Chisora lands stupefying, unnecessary trilogy fight with Fury

Why drag this out much longer?
I'd be ahead if I could quit when I was behind
Bobby Womack*, 1976

At the time of writing British heavyweight chugger Derek Chisora is 8-weeks short of his 39th birthday. By the time he walks toward the empty ring on December 3rd to fight the Heavyweight Champion, Tyson Fury, he will be closer still. Among the dissent the match up has drawn, for the things it isn’t; competitive, necessary or requested, boxing fans, writers and observers are only paying peripheral attention to yet another example of a middle age man punching for pay. Aesthetics can deceive. Routinely do.

Beyond the superficial of weigh-ins, face offs and PR soundbytes, in the haste to point to those who Fury should be fighting and just how unworthy Chisora is, the challenger’s age is but a sideline.

Lest we forget. Old is still old.

Continue reading →

October 21, 2022 0

Veteran Wilder punches toward future greatness

The bigger they come, the harder they fall.
Bob Fitzsimmons, 1862-1917

It is the nature of the meandering river of life that the vistas and postcards of the past can seem more lustrous than our current view. That which has passed becomes richer for the embellishment our memory imposes and the present dulls as our optimism dissipates with grey hair and midlife. Applied to boxing, it exaggerates our heroes and denigrates their successors.

This manifests as “Tommy levels Floyd”, “nobody beats peak Iron Mike”, or for older observers, “nobody punched like the Brown Bomber”. Ask Eddie Murphy. These opinions root deeply, becoming fixed in the landscape of our outlook. It closes us to the brilliance of now. The genius around us. Things new can still be great and may one day, if we are spared long enough, be the fixations of our future. Best to embrace the enjoyment they provide as if still young ourselves, than diminish them in the kangaroo court of our rose-filtered nostalgia.

Saturday’s knockout win, accumulated with a single right hand that travelled around 18 inches, continued to confirm that future history will smile on Deontay Wilder in much the same way it romantacises those bygone gladiators.

Continue reading →

October 16, 2022 0

Nostalgia for sale. Benn and Eubank Preview

_{Article first published at Bookmakers.com}

There will be a different type of atmosphere in the O2 Arena, London, this weekend when the British pairing of Chris Eubank Jr. and Conor Benn march toward the lights. Memories will be stirred. Emotions and glasses will be charged.

Fans of their fathers, Chris Sr. and Nigel, two warriors of the 1980s and ‘90s, will recall the febrile nature of their great rivalry and those who watched as children, or were not yet born, and suckled on tall tales of Eubank and Benn fights, will grasp tightly the chance to experience those golden days via the proxy of their fighting sons. Those feelings, of a deeply rooted affinity to a fighter, are harder to muster among the inactivity and sprawling labyrinthian reality of boxing in the 21st century.

Rivals all too rarely fight.

Saturday’s headline contest boasts this once common intensity, inherited though it may be, and is a refreshing fixture even as a catchweight contest.

Continue reading →

October 7, 2022 0

Boxing isn’t to blame for cheating. Cheats are to blame for cheating.

Peace: A period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
Ambrose Bierce, American Essayist, (1842-1914)

Boxing isn’t an entity. It isn’t sentient. It isn’t a building, a person or a particular group of people. Nor is it an organisation or corporation. It isn’t owned. It isn’t a charity. It isn’t a sanctioning body, or a certain array of promoters. It isn’t one thing, or a sum of many. It isn’t a game. It isn’t a business. It doesn’t think. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t have a conscience.

It isn’t even an it.

On days like today, when the shit hits the fan and someone has been caught with their hand in the till, or cheating to get ahead, the orgy of activity that occurs beneath the word boxing is often referred to in this way. As a thing. A conscious, aware, tangible, living, breathing thing. Boxing is not any of those ‘things’. And as such, the idea ‘boxing is hurting itself’ or, more dramatically, ‘shooting itself in the foot’, is a phrasing which hinders progress and the serious discussion required to find solutions to the problems all too frequently perpetrated in the name of the sport.

Continue reading →

October 5, 2022 0

Echoes of place and time as Eubank and Benn seek to extend their fathers’ legend

The important thing when you are going to do something brave is to have someone on hand to witness it. 
Michael Howard, Military Historian, (1922-2019)

Our relationships with fighters are shaped in the main by the greatness of their deeds. In their power, their skill, their willingness to endure pain that appears beyond our comprehension, behind the ordinary. The depth of the awe in which we hold those champions is influenced by our place in life when they emerge. It is the crucible for the additional sentimentality we all feel toward the heroes of our past. Specifically, those of our formative years when senses are keenest and less dulled by time and the accrued cynicism.

Appreciation of others, of successors, assessment of predecessors, is cured by the wisdom of age but our champions, the one’s we elevate at our most impressionable always stand tallest in our recollection.

On Saturday night, Chris Eubank Jr and Conor Benn will tap into the emotions of fight fans of my generation, encouraging a voyage through the decades to the seminal rematch between their fathers 29 years ago. It is a fight forged in opportunism, hidden from the masses by the convoluted nature of viewing via an obscure app and with arguably more to lose than there is to gain for both protagonists. And yet such is the lustre of Benn and Eubank Senior’s two fights there will still be an audience in pursuit of access when the first bell rings.

Continue reading →