Orthodox / southpaw: Enjoying Crawford-Benavidez from different angles

By Bart Barry-

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – “How many services must one rent monthly to watch a championship prizefight?” went my thoughts Saturday from an apartment in nearby Zapopan, as ESPN+ and Roku and Sling, one after the other, collected my usernames and passwords then returned unhelpful errors about availability outside the United States. The next gambit, a virtual private network (VPN) that is another monthly service, brought only less helpful errors that implied: We don’t know where you are, pal, and that means you must be somewhere you shouldn’t be.

And so it went, miserably, until four monthly subscriptions took me limping to a compromise pathetic as it was welcome: A YouTube Live stream of a guy holding the camera of his phone at a 30-degree angle to a television, filling 2/3 of his screen with darkspace dark as deep space, while chatty fellow viewers warned him to keep the volume down lest ESPN dam his damned stream.

Without the tranquility of a reliable service and without an audio narration to help me know what I saw, frankly, Saturday’s match ended kind of suddenly, when welterweight titlist Terence Crawford beat to mushy Jose Benavidez Jr. on ESPN, a Disney property still beholden to ancient cable providers the way you and I are beholden to oxygen.

He notices there’s more talk of boxing on SportsCenter these days and imagines such talk representative of boxing’s ascendancy without quite getting his finger on the affiliate scheme that drives much of SportsCenter’s coverage of anything. There’s more boxing on ESPN now, too, which is further evidence of the sport’s ascendancy. ESPN, he assumes, in the few thoughts he bothers giving these sorts of things, has taken the sporting world’s pulse and predicted, accurately it turns out, boxing is rising in the American consciousness the same way soccer did a decade ago. He’s watched his share of Muhammad Ali documentaries and Mike Tyson knockout clips, and if he remembers correctly George Foreman used to do awesome commentary of Roy Jones fights on HBO, or maybe it was the other way around, and since boxing just came on after college football, well, why not?

I didn’t get to a shark metaphor in 5 1/2 previous years of watching Crawford but it came along clear Saturday night after a day at Acuario Michin (admittedly), this city’s new aquarium and its country’s largest – to complement this city’s zoo, its country’s most populous. After the Friday weighin antics, unexpected as a Monday morning, and the symmetrical hatred they supposedly evinced one imagined Crawford’s eyes would flash Saturday if they were capable of it, and they didn’t. Not in the veiny enraged way one understands the term. They were unknowable, like Crawford. They observed Benavidez and did not blink. Which made me wonder if Crawford’s sadism hasn’t been overstated a bit by me and others. Crawford is a predator true. The better a creature is at preying the more indistinguishable be his satisfaction and euphoria, the more lesser predators and prey alike project a euphoria, an almost erotic joy, on his violent activities. Mining such acts for mindfulness, though, introduces an autoimaginary element – how could I do such a thing without it brought me pleasure?

He likes the depictions of street credibility ESPN’s leadin biopics offered before Crawford – “Bud” is a weird nickname for a fighter, but whatever – and “Junior” went after each other Saturday. Lots of athletes come from bad places, but boxers get to really do something about it. The hatred between the fighters was real, anyone could see that. When the opening bell rang he expected the two men to throw the ref out of their way and frenzy violently, but they didn’t because of strategy.

I sat a few feet behind Crawford in February as Benavidez worked through someone named Matthew Strode in Corpus Christi, Texas, and the prevailing emotion Crawford expressed was polite boredom. Some local-sponsor type asked him – “hey, champ!” – what he thought of Benavidez’s performance, and Crawford gazed blankly up from his seat to say, “What do you think?” At 135 pounds, it’s safe to infer, Crawford’d not have been allowed in a ring with Benavidez without first procuring a license to hunt. But at 147 Benavidez was a far abler foil.

He knows these men are smaller than heavyweights, his bailiwick, but there’s this pound-for-pound thing that makes these guys better than heavyweights on a sliding scale of some sort. Crawford is able to drain the spirit out of a bigger man like Benavidez by punching his body. Crawford, too, does this thing with switching his stance that makes him able to hit and not get hit, even if it looks like he’s getting hit. Definitely.

I want men who are not heavyweights to climb weightclasses because doing so reveals their weaknesses in the unfair way of physics. Crawford has few if any weaknesses, but physics precluded him from dashing through Benavidez because Benavidez was a significantly larger man who knew what he was doing better than he was able to do it. Forget not, while an unknown Crawford made fights in Knoxville and Iowa City, 8 1/2 years ago, Benavidez made his third prizefight in a banquet room of our fightweek compound in Texas the night before Manny Pacquiao starred in Cowboys Stadium – Benavidez, not Crawford, would be Top Rank’s successor to Pacquiao.

He sort of sees what the ESPN commentators mean about Benavidez being a good counterpuncher, but he wishes Crawford would just leap in and dominate him like everyone says he can. Crawford’s controlling the outside foot and stuff, and he obviously hits harder, so why not go for it? Can’t be that complicated!

I enjoyed the tension in the ring early, the portentous feeling the wrong man might just win and ruin a whole lot of Nebraskans’ night out. I liked how Benavidez disrespected the champ, hands at his waist, and how Crawford saw something, some honest signal, that dissuaded his attacks for a halfhour, no matter his superior quotient of skill. Benavidez possessed magical skills for a 16-year-old while Crawford possessed them for a 30-year-old, advantage Crawford, sure, but if one were to tally athletic assets then return to Benavidez’s side of the ledger what being shot in a leg took out, the final accounting would be damn close, do not doubt.

I enjoyed the fight.

He loved the ending.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry