My kingdom for a heel
· Yahoo Sports
I briefly considered starting this piece with a humorous, topical rewrite of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” (as heard in the timeless cinematic masterpiece Shrek 2), but I’ve long since accepted the hard truth that I am not and never will be “Weird” Al Yankovic. Let’s just jump right in and talk about assholes.
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While we’ll never have a shortage of bad guys in professional sports, some archetypes are more overrepresented than others. The privileged (LA Dodgers, Colby Covington), the morally repugnant (Deshaun Watson, “Tank” Davis, Draymond Green), the obnoxious blowhards (Aaron Rodgers, Novak Djokovic), these guys are everywhere you look. What we’re facing a dearth of is proper heels. True-blue villains in the classic tie-the-damsel-to-the-train-tracks-moustache-optional mold.
Consider Tyson Fury, one of the gentlemen whose recent stints in the spotlight prompted me to abuse my status as a staff writer to expose as wide an audience as possible to my whining.
Fury clearly wants to portray himself as a swaggering talk-the-talk-walk-the-walk antihero, lacing his banter with enough self-effacement to ideally come off as a lovable rogue. Even putting aside his history of grotesque comments towards women and minorities and his association with accused mob boss Daniel Kinahan, which prevented him from getting a U.S. visa for 10 years before his new buddies wheedled the current President to overrule his staff as a favor, the schtick falls apart for a simple reason: he can’t trash-talk to save his life. I’m half-convinced the reason he kept his dad around for so long is that, like Conner4Real’s perspective manipulator, even Tyson’s worst word salad sounds Shakespearean next to John Fury’s inarticulate bellowing.
He’s not alone, unfortunately. I’m not holding everyone to Muhammad Ali’s standards, but the modern fighter’s inability to rattle off a slick one-liner feels like a plague. It’s especially egregious in the social media age, where most of the beef takes place online and requires no on-the-fly creativity. You’re telling me these doofs have infinite time and collaborators to craft artisanal beef and the best they can serve up is this crap?
Going back to my abusive ex-sport for a moment, I’m struck by the devolution of self-promotion in MMA. Chael Sonnen, despite rarely finishing foes and utilizing the sort of grapple-heavy approach that gets you cut from the UFC regardless of record these days, used high-quality chirping and sheer charisma to build a fount of goodwill that’s survived multiple high-profile losses and a failed drug test. The dude was funny, charming, creative, and self-assured enough that you couldn’t help but believe him when he vowed to destroy one of the most dominant champions to ever grace the cage.
Nowadays, antagonist enthusiasts have to content themselves with Josh Hokit randomly calling Michelle Obama a man and Sean Strickland posting AI slop of himself beating up Dylan Mulvaney. There’s no artistry there, and trust me, proper villainy requires artistry. It’s profoundly easy to piss people off; my cat pisses me off whenever she steals her brother’s prescription food and you don’t see me calling Miss Kitty the modern master of hype.
I call her The Baby and Sweetie-Pie and You Little Shit, for the record.
Speaking of little shits, how about Ben Whittaker, eh?
It takes a lot to snuff out the goodwill generated in me by a full-back Whitebeard Pirates tattoo, but Whittaker has managed the impossible. Despite a sterling pedigree and Eddie Hearn’s sternest attempts to make him into a face, he’s ticking every box on the checklist; favoritism from the matchmakers, favoritism from the officials, repeated implosions under pressure, and a criminal lack of personality. There’s no sauce there. He’s terminally sauceless.
This is a weird accusation to make considering his sizzle reels, but here’s the thing: showboating only works when there’s an element of danger. Roy Jones Jr dropping his hands against James Toney, Larry Bird telling the Lakers defense exactly where he’d shoot from ahead of the inbound; the whole point of showboating is to prove you’re so superior to your opponent that you can take stupid, unnecessary risks. Doing it against someone brought in to lose only serves to highlight how pathetic the matchmaking is.
It was hilarious when 51-year-old Ichiro Suzuki sat down nine high school girls in a complete-game shutout recently. It would be received more poorly if he was doing D-Generation X crotch chops after each K.
The obvious solution would be for Whittaker to pull his shenanigans against warm bodies, but it’s become pretty clear that he can’t, and the actual boxer underneath the spot monkey isn’t particularly entertaining. Though they may weigh around the same these days, he’s no Naseem Hamed. He can’t just put his head down and let the scoreboard do the talking, either, as it’s unclear at this point whether he could even best domestic rivals like Callum Smith and Joshua Buatsi. What’s an unlikable promoter’s pet with a fast-approaching ceiling to do?
Lean into it.
Take a few public speaking and comedy classes. Practice some droll, disrespectful bits of pageantry you can pull off against competent opponents without getting your skull caved in. Let everyone know you’re aware you’re getting special treatment and dare them to be the one to put you in your place. You’re still going to lose when you run into true elites, but hell, nobody expects Vegeta to ever beat Goku and we still love the guy.
There is a long and storied literary tradition of highfalutin, hyper-privileged pricks who nonetheless work their ways into our hearts through slick wordsmanship and an unabashed embrace of an unlevel playing field. Maybe that’s the niche Whittaker can slot into.