Don’t expect this to be a fight report.
On Saturday, we saw a rare double appearance by members of the “white men who fight infrequently, but are never punished or judged for being ‘inactive’” club when Artur Beterbiev met with Callum Smith at the Videotron Center in the city of Quebec.
It was a predictable blow in favor of Beterbiev.
I mention this (underline, highlight, and red Photoshop arrows point to it) because of some criticism I received on Twitter/X late last week (@boxing_tribune).
On Friday I pointed out that three-time light heavyweight champion Beterbiev would, in fact, defeat Smith because, like so many UK fighters, Smith’s reputation as a world-class fighter was the product of a jealous, wildly nationalistic UK. and obsessed with himself. media.
And, as is often the case, the uncomfortable truth I told people turned out to be an irrefutable truth.
But I’m not going to pat myself on the back too much for this. Beterbiev was clearly the better fighter. The bettors and anyone with a clear boxing mind knew it. He was dazzling and obvious. Beterbiev versus Smith was a case of excellent versus just good, high-level world class versus high-level regional.
However, throughout the run-up to this fight, we listened to the UK media spread wishful thinking, entering the realm of deception, into the public narrative. And just as they did when they sold Smith as a rival for Saúl Álvarez in 2020, it was all, as the British say, “nonsense.”
Aside from raw potential and a stoppage of George Groves (who, himself, may have been an overrated English fighter), there was nothing to suggest Smith was “special” at a world-class level. Good yes. He’s not great…and he’s definitely not elite.
We’ve seen this a lot when it comes to UK wrestlers in general. Because the UK media has been so good at promoting their own and honestly keeping the media gigs between them, they have sold many UK wrestlers as better than they really are. And, feeding off that hype, UK promoters have managed to get their fighters disproportionately high ratings from sanctioning bodies.
In the last few days/weeks/months we’ve seen guys like Sunny Edwards and Ohara Davies completely fall apart. Joe Joyce was knocked down (twice). Daniel Dubois was gutted by Usyk. Josh Taylor went off. He could go on and on back further (like, gulp, Ricky Hatton was never as good as he advertised himself to be, gulp!). All of these guys received a harsh treatment from the UK media, showering them with vast amounts of exaggerated praise and attention, bending reality to the point of breaking it.
It’s an affront to common sense that some of these guys are touted as “real”, when you can clearly see from their skills and a resume full of falafel cart sellers and Bulgarian gym trainers that they are not. She is a waste of our time. We, as fans, want good, competitive fights with well-developed and proven fighters, and not “let’s try it, buddy” challengers who get gutted when they move up a weight class and then get promoted again for another big fight. A couple of years later… where they get trashed again.
One prominent UK boxing media personality even labeled Beterbiev-Smith a “fight of the year contender” during fight week. Is seriously. In what strange parallel universe is Beterbiev vs. Smith would have been ANY Fight of the Year? Smith simply wasn’t good enough, no matter how many times the British boxing media “experts” told the world otherwise.
I don’t mean any of this is a personal attack on Callum Smith, but if the man feels hurt as a result of this kind of reality check, so be it. There are levels in this sport, just like in all sports. No one who covers football would insist, with a straight face, that the Boise State Broncos had a realistic chance of beating the Dallas Cowboys in an all-time classic.
A lot of nonsense was thrown at me when I stabbed this hot dagger of truth into the ass of advocacy as journalism. There was the “The UK is producing more world-class boxers per population” nonsense and the “Britain is running boxing right now” boast (plus a lot of general nastiness in my inbox and the claim that I’m ” full of toxic nationalism”). tribalism”). But I challenge you, if you’re not a boxing moron or a wildly patriotic Brit, to look at all the UK fighters who are champions or world-ranked contenders and count how many of them are truly proven, world-class fighters with resumes to match. What would that figure be? Maybe 3 or 4. Maybe. And two of them, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, have been quite inconsistent in recent performances. From a UK population of over 67 million? In reality, that is a smaller percentage of world-class fighters produced than many nations.
But I digress.
Fighters are overrated everywhere and in all countries. Resumes are artificially bolstered everywhere. The boxing media sucks everywhere. But the UK has put all this together and turned the deceptive hard-selling of relatively vulgar wrestlers into an art form.
The UK media (and the fans who buy what’s sold) are supporting their own. I understand. His devotion to his people is almost sweet. As I’ve said many times before, I wish American fans and media would support each other more. But charming devotion doesn’t necessarily guarantee a good boxing product. Some would say it’s actually a hindrance.
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