Boxing Did It Right With Joshua vs. Klitschko
I can’t pretend I’m a big boxing guy. I’m not.
I’m fortunate enough to have Carlos Toro, Steve Muehlhausen, Joe Hulbert, Constantin Ecnkner, and even Gabe Oppenheim on occasion contribute to our boxing section. It shouldnt be a surprise it’s the smallest of our three subsites, and there’s no shame in that.
WE’RE HUGE, BRO.
Anyway, there was no UFC this weekend. No UFC next weekend, either. The WWE Payback lineup left plenty to be desired, so I was unusually pumped for the Heavyweight battle between longtime kingpin Wladamir Klitschko and sensationAnthony Joshua. Two big, successful heavyweights? Cool!
I didn’t really know what I was walking in to. They did it right.
When I say “they,” I mean whoever was responsible for booking Wembley Stadium, securing Bruce Buffer, and coordinating those entrances.
Makes you wonder why WWE doesn’t give in and run a major show over there. Or why UFC didn’t do everything possible to book Conor McGregor in Croke Park. You know — taking the best possible fight you can book, and putting it in the best possible venue you can book it in.
You can say a lot of things about boxing being behind the times, the popularity and PPV numbers waning — and all of those would be true. They still went out and made boxing look like the biggest sport in the world Saturday night.
The fans were rabid. The camera work was great. A 90,000 seat arena was made to look like a 200,000 seat arena. Joshua practically had an album’s worth of songs play him out during an entrance that felt 15 minutes long.
Boxing did it.
Canelo Alvarez vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr is the next marquee bout, and it’ll be nothing like the production we saw Saturday evening. But I could think of worse things than a 26 year old top talent taking on a familiar name in Chavez Jr. inside the T-Mobile Arena.
Oh yeah, there was a boxing fight. It ruled. Anthony Joshua won.
But that’s it. I wanted to give boxing props. On a weekend afternoon I was in awe from a home office in Ewing, Kentucky as two stars of a sport that has seen better days captivated what seemed to be the world.
