pitted its titular protagonist against an Indonesian ultra-prodigy with a style inspired by monkeys<\/a>.<\/p>\nRocky famously followed a similar trajectory; there\u2019s an old, likely apocryphal story that after Rocky IV saw the Italian Stallion overpower the superhuman Ivan Drago, someone on the writing team jokingly suggested that the only rational next step was to have him box an alien. That, as the story goes, is how Predator came to be.<\/p>\n
Rather than take that route and risk rising past their optimal altitude, NOMAD\u2019s writers let their focus sink and broaden.<\/p>\n
Impeccable as MEGALOBOX\u2019s aesthetic was, the first season left a lot on the table when it came to engaging with it. The classic cyberpunk contrast between civic grandeur and familiar slums, the biomedical tech race for which Megalo Boxing served as a testing ground, the physical consequences of people smashing each other upside the skull with miniaturized industrial equipment; the narrative only explored them them insofar as they directly interacted with Junk Dog\u2019s pursuit of victory.<\/p>\n
MEGALOBOX started at Point A, put up a clearly visible finish line at Point B, and invited you to run along with it. It couldn\u2019t take its eyes off the prize for long for fear of stumbling off the track. NOMAD is almost meditative by contrast, a somberly romantic stroll that uses a diverse cast of characters to explore every facet of the sweet science. Where MEGALOBOX was a boxing story, NOMAD is a story about boxing.<\/p>\n
Joe\u2019s journey was defined by an all-consuming desire for victory, a willingness to risk everything he had for the sake of claiming victory. NOMAD interrogates both sides of that statement throughout, starting with Joe\u2019s confrontation of his antithesis: \u201cChief,\u201d the patriarch of a dispossessed Latino community who, like Joe at the beginning of his story, is a terrific boxer but makes a living throwing fights. Where Joe raged against his fate, though, Chief finds contentment.<\/p>\n
Contrasting perceptions of victory and sacrifice, both in and out of the ring, define the narrative throughout. Liu, Yuri\u2019s protege, makes it to the top of the Megalo Boxing world but struggles to escape his trainer\u2019s shadow. Mac Rosario, a former fighter and police officer rendered quadriplegic by a bullet wound, returns to the ring with the aid of a revolutionary new spinal implant but suffers side effects that estrange him from his family and himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrounded\u201d may not seem like the right term for a series like this, but it feels like the right term. The stadium-filling super fights of Season One\u2019s latter half give way to visceral slugfests that truly sell the damage these enhanced punches inflict on flesh and bone. Beyond the in-ring action, Joe\u2019s recovery from addiction is a lengthy, grueling, painful process. And like all great sci-fi, the socioeconomic struggles many characters face, dressed up though they may be in futuristic trappings, are all too timely.<\/p>\n
NOMAD doesn\u2019t view boxing through rose-colored glasses, but neither is it cynical. I\u2019d wager that all of us here have, to some degree of depth, grappled with our love and support of a sport so adept at producing tragedy. NOMAD is right there with us, speaking and listening without judgment. Boxing is thrilling. It\u2019s horrifying. It\u2019s redemptive. It\u2019s destructive.<\/p>\n
And, sometimes, it\u2019s just a fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most human boxing story in recent memory involves piston-powered exoskeletons. Seven years ago, I wrote about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,10808,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-274514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-boxing-commentary-opinion","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}