I mentioned here recently that I’ve been an armchair boxing fan for years, how could you not be if you grew up in the seventies? Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Holmes, Norton, Shavers and other heavyweights of that decade would be at the top in any era. I watched their fights, usually highlights on ITV on a Saturday lunch time, sharing the adults enthusiasm if not their understanding. As I got older I stayed up all night to watch the likes of Hearns, Duran, Leonard and the best of all Marvin Hagler. Those two periods have never been bettered in my opinion but I’ve followed boxing ever since though mostly the careers of the best British fighters and we’ve had a few; Bruno, Eubank, Benn, Watson, Lewis, Hamed, Calzaghe, Froch and I’m sure more names will pop up when I’m finished. To be fair, I suppose I only really get interested in the big fights and don’t know a great deal about fighters on a more local level. I can’t be much arsed about streaming and all that shit, I’ve never made any attempt to understand it so nowadays I mostly listen to a radio commentary then get the highlights on YouTube not long after. Despite an almost lifelong interest I’d never, ever attended a live boxing event, until last week.
Our local lad Fabio Wardley had an inauspicious route
through boxing but every time he’s been tested against a higher level fighter
he’s come through, culminating in becoming British champion. I mean, British heavyweight champion, from
Ipswich? That’s just fucking
mental. Now he’s fighting on the fringes
of world championship level and with his ability to take hard punches and shake
them off, along with an impressive knockout ratio, who knows? Anyway, he ended up headlining an open air
event at Portman road football stadium in front of twenty thousand people and
it was too convenient to miss.
So along with family and friends we got the cheapest tickets
in the house and turned up to find that although they were cramped and
uncomfortable the view was actually pretty bloody good. The weather was horrible so the people who
had paid £300+ for the best seats beneath us were getting rained on which
amused us at the time. There were loads
of fights on the undercard and I can’t remember how many we watched and right
now I’m struggling to recall any names but all were entertaining. There was some clever boxing and also a
couple of impressive knockouts. Another
local lad won on points as did an Olympian from Colchester making his pro
debut. We saw ring walks, heard the
announcer with the booming voice and they still have a scantily clad woman with
a number on a board strutting around the ring between rounds. Happily there were no annoying delays between
fights and the night passed quickly, fight after fight, before we knew it the
main event approached. I’m sick to death
of “Sweet Caroline” and sneer at most of the cheesy tunes they play to buzz the
crowd up but I was amused by the way people under the influence cannot help but
react to this stuff.
So the main event, after the ring walks (yawn, seen one you’ve seen them all) two unbeaten heavyweights faced each other across the ring. The opponent from Australia was Justis Huni, a man with top amateur pedigree and a slick reputation, a real live opponent as opposed to someone expected to fall. For the first three rounds it was pretty tight with Fabio looking most likely but from then on Huni took over and if we’re honest, gave our man a total boxing lesson. Why wasn’t Fabio closing the gap? Why wasn’t he letting his hands go? After the ninth round I turned to number one son and said ‘he needs a knockout to win’ and he agreed. Then in the tenth round Fabio landed a perfectly timed right hand bang on the chin and the fight was over. A spontaneous roar erupted and we looked at each other with jaws hung open, wow!! That one punch saved our man and sent us all home happy and will be talked about by boxing fans for years to come and not just in Suffolk.
There was some bleating about the fight being stopped prematurely but having watched numerous replays Huni was staggering backwards from the ref, he would never have lasted the round. However in defeat he impressed everyone and having been booed into the ring he was cheered out. And Fabio, how far can he go? As a boxer he’s not in the same league as Usyk but who is? And with that granite chin and one punch power he’s got an outside chance against anybody. Who knows if boxing will ever come back to Suffolk in such a way but if it does I’ll probably go along again. I might even be tempted to travel a bit further.
But even after all that, Test match cricket is still my
favourite sport and this week we had the spectacle of the ICC world test
championship from Lords. I must confess I was happy to see the geriatric Aussie
team beaten by the Saffers in a close, entertaining match. It’s fair to say ball dominated bat over the
three and a bit days, both teams have serious attacks but SA have the best in
the world in Kagiso Rabada who reminds me a lot of the great Malcolm
Marshall. Fair play to the Saffers but
they strolled into the final after a ridiculously easy schedule in which the
highest ranked team they beat was Sri Lanka and nobody can tell me they are the
best test team in the world despite what just happened at Lords. In my opinion there are three or four teams that
are better and two of them will commence a five test series before the end of
the month.