There are many ways a boxer can show respect and sportsmanship in the ring. These include touching gloves at the start of the fight – in some cases before or after certain rounds – and then doing the same, or perhaps even embracing, at the fight’s conclusion. They can also show respect and sportsmanship by bowing to their opponent, particularly if having done something illegal and worthy of reprimand, or raising their opponent’s arm at the end of it all with the aim of getting the crowd to celebrate their performance.
It is, given everything at stake, something tough to get right. To show too much respect is viewed as a weakness, whereas to show none at all flies in the face of the supposed values and etiquette of a sport predicated on wounding another human being with fists. Some fighters are told, “Show no respect,” when fighting a famous name, or someone with more experience, while others are told, “Make them respect you,” which essentially means go out there and land something big early. Whatever the plan, respect is usually something either shown, won, or in the end the goal; something even greater than winning a belt.
In fact, to gain respect is not always the result of winning. Often the fighter on the losing end is the one for whom the word respect is used, almost as a consolation prize, and often the mark of whether or not they deserve respect will lie in their ability to show good sportsmanship following a defeat.
For Chris Billam-Smith, the former WBO cruiserweight champion, respect is something he earned long ago. He earned it from fans due to the way he conducts himself, both in the ring and outside it, and he earned it from his opponents due to his sheer toughness and stubbornness on fight night.
Only in defeat, however, would we really get to know Chris Billam-Smith. He suffered an early one in his career, that much is true, yet Saturday’s loss against Gilberto Ramirez was the big one; the one that robbed him of all he had worked so hard to win. This defeat, more so than the one in 2019 against Richard Riakporhe, was not only punishing physically for Billam-Smith but also served to highlight the difference in level between one champion and another, always such a humbling experience for the man or woman who has fallen short.
The emotions felt by Billam-Smith will have been no different than those of any other outclassed fighter. Yet the class with which he accepted the defeat – a unanimous decision win for Ramirez – said so much about both his character and ability to stay rooted despite all the success and popularity that has recently come his way. If it wasn’t enough to praise Ramirez in the aftermath, Billam-Smith could be seen handing the Mexican southpaw his WBO belt as the unanimous decision in his favour was read out. There it was in his hands, this thing he had so badly wanted to keep and protect, now being offered up to the man who showed beyond any doubt that he was the superior boxer through 12 rounds.
It wasn’t done with a smile, this gesture, and Billam-Smith certainly wasn’t happy to be doing it. But it was, for him, the correct way to behave following a defeat and so that is how he dealt with it. He put his despondency, so clear on his face, to one side and instead embraced the relinquishing of his belt the same way he had embraced the winning of it. That is to say, he felt it. He stayed in the emotion of it all and he refused to shirk or suppress the feelings that would have washed over him in that devastating moment.
It was admirable in many ways; almost as admirable as his performance. It was also no great surprise to anyone who has either watched Billam-Smith fight or listened to him speak, for this is a man cut from an entirely different cloth from most fighters. This is a man who has never once taken his success in the sport for granted and someone who always saw winning a world title, let alone doing so at the home of his beloved AFC Bournemouth, as the apex. To then go on and defend this belt, successfully, and bag a presumably life-changing payday in Saudi Arabia will only be seen as a bonus in the eyes of Billam-Smith. In short: he, more than most, knows how hard the sport is, and he knows how difficult his particular journey has been. Humility has been beaten into him and now seeps from his every pore.
In contrast, someone like Jake Paul will never understand the struggle to reach the top in a competitive sense and therefore lacks the humility and respect you find in most professional boxers. His journey, shorter and far more successful than most (monetarily speaking), is one of the superficial variety, existing entirely in a vacuum. It is one of content, performance, and clicks. All that matters is money.
On Friday, when he beat a 58-year-old Mike Tyson, Paul received respect not for beating a 58-year-old Mike Tyson – thankfully – but for instead not beating a 58-year-old Mike Tyson too badly. In other words, people desperate to say something positive about Friday’s abomination were quick to give Paul respect for “carrying” Tyson when it became clear Rusty Mike couldn’t do much of his own volition anymore. There were murmurings of this during the fight, with Paul somehow unable to finish a wounded deer, and these murmurings were then confirmed when Paul, catching on to the narrative early, revealed that yes, he had carried Tyson at the post-fight press conference. “I didn’t want to hurt someone that wasn’t able to do much,” he said, and just like that, suddenly he was the good guy again.
The wheels of this plan were by then already in motion. They had started to turn the moment the final bell sounded and Paul realised there was now a chance that Tyson, no longer thwarted by rules, could attack him and put either his hands or teeth on him in a way he was unable to during the fight. That was precisely why Paul, so obnoxious in the buildup, wanted to make friends with Tyson and why, in the final round, he bowed to him, knowing too that this would be an image captured and shared around the world. It is, after all, all about optics these days. Appearance. Illusion.
To suggest there was any feeling in that final gesture, or indeed Paul’s post-fight comments, would be naïve in the extreme. One need only listen to how his brother, Logan Paul, reacted when asked about a potential fight against Tyson to understand how these boys really think and function. Everything, to them, is little more than a show, a performance, an opportunity. Nothing is based in reality and nothing matters more to them than exploiting opportunities and making money.
That is all fine, of course, and totally their prerogative, yet to feign respect and sportsmanship following a fight which was the very antithesis of those things is a stretch even for the Pauls. Indeed, if the concept of carrying a fighter is an attempt to preserve a beaten man’s dignity, to then reveal to the world that you carried them is to effectively undo all that and not only strip them of their dignity but do so in a fashion far more embarrassing, for a boxer, than having been put out of their misery and knocked out.
Rather than carry him, more likely was it that Paul felt something from Tyson early, banked the memory of it, and then remembered how humiliating it would be to lose to an old man, even one as celebrated as Mike Tyson. The more he started to tire, and he did, the larger these fears inevitably grew in Paul’s head, and the more he realized, too, how surprisingly tricky it was to land anything clean on a squat fighter who could still just about hold up his hands and bend at the waist. Paul, after all, remains a neophyte. When it comes to creativity, he has very few tools and even fewer ideas, which in turn explains his popularity in a dumbed-down world.
You can call it sportsmanship all you like, but what we saw from Jake Paul in the presence of Mike Tyson was closer to showmanship – all of it. This Paul does as well as anyone in boxing, it’s true, and if you are to respect anything about him, it should definitely be that. But please don’t get the two things confused.
The reality is, the attitude that got Jake Paul into this sport – that is, sheer ignorance – would not have allowed him to entertain thoughts of compassion in a moment like that on Friday night. Had such thoughts even been available to him as a human being, he never would have shared a ring with a 58-year-old Mike Tyson in the first place.
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