Greetings heathens, zealots, web denizens, and the rest of you!
I honestly cannot tell what is more hilarious to me: that the national press placed so much importance on a charity boxing match, or that most of said press thought that Trudeau was going to lose and were shocked, oh how they were shocked, that he didn’t.
By way of quick background, Liberal MP Justin Trudeau and Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau fought three rounds for a cancer charity in Ottawa Saturday night. And good for them. It takes guts that most people do not have to get into the ring in the first place and they used their profile to raise money for a good cause. Trudeau won by TKO late in the 3rd round after basically using Brazeau’s head as a heavy bag.
Now, what is amusing here is how reporters from Sun News to the National Post, who clearly haven’t ever seen a Rocky movie, let alone actual boxing, picked Brazeau to basically do to Trudeau what Foreman did to Frazier. (And if you don’t get that reference, you probably shouldn’t have been making predictions about boxing. Just sayin’.)
They will tell you that Brazeau looked bigger (he was only a few pounds heavier than his Liberal opponent) that he has a black belt in karate and was in the army. (uh yah, so what?) . That Trudeau was taller, with a longer reach and had been hanging around boxing gyms his whole life was no never mind to the political pundits who made him a 3 to 1 underdog.
The truth was Brazeau was picked because he is a Conservative and Conservatives are big and tough and rah rah rah. Liberals are meek and wimpy and probably made from tofu instead of muscle. So Trudeau had to lose because, you know, Liberals can’t box.
The punditry about the fight was, to be frank, embarrassingly and hilariously bad. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the sport would not have favoured Brazeau. He has a black belt? Big deal. Last time I checked, breaking boards and kicking was not allowed in boxing and, the fact of the matter is, most karate schools do not employ full contact sparring. The bit about the army? That would be relevant, I guess, if he boxed in the armed forces. He didn’t, so really, one might as well have said he was also played golf or something.
Trudeau, on the other hand, has been boxing since he was a kid. Never actually fought in the ring, but was in the gym, which gives him a massive edge over someone who wasn’t. Boxing is a balletic craft that takes time to learn. So there is a basic rule when predicting a bout: if one guy has lots of experience and the other guy doesn’t, you don’t pick the noob to win…unless the noob happens to be from Philadelphia. You ALWAYS bet on the fighter from Philadelphia.
The fight itself was sloppy – neither man would last long in a typical club show in St. Catharines – but Trudeau knew enough to open up the can of whup ass on Brazeau, who learned that painful truism about boxing: you play golf, you play tennis. Boxing is the hurt business. You never “play” at boxing at any level of the sport.
Near as I can tell, Brazeau figured that ducking and blocking were against his religion.
It was OBVIOUS this was going to happen, despite some of my Sun media peers gleeful predicting the doom of Trudeau based on his politics. Even the National Post couldn’t admit its silliness afterward, still insisting the non-boxer should have been favoured over the guy who knows boxing because, you know, he looks mean. *sigh*
This is what happens when political commentators decide to talk about the sweet science. You don’t know what you’re doing, boys and girls. Leave it to the pros, ok?
St. Catharines