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the Tosser King Part 3

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Well it’s official. February 22, in Vegas, Tyson Fury will put on his big boy shorts and fight Deontay Wilder again. The official announcement was made on the 27th, but I didn’t hear of it till yesterday. Earlier today I watched some talking heads (one of them Timothy Bradley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilfXVDfTTvQ ) on Youtube talking about it and they were hyping this fight as the biggest of the decade – bigger than Pacquiao / Mayweather, bigger than Joshua / Ruiz 2.

They said a lot of nice things about both fighters, that Fury was a clever boxer, and that Wilder was the hardest puncher of this generation, that both men were courageous for agreeing to fight each other, etc.

However, they got some things wrong, and it pissed me off: (For the record, Bradley did not utter any of these hereseys.)

  1. Tyson Fury is not the Lineal Champion. We’ve been over this before. You can’t claim that you’ve “never been beaten in the ring” when you twice failed to show up for a fight that you were under contract for. Chickening out is not the same as winning the fight, and I can’t believe that I have to point this out again.
  2. It’s time to quit dissing Andy Ruiz for losing to Joshua in the rematch. The “little fat kid” is currently the number 6 heavyweight in both the IBO and Ring Magazine rankings. He wasn’t the recipient of a gift from crooked or incompetent judges, he kicked Joshua’s ass. That he lost a decision to the same man is no cause for derision. Grow up.
  3. Tyson Fury has not become a ‘world wide mega-star’ by fighting Tom Schwartz and Otto Wallin. In fact, he lost a lot of credibility by doing so, and at tremendous risk to his career. What if he had lost to one those stiffs? Game over, or at least a return to square one. And Wallin presented a problem for him, cutting his eye badly enough that he could have lost by TKO.
  4. It will not be bigger that Pacqiauo / Mayweather, or Mayweather / MacGregor for that matter. I hate to break it to you , but out there in the real world, people generally don’t know who these men are. Manny Pacquiauo was hyped enough, (like Oscar De la Hoya before him) that he became a household word. Mayweather slowly got close to that kind of celebrity status, but he never got all the way there. The Pacquiauo / Mayweather fight got hyped so much that it became almost a national holiday, with people gathering in homes all over the country to watch the “two world’s best” duke it out. This could have been a huge boon to the boxing world, with huge numbers of the uninitiated watching, had they put on a show. But what they saw was an aging and injured Pacquiao chasing around a reluctant Mayweather for 12 rounds; an epic snooze-fest. The Fury / Wilder fight promises to be much, much better than that, but I don’t believe they will pull in near the audience that Pacquiao / Mayweather did. Despite their accomplishments, people just don’t know who these men are. When Wilder knocked out Ortiz some weeks back, my local newspaper had this to say about the event: Nothing. Zip, zero, squat.

Despite these malodorous mis-statements I do share the excitement of this talking head crew. This is a heavyweight fight of real import, not because Fury is the lineal champ, but because he has the skill set that can possibly beat Wilder. He beat Klitschko, after all,and there are some key similiarities between Wilder and Klitschko. (Long and strong jab, devastating right hand, etc.)

This is so much better than seeing Fury take on yet another stiff, this is not a farce, this is championship boxing.

For the moment I will take back the blog-imposed title of ‘the Tosser King’ (meaning he was a great wanker for fighting Wallin and Schwartz) and will give a thumbs-up to him for fighting the most dangerous man on the planet.

Ruiz vs. Joshua 2

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I’m okay.

It was okay.

It was satisfactory to a large degree.

It made sense.

I guess.

Anthony Joshua defeated Andy Ruiz in 12 rounds to regain the WBA, IBF, IBO and WBO titles. He did it fair and square. No argument. He did the very thing that George Foreman (back in June) said he would not be able to do – to figure out what he did wrong and correct it it a mere six months. He went from being a search-and-destroy heavyweight to being a dancer – a Jim Corbett. He adopted the same strategy that Tyson Fury used to wrench these same belts from Wladimir Klitschko. (To be fair, I think Joshua threw a lot more jabs than Fury did. Joshua’s victory may have been boring but not farcical).

It was fair, it was a correct decision. But it was not compelling. It was not convincing in the same way a knockout would have been.

And no, it’s not that same as what Ali did. Ali stung like a bee. He jabbed and bounced away, jabbed and stepped aside, but then he hurt you too. You can’t ask Cleveland Williams, or Sonny Liston, (because they’re dead) but you can see the films of those fights. Ali danced, and he devastated. His defense lead to offence. Fury and Joshua left that part out.

Ali used the rope-a-dope on Foreman. That was simultaneaneously the opposite of dancing and yet an alike strategy in that it was not boxing. The rope-a dope is standing still, dancing is running away. My dad, and many other dads back in ’74 grumbled that Ali’s victory was hollow, or somehow less than valid because he used this non-boxing strategy. But the difference here is that Ali knocked Foreman out. Joshua and Fury just frustrated Ruiz and Klitschko. They were an irritation, like a mosquito that whines near your head in the summer twilight, you try to swat it, but miss. Hell, I find Spongebob Squarepants pretty irritating, but I’m not ready to give him a championship belt.

When a boxer employs a strategy that is at it’s core a means to avoid boxing, I get impatient. When a boxer devises such a strategy and wins, I grumble. When a fighter uses such a strategy and wins a world title, and the press loves it, I retire to Bedlam.

Joshua was rightly praised for keeping to his fight plan the whole twelve rounds. The commentators said, and I too thought I saw him start to revert. From time to time he would stay in the pocket for a moment, trade a couple shots. But then he’d remember what he was supposed to be doing, and force himself to step out, to once again fire from long range, out of range of his opponent. That was what George Foreman said he couldn’t do, to become a different fighter. That was impressive.

The commentators tried to put a shine on what Joshua was doing by more than once referring to Lennox Lewis and his pair of fights with Hasim Rahman. They offered the story as a sort of hopeful vision. When Lewis was ‘starched’ by Rahman, the boxing world was turned upside down, but then when he won the title back right away via immidiate rematch, the offense of the Rahman rein was quickly forgotten. The stain of that loss did not, in the long run, tarnish Lewis’s legacy.

The implication was, that if Joshua could right the wrong of this little fat champion’s existence, than everything would be right in the boxing world again, just like it was when Lewis beat Rahman.

A couple problems with that:

(First, I mean no disrespect to Hasim Rahman and his long and illustrious career. It was good to see him in the corner of a hot prospect Saturday. I hope they go far.)

First, Lewis was knocked out because he was clowning. He was taunting Rahman and showboating for the crowd. He dropped his hands, and Rahman dropped his ass. That ain’t the way this happened. Joshua got beat at his own game. He was in full search-and-destroy mode, trying to knock Ruiz out when he got starched instead. He was hit with many blows, but it was that first hard left in the third round that did the real damage.

He got beat at his own game. He. Got. Beat.

Second, Lewis floored Rahman with a beautiful and terrifying combo. Joshua didn’t floor Ruiz, never even came close. Lewis got revenge on the man that beat him, Joshua did a Spongebob Squarepants for twelve rounds. They’re very different things.

Now I’m reading pundits and such opining that Ruiz’s career is in ruins, or at least in peril, because he gained weight, did a “Buster Douglas”. “He’ll never live it down”. “He’ll regret not training harder”. Even Ruiz was saying it. “I partied too much”. What did I miss? Did I miss Ruiz gasping for air? Did I miss him slowing down, throwing fewer and fewer punches as the fight wore on? Did I miss him dropping his hands in exhaustion so that Joshua leveled him? No. Because none of those things happened.

So, in what way was his weight a factor in the fight?

(Crickets).

That’s what I thought.

One final thought: as of this writing, (Tuesday the 10th) Ring Magazine, in teir inscrutable wisdom, still shows Ruiz as their number 3 man (behind Fury and Wilder), ahead of Joshua at number 4. Their records are up to date, Ruiz showing two losses, but still he is ahead of Joshua. How do you spell irrelevant?

Who Can Beat Wilder?

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Deontay Wilder cleaned another clock last night. Did a whiz-bang job of it too. Seriously, I was impressed.

I was originally impressed after his first match against Stiverne. Up till then, I bought into the rap against him, that he hadn’t fought anyone, that he was just a clubber, etc. Seeing him go twelve rounds, and against a champion, well that pretty much settled that issue, huh?

Well no. As you could see from his comments last night if you sat through the pre-fight hype show, that he still hears the same critique. He can’t box, has got no footwork, blah blah blah. Funny thing is, I get to thinking it too. Even after seeing him defeat Ortiz the first time, Even after he knocked out King Tosser Fury.

He was patient, looking, feinting, jabbing, studying his man, waiting for the opportunity to drop his payload, the “bomb” that he talks about. Boom! One shot, and the bogeyman was down.

And we’ve seen it before! He beat Szpilka and Washington in precisely the same way.

He may be the very best. I’m starting to think so. I want it to be Ruiz, cause he’s just so damn likable, but I think it’s probably Wilder. I hope most of all that we get to find out. Not five years from now, but now. 2020. Let’s get the big fights moving forward.

Now Ruiz / Joshua 2 is coming up fast. I can’t wait.

No Fake Boxing

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November 23rd is a big fight. Can I get an amen?

Deontay Wilder is fighting Luis Ortiz. This is the real thing, a genuine heavyweight title fight. These are two big strong men who have earned the right to fight for the title by taking their lumps and whooping ass, fighting real fighters, contenders with championship aspirations of their own and not mugging and posing and beating up stiffs, not mincing around in a tutu like that great wanker, what’s-his-name.

The last time these two fought it was glorious. Can I get a hallelujah?

The opening rounds were tense, as both men had (rightly so) great respect for the other’s power. Ortiz got leveled in the fifth round, yet survived the ensuing helicopter assault, and came back. In the seventh he rocked Wilder (I still don’t know how he stayed on his feet) like no one else has ever done, and it was Wilder’s turn to survive. In the seventh, Wilder put Ortiz down two more times and the fight was stopped. This was a compelling fight.

There was a time that I was not a real fan of Wilder. I wasn’t really aware of him until 2014 when he beat Liakhovich and then Malik Scott shortly after. He was 29-0 with 29 knockouts, but the rap I heard was “he hasn’t fought anybody”. I looked it up, and to that point in his career, his opponents had a combined record of 434 – 210, so the charge was fair.

But I thought Scott and Liakhovic were real fighters, so I started to pay attention. And then he got a title shot against Bermane Stiverne, a fighter who had already earned my respect by besting Chris Arreola twice. He beat Stiverne, going the distance for the first time in his career, out-boxing the champ for twelve rounds. Critics still said he had bad technique, that he was just a no-talent clubber. To them I say “Let’s see you get in a ring with Bermane Stiverne. Show me how it’s done”.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Since then, the level of his competition has risen dramatically. His last nine opponents have a combined record of 253 – 13. He isn’t ducking anybody. He fought Szpilka, Arreola, Breazeale. Gerald Washington was ahead in the fight when Wilder knocked him out. He even fought that great chub-hugger Fury. Knocked his ass out, too, (though all the fans of fake boxing say Fury was robbed.)

I know, there was shade thrown his way for not fighting Joshua when he apparently had a chance. But Joshua, instead of continuing to negotiate with Wilder, (as we all wanted to see those two fight), went a different route, the wanker’s route, and got knocked out. Now he is in real danger of becoming irrelevant.

It’s still possible for them to make a mega-fight. Supposing that Joshua wins the rematch against Ruiz, (in my mind a 50/50 proposition) and Wilder gets past Ortiz and his rematch with Fury, then Wilder / Joshua would be a pay-per-view.

But if Ruiz wins the rematch, the road to another title fight becomes long and treacherous for Joshua, winding it’s way past Pulev, Kownacki, Miller, hell – even Usyk.

As for Ortiz, the man is a wrecking ball, like David Tua or Samuel Peter. Danger in both fists.

I can’t wait.

My prediction? The odds makers favor Wilder, and I agree. Wilder will probably win. All it takes is one good punch though. If Ortiz catches him…

Up and Comers

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Jermaine Franklin (20-0, 13 KO’s) looked pretty good Saturday. This was his third time on Showtime, and the talking heads were pretty merciless before the fight, saying that he was a big disappointment in his first two TV engagements. Not that I disagreed, he was dull. Maybe even lethargic.

He came in at his lightest weight in a quite a while, giving hope that he would fight more aggressively. He did that in round one, and he rocked his man four times that I counted. It looked to me that if he had kept his foot on the gas, he could have ended it early.

But instead, he slowed it down. Remarkably, that is precisely what his corner told him to do. “slow it down and pick your shots”. Weird.

While he did win convincingly, (scoring a knockdown in the later rounds) he fought like a much bigger man, conserving energy, fighting at a slow pace. He does have fast hands, though, and I look forward to see him make the jump to the next level.

By the way, his 20-0 record is not like the farce that is Otto Wallin’s record. Franklin’s opponents have a combined record of 188 – 49.

Side bar: It is a crying shame what happened to Claressa Shields (and her opponent and the fellow that got hurt). I hope she cleans house. Buster fired his own father and he did alright.

In other news Oleksandr Usyk is going to fight Tyrone Spong on October 12. I know Spong as a kickboxer. I had to look up his record, which is 13-0. He’s achieved that by fighting less than stellar competition. Still he has lots of combat experience and savvy, he could be a good test for Usyk. I doubt it, but he could. I think Usyk is going to be too fast for him.

Usyk just seems to have scary talent. We all know Evander Hollyfield and Michael Moorer moved up from cruiserweight, and they did more than OK. Tomasz Adamek too. Lets see what this guy can do.

One unfortunate thing though, if you’re like me and like eleven year old boy humor:

Spelled different, but pronouced the same.

I propose that his official heavyweight nickname be “Walrus”. That would be even funnier than Jimmy Lennon Jr.’s ‘fart fans.’

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The Tosser King Redux

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The great wanker, he of churlish wit and girlish charm, the hairy coquette, Tyson Fury, the Tosser King defended his imaginary crown once again, this time against one Otto Wallin, who, as I’ve previously pointed out, has accumulated a record of 20-0 by fighting an assortment of corpses with a collective record of 271-259.

Otto made it semi-interesting in that he opened a cut on Fury’s noggin in round three that could have stopped the fight, but didn’t. (Maybe should have stopped the fight – one has to wonder about the legitimacy of the ref and ring doctor when Fury got rocked in round 12 and they let it go on without the doctor looking again at the eye.)

He won ten rounds to two.

What I want to see is the rematch with Wilder. This has been is set for February but now the big Tosser may have to put the kibosh on that, or at least delay it, since getting his melon sliced open by Wallin. If he misses that date with destiny, who knows where he’ll end up? A lot can happen in the next months.

Primarily the Ruiz / Joshua rematch, the fight for the real lineal championship. Pulev already has himself in position to be the mandatory challenger for the winner of that fight. What if Pulev wins that one? (I jest) How long will it take then for Fury to get himself a shot at the real title? First he has to beat Wilder, whenever that fight takes place, then he has to hope the boxing stars align to allow him a shot at Pulev, Joshua or Ruiz, as the case may be. That’s assuming that Kownacki or Joyce or Whyte or Povetkin aren’t next in line by that time.

Hell, what if Wilder loses to Ortiz? Will anyone care to watch Fury / Wilder 2 then?

At the very least, the myth of him being “the one true champion” has been exposed for what it is; a masturbatory fantasy. He should have been fighting real fighters instead of tomato cans, working his way to the place where the boxing fans and governing bodies alike would be demanding that he get a shot at the crown.

Now he’s lost a lot of momentum on that upward trek, and he’s got a rather severly damaged eye. As my mom used to say: “If you don’t stop it, you’ll go blind.”

The big Tosser.

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The Terrible Tiff on the Edge of Town

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Yes, that’s a landscape from the Teletubbies show.  And no, I’m not making a fat joke.  And yes, my artwork is pathetic. 

I put that picture there because it most adequately expresses my reaction to the news that Ruiz and Joshua are going to fight in Saudi Arabia.  I think it’s the first time there’s been a heavyweight title fight there. (Checks memory banks) Yep, the first time.

I’m giddy. I’m thrilled. I’m beside myself.

The exotic location makes it that much more intriguing, like an epic fight of old:

This is going to be historic, Like the Thrilla in Manilla, the Caracas Caper, the Rumble in the Jungle,  This will be legendary, epic.  All that remains is for Andy and Anthony to make a good fight of it.

 I’m so glad they didn’t muck it up by letting it go to Cardiff.

(Mostly I’m just happy to have a real fight to look forward to, after the announcement of the latest Tyson Fury wank-fest.)

So an epic battle of historical significance needs a good title, but they’ve given us “The Clash in the Dunes”?

Really?  Pee-yoo!

That’s the best we could do?  I mean these Saudi guys put up $100 million, we should do better. We owe it to them.  

So let’s put on our thinking caps.

The fight is taking place in Diriyah, a town on the outskirts of Riyadh, and which looks too much like “diarrhea” to be of any use.  So we could use Riyadh, the desert, the sand, or the sun as the location.

So, right off the top of my head, we could use “Struggle in the Sand”, or “Duel in the Desert”, or “Scuffle in the Sun” or “Ruckus in Riyadh”.  

Or, getting away from alliteration, it could be “Melee in the Desert” or “Fracas in the Sun” or, if they had all four belts on the line, the “Brawl for them All”.

Or, my favorite, (with apologies to Gabriel Iglesias) “the Fat and the Furious.”

And that took me all of three minutes. 

Hail to the Tosser King

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Tyson Fury keeps calling Deontay Wilder a dosser. At first I thought he was saying tosser, but no, dosser. So I looked it up, and it means “homeless person” or “a city person who does not have a permanent home and sleeps in the streets or in very cheap hotels.” In other words, what we used to call a hobo, a bum.

And that makes sense. As long as I can remember, “bum” was an accepted boxing pejorative, along with palooka and mook.

But I like tosser. It means the same thing as wanker, one who plays with himself. And that will be Fury’s new title on this blog, the Tosser King. He wants to be recognized as the Lineal Champion, and calls himself “the Gypsy King” but for now around here it will be “Tosser King”, for him, the wanker.

“What”, you are asking, “has turned you against the big Brit?”

I wanted to be a Fury fan, really I did. After the Wilder fight I had to change my opinion of his boxing abilities. He is quick and slick and hard to hit. And I loved his demeanor after the fight. You could see that he was disappointed with the draw, but he kept smiling and being gracious. He did a similar thing after the Klitschko fight, where to settle a bet, he sang a song acapella into the mike, not afraid to make an ass of himself. He looked to be (in both cases) like a man on an adrenaline high who just loves his sport.

And he dropped all pretense of hostility toward his opponents, he hugged them, complimented them, thanked them, told them he loved them.

It kind freaked Wilder out. He went with it, but you could see him thinking “WTF?”.

And I LOVED it when he called out Joshua, flapping his arms and clucking like a chicken. That was both funny and charming.

At that time, I was a converted Fury fan, looking forward to watching him fight again.

But then, as I have theorized elsewhere, Slugworth got to him and convinced him to abandon reaching for the lofty goals of title belts, unification, etc., and sink down into the fetid swamp of maximum moolah.

So we got Fury / Schwartz. Not Fury / Ortiz or Kownacki or Rivas or Whyte. Schwartz. And we were treated the spectacle of a grown man being treated like a kitten treats a ball of yarn. It was sad. It was shameful.

And he went right back to the trash talk. I even heard him go back in time and throw shade at Klitschko, which makes no sense. The man is retired, he’s not going to come back and fight you again, let him be.

And now he’s chosen to fight Otto Wallin. Another “not-ready-for-prime-time player.”

Oy.

“Butt Otto Wallin is professional boxer, and he’s undefeated.”

Yeah, and Francesco Pianetta was a professional boxer and undefeated when Klitschko fought him, (I know, because being incredulous, I looked it up). He was 29-0 and his opponents up to that point in his career had a combined record of 448-273. He had victories over Oliver McCall and Frans Botha on his resume. Yet Klitschko made him look like some couch potato that fell asleep and just dream-wandered through the wrong door and found himself in a boxing match.

Otto Wallin is 20-0 and his opponents have a combined record of 271-259.

I expect he’ll get a rude awakening too.

As for his claim to the lineal championship:

Bitch, please.

He gave it up when he failed to show up for the rematch with Klitschko. Not getting into the ring isn’t the same as not being beaten in the ring. He gave it up, relinquished it, let it go. He refused to defend it. Sure, he had good reason, but that doesn’t change the fact that he didn’t show up. You don’t win championships on the kindness of others and you sure as hell don’t keep them that way either.

Then Joshua and Klitschko duked it out for all his hardware, and in reality the lineal championship as well. In the case of a gap in succession (like when the champ retires), the protocol is to award the title to the winner of a confrontation between the number one and number two fighters in their weight class. No, I don’t know where Klitschko and Joshua were ranked when they fought, but if they weren’t one and two I’d like to know who was.

So Joshua wins the fight, reels in all those belts and the moniker “Lineal Champ.” Subsequently he lost it to Andy Ruiz, so to my way of thinking, Andy Ruiz is now the lineal champ. Prove me wrong.

Sadly, I think Tyson Fury is a very talented fighter who has been shanghaied – placed under a spell by some money-grubbing dream-weaving bastard of a promoter. He’s stuck now in a rut fighting tomato cans and wee girls, waving his paws like a trained bear in a cage so the kids will throw peanuts at him.

And he roars “I’m the best! The one true champ!” And like the Emperor showing off his new clothes, he swats at Tom Schwartz and the kids shout “Yes! You’re the best!” and he swings at Otto Wallin and they all swoon “You’re our champion!”.

He doesn’t’ know that the kids work for the promoter. And none of them will tell him that he’s disengaged, disconnected from the rest of the boxing world, that he’s living a fiction, in a fantasy world.

These fights don’t mean anything. He’s not working toward a title shot, he’s saying “I’ve already got one!” like the French guard in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Maybe he should try to fight Shrek next. It would mean as much.

He can’t see that he’s lost in a magical land* called Irrelevancy. And no one has the guts to say that really he’s just playing with himself.

The big Tosser.

*I didn’t say it was good magic.

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Props to the Nightmare

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They say that styles make fights, and that explains why Frazier and Ali were so bad for each other, and why Foreman was KO’d by Ali and beat Frazier like drum. It’s not a linear equation. You can’t just look at the records and the tale of the tape and predict the outcome with any authority.

As my Dad would say, “That’s why they fight.”

If it were that logical and predictable I guess we wouldn’t watch it. And I’m glad I was watching last night.

I predicted a Kownacki victory (got that part right). But I also said he would win by knockout and within five rounds.

Oops.

I’ve seen Arreola fight before – several times, including all three of his title fights. I knew what he looked like, and how he fights and I thought Kownacki would get inside of his looping punches and pummel him with uppercuts and straight shots and take him out.

Surpise number one: Arreola didn’t look like Arreola. He weighed in at 244. That’s about as trim as I can ever remember seeing him.

Surprise number two: While he normally throws about 40 punches a round – right near the heavyweight average, last night he threw twice that many – like Kownacki. Kownacki is known for his high-volume assault, relentlessly punching, punching, punching, throwing at twice the rate of the typical heavyweight. In this way, he overwhelms his opponents, chipping away at their defense till he finds his way to their chin. But instead of just covering up and hoping Kownacki would slow down, Arreola decided to fight fire with fire. He amped up his own offense, matching him punch for punch. (He actually set a record for number of punches thrown.) (!)

Surprise number three: While he did get pummeled, he never went down. They say you can’t buy a chin, or get one in the gym, so he must have worked a deal with the Devil to put that steel in his chin. It was never weak before, but last night it looked ready to take a sledge hammer. Remarkable.

Surprise number four: He wasn’t an ass. In the past I always thought of him as a bully. A cantakerous biker-looking beer-drinking bully. I’ll never forget him beating the slobber out of one Joey Abell. When it was clear that Abell was unconscious yet still standing, Arreola stopped throwing and went in for a smirking kiss instead. The Chris Arreola that we saw this week was a gentleman. For the first time I thought I could enjoy having a beer with him.

Surprise number five: The old boy ain’t done yet. I thought he was done three years ago, when he fought Wilder. He looked tired. I never saw anything like the confidence he would need to win. It even looked to me that Wilder carried him for few rounds. If I remember right, Wilder said something about giving the old man one last big payday as a send-off, a farewell. I believed it, thought that was his swan-song. When I read that he was going to fight Kownacki I bitched about it being a mis-match along the lines of Fury / Schwartz. Indeed the betting odds were severe, with Kownacki a -3,500 and Arreola +1,100. But the old guy made it a real fight, with smarts and guts and the hell with the odds.

But right the oddsmakers ultimately were, Kownacki won convincingly. After the fight that lady interviewer gushed “You said you would retire if you lost tonight, but surely after that performance you can’t be thinking of retirement now?” It was a vacuous question, but I think that she was just expressing the admiration and appreciation we all felt. He gave us a hell of a show, and we would like to see more.

But his point is well taken, and better it would be if more boxers were to adopt his point of view: He said “I’m too old to start over, and that’s where I’ll be if I lose, back to square one.” Too many, addicted to the adrenaline, can’t seem to find the brakes.

And by the way, what the hell was up with Kownacki playing the Polish national anthem? The man’s been living in Brooklyn since he was seven years old. I mean Arreola makes a big deal about his Mexican heritage, but he at least he knew what country he’s from. Props for that too.

So, I hope he does retire. And I hope he makes it stick, that he doesn’t attempt a ‘comeback’ in a couple years, saying “age is just a number” (I think George Foreman may someday regret saying that inasmuch as it has added fuel to the fire that still burns in old fighter’s bellies) and doing harm to himself. This was so much better a farewell than the Wilder fight.

Adios valiente guerrero. Via con Dios, Pesadilla.

The Rhyme and Reason of Matchmaking

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In the coming weeks are two fights that I’m going to watch, and will recommend that you watch. Both fights feature an exciting up-and-comer, an undefeated knockout artist. One is Joe Joyce, the other Adam Kownacki.

Now I’ve been whining lately about the lop-sided nature of the matches that are being presented to us. I called Fury / Schwartz a farce, and it was. I thought Joshua /Ruiz was too, (it was supposed to be) but Ruiz had other ideas. I thought Wilder / Breazeale was going to at least go a few rounds, but live and learn.

Joe Joyce, who is 9-0, is fighting Bryant Jennings. Jennings is 24-3, and once went 12 rounds with Wladimir Klitschko. Okay, so what’s the problem? Joyce is ranked number 11 and Jennings 29 (IBO rankings) and a 7/2 dog.

Adam Kownacki (19-0) is to fight Chris Arreola (38-5-1), who fought Bermane Stiverne, Vitali Klitschko and Deontay Wilder for a world title, getting stopped all three times. Kownacki is ranked number 7, and Arreola 44. (They haven’t put any odds on this one yet, but you can bet (har) it will be ugly.)

Adam Kownacki needs another tune-up fight? Really?

This looks like the result of the same mentality that gave us Fury / Schwartz. But maybe not…

I got curious and I got to thinking and I looked these fellows up on Boxrec and found that in the first five fights of Joyce’s career, he fought men with a combined record of 79-27. The last four men has faced have a combined record of 108-12. So kinda what you would expect to see, the competition getting harder as Joyce gains experience.

Kownacki’s first eleven opponents have a combined record of 43-44 and the last eight 127-11. Hm. Kownacki’s team made a big change after eleven fights.

So, there is a difference in the rate of change and a difference in the starting point (Kownacki starting much lower) but the overall arc is the same. Start them out with opponents you expect them to beat, so that they can gain experience. Then gradually introduce them to better fighters and see how far you can go. The aim is prepare your man for championship level fights with out having absorbed a whole bunch of punishment on the way up.

I’m thinking maybe Joyce and Kownacki’s teams already believe they are ready for top competition.

Kownacki was actually considered to replace Jarell Miller to fight Anthony Joshua. At that time he said “I am not ready”. But shortly after Ruiz beat Joshua, he changed his tune, and there is talk that he will maybe get a shot at Wilder sometime soon.

So, maybe the thought is to just keep Kownacki healthy while he waits for his title shot.

Joyce has been saying that he wants the ‘fast track’ to the title. Maybe that explains the higher quality of fighters he was facing early in his career. I also looked up and watched his last fight (Alexander Ustinov) and I think Jennings is a step above his level. So this really could be Joyce simply climbing the ladder.

Actually I will go as far as to say that I wouldn’t be that surprised if Jennings pulled off the upset.

(I wrote this before the Joyce / Jennings fight, but forgot to post it.)

My prediction for Saturday: Kownacki wins by KO in 5 or less.