Jeff Pearlman (dude in glasses on right) thinks boxing is for losers
Jeff Pearlman, best known for the infamous John Rocker-is-a-racist S.I. article, has a column running on ESPN.com right now that is so utterly stupid and offensive I feel a need to comment.He's writing about Oscar/Floyd and the preposterousness of the fight being titled "The World Awaits." Yes, hype titles like that are ridiculous, and yes to say that "the world is awaiting" the showdown between Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather is overstating the case considerably (although, let's face it, the hype for this fight is a pimple on the face of the pomp and circumstance that greets the Super Bowl or the World Series each year, and Jeff, I hate to break it to you, but the world doesn't wait on them either).
He moves on to do a random polling of his "associates" to get their opinion about this fight, supposedly to prove that most regular people do not care about boxing. He leads into his poll with this gold-plated material:
Personally, I do not know "The World." I know World B. Free. I know Atlanta's World of Coke. I know "We Are The World" (big ups, Dan Aykroyd). But not "The World." So, in an effort to self-educate, I called "The World," a.k.a. a random sampling of associates who surely must be amped for the biggest throwdown since MC Hammer-Vanilla Ice, backstage at the 1990 Grammys.
This style is recognizable to any sports fan who has to traverse the snarky fratboy hell that is the ESPN diaspora these days, beating a flimsy premise to death with a string of one-liners unworthy of Jimmy Kimmel. It speaks of exactly the kind of asshole who thinks this kind of writing is funny (oh snap! he referenced Vanilla Ice! Big ups, Dan Akroyd! how does he come up with this stuff...). And no, it goes without saying that this class of dude is not into boxing, and neither are his dudely friends.
From there, Pearlman recounts the fact that he was at the Hagler/Leonard fight and there was a fight the world was waiting for (it was no doubt a much bigger fight than Oscar/Floyd, although I'm not sure why that's relevant, and honestly even then boxing had moved far from the mainstream of sports culture... he could have conducted his idiot poll in '87 and found no shortage of people unconcerned with that fight), and that part of the problem with this fight is that it's not that fight, not to mention the fact that Floyd is such a dick and boxing sucks now.Where do I begin? How about at his beginning? Check this out:
They have tagged it "The World Awaits."
Not "A Couple of People Await."
Not "Bookies and Ticket Scalpers Await."
Not "Shallow Posers Who Wear Sunglasses Indoors and Pay $50,000 to be Seen Ringside Next to Nick Nolte and Aubrey O'Day Await."
Not "Random Boxing Geeks With No Lives, Money, Deodorant or Girlfriends Await."
No. "The World Awaits."
I could go on for a long time about how narrow-minded, provincial and willfully stupid this is. All of the above insults could be leveled at the Super Bowl crowd by changing maybe two words, the Super Bowl which Pearlman and his ilk hold sacrosanct. To wit:
- The bookies I know do not make their livings off of boxing by any means - most of them could work the football season and take the rest of the year off if they wanted to.
- You'll see more A-level celebrities at even a borderline big-time fight than you ever will at a football game, or the World Series for that matter.
- There are no more pathetic, chickless dorks in the world than the Pearlman universe of Bill Jamesians and fantasy league rejects.
For myself, an admitted "random boxing geek" of the highest order (and what makes us random, I wonder - that we weren't in your frat at Tech State Poly?) I wanted dearly to go to Oscar/Floyd and I usually have no problem through my connections going to fights shown on HBO. This fight? Not a prayer. "It's a tougher ticket than the Super Bowl," my HBO insider told me. "People are obsessed with this thing."So Jeff Pearlman, clearly someone is interested, just not your crowd. Point taken. You know, a men's field hockey game between Pakistan and India will draw up to a hundred thousand fans in either of those countries, and the outcome has the potential to start a war. Why don't you write a column about how none of your friends care about that either, throw in some predictable ESPN-like jokes - "men's field hockey, ha ha ha, do they wear skirts, AH HA HA HA..." Or better yet, why don't you go do a couple anal chugs or mow your lawn or fill out your bracket or brag about your Hemi or do whatever you and your kind do... and just shut up about things that you readily admit you know nothing about.
The world ain't waiting for Mayweather-De la Hoya (ESPN.com)
8 Comments:
[marv albert voice]YES! AND IT COUNTS![/marv albert voice]
I haven't read you this heated in a long time. And you're absolutely right.
I hate how some sportswriters from any country are quick to dismiss a sport that is not popular in their circle. French sportcasters laugh out loud when people say baseball players are athletes.
Truth is the only sports events the world really awaits take place on a green pitch.
But just because you're not a fan of something doesn't give you a right to criticize or ridicule other people.
People get slashed over wrestling pronostics in Sénégal.
Boxing just has some weird self-reflection thing going on. Other sports aren't constantly talking about their health in a meta-way. You never hear, "Indianapolis - Tampa Bay super bowl is bad for football." shit.
Everything is always a "black eye for boxing." All that hand-wringing isn't worth shit.
The truth is boxing isn't what it used to be, but it's still great. There have been at least a half dozen fantastic fights made for this year. Boxing is not dying or in trouble, it just lives in a different neighborhood. And as for Floyd being bad because of the way he talks, what else is new. A white writer on ESPN going after an African American athlete. Strangely, FOX sports is far less reactionary than ESPN, or should I say disney... Yeah, I know, we're all at the mercy of the same gods, I don't even like to think about it.
Yeah, I haven't been this heated in a while, but this is just the kind of thing that lights me up obviously. Exactly as you put it, Madsear - the insular universe that sees whatever sports their world deems relevant as all that matters, and everything outside of it as borderline ridiculous, something for dudes who stink and can't get chicks. That he had the audacity to try and support his point by turning to HIS friends made the case against him better than I ever could. All of my friends talk about this fight constantly, Jeff Pearlman. Are my friends less relevant than your friends? What do you think the relevance of this fight is in Mexico, versus, say, the Barry Bonds steroid controversy, which you devoted an entire (and largely useless) book to? Are Mexicans just idiots who couldn't get into your frat also?
Fuck him. I'm still pissed.
all sports are just theatre. pearlman is just a simpleton for not realizing that fact.
espn became a 24 hour network but then realized that in order to keep their audience, they needed to create news as well as report it. now they're building up athletes just to destroy them... because everybody loves a nice character arc, right?
that's why i come here for 95 percent of my sports info. people on this site think about what they're consuming and then dissect it. there may be small barometers for what gets the most attention (comments, hits, etc), but ultimately this site isn't controlled by it's fans like espn is by its users. in other words, espn exists because its audience does.
in any case large, take comfort in the fact that you're not shoulder deep in that place anymore, and if that doesn't work- just think of the espn mobile disaster for a few laughs.
My biggest complaint about this article is that the lead is that Mayweather is unlikable and then this isn't addressed until the very end and rather perfunctorily at that.
Additionally, if you're going to write an anti-boxing article, why ignore the most obvious and salient point, that most medical professionals regard the sport as something that should be outlawed because of the danger of permanent damage or death to the participants. Not that I think that boxing should be outlawed; however, it's significant that Pearlman ignores the only slant that has actual depth and talking pointsin favor of tossing out the textual equivalent of an extended fart joke.
Basically this is a Me-article. I, Jeff Pearlman, am smarter than anybody who would be patiently waiting for this fight because they don't know what a fight is. believe me, 20 years ago, my old-man mnaged for us to go and see a real legendary event and I am very proud of that.
This asshole actually just gives us his memories as a shorty and tells us they are more worthy than those of kids who might be having wet dreams thinking of that fight.
So working years at sports illustrated and ESPN actually can make you lose your candor and enthusiasm when it comes to sport.
That's just sad...
and someone should never ever call their own pops a moron.
As someone actually involved in the boxing industry, this is the type of snarky, dismissive article we've been reading in the main stream press over and over again for the past several years. Sports Illustrated no longer covers the sport like it did. It's friggin' depressing.
It's funny that half of the people he asked, in his informal poll of people who may or may not even be sports fans, were women. I'm sure if you asked most of his people who were the two teams who just played in the Super Bowl, they'd be hard-pressed to name them.
Obviously, the sport has it's problems - but De La Hoya-Mayweather is not one of them. Floyd may be a shithead - but this guy just wrote a book about Barry Bonds. He also references T.O. (another model citizen and candidate for man of the year) - I guess to compliment him on his creativity in trash talking, as opposed to Floyd's?
There are annoying athletes in every sport, who also happen to be really good - Barry, T.O., Kobe, etc. The ratings are down for all of the major sports on TV and Boxing is no exception. The NFL is the most popular sport in the US and Monday Night Football couldn't even stay on network TV.
Whatever, it's de riguer to piss on boxing - almost always has been. If this ponce isn't interested in De La Hoya-Mayweather, it's his loss. Fuck 'em.
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