CarlCX posted:

CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 39: FROM GLORY TO GOLGOTHA

MAIN CARD: LUNCHBOX HANDS
HEAVYWEIGHT: Chase Sherman (16-10) vs Waldo Cortes-Acosta (8-0)
As I close in on the end of my first year of service in the fight mines, I realize I have written about Chase Sherman more often than any other fighter. This is the sixth time I will write about Chase Sherman in eleven months. Two of those fights didn't even happen. At one point Chase Sherman wasn't even employed by the UFC anymore. And yet, in a year with multiple Israel Adesanya fights, in a year with promising prospects like Tom Aspinall and Marlon Vera in several main events, it is Chase goddamn Sherman who is my white whale--nay, my Vanilla Gorilla. I cannot escape him, no matter how deeply into the B-leagues I run, and he cannot escape me, no matter how many times he is manhandled by large men. We are destined to do this dance forever, his rock'em sock'em boxing propelling the two of us through space until all of reality suffuses and becomes a disc in which no points can be delineated from one another.

Where in the tapestry of time are we, now? Is this the great Parker Porter bout of 2021? Is it the Chase Sherman vs Alexandr Romanov that happened in this reality or the original cancelled one from Earth 26? Is this the 2025 Chase Sherman/Hamdy Abdelwahab world championship bout that came after The Great Collapse killed half the roster, sank the entire western seaboard and left the UFC under Bjorn Rebney's control? Oh, no, that's right--it's Chase Sherman vs Waldo "Salsa Boy" Cortes-Acosta, the fight I definitely didn't make up that definitely doesn't feature a fighter who just fought a full fifteen-minutes and took fifty-nine heavyweight strikes less than three weeks ago for $10,000 before taxes and is now somehow licensed to fight again already without anyone getting arrested for crimes against decency. That would be ridiculous.

It's Chase Sherman. What words are there left in my blood to tell you anything about the man, and what veins have I left to pour ink to page with for him? Through the wheat the boxer will appear to take him away, and I will mock him to all of you while in my heart of hearts cradling him and letting the blows fall upon my body. No, I will cry, not my son. But they will not listen, and when the time comes, I will deny him to the thanatologists and say I knew him not, but I will know that his was the face of The Heavyweight, and lo, I will see him in every heavyweight yet to be.

Waldo Cortes-Acosta by KO. Ab ovo, ab aeterno, ab intestato, ab intra.