And Now For Something Completely Different

Let's just negate all the intellectual work of the last post with some self-abasement, shall we?  As JP can attest to, I am a big fan of the boxing match.  I lurve boxing.  It's not really just about watching people hit each other, I think, because I don't really care for Ultimate Fighting.  For me, it's more about the art of fighting, I guess.  It's contained, it's all about strategy, and watching people work both mind and body together.  JP is probably snickering, because the philosophy of the whole thing is not what I'm espousing at actual matches with a beer in my hand.  That usually flows something like, "Knock the shit out of him!"  But underneath it all, it's really a very aesthetic experience for me.  Seriously.

When D/B and I get to go to a match, we usually buy tickets for the back row.  The fights we get to see are in a ballroom, so there really isn't a bad seat in the house.  Going to the back row might seem counter intuitive, but we like to stand and yell a lot, and sitting in the front doesn't really help all the people behind us.  Although I've often wondered about the weirdos (vast majority of people) who come to matches and sit there talking about god knows what while very exciting exchanges of blows are happening on the ropes at that very moment.  What the hell did they come there for?  Perhaps unsurprisingly, in spite of our efforts to tuck ourselves out of the way at most matches, we are now a recognizable feature at most fights by staff and some fighters.  People will say, "Hey, I wondered if you were going to show up."  (???)  So perhaps we've made too much of a spectacle of ourselves.  

I would like to think, actually, that the fighters know better than to get on our bad side.  Last Fight Night, I yelled, "You really don't want us to cheer against you, do you?" and apart from the chuckle the crowd had, the boxer seemed to pick up considerably after that.  We are quite the cheering squad.  The two of us have out-yelled a house of frat boys.  Good times.  Last event, my boxer crush said something about having seen/heard the two of us that night again.  (Again?)  He brings a large cheering squad of his own, so that means the two of us beat out literally a fourth of the room with our squawks.  I have no real indication of how loud we actually are, so it always surprises me.

Yes, I have a boxer crush.  I'm a huge fangrrl of Tommy Karpency, a light heavyweight boxer from Adah, PA.  As pictured below.  I got in on Tommy's 5th fight of his professional career.  If I recall correctly, Tommy dropped the guy in the first round before a minute had even passed.  Just knocked the hell right out of him.  He just turned 23 years old a few weeks ago (please don't ask me how I know), but at the time of the fight, he was probably 20 or 21.  He's currently the youngest man in the top 25 ranked US light heavyweights (he's #17).  I was really impressed by two things:  his technique and his punch.

I am also impressed that he is good looking (rare in my opinion for a boxer), and he is in the weight class that I find attractive, but that really has nothing to do with it.  Honestly.  He has an uncanny ability to size somebody up, feel them out, and get around their punches.  He knows almost immediately when someone has taken their guard down, and that's when he goes in.  It's quite fascinating to watch, really.  The first time I saw him fight, I remember thinking it was the first real fight I'd seen where I thought one of the people in the ring was a boxer.  That might sound dumb, but I don't really know how to explain it.  There is a certain sense of posture that comes with being a boxer--it's how he carries himself, it's how he gets around the ring, the way he punches.  Some people, believe it or not, look like chickens trying to take flight when they box.  Tommy looks like pure art.  Er, his boxing.  His boxing is pure art.

Then there is the punch itself.  It must be brutal.  It just drops people.  I mean, they're all in the same weight class, but that doesn't make the punches alike.  Some people have a vicious punch, they just get more power behind it.  When Tommy connects with somebody, they seriously feel it, and it's usually when he makes that first real connection on somebody that the fight "turns" and starts going his way.  They don't seem to recover.  The last fight I watched about a week or so ago was actually for a belt, the WBA Fedecentro light heavyweight title.  I'll let Eastside Boxing describe what happened:

A vicious left hook by Karpency dropped Phelps midway through the second stanza. After Phelps arose to beat the count, a two-fisted barrage by Karpency left his opponent helpless on the ropes forcing referee Mike Napple to put a halt to the bout.

Like I said, it just drops people.  They don't seem to really recover from it.  I'd love to know how it compares, but that's just getting geeky.  In his career, he's lost once and drawn once.  I watched the loss.  It was on ESPN's Friday night fights.  He was fighting Rayco Saunders, and he lost on the cards, even though Teddy Atlas had him winning the fight.  It looked about even to me, so I could see it going either way, even though I wanted Tommy to win.  But Rayco was about eleven years older than him, his alias is "WAR", used to be a drug dealer and was recently acquitted of aggravated assault, attempted homicide and reckless endangerment.  In 2005, he was supposed to be the witness against three people who had plotted to kill him, but he showed up in court wearing a skirt that said "Stop Snitching" and wouldn't cooperate with prosecutors.  LOL.  You have to lol at that.  If you want further giggles, here is his website, with forum:  link.  There are four posters and two topics so far.  But I don't think there's any shame in losing on the cards to Rayco Saunders.

Tommy's not a young Mike Tyson.  Or a young Ali.  But he's good.  He's really fucking good.  Maybe he's a young Tommy Karpency, if you get what I mean.  He's got talent.

If you wanted to see his official stats (or if you wanted a handy post about them as reference so you could find them for yourself later!), and really why wouldn't you, you can find them here:

http://www.boxrec.com/list_bouts.php?human_id=357083&cat=boxer

The ultimate goal, of course, is to see Tommy go for the #1 spot, maybe in Las Vegas or something.  Of course, that's pretty much up to him.  But it means so much more to be able to watch his career move forward.  That would be a great full circle kind of thing.  I'm getting screwed out of the next Fight Night because I'll be at the KY Derby.  But the next time I get to see Tommy box, I'll get a picture.  Because I'm that much of a fangrrl.

Good God, I love boxing.

Tommy needs his own website and forum.  There should totally be a Tommy fanpage, I'd so be all over that.  I could come up with some stupid nick to post as, like, I don't know, KentuckyKnockout or TKOhYeah or something else that's stupid.  It'd be more time to waste on the internet.  As it is, there's just his MySpace page, and hanging around on that is just...weird.

-- DV

Boxing links for the curious:  Eastside Boxing or Doghouse Boxing