The American Boy

I’m often irritated by much of what I see or hear on HBO’s boxing programs. But last night my level of displeasure went way beyond simple annoyance. They pulled something so fucked up that I actually got angry.

In the co-feature to Edison Miranda’s unveiling, HBO introduced a nice looking American white-boy named Jason Litzau—known as “The American Boy.” Litzau has a back story that HBO and others have already been quick to jump on. Apparently, throughout Jason’s adolescence, his father took him on sprees of petty thievery. Litzau’s turning to boxing is being pitched as a transformative event. You can imagine the storyline—angry young man finds himself through boxing, learns to curb his antisocial behavior, but he still has a tremendous rage that he unleashes on his opponents.

Twenty seconds into the first round, it was clear that Jason Litzau couldn’t fight even a little bit, and that his opponent Jose Hernandez had been furnished because he could fight even less; he was glacially slow, had a weak chin, and skin that would break apart at the first sign of trouble.

It didn’t matter. Litzau fought with his chin perched so high in the air that it would have been impossible to miss. Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a weak chin. So he got knocked out with one punch.

Anybody who knew anything about boxing could see that this kid was a stiff. Yet here he was, perched to enter the Big Time.

Max Kellerman spent the entire fight shamelessly shilling for this hopeless imitation of a fighter. Lennox Lewis seemed vaguely nonplussed, but held the party line. Jim Lampley can’t tell a good fighter from a bad one, so he chimed in occasionally to second whatever nonsense either Kellerman or Lewis had offered.

It drives me crazy that, in a division teeming with killers, HBO chose to promote this sad imposter. If he’d been black, Hispanic, non-American, ugly, or with no easily spun yarn attached, they’d have never given him a glance. And predicated on boxing ability, he wouldn’t have deserved one.

Jason Litzau didn't deserve on either. No one should ever have had to watch Jason Litzau on HBO. Or on any other televised boxing, for that matter.

I’m glad the motherfucker got knocked out. But it bothers me that HBO isn’t called to task for promoting (and pandering to) this kind of ham-handed racism.