Ingredients for a truly great fight: two willing fighters; two capable fighters; two well-matched fighters; two fighters who weigh roughly the same on the scales (although this is not essential); two fighters with six packs (ditto); two fighters synonymous with the division in which they will fight; two fighters in their athletic prime; two unbeaten records (this, too, is not essential); one big arena; thousands of spectators; a fight town; a good, iconic broadcaster; at least a year of seasoning; a dash of ambition; a soupcon of friction; a pinch of hunger.
Two years ago, the welterweight title fight between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence was a dish cooked to perfection. It contained each of the above ingredients and became one of those rare instances where the taste is as good as the anticipation of it. By the time it was served, stomachs rumbled and eyes rolled, but they knew, like any great dish, the longer it was left to marinate in its own juices, the better it would taste.
They were right, too. Come fight night, diners in Las Vegas, starved for years, were positively ravenous and couldn’t wait to tuck in. Some wanted a piece of Crawford, others wanted Spence, but everybody accepted that the thing to do was enjoy them together. In fact, that was the only way for this meticulously prepared meal to be eaten. Like spaghetti Bolognese, pie and mash, or steak and chips, its parts could be eaten individually, yet it worked much better as a whole.
It was, after all, a superfight, Crawford-Spence. It had all the ingredients of one, it had the smell of one, and, on July 29, 2023, we discovered it also had the taste of one.
The master chef in the end was Terence Crawford – the one responsible for how it tasted – but, make no mistake, the cooking of the event was a team effort. You had Crawford, the head chef, and you had Spence, the sous-chef. You then also had a kitchen full of other people who contributed, including those involved in the promotion, those working for Showtime, and even former opponents of Crawford and Spence, whose blood, sweat and tears found their way into the dish eventually served.
The anticipation was high, at least among foodies – its target demographic. No ordinary grub, for Crawford vs. Spence to whet the appetite you had to boast an already educated palate and a keen eye for detail. You had to understand what it was you were tasting and you had to prefer fine dining over fast food or gas-station snacks. If nothing else, you had to appreciate the distinction between the two and recognise that food is more than just fuel.
It helped as well to be a little nostalgic and to perhaps pine for a time either long ago or one you yourself never experienced. In Las Vegas, for example, where so many great fights have unfolded, you had the likes of “Sugar” Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns cooking up a welterweight storm in 1981 and for a moment, just a moment, Crawford-Spence became almost an extension of that. It had the same spices. They used the same utensils. You felt, by being there, that this was as close as you could ever get to experiencing what those who attended Leonard vs. Hearns would have experienced in ’81. The excitement. The anticipation. The purity of the ingredients.
Today, sadly, good ingredients are harder to source. In boxing as in life there are all sorts of additives getting tossed into dishes these days and plenty in boxing are out to prove the old adage that too many cooks spoil the broth. Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the reason for cooking a superfight in the first place. Sometimes people in the kitchen forget to consult the recipe for fear of learning the extent of their ignorance.
In the two years since Crawford-Spence there have been a few “superfights”, all of which relied on the considerable helping/holding hand of Saudi Arabia and Riyadh Season to come to fruition. These fights, the likes of Oleksandr Usyk vs. Tyson Fury and Dmitry Bivol vs. Artur Beterbiev, featured many of the same ingredients listed at the start, but with one or two key omissions. Indeed, these omissions are important to note, particularly when they impact the overall taste of the dish and signify new eating habits.
In the case of the aforementioned, location and certain access restrictions clearly spoiled the feeling of a superfight in the traditional sense. For as good as the fights were, it was difficult to create the kind of anticipation levels they would have wanted when the fights were being staged in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – hardly a boxing hotbed. Famous fights of the past may also have landed in unusual locations – Kinshasa and Manila to name just two – but we find ourselves in a different era now, one in which apps/streaming services and not major TV networks provide the bridge to these faraway destinations. In other words, to bury a fight in Riyadh, where only the locals congregate, is a sure-fire way to keep it an exclusive, high-end experience for only the rich and famous. It is a fight for them, not us.
The same is true of the fight this weekend between Terence Crawford and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. That, unlike Usyk vs. Fury and Bivol vs. Beterbiev, takes place in Las Vegas rather than Riyadh, but still its lack of specific ingredients detracts from the quality of the fight. It will be bigger, no question, than Crawford’s previous outing in Vegas, against Spence, but the fight itself is no greater. How can it be when Crawford, who boxed Spence at welterweight, is now climbing up to super-middleweight to make it happen? How can it be when it shares as much in common, in its manufacturing, with Jake Paul’s proposed Netflix exhibition with Gervonta Davis as it does Crawford’s classic with Spence?
To be kind, you could say that this is Crawford’s Ray Leonard vs. Marvin Hagler, but even that seems too weak a comparison. The reality is, Alvarez vs. Crawford makes sense only within the parameters of boxing’s new video-game mode, where anything goes so long as it grabs attention and makes money. That doesn’t necessarily make it a bad fight – it certainly isn’t – but it just means it is a fight without any reason for it happening beyond the obvious: money. If, for instance, Alvarez, the supposedly bigger man, beats Crawford on Saturday, does that really do anything for his already considerable legacy? Is he not, in that scenario, just beating up a doughy 38-year-old former lightweight champion whose lack of options in his natural habitat forced him to move up until he reached his limit? Similarly, if Crawford wins, it might only lend credence to the theory behind him moving up: fight Canelo, yes, but fight an older, slower Canelo whose decline has been evident for some time.
It’s hardly high stakes stuff, is it? Instead, a fight like Saturday’s presents as more of a reflection of how soft and predictable boxing has become of late and a reminder of how rare a fight like Crawford vs. Spence tends to be. After all, in that fight, Crawford vs. Spence, that’s all you had: high stakes. There was money being made, of course, but the overwhelming smell in Las Vegas that July was not desperation or greed but rather competition, ambition, and sweat. These two rivals, relative unknowns in a world of Canelos, got together because they had something to prove and a need to eat as much as cook. They were as hungry as us, the ones tucking in, and resolved to put a little of themselves into whatever they produced. The ingredients were fresh, not out of date, and therefore the ones tucking in were spared the regret of having eaten it the next day.
Canelo-Crawford, on the other hand, is slightly different. It’s popular and it’s tasty and it will even be filling and momentarily satisfying. But it’s still processed food.
