New Star Navigation: Why We Need More Stars In Boxing, And Why The Keith Thurman-Shawn Porter Fight Is So Vital

For the past decade or so, boxing has been in an interesting place. Everyone imagines that the sport is healthiest when there is a dominant heavyweight champion who everyone has to aspire to defeat, and yet the presence of that exact archetype in Wladimir Klitschko seemed to make things less compelling slightly instead of more. The truth is that, for the last decade or so, the real excitement of the sport has been in the lower weight classes. Hell, the proof of this can even be found in the two most recent boxing movies, Creed, and Southpaw. Were the protagonists, or the antagonists, in the heavyweight division? No.
In the world of boxing that is not defined by celluloid, things look equally impressive. We have good-to-great fighters, and the potential for exciting fights, all throughout just about every division. However, bubbling just below the surface is an ugly truth of things, and it is the time to address it. Every one of those fights you could think of, with one or two exceptions, aren’t between American stars.
Canelo-GGG, Gonzalez-Inoue, Lomachenko-Salido are just a few examples. I am sure I could come up with more if I tried.
In fact, as you look further, where exactly are the American stars? This article seeks to find them.

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Before we go too much further, a quick word on the graybeards who you may have thought of as soon as you saw the title of this article.
Hanging over the head of the sport of boxing like a sword of Damocles is, of course, Floyd Mayweather Jr. While his defensive acumen appears to remain sharp the rest of it is an open question. Does he want to box anymore? Can you find an opponent who will A: bring the best out of Floyd as an offensive fighter, and B: be someone we want to see him fight?

The 1st part of that equation might never happen. It’s sad to say, but the Floyd Mayweather who blended sterling defense with crisp combination punching died somewhere after the Oscar De La Hoya fight. If you seek to find the reason why so many people who criticize his "fighting" do so, his unwillingness to let his hands go is it. Not because we want everyone to fight in a blood-and-guts style like Arturo Gatti, because as hard as this might be to believe, that would get boring just as quickly. What we want, though, is for people who have the potential to be great to show the full depth and breadth of all of their skills.

As for the 2nd, that's equally difficult to find. You see, Floyd Mayweather has served boxing with distinction and glory. But, because he's done that for so long, people are tired of him. They're tired of the cars and the act and everything that comes with putting down your hard-earned money to see him.

And as long as that's true, you can't count on him anymore.

And that leaves us with the other graybeard, Andre Ward. Simply put, Andre doesn't fight enough. He has fought four times in 4 years, and against the sort of gallingly bad competition that the "Demographic" would draw and quarter Gennady Golovkin for. (And yes, before you ask, I will get to the demographic in an upcoming article. Suffice it to say; I disagree with their opinions.)
So now with the graybeards out of the way, it is time to move on to the younger generation of those who might be considered stars,
Terrence Crawford, Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, and Errol Spence Jr. . 2 out of that foursome in the person of Keith Thurman and Shawn Porter will be fighting each other this Saturday night, in Brooklyn, for one of the small flotilla of belts that can be found in the welterweight division.
(Author's Note: This article was written before Thurman-Porter took place.)

To a man, the 4 of them are all still waiting for the fight that takes them from a star amongst boxing fans to just a flat-out STAR. It might be that Thurman-Porter, even after the postponement, gives us the kind of all-action and high-skill fight we don't get to see too much of anymore. Or it might be another one of those fights that look exciting on paper but turns around to be terrifically stultifying and one-sided in practice. No one will know, least of all the two fighters, until they meet each other in the middle of the ring at the Barclays Center.

The reasons for this gulf between talent and acclaim are myriad. But the most simple, the most basic to understand, are these two.

1: They don't fight enough.

Gone, perhaps for good, are the days when fighters fought more than twice a year. It is, as a result, harder than it should be for a young fighter to endear himself to the hearts and minds of casual sports fans when you aren't fighting enough to show them what you can do, and who you are. It also means that it's far harder to build demand for the sort of super fight that used to make stars, even ones that ended as more of a coronation than anything else. (See Roy Jones vs James Toney for an example of what I mean.) ¹
Couple this with the idea that there are few fighters now willing to risk their undefeated records for a real challenge, and we end up with a situation where no one moves past potential and what-ifs.

But that, to my way of thinking, isn't the real problem. This is the real problem.

2: USA Boxing is broken and in the late stages of dry-rot.

It used to be that we developed stars at the Olympic Games.

This will not be a referendum on which was the better team, the 1976 unit of Montreal or the 1984 Los Angeles contingent. Both teams gave us all-time greats, Sugar Ray Leonard and Michael Spinks in 1976 and Pernell Whitaker and Evander Holyfield in 1984. The argument over which team was better will go on as long as there is a combination of beer and people to discuss it.

Rather, the point is that even without those two supernova teams, the Olympics is always where our best and brightest have been found. Names like Ali, Foreman, De La Hoya, Jones Jr., Mayweather just to name a few.

But now? Now we're being forced to hope and wish that our guys get into position to medal. Gone are the days of our top amateurs coming home with gold medals and polished reputations where people expected a lot from them.

So, with that in mind, I have a useful solution to solve this problem.

Hey, Top Rank, throw some money at USA Boxing. You too, Golden Boy, Main Events, and hell the PBC. You want to be in a position to sign the next superstars, the next Ray Leonard, and Roy Jones? Easy. Build the infrastructure that allows it to happen.

Hopefully, it works. And hopefully by 2020, we have what we need to be elite again.

Video Footnotes:

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One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WFNxRhldoQ^↩

What I'm Watching: Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi

Misawa vs Kobashi: Just as fun as Misawa vs Kawada, but for entirely different reasons. 

Part of the fun of being a wrestling fan, at least for me, is watching EVERYTHING. Some stuff you watch once or twice and then get tired of except for something really transcendent (shoot-style fits this for me, with the transcendency exception being Volk Han.) And then, there is some stuff that you can watch again and again with no hesitancy whatsoever. The 4 Corners of Heaven era of All Japan is one of these eras for me. Kawada, Kobashi, Misawa, Taue. Those 4 names, and the endless iteration of matches they produced, are some of the best and most fun heavyweight matches I have ever seen. 

And quite frankly, while everyone talks about the Misawa-Kawada rivalry and how important it was, there is one I enjoy just as much, because it has a slightly different aesthetic to it. Misawa vs Kawada is largely a battle of two stoics, and while that is fun, it can get tiresome (the exception of course being 6-3-94, which is as perfect a match as anything that has happened anywhere.) Kobashi is a lot of things, but a stoic is not one of them. He bursts free with energy, excitement, and charisma. And with Misawa vs Kobashi, you get someone who seems to have no emotion versus someone who defines all of his successes on it. It's a fascinating counterpoint. What I am watching now is their best match together, a match so good that Jushin "Thunder" Liger and Shinjiro Ohtani patterned their own classic of February 9th, 1997 after it. 

This is one of the matches that young wrestlers should be watching, and studying. Don't just watch the MOVEZ~!, although those are plentiful. Watch how the crowd cares. You can make that work, people in wrestling school. Just try a little harder. 

Shooting Star Presses: A Compendium

When you're a young wrestling fan, the things that boggle your mind sometimes feel embarrassing. Maybe, you were completely gobsmacked by the Ultimate Warrior, or Jake Roberts's DDT. For me though, it was one of my friends in junior high showed me this:



As you might understand, I was through. Jaw on the floor, mouth open, and everything.. As time has gone on, people have added variations to it, twists and planchas with it. But honestly, the simple act of heading to the top rope and hitting this maneuver proves you are, if not the king of the high-flyers, than someone not too far off.  It remains the true apex test of a high flyer, the one thing that separates someone who is billed that way by a lazy promotional structure (looking at you Kofi Kingston) and someone who actually has the go

With that in mind, here are the best Shooting Star Presses ever.



Paul London's bad-ass, and for my money the best, SSP.



And the new king on the throne, Matt Sydal\Evan Bourne

(Side note: You'll notice I didn't put any of the variations in here. The Shooting Star Presses i loved the most are the classics. Find the standing variations as you need to.) 

Free Wrestling On The Internet: The Midnight Express

The best part about the internet, besides reading this fine blog, is the sheer preponderance of awesome wrestling from a variety of sources that you can find. All you need to know how to do, really, is look for what YOU like. I'm not asking you to enjoy what I enjoy, but that you enjoy something. 

What do I enjoy? The Midnight Express for one. Watching them do what they did was awesome. Admittedly, the Eaton-Condrey variant doesn't have nearly as much tape available. But from what you hear from people who were around during that time period, they were as good as it got. But the Eaton-Lane version? That's the fun stuff. 

Below are links to matches against the Fantastics, and the Rock N' Roll Express. You can find more. I recommend you do just that. 

The Daily Liger: The Grumpy Master

 The interesting thing about this Daily Liger project is to find the matches that aren't super-hyped. I mean everyone can talk about the Liger-Ohtani matches, and I have. But to be honest, the fun is in finding matches like this one. It's also the fun of watching the Untouchables tandem of Liger\Kanemoto grump their way through a match against a pair of young juniors. As I said, grumpy liger is the best liger. try and enjoy.

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