One of the weirdest traditions in combat sports is the obligatory pre-fight staredown.
The problem with the staredown is that it’s very forced.
Sure, it’s sometimes cool to see two fighters come nose-to-nose and stare into each other’s soul right before they try to knock seven shades of shite out of each other. It’s also true that some fighters seize the opportunity to try to psyche out their opponent and take up residency inside their head before the contest. Of course, it can be a great means of generating hype to sell a fight too.
Sometimes though, you’ll get two fighters who have the utmost respect for one other just go through the motions. If they have to eyeball the other guy in front of the cameras, they’ll put on a show. Even if there’s zero animosity between them, they’ll bust out their best thousand-yard stare for the sake of tradition.
You can always tell when this is the case. Sometimes it’s very obvious.
It was also very obvious for the pre-fight staredown for the Irish super featherweight title between James Tennyson and Declan Geraghty, which is set to go down in Belfast on the card headlined by Jamie Conlan against Yader Cardoza.
The two pugilists were seen laughing and chatting away to each other during the obligatory staredown at the media day this week, showing everyone that there will be zero bad blood for this highly-anticipated rising prospect vs rising prospect bout.
