By Bart Barry-
One doesn’t know when the urge to experimentalism will strike but one learns indulge it until he learns not to (many efforts before he learns to indulge it once more, in the doubly helical way of creative and open systems). Saturday’s aficionado’s buffet – Lee Selby versus Josh Warrington and Gary Russell versus Joseph Diaz, for featherweight titles, and Adonis Stevenson versus Badou Jack for the light heavyweight championship – present a clean enough roster to explore biases and their possible origins.
This column happens in a coffeeshop as it has for a number of years now, ever since I discovered making the process a reward itself was more sustainable than making the process a thing that merits reward; a decade of Sunday morning procrastinations followed by struggles followed by coffeeshop rewards accidentally gave way to an obvious solution that became such only once it happened accidentally. Then a minor epiphany followed: It’s more fun, if not demonstrably better, to write in a loud and bustling place, and to allow the noises and bustles seep in the column, than run the fool’s errand of sealing your system off – what happens when one’s weekly fears shift from being blocked to being bored.
There are echoes and architectural debates and orders and gossiping happening all round – “flood zones” gets articulated but won’t be used – the workaday wanderings of a mind that spent 25 senseless minutes on haploid cells before sending himself northwards to one of the five coffeeshops of the Sunday morning circuit. The irony of exchanging, or having exchanged for us, immortality for rapid improvement, to become fitter, though alas no more adaptable, than bacteria, sets itself outside of irony for preceding irony by a few hundred million years.
No segue. No bridge.
I didn’t care who would win Warrington-Selby for at least a round. Then it became apparent via observation and commentary Warrington was the shorter busier guy, the volume-puncher to Selby’s boxer, and I began to favor Warrington. I’ve been the shorter busier guy far more often than the taller craftier one, and I initially cheer for whomever reminds me of myself, like you do, though not quite inflexibly as Roy Jones does.
Whither the ancient journalistic ideal of unbias? I’m no longer sure it exists or ever did; bias precedes interest a bit like friction precedes motion. Until we have a thought to prove or disprove, I suspect, we’re daydreaming.
No sooner was Selby bleeding from beside both eyes then I began rooting for Selby in the same halfhearted way I rooted for Warrington. Then Selby and Warrington bled together as different arms and legs of the same general body and I began to root for a fair decision, to root halfheartedly for prizefighting itself, until the decision got read. Then I took a nap.
No segue.
I didn’t care who would win Russell-Diaz for a round and a half. I believed Russell was way overrated when HBO hardsold him to us 6 1/2 years ago the same way I believed Vasyl Lomachenko was way overrated when HBO hardsold him to us four years ago. Then they fought, and by virtue of Lomachenko’s victory Lomachenko could no longer be overrated as Russell.
I interviewed Jose Ramirez six years ago for The Ring magazine and wondered if the California-born U.S. Olympian with a last name ending in ‘z’ mightn’t be Diaz until I spent a few minutes looking that up Sunday morning (since I stopped caring if he was, a minute into round 2 Saturday night). The guy I interviewed was too polished by half, too entrepreneurial, too much about branding, to show what composure Diaz showed 30 seconds into Russell’s flashassault on his gloves Saturday.
I’m so tired of hearing about handspeed, Russell’s or anyone else’s. Maybe because I can’t relate. Maybe because I think it’s an unimaginative way to describe a prizefighter – one doesn’t cultivate handspeed any more than he cultivates height or eyecolor.
Russell’s hometown crowd’s cheering his brief show of exhausting ineffectiveness in round 2 made me cheer against him. Then Diaz’s aggressive reply made me stop caring if Diaz was the young branding executive I spoke with in 2012. I continued to cheer for Diaz until the ninth or 10th round, when by virtue of Russell’s not wilting, howsoever many Diaz bodyshots made Russell’s narrow waste crinkle, I decided Russell was doing something very clever to disarm Diaz. The final round I cheered for suspense, and therefore Diaz, but I didn’t mind the decision.
And I admire Russell for giving himself a C+ and being vulnerable about what vulnerable knuckles keep him inactive. While we lament a talent wasted by indolence Russell finds solace and pride in concealed deficiencies overcome.
No bridge.
I didn’t care who would win Stevenson-Jack for its entirety – an acknowledged disinterest influenced in part by the hour when the match’s opening bell rang. At times I wanted the 40-year-old southpaw to do something reckless and violent with his left hand and end the fight because the fight was not entertaining most of its duration. Later I wanted Jack to wearout the old man and end Stevenson’s deeply unsatisfactory reign as world’s lineal light heavyweight champion.
I wanted to cheer for Stevenson because he won his title the right way, lest we forget, mowerstrapping a talented champion favored to outclass him easily, and because Stevenson has a certain roguish charisma, but finally I couldn’t because Stevenson is neither talented nor active enough to bias me. Stevenson obviously received the draw like a victory, not because he thought he won the fight, unconscious as he was when it ended, but because he got to leave the Canadian ring with his title, ensuring one more championsized purse.
Stevenson and Sergey Kovalev, today, form a pair of prizefighters that stands further from a once-desired rivalry than anyone does.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
