For a sport focused on rendering people numb through sustained blunt force trauma, people who are good at it don’t always get the credit they deserve.
I think there is a tendency to underestimate the abilities of offensive specialists. I’m not talking about aggressive boxer-punchers like Naoya Inoue or Román “Chocolatito” González, but rather artists from the trenches whose talents lend themselves to avoiding the paradigm of hitting and not getting hit in favor of the maximum. damage.
There are some components to this, particularly a learned aversion to the “lower” forms of fighting. In the same way that horror, comedy and action are often considered lesser genres than drama or tragedy, slugging is perceived as cruder than textbook boxing, even when it has genuine depth. The more you refine your palate, the greater the instinct will be to separate yourself from the medium’s original appeal, whether that’s enjoying hijinks on a big screen or screaming while two guys trade concussions until one of them stops getting up.
When we think about “proper” boxing, especially when we compare fighters by things like pound-for-pound lists, the natural instinct is to favor the technician regardless of whether the slugger is getting similar or better results. Success is about maximizing your gifts, but if that gift is durability or raw power, it’s easier to dismiss than reach or reflexes.
To be fair, it can also be much more difficult to distinguish nuances when two fighters exchange at point-blank range. It’s one thing to see Floyd Mayweather receive a right hand to the shoulder and come back with a missile down the tube, and quite another to see Brian Castaño or Subriel Matías receive two blows in the pocket and realize that a lesser fighter would have received five. . As with all permutations of the Sweet Science, there are levels to beating people up.
If your average fighter can be compared to a fear-ridden idiot, then Artur Beterbiev is Aliens. The components are similar: offensive prioritization and looping punches on the literal side, inhuman monsters on the metaphorical side, and a preponderance of blood in both. The difference is in the execution. Beterbiev cuts the ring like few others, and while his punches aren’t as aesthetically pleasing as Dmitry Bivol’s perfect pistons, his shot placement and selection allows them to land with alarming frequency.
He doesn’t leave the ring as handsome as a more conservative fighter would, but if he’s beating people more decisively, can you really call that a worse way to go? Do rougher brush strokes make less art?
We didn’t get to see as much of Artur Beterbiev’s horror show as we should have; One can only imagine the director’s cut, regardless of injuries and promotional problems. Beyond the endemic tension of watching him step into the fire again and again, there’s a growing fear that this will be the screening where the film finally falls apart. However, regardless of how little time remains in its theatrical run, it deserves to be appreciated.
