Nikolai
Valuev versus Monte Barrett just wrapped on HBO and I'm pretty sure The Girl was not impressed with her first extended viewing of a prizefight.
Then again, I hyped the fight as a beating at the carnival, so that might not have been the best line to take on this one.
Valuev is a seven-foot tall Russian who took Barrett's lunch money for 10 rounds before Barrett's trainer needed to step in and end the fight. That was a decision so rational that Mike Tyson would have made it, so that's where the fight stood near the end there.
It was distracting to watch and a pretty sad fight overall and it makes me a little nostalgic for a time I wasn't even around for. Most of the recent big-name title fights have fallen flat and so it's no surprise that boxing has lost its audience.
No longer are there
hordes of men in there 20s clamoring for title fights in their hometowns (Don King arranged a fight last year in Chicago at the United Center that was far from a sellout and this fight was downgraded to Rosemont) and why would they?This is not even the heyday of Mike Tyson when I was in grammar school and everyone knew he was the undisputed champ, even snot-nosed fourth graders.
Now, of the four fighters holding belts today, they are all Eastern European (which isn't very appealing to an American audience) and there hasn't been a decent high-profile fight in years. When I think back to the Lennox Lewis/Michael Grant fight I remember that the fight lasted a few minutes and that the highlight of the evening was the undercard that went the distance.Lewis/Tyson? Same story. That was just a pitiful showing, despite the bales of cash collected for the pay-per-view. While there are fights that appeal to the hard core boxing fans, for the casual fan like me, it's a bummer that there hasn't been a decent bout in recent memory.
To put it in perspective, imagine if the last five Super Bowls had all been 45-7 blowouts or if the only teams in the World Series were from tiny markets and comprised of players from the Eastern bloc. It just takes some of the fun out of it.
I don't really have a point in all of this, except that I wish things were different and that there was a reason to book a flight to Vegas or Atlantic City with a group of friends to see a big bout.Well that, and a boxing world where nine out of ten passersby on the street could name the heavyweight champ. Say what you will about Mike Tyson, but at least everyone knew his name.
(Photo from HBO.com)
The premise is that for $30 you can have Mr. Belding, Horshack or Timmy (now that Lassie pulled his ass from some God-foresaken well for the 50th time) call your buddies and say hello. For $300 a pop, the Soup Nazi will call in as you open your car wash in the misle of nowhere (which has to be sublimely ridiculous).
