By Gerardo Granados: After the Terence Crawford vs Viktor Postol fight ended, a friend of mine got angry with me, because I said that Crawford performance against Postol had been boring. I told him that only a boxing purist like him could be pleased to watch Bud running shutting off the rounds, pot punching, reluctant to take any kind of risk, playing it safe only counter punching. Then my friend told me what most boxing purists would say “you know nothing about the sweet science”; so I had no choice but to laugh on his face.
My friend believes that to fight on the inside is to brawl. He is often quick to demise any fight fan that enjoys the true essence of prizefighting but fails miserably to acknowledge that in the beginning there was no such thing called the sweet science, but instead it was known as bare-knuckle prize fighting.
As the boxing technique and training evolved the so called sweet science appeared to add beauty to prize fighting, but not to take the place of the raw violent essence of prizefighting.
It is a pleasure to see a skillful boxer use his ring IQ, overall boxing technique to set up his punches, to control the tempo and distance and to maneuver at will his opponent with the goal of utterly destroy him; but not so to see him playing it safe all the time looking for to win on the scorecards.
All martial arts share the idea of hit and not get hit; to hit and don’t get hit isn’t exclusive to boxing at all. In the ancient Greek Olympic Games, we can find perhaps the remote beginning of the Mixed Martial Arts in the Pankration. But pro boxing has a different origin, not as glorious but one, even more, brutal and violent based on the need of men to earn a living out of beating unconscious his opponent.
Some boxing purists pretend to be the only ones to have the right to have an opinion. It is like that for the reader to be able to have an opinion about politics, the reader had to be a politician, as if the average citizen couldn’t understand, appreciate or make any judgment as an outsider.
Yes, boxers (prizefighters) will be alone when they retire. It was them who decided to become prize fighters in the first place; it is them alone inside the ring taking the punches and it is us the fight fans who pay to watch them get hurt. It has been that way since the beginning and to deny it’s useless.
In the beginning, there were bare knuckle fights, yes it was raw violent and people gathered to watch two men fight until one surrendered or fell unconscious. No, they didn’t gather to watch footwork, elusive defensive skills or cared to criticize their punching technique, all people wanted was to have fun. Maybe for today standards it could be a barbaric practice, but I bet to the reader that we would feel the adrenaline flowing thru our veins if we witnessed one of those fights.
But have we forgotten the essence of prizefighting?
Is to constantly run staying out of fighting range and to clinch like an octopus part of the defensive boxing skills?
Is the fight of the year awarded to the best fight based on entertainment value?
Should there be an award for the pure boxing exhibition of the year too?
Old time proud boxers fought to prove who the best in the eyes of fight fans was; now some Divas fight to earn the most money out of fans. Sadly one thing hasn’t changed and boxers still are the ones taking all the risks and the rest of the involved are the ones taking the biggest earnings.
Is the Terence Crawford vs. Viktor Postol bout a front runner for the fight of the year award? Is the Francisco Vargas vs. Orlando Salido the lead candidate to win it? Is there any difference in entertainment value between these fights?
In the end, it might be just a matter of boxing taste. But for me, the excess of use of the sweet science takes the essence of prizefighting out turning it into a boring fight.
But what about the readers, are you a boxing purist or a hardcore fight fan?