The Beltline: Watching action from Japan between breakfast and lunch might be the best and most enjoyable way to experience boxing in 2024

By Elliot Worsell

IT might very properly be an age factor. Either that or an growing want for and appreciation of sleep. Whatever it’s, the prospect of watching boxing from Japan at the splendidly civilised hour of 11am has turn out to be not solely extra and extra interesting however now additionally seems to signify the best way to watch the sport and do justice to the action inside the ring.

This thought arrived on Saturday (February 24) – someplace between 11 and 12 o’clock – and was largely impressed by the performances of Junto Nakatani and Takuma Inoue, each of whom gained bantamweight world title fights on the similar invoice in Tokyo. To see their fights finish in surprisingly dramatic style – Nakatani stopped Alexandro Santiago in six rounds, and Inoue stopped Jerwin Ancajas in 9 – was one factor, however even higher was the proven fact that each fights have been wrapped up by 1pm, UK time.

Indeed, so accustomed have we turn out to be to associating the act of watching boxing with fatigue, I used to be virtually uncertain what to do after watching all the combating conclude on Saturday. Unlike when watching fights from the US, I hadn’t interrupted my sleep to watch boxers by eyes I hoped would keep open for the length. Nor, as is the case when watching UK fights, had I impatiently waited up half the evening in the hope the essential occasion would each start and end earlier than midnight.

Instead, thanks to the time distinction, I had managed to watch some elite-level boxing with the remainder of the day nonetheless forward of me. Also, I felt I had a far better appreciation of what I had truly watched – the particulars, the intricacies – by advantage of getting noticed it by comparatively contemporary eyes and with a transparent thoughts. Gone, you see, was any of the resentment you generally experience when both waking up for a combat or ready up for one. Gone, too, have been the myriad distractions you usually experience when attending a combat, in addition to the want to continuously test practice instances to guarantee you will get dwelling at the finish of all of it.

That’s not to say watching a dodgy stream of an occasion from Japan is preferable to attending fights in particular person, however definitely for UK boxing followers there’s a actual thrill to the consolation of watching boxing from Japan these days. This is true of watching not solely somebody like Nakatani, who’s quick changing into certainly one of their massive stars, but in addition in fact Naoya Inoue, the largest star of all of them, who has been usually brutalising opponents whereas boxing followers in the UK determine what constitutes brunch.

On Boxing Day, in truth, many people can have watched Inoue cease Marlon Tapales in spectacular model; a present sullied solely by the tragic flip taken by an earlier combat between Seiya Tsutsumi and the late Kazuki Anaguchi. There was additionally that balmy morning in July when Inoue ran by fellow champion Stephen Fulton as if the unbeaten American was an opponent like every other. Then, to return even additional, how can anybody overlook the basic 2019 combat between Inoue and Nonito Donaire, which came about at Thursday lunchtime in the UK and firmly cemented Inoue’s status as a can’t-miss fighter, particularly when, for us, the pleasure of watching him doesn’t come at the expense of evening’s sleep.

There is one thing extra to it than simply sleep, too, by the way. With Japanese boxing, there may be, it appears, a sort of high quality assure, for not often do the massive fights there ever disappoint. If, for instance, you’re not watching Inoue break faces and new floor, or Nakatani rise by the weights, you might as an alternative be handled to boxers like Kenshiro Teraji or Kazuto Ioka in action. Or Kosei Tanaka. Or Seigo Yuri Akui. Or the 105-pound Shigeoka brothers (Yudai and Ginjiro).

Whoever performs, by no means is the action from Japan something lower than pulsating and by no means is the high quality something aside from elite. That they then ship the action to the soundtrack of silence – so quiet are Japanese crowds – solely serves to make the experience of watching these occasions all the extra surreal and in some methods pleasurable. After all, with the noise eliminated from the spectacle – each of the followers and the hype males – you’re basically gifted boxing in its purest kind: two extremely expert and usually competitively matched boxers making an attempt to outdo each other with energy and smarts.

Simply put, to watch boxing from Japan earlier than noon in the UK is to just about get every little thing you need from the sport whereas at the similar time eradicating every little thing you may, in an excellent world, do with out. You see the best in the world carry out and can then decide them with out being informed what to suppose or what to really feel by hyperactive pundits or commentators keen to current the most popular model of occasions for both their boss or promoter. All you’re left with in the finish is the boxing, the action, the stuff that basically issues. Better but, in the technique of watching it unfold you are feeling contemporary, invigorated, even perhaps impressed. You are alert, awake. It feels virtually like a dream; too good to be true.