By Bart Barry-
ESPN2 broadcast a middleweight title fight between Japan’s Ryota Murata and Italy’s Emanuel Blandamura at 0800 ET on Sunday morning. Right network, right timeslot. And if Murata’s next opponent is weak as Blandamura, ESPN has a smartphone app and 0500 spot ready to go, too.
Turns out Sunday morning boxing is unlikely to replace church services in America, but it’s not a terrible thing to do with the seven o’clock (CT) hour if you’re already awake. Logging my second Murata fight, Sunday, convinced me he’s not worth setting an alarm for.
Promoter Top Rank has its reasons for vending any ticketseller, be he Mexican (Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Salvador Sanchez II) or Chinese (Zou Shiming) or gigantic (Butterbean), though often the reasons feel reducible to a Bob Arum autochallenge – Watch this! – and now ESPN has found the perfect programming slot for such fare. Murata-Blandamura sated a demographic like: Bored Italo-Japanese sportsfan undecided between SportsCenter and an abridged NBA replay.
Nothing inspiring happens during a Murata fight. There is bodypunching, sort of – it reliably happens when Murata misses with his cross – and what robotic offensive determination happens when a man is unthreatened by his opposition. We’ve seen this approach, though, ad nauseum, in HBO’s conjuring of Olympic silvermedalist Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin. The only obvious difference thus far is the timeslot and commentary.
Teddy Atlas, apparently back from exile, though as yet not allowed ringside, saw a b-level prizefighter Sunday morning and said exactly as much. Howsoever wrongheaded Atlas can be the man is independently wrongheaded. Such independence is refreshing when set against HBO’s tickle-me-Elmo promotion of GGG, one that took a b-level prizefighter matched with c-level opponents and caused a nationwide hyperbole drought.
One is tempted to see comeuppance in the ongoing search for a May 5 Golovkin victim; Golovkin is not an a-side in the pay-per-view sense of the term, and initial attempts to make him one went where they belonged. Now Golovkin and his handlers attempt to find some nohoper desperate enough to take short money on shorter notice.
There has long been something cheap about Golovkin’s ascent. Few serious efforts were made to pay serious men like Andre Ward or Carl Froch enough to give Golovkin what opposition might’ve revealed him worthy of the praise so shamelessly heaped on him, and the first such effort – making Golovkin the b-side against Canelo Alvarez – revealed a talent well shy of generational (no, it doesn’t matter if Golovkin deserved the decision; his inability to hurt an oversold junior middleweight damned the whole enterprise).
This current rash scramble for a sacrificial offering sets the mind racing backwards 15 years to Lennox Lewis versus Vitali Klitschko, a fight for the lineal heavyweight championship of the world made on two weeks’ notice. That’s not a typo. Kirk Johnson withdrew from his June 21, 2003, match with Lewis on June 7, and in a turn of matchmaking that now appears miraculous, Vitali (the Klitschko with a chin), who was scheduled for the undercard, signed to fight Lennox. And Lennox signed to fight Vitali. Lewis was unready for Klitschko, and had he not cut Klitschko to the bone early in the match, Lewis likely’d’ve lost. Lewis did not fight again.
To be charitable, all that likely precludes Golovkin from fighting a fellow titlist like Billy Joe Saunders or Murata in June is money. Saunders fights in June, anyway, and will make weight; Murata just made weight and hardly taxed himself sleepstalking Blandamura. It would be an appropriately vengeful tack for Golovkin to take, writing Canelo out of middleweight-title contention: I make fight Saunders June, I make fight Murata September, I forget Clen-elo.
Here’s the less-charitable reason these fights won’t happen: Saunders undresses Golovkin, and Murata loses to Golovkin but shortens what’s left of the GGG salesblitz.
No, Top Rank is not hurrying to match Murata with anyone who’s won a fight outside his native land – a feat Murata may never accomplish – but Top Rank is savvy enough to take a long payday for Murata in a fight that will be dynamite for a few rounds, rather than see its unidimensional Godzilla decisioned by some other tiertwo journeyman on ESPN.
That’s written in good faith, too: I believe Golovkin-Murata would be spellbinding since neither man believes any other 160-pound man in the world hits hard as he does, and both have prepared their defenses accordingly. Golovkin’s not going to eat a Murata righthand and land a knockout punch in the same second, and Murata’s not going to miss high with the cross just to land the hook; both men would be initially bashful, sure, but as neither man has the dexterity or impetus or chief second to fashion a plan b, Golovkin and Murata eventually would resort to smashing one another until the better man wins. Probably that’s Golovkin, but then, he’ll not be the Olympic goldmedalist in the ring that night, will he?
ESPN could use Golovkin-Murata as a meaningful launchparty for ESPN Plus, and maybe even offer HBO Sports some much needed step-aside money (as LL Cool J put it: “With a third of my deposit / I’ll buy your whole crib, plus the clothes in the closet”). Having a pay-per-view match cancelled on account of a drug test was unfortunate and fully unexpected, so how about we not respond predictably with safetyfirst matchmaking rubbish?
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
