By Bart Barry–
Saturday at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center, American welterweights Timothy Bradley and Brandon Rios will compete for a world title of some sort and, more importantly, for a chance to be their division’s premier b-side attraction – as friend and colleague Norm Frauenheim insightfully put it Friday. While neither guy sees himself as a gatekeeper – Bradley, in fact, has a loose argument for IBHOF induction someday – no one in the sport sees either guy as the world’s best welterweight, though, again, Bradley has a loose argument for that distinction too.
But finally, an honest prizefight. It has been that long, so long in fact this one almost misses us gazing desperately towards Canelo-Cotto while wondering how to compose a eulogy for Ken Hersman’s career at HBO. There has been, and will continue to be, a want of eulogizing for Hershman because, frankly, we’re not qualified to pen eulogies, little as most of us have minded his career at HBO. Consider this, then, an impressionistic portrait by a writer too uninterested to check dates and figures.
Hershman came to HBO sometime after Timothy Bradley and Devon Alexander made a disappointment of a match in Pontiac Silverdome, then auditioning for world’s largest empty refrigerator, a disastrous show so poorly attended the HBO broadcast trucks, like the one racing at you in those intro cartoons, parked in the middle of the floor, and even by stuffing the fight in a back corner and closingoff the mezzanine, they still couldn’t make the arena look more than 1/10 full because it wasn’t 1/15 full. Legend has it a few HBO VIPs showed up for that disaster, and after recovering from frostbite set about a plot to fire the man who lost Manny Pacquiao to Showtime for a night (the one in which Pacquiao eradicated world poverty by wearing yellow gloves, historians will recall).
Uninspired to do more than rebuild slowly and cheaply, HBO hired Showtime’s guy, who had fought a marvelous insurgency in the preceding years and made Showtime the destination network for serious fans while HBO lazily tended its starsystem. Maligned as it was by misfortune and miscreants, Hershman’s Super Six tournament was a wonderful thing whose ultimate winners, Andre Ward and Ken Hershman and Carl Froch, did quite well for themselves immediately afterwards. Froch is now retired, Hershman is about to be retired, and Ward continues a halfassed comeback from semiretirment – so nothing, as the saying goes, is permanent.
But whatever innovative spirit Hershman had at Showtime, not an innovative thing was done during his time at HBO, unless discovering Eurasia 20 years after the Soviet Union’s collapse should be called revolutionary. Hershman fired Al Haymon and his lackey Richard Schaefer and Schaefer’s spokesman, Oscar De La Hoya, in a move more memorable for spite than creativity: Hersman did not clear away dead underbrush from the calendar, allowing bold, suppressed ideas to spring forth, so much as he avenged his predecessor and sent Haymon to a much wealthier benefactor with whose capital Haymon, a vindictive pacifist, has smothered boxing to critical condition. Hershman is not to blame for Haymon’s ascent; Haymon is a force of nature, where men like Hershman, and the guy who replaced him at Showtime, are lawerly bureaucrats, not entrepreneurs.
Perhaps HBO’s culture is to blame, in part, while we’re introspecting. Fighters, not fights, drive HBO’s starsystem, a philosophy that manifests itself as a panicked paralysis whenever anointed stars like Nonito Donaire get outclassed by men whose superior skills somehow elude HBO’s staff of talentscouts and matchmakers. Whoever replaces Hershman should move first to acquire a professional matchmaker or two – boxing guys, outsiders who drink too much and dress like slobs, not television guys, not aspiring runway models, not writers-cum-publicists, not lawyers from Harvard or Yale, but men with real contacts lists, real shortnotice talent, real chemistry with prizefighters of all skill levels, and decades, not months, of experience – and enable him- or herself to dictate intelligent terms to serious outfits like Top Rank and Main Events and K2, treating them as suppliers, not partners.
There’s a shortage of talent in prizefighting at this time, and HBO’s next generation of broadcasters should realize this and not hardsell us on historic championship runs like Wladimir Klitschko’s or Gennady Golovkin’s – runs even casual fans know are meaningless. Whoever replaces Hershman, s/he should dictate terms in the negotiation, request a bold budget, request increased latitude, request a brand new team, pause to accept whatever’s offered and not act merely thrilled to be picked. A person who does this likely will find s/he doesn’t jibe with HBO’s current culture and turn down the job. A few incidents like that and perhaps the culture will see a need to change, maybe even deciding our sport is not worth the hassle that broadcasting it brings. Boxing will find a way to struggle along, regardless.
Whatever hassles soon get brought, know this: Bradley-Rios deserves your viewership. These are two honest prizefighters who are, for once, evenly matched. Neither belongs at welterweight: Bradley moved up to make more money, and Rios moved up because his offseason diet makes weighing 135 pounds or 140 impossible. Both are worn by experience, both were fed to Manny Pacquiao for different reasons, and Bradley proved to be the considerably less-digestible dish. Bradley decisioned Pacquiao, and many have not forgiven him for it, despite his acquiescent performance in their rematch. Rios lost to Pacquiao more predictably and lopsidedly than anyone save Chris Algieri. Bradley is a better athlete and a better fighter than Rios, but then, so was Mike Alvarado a better athlete and better fighter than Rios, and Rios beat him down twice.
Bradley has a new trainer, the philosopher poet Teddy Atlas, but what Bradley needed and probably still needs is a technician who tells him to lower his chin and move his head, not a motivational speaker who steels his resolve in a crisis. Bradley manages crises better than anyone currently plying the craft; he needs help navigating round them, not navigating through them.
Still, I’ll take Bradley, SD-12, in an excellent and honest prizefight.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
