Nostalgia of a sort: Saucedo decisions Booth on UniMás

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in California welterweight Oklahoman Alex “El Cholo” Saucedo decisioned Florida’s Clarence Booth by inappropriately wide scores of 79-73, 79-73, 78-74. I watched the 11th hour fight on a Univision app Googlecasted to a television; the stream split and spilled, the buffering was routinely inadequate, and Tecate’s black eagle unfailingly annoyed. The experience, however, was not just a pleasure on its own: it was a reminder of how much better boxing can be and not long ago was.

Back when I found our sport intriguing enough to cover many fightcards and travel a dozen times a year at personal expense, I sat ringside for eight of Alex Saucedo’s first 12 prizefights, and it was an undulatory ride that trended progressively upwards till it was hard-down by March 2014. Initially Saucedo seemed Top Rank’s exact replacement for Antonio Margarito, a rangy Mexican welterweight with a chin and joy for combat, though thrice as polished. And he was merely 17 years-old when we saw him begin his career in Houston (on a card that featured Son of the Legend’s unbuttoning Peter Manfredo).

Though a Chihuahuense by birth, Saucedo fought and still fights out of Oklahoma City, which is the sort of place you’re more likely to recruit a rehab opponent for Son of the Legend than find a future Mexican champion, but like other elements of the Saucedo story, that was an enchanting anomaly until it wasn’t – until it became painfully apparent Saucedo’s exposure to worldclass teaching, training and sparring was wanting in Sooner State. For Saucedo’s match two years ago at Alamodome, the last time I watched him from ringside, the card on which Son of the Legend decisioned Bryan Vera and Orlando Salido fouled Vasyl Lomachenko’s first title match, an old guy named Gilbert Venegas, four deep in the concluding 11-loss streak of a 12-20-4 career, found himself an imported sacrifice for El Cholo – who missed weight by more than a pound and set to clanging what alarms sound when a prodigy begins to disappoint those who’ve invested reputations in him.

That wasn’t me, quite – though I’d sneaked Saucedo on a 2012 list of The Ring’s best prospects after only his seventh prizefight – but it was Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler, an actual legend of his craft previously interested enough in Saucedo to journey all the way to Corpus Christi, Tex., to attend the Oklahoman’s second match. Trampler’s face is not an easy read at ringside, but he seemed duly underwhelmed by Saucedo’s decisioning of Venegas that night at Alamodome, and he might have said explicitly that were an HBO employee named Peter Nelson not in the immediate vicinity.

That year, 2014, became a lost year of sorts for Saucedo, and boxing itself – probably why few noticed one of Top Rank’s prospects, a kid who at age 18 had opened an HBO broadcast for Nonito Donaire, was gone almost entirely missing. Saucedo fought five opponents in 2014, sporting an aggregate record of 56-58-4, and showed little more than a granitic chin he allowed other men to test too often.

The way Top Rank handled Saucedo’s career in 2015 gives fine an example as any the difference between a professional outfit and whoever runs the PBC, an outfit with more money than talent that likely would have gone full-promotional with Saucedo, feeding him increasingly worse competition for increasingly more money till even Keith Thurman started to snicker at Saucedo’s announced opponents. Instead Top Rank put Saucedo in four 2015 matches against opponents with an aggregate record of 69-28-5 and without a losing tally among them, veterans who did not respect a 20-year-old, men who possessed power and craft and intent enough to ice Saucedo unless he improved his defense or demonstrated an incredible chin.

Based on Saturday’s episode, Saucedo did the latter more than the former; his defense is marginally better, yes, and his chin is really quite excellent. Clarence Booth was just the opponent for Saucedo, too, a man who, bursting with musculature and ferocity, looked considerably more menacing than opponents would report – Booth has only stopped two of the last seven men to test his power – and made Saucedo make decisions some of us stopped believing he was capable of making.

“Solo Boxeo Tecate” looked excellent, and it was wonderful to see Israel Vazquez (a rare prizefighter who, in honor of Valentine’s Day, was “one that got away” from Trampler and Top Rank), a man among the noblest of our beloved sport’s noble practitioners, offering commentary. The whole thing brought nostalgia of a sort: I remember this! I remember traveling to Tucson to cover fights like these! I remember Lupe Contreras’ goofy delivery of his “más macho” tagline! I remember Bernardo Osuno adlibbing through Friday night cards! I remember caring enough about boxing to find Spanish-language streams because there were actual consequences for the men who fought on Telefutura and for the sport itself!

Writing a fight report can be simple stuff, simpler even than a conference-call report; yes there are nonlinear elements to it, but the rounds do, after all, arrive in sequence, and few who read fight reports do so for any reason more than: They can’t help themselves. It said a lot to me about me I’d come to find things like PBC or UniMás dreary enough to go through the trouble of writing on subjects farfetched as Catalonian architects or Colombian sculptures, or rewriting entire columns from bygone years.

Well, the times have changed: I now live in Texas, where the main event of a UniMás card doesn’t happen till 11 PM, three hours later than “Solo Boxeo de Miller” sent its Friday mainevents off in Phoenix, and the roster of meaningful challengers for rising prospects is fractionally thick as it was even a decade ago, and current attendance in local gyms assures that situation will worsen. But Saturday’s card was good fun, for once, and that must be counted.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Photo By Chris Farina / Top Rank