The Far East is closer to the square circle than it has ever been.
Last week on February 27, Fox Sports 1 aired China’s colossal 7′ Taishan Dong rout Roy McCrary for the third win of his professional career.
This week, the Middle Kingdom has another ambassador entering the ring, this one half the intimidating size but more than twice the ability: three-time Olympic medalist Zou Shiming.
Zou (6-0, 1 KO) takes a leap up in competition to walk through the fire and challenge IBF-recognized world flyweight champion Amnat Ruenroeng (14-0, 5 KO) in Macau, China on March 7. HBO2 will broadcast the replay at 5 p.m. ET.
The two share a rivalry that dates back to 2007 in the amateur ranks. As is the state of boxing, however, the action set to go down inside the ring takes a backseat to the geo-politics at hand.
The undefeated Zou is a national icon and Top Rank CEO Bob Arum’s key to selling boxing to the Far East.
“Zou is the engine behind all of this activity in China,” Arum said via Boxing Scene. “He’s the poster boy.”
It’s a lot of weight to carry for a man who has only competed professionally six times. But Zou has had his amateur career financed by Chinese sports authorities since he was a teenager. Carrying out interests that go beyond the fists being traded inside the boxing ring is nothing new to him.
The real burden, he says, comes from within.
“The pressure doesn’t come from my home country, but comes from myself,” Zou said.
This weekend, though, Zou will be facing a new kind of stress that he’s never encountered and, frankly, isn’t ready for. That being a truly elite professional fighter.
The threat comes in the form of the world-class champion out of Thailand, Ruenroeng, the No. 2-rated flyweight by the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board.
Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty ImagesRuenroeng is the defending champion.
Sporting the longest reach of any fighter the loaded 112-pound weight class has to offer, Ruenroeng fights for the first time since his nearly unparalleled 2014 campaign that saw him pick up the IBF belt and defend it twice, defeating three noteworthy opponents: The long-time flyweight contender Rocky Fuentes, Japanese prodigy and two-divisional world champion Kazuto Ioka and top-10 flyweight McWilliams Arroyo.
His virtual absence from Fighter of the Year ballots was criminal. But it was to be expected as he only competed in Thailand and Japan, hidden from American viewership.
Zou‘s 2014 wasn’t so impressive. He went 3-0 but against sorely low-level competition, accentuated by his last fight in November that was accompanied by a heavy dose of political influence.
The two-time Olympic gold medalist “earned” a title shot with an underwhelming unanimous-decision victory over a third-rate fighter in Kwanpichit OnesongchaiGym. OnesongchaiGym had no business in a title eliminator. Zou did manage to finally sit on his punches more and send his Thai opponent to the canvas but faded down the stretch of his first 12-round fight and was left with a badly swollen left eye.
There’s nothing he has done in the paid ranks to suggest he can beat a champion like Ruenroeng, whose sharp punching and uncanny length make him a stylistic terror.
Feng Li/Getty ImagesZou vs. Ruenroeng
Zou doesn’t hit with huge power—or even above-average kind. And at 33, doesn’t possess the otherworldly speed and footwork he utilized to become one of the most successful amateur boxers of all time.
It hasn’t even been two years since his professional debut. Esteemed trainer Freddie Roach, who will likely be in Zou‘s corner this weekend, admitted that this is hardly half the time required to win a world title.
Per Sports On Earth’s Geoffrey Gray:
“The process of taking an Olympic medalist to a world championship is four years,” Roach says. “I had Virgil Hill, he did it in four. Brian Viloria, he did it in four. But two years? It’s not enough.”
Of course, winning a title within that allotted time period isn’t unheard of. Ruenroeng, himself, beat the swarming Fuentes for the vacant IBF strap just 20 months into his pro career. But the Thai is one of the exceptions. He’s never been a run-of-the-mill kind of fighter.
He’s never lived a run-of-the-mill kind of life.
A Muay Thai boxer since the age of 12, Ruenroeng dropped out of school in the second grade. He was sent to jail on three separate occasions. In 2006, he was sentenced to 15 years for committing robbery. But pugilism saved his life.
“I made the wrong decisions and went to jail,” the IBF champion told The Ring Magazine’s Anson Wainwright. “My life would have been finished in jail but I am very lucky that boxing gave me another chance.”
He tried his hand in the prison boxing program and the very next year upset Zou at the “King’s Cup” international amateur boxing tournament, their first of three fights.
Zou would take the next two meetings. But boxing at the amateur and professional level are practically two different sports. Where the Olympic medalist seems to have trouble habituating himself within the billowing violence of prizefighting, Ruenroeng flourishes in it.
Gifted with a nightmarish 69.5″ reach, Ruenroeng is a rough-and-tumble fighter who can bolt opponents in the face with a wicked jab from either hand or engage in melee-type holding and grappling, tangling up his opponents and cranking necks when he can.
A lanky, brutish fighting machine.
Sandy Saddler incarnated.
The Thai obviously lacks the unearthly hitting power Saddler did but he carries with him that savage spirit and ability to beat a variety of adversaries.
Ruenroeng recovered from a knock down to outbox an Olympian (Arroyo). He outfought a brawler (Fuentes). And beating Zou wouldn’t be the first prodigious Asian talent he’s met on unwelcoming turf to conquer (Ioka).
That fight against former minimumweight and light flyweight champion Ioka wasn’t close. Ruenroeng soundly took the Japanese apart—the scorecards be damned.
Zou, too, will be fighting in front of a partisan crowd. And backed by the powers that be, inexplicable judging in his favor isn’t at all out of the realm of possibility.
That’s because a loss for Zou would be a horrible blow to the boxing revival—a new “Boxer’s Rebellion,” if you will—going on in China, where the sport was originally banned in the 1950s.
The Chinese government found boxing too violent.
Come Saturday, Ruenroeng will demonstrate why.
No comments:
Post a Comment