We Made It

An entire calendar year has rolled around since the first PrizeFighting article was published. In that piece, I wrote about my past frustrations with getting started in an attempt to excise them and the result has been monthly fight predictions, semi-regular reviews of media, and intermittent attempts at analysis. By necessity, this is a 'slow media'-esque website.

I once declined to be on a friend's podcast because I didn't think there was a good enough reason for people to be interested in what I had to say. That inhibition to share what my interests and interpretations are with a wider audience had long been part of my personality. He responded by telling me "I don't think I trust your judgement on whether or not it's worth saying".

Much of my reading of late has been about history and not all of it boxing-related. John Blanke was a black trumpeter who played for rich white people over 500 years ago, he is "the first person of colour in England for whom life records and an identifiable portrait survive". He didn't set out to be, he just was.

There are only a few black reporters and pundits in boxing's present (more specifically, ones who haven't professionally worn gloves). DAZN's Ade Oladipo. DAZN's Ak & Barak. Ring Magazine's Hans Themistode. TNT Sports's JayDee Dyer. If we include new media, there's Nestor Gibbs of ThaBoxingVoice, Seconds Out's Radio Rahim, and ShowBizz The Adult. It's hard to miss that practically all of them pivoted to the fast media world of video.

Oral traditions predate written language. However, written language was truly revolutionary. Being literate was for all intents and purposes a form of magic. An illiterate messenger could be handed an object with markings on it to deliver to someone else, and the thoughts of the person who wrote those markings could traverse space and time into the mind of another human being countless miles away without the two ever meeting, completely bypassing those who saw no meaning in writing.

Reading is objectively good for your brain and forever will be.
Social media is probably the opposite.

In Blaise Pascal's 1657 Seizième lettre aux révérends pères jésuites, he wrote: "Je n'ai fait celle−ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." I have made this one (letter) longer only because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter. I.e. being succinct takes time, brevity is wit. The effort you spend editing your own output is for the benefit of the recipient, like thinking before you speak. Videos and podcasts do not respect your time. Too many of the interview subjects and interviewers do not care to say something thoughtful or thought-provoking.

That's not to say they can't learn. It really comes down to whether you practice enhancement of the self or criticism and subsequent improvement of the self. Anyone can either attribute success to exceptionalism for having pulled yourself up by your bootstraps without the help of others, or attribute it to a combination of external factors like community, education, society, and luck. Impostor syndrome is interesting because, bar literal impersonation, it's only ever experienced in situations that impostors do not find themselves in. An aspiring composer who composes is no longer aspiring, they just are.

My writing has plenty of ways to improve, yet aspiring to be a better writer feels like aspiring to chase shadows. The biggest concern at this point is not evolving. Covering world title fights every month was to force myself to be consistent and up-to-date, covering media was to interrupt the tedium. There are still lots of things to accomplish and you'll see them over time. Thank you for being here to read it.