By Bart Barry-
Saturday in England in a heavyweight match broadcast by DAZN, Ukrainian cruiserweight prodigy Oleksandr Usyk worked alongside London’s Dereck Chisora to show what a bad idea Usyk’s migration to heavyweight was, winning a sloppy and close decision against a c-level fighter praised for trying hard, a couple hours before Japanese prodigy Naoya “Monster” Inoue origami-ed Australian bantamweight Jason Moloney in a match broadcast by ESPN+.
I looked forward mostly to Usyk, a fighter whom, until Chocolatito looked splendid the Saturday before, I’d’ve called my favorite among all actives, and quickly. Had I forgotten about Inoue? I suppose I had a bit, but for a good reason, for Inoue: I knew Monster was in fine promotional hands.
There’s an evangelical quality to writing a weekly column about a sport that isn’t a league and hasn’t a season. However limited or vast one’s readership he’s given a chance to petition strangers on his favorite fighters’ behalves. For many reasons, beginning with its unfortunate affiliation with Richard Schaefer, the World Boxing Super Series has maintained a cursed sort of feel here in the U.S., home of so many recent cursings. I freely admit a personal favoritism for the WBSS, its participants and especially its champions.
I’m not oblivious as I feign of the fiscal goings-on of our beloved sport, but I don’t care about them either. It’s not my role. It’s not yours. I watch prizefighting to see men perform heroic acts and transcend themselves. Entering oneself in a single-elimination tourney like WBSS is a proper pathway to those ends. WBSS has given us spectacular finishes and spectacular champions, Usyk and Inoue chief among them.
WBSS took more from Usyk than Inoue, evidently, as the quirky Ukrainian has not been the same since. Saturday he was further from the same as he’s ever been. Chisora was two things too much for Usyk: Wide and slow. He was, in the final tally, not too powerful, as Usyk wagered Chisora would tire and did not lose the bet, despite getting made proper miserable for some 12 of their 36 minutes together.
No, what foiled Usyk, what made him nothing like the otherworldly cruiserweight we loved a few years back, was the way Chisora’s 55 1/2 extra pounds bent the geometry of Usyk’s attack. There was no popping and stepping round Chisora; he was very much wider than Mairis Briedis, Murat Gassiev and Tony Bellew. Far sloppier too.
It was a bit reminiscent of watching “Fast” Eddie Chambers’ 2010 tilt with Wlad Klitschko, a match in which Fast Eddie’s shoulders fit within the span of Klitschko’s chest. No matter what lateral movement Chambers employed it was hopeless; he couldn’t get outside Wlad to spin him, with four steps and a hop. At least Chambers was acclimated to heavyweight pace, which is glacial.
Usyk missed a number of the large number of punches he missed Saturday because he threw the second or third punch of a combination where his first punch should’ve sent Chisora, and did send Chisora, too, just a few seconds after Usyk expected Chisora to get there. The bemused look on Usyk’s face said nothing so much as: “There’s boxing, and then there’s heavyweight boxing!”
Usyk is committed to finishing his career a heavyweight, though he could certainly return to cruiserweight (he’s fought twice in two years and gained merely 15 pounds, which is about the monthly American COVID-19-lockdown rate). This is poor strategy. There’s no telling if Usyk realizes this, as he’s too eccentric to read. He’d have done much better cherrypicking a heavyweight beltholder, while continuing his cruiserweight reign, making a one-night-only spectacle of trying to outbox AJ, Gypsy King or Wilder & Wilder. Instead he’s getting his tires balded and brain softened by men with a fraction his talent but unlimited size.
I’ll still watch him and tell fellow aficionados he’s one of my favorites, but my enthusiasm for him got beat out me Saturday. About the opposite how I felt watching Inoue.
If Monster is not fully recovered from what he and Nonito Donaire did to one another a year ago this week, he is quite nearly so. It feels good to watch a man be excellent at something, whatever that thing be, no? Inoue is near as we have to a perfect offensive machine. He is our sport’s apex predator and best fighter. His attack is varied, educated, balanced, gorgeous.
He turned pro as a light flyweight, won a title there, defended it once, skipped a division and blasted in two rounds Omar Narvaez, a fabled Argentine making his eighth defense of that title. In three years Inoue outgrew that division, moved to bantamweight and began winning title fights more easily and quickly than he’d done at either his two previous weightclasses. Nobody does that. Ask Chocolatito or Usyk. Fighters gain weight on their chins, not their fists, which is what makes scaling divisions such a feat.
Excepting his fight-of-the-year ordeal with Donaire, Monster hasn’t been tested much in the 11 rounds of his other four bantamweight title fights; it’s not that he’s that much better than what softies he’s been matched with, it’s that he’s that much better than everyone. We know this because it was a tourney doing his matchmaking in 2018 and 2019, not a promoter.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
