There was a time, not so long ago, when boxing fans were entitled to wonder if a next generation of top-level fighters were ever to materialise. The class of the 90’s hung on, clung on and drove back any upstarts hoping to push them down the stairs and claim the house as their own.
Television networks stuck with the veterans, providing platform to those who reflected back the ageing demographic still pursuant of their boxing fix. Boxing, in a tale almost as old as the sport itself, is struggling for survival. Nefarious sanctioning bodies slowly dissembling its inherent hierarchy from within while the interloper from below stairs, the UFC, grew its appeal with the younger audience.
Boxing stuck with what it knew. Hopkins. Mosley. Oscar. Roy.
Maybe, almost a decade too late, the new class is here. I hope a rejuvenated Kelly Pavlik is among them.
Continue reading “Holding out for a hero, is a new dawn really here?”
I’m excited about the WBC Super-Middleweight contest between Nottingham’s Carl Froch and Arkansas’ Jermain Taylor, it pitches two fighters together who are in their respective primes. It doesn’t rely on nostalgia, nor does it feature a network favourite and a cherry picked opponent. It isn’t quite the choice Froch has framed it to be, pursuing Taylor is noble given the posturing of preceding champions in the selection of foes, but Taylor, lest we forget, is Froch’s mandatory as he won a vacant title and Taylor beat Lacy in a final eliminator. However, for all the glass half full gloss it still beats Taylor’s reliance on an age old cliche to promote the fight. 
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