In the old days

you knew who the heavyweight champion of the world was.

Three things over the last week showed me how this and so much in boxing has changed. The main one being the shockingly awful “fight” between Danny “Bumbling” Williams and Audrey “Z-Force” Harrison for the Commonwealth title.

I can’t blame those in the crowd that started chants of “What a load of rubbish”.

After the cracking two rounds Amir Khan took to win his bout it showed that his silver medal at the Athens Olympics in 2004 was the beginning of big things for the kid, as long as he stays mentally the way he is now and doesn’t go off the rails. And with his dad round I’d say the former is the more likely.

The heavyweight contest really showed the gold medal Audrey won at Sydney in 2000 should have been the glorious finish to his career. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone who seemed so scared of getting hit, it was such a contrast to a program I’d watched earlier about “The Thriller In Manila”.

Yeah I know one of the main things is to avoid being hit but the way Audrey goes about it is embarrassing and then you compare it to Ali vs. Frazier going at each other for 14 rounds, in terribly oppressive heat & humidity.

Neither took a step back each taking severe punishment, yes Ali has paid the price and Frazier was blind in one eye before the contest and couldn’t see out of the other at the end but they gave the audience their monies worth and the world watched. They watched two great fighters out on their feet still trying to win.

The last of the three things was a documentary about Joe Louis “the Brown Bomber” heavyweight champion of the world between 1937 and 1949 with a record 25 successful defences. But even though he fought at a time when people still travelled across the Atlantic by boat, there was no satellite TV, no internet web broadcast everyone knew he was the champion.

Who knows Audrey or the other bum, who knows all the so called heavyweight champions in all the alphabet soup of boxing organisations apart from the dedicated follower.

And does the dedicated follower really care about two giants lumbering round a ring looking like they’re at a tea dance the amount of time they are grasped to each other, wouldn’t the dedicated follower prefer to watch Ali, Frazier or Louis ?

Also in days gone by you used to know the names of all the union leaders…so OK somethings to change for the better 😉

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