Xander Zayas: Quitter, or Just What Boxing Needs?

The reaction to Xander Zayas after the Jaron Ennis fight has been disappointing.

Not because people thought he would lose. Most people thought he would lose. Not because people criticized his game-plan. That’s part of boxing.

It’s because so many people watched seven rounds of a young fighter putting everything on the line and somehow landed on the word “quitter.”

If you want to call a corner throwing in the towel quitting, that’s your right. We all get to have opinions. That’s what makes sports fun. But I don’t know how you watch that fight, from the build-up to the stoppage, and come away believing Xander Zayas lacks heart.

The kid made a fight that a lot of people around him didn’t want him to make.

His promoter wasn’t exactly pounding the table for it. Plenty of media members thought it was too much, too soon. Outside of Puerto Rican boxing circles, there weren’t many people picking him to win. The safer move would’ve been to keep developing, keep collecting victories, and wait another year or two.

Instead, he asked for the fight and he signed the contract.

Then, the opening bell rang and things got ugly immediately.

He got dropped in the first round and got up. He weathered the storm and came back in the second. By the third round, he had completely changed the momentum of the fight and had a packed Barclays Center wondering if something special was happening right before our eyes.

Round five was brutal.

He got dropped hard and spent the better part of a minute taking punishment from one of the most dangerous fighters in boxing. The kind of punishment that would’ve convinced a lot of fighters they didn’t belong in the ring with a guy like Boots Ennis.

Yet he made it out of the round.

He came back out for the sixth and took more damage.

Then came the seventh.

The final knockdown wasn’t some fighter looking for an escape hatch. He wasn’t laid out on the canvas, he wasn’t looking for a way home. He was on one knee, like a warrior accepting his fate. You could see it on his face. The fight was over and he knew it.

There was no panic. No excuses. No complaints.

Just a young fighter who had given everything he had, looking toward his corner as his team made the decision to save him from himself.

That’s a lot different than a guy looking for a way out.

We spend years complaining that boxing doesn’t let young fighters take risks anymore. Then somebody finally does it, and people call him a quitter when it doesn’t work out.

I’m a big Vergil supporter. He’s a local guy. I’ve watched him grow up in this sport. Maybe he’s trolling. Maybe he’s trying to get under Xander’s skin. Maybe he’s frustrated with everything that’s happened in his own career and is lashing out a little bit. I don’t know.

I just have a hard time believing somebody who has sacrificed what Vergil has sacrificed can watch that performance and honestly think quitting is the right word.

I saw Devin Haney say it too.

If anybody has even a little room to make that argument, it’s probably somebody like Haney, who kept getting up against Ryan Garcia when every survival instinct in his body was telling him not to... I suppose.

Even then, I don’t understand it.

That’s your peer. That’s your colleague. You just watched somebody help elevate the sport.

When fights like that happen, boxing wins. New fans come in. People get excited. The entire sport benefits.

We need more of that. We need more guys willing to put it all on the line and if they lose, they lose.

But what bothered me most wasn’t hearing it from other fighters. Fighters talk. That’s part of the game.

What bothered me was seeing the fans rush to call him a quitter after watching him do something most of them would never have the guts to attempt.

And maybe that’s part of the problem.

A lot of people are so quick to reach for the word “quitter” because it’s familiar. They see quitting everywhere. They see it at work. They see it in relationships. They see it in goals they never finished chasing. So when they watch a fighter get pushed to their limits, that’s the first label they grab.

But there is a difference between quitting and getting beat.

There is a difference between looking for a way out and finding your limit against one of the best fighters in the world.

What’s so frustrating to me is we spend years complaining that boxing doesn’t let young fighters take risks anymore.

Everybody wants to see prospects tested. Everybody says the sport protects its stars too much. Everybody says these guys need to stop waiting around and prove themselves.

Well, Xander did.

Hell, I asked the ‘Fernando Vargas - Felix Trinidad’ question all fight week because I genuinely wondered if that’s what we were looking at; a young fighter with a ton of talent getting thrown in against a monster before he was fully ready.

But he wanted it anyway.

Maybe it was too much, too soon. Maybe the fight takes something out of him long term. Maybe he comes back better because of it.

But I don’t know how anybody watches those seven rounds and decides the defining characteristic of that performance was quitting.

The defining characteristic was the willingness to take the risk in the first place.

Maybe it was too much, too soon. But the defining characteristic of that performance wasn’t quitting. It was the willingness to take the risk in the first place.

The next time you see one of these fighters at a meet-and-greet, a press conference, or an autograph signing, remember what they’re actually doing for a living.

Every fight takes something from them.

Every training camp takes something from them.

Every time they step through those ropes, they’re accepting risks most of us wouldn’t take for all the money in the world.

And here we are sitting on our couches, drinking our beers, eating our hot wings, scrolling our phones, calling somebody a quitter because he lost to one of the best fighters on the planet.

Every time they step through those ropes, they’re accepting risks most of us wouldn’t take for all the money in the world.

We don’t have to worship these fighters. We don’t have to agree with every decision they make. But we should appreciate what we’re watching while we still can.

Xander Zayas got knocked down three times by Jaron Ennis. He got overwhelmed. He got stopped.

Those things happened.

Hell, baseball has a word for three strikes. They call it a strikeout.

In boxing, apparently we call it quitting.

What I didn’t see was a quitter.

I saw a young fighter dare to be great, find out exactly where he stands, and pay a price most people aren’t willing to pay to get the answer.