Boxing is all about levels. This was brought home to me during sparring years ago. A fellow amateur handled me quite easily, which led me to assume he was of a decent standard. Then, later in the same session, another guy he sparred with absolutely toyed with him. It was like watching a young Naseem Hamed playing with his early foes, such was the dominance.
Later, I learned he was a professional, which was no surprise, given the gulf in class. I looked him up on BoxRec, excited to see which flashy rising talent I had just witnessed, and was astonished when I saw his record: 0-4.
AND THE FIGHT STILL WENT ON FOR TOO LONG
Like any boxer, even at amateur club level, I liked to think I was of reasonable standard. But that day, I was whipped by another amateur who was in turn whipped by a pro boxer who’d never won a fight. It was a rude awakening as to my true place in the pecking order of the sport.
This all came back to mind last week when watching the much-hyped, and then disastrous, fight involving Scot England, the Guinness-ratified oldest boxer to make a professional debut.
He was 58 but matched about as soft as you could get in the pro ranks: though 35 years younger at 23, his opponent, Jayshawn Hunter, had an 0-6 record, with five of those losses coming by first-round knockout, and his sole distance fight seeing him knocked down three times in four rounds.
And yet England was floored by the very first attack from Hunter and stopped in 47 seconds after being rocked again by a jab and tottering around on stiff legs. If anything, the fight lasted about 40 seconds longer than it should have, and that’s no exaggeration. The referee should have stopped the contest the moment England hit the deck. When he got up, England was ungainly, stiff, slow and open.
Perhaps these traits were a result of being dropped heavily and immediately discombobulated by head shots. Had he got a foothold on the fight, we might have seen form that was presumably good enough to satisfy the licensing authorities at the Tennessee Athletic Commission. But the fact he was hit and hurt so quickly, and so badly, is not an extenuating circumstance – it happened because he was 58 and, more importantly, because he didn’t understand boxing is all about levels.
NO SPORT FOR OLD MEN
England, after all, was not a boxer prior to being licensed as a professional one. He had not even had an amateur bout. His career has been spent as a journalist and DJ, and he somehow translated his enthusiasm as a boxing fan into an appearance as a competitive fighter.
There have been others who have boxed in their 50s and beyond. But debate has raged even when experienced pros have done so, and even the great Evander Holyfield fared very badly when he fought at 58.
But while his age was not in itself the sole reason to deny England his bucket list moment, it absolutely should have been weighed against his total lack of prior experience. This was no 58-year-old Holyfield. This was a 58-year-old raw novice going against a young man who’d had six prior professional contests.
Yes, he’d lost all six, but then that prodigious-looking pro in the gym who bashed the guy who’d bashed me had lost all four of his.
I’m more than a decade younger than Scot England, but I know I’m far too old to box pro, if at all. I’m also far more experienced than him, but I still know I’d have no business in a pro boxing ring.
Yes, boxing is all about levels. If England wasn’t aware of that before, it took just 47 humiliating seconds for him to find out.
Very thoughtful comments – well done Oliver