By Bart Barry-
SAN ANTONIO – Saturday I went for a drive in a random direction and learned a bit more about the spread of COVID-19 in this community (though nothing science hasn’t been trying to tell us in its now-hoarse voice). If this turns out to relate to Tyson Fury, like the rest of the column, I’ll be surprised and overjoyed, and if it doesn’t, I’ll probably revise a clumsy * break somewhere below, but follow along if for no other reason than the guy writing this hasn’t an inkling where it might go and little more of an inclination to tidy-up when he’s done.
How did randomness get achieved on a Saturday drive during the withers of a pandemic lockdown? The mailman delivered a hand-addressed letter days ago to the wrong address, this one, and days of flagging the letter in the box did nothing to get him remove it. Finally I put the address in Google maps and headed wherever the voice directed. The southeast neighborhood where I landed is workingclass like this: Most everyone in the neighborhood works fulltime, and per-capita annual income is less than $23,000.
The stripmall was bursting and traffic was congested as anywhere I’ve seen it since March. If you don’t have access to a creditcard you haven’t access to Amazon, and do your shopping locally; and if you give 50 weekly hours to work (jobs in that neighborhood ain’t virtual, and if the pandemic has taught the rest of us something about work, one hopes, it is to include, henceforth, one’s commute in hourly wage calculations) and you get paid weekly you have only Saturdays for shopping, like everyone round you.
The neighborhood was spared the first COVID-19 wave, like most of this city’s neighborhoods, but now that state government has sacrificed its citizenry to the market god – the governor last week refusing our county judge’s pleas to make masks mandatory, citing available hospital beds and freedom – this neighborhood will suffer an outbreak in wave 2 the way the rest of our city’s neighborhoods now do, and that outbreak will be exacerbated by what unmasked congestion marked Saturday’s stripmall.
Then all is hopeless? No, no it isn’t. The social order convulses right now, and that will bring a change that has nearly good a chance of being for the longterm better as being for the longterm worse. Young protesters have made a calculation of their own: The chances of my catching a deadly virus while marching outside, now, are less than the chances of a loved one being killed by police.
That’s a quite extraordinary thought and perhaps a rational one. It’s the perhaps-an-irrational part that is changed. In bygone days a community’s elders would read the youngsters a scroll of benefits and historical sacrifices and tell them it’s their turn; sacrifice your vigor right now for improved fortunes later. Except today’s youths can’t see a damn thing these elders sacrificed for anyone and see no coming fortunes either. If protesting what violence might kill their peers now causes them to spread among their grandparents a deadly disease, well, sacrifices must be made, no?
God help us – get to the hopeful part! Tyson Fury brought aficionados hope last week (you now find yourself in the middle of a transitional sentence so graceful only a bald, obese gypsy might attempt it) when he agreed to the terms of a fight series with his division’s last remaining titlist in 2021.
After Fury dispatches Deontay Wilder later this year, or doesn’t, he says he’ll make two matches with Anthony Joshua then leave our beloved sport much better than he found it, which is remarkable. All it ever took, Fury now proves, is selfbelief – or lunacy. Fury took an illadvised match with Wilder a couple years back because he believed in his talents, or was fully out of his mind, and did enough and made enough of it to make an enormous rematch and whalebone Wilder in February.
Three years ago the idea of Deontay Wilder being the best heavyweight in the world was absurd, sure, but the idea of Fury being the clear favorite in a rubbermatch with Wilder and a pair of matches with AJ was absurder still. Then the Gypsy King went Lazarus on Wilder and Tysoned him, while AJ got emasculated by El Gordito and stayed that way in the rematch.
Wilder’s got about 90 seconds later this year to snatch Fury’s initiative with an overhand right, and if he doesn’t, if Fury makes it to round 2 without a concussion, what’s going to stop him? ’Twon’t be Wilder’s newfound fragility. Or if AJ goes robot destroyer Fury undresses him – Joshua is both less powerful and more predictable than Wilder – or if Joshua shows us that guy we saw last time Fury upstages Willie Pep by winning 12 rounds without throwing a punch.
Of course with Fury there ever be nemeses lurking, the Furies, as it were, whatever agents Fury might summon for his autodestruction next time, if there’s a next time; Fury might well undo himself, but probably neither Wilder nor Joshua will. Fury’s selfbelief forced Top Rank to work with PBC and forced Eddie Hearn to work with an alleged Irish weapons smuggler in the Emirates, which ought be a lesson to aficionados if not their favorite fighters.
Next time Bud Crawford and Errol Spence sign opponents you must BoxRec or a middleweight titlist tells you everyone above 147 pounds is afraid of him, remember the Gypsy King and know what’s lacking actually is simple selfbelief.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
