What passes for a spectacle in boxing today? The answer requires a cracked window, a match struck and shaken, and advanced warning. The YouTube Cruiserweight champion of the world, who, thwarted in his oh-so-genuine pursuit of a not-yet-grey heavyweight opponent, chose instead a lightweight in an exhibition. This same lightweight, in the aftermath of the only debatable outcome of a heretofore middling career, is muffling the echo of his hollow ambition. Is that what drives interest, what billows so softly the masts in the current doldrums?

If you are reading this, the answer is surely no, because you are a relic, consuming your sports coverage in words at a time when podcasts are, for some incomprehensible reason, watched, when reading stamina and interest are crippled by Instagram captions and the brevity of Grok, and because you could give less than a fuck about such farces as the aforementioned one. If you are reading this, there is a chance that the last time you felt your pulse quicken, not just at the action, but at the anticipation of it, was two years ago, and the common denominator between your engagement then and your engagement now is one man: Terence Crawford. The generation is his, the years that stretch back to Floyd Mayweather Jr., and those on the horizon, littered as they will be with a mostly loud and forgettable horde of fighters jockeying for clout with bandwidth.

If you doubted Crawford’s ownership (and how could you not whenever Naoya Inoue or Oleksandr Usyk put paid to the divisions they invaded), that doubt was silenced Saturday, when Crawford soundly defeated undisputed super middleweight champion Saul Alvarez, before 70,000 people at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.

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Alvarez was long considered the defining fighter of his generation, an improbable blend of otherworldly skill and feverish popularity. How could it be that the greatest fighter in the world was also historically popular? One explains the other. Popularity augmented Alvarez’s ability, his ambition, and even the estimation of his opponents, thereby amplifying his greatness. But the mythology at work cannot recover from what Crawford did, and only Alvarez’s proximity to the end will spare him the refashioning of legacy that accompanies so ugly a defeat.

Because Crawford didn’t just beat Alvarez, he interrogated a confession out of him. This was a fight that was supposed to teach us, and Crawford especially, that weight classes exist for a reason. Instead, it was a referendum on Alvarez and his division. Alvarez-Crawford showed us that super middleweight is a pseudo-division, a waystation, and a refuge—it was cleaned out by a former 154-pound fighter who was parsed and disassembled by an ex-lightweight. This was not Roy Jones Jr. moving to heavyweight to fight John Ruiz: Crawford fought the man at super middleweight. In less than six rounds, the question shifted from whether Crawford could take Alvarez’s punch to whether that punch was the only hope Alvarez had; that second question was answered emphatically well before the final bell. Alvarez didn’t have a puncher’s chance—he had none at all. What does that say of the division he so easily conquered, and of the glory accompanying that feat?

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Surely Alvarez expected his current style, that of the elusive pursuer who throws singular power shots to cow opponents and marshal his stamina, to yield results against a smaller fighter, especially one who welcomes the risk in aggression. Perhaps Alvarez expected Crawford, like so many before him, to be intimidated by the event, pacified by the payday, to offer a soft belly and eager neck, as Jermell Charlo, the last junior middleweight to wield the golden ticket, did in 2023. But such thinking grossly misunderstands Crawford, who sees in every opponent impudence, and whose response to that insult is merciless.

Alvarez’s miscalculation figured whenever he tried to impose his style on the fight, when he unloaded with the kind of punches that would wither a welterweight. Perhaps those punches would have produced this desired effect, had Crawford not anticipated each one, caught just enough of each punch on his elbow or glove, had he not used the same half-step footwork that sets up his counters to slide safely out of reach, had he not stepped into Alvarez when most everyone else had sought retreat. And what was Alvarez to do with his offense so effectively nullified? Draw on a stamina he has neither had nor needed? Outbox the finest boxer of his generation? Outsmart a man of greater craft?

No, there was only the next telegraphed left hook, the next right hand as powerful as it was ineffective. For this intermittent, fleeting daring, Alvarez was clipped into timidity, strafed and turned in the clinches, forced to reset, and then reset by force. To see the sturdy Alvarez overpowered, to watch him come to understand what strength can be wrought from a wiry frame, to see him blistered by combinations no one has dared throw at Alvarez in years—this was a spectacle. Even light heavyweight kingpin Dmitrii Bivol, who chased Alvarez from light heavyweight behind an onslaught of ones, twos, and threes, never threw them as murderously or articulately as Crawford. Nor with the sadistic glee, the pleasure in cruelty that produces the only histronics Crawford indulges in—those that amplify the discomfort of his victims.

You might expect this humiliation to inspire Alvarez; yet he was largely passionless, so reconciled to defeat that he reverted to his old habit of ostentatious defense, as though the secret to victory lay not in rendering his opponent unconscious, but in preserving the image of himself as the untouchable, the fighter who cannot be hit, the one who must be protected and preserved. No, there was no saving Alvarez on this night, on that point, even the judges were unanimous in their agreement.

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What to make of Alvarez’s post-fight comments, his declaring himself a winner because of the magnitude of the event, because of the success of his personal life. The words of a fighter minutes removed from the crucible should be judged charitably, if at all. There is, however, in Alvarez’s in-ring reflection a concession, one he later concretized: Crawford was in every way his better. In the ring, with a microphone in his face and reality on his shoulders, Alvarez was finding the only victories available to him that night. None of them could be salvaged from those twelve rounds. Such was Crawford’s greatness.

In The Human Stain, Phillip Roth writes of the “human desire for a beginning, a middle, and an end—and an end appropriate in magnitude to the beginning and middle.” Is this not what Crawford has achieved? A career trajectory of determined ascent culminating in a historic ending? Criticisms of Crawford were very often a tell, issued most forcefully by those who had a fighter (or promoter) to protect, because it was obvious even then that the fighting pride of Omaha, Nebraska, lacked for nothing but opportunity. The opportunities finally came, and just look what he did with them.

July 23, 2023, felt like a beginning.

The stakes suggested otherwise; the hardware and other credentials implied a culmination, more peak than plateau. What transpired in the Ariake Arena that day might have functioned so had Stephen Fulton’s hand been raised, had he left Japan not merely the unified super bantamweight champion of the world but the man who halted the inexorable. Because where do you go from there? 

Instead, a beginning; a confirmation that expectations needed to be calibrated to an unmatched ambition, an unparalleled talent. Naoya Inoue’s demolition of Fulton did more than unify the division: it rendered its remains irrelevant. Because if Fulton had nothing for “The Monster,” what 122-pound fighter did?

Not Marlon Tapales or Luis Nery, who proudly earned their pounds of flesh before being heaped on the pile. Not TJ Doheny, not Ye Joon Kim. You could run a charitable finger down the list of super bantamweights—better: start at the bottom and work up—and find nothing but underdogs, placeholders in an extraneous series, their rankings applying only to each other, not to the fighter whose shadow they toiled in. For Inoue, Fulton should have marked the beginning of a new assault, a fresh invasion, one that would have spared the fighters that “The Monster” bypassed a visit to the shadow realm—and done them the further kindness of letting each pretend Inoue’s avoidance was the source of his preservation.

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Ink seals the mismatch, not blood; it should be the business of matchmakers, not fighters. And yet, Inoue pushed back against this maxim because his mismatches materialized most strikingly after the bell. They manifested not in the results, which stopped being in doubt long before people stopped doubting Inoue, but in the ease of dispatch. They manifested in blood.

Inoue atomized opponents, sending even the supposedly stern into crisis; ending early, brutally, or both, the Inoue mismatch retained its charm in having to be proven, not confirmed. Was he expected to win the WBSS bantamweight tournament? Yes, but the manner of victory augmented his path to the championship. The twelve rounds Nonito Donaire demanded of him in the finale only further ratified Inoue’s absurd precocity. Their rematch two and a half years later, a mismatch sealed in ink, served as confirmation—however superfluous, however undesired—that Inoue’s celestial ascension at least kept pace with Donaire’s decline.

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Heading into Sunday, and Inoue’s return to the US, where he would face Ramon Cardenas from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, had expectations changed?

Tapales was the IBF champion, pursuing his title immediately after dispatching Fulton, when most fighters would have gladly taken a victory lap, set Inoue apart. More importantly, it was typical of him, of his accelerated ambition, that, like an express bus, skips all stops between major intersections. The Nery fight allowed Inoue to massacre a mandatory challenger who had vilified himself in Japan for failing weigh-ins and drug tests alike. 

But what justified Doheny, who represented barely a stay-busy fight for a fighter who had already shown he could busy himself butchering the world-class? Kim was a poor replacement for Sam Goodman, who was twice injured in preparation for Inoue, instead of getting once concussed for making it to the opening bell.

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To borrow from JM Coetzee, Inoue post-Fulton felt like a fighter in the “gyroscopes of the Grand Design,” one fixed in the orbit of a larger celestial body, part of a plan that kept him in a controlled and predictable motion. But should Inoue be promoted like a regular fighter, guided by the principles that maximize the earnings (and safety) of fighters well beneath his ability? 

Some promotional material for Inoue’s return emphasized his activity, with Cardenas being Inoue’s fourth fight in a year. Too many fighters have decided that biannual combat is sufficient to achieve the accolades they have bestowed on themselves, or at least enough to provide a lifestyle that justifies controlled risk. Thankfully, Inoue is not one of them. But the emphasis on quantity seemed a tell, as though more of who we want should supersede more of what we want.

One might argue that Inoue’s return warranted a fatted calf for an opponent. This sacrifice of an opponent to confirm the esteem of the headliner is step of the grand design. But even those who traveled to Las Vegas, who lined up for hours to see Inoue weigh in, would rather a fight than a fighter be the reward for their time and money. 

They got both.

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Bolstered by sound strategy and self-belief, by the irreverence needed to shatter an idol—Cardenas was that fighter. Inoue, who, on the brink of disaster, rallied to reaffirm his greatness—he, too, was that fighter. And the eight ferocious rounds they shared were the fight. 

Inoue was on Cardenas immediately and just as quickly punished for it. Cardenas timed Inoue with clever jabs and worked the body with verve; behind a sturdy guard, Cardenas found safety from Inoue’s flurries and an opportunity to exploit them. In the second, a vicious counter hook planted Inoue violently on the canvas. Should Cardenas relive that moment for a lifetime, its sweetness will likely come with the added fantasy of a few seconds more. Inoue was up with only eight seconds remaining in the round, but it is fair to wonder whether another twenty would have altered each man’s future. 

Alas, Inoue made it to his corner, found the time to clear his head, and used the remaining six rounds to first eliminate the predictability in his attack, which Cardenas was, with incredible charm, masterfully and maliciously exploiting—and then to grind this defiant and sturdy man to pieces. But it must be said—because Cardenas deserves it—that despite being dropped in the seventh round, the San Antonio fighter remained defiant. For all the telltale signs of his disintegration, Cardenas remained committed to the fight and life-altering counters he launched—and to paying victory’s price. The fighter that referee Thomas Taylor rescued a round later was upright and eager to sacrifice whatever he had left. 

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There was always the chance that Inoue would fall victim to the drudgery of his profession, surprised in one of the valleys on the EKG monitoring his career. Cardenas, this would-be saboteur, hurt Inoue like no one before; his technique and toughness humbled an arrogant destroyer. But Inoue is his best when threatened. In those harrowing moments, however few they may be, Inoue finds both a joy mere victory cannot provide and an excellence opponents cannot achieve.

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You are a fighter obstructing the path to Inoue becoming the undisputed featherweight champion. What you witnessed Sunday bolstered your already preternatural confidence. The years, the rounds, and the scale are finally figuring in Inoue’s incredible career. And you can exploit this outlay of greatness, exacerbate it with ill-intentioned means, because you now see that the end—that other grand design, that other inexorable—is coming for Inoue. You can usher it forth. Or so you think.

May 4, 2025, felt like a beginning.