Sam Noakes walked to the ring in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Saturday with a wholesome smile on his face and opera music blaring. I wondered why. He was on his way to fight Abdullah Mason to kick off the “Ring IV” main card, the latest attempt to drum up interest in Saudi tourism and whitewash the country’s image with some boxing fights. Mason is a prodigious 21-year-old with fast feet, faster hands, and a lust for knockouts. His only vulnerability is that this latter trait can lead him to abandon his very capable defense in his quest for blood. Plenty of his opponents can find his chin with a good shot—Yohan Vasquez even decked him twice in the first round of their 2024 bout—before Mason separates them from their consciousness. If Mason ever loses, it will probably be by getting knocked the fuck out himself, so you may want to follow his career.
Anyway, Mason hurt Noakes in what felt like every single round. In the third, their heads collided hard, opening a gash next to Noakes’s left eye. What was a happy, unmarked face 15 minutes earlier turned red, along with both fighters’ trunks and plenty of the ring apron. Mason put himself in the line of fire enough that Noakes hurt him too, though not as badly, and that gave him hope. In the eighth round, Mason landed a body shot with such force that everybody in the arena went briefly silent, exhaling along with an agonized Noakes. But every time it looked like Noakes would break, his body reasserted its strength and stayed up. He somehow made the final bell, losing by unanimous decision. Boxing fans will love him forever for the bravery of the performance alone. As he hugged Mason, Noakes smiled again and blood flowed into his open mouth.
Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez smiles in the ring for a more straightforward reason: he is so, so much better than you. Everything in his fight with Fernando “Puma” Martinez, a fellow champion who ostensibly posed a real challenge going in, reminded him of that fact, even being punched in the face. Bam dominated so dispassionately that the scheduled 12 rounds felt like a drastically excessive amount of time. He said post fight that he knew he had Martinez figured out after one.
Puma’s durability got him through nine more humiliating stanzas (during one Bam damaged his nose, which leaked blood for the rest of the fight), at which point he mustered some resistance. A little string of punches earned applause from his supporting contingent in the stands. The cheers spurred Martinez on: he leaned a little too far over his front foot in his aggression, the first real mistake he’d made all night, and Bam promptly deposited him hard on his back for the count. Martinez looked shaken up from the floor, but I thought I also caught a hint of resignation in his eyes. At one point, broadcaster Todd Grisham said Bam would be a favorite against Naoya Inoue, who is not only two weight classes heavier but no worse than the third-best fighter of the generation. The take was wildly disrespectful to Inoue at best and delusional at worst. I also kinda get it.
Devin Haney’s smiles are harder to read into. He is a fantastic fighter, with titles in multiple weight divisions. But he has always fought as if a little bit scared. He uses a jab to keep opponents away, then grabs them to restrain their arms if they get too close. Occasionally, a counter-right hand features. He might grin while making you look bad – falling way short with your own jab, say, or taking his in the face for the 50th time—but he rarely looks that great himself. In 2023, Ryan Garcia ruined Haney’s perfect record by beating the hell out of him over 12 rounds, principally with a simple left hook. Garcia then tested positive for the banned substance ostarine and Haney’s “0” was reinstated. Boxing fans and insiders still seemed to blame Haney, though, hating on him extensively for his cowardice and inability to defend the left hook. There was no good reason for this, but people hating the negativity of Haney’s fighting style seemed like a reason.
In his fight following the Garcia disaster, Haney boxed so defensively that I wondered if he was irrevocably traumatized. Brian Norman, a bigger, harder-hitting fighter than Garcia, seemed certain to knock Haney out on Saturday. Haney abruptly decked Norman in the second round. There Norman was on his butt, mouth and nose leaking blood, the supposed puncher reduced to the punchee. Haney controlled the fight for the rest of its duration. That he hardly engaged with Norman in these rounds is why he will never be revered as straightforwardly as Noakes for his performance, though Haney is a better fighter.
Afterwards, Haney climbed triumphantly onto the ropes and stared at the camera. His smile was open-mouthed, a little vacant, and completely bloodless.
Anthony Yarde looked so serious walking to the ring for the main event of the day, especially next to David Benavidez and his goofy grin. Yarde has finished just about everybody he’s ever faced, short of the elite level. When he stepped up, he had world-class foes Artur Beterbiev and Sergey Kovalev in major trouble, but they both came back to knock Yarde out instead. Yarde was the underdog against Benavidez, and desperate to take his third and likely last opportunity to win a world title. Some—mostly from Yarde’s native United Kingdom—argued that he had a real shot, what with his learned wisdom and a perceived edge in power. Despite an ability to throw combinations at speeds that would make a lightweight jealous, Benavidez is generally underestimated; you can thank Canelo Alvarez’s years-long ducking of him for that. The least Canelo could have done was be honest about why.
Yarde knew, fighting tentatively from the start against the supposedly pillow-fisted Benavidez. Broadcaster Sergio Mora repeatedly praised his tactics—Yarde would throw a counter after one or two of David’s shots to disrupt those blazing-fast combinations—but the optics of a power-puncher retreating while being outlanded two-to-one didn’t seem ideal to me. In the fourth round, Yarde grabbed one of Benavidez’s arms, but David used the other to bang away at Yarde’s head and body with an alarming, primal ferocity rarely seen even in sanctioned violence. Firefights may compel Mason and amuse Bam; Benavidez likes them.
Next Benavidez started to get his combinations off in full: five, six, seven punches in a blur clubbing Yarde in the face. Yarde’s nose exploded. Blood spilled from his nostrils as if from a tap, accelerated by Benavidez’s punches turning the faucet further, further, further. Benavidez’s inability to turn off the lights with a single punch became a stomach-turning curse rather than a blessing: shot after shot after shot detonated on Yarde’s destroyed nose, and still the fight went on. Don’t watch the highlights.
I never really bought into Yarde’s chances because Benavidez is really fucking good. (Seriously, he might never lose a fight.) I also didn’t have much of an emotional connection to Yarde’s career. But watching Benavidez batter him into a diminished version of himself was quite overwhelming. One round Yarde was essentially fine, losing rounds but yet to get hit with anything too calamitous. It seemed like he might make it out without taking a bad beating. Then he was drowning in his own hemoglobin, shelling up against the ropes, mouth open and eyes alight with panic.
Yarde buried his face into referee Hector Afu’s shoulder when Afu mercifully waved off the fight, so I don’t know what Yarde's expression looked like then. When he walked over to congratulate Benavidez a few seconds later, his face retained enough shape that I could tell he was grinning. With tears pressing into the sides of my eyes, I couldn’t smile along.
