To the fistic enthusiast boxing's sporadic, meandering and endless 'season' imbues the promotion of an event with significance nearly equal to the fight it culminates in. With lead times measured in months (and occasionally years), anticipation is an integral part of enjoyment. But all too often when a major fight lures the spotlight of the sporting world temporarily to the shadowy corner occupied by the Sweet Science, the battle so illuminated falls well short of the hype. This is especially true of boxing's erstwhile marquee division, the heavyweights, formerly an Olympian temple strode by titans like Ali and Frazier, Holyfield and Tyson, who defined the larger sport with their squared circle heroics.
The saying has always been "as go the heavyweights, so goes boxing".
But lately the division has been more wasteland than heartland. The modern world offers its large, athletically gifted young men a variety of easier paths to riches than getting punched repeatedly in the face. Yesteryear's promising heavyweights have become today's promising tight ends and power forwards.
While the coin of the promotional realm is hot air and hyperbole (witness Haye appearing at a presser in this tee shirt), eventually the balloons deflate, streamers are ground underfoot and by the conclusion of the ringwalk a boisterous parade has been pared down to two men, facing off with ruinous intent across a small square of painted canvas.
The two combatants have reached the center of the labyrinth, the irreducible heart of the sweet science fundamentally unchanged since the bareknuckle days of The Fancy catching express trains to the English countryside for forbidden contests.
Judged as a promotion, the recent heavyweight unification bout between Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye was a runaway success. Haye said all the right things, exuding the sort of egotistical confidence fans like to see in an underdog (or champion, for that matter), goading Klitschko with ploys as old as the sport itself with a few modern twists for savor. Wladimir will never be mistaken for a hot tempered extrovert, but he acquitted himself well filling a modified Ivan Drago role for the prepackaged media narrative.
And the fans did their part, allowing a heavyweight fight to stir up genuine excitement and passion unseen since Lennox Lewis' retirement in 2004, the penultimate star of the division's last (final?) golden age. This in spite of Haye having turned in a notably lackluster performance in his previous outing, narrowly out-pointing plodding giant (literally, at 7'2") Nikolai Valuev, a fight defined by Haye's timidity. A victory is a victory, but it was far from the type of full blooded assault you'd expect from a fellow who fancies himself a decapitator of giants and it should have been a warning to everyone caught up in Haye's whirlwind of self promotion.
So I was unsurprised when the tenor of this one was set by previous results, not press conference spin. Wlad fought the way Wlad fights- pumping one of the best jabs in the sport and daring his opponent to find a way around it. Haye fought off the back foot with extreme caution, a display some uncharitable postfight observers described as 'skipping away like a schoolgirl'.
Part of boxing's appeal is the immutability of the result- you fight the rounds, what happens happens and you have to live with it. Ideally this inspires the combatants to 'leave it all in the ring' as the saying goes. But fighters can be mesmerized by the procession of rounds, three minutes of walking a tightrope over a chasm while your opponent tries to knock you off. It's easy for the match to slip away from a fighter so focused on maintaining his balance he forgets part of the job is knocking the other guy off the rope.
This was Haye's fate.
His defense was effective if unsightly, but a relative lack of aggression resulted in offense dispersed too randomly across the 12 heats to create any real difficulty for Wladimir. In boxing it is not enough to make the other man miss, you must react instinctively to make them pay for missing. Haye was satisfied with solving the first half of the equation but disinclined to shoulder the burden of working it through to the end.
Post fight, the modern Fancy made much of Haye's failure to match prefight hyperbole with ring performance, mocking his (admittedly thin) excuse of having a broken pinkie toe. But when in-ring auguries speak so clearly I can't fault participants for being what they are rather than what they want you to believe they are. Yes, it would be brilliant if both transcended their natures and delivered a bout for the ages. But in boxing such fights are Cometary events, uniquely spectacular when they happen but vanishingly rare by definition.
In the end, I enjoyed the journey to this fight enough that the shabby destination, while disappointing, didn't ruin the experience for me. A classic result is always possible whenever two men enter the ring, and that anticipation fuels my love of the sport. If the result is a rarity with modern heavyweights, so be it- when it finally does arrive it will be all the sweeter for the wait.
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