By Bart Barry-
Saturday in Brooklyn, Florida welterweight Keith “One Time” Thurman hit Ohio’s “Showtime” Shawn Porter many many times and all over though not too often on the chin and beat him by three fair scores of 115-113. Social media reacted with uncharacteristic sobriety to a match Showtime-on-CBS-presented-by-PBC commentary mistook for a historic war from opening bell to closing after promising a historic war over and over and over.
The match was better than expected and about a third what viewers heard it was from the PBC’s circusbarking play-by-play dude. Somewhere in his relentless drumbeat of historic punchstat figures and legendary power this contradiction became obvious in a way best posed like a question: How come Mike Tyson never set any activity records in his heyday?
Television, mankind’s greatest yet enthusiasm-dissemination device, embraces then amplifies emotions as they arise, picking them up and setting them down instant by instant, and therefore no conflict registered to Saturday’s on-air lunacy. But here it is in a plainspoken way television can’t do: If Keith Thurman hits so damn hard, how come 200 chops with the Thurman axe didn’t dent much less fell the Porter tree? How come a Sunday morning camaraderie pic of Thurman and Porter saw Porter looking so clean, safe and sane?
Because Porter has a legendary chin! Sure, right, whatever; legends don’t get dropped by clowns like Adrien Broner and Porter did.
Great acts of combat inspire great prose.
“They both appeared exhausted in the final round but let it all hang out,” wrote ESPN’s Dan Rafael.
“With the kind of tremendous action they created in the ring, a rematch is a no-brainer and an easy sell,” wrote USA Today’s Mike Coppinger.
Porter was what his supporters believed he was and Thurman was a bit less. Like every other volume puncher in history Porter erred with his chin over his front knee, too anxious to impose himself and consequently wide open to counter uppercuts. Thurman landed a few and more of other counters like his left hook but often Thurman was in such frantic and tanglefooted retreat the punches did not measure on Porter’s chin the way they attacked PBC viewers’ ears.
Congratulations of a sort for that: The missing component of television broadcasts has long been its flattening audio that makes all punches sound the same. PBC raced directly past that issue in a wide circle that now has every punch sounding much louder and the same.
It is easy to call Porter a fun fighter without calling him or Saturday’s match legendary and probably advisable too. Being anywhere but Brooklyn for a columnist had the advantage of being far from the event’s boorish puppet-promoter sweating and screaming across press row about the quality of his product. Porter combines athleticism, desire, and yes, intelligence the way young Timothy Bradley and Juan Diaz did. He is aware of his limitations in a way his opponents are not; volume guys do not fear violence or exhaustion or ridicule the way they shudder at others’ right uppercuts but it takes a Juan Manuel Marquez – much more than a Keith Thurman – to plant and hold steady with a wildman racing your way. Porter’s jab wasn’t merely the decoy it appeared but wasn’t much more than that either. When the two men jabbed together Porter’s jab was often the first arriver but no credible source ever said Thurman had a great jab.
What Thurman has is a right hand and sometimes a left hook but it’s been so long since he fought an opponent bad enough to make him look invincible it’s admittedly hard to recall what made us so excited about him years ago but speed and intensity are good places as any to look. Or perhaps it was our delirious search to find some welterweight who might ice Floyd Mayweather that made us see in Thurman more than was there. Whatever images once danced in our heads Thurman’s footwork today rates, on a scale of novice-to-master, about: Amir Khan + 1.
Porter was able to jab him out of position and spin him fairly easily because, whatever postfight allusions Thurman concocted about Muhammad Ali (who as an aside gave away opening rounds in order to knock George Foreman out, not decision him narrowly) Thurman’s feet rarely anchored his body properly. His vaunted power, which took precious little fight out of Porter, relied heavily on Porter’s aggressiveness and Porter delivered that aggressiveness, swinging and missing ferally and fairly often(ly), but Thurman was out of position or in-position and retreating at the time of Porter’s arrivals mostly. A generation raised to confuse wide circles and wasted effort with great defense surely saw in Thurman’s tactics something like genius but not the rest of us. Better put: In 36 minutes of what horizontal ferocity snaps heavybags from gym ceilings vertically Thurman didn’t once show Porter as much conviction or technique or effect as “About Billions” did.
Still, Thurman-Porter 1 was dramatic throughout and suspenseful occasionally. Let us see an immediate rematch. According to their Sunday pic neither guy was ruined by Saturday’s match and according to previous box-office receipts neither guy is popular enough to spend another year starching novices. Provided the check clears this week CBS should agree to air the rematch in December, too – maybe even at a discount.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
