You can tell a lot from someone’s face. This is no less true of game faces, the kind we see in a boxing ring on fight night. A game face will usually start as one thing, then become something else as the fight unfolds. By the fight’s end, it will be considered an unreliable gauge of success. “Look at his face,” you will hear someone say. “Does that look like the face of a winner to you?”
Some fights, like last night’s IBF super-welterweight title clash between Bakhram Murtazaliev and Josh Kelly, are even sold on faces. One had a scary face, they said. The kind you see on the cover of a Russian novel. The kind you see seconds before waking up in a cold sweat. The other, meanwhile, had a pretty face, hence his nickname: “Pretty Boy.”
Together, their faces made a compelling contrast. Not just that, you had two faces that gave you an indication of how these two super-welterweights fight. In Murtazaliev, you had a guy who was all about intimidation and detachment, while Kelly, the mover, is a man whose goal in the ring is to hit and not get hit; in other words, stay pretty.
At a certain level Kelly’s face is rarely threatened and indeed we have grown accustomed to seeing him smile and showboat in recent years. However, in challenging Murtazaliev – a serious man, and a serious fighter – some predicted that the smile would be wiped off Kelly’s face for good. This, they said, was no laughing matter. Nor would it be fun.
To support this theory, they referred to Kelly’s stoppage loss against David Avanesyan, another mean and aggressive Russian, in 2021. They offered that as evidence; evidence that this, Kelly’s first world title shot, would be a task beyond the 31-year-old from Sunderland, England. Prettiness, they said, was not what was required against a man like Murtazliev, all business, frowns, and cheekbones.
Yet Kelly, regardless of the opponent and threat level, cannot help but smile. He will also tell you how he is feeling, and how the fight is going, by the way he moves and expresses himself in the ring with his opponent. He has not, as Murtazaliev has, mastered the art of the poker face, Kelly. He thinks he has, but he is wrong. Truth be told, because he is a man of emotion, one look at his face and you can deduce exactly how a fight is going. Even when Kelly smiles, he has one smile for when he is winning and another for when he is losing. He smiles when he is feeling good and he smiles away the pain, too. Watch him enough and you come to know the difference.
Last night in Newcastle, Kelly was all smiles for the most part. He smiled on his way to the ring – delighted to be having his first world title fight among his people – and he smiled during the introductions, showing no sign of being intimidated by his feared, heavy-handed opponent. He also smiled a lot early, when starting the fight well and soon getting Murtazaliev to fall into his traps and follow him around the ring. As he did so, Murtazaliev struggled to set his feet, cut off the ring, and found himself clipped regularly by counter left hooks. He then suffered the indignity of touching the canvas in round four, when a Kelly counter jab caught him unawares and rocked him back on his heels.
Now, at last, it was Murtazaliev’s turn to smile. It was a wry smile. A rueful smile. A Russian smile. It was also uncharacteristic of him; a smile not of happiness but embarrassment.
On Kelly’s face, meanwhile, was an expression just as uncharacteristic. There may have been a smile initially, but one glance at his coach, Adam Booth, from his position in a neutral corner and it wasn’t long before a look of fierce concentration returned to Kelly’s face.
For five rounds, as serious as it was, Kelly had had plenty to smile about. In the eyes of most observers, he had fashioned a healthy lead and was boxing the perfect kind of fight against an opponent like Murtazaliev. He never stopped moving, of course, as is his custom, but there were enough punches thrown while on the move to keep at bay any accusations of negativity. It was frustrating for Murtazaliev, no doubt, but Kelly’s capacity to move, counterpunch, and move again was, in the context of the fight, a strategy every bit as impactful as the strategy Murtazaliev hoped to impose: come forward, throw heavy shots, hurt his opponent.
Besides, despite his low output, Kelly was making the most of what he did throw. Often, in fact, his punches were the most meaningful ones in a round, particularly in the first seven or eight rounds. They were clean enough to register with the judges and they were hard enough to register with Murtazaliev. That, really, is all that matters.
In the eighth round, Kelly landed a gorgeous left hook-right cross combination on Murtazaliev as he chugged forward, then threw his left hook to both body and head. They were flashy, eye-catching shots and likely enough to seduce three judges and have them lean in his direction. The challenge then, from Kelly’s point of view, was to ensure that those brief cameos of quality remained the key moments in any particular round. He achieved this by moving and moving and never allowing Murtazaliev to respond with anything of equal note.
For eight rounds, Kelly had no problem doing this. However, come round nine, he realised the extent of Murtazaliev’s power, and the danger of letting him get close, when a short left hook smacked against his forehead and caused his legs to momentarily betray him. This resulted in Kelly dropping to the canvas on his knees, where he was counted by referee Michael Alexander.
While down there, Kelly did the only thing he knew how: he smiled. He smiled away any pain, he smiled away the humiliation of being counted, and he smiled in a manner that suggested he was, despite the momentary crisis, going to be okay. Once upright, he then set about proving it. He was tired, and at one point warned by Alexander for holding, but he ultimately survived whatever Murtazaliev launched his way. By the round’s end, Murtazaliev cut an exasperated figure, fed up with missing and fearful he had now missed his chance.
To begin round 10, Kelly was again telling the story of the fight via his face and his body. Out early, he called for the crowd to “come on!” and then rallied them by throwing both his hands towards the sky. Perhaps he felt he needed them going into the final three rounds. Or perhaps, being the perceptive type, he was aware that judges and writers alike focus as much on body language as punches in a close contest. Perhaps, in Kelly’s mind, it was important to deflect the concern of what happened in round nine and demonstrate to us all that he was relishing this kind of battle and eager for more.
Either way, Kelly responded to the events of round nine with impressive composure and maturity. In the 10th, we were back to watching bull versus matador, with only a long right hand from Murtazaliev, thrown as Kelly scurried along the ropes, registering as a noteworthy shot. That aside, it was a quiet, nothing round; therefore, a perfect round for Kelly, the fighter considered to be in the lead. In fact, the importance of him getting through round 10 would be properly understood afterwards, when Kelly said, “I couldn’t remember the full round.” In other words, despite his smile and the way he moved, he was still feeling the effects of the ninth.
The final two rounds promised a grandstand finish but failed to deliver. Both, by then, were clearly exhausted and Murtazaliev, the one who needed to finish strong, was not helped by the basic, predictable nature of his attacks. That, combined with Kelly’s ability to stay both disciplined and elusive even when tired, meant the 33-year-old missed more than he landed. It also meant that the shots he did land – like the right hands in round 12 – connected only at the tip and often scuffed rather than steadied the target.
As for Kelly, his best moment in the championship rounds came in the 12th when he smartly slipped Murtazaliev in the corner, spun him around and kept him there. Not content with that, he then unleashed a combination on the champion to put a seal on both the round and perhaps the result.
Nobody, at that stage, could be certain of who had won, but that’s not to say we didn’t have indications. As with the fight itself, all one had to do at its conclusion was look at the expressions on the faces of the two boxers to get an idea as to how it had played out. Superficially, one would spot on the face of Murtazaliev a cut beneath the left eye, some abrasions along the forehead, and specks of blood all over his cheeks. Kelly, on the other hand, showed no signs of having even boxed. His face, as it was when he entered the ring, was unmarked; no different in the ring than it was on the poster.
More than that, though, you could detect in the two boxers’ demeanours how this story was likely to conclude. Whereas Kelly, the challenger, was all boyish energy and positivity post-fight, Murtazaliev, now 23-1 (17 KOs), moped in his corner with his head down, as though readying himself for the taste of his first pro defeat. He seemingly felt the impact of 470 days away from the ring and now cursed his own inactivity – both in the fight and generally. He knew that even as a champion it would take more than what he had produced over 12 rounds to edge Josh Kelly in England. It was, on reflection, that kind of look. It wasn’t necessarily pessimism, or even the look of a man who knew he had lost. It was simply the look of a man who knew the score.
The scores: 115-111, 114-113, and 113-113. The result: Josh Kelly wins by majority decision; becomes the new IBF super-welterweight champion.
Before telling us how he did it, Kelly, now 18-1-1 (9 KOs), first checked his face in the lens of the nearest camera. It was, to his delight, clean, unmarked, still pretty. It was also the face of a winner.
