Haye v Harrison takes us into realm of the absurd

The big news in boxing this week is that David Haye will fight Audley 'A-Force' Harrison at the MEN Arena in Manchester on November 13. There are so many things wrong with that sentence, I hardly know where to start.
Perhaps the least obvious though, is the location. Why Manchester for God's sake? I've got nothing against the city, apart from a certain football team I'm not going to mention, but why on earth have they chosen to stage a fight between two London fighters, with big London-based support, in er, Manchester. It makes as much sense as moving the Manchester derby to bloody Wembley.
Anyway, that said, it's an intriguing proposition wherever it's held. Harrison is best described as a joke without a punchline, while Haye is obviously taking time out from his oft-stated mission to 'clean up the heavyweight division'. Some have said, rather unkindly, that Mr Harrison doesn't deserve a shot at the title. Which may be true but at least he holds the European heavyweight title and the fight is of interest to British fans if only to enjoy the spectacle of two former friends swinging their fists at each other. But before all that, we've the even bigger spectacle of Haye/Harrison 'trash-talking' in the media to look forward to, for ooh, the next eight weeks or so. Harrison, who will be 39 when he climbs into the ring, certainly talks a good game, as he proved at the press conference. And apparently he does still have some fans, as proved by his appearance on Soccer AM this morning. Will whoever these people are please make themselves known at reception...

In other news, one of the men who Haye should have been fighting, Wladimir Klitschko, defends his IBF/WBO/IBO world titles tonight against Nigerian Samuel Peter. In their last meeting five years ago, Peter managed to put Klitschko on the canvas three times before eventually losing on points. However, having reviewed the footage just now on YouTube, they looked like pretty soft knock-downs, and I don't think the big Ukrainian was ever in real trouble. Still, it's probably the most-entertaining encounter the younger Klitschko has been involved in for the past few years, which isn't saying a lot considering he's played a starring role in some of the biggest boxing snooze-athons of all time. While Peter has an impressive 73% knock-out rate, I don't think he'll pull it off tonight and old Wlad will probably wrestle his way to another points win (2/1 Betfred), taking another little piece of boxing's ravaged soul with him.

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.

Preview: Kevin Mitchell v Michael Katsidis

There are two big fights this weekend involving up-and-coming British fighters. In New York, Amir Khan takes on Paulie Malignaggi, while a little closer to home, at West Ham's Upton Park, local boy Kevin Mitchell fights Michael Katsidis for the WBO interim lightweight title. There's little doubt in my mind who has the more difficult task (Mitchell) and which fight will prove the more entertaining (Mitchell again.)
Unbeaten in 31 fights, Kevin Mitchell is a great little fighter: tidy, compact, but with a sting in the tail, as his last outing against Ignacio Mendoza proved. But despite impressive wins against Mendoza and Breidis Prescott among others, the suspicion remains that Mitchell may have moved up in class too soon. Graham Earl, knocked out in five rounds by Katsidis in 2007, certainly thinks so. Katsidis (pictured above) is a warrior in every sense of the word, and his Greek father even hails from the same village in Greece which is thought to have been the birthplace of Achilles. He will care not a jot that Mitchell is fighting in front of an expected 30,000 fans at the home of his beloved West Ham and will try and take him into the trenches from the start. The bookies make Mitchell a slight favourite overall but SkyBet quote both fighters at 2/1 to win by TKO or KO. My feeling is that it could go either way - sorry for stating the obvious - but I expect a war and fancy SkyBet's generous 6/1 on both fighters hitting the canvas at some point during the fight.

Preview: Amir Khan v Paulie Malignaggi

Visa problems aside, Amir Khan will make the journey to the spiritual home of boxing on Saturday, New York's Madison Square Garden, to take on Brooklyn-born Paulie Malignaggi.
One of two big fights this weekend featuring British fighters, the other being Kevin Mitchell's title fight at Upton Park against Michael Katisidis, more of which later, the bookies make Khan a 1/5 favourite to defeat the New York man in front of his own fans.
Malignaggi is a bit of a slapper, by which I mean to say he doesn't punch very hard not that he's loose of morals, and the facts bear this out. Paulie has won 27 of his 30 fights but only five of those wins came by way of knock-out. Having said that, he's a pretty durable fellow and came out of two tough fights against Juan 'Baby Bull' Diaz with his reputation enhanced. He has only been stopped once, by Britain's own Ricky Hatton back in 2008, and even that defeat went down in the record books as a 'technical' knock-out after his corner threw in the towel at the start of the 11th.
Hatton was nowhere near his best that night, but easily outclassed the 'Magic Man'.
I expect Khan to win comfortably but I wouldn't be surprised if brave Malignaggi refuses to go down easily in front of his own supporters and takes the fight to the scorecards. Sporting Bet's 13/10 about a Khan decision is the stand-out bet, with a saver on a Khan stoppage in rounds 10,11,or 12 at 13/2 with Bet365 advised.

Mayweather a bridge too far for Sugar Shane

I must admit I thought Floyd Mayweather Jr would cruise to a comfortable points win over 38-year-old 'Sugar' Shane Mosley and well, I wasn't far off. The scorecards at the end of the night reflected Mayweather's dominance with two judges scoring the fight 119 to 109 and a third giving to it to 'Pretty Boy' by a slightly narrower 118 to 110.
But that doesn't tell the whole story. In the second round 'Sugar' Shane landed two sweet right hands that had the self-proclaimed 'best-fighter-in-the-world' wobbling at the knee and holding on. For a brief moment, with the crowd brought to its feet, it looked like the unthinkable might happen. Sadly from Shane Mosley's point-of-view it was not to be and Floyd Mayweather Jr regained his composure and put on the boxing exhibition we'd all expected of him. Slick, quick, a master of the defensive arts, Mayweather got on his bike and slipped in and out of range with consummate ease. The 14 months since Sugar Shane demolished Antonio Margarito seemed to have aged him 14 years and he tired rapidly after his second round heroics came to nothing.
But for all his dominance Mayweather never really looked like finishing off Mosley inside the distance and I'd be inclined to agree with Manny Pacquiao's assessment of the fight. No one has really taken Mayweather into the trenches and tested his fighting heart in the way that I believe Pacquiao certainly would.
That fight now has to happen. There can be no more delays, false-starts or fudges. Fight fans deserve to see the world's two greatest fighters - two of the greatest ever - going head-to-head. If Floyd Mayweather's blocking tactics were intended to raise the stakes (and I believe that is exactly what 'Money Man' intended) then it's worked. Expectations ahead of a fight with Pacquiao are at fever-pitch. When seasoned boxing writers like Kevin Mitchell in The Guardian are comparing it to another Ali-Frazier, you know we're in for a treat.

Where now for Carl Froch?

I wasn't altogether surprised when I heard the news that Carl Froch had lost his first professional fight to the formidable Dane Mikkel Kessler last weekend. Froch had looked well below par in his previous 'Super-Six' outing against Andre Dirrell and it was always going to be tough taking on the remarkably durable Kessler in his own backyard.
Froch's preparation for the fight was further hampered by an ear infection and the volcanic ash situation but the Nottingham-man, to his credit, has never been one for excuses. Having finally watched the fight - it's been a busy week, don't ask - I have some sympathy with those members of Froch's camp who have complained about the scoring. To be honest, I think the verdict was a fair one. Froch has an infuriating habit of keeping his hands dangling near his waist and a tendency to stand back and admire his handiwork after landing big shots instead of pressing home his advantage and finishing the job. He didn't do enough to keep his WBC title and he probably knows it. Having said that I have no clue how one of the judges scored the fight 117-111 to Kessler. Was he watching the same fight? Most of the rounds were pretty close and Froch had the better of the early exchanges in what was, at times, an enthralling fight. The last two rounds in particular will live long in the memory and marked perhaps the first time this Super-Six contest has really kicked into life. Froch has nothing to be ashamed of, none of the fighters taking part in the contest have won away from home so far and it was always going to be a big ask taking on Kessler in front of 10,000 partisan Danes. With a 1-1 record from his first two fights in the competition, Froch is far from out of it, and could still figure in the final reckoning to decide the world's best super-middleweight. Unless, as reports suggest, he rules himself out of the competition because of a dispute over the venue of his next fight with Arthur Abraham. That would be foolish.