By Bart Barry-
ATLANTA – Traffic shapes your view of everything here, and you’re not ready for it. You’re a medium-city guy who hails from one and likes others from them, and you know infrastructure in medium cities is sometimes wanting, especially in the South, spiritually unprepared as it is for immigration of all kinds, and yet you’re not prepared for the perilous and timebending nature of this city’s traffic.
This has something to do with Saturday’s match but not too much, even if one of its combatants is from the American South. Scotsman Josh Taylor had something that bent New Orleans’ Regis Prograis in a way for which he was unprepared, howsoever well-prepared he thought he was. And since I happen to be in Peach State for reasons entirely unrelated to our beloved sport, why . . .
Class told early Saturday while ruggedness told later, and that’s not oftenly how it goes. Taylor won WBSS’ third Muhammad Ali Trophy by majority-decisioning Prograis in an excellent fight broadcast by the aficionado’s network, DAZN, from an O2 Arena near enough Taylor’s native Scotland to make it a homegame for the Tartan Tornado (and since Taylor prevailed, he remains British).
In so doing Taylor joined Callum Smith and Oleksandr Usyk on a shockingly short list of prizefighters since 2017 who’ve allowed themselves be matched in single-elimination tournaments against the best available men in their divisions and prevailed. While an argument might be made that Top Rank and PBC assets shouldn’t be excluded from conversations about the world’s best 168- and 200-pound fighters in 2018 and best 140-, 130- and 200-pound fighters in 2019, the ranks of those capable of persuasively making such arguments ain’t exactly swelling.
There was much chatter, for instance, about Top Rank junior welterweight champ Jose Ramirez, Sunday morning, with Taylor’s establishing himself as the division’s best. Ramirez moves the gate for Top Rank, and the promoter’ll be in no hurry to risk such prowess against a man who might beat him. Which brings a very interesting question: Who of Saturday’s combatants do Top Rank’s matchmakers, boxing’s best for a few decades at least, think is less likely to beat Ramirez in a way that cancels future sales? That question, much more than belts or rankings, will determine the next direction for the junior welterweight division.
The aforementioned Smith and Usyk cases are instructive here. Both men did everything they might to scour their divisions, and neither got rewarded with meaningful followup challenges. Middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez decided a match with a 175-pound titlist was more attractive than a match with Smith, and former middleweight titlist Gennady Golovkin, well, his handlers now search Twitter profiles for a proximate opponent, #superwelter. Usyk’s case is slightly different – there was nobody left when he was done at 200 pounds – but he’s now at heavyweight, where no champion is matched to lose unless by accident.
The Muhammad Ali Trophy is gorgeous but not magnetized.
Still, what Taylor and Prograis did in its pursuit merits more words than granted thus far. Taylor unmanned Prograis for 2/3 of Saturday’s match by smothering him, in a twist few anticipated. Taylor’s largest liability, going in, was his tendency to defend in the exact manner from which Prograis’ attack would draw encouragement.
Then Taylor did nearly its opposite. He introduced Prograis to a degree of physicality Rougarou did not prepare for. What happened eventually, Taylor’s unemployable right eye, was exactly what Prograis would’ve predicted had anyone told him Taylor’d be brazen enough to get physical during minutes 4-35, but herein lay the problem for Prograis: Taylor predicted the same in camp.
Nobody who watched the 12th round of Saturday’s fight thinks Taylor could’ve prevailed were the match unexpectedly extended to 15 rounds – Prograis won the final round more clearly than either man won any of its predecessors – but Taylor had a better plan and executed it more precisely. Fortune, they say, favors the bold, and it did Saturday when a nasty gash opened over an eye Taylor wasn’t using anyway; the southpaw Taylor’d long since replaced his lead eye with tactile tactics and didn’t bother dabbing at his bepurpled right eyelid while there was still a chance to counter the southpaw Prograis.
Saturday’s was not a great fight but an excellent one. Taylor would not have prevailed in a great fight, one in which each man was felled or worse; had the match been any more excellent than it was, in other words, Taylor would’ve been the one giving a gracious postfight speech rather than Prograis.
A word or two about that, too. How refreshing was Prograis’ comportment for an American after losing a decision narrow enough to be attributable to geography? He promised no excuses and made none. He called his opponent – badly faded, beatup and blinded – the better man more than once. Prograis wasn’t chastened in defeat but noble. He’d gotten a fight more honest than expected and talked like it.
That spoke, also, to what Taylor’d done. When a man skitterskips his way from you, husbanding his most violent acts for a finalbell chest slap, it’s impossible not to feel cheated. But when a man puts his weight on you, shoulders you and forearms you, gets your sweat cleaned off his gumshield after a round of knocking it from your head in halos, when he makes it filthy intimate, that’s another thing entirely. It’s easier to be gracious after such an experience – and such things must be experienced to be believed.
Congratulations, then, Josh and Regis, we wish there were more men like you!
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry