By Norm Frauenheim-

Erik Morales and Vitali Klitschko are at the head of the 2017 class on the ballot for inductions to the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Morales, another link in the long line of Mexican greats, should be a lock. From this corner, it would only be a surprise if Morales were not a unanimous choice on ballots due at the end of October.

If he isn’t, voters simply have not looked closely at the ballot or his credentials. Morales won titles at four weights – 122 pounds, 126, 130 and 140. He battled through two memorable trilogies, Marco Antonio Barrera and Manny Pacquiao.

There are nine losses on his 61-fight ledger, but he fought just about everybody. In the end, he stuck around too long and fought at weights too heavy for a fighter who was at his ferocious best as a featherweight.

Vitali Klitschko isn’t the lock that Morales is. At least, not on this ballot. But he was a terrific heavyweight and very much a part of the Wladimir Klitschko reign that would follow after he retired to become mayor of Kiev.

The brothers would never fight each other.
At their best, however, the pick here would be Vitali in a close one. He was tough, smart and resilient, especially in one of only two losses in 2003 to Lennox Lewis in a bout stopped because of cuts.

The rest of the ballot? It’s a tough call. Only three will be inducted. The process asks voters to select five from a list of 32 nominees The best of those include welterweight Donald Curry, light-middleweight Winky Wright, heavyweight Michael Moorer, middleweight Nigel Benn and junior-flyweight Ivan Calderon.

They’re all worthy. Moorer was at his best at 175 pounds. He was 10-0 in light-heavyweight title fights. But he’s remembered mostly for crushing losses to 45-year-old George Foreman and Evander Holyfield.

Benn was a very good middleweight champ best known for upsetting Gerald McClellan in a haunting bout that left McClellan with permanent injuries. He also beat Iran Barkley. But there aren’t many more well-known names on a record that ended in three straight defeats.

On this ballot, the votes go to:

§ Curry, who held titles at 147 and 154 in a career that had him at the top of the pound-for-debate during the mid-1980s.

§ Wright, who might have been the best light-middleweight champ ever in the brief history of a division getting a lot of attention these days.

§ Calderon, a 105 and 108 pound champion in the first decade of the new millennium and the best little guy to answer an opening bell since a couple of other Hall of Famers, Michael Carbajal and Humberto Gonzalez.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Jermall Charlo, the more aggressive, harder punching of Kevin and Terrie’s twin boys, climbed the ropes of the USC Galen Center in Los Angeles last December and hurled rhetorical questions about his dominance at a crowd reeling still from the spectacle of his worst intentions. Behind him, silent and humbled, Julian Williams gathered whatever of himself Charlo had not forever claimed.

That moment defined not only Jermall but also Jermell, the smoother boxing twin who in the aftermath of his brother’s violent arrival was relegated to being the other Charlo, the one that, whatever his merits and accomplishments, would for the time being be distinguished by accolades either absent and another’s. Frustrating that, as any brother can attest; and that frustration is only exacerbated when the proving grounds are shared. Any fighter would want a moment like the one Jermall enjoyed against Williams, and who amongst us wouldn’t be overjoyed to watch his brother awash in the glory of such a triumph? But surely, Jermell the competitor, the man who his entire life has been measured, sometimes even literally, against his twin, wished he too could be individualized in the crucible.

Saturday night, at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, Jermell got his chance. His opponent, undefeated Erickson Lubin, a one-time Olympic medal hopeful who passed on potential gold for real green. Like Williams, Lubin shied not at all from declaring his expectations of victory and had become a trendy upset pick in part because he was Charlo’s opponent. And like Williams, Lubin was left groping his way through the din of broken synaptic dialogue. It took Charlo less than a round to jab Lubin into place for the uppercut that made fools of Lubin’s handlers and, more importantly, made Charlo more than the other brother.

Twinning his brother again, in the aftermath of this defining victory Jermell spoke heatedly of payback, of what rage smoldered behind his prefight silence, how he had yearned for the opportunity to punish Lubin for his insolence. That talk, as it was with Jermall, is being branded by some as classless, as beneath the sport. Very well, let people selectively apply such standards of decency, tenuous moral superiority being the currency of the times. They should know, however, that such criticism leads back to the Charlo interview that birthed it, the context of that interview, and, inevitably, the punch that gave Charlo such license. Rest assured, Charlo would happily have critics trace that origin story for any purpose they like.

What is interesting about both brother’s vitriol is how fabricated it seems. Indeed, it was their silence in the build-up to their biggest wins that is out of place: rarely do fighters, irrationally confident, bulwarked against doubt, concede more than the possibility of attrition (and the nod to their opponents couched therein). Why are the Charlos so incensed by typical cliche? Surely they do not expect men similarly constituted to speak otherwise? Brotherhood is as likely an explanation as any other; that blood bond uniting them against their undoing and demanding that each brother meet the standard set by his kin. It is perhaps this motivation that helps explain why the brothers have similar trajectories of improvement, why their biggest challenges have produced their finest moments.

The counterexample, mind you, is obvious. Given the opportunity the Charlos would relish, the Klitschko brothers avenged one another, each hanging defeats on his sibling’s conqueror. The honor of the family name restored, Wladimir and Vitali seemed mostly drained of animus; their vengeance a sort of debt settlement, more arithmetical than existential. However malicious—and here Vitali made clear a striking sibling difference—there was none of the rage or frenzy that has marked the Charlo’s recent performances. A certain nobility born of perspective characterized the Klitschko’s (though one not without its lapses); one gets the sense they saw themselves always as mere participants in a sport, bloody as that sport may be.

For the Charlos however, everything is personal. Could you imagine either of them outsourcing their vengeance to their brother and finding any satisfaction in get back not wrought of their own hands? Or being as philosophical about a draw as Gennady Golovkin and Saul Alvarez were in what was supposed to be the highest stakes fight on American soil this year? Is it not difficult to envision either brother even touching gloves with an opponent? For years they were twins first, fighters second, a biological gimmick foisted on the public by an entity long reviled. It should come as no surprise then that having arrived as individuals and together they are indifferent to—even incredulous before—demands for decorum. Their conduct has, somewhat ironically, blurred the distinction between the brothers, though the fighting the expectation remains the same for both: ill-will artfully applied. They are the permanently insulted responding in kind, with a dash of injury thrown in for emphasis.

Pride and pridefulness are not for everyone, of course, and even those who persist in their appreciation of a near outlaw sport predicated on exploitation and the quickening of ends can have their delicate sensibilities. But honesty is something most everyone can appreciate. And is there anything more honest in sport than a man motivated by things greater than himself, armed only with his fists, endeavoring to leave every threat to his livelihood, his family, his name, in utter crisis? The Charlos will tell you no, and may not understand any answer to the contrary. May they never change.

By Bart Barry-

Editor’s note: For part 14, please click here.
AUSTIN, Texas – We’ll get to the meat of this column quickly, but first a goodfaith effort to tie loosely what follows to prizefighting, specifically prizefighting broadcasted by Showtime. Long before PBC and the Brothers Charlo – and if you’re now suddenly interested in the latter after Saturday’s showing, read Kelsey McCarson, who’s been keeping well the Charlo beat longer than anyone – Showtime was HBO’s scruffy cousin, in budget, and HBO’s superior, in quality.

Back then, too, this current mess of a column was blueprinted with a T-square on a draftingboard the night before it got written, and often with a background audiotrack of whatever came on Showtime after boxing. One time 10 years ago that background audio featured a guy walking in a dark New York alleyway and talking about why standup comedy only works in places it is terrible to live – the opening of Doug Stanhope’s Showtime special.

Today there are nearly a myriad of talented comedians, and thanks to Netflix, podcasts and other such services, comedians are accessible as they’ve been – Burnham, Burr, Chappelle, CK, Holcomb, O’Neal, Rock, White, to name personal favorites in alphabetical order – but only one has yet struck me as a genius of the form, as a performer original enough to fail for long stretches at a time before hitting so cleanly you find yourself alone in a room, and subsequently impervious to what the late Patrice O’Neal called laughter’s “contagious effect”, struggling for breath, eyes watering. That is, or perhaps was, Doug Stanhope, the end of whose “Beer Hall Putsch” is so caustic and original and layered one is awed by the man’s talent much as he’s offput by Stanhope’s vivid imagery.

Thus I drove for two hours the terrible stretch of I-35 from San Antonio to the capital, unrivaled west of the Mississippi for its aggressiveness, danger and misery, and stood two hours in the lungdamp heat and stench of an outdoor moshpit, Friday, to give thanks more than be entertained. Often as we’re told by cable news the political stakes have never been higher and our quadrennial vote is oh so essential, what’s been true in my lifetime is likely to remain so: Who you vote for every four years in the United States matters not nearly so much as what you do with your creditcard; your franchise is more reliably found in your wallet than any ballotbox.

Or so I believe. And so I reliably buy tickets for live performances expecting little more than a chance to offer anonymous gratitude. Stanhope is still magical but no longer miraculous, and it makes you wonder how much of the magic you now import as an audiencemember and how much of the magic he still exports from thin air.

Friday Stanhope introduced his opener, Jay Whitecotton, as a friend (and later proved it by addressing Whitecotton in the wings throughout the performance) with a short bit that felt more confession than stagecraft: I’ve been drinking since this morning, Stanhope said (or something close), but I just took some Adderall and I can feel it kicking in so I’m going to go review some notes and come out after Jay. There were a couple other references to Adderall and they were instructive for the reason much of Stanhope’s Friday show was more instructive than hilarious – process.

Stanhope’s bits are cobbled from handwritten notes on pink paper, or at least these were what he brought out and began to use after his closer didn’t punch, and they appear bulletpoints of an outline more than the sea of metered legalpad essays Jerry Seinfeld floats in his new Netflix special. Which comes as no surprise. The stakes for Seinfeld are multiples higher than they be for Stanhope. Seinfeld is as many times the professional comedian that Stanhope is as Stanhope is the artist that Seinfeld is. One man continues to build a comedic and financial legacy while the other maniacally pursues a single unforgettable experience. Seinfeld knows; Stanhope discovers.

Stanhope breaks script often, though one suspects less often when he’s off than on. There seemed less improvisation Friday by Stanhope for his being less confident in new material, commenting several times on the choppiness of his delivery and what poor timing he attributed to jetlag and the daily battle his body and mind host between depressants and stimulants.

A personal note about Stanhope’s use of Adderall: I’ve not tried Adderall but spent a fewmonths’ stretch writing under the influence of Modafinil, which promotes a similar sort of synthetic concentration under the auspices of wakefulness. I didn’t stop because of some trite dependency or moral pang; I stopped because it didn’t work in writing for the same reason it does work in Stanhope’s form of comedic improvisation: It takes you deeper in every thought like “thought, a thing one thinks, which is a thing the brain does, or maybe the mind, that collection of billions of selfinterested neurons none of which has interest in thinking but only electrical connectivity, a billion unthinking binary switches that somehow form a thought, whatever that is, like Daniel Dennett’s ‘competence without comprehension’, and don’t listen to neurologists either, that petty and selfaggrandizing lot, till they can zap a piece of fat to see an idea.”

That sort of directionless ferreting usually proves futile in writing, where it proves extraordinarily creative and funny when it meets Stanhope’s timing – a delivery perfected in the crucible of three decades’ stage performances – as he masterfully fills the second and a half his mind needs to burrow another level, with stuttering. But it also proves dark. And 30 years of deepening darkness can come to an unfunny place.

Stanhope knows this but commits to it, choosing his accommodations by one-star reviews, touring in filthy rental vans, reveling in selfdecimation, but also glancing routinely at a chemically dependent crowd that is ageing bitterly, many outpacing their favorite performer, while reflecting back at Stanhope something he no longer appears to find so energizing. Then there’s the internet and the President and just how leathery they’ve made audience sensibilities; robbed of the 1/3 of material touring comedians safely mined from the quarries of national political figures (Trump defies inventive satirizing), comedians have to find weirder social commentaries to make, but that, too, is difficult, since the web makes all intriguing local happenings global events eventually.

An hour with Stanhope previewed the ends of the craft as currently practiced.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action Live from ringside at Barclays Center as three world titles in the 154 pound division are contested.  In the main event Erislandy Lara defends the WBA title against undefeated former U.S. Olympian Terrell Gausha.  In the second bout, undefeated world champion Jermell Charlo defends the WBC belt against undefeated Erickson Lubin.  Kicking off the show Undefeated Jarrett Hurd defends his IBF title against former world champion Austin Trout.  The action kicks off at 10 PM ET

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1:

Round 1 Right from Charlo…HUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES LUBIN….LUBIN IS STIFF ON THE CANVAS AND THE FIGHT IS OVER

Round 1 Left from Hurd..Straight left from Trout..Jab..

Round 2 Hurd lands a right on the ropes..Right from Trout..Uppercut.Uppercut from Hurd..right and left from Trout..Right hook and uppercut..

Round 3 Great exchanges..Trout lands a 3 punch combo..right from Hurd..Right from Trout..Right to body..Right from Hurd..Right

Round 4 Right from Hurd..2 Hard jabs…Body shot from Trout..Hard left..2 more lefts..Straight left..2 hard uppercuts..

Round 5 Straight left from Trout..Hard right rocks Trout..right inside..Uppercut from Trout..2 punch combination..Right from Trout

Round 6 Right from Hurd..Left..Left from Trout..Uppercut from Hurd..Big right hurts Trout..Straight left from Trout

Round 7  Hurd cut around his left eye…Left and right from Hurd..Hard right..Right buckles Trout..Left from Trout..3 Punch combination from Hurd

Round 8 Big right rocks Trout..Hard right..Trading lefts…Left from Trout..Left..Left from Hurd

Round 9 Left from Hurd..Right..Right..Left from Trout..Trout cut under his right eye

Round 10 Jab from Hurd..Uppercut and left from Trout..3 punch combination and a hard left from Hurd…Trout’s eye is shutting….FIGHT STOPPED IN CORNER…TROUT CAN NOT CONTINUE

By Norm Frauenheim-

It’s one of those hyphenated divisions once lost amid the proliferation of them. Call it light, Call it junior. But don’t call it forgettable. Not any more, anyway.

The 154-pound weight class, once a stopping point between welter and middle, is making a memorable impact on the scale, never more so perhaps than Saturday night with three intriguing bouts at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on a Showtime-televised card.

A division first created in 1962 has some of its own legends. There still might be more money at 160 and 147. But increasingly there’s some history to be made 154, too.

“There are just better fights at 154,’’ said Erislandy Lara, who faces an emerging and unbeaten ex-Olympian, Terrell Gausha, for his WBA title on a card that also includes two other 154-pound title fights — Austin Trout-versus-Jarrett Hurd and Jermell Charlo-versus-Erickson Lubin.

Lara concedes that he is looking up the scale – the pay scale, too – at 160 for a rich rematch with Canelo Alvarez or a shot at Gennady Golovkin. But both figure to be busy with their own rematch of a controversial draw last month.

“I have unfinished business that has to be settled,’’ said Lara, who lost a split decision to Canelo at 154 in July 2014. “He knows who the true winner of our fight was, and he doesn’t want to do that fight again.

“…“If you look at Canelo’s record, there are three marks (a loss, split decision and draw). There’s (Floyd) Mayweather, me and Golovkin. Great fighters fix the wrongs on their record, and Canelo and his team will have to do that sooner or later.’’

For now, however, Lara will have to resign himself to the later. At 154, there are plenty of challenges and paychecks.

“154 is much deeper,’’ Lara said.

It is, and it has been for a while. A who’s who of names have at, one point or another, held a 154-pound title. Here’s Hall of Fame sample: Winky Wright, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, Thomas Hearns, Oscar De La Hoya, Pernell Whitaker, Felix Trinidad, Wilfredo Benitez and Shane Mosley.

There’s a reason that Wight leads the list. From this corner, Wright’s reign at 154 marks the beginning of an era when the weight became more than just a portal, a stopping point for moving up or even moving out and into retirement.

At 154, Wright was as good as anybody at any weight from March 2004 through May 2005 with successive victories over Shane Mosley and then a win over Trinidad.

If there was a prize at stake for the best performance on Saturday’s Showtime card (7 p.m. PT/10 p.m. ET), it could be named for him. Call it The Winky Trophy For The Wright Stuff. There’s nothing junior or light about 154 anymore.

By Bart Barry-

Recently my Saturday hike saw a canine companion turn instantly from goldenfleeced cutie to predatory lightning bolt. Still more recently Netflix recommended a very good documentary – “Ice Guardians” – about professional hockey’s enforcers, the players whose tenures in the NHL begin and end with their readiness, willingness and ability to fight. As this remains a column nominally about fighting consider what follows a form of crosstraining, a means of sharpening one’s afición by mulling some ungloved acts of violence.

Kiwi is a three-year-old cocker-spaniel mix who weighs little over 20 pounds and swings widely and acutely between affection and surliness. He is a carnivore, of course, with a taste for Texas barbecue that approaches lunacy: He prefers his ribs dirty, covered in meat, and doesn’t clean them so much as masticate the entire organ – muscle, tendon, cartilage, bone, marrow. When he’s had roast beef he tends to take a small and fluffy blue whale toy and put in much work, throttling it with a series of rapid neck twists, smashing it to the carpet then throttling it some more. It’s not cute or menacing, quite.

The role of enforcer in the NHL is, according to enforcers, entirely distinct from the role of goon – a disparagement used in the game at most all levels for a player whose lack of skill forces him to choose brutality over aesthetic options like passing or shooting or defending cleanly. An enforcer creates a preventative tension on the opposing team’s bench, acting like an insurance policy for his team’s talentful players who subsequently maneuver with the freedom of knowing nothing untoward or particularly physical will befall them. To hear enforcers explain it, their menacing presences govern other teams’ wouldbe scofflaws more certainly than lesser deterrents like suspensions or fines or even lifetime bans do – those deterrents are abstractions, where the threat of a large man’s bare fist racing from your nose to hypothalamus is a deterrent that is objective.

Guadalupe River State Park sits 30 miles due north of San Antonio and has a main entrance used by hikers and campers and bikers and tubers, and a back entrance with a gate that allows hikers alone. The backentrance trail winds through woods and meadows before descending to a river overlook, and it’s nearly always empty enough for Kiwi to gambol without a leash.

There is no type of combat like hockey fighting. Begin with the idea of trying to gain purchase on a frictionless surface. If you punch your target without having a hold of him, physics’ equal and opposite force sends you impotently backwards at the decisive moment. What you have to do, then, is grab hold of his jersey with your lead fist and pull his chin into your jab while cocking your back fist for a blow most concussive you verily do not wish land on his helmet or faceshield. Of course, he’s trying to do the very same, and the trick is tricky enough to turn th’t the NHL sees very few knockouts, even while most every fight ends with a knockdown of some grappling sort. In the good old days, as it were, before fightstraps and other such accoutrements, the goal was to get your opponent’s jersey over his head, extending his arms involuntarily, the better to lash him savagely with right uppercuts. Prizefighting is sportsmanlike and orderly by comparison.

The small armadillo may have been lame or lost or merely careless when it caught Kiwi’s attention. Kiwi, who’d dashed and trotted through a couple miles of rugged Hill Country terrain by then, breathed heavily with his tongue out, the better to scoop air in his throat. Less than a second after the armadillo made some fateful sound I did not hear, Kiwi’s mouth was shut, his ears up, and he bounded off the trail. In a single, silent motion, he rammed the armadillo with the bridge of his snout and knob of his thickboned forehead, putting it on its side, diggerclaws frantically scrambling. Once Kiwi’s lower jaw got in the armadillo’s fleshy underside, the throttling commenced. The sight became natural and horrifying, naturally horrifying, horrifyingly natural.

The biggest surprise “Ice Guardians” holds for anyone who’s played the game at any level above peewee is the surprise its laity commentators describe at their discovery NHL enforcers are actually decent men who are preternaturally loyal to their teammates. Raised in a bubble of superhero flicks and prowrestling villains, one assumes, these professors and doctors imagined psychopathy alone might lead a man to make his living punching other men. It’s an irony initially lost on them a dispassionate psychopath might make the very worst sort of enforcer, detached as he’d be from his teammates’ suffering, hypothetical or actual; whatever their size or temperament, NHL enforcers are generally men empathetic to a fault.

Kiwi’s teeth acted like saws while his neck torqued infinities, one two, then smashed the flailing armadillo on the earth – the way he’d practiced his toy whale for three uneventfully domestic years. Then another ramming to put the armadillo bellyup and another throttle throttle smash. Three altogether till the armadillo’s vital red organs bubbled orange out its chest while its legs went from twitching to ticking, animation dwindled. The job finished in 15 seconds, Kiwi wandered off and left me to end the little creature’s suffering. When Kiwi returned to the armadillo’s warm carcass, having hungrily licked the blood from his teeth and gums, he gazed curiously from the armadillo to me like “What have you done, pal?”

There’s lots of beerdrinking in the NHL, even more in NHL lore, and one imagines nobody better to have a beer with than an NHL enforcer. A paragon of masculinity in a profession that cottons to nothing effeminate, the enforcer speaks softly if directly, laughs loudly and ensures everyone gets home safe. By the time he ascends to the NHL, the enforcer is capable of precise, professional violence – which lets some forget how he was selected years before to become an enforcer. In a sport of Irish tempers and irrational pride, the candidate enforcer showed a lower threshold to offense than his peers and a unique propensity for violence. And a strict adherence to the game’s code: A professional hockey player settles differences with the knuckles of his bare fist, not the lumber in his gloves or the razors on his feet.

By the time we got back to the car, a couple miles and 45 minutes later, Kiwi was bouncing and yipping like usual, tail wagging, licking my chin and panting, returned to his euphoric, playful self.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Wladimir Klitschko retired only two months ago. I’m already starting to miss him.

The more the heavyweights change, the more they stay the same. Sorry for the cliché, but the state of the heavyweight division has become one. It just can’t seem to break out of the mind-numbing cycle that has made it oh-so forgettable.

Klitschko’s retirement in early August was applauded in part because it appeared to open the door for different faces, new opportunity and – above all – renewed drama.

The sense was that the old flagship division would be resurrected. But is anybody really excited about the Deontay Wilder-Bermane Stiverne rematch? Sorry, dumb question. How about Anthony Joshua-Kubrat Pulev? Again, sorry.

Joshua and Wilder are the leading faces in what could be a heavyweight revival. Let’s start with Joshua, who faces Pulev on Oct. 28 in the UK. He has power in his punches and personality. He’s also got some smarts and resilience, both of which he demonstrated in stopping Klitschko in what was the Ukrainian’s final fight in front of a rock-and-roll-like crowd of 90,000 at London’s Wembley Stadium.

The fight last April was terrific. The huge crowd was even better and it probably generated more headlines than the bout itself. It suggests that the heavyweights and perhaps the business were back. Think again. Joshua-versus-Tyson Fury would have been a lot fun. Fury upset Klitschko before Joshua finished him. But the controversial Fury has been under suspension and unwilling to file for a new license with UK regulators. This week, Fury said he would retire. Who knows what he’ll really do?

The only apparent certainty is that Joshua is fighting Pulev, who in 2015 was just another one of those bowling pins that Klitschko knocked out so regularly.

Then, there was the unfortunate shuffle involving the hard-luck Wilder. It is a further sign that the heavyweights have yet to break out of the cycle that has made them irrelevant. At least, Klitschko was worth watching for his astonishing consistency, including a nine-year, seven-month reign as the heavyweight champ.

Without him, we’re left with the familiar disruptions. Wilder’s bout with Luis Ortiz was canceled because Ortiz tested positive for medication he did not disclose.

Ortiz’s management said the medication was for excessively high blood pressure. That begs the question as to why Ortiz has been allowed to fight in the first place. But the medication was also reported to be a masking agent for PEDs, including steroids.

For Wilder, the situation is all-too familiar. His 2016 bout against Russian Alexander Povetkin was canceled when Povetkin tested positive for a PED. Instead, Wilder went on to fight sub Chris Arreola in a fight that left him on the shelf with a torn biceps and an injured hand.

Now, the sub is Stiverne, who agreed this week to the Nov. 4 rematch at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in a Showtime-televised bout. In Stiverne, Wilder faces a heavyweight whom he beat by unanimous decision in January 2015 for the WBC title. Been there, done that.

Like Joshua, Wilder has a media-friendly personality. He also possesses dramatic power, the best right hand at any weight since perhaps Thomas Hearns. What he lacks is experience. Despite his Olympic bronze medal, he’s late to the game, unlike Joshua, a 2012 gold medalist. Wilder will be 32 years old on Oct. 22. What he desperately needs is experience against skilled fighters, heavyweights like Povetkin, also an Olympic gold medalist, and the clever Ortiz.

But Wilder’s development has stalled by all the junk that seems to plague the heavyweights more than any division in a sport already synonymous with trouble. Wilder’s right hand can knock out anybody. But he has to know how to land it against a heavyweight at a skill level more proficient than Stiverne or Arreola.

“Stiverne will pay for Luis Ortiz screwing up,” Wilder said Thursday.

Maybe, but Wilder might pay a bigger price for not getting the opponent who could prepare him for Joshua and a fight that needs to be great for the sake of a division. And the game.

By Bart Barry-

Editor’s note: For part 13, please click here.

*

CUSCO, Peru – The morning air is crisp here in the Andes, 11,000-foot-altitude crisp, and the sun is bright, 11,000-foot-altitude bright in a way whose rays the locals call “burning, not tanning” and the two cause a unique latemorning event in the small room of this bed and breakfast: The glass of the window is too hot to touch but opening it makes the room uncomfortably cold. That may be the only phenomenon the locals don’t cure with coca-leaf tea. And about that coca plant . . .

Shaking, no, shuddering: Not the way your hand moves after a third cup of coffee but how your body moves on a sudden chill, except not confined to a second or a minute or an afternoon – an involuntary shudder vibrating the body its length till the day divides itself as Nature did before we imposed clocks on Her, just meaningless darkness or meaningless light, no conscious associations. An unscheduled way to spend one’s last day in Peru, but the day after Montaña Machu Picchu’s ascent was scheduled for recuperation, though who knew so much freight might be loaded that word’s stanchions?

Ah coca, the magic miracle plant of Inca lore, potent more as an appetite suppressant and diuretic than anything registerable as a stimulant; it might get you up the mountain embracing absurdity but you don’t attribute it till a fifteenhour passes and a 2,000-foot ascent and (more harrowing) descent gives you nary a hungerspike nor even hunger enough to force down luxury rail fare and while you do wonder at it you figure fatigue reasonably overwhelms hunger till the next day. Sometime that afternoon you realize unwittingly imposing the coldest of turkeys on what now loudly declares itself a chemical dependency was unwise; it might be sunstroke from the descent – an afternoon Andean glare that dashes through SPF 30 like wet tissuepaper – or it might be foodpoisoning (did that alpaca steak taste gamey? compared to what?) but it almost has to be the “tea” you mixed to muddy with green hoja-de-coca dust from the convenience store and an enormous bottle of water with a tiny mouth into which you futilely windfunneled your green dust the night before the climb, a concoction so vile your limeña boothmate spent her ninetyminute beside you on the train from Ollantaytambo to Machu Picchu disbelieving and rhetorically asking if you’d complete your illadvised journey to bottlebottom.

Which you proudly stupidly did before resuming assault on your stunned belly with coca-toffee snacks perfect for suckling all the way up the mountain. Twenty-four hours to the quarterhour later the shuddering begins and does not subside for a thirtyhour till it expertly passes misery’s baton to dysentery’s fay cousin, who makes a host of you for a week.

Nothing recreational or edifying about the climb, either, friends. Thirty degrees unrelenting upwards on narrow ancient stones, every CrossFitter for the last hour telling you in Spanish or English or Dutch or German you are but a tenminute from a top you cannot see until you do and wish you didn’t – so high and steeply above you and covered in colorful North Face attire it resembles an Afghan fighter kite at full pench – then a sideways descent on cramped legs that shows you a sheerness of drop you missed going up, a vista that sets you to spidermanning boulders along the silent drumbeat of a mantra that goes: Legs soft like Bode’s!

A perfect time, evidently, to wonder at how much of language is but courtesy. All of grammar, as it happens. Look at that last fragment of a sentence. “Grammar” is the only word my mind needed to communicate the idea to itself; “all” was assumed since less than all would be more sensation than qualifier; prepositions like “as” and “of” serve purely diplomatic roles, softening and qualifying for another’s benefit; “it” is redundant; “happens” is stylistic fluff not even a frivolous mind would say to itself. In that light most editing reveals itself arbitrary as any other pursuit: You’re telling me you got the gist of things without the decorative prepositional phrase “as it happens” but I know I got my thought’s gist simply with “grammar” and so now we haggle to a compromise we assume acceptable to readers like us.

Lima is neither pretty nor pleasant – a Latin American capital in the harshest sense of the term. A desert with a coastline, dusty and trafficful, unfriendly to locals and visitors alike, still deeply scarred 25 years later. Taxistas and innkeepers, what talkative folks comprise the majority of any solo traveler’s conversations his first day in any city, get blankfaced and silent at first utterance of these unmistakable seven syllables: Sendero Luminoso. The ostensibly Maoist domestic terror organization that put Lima in a shoot-on-sight sundown curfew until its leader, Abimael Guzman, was captured and set in a cage for public viewing – its mention still snatches all animation from limeños’ faces.

When compared to other Latin American places there is an almost militaristic efficiency to Peruvians’ concept of time and its elasticity: Peru uses every hour of the day and night, planes land on the Jorge Chavez tarmac at 0200, trains depart their stations at 0400. But Peru also strikes a visitor as among Latin America’s most enduringly indigenous countries – from Peruvians’ appearances and dress to the successful preservation of Inca culture. Perhaps the Spaniards brought to the Americas more than what pestilence and durable brutality trumpeted their arrival; perhaps, contrary to centuries of Eurocentric scholarship, Spaniards also brought a cultural flimsiness Peru found resistible better than its neighbors did.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Andre Ward’s surprising retirement, Roman Gonzalez’ sad defeat and the scorecard controversy still brewing over the Gennady Golovkin-Canelo Alvarez draw is re-energizing the pound-for-pound debate and generating renewed optimism about a resilient business known for comebacks.

It’s always best to be cautious about whether another comeback is on the horizon. Adelaide Byrd’s crazy card favoring Canelo by a bewildering eight-point margin on Sept. 16 serves as a clear-and-present warning. It reminds me of an old line from Hall of Fame writer Michael Katz. To wit: Only boxing is killing boxing.

Nevertheless, some intriguing elements are beginning to fall into place for some real momentum going into 2018. Even Adelaide’s Byrd-brain card might prove to be a good thing. It all but ensured that there would be a rematch in what looks to be a headline-grabbing rivalry until at least next May and perhaps beyond. There are plenty of reasons to question — even suspect — Byrd’s scoring. But only a rematch can provide an answer. That’s good for business.

So, too, is the slow, yet still painful move away from the pay-per-view business model. The numbers just can’t be believed any more. The buy rate has been corrupted.

The only relevant number in a Guccifer 2.0 era full of Russian hackers, bots, Trump tweets and pirates is the rip-off rate. The move toward bouts on ESPN and Showtime without the PPV tag is already underway. Early indications are that it is working. It has to.

The idea is to introduce young fighters, fighters from Eastern Europe and Central Asia to an emerging audience of young fans armed with cutting-edge tech and seeking new ways to watch. They’re seeking new fighters, too. Ward was good, even great in an old-school kind of way. At 32-0, he has a Hall of Fame resume.

It also fair to wonder whether he won’t be at least tempted to try his luck at heavyweight, a la Roy Jones Jr. But the guess here is that Ward knows he’s just not big enough to contend with Anthony Joshua, 6-foot-6 and 27, or Deontay Wilder, 6-7 and 31. Ward formally notified the acronyms this week that he was vacating his light-heavyweight titles. Now 33, he’ll look around at the younger generation in a year or two and probably decide to stay retired.

Ward’s retirement creates a vacancy – maybe even a breath of fresh air – at the top of the pound-for-pound debate. He was a terrific boxer, subtle and smart. Yet, he was never a big draw, in part because of inactivity brought on by promotional trouble. He also had something of an artistic temperament, meaning that he approached each bout more as a craftsman than a salesman.

He was fun to watch, but you had to know what you were watching. Same with Roman Gonzalez, a master craftsman who is the lightest fighter to ever occupy the pound-for-pound’s top spot. Gonzalez’ fight to draw a big crowd was complicated by the simple fact that he’s a little guy, a flyweight whose ascent up the scale was stopped by successive losses to junior-bantamweight Srisaket Sor Rungvisai.

There’s a reason for weight classes and that was evident in the Gonzalez defeats. Evident, too, was a fighter who seemed to have lost his way, if not his will, in the wake of trainer Arnulfo Obando’s death.

Time, tragedy, simple physics and circumstance have eliminated them from the top of the argument. In their place, there is a youth movement, at least there is in this pound-for-pound edition.

At No. 1: Terence Crawford. He’s slick, quick, instinctive and appears to have a mean streak. He dominated junior welterweight and the guess here is that he will do the same at welter. There are questions about whether he can draw in locales far from his fans in Omaha. On PPV, no. On ESPN, yeah. Without PPV limits, more fans will get a chance to see just how good he is and how much better he’ll soon be.

No. 2: Mikey Garcia. He’s smart and as efficient as any fighter in a long while. I’m not sure the lightweight champion can beat Crawford at a heavier weight (147 pounds) or junor-lightweight Vasily Lomachenko (more on him later) at his own weight, 135. But it looks as if the economical Garcia does what he has to, which might mean we haven’t seen most of what he can do.

No. 3: Lomachenko. He’s part wizard and part Ali. At least, that’s how promoter Bob Arum and others have portrayed him. At 130 pounds, I’m not sure anyone can beat him, but he faces an intriguing Dec. 9 challenge from Guillermo Rigondeaux, anther master craftsman, yet dismissed as boring. Rigondeaux is jumping up in weight, from 122 pounds, to face Lomachenko in an unprecedented bout between double Olympic gold medalists. Can the Cuban beat the Ukrainian? Maybe not, but he has the skillset to challenge him, or at least show somebody else how to beat him.

No. 4: Golovkin and Canelo in a tie. Or was that a draw? If Canelo learns from the debatable draw the way he learned from a loss to Floyd Mayweather, he should win against GGG, who is 35 and will be 36 at opening bell of the projected May rematch.

No. 5: Joshua. Maybe, Joshua belongs in the second five for now. But he is the possible face of the very future that is apparent in autumn of the year before boxing’s potential comeback. He is drawing huge crowds in the UK. Boxing has always been defined by the heavyweights. No real comeback is complete without one and Joshua might be the one.

By Bart Barry-

Thursday afternoon Andre Ward announced the conclusion of his excellent career. The retirement feels legitimate because Ward feels legitimate, ungiven to publicity stunts or publicity in general, and the reason he cited – an unwillingness to keep suffering – is a hard one to walk back later: “With my body now two years older, my desire to fight has returned in 2019.”

Ward joins Floyd Mayweather, whose third retirement, one hopes, is his final retirement, Juan Manuel Marquez, Wladimir Klitschko and Timothy Bradley, on a worldclass list of five prizefighters who retired this year.

What follows is a meandering, unstructured series of thoughts and runon sentences about the careers of these men as seen by one aficionado deeply interested in our beloved sport during their best years. This is no final word; even if such a thing existed this wouldn’t be a finalword piece because its author hasn’t the shoulders or stomach to bear the burden of a final assessment to the end of days.

First a clarifying hypothetical question (that I doubt I’ll answer myself as, the more I’ve considered it, the less certain I am, after beginning uncertainly): Pretending all five men didn’t just retire this year but also made their career’s final matches in 2017, only three would be eligible for Hall of Fame induction in 2022 – and so, which two shouldn’t get in? This question is wigglier than it looks. As a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, which I am (just checked; I honestly didn’t remember if I’d remembered to pay this year’s dues), I am allowed to vote for all five guys – which precludes a hypothetical crisis of conscience. Too, Marquez announced his retirement this year but stopped fighting three years ago and will be on the ballot in 2019, and Bradley will be on the ballot, or should be, in 2021. The question, then, seeks a statistical prediction more than an aesthetic judgement: Not “who would you leave off your list?” so much as “who would mathematics exclude?”

Probably Ward and Bradley. Mayweather was one of the world’s two best fighters for most of an era. Klitschko was the heavyweight champion of the world for a goodish while. And Marquez has nearly as many career prizefights as Ward and Bradley combined. There’s an argument to be made Bradley doesn’t belong in this particular conversation, and fairplay to that, but as this is my meandering, unstructured series of thoughts, and as I have a general weakness for volume punchers and a specific weakness for a prizefighter honest and decent as Bradley, he’s in.

Fine, but after what Ward just did in his rematch with Kovalev, how dare you, sir?

Hold on there. It’s not me – I’d love to leave Klitschko off the list, truly I would – but you can’t fight as many times for a world heavyweight championship as Klitschko did and expect a majority of voters to overlook that because, and this is especially important when we judge recent made-by-television careers in lower weightclasses, the heavyweight champion is the one person in our sport who cannot scale weightclasses in search of better opposition. You can’t hold the heavyweight champion’s era against him if he fought all comers, and for the most part Klitschko did.

That’s not fair? No kidding. Neither is Klitschko’s being 11 inches and 100 pounds bigger than Marquez (before Juan Manuel dedicated himself to the sort of fitness regimen Wlad and brother Vitali followed since the amateurs).

This may be the only time pound-for-pound musings can be amusing: What sort of horror movie would a prime Marquez make with a 130-pound Klitschko?

Good one. Let’s play a touch more. Mayweather did not fight Marquez on terms even resembling even eight years ago but showed enough in their 36 minutes together to imagine 130-pound Mayweather beats the Marquez who snuffs shrunken Klitschko, at least seven times of 10. Prime Bradley sneaked past 40-year-old Marquez in 2013, but 130-pound Bradley probably wouldn’t win two rounds against 30-year-old Marquez. That leaves 130-pound Ward against 130-pound Marquez, and frankly, what a lovely fight!

I’ve chosen Marquez as the axle round which our circle twirls because Marquez is my favorite fighter who retired in 2017. He is also the man I’d least like to encounter in a dark alley. Again, while plenty of fighters I’ve interviewed have expressed a willingness to die in combat Marquez is the only one who’s given me a sense he’s willing to kill in the ring – and that’s neither hyperbole nor metaphor.

Back into the dark alley a bit. Second on that list would be Ward; I saw him sitting in an Oakland hotel lobby the night before he cuberooted Chad Dawson (Ward’s defining fight, along with his manhandling of Mikkel Kessler, till the Kovalev rematch), and dude’s eyes were dead as a mako shark’s. Mayweather’s third on the darkalley test because he’s a bully at heart, and things’d get intentional and sadistic right quick with a man whose temperament and skills could leave a disgusting mess. One doesn’t get the sense either Klitschko or Bradley has been in a dark alley or’d have much interest in fighting there; Bradley’d hit you a couple times then tell you to chill out, and Klitschko’d keep jabbing and bounding backwards till he ran out of alley or the cops showed up.

What Hall of Fame induction actually means to boxers is anyone’s guess; I’ve heard lots of young gymrats want to be champions but never heard one want to be a Hall of Famer – halls of fame have a definite meaning in teamsports they lack in sports like boxing or swimming or golf, whose hallowed edifices serve more as museums.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Jorge Linares defends the WBA Lightweight title against mandatory challenger Luke Campbell.  The action begins at 10 PM ET / 7 PM PT

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1 Right hook from Camobell..Quick jab from Linares…Straight left from Campbell

Round 2: Good exchange..Left hook from Linares..HARD RIGHT AND DOWN GOES CAMPBELL..Campbell cut over his right eye

Round 3 Right from Linares..Body shot from Campbell…Straight right from Linares..Combination

Round 4 Campbell landing to the body…Good uppercut from Linares..Straight right..Good body shot from Campbell

Round 5 Hard right from Linares…Right hook from Campbell…Body shot from Linares..Straight right

Round 6 Hard right from Campbell…Left hook to body from Linares..Combination from Cambell

Round 7 Good left hook and left from Linares..Campbell lands a good jab..Good right from Linares..another right..Hard right hook from Campbell..Straight right from Linares..Good right body shot from Campbell

Round 8 Hard right from Linares…Left from Campbell…1-2..2 body shots…Good left hook from Linares

Round 9  Good hook from Campbell..right from Linares..Good hook from Campbell..Left hook from Linares..Hard left to body from Campbell..

Round 10 Good right hook from Campbell..3 straight rights from Linares..and another..Campbell lands a jab

Round 11 Left to body from Linares..Jab..

Round 12 Good left hook from Linares…

115-113 for Campbell….114-113 for Linares…115-112 for LINARES

By Norm Frauenheim-

TUCSON, Ariz. – Oscar Valdez Jr. is at home, his second home, with a promise as a priority.

In his last trip to Tucson in 2015, he promised he’d be back with a world title. He delivered on that one, returning with a World Boxing Organization belt that he won in 2016.

But one promise begets another.

“I’m not planning on losing this here,’’ Valdez said, with the belt in one hand, after he stepped off the scale Thursday at 125.8 pounds for his title defense against unknown Filipino Genesis Servania at Tucson Arena on an ESPN-televised card (7:30 p.m. PT/10:30 p.m. ET).

In a third defense of the belt, Valdez (22-0 19 KOs) is expected to win a bout that could set up a showdown with Belfast featherweight Carl Frampton. Frampton just signed with the company that manages Mick Conlan, a Valdez stablemate who faces Kenny Guzman on the Friday undercard.

Despite an unbeaten record (29-0, 12 KOs), not much is known about Servania, who is fighting in the United States for the first time after fighting mostly in the Philippines and Japan. Servania, who weighed in at 125.4 pounds, had one bout in Dubai

“There was a time when Manny Pacquiao wasn’t known, either,’’ said Valdez, who has generated headlines for Friday’s card by his vocal support for The Dreamer and their fight to stay in the United States.

Valdez promoter Bob Arum is offering 500 free tickets to Dreamers – undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. when they were kids — who show up at the box office with documentation of their immigration status.

“This is insane, the policy that we now have,’’ Arum said a day after he announced the free tickets. “These Dreamer kids are as American as my grandkids. They were raised in this country. They speak English. They go to American schools. The idea that we would send them back to other countries is ludicrous.

“Americans are supposedly held to higher ethical standards than this. I will fight to the last breath in my body for these kids. They belong in the United States, they can contribute to this country and we have to open our hearts to them because they deserve it.

“They came here – does it matter if their parents came legally or illegally? They were kids when they came here and I think every American has the moral obligation to stand up for these dreams.’’

Up and down the card, there is support for what Valdez is saying and Arum is doing en behalf of the Dreamers.

“My people are good people, people who are just fighting to make living,’’ said Gilbert Ramirez, a Mexican who defends his WBO super-middleweight title against Jesse Hart in perhaps the most intriguing bout on the card.

Ramirez (35-0, 24 KOs) was 167.8 pounds Thursday. Hart (22-0. 18 KOs) tipped the scales at 167.6. Conlan (3-0, 3 KOs), an Irish Olympian, was at 126.6 pounds. His opponent, Kenny Guzman (3-0, 1 KO) was at 125.

The untelevised portion of the card begins at 4:30 p.m. (PT). It can be watched on an ESPN app.

By Norm Frauenheim-

TUCSON, Ariz. – Father and son both wore black caps made specially for a mission that has been underway for a couple of generations. War, it said in bright white stitching.

It’s a familiar message, one made famously by Marvin Hagler, who wore it on a red cap before his legendary victory over Thomas Hearns more than three decades ago.

Eugene “Cyclone” Hart and son Jesse Hart borrowed the message, a declaration that this time they intend to bring home a title to hang alongside those caps in the Hart household. There always has been an empty hook in the family closet. A belt is missing

Dad never got the opportunity to fight for one during an era when there were fewer of them.

But that chance is there Friday when Jesse (22-0, 18 KOs) attempts to take the World Boxing Organization’s super-middleweight crown from Gilberto ‘Zurdo” Ramirez (35-0, 24 KOs) in the arena at Tucson Community Center on a ESPN-televised card (7:30 p.m. PT/10:30 pm ET) that features featherweight Oscar Valdez in a WBO title defense against Filipino Genesis Servania.

“He gave me a shot,’’ the 66-year-old Eugene Hart said Wednesday at a news conference in rhetorical tip of that back cap to a 28-year-old son determined to give his dad a title he was denied so long ago.

If there were a rating in a ratings-crazy sport for the best fighters who never got a title shot, Eugene Hart would have to be there. There’s no one he didn’t fight, including Hagler, who won their war in 1976 with an eighth-round stoppage at the old Spectrum in Philadelphia. He was a Philly fighter, which meant ducking anyone was simply out of the question.

He lost to Vito Antuofermo. He got knocked out by Bennie Briscoe. He also fought Briscoe to a draw. He beat Sugar Ray Seales. He lost to Willie “The Worm” Monroe, Bobby “Boogaloo” Watts and Eddie Mustafa Muhammad.

Hart’s 30-9 record, including an astonishing 28 knockouts, is full of legendary names, nicknames and lessons about how much the game has changed. These days, some kind of title — from acronym to interim — would be at stake.

But not in his day. There were only scars and the pride to fight on. Turns out, those scars and pride are lot more memorable than some shiny tin on a cheap plastic strap. But that belt is part of today’s business. You need at least one, and Jesse Hart figures he can fill that vacancy on his resume while also filling that empty corner in his dad’s closet.

“Mentally, I feel like this is the time, my time,’’ he said a couple of days before what might be the best fight on the Top Rank-promoted card. “I’ve never been more ready, never more prepared to do what I have to.

“I’m ready, but I’m calm.’’

Call it the calm before the storm. Jesse Hart stirred up some pre-fight flak with trash talk on his twitter account. He promised to do this, that and who-knows-what-all to Ramirez, a likable soft-spoken Mexican from Mazatlan.

“But that’s business,’’ he says.

In person instead of within 140 characters, Jesse Hart is as likeable as Ramirez.

“I think he’s a good fighter and a fine champion,’’ the good son said while wearing the hat with the three-letter word that suggests he won’t be so polite at opening bell.

In terms of civic pride, Hart has as much to fight for as Ramirez does. For Ramirez, there is the pressure that every Mexican champ has. Mexico’s pride in its fighters has deep roots, including an uncompromising set of demands for courage and sometimes blood.

For Jesse Hart, there’s the Philly tradition, which his father embodies, even without a title. Jesse Hart says that even Bernard Hopkins, the recently retired face of Philly boxing, talked to him about how important Friday night’s fight is.

“I want to be part of those great names,’’ Jesse Hart said just days before a fight about family and Philly and everything that makes them inseparable.

By Norm Frauenheim-

TUCSON, Ariz. – Oscar Valdez Jr. doesn’t have to look far to see a Dreamer. He sees one in his own reflection in the mirror. He sees one in old friends. New ones, too. He sees one in his trainer Manny Robles. And even in a grandfather.

Valdez, a featherweight with roots on both sides of the border between the United States and Mexico, doesn’t fit today’s legal definition of a Dreamer.

Polarized politics have somehow twisted the term into some thing hard to recognize. Everything is controversial these days, even dreaming. But Valdez doesn’t needs to read the legal fine print to know that he is a Dreamer in every other way that matters.

He’s lived the life. He was born in Nogales, on the Mexican side of the border with Arizona. He moved to Tucson as a kid with his parents.

Years later, he returned to Nogales with his dad. His mom stayed in Tucson. He’s Mexican and American. American and Mexican. He speaks two languages, Spanish and English. He has dual citizenship, U.S. and Mexican. He has family in Tucson and Nogales, Hermosillo and Ohio.

A few weeks ago, the two-time Mexican Olympian heard President Donald Trump rescind the federal program — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — that protects young undocumented immigrants from deportation. Then, he watched people his own age and with the same life experience protest in a battle to keep the program intact. He hears himself in their protests. Sees himself in their fight to stay in the only country they have ever known.

“I’m a Dreamer,’’ said Valdez Jr. (22-0, 19 KOs), whose own dream will continue to play out Friday when the WBO champion faces Filipino Genesis Servania (29-0, 12 KOs) at Tucson Convention Center on ESPN (7:30 p.m. PT/10:30 a.m. ET). “I think we’re all Dreamers.’’

In his grandfather Luis Fierro, the grandson sees a dreamer and a dream worth fighting for. Fierro was arrested last month in southern Arizona, reportedly for an old traffic ticket. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents filed charges that could result in his deportation, according to Valdez, who said Fierro was jailed for about three weeks.

“But we got him out from behind bars,’’ said Valdez, whose trainer, Robles, was born in Mexico and grew up in Los Angeles after arriving in the U.S. from Guadalajara to join his parents as a 6-year-old kid in 1978. “My grandfather will be at the fight Friday night.’’

Valdez promoter Bob Arum, a vocal Trump opponent, hopes 500 Dreamers will be there alongside Fierro. The Top Rank promoter will give tickets to the first 500 Dreamers who show up at the box office with a Federal Employment Authorization card.

“Top Rank wants to make it clear that we stand in solidarity with the Dreamers,’’ Arum said in a statement Monday and repeated in a conference call Tuesday. “We are ashamed of the way they are being treated by the Administration in Washington. Americans are way better than this.’’

A year ago, Valdez found himself in the middle of Arum’s opposition to Trump. He was part of Arum’s “No-Trump Undercard” last November before a main event featuring a Manny Pacquiao victory over Jessie Vargas in Las Vegas.

Then, Valdez was a lot more interested in talking about punches than politics. He still is. But politics are hard to avoid these days, especially when a grandfather gets arrested. Valdez said other members of his family have been affected. They are frightened, said Valdez, who said they didn’t want to be identified. He said he told them OK, that he’d speak for them.

“To me it is a great honor to be able to be a voice that can bring light to this issue and defend those that are in need and don’t have someone that will stand up for them,’ Valdez said. “I have family members that are in danger of being deported over the decisions taken by our government against DACA. I will not stand around and watch silently.

“I completely support this initiative taken by Top Rank and I want everyone to know that we will stand together and we will fight for what is right.’’

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady “GGG” Golovkin fought to a most convenient draw. If the fight fell short of expectations (and it did) it is mostly because those expectations, stewing as they had for two years, had become impossible to satisfy without the presence of a ten-count, a capitulatory knee, an urgent physician. Bereft of carnage’s markers, discussion of a bogus scorecard is dominating the aftermath. That is unfortunate, not just in the way those most outraged would have you believe, but because when the sabers rattle about scorecards it means neither fighter was left in a heap. And if that is an oversimplification, go on and rattle your saber about it.

Judge Adelaide Byrd’s 118-110 scorecard is absurd, yes. Should Byrd turn in the same tally with the same action but participants reversed, she would be incompetent. Were she to turn in a different card with that same reversal, she would be corrupt. But Golovkin had 12 rounds to convince two judges of his superiority and couldn’t and Alvarez, yet again, had an unfathomable card in his favor because there is no Golden Boy Promotions without him (in this respect Alvarez is quite right in asserting he is above any need for luck). Neither man is as good as his most passionate supporters or HBO would have you believe, and chopping up those thirty-six minutes into five-second clips that justify your interpretation of the action does nothing to change that. If you wish to harp about a bad card, attend these considerations to your bleating.

The spectacle produced by one of the most intimidating fighters of the decade and the latest Mexican fighting icon was well short on violence. Were there moments where each fighter was hurt? Perhaps, though not so glaringly that one might expect such moments to trigger a sequence culminating in unconsciousness. Golovkin drove home a few signature blows; Alvarez managed to bury this fist or that into Golovkin’s ribs or chin. To say with confidence that either man was hurt, however, required looking closely for evidence, which, considering what the evidence is, should be rather obvious. No, it was a cautious and defensive fight between reputed punchers—did you wait two years for cautious and defensive?

“Cautious and defensive” for Golovkin demands an explanation. Age and the recent improvement in his opponents have tempered Golovkin; the withering body attack that accompanied his arrival to American airwaves has left him seemingly for good. Whatever the reason, a mediocre trainer, a diminished ability to pull the trigger, aversion to the vulnerability bodywork demands against the best, Golovkin has become a headhunter and his two best opponents have benefited mightily as a result. Still, he stalked effectively enough, endlessly enough, that the potential for a stoppage seemed his alone. All the while he was as elusive as a pressure fighter can be, catching just enough of Alvarez’ punches on his guard to nullify one of boxing’s most creative offensive fighters. The subtlety of Golovkin’s defense can be a challenge to appreciate, but his chin, otherworldly as it is, is not what makes him so seemingly indestructible.

Enough about his defense though: it is his capacity for destruction that built the Golovkin mystique, and it was this that Alvarez had to reckon with. Reckon with it he did, (if as little as possible). Sometimes widely, sometimes by but a hair, Alvarez managed to make Golovkin miss punches that have broken lesser opponents. There is a flash to everything Alvarez does in the ring: his combinations are flamboyant, he dispatches spectacularly opponents selected for that purpose, his defense too, has an exaggerated flair. He does not embody the Mexican fighting spirit—there is a striking absence of his culture’s beloved attrition in his game, and too much privilege in his ascension—but he is skilled and professional and connected and those things can take you a long way. He fought Golovkin effectively in spurts, trying, as his promoter once did, to steal three minutes in thirty seconds, a tactic that will serve him so long as he fights for Golden Boy Promotions in Nevada and Texas.

And it served him on this night. If only in a few crucial rounds, Alvarez did what anyone who wants to slow Golovkin’s roll must do: fight back. And while there was a hint of desperation to those flurries—indicative of a fighter trying to fight off rather than fight an opponent—those combinations still stalled Golovkin and brought the crowd to life. Here the advantage of his flashiness cannot be understated. It is easier to appraise Alvarez’ work: his technique is clean, obvious, and it encourages fond assessment thereby.

It would be unfair to reduce Alvarez’ performance to optics, however. Yes, he retreated too often, too obviously to secure a win despite needing to convince but one judge of his superiority. Only one fighter did enough to have his hand raised Saturday, and he left with his belts. But the notion that Alvarez does not belong in a ring with Golovkin is nonsense. Alvarez planted his feet long enough for Golovkin to leave no doubt in the judges’ minds, to live up to his reputation. That he didn’t says something about Alvarez, lest you wish to strip Golovkin of his reputation (and whatever glory Alvarez, whatever victory his supporters, may find in a draw). It says something about Golovkin that Alvarez was anything but bold on a night that demanded it.

And it says too that neither fighter is great. A great fighter would have left no doubt Saturday.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in Las Vegas the adverb-adjective noun in the noun preposition adjective noun(s) happened when Kazakhstan’s middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin drew with Mexican junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in a prizefight that burnished somewhat Canelo’s legacy, not Golovkin’s. One scorecard went for Golovkin, one scorecard went for both, and the one scorecard that went for Canelo was sufficiently wide to stoke outrage and preserve its embers till May’s rematch.

Saturday’s junior middleweight did not deserve to win the decision, and Saturday’s middleweight did not deserve to win the fight by virtue of its going to a decision. A draw was just fine.

I did not score the match because promotion of both fighters’ punching prowess since 2012 assured me there was no conceivable way the detonation scheduled for their opening bell might lead to both remaining upright, much less unscathed, and so why bother with the formality of an incomplete card? Nobody’d care, after all, I had it 3-2 for Canelo when the deadliest puncher in middleweight history put him on a gurney.

Golovkin’s supporters lost Saturday night. Canelo proved himself the better athlete, craftier technician, possibly the harder puncher and decisively the better finisher, while Golovkin proved himself, well, bigger. The ratification catharsis Golovkin fans have anticipated for five years – the night all their grainy camp videos and faith in Abel Sanchez coalesce into a spectacle so feral their hypothetical legend is ratified as something greater – did not happen, and so their catharsis got loosed on a scorekeeper’s card.

If that’s not an admission of defeat, it’ll do till one shows up.

Whatever the scores should’ve been makes exactly no difference because the fight was good enough to merit a rematch and nobody became interested in our beloved sport on the quality of its split decisions. Now’s a decent moment to reiterate that: You didn’t start watching boxing because you heard about its awesome fourheaded scorekeeping criteria; you grew to love boxing on the virtue of its best events needing no judges whatever. Since Saturday’s event needed judges it was less than best and way less than promised.

A sixtymonth campaign of pretending GGG’s knockout ratio against undersized overachievers is somehow historic now devolves into a shouting match over how many points he scored on a junior middleweight whose consciousness he did not imperil and whose ribs he did not crack and whose nose he did not bloody and whose eyes he did not shutter and whose spirit he did not nick, in 36 minutes of trying? How embarrassing. Golovkin is and will remain a B+ middleweight in a D+ era, but let us have no more happy talk of inclusion on lists with Marvelous Marvin Hagler or Carlos Monzon or Harry Greb – however much longer GGG’s reign of terror on former welterweights and super welterweights continues.

Against a heavybag or a smaller man frightened into behaving as one Golovkin is, no doubt, an annihilating presence. In his postfight comments, somewhere between his fifth “Mexican Style” and seventh, Golovkin accused Canelo of not being that sort of heavybag, and he was right. Canelo’s brand of Mexican style has always been offbrand, more Puerto Vallarta than Culiacan, but as the smaller man he was entitled to do something other than stand and trade mindlessly with a man whose only midfight adjustment was to stand and trade mindlessly-er.

And before we get any higher on our hindlegs about that decision it certainly felt like an honest hand could score rounds 1-3 for Canelo and rounds 10-12 for Canelo, and since three plus three still equals six, if disputing Saturday’s draw becomes your new identity, kid, that says not a damn thing about Saturday’s decision but lots of damning things about you.

Canelo’s winning clearly the last two rounds and less clearly the 10th was the most impressive thing either man did Saturday, especially after preceding those rounds with toetouching backstretches courtesy of one factor, Canelo’s carrying into the championship rounds more weight in his upperbody than he’d done previously, and courtesy of a much larger factor – Golovkin’s stiff jabs to the spot on his forehead where the headgear’s patch would sit, the happenings of which jar the spine its length (see also Ali-Patterson, 1965).

From the fifth round through the ninth the geometry of Canelo-Golovkin 1 appeared like nothing so much as Margarito-Cotto 1, right down to the parry-shuffle-set Canelo did while a large, tactically limited man chased him nodding and smiling. At the fight’s exact midpoint, 30 seconds after round 6 ended, Canelo looked towards the ceiling like he hoped it would say round 9, not round 7, then he fought the next six minutes like he wanted merely to weather them. He was quick and experienced enough to see Golovkin’s telegraphed punches as they left the signalhouse and widely avoid the worst of them, but he hadn’t the conditioning to chasten Golovkin’s sloppy delivery with anything worse than taunts – and if neither man exhibits effective aggressiveness it is never improper to reward ineffective aggressiveness, which Golovkin showed every single minute of the fight.

Thus Golovkin’s largest quality lay in his being the larger man; Canelo’s blocking punches thrown by a 160-pound man fatigued him more than blocking a 154-pound man’s punches (yet another reason why GGG’s inability to fight above middleweight will remain a mark against him). I watched the match with an ethnically diverse group of aficionados, the majority of whom have themselves thrown hands, and the consensus as round 10 began was that Canelo was there for the having. But then Canelo delivered the sophomore level of a lecture Danny Jacobs began in Golovkin’s last match: What happens when you try to mincemeat a man who doesn’t fear you.

There was never anything devastating about a single Golovkin punch – but who could forget the early days of the Golovkin manufacture when HBO leaped to liken a round 7 corner stoppage to prime Mike Tyson? – and Canelo established this early then worried about it midway, but by round 11 Canelo knew no single thing Golovkin could do would unconscious him, and so Canelo went for the win while Golovkin stayed at cruising velocity. Which is why Golovkin fans’ rage at one card of Saturday’s acceptable splitdraw decision is disappointment with their guy, masquerading as a stand against injustice.

Just wait till y’all see the scorecards and purses on Cinco de Mayo!

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Gennady Golovkin defends the IBF/WBA/WBC/Middleweight titles against Canelo Alvarez in a highly anticipated bout.  The action will begin at 8 PM EST/5 PM PT/7 PM in Guadalajara/6 AM in Kazakhstan with a 3 fight undercard featuring Joseph Diaz Jr. taking on Rafael Rivera.  A battle of undefeated super bantamweights in Randy Caballero battling Diego De La Hoya as well as Ryan Martin battling Francisco Rojo

THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1:Golovkin stalking. Alvarez gets in a nice combo to body  pops him with the jab

Round 2. Alvarez landing quick combinations.  Working the body

Round 3. Golovkin becoming more aggressive with his pressure. Lands some solid left hooks

Round 4. Golovkin continues to pressure and land on the ropes. Lands a nice quick hard right

Round 5.  Great Round.  Golovkin landing on the ropes. Canelo shakes off and explodes out with a combination. Golovkin landed a huge right

Round 6. Golovkin looking to ramp up pressure. Alvarez landing some nice combinations

Round 7  Golovkin pressure landing some thuddingbshots. Alvarez mixing in combinations.  Alvarez swelling under left eye

Round 8. Golovkin stuns Alvarez with a left.  Canelo responds nicely with combinations.  He lands a flush uppercut on ropes. Hard right from Golovkin

Round 9. Both guys tiring.  Golovkin still landing harder shots but Canelo gets in a vicious right hand

Round 10. Another terrific Round  Alvarez controlled the early part with hard combination on a tired Golovkin. Golovkin came back but wasn’t enough

Round 11. Alvarez lands a crushing righ5 and did some good body work. Golovkin lands a hard combination

Round 12. Canelo doing terrific work on the inside.  Golovkin doing work.  Great flurry down the stretch

118-110 Canelo.   115-113 Ggg.  114-114.   Draw

Round 1.  Rivera lands a hard right.  Body shot from Diaz.  Right from Rivera

Round 2.  Right from Diaz.  Right hook.  Right to body from Rivera.  Left. Right hook. Straight left.

Round 3.  Diaz lands a body shot.  Combination to head

Round 4.  Right from Rivera. Left from Diaz.  Hard combination

Round 5. Hard right from Rivera at end of round

Round 6. Body combination from Diaz.  Head combination.  Left to body.

Round 7. Body work from Diaz

Round 8. Body from Diaz

Round 9.  Right hook from Diaz.  Right hook

Round 10.  Right to body from Diaz.  Straight left.  Counter right. Another counter

Round 11. Right to head from Diaz.  Right from Rivera.  Straight left from Diaz left from Diaz.  Right to body from Rivera.

Round 12. Hard counter and straight right from Diaz.  Right hook to body. Combination. Right. Right from Rivera

119-109 twice and 120-108 for Diaz

De La Hoya landing harder shots and very aggressive after Caballero came out strong

Round 10.

100-90 &98-92 on 2 cards for De La Hoya

Round 1 right from Rojo…combination from Martin

Round 2. Left from Martin. Left hook..right from Rojo.  Martin jabbing.  Body work.   Combination

Round 3. Rojo working body. Body. Combination from Martin. Right hand…Right from Rojo

Round 4.  Right from Rojo.  Body shot… body shot. Combination from Martin.   Jab from Rojo

Round 5.  Rojo working on ropes.  Hard right from Martin.  Right from Rojo. Left from Rojo.

Round 6.  Right from Martin. Right from Rojo.  Combination on ropes. Combination from Martin. Jab from Martin

Round 7.  Martin lands a body shot. 1-2.  Body shot from Rojo. Combination from Martin. Rojo working body.

Round 8.  Martin warned for low blow. Left from Rojo. Martin warned again.  Good right from Martin. Another right.

Round 9. MARTIN DEDUCTED POINT FOR LOW BLOW.  Combination from Martin. Left gets in for Rojo. Right from Martin

Round 10.  Rojo working on ropes.  Combination from Rojo.  Combination from Martin. 3 punch combination. Body shot from Rojo.  Left. Right

Martin wins by split decision.96-93,95-94. Rojo got a card 98-91

By Norm Frauenheim-

LAS VEGAS – Finally, a fight with a buzz.

It was there, loud and clear, Friday in a way that could be heard in the roar and felt in sharp elbows from fans in a restless crowd jostling for a clear view of two men in their underwear standing on a scale.

More than 9,000 jammed an arena at the MGM Grand to witness a ritual, a weigh-in and stare down. No suspense there. But anticipation was off the scale for the long-awaited Gennady Golovkin-Canelo Alvarez fight (HBO pay-per-view/5 p.m. PT, 8 p.m. ET) at T-Mobile Arena.

They were mostly fans with no chance at seeing the fight live. If you’re thinking about buying a ticket on the secondary market, call your banker or head to the corner pawnshop. On Friday, the cheapest seats were going for $700. But the weigh-in was free. Fans began standing in line at sunrise. They waited for five, six hours, to see what had already been expected. The fighters made weight. Surprise, surprise.

In a middleweight bout so even in so many ways, they were — appropriately enough – even on the scale, too. Golovkin 160, Canelo 160. Not an ounce difference between them. Golovkin looked a little taller; Canelo looked a little wider. Six of one; half-dozen of the other.

It’s a pick ‘em fight and the spontaneous roar from the crowd seemed to say it was happy, perhaps relieved, for an opening bell to a bout without a pre-ordained result. Make no mistake, the weigh-in was a spectacle. They all are. But it wasn’t the empty shell that played out on the eve of Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s scripted stoppage of novice boxer Conor McGregor on Aug. 26.

That was about money, and only money. Money is part, and only part, of Canelo-Golovkin. According to contracts filed with the Nevada Athletic Commission Friday, Canelo is guaranteed $5 million and GGG $3 million. With a percentage of pay-per-view buys, both are expected to wind up with a lot more, especially if the PPV number hits 1.5 million.

Whatever the final take, Canelo (47-1-1, 34 KOs) and GGG (37-0, 33 KOs) are guaranteed only a fraction of Mayweather’s $100 million and McGregor’s $30 million. Mayweather and McGregor laughed all the way to the bank. Canelo and GGG will have to fight their way there.

That’s the expectation. Both fighters say they know that and have planned for it. Both promise a fight that some say might rank alongside some of the best in middleweight history. That’s saying a lot. It was Sugar Ray Robinson’s division. It means Hagler-Hearns and Bernard Hopkins.

All kinds of that hype and more have been offered up during the weeks before Saturday’s fight for Golovkin’s title.

Canelo promoter Oscar De La Hoya, who often sounds as though he’s been watching too many old movies, has promised 12 rounds of hell. GGG trainer Abel Sanchez, more understated and perhaps more realistic, said he expected both fighters to get knocked down. GGG has never been off his feet. Never been beaten either.

Canelo has promised a knockout. He repeated the promise Friday. GGG shrugged his shoulders and flashed his What-Me-Worry smile.

“I have been champion long time,’’ the fighter from Kazakhstan said, almost cryptically.

Those fans, that roaring crowd, needed no interpretation. They were buzzing about a fight, the kind of fight they haven’t seen in a long time.

By Norm Frauenheim-

LAS VEGAS – Canelo Alvarez has something Gennady Golovkin doesn’t want: A loss.

In a time and place when unbeaten often means perfection, defeat is portrayed as more than a blemish. It’s characterized as that fatal flaw. Avoid it at all costs and that’s exactly what Floyd Mayweather Jr. did in a career that made unprecedented money, which defined his identity as much – if not more – than that 0.

But boxing’s elemental drama is rooted in adversity.

How to deal with it.

How to come back from it.

The game’s enduring legends are often built on what they did after defeat. Muhammad Ali might not be remembered and revered without that 1971 loss to Joe Frazier. Sugar Ray Leonard might not be the cornerstone to the legendary ‘80s without that loss to Roberto Duran in 1980.

For Canelo, dealing with defeat is a story that has been unfolding over the four years before his long-awaited middleweight bout (HBO pay-per-view/5pm PT, 8 pm ET) against Golovkin at T-Mobile Arena.

In his first and only loss, Mayweather toyed with him in a humiliation that angered Canelo’s nation of fans, who complained that he didn’t fight like a Mexican.

It was painful then. It was a lesson later. Throughout, it has been an inexhaustible source of motivation for a Mexican whose dark eyes say a lot more about him than his red hair. Like a spark off flint, they flash.

Call it determination, or anger, or more. But its intensity is unmistakable. It’s as if Canelo (49-1-1, 34 KOs) listens to questions, hears the words and looks through all of the rhetoric like a man still seeking to correct the kind of painful loss he never wants to experience again.

Exactly four years after the Mayweather loss on Sept. 14 2013, Canelo trainer Eddy Reynoso and manager Chepo Reynoso sat at a roundtable Thursday in a MGM Grand ballroom with reporters and talked about it.

“Defeat teaches you more,’’ said Eddy Reynoso, who confirmed what everybody has seen in the steady, patient evolution of Canelo.

A young, cocky kid became a serious student. He had to, otherwise he would have been just another forgettable number on the path to the 50-0 that Mayweather will be selling on those T-shirts and caps.

There’s movement in the upper body. There’s a more consistent jab. There are seven straight victories. There’s a sense, too, that nothing will be easy, especially against the accomplished and reigning middleweight champ, GGG (37-0, 33 KOs), who has never lost and never even been off his feet.

“You learn more from defeat, so there is an advantage because it allows you to become a better fighter,’’ Eddy Reynoso said.

Yeah, Chepo Reynoso said.

“As long as it doesn’t happen too many times,’’ he cracked.

Once, of course, is more than enough. But once also might be prove to an unlikely advantage in milestone bout that in the end might be determined by a fighter who has encountered adversity, embraced the lessons, conquered the demons and learned how to use it.

By Norm Frauenheim-

Their news conference Wednesday at the MGM Grand was something of a formality in the build-up to their middleweight fight Saturday at T-Mobile Arena. Everybody was polite. There were thanks instead of trash.

On one level, the relative silence was a relief.

Up and down The Strip, there are still echoes of insults Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor exchanged before they met in an August 26 event that included a boxer, a mixed-martial artist and a mixed message.

Mayweather, McGregor and everybody around them might still be talking, if not for all those awkward and yet unanswered questions about what the pay-per-view numbers really were. We don’t know. We may never know.

In Golovkin-Canelo, however, there doesn’t have to be talk – and only talk. Spectacles draw crowds like accidents. But who remembers them? They’re gone faster than a bag of chips and a mild heartburn.

Canelo-GGG is being sold as much more. Substance instead of empty spectacle is the sales pitch for the HBO pay-per-view bout (5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET).

“I know it’s going to be a tough fight,’’ said Canelo, the red-headed Mexican who again wore signs of his Irish roots with a full beard that McGregor would have envied. “I know that. I’m prepared for that.’’

Canelo is a man of more punches than words. He doesn’t indulge in overstatement. When he says he is prepared, be forewarned. To wit: Be prepared for a middleweight perhaps as good as any in weight class full of bouts, name and dates that could fill a history book.

There’s no myth in middleweight. No mixed, either. But that’s another story. But there’s always another story about to unfold. At least, Canelo-GGG has that potential. Canelo promoter Oscar De La Hoya says it might be the best since Marvin Hagler-Thomas Hearns.

“Your kids will be talking about Gennady Golovkin-Canelo Alvarez twenty years from now,’’ De La Hoya said.

Unlike his fighter, De La Hoya does indulge in overstatement. As a promoter, that’s part of the job. If Canelo-GGG comes even close to the drama attached to Hearns-Hagler, then the lack of words before opening bell won’t matter.

There will be plenty to say about for many years after.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, in the main event of HBO’s super flyweight tripleheader from StubHub Center in Carson, California, Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek augured Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez into the canvas with a right hook so ill-intentioned and unsparing as to make superfluous the ritual tallying of seconds and scores alike. A third fight between Gonzalez’ and his conqueror became superfluous too in the long minutes between Gonzalez’ departure and return to consciousness. Even boxing’s most ambitious man is likely to appreciate the options that reroute him from another opportunity to settle a now lopsided score.

To be sure, Sor Rungvisai would hesitate not at all to share the ring a third time with what was, even a week ago, arguably boxing’s finest practitioner. For he is now Gonzalez’ fighting superior; and while this superiority he owes primarily to his size, vitality, power (attributes one must lobby hard to take credit for) there is more to him than physicality—Gonzalez, of course, has been beating bigger men for years.

What Sor Rungvisai brought was an irreverence both inherent and inherited: he forced an ugly fight with Gonzalez the first time, and having watched the scale of suffering tilt in his favor, set upon Gonzalez with greater fervor the second. After all, Sor Rungvisai too was fighting for vengeance, fighting to silence those who discredited his victory in March, and his performance reflected as much. He did not just dare the greatest offensive fighter of recent years to fight him, Sor Rungvisai demanded it, believing belligerence the key to victory.

And he was right, hence the smirk on Sor Rungvisai’s face when Gonzalez implored referee Tom Taylor to police the headbutts that again figured in the action. This plea told Sor Rungvisai there were questions his opponent could not answer—so he posed them mercilessly and relentlessly and boldly and ushered the Nicaraguan to his undoing. He is deserving then, of the accolades that should attend that unforgettable end.

Could it also be that Gonzalez suffered the fate that he deserved? Consider the bitterness of his first loss to Sor Rungvisai, the frustration born of scorecards, of an outcome taken out of the hands most deserving of delivering it. Consider too, Gonzalez’ understanding of the intimacy of the knockout, for the uncorrupted truth it reveals, that responsibility free of blame—might not a definitive ending then, however chilling, prove more satisfying to him?

Stretched on his back, looking skyward, Gonzalez was shown his ceiling as a fighter, and there is some nobility in that. Sor Rungvisai represented the culmination of a career of staggering ambition: Gonzalez was not finessed onto HBO and fed an army of no-hopers while a makeshift narrative about his greatness was conjured out of mediocrity—he is the genuine article, immune to the red hot revisions aimed to incinerate legacies in the aftermath of defeat. A middling end was never Gonzalez’ fate: the very nature of his career prevented it. He has now lost consecutive fights, yes, but there are no bad losses on his ledger, nor will there be any, given how undeniably Gonzalez has slipped. The signs were there before Sor Rungvisai, and after Sor Rungvisai expectations and evaluations will be forgiving. You are allowed to age when you leave no challenge unmet—and it is respect, not courtesy, that dictates as much.

Yet even if it is too early to eulogize Gonzalez’ career, he looked like no better than the fifth best fighter on the card, which means the division likely moves on without him or at his expense. But it will not do so in anonymity, and for that, Gonzalez deserves much credit. He, along with K2 Promotions, not only prompted the return of the flyweights to HBO’s airwaves he justified it. Yes, HBO now has an army of dragons guarding its gold, and the departure of Top Rank could be a sign that boxing at least as longtime subscribers have come to expect it is not long for the network. But the response to Superfly was strong, the arena sold out, and the action as good as anything HBO has offered in some time.

These are reasons then, to invest in the lower weights, and any pairing of the best of the card’s fighters (Juan Francisco Estrada, Carlos Cuadras, Naoya Inoue and of course, Sor Rungvisai) will meet the lofty expectations Saturday set. HBO may not care to bankroll as obvious a tournament as they could make, not when their stars have opponents comeback, showcase, and stay-busy alike to pay, but it is nearly impossible to imagine them not capitalizing on the very real enthusiasm Gonzalez engendered. And there is an important lesson to be gleaned from that: his career, conducted as if in adherence to a fighting romantic ideal, will leave both Gonzalez and boxing for the better. That so few are prepared to follow his lead only makes that message more endearing.

All of that time Saturday, from the ring to the gurney, the ambulance to the hospital, and yet so few what-ifs to ponder. When people ask him what happened that night in Carson Gonzalez should find some peace in saying, “A better man.” And he should one day, and hopefully, one day soon, say it with a smile.

By Bart Barry-

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – Onto the mess of rainbows and the Beach Boys and vivacity of this city’s Pier, else the whole effort mightn’t come off: A cleansing be needed because what happened Saturday in the grittier unhappier but still uniquely special climes of Carson, 20 or so miles southsoutheast of here, brought something funereal – a funereality? – disproportionate to its event. It was not merely an a-side got stiffened in the main, an all too infrequent occurrence anymore, but how remarkably few b-side supporters attended, and thus how remarkably quiet got ringside within 15 minutes of Sor Rungvisai-Gonzalez 2’s opening bell.

The compulsories: Thai super flyweight champion Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek iced Nicaragua’s Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez early in round 4 of their rematch in the tennis stadium at StubHub Center. Chocolatito entered the arena, as much a West Coast mecca for aficionados as Madison Square Garden in the East, with a surge of excitement, a wildflower festival of Nicaraguan flags suddenly flying everywhere round the bowl, but left 45 minutes later on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, a precautious formality, we’re assured, but possibly more: Nobody liked the way Chocolatito twice crumpled on the bluemat – his arm chickenwinged behind him, knockdown 1, from which he rose with eyes that went startled to incredulous to fearful, shortly before he got put in savasana.

What was understandably lost in Chocolatito’s breaking was Sor Rungvisai’s lonely ecstasy – while commission officials and doctors rushed awkwardly through the ropes to Chocolatito’s disconnected consciousness and indifferent body Sor Rungvisai even more awkwardly performed a victory somersault stageleft. It was the first indication in the six months we’ve known him he knew Roman Gonzalez was anybody at all and beating Gonzalez was a lifechanging feat. And therein lay Sor Rungvisai’s defining advantage. He didn’t appear to care for a moment of his 45 or so minutes of combat with Chocolatito what aficionados opined of Chocolatito or what Chocolatito’s career led him to opine of himself. To Sor Rungvisai he was a smaller man open often to exchanges and given to complaining quickly to officials about what headbutts happened accidentally till Sor Rungvisai saw their outsized effect on Chocolatito’s spirits and began accidenting them frequently.

A telltale tell it was, too, when Chocolatito began his Saturday appeals before the fight was a halfround old. Sor Rungvisai ignored the referee and watched Chocolatito, unblinking – and did you notice the man didn’t blink even once during their Friday postweight staredown in the brilliant California sun? – then knew he had the little Nicaraguan and acted like it. Sor Rungvisai brutalized Chocolatito with the punches Chocolatito blocked and worse yet with those he didn’t: Welcome to super flyweight, flyweight! Just because Chocolatito’s body no longer wished to touch 112 pounds semiannually did not him a super flyweight make, and if Carlos Cuadras spoke such to him in short declarative sentences last year Sor Rungvisai growled it in March and roared it on Saturday.

However Chocolatito prepped for their rematch, and one senses a wrongheaded emphasis on Sor Rungvisai’s head headed Chocolatito’s camp itinerary, it all got obviously scrambled to apart before the second round was through and probably well before that. Whatever his supporters told him about a March robbery that truly wasn’t Chocolatito rededicated himself, etc., to avenging his career’s first loss and got properly flattened in fewer than four rounds, and when he returns to Managua and those who love him tell him to consider retiring he will do well to heed their admonishments.

The problems Chocolatito has with super flyweights cannot be remedied with strategy or tactics or anything at all, save borrowing Juan Manuel Marquez’s personal trainer and supplements regimen, and since VADA shan’t smile upon that, it’s time for Chocolatito to call it a once-in-a-generation career and make his living doing something that is not prizefighting. Videos out of Nicaragua show Chocolatito’s dad and aunt hissing about managerial malfeasance and what illadvice moved Chocolatito from 112 pounds to 115 (and American television and American purses), but when ambulance videos from Carson get seen in Managua bygones should remain bygones at least till a retirement announcement comes.

Roman Gonzalez leaves behind a weightclass and sport very much better than he found it. He topped mythical status lists and an HBO broadcast without ever performing within 80 pounds of the average American male’s weight and bequeathed to his fellow tiny warriors an incredibly healthy ecosystem. Better, too, the decisiveness with which Sor Rungvisai removed him from the division; one retrospectively fears what might’ve come of Chocolatito’s health in an 18-month stretch that comprised a brutal rubber match with Sor Rungvisai and a title defense with Mexican Juan Estrada and a culminating decimation at the fists of Japan’s Naoya Inoue.

Those other two too plied their wares Saturday and promised many good things for aficionados and no good things for Chocolatito. HBO hasn’t the funds or impetus at the moment to unify heavier divisions with heavier purses, but Mexican Carlos Cuadras, who lost a fair and very close decision to Estrada in Saturday’s co-comain, would surely make a wonderful scrap with Inoue, and Estrada, who boxes with fantastic precision and class, would need every one of his wiles to relieve Sor Rungvisai of his belt. Such a card could not sell 10,000 pay-per-views but might sell 7,500 tickets in Carson and confirm HBO as the unlikely but enthusiastically welcomed new home for our beloved sport’s longsuffering aficionados.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Srisaket Sor Rungvisai defends the WBC Super Flyweight title in a highly anticipated rematch with 4-division champion Roman Gonzalez.  The action kicks off at 10:15 ET / 7:15 PT / 9:15 am Sunday in Thailand and 8:15 PM in Managua with a two fight undercard as Naoua Inoue defends the WBO Super Flyweight title against Antonio Nieves and Carlos Cuadras takes on Juan Francisco Estrada in an All-Mexican Super Flyweight showdown.

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Round 1: Accidental headbutt/no cuts…Straight left from Rungvisai

Round 2 Gonzalez being aggressive…combinatons..Good right…

Round 3  Tremendous toe to toe action..Hard right from Gonzalez…hard left from Rungvisai..

Round 4 Body work from Rungvisai…HARD RIGHT HOOK AND DOWN GOES GONZALEZ…HARD RIGHT AND DOWN GOES GONZALEZ AGAIN…HE IS KNOCKED OUT

Round 1: Jab-right hand from Inoue…1-2…Hard 3 punch combination..Hard left from Nieves..Body shot from Inoue..

Round 2 Right from Nieves to the body..right…Jab from Inoue..2 body shots..Body shots from Nieves..Body shot from Inoue..Right..left to body..combination

Round 3 Uppercut from Inoue..Body shots..3 punch combination

Round 4  Inoue lands a left to the body..another one..

Round 5:  LEFT TO THE BODY AND DOWN GOES NIEVES..Hard left hooks

Round 6:  good right from Inoue..Left hooks to the body..Right and left to the head..Vicious right...FIGHT STOPPED AFTER THE ROUND

Round 1: Body work from Cuadras

Round 2 Combination from Cuadras…Counter right from Estrada

Round 3 Left hook from Cuadras…Jab..Combination..1-2…Left hook from Estrada..Left hook

Round 4 2 left hook from Cuadras…

Round 5 Hard uppercut from Estrada..Counter right from Cuadras…Left hook..Good left hook from Estrada..Right..Body shots and left hook from Cuadras..

Round 6 Hard jab from Estrada..Hard 1-2..Right..left hook..Big right from Cuadras..Big right from Estrada..

Round 7 Hard right from Estrada..Hard flush right..Uppercut from Cuadras..Good right

Round 8 Straight right and jab..left hook to body from Estrada..Right from Cuadras..Good body shots…Good right from Estrada..

Round 9 Uppercut from Cudras..Good right…combination and right hand…

Round 10 Hard right from Estrada..HARD RIGHT AND DOWN GOES CUADRAS..2 Hard right hands…Right…Cuadras lands a lopping right

Round 11 Good left hook from Estrada..Body shot from Cuadras..Good left from Estrada..Left hook from Cuadras..Left hook inside for Estrada..Big left hook..

Round 12: Good right from Estrada..Big left hook..Combination from Cuadras…Hard right over the ropes from Estrada..Left hook from Cuadras…

114-113 on ALL CARDS FOR  JUAN FRANCISCO ESTRADA

By Norm Frauenheim-

David Benavidez wants to do what his older brother has already done. To wit: Make a little history. As a noteworthy accomplishment, being the youngest ever with a title is already in the family scrapbook.

Jose Benavidez Jr. pulled it off in 2009 when, at 16, he became the youngest to ever win a national Golden Gloves title.

Eight years later, younger brother David, less than a year removed from his teens, hopes to become the youngest super-middleweight champion Friday (Showtime 10:05 p.m. ET/PT) in a bid for a vacant World Boxing Council belt against Ronald Gavril at Las Vegas’ Hard Rock.

“This opportunity means the world to me,” the 20-year-old Benavidez (18-0, 17 KOs) said. “I’ve been working for this since I was a little kid.’’

Truth is, the younger Benavidez, of Phoenix, is out to prove he’s more of a prodigy than just a kid, especially against an unknown Gavril (18-1, 14 KOs), a 31-year-old Romanian.

There are questions about how Gavril even got into a position to fight for a title vacated by Badou Jack. He’s there because 2004 Olympic bronze medalist Andre Dirrell withdrew because of injury. The 34-year-old Dirrell is well-known, which might be another saying he’s shop-worn. Gavril is more unknown, which might make him a lot more dangerous.

Hard to say. What is known — and known in abundance, however, is that Benavidez has been beating up his elders since he went pro in Mexico at the same age his older brother won one of the biggest prizes of all in the amateur remarks. Sixteen, Sweet 16, if you’re a Benavidez.

Another display of David Benavidez’ power would further solidify his credentials as a mature player at 168 pounds and eventually at every other weight from light-heavy to heavy. He’s only going to get bigger, certainly on the scale and maybe in name recognition.

“Winning the championship would be enough on its own’’ David Benavidez said. “But the opportunity to be the youngest in the sport is a major accomplishment and the biggest of my life so far.’’

For now, David has a bigger name than brother Jose, a major prospect in 2010 and an interim junior-welterweight champion in 2014 with a controversial decision over Mauricio Herrera. But the older brother in the family’s youngest-ever tandem is hoping to work his way back into contention.

Jose Benavidez’ career was interrupted in August 2016 when he was shot in a knee while walking his dog in Phoenix, according to Phoenix police. In the spring, the knee had healed enough for Benavidez to begin running.

Now, he’s ready to resume his career, probably at welterweight. Jose Benavidez visited his promoters Thursday at their Top Rank offices in Las Vegas Thursday to discuss a comeback bout later in the year, possibly in November.

By Bart Barry-

Nicaraguan super flyweight Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez seeks to avenge his career’s first loss against Thailand’s Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek in the main event of this Saturday’s extraordinary “Superfly” card in Carson, Calif., a card HBO will broadcast and in so doing stake an unlikely and indisputable claim to 2017’s best boxing broadcast. The comain will have Japan’s Naoya “The Monster” Inoue making his first match in the U.S. And the co-comain will have yet another 115-pound man, Mexican Carlos “Principe” Cuadras, whose claim as the world’s best super flyweight is not an unreasonable one, making combat with countryman Juan Francisco Estrada.

Frankly it’s an honor to cover a card of this quality. A quick query to the memory brings back a nullset of a better constructed threematch finale to a card I’ve attended – though Barrera-Juarez II in 2006 comes tumbling forward on the virtue of what Israel Vazquez did to Jhonny Gonzalez in the co-comain (while Marco Antonio Barrera bemused Rocky Juarez too thoroughly in the main to make the card actually historic, despite its fine construction).

Most importantly it could be the last chance to see a historic prizefighter like Chocolatito in the mainevent of a consequential card. Whatever happens Saturday Chocolatito is unlikely to retire and stay retired, a more likely occurrence is that long past the viable economics of the act Chocolatito’ll continue to work for backwages in a futile bid to do things the Money way, and he’s too good and decent for that to be a thing worth traveling to Los Angeles or Managua to witness.

The march upwards in weightclass and age is too much for any man to endure flawlessly much past his 40th fight or 30th year if he weighs less than 120 pounds, and in March Sor Rungvisai played reminder of this much as its cause. Chocolatito did more to accomplish less against Sor Rungvisai than any Sor Rungvisai predecessor and being reminded of it exhausted Gonzalez till the ratio trebled but still Chocolatito spun and whacked and resisted what disbelief surely came thumping. If there were special preparations Sor Rungvisai made for Chocolatito he did not betray them; perhaps his fruitfullest tactic was treating a legend like a shortnotice swingbout replacement to be butted and beaten as whim bade.

Whatever the weighting supposedly be, a good metric for ring generalship, that squirrely criterion with which we justify our biases when scoring rounds that’re close, is: Who files first appeal to the referee? who petitions an official’s intervention in lieu of making justice with his proper fists?

In March it was Chocolatito and an unfailingly bad sign. If Sor Rungvisai’s heady comportment was less than purely sporting Chocolatito’s conduct was more worrisome. Great fighters are dirty fighters and Chocolatito is a great fighter by this measure and every other but in March Chocolatito was a statesman, and offended too. He knew what Sor Rungvisai did was not accidental but once referee Steve Willis refused to be more officious than a point’s deduction from the Thai’s tally Chocolatito needed to remedy fouls with fouls, as craft told him he should, but Chocolatito did not and did something oh so much worse: He let selfindulgence touch him a touch.

Such indulgence begets brutalization and it surely did in March. Chocolatito’s face and head was an ugly mess by the concluding bell. What stung worse than his first career loss coming at the hands and head of an unclassed brute like Sor Rungvisai was Chocolatito’s realizing he’d have to face the man again and immediately if he chose not to retire – something like what the late Vernon Forrest felt the day after losing to Ricardo Mayorga. If Sor Rungvisai did not inflict the same mental cruelty on Chocolatito as Mayorga did Forrest he distributed a commensurate physical cruelty that would render a lesser man cautious in rematch.

Fortunately for Chocolatito there is only one strategy in the ring and a startling array of tactics for employing it – endeavor to attrition any man toeing the line before you. He expected Sor Rungvisai to fold of his own discouragement and got surprised when Sor Rungvisai did not. Class did not tell ultimately in March because it got thwarted by Sor Rungvisai’s fouling and obliviousness of his opponent’s class, which may be a roundabout way of writing class, of a certain sort, did indeed tell.

Expect Chocolatito to be the offender Saturday; if Sor Rungvisai did not pack a cup packed with reinforced beltline padding for his trip from Thailand he will regret it; Chocolatito will be targeting that beltline and a few inches above and below it from the opening bell until he is told to stop and after he is told to stop until a point gets deducted and maybe after that, too. Accustomed to enjoying benefits of all scoring doubts in his career’s 27 or so championship matches Chocolatito did not expect to lose March’s decision and now says in a convincing tone he intends to strip Sor Rungvisai of his fitness to continue, and if so, what difference will a point deduction in round 3 and another in round 8 matter?

There’s a genuine possibility, though, Chocolatito’s belting Sor Rungvisai early and often will not avenge his first loss. Sor Rungvisai well may have Chocolatito’s number; he well may have too much physicality and chin and derringdo for this 30-year-old, 115-pound iteration of Nicaragua’s second alltime great, remanding Gonzalez to retirement but leaving HBO with enough pieces – in Sor Rungvisai and Cuadras and Inoue, at least – to make an historic unification of the super flyweight division.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

The canvas and ropes will be the same. So will the arena. Only a couple of ounces will separate the gloves. Two events within three weeks look an awful lot a like. But they aren’t.

In fact, they couldn’t be more different. Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s TKO of mixed-martial artist Conor McGregor on Aug. 26 at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena and the looming Gennady Golovkin-Canelo Alvarez middleweight fight in the same building on Sept. 16 are separated by differing perceptions of the same concept.

Legacy.

It’s an overused word these days. Yet, it’s always there. But what exactly is a legacy? Turns out, it’s exactly in the eye of beholder.

For Mayweather-McGregor, legacy means money. The bigger the money, the bigger the legacy. Mayweather and McGregor made GDP-like sums.

For Golovkin-Canelo, the fight is more for their place in history. Mayweather has enough money to buy his piece of history, securing a predictable victory that allowed him to surpass Rocky Marciano with a 50-0 record against a novice boxer.

Golovkin and Canelo have different takes, even between themselves about legacy and what it means. For Canelo, it’s Mexican history and a chance to perhaps fight his way to a spot alongside Julio Cesar Chavez. For GGG, it’s about the middleweights and his fight to be recognized alongside the division’s iconic names.

They’ll make plenty of money, yet probably only a fraction of what Mayweather and McGregor did. But Mayweather-McGregor was, first and foremost, about money. Their event accented the Prize in prizefighting.

For Canelo-GGG, the accent is on the Fighting. Amid all the talk of pay-per-view records that could double or triple Mayweather’s $100-million guarantee, that sounds almost quaint. But it’s a welcome kind of quaint, comforting from at least this perspective.

“I want to win this fight because maybe for me this win will be like a history fight, like (Sugar Ray) Leonard vs. (Mavin) Hagler,’’ Golovkin said Wednesday during a conference call.

Golovkin went on to talk about the great names in the division and some of their own accomplishments. He is about to make a 19th successive defense of his middleweight title. He’s within one defense of matching the 20 straight by Bernard Hopkins, who is a Golden Boy executive in the company that promotes Canelo.

“Right off the top, the interest for me is it’s a huge fight,’’ GGG said. “The story — in the middleweight division, it’s a long story. I don’t know, I remember a lot of great champions, like Carlos Monzon, Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Bernard Hopkins. Right now, I think new stories, new times for us. So many stories are huge in the middleweight division. To be a champion is huge.’’

There was a time when Mayweather would hear some of those names and argue that he was better than any of them. Out of that argument, he created TBE, The Best Ever, which became another commodity, another way to sell caps and T-shirts. From the man who calls himself Money, it is always about how much he made and less about whom he beat. On one level, he is TBE, as in The Biggest Earner ever.

For GGG, however, the sense is that he wants to be remembered for whom he beat in a career that will put him alongside a gallery of names all worthy of some TBE consideration

“I respect boxing,” GGG said. “If you respect boxing like me, watch my fight.’’

It sounds like a good investment in an old craft respected more for what the fighters did than what they earned.

Reading, PA (September 29, 2017) – Marshall Kauffman’s King’s Promotions is proud to announce the signing of super middleweight prospect Brandon Robinson to an exclusive promotional contract.

Robinson, 29 years-old of Upper Darby, PA has a record of 6-1 with five knockouts.

Robinson, who got a late start in the sport, has won six fights in a row after his pro debut when he fought 30 pounds over his natural weight-class, and lost to former National Golden Gloves champion Mike Hilton.

Robinson has kept a busy schedule as he will be in action tonight, when he takes on George Sheppard at the 2300 Arena in South Philadelphia. The bout with Sheppard will be the 8th fight in a year for Robinson.

“I am very excited to sign with King’s Promotions,” said Robinson. “Marshall believes in me and I believe in him. He will help me get to the top and eventually fight for titles at super middleweight. Look out for me. I am just ready to fight, and the next one will be tonight at the 2300 Arena.”

Said King’s Promotions CEO Marshall Kauffman, “Brandon is a late bloomer, but we feel we have a real diamond in the rough. He brings excitement and he has scored some explosive knockouts. He already has a good fan base that will only get bigger as he continues to win. He has a solid team behind him with his manager Lando Rosa and Team Pivot. We will keep him busy, and I feel he has a chance to fight in some big fights.”

Undefeated bantamweight sensation, knockout artist, Christian Carto will take on his toughest foe to date when he takes on Alonso Melendez (14-1, 11 KOs)
in the eight round main event

The bout is scheduled for eight-rounds.

Carlos Rosario (7-2, 4 KOs) of Pennsuaken, New Jersey and Jerome Conquest (8-2, 1 KO) of Philadelphia will meet in a highly anticipated eight-round lightweight bout.

In six-round bouts:

Maynard Allison (9-1, 6 KOs) of Philadelphia meets Juan Rodriguez (7-7-1, 5 Kos) of Haymarket, Virginia in a junior lightweight bout.

David Gonzales (8-2-2, 2 KOs) of Philadelphia battles Darius Ervin (4-1) of Los Angeles in a super lightweight bout.

Erik Spring (9-1-2, 1 KO) of Reading, PA will fight Anthony Prescott (6-7-2, 2 KOs) of Cherry Hill, NJ in a super welterweight fight.

In four-round bouts:

Brandon Robinson (6-1, 5 KOs) of Upper Darby, PA will take on George Sheppard (1-2) of Virginia. in a super middleweight bout.

Robert Irizarry (3-1-1) of Cherry Hill, NJ fights Bryan Perez (2-7-1, 1KO) of Carolina, Puerto Rico in a super featherweight fight.

Rasheed Johnson (1-1) of Philadelphia battles Demetrius Williams (1-3) of Philadelphia in a welterweight tussle.

Amir Shabazz (4-1) of Philadelphia will square off with Alan Lawrence (1-0, 1 KO) of Newark, NJ in a light heavyweight bout.

Tickets for this great night of boxing can be purchased at www.2300arena.com for $100, $75 and $50

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By Bart Barry-

Saturday in Las Vegas retired welterweight champion Floyd “Money” Mayweather (50-0, 27 KOs), a 40-year-old American, beat mixed martial artist “The Notorious” Conor McGregor (0-1, 1 KO), a 29-year-old Irishman, to a fraction of himself until referee Robert Byrd’s intervention after the first minute of round 10. If the match ended predictably, it gave its pay-per-viewers unpredictably more entertainment than we deserved. Mayweather-McGregor was way better than expected.

Credit for that properly goes to McGregor, whose unorthodox approach to boxing and his pronounced vulnerabilities – the greatest of which was not knowing how pronouncedly vulnerable he was – made Mayweather comfortable enough to eschew what thick, goopy layers of cliche form his public persona, remember the hardened amorality at his core, and hurt the man across from him until he was ordered to stop.

What makes boxing different from all other combat sports is that no matter how defensively adept you fancy yourself you are going to get hit often, and getting hit often is a uniquely stressful experience. No fighter’s fantasies comprise being hit thusly, but boxers expect it and vigilant themselves accordingly. The act of being hit repeatedly and the unwavering threat of being hit repeatedly more is what surprised McGregor the most. You can do roadwork and elasticarm bends and backflips and CrossFit and all the rest, and maybe even some sparring with undersized guys, too, but there’s nothing to condition you for being punched a whole lot but being punched a whole lot.

Mayweather gave McGregor a combination of force and precision no sparring partner did (or that sparring partner would be Mayweather), and McGregor receded and wilted subsequently. And wilted is the proper word for what happened to McGregor – a thing we see in boxing gyms round the world every weeknight when two equal physical specimens begin to punch each other and one grows mighty and the other wilts until a coach shortshifts the bell and waves the session off. McGregor’s handlers likely’d not’ve known to do that, and fortunately for them Saturday’s otherwise incompetent referee did instead.

McGregor, in a weakly megalomaniacal way, indicated in his postfight interview when he gets tired his legs get wobbly. Yes, son, that’s called fatigue, and it makes cowards of us all, it makes us not want to fight – it makes us go whole minutes of combat without doing anything but flee – and it’s a universal sign in our beloved sport, the manly art of selfdefense, a match is concluded.

Even claims of quick stoppages are universal, not something invented by McGregor; any aficionado who’s attended an undercard has seen some version of the 10 1/2-count, when a fighter remains on his knee till 10 then leaps upwards, arms spread, pleading to continue, all strength miraculously restored. Except McGregor didn’t get that far because, in lieu of taking a knee and regrouping, he decided to use the “just energy” of going “wobbly” while a professional fighter placed the middle knuckle of his left and right fists on his chin and temple. More exotic strategy and tactical innovation by The Notorious, perhaps, but also a loud plea for official assistance.

Good that it came, too, because McGregor hadn’t enough time in his brief career as a boxer to learn how to comport himself when things went awry. He was a frontrunner, not unlike prime Mayweather or anyway Mayweather against a fellow boxer, and didn’t have a plan C, once McGregor’s vaunted power never activated and his one uppercut counter failed to cut Mayweather’s lights.

For a threeround, though, it was interesting – far more interesting than expected. The larger man, by what looked like three weightclasses at opening bell, intended to win by decision, outpointing the spoiler unless the spoiler took scoring chances as the fight progressed. If that wasn’t the most suspenseful happening, it was quite unexpected and a little dramatic; it set the imagination cooking with ingredients of Mayweather like a risktaker and knockout needer.

By round four, when Mayweather had done very little and yet McGregor was suddenly diminished, arming and pawing punches like someone less than a novice, the standard Mayweather slowmarch was underway, and one hoped only something conclusive might happen. Tradition dictates the worst thing that might befall a pay-per-viewer is Mayweather realizing, with an audible click, his opponent cannot hurt him, as tradition dictates that be the time for Money to begin melding time and space together till the final six rounds of a championship prizefight, a thing which should be both dramatic and suspenseful, become an 18-minute lump of bodyjabs and a rolling lead shoulder and talk of Money’s legacy and retirement plans (Saturday’s was his fourth or fifth final fight). Instead McGregor was defenseless enough for Mayweather to accelerate for once and do what you are supposed to do with a defenseless man in front of you: Try to take his consciousness violently.

If it’s the last we see of Mayweather, it’s an image that should please him is the last we have: eyes predatory, mouth maliciously set, punches properly leveraged for force and angled intentionally: Floyd Mayweather, a prizefighter – not a Pretty Boy or a Money, but a man professionally committed to hurting other men with his fists. It took some fraudulent matchmaking to get there, a professor against a bachelor’s degree, but Mayweather got there with his wealth and wits intact.

Enjoy your retirement in good health, Floyd, and now leave our sport be.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as undefeated legend Floyd Mayweather takes on UFC sensation Conor McGregor in a highly anticipated boxing match.  The show begins at 7 PM ET with a 5 fight undercard that will feature Gervonta Davis taking on Francisco Fonseca in a lightweight bout (Fonseca can win the IBF Jr. Lightweight title which Davis vacated at the scales.  Nathan Cleverly defends the WBA Light Heavyweight title against former super middleweight champion Badou Jack.  Undefeated Andrew Tabiti takes on former two-time world champion Steve Cunningham in a cruiserweight battle.

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Round 1: McGregor lands a left…Uppercut

Round 2: Right from Mayweather..Right from Mayweather…Right from McGregor..Left to body..Right from Mayweather..

Round 3 Jab from McGregor..Jab..Right to body from Mayweather..

Round 4 McGregor lands a a left…2 rights from Mayweather..combination..Jab from McGregor..Right from Mayweather..Left from McGregor..Lead right from Mayweather..Left uppercut from McGregor..

Round 5 Right to body from McGregor..Left from Mayweather..right

Round 6 Jab from McGregor..Right to body fro Mayweather…lead right..right from Mayweather…Left to body from McGregor…good body work..left..Good counter right from Mayweather..

Round 7  Right from Mayweather..uppercut from McGregor..Combination and right from Mayweather,,2 rights..

Round 8 Good left from McGregor..2 rights from Mayweather..Combination from McGregor..Jab from Mayweather..

Round 9 Body shot from McGregor…hard combination…Right from Mayweather…hard right,,McGregor hurt..Hard right rocks McGregor.

Round 10 2 HUGE RIGHTS….MCgREGOR HURT…1 MORE SHOT…ROBERT BYRD STOPS THE FIGHT

Round 1: Left to body from Davis..Left uppercut..Right to body from Fonseca..Counter left Davis..Right to body from Fonseca

Round 2 Nice combination from F9nseca…Body shot from Davis…Left hook from Fonseca..Hard uppercut from Davis..

Round 3: Huge combination featuring uppercuts from Davis..Left from Davis…Good counter from Fonseca…

Round 4 Huge uppercut from Davis…Right and left from Fonseca..Good left..Body shot

Round 5  Fonseca lands a left to the body…Hard body shots from Davis..right to body…Counter from Fonseca…

Round 6 Lead left from Davis…Nice left

Round 7  Good right from Fonseca..Good right and left uppercut from Davis…Right to body from Fonseca..Left from Davis

Round 8 LEFT TO HEAD…FONSECA DOWN AND COUNT REACHES 10…FONSECA CLAIMING BEHIND THE HEAD

Round 1: Right from Jack..Body..2 rights..Right from Cleverly..Good right from Jack..Jab from Cleverly..left from body..uppercut from Cleverly…Nice right

Round 2 Body shot from Jack..2 rights from Cleverly..1-2 from Jack..Nice body shot..overhand right

Round 3 Body shots from Jack..Right hand..Good uppercut..Short body shot..Jab from Cleverly

Round 4 Hard shots from Jack..Nice left hook and right..Big left hook..Big 3 punch combo.Clecer;y bleeding from the nose

Round 5 Hard left from Jack..Jack landing big shots on ropes…Left from Cleverly..Jack pounding Cleverly on the ropes..BIG UPPERCUT FIGHT STOPPED–TKO FOR BADOU JACK

Round 1 3 jabs from Tabiti..counter jab from Cunningham..Right from Tabiti..Jab..Jab from Cunningham..Lead right from Tabiti..Counter from Cunningham..

Round 2 Double jab..right hand from Tabiti..Nice counter right from Cunningham…Combination from Tabiti…Left hook for Cunningham..

Round 3 Combination from Tabiti..Right to body..Counter from Tabiti..Jab from Cunningham..

Round 4 Tabiti lands a right to the body..Jab from Cunningham..Jab..Right

Round 5  Right from Tabiti..2 jabs from Tabiti..Left from Cunningham..uppercut..Double jab

Round 6 Counter right from Tabiti..Right from Cunningham..short right from Tabiti

Round 7  Right to body from Tabiti..Jab..Nice exchange

Round 8  Right from Tabiti…right uppercut

Round 9 Combination from Tabiti..Counter right from Cunningham..

Round 10 Double jab from Cunningham…

Tabiti landed 112-315       Cunningham 89-329

97-93 twice and 100-90 for Tabiti

Round 1 Right from Ugas…

Round 2:  Right from Dulorme….Uppercut..GOOD UPPERCUT AND DOWN GOES DULORME..Good body shot…HARD RIGHT AND DOWN GOES DULORME

Round 3:  Big flurry from Ugas.. Right from Ugas…Hard hook to the jaw..

Round 4:  Dulorme lands a straight right…

Round 5 Right from Ugas..Hard right..Trading uppercuts…Hook from Ugas..uppercut and right…

Round 6 Right from Ugas…Body shot from Dulorme…

Round 7:  DULORME DEDUCTED A POINT FOR A LOW BLOW…Uppercut from Ugas..BIG LEFT AND DOWN GOES UGAS

Round 8:  Hard uppercut from Dulorme…Left hook from Ugas..Left from Ugas..2 hooks from Dulorme..

Round 9:  Hard hooks from Dulorme

Round 10:  DULORME DOCKED A POINT FOR A LOW…Hook from Ugas..

94-91 and 93-92 TWICE FOR YORDENIS UGAS

Round 1 Double jab and hook from Heraldez..Combination..

Round 2 Combination from Borrego..Body shot from Herladez

Round 3 Triple jab from Heraldez…Combination..Borrego bleeding…Hook from Heraldez

Round 4:  Borrego counters on ropes..

Round 5 Combination from Heraldez..

Round 6 Straight left from Borrego..Combination from Heraldez..

Round 7 Combination from Borrego..Right from Heraldez..Good left..

Round 8 3 jabs from Heraldez..Right…Left from Borrego…Borrego bleeding from his nose..Good combination from Heraldez…Body shot

Round 9  LEFT AND DOWN GOES HERALDEZ …Good body shot…Good left hook..

Round 10 Left from Borrego..Jab from Heraldez…Body shot..

96-93, 97-92 TWICE FOR JUAN HERALDEZ

By Norm Frauenheim-

LAS VEGAS –The beat went on — and on — Friday in the parade to an event that looks and sounds more like spectacle than sport.

Conor McGregor screamed. His Irish fans screamed. And Floyd Mayweather Jr. did what he has always done. He’s more than just unbeaten.

Mayweather’s ability to generate money is unmatched, if not unprecedented. Boos-for-bucks is a formula that has transformed him into perhaps the high-earning athlete ever.

The boos were there, off the scale, Friday for the ritual weigh-in at T-Mobile Arena where Mayweather is favored Saturday night to extend his 49-0 boxing record to 50-0 against a mixed-martial arts star with zero experience as a professional boxer.

Depending on who and what you believe, McGregor’s chances at derailing Mayweather’s bid at equaling Rocky Marciano’s historical record are the numerical equal of his boxing experience. We’re talking zero. So-called sharps – an oddsmakers’ term for smart bettors — have been descending on the Vegas books over the last 24 hours.

One wagered $1 million Thursday with the chance to win about $182,000 on Mayweather. A second bet of $1.2 million was also reported. More of the same was expected before Saturday’s pay-per-view card (Showtime/6 p.m. PST/9 p.m. EST).

But a zero chance is chance enough for fans who just want to see Mayweather lose, even if it could only happen in the event of an accident, say, an asteroid striking T-Mobile Arena’s roof so that it only collapses on where Mayweather is standing. Hey, bleep happens.

In addition to beating everybody he has ever faced, Mayweather has been generating bucks through boos at almost every turn. Reports are that he could earn $200 million for Saturday night’s event.

Before weighing at 149.5 pounds for the 154-pound show, he ensured some more enmity from the weigh-in crowd by stepping on the scale in Irish green shorts that said Paddy Power across the waist band. The crowd roared in anger and McGregor led the way.

After tipping the scale at 153 pounds, McGregor (21-3 in UFC bouts) pose for the traditional face-off with Mayweather with his mouth open in what looked like a perpetual stream of expletives. It was an Irish temper turned up as high it could go.

“I see a man afraid,’’ said McGregor, who is guaranteed a reported $100 million.

Maybe, but the odds makers are beginning to see something different in a man they think is closing in on some easy money. For him. And them