I thought this was interesting. The guy who fought on Joshua's undercard apologizes fans for a terrible fight, even though he won. Twitter
Fair play to him for his honesty but it's the least he could do because that fight was fucking disgusting.
It was a dreary fight, but this is also what is different between boxing and sports. Generally in sports, results are everything. Difficult to imagine a football team apologizing for defensive tactics or getting several yellow cards while winning. In boxing we want the performances to be aesthetic too, which sounds more like art than sports.
Football teams do get criticised for being excessively defensive all the time tbf. The difference is elasticity of demand....if Celtic are particularly shite to watch crowds dip by 5-10% but tens of thousands of nutters like me will just keep showing up anyway out of emotional attachment. Its not like we can pick a more entertaining team and go watch them. And in most other sports you have structured tournaments with set prize money where a win is a win, making fan demand even less relevant than in football Boxing is unmoored from anything like that, totally and uniquely dependent on getting bums on seats and in that sense way more like the entertainment biz than other sports. Who cares if john Ruiz is heavyweight champ, ain't nobody got time for that
Criticised yes, but the criticism comes from the fans, the teams themselves don't usually apologize winning, as was the case here. Your points are good and kind of the same thing I was saying too. Boxing is a peculiar sport in the sense that results are not everything or even the most important thing
All good points, and yes it is about entertainment, saying that though it is fine to be defensive, that wasn't the problem here. The issue with Okolie is that he wasn't fighting, he was breaking the rules and should have been disqualified in all honesty.
Another thing is being excessively defensive is not breaking or even bending the rules in football. A referee is fully within their rights to deduct points or even disqualify a boxer for holding, turning their back or refusing to fight.
That's true too, though here the fighter apologized for poor entertainment, not for breaking the rules. I also don't think that fight fans are that annoyed with rule-breaking per se (Holyfield, Duran) but with fighting style that expresses 'cowardice', not depending on the result
Ultimately people pay to see a fight, so I think it's natural we're gonna feel cheated if a guy breaks the rules to avoid a fight. Slipping the odd low blow or elbow on the refs blind side doesn't really break that contract with the fans
Yes, and a fight is a performance which includes showing bravery, taking risks and intention of hurting thethand opponent. The end result is less meaningful than meeting these expectations (seeing a 'fight'), which, as I originally stated, sounds more like a performing art than a mere sports competition.
Anthropologist David Graeber in 'debt: the first 5000 years': 'the quintessence of the warriors honour, which can only be gained by the destruction and degradation of others, is to throw himself into a game where he risks the same destruction and degradation himself'.
