Recent criticisms of Showtime’s “Super Six World Boxing Classic” are beginning to make a pattern, faint but detectable. The tournament’s critics appear not to be actual Showtime subscribers. That is, to justify the 10 monthly dollars they save on cable bills, otherwise thoughtful observers now discount the network’s innovative concept by implying it hasn’t met expectations.
Whose expectations? How not?
Among writers, smart ones at least, there’s ever a pessimistic bent to resist. Failure, for being quantifiable, attracts intellect. Smart people like to sort and group things, and success is more elusive than failure. And the writer’s job, often, is to say anything at all even when he can’t say something nice. So it goes.
But it’s time to check that pessimism and take another look at this tournament. And then another and another. A couple Saturdays from now, on April 24, the second fight in Group Stage 2 features Carl “The Cobra” Froch against Mikkel Kessler – to whose surname Hamlet fans might attach “The Dane.” The fight happens in Herning, Denmark. It will likely be the most consequential prizefight in that country’s history.
Last week the Nottinghamshire Cobra and Kessler the Dane joined a conference call without many American writers. They were counterprogrammed by a Kelly Pavlik call in what appeared to be part of HBO’s strategy for undermining Showtime’s tournament, regardless of long-term consequences. Those writers that went for the bigger domestic name missed a chance to learn more about Froch and Kessler. Kelly Pavlik, meanwhile, is strong and ready. Got it.Asked for an opening comment, Carl Froch began in the third-person beloved by megalomaniacal dictators and prizefighters: “This is the WBC super middleweight champion.” Froch went on to say lots more in the hour that followed, but far as opening comments went, that was it.
Froch is a person of no extraordinary intelligence who speaks eloquently. The ideas he expresses are no larger than other prizefighters’. To his workaday ideas, though, he brings a surprising flamboyance and authority.
Goodness me, might that be an apt metaphor for his fighting style? Come to think of it, yes.
Here’s another thought about Froch’s eloquence. It is a high commentary on the English school system’s deservedly fine reputation. There is no tradition of unintelligent eloquence in America; instead, we revel in smart people expressing themselves badly and call it “egalitarianism” or something. But Froch is a boxing epitome of the peculiar English tradition whose standard bearer is Jane Austen, a writer of no particular intelligence who was still a genius. Solve that riddle, and you’re an Anglophile.
Asked about Mikkel Kessler’s allegations of roughhousing and otherwise dirty tactics by Andre Ward in his last fight – to hear Kessler tell it, Ward only stopped clinching long enough to head butt him – Froch was unwilling to lend Kessler’s excuses credence or Ward any bona fides as a roughhouser. About Kessler, Froch said, “From what I saw, he was quite conclusively outboxed.”
“Quite conclusively outboxed”; how rich is that? It’s precise, short and brooks no disagreement. It doesn’t say anything folks outside the Kessler camp didn’t already think in more expansive ways. But it says it just right. And it also implies there’s more to Froch, as a man and a fighter, than just a surplus of pride and awkwardness – which is about all American writers have credited him with having.
Froch should be exposed by Kessler in his next fight. But Froch should have been exposed by Andre Dirrell in his last fight. He should have been exposed by Jermain Taylor in his penultimate fight. He should have been exposed by Jean Pascal in the fight before that. Had you shown an American bookmaker a tape of any one of Froch’s first 23 fights and asked for Pascal-Taylor-Dirrell parlay pick, there’s no way you would have gotten: Froch 3-0. But that’s exactly where Froch stands.
Froch is proudest of three things: his championship belt, his unblemished record and his high knockout ratio. It’s the third that makes the least sense, though, when you watch Froch’s awkward, often-unbalanced and always unorthodox approach to punching. Asked for a mechanical explanation of the concussion that nevertheless affixes to the ends of his fists, Froch had little insight but plenty of well-chosen words.
“It’s a biological mystery,” he said before exploring, then dismissing, other possibilities such as lower-body strength: “But I have skinny chicken legs, so it’s not that.” So he settled on a combination of mystery and good genes.
Whatever it is mechanically, psychologically it’s about commitment. Carl Froch punches with power because Carl Froch believes he punches with power. There’s more to it than that, of course – accuracy helps, and so do his odd angles – but belief has to be the foundation. Froch hits opponents hard for the same reason Mickey Ward was a great body puncher: He believes.
Someone has to. Whoever was the favorite pick among experts when the Super Six tournament began – Kessler or Arthur Abraham, mostly – no one outside Nottingham had Froch to win. And yet, Froch began by decisioning Dirrell while Dirrell searched for a professional identity. He now faces Kessler in the throes of an identity crisis. And in Group Stage 3, he’ll face an Arthur Abraham who might be more tentative than usual. Get in the playoffs, as they say, and anything can happen.
Which is exactly the point of this tournament. It is unpredictable. It is dramatic. And it’s supported by a “Fight Camp 360” program blessedly focused on boxing and devoid of Mayweathers. The episodes move well and filter the noise some think prizefighting is about. Unlike HBO’s “24/7” programs, then, “Fight Camp 360” is made for people who care about boxing those other 50 weeks of the year.
The Super Six remains the best thing to happen to our sport since Vazquez-Marquez III.
Source: 15rounds.com
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