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By Bart Barry-

Saturday at England’s Wembley Stadium British heavyweight Anthony Joshua will fight Ukraine’s Wladimir Klitschko. One week later at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena Mexican Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will fight Mexican “Son of the Legend” Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Both matches have their charms.

But one undefeated man to be found in the fourman bunch, too. Aficionados didn’t care much about undefeated marks before Money May – the fixation on Rocky Marciano’s record never felt like a product of aficionados so much as what casuals necessarily predominated a sport that dominated American culture in that time (like nonmusicians harping on albumsales because they have to have an opinion on what’s current and can’t very well muse about chord progressions) – and evidently don’t care much in our wasteland of a post-Money sport.

Look how quickly Mexicans forgave Canelo’s moneymaker of a whitewash against Money May. Too they forgave Son of the Legend’s loss to Maravilla Martinez; there was no dishonor in being wholly outclassed by a superior athlete and nothing but honor in that final round – which, for whatever we opined of Chavez every day before and every day since, nevertheless yielded the most suspenseful 90 seconds of prizefighting anyone has seen in a generation at least.

Hating Canelo or Chavez has never enchanted anyone the way he hoped it might. Canelo exudes professionalism, shows up ontime and ripped for every weighin, fights with reliable intensity, and stiffens lesser opponents with a quickness (and count me among those who verily do not hold it against Canelo he’s yet to move up in weight to fight a man who’s never moved up in weight). Son of the Legend, meanwhile, is nearly a legend in his own right – a different sort of legend, granted, but, well. For all his tries at channeling Dad’s pride and intensity Junior will ever be a raspberry-briefed cereal-scarfing goofball to the rest of us, and bless his heart, he knows it. You glare contemptuously at Junior for squandering his birthright, and he looks back at you through puffy bloodshot eyes and says, “Dude, what’s your problem?” – and if that doesn’t disarm you giggling, you’re wound too tight, and that’s not Junior’s problem either.

Both guys can fight a bit too. Canelo is a b-level novelty act in any good era, as Juan Manuel Marquez bitterly exclaimed years ago, and Chavez is a backup accordion player lipsynching on Televisa for Banda Ensalada de Fruta in that same era, but chance has put them together in this unserious era and they’re here to party and have some fun – which is about all the hundreds of thousands of Mexican fans who’ll buy their pay-per-view want anyway. There’s no sense scolding los mexicanos; they know better, obviously, but why not buy the fight – it’ll be fun!

Less fun but indeed more serious is Saturday’s spectacle between a perfectly untested British heavyweight and Wlad Klitschko, whom a panel of experts just rated the 16th greatest heavyweight of all time for “The Ring” – which means, conceivably, the future ratings of James Jefferies (15), John L. Sullivan (14) and Gene Tunney (13) could be at stake if Klitschko upsets Joshua, though Lennox Lewis (T-11) and Evander Holyfield (T-11) are right to rest easy. Truthfully, Klitschko might’ve jab-jab-held his way to a decision victory against at least a few of the top-10 guys on that list, but what is most clearly reflected in Klitschko’s lowly seeding is: Wlad has brought to sport a larger ratio of size-to-risktaking than any fighter, nay professional athlete, before him. Even in Klitschko’s greatest wins, whatever those were, one got the sense the physical advantage Klitschko enjoyed was preposterous – and yet there was nervous Wlad, chin 40 inches behind his lead foot, rippling quadriceps primed for a balletic leap backwards at an opponent’s first twitch.

In Joshua, though, Wlad faces a second consecutive opponent over whom he enjoys less than his career-standard sixinch height advantage, and worse yet for Wlad’s chances, a man whose physique looks every bit enhanced as Wlad’s always has. It’s improper to note this, of course, but with 70,000 attending Super Bowl LI and 90,000 about to attend Joshua-Klitschko, it doesn’t look like 2017’ll be the Year of the Antidoping Crusader, does it?

Maybe Joshua-Klitschko will deliver in a way Klitschko-Haye disastrously did not, maybe Klitschko, stripped of his physical advantages and sympathetic officiating and hometown scorekeepers, will reveal a sinister ferocity that makes all gasp as he chops down the Joshua tree then steelhammers a dozen drunken Brits at ringside in a rage only brother Vitali (17) can extinguish.

No probably not. It’ll be incumbent on Joshua to supply all the meaningful aggression Saturday, and across from a man roughly 50-times accomplished as anyone he’s faced heretofore, chances are good, Joshua’s going to need to warm to the task. If the final bell rings on this fight stamp an L in the column of public perception for Joshua; if Klitschko stays upright for 36 minutes nobody will leave Wembley Stadium satisfied. Drunk, yes, but not satisfied.

The same cannot be said quite of how Mexican fans will perceive Canelo if he fails to circuitbreak Chavez a week later. Chavez hasn’t the defense to make a fight boring, and if Canelo is dumb enough to retreat for long Chavez will catch him and cream him. What’s far more likely is a far better fight than Joshua-Klitschko.

All this haggling is ungrateful. Both fights promise suspenseful moments because both fights’ outcomes are unknowable. Let’s take it, say thank you, and walk away smiling.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

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