J Rock’s swing in the Banana hammock

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at Philadelphia’s Liacouras Center in a super welterweight title-unification fight broadcast by Fox, Dominican slugger Jeison “Banana” Rosario beat-down Philadelphia’s Julian “J Rock” Williams, stopping Williams in round 5 and snatching his WBA and IBF titles the right way.

In the beginning it had all the trappings of a
homecoming coronation – slick graphics, venue, dazzling biography, management
organization, Watson, sycophantic commentary team – and then a curiosity turned
up in the corner labeled Designated Opponent right about the time introductions
got made.

Sampson Lewkowicz. 
His is not a flawless eye for talent but it’s very close, and multiples
better than PBC’s.  Most famous for his
effective discoveries of Manny Pacquiao and Sergio Martinez, for seeing past
their blemished records, a few years ago Lewkowicz
saw which of the Hermanos Benavidez had the true upside, and when he was right
and promoter Top Rank wasn’t and tried to poach their ways out of such
shortsightedness, Lewkowicz went to the mat with them and won.  Lewkowicz, an Uruguayan, of all things, sees
qualities other talent scouts do not. 
His stable is not huge or assembled at premium prices but comprises a
type of prizefighter you’d be foolish to schedule for a homecoming showcase.

Which is exactly what PBC did, of course.  There’s more to this story, surely, depending
which lens you watch it through – a bout of flu in camp or a hellish style
matchup some sage or other warned somebody about – but there’s exactly no
chance the braintrust at Fox on PBC on Fox, “preeminent” though they be,
anticipated what befell Williams.

What told very early on and does not portend well
for Williams in the rematch is how little Williams’ flush punches affected
Banana.  Despite what trickeration drives
replay selection between rounds Williams’ technically proper rightcross
counters did nothing to shortcircuit Rosario’s attack or even much dissuade it.  Had Williams sliced open Rosario’s eyelid or
had Williams’ own eyelid proved more durable things might have gone differently,
but that’s all in a fight, and if Williams’ sight problems came via reopened
scar tissue, as explained during the broadcast, if in other words Williams was
already accustomed to fighting through blood in his eyes, he sure didn’t act
like it.

Let us not pile on Williams for the sins of his
management company, though; good people opine Williams is good people.  It’s hard to cheer against him as it is to
imagine his becoming a world titlist in a different boxing ecosystem – the
enduring lesson of Pacquaio-Thurman.

In his fascinating book “The Soul of the Ant” suicidal
19th-century South African poet Eugène Marais posits a termitary, the
laboriously constructed habitat of what termites Marais studied for a decade,
functions as an organism little different from the human body, stretching his
metaphor to include termites of ferocious mien acting like white blood cells
whilst constructionworker termites act as red blood cells.  Whatever modern reductionists have proved or
disproved about this metaphor in a century since its publication, it is
wellbuilt as it is imaginative, with cells, in the form of near-mindless
termites, racing through their termitary to ensure its health, like blood
racing through human veins and arteries. 
It calls to mind a similar if more modern metaphor of the world wide web
acting as our species’ brain whilst its billions of cells labor away oblivious
of our contribution to its thoughts or thinking.

So let us stretch these stretched metaphors to
include in our beloved sport’s ecosystem (ostensibly red) blood cells like
Sampson Lewkowicz and Jeison Rosario, cells scheduled for anonymity all their
days till an unscheduled tear happens in boxing’s protective membrane and
suddenly they burst out in violent spurts. 
Rosario, dropped thrice at Sam’s Town Hotel & Gambling Hall in 2017
by Nathaniel Gallimore a year before J Rock decisioned Nate the Great, was
essential as he was replaceable; boxing needs such men to make coronations for
other men but doesn’t expect them to be memorable to any but their friends and
family.

What do you know about, say, Herb “Gorilla” Siler?

He was a 20-12 heavyweight who died 19 years ago
and surely beloved to someone even while anonymous to all but a handful of
aficionados.  Too, he was the first
knockout of Cassius Clay’s prizefighting career – four years before there was a
Muhammad Ali.  Essential as he was
replaceable in boxing’s ecosystem, Gorilla is a permanent part of The
Greatest’s resume even though men like Tony Esperti and Jimmy Robinson were
just as likely to make the same history had their schedules properly coincided.

Let coincidence neither lose an idea like: At
26-1-1 eight months ago in Virginia, J Rock was the homecoming b-side for
undefeated titlist Jarrett Hurd, raised but 30 miles from the EagleBank Arena
where Hurd’s coronation was to happen.  A
less cynical scribe, then, should marvel at PBC’s marvelous matchmaking,
bestower of rich parity, rather than mock the organization for apparent
incompetence.

Well.  In my
defense I watched Saturday’s match live on Fox in the hopes of seeing J Rock do
something ultimately decisive in a competitive scrap.  The scrap was competitive and something
decisive surely did transpire.

I’m on the Banana wagon now, while we wait for
whatever Naoya Inoue does next.

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Author’s note: Hearty congratulations to us!  As
announced late last week, 15rounds.com was the 2019 home of not only our
sport’s co-best exemplar of courage, Marc Abrams, but also our sport’s co-best
exemplar of benevolence, Norm Frauenheim. 
Two, more-deserving winners cannot be found.

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Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry