Boxing used to be part of the national conversation – not anymore
Deontay Wilder may be billed as the most frightening heavyweight champion since the young Mike Tyson who was the most frightening since George Foreman who was the most frightening since Sonny Liston. Wilder probably deserves the billing. He has had forty-two fights and won forty-one of them, and he never needs the judges’ scorecards to say he has won. His opponents don’t stay on their feet till the final bell tolls. He can win with a single punch as he did last week against Luis Ortiz. The judges had Ortiz ahead, but in the sixth round Wilder landed the big one, and that was that. Yes, he’s frightening.
Nevertheless, being frightening doesn’t make you invincible. Mike Tyson went to Japan and got beaten by Buster Douglas who wasn’t considered to have a chance against the fearsome one. We all know what happened to George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle, though before the fight some were afraid that he might kill Muhammad Ali. As for Liston, after his two first-round knock-outs of Floyd Paterson, many thought the pretty boy Cassius Clay (as Muhammad then was) crazy even to get into the ring with the monster, and indeed at the weigh-in Cassius acted as if he was indeed crazy. Nevertheless he won and wouldn’t be defeated till the authorities stripped him of his title when he refused to be drafted into the American Army. (“I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong.”)
Many boxing matches are predictable and not only because the challenger for a title or the opponent of a boxer on the way up has been carefully selected as one likely not to cause him too much trouble. Sometimes misjudgements are made, as was the case when Buster Douglas was picked as Tyson’s next victim. That may have been the case earlier this year when Anthony Joshua defended his three World Titles against Andy Ruiz Jnr and lost. Few had given Ruiz, six inches shorter than Joshua and tubby (to put it politely) a chance. He had indeed come into the fight as a substitute, Joshua’s selected opponent, Randy Miller having withdrawn on account of carelessly failing a drugs test. Perhaps Joshua was over-confident. Perhaps he had prepared for a different style of fighter. Perhaps he was just out of sorts. Perhaps he wasn’t as good as we had thought – and indeed that night he certainly wasn’t as good. No matter. He lost and this week has the chance to redeem himself and regain his titles in, of all places, Saudi Arabia.
Then, in theory anyway, the other British former World Champion, Tyson Fury, will have his re-match against Wilder after their disputed draw last year. I say “in theory” because, though contracts have reportedly been signed, in the boxing world there are always mutterings about a contract being only as good as the paper it is written on.
Be that as it may, heavyweight boxing gets headlines and attention such as it hasn’t done for years, not since the young Mike Tyson was champion, or even since the days of Ali, Foreman and Joe Frazier. There has always been a special glamour attached to the heavyweight division, even though, throughout boxing’s history, there have been better and more skilful boxers in lower divisions. When experienced boxing writers compare fighters on a pound-for-pound basis few heavyweights may feature in the top ten or even top twenty. What makes them special is the big punch – that, and the fear factor.
Comparing now and then is difficult in all sports, but, in boxing not so difficult in the lower weight divisions. You can find good reasons to assert that there has never been a middleweight to match Sugar Ray Robinson as he was in the late 1940s and for much of the next decade, but when it comes to the heavyweight division, you are not comparing like with like. Today’s top heavyweights are mostly several inches taller and several stones heavier than the champions of the past.
In 1937 when Joe Louis won the title he would hold for twelve years and successfully defend twenty-four times, he weighed less than 14 stone. Before him, in the 1920s, Jack Dempsey, the terrifying “Manassa Mauler” weighted in at around 13 stone. In the 1950s Rocky Marciano who retired undefeated after 49 professional fights, never weighed as much as 14 stone. These three indisputably great champions compare to Wilder, Fury and Joshua as prop forwards in rugby union’s amateur era do to the props in this autumn’s World Cup. They were what Bill McLaren used to call “solid citizens”, but they weren’t huge and they didn’t have necks as big as thighs.
Admittedly there were a few fighters in the now long-distant past who were physically comparable to the modern monsters. Jess Willard who held the title from 1915-19, till destroyed by Dempsey, stood 6 ft 6 and weighed at least 17 stone – some say more – and the Italian Primo Carnera, known as “The Ambling Alp”, was built on comparable lines. But neither Willard nor Carnera had much relish for the fight game, not much skill either. It’s pointless, though tempting, for those who remember Joe Louis and Marciano to argue their case against today’s heavyweights, more possible perhaps to do so for Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, though only just, since when they were in their prime they would have been conceding at least three or four stones to the likes of Joshua and Fury.
Still the heavyweight division is as interesting as it has been for a long time, and it is just possible that sometime in the next year we may once again have a single recognized champion, as used more often than not to be the case. The odds may however be against this, because unification fights are difficult to arrange. There is usually a case for one party to sidestep the proposal.
Yet, even if this happens, and there is a single World Heavyweight Champion, he is unlikely to enjoy the recognition and fame of Louis, Marciano and Ali. The reason is simple. Boxing features more than it has ever done on TV, but the biggest fights are always on subscription channels and behind paywalls. Whatever the size of the world-wide audience, boxing on television attracts the already committed. Heavyweight title fights don’t become part of general conversation as they used to. The likes of Louis, Marciano and Ali were known to people who weren’t boxing fans. Today’s fighters aren’t.