One of the obviously good things about the internet is access. It allows us to trade views of varying wisdom right across the world in an instant. One of the bad things about the internet is that some of those views could fuel a hot-air balloon forever and a day.
Take this contribution at the weekend on the Bleacher Report, a shouty site for mainly American tastes in sport. "Could it be," asks Bryan Flynn, "that before we are even halfway through 2010 the sport of boxing could be in its death throes?"
Nothing personal, Bryan, but this is Yankocentric nonsense. The author thinks the sport is doomed: a) if Joshua Clottey beats Manny Pacquiao; b) if Shane Mosley beats Floyd Mayweather Jr; c) if Mayweather Jr beats Mosley and has nobody else to fight; and d) if Pacquiao wins and retires.
There is, it seems, nobody else "out there" capable of saving the sport. "Out there", in this case, is defined by the shores of the United States. We will have to see if David Haye can persuade Mr Flynn and like-minded experts to think otherwise by doing a number on John Ruiz in faraway Manchester next month.
I expect Dagenham's Kevin Mitchell to establish himself as a star if he beats Michael Katsidis for the lightweight title in London in May. And who's to say Germany's Arthur Abraham or Nottingham's Carl Froch won't win Showtime's Super Six series for the super-middleweights?
Maybe Amir Khan will look spectacular against Paulie Malignaggi at Madison Square Garden in May and go after Junior Witter's conqueror, Devon Alexander, who stopped Juan Urango impressively on Saturday night and who holds two of the other light-welterweight belts now.
There are scores of good fighters and good fights "out there", if you look for them. There is no denying America is still the centre of boxing. It is where most of the money is. But it is not necessarily where most of the common sense is.
Get yourself a passport, buddy.
Hidden treasures
If your first memories are your strongest, I am stuck with Sugar Ray Robinson in my head forever as the template for the perfect boxer. I could have done worse.
Jim Jacobs, who went on to be Mike Tyson's trainer, did a lot of the eerily disconnected voiceovers on Greatest Fights Of The Century, the priceless collection of old films he and his business partner Bill Cayton put together in a television package which went around the world and which served as sort of an Open University course on the sport.
Over many years of trawling archives – mainly in Europe, where a lot of the old American fight films had ended up because it was illegal to transport them across state boundaries in the United States – Jacobs and Cayton compiled snippets and even some complete accounts of a staggering 16,000 contests for their company, Big Fights Inc.
I would wait expectantly for each edition and no fighter would engage my attention more than Robinson, a sleek marvel of smooth movement and power in a discipline where to combine those two skills without any seeming effort was beyond anyone in our little gym.
You might be able to dance, but you couldn't hurt – or vice versa. This one obvious conundrum almost accidentally described boxing, reinforcing the impression that, beyond argument, it is the most difficult of all sports.
Robinson was its distant god, far removed in time and image. He could never lose. But, of course, he did – most memorably once in six meetings with the very antithesis of the boxing art, Jake LaMotta. Even though I knew I was watching a fight that was many years old, I could never accept the result (especially as the Raging Bull was more than a stone heavier than Robinson). It is said we did not even see the best of Sugar Ray on film, that he was at his most imperious at the lower weights earlier in his career.
There were other artists in that series: Tommy Loughran, who hardly ever lost; Gene Tunney, a ring classicist with literary pretensions who twice took a fading Jack Dempsey to school, yet lost (for the only time) to the smaller brawler, Harry Greb; George Carpentier, destroyed but not disgraced by Dempsey; the incomparable Benny Leonard and hundreds more.
It didn't matter that they seemed so pale and thin, or that their movements were often jerky because of the flickering film. They were gone, untouchable and preserved forever. Nobody could beat them now.
They are still there, of course. Still punching and gliding, winning and losing – and silent, mostly, apart from the odd stilted interview, as some of them stare hypnotically into a camera and mouth rehearsed nonsense.
If you want to be reminded – or discover for the first time – what makes boxing great, seek out these old fight films. Jacobs and Cayton are gone, but the fruits of their obsession are still there, in the hands of ESPN, and occasionally, they turn up in the small hours on the channel's Classic Sports outlet. Get on the phone and make them give Greatest Fights Of The Century a regular slot.
Slipping and sliding
There are several ways to avoid being hit in a boxing ring. Some fighters make getting out of the way look like art. Jack Johnson used to pat punches away with his gloves like kids swat flies, content to wait until his opponent wore himself out swinging at fresh air before he unloaded his own.
Roberto Durán and Julio César Chávez, of the modern greats, were masters at getting in the hitting zone and slipping oncoming traffic with deft head movement, then countering from close range. Muhammad Ali's eccentric backward leaning and spoiling tactics made him as hard to hit as an eel until he slowed down and went to the ropes.
Andy Morris of Wythenshawe wouldn't put himself in that class, of course, but he is one of those well-schooled boxers who knows how to defend himself and make it look easy. The judges in Huddersfield on Friday night didn't think so, though, as they saw him a unanimous loser to the all-action Gary Sykes in a terrific scrap for the vacant British super-featherweight title.
This was Morris's third loss in 21 bouts (John Simpson stopped him in 2006 and 2007), but he's better than that, and he didn't get caught with too many on Friday night. Morris moved smoothly right and left, ducked, slid and parried, taking a lot of Sykes's blows on the gloves on the arms, but was outworked overall – and that is what the judges rewarded.
It is a pity, though, that the art of self-defence is not regarded as part of a boxer's point-scoring armoury. The man who considers himself the best fighter in the world, Floyd Mayweather Jr, is the dying art's most vocal advocate. Lesser fighters would do well to listen to him here, talking calmly and intelligently, for once, about looking after yourself in the ring.
Source: guardian.co.uk
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