He suggested that "the closer a heavyweight comes to the championship, the more natural it is for him to be a little more insane, secretly insane, for the heavyweight champion of the world is either the toughest man in the world or he is not, but there is a real possibility that he is. It is like being the big toe of God". Mailer added with absurd grandeur that "when the heavyweights become champions they begin to have inner lives like Hemingway or Dostoevsky, Tolstoy or Faulkner, Joyce or Melville, or Conrad or Lawrence or Proust".
These days humble boxing hacks have to tussle instead with issues of doping, gangsterism, sportswashing and the mundane fodder of explaining to bewildered or uninterested readers that Tyson Fury is the WBC champion while Oleksandr Usyk holds the IBF, WBA and WBO belts. But the bout planned for this Saturday between two unbeaten boxers would have produced the first undisputed world heavyweight champion of the 21st century.
The last man to be the King of the Hill, in Mailer's phrase, was Lennox Lewis who beat Evander Holyfield to unify the recognised heavyweight titles in 1999. So there was a real frisson of anticipation at the prospect of Fury fighting Usyk. But since the protracted and tedious negotiations between their rival promoters produced an original date for the fight of 23 December they have just traded in disappointments and insults.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 12, 2024-Ausgabe von The Guardian.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 12, 2024-Ausgabe von The Guardian.
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