From the Ring to the Algorithm: Fernando Vargas Jr. and the Global Gladiator 2.0 By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Tokyo-Madrid red-eye TOKYO—Somewhere between the neon glare of Shibuya and the cigarette haze of a Madrid sports bar, a twenty-something welterweight named Fernando Vargas Jr. is being watched by strangers who have never paid…
The World According to Floyd: How One Undefeated Boxer Became Planet Earth’s Favorite Punchline By Dave’s Locker International Desk Ladies, gentlemen, and offshore-betting syndicates from Macau to Minsk, gather round the global campfire. We are here to discuss Floyd “Money” Mayweather—not as mere athlete, but as a walking, talking, Gucci-swathed Rorschach test for the 21st-century…
Canelo vs Crawford Time: When the World Sets Its Alarms for Two Men Punching Each Other in Vegas By Santiago “Sam” Delacroix, International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker If you’ve ever wondered what global unity looks like, forget the UN General Assembly—set your phone to 4 a.m. in Lagos, 11 a.m. in Moscow, and 5 p.m. in…
Fabio Wardley and the Short, Violent Poetry of Global Distraction By Our Man in the Cheap Seats LONDON—While half the planet argues over whose war crimes are more photogenic and central bankers debate whether to call the next recession “transitory” or merely “fashionably late,” a 29-year-old man from Ipswich has been quietly perfecting the art…
Oleksandr Usyk and the Sweet Science of Existential Dread By C. Marlowe, International Correspondent, somewhere over the Black Sea KYIV—When Oleksandr Usyk slipped through the ropes at the King Abdullah Sports City in Jeddah last year to relieve Anthony Joshua of his alphabet soup of belts, the punch he landed on the collective jaw of…
From Riyadh to Reno, the name Tommy Fury is currently being spoken in the same fevered breath normally reserved for oil prices, TikTok bans, and whichever Kardashian has most recently filed for divorce. To the uninitiated, he’s a 24-year-old British light-heavyweight who has never fought a top-ten contender. To the rest of us—sipping lukewarm coffee…
Crawford vs Canelo: When Two Hemispheres Collide in a Glorified Parking-Lot Behind a Casino in Vegas Dave’s Locker Global Dispatch, 9 May 2024 The boxing world has finally found a way to make the war in Gaza, the collapse of the Yen, and the slow-motion implosion of the Arctic ice shelf feel like quaint side-notes:…
Terence Crawford and the Quiet Art of Global Violence By A. Serrano, Foreign Correspondent (currently hiding from creditors in a Moldovan airport bar) Omaha, Nebraska—birthplace of TV dinners, Warren Buffett, and now the planet’s most polite destroyer of men. Terence “Bud” Crawford has, in the grand tradition of American exports, taken something provincial (the Midwestern…
