Why doesn’t boxing have something similar to what football calls a friendly match?
Everyone knows that, in reality, a friendly match is played for nothing particularly important — or, if we really need to give it a more respectable name, for experience. The result is still the same: money flows to the players in return for yet another historic footballing masterpiece. 🙂
Now let’s look at boxing, or really any combat sport. Here, a fight “for nothing” simply cannot exist. And it is not because gaining experience is somehow a bad thing. There always has to be a winner and someone who gets beaten, otherwise the natural order of the world might be disturbed. 🙂
A fight between Tyson Fury and Mariusz Wach could be a perfect example of this kind of boxing “friendly match”.
They will both earn money, so in that sense it is exactly the same situation as in football. They will both show that they can still fight, they will remain active and remind the fans that they are still around.
The fact that neither of them is probably desperate to score a spectacular knockout is a completely different matter.
Tyson has a fight with Anthony Joshua ahead of him, so this kind of friendly match is exactly what he needs. There is a much bigger prize waiting for him there. Neither fight will do much for his ranking anyway, because he has already come out of retirement so many times that it is probably better not to count. 🙂
The situation is similar for Mariusz Wach. The fanfare after Saturday’s fight in Thailand will barely have died down when, just two weeks later, the entire Tyson family will want to avenge their brother at a freak fight event.
So why do boxing fans find it so difficult to understand that friendly matches are sometimes genuinely necessary?
That is obviously a rhetorical question, because boxing fans tend to be guided by emotion rather than logic. 🙂
To sum it up: real fans will appreciate the fact that Mariusz Wach is writing another chapter in the history of his career by sharing the ring with yet another legend of the sport.
And on that optimistic note, I wish you all a truly wonderful day. 🙂