Primal Fear

Boxing is the only sport I still occasionally watch on television. Yet over the past several years—perhaps longer—the world around it has grown increasingly strange, gradually eclipsed by the rise of the YouTube-boxer phenomenon. The bout that took place last Friday in Miami belonged squarely to this distorted new landscape of influencer boxing. There was no real upset; the outcome—Anthony Joshua knocking out Jake Paul—felt largely inevitable to most.

It wasn’t planned, but I watched—from the women’s bout on the undercard through to the main event. Neither fight was compelling enough to keep me on edge, yet it held my attention nonetheless. Entertaining, if not unforgettable.

Images of surfing or ocean swells no longer trigger any scent or emotion tied to the sport for me. Boxing, however, still does. Perhaps those sensations were simply too primal to forget.

Photo: My son, Nobi Jr., with Anthony Joshua at a gym in Fremont, California, 2022.