By Bart Barry-
SAN ANTONIO – Not even a threehour drive from where this was written, Saturday night at Houston’s Toyota Center Mexican super welterweight titlist Jaime Munguia decisioned Japan’s Takeshi Inoue on unanimous scorecards that were semiaccurate despite likely being filled-in over breakfast tacos. The match’s promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, a promise machine, promised to be back in Houston again and again, as he does in every city he visits.
I wasn’t there and through the opening credits of Saturday’s mainevent couldn’t remember why, exactly, I’d forgone the experience, especially considering December’s trip to Corpus Christi for a spectacle promising nothing much qualitatively greater. (Toyota Center, too, remains dear for being the site of a personal ringside highlight and Golden Boy Promotions’ greatest early show: Juan Manuel Marquez versus Juan Diaz, 10 years ago next month.) Then a few minutes in the opening round it came together: I did not believe a month ago, and remain no more convinced today, Munguia is a mainevent fighter.
He may be on his way like Antonio Margarito once was, but he’s not there now, and his promoter’s abundance of broadcasting opportunities more than Munguia’s abundance of talent is why Saturday’s was a headline gig for the Tijuanense. It shines through in Munguia’s hitch, more pronounced when he is moving backwards or sideways than when his aggression bends him forwards. His hands too low, his chin too high, Munguia raises his gloves drops them raises them to get each combination started, and it’s the very way Inoue ducked so many high hooks early (before Inoue decided these punches were better blocked).
It’s a large reason Munguia works best moving forward and should not move to weightclasses whose titlists do not let him move forward on them. Munguia is enormous for 154 pounds, and enormity composes most of his talent at this point. We’re told how young he is and likely to outgrow his weightclass, and that doesn’t bode well for him since adding six pounds will make him punch hardly harder but absorb abler what punches clip his chin, which is many. Because his trainer’s breakthrough professional accomplishment was befriending Joel De La Hoya Sr. decades ago, Munguia hasn’t a proper tutor to admonish his left glove upwards, upwards, and this leaves him scarywide open to rights of all shape and flavor, from dunking-overhand to piston-cross.
Limited as Inoue was in every pugilistic tool save desire he nevertheless struck a prizefighter in his third title defense with punches launched from his own hip. How he did this speaks to Munguia’s want of ring IQ. At least once every round Inoue’d bull Munguia to the ropes, where Munguia’d drop his left hand as if involuntarily. His opponent’s guard pinned at his waste for reasons Inoue found fortuitous if puzzling as the rest of us did, Inoue’d force the palm of his left glove between Munguia’s chin and collarbone then blast Munguia with a right. The first few times it happened one immediately sensed Inoue must be about more than first impressions (dominated as those were by images of Inoue’s crossing right foot behind left every time he pivoted) and onto wily stuff indeed, as he teed-up Munguia’s chin in a way more than figurative.
But no. Munguia simply didn’t have an answer for being bullied back. Sometimes Munguia returned fire, sometimes he brought Inoue to his chest and looked for the ref, and other times he began a rabbitpunch-off and looked for the ref. In this sense if no other Munguia gave the impression of a mainevent fighter, a true a-side: He expected official enforcement of favorable terms and got that quite a bit in the match’s first half from a sometimes officious ref unable to break the fighters without assigning culpability.
On to Inoue. What Japanese pressure fighters have that all pressure fighters have but few have more than the Japanese is self-possession. There are cultural origins for this, probably, or maybe it’s a selfselection sort of thing, whereby matchmakers know an entertaining test will be given their fighters if a b-side gets imported from Japan. How else does one explain Inoue’s presence on Saturday’s card in the first place? It’s not enough to say Inoue’d only once before fought outside Japan; Inoue’d only twice before fought outside Korakuen Hall.
Yet there he was, making his American debut in a mainevent at Toyota Center, home of the Rockets, and making a proper show of his opportunity, too. A little zany, a little eccentric, a little offkilter – that was Inoue during fightweek and into fightnight and right through the last bell. Those aren’t pejorative modifiers because they’re not even tangential synonyms for the pejorative modifier Munguia was after, after all: Intimidated. Inoue was not that. Even when he got near kneedropped midlate by the same basic combo Munguia bounced off him 50 times Inoue straightened and shimmied and recollected on his stool.
Something else Inoue’s self-possession revealed about Munguia: He may not hit hard as advertised. Despite doing regularly the one thing every single completely superfluous commentator demands – punching to the body – Munguia did very little to take Inoue’s legs and still less to take Inoue’s spirit. Frankly the left hooks Munguia landed to Inoue’s body took about much from Munguia as they did from Inoue, blasphemy of all blasphemies.
About the completion of boxing commentary’s superfluousness: DAZN is an innovative platform without innovative commentary. Already the Kenny Mora Leonard trio is brutedreadful for all the reasons Lampley Kellerman Jones became so; the whole enterprise is banal, salesy and most of all constant. The threeman booth means someone or -ones must be talking every instant, and since there aren’t that many ways to sell a product to a customer whose payment you’ve just confirmed and since the new media reality is that no one who might criticize a promoter or manager or programmer, much less an advertiser or sponsor, is allowed a live mic, televised boxing commentary now reduces to a childlike contest of who can say “unbelievable” the most times, where five years ago it was at least a contest of who could say it the most euphemistically.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
