Cliches work because they’re true often enough to feel universal.
One in particular comes to mind heading into the outstanding doubleheader at the O2 Arena on Saturday (ESPN+, 2:30 PM EST).
Good things come to those who wait.
Fans of women’s boxing have waited a long time for a year like 2022. In April, thousands packed Madison Square Garden for the superfight between lightweight champion Katie Taylor and featherweight champion Amanda Serrano. It was arguably the biggest women’s fight of all time.
This Saturday, we get arguably the best card. Two genuine, unification grudge matches headline and it comes with a little extra time to anticipate the action. After all, the results of the middleweight championship battle between Claressa Shields (12-0, 2 KO, WBA/WBC/IBF) and Savannah Marshall (12-0, 10 KO, WBO), and the Jr. lightweight unification between Mikaela Mayer (17-0, 5 KO, IBF/WBO) and Alycia Baumgardner (12-1, 7 KO, WBC), should be in.
The world got in the way.
The death of Queen Elizabeth in September was one of the biggest stories of the year and for a sports event scheduled in the UK, there was no way the show could go on. Here we are a month later and the fights remain just as good on paper.
Boxing’s past tells us sometimes delays give us more than we could have asked for.
Delays related to major real world events are less common than standard injury delays. The most notable delay of the 21st century came just shy of 21 years ago. Originally scheduled for September 15, 2001 at Madison Square Garden, the middleweight unification bout between Bernard Hopkins and Felix Trinidad was postponed by one of the defining tragedies in American history.
The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center brought the world to a standstill for days. No boxing match mattered in the days after and it remained the biggest story in the world two weeks later when the event proceeded as planned.
But perhaps not as intended.
Famously, promoter Don King commissioned something called the Sugar Ray Robinson trophy for the winner of what had been a four-man tournament also including William Joppy and Keith Holmes. Learned boxing observers warned of the threat the underdog Hopkins presented.
It didn’t affect the long-term vision already built. Magazine covers teased the possibility of Trinidad, a former welterweight champion, of going further up the scale to challenge light heavyweight titlist Roy Jones. If the legends are true, King was already thinking about it too with Trinidad’s name already etched on a trophy that never made it to the ring that fateful night.
Hopkins then wasn’t Hopkins now. Everyone knew he was a good, long reigning titlist but his biggest fight to then was a forgettable decision loss to Roy Jones Jr. in 1993. Hopkins hadn’t defied the odds against Antonio Tarver, upset an undefeated Kelly Pavlik, wrested the light heavyweight crown from Jean Pascal in his mid-40s or unified a pair of belts at damn near fifty.
We didn’t know what we didn’t know.
We started to find out as Hopkins boxed an almost perfect fight through five rounds. The impression grew deeper in the furious sixth round as Hopkins battled against a Trinidad letting his hands go with a frenzy. It crystallized in a violent tenth as the unbeaten Trinidad emptied his guns while Hopkins deftly defended and picked him apart, sending Trinidad reeling in the closing moments of the round.
Everyone knew when Felix Trinidad Sr. stepped into the ring to save a felled son from further punishment in the twelfth and final frame. For boxing fans, it was a brief respite from a world that felt scary, different, than it had just two weeks before.
It can be hard from this side of the pond to fully grasp what the loss of Elizabeth might have meant from to the US’s Atlantic neighbors. At the least, she was the face of a nation for almost everyone’s lives. Her passing was a much different event than 9/11 but one that still marks a passage of time and a changing of the world that was. The events canceled or postponed in its wake was a reminder that some things matter much more than the pastimes we enjoy.
The major boxing event most affected by the reality of the world outside resumes this Saturday. Will we get a pair of bouts that meet the hype every bit as much as Taylor-Serrano did earlier this year? Or could we get something even more?
The feeling here is the wait will be worth it.
Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, a member of the International Boxing Research Organization, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com
