By Norm Frauenheim–
Being a sports fan during the pandemic from hell isn’t easy. It’s more about what’s missing than what’s really there, somewhere in the empty bubble amid seats filled with cutouts and annoying noise generated to sound like cheers.
Some things, of course, never change. I give you the Los Angeles Clippers, who were among the missing all over again this week in a vanishing act against the Denver Nuggets that was almost a nostalgic trip back to the old Clip Joint, basketball futility gone yet still not forgotten.
The Clipper fold in blowing a 3-1 lead in a best-of-seven series during the Pandemic Playoffs wasn’t pretty. For the Clippers, consolation probably rests in the circumstances of a trying time that everybody hopes to soon forget. It’ll come with an asterisk, a symbol that will mean it really doesn’t count. Yet in the here-and-now, it was almost comforting. During a time when it feels as if everything has changed, the Clippers didn’t.
They were familiar when little else is.
I mention this because it’s mid-September, a time when boxing would dominate the week. Wednesday, Sept. 16, was Mexican Independence Day. The familiar fireworks had become an annual ritual, an expectation of a major bout that began with Julio Cesar Chavez and continued with Oscar De La Hoya. It and Cinco de Mayo had become the game’s double date, a stage that belonged to the sport’s biggest stars, even if they weren’t Mexican or Mexican-American.
Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s last 10 fights, and 11 of his last 12, were on Saturdays tied to May 5 and Sept. 16. Since 2007, it’s no coincidence that two of the four top pay-per-view bouts were held on these dates, including the record setter – Mayweather’s decision over Manny Pacquiao on May 2, 2015 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand.
It was a time to do business. A time, also, to prove that boxing could still stop the world, hold center stage.
But that’s missing this week. I had almost forgotten about it until I glanced at the calendar and realized that last Saturday or this Saturday was supposed to belong to Mexican middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez, who about five years ago had promised to take back the May and September dates from Mayweather.
Alvarez has fought in May and/or September seven times since his loss to Mayweather on Sept. 14, 2013 to Mayweather, also at the MGM Grand. His last fight in either month was in a victory over Danny Jacobs on May 4, 2019 at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena.
But the traditional dates have gone dark since then. First, there was the pandemic, which eliminated any chance of Canelo facing UK super-middleweight champion Callum Smith in May or September. Now a lawsuit, filed last week, against promoter Oscar De La Hoya and streaming-service network DAZN leaves Canelo and the business without a date.
Boxing needs Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence on Sept. 16 as much as college basketball needs March Madness. On the calendar, those were days to circle. Days to make money. Days that define.
Without them, Canelo and the business are just a couple of guys hoping for a blind date. Not much future in that.
