A love letter to ShoBox
And the return of this newsletter!
(Photo: Showtime Sports)
Hey, friends. It’s been a while.
Alright, super quickly: I started this a few years ago, before I had a full-time job in journalism and before I’d ever had the opportunity to cover boxing at a professional level. I stopped when I got hired at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, first as an intern and then as a full-time reporter.
Since then, I’ve moved across the country and changed jobs. I still watch fights nearly every weekend and I definitely miss writing about boxing, so, inspired by a particularly lively edition of ShoBox on Friday, I’m deciding to bring this back. I don’t want to give myself a quota of how much I should be writing because I don’t want it to feel like a chore, but I’m hoping to do this a couple times a month moving forward.
If you’re still hanging on as a subscriber from the initial run, welcome back (the unsubscribe button is at the bottom, lol). If you’re new, also welcome. Hopefully you don’t already want to unsubscribe.
All right then, about the fights. ShoBox is Showtime’s prospect series, usually running on Friday nights and including fighters with undefeated or near-undefeated records squaring off against each other. It’s been going on for more than two decades, but gets extra credibility for having dozens of former champions on its alumni list. Among them: Tyson Fury, Andre Ward, Deontay Wilder and Timothy Bradley.
That’s not to say ShoBox is constantly putting the best prospects in front of the world to sink or swim. Especially with the current TV landscape, promotional companies are signing prospects at the very beginning of their careers and putting them on major TV networks right away. ShoBox works with a slew of different promoters, but you’re not going to see a blue-chip Top Rank prospect fighting a fellow prospect on Showtime.
There have been fewer editions of ShoBox over the past few years, no doubt the product of budget constraints and the pandemic. But it was back with three fights on Friday, headlined by a 168-pound clash between Sean Hemphill and David Stevens.
There are of course people who are very plugged in to the sport and know almost all the fighters, but I think it’s fair to say most people tuning it to ShoBox don’t know much about the fighters they’re about to see. And that’s the point! It’s not by any means perfect, but ShoBox can feel like a tiny corner of boxing that isn’t constantly being bogged down by nonsense that takes the forms of sanctioning bodies, commissions and promotional companies.
Over eight rounds, Hemphill and Stevens engaged in a classic boxer vs puncher matchup, with Hemphill — the longer fighter — having success from range, while Stevens — the more powerful fighter — tried to close the distance and turn a boxing match into a fight. Stevens had more and more success as the fight went on, but it still seemed close going into the final round. That’s when Stevens, with less than a minute to go, dropped Hemphill and then finished him with a brutal sequence with just two seconds left on the clock.
The scorecards revealed afterwards that Stevens was ahead, meaning he was on his way to the win even without the big final round. But this was still an 8-round fight that had everything you could realistically ask for. It was the best of ShoBox — a competitive fight, two fighters we want to see again and potentially the emergence of a true contender.
You’re never going to tune into a ShoBox card with the same anticipation you feel when a heavyweight title is on the line. It’s definitely something for the hardcore fans, who are probably treated worse than their counterparts in any other sport, what with unnecessary pay-per-views and marinated fights that never happen. But still! There are some great things about being a boxing fan, and ShoBox is one of them.
Sometimes weird stuff happens. One time, heavyweight contender Frank Sanchez had to wait 15 minutes in the second round when a rope collapsed off the ring and it took officials that long to fix it. On Friday, even, Stevens’ shoe started to fall apart halfway through the fight, so his trainer ripped off the sole and he fought the rest of the fight without it. Boxing is great when it’s weird, honestly, and sometimes ShoBox is both.
Long may it continue!