4 days ago
CARVILL'S NOTES: First Memories of Usyk
There will be, if you are lucky, a few moments in your life when you know as they are happening that you are seeing something special. It is unfortunate that such knowledge usually only comes after the fact.
To quote Andy Bernard, 'I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them."
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I have seen a handful of remarkable performances in my life that I was lucky enough to know when they were happening that I was a witness to the extraordinary. The first one I remember clearly was being at the MEN Arena in Manchester on 4 March 2006, which was the night that Joe Calzaghe went into the ring for twelve rounds and left in it the tattered remnants of Jeff Lacy's career.
The next came on 10 November 2012 in Hamburg, Germany, when I watched Wladimir Klitschko get called to the ring by Sylvester Stallone. As Klitchko came out, his belts being raised behind him, the only thing I could mutter to myself beneath my breath was, ' That is the heavyweight champion of the world.' It was as if my understanding of what title really meant had only bloomed and blossomed in those few nanoseconds.
And then there was 9 September 2017, just before I was to turn 36, when I went to the Max Schmeling Halle, here in my home of Berlin, to watch a little-known Ukrainian fighter named Oleksandr Usyk defend his WBO cruiserweight championship of the world against Marco Huck.
If I am to digress here, it is merely to provide context. Huck and Usyk were meeting that evening as part of the inaugural World Boxing Super Series, which sought to crown the best cruiserweight in the sport. Apart from bragging rights, the prize on offer was the Muhammad Ali Trophy, which symbolises how the Ali family will let you put his name on anything for the right price.
Huck had held the WBO title between 2009 and 2015, from winning it against Victor Emilio Ramirez to losing it against Krzysztof Głowacki. Despite his plaudits and his thirteen title defences, Huck was overrated as a boxer. The miracle was not that he had beaten eleven men across those defences, but that there had been eleven men on the planet who were not capable of beating him.
There was a rumour long substantiated in Germany that Huck had been part of a raft of fighters that had turned up to the Sauerland Gym in Berlin one day, looking for work as sparring partners. The promoters, without any big stars, apparently hit on the idea of finding a half-decent boxer and then packaging them for the public.
That sounds cruel, but the truth usually does. Huck never placed on a pound-for-pound list because technically, he was all sixes and sevens: he looked uncoordinated on his feet, he clubbed rather than punched, he left his chin in the air.
But he also trained hard and pushed himself, when he could. It just never ended well for him. After leaving the Sauerlands, he went to Newark, New Jersey, to try and become a star in the US, but found himself stopped in eleven by Glowacki.
It was after returning to Germany that Huck's career seemed to putter. He fought Ola Afolabi and Dmytro Kucher in fights that few noticed, then lost to Mairis Briedis. He seemed lucky, at that point, to even be included in the World Boxing Super Series.
Usyk was on a different trajectory. After winning a gold medal at the 2012 Olympics at 200lbs, he had largely fought in Ukraine before travelling to Gdansk, Poland, in 2016 to beat Glowacki over twelve rounds for the WBO title. He then went to the US, where he beat Thabiso Mchunu and Michael Hunter to defend the belt.
It was Usyk, rated the number-one seed in the tournament, who chose to fight Huck. The two men were similar: nearly the same age at 30 and 32, just an inch difference in their heights, one a former WBO cruiserweight champion and one the current.
The difference was in their records: Usyk was 12-0 (10), Huck was 40-4-1 (27). It was between a fighter who may have peaked against one who was coming into the full measure of their powers.
While Usyk will fight in front of more than 80,000 at Wembley soon on DAZN, there were fewer than 5,000 in the arena in Berlin that night. The Max Schmeling Halle is built on two levels, but only the first was being used that evening, the rest curtained off because ticket sales had been so low.
Usyk ran away with the victory that night, etching his mark onto the fight from the first bell. Huck followed Usyk as much as he could, but the Ukrainian swiped everything away from him, one round after the next, until the referee stopped the fight in the tenth.
It was a warm night and, walking out afterwards, into the cooling air of the Mauerpark, it seemed that the birds had lowered their singing. Something special had occurred, and the world had shifted, changed, almost imperceptibly. Everything was different to how it had been just moments before.
And on that note:
When the news broke last week that Ricky Hatton was to fight again, this time in Dubai, I began to think of his fight against Juan Lazcano at the City of Manchester Stadium in 2008. Hatton beat Lazcano on points, and it was tough. It may have also been the best night for him to have retired: a win, 55,000 people at the stadium of his beloved football team, his last fight with Billy Graham before they split and the enmity built. I have a theory about boxing that every fighter has 'One Last Good Fight' in them before the wane begins. Most never know it, but life for them never gets any better. So it was that night in Manchester.
Speaking of that night in Manchester, it was the only time I've ever seen a fighter get a haircut between rounds. Paul Malignaggi wore extensions that night and, eventually unable to keep them tied back and with an exasperated referee, Buddy McGirt took scissors and began to chop them from Malignaggi's head, kicking the strands out of the ring. If life is strange r than fiction, then boxing can indeed be stranger than life.
Speaking of Juan Lazcano, there was an old-timer in boxing I knew called Joe Rein. He died about twelve years ago and my life is much poorer for it. He knew Juan Lazcano from the gyms around Los Angeles. 'Crazy as a loon,' he once told me. 'He talks to God, but I know secretly that it's only me that she talks to.'
Here is a story I heard out of Vienna: around four or five years ago during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Austrian government decreed that all training facilities had to close unless the people involved were professional athletes. So it was that a group of friends in Vienna, all enthusiastic, weekend-warrior bag-hitters all turned professional en masse. And they enjoyed it so much that they still put on – and take part in - professional shows all these years later.
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