Marquez v Diaz II and a new dawn....

After a fairly quiet summer on the blogging front - ok I'll admit it, I got distracted by another sport where the only gloves on show are worn by goalkeepers - big time boxing makes a come back tonight in Las Vegas.
Juan Manual Marquez's 2009 encounter with Juan 'El Torito' Diaz was an almighty bust-up rightly named 'Fight of the Year' by the Boxing Writers Association of America. Marquez eventually triumphed in the ninth round but only after some barely believable exchanges which left both men bruised and bloodied.
It's not surprising then that fight fans all over the world are looking forward to their re-match tonight. But after the all-out-war they gave us in the first fight it's hard to see how tonight's match-up can be anything other than a disappointment. I hope I'm wrong and given their contrasting styles - Marquez more of a counter-puncher, Diaz doesn't have a reverse gear - there's every chance we could have another classic on our hands. Marquez was well beaten by Mayweather in his last outing, but there's no disgrace in that, while Diaz lost his recent re-match to Paulie Malignaggi. Enough said. Marquez has to be preferred and Sporting Bet's 2-1 that he wins in rounds 7-12 offers the best value.
An interesting sub-plot of this fight for British fans is that if Juan Manual Marquez wins he is very likely to be Amir Khan's next opponent at light-welterweight.
Tonight's fight also marks a major milestone for me personally in that for the first time ever I will be able to watch it legally, in my own home, on Sky Sports. Thanks to BT Vision's deal with Sky I no longer have to stay up late, trawling the internet to find an illegal stream with Chinese commentary or have to wait until someone loads it onto YouTube the next day. Thank you BT.

Sucker Punch: Boxing and the Arts

There are those, myself included, who consider boxing an art form. But even if the sweet subtleties of the fight game are lost on many people, the arts seemingly can’t get enough of the sport. Rarely a week goes by without the release of a new coffee-table book of black and white photos of Muhammad Ali and the sport of boxing has already given us some truly memorable films. I recently watched Humphrey Bogart in The Harder They Fall, a classic sporting film noir about the (thinly-disguised) career of Italian giant Primo Carnera, and I’ve just begun reading Michael DeLisa’s Cinderella Man, the story of heavyweight champion James J Braddock.
However, if it’s not unusual to come across artistic depictions of boxing in books, films and on television, one place I never expected to find it was in the theatre.
Sucker Punch by Roy Williams has just finished a highly successful run at the Royal Court Theatre in London and when I went to see it a couple of weeks ago it absolutely blew me away. I can’t recall a more visceral, affecting experience at the theatre, ever. Even my wife enjoyed it.
The intimate theatre - it barely holds 50 people - had been transformed into a boxing gym with a ring at its centre and the audience on either side. The action is set in London against the backdrop of Thatcher’s Britain and the race riots in Brixton and Broadwater. Two friends, Leon and Troy, end up working at a south London boxing gym run by old-school trainer Charlie Maggs who takes them under his wing and tries to mould them into contenders. Troy bristles under Charlie’s subtle-as-a-sledgehammer training regime and barely concealed racism while Leon is happy to bite his tongue and ignore his trainer’s many faults in the hope of receiving some paternal warmth lacking from his own father.
After the pair fall out their lives go in very directions and Troy moves to America. But both find success in the ring and the scene is set for a final showdown between the two former friends. Almost every critic has written something along the lines of 'this play packs an emotional punch', which it does, but the play also succeeds on a number of levels. It is about race, the black British experience, the sport of boxing, identity, friendship. Both fighters are a pastiche of well-known British boxers from the 80s but probably the most obvious comparison is with Chris Eubank (Leon) and Nigel Benn (Troy). Although Eubank came from an impoverished background and had been taken into care as a youngster, he adopted the manner and dress of an upper-class English gentleman and even purchased the title of Lord of the Manor. In contrast, his great rival, Essex-born Nigel Benn, was considered somehow more ‘real’ by many people. A rough-and-ready character who wore his heart on his sleeve. Their epic rivalry split the nation and culminated in two mega fights in Birmingham and Manchester. But the comparisons with the protagonists of Sucker Punch don’t bear much scrutiny. These two weren’t childhood friends, although they did come to despise each other, and it was Eubank not Benn who like Troy took up boxing after moving to America from London.
However, the play is a triumph and I can see it being made into a successful film one day. The performances are all first rate, particularly Daniel Kaluuya as Leon who is barely off-stage for the entire 90-minute production. As I say, it's just finished its first run but when it reappears, go and see it. You won't regret it.