Boxing this weekend

If you don’t know me, you should know this: I love boxing. In fact, many of my philosophies on life are related back to it. Yep, I’m one of those who watches two guys punching each other mercilessly and sees a metaphor for life. In life, I view myself as a counter-puncher. A counter-puncher waits for people to punch and then takes that chance to create an opportunity to punch back, looking for openings. I wait for opportunities and then try to make the most of them. It’s my little way of being ‘safe’. Some people lead with their face and charge in, sometimes get knocked out and sometimes getting knock outs and it’s always fun to watch because they’re swinging for the fences. That’s not me. I swing for the fences when I get opportunities but often don’t look to create my own.

Anyway, enough about me. Let’s talk about this weekend’s fight. This weekend, an undefeated middleweight KO artist named Kelly Pavlik, 26, got in there with a boxing wizard and defier of time named Bernard Hopkins, 43. That means there’s a 17 year difference between the two and in his last fight, Hopkins already looked old. He was slow and sluggish and exhausted by the end of his last fight. Everyone had said, “OK, B-Hops is getting old and it’s time for him to retire.” That’s not a bad thing. Fighters age rapidly, or at least it appears they do. This stems from getting older and there being 6 month gaps between their fights, so when you see them again and they don’t look different on the surface, their bodies have started to get tired. It’s like running into someone from high school and thinking they got old over night because you haven’t seen them in forever. So everyone expected Hopkins to cash out with this fight against the young up and comer and pass his torch. Here’s the thing (and one of the things I LOVE about boxing): that isn’t what happened. Instead, this 43 year old man boxed that kid’s ears off for 12 rounds. Pavlik couldn’t put punches together and that 43 year old man worked him for 36 minutes. Hopkins used every trick at his disposal to frustrate and punish that kid.

Pavlik was (and still is) a top prospect and will earn tons more $$$. He punches hard, he’s humble, and (sadly this is the way of boxing) he’s white and white fighters seem to get the benefit of the doubt more often (see Jack Johnson in The Great White Hope). So Pavlik has a future. He’s not ruined. But make no mistake, the school bus was pulled up and Pavlik got on and Hopkins showed him ever trick in the book. I recall getting the crap being beaten out of me by my big brother (who is 5 years older than me) as a kid and eventually getting so frustrated that I couldn’t make a dent in him that I just gave up. He was just that much bigger and better than me and I’d go off and cry. Well that’s what Pavlik looked like at the end of that fight. Mentally taken apart.

To top it off, after the fight (which was staged at a ‘catch weight’ of 170 lbs, 10 lbs above Pavlik’s normal fighting weight), Hopkins pulled him to the side and gave him a huge pep talk (on camera) about how Pavlik was a great fighter and he needed to stay at 160 and rule the roost. So he was schooled in the ring and he was schooled afterwards. The whole time the 26 year old had a ‘yes, sir’ hang-dog look on his face.

So all that to say, 40 ain’t death. Beyond 40 ain’t death. We don’t have to stop fighting, we just have to fight smarter.