By Norm Frauenheim–
Nothing can mix and confuse extremes quite like boxing. From courage to cowardice, it’s all there all at once. That’s part of the attraction. Part of the problem, too.
This weekend, it’s all there all over again, another example of what has been called life-in-a-shot glass. Good-and-bad, 180-proof, in a cocktail sure to enthrall and exasperate.
Start with the good, Jose Ramirez-versus-Josh Taylor Saturday night (ESPN, 8p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT) in a fight at Las Vegas’ Virgin Hotels for all of the relevant belts between junior-welterweights, both unbeaten and in their primes. What’s not to like?
Taylor (17-0, 13 KOs), a confident Scotsman, and Ramirez (26-0, 17 KOs), a farmworker’s son from central California, bring all of the personal and physical elements to a bout that promises to be a classic. At every level, it’s compelling.
It’s also a refuge from the other side of a whiplash-like week that sums up the schizoid state of the game.
It’s a short trip from classic to crap, which is a polite way of describing the spit-bucket full of ongoing headlines about Anthony Joshua-versus-Tyson Fury. Will it happen? I don’t care. Not anymore.
It feels as if the heavyweight talks have lasted as long as the Pandemic. They haven’t, of course. Like the virus, however, there just never seems to be a real end to reported negotiations for a fight said to be worth $155-million.
Only the insults escalate in what appears to be a fight with diminishing chances at landing on any calendar in any hemisphere.
The latest problem looks to be an arbitrator’s ruling to uphold Deontay Wilder’s contractual right to a third fight sometime before September 15 or The Twelfth of Never.
Fury has been suggesting he needs a tune-up, which is exactly what Wilder might offer if his performance in losing a seventh-round stoppage to Fury in a rematch last February is any indication.
Meanwhile, Joshua promoter Eddie Hearn is suddenly issuing deadlines instead of promises. And Fury is issuing threats, challenging Joshua to a street brawl instead of a fight that Fury said would happen in Saudi Arabia on August 14.
Joshua-versus-Fury is getting to be a little like Terence Crawford-versus-Errol Spence Jr. Maybe, we’ll see both on Triller a couple of decades from now.
But there is Taylor-versus-Ramirez.
“Now at the end of this pandemic, we have the best fight of the whole pandemic experience,’’ Top Rank promoter Bob Arum said. “We don’t have to sell anything about this fight. We just mention the fighters. They are both undefeated, both former Olympians, both world champions. This will be a great fight!”
Arum, a man of many words. has unloaded his share of vitriol during his role as Fury’s co-promoter. But he didn’t have to say much about Ramirez-Taylor
That says volumes about what might be Fight of the Year.
