Heavyweight Thoughts

First up, I was wrong.

As everyone knows by now, Tomasz Adamek beat Chris Arreola by unanimous decision. I had been thinking about analyzing another writer's Mosley-Mayweather predictions (and you should check them out) but being wrong is always a great segue into pontification to support the underlying arguments behind one's mistakes. So heavyweights it is.

I'll start, of course, with fight about which I was so very wrong.

I noted not too long ago that I thought Chris Arreola would knock Adamek out in 3 and that Adamek could expect to last 6 rounds or so at best. Adamek, who is fundamentally sound but hardly 'Money' Mayweather or 'The Executioner' when it comes to defensive polish, soundly outboxed Arreola over the distance. I would not have been surprised if he had boxed well for three or four rounds, gotten badly beaten up in one or two, and then been stopped hard. I did not expect him to keep Arreola on the end of the jab for the entire fight or come anywhere near winning. I have to give Adamek a lot of credit for the win.

I also have to add a caveat to that credit.

I think that Arreola's loss to Adamek says more about the state of the heavyweight division, especially the American heavyweight picture, than it does about Adamek's legitimacy as a big man.

To start, despite the impressive win, I would still consider Adamek a live underdog in a rematch with Steve Cunningham rather than a favorite. I've said a lot about my thoughts about the original fight and I give Adamek a lot of credit for chin, resiliency, and power. I just don't think he is as good as the best cruisers in the world and that his ability to pull knockdowns out of his hat swayed judges who didn't know who Cunningham was. I'm not saying that the fight was so lop-sided Adamek's win was a magoo. I am saying that Adamek-Cunningham is not a fundamentally different fight than the fight between Wlad Klitschko and Sam Peter that put WK back on the heavyweight map.

In both fights a superior boxer outboxed a big puncher for the majority of the fight. In both fights the puncher scored strategic knockdowns that made the fights hard to score despite the overall dominance of the boxer. In both fights it was very difficult to find rounds to give to the puncher outside of the knockdown rounds. In both fights it could be argued that there was at least one round that might deserve to be 10-9 or even 10-10 despite the knockdown, because one good shot was the only accomplishment the big puncher managed that round.

Yet, in both fights, one guy clearly was able to hurt the other guy whenever he had the chance and was able to get the chance often enough to produce some impressive results in small but dramatic bursts. The other guy, while successful overall, was not able to match those bursts of drama.

It could be argued that Sam Peter and Steve Cunningham both deserved to win and equally argued that neither WK nor Adamek did quite enough to win. The knockdowns made the fights that difficult to score.

Adamek's life and death struggle with Steve Cunningham and his loss to Chad Dawson, coupled with his surprisingly easy win over Chris Arreola, leads to an unpleasant conclusion.

James Toney, Juan Carlos Gomez, David Haye, and Adamek have all enjoyed some degree of success beyond expectations at heavyweight. I would favor Hopkins over Adamek at heavyweight and (despite the thoughts of some others) would call Hopkins/Haye an even money fight. It might be time to change conventional wisdom: the cruiserweight division might now be deeper and more talented than the heavyweights. If one consider that the 200 lb weight limit is perfect for the great heavyweights of history, this only makes sense.

I'll offer a reason, at least on the American side. Three reasons, actually.

Promoters, writers, and fans. Especially writers and fans. Sure, the promoters are evil. But writers and fans enable that evil in their passion for the sport they love.

The promoters' share of the blame is obvious, but I'll repeat it anyway: they've protected marginal prospects to manufacture impressive records, they've exploited their own successes so shamelessly and attempted to simulate their own achievements so ludicrously that their business model is perhaps less incestuous than it is masturbatory. When given the chance to discredit or marginalize the sport, they've done so at every turn. They make the fights and their need for that 'special fighter who can't lose' requires guys stay undefeated for as long as possible. Usually they stay undefeated by fighting the kind of opponents who don't offer enough of a challenge to allow them to develop their skillset.

Writers enable this by making a big fuss over the promoters' next Michael Grant or Chris Arreola. Amateur writers are the worst (witness my own belief in Arreola) but professional writers are far from immune. Boxing writers become boxing writers because they were boxing fans first. The objectivity demanded of a crime reporter is not necessarily desirable in a sports writer. Would anyone want to read a boxing article by an MMA fan? Writers get worked up, excited, or impressed beyond rational justification just like fans do. Hyperbole is sort of expected of a sports writer even when they aren't worked up. When they really like a guy? They're going to be fulsome. The Ring published an article comparing Henry Armstrong and Manny Pacquiao. The gulf between the respective achievements of the two great fighters is so wide that the article itself stressed that the idea that Pacquiao might be as great as or greater than Armstrong was silly in order to focus on the real parallels between the two... but the fact remains that they published an article comparing Henry Armstrong and Manny Pacqiao.

Fans enable everyone by buying into everything. The next guy all the promoters and writers are raving about will be a fan favorite quite soon. His loyalists will scream for him to fight VK or WK after his 9th fight. They'll write to their preferred writer's mailbag swearing that David Haye will knock out either Klitschko with ease. They accept the notion that Tomasz Adamek is a legitimate heavyweight because he beat a prospect whose only test on the world class level was a heartless human sacrifice to some ancient European war god.

There are obviously (just obviously not on this blog) good writers. There are many good fans. There might be a good promoter somewhere. Maybe. I exaggerate some on every one of my criticisms... but only some. I'm as guilty as any other writer or fan.

The heavyweight division could improve with some matchmaking effort on the part of promoters and some careful consideration on the part of writers and fans. In the meantime, we need to be realistic about what we've got.