Chris’ weekly column, “The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly” or “GBU” was exhaustive yet concise, managing to distill a weekend of action into a few hundred words. This week, TCS offers its own take on the GBU, a poor imitation of course, but one intended primarily to honor the man as much as the action, and to bid goodbye to Chris in the way many of us first said hello to him: by talking about boxing.

Read The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: A Weekend Wrap Up in Tribute to Chris Herrera on The Cruelest Sport.

If any fight from this past weekend is to dominate discussion in the coming days it is the HBO main event from the Turning Stone Resort and Casino, in Verona, New York, where junior welterweight Lucas Matthysse barely survived, and narrowly outpointed, Ruslan Provodnikov. And the attention Matthysse-Provodnikov receives as its dust settles is well-deserved. While perhaps not the apotheosis of violence the unbridled enthusiasm that preceded it anticipated, Matthysse and Provodnikov arrested a collective attention for twelve brutal rounds, the type of rounds that obscure futures.

Read Ungodly Punishment: On Matthysse-Provodnikov, Terence Crawford and Styles on The Cruelest Sport.

“There is more to creating a diamond than pressure and heat. Time also plays a role; and time, as something exhaustible, is a player in Matthysse-Provodnikov as well. It is impossible to imagine these men leaving the ring Saturday unchanged by the other’s mischief, nearly as difficult to imagine their careers maintaining whatever trajectory caused their collision. And does it not feel as if, in facing each other, Matthysse and Provodnikov, are meeting their destiny, that beast in the jungle whose pursuit, however unforeseen, would inevitably overtake them?”

Read The Beast in the Jungle: On Lucas Matthysse-Ruslan Provodnikov on The Cruelest Sport.