The heavyweight boxing champion of the world loses after more than a decade unbeaten. The man who defeats him has an improbably delightful name.
Yet the upset on Saturday caused little more than a ripple with fans preoccupied with college and pro football, the Golden State Warriors and even the Davis Cup.
When the English press gives more attention to a 0-0 draw between Spurs and Chelsea than a championship bout, it is not a good sign for the sport. In the US, the opening of a boxing movie, Creed, outshone nonfiction.
Heavyweight fights used to dominate the sports pages, and even the front pages. There are many reasons for the loss in popularity, including the alphabet soup of divisions and competition from other sports, including action-packed mixed martial arts.
However, the longtime champion, Wladimir Klitschko, deserves some of the blame. His dominance has sometimes seemed to suck the life out of boxing’s glamor division. His clinch-heavy style has also been blamed for turning off viewers interested in some big knockouts, not scientific pugilistics.
Enter Tyson Fury.
Before the fight, Fury proclaimed himself the savior of the division and promised to rid the sport of the dull Klitschko.
“It’s a personal mission for me to rid boxing of a boring person like you,” he said. “Your jab-and-grab style — surely all of Europe wants to see you get beaten. You have about as much charisma as my underpants: zero, none. You’re a sports psychologist, you speak 37 different languages, so what? You’re still a robotic person. You’re still not exciting and fun to watch. I am the new blood in the division, you are an old man.”
Fury was as good as his word, winning a unanimous decision in Duesseldorf, Germany, that Klitschko rued.
Now heavyweight boxing has the chance for a rejuvenation. The key will be Fury.
Fury, 27, is 25-0 and, as his prefight remarks made clear, has the gift of gab. At 2.06m, he is the tallest widely recognized champion ever. (Nikolai Valuev, a 2.13m-plus Russian, held the WBA belt off and on from 2005 to 2009.)
Fury certainly seems to be colorful enough to transcend his sport. He released a video of himself head-butting a watermelon.
Of Irish-Gypsy extraction, his Twitter handle is “Gypsy King.” And, yes, he was named after Mike Tyson.
The fight contract calls for a rematch, but in all honesty that might not be especially anticipated.
Saturday’s bout got some of the same “boring” reviews as Klitschko’s other fights. Fury bobbed and wove. Klitschko patiently looked for openings. Neither man punched a whole lot.
The Ring magazine headlined it “Big Upset, Bad Fight” and asked: “Can a fighter clown his way to the heavyweight championship of the world? He can if the defending heavyweight champion doesn’t throw any punches.”
We may have to wait awhile, but one man who could reinvigorate the division is the 35-0 American Deontay Wilder, known as the Bronze Bomber.
Wilder packs a big punch — 34 of his wins are by knockout — and could be a threat for the title against Fury or Klitschko. Fury dismissed Wilder after Saturday’s fight, but in a way that might stoke interest.
“Why would I be bothered about a novice like Wilder?” he told reporters. “He’s a basketball player who took up boxing a couple of years ago.”
A grudge, a flamboyant champion, some social media buzz: Heavyweight boxing needs all of this to be relevant again. Klitschko’s loss is just the first step.
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