In an effort to gauge the interest in this weekend’s flyweight fight between Sunny Edwards and Galal Yafai, I found myself in the comment section of an interview Yafai did with Tris Dixon for BoxingScene. In this section, where one should never linger, I discovered just one comment about the fight, as well as another which, although more about the interview than the fight itself, inadvertently said everything about the fight. The comment was this: “Articles in here getting too long. Just an observation.”
That it said nothing about either Edwards or Yafai, this comment, in the end hardly mattered. After all, implicit in the comment was the exact reason why a fight like Edwards vs. Yafai may struggle to resonate with those short on patience. In other words, it is possible and perhaps probable that a fight like Edwards vs. Yafai struggles for the very same reason that any written piece of more than, say, 300 words will struggle to resonate with some in 2024. (The Yafai interview contained 2,645 words, by the way – hardly an epic.) Some, whether we like it or not, are just not built for long distances nowadays. Given the choice, they would prefer things to be quick, obvious, and easy. They would prefer to be comforted rather than challenged.
In the case of Edwards vs. Yafai, you have on the horizon a great fight between two evenly matched flyweights, but don’t expect it to be easy. If anything, this is the boxing equivalent of a longform piece. It will require patience, understanding, and some basic knowledge of what it is you are seeing. Nothing about it will be spoon-fed to you, nor for that matter will it conclude early, thus sparing your flagging attention span having to stretch beyond what feels normal. More likely is it, in fact, that Edwards and Yafai, as flyweights, will have to take the scenic route on Saturday and observers will have to travel with them, accepting the difference between flyweights and heavyweights and realising that patience sometimes rewards if you stick with something long enough and look up from your phone and out the window occasionally.
To some extent it must be a strange fight to have to push and promote in this day and age, Edwards vs. Yafai. In Britain at least, we are being told this is one of the biggest fights of the year, and yet it is tough to figure out exactly how big a fight between flyweights can be in 2024. Certainly, in boxing circles, a fight between Edwards and Yafai carries significance and will be watched, but it is beyond that, out there in the real world, one struggles to see its appeal, especially given it will play on an app (DAZN).
If this fear turns out to be warranted, it would be a shame, too, because there are few fighters in Britain more talented than Edwards and Yafai and there are few storylines as interesting as the one they aim to conclude this weekend – one rooted in amateur rivalries and family feuds stretching back 10 years.
Had they been heavyweights, of course, Edwards and Yafai would be on a different trajectory altogether. A fight like this, for example, would be massive – truly massive – and someone like Edwards, in particular, would be a much bigger name on account of his personality and aptitude for self-promotion. He would have more than just four knockouts on his record and people would watch his fights more hopeful of the finish coming via stoppage rather than three scorecards read out after 12 rounds.
In fact, if you analyse why flyweights don’t move the needle, it has a lot to do with that predictability, with decisions often a formality. Even if the lower weight classes contain the classiest technicians around, and they do, there is still nothing more appealing to fans than someone who can finish a fight in the blink of an eye. They are the ones who keep fans on the edge of their seats and persuade them to buy tickets. They are the ones whose fights draw the biggest crowds and the most attention.
As painful as it is to mention (again), that was one of the reasons why the heavyweight “fight” between Jake Paul and a 58-year-old Mike Tyson caught fire the way it did a couple of weeks ago. As well as Netflix and the two names involved, they could also sell it on the basis that it took place at heavyweight, which gave the impression, albeit a false one, that big punches would be landing and that there would be drama in every round. Added to that, these rounds were going to be shorter than usual – two minutes as opposed to three – and there would only be eight of them, the appeal of which, in the eyes of casual fans, cannot be overlooked or understated.
We are, after all, in the age of dying attention spans, a dozen tabs, and a dozen screens. Eight-twos means only 16 minutes of action, whereas the 12-threes Edwards and Yafai are due to share on Saturday amounts to 36 minutes of action. That, at a time when youngsters are proudly admitting they watch films on double speed, is hardly conducive to bringing in a crowd or making superstars of boxers who require patience and intelligence on the part of their audience.
To compensate for this, these boxers are encouraged more than ever to sell themselves, debase themselves, and do whatever it takes to get eyeballs on their fight. Yet it is not the fighters who should be held accountable for a lack of interest in proper fights and a growing interest in improper fights. There is instead something much bigger and scarier at play here, a battle for which nobody in boxing is really equipped. Not when there are so many other options out there. Not when the recipe for financial success in boxing now boils down to either outsourcing to the Middle East, where a whole nation picks up the tab, or simply this: getting famous people to fight each other in short, silly fights.
If blind faith is really all we have, let us focus and finish on another comment related to that Yafai interview. This one, presumably in response to the one earlier mentioned, was posted a day later and it said: “I enjoyed every bit of it. This was a good interview on a boxer I knew nothing about but his name. Now I am really interested in this fight.”
Read the full article here
