All roads lead to Las Vegas for GGG-Canelo showdown

In the wake of the richest fight in history, SuperSport will now broadcast the most anticipated middleweight bout since the 1980s – Gennady “GGG” Golovkin against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in Las Vegas in the early hours of September 17.

The action will be broadcast on SuperSport 2 (SA only) from 3am.

Not since the brutal rivalry of the men they called the Four Kings – Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns and Roberto Duran – has there been such excitement around a middleweight contest.

Golovkin is the dreadnought of the middleweights, a paralysing puncher with 33 knockouts in 37 straight wins; the most savage puncher in the division’s history.

Alvarez has already packed in 51 fights, his only defeat coming on points against a peak Floyd Mayweather jnr four years ago. He’s the very epitome of a Mexican fighter: relentless, highly skilled and at his best when drawn into a slugfest.

In a curious twist, Golovkin delights in embracing so-called “Mexican style” as he both mimics and appreciates the virtues of the country’s famous boxing legacy.

The sold-out signs went up on the fight many weeks ago, with more spectators expected at the T-Mobile Arena than attended the Mayweather-Conor McGregor bout at the weekend.

“It is right there with Mayweather and possibly bigger,” said Alvarez. “That fight taught me a lot. But this fight will bring out the best in me. Golovkin is the most dangerous fighter at this moment. We want to show him that on this side, there is a lot more to give, too.”

Golovkin, who never bothered to watch the Mayweather-McGregor encounter, said that this was a fight boxing can be proud of.

“It is boxing’s biggest fight. It is a fight for history. It is a real Mexican fight. Everyone will remember this fight. Canelo is number one in Mexico. He is very special.”

Money Fight madness – bring it on

This weekend the finest boxer of the modern generation, Floyd Mayweather jnr, fights Conor McGregor, the most outrageous mixed martial artist of them all.

Whether or not they belong in the same ring is immaterial. They are two different stars moving into one another’s orbit, creating the perfect marketing storm.

Despite his lack of explosiveness, Mayweather’s fast hands and fast mouth have been parlayed into great financial success. Anyone who fights him gets to write his own cheque.

McGregor is similar, a boastful, mouthy champion who talked his way into potentially the richest fight in history. His back story and his ability to sell a fight, mostly through a rapid-fire monologue of filth and ballyhoo, is the perfect counter to Mayweather’s slick shtick. Put the two together and you have something approaching hysteria.

Traditionalists who complain about the nature of the contest forget that boxing long ago surrendered its innocence. The sport is pock-marked with drama, controversy and outrageous gimmicks, and still it thrives. Throw in Las Vegas – “the most expensive toilet in the world that still can’t flush,” as writer Brin-Jonathan Butler so eloquently puts it – and you have the perfect backdrop to a fight that will drip with glitz and gaudiness.

Those who say it is bad for boxing miss the point entirely. The only time boxing is in trouble is when people aren’t talking about it.

TThose who say it is bad for boxing miss the point entirely

The trouble with boxing, particularly in America, is that it is a niche sport. Even in a major market like the US, it exists on the margins. You have to dig around to find mentions of it in the New York Times or the Washington Post. It barely features on mainstream US television.

Yet this fight is different. Call it the Mike Tyson effect. Many people claimed Tyson was bad for boxing given the heavyweight’s proclivity for violence out of the ring, but boxing never enjoyed a higher profile than when he was in his prime. People were drawn in their thousands, like onlookers to a car wreck.

Boxing is again back in the limelight, this fight having turned on boxing and non-boxing fans alike who are curious about the combatants and wonder whether an untested fighter like McGregor can rumble with Mayweather and perhaps even beat him. Any sober assessment of the contest says that McGregor has no hope at all. He’s an untried, untested boxer going up against one of the most fluid, most accomplished boxers in history. Videos of him sparring show a man ill at ease with even the fundamentals.

Last May McGregor sparred with South Africa’s Chris van Heerden, a solid pro now based in Santa Monica. Van Heerden wasn’t impressed.

Yet the one thing fans cannot comprehend is what goes through a fighter’s mind as a big fight approaches. As Tyson said in a recent podcast, every fighter believes he can find a way to win, no matter how big the challenge is. McGregor won’t entertain the idea of losing, his instinct as a fighting man instilling him with a deep belief that he can truly win. Whether it’s rational or not is beside the point – the possibility of losing won’t have entered his consciousness.

Any man with two hands has a chance in a fight, so McGregor is banking on his unorthodoxy and powerful left hand doing the business come August 26. The trouble is that many better boxers than McGregor, even big punchers like Canelo Alvarez, have tried and failed against Mayweather. Forty-nine in all have had a shot; 49 left as losers.

McGregor will be the bigger man and he’ll come out throwing bombs, but I expect McGregor will ride out the storm with his clever movement and cute defensive strategy. Emboldened by the Irishman’s inability to land anything of consequence, he’ll nail him with combinations, embarrassing him with an assortment of punches honed in a 21-year pro career. He’ll frustrate McGregor no end and likely put him away in the final quarter if he wants to put an exclamation mark on his performance.

This fight is everything the haters say: a sham, a freak show and an embarrassment. But it’s also fun and compelling, a harmless counterpoint to what’s safe and comfortable. Which is why we’ll all be watching. – © Sunday Tribune

ALL THE ACTION WILL BE BROADCAST LIVE ON SUPERSPORT 2 IN THE EARLY HOURS OF SUNDAY.

New York snapshots

SSunrise over Brooklyn, early morning run.

WWWE NXT Takeover Brooklyn.

BBrooklyn brownstones.

NNew Day WWE crew.

JJinder Mahal.

SSnoop Dogg photo-bomb.

SSnoop Dogg jammin’.

SSpectacular views from the 102nd floor of the One World Trade Centre.

NNY from on high.

TTrapeze school New York.

SSurf’s up.

TTimes Square.

TTimes Square, where anything – and anyone – goes.

TThe Flatiron building.

Cheers to two great Bok wingmen

Could it be that two of South Africa’s greatest rugby players might never be seen in the green and gold again? Could it be that the pair will shuffle off with barely a goodbye?

It’s a staggering thought, but when the squad for the Rugby Championship was announced last weekend, the exclusion of left and right wings Bryan Habana and JP Pietersen was hardly mentioned. The rate of change in rugby might be rapid, but it seems almost indecent that more hasn’t been made of Habana and Pietersen no longer being part of the great tribe.

Habana has been a fixture at Toulon for four years while Pietersen has just joined him after a brief tenure at Leicester. They’re miles away, in thought and in distance, in seems.

The last of Habana’s record 124 Tests was the shambolic match against Italy where he book-ended his remarkable record, dotting down for the 67th time.

Pietersen’s final last game came the week before, against England, when he earned his 70th cap.

Officially, nothing has changed with the two. Habana, in fact, recently said he would continue to be available, but he’s not quite sitting at home waiting for the call. Pietersen, too, made it clear that he’s just a phone call away, but knows it’s unlikely to come.

Habana is 34 with plenty of miles on his clock. Pietersen, a Sharks legend after 10 years in Durban, is 31 and he too has more of his career in the rear-view mirror.

Both earned World Cup winners’ medals in 2007, but they were always worth more than their places. For years, Habana, especially, represented the aspirations of South Africa’s black community. He was explosive and deadly from the start and fast became an automatic choice. He was even adored at Loftus Versfeld where he wore the light blue for five years.

He was everything you wanted in a wing: fast, cunning, dexterous and instinctive. He had size, too, and attacking players weren’t keen to fly down his channel. Habana thrived in the big moments; the greater the pressure the better he was.

HHabana would have a claim to being the best SA player of the 21st century

He was named the world’s best player a decade ago and for a couple of years he could lay claim to being the best finisher in the game. Indeed, if Frik du Preez was officially SA’s player of the 20th century, Habana would have a claim to being the best player of the 21st. He has meant that much to the cause, a match winner without compare, and a talisman.

Pietersen was a different beast. Large by South African wing standards (105kg), he was far more than a crash-baller, his size betraying a deceptive swerve and serious pace. He had a formidable work rate and he and Habana appeared in harness together a record 25 times for the Springboks.

He was a favourite of the Sharks, who had good reason to enjoy him given that his uncle, Christie Noble, had famously blazed the path for his nephew to burst through when he starred on the wing when Natal won their first Currie Cup title in 1990.

The trouble with rugby is that few players officially retire from the Springboks. For most, their names suddenly no longer appear on the team list. There is no fanfare, no goodbye, no thanks for coming. A couple of players cleverly orchestrate their retirements, but these are typically those who have sated their hunger. They know when they’re done and they exit on their own terms. They’re the lucky ones.

Players like Habana and Pietersen aren’t done, but the new wave has already been ushered in with players like Ruan Combrinck, Courtnall Skosan, Dillyn Leyds and Raymond Rhule making their way.

The certainty that Habana and Pietersen will never wear the Bok jersey again also becomes clear with the Boks relying less and less on their overseas contingent. Just one foreign-based player is in the current squad, a clear sign that a line has been drawn in the sand, as has been the case with the All Blacks for many years.

Sentiment is thus tossed to the winds. We’ll have to console ourselves with the highlights on YouTube and elsewhere to remind us just how special the wingmen were.

Thanks for the ride, guys. – © Sunday Tribune

 

 

 

 

 

Tub-thumping reporters spit the dummy

Whenever there’s a major international sport fixture, like yesterday’s Super Rugby final, there’s usually a fascinating parallel game that gets played.

As long as fans have squared off and opinions have raged, newspapers have got in on the act. For years, they’ve adopted the role of cheerleader, almost always unbidden and with various results.

The understanding is simple: get behind the local team and do what you can to unsettle the opposition.

And it’s often worked. Many coaches have famously clipped out cuttings and posted them on changeroom walls as motivation. There’s no easier way to pump up a player. Short of shoving the offending article up the reporter’s nose, the best response is to produce a top performance. Many do.

The finest example of this played out in New Zealand recently. The national daily (The New Zealand Herald) made no attempt to offer fair and balanced coverage. From day one its modus operandi was to get under the skin of the touring British and Irish Lions.

There was a charming twist, too, given that the Lions coach was a New Zealander. No worries. Every day brought forth a fresh insult, calling them no-hopers or boring. The little game reached its nadir when a graphic artist plonked a red nose on Warren Gatland, the coach, which was dutifully published on the back page. The inference was clear: Gatland was a clown.

TThe wonder is that Gatland didn’t bite the head off the local Herald correspondent

He wasn’t pleased. The wonder is that Gatland didn’t bite the head off the local Herald correspondent. He saved his best for last, coaching his team to a rousing drawn series, against most expectations, and prancing into the final post-match conference tartly wearing a red nose.

There ought to have been much egg on face all around the Herald offices. No-one minds a bit of parochial journalism – some even expect it – but the paper’s coverage was consistently spiteful. It wasn’t clever or witty.

It was so nasty that even a dyed-in-the-wool Kiwi hero like Sean Fitzpatrick professed his deep embarrassment.

When it comes to winding up an entire nation, there is nothing like a lazy stereotype. It would be too easy to take shots at New Zealand, a tiny, insular country obsessed with rugby and little else (if you exclude the sheep). You get my drift . . .

So it was entirely predictable that a couple of Kiwi reporters got on their high horses about the appointment of Jaco Peyper as referee for yesterday’s big game, creating the sort of uproar that was absent when one of their own, Glen Jackson, got the appointment last year.

New Zealand reporters do tub-thumping like few others. Not only do they align themselves with the All Blacks with almost compulsive zeal, their one-eyed approach is generally at the exclusion of anyone else’s virtues. Other teams never beat the All Blacks. Rather, it’s usually a case of the All Blacks losing.

Kiwi reporters have done this for years. The bleating still hasn’t died down about “Suzie”, the mystery waitress from 1995. One reporter even dredged up Laurie Mains this week, who unsurprisingly railed against the Lions, his former team.

The criticism of Peyper, one of the world’s preeminent officials, reached hysterical levels. The Herald – who else? – was leading the dummy-spitting, damning the appointment before the official had pulled on his socks. It was a transparent attempt to unsettle him, although he’s smart enough to know better. They also needed someone to blame if the wheels came off.

Interestingly, team campaigning is not a game SA newspapers tend to play a whole lot, although the Durban and Cape Town press corps have been known to take a few pot shots over the years. Quite apart from not having a robust tradition of tabloid newspapers (in the ribald sense), our sensitivities tend to be far different. Local scribblers are more gentle and measured. And with everyone desperate for access, there’s a fair bit of risk involved in annoying the wrong person. So they tend not to do it.

With newspapers ravenous for readers, it’s no surprise that some play this game in a desperate attempt to stand out. The real scoop is when they get it right by being droll and inspired. Anything else is just whinging. – © Sunday Tribune