Isn’t a side-show what the heavyweight division feels
like? When Seth Mitchell got his chance to “avenge” (a comically grandiose term
for such a trivial event) his defeat against Jonathan Banks didn’t the bout
feel like a curiosity, a diversion, a rarity and not something to be taken
totally seriously? If it didn’t before the final bell it certainly did after. It felt
and
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| Look familiar? |
looked like the circus had come to town, bivouacked outside an old saloon
for the itinerant strong man to step out of the prairie wagon and challenge the
drunken gawkers to put forth their least soused challenger to fight for a
barrel of rot gut!
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| John Ford. American storyteller. |
When heavyweights compete now, it feels almost like a period
costume party, a ritual devoid of its real significance and now a mere
ceremonial and nostalgic indulgence. The way Hollywood uses the Western these
days. A dalliance, a nod to the old ways with the knowledge that this kind of
entertainment is only digestible to a modern savvier public on occasion as they
know all too well that this isn’t how we do things any more. That’s why
Westerns these days are half-hearted commercial smash and grabs rather than a
vehicle for narrative artists like Howard Hawks and John Ford to tell complex
and artful allegories about contemporary America.
The absence of a great America heavyweight is a
representative comment on what is happening in America. The ghettoes that used
to produce heavyweights have re-directed their focus. Big guys with
coordination and skill are going to the NFL and NBA by way of a college
scholarship. It’s a better and more stable way to make a living in sports with
less politics, less instability and in-fighting. If you lose a basketball game
or a football game you are not all of a sudden a bum. Then there is the added bonus
of not getting punched in the head; although the concussive effects of the NFL
are arguably just as bad – at least you don’t have to deal with Don King. (Another indication of the desperation of the
division is how King still seems active in it!)
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| Deontay Wilder screaming nonsense |
Deontay Wilder looks intriguing. 28 fights. 28 KO’s. Even
Mike Tyson had a less impressive KO percentage at this stage in his career and
didn’t have an Olympic medal in his sock drawer. But no one seems to care. Wilder
comes out arms swinging like helicopter blades, connects in a blur of flailing
chaos and then, in his post fight interview, rambles like a drunken Ray Lewis
that is frankly embarrassing to behold. It’s a low rent sideshow tacked on to
the end of a more reputable boxing card; like a trailer for that viral snuff film
Bum Fights, a film that threatens to not even last that long as Wilder is
facing jail time for domestic battery. At least when Tyson went to jail, it was
significant.
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| Cultural Icon. |
With Rodney King a recent memory, the LA riots, the emergence of
controversial gangster rap and OJ about to go for a long drive in his Bronco,
Tyson’s incarceration was culturally relevant. If Wilder does go to jail, the
incarceration will be just as equally irrelevant. Controversy is good in boxing
but only when there are the fights to validate the noise. If there aren’t, it’s
just a sideshow, a curiosity, something dead to poke with a stick without the
substance to even be called an homage.
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