“Deontay Wilder stopped Johann Duhaupas in eleven rounds at the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama, on Saturday night, approximately seven rounds later than even generous expectations foresaw, and three rounds later than the fight’s meager offering of competitiveness dictated. Before lionizing Duhaupas for his toughness—which so grossly exceeds his craft as to render the latter moot—consider this: “Duhaupas is making his U.S. debut” was the biographical tidbit offered in the Rogers Cable Guide description of the fight. Make of Duhaupas what you will (to make of Wilder what you want) but when a cable guide, which is supposed to accurately reflect the content of a broadcast or embellish it in an intriguing way, can muster no better pitch for a fighter than his inaugural journey to the U.S., well, that probably means there is little to say.”

Read Night of the Reptile: Deontay WIlder TKO11 Johann Dupauhas on The Cruelest Sport.

“Chatter from the VIP tables was not about how Chris Van Heerden, for all his plucky insolence, at no point posed a threat to welterweight Errol Spence, or how Tommy Karpency was given the opportunity to face Adonis Stevenson in part because the crisp right hand he landed in the second round would be as close to victory as Karpency would ever come. If the PBC’s plan is to obfuscate what prizefighting should be about—two men of comparable ability paid to harrow each other in a spectacle of unmaking—and replace it with gatherings where violence is a backdrop to a social event, where the celebrity of the fighters supersedes their achievement and the pageantry of the proceedings is the primary criterion of its quality, Toronto warrants a return.”

Read “Cheap Celebrity: Adonis Stevenson Headlines Premier Boxing Champions in Toronto” on The Cruelest Sport.

“Mayweather-Berto is a fight even Mayweather’s most devoted acolytes are struggling to work themselves rigid over. But enough of Mayweather’s self-appointed members of The Money Team: those in their ranks whose primary interest was never boxing will, as Bart Barry put it with his typical acuity, be gone soon enough. The rest will have a library of fights to worship if not watch, some articles of clothing; the satisfaction of knowing their man is clearly TBE since the present, by virtue of their living it, is clearly better than the past.”

Read Neither Ripple Nor Echo: Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Andre Berto Preview on The Cruelest Sport.