Boxing - Joshua vs Usyk

Not saying I called it, but I called it

#JoshuaUsyk I try to base my predictions on reason, and reason says Joshua. The glint in Usyk's eye 👁️ says something odd happens.

— sportstweet (@kpfssport) September 25, 2021

The look is that fella at the back of the pub that everyone is wary of. It's speaks of willingness to do things that other people think are unreasonable. It works against reason.

Alvarez vs Golovkin

Since I’ve written about the freakshow and turned out to be mostly right, I feel I ought to write about an actual boxing match.  And Alvarez vs Golovkin could be a damn good boxing match.

I always feel I don't give Canelo the respect he deserves.  Because he's good, he lets his boxing do the talking and he doesn't duck fights.  He's a model professional in a time when that's a rare commodity.

But he’s fighting Golovkin and I <3 Gennady Golovkin.

I first became aware of Golovkin sometime around the time he moved to the US.  Mostly I noticed the number of boxers trying to avoid him.  It annoyed me because I was worried that he’d never get to make his name because he wouldn’t have strong opposition.

I am so pleased he proved me wrong.

I like tidy boxers, which he is.  I like no-nonsense boxers, which he is.  Also, you know baby-faced Kazakh destroyer :D

His technique is not perfect; I wish he’d use his feet more to get out of range because he takes way too many punches.  It’s all well and good being an iron jaw (and an iron face in general) but, as someone said about Carl Froch, all that means is people keep hitting you in the face.

I look forward to this fight (and the BBC’s excellent radio commentary).  It should be a good match-up between two stand-up boxers with solid technique.  It’s exactly what I want from boxing.

Mo Money, No Problems - Or Mayweather is going to win Mayweather vs McGregor

Mayweather will win Mayweather vs McGregor. He was always going to. He won it the minute it was announced as a boxing match, not that he would have agreed to an MMA match (nor should he have been expected to). Mayweather is very proud of the 0 in his defeats column and, at this stage of his career, he’s not going to risk it. If he thought there was a chance of losing, Mayweather wouldn’t have agreed to the fight.

People keep saying that it just takes one punch to knock someone out, and that that’s the beauty of boxing. But Mayweather’s style of boxing has always been to avoid getting hit and he has faced far better boxers than McGregor. Mayweather’s counter-punching style is also going to frustrate the heck out of McGregor, making a wild haymaker from McGregor more likely, which opens him up to a body-shot from Mayweather. And Mayweather body-shots are a thing of vicious beauty.

McGregor went into this knowing all of that, and is making no bones about being in this for the money, so I don’t think even he thinks he’ll win. He’ll still try, bless him, but he’s not going to win.
McGregor has one chance - he can win if Mayweather turns up too old. There’s no way of telling when that will happen to an athlete (Bernard Hopkins was fine till he hit 50, other people are too old at 30.). I think this is unlikely to happen to Mayweather for 2 reasons.

1 - Mayweather keeps himself quite near to game shape in between fights. I suspect this causes less wear and tear and keeps him fresher than if he kept having to do big weight cuts before each bout.

2 - Like I said before, Mayweather is really proud of that 0. If he thinks he’s lost a step, he’s going to call the fight off.

I can see the match going a couple of rounds, because, weird match against Ortiz notwithstanding, Mayweather hasn’t gone less than 10 rounds since 2006. I don’t think it will reach 10 rounds, mind you, because I really do think McGregor’s going to go for a haymaker and get body-shot before then. I can see it going 4 rounds. That’s long enough that people are going to think they’ve got their money’s worth and won’t complain too much. Although, in the UK, I do not understand why you’d pay to watch this freakshow (let us call it what it is) when you could listen to it on the radio for free.

On Mayweather vs Pacquiao

I was going to write a whole long post about the fight, but I find that Ricky Hatton has said everything I was going to say, in a much better way, and with greater authority, here.

The only thing I might add is that one of the things that counts against Mayweather in the public perception is that he always (or almost always) plays the villain in the build up to his fights.  Which makes sense from his point of view, because it keeps people's interest.  Because he's stuck with an interesting problem, in that he's enough better than the rest of his division that the fights aren't all that close, and he's a counter-attacking fighter, and people don't seem to get the effort and precision involved in being a good counter-attacker, so that's not a big box office draw either.  If he didn't play the villain, it'd be very similar to the problem there is in the heavyweight division, where we know who is going to win (a Klitschko) and how they're going to win so people aren't all that interested, so they don't watch, so the purse isn't that big.  And if my job involves people trying to hit me in the head, I am going to try to get paid as much as I can.

So Mayweather plays the villain and people pay to watch people hit him, and, of course, he's good enough that they don't.  Because Mayweather has an exceptional defence, one that I wish to show several UK boxers as something to be emulated.  He does other things that I think help him, such as staying in reasonably close to fight shape (unlike people who shall remain un-named but are obvious), so there's less stress on his body overall, which may be why Old Father Time has bitten him less than other people.

Basically unless he turns up too old on the 2nd of May (which can happen and in the [paraphrased] words of Bernard Hopkins, you never know you're too old until you turn up too old), Mayweather is winning this one.

I am still, however, utterly hoping and praying that Pacquiao will win.

Boxing (Or I Understand The Hype Principle But Why This Version?)

I don't think I've ever hidden that I am not a fan of David Haye.  And it's mostly his trash-talking that I don't like.  I hear and understand the counter-argument, that he does most of it in order to whip up interest for his fights, in what is a somewhat moribund heavyweight division that no-one cares about (although, I swear that if the Klitschkos where American, the US boxing press would be all over them), but I just find it odd that he chooses to play the role of the fighter the audience want to see knocked out when he's the (much) smaller man in his heavyweight fights.

Like Haye vs Valuev, Haye was 6 ft 3, weighed in at 15 st 8 lbs (190.5 cm and 98.9 kg) while Valuev was 7 ft 2 and 22 st 8lbs (218.4 cm and 143.3 kg)*, and against Wladimir Klitschko, Haye came in at 6 ft 3 and 15 st 3 lbs (190.5 cm and 96 kg) versus Klitschko's 6 ft 6 and 17 st 5 lb (198 cm and 110 kg)**.  You could have sold the heck out of those as tiny British David versus hulking Soviet*** Goliaths.

Against Tyson Fury (height 6 ft 9, weight at last fight 18 st 2 lb / 216 cm, 115.2 kg), Haye would be giving up ~ 6 inches in height, about 2 stone in weight and 7 inches in reach.  And it's not like Fury is Prince Charming****, so again why it Haye playing the antagonist?

Haye is not Money Mayweather.  The reason that Mayweather has to be the bad guy is because he is that much better than everyone else in the division.  Mayweather being the bad guy gives people a reason to watch his next match, because while, logically, we know that the next schmuck stands the same tiny chance of victory as the last schmuck, maybe, just maybe this will be the guy that shuts Mayweather up.  That's how Mayweather makes his money.

Haye isn't the best guy in the division, he isn't unstoppable, so I don't see why he's going down that route, unless it's that he's incapable of being polite for 10 minutes in front of camera.

All that being said, if Haye can get to the end of the twelfth, I suspect he'll win the fight just because he is a better boxer, technically, than Fury.

* source
** source
*** yes, I know.
**** Fury does have the advantage of occasionally being on free tv being the lovely, supportive older cousin to Hughie Fury.