IF ever a line summed up a fighter, it was Subriel Matias’ declaration this week that just knocking down Liam Paro wouldn’t satisfy his bloodlust. Instead, he wants to make the Australian suffer.

While we like to shake our heads in disgust or disapproval in response to such a statement, as when Prince Naseem strutted into the ring surrounded by cemeteries and zombies, or when Sergei Kovalev openly mocked his victim’s distraught children sitting ringside, there is a quietly awkward situation of pleasure, that can be derived from the uncompromising nature of a rugged fighting machine.

Perhaps, given his history, Matias should “know better” when speaking out on the subject. But he’s a tough man in a tough sport.

On the opposite side, coming in with a record of 24-0 (15 KO), IBF super lightweight title challenger Liam Paro has no illusions about what it will take to dethrone the man who has beaten, broken and stolen the title from the soul of his last five victims .

“I’m a fighter and I fight like a fighter, and I’m proving that by not only fighting the most avoided guy in the division, but by going to his backyard to do it,” Paro said.

“I always said I would fight anyone and now I’m showing it. There’s a world title on the line and that’s what you dream about as a kid, winning world titles, and what better way to do that than by eliminating the number one fighter in the division. I didn’t want to take the basic route, you want to beat the best and there is no better way.

With full faith in his cornerback team, led by coach Alfie Di Carlo, Paro believes that a solid camp, tough training and a keen tactical mind will see him through the night and at the end of it with the title strapped to his belt.

“It’s a world title fight and you shouldn’t expect anything other than a difficult night’s work. I’m ready for a 12-round war. I’ll give 110 percent and I’m ready for whatever he throws at me. The IBF is a great organization and I believe it will be a fair fight, so the decision will depend on me and him and who wants it the most that night. If that happens and it goes 12 rounds, I have the boxing skills to come out on top in the cards.

Getting ahead on the cards is one thing. Staying there is completely different. Petros Ananyan managed to do this at the beginning of 2020, when he inflicted the only disadvantage on Matias in 21 fights. All of the remaining 20 victories were within reach, including revenge on Ananyan two years later when Subriel had gotten his act together. As if Paro hadn’t already received enough warning, Matias’ terse words about his return home to Puerto Rico veered into usual territory.

“During camp, I feel like an animal trapped in a cage,” Matias said. “Being imprisoned, having daily hassles, being away from family. This creates a monster that grows inside me during camp. I leave the camp as an animal in search of prey, and this time it is Liam Paro.

“I’m preparing to take damage and deal damage. They want to take the beans from my family and we can’t let that happen. We’ve put a lot of effort into being here, and I can’t lose it all in one day. That’s why I have to make these sacrifices,” Matias continued, darkening by the second.

“Many say I’m crazy, but I like it, one day they will open their eyes and I will become the unified champion. They’ll have to give it to me.

Although Matias appears to be a brutal world champion on paper, the 32-year-old’s approach is more refined.

His opponent can also box and punch a little. A confident southpaw with a decent kick, Paro annihilated domestic rival Brock Jarvis in one round and scored a forceful sixth-round victory over the talented but unpredictable Montana Love in tardy 2023.

If he can march into a hostile environment, silence the crowd and grab Subriel Matias’ 140-pound crown, effectively derailing the freight train momentum of one of boxing’s best beasts, then the Queensland man deserves all the credit.

Intense and lively throwing bombs at Matias early on brought success to players such as Jeremias Ponce, Batyrzhan Jukembayev and Shohjahon Ergashev. Keeping the boogeyman at bay for a long time is a much more tough task.

Another tough task is generating the hype and buzz needed to capture the attention of the boxing audience tuned in to a pay-per-view event in Las Vegas that is taking place around the same time. If one player can rival Gervonta Davis in a spine-chilling finish, it’s Subriel Matias. Just don’t expect any apology when he does it.

It started with a voice in the crowd. Deafening, confident, intrusive, undesirable. Hearing this voice, every member of the gathered crowd turned, wondering first whether the interruption had been planned, and then whether anyone around them could attribute the name of the man whose words had caused it. From there, attention naturally turned back to Ben Whittaker, the man whose voice was silenced by the latter. We then wondered if maybe Whittaker would be able to provide some context to what was going on. We then wondered if perhaps he had the knowledge we all lacked.

At that moment, looking from the back of a hotel conference room in London, it could have been almost anyone. It could be, for example, a disgruntled hotel guest whose leopard-print bathrobe was previously stolen by Whittaker, or, for that matter, a disgruntled former adversary of Whittaker demanding “respect” that was never shown to Whittaker when they shared a ring. It could have been the voice of one of those modern boxing managers who share their thoughts on everything with fans, whether in cars or in conservatories on Zoom. Or it could have been Mauricio Sulaiman with a modern belt or Turki Alalshikh with a modern idea. It could have been a retired fighter trying to flog CBD oil or a physical manifestation of Ryan Garcia’s tweet. More likely, with Ben Whittaker on stage, it may have been the ghost of Frankie Randall demanding a return to his antique nickname: “The Surgeon.” And if not that, it could be Emanuel Augustus, who wanted all his antique moves and his entire identity back.

For now, we only had an accent and a few words. From these words, he obviously wanted a fight with this man. Fight with Whittaker. Fighting for money. He also accused Whittaker of having fought complete nobodies up to this point and avoided him, a moment that had countless camera-wielding fans turning on the Caps Lock feature on their phones in preparation for the headline. Remember, Whittaker didn’t want to play the same game. Instead, he cooled down any simmering tension by saying, “Someone get this man a Sprite and a banana.” At this point, the only sound in the room was laughter.

Then he sort of disappeared, the burglar; a man with a voice but no name. Taken out of the room through a side door directly into the hall, the agitator achieved his goal and quickly fled, never to return. There was really no need for this as the mission was accomplished. Eventually, the room soon learned that he wasn’t just an attention seeker looking to cause chaos on the Internet, but was actually a boxer. A real boxer. A boxer like Whittaker.

How refreshing, antique school, to see a boxer on the loose, in real life, go to such lengths to show up at another man’s press conference when he could have easily stayed at home and harassed him online like so many in boxing who currently they are very popular. How wonderful to know that some people still want to go a step further, analog men in a digital world.

Later we even got his name: Ezra. Ezra. The name would have to wait. It would have to wait until a better phone signal allowed BoxRec.com to load on my phone. By then, just for fun, I was trying to remember all the notable Ezras I knew. Pound; poet. Koenig; musician. Miller; actor. When it comes to boxing, the only person that came to mind was Sellers, although it couldn’t have been him because he sadly passed away in 2013.

No, this Ezra was a voice and a name modern to all of us. Ezra Arenyeka. That was his name. Or to give it a title: Eworitse Ezra Arenyeka. Born in Nigeria but living in Sale, we all discovered at almost the same time that this was the 28-year-old known as the “African King” who currently holds a record of 12-0 (10), hence his unwavering confidence. He has fought once in the UK, against Mohamed Cherif Benchadi in 2022, but has campaigned mainly in Nigeria, with occasional appearances in Ghana, the Netherlands and Colombia.

“Do you want to interview him?” several of us were asked this afternoon.

“Who?”

“Ezra. Is outside.

I still wasn’t sure if he was a boxer or not at this stage, no matter if he had a good reputation, I sensed that most people who were offered the opportunity politely turned it down. certainly yes, if only to make my point: don’t feed the birds; pay no attention to attention seekers. Or something like that.

And yet, despite the belief that denying him extra attention was the right thing to do, there remained a much greater belief that Ezra Arenyeka had acted insecurely and that in the end he would be the one laughing. Indeed, watching him at work, I was reminded of the moment when Mahmoud Charr – then ‘Manuel’ – did something similar at the press conference at Upton Park after David Haye’s fifth-round stoppage of Derek Chisora ​​in July 2012. That night, when Charr approached Haye at the top table, the reaction was very similar. Yet despite all this uncertainty, this approach worked. Suddenly, without beating anyone of note and despite no one knowing his name, Charr, the so-called “Diamond Boy”, was selected to fight Haye in September. This fight probably would have happened as well if Haye hadn’t found a more entertaining and noteworthy circus act in Tyson Fury shortly after signing the fight with Charr.

Similarly, Arenyeka will be rewarded on June 15 at Selhurst Park for his courage, insolence and self-promotion. That’s when, as expected, he’ll actually fight Ben Whittaker and get a chance to back up everything he shouted about the former amateur star at a press conference in a London hotel. Moreover, for both Arenyeka and Whittaker, a single and unexpected outburst at the press conference ensured that the June 15 featherlight heavyweight fight would be the most compelling and significant of Whittaker’s fledgling professional career. This is quite a feat, considering that no one could be sure that he was boxing at all when his opponent attacked.

LIKE many children, every decision and turn Xander Zayas made in his early years was born out of necessity, not the luxury of choice. For example, at the age of 11, he moved to America from Puerto Rico simply because his mother and stepfather wanted to put down roots there. Then, once he gets there, he will learn to speak English within six months, because without this skill he would feel even more isolated and alien than before. Meanwhile, earlier, at the age of just six, he was taken to a boxing gym and then learned to box not because he wanted to, but because his mother, concerned about the abuse he had to endure, forced him to do so as a way to teach him self-defense. In fact, it was the first language other than his native that Zaya learned as a child: the language of self-defense; martial language; the language of adapting to the environment.

“At first she put me out there to learn, but honestly, I didn’t want to do it,” said Zayas, now 21. “I didn’t want to get hit. I’ve already been hit on the street, so why would I want to get hit for fun too?

“But that’s how it all started anyway, and I remember there was this little girl who beat me so bad, man. She handled me well in sparring. It got to the point where I was just mad at myself and I was like, “Man, come on!” You have to do something with that! So I started going back and hitting shots, and then I found I fell in love with it.

Let me repeat once again: Zayas’ mastery of boxing was neither accidental nor even natural, but rather something forced by circumstances. In this case, he was forced to learn and improve because of the humiliation he felt when his girlfriend took him to the gym in hopes of reducing the humiliation he experienced outside the gym. As is often the case, one thing led to another, and by the time Zayas was 11 and living in Sunrise, Florida, he was at least able to take care of himself in a way he hadn’t been able to before he found boxing. gym. This, if nothing else, gave him the self-confidence that he would otherwise have been sorely lacking, taking such an essential step at such a newborn, impressionable age.

“It was extremely arduous at first,” he said, “coming from (San Juan) Puerto Rico and not knowing the language; lack of friends; having to start a fresh school and find a fresh boxing gym. It was really arduous at first, but at the age of 11 you are like a sponge. You start collecting things very quickly. Within six or eight months I was speaking the language and had a few friends. So it was much easier.

“There was no other place where Spanish was spoken except in my house. Wherever you went, whether to a supermarket or a restaurant, you had to speak English. There’s no other way. Where I live in the US, there isn’t a vast Latino community, and if there is, they still talk to you in English because they want to push you to be better.”

In many ways, this feeling could describe much of Zayas’s newborn life and the journey he has experienced thus far. After all, with every challenge before him, he was committed to finding a solution, and in pursuing that solution, he not only added strings to his bow from a practical standpoint, but also accumulated wisdom that belies his age.

“Being around so many professional players from a newborn age definitely helped,” he said as he was praised for his mature voice. “Since I was 12 years senior, I have been sparring with professional fighters and training around them. I managed to see it all. Besides, my family raised me this way; be grounded and balanced. Throughout my life, I have been surrounded by people older than me, which has taught me how to take care of myself and run a business. Do your thing and get out, that’s all. There’s nothing else to do.”

It certainly seems like a typical phenomenon; or prodigy. Blessed not only with incredible maturity and impressive composed, Zayas is also a student of both boxing and life, and observes others with such a keen eye that it is no wonder he has imitated so many mannerisms along the way, whether or not evident in his speech or in the ring.

“When I was 12 or 13, that’s when I really started watching boxing,” he said. “I used to watch gigantic fights, but they were usually broadcast too slow and I had to go to bed. But from around the age of 13, I started watching boxing a lot more. I would watch Miguel Cotto, my favorite fighter of all time, as well as Andre Ward and Manny Pacquiao. Who else? The Klitschko brothers (Vitali and Wladimir). Vasily Lomachenko. I remember when he came back from the Olympics. Sensational.

“Going into high school, I knew at the age of 13 or 14 that this was what I wanted to do. In my first year, one of my teachers – my English teacher – came and said that we had to write down our main goal in life and say where we all saw ourselves in five years. I wrote that I was going to be a professional boxer, and then we had to throw it away – it was like a game – and someone picked it up and gave me the newspaper back. Less than five years later I was a professional fighter.”

Of course, the gigantic goal for any amateur boxer is to appear and hopefully medal in the Olympics, and in that respect Zayas was no different. He, too, wanted to call himself an Olympian and represent his country, but only the fresh age requirement of 19 would prevent Zayas from achieving that at the 2020 Summer Games.

“It was a huge disappointment for me,” he said. “I feel like it’s a disappointment for any athlete when you dream of going to the Olympics and representing your country and you can’t do it because of some rules or technical reasons.

“For me it wasn’t that arduous because there was an age difference and I knew I didn’t want to wait until 2024. If I did, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now. So it wasn’t that difficult for me because it gave me the opportunity to turn professional. I knew I didn’t want to wait until 2024, so I took the opportunity. Then you think about all the athletes who were preparing for the 2020 Games and then were hit by the Covid pandemic. They had to start all over again. I bet it was much harder for them than it was for me.

As for Zayas, he turned the disappointment of missing out on the Olympics into a kind of motivation; the motivation to not necessarily try again, but instead do what he’s always wanted to do: go pro. He did so in 2019, becoming, at the age of 16, the youngest boxer to sign a professional contract with Top Rank in the 53 years since its founding. However, he did this only after making sure that everything was fine with his mother.

“We sat down as a family and talked about it, but my mom didn’t want me to do it at first,” he said. “And she said, ‘Well, you haven’t graduated yet.’ You’re not a grown man yet either, but soon you’ll be fighting grown men. Then I went back to her and said, “Listen, this is what I want to do.” It’s my life. This is what I want to devote myself to. She told me, “OK, if you graduate from high school, you can do this.” I started homeschooling the same year, the same semester I turned pro, and finished high school online with a concentration in boxing.

The advantage of staying in high school, beyond all the learning, was that Zayas could remain rooted, human, and in touch, at least for now, with kids his own age. It also meant that he would experience the pride of seeing his peers rejoice upon learning that he was going to take his boxing journey to the next level when he turned 17.

“I remember I was on a field trip and they announced it (he had turned pro),” he said. “One of my boys said, ‘Hey, did you really just sign with Top Rank?’ But I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t know this was the day they would announce it. So I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and he showed it to me and said, “Look, it’s here!” He shows me this story and suddenly I say, “Oh yes, I signed a contract with Top Rank!” It was amazing. Everyone was really ecstatic for me. I feel like all my friends from high school were good people, so they were all really ecstatic that I was ecstatic.”

Zayas is currently 18-0 with 12 knockouts. He will headline his first major event on June 8 at Madison Square Garden in Novel York, where he will face former WBO super welterweight champion Patrick Teixeira over 10 rounds. This undoubtedly represents the toughest test of Zayas’ career to date, given the hype that has followed him at every turn and with him being described as everything from “a beacon of hope for Puerto Rico” to “the next Miguel Cotto,” maybe such a fight isn’t so premature after all . While Xander Zayas may be newborn and still in the learning phase of both his life and career, some men – boxers – began the battle with puberty, so to speak, much earlier than others. In Zayas’ case, his voice deepened faster than his peers. As soon as he took off his vest, hair appeared on his chest.

“Pressure will always follow you, no matter what you do in life,” Zayas said. “As a newborn boxer, I feel like there will always be pressure on me. I have the whole country behind me, so there will always be pressure. I just have to stay focused, listen to my team and family and enjoy what I’m doing; every interview, every training, every fight.

“Honestly, I don’t put any pressure. I feel like I’m going in the right direction and in the right direction. The whole team knows the goal and what we want. Step by step we reach our goal. I don’t think about being “The Next This” or “The Next That.” I just have to be myself. I want to be ecstatic with what I do, have fun with what I do and make my family and my team proud. I hope I can make everyone who appreciates me and likes me as a professional player proud of me too.”