Watch Boxing Paulie Malignaggi
vs Adrien Broner Fight Streaming Live Online on 22 June, 2013.
Watch Boxing: Malignaggi vs BronerLive
Boxing, along with baseball,
is the sport that most cherishes its history. There is a thread that connects
the legends of the past to today’s modern pugilists. Whether you fought on a
barge to avoid the long arm of the law or you walked to the ring with rapper 50
Cent in tow, there are ties that bind.
Like the ultimate Kevin Bacon
game, almost any serious fan of the sport can weave a path through the mists of
time. Tyson to Holmes to Ali to Henry Cooper to Joe Louis. And back further, to
Jack Dempsey, to Jack Johnson.
Little has changed in the
hundred years that separate the modern fighter from the ghosts of yesterday.
The ring still has four corners. The trainers still yell to work a little
harder, to run a little further. And when the gloves are laced up, it’s still
the story of two men facing both each other and their own fears in a
ritualistic dance with danger and even death.
There’s something almost
old-fashioned about boxing. Critics call it barbaric, brutal, uncivilized, a
relic of another era unfit for a modern, verdant and so very sensitive world.
Supporters prefer terms like epic and classic.
And no one is exactly wrong.
It’s an argument that has
raged for decades and one that will continue until the sun sets for the final
time—as long as there are men in the world there will be fighting. And as long
as there are men fighting, crowds will gather, popcorn in hand, to soak in the
spectacle.
That too has changed only in
form and language over the years. From John L. Sullivan to Floyd Mayweather,
the boastful boxer is a comfortable trope, a character we all recognize and
that most of us enjoy. Loud talk is as much a part of boxing as a crisp jab.
And while some, like Muhammad
Ali, stood apart for the sheer poetry of their threats, the end result was much
the same. When Ali told the media that Leon Spinks was so ugly “every time he
cries tears run down his cheeks halfway, stop and then run back” it was
beautiful and hilarious.
But it was still, boiled to
its core, just a “ you so ugly” joke, the same crack in essence that Paulie
Malignaggi used in particularly crass fashion to belittle Adrien Broner in the
lead-up to their June 22 fight on Showtime.
“He doesn’t understand what it’s
like to be good looking,” Malignaggi said of his young opponent. “Where you get
regular p*ssy, weekend p*ssy and you don’t pay for none of it. It just comes to
you. That’s the life I live.”
