By Bart Barry-
Saturday at Philadelphia’s Liacouras Center in a super welterweight title-unification fight broadcast by Fox, Dominican slugger Jeison “Banana” Rosario beat-down Philadelphia’s Julian “J Rock” Williams, stopping Williams in round 5 and snatching his WBA and IBF titles the right way.
In the beginning it had all the trappings of a homecoming coronation – slick graphics, venue, dazzling biography, management organization, Watson, sycophantic commentary team – and then a curiosity turned up in the corner labeled Designated Opponent right about the time introductions got made.
Sampson Lewkowicz. His is not a flawless eye for talent but it’s very close, and multiples better than PBC’s. Most famous for his effective discoveries of Manny Pacquiao and Sergio Martinez, for seeing past their blemished records, a few years ago Lewkowicz saw which of the Hermanos Benavidez had the true upside, and when he was right and promoter Top Rank wasn’t and tried to poach their ways out of such shortsightedness, Lewkowicz went to the mat with them and won. Lewkowicz, an Uruguayan, of all things, sees qualities other talent scouts do not. His stable is not huge or assembled at premium prices but comprises a type of prizefighter you’d be foolish to schedule for a homecoming showcase.
Which is exactly what PBC did, of course. There’s more to this story, surely, depending which lens you watch it through – a bout of flu in camp or a hellish style matchup some sage or other warned somebody about – but there’s exactly no chance the braintrust at Fox on PBC on Fox, “preeminent” though they be, anticipated what befell Williams.
What told very early on and does not portend well for Williams in the rematch is how little Williams’ flush punches affected Banana. Despite what trickeration drives replay selection between rounds Williams’ technically proper rightcross counters did nothing to shortcircuit Rosario’s attack or even much dissuade it. Had Williams sliced open Rosario’s eyelid or had Williams’ own eyelid proved more durable things might have gone differently, but that’s all in a fight, and if Williams’ sight problems came via reopened scar tissue, as explained during the broadcast, if in other words Williams was already accustomed to fighting through blood in his eyes, he sure didn’t act like it.
Let us not pile on Williams for the sins of his management company, though; good people opine Williams is good people. It’s hard to cheer against him as it is to imagine his becoming a world titlist in a different boxing ecosystem – the enduring lesson of Pacquaio-Thurman.
In his fascinating book “The Soul of the Ant” suicidal 19th-century South African poet Eugène Marais posits a termitary, the laboriously constructed habitat of what termites Marais studied for a decade, functions as an organism little different from the human body, stretching his metaphor to include termites of ferocious mien acting like white blood cells whilst constructionworker termites act as red blood cells. Whatever modern reductionists have proved or disproved about this metaphor in a century since its publication, it is wellbuilt as it is imaginative, with cells, in the form of near-mindless termites, racing through their termitary to ensure its health, like blood racing through human veins and arteries. It calls to mind a similar if more modern metaphor of the world wide web acting as our species’ brain whilst its billions of cells labor away oblivious of our contribution to its thoughts or thinking.
So let us stretch these stretched metaphors to include in our beloved sport’s ecosystem (ostensibly red) blood cells like Sampson Lewkowicz and Jeison Rosario, cells scheduled for anonymity all their days till an unscheduled tear happens in boxing’s protective membrane and suddenly they burst out in violent spurts. Rosario, dropped thrice at Sam’s Town Hotel & Gambling Hall in 2017 by Nathaniel Gallimore a year before J Rock decisioned Nate the Great, was essential as he was replaceable; boxing needs such men to make coronations for other men but doesn’t expect them to be memorable to any but their friends and family.
What do you know about, say, Herb “Gorilla” Siler?
He was a 20-12 heavyweight who died 19 years ago and surely beloved to someone even while anonymous to all but a handful of aficionados. Too, he was the first knockout of Cassius Clay’s prizefighting career – four years before there was a Muhammad Ali. Essential as he was replaceable in boxing’s ecosystem, Gorilla is a permanent part of The Greatest’s resume even though men like Tony Esperti and Jimmy Robinson were just as likely to make the same history had their schedules properly coincided.
Let coincidence neither lose an idea like: At 26-1-1 eight months ago in Virginia, J Rock was the homecoming b-side for undefeated titlist Jarrett Hurd, raised but 30 miles from the EagleBank Arena where Hurd’s coronation was to happen. A less cynical scribe, then, should marvel at PBC’s marvelous matchmaking, bestower of rich parity, rather than mock the organization for apparent incompetence.
Well. In my defense I watched Saturday’s match live on Fox in the hopes of seeing J Rock do something ultimately decisive in a competitive scrap. The scrap was competitive and something decisive surely did transpire.
I’m on the Banana wagon now, while we wait for whatever Naoya Inoue does next.
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Author’s note: Hearty congratulations to us! As announced late last week, 15rounds.com was the 2019 home of not only our sport’s co-best exemplar of courage, Marc Abrams, but also our sport’s co-best exemplar of benevolence, Norm Frauenheim. Two, more-deserving winners cannot be found.
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Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
