Category: Boxing

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Joyce’s chin, otherworldly, is an asset and a deterrent

The weekend reluctantly succumbs to a grumbling Monday, children scramble onto back seats and the drizzle of late September sneers at those too lazy to cut the lawn the day before. In the ensuing silence, thoughts, ideas compete, ebbing and flowing for those of us wrestling with obligation, the should dos afforded by time and solitude.

Boxing lurches in to frame among the unwashed breakfast pots, the dogs that need exercise and the bill that needs paying. It isn’t always this way. Golovkin and Canelo III came and went leaving little fat to chew on by the Monday, despite the generational greatness of the pairing. A tired episode in a great rivalry. The money laden, but inferior, Godfather III if you will. Years too late.

Into the wash of their encounter stepped Shakur Stevenson, the next, next Pretty Boy. He has predecessors as would be successor to Floyd and his Uber-wealth. 25 years old and 22 ounces over the limit. He won. Cemented his status. But missing weight brought more headlines than the fight. The nature of the modern mediums. Words, failure, toxicity create more wake than quality, preparation, success.

And so it fell to the heavyweights in Manchester, England. The two nice guys called Joe, Joyce and Parker, met in a crossroads bout. Was this the top of Joyce’s arc or could he continue his climb versus Parker, a man who had soared with Joshua and Ruiz already? Expectations had been modest. Joyce, huge, lumbering but effective. Parker, stout, sharper and seasoned.

Both excelled. And their bruising encounter revealed a new player at the top of the division.

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Andy Lee, a young face with an old voice, creates doubt in the script for Joyce v Parker

When in doubt, tell the truth.
Mark Twain, Humourist and novelist, (1835-1910)

Any boxing match worth its salt is a cocktail of knowns and unknowns. Proposing multiple potential outcomes, paradoxical in the conflict of conviction and uncertainty those possibilities provoke. Fight week should play with those conclusions, tease doubt, shift perspective and stimulate debate for those with the wisdom to embrace the rumination rather than dismiss anything that doesn’t validate their own opinion. A common failing in the echo chamber of our own social media streams.

This weekend’s heavyweight battle between Joe Joyce and Joseph Parker doesn’t possess all of those ingredients. As a result it had failed to toy with fight fan’s interest as the last days and hours before the first bell tick away in the way the best fights usually do. Both Joes possess strengths and weaknesses, present a variance of form and experience and offer complimentary styles too. There has always been much to like in the match up. The bout boasts sufficient jeopardy and reward for the victor and vanquished to encourage a fierce commitment from the two gentlemanly protagonists too.

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When the time comes. Golovkin and the age old problem

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, 
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 2

I sat perched on the edge of the sofa, waiting for one of the three greatest middleweights of my life time to enter the ring. Twenty or more title fights sprawled out on his record, a long sequence of victories, a red mark or two failing to diminish a reputation as the best 160 pounder of his generation. And perhaps, whisper it quietly, the best of all.

Aged 40, doubt remained. Such was my intoxication with boxing, the 4am ring walk, the obscure channel, the pay per view fee, nothing would dissuade me from tuning in. A dangerous opponent, younger, fresher, stronger too maybe? He had it all to do.

The year was 2005. The fight was Hopkins versus Eastman. Much has changed since. Much has stayed the same.

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Golovkin chases the debts of the past, Canelo credit for his own

First published at bookmakers.com

This Saturday, fans of boxing and the wider sporting world will turn their gaze away from the heavyweights and toward the unfashionable trappings of the Super-Middleweight (168lb) division. Two luminaries of the modern age; Saul ’Canelo’ Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin, face each other for the third, and in all likelihood, final time. Los Angeles’ T-Mobile Arena will provide the stage for the concluding chapter in their bitter and controversial rivalry.  

For each combatant, the customary collection of belts will be at stake, alongside lucrative purses and, most cherished of all, the chance to establish definitive superiority over the best of their contemporaries. There are a host of variables to navigate in predicting the outcome. Age, form, activity, location, weight. Proposing opportunity for punters but complicated by the interpretations applied to their significance and to whom they offer advantage. The enduring injustice which hung over the verdicts awarded in their first two contests, an unjustified Draw and a barely conceivable Majority Decision for Canelo, is an additional factor which could influence markets and conceivably create margins for those who invest unemotionally.  

It is a feast of tangibles and intangibles.   

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Usyk glowers, grins and out-wits Joshua once more

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect

George Bernard Shaw, Playwright 1856-1950

As I glared at the blank screen before me, thoughts on Oleksandr Usyk’s triumph over Anthony Joshua still swirling. Theories, meaning, the rumination of others flitting in and out of view and ear shot. The starkness of the victory I had seen, the troubling thread of doubt dangled by one or two who’d witnessed a closer fight weaving through my mind. Happen-chance and necessity led me to a live BBC concert from the Royal Albert Hall. An exceptionally gifted singer, Shelea, was shaking the old dome to its foundations. Performing in the long shadow cast by Aretha Franklin. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. She sounded uninhibited, undeterred by the shoes in which she trod. Empowered by the responsibility. Emboldened by the audience before her.

It struck me that the quest for the respect of others, of history, of his rivals, of those who would take what he had, of the street life he hoped never to disgrace but eternally escape, of being validated by wealth, influence has been a constant in Anthony Joshua’s professional career. A weighty burden too.

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Beyond reasonable doubt. Usyk chases confirmation, Joshua redemption

Article first published at Bookmakers.com

“Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.” ― Gustave Flaubert 

Saturday’s heavyweight rematch between Anthony Joshua and Oleksander Usyk, a bout awash with possibilities and drenched in the oily wealth of its hosts, will anoint Tyson Fury’s successor following the Gyspy King’s insistence he has now retired. Other shiny and glib garlands will be draped about the victor of course but in the old money of boxing, either Joshua or Usyk will become, the man. 

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Fury dominates and then destroys Whyte in six

First appeared on BigFightWeekend.com

It would be cruel to suggest 76 years young singer Don McLean moved his feet quicker in his pre-fight rendition of American Pie than London bruiser Dillian Whyte did before being struck by a Tyson Fury right uppercut, but it wouldn’t be far from the truth. Deconstructing Whyte’s reputation based on the ease with which Fury deposited the floundering challenger on the canvas in front of a baying Wembley crowd, high on freedom and other confections, will be a popular undertaking but unjust too. Observers are encouraged to refrain.

The division today isn’t 1970s deep. It never was before Ali, Foreman and their many contemporaries and it likely never will be again, and as such the perennial comparison is redundant. Within his generation, Whyte possessed a credible record and a consensus place in the top half a dozen big men.

That Whyte failed to land a punch of note in six rounds speaks to Fury’s dominance of that same generation more than the limitations of the self-made ‘Body Snatcher’. But defeat brings cynicism. Dominance, as Fury’s predecessor, Wladimir Klitschko found, invariably does too.

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Boxing bullied out of the Kinahan business on eve of Fury versus Whyte

“I think crime pays. You travel a lot.”

Woody Allen

Fighters always attract a troupe of colourful characters. Their money, and their potential to be parted from it, even more. Sycophants. Chancers. Criminals. Sugar Ray Robinson, the greatest of them all, engaged a parade of the bizarre and the harmless. From a person with Dwarfism, employed for no discernible reason beyond the novelty of their height, to a pair charged with whistling while the shimmering Robinson worked – if Gilbert Rogin’s obituary of April 24th 1989, by way of coincidence, is to be taken as a gospel of the period.

The great man danced in an era in which dressing room visitors were far from harmless, and in a shady world where the advice of ‘advisors’ was always followed. Boxing’s enduring chaos is fertile territory for organised crime. In the 1950s, a period oft considered a golden age, the Mob were manifestly the king makers within the sport.

On the eve of the heavyweight title fight between Tyson Fury and Dillian Whyte, Daniel Kinahan’s growing influence within boxing’s many lucrative shadows, including a documented advisory capacity in Fury’s later career, has finally been arrested.

If not the man himself. It is a story perhaps only at its beginning.

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Khan and Brook cast long shadows from their last sunset

Ageing is natural. It happens to all of us. I just always want to look like myself, even if that’s an older version of myself.

Halle Berry, Actor (1966- )

In the summer of 2004 a boxer called Amir Khan, aged just 17, the possessor of unfathomable hand speed and armed with a quiver of jabs, a favourite grandson’s smile and a vest beneath which beat a fearless heart, became a household name in Britain when his voyage to an unlikely Silver medal at the Athens Olympics was broadcast live on terrestrial television. Fight fans, sports fans, grandmas, uncles, friends, all bore witness to Britain’s sole entrant.

On Saturday night, much closer to home than the Greek capital and now a retired veteran of 35, Khan climbed the steps to the ring for the final time. The loneliness of his entrance in to the public’s consciousness as a boy all those years ago reflected back in a brutal departure from the prize ring. Referee Victor Loughlin showing sufficient mercy to save a wilting Khan from a pitiless and increasingly rampant Kell Brook in the sixth round.

A fight 17 years in the making was over in 17 minutes.

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Canelo to confirm his dominance

The fight between Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and Caleb Plant for the undisputed Super-Middleweight title occurs this weekend, and while the IBF belt the unbeaten American will bring to the party completes the modern day quartet for the victor, in truth, Plant is, in auld money at least, merely a distinguished contender for a crown Canelo earned beating Callum Smith 11 months ago.

True, the IBF were the first to inaugurate a championship at the 168 pound limit, Scot Murray Sutherland becoming champion in 1984, but Plant’s belt, despite the history, is no more validatory than the WBO strap Canelo took from Billy Joe Saunders earlier this year. They add to the aesthetic of his dominance but it was proven some time ago.

None of which should detract from the positivity in play in a bout between the two. Foremost because Canelo will be fighting for the fourth time in less than a year and in doing so cementing his status as the number one fighter in the world and Chairman of the ‘What have you done for me lately?’ club. Plant is also undisputed as the best available contender in the division.

But can he win?

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DeMarcus Corley, the old grifter, dances into another Diggstown

‘The guy got hurt. It happens. It happens to fighters. I thought you knew that.‘

James Woods, as Gabriel Caine, in Diggstown.

In the 1992 picture, Diggstown, or Midnight Sting for those on this side of the pond, Lou Gossett Jnr. plays ‘Honey’ Roy Palmer. A long retired prizefighter for whom fame never called. Subjected to the persuasive patter of con-man Gabriel Caine, Palmer finds himself in the titular town with 10 opponents lined up to face him in a 24 hour period. The prospects of triumph seem distant and the consequences of defeat, and the lost bet for Caine, catastrophic given the Mafia origins of the money Caine has wagered on the outcome.

‘Honey’ Roy, like DeMarcus Corley, who boxes again this weekend two years on from the last of a long sequence of defeats, had retained a fighter’s physique and the wiles of a well-schooled pug, but he was, nevertheless, 47 years old.

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Whyte goes all in for Fury chance

The higher I go, the crookeder it becomes.

Michael Corleone, Godfather III (1990)

Dillian Whyte is a good heavyweight. He isn’t Earnie Shavers, or Ray Mercer. He is, as the Acorn and Merciless were, a good heavyweight in an era that belongs to others. Whyte has compiled a resume that stands comparison with most of his own contemporaries. And a few of his predecessors too. His era isn’t the golden one of Shavers and his thunderous right hand but it has the potential to rival or surpass many of the decades that preceded the glorious 1970s. Besides, no fighter chooses his or her own time.

However history will remember Fury, Joshua and Wilder’s era, their collective defeats and the emergence of Usyk is unlikely to remove any of their names from above the door of the decade they’ve cohabited but Whyte has been a perennial presence. The demise of his showdown with Otto Wallin, a credible if unexciting fixture, became ever more predictable following Joshua’s decision to opt in on the contracted Usyk rematch and the WBC mandating a victorious Fury negotiate with the winner of Whyte and Wallin.

The risk to reward ratio of the Wallin fight changed. Dramatically.

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Old money and the roads to Fury

A champion is someone who gets up even when he can’t.

Jack Dempsey

Rude. The only way to describe the health of the heavyweight division. It has a singular and consensus champion. Tyson Fury. One fresh from an enthralling rumble with the sport’s biggest puncher. Subsequently, his WBC mandatory challenger, and therefore his most likely next opponent, will be Dillian Whyte, a fighter in every fan’s top 6 or 7, if he beats Otto Wallin, who cut and bothered Fury when they met a year ago.

Beyond Fury’s immediate challenge, contenders Oleksandr Usyk and Anthony Joshua will reconvene in the Spring to determine the most worthy to contest all of the available belts, for whatever merit resides in the custody of all four. And alongside that quartet, exist a parade of potential challengers with varied styles, stories and skill.

Boxing has its heavyweight champion. A charismatic one. Unconventional. Gigantic. Everyone else, merely contenders. In old money at least. The hope now, in this brave new-old world, is that the Champion stays busy.

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Furious and wild. Tyson and Deontay carve a place in heavyweight history

The King of Las Vegas. The King of the Heavyweight division and the conquerer of demons seen and unseen, Tyson Fury finally convinced someone, anyone, to stop Deontay Wilder from trying in the 11th round. It was an astonishing battle between two men with a depth of resolve that cannot be taught, nor bought by the millions they’ve already accumulated.

Fury climbed from the canvas twice in the fourth, to eventually overwhelm and knockout Deontay Wilder following 11 of the most furious and wild rounds the division has seen in decades. They do not have the equivalence of Ali and Frazier or the technical brilliance of Bowe and Holyfield, but Fury and Wilder have provided entertainment and drama to match those illustrious predecessors.

There will be no fourth. But thank goodness for the contractual obligation that insisted on a third.

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Cheeseman and the deal with the devil

Every fighter has a relationship with sacrifice. Offering something of their unseen tomorrow for the conspicuous glory of today. As a witness to the transaction, boxing fans marvel at the willingness of those inside the ring who make the exchange for our entertainment. Light-Middleweight Ted Cheeseman, who succumbed to the fists of the Troy Williamson and relinquished his British title last night, is a man that embraces this truth.

Not for the first time, the courageous former champion departed from the stage a little less than he’d entered it. The crowd and the audience at home staggered by the action Cheeseman and Williamson had provided in 10 gruelling rounds of thudding combat.

Cheeseman’s tumultuous encounter with Williamson evoked memories of those in whose footsteps they trod, Jamie Moore and Matt Macklin most prominent among them, and proved a fitting prelude to the night’s main attraction over in Las Vegas, where a fellow brother in arms willingly gave a piece of his future self in the pursuit of his own glory.

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Former British champion, David Price hangs them up

Imagine being the British Champion. The British Heavyweight champion at that. A Lonsdale belt draped over a shoulder, shimmering beneath the ring lights. A century of history on which to stand. David Price, the Liverpudlian giant, has stood and felt those sensations, held that famous belt as his own.

And he did so, in his hometown.

Only a few men have ever shared that feeling; Iron Hague, Tommy Farr, Woodcock, Cooper, Bugner and Lennox Lewis perhaps most famous among them. Frank Bruno never did. Price won the title, aged 29, by beating Sam Sexton in 2012. He defended the crown twice, beating Audley Harrison and Matt Skelton, before relinquishing the belt in late 2013 to pursue higher honours.

Those honours never did quite materialise for the self styled ‘big horrible heavyweight’. Momentum was lost on the alter of circumstance. Poor management, bad luck, injuries and the reality of a knockout defeat or two, which can happen when you’re boxing world level big men, or mediocre big men juiced to the brim for that matter, all contrived to deny him the breakthrough he so desperately craved.

He announced his retirement this week. Sanguine about his frustrations but characteristically honest about his reasons for choosing not to box on.

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Fury, Wilder and the third act

“Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.”

Truman Capote, Novelist (1924-1984)

Trilogies, in an era when the first fight is all too often hard to make, are a rare spectacle. Particularly among heavyweights. The third of the series is typically only required to settle the argument as to who is the better fighter following shared outcomes in the opening bouts. Ali v Frazier, Bowe v Holyfield the most famous examples in the modern age, if the 1970s and 1990s still count as the modern age. Both pairings were notable for the equality of the protagonists and for the career best performances drawn from all four.

As the days and hours tick down to the third fight between Fury and Wilder, there should be, given this scarcity, the iconic nature of those illustrious predecessors and the tumultuous events of the first two encounters, more enthusiasm for the fixture than there is. Remarkably, considering the dramatics of those two fights, the mandate behind their third meeting is not driven by the appetite of fans or the quest for resolution as to who is the superior fighter, it is compelled only by contractual obligation and the stubbornness of Deontay Wilder.

Fury v Wilder III, until last week merely an irritating obstacle to greater prizes, is now upon us. As boxing’s various troubadours, fixers and mystics descend on Las Vegas, the memory of Joshua’s dethronement as fresh in their minds as the jet lag and neon lights will permit, the fight in prospect has become entirely more intriguing.

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Posturing, greed and the loss of Fury v Joshua

By Hector T. Morgan

Anthony Joshua’s humbling defeat to Oleksandr Usyk didn’t steal a unification bout from him, or his contemporary, Tyson Fury despite the persuasive narrative that it did. Boxing’s usual follies and the greed of one or both parties deprived the fans of the most enticing fight available several months ago. The two protagonists will one day look back wistfully to the moment, or moments, when they allowed the fight to slip away in the pursuit of an ever larger purse they will never have time to spend. Hipsters will point to the overdue Welterweight pairing of Errol Spence and Terence Crawford as the bout boxing actually needs the most, and there is merit in the argument, but heavyweights remain the premier attraction and the measure by which most eras are judged.

A fact that informs the greed that enveloped the potential fixture and permitted the contracted trilogy bout between Fury and Wilder to encroach and supersede the richest fight boxing could make.

And though fans may one day witness the two face each other, it will forever be diminished by the passage of time and the two defeats Joshua has now collected.

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Usyk the Great uproots the Joshua tree

And so it was, the giant visited by defeat once more. Anthony Joshua lost for the second time and the collection of party garlands he’d hoped to parlay into an undisputed clash with Tyson Fury at some future point were passed to a new custodian. The fight proved revelatory for those trusting in the age old adage “a good big un beats a good little un.” and, further, revealed limitations in Joshua’s technical competence and confirmed Oleksandr Usyk’s unquestionable superiority.

As night follows day, the dissection of Joshua’s performance began before it had even ended. Sport in the spotlight insists all losers are finished, all conquered champions exposed. It is an incessant and usually unqualified scrutiny. True, problems have grown like weeds around and within Joshua’s performances; where once there was a youthful vigour and self belief, knots of indecision and timidity now prevail.

Joshua remains a dangerous heavyweight and there is scope still for improvement on the disappointment of Saturday,. Boxing fans must be wary of dismissing those who venture to fight their peers, and lose. He took his lumps and bumps, his defeat, with humility and grace.

They too, are admirable qualities.

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Joshua and the legends we chase

The notion boxing can ever be brought to heel, conform to the norms at work in other sports is a Camelot many still yearn for. Every fan, writer and concerned bystander would like boxing to pitch its best versus its best more frequently. Noble? Yes. Futile? Entirely. It is akin to trying to make a ruler from a snake. A Freudian analogy, given the snakes that rule the game.

There is no utopia, and the unwelcome truth, as it was for the Arthurian legend of Camelot, there never was.

A heavyweight contest between Anthony Joshua and the Ukrainian, Aleksander Usyk, being fought before a gathering of 60,000 of London’s most lubricated inhabitants represents an intriguing and important reality.

And while not the eternal fantasy of Tyson Fury v Joshua, it boasts the players and the stage to forge a new legend, possibly two.

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“I coulda had class”. Fighters, films and the fix

For cinema goers, the image of a boxer being coerced into losing a fight or consoled in the aftermath, is all too familiar. A convenient vehicle deployed by film makers, since the advent of ‘talkies’ in the 1920’s. From John Wayne to Charlie Chaplin, actors have been knitting their brows as earnest pugs buckling beneath the guilt that ensues. Electing to forgo the integrity they cherished, in exchange for easy money or the promise of richer fruit down the line, is a choice much easier to reject in theory and detached from the starkness of life as a prizefighter from the 1930s to the late 1950s.

As Brando immortalised in The Godfather, fighters, like others in position of influence and value, were made offers they couldn’t refuse.

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And the band played on. Boxing’s voyage to the abyss

Rogers Morton, a prominent figure in American politics in the 1970s, once said, while serving as Campaign Manager for Gerald Ford’s ailing push for the White House and pressed on how he intended to salvage lost momentum; “I’m not going to re-arrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic.” A quote that would outlive the Statesman, both in political influence and life, he would succumb to cancer in 1979, and one that became synonymous with actions deemed superficial and redundant in the face of impending disaster.

As a 58-year-old Evander Holyfield clambered back down the ring steps in Florida this weekend, a state which withdrew his license to box 17 years ago on the grounds of his diminished ability, it is easy to clamour for boxing to do something, to intervene. Thousands added their voices to the cause in the days before the ‘fight’, screened by Triller (no, me neither) and commentated on by former president and the doyenne of delusion, Donald Trump. They urged ‘boxing’ to change course, to come to its senses.

Gratefully, it took but a few seconds for Holyfield to be separated from his, if he wasn’t detached from them, or at least reality, when he arrived.

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Charlo takes a jab at Tszyu ambitions

By Hector T. Morgan

Smack talk is part of the game when it comes to boxing. The quest for edge, for attention and the need to nurture ego and project self-belief has prompted thousands of fighters to diminish potential opponents and boast of their own dominance. Jermell Charlo is one such fighter. In a social media world where the background noise is high, getting noticed, particularly when fighters box so infrequently, is often as arduous as the fights.

Since his knockout victory against Jeison Rosario in September 2020, the 31-year-old American has held the WBA (Super), WBC, IBF, and The Ring light middleweight titles. Charlo is an outstanding fighter. But to transcend, to stretch to the weightier purses of those who passed before him. He needs bums on seats and eyeballs on his career.

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Saunders arrives at the moment of truth. Canelo on Cinco de Mayo

First published on January 29th 2021

British Super-Middleweight contender Billy Joe Saunders has landed a fight with boxing’s premier star, Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez, to coincide with Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican celebration of the nation’s victory over the invading French forces in 1862. It is a day now synonymous with boxing and, specifically, whoever is the nation’s biggest star in that calendar year, headlining a US based show.

Saunders’ challenge to Canelo will bring joy to those hipsters who revel in the possibility the Hatfield rascal will prove to be slippery Kryptonite to boxing’s newest and seemingly invincible Superman. For those to whom Saunders is merely a crass irritation, their joy will be found in the presumed evisceration of such a fanciful idea.

The fight offers the Mexican superstar an opportunity to substantiate his status as the division’s king. A crown he earned beating Callum Smith last year. Saunders holds the WBO belt. In truth, it is a decoration. Saunders won the vacated title by beating unheralded Shefat Isufi in May 2019. Two subsequent defences, both abject in their significance and the entertainment provided, added negligible kudos to his reign and the belt stubbornly remains little more than a curio.

Nevertheless, without it Saunders would probably not have landed the fight and be facing his moment of truth.

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Liam Williams secures his place in a gallery of the gallant

Explaining the status of any individual fight, the sense of the significance it should be afforded in the wider boxing landscape, is an undertaking for only the boldest and most patient among us. This intractable maze also makes it impossible to define fighters in the way they once were. Any argument about a fighter’s world class credentials must first be preceded by agreement on what world class actually means.

Is losing a world title fight enough or must you win one? Ken Norton never did but would give any heavyweight in history an argument. What is a world title anyway, if there are four available and others competing to be recognised? The WBA routinely acknowledge three of their own in a single weight class and list ‘champions’ few have even seen fight.

As Demetrius Andrade distorted Liam Williams’ face on Saturday night, in the way a potter might when throwing wet clay on a wheel, the notion of what makes a world class fighter, or how such status is earned, ebbed and flowed. A WBO title fight is rarely the platform for greatness, though exceptions exist, and the organisation’s mandatories, of which Williams was one such example, are not typically drawn from a consensus top 10.

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Rampant Benn wrecks Vargas in 90 seconds.

The acceleration in Conor Benn’s progress as a fighter is, frankly, astonishing. Samuel Vargas is not Carmen Basilio, but he’s rugged, durable and still held aspiration. He was obliterated in 90 seconds by a 24-year old with the patter of a superstar and a magnetic persona to match.

Vargas protested the stoppage, Colombian’s from the North American circuit expect to box on unless they’re laid out flat, but a degree of compassion will serve him well in the long run. There was the sense Vargas let the enemy in through the front door and Benn ran rampantly through the opening. Right hands, uppercuts and left hooks. Vargas’ eyes looked to the lights, the end would have followed had Michael Alexander not intervened.

For Benn, as with all prospects, contenders, matchmaking is key. If left to the protagonist, it will be ambitious.

Continue reading “Rampant Benn wrecks Vargas in 90 seconds.” →
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