“I Am A World (Bleeping) Champion”

It’s easy to be a cynic.

Bad news travels fast and far in the blink of an eye while good news travels as swiftly as a snail stuck in a syrup puddle.

We tend too often to think that this boxing age is deficient in so many ways, that the sport has been dented and diluted, that a preponderance of titles cheapens the acquisition of one.

That view is not shared by young Chris Algieri today, who opened his eyes this morning, lifted his head off his pillow, collected his thoughts, and said to himself, This is real.

That title belt, which had been in the possession of The Siberian Rocky, RuslanProvodnikov, built up as being from superior warrior stock, the sort of product that is generated from less than humble origins, and sub-zero climes, which render one thick-skinned, or dead, stays with the Russian.

A new one is being manufactured and will be sent to the Long Islander, who makes his home in a town called Greenlawn. So no, if you’re thinking with his one open eye he strapped that belt around his waste and toddled into bed, and slept in the belt, sorry to wreck that visual for you.

“I had to give it back,” the 30-year-old ex kickboxer, who turned pro as a boxer in 2008, told me Sunday. “I’m waiting for mine.”

I queried the fighter, who gained respect by the ton on Saturday, for his stubbornness and resolve during a time when he easily could have crumbled into pool of anxiety and pain.

“The first thing you did the morning after, did you ask yourself, ‘Was that a dream?” I continued, “It was a dream…but it’s real.”

“Oh, it’s real,” Algieri responded, on Monday. “I am a world f——g champion.”

“So, it’s sunk in then? How so? When exactly?”

“It hit me yesterday, while barbecuing with my family at my home in Greenlawn,” he said. “Everyone was talking and excited. I was sitting quiet behind my shades. Alone, but in a group. I started to get emotional as the realization washed over me like a wave…..I did it.”

Damn right ya did.

He told us before he would. He told us before that this sport is unlike any other, that the athletes in that ring give more of themselves than any others. He’s right. And he is a world f—-g champion.

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