A pretty pleasure awaits on Saturday night when the two almost best super bantamweights in the world meet in Manchester, England, over twelve rounds. Almost all fights in boxing these days are promoted far beyond their own meaningfulness, but Carl Frampton?s bout with Scott Quigg is that increasingly rare and precious thing?a fight between near-equals, with an audience that knows it. Even Matchroom Promotions?s Eddie Hearn, who has spent the past few years likening Anthony Joshua to every half-great heavyweight in history, has kept relatively shtum.
Partly this is because his fighter, Quigg, is the bout?s underside. Frampton, Belfast, Northern Ireland, is the real star here, with his manager, Barry McGuigan, perhaps also the only figure in British boxing capable of ruffling Hearn?s Sky-backed feathers: it was McGuigan, after all, who took Frampton away from Hearn in 2013 in lieu of signing a co-promotional agreement. Hearn was then left with Quigg, Bury, England, who might match Frampton for talent but greatly lacks his charisma. While both have held world title belts for some time, it is Frampton who leads his own bills, Quigg, 31-0-2 (23), who shares them with others. This says much about them as characters: Frampton is charismatic and cool, the centre around which Cyclone Promotions revolves, while Quigg, introverted, careful, shy, is one of the many at Matchroom and Joe Gallagher?s Gym.
Work a little harder at these types and they produce themselves also in the ring. Frampton has much more the air of a gunfighter about him, his hands harder, his mood cold and slick: he fights with the control of a man who knows himself, who knows his place in the pecking order?high. And Quigg? He?s diligent, industrious, hard-working, tending to keep his hands high, chin tucked, always already ever-so-slightly panicked. In 2014, Frampton, 29, called him ?programmed, almost robotic and stiff? in an interview with Boxing Monthly. This is not quite the fighter Quigg, 27, had looked like becoming in his early professional career, before joining Gallagher; that Quigg seemed a little slicker, a little harder-hitting, a little less set. And while he roundly thrashed Kiko Martinez in his last fight, even this thrashing, which saw new Quigg look a little more young Quigg, was secondary and belated: Frampton had two wins over Martinez already.
Which is not to diminish the quality of the fight so much as to enhance it: there?s a narrative here, one in which Quigg, the boy so polite he asked to be expelled from school to pursue boxing, is always secondary to Frampton, secondary in joining Hearn, secondary in popularity, in reputation, in record. This is not really a narrative that?s been spun much thus far?better to present the fighters as equals for fear people take the wrong impression?but it?s one that should be considered. Secondariness is a difficult thing for most fighters to take, but British ones especially. Above all, it was anger at his projection of superiority that drove Nigel Benn against Chris Eubank. ?What annoyed me most,? he told Ben Dirs for his 2013 book, The Hate Game, ?was the way he looked down his nose at everybody. He thought he was an eloquent man, but really he needed elocution lessons.?
Benn-Eubank is always the fight to which all-British world title fights are compared. It is British boxing?s Waste Land, its Don Quixote, its Inferno, the seminal moment which all in the future recall, whether rightly?as perhaps with Froch-Groves?or not (Haye-Chisora, anyone?). But the comparison here might be warranted. Unlike Benn and Eubank, whose enmity was generally real, both seeming to see exactly what they didn?t want to be in the other, Frampton and Quigg don?t appear to hate one another?s guts (what Frampton and McGuigan think of Hearn might be another matter). At the same time, they?re opposites in style and character, and similar enough in talent to promise much.
And this is the critical point: though Frampton, 21-0 (14), has accomplished more than Quigg, beaten better opponents more regularly, he?s never looked transcendentally better than him, never much more, indeed, than his equal. Modern-day boxing prides itself on narrative outside the ring and joyless predictability within it, its surprise and mystery, if not, of course, its violence, less surprising and mysterious all the time: boxing today becomes more a bloodless sport than a bloodsport, even if the red stuff is spilled. For something can be bloody and yet lifeless. And who wants to see a sitting duck get hit for six?
This is why Frampton-Quigg promises much. Forget the narrative, their records, their promoters: watch two quality fighters go at it on Saturday night without knowing in advance the promised end. Frampton?s the favorite with the bookies, but not by much. So here?s a reason for viewing: Watch something like a sport, for a change.
