Volk and The Privilege of Adversity

Volk and The Privilege of Adversity

GuyWhoLikesSport GuyWhoLikesSport

It’s rare for Australia to unite behind one person in an individual sport.

For the most part, we keep things on shore.

We follow the AFL and NRL, and bicker internally over our favourite teams.

Some Sydney freaks might even watch Super Rugby.

Whenever there’s a big event, we’ll unite behind the national teams like the Australian cricket team for The Ashes or the Matildas and Socceroos during a World Cup.

Even then, we engage in civil wars over certain players and their spot in the team, the Mitch Marsh discourse springs to mind.

He’s an extension of the Brett Emerton debates from 10 years ago.

This is a local, team sport country first and foremost, outside of a few icons.

I was born in 1996 and the first icon I vaguely remember was Cathy Freeman’s 400m in Sydney.

Ian Thorpe is another that springs to mind

Alexander Volkanovski isn’t quite on the level of Cathy Freeman or Ian Thorpe in terms of the national consciousness, but as a two-time featherweight champion, he’s just as accomplished.

It isn’t his fault, in Australia, MMA is a fringe sport and UFC fans are largely a collection of white guys who wish they could fight (myself included).

I watched Volk’s win against Diego Lopes at the Royal Derby Hotel in Fitzroy on Sunday afternoon.

Even if, by objective measures, Volk isn’t Cathy Freeman, in that pub for that hour, he was the biggest star in the world.

Everyone rode every exchange.

We exploded when Volk landed his big left hook,

…we cheered when he sent Lopes stumbling,

and we gasped when he hit the deck at the end of Round 2.

In every exchange, we groaned and creaked like a dad getting out of a chair.

It felt like every time Volk sat in the pocket with Lopes, it was going to end badly for Australia’s greatest active athlete.

Yet it didn’t.

I looked around the pub as Bruce Buffer was reading out the scorecards.

Nobody was waiting for a drink. Staff were arm-in-arm.

It felt like the entire pub had just watched a man walk a tightrope between the Eureka tower and the Rialto building, and we were waiting for him to take the final step.

When Buffer read out the cards and Volk won, the pub exploded, I nearly cried. Staff and patrons hugged.

Volk held his head in his hands and kissed the canvas.

A fighter with as much pluck as anyone, in a business defined by it, did enough to win clearly.

I had it 4-1 Volk. The worst you could possibly have had it is 3-2 for Volk.

He was first to every punch, and he won every exchange on the feet. The only place he didn’t have success was in the takedowns.

In many ways, it was a masterclass.

He looked mostly like the old Volk, rather than an old Volk.

But it felt closer. It felt like Volk spent the night teetering.

As a Richmond fan, it felt like the Adelaide Grand Final which was over objectively much earlier than it felt.

After he won, Volk told Joe Rogan (in what felt like the post-election Republican Convention) that “adversity is a privilege”.

I disagree.

Adversity, specifically the kind that came with watching Volk beat Lopes, was a f**king nightmare.

Volk is clearly still good enough to mix it with the top guys. He’s again champion of a division that he’s mostly cleared out.

He’s still as hard as a diamond – he apparently fought blind in his left eye from the third round onwards- and he has a distinct skill advantage over most fighters.

He’s technically and mentally brilliant, but physically he’s not the same.

Volk in his prime would have put away a game-but-technically-inept Diego Lopes much sooner than this Volk did.

It was proof of an inexorable truth: we’re closer to the end than we are the beginning.

I didn’t trust Volkanovski’s chin to stand up in exchanges like it used to.

Nobody in the pub did – we know his history too well.

In the end we were wrong. He proved his greatness again.

But the pub and I watched that whole fight with one hand under our chins, forcing eyes at the TVs while the other hand rested on upset stomachs.

I don’t want our hands to move up to cover our eyes.

I don’t want him to become a fingertips fighter, like Muhammad Ali at the end.

Volk himself seems to know it.

For the first time after a win, he was downbeat. He acknowledged that “his best chance [was] catching me” and, crucially, “I know I should be more cheery”.

Volk knows his chin isn’t the same.

For today, a legend is back on top.

He’s the champ again.

But we saw what it took – the tightrope walk, the risk.

Please, don’t let the game take more than it already has.

Don’t give it more than you can afford.

For this time and every other time we get, hopefully not too many, thanks Volk.