Imagine if Nelly vs. Chingy was on the card for Saturday night. Smoke and expectation hung thick in the overflowing Dome. They had filled the Dome! Nelly vs. Chingy had filled the Dome. Every hip-hop head in St. Louis, and from elsewhere, had put up big bucks and put their butts in a seat to look at this.
Don King was there, of course, wearing a purple crown, with magnificent hair and a guaranteed chunk of the change.
Jay-Z was there, and what’s left of the Wu Tang Clan after O.D.B OD’d (RIP), keeping their respectful distance in the dark of the Dome pierced by the red eyes of burning cigars.
Cedric the Entertainer was there, hollering at Nelly from the first row, “Come on, Playa! Just like back on Natural Bridge and Kingshighway!” n a shout out to old street fights, when the referees were the po-po.
Janet Jackson was there, too, wearing almost nothing except straightener and a perm, cooing, “Oooo, Chingy,” beside her brother, Michael, who had bought six seats spanning two rows and positioned himself in a bulletproof oxygen tent, guarded by the Fruit of Islam.
Corner man T Luv pumped up his boy, Nelly, popping his chest and checking the lacing on his Everlasts, which read “D-E-R” (left glove) “R-T-Y” (right).
In Da Streetz hyped Chingy, giving little stinging slaps to his slant jaws, juicing his mouth with Hip-Hop H2O (a very minor sponsor n A-B had the major product placement on lock) and checking the laces on his gloves, which read, right and left: “G.I.B.”
G.I.B. Get It Boyz! That reminder of his crew would have been painful for Chingy, had he time to consider what had just gone down.
The undercard was ugly.
The Hip-Hop Boxing Federation (HHBF) had rejected as too unevenly matched all of the one-on-one undercard pairings suggested by the two camps. Finally, a match was accepted: Murphy Lee of the St. Lunatics vs. all of the Git It Boys, Chingy’s entire crew of support rappers.
And Murph won! He popped them one by one out of the ring like Godzilla picking insects out of a scale with a claw.
But a brother in an entourage has got to eat some shinola in this life. All the beaten Git It Boyz were already back in street clothes, ringside and screaming, just as the Lunatics were suited up on the other side of the canvas, hollering for Nelly.
“I n am n number n one!” Nelly rapped over beats piped in on the Dome’s crunked sound system as he strutted to center ring in his big, puffy, Ron Isley-brand boxing shorts of fur.
“I’m a boxer, boxer, hard hitter, baby, baby,” Chingy belted out, strutting up, until referee Earl Wilson, of the Gateway Classic Sports Foundation, grabbed each fighter’s gloves, and said, “You filled the dome.”
Then, the bell was struck, the crowd went wild, and the fight was on.
The smart money was on Nelly. He was, after all, the undisputed world champion, who had spent more time at the top of the charts than Chingy had spent hitting blocks in Walnut Park. Nelly had the size, the tools, and the scars of experience.
He also had much more to lose. And Chingy had everything to gain.
Chingy had the hunger and the grit and the romance of the underdog, a damn good jab, and a hell of a lot more to pay off for anybody betting on him.
Bounce, bounce and spin, and the boxer, boxer, baby, baby landed a pesky jab on the chin of Nelly, who had worn his big-sparkle bling-bling into the ring, as if daring Chingy to knock it out of his ears and gums.
Guccio, who had an okay seat in the middle distance, behind the entire defensive line of the Rams (but in front of several executives of radio stations that had declined ad trades to hype the fight), was the first to notice it.
“Ali,” Guccio said to Sam Moore, who was whispering in Mike Spinks’ ear. “Nelly has a little Ali in him.”
It would become obvious to everyone over the duration of the fight and dominate post-game coverage.
Nelly had a little Ali in him. He floated n he stung n he talked, a lot more than you would have thought he needed to, famous and rich and favored as he was.
Maybe that was it. Maybe it was Nelly’s greatness, matched with Chingy’s overmatched gutsiness, his Leon Spinks junkyard dog factor. Maybe that explains what happened as the fight wore on.
K. Curtis Lyle stood in protest first. He stood, and he hollered, “My buddies in the Panthers all got shot in the back, because they kept running. I slowed down, and looked around. Slow down! Look around!”
The odd thing was n how loud the poet sounded in the crowded Dome. Flavor Flav’s extremely noisy attempt to cut a movie deal in the corporate seats was drowned out, tsunami-style, by Curtis’ cry.
Then Eugene B. Redmond stood.
“You are rivers,” Redmond said. “You should flow. Together.”
His voice obliterated the pimptalk of R. Kelly trying to share his hotel keys with the card girls. It even made Nelly flinch. Chingy stopped in mid-bounce and spin.
Chocolate Tai and Ebony Eyez and Shannassi could be seen, now, standing and holding hands way up high, and heard, singing an old Double Dutch song.
“I got no beef,” J. Kwon said, in the oddly quiet Dome, “so I get no press.”
In the weird silence, you could hear Marcus Camby stretch his long legs, looking lonely as only Marcus Camby can.
Did Nelly and Chingy withdraw the punches they were ready to throw? Did they throw off their gloves and shake? Show love?
Would you like it if they did?
Or would you prefer the upset victory, Chingy surprising the Derrty champion, wearing him down with rains of jabs that exposed a weak (perhaps Band-Aided) chin?
Or do you want Nelly to destroy the scrappy contender, to crush him into the canvas and dance off into his limo and a future in the fashion industry?
Wasn’t it Percy Green who said (to everyone except the mayor), “Why can’t we all … just … get along?”
And wasn’t that Don King who shook his crown, and hollered, “Because there is profit in our fighting!”?
And wasn’t that Cory Spinks who shook his title belts, and said, “Because there is pride in our fighting!”
Then K. Curtis Lyle sat back down, muttering a quote from Freud about the narcissism of small differences, how we exhaust ourselves fighting people who could be our friends, how we find reasons to hate in others that which we love most in ourselves.
And how long shall our prophets kill each other while we stand around and look?
Curtis sat down, but everybody else stood up, because the other elders who had tried to stop the fight were still standing. We stood up, because we didn’t want them to block our view of the show.
Who wants poetry, when you can get some blood?
