SAN ANTONIO – If you walked along the remnants of Chalk It Up on Houston Street, Saturday, hundreds of drawings in dusty pastel colors underfoot, then came to a staircase for the River Walk – no, not the tourist loop but the one that takes you to Brackenridge Park – and exited at Navarro Street, heading eastwards, you were on your way.
Municipal Auditorium was on your left. A majestic stone building erected in 1926, during the period that saw most of the city’s enduring stone landmarks constructed, Municipal Auditorium stood before, but cast no shadows on, two war memorials. Korea then Vietnam – the latter housing, in an air-tight compartment, the names of all 60,000 San Antonians who served in Southeast Asia.
Inside Municipal Auditorium were the National Association of Police Athletic / Activities Leagues boxing championships, known universally as “The PALs.” This year’s championships were especially important because the winners in each weight class qualified for a berth at the Olympic trials in Colorado Springs. Ten dollars, in other words, bought you a seat at ringside where you got to see 40 of our country’s best boxers.
It was a good respite from another lousy week in an astoundingly bad year for prizefighting. Last week’s announcement that Andre Dirrell would not fight Andre Ward in November changed Showtime’s “Super Six” tournament to a Super Three. More about that in a bit.
Back to Municipal Auditorium. A few minutes after I took a random seat, Saturday evening, good fortune sat a teacher one row behind me. He was Tom Mustin, Team USA’s 2000 Olympic coach, mentor to future stars like Jermain Taylor, Jeff Lacy, Rocky Juarez and Brian Viloria. And along with being a fine conversationalist, Mr. Mustin was a pair of reminders.
First, no matter how much you know about professional fighters and their trainers, no matter how many fights you’ve seen or stats you’ve memorized, beside a career amateur coach you don’t know much. Men like Tom Mustin or Kenny Weldon teach eight year-olds how to box, travel the world with their kids and act as surrogate fathers as much as trainers.
And second, you should temper your criticism of USA Boxing’s results with an appreciation for the sacrifice its teachers make. The hours are brutal. The pay is low. And the responsibilities are many more, and deeper, than what professional trainers, gunslingers by comparison, take on.
Watching a national amateur championship also affords you insights into someone like Rau’shee Warren. A two- and likely three-time Olympian, Warren is probably America’s best amateur. Among his feats is maintaining the same weight at age 23 that he had at 17. The training grants he continues to win from USA Boxing are superior to the purses he’d earn as a 114-pounder, so why turn pro?
He is now, in both age and skill, a man among boys. His Saturday bout matched him against San Antonio’s Adam Lopez, a boxer now trained by Jesse James Leija. Lopez opened the first minute of the first round with an interesting tactic. He punched at Warren’s right arm. Warren, a southpaw, carried his lead hand low, and the theory was that by targeting the middle of his arm, Lopez might disrupt Warren’s up-jab and activity. It worked.
For about 60 seconds. Then Warren came alive with quickness, accuracy and unexpected ferocity, and everything stopped working for Lopez. The final line – “Warren dec. Lopez, 20-2” – squashed further description.
The evening’s most curious spectacle came a little later in the 201+ division, and he came complete with pink headgear and an infuriating style. Lenroy Thompson, originally from Florida but now boxing out of Kansas, does everything technically wrong en route to beating everyone he faces. I asked Mr. Mustin if someone like Thompson might actually represent our country in London in 2012.
“Why not?” said Mr. Mustin, and he began to chuckle. “He’s the type that could win a gold medal.”
Thompson’s style and achievement are a good place to turn and start back towards the matter of Andre Dirrell. Amateur boxing is a meritocracy based on computerized scoring, which has its own logic. If you know where to position yourself on the canvas and how to hit your opponent in a way three of five judges can see, while precluding your opponent from doing the same – à la Lenroy Thompson – you become a champion.
Professional fighting is a different sort of meritocracy, one adhering to box-office receipts. Just as being exciting does not win you amateur titles, being able to hit your opponent twice in a round in which he hits you but once does not win you lucrative purses, or many fans.
Of the two meritocracies, Andre Dirrell came closer to mastering the amateur than the professional. He was an Olympic boxer whose style was so displeasing to so many people in his first title fight, with Carl Froch, that many doubted the sincerity of his injury when Arthur Abraham fouled him in his last match. I did not.
Last week, though, after Showtime had rescheduled Dirrell’s match with Andre Ward for November – location “TBA” (Ticket Buyers Absent) – most fans doubted the sincerity of the “neurological issues” that caused Dirrell to be the third man to drop out of the Super Six.
If I were Dirrell, I would have offered some medical documentation with my press release.
Which brings us to the Super Three. Something else we can borrow from amateur boxing is the “walkover” result. Let’s use that and say Ward “walked-over” Dirrell, leaving Froch-Abraham to decide who’ll fight Ward in the finals. Those are the only two fights anyone wants to see now, anyway.
Finally, while Ward and Dirrell were Olympic teammates, only one of them – in style, charisma and box office – made a successful transition to pro. There’s really no shame in that for Dirrell. But now that we realize it, we must move on.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry
