FanShot

Strictly Cosmopolitan: Carl Froch-George Groves Preview

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The gulf in status between the two combatants – one a member of standing in boxing’s international class, the other a British export in waiting – is a reminder as to the type of continuum on which all prize fighters find themselves. On one end of this continuum is the local: a world of neighborhood boxing gyms operating on shoestring budgets, where fame only goes as far as a two-line blurb in the community weekly. New York City, Youngstown, Cuauhtemoc–it could be anywhere. On the other end, the global: a level of status transcending borders but most closely associated with Las Vegas, a city anchored on barren Nevada land but so self-contained in its neon excess that it might just as well exist ethereally or in the minds of men. To scale the heights of the sport, as is the dream of any fighter, is to fight one’s way from one pole to the other – from the local to the global. Even Muhammad Ali was the "Louisville Lip" before he was ever "The Greatest." (read more)