Recognize.

Having taken a backseat to Mixed Martial Arts in the hierarchy of combat sports in recent years, boxing in 2011 finds itself struggling for relevance. Whether the sport is in a transitional/restructuring period or on its death knell is debatable, but its clear that if there were any period of time that greatness among its scattered and poorly organized ranks* would be easily missed, it would be now.

That said, I'm pretty sure that it did.

The footnote of the day comes in a historic performance from Bernard Hopkins who, in soundly outclassing Jean Pascal in a rematch of a draw he clearly won, became the oldest "legitimate" boxing champion.

The history, despite its rarity, is less interesting than the fight itself. A fight without a significant knockdown which went the distance. Without great injuries or heroic comebacks. A bout which became an instant classic.

This was not a portly, sluggish George Foreman showing old man strength in pawing his way though the odds against Moorer with a doubled two-piece (no biscuit) in the late rounds. This was not an intended sideshow with a Hollywood ending. This was championship boxing.

For twelve rounds, B-Hop embodied his craft. Bernard Hopkins was not merely an aging boxer illustrating the difference in skill and seasoning between he and an athletically superior champion eighteen years his junior; he was boxing. In the feet, head and hands of the last of his kind, Bernard represented the sport, sticking up for itself. Making a case for its artistry and the nuance which differentiates true boxers from simple fighters. The Samuel Peter's of the world, banking on one-shot power or the lightweight volume punchers mashing each other into paste.

The paper champions. The slam dunk weekend warriors with no mid-range game. A new sneaker to sell.

On 5/21/2011, the executioner was not himself, rather, he became Jordan on the Wizards. Every dirty trick, every mental game, every spurt of dominance and adjustment to the opponent made that much more transcendent by the immense vulnerability in his age, his diminished but still formidable skill, and for the fundamental change in his style. This was Bernard, the quintessential defensive counter-puncher going toe to toe. Not flirting with it. Standing, trading, and still managing to show elusiveness, to show the character of his style even in discarding it almost completely past round four.

Try and remember that time. So spoiled with his greatness, that we forgot Michael Jordan for Tracy Mcgrady the year, with one decent knee, he scored his number. 23. The year he scored 22 straight points in a game at 40 years of age. The year he showed that defense was still the benchmark of the truly great basketball player with the most iconic block of his career: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS9PoDuBKjI&feature=related

Also the year he missed a wide open dunk. Lunging for steals and gambling against quicker, stronger and more spry guards half his age. The year he spent communing with the sideline treadmill, trying to keep warm, struggling with the weight of his own legacy. A final comeback most try to forget.

Beyond his mixed recent history against elite competition, Hopkins was hurt twice in the fight against Pascal. Once early, and once in the final round. It was not dominance executed without fear of failure. The tension suffused every jab and feint in Hopkins high-wire act against age and odds. even out-pointing and out-landing the champion for each round following the first, there was never a moment without the feeling that the other shoe might drop. Violently. Yet, it didn't.

Everything considered, this might have been Bernard's 43 points at 40 years of age moment. The last hurrah.

It's easy to dismiss the comparisons between the two men; the glaring differences say one existed in a team sport, another in an individual one, one was blessed with immense physical gifts, the other arguably average: but the essential truths of their makeups make the points moot. These sportsman built themselves. Their legacies and greatness had less to do with the highlights, but rather, the small details.

The pass to Steve Kerr. The shrug of a desperation haymaker and a clinch to follow.

They were never supposed to be the best. Jordan was cut from his high-school team. Hopkins had his amateur career behind bars. Jordan was drafted after Sam Bowie and sent to a miserable Bulls team. Hopkins spent most of his career being ducked or disrespected before his historic defense streak. They both suffered losses against their chief rivals before achieving greatness. Jordan was dismissed as a one-man team, repeatedly embarrassed by Detroit before breaking through in 90-91. Bernard was suffocated and dominated in 93 by Roy Jones Jr.

In the end, we know how those stories played out.





Admittedly, there was probably a point where Jordan was more Roy Jones than Hopkins, and there are perhaps more apt comparisons with Muhammad Ali, but they clearly share the same heart. Charles Barkley or Dennis Rodman comparisons might spring to mind based on dominance defying expectation and the public persona of each, but they don't hold up. Neither was the same kind of force. Neither dominated, sometimes, without seeming like they were. And being fair, Jordan was Hopkins much longer than he was Roy Jones in his career; i.e. the freakish athletic talent, which quickly gave way to the winning Jordan. The one who played shutdown defense. Who was more of a jump-shooter than a slasher. A tactician. A student and a teacher. Behind closed doors, as the Jordan mythos finds itself deconstructed through time, He and Hopkins resemble one another more and more in their defining traits.

Steadfast refusal to give in. Singularity of focus. The dirtiness and anger of their competitiveness. Their comprehensive understanding of the game each played.

The bittersweetness lies in the reality, that despite greatness, Bernard wont be around much longer. That we wont see a boxer like this again, and perhaps, that we may never see boxing like this again.

It's a thought that hopes itself to be alarmist. That prays for a Kobe Bryant or a Lebron James in the years to come for the middleweight and light-heavyweight divisions. That knows that there will be others. Other great athletes/players to come and attempt to fill the role, but perhaps none we will ever accept. None we can see with the same eyes. Believe in the same way.

Truthfully, as defining a performance as Bernard Hopkins gave this month, this will not be what he is remembered for. It will not matter, like Jordan, that he did not end as a wilting flower (like Ewing on the Sonics), but rather, as a force in a sport becoming human. Becoming nothing shameful; but nothing we want to see keep going, whatever their desires might be.

It's awfully easy to miss the details when someone's fading from view.

Still, these moments demand recognition from a public that depreciates its own entertainment. Who often dismiss ugly perfectionism for the ease of flashy mediocrity. Who increasingly run to the stat sheets, the numbers over everything, making fantasy sports of reality and ruining both.

I know what I saw when I watched that fight. It's the first sign of it I've seen in boxing since Castillo-Corrales 1. Not goodness, not entertainment: Greatness.

Here's to the hope that we take the time to remember it.





(*beyond Manny Pacquaio and Floyd Mayweather's protracted filibuster towards the last genuine marquee match-up in boxing)

Suggested topic labels for this post: "Scooters, vacation, fall."

There's a person you know right now who is with someone they shouldn't be with. As I type this, he or she might be cuddled up with this individual in a bed that was an unsuitable middle ground of Sleepy's softness bed-numbers which is just a single example in a series of slippery slope choices leading your person into a cavernous pit of compromised mediocrity.

You know this person.

This person complains to you sometimes about their problems, and you look at them, your eyes welling with the hard-earned watery vitriol of frustration at their willful futility and you try to tell them that they're curdling the milk of your human kindness. Giving the maternal teat of your conciliatory friendship and care a proverbial* purple nurple.

You don't appreciate this.

You want to tell this person, "hey, why are you doing this to yourself?" Don't you know that you're better than this? Don't you know grown men resent being made to sound as if they're reciting an Oprah monologue preaching self-actualization?

But of course, this person is often too stubborn to stop until they're absolutely ready to. Until they hit bottom... or bottom hits them.

Often this person is in the mirror.



You're in an unhealthy relationship with yourself. You need counseling. You need to learn how to express yourself.

Again, I guess.

I am disappearing before my very eyes, and pretty much, only my eyes.



The amazing thing about gradually becoming a hermit isn't so much the lack of human contact atrophying my mind and rendering me mildly dyslexic as a typist, making me mildly forgetful of easy trivial information that would otherwise finish or fill-out a lot of my sentences, it's not even the Al-Queda intern beard I grew and then shaved, although that was kinda special, no, it's that I've grown in my infinite withdrawing, slightly lonely.

Mostly for myself though.

I like my solitude, but the old me wouldn't have needed this preamble to introduce himself to an invisible internet readership of none. He would have simply wrote, and vomited up some semi-charismatic eloquence and let it sit for someone to stumble on.

And maybe it would have been a stupid intro, or a talky one, or whatever, but it wouldn't have been hidden. It wouldn't have started like any decent story's first draft with everything you write to get started...

But this is what happens when you swallow your life.



"Be the conduit for life grasshopper, not the container; that which does not flow, clogs."

The cumulative effect of taking everything good, bad and indifferent about yourself and hiding it behind your eyes. Telling it to stay there and rot while you busy yourself with the pursuit of accumulation. You know, "try to grow up".



"Ah, so."

The irony here is that this blog is going to largely be about the everything else I busy myself with. It will be about the joyful distractions and occasional inspirations of my escapism, while I try to reclaim my life-raft and paddle back to the cruise-liner of greater society. Also, I'm going to be polishing my metaphors, because I'm pretty sure that one was at least a little awkward.

I like the excuse to clack keys which I wont have to hold up in front of the group as a part of my recidivist writer rehab. I may occasionally put up some of my crap, but more than that, I like the excuse to talk about and introduce cool stuff**, because even being moderately vegetative, I can't stomach wanton garbage and I have always thought that people horde their cool too much.

Mind you, this might be out of a lack of it. Wanting to keep that band they like between friends. Not wanting to let a thing that you've claimed become communal property in the flat world... because then what would you have left over, a sterling personality?

Okay.

It took you twenty years to find that obscure horror film, someone has to respect that struggle right?

Nah.

They don't. And I don't. And you shouldn't. This goes for the "you" not tied to external passive media as well. Life is meant to be lived, and enjoyed, and shared, and so, the first step begins.

Grab a name tag. Ignore the stale donuts and sour coffee.

Hello, my name is David. I'm a 26 year old unemployed writer from Brooklyn trying to get through his fourteenth mid-life crisis***. Trying to write again. Trying to make a living. Etcetera. I'm sure you already have a mental picture. I wont disabuse you of it. I'll only say by way of mild qualifier that I'm the coolest hermit you can find...

Unless you know one that whittles. Or makes strangely compelling art from blood and semen trapped under glass panes and soldered onto metal backing. Then, okay, fine, whatever, you could make an argument.

Maybe.



But fuck you for trying to.

I could make little hair-families from the shedding of women that sit next to me at the bus and play out what might have been in three-part dandruff puppet theater episodes brought to you in part by a grant from the Helena Rubenstein foundation, but I'm not an attention whore. Or that weird.

Really.

As it stands, I may not be the center of the universe. Nor despite the inescapable attention whoring of blogging, am I petitioning to be. But falling between the cracks gives you the gift of unique perspective, and, many times, generous chunks of free time. Where your accountant brother might be able to help you successfully set up an I.R.A, I can tell you about interesting shows you've never heard of, video games, music, books and comics you might like, and a smattering of all the rest of the shit people with real lives don't have time to waste worrying about.

So,



Let the great experiment begin!


*There are no proverbs that I know of to cite involving the application of nipple twisting, but I chalk that up to a poor memory and hobbled public school education.

**Satisfaction not guaranteed. Also, I reserve the right to blog about random bullshit and personal nonsense like everyone else.

***Is that excessive? Would 34 1/2 nervous breakdown sound more reasonable? Also, because this is a blog and not a novel I can get away with this indulgent asterisk bottom of the page reference deal- someone should have flogged Junot Diaz about the head and arms for doing it in "Oscar Wao" though.