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December 19, 2004
Russian Strength
Well, Tyson didn't win, of course; Danny Williams snacked on his ghost, and Williams was in turn undone by Vitaly Klitschko, one of the few heavyweights in the rankings who's actually worth his salt. Even Klitschko is an embarassment, though; he's thirty-three years old, past his prime before he's even had one. Don King and the alphabet-soup organizations have colluded to strip boxing of its youth. Trading youth for money isn't news, of course, but a quick glance back to as recent a phenomenon as, yes, Iron Mike Tyson will tell you what you need to know: it's more exciting when young guys battle it out. Watching guys in their thirties compete to see who'll run out of steam first is only interesting when said aging guys had glorious youths against which to compare their seasoned selves. Some guys learn from their youthful follies (George Foreman learned how to love the game better than himself, and consequently fought some really fun, entertaining fights in his comeback); others show how dangerous it is to burn too brightly (Tyson, though there are several other lessons elbowing for room in his sad fable). The fighters we're now watching play out the last few years of their careers are fighters who did very little of note when they were younger. They just signed the right contracts and kissed the right asses.
This isn't to say they couldn't have done great things. Some of them certainly might have, had the boxing organizations been even slightly interested in whether the game was healthy or not. Chris Byrd and David Tua come to mind. I hear Yanqui Diaz can be an exciting fighter. But without decent matchups and interest in development, not just paydays, Diaz will be yet another who-knows? heavyweight whose career will vanish into the pea-soup fog that'll appear facelessly next to "early 21st-century boxing" in the history books.
Posted by jd at December 19, 2004 12:22 PM