One of the indelible highlights from my recent vacation to England
was the welterweight title fight in Sheffield between Kell Brook and Errol
Spence. The match turned out to be excellent with Spence asserting himself in
the fight's second half, eventually forcing Brook to yield in the 11th round.
Unfortunately, my travel schedule didn't allow for me to write an immediate
post-fight column. However, I wanted to share with you my thoughts and
impressions from a memorable night in Sheffield.
What follows are some notes and observations about the event –
everything from the arena, to the crowd, to the promotion and most importantly,
the combatants.
Even though I had been to a number of big fights across
America, that night in Sheffield was a singular experience. I marveled at the
intensity, the emotion and the euphoria that swept through the crowd during the
evening's festivities. I'd compare it to the intensity right before the opening
bell of a Pacquiao fight or maybe the exultation in the San Antonio crowd after
Marcos Maidana defeated Adrien Broner. However, this Sheffield crowd engaged in
revelry for hours, not for an instant here or there.
Experiencing a big-fight atmosphere in the U.K. had ranked towards
the top of my boxing bucket list for some time, and Brook-Spence certainly delivered the
goods. It was an unforgettable evening and I felt lucky to have witnessed it.
Here are some items that I took away from the night.
1. The drinking.
Except in particular places in the U.S., drinking outside on
street corners is usually frowned upon. Yet, walking around Sheffield, huge
crowds assembled outside of the pubs and everyone was drinking. And there
seemed to be a pub every block-and-a-half. Also, it wasn't let's have a drink
or two before the fight; there was serious consumption going on.
And the imbibing wasn't reserved for just pre-game festivities. Picture this scene:
Between fights, everyone rushes out to the concourse. That part is fairly
universal. However, what I saw in Sheffield is a real difference between U.S.
and English fight fans. Trying to find a restroom, I saw a huge line of about
200 people and said to myself, aw fuck. Momentarily disappointed, I soon
realized that the line was actually for beer. The bathrooms were to the side. I
walked right in and came right out, no line for the ladies room
either. This might seem like a rather small point. However, it was a
noticeable difference.
Perhaps more tellingly, everyone in the beer line seemed affable.
The Brits waited in an endless line, but they did so patiently. It was all so respectable. They probably were going to
miss the beginning of the Groves-Chudinov co-feature, but they didn't seem to
care. Those two watered-down pints were the priorities and if fans had to spend
a considerable part of their night in line, they weren't particularly bothered
by that fact.
While drinking with some friends after the fight, what struck me
was not that a few in my group had 10-12 beers throughout the night. No, I had
certainly seen that before. What was unique is that they had 10-12 beers and
were perfectly fine. They seemed unfazed by that amount of liquor. Now I can
usually hold my own when drinking but I realized that I was completely out of
my league here. To them, their consumption may have just been called
"Saturday" – nothing seemed particularly out-of-the-ordinary. If I had
12 drinks (granted, I usually drink whiskey), I'd be out of commission for
quite some time.
2. The singing.
British boxing fans sure love to sing. Whether it's "Sweet
Caroline," the riff to "Seven Nation Army," "God Save the
Queen," football chants or various other cheers that emanated at points
throughout the crowd, this was one full-throated collection of boxing fans. I've watched dozens of Matchroom Sport's promotions before and I had always
noted the fervor in the crowd, but to experience it live was something
altogether different. The stadium was rocking. At certain points, you couldn't
even hear Michael Buffer on stage, and his mic was working perfectly fine.
3. The clothes.
It had been almost unseasonably warm in the days leading up to
Brook-Spence. In London, it was in the mid-80s (feel free to do your own
Celsius conversion). By nightfall in Sheffield, the temperature was probably in
the high 50s and dropping. Yet, groups of English lads walked around in tee
shirts and shorts. More stylish men adorned their blue blazers, skinny jeans
and sneakers (a trend that hasn't fully caught on in the U.S).
I've seen a number of fights in Las Vegas and Atlantic City and
I've seen my fair share of fight-night slutware, but let me say, a number of
English women didn't disappoint on this front. They held their own. There were onesies and butt cheeks galore. Seemingly
every third woman had an upper thigh tattoo. In general, I'd say that the
average number of tattoos per person in my section was 16. Body art seems to be
quite the rage among English boxing fans.
4. The Saturday Night Boxing fans meet.
It's a strange phenomenon of social media that you develop
relationships with people that you don't actually ever meet. Boxing, a niche
sport in many parts of the world, is a perfect representation of this reality,
in that for many of us, we often don't get an opportunity to talk about the
sport in our "real" lives. Thus, we've migrated to Twitter and
corners of the web to get our boxing fix.
I've had a Facebook boxing group since 2011. At its peak before it
was hacked, it numbered over 75,000 people. In 2015, I reconstituted the group
and SN Boxing remains a place where many of my
favorite boxing people go to opine on the sport. Many people in the current
group have been there since the beginning. Over the years, several have become
good friends. As I stated earlier, it's a strange phenomenon, but if
you're taking time to read a boxing blog entry such as this, you probably
understand it.
So it was quite a thrill to finally meet Ian (from Sheffield),
Danny (from Birmingham, U.K.) and Brad (from Canada) and sit next to Nic (from
Bristol, U.K.) and Arvin (from New York by way of London). When Ian, Danny and
Brad had told me that they had spent most of the day drinking together, I felt
like a proud parent. They had never met before and yet were ripping on each
other like old friends. And in many ways, they were.
5. Football.
Football is inescapable in England. It's the national currency as
much as the pound is. I've caught the fever over the last few years and try to
watch as many Arsenal games as I can. As an aside,
later in the week in England, walking down a treacherous peak in the Lake
District, we (my girlfriend and I) met an experienced hiker from Preston
who was a big Everton supporter. I spent 30 minutes with him commiserating about
our disappointing Premier League seasons (yes, Everton improved its status this
campaign but the hiker was a long-time Evertonian who remembered when they were
a legitimate threat to be a top-four team in the league). Football created an
immediate bond.
Sheffield is a fascinating English football battleground. The city
of 550,000 has two major teams, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday, and each
team's supporters loathe those who root for the other one. Ian, who is a
die-hard Wednesday supporter and travels the country supporting them, couldn't
even utter the name of the grounds on Saturday where the fight was being staged.
When writing about the arena (Bramall Lane), he referred to it as
$*@^(&& &*@%. He was also not alone in using this
designation.
To provide further perspective, these teams aren't even in the top
division in British football. Wednesday is a second-division club and United
was in the third division last season. Yet, these demarcations are real and fierce. I
also found out that everyone in Sheffield seems to hate Leeds and its football
team, Leeds United. Walking into the arena, we saw an older, drunken gentleman
with an enormous gash of blood oozing down his forehead. He kept yelling Leeds!
Obviously, he had been picking a fight, and got his wish.
6. The moment of silence.
England had been rocked by the Manchester bombing in the week
leading up to Brook-Spence. The devastating attack targeted children and their
parents and that explosion seemed to touch a piece of everyone in the Sheffield
crowd. As Michael Buffer tried to initiate a moment of silence, impromptu
Manchester United cheers broke out in several sections. Once the crowd had
finally quieted, the silence was serene and poignant. The atmosphere, which had
been rocking all night, embraced solidarity with those who had been killed and
the families personally affected by the terrorist attack. When the silence
finally ended, the crowd let out a deafening roar. Manchester, only 30 or so
miles away, was very much in the hearts and prayers of all of those in
attendance.
7. Groves finally a champion.
I was surprised by the rapt reception for George Groves from the
Sheffield crowd. In 2013-14, Groves waged two epic battles with Carl Froch. The
first one ended controversially as Groves was ahead in the fight upon it being
stopped by Howard Foster. In the rematch, in front of 80,000 fans at Wembley
Stadium, Groves fought Froch on even terms before being obliterated by a
three-punch combination in the eighth round. After that fight, Groves came up
short in another title bout against Badou Jack and had a handful of
lower-profile wins.
Groves, a Londoner, wasn't a native son by any stretch in Sheffield, but his ring wars had certainly made their impact among English boxing
fans. Facing Fedor Chudinov from
Russia, Groves was fighting for a title shot for perhaps the final time; the crowd was behind him 100%.
Groves started off with a risky strategy. Planting himself along
the ropes, he let Chudinov tee off on him at close range. Although Groves
countered here and there, he was getting the worst of the action in the early
rounds. By the fifth, his counter right hands started to land with more
frequency. In the sixth, he landed a series of hard rights that hurt Chudinov.
Although Chudinov never went down, the succession of Groves' huge punches
forced referee Steve Gray to stop the fight. Perhaps the stoppage was a little
early, but Groves had done real damage.
Immediately following the victory, there was elation throughout
the grounds. Groves was practically speechless in the first part of his
post-fight interview. The crowd was raucous with its approval, providing Groves
with a fitting coronation. Even though Groves' best days may be behind him, he
will always have a championship belt. He's a blue-collar fighter, one whom nothing was
given to. He's had to overcome self-doubt and criticism about his emotional
fragility in the ring to get to the mountaintop, and finally, he had made it.
The moment was his.
8. Brook's hand speed.
I had seen numerous Kell Brook fights before, including one in
person against Luis Galarza in 2011 in Atlantic City. At that point, Brook was
still very much a one-handed fighter, with his left dominating the
proceedings. As Brook has developed into a top welterweight, he has worked to
make his straight right hand a weapon in its own right.
In my mind, I had always attributed Brook's success to his
accuracy and punch placement rather than speed. However, his performance
against Errol Spence made me rethink my internal calculus.
Spence had good hand speed, but Brook's hands seemed to move like
lightning in the early rounds of the fight. Landing quick one-twos, he
successfully flurried at many points in the first half of the fight, especially in the sixth round. Although
many of the rounds were close, when Brook let his hands go, good
things happened. After the fight, Spence admitted that he had lacked sharpness.
Sure, his inactivity had played a role in that, but Brook's superior hand
speed was also a significant factor in Spence's cautious start. Brook's hand
speed was a real advantage.
9. Spence's body punching.
Spence's body work has always been his calling card. When he threw
his left uppercut to the body, you could immediately see Brook's
discomfort. Spence's shots were like thudding bricks. In the rounds where he
went to the body consistently, he won them. After a few frames of headhunting
in the middle portion of the bout, Spence returned to a committed body attack in
the ninth, and in many ways, the punishment that he dished out in that round,
foreshadowed the end of the fight.
10. A round befitting of two champions.
By the 10th round, Brook's left eye started to become a real
hindrance. Spence was landing more cleanly than he had earlier in the fight and with more frequency. In the beginning of the 10th, Spence trapped Brook along the ropes and landed
a devastating three-punch combination that sent Brook to the canvas. There was
still a lot of time left in the round and in that moment Spence had completely
seized control of what had been a very competitive fight. Yet, upon rising,
Brook made a heroic last stand. Emptying his arsenal with big right hands and
left hooks, Brook tried his best to end the fight. Spence countered with
straight lefts to the head and body shots. As the round concluded, the two fighters
engaged in a vicious war of attrition. Brook flurried with everything that he
had and Spence attempt to keep pace. The crowd rose to its feet in appreciation
of the spectacle.
After the round, I watched both go to their respective corners.
Spence had taken some good shots in the 10th, but he took them well. Brook,
well, he seemed defeated. I said to the people I was sitting with that Brook won't
make it out of 11th; he just couldn't absorb much more punishment. And sure
enough, as Spence approached Brook in the beginning stages of the round, Brook
took a knee and let Howard Foster count him out.
In the aftermath of the fight, Brook received criticism from some corners of boxing fandom for "quitting." Brook wound up suffering another broken orbital bone (he had received a similar injury to his other eye in his previous fight) and had gone to war in hopes of achieving victory. Yes, his last move was a protective measure, one for the rest of his
career, and quite honestly for the rest of his life. I applaud his effort in
the fight. He acquitted himself to the best of his ability; however on this
night, Spence had too much firepower. Brook, physically and emotionally, had
been defeated.
The majority of the crowd streamed out of the arena as soon as the
fight ended; they didn't even stick around for the post-fight interviews.
Spence had successfully established the beginning of his era in professional
boxing while Brook was unable to give his hometown fans the victory that they
had so craved. And if some of Brook's fans were angered by the final moments of
the fight, they realized that Spence had earned the victory. The fight was
conclusive.
Although there had been momentary sadness in the crowd, within a half hour
from the final ten-count, the pubs were packed again. Spirits, both literally
and figuratively, were being raised. Back at my hotel, I had a few drinks and talked boxing with
my friends until three in the morning. I went to bed a satisfied
customer. What a night!
Adam Abramowitz is the founder/head writer of saturdaynightboxing.com.
He's a member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board.
