“Yes, right,” said Argentine Lucas Matthysse in Spanish, Saturday, when asked if he next wished to fight junior welterweight champion Danny Garcia. “For that reason, I am thankful to Golden Boy and Al Haymon. They are going to get me that fight, and I know that it is going to be like that.”
Hear the difference in tone? It is not a translation trick but the firmness of a man expressing a proper understanding of power’s proper balance. Having undone Lamont Peterson in fewer than three rounds at Boardwalk Hall, Matthysse did not plead with his promoter to fulfill a contract tortured by an attorney from English to Latin and back, nor did he bend his knee in supplication to a manager or television exec. Matthysse instead gave a polite order to his American promoter, manager and network in the clear language of one genuinely empowered: Thank you in advance.
What you feel about Lucas “The Machine” Matthysse today is a thing to take measure of, perhaps record in a diary, and use as your standard to come, because what you feel is genuine enthusiasm, the euphoria of discovery, a sensation of hopefulness one gets when he realizes the world is a more original, entertaining place than previously surmised. The optimism comes from a place of promise: If this discovery happened, there was a wondrous thing out there I knew nothing about, which means there are other wondrous things out there I know nothing about, wondrous things I necessarily know nothing about knowing nothing about, and life might put them in my way, and what better reason to answer tomorrow’s alarmclock?
Everyone appears to realize the epiphany of Matthysse except Matthysse, and why would he? He is the person he expects himself to be, courteously indifferent and trancedly unbothered by what details modern fight fans think need admiring – entrance music, posse count, apparel sponsorships, purse sizes, management choices.
Ah, management choices; one of the more enchanting things about Matthysse is how he tells Jim Gray whatever he wishes after a fight because Gray works for Richard Schaefer who works for Al Haymon who works for Lucas Matthysse. For once a Haymon-managed fighter did not begin by thanking Haymon and God, reconfigurable in many fighters’ minds, but directed a man whom he pays as an employee. It is sensed, and quivers every brink-pink strand of their free-market pom-poms, while manifesting itself most deliciously in the spectacle of Schaefer arresting Gray’s microphone to whoop like an apprentice hype-man at a freestyle battle.
There is a financial component to this, of course; Matthysse understands what fellow Argentine Sergio Martinez, too, understands: He now needs his promotional team fractionally much as they need him. But there is also a cultural component one sees in other Latino phenoms like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez: They originate in lands where their country’s best athletes amassed incredible stores of celebrity and wealth in a sport, soccer (fútbol [whatever]), unbroadcasted by American networks. Alvarez visited with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto last month. Martinez’s last kickoff press conference was emceed by Argentine president Cristina Kirchner. To empathize with how such experiences might affect these men, an American can answer this question: After a meeting with Barack Obama, how seriously would I take a promoter promising I might, with his help, someday, if I’m incredibly lucky, make it to the prestigious airwaves of Showtime?
There will ever be a place for a handsome guy with knockout power in both hands, a place in our sport, a place in general sports lore, a place in popular culture at large, and even if Matthysse somehow does not know this, he necessarily senses it, and if he feels any compulsion whatever, and perhaps he does not, it is a compulsion to verily pain the man across from him, as he did in quick time against Lamont Peterson, Saturday.
Much could be deduced from the final instants of round 1, when Matthysse landed a leaping lefthook lead that imparted to Peterson such significance all athleticism fled Peterson’s legs in the minute that followed, a minute after this moment: At the bell Matthysse watched Peterson take his first steps towards the corner, with a predator’s facade, placid to a point of complacency, one not often seen since Juan Manuel Marquez studied Juan Diaz at the close of every round in Houston – like a disinterested curator pondering a work’s craquelure. “The Machine” confirmed about Peterson what Matthysse enters every fight suspecting of every opponent: He is fragile.
Matthysse then waited a few minutes before timing Peterson’s jab, using the twitch of Peterson’s left shoulder as a trigger, and spear-chiseling him with a right cross that drained the match of any suspense save: How badly will Lucas hurt Lamont?
Both men started left hooks in the middle of round 3, and while Matthysse’s arrived earlier by a piece of a second, the difference in the punches’ effects was anticipated by their hips, not their fists: Matthysse squared his feet and completed a 180-degree hip turn before his punch struck. Peterson threw his punch more correctly – short, balanced, fist pronated – and it made Matthysse’s eyes widen for a moment, which is now a solacing detail Peterson might find on replay, since Peterson was, by the time Matthysse reacted, dropping canvasward in the unresisting way unique to the freshly unconscious.
Welcome to boxing’s new pleasure, then, a comely man who unwreathes other men with a dispassionate glaze on his eyes that he rinses with tears at the mention of his daughter’s name on an American television channel he cares rather little about.
Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com
