Swinging at Shadows
Will Cruz/Garbrandt Be MMA’s Mayweather/Canelo?
Three years ago, a 23-year-old kid named Canelo Alvarez fought the best boxer in the world.
The fight, billed with the weighty subtitle “The One”, garnered more anticipation than the usual Floyd Mayweather match. Mayweather’s unbeatable aura had not lost its shine in the ring, but there was a building anticipation for the arrival of Father Time; at 36, Mayweather was thought to be on the brink of decline, and in boxing the fall is often fast and unforgiving. We squinted for any hint of slowed reflexes, of a boxer’s body beginning to break down as they all one day do.
In his opponent, Mayweather had a true foil for the public to hitch their wagon behind. Canelo was every bit of twenty-three; musclebound and menacing and with a shell of blissful arrogance. He had almost as many professional victories as Mayweather, but statistics can be deceiving. He was a young boxer, and carried all the threats and flaws a young boxer does. A green fighter of Canelo’s kind is as dangerous as he is vulnerable, his ignorance to the biggest stage’s bright lights an anchor only if his opponent can weather his youthful storm.
Canelo was not favored to beat Mayweather — who could be? — but there was something to the matchup that suggested the potential for a historical shift. The narrative was in place: the wily veteran, maligned by many for his actions outside of the ring, but undeniable in his ringcraft and defensive wizardry; the hungry young puncher, less seasoned but more dangerous, capable of ending any fight with the right swing. Baby-faced and bright-eyed, and with a built-in Mexican fanbase, Canelo had the makings of the heir to Mayweather’s pound-for-pound (and pay-per-view) throne.
Smart money said that Mayweather would win in the fashion he tends to: smart, crafty, hard to catch. But if Canelo lands…
The changing of the guard never came, at least not during those twelve rounds.
The opening stanzas were competitive in the sense that Canelo seemed comfortable, but Mayweather proved at once that he had not lost a step. Often chastised for “dancing” his way to victories, Mayweather spent much of the fight in the pocket, slipping punches and bouncing shots off his reflexive shell before stinging the young Mexican with counters.
It was a young fighter’s flaws that began to bleed into Canelo’s game by the fight’s midpoint, when his stifled offense gave way to unmasked frustration. He snuck in a low blow in the fourth, shoulder-bumped out of a clinch in the fifth. He paid no respect to Mayweather’s aura — a good sign for the young underdog — but grew increasingly lost in the ring. In the seventh, he gave up on his futile plan to corner Mayweather and instead backed himself up against the ropes, only for Mayweather to tee off on him with tactical aggression. It’s in the subtle spaces that Mayweather shows his greatness — even with Canelo stone-frozen against the ropes, Floyd refuses to bite too hard, keeping his combinations tight and measured.
“Canelo may well be the fighter of tomorrow,” Al Bernstein says as the twelfth round comes to a close, “he is not quite yet the fighter of today.”
While a smiling Mayweather commanded the podium at the post-fight presser, the young Canelo shrunk in his seat, his head low, the bigger fighter made small by the sting of his first defeat. When it was his turn to speak, Canelo was blunt in his assessment of the loss.
“I couldn’t catch him…”
To call Dominick Cruz the Floyd Mayweather of mixed-martial arts does not paint the full picture of the UFC bantamweight champion. Mayweather’s tools have been shaped by boxers of old — his impenetrable shoulder-roll defense, his snapping pull-counters — but in his arsenal they’re sharper than seen before. Some of Cruz’s tricks bear similarities to certain trailblazers (he was inspired first by Ali’s footwork) but in MMA, he’s rewritten the rules of movement.
In the days of the WEC and then in his early UFC title defenses, Cruz was undervalued if only because few attempted to understand him. Even a typically astute commentator like Joe Rogan fell back on words like “weird”, “awkward”, and “unconventional” to describe the feints and traps that Cruz sets for opponents in the cage. In a sport still in its infantile stages, Cruz is one of the first true masterminds. (A fighter of lesser mental fortitude and adaptability would have caved somewhere in that four-year stretch of career-threatening injuries.)
Like Mayweather, Cruz abides by the simplest of fighting philosophies with an equally complex application: hit and don’t get hit, with an emphasis on the latter. Both men are adaptable to the point of taking on chameleon-like forms. In his youth Mayweather was a ferocious counter-puncher that took risks while rarely feeling any repercussive sting. In his twilight years he earned his reputation as a cautious out-fighter, but he could turn the tables at any time; he spent much of “The One” in the pocket with Canelo, oozing the same confident calm that he has on the outside, and used Canelo’s offense him.
Cruz operates similarly, so fluid and fast in his reactions that all phases of mixed-martial-arts blend into one flowing stream of attack and defense.
His recent opponents, from T.J. Dillashaw to Urijah Faber, seem to dismiss Cruz’s gifts before being taught a clinical lesson in combat. He’s a point fighter. He’s got no power, he just dances and looks for the decision. “The Decisionator”. I’m going to knock him out. Dillashaw’s in-fight adjustments in January suggested that he respected Cruz’s abilities more than he let on publicly. Faber’s utter perplexity in the face of Cruz’s movements in June proved he had learned little from their previous contest.
Twenty-five year-old Cody Garbrandt has sung the same tune ahead of his UFC 207 title fight with Cruz. In fairness, “No Love” poses a one-punch threat rarely seen in the 135-lb division. Knocking out all but one of his pro opponents gave Garbrandt his title shot but also brands him with the young puncher’s curse. With every big right hand and stiffened foe, an unavoidable cloud of arrogance builds around him. Even great fighters are susceptible to this curse; watch Conor McGregor spin and leap and swing at Nate Diaz back in March, and then look utterly shellshocked when his opponent hadn’t crumbled by the second round. Every slugger is dealt a lesson eventually — and the great ones learn something — and there is no better teacher than Dominick Cruz.
Yet still that intangible something that widened eyes and raised pulses ahead of Canelo vs. Mayweather is present again as Garbrandt prepares to dethrone Cruz. The fight game is unforgiving to its veterans, in the world of four-ounce gloves even moreso than in boxing. Cruz is by no means an over-the-hill fighter, having looked his best in his two 2016 performances, but Garbrandt carries that youthful sense of danger that Canelo brought into the ring three years ago. It may lead him into the same cold and deep waters that Canelo found himself in, swimming blind with a master technician that sees all.
Canelo would go on to inherit Mayweather’s role as boxing’s biggest box-office attraction, albeit on a much smaller scale. Garbrandt, his blissful shell still in tact, has the tools to one day take over the division Cruz now rules. It will take more than what he’s shown, however, for him to reveal himself as more than a potential fighter of tomorrow.
But if Cody catches him…
Catch. It is a curious word to use in terms of a fist fight, almost derogatory in its implication of randomness or chance timing. It implies a fateful collision rather than a systematic besting of an opponent.
It’s a dangerous word to lean on when fighting a ghost.
