Renaissance in the ring

Suddenly boxing is oozing with young talent, and the potential collisions are intriguing.

Terence Crawford is either (A) an upcoming improv comic (B) a renowned session musician ( C) a sociologist specializing in inequality or (D) the best boxer in the world.

I’ve often wondered if a sidewalk survey would produce many right answers, at least outside of Omaha (Crawford’s hometown), New York, Las Vegas or maybe Los Angeles. 

When a tree falls outside the airwaves of ESPN, does it make a sound? 

And yet there are sports where the fans are way ahead of the media, where women’s basketball players and volleyball players, in particular, are much more renowned than we think.

Boxers, at least this generation of boxers, might fall into that category. If not, they should. Derided as the sport that isn’t even competent enough to kill itself, boxing is suddenly awash with young American talent, and with several special-occasion fights on the horizon.

Crawford is headed toward a welterweight summit meeting with Errol Spence, maybe this fall, maybe later. Crawford-Spence will fill most conventional halls and would largely populate AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Tex., where Canelo Alvarez and Billy Joe Saunders drew 73,126 last year.

Both men are undefeated and largely unchallenged, and Crawford finds a primal glee in humiliation. “He wants to take out your heart and show it to you,” says Phoenix boxing sage Norm Frauenheim.

Even Shawn Porter, who was the better man during much of his loss to Spence, retired after being stopped in November and admitted he wasn’t in the same class. “He’s the Quan,” Porter said, evoking Jerry Maguire.

The Crawford-Spence winner had better enjoy his supremacy. Lurking in the welterweight wings are Jaron “Boots” Ennis and Vergil Ortiz. Ennis is 29-0 with Philadelphia snarl and seasoning, maybe the best from those hostile streets since Joe Frazier.. Ortiz has busted up 18 victims without a loss.

If boxing lived and died with Crawford, whose personality  is diffident at best, it would keep sliding down the ladder of consciousness. It’s not.

On June 25, Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez of San Antonio tore apart Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, a fighter credentialed enough to have torn apart the legendary Roman “Chocolatitio” Gonzalez. Rodriguez was calm, careful and devastating with both hands, and he stopped Sor Rungvisai in eight rounds. Having already beaten Carlos Cuadras, the 22-year-old Rodriguez (16-0) is in the mix for either Chocolatito or Juan Francisco Estrada, who took a questionable decision over Gonzalez last year and will meet him again sometime this year. Rodriguez, in the distinguished care of trainer Robert Garcia, awaits either or both.

Perhaps you were wondering who that young fellow was in the Gatorade commercials, sparring with Damian Lillard. Or perhaps you’re one of the millions of social media followers cultivated by Ryan Garcia, the heartthrob lightweight. Garcia fights Javier Fortuna next month in Los Angeles, but at some point he will put his unmarked face in front of the conclusive gloves of Gervonta “Tank” Davis, who is 27-0 with 23 knockouts at age 27. Davis is a legitimate hip-hop hero. A match with Garcia (23, 22-0 with 18 KOs) might break Twitter, and what a wonderful thing that would be.

But that just starts the lightweight story. Devin Haney, a throwback technician who would rather inflict a million paper cuts than knock you through the ropes, completely befuddled George Kambosos in front of his Australian fans and unified the lightweight title. Haney could fight Davis or Garcia, and then there Teofimo Lopez, who was the Next Legend before Kambosos touched him up.

The top lightweight of all is probably still Vasyl Lomachenko, who is somewhere in Ukraine, defending his country. Boxing prays for his return but savors it, too.

Everywhere you look there’s a scenario building. 

Light-heavyweight Artur Berterbiev. 37, has won all 18 pro fights by knockout and threw aside Joe Smith in two rounds two weeks ago. Dmitry Bivol, another light-heavyweight, repelled Canelo Alvarez’s audacious try to move up and won a clear decision.

But then there’s David Benavidez of Phoenix, 26-0, currently at super-middleweight but ready to move up if Canelo continues his disinterest in such a match. Benavidez is 25 and hasn’t let anyone go the distance since 2014.

Oh, the heavyweights? Tyson Fury said he would retire after he bludgeoned Dillian White, but zeros and commas can have a therapeutic effect. Oleksandr Usyk knocked off Anthony Joshua to hold the other three belts. Usyk was a master-class cruiserweight who will meet, and probably beat, Joshua again on Aug. 20. 

At 6-foot-3, Usyk has never fought at more than 221 pounds and would cede six inches and probably 40 pounds to Fury. Meanwhile, rumors of a Deontay Wilder-Andy Cruz continue to smolder, and the X factor is Finland’s Robert Helenius, the 6-foot-7 Nordic Nightmare (apparently the “Socialist Slugger” didn’t catch on).

Naoya Inoue, known as “The Monster,” is 29 with a 23-0 record and 20 knockouts, most of them spectacular. He rules the bantamweights, but if he moved up four pounds he would run into some monstrous challenges from Stephen Fulton, the Philly kid who dominated Danny Roman to win two super-bantam belts, and Murodjon Akhmadaliev, who has the other two and beat Ronny Rios Saturday night.

Super-featherweight Shakur Stevenson (24, 18-0) is already likened to history’s best small fighters. He removed Oscar Valdez’s unbeaten status without undue sweat.

Then there are the Charlo brothers, super-welterweight Jermell and middleweight Jermall, from Houston. Jermell has an interesting matchup with 6-foot-6 Sebastian “Towering Inferno” Fundora at some point, and Jermall still pines for Canelo or Gennady Golovkin, and mogul money.

Last week Canelo and Golovkin signed up for a third bout, on Sept. 17. That used to be front page news, back when sports was consumed on pages. Now it’s shrug-worthy. Golovkin is 40, and Canelo is beginning his long downgrade to a soft landing somewhere, preferably near a golf course.

The boxing renaissance has happened even though nobody pays attention to Olympic boxing anymore, and despite the usual inter-promotional recalcitrance that postpones the best fights and has brought pleas from Hall of Fame promoter Lou DiBella, among others, for a boxing chief executive. 

But clearly someone is doing some righteous coaching on the amateur level, and young fighters are seeing TV opportunities like never before.

Will everyone know every boxer’s name in 2023? Probably not. Will the networks tire of wondering whether Steph Curry is either the 7th, 8th, or 9th best basketball player since ESPN came along in 1981 and marked the beginning of time? That’s dubious, too.

What is true is that the gap between those who care about boxing and those who don’t is narrowing, and that it doesn’t matter who knows your name, as long as they spell it right on the checks.