According to Dan Rafael of espn.com, hot shot prospect Felix Verdejo had surgery on his left hand to remove bone spurs.

“Good as new,” Top Rank vice president Carl Moretti told ESPN.com. “Dr. Shin did a terrific job, and there were no surprises with the procedure. We anticipate Felix returning in the fall with the exact date and [television] platform to be figured out over the summer with [manager] Ricky [Marquez] and the team.

“Felix will have a follow-up visit on Monday, make an appearance on ‘Golpe a Golpe’ [on ESPN Deportes] and then return to his island for a full recovery,” Moretti said.

By Bart Barry

Saturday on BET, American super middleweight world champion Andre Ward made his much-needed return to boxing, stopping in the ninth round a hapless but stubborn Brit named Paul Smith, right about the time NBC served its viewers a terrible main event called “The Battle for Ohio”, from Las Vegas, that ended with welterweight Shawn Porter decisioning Adrien Broner by refreshingly wide scores. Before his match with Ward, Smith baldly missed weight and got himself beaten bloody for the indiscretion. Before their opening bell, Broner and Porter verbally antagonized one another, then spent 35 of 36 minutes hugging it out.

Adrien Broner’s defense is an atrocity. It took Marcos Maidana to indicate this a ways back, but Shawn Porter offered its definitive proof in round 1 of their Saturday scrum. After feinting Broner into a retreat – one doesn’t say Broner was feinted out of position, since, defensively, he’s never in position – Porter pursued Broner in a sort of relenting-wildman style Porter employed the entire match, and Broner, whose hands and feet obey autonomous, often-competing masters, leaped backwards and threw his arms directly upwards. When Porter’s punch landed and nearly touched the back of Broner’s head to his C1 vertebra, Broner had both white gloves overhead – in a feat of contorted defenselessness not seen in televised fighting since Marco Antonio Barrera slammed Naseem Hamed’s face on a Las Vegas turnbuckle 14 years ago.

Sensing his stick-em-up pose would not disarm Porter so much as a lackadaisical mugger, Broner immediately, and relentlessly, employed his backup plan: Unrepentant hugging. There’s a reason this worked, sapping Porter of what energy a formless volume puncher like him needs to be effective: Broner has disproportionate upperbody strength even for a welterweight (or whatever weight he now campaigns at). Porter badly wanted to punch Broner, but he was generally unable to, both because Porter is nearer to being bad at boxing than good, and because when Broner got his head and arms in a variety of grappling holds, Porter stopped churning his feet and merely tried to outwrestle Broner.

Before one criticizes Porter’s dad for not telling his son to free his hands with his feet, one pauses, in observance of both Fathers’ Day and regression to the mean, to impart: Andre Ward is just about the only athlete left in prizefighting who knows how to do this. Mediocre as his work may be with most everyone else he’s touched, trainer Virgil Hunter deserves much credit for what fantastic work he did teaching Ward how to fight.

How good it was to see Ward back in a prizefighting ring!

Rusty? Yup. Older? Sure. Less effective punching a cruiserweight than a super-middle? Of course. Likely to lose more than three rounds to Gennady Golovkin in a 12-round fight? No way.

Ward is a serious professional. It was a relief, in this sense at least, to see a man in an exhibition match who wouldn’t foul it up with hotdoggery, sloppiness or boredom. Ward punished Paul Smith for coming in at Chavezweight in his BET debut, also BET’s boxing debut; it was indeed cathartic, however cruel and misplaced the catharsis, to watch Ward make Smith repent for the ordeal of a prefight Nipsey Hussle concert.

Saturday, Nipsey stretched the boundaries of imitative talentlessness to a point at which they’d have snapped even 20 years ago; Nipsey Hussles have always existed, but hip-hop’s natural selection – or, heavens, any selection – did not accommodate them until recently. The nature of the hip-hop business is such that new acts must be discovered for each Tuesday release, and there are not, nor have there ever been, that many talented lyricists in America. (Friday evening in Dallas, LL Cool J will headline a show that features Big Daddy Kane and Doug E. Fresh and Whodini and Sugarhill Gang, and it’s instructive to ask, before the first Nipsey apologist draws breath: Is there another iteration of the known universe in which even a creative record-label executive imagines Nipsey Hussle headlining a concert in 2045?)

If these days I read like a curmudgeon, I’ve made my peace with it. The same element, time, that led a once-sprightly optimist to curmudgeonhood, anyway, is what, in part, PBC relied on to draw ratings for its godawful Saturday show. I watched the fights with a couple Puerto Rican friends from the boxing gym, and after fast-forwarding through much of the undercard offerings – NBC helpfully juxtaposed an excellent U.S. Olympian, Errol Spence, with a dreadful one, Terrell Gausha – we all kept reminding ourselves how wonderful it was this unwatchable bore of a main event was on free television, in an unthinking application of a childhood metric. In the digital era, network television mostly means more ads and scripts written round selling things, but for a certain, later portion of the demographic PBC aims at there is still nostalgic meaning in hearing an event will be broadcasted by NBC or CBS or ABC.

Take the pros with the cons, then, say the cons, because if they’re talking about us, they’re promoting us. True that. It’s one of only two things Broner did well Saturday – along with applying a left-hooked tag to Porter’s floating chin at the top of round 12: Respect the brand. Having lost widely to a competitor who lacks most every one of his gifts, Broner was reliably, and durably, self-aggrandizing in defeat. While intellectually incapable of aping anything else Floyd Mayweather tried to teach him, Broner unwaveringly applies one idea that enriched Money May: Tariffs exacted from men who wish to see my bitch ass beat to death look the same on a spreadsheet as fees gratefully paid by admirers.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Andre Ward’s return from a 19-month layoff Saturday night comes at a time when he has to come back. Everybody’s prime comes with an expiration date. It’s hard to know how close Ward is to the end of what he has done so well, perhaps better than anyone among the leaders in today’s pound-for-pound generation.

At 32, however, it’s time to find out. His comeback bout against journeyman contender Paul Smith at Oakland’s Oracle Arena in a BET-televised bout provides a look at what he still has and at what he might still accomplish.

“The game plan is to razzle, dazzle, be explosive and do it all,’’ Ward said after a workout Tuesday.

Yet, it’s clear that the bout against Smith, defeated by Arthur Abraham in his last two outings, is a test drive. It’s happening at a catch-weight, 172 pounds, four more than the super-middleweight division Ward dominated before contract problems and a shoulder injury. It’s three pounds less than light-heavyweight.

Against Smith, Ward will get an idea where his career goes next. Gennady Golovkin at 168 pounds? Or Sergey Kovalev at 175? For now, Kovalev looks more likely. Golovkin appears more interested in the winner of a projected bout between Miguel Cotto and Canelo Alvarez for a piece of the middleweight title.

There was also an internet dust-up. On a Russian website, the usually polite Golovkin ripped Ward for suggesting that he was lying when he said he’d fight Ward at 168 pounds.

“You haven’t been interesting for a long time,” Golovkin was quoted as saying in response to Ward. “Everyone already knows what you are, and, because of this, they do not go to your fights. As a man, you are dead to me.”

If the quotes are accurate – and GGG has yet to deny them, it sounds as if chances at Ward-Golovkin are dead, too. But if the Floyd-Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao fight proved any thing, it showed that no deal is ever dead if money and interest are there.

That brings us back to Saturday night. It all depends on how Ward looks against Smith, a UK super-middleweight known for toughness and little else.

Ward might be at an age when he can no longer make 168, which would probably end the Golovkin possibility. GGG is already a small middleweight. It would be a stretch for his to fight at 168. Anything more than 170 looks unlikely. That would mean Kovalev, a Fight of the Year in any year.

Ward (27-0, 14 KOS) has been reluctant to talk about anything beyond Smith (35-5, 20 KOs), his first bout since his career was shelved in a contract dispute with late promoter Dan Goossen. He has no idea how he’ll react to his first opening bell in nearly two years.

“We’ll make adjustments along the way, but there isn’t a specific game plan for Paul Smith,’’ Ward said. “I think you are going to see everything come Saturday night. I’m not going to force it. I’m just going to let it flow.”

Mostly, Ward sounds as if he’s relieved to move beyond a stage in his career – his life – that left him unsure about what was next. He said he even thought about retiring. Twice, he said during a conference call, he planned to announce his retirement.

But now he’s anxious and energized for a second chance to fulfill the potential that has been oh-so evident since his 2004 gold medal, the last Olympic god won by an American boxer.

In retrospect, it might have been more lesson than layoff.

“Was it uncomfortable? Yes,’’ Ward said. “Did I hate every moment of it? Yes. But did it force me? Did it teach me? Absolutely. So, no, I wouldn’t have changed anything.

“And we’ll see Saturday night about the layoff.’’

And the future.

By Bart Barry–

Saturday in Madison Square Garden Theater, the very place Filipino Nonito Donaire’s candidacy for HBO Fighter of the New Century was subverted 3 1/2 years back by a pesky South American, Jamaican featherweight+1 Nicholas “Axe Man” Walters was unable to stretch Colombian featherweight Miguel Marriaga, much to the theater’s icy chagrin. Walters won a unanimous decision, and neither man stopped fighting or so much as clinched for nearly the full 36-minute duration, but it was not enough action, coming in the form of a 127-pound Jamaican and a Colombian featherweight, evidently, to prod New Yorkers to sustained applause.

Here’s how it went Nov. 9, 2013: Corpus Christi, Texas, was balmy and surprisingly humid for the season, American Bank Center was a dump – there was no WiFi, and the crowd lacked spirit – press row was the sort of discombobulated jumble a publicity outfit alone could conjure, and my marriage was in freefall. There were reasons aplenty for distraction, if not outright anxiety, and yet.

One begins as a boxing writer squinting at every fight, interrogating every match for its historical import and metaphorical capacity for yielding capacious metaphors – every four-rounder comprising a tiny chance at an immortality-manifesting phrase like “I saw him when he was fighting nobodies in empty arenas.” The more one sits ringside, the more his attention wanes, and something like guilt replaces the will to examine fighters’ footwork from yesteryear’s fights. Somewhere round one’s 60th fight card, though, a nearly enlightened state happens: I’m going to enjoy the undercard however I wish – watching the scorekeeper in the silly striped shirt, fantasizing about a ringcard girl, chatting with a pal I’ve not seen since last year, texting with my mother, googling the attendance record of the venue; whatever brings joy – and if something sensational happens, it will hit me with concussive force enough I’ll not be able to miss it even if I so wish.

That was Nicholas Walters. On a card that boasted Alex Saucedo, Vic Darchinyan, Mikey Garcia, Nonito Donaire and other less-talented but more-touted participants, the Jamaican featherweight happened with a concussive force too great to miss; in his U.S. debut, against Mexican Alberto Garza, Walters radiated with a violence of intention and act uncommon even among prizefighters. His form was rough, his punches were wild, but for simple force and desire, Walters was unmatchable that night.

I’m biased about Walters, then, and I could not care less if it offends.

He missed weight Friday, and it hurt. Part of the appeal of a Walters, like an Antonio Margarito before him, is the size advantage he brings to confrontations – and that appeal is immediately nullified by unfairness if he does not find a way, whatever way, to touch the contracted weight for at least a moment or two before bounding three or four weight classes upwards in 24 hours. Saturday Walters stood across from a career featherweight in Marriaga, a man who has fought nothing but 126 pounders for six years, and Walters looked enormous.

Walters is too big to be a featherweight, unless he returns to fighting thrice annually, and chews solely ice chips four weeks every year, and that is a real problem because Walters’ technique is a passport-snatching type, one that will not allow his power to travel to other weightclasses, and without the power to terrorize his opponents, Walters has very, very little.

His reflexes are about average, which might not be an issue except for his reliance on them; Walters thinks he is much quicker than he actually is, and a lot of this autoöverestimation comes from amateur experiences enough to anticipate the nature of others’ attacks, his parries triggered by anticipation more than reaction – particularly evident and perilous in round 1 Saturday, when Walters repeatedly sent his right guard out to defend Marriaga’s jab even before the Colombian knew he would throw it.

Walters straightens noticeably when he throws, making the target of his head blink and rise like a cartoon thought bubble with an idea, and despite his physical disadvantages Marriaga saw this and exploited it several times in the opening half of the fight. Walters’ defense is quite poor, too. He regularly employs the shell tactic of lowering his lead hand, and almost as regularly neglects to tuck his chin fully behind his lead shoulder; Walters’ defense is not so much a shell as an invitation.

What makes all this work, though, is the Axe Man righthand Walter wields. It is offense-as-defense in the very best sense: Before an opponent commits to a combination, he asks – and in Marriaga’s case, noticeably asks – “What if this does not knock that guy stiff?” The force of Walters’ overhand right is enough to alter others’ offensive calculations, which very nearly fits a workable definition for great defense.

No featherweight should be hit with Walters’ righthand, not Marriaga, not Vasyl Lomachenko, not God shrunken in a 126-pound form. The consequence of Walters’ righthand removed Marriaga’s desire to throw punches Saturday; yes, Walters’ body blows reduced the force of Marriaga’s punches, but it was the possibility of getting spearchiseled by that righthand that kept Marriaga from even wanting to bother.

No prizefight is gentle, but Saturday’s affair – while conclusively better than the New York crowd opined – was not withering enough to entitle Walters another 2/3-year rest. If he takes a couple weeks off, but not a month, then heads into camp for a Lomachenko match, there’s reason to think he can distill himself to 126 one last time. Walters-Lomachenko is the sort of palate-cleansing affair our beloved sport sorely needs in 2015.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action from the UIC Pavilion as Erslandy Lara defends the WBA Super Welterweight championship against Delvin Rodriguez. The action begins at 9 PM eastern with a Light Heavyweight fight between Artur Beterbiev and Alexander Johnson

12 ROUNDS–WBA SUPER WELTERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP–ERISLANDY LARA (20-2-2, 12 KO’S) VS DELVIN RODRIGUEZ (28-7-4, 16 KO’S)

Round 1 Lara drilling Rodriguez with left hands…10-9 Lara

Round 2 Lara lands a left…Jab…20-18 Lara

Round 3 Lara lands a right hook..right..snapping right and left..2 hard lefts..30-27 Lara

Round 4 Lara pounding with both hands...40-36 Lara

Round 5 More Lara domination…50-45 Lara

Round 6 STRAIGHT LEFT HAND AND DOWN GOES RODRIGUEZ…60-53 LARA

ROUND 7 Lara continuing to box well…70-62 Lara

Round 8 Hard left makes Rodriguez stumble…..80-71 Lara

Round 9

10 ROUNDS–LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHTS–ARTUR BETERBIEV (8-0, 8 KO’S) VS ALEXANDER JOHNSON (16-2, 7 KO’S)

Round 1 Not much…10-10

Round 2 Beterbiev lands 2 left and an uppercut..20-19 Beterbiev

Round 3 Johnson lands a left..29-29

Round 4 Beterbiev lands a hard combination..Good body combination...39-38 Beterbiev

Round 5 Beterbiev lands a left..LEFT AND DOWN GOES JOHNSON…HARD RIGHT ON THE ROPES FOR A 2ND KNOCKDOWN…Big flurry at the end of round...49-45 Beterbiev

Round 6 Beterbiev controlling…59-54 Beterbiev

Round 7 RIGHT AND DOWN GOES JOHNSON…HUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES JOHNSON AND THE FIGHT IS OVER

By Norm Frauenheim-

There’s a lot of talk about TBE this spring. It started with Floyd Mayweather Jr. It continues with LeBron James. But there’s a difference, one that becomes increasingly evident as the drama unfolds in the ongoing NBA Finals.

For Mayweather, TBE is a fashion statement, an acronym he wears on caps, T-shirts and anything else for sale. For James, it’s a personal statement, a challenge he took on in his return to Cleveland.

TBE stands for The Best Ever, of course. But that can mean just about anything. It’s an acronym, after all. Define it with your own values and these days that’s money. Money, money, money. Welcome to the wealth gap. There’s the one percent and the 99 percent who wish we were.

That’s Mayweather’s world and it is re-confirmed every time he looks at Forbes. He’s the magazine’s No. 1-earning athlete all over again, the best ever, better even than Tiger Woods.

Mayweather’s $300 million in Forbes latest edition of its annual list of jockdom’s filthy rich breaks Woods record of $115 million for the 12-month period between 2007 and 2008. Woods, by the way, is still ranked No. 9 by Forbes. But that’s about the only leaderboard he makes any more. Woods is shooting in the 80s and forever shooting himself out of golf’s TBE debate.

Point is, it’s easy and misleading to equate TBE with Forbes. But, I suspect, Mayweather does. If there’s a moment when Mayweather isn’t talking about money or flaunting all it buys, I’ve missed it. He loves to show it off. I’d prefer to see him show off a knockout punch once in a while. But, as a member of the 99 percent, what do I know?

Then, there’s James, who has his own definition of TBE in the month after Mayweather and Pacquiao generated $600 million in an event that was a Gross Domestic Product in more ways than one.

James doesn’t talk about TBE. He’s never been quoted as saying he’s better than Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson, unlike Mayweather, who has said he’s better than Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson. Yet, the NBA debate is more lively and forceful than ever with James’ powerful show of talent and will in leading the injury-ridden Cavaliers in a bid to upset the Golden State Warriors.

Increasingly, James’ performance is generating a fan-based debate about why he might be better. With Mayweather, it has been more about him saying he is and the public saying he’s not. Real proof is hard to find in Mayweather’s claim, despite a 48-0 record that is one victory short of Rocky Marciano’s mark.

But it’s there with James, whose return to Cleveland from Miami was a a huge gamble. Yet, he embraced the risk, encountered the adversity and has followed up with one great performance after another in a body of work that says legacy is more than an acronym.

Or an income.

By Bart Barry–

“It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books – setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them.” – Jorge Luis Borges

SAN ANTONIO – The Alamodome, just east of this downtown area’s center, has hosted prizefights both great and consequential since its grand opening in 1993. Unfortunately its most recent event will be remembered only in the latter tally.

Saturday, before a partisan-Mexican crowd of 63,392, one which publicists insist smashed seven unique attendance records, Mexican Saul “Canelo” Alvarez laid ruin to Puerto Rican middleweight champion Miguel Cotto, thrashing Cotto, who weighed in on the contracted dot of 154 1/4 pounds, for 9 1/2 of their 11 rounds together before Texas referee Laurence Cole, in an uncharacteristic and unappreciated (by Alamodome attendees), act of insight and empathy, waved a stop to the match at 1:00 of round 11, making Alvarez the first man to contest and win both the WBC’s world junior middleweight and middleweight championships in the same match. Stubbornly scheduled to coincide with Cinco De Mayo weekend, even if the calendar rendered it impossible, Saturday’s Siete De Mayo fiesta was more a cynical ethnic cashout than a party.

“I fight for the people,” Alvarez said immediately afterwards. “Because without the people, there are no people.”

“Miguel Cotto tried to win,” said Cotto.

The miracle was not so much in the fight’s happening, although that was unusual in a year already bad enough to divide two into prizefighting’s committed fanbase yet again, but that it was competitive for long as it lasted. Cotto, effectively retired since battering marvelously the crippled Argentine formally known as Maravilla almost two years ago – and the ‘almost’ is essential, we know, since Cotto employed his now infamous “Point Per Day from Puerto Rican Parade” clause, insisting Alvarez pay a significant penalty for scheduling the superfight in Mayo, not Junio – made a better showing than many forecasters feared when the fight’s contract finally was published during the weighin.

Cotto promoter Roc Nation, a still-novice outfit captained by Big Daddy Kane’s longtime hypeman, has brought none of the innovation promised its semifull Barclay’s Center houses, proving with rapper Jay-Z’s tepid success th’t rapper 50 Cent’s abject failure in the very same gambit was not an anomaly but a trendsetter: Hip-hop artists, evidently, are multiples better at selling hustler epics to suburban teens than combative mismatches to urban adults. Or perhaps that’s a touch unfair to Roc Nation: It did, after all, invent for its Canelo-Cotto weighin a contract-unveiling gamechanger in which the terms of a fight – weightclass, purse, trunk colors, trim, glove size, referee, drugtesting policy, and even permitted punch combinations – remained variables unknown to ticketbuyers until DJ Truth 1 revealed them Friday while Alvarez and Cotto loitered near the scale.

Oddsmakers, themselves doubleblinded as ticketbuyers till Friday’s afternoon announcement, quickly installed Alvarez a 4-1 favorite, upon learning last-minute negotiations by promoter Oscar De La Hoya and cable broadcaster HBO restored Canelo’s left hook to the permitted-use column from which it was struck deliberately by Miguel Cotto’s own pink pen Thursday evening. Writing of HBO, the network’s palpable relief was felt from New York to Lone Star State when the match’s opening line came in well below the unwritten threshold (5-1) determining a match’s fitness for pay-per-view.

“It’s not complicated,” explained an HBO programmer who requested anonymity: “If there’s less than five times the chance our favorite will beat his opponent, take out your wallet. ‘Championship Boxing,’ our flagship program, is for less-competitive matches, obviously, though our 10-1 sweetspot is considerably lower, still, than Showtime’s. Once a fight goes off at 15- or 20-1, we’re going to lean ‘Boxing After Dark’ unless it’s (Gennady) Golovkin.”

Cotto trainer Freddie Roach, ubiquitous as a popup ad since the fight was signed, whenever it was signed, prepared his charge for a seemingly slower version of Alvarez, as Alvarez had little issue finding the Puerto Rican from about the second round to the match’s merciful end in the 11th. Alvarez, the naturally larger man, succeeded where others failed before him, successfully hooking with the hooker in a way 2015 Cotto victim Daniel Geale did not, starting a left hook to the head each time Cotto started a left hook to the body, and twice topspinning Cotto in a way not seen since Manny Pacquiao cleaned the Puerto Rican’s clock in 2009.

There are no sixth chapters in prizefighting, and Cotto’s inability to imperil Canelo even once in their 34 minutes together Saturday portended the end of a career marked by popularity more than greatness. Had Cotto retired immediately after Pacquiao stopped him, or Floyd Mayweather or Austin Trout outclassed him, his legacy might have included as much goodwill as it lacked decisive victories over great fighters in their primes, but the rapacity of Cotto’s cashgrab since 2012 – excepting only his match with Sergio Martinez, since Martinez and his handlers and New York’s athletic commission and HBO are more culpable for a one-legged man’s assault than its perpetrator – has cooled what warm feelings aficionados long reserved for the Puerto Rican.

Cotto’s surly disposition and spartan interview style conclusively wore better on a doomed warrior than a finicky diva.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action Live from Barclays Center as Miguel Cotto defends the WBC Middleweight title against former two-time champion Daniel Geale. The action begins at 10:30 PM ET.

12 ROUNDS–WBC MIDDLEWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP–MIGUEL COTTO (39-4, 32 KO’S) VS DANIEL GEALE (31-3, 16 KO’S)

Round 1 Cotto lands to the body..left to body..jab..jab..Geale lands a right…10-9 Cotto

Round 2 Cotto lands a right..quick jab..body combo…Geale lands a jab…quick combination…20-18 Cotto

Round 3 Jab snaps Geales head back..jab..left to body…Right from geale…Hard right from Cotto drives Geale into the ropes….30-27 Cotto

Round 4 HUGE LEFT HOOK AND DOWN GEALE..Huge FLURRY AND DOWN GOES GEALE AGAIN…FIGHT STOPPED

By Norm Frauenheim-

A shuffle the top of the marquee begins to unfold, almost like a political campaign, in an inevitable transition put into motion by Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao. Despite record-setting revenue, the fight was an artistic flop, yet a sign that the business is moving on in search of new stars.

They’re there, on a list topped by Gennady Golovkin, Canelo Alvarez, Terence Crawford and Roman Gonzalez. A preliminary, yet intriguing move takes place Saturday in the Miguel Cotto-Daniel Geale fight at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. The HBO-televised bout sets the table.

If Cotto – a prominent face in the Mayweather-Pacquiao generation — wins, it looks as if he’ll face Alvarez for perhaps his last big payday in another chapter in the rich Puerto Rican–Mexican tradition. If Cotto loses, then maybe Golovkin bypasses Carl Froch and goes straight to an anticipated date with Canelo in a bout sure to include Fight-of-the-Year hype.

It’s no coincidence, perhaps, that Golovkin plans to be at ringside for Cotto-Geale. He knocked out Geale. He wants Cotto’s version of the middleweight belt. Of all the potential contenders for the pound-for-pound office about to be vacated by Mayweather, Golovkin looks like the front-runner, both in ring skill and popular appeal.

If there were an election among Mexican fans in Los Angeles, Golovkin, a Kazak, would get a lot of votes. In his last two bouts in LA, the crowd has been filled with people wearing T-shirts and campaign-style button that said: Mexicans for GGG.

There’s A-side leverage in that kind of popularity. At some point, it’s bound to bring GGG out the most-feared category and into a powerful bargaining position. Ducking GGG will soon become a bad business move, especially with the Mayweather-Pacquiao generation at the brink of retirement.

Andre Ward looms as another potential candidate in the race to succeed Mayweather. He’s not as likable as Golovkin. But he might be skilled enough to beat him. We’ll begin to see soon enough. In his first fight since November 16, 2013, Ward faces Paul Smith on June 20 in hometown Oakland.

Meanwhile, don’t be surprised if this race gets as crowded as the one with Republicans running for president. There’s talk that master-tactician Mikey Garcia, an unbeaten super-featherweight at 34-0, is preparing to come back. He hasn’t fought since January 25, 2014.

There’s also Deontay Wilder, the first American with a heavyweight belt since Shannon Briggs, who knocked out Sergei Liakhovich for the WBO title in 2006 and stalking Wladimir Klitschko ever since.

Wilder, likable and probably a couple fights away from seriously challenging Klitschko, has boldly declared his candidacy. Wilder likes to talk and he said a lot in a conference call Wednesday for his first title defense June 13 against unknown Eric Molina in Birmingham, Ala. Wilder said he can be a bigger star than Mayweather.

“Most definitely, and I say that with high confidence because the heavyweight division is the cream of the crop in the first place,’’ said Wilder, the WBC champion. “The things that I bring, the charisma, the excitement, the personality that I have, everything about me is all me. It’s totally me.

“Some guys, when they have cameras in their face, they presume to be a certain type of person or the persona about them changes. When the camera is off, they’re a totally different person. I don’t have split personalities. I’m not a fake person. Everything about me is real. Everything you see on (Showtime) All-Access is me. Nothing is scripted, nothing is planned up, nothing.’’

Nothing, other than being next.

By Bart Barry

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

*

CARLSBAD, NM – This town is an overpriced outpost on the border of two western states, a dilapidated homebase of sorts for those who might venture to Guadalupe Peak, 8,000 feet in the air, or Carlsbad Caverns, 1,000 feet below ground. It is the nature of adventures they should feature the unknown, and if the unknown were but a roster of pleasant surprises, why, it would be the already-known.

Portrait of a column that nearly was not written:

A half hour lost to suffering through Amir Khan’s latest match, Friday, a glance at HBO’s upcoming fight schedule, Saturday, and Sunday a six-hour drive across terrain unchanging as it is forbidding, a particularly unappealing hotel in a particularly unappealing town, and nothing to do but eat poor barbecue or survey the Wal-Mart parking lot – not the best of Sundays but possibly the worst of them. It brings a sensation like nostalgia’s bullying twin, a reminder what hopelessness Sunday afternoons can hold if you’re not careful with them, if you’re not in a place where forward lamentations are forbidden or gnawing past-tense conditionals do not know to look.

There are oranges and yellows and reds everywhere here, and a washedout blue sky, too, but these are colors, one ought remember, one enjoys in shade or from shade. Blazing-on-blazing, instead, are what the colors of New Mexico are and portend in June.

Hopelessness in the sense of being without hope, being near enough to a moment to caren’t a whit for the future, where hope resides, is a very good thing; hopelessness in the sense of being through a checklist of reasons to go on drawing breath, to be past experiences and disappointments enough to think it probable the future will be worse than this, however bad this is, is a very bad thing. This city has a hopelessness to it in the worse sense of the word. Maybe that changes as you read this (for it certainly does not change as I write it); if you’re reading this on Monday, there’s a good chance I am somewhere near the top of Texas, the peak of Guadalupe Mountains National Park, 55 miles southwest of here, hiking alone in the wilderness, part of an act of faith that goes: Hiking may not get better, but life gets better because of solitude and nature.

It’s an ongoing embrace of the unknown, the necessary ingredient in adventure – what justifies a man’s life. Adventure is duly celebrated in every culture, but a caveat exists that explains the upwards spiral adventuring catalyzes: The more one converts the unknown to the known, markedly, the more one’s tolerance for the known diminishes. It’s another quirk that argues modestly against any perceivable universal order whatever; it’s the reason “mysterious ways” retains such a philosophically seductive sheen.

The 450-mile westwards drive from San Antonio is blessedly open and devoid of the petty competitiveness one finds on most interstates across the fruited plain, the way motorists cluster tightly, surrounded by miles of open space, angling to deny strangers the satisfaction of a spot in the imaginary future area they plan to occupy. Texas has lots of guns and lots of road-rage, and blossoming billboards about road-rage, and if one were to think arming the populace would decrease the likelihood of strangers confronting one another, well, he would be wrong. Arming the populace invariably grows the self in self-protection more than the protection, expanding the perimeter of offense and probably the perception of offense, too.

Writing of which, some might be offended to have come all this way to a boxing column only to encounter a pining-away about flat western spaces and traffic patterns and Sundays. Very well.

Friday British welterweight Amir Khan decisioned American Chris Algieri in a match that was, like most things PBC, somewhat better than feared. British fans are loyal fans – frankly, they are like Mexicans without a fraction the talent pool – and their loyalty is continually tested and occasionally rewarded by Khan, good a representative of this era as any. Khan does not win his career’s biggest fights, or perhaps the fights he loses that he is supposed to win retroactively gain in stature, but he provides suspense because his chin is so poor that it distracts from his footwork, which otherwise would be glaringly awful.

However many trainers he’s had, Khan has never had stricken from his repertoire a sideways-skipping escape that looks frightened no matter the juncture of a fight in which it appears. It is incredible that Algieri, a man who barely survived Ruslan Provodnikov at 140 pounds and lost every minute to little Manny Pacquiao in November, at times looked aggressive and imposing as Antonio Margarito against Khan. Algieri thinks and listens in a way Khan never does, and when he goes in the hard way he emerges from it much better than Khan, too.

“So little from so much” – that ought to be the tagline in September if it turns out Khan looked badly enough Friday to win the Floyd Mayweather retirement-match lottery. Since Algieri couldn’t miss Khan with wildman rights in the opening five rounds, it stands to reason Mayweather might possibly, conditionally, conceivably, tentatively, haltingly go for a knockout to close his career. The Brits would have to acquire from scalpers 15,000 of the MGM Grand’s tickets, with the remaining 1,000 split between celebrity comps and Mayweather fans, but why not?

Enough of this. I’d rather be in Barcelona . . .

*

Editor’s Note: For part 10, please click here.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim

Amid the clutter of 17 weight classes and more acronyms than letters in the alphabet, there’s something else to hang in that chaotic closest full of belts not worth a decent sanctioning fee at the corner pawnshop.

Catch-weights are just another part of the mess. Like a lot of junk, the catch-weight clause is many things. Sometimes a loophole and always an annoyance, it it’s also part gamesmanship. It’s an opportunity for the guy with A-side power to dictate.

In the end, however, it just represents further confusion in a business screaming for a little clarity, if not order.

It further buries all titles beneath insignificance so deep that few care anymore. Another shovel full of it is about to be dumped on the middleweight title, or whatever piece of it is at stake in the Miguel Cotto-Daniel Geale fight at Brooklyn’s Barclays Centre on June 6 in a HBO-televised bout.

They have agreed not to exceed 157 pounds for a 160-pound title. Does that make any sense? No, says Geale.

“”If it’s not a title fight, then a catch-weight is not a problem,’’ the Australian said Thursday during a conference call for Jay Z’s Roc Nation-promoted bout. “But if you’re fighting for a middleweight title, the weight limit is 160. I find it funny. It should be at 160, but I’m not going to complain.’’

He can’t complain. He agreed to the catch-weight, after all, simply because it was the only way he could secure a chance to challenge Cotto on HBO. Cotto, the A-side on a New York weekend that celebrates his Puerto Rican heritage, has all the leverage in a bout seen as a steppingstone to big money with Mexico’s Canelo Alvarez later this year.

That Cotto would demand it at all, however, might be a sign of some concern about Geale, who is taller and has about a five-inch advantage in reach. Austin Trout had about a four-inch edge in reach in his 2012 upset of Cotto. What’s more, Geale, knocked out in July within three rounds by Gennady Golovkin, is a natural middleweight. Cotto, Puerto Rico’s first champion at four weights, is not. He said so Thursday.

“Everybody knows I’m not a 160-pound fighter,’’ said Cotto, who will be fighting in the division for only the second time since he beat a hobbled Sergio Martinez a year ago.

Against Martinez, Cotto was able to leverage his proven drawing power into negotiating a 159-pound catch-weight. At opening bell, Cotto was at 155. Against an even lesser known Geale, Cotto was able to demand and get a couple of more pounds of flesh. It’s gamesmanship. It’s the way business is done these days, says Coto trainer Freddie Roach. To wit: Force the other guy to sweat. But that’s more of gotcha clause than catch-weight.

“They’re trying to weaken me by making me go down a few more pounds,’’ said Geale, who was born on the island of Tasmania, south of the Aussie continent.

They are, yet in the process they further weaken a title in a division with a fabled history. Mavin Hagler fought for the middleweight championship. Cotto and Geale are fighting for the 157-pound title, what ever that is.

Geale promoter Gary Shaw has an interesting idea. Any title fight at a catch-weight should come with an asterisk. But where would you put it? Between the bauble and the bangle on the belt’s brass plate? Between the interim and the emeritus in the record book? These days, it’d just be more meaningless clutter.

By Bart Barry–

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

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San Antonio Museum of Art currently features a retrospective exhibition of works by American painter Jamie Wyeth, son of Andrew. There is real talent in his paintings. Innovation, too. In a series of works that has seagulls depicting the seven deadly sins, Wyeth uses watercolor paint thickened with honey – a trick Wyeth attributes to his time working in Andy Warhol’s Factory – painted on cardboard. The gulls are ravenous, wild, and terrifying if one imagines himself prey. Wyeth also uses every part of a brush, his fingers, and even his tongue to make a large, gulls-and-waste-disposal piece called “Inferno” for its fire and hellish air.

Innovation without talent produces little but anxiety, and fortunately Wyeth has plenty of talent, even if not so plentifully as his dad did. Would that boxing had fractionally so much talent as innovation, lately.

This sport is increasingly difficult to write about. Last week’s performance by Nicaraguan Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez, unfortunately, served like nothing so much as a reminder how much better and easier it was to write about prizefighting a decade ago. About a decade before that, of course, the newspapers abandoned the sport shortly after the larger American public did, another marvelous example of the free market’s creative destruction, but part of the reason writers let it happen – and writers did have some control over the matter – was because there was less to write well about.

The writer is not yet born who can write compellingly about a subject for which he feels no passion, and fleshings-out of box scores and television ratings and polls fool only undiscerning readers, and boxing now accelerates its descent into a place about which no smart being can feel passion. There’s habit, of course, but last week’s end of ESPN’s relentlessly mediocre “Friday Night Fights” stamps an epitaph on that. ESPN always had the budget to outbid HBO and Showtime put together – look what it pays for “Monday Night Football” and “Sunday Night Baseball” – but chose, instead, to treat boxing as a shamefilled filler between collegiate softball games, doing less than Telefutura, much less than Telefutura, to advance interest in our beloved sport.

Manager Al Haymon saw an incredible resource being resolutely squandered and moved on it. Bless him for that. Al Haymon will now fill ESPN, over time, with Just For Men-quality matchmaking. Damn him for this.

One has to care exponentially more about Olympic medals and British boxing than I do to watch garbage like James DeGale versus Andre Dirrell, regardless of whichever network televised it Saturday. Dirrell, whom writer Steve Kim nicknamed “Dirreadful” back when boxing was fun to cover, has been unwatchable for years, and Saturday was by no means his opus – he did get floored a couple times, after all. No, Dirrell’s opus was the opening act of his agent-provocateur role in Showtime’s “Super Six” tournament way back when. Before he refused to fight Andre Ward because Ward would beat him, before he “Matrix-ed” his way into defenselessness and then unconsciousness with Arthur Abraham, Dirrell set a precedent for insipidness against Carl Froch. It will be a long time before a muscular, 168-pound man shows a greater commitment to conflict avoidance than Dirrell showed against Froch in 2009.

Dirrell was the blueprint for an Al Haymon fighter, even before most knew who Haymon was: Telegenic, athletic, a lion in a mismatch – look at that handspeed! – and a pussycat in a fair fight.

Haymon now uses venture capital to corner boxing on American public airwaves, a strategy that, if successful, will end boxing writing, but his approach has one oft-overlooked flaw: Haymon does not appear to like seeing men fight even a little. Never mind the existential resistance to Haymon’s plot from an outfit like Golden Boy Promotions (and never ever mind the token rebuttals from Haymon’s puppet promoters), the meaningful resistance to Haymon’s plot is right here: People who like to watch boxing don’t enjoy the fights Haymon makes.

Aficionados, a romantic and tragically flawed bunch, play an imaginative game with ourselves, perhaps the best escape: We dismiss the most obvious explanation for each happening in our sport and replace it with ideas that are daft. We dismiss what is obvious – Haymon hoodwinked a number of cable guys then moved on to hedgefund managers, without attracting one new fan to boxing – and replace it with a savvy plot to attract with bad fighting Americans who don’t even like good fighting. “Better than feared” is not a growth strategy in a market so tiny that fewer than one-percent of American households even know to have fear.

There is no faking inspiration, regardless of special effects and dramatic lighting, and there is nothing inspiring about Haymon’s stable of fighters feinting at one another, especially if matches continue to happen at an hour not even boxing fans are yet drunk. Haymon’s personal finances will do fine – he’s now the patron saint of every entrepreneur who salivated simultaneously at combat sports and Wall Street but couldn’t think how to marry them – but his brand is no more likely to endure than writers’ collective interest in boxing . . .

*

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

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
.

David Sanchez scored a 2nd round knockout over Walberto Ramos in a scheduled 10-round Bantamweight bout at the Polideportivo Centenario in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico.

Sanchez dropped Ramos in round one from a right hand. Sanchez scored another knockdown in round two from a hard flurry that was started by a right. Later in the round, dumped Ramos for a 3rd time for a right hand and the fight was stopped at 2:49 of round two.

Sanchez is 28-2-2 with 22 knockouts. Ramos of Colombia is 23-7-2.

Adrian Young scored a 10th round stoppage in the final scheduled round of his Super Featherweight bout with Marco Antonio Juarez.

Young battered Juarez around in the final frame until the bout was stopped at 2:45 of round 10.

Young is now 22-1 with 18 knockouts. Juarez is 13-4.

Yazmin Rivas defended her WBC Female Bantamweight title with a 6th round stoppage over Simone Da Silva Duarte.

Rivas dropped Duarte in round six. Then she pounded away with body shots and then a head combination forced the stoppage at 1:27 of round six.

Rivas is 33-8. Duarte is 14-9.

By Norm Frauenheim-

Nearly three weeks have passed since Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s decision over Manny Pacquiao in the Letdown of the Century and there’s been no backlash.

Canelo Alvarez’ knockout of James Kirkland on May 9 drew HBO’s biggest audience for non-pay-per-view bout since 2006. A week later, there was a capacity crowd at the rebuilt Forum for Gennady Golovkin’s stoppage of Willie Monroe Jr. and Roman Gonzalez’ celebrated return to the U.S. market.

Perhaps, damage from Mayweather-Pacquiao was contained. Maybe, that’s because it was a fight that boxing’s traditional demographic couldn’t afford. It was an event for the one percent, which yawned throughout 12 rounds and then piled into Bugattis, Ferraris and private jets for a holiday aboard Mediterranean yachts.

Truth is, the one percent was probably never coming back anyway. Meanwhile, the game’s loyal customers had already moved on to the leading names in an emerging generation that has supplanted Mayweather and Pacquiao, who were old news before opening bell. Just plain old, too.

Controversy will linger over the Pacquiao-Mayweather money grab, and that’s all it ever was. Conspiracy theories about the severity of Pacquiao’s shoulder injury will circulate and re-circulate.

Mayweather will continue to blame the Filipino for the lousy fight, yet there was never one second when Mayweather ever showed any inclination at taking matters into his own hands. Pacquiao wasn’t throwing punches at his usual rate. There were moments when he appeared to be wide-open for a fight-ending uppercut. But it was never attempted. Mayweather was content to remain in a defensive posture, even backing away on his heels in later rounds when it was clear Pacquiao had no chance. In a Showtime replay, his father and trainer, Floyd Sr., exhorts his son to get more aggressive.

“You fighting like you scared, man,’’ Floyd Sr. said.

In the post-fight news conference, Mayweather repeatedly demanded an apology from pundits who had said the fight didn’t happen five years ago because he was scared of Pacquao.

Did his father apologize for saying it during the fight? Just wondering.

But there’s been no immediate backlash evident at the box office or in the television ratings. Traditional fans had a pretty good idea about what would happen anyway. Mayweather fought as he always has. He took no chances, fighting for another day – or more to the point—another paycheck.

The guess in this corner is that we have seen the last of Pacquaio, at least in the U.S. He was in decline before he underwent surgery for a reported tear in his right shoulder four days after the fight. It’s expected to heal in six to nine months. Maybe he could fight in 2016. But will he be any better then than he has been the last three-to four years? Doubtful.

Then, issues at how and when he disclosed the injury linger. Why at the post-fight news conference and not in documentation before the weigh-in? The Nevada State Athletic Commission has talked about an investigation, saying Pacquiao could be fined or suspended. Meanwhile, more than 30 civil lawsuits have been filed, many listing him as a defendant. The suits appear to be frivolous. If deflated fans can sue Pacquiao, can New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady be next?

But they’re there and they’re a headache. If Pacquiao fights again, maybe it will be in a farewell bout at home in the Philippines or in tax-friendly China. Another fight in the U.S. would probably mean lawyers and legal fees.

Then, there’s Mayweather. If there’s a backlash, he might feel it. Mayweather says he intends to fight in September in what would be the final bout in his six-fight deal with Showtime. It figures to be another PPV telecast, perhaps against Amir Khan. But anecdotal evidence indicates there won’t be many return customers. At least 4.4 million bought the Pacquiao-Mayweather telecast at about $100 for high-def. Those lawsuits, no matter how frivolous, represent a groundswell of anger directed at both Pacquiao and Mayweather.

If there’s a September bout, history will be a big part of the sales pitch. It represents a chance for Mayweather to equal Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 record. With a victory, Mayweather could further his claim on the TBE brand, The Best Ever. But even that is problematic. The devil is in the numbers. Mayweather’s caution, never more evident than it was against a vulnerable Pacquiao, has stopped 54.11 percent of his 48 opponents. Marciano scored KOs in 87.76 percent of his bouts. Advantage: Marciano.

Mayweather says he’ll retire after his next fight. But he also says he changes his mind. His pursuit of an unbeaten legacy is reason to think he’ll try to go 50-0 with the 50th bout as the inaugural event at a Las Vegas arena currently under construction.

Mayweather, then a free agent and ever the businessman, could sell No. 50 to the network that offers the most money. But how much would it really be worth? Sift through the remains of Mayweather-Pacquiao, and there’s evidence that it’ll only be a tiny fraction of what looks like a last chance to cash in.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – While hiking Saturday morning I came across my first in-action dung beetle, a needly faced creature pushing a smooth cylinder of cow excrement along a path beside the Medina River. If you do not think a dung beetle is among nature’s most extraordinary creatures, keep reading. Saturday evening, a nearly as remarkable Nicaraguan flyweight named Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez made his debut on American premium cable. These occurrences are only connected by coincidence, and diminutive stature, perhaps loosely, but as both are interesting in their way, please be indulgent.

The male dung beetle pushes his ball, one that can weigh 250 times what he does, backwards, with his hind legs, while walking on his front legs. He pushes extraordinary distances in search of both a mate and a final resting place. Perspective: To match the physicality of the dung beetle’s feat, a man would have to push an M31 tank with his feet while walking on his hands from here to El Paso, only to have every female he encounters ignore him entirely to inspect his tank and calculate the likelihood her offspring could survive in it. There’s good reason ancient peoples deified the dung beetle.

Roman Gonzalez (43-0, 37 KOs), meanwhile, is the real thing, and it is good to see him embraced by HBO – a network with nothing to gain, really, by exposing its subscribers to a man with championships at minimumweight, light flyweight and flyweight, a man who is yet to fight within 40 pounds of what the average American woman weighed in 2014. At 5-foot-3, Gonzalez won his first world title weighing 104 1/2 pounds; he is tiny. Too, he is perfect in form as anyone currently plying the craft of prizefighting.

He’ll never capture America’s imagination the way Floyd Mayweather has, in part because Gonzalez is nearly impossible to dislike. Watch his opponents’ treatment of him after each knockout: They feel sincere affection for him, and he feels sincere affection for them, hugging and bowing and smiling graciously in a way heavyweights never do. Part of that, also coincidentally, returns to a counterintuitive boxing ratio in which the possible consequences of a fight are inversely proportionate to the possible consequences of each punch.

Gonzalez strikes with disproportionate force for a man who weighs 111 pounds, yes, but Wladimir Klitschko strikes with disproportionately more consequence even than his disparity in size with Gonzalez anticipates: A punch from Klitschko is much more than three times as likely to render you unconscious. Which, ironically, makes a fight with Klitschko much safer, in a survivability sense, than a fight with Gonzalez. A single blow whose concussion renders you instantly unconscious is not healthy, of course, but you’d rather that than 150 punches from Gonzalez.

There’s one other incredible advantage the heavyweight champion of the world has over any minimumweight champion: His punches travel distances enough that any member of the laity can observe them at full-speed. Not so with a Gonzalez fight. Gonzalez and Edgar Sosa, Saturday night, were so very much closer, and their motions so very much quicker, in part for traveling shorter distances, in part for having to propel so much less mass at one another, that even a knowledgeable observer could hardly hope not to lose something with peripheral vision.

One needs the fovea to watch Gonzalez, and as the fovea’s scope is notoriously small, one must choose, when television does not choose for him, whether to observe the feet or the hands. The hands are where the consequences are, and Gonzalez pronates masterfully at the ends of his punches, but if you’ve never watched Gonzalez’s footwork, or had the privilege of watching Lee Wylie’s explanation of it, treat yourself to a replay of Saturday with your eyes set on the canvas.

Gonzalez has now replaced Mexican Juan Manuel Marquez as the fighter whose style every trainer in the world should instill in every child he teaches to box. Gonzalez is offensively minded, technically precise, and defensively responsible. Of the three best fighters in the world today – Floyd Mayweather, Gonzalez and Guillermo Rigondeaux – Gonzalez is the one who looks for the knockout every time every bell rings. His attacks are fundamentally correct to a point of being nearly impersonal; where Mayweather seeks to solve an opponent and Rigondeaux gets bored enough to rehearse combinations flagrantly before throwing them, Gonzalez applies a template. Mayweather and Rigondeaux query their massive databases for opponent patterns, finding matches for neutralization, first, before applying offensive templates. Gonzalez, conversely, applies his offensive template in the faith it instantly will make every opponent almost the same.

One other enormous aesthetic difference between Gonzalez and Mayweather: The referee rarely enters the broadcaster’s frame during a Gonzalez fight, while he is ubiquitous whenever Money is in the ring. Half of Gonzalez’s rare clinches do not even require the referee to break them: “We came too close together just now, brother, but no worries, let’s take a step back and resume the milling.”

There was harmony in Saturday’s HBO broadcast, pairing Gonzalez and Kazakh middleweight titlist Gennady Golovkin, even if the order was backwards. Boxing is never a meritocracy till a bell rings, and one hopes Golovkin was impressed enough by Saturday’s opening act to glance through Gonzalez’s record: world championships in three different weight classes, a man fighting larger men rather than calling for littler ones, a prizefighter seeking new challenges in a quest to improve. Gonzalez is six years younger than Golovkin and has seven more knockouts, and somehow, no one is ever “afraid” to fight Gonzalez.

When Willie Monroe Jr. becomes your last fearless man, it’s time to fashion a new marketing slogan.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

PHOENIX, Ariz. – Jose Benavidez Jr. and Jorge Paez Jr. made weight Thursday for a truTV super-lightweight title fight Friday night in a bout that is critical to Benavidez’ future and represents a step in a larger battle to resurrect boxing in Arizona.

Benavidez, (22-0, 15 KOs), Arizona’s first champion with a major championship since Hall of Fame junior-flyweight Michael Carbajal, was at 139 pounds, one under the mandatory for his first defense of the WBA’s interim version of the super-lightweight crown.

Paez (38-5-2-1, 23 KOs) was at 140, although he looked drawn and weary after what appeared to be a struggle to shed pounds.

In another intriguing bout scheduled for 10 rounds, Antonio Orozco (21-0, 15 KOs) of San Diego faces Baltimore’s Emmanuel Taylor (18-3, 12 KOs), who is coming off a loss to Adrien Broner. Both tipped the scale at 141 pounds

Benavidez, who is five inches taller and has at least an inch advantage in reach, appears to be the favorite on his birthday. He turns 23 Friday. The Phoenix native also will be fighting in front of a hometown crowd at US Airways Center. The truTV telecast of the Top Rank promotion is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. PST (10 p.m. EST). The non-televised portion of the card, which was put together by Iron Boy Promotions of Phoenix, is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. PST (8 p.m. EST).

There hasn’t been a major fight in the arena, home for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, since Julio Cesar Chavez’ singular career ended there on Sept. 17, 2005 in a loss to Grover Wiley, a car salesman from Omaha.

Carbajal sold out the arena twice, once in a 1992 TKO of Robinson Cuesta and again in 1993 with stoppage of Domingo Sosa. Then, the place was new, Carbajal was in his prime and the Suns were in the playoffs. Now, there’s talk of building a new arena, Carbajal is 47 and the Suns haven’t been in the playoffs for five successive years. In other words, it’s been a while.

A chance at restoring some of the boxing heritage rests in Benavidez’ accurate hands, which were precise enough to score a controversial decision over Mauricio Herrera for his first title last December in Las Vegas.

Paez, who is known for his toughness, is the son of a legendary Mexican featherweight who also has place in Arizona boxing history. Jorge Paez Sr., also a clown in the Mexican circus, fought six times in Arizona, winning five and battling to a draw with Louie Espinoza in a memorable bout for the IBF’s featherweight title at the old Veterans Memorial Coliseum in 1989. Espinoza, who held the WBA’s super-bantamweight title for about two years, lost a split decision to Paez in a 1990 rematch in Las Vegas.

Today, Espinoza is a carpenter in Chandler, Ariz. Paez Sr, is living in Vegas, according to his son. Meanwhile, Arizona boxing went dormant, in large part because of immigration legislation, SB 1070, so controversial that the late Jose Sulaiman of the World Boxing Council told Mexican boxers to boycott the state.

Some did. Some didn’t. But the real impact came with Mexican-based advertisers, which decided to withdraw sponsorship of bouts scheduled in the state. One was in Phoenix, featuring Benavidez. It got canceled.

The furor over 1070 has subsided. It’s a chance for boxing to recover. But can it? For now, that’s up to Benavidez.

By Norm Frauenheim

PHOENIX, Ariz. – He turns 23 on Friday. Jose Benavidez Jr. approaches his birthday unbeaten, yet not unchallenged. His record is the product of a jab, an exclamation point that is at the cutting edge of his natural talent. He was born with it. Lots of it.

The challenges are a little different. Some are self-imposed. Some unwanted. All are collected over time. With every birthday, there always seem to be a few more. How to celebrate a birthday, perhaps, rests in how they are encountered. How they’re conquered.

Coincidental or not, Benavidez plans to celebrate with a 23rd victory to match his 23 years against Jorge Paez Jr. in the first defense of a major title, the World Boxing Association’s interim 140-pound championship, in a truTV bout at US Airways Center.

The interim suggests that some titles are forever. Nothing could be more misleading. Or foolish. Benavidez, a junior no more and probably a full-fledged welterweight before long, seems to understand as much.

The kid, a professional fighter at 17, is gone. There’s a chiseled face and intense eyes as dark as coal. If you’re looking for the wide-eyed teenager, you’ll have to find his photo in a high-school yearbook. The maturing Benavidez (22-0, 15 KOs) talks with newfound self-assurance. The title might be interim. The fighter who has it, however, doesn’t sound like a disposable champion. He said at a news conference Wednesday that the belt would not leave Phoenix, his hometown.

“I guarantee that,’’ he said.

It was a bold comment, especially against a Paez who grew up in boxing. The soft-spoken Paez (38-5-2, 23 KOs) doesn’t appear to have any of the big-top flamboyance his dad had as a clown in the Mexican circus. Yet, the 27-year-old son has shown some of the toughness that Jorge Sr. possessed as a featherweight champion.

Benavidez is fighting more than just Paez Jr. Skepticism lingers. His unanimous decision for the WBA belt over Mauricio Herrera last December in Las Vegas was controversial. HBO’s commentators and most of the writers thought he got a gift from the judges. Against Paez Jr., they’ll be watching to see if they were right. Benavidez’ challenge is to prove them wrong.

“We have to score a stoppage, win convincingly, for my son to take a significant step in his career,’’ his father and trainer Jose Benavidez Sr. said Wednesday during a news conference for a card that includes Antonio Orozco-versus-Emmanuel Taylor and is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. (PST).

Benavidez, Jr. and Sr., hoped for a rematch with Herrera. Only a convincing victory in a second fight could knock out every doubt. Even if he beats Paez Jr, there will still be controversy about the scorecards against Herrera, a Golden Boy Promotions fighter

“I told him I’d fight him,’’ Benavidez said. “I said so right after the fight and ever since. But he wants bigger names, I guess.’’

Benavidez is probably five years away from his prime. He figures to get better as he matures. It doesn’t always work that way, of course. But an older Benavidez sounds as if he is determined to prove that all of the promise surrounding him as a hyped prospect five years ago was more than just baby fat. He says he is willing to fight anyone.

His Top Rank promoters have confirmed he was a possibility for Terence Crawford last April in the former lightweight champion’s first bout at 140 pounds. Instead, Crawford, the Boxing Writers’ 2014 Fighter of the Year, fought and stopped Puerto Rican Thomas Dulorme on April 18 for a WBO title that was vacant and not tagged with the interim garbage.

Crawford, ticketed for stardom, would have been interpreted as step too far for Benavidez. But he and his father were prepared for it.

“We signed off on it,’’ the senior Benavidez said. “Then, Top Rank got back to us and told us they had decided to go with Dulorme. Hey, Crawford would have been very tough, no doubt. But no matter what happened, my son would have learned a lot.’’

The son says he would have done more than that.

“I’d have beat him,’’ Benavidez Jr. said. “I’m bigger than he is. But that’s OK. It’ll happen someday. There’s still plenty of time.’’
Still plenty of birthdays.

By Bart Barry

HOUSTON – Minute Maid Park, home of the Astros, made a fine fight venue, even, or perhaps especially, when its retractable roof winked at its anxious media section, water dropping from the sky, papers rising from the table, before shutting once more just before the main event. Mexican Saul “Canelo” Alvarez then knocked Texan James Kirkland stiff in the last minute of round 3. And fans who’d been fed, by that late hour, 10 hours of inedible slop, left overjoyed by the spectacle because, whatever Floyd and Manny may opine, positively nothing beats a knockout.

The end came in slow motion at ringside, the better for savoring it. Alvarez set his eyes and head exaggeratedly low, fixing them on Kirkland’s chest – because, as the old timers know, it’s one head’s length from the breastbone to the chin – and then he took his time cocking the righthand. Kirkland, reflexes impaired, already nigh drunk from blows to his skull, picked-up the punch an instant late, exactly as Alvarez intended. Kirkland dropped his hands to the very spot Alvarez’s eyes set. Then Kirkland realized he’d fallen for a feint and hoped without hope he might chasten Alvarez’s aggression with a lunatic lefthook counter. But Kirkland had time only to get the punch started and complement the aesthetics of Alvarez’s perfectly structured right by flailspinning over Alvarez’s properly lowered head, winning for Alvarez Knockout of the Year even if we’re not yet to the ides of May.

It was a right remedy for the disaster of May 2, and it was right th’t a Mexican brought it to us. It was a right remedy, too, for Alvarez’s own terrible showing against Mayweather some time ago.

It brightens the spirit to think Mexicans might have a genuine article, finally, in Alvarez, a man who, if he’s never quite the world’s best prizefighter, is now Mexico’s best prizefighter, not merely its most popular. Popularity, as Edward Norton’s accomplished character in “Birdman” so aptly puts it, is the slutty little cousin of prestige, and while Alvarez has never wanted for popularity, a debt owed more to Mexican daytime television and haircolor than fistic accomplishments, he now has prestige, an order of merit greater because it’s how the meritocracy of boxing would order it.

Alvarez may not yet deserve 30,000 fans in Houston or 40,000 in San Antonio, not when Mayweather and Pacquiao gather half that many at MGM Grand, but the Mexicans gathered in Houston on Saturday absolutely deserved the fight, and ending, Alvarez gave them. Beleaguered as they have been with Son of the Legend, the Legend’s disaster of a son – and the Legend, self-oblivious a sporting legend as you’ll find, was in lock-Tio-Julio-in-the-basement broadcaster mode from ringside Saturday – the Mexicans, boxing’s one reliable demographic in sickness and in health, finally can embrace Alvarez with a clean collective conscience, setting aside Juan Manuel Marquez’s enduring and caustic criticism of Alvarez: one more resentful riff from Mexico’s best prizefighter of the last generation, and best resenter too.

Alvarez does not yet show a spot of resentment, nor should he, and that is a fine thing. Son of the Legend, setter of an entitlement-to-accomplishment ratio that may never be surpassed, came into the sport already resenting every interview his duties caused him to suffer ungladly. In this respect, Alvarez, when compared to Son of the Legend, is a consummate professional. But again, that phrase, “when compared to Son of the Legend, is a consummate professional”, is now elastic enough to accommodate everything from the housekeeping staff at Sheraton Four Points to the waistband of Junior’s next pair of raspberry-pink cotton briefs.

I have interviewed Canelo on the phone twice, and both times were marked by their courtesy and professionalism. Of a culture that values time differently than ours does, Alvarez was the exception to Mexican prizefighters: He called at the appointed time, to the minute, and was entirely cheerful and unassuming. His answers were unremarkable, since child stars in any culture come deprived of what challenging experiences make many adults at least initially captivating, but as that is a thing he cannot control, and as it is ungracious, after all, to blame dullards for their condition, I recall him fondly for his punctuality. And for one other reason: Asked in Spanish if he sees nostalgia, a cognate that works equally well in both languages, in the eyes of his expatriated countrymen when he attends publicity events in, say, Texas, Canelo’s voice rose, and his sincerity gleamed off the edges of a rare, unrehearsed answer:

“Those men, to see them after they work, those men, those . . . If solely you knew how hard they work. Those men are heroic to me.”

Dullard or otherwise, Alvarez has character, and he fights with character. Every other Money Team retread misuses the word “fearless” – attrition hunters who gambol away from opponents till they’ve reduced them, via boredom or exhaustion, to targets, and then roar their imitation of bravery – but Canelo’s selection of opponents has shown no fear whatever. Glance through the rankings of his division and find someone you think could beat him whom he’s avoided.

Austin’s James Kirkland may not have been in top condition, and may not have sold a fraction the tickets in Houston he’d have sold in San Antonio, either, but he brought real violence from a real junior middleweight, Saturday, and Alvarez did not wilt even slightly. Alvarez treated Kirkland like a heavybag for practicing creative combinations on, even while Kirkland bulled and leaned and whacked, in rounds 1 and 2, and Alvarez had the balls to throw a dozen right-uppercut counters, too, exposing his head fully to Kirkland’s left hand.

Alvarez gave a fitting performance to our sport’s fittest fans.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action live as Canelo Alvarez takes on James Kirkland in what figures to be a Jr. Middleweight slugfest scheduled for 12 rounds. The action begins at 9 PM ET / 6 PM PT

12 ROUNDS–SUPER WELTERWEIGHTS–SAUL ALVAREZ (44-1-1, 31 KO’S) VS JAMES KIRKLAND (32-1, 28 KO’S)

ROUND 1 Right from Alvarez..Good right from Kirkland…Hard right from Alvarez..lef hook..another..hard right..BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES KIRKLAND…Hard left…Huge bidy shot rocks Karkland…huge barrage…Kirkland hurt and barely makes it out of the round…10-8 Alvarez

Round 2 Great round that saw Alvarez land some hard shots early…kirkland came back to land on the ropes…Alvarez landed sone hard uppercuts late in the round….20-17 Alvarez

Round 3 Kirklands lands a body shot..2 hard head shots from Alvarez…body shots…..HUGE UPPERCUT AND DOWN GOES KIRKLAND…INCREDIBLE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES KIRKLAND AND THE FIGHT IS OVER

LONDON (May 8) – Mexican ace Canelo Alvarez says he is ready to claim the mantle of boxing’s pay-per-view star after Floyd Mayweather hangs up his gloves.

The 24-year-old light-middleweight takes on big-hitting James Kirkland this weekend, live and exclusive on BoxNation, in an edge-of-the-seat thriller in front of 35,000 at the Minute Maid Park in Texas.

Despite refusing to overlook the dangerous Kirkland, the flame-haired superstar is prepared to fill the gap once Mayweather calls it a day following his last fight in September and has even opened the door to a rematch with the money man after his 2013 points loss.

“I’m ready. I’m ready for whatever comes to my career. I work hard, I train hard, I fight the best, and if that’s the role [next PPV star] that I have to take once they’re [Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao] gone, then yes, I’m ready for it,” said Canelo.

“I would love it [a rematch with Mayweather]. It would interest me. I’ve learned more things, there’s more experience, but right now, this fight is what’s more important to me, and that’s James Kirkland on Saturday,” he said.

Canelo is well aware of the threat knockout artist Kirkland possesses having stopped 28 opponents in his 32 wins, with just a single loss on his record.

The former WBC and WBA light-middleweight champion knows that this is a fight that has captivated the boxing public and says he will fight any fighter as long as it appeals to the fans.

“I’ll fight any style. I’ll be clear – I’ll fight any style. I’m ready and willing to fight anybody, but the fans like this style because that’s the fans, what they go to see. They want to go and see action, and these are the kind of fights where the people will leave happy,” said Canelo.

“Kirkland’s a very dangerous fighter because of his punch. His power is extreme. He can finish the fight with one punch, and then he also throws out of different angles, so it makes it even more complicated, more difficult, but more than anything, it’s that power that he can finish a fight with one punch.

“My goal is always to fight the best in the world, so that the fans get what they want: to see the best fights possible. As long as they’re at the top, I want to fight the best,” he said.

31-year-old Kirkland, who hasn’t fought since his electrifying win over Glen Tapia in 2013, is undaunted at the prospect of facing Canelo and says he is prepared to go toe-to-toe with the ferocious Mexican.

“I can just tell people this when they ask about boxing and what can I bring to the sport or how I picture myself: I am a force of nature that overrides a lot of the people that I fight. When they come with heart, I believe my heart is bigger than that,” said Kirkland.

“When they come with determination, I don’t feel no one has the will power and the drive that I possess. When it comes to speed, I don’t feel as if the opponent is going to be able to adapt, and if they do, I always got a step above my opponent.

“It’s going to be a fight [against Canelo] that you don’t have to worry about if they’re going to run, if this person’s going to be dodging and ducking and looking for somewhere to run and hide.

“Me and Canelo will meet in the middle of the ring and that’s where the fight will take place. We may stay there the whole entire fight if he’s going to come to fight like I’m coming to fight, then that will be the particular fight that the fans want to see,” he said.

Also, live and exclusive on BoxNation at 7pm this Saturday night from The SSE Arena in London, will be a stacked Queensberry Promotions card featuring rising star Frank Buglioni who defends his WBO European super-middleweight title against Lee Markham.

The 26-year-old known as ‘The Wise Guy’ is one of the country’s top emerging talents and is looking to make it an easy night’s work against the tough Markham.

“Camp has been spot on,” says Buglioni. “My spar mates Luke Keeler and Spike O’Sullivan have very similar styles to Markham, only they’re a lot better! Gary Boulden beat Markham yet Luke knocked Boulden out inside a round which puts it all in context. And Spike’s mixed at world level.

“They’ve been preparing me for a gruelling 12 round war. My strength and fitness are at an all time high. I’d never felt better than I did in my last fight and there’s been further improvement since. I’m really looking forward to showing everybody what I’ve added on May 9th – if the fight goes long enough!”

WBO European welterweight champion Bradley Skeete is also back in action as he takes on Brunet Zamora, with the exciting prospect Mitchell Smith up against Cristian Palma for the vacant WBO Intercontinental featherweight belt.

That’s not all from BoxNation who will air a third show on Saturday night when German star Felix Sturm looks to bounce back onto the world stage as he stakes on the hard-hitting Russian and current interim WBA super-middleweight champion Fedor Chudinov.

Canelo v Kirkland is live on BoxNation (Sky 437/490HD, Virgin 546 and TalkTalk 525) this Saturday night at 2am. Visit boxnation.com to subscribe.

-Ends-
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By Norm Frauenheim-

There are more tired excuses than reasonable explanations for what happened May 2 in the colossal failure to fulfill even a fraction of the expectations for the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao fight.

Still, everybody attached to the pay-per-view affair will try. They have to. Believe it or not, there’s even more money to be made. There are still contracts to fulfill.

Hence, we’ll hear form Mayweather all over again Saturday night (9 p.m. ET/PT) in a Showtime exclusive with Jim Gray in a production titled “Inside MAYWEATHER vs. PACQUIAO Epilogue.”

After all the outrage throughout the week following the welterweight bout, it sounds more like autopsy than epilogue. Still, it should be interesting to hear Mayweather address a laundry list of issues and allegations that has emerged since his unanimous decision over Pacquiao at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand.

According to a Showtime release, Mayweather talks about mid-week news that he’d be willing to do a rematch. He confirms he sent a text to ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, saying he would be interested in a second fight. In what sounds like good news, however, he’s changed his mind.

“Did I text Stephen A. Smith and say I will fight him again? Yeah, but I change my mind,” Mayweather says. “At this particular time, no, because he’s a sore loser and he’s a coward… If you lost, accept the loss and say, ‘Mayweather, you were the better fighter.’ ”

After all the ridicule and criticism of the first fight, wouldn’t a rematch be a working definition of insanity? You know the one about doing the same dumb thing over and over again. Of course, Mayweather might change his mind again. Besides, this is boxing. Oh boy, a trilogy.

According to the release, Mayweather also addresses the post-fight disclosure from Pacquaio that he fought with an injury to his right shoulder. He underwent surgery for a tear on Wednesday in Los Angeles.

“Excuses, excuses, excuses,” says Mayweather, who is 48-0 with one fight left on his Showtime contract. “I’m not going to buy into the bull—… and I don’t want the public to buy into the bull—-. He lost. He knows he lost. I lost a lot of respect for him after all of this.”

According to the release, Mayweather also says he did not know of Pacquiao’s injury, which is believed to have happened in early April while sparring at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, Calif.

In an interview with Filipino media on the Sunday after the fight, Pacquiao alleged sabotage. He said that
Mayweather knew about the shoulder. He alleged that somebody, perhaps a Mayweather plant at the Wild Card, leaked the news.

Pacquiao said Mayweather repeatedly pulled on his right arm in an attempt to aggravate the injury. Pacquiao said he re-injured the shoulder in the fourth, ironically his best round in the 12-round bout.

“Absolutely not,” Mayweather says when asked if he was aware of the injury. “He was fast. His left hand was fast. His right hand was fast and he was throwing them both fast and strong.’’

HOUSTON (May 7) – Canelo Alvarez and James “Mandingo Warrior” Kirkland hosted an open-to-the-public media workout in Houston on Wednesday, May 6 at Minute Maid Park in advance of their highly anticipated clash on May 9 at Minute Maid Park and live on HBO World Championship Boxing ®. Hundreds of fans came out to the stadium to watch their favorites get in the ring ahead of Saturday’s mega-fight. Golden Boy Promotions Founder and President Oscar De La Hoya and SMS Promotions Chairman and CEO Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson also attended the workout to show their support for their respective fighters Canelo Alvarez and James Kirkland ahead of Saturday’s bout. Also in attendance were promoters Mike Battah, President of Leija*Battah Promotions and Jesse James Leija, Texas Boxing Legend and Founder of Leija*Battah Promotions.

Other fighters on the Canelo vs. Kirkland undercard in attendance at Wednesday’s workout included co-main event fighter Humberto “La Zorrita” Soto (65-8-2, 35 KOs),2012 Olympian Joseph “Jojo” Diaz Jr. (15-0, 10 KOs), Chinese heavyweight sensation, Taishan (3-0, 2 KOs), Alfonso “El Tigre” Lopez (23-3, 18 KOs), Eugene “Mean Gene” Hill (31-1, 21 KOs), KeAndre Gibson (12-0-1, 5 KOs), Ryan Martin (12-0, 7 KOs), James Leija Jr., and Antonio Capulin (14-0, 6 KOs).

Here is what the fighters and the promoters had to say at the workout:

CANELO ALVAREZ, Former WBC and WBA Super Welterweight World Champion:

“I am ready to fight tomorrow if needed. I feel excited that the fight is nearly here.

“Kirkland is a strong puncher so I have been sparring with southpaws to be prepared for May 9. I am strong too and I will also look to fight intelligently on Saturday.

“I want to thank all of the fans for their support. I want them to enjoy the fight, and get to see the action in the ring they’ve been waiting for.”

JAMES KIRKLAND, Super Welterweight Contender:

“I know that I come with excitement, with what fight fans want to see. Knowing that my fans and supporters that are spending their hard earned money to come to this fight motivates me. I work just as hard as them when they are out there pushing that clock to make the money to come see the fight.

“My first meal after the fight? That’s classified information! [laughs] That’s going to be one hell of a good meal that I am going to eat after the fight. I’m a seafood guy, but I love it all, including the sweets. I’m definitely going to have my choice of meal after the fight.”

HUMBERTO SOTO, Former Three-Division World Champion:

“For my training camp, I’m at a high altitude in Temoaya, Mexico, near Centro Ceremonial Otomi. The altitude is almost 5,000 meters. The oxygen is excellent; my routine starts with a run on the morning, then I take a bath before breakfast. At 2:00 p.m., I go to the gym for a couple of hours, then back to the camp, bath, rest, eat, by the evening, sometimes, we watch some movies, play cards or just talk. Sometimes it can be tedious or monotonous but I know that’s the sacrifice that we all have to make to get big rewards.

“For my bout against Gomez on May 9, I know that will be a tough fight, a difficult one. We’re working hard to get the win. I know Gomez is dangerous, but I think that my experience and the fact that I also want to be a champion again will make the difference.”

JOSEPH DIAZ JR, 2012 U.S. Olympian and Featherweight Prospect:

“It’s a dream come true to be on the Canelo-Kirkland undercard. This is probably the biggest stage in my life to be fighting in front of a big crowd at this point.

“I’m not scared to fight in front of a big crowd at Minute Maid Park on May 9. I fought on a stage kind of similar in the 2012 Olympics. There where tens of thousands of people there and millions of people watching me in the United States and all around the world. I just have to zone out and focus on my opponent.

“After the weigh in, I’m probably going to eat some Italian food, maybe have a lot of carbs and some protein to replenish my muscles and make sure I am hydrated to be strong for the fight.”

TAISHAN, Heavyweight Prospect:

“Right now, I am focused on getting better in each fight, becoming victorious of course. Whether knockout or decision doesn’t matter. I feel better after each fight, and I’m staying focused and keeping my eye on the prize.

“My strategy for May 9 in the ring is to use my jab. The jab is the most important part of boxing; it’s everything.

“I’m not thinking about how big the crowd will be on May 9. It’s another stage, another fight, so I will go in and do what I need to do.”

RYAN MARTIN, Lightweight Prospect:

“Training camp has been an ongoing thing. I had a fight four weeks ago so I went right back into camp that Monday. Training camp has been very consistent; it’s going according to schedule, and I am ready to put on a show.

“I am not worrying about what my opponent brings to the ring. He is going to be worried about what I bring.

“It means a lot to me to be on the Canelo-Kirkland undercard. It’s very humbling to be a part of an event like this, and I am ready for it.”

JAMES LEIJA, Jr., Welterweight Prospect:

“My dad [Jesse James Leija] is behind me 100 percent. He’s my trainer and the best advice he has given me is to just relax and remain calm. No matter how big the crowd is, you tell yourself that you are just back in the gym.

“This is one of the biggest cards of the year, and I am very happy to be a part of it.

“Fans watching on May 9 can expect very skilled technical fighting from me. I am a student to the game first of all, having seen my father go through it as a professional boxer; seeing what works and what doesn’t. He’s telling me how to approach to game more scientifically rather than just going and being a brut.”

ALFONSO “EL TIGRE” LOPEZ, Light Heavyweight Contender:

“I’m really excited and overwhelmed. I want to put on a good performance for the fans. It’s a great opportunity for every fighter on this card because it’s such a huge event.

“I’ve been jabbing in the gym with the absolute best to prepare; he’s a Cuban southpaw. I’m ready to make this a smart fight, an intelligent one.”

EUGENE “MEAN GENE” HILL, Heavyweight Contender:

“I’m excited to fight on the undercard for Canelo Alvarez and James Kirkland.

“I’ve been training at a high pace so my opponent will have to fight me at a fast pace.

“This training camp, I’ve been training three times a day and eating right. I’m going to get the knockout.”

KEANDRE GIBSON, Welterweight Prospect:

“I’ve had a good training camp. Earlier in my camp, I got two to three weeks of sparring in with Manny Pacquiao for his fight with Floyd Mayweather and it was a great experience. I picked up a lot from him. Letting your hands go and throwing more punches, switching off from fast punches to power punches and tricks in the ring.

“Fans can expect action from me on May 9. They can expect a lot of speed, a lot of power, and a lot of punches. For me and my guy, we will be going toe to toe.”

OSCAR DE LA HOYA, Founder and President of Golden Boy Promotions:

“Canelo Alvarez is ready for this fight on May 9 against the ‘Mandingo Warrior’ James Kirkland. This fight is what the fans have been waiting for: action in the ring, top fighters going for it, not afraid to fight.

“There will be no running in the ring on May 9, that’s for sure. Once that first bell rings, fans watching the action live from Minute Maid Park and on HBO World Championship Boxing won’t be able to look away until it’s over, whether by knockout or decision.”

CURTIS “50 CENT” JACKSON, Founder and Chairman of SMS Promotions:

“Outside of the Manny-Floyd fight, this really is one of the biggest fights in boxing this year. Watching it at Minute Maid Park live is a must.

“Some of that same energy that Mike Tyson had, James has. That same killer instinct is there. You have some fighters that have fighter blood for real. That’s James. That leaves it to me to find the right for him because all he wants to do is fight. James is a guy that goes headfirst at the biggest opportunity.

“I like Ann Wolfe as a trainer. But, I did see James get down in weight faster this training camp with Rick Morones and Bay Bay McClinton.”

JESSE JAMES LEIJA, Texas Boxing Legend and Founder of Leija*Battah Promotions:

“He has so many different styles; he is almost like a chameleon. We trained so he could do a little bit of everything in that way so when he fights in the ring, the opponent will have to try figure out how to fight five different styles.

“It’s mind-blowing to think that my son is doing something that I did for so long. It’s one of the toughest sports in the world and it’s one of the scariest things to do for a parent to see one of their kids step into. It takes a lot of guts and a lot of courage for anyone to step into those four corners.”

MIKE BATTAH, President of Lieja*Battah Promotions:

“James Leija Jr. will be making his professional debut on Saturday’s mega-fight he will have a platform to showcase his skills.

“Capulin, Lopez, and Hill , who were out here today, have a great fan base in Texas and are here to represent. Fans will get to see some of their favorite fighters in the ring on Saturday.

Tickets for May 9 Canelo vs. Kirkland are priced at $350, $150, $100, $50 and $25, plus applicable fees and service charges, are available for purchase at Astros.com/boxing, the Minute Maid Park Box Office (Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.) all Ticketmaster outlets, by calling Ticketmaster at (800) 745-3000, online at www.ticketmaster.com. There is a 19-ticket limit per household.

Canelo Alvarez vs. James Kirkland is a 12-round super welterweight bout presented by Golden Boy Promotions in association with Canelo Promotions, SMS Promotions and Leija*Battah Promotions. The fight will take place Saturday, May 9 at Minute Maid Park in Houston and is sponsored by Corona Extra, Mexico – Live it to Believe it!, Fred Loya Insurance and O’Reilly Auto Parts. Doors open at 11:00 a.m. CT and first bout starts at 11:10 a.m. CT, the HBO World Championship Boxing telecast begins at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT.

For more information, visit www.goldenboypromotions.com, www.canelopromotions.com.mx, www.smsboxing.com, www.hbo.com/boxing and www.astros.com/boxing, follow on Twitter at @GoldenBoyBoxing, @SMS_Boxing, @HBOBoxing, @Canelo, @KOKirkland, @Astros @LeijaBattahPR become a fan on Facebook at Golden Boy Facebook Page, https://www.facebook.com/SMSBoxing, www.facebook.com/HBOBoxing or www.facebook.com/astros and visit us on Instagram @GoldenBoyBoxing, @smsboxing and @HBOboxing, @Canelopower, @Kirklandsworld. Follow the conversation using #CaneloKirkland.

By Bart Barry–

Saturday at MGM Grand Garden Arena, in the best fight of May 2015, so far, American Floyd “Money” Mayweather easily decisioned Filipino Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao, and more importantly, he made $100 million. Official scores went: 116-112, 116-112 and 118-110. Only one judge got right a match in which Pacquiao won two rounds, Mayweather possibly lost two rounds, and the rest were not close.

If there is a happy take-away from Saturday for our beloved sport, it is no better than this: Realizing, for once, the average pay-per-viewer drunkenly echolocates boxing telecasts like a bat – forming a picture in his mind as much from what he hears as what fills his eyes – the cocommentating crew from cable networks HBO and Showtime checked-and-balanced itself to an objective broadcast that presented the fight in its lopsided lack of glory, engendering no claims of scandal.

If historians return to Mayweather-Pacquiao someday, though its ultimate irrelevance is probable, it will be to mark a very talented athlete’s final vengeance on a sport he’d grown to hate deeply. There will be a montage of essential moments in this marking: Mayweather gloomily glancing down on Pacquiao’s forehead at the Friday weighin, Mayweather standing directly in front of Pacquiao with his gloves at his waist, Mayweather skipping frantically away in round 12, and Mayweather standing on a ringpost to yell at a large assemblage of people who realized they’d been had again – and this time, worst of all, by five years of their own imaginings.

Manny Pacquiao deserves no praise for his Saturday effort. He made no adjustments. He took entire rounds off. And he gracelessly claimed he won the fight afterwards and further subverted what esteem aficionados held for him, hours later, by attributing his listlessness to a shoulder injury – as if he’d not used that same shoulder to raise his arms jubilantly overhead at the Friday weighin. Coach Freddie, whose termination is likely in promoter Top Rank’s third Manny remake (since already it’s apparent the injured-shoulder gambit smells too desperate), deserves even less praise than Pacquiao does; he trained his charge for a fighter with no more dimensions than Antonio Margarito showed. Sure, Mayweather was much faster at evading counters than Roach was on the handpads, and for an injured fighter Pacquiao certainly hurled that counter right hook, didn’t he, but ultimately Mayweather used the playbook Juan Manuel Marquez wrote in 42 rounds against Pacquiao to expose exactly how little Roach actually taught Pacquiao in their vaunted educational sessions together.

Commentator Jim Lampley was right in his midfight allusion to Marquez-Pacquiao 3, the match whose second half saw Pacquiao hopelessly swim at Marquez, taking five steps where Marquez needed two, and thoughts of Marquez returned, too, in round 9 when Mayweather caught Pacquiao pure with a right cross the much larger man did not plant on, and it was a reminder why, whoever will be recalled as the greater fighter, Marquez will remain the more beloved one for showing a form of courage with which Mayweather is yet to familiarize himself.

How enormous must Mayweather have looked to Pacquiao in that opening round? Seven-feet and about 250 pounds, probably, as Mayweather’s chin was farther from Pacquiao’s anxious fists as any chin ever has been. Unsurprisingly, Paulie Malignaggi, already our generation’s best commentator, seated beside Lennox Lewis, easily its worst, was the one to distill the fight to its quintessence: Mayweather fought at his desired time and distance, and Pacquiao did not.

In round 4 Pacquiao finally caught Mayweather with a punch, countering him with a left cross the same way Marcos Maidana countered him with a right hand in September, and Mayweather put his hands up, retreated and felt what Manny had for him. Which was not much. Pacquiao fought “intelligently” and retreated himself, back to the middle of the ring, so as not to expend energy carelessly. Imagine that: Pacquiao calculated he had a better chance of outsmarting Mayweather than outworking him. It was a reminder, along with Mayweather’s considerable size advantage, of the second part that made this fight a mismatch the day it was signed: Pacquiao, since his 2010 fight with Margarito, is fractionally active as laymen think he is. Pacquiao lost a 2012 decision to Timothy Bradley because he was inactive and inaccurate. He opted for frantic activity in his fourth match with Marquez and got iced. Mismatches with punching bags got split by a rematch with Bradley in which Pacquiao, promised the benefit of every scoring doubt, fought no more than 90 seconds of each round. A kinder and wiser Pacquiao is what aficionados have been served for 4 1/2 years now.

The only chance Pacquiao had or would ever have against Mayweather is if science somehow took the wildcat demon who shredded Erik Morales nine years ago and added 20 pounds of muscle to his frame without slowing him a wink. An impossible thing, in other words, Pacquiao ever had a chance against Mayweather, and every single reader of this column knew it the night Marquez left Pacquiao in a heap, and then we chose to suspend our disbelief because a boxing promoter is good at nothing so much as legerdemain, waving crazily a Chris Algieri doll in his right hand while palming the two-headed Marquez coin in his left.

Those who surround Floyd Mayweather know he cannot imagine boxing in his absence; for Mayweather, the sport of boxing ends the day he retires. Because of Mayweather, few of us will have the presence or means to argue with him when that day comes. Against the future of boxing, then, I’ll take Mayweather: UD-49.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action live from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas as the long awaited super fight between Floyd Mayweather and Maanny Pacquiao is a finally here. All the action begins at 9 PM with a 2 fight undercard featuring world champion Vasyl Lomachenko defending his Featherweight title against Gamalier Rodriguez as well as Leo Santa Cruz battling Jose Cayetano

12 ROUNDS–WBA, WBC, WBO WELTERWEIGHT TITLE–FLOYD MAYWEATHER (47-0, 26 KO’S) VS MANNY PACQUIAO (57-5-2, 38 KO’S)

ROUND 1 Good right from Mayweather..hard right..10-9 Mayweather

Round 2 Pacquiao lands a left to the body…Mayweather lands a right…Pacquiao lands a left..19-19

Round 3 Mayweather lands a lead right..Pacquiao gets in a body shot..Lead right from Mayweather..Hard right…29-28 Mayweather

Round 4 Pacquiao landing combinations on the ropes..Big left stuns Mayweather..Pacquiao lands a flurry on the ropes..Big right hook..Mayweather lands a right..Pacquiao gets a left and a body shot..38-38

Round 5 2 hard rights from Mayweather..Jab..48-47 Mayweather

Round 6 Straight left from Pacquiao…straight left to body..Pacqui landimg combos on the ropes..57-57

Round 7 Good right from Mayweather..Left from Pacquiao..67-67

Round 8 Pacquiao lands a left..body shot..Hard right from Mayweather..and another..77-76 Mayweather

Round 9 Hard left from Pacquiao…86-86

Round 10 left to body from Pacquiao..Mayweather lands a jab..Good counter right from Mayweather..96-95 Mayweather..

Round 11right from Mayweather..Bidy shot from Pacquiao..right from Mayweather…hook..106-104 Mayweather

Round 12 Mayweather getting away from Pacquiao…116-113 Mayweather

118-110, 116-112 2 times for Floyd Mayweather

10 ROUND FEATHERWEIGHTS–LEO SANTA CRUZ (29-0-1, 17 KO’S) VS JOSE CAYETANO (17-3, 8 KO’S)

ROUND 1 Big right from Santa Cruz…2 rights..Left from cayetano,,,10-9 Santa Cruz

Round 2 2 rights from Santa Cruz…hard right…Cayetano lands a left..20-18 Santa Cruz

Round 3 Santa Cruz lands a right..Hard right to the head..2 more rights…30-27 Santa Cruz

Round 4 Santa Cruz lands a body shot…40-36 Santa Cruz

Round 5 Hard right from Santa Cruz…50-45 Santa Cruz

Round 6 Santa Cruz lands 2 lefts to the body...60-54 Santa Cruz

Round 7 2 hard shots on the ropes…70-63 Santa Cruz

Round 8 Santa Cruz has a knot on his forehead…79-73 Santa Cruz

Round 9 santa Cruz continue to dominate ...89-82 Santa Cruz

Round 10 99-91 Santa Cruz

100-90 on all cards for Leo Santa Cruz

12 ROUNDS WBO FEATHERWEIGHT TITLE–VASYL LOMACHENKO (3-1, 1 KO) VS GAMALIER RODRIGUEZ (25-2-3, 17 KO’S)

Round 1 Straight left from Lomachenko..combination..10-9 Lomachenko

Round 2 20-19 Lomachenko

Round 3 Lomachenko lands a combination…30-28 Lomacohenk

Round 4 Rodriguez is cut over his right eye..Hard left from Loamchenko..Body shots..Hard right hook…40-37 Lomachenko

Round 5 Rodriguez docked a point for a low blow..Fast combination from Lomachenko….50-45 Lomachenko

Round 6 Lomachenko landing alot more…60-54 Lomachenko

Round 7 Hard body shot from Lomachenko….COMBINATION AND DOWN GOES RODRIGUEZ..70-62 Lomachenko

Round 8 Uppercut, right and uppercut from Lomachenko..Rodriguez gets another point deducted for a low blow..3 punch combination…80-70 Lomachenko

Round 9 BIG RIGHT HOOK AND DOWN GOES RODRIGUEZ AND HE TAKES REFEREE ROBERT BYRD’S 10 COUNT AND THE FIGHT IS OVER

By Norm Frauenheim

LAS VEGAS – It was a carnival and a concert. It was chaotic. Demonstrators protesting domestic violence stood on one street corner. A preacher stood on another. Seek God, he told a passing crowd full of people seeking a ticket that not even God could afford. They spoke Tagalog, English, Spanish, Russian, politics and Hip-Hop. They waved flags of every stripe.

It was a weigh-in. But the scales were incidental.

Crowds, chaos and cops gathered in and around the MGM Grand Arena for an event Friday that was scripted in every way, yet off the scale for the kind of attention it has generated. Ordinary weigh-ins are about as exciting as watching somebody brush their teeth. But nothing about Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. has been ordinary.

Only extraordinary.

Many among the 11,500 in the Grand Garden Arena for the weigh-in formality paid from $170 to $500 for tickets initially priced at $10 apiece just for the chance to see a couple of welterweights step on and off a digital scale. For the record, Mayweather was 146 pounds; Pacquiao 145.

Most of those same fans and virtually everyone out on those sidewalks won’t be there Saturday night for an opening bell to an exclusive event. Boxing is a sport defined by The People’s Champ. But most of the people can’t get into this one. It’s for the one percent, even at prices that have begun to decline during the last 48 hours. There’s plenty of argument about who wins, Mayweather (47-0, 26 KOs) or Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KOs). But there’s no debate about the scalpers. Everybody hopes they take a beating.

Yet even inflated prices have not extinguished the enthusiasm for a bout that has been in the public imagination for at least five years. Mayweather, 38, and Pacquiao, 36, are closer to the end than they are their primes. Even they concede as much. Both talked about retirement throughout the buildup for the bout, a joint pay-per-view telecast by HBO and Showtime (6 p.m. PST/9 p.m. EST).

A reason, perhaps, rests in the respective personalities. Mayweather is easy to dislike. Pacquiao is thoroughly likable. That difference was evident before and after the weigh-in. On the applause meter, it was no contest. It was unanimous for Pacquiao, the Filipino Congressman who smiled and raised his hands above his head like a triumphant American politician at his party’s national convention.

For Mayweather, there were mostly boos. For the last couple of weeks, national pundits have ripped him. His record of domestic abuse was the target of those protesters Friday. Mike Tyson, who was at the weigh-in, joined the critical chorus, calling him “a scared little man.” Laila Ali said he pitied him, calling him “a little boy.’’

Mayweather, subdued and polite throughout the hypoed-filled build-up, has repeatedly said the bout is not good-versus-evil. But try telling that to the crowd that gathered in and around the weigh-in.

Their roles have been cast.

Go ahead and argue about whether that’s fair. But there’s no debate about whether it’s profitable. Record revenue is expected. According to some projections, Mayweather could earn as much as $180 million. Pacquiao purse could hit the $100 million mark. There’s talk that the pay-per-view numbers will reach 4 million, almost twice the record.

The soaring expectations will be hard to fulfill, if not impossible. Mayweather goes into the bout favored by about 2-to-1 odds. He’s the bigger man and might be much bigger after a couple of meals before Saturday night’s opening bell. He’s also a calculating fighter, who at some point might capitalize on mistake the most expected from the more instinctive Pacquiao.

Yet Pacquiao’s calm and energy have been evident throughout one interview after another during the last couple of weeks. He’s been the happy warrior. To wit: When he stepped off the scale Friday, he ate a cookie. Then, he thanked Mayweather after the, posed for the cameras in the stare-down ritual.

“I said thanks, yes,’’ Pacquiao said. “Thank you for making the fight happen.’’

Mayweather said he never heard him. But he did glance over his shoulder at the Filipino after they broke the pose. There was a foreboding look in his eyes. Maybe there was anger. Maybe, fear. Maybe both. Maybe, he knows something nobody else does.

By Joseph Davey

For me and I’m sure many boxing fans, Saturday’s superfight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao brings with it equal parts excitement for the bout itself and disdain for it’s coverage. For years at a time, mainstream sports media avoids boxing as if it were a plague that could infect the  very image of America’s most “wholesome” sports. If baseball, basketball and the NFL were an all American backyard barbecue, boxing would be the drunk uncle everyone tries to forget is there. Sure he has some good stories, but they’re the same few you’ve heard a million times.  
When a super fight does come along that’s worthy of public consideration, the talking heads of sports TV respond by dredging up the “I remember whens” and inevitably talking about the same three fighters (Ali, Leonard and Tyson) and how they relate to the upcoming fight. For men and women  who can break down and analyze the 1983 Super Bowl and the 72 World Series like it happened yesterday  and possess a near encyclopedic knowledge of every stat ever collected, their lack of insight into boxing is almost cringe inducing.  It’s as if boxing is constantly happening in the past. The current crop of fighters just never seems to measure up to the greats of yesteryear.   
Even boxing’s own fan base is often guilty of focusing on how much better those bygone fighters are than our current ones. But like all things in life, the past has a way of smoothing out the rough edges and leaving us with a rosy and nostalgic memory of what once was. Case in point is the seemingly constant comparison between Floyd Mayweather and Sugar Ray Leonard that the media is so fond of making. 
 
A common refrain is “yeah Mayweather is good, maybe even great, but Leonard is a legend”. After such comments we hear things like “Leonard fought fighters in their prime!” and “Leonard always fought the best there was! He wan’t afraid to take risks!”  All of which are mostly true. But Leonard’s career, looked at objectively, suffers from the same criticisms now being leveled a Mayweather. Early in his career, Leonard did fight fighters in their prime. His wins over Wilfred Benitez, Roberto Duran and Tommy Hearns were all career defining wins over equally great fighters in their prime. And all of them were the best available fighters at the time Leonard fought them. But Mayweather had a very similar run early in his career with victories over Genaro Hernandez, Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo; all of whom were in their primes.  

No one criticizes Mayweather for this stretch of his career because like Leonard, these wins were over the best in the division and represented fighters who were at the peak of their careers. But after those wins, Mayweather has been criticized for hand picking opponents who are past their prime, making them come up in weight to fight him and in the case of the impending Pacquiao fight, waiting until Pacquiao looked vulnerable to make the fight. This is the point where most media members bring up Leonard as an anti-Mayweather example; a man who never took the easy route and only fought the best at the peak of their powers. But the passage of time has seemingly erased the reality that it was Leonard who championed the tactics employed by Floyd to gain an edge over his opponents. In his bid to win the light heavyweight title, Leonard made titleist  Don Lalonde weigh in at 168 for the bout;  7 pounds under the light heavy limit. The same 7 pounds Mayweather had Juan Manuel Marquez come up in weight to challenge him for the welterweight title. And as incomprehensible as it is, many writers and analysts use Leonard’s win over Marvin Hagler as THE example of Leonard going out of his comfort zone to fight the best.  

They all seem to forget that the Hagler fight was first proposed in 1982, a full 5 years before the two fought. Of the 8 fights Hagler had in those 5 years, one was a close decision win over Roberto Duran and two were legendarily brutal wars against Tommy Hearns and John Mugabi. It was only after Hagler took massive punishment against Mugabi and looked past his best that Leonard came out of retirement and signed to fight him.  

People cite ongoing eye issues as the reason Leonard took so long to make the fight, but it rings about as hollow as Floyd’s drug testing issues holding up the Pacquiao fight. It may have been an issue for a short time, but neither was the reason the bouts were held up for 5 years. Whether Leonard is a better fighter is certainly a legitimate debate, but the way in which people forget that Leonard employed many of the same tactics as Floyd has as much to do with nostalgia as it does with the personas of each fighter. Leonard was universally loved by the public at large and Mayweather is almost as universally reviled. 

 It’s another favorite topic of discussion among the mainstream sporting press: Mayweather the domestic abuser. On the surface it’s a just criticism. What Floyd does outside the ring is over the top, obnoxious and in the case of his domestic violence issues, down right abhorrent. He at times is almost equal parts villainous persona and actual villain. There are no excuses for anyone, let alone a major sports figure, to commit such horrible acts against women. Yet, the way in which these sportscasters talk of his crimes as if they were synonymous with the problems that plague boxing and only boxing is laughable.  

Floyd is an incredibly easy target for this because of his refusal, in many cases, to even answer questions about the abuse. When he does, it’s done with such lack of remorse that he paints the worst possible picture: a man who is the face of a violent sport and has no remorse for using his trade on defenseless women. It is at the least a fairly accurate portrayal. For a man whose job is to render trained men unconscious to put his hands on a woman is a display of the worst qualities in human beings. The conclusion that is often made though, is that boxing is the wild west. It tolerates the worst acts of man so long as the millions of dollars at stake aren’t put in jeopardy. And it’s true.  

Things like steroid use, criminal behavior and underhanded politics are the norm for boxing. With multiple belts in each weight division and “title fights” that take place between fighters no one, including  boxing fans have ever heard of, it’s easy for the average sports fan to sit back and agree that “man, boxing messed up.” Yet for all of it’s flaws (and there are many), boxing is the most honest sport out there. Don’t believe me? Look at the NFL. 

 Few people batted an eye when Ray Rice was suspended for a paltry 2 games following his “alleged” domestic abuse allegations. It was only after the disgusting video of him knocking his wife unconscious that the NFL took real action against him. Anyone who thinks Rice would have sat out more than his 2 game suspension had the video not leaked is dreaming. Players routinely fail drug tests and get into “altercations” outside of the NFL, yet next to nothing is done.  

Kobe Bryant, still revered in the U.S. as well as around the world, settled out of court on civil charges that he raped a 19 year old hotel employee. He then publicly apologized to the fans and the woman who accused him of rape; yet in the same breath contended he did not rape her. A year later, he signed a multi-year, $136 million dollar contract with the Lakers. His sponsors returned. People swept it under the rug and comedians joked about it on late night TV.  
In a way, Floyd Mayweather asking “where’s the video” in response to his domestic violence incidents is his way of saying “why do they get away with it and not me?” Because in the mainstream sports world, it seems all America wants is a half baked apology and promise not to do it again. Sports fans want to see their “heroes” back on the field. And by swallowing their righteous indignation in order to see players return to action, boxing serves as the perfect scapegoat to relieve the American conscience. “Yes, what (sports star) did was bad, but did you see Mayweather?!” He didn’t even apologize!”  The same holds true with money.  

College football fans are more than happy to watch every meaningless bowl game despite the fact that they’re nothing more than hyped up cash grabs. And cash grabs off of the backs of athletes that are literally earning nothing for their effort. Boxing’s multiple belts are such thinly veiled attempts to squeeze money out of the fighters that they stand as a reminder of the greed inherent in the sport.  But for some reason bowl games and the relentless sponsorship ads that run through every major sporting event are passed off by the general public as legitimate forms of sports revenue. The bottom line is all sports are about money. The difference between boxing and the mainstream sports is simply that of appearance.  

Major League Baseball and the NFL hide their greed in boardrooms and closed door meetings. Boxing simply removes the veil and lets the public see the truth. The squabbles between promoters and networks that has been at the forefront of the run up to Mayweather – Pacquiao is merely a peek into the sordid world that is professional sports. In boxing, the fighters, trainers and promoters have always worn their hearts on their sleeve. The sport has always represented the best and worst in human nature. For those of us who love it, the raw honesty of the fighters in and out of the ring is why we keep turning in after the bright lights of a super fight have gone dark. it’s why we buy premium cable packages and shell out 99.95 to watch our “Superbowl”. It’s life in microcosm without the pretense of false appearances. 

 Boxing is the good, bad and ugly of the sporting world. On Saturday, Floyd Mayweather will be fighting for money. More money than any athlete has ever earned in one night of sports. He’s totally unapologetic about his reprehensible actions outside the ring. And yes, he’s fighting for his place in sports history. The question we should all be asking is whether we value the sport over the man. To claim boxing is everything wrong with sports is to gloss over the more difficult issues at play every time an athlete doesn’t live up to the ideals society has expected of them. When the fake apologies are removed and the money is on the table for everyone to see, we should all be asking ourselves whether we care more about the larger issues or just want to see a contest played out at it’s highest level. On May 2nd, maybe we should be asking ourselves whether  sometimes, it may be worth our money to see if the bad guy gets what’s coming. At the very least, all sports fans should have boxing to thank for that.  

By Norm Frauenheim

LAS VEGAS – There’s not a day, or even a few hours, when there isn’t a volley of insults between Floyd Mayweather Sr. and Freddie Roach. They sound like natural antagonists, separated by a lifetime of irreparable slights. You could assume that they share only mutual contempt. But you’d be wrong.

Roach and the senior Mayweather are an odd couple, alike in the biggest fight of all, bigger than even Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr.

It’s an alliance they didn’t choose and didn’t want. But life is like that. Cheap shots happen. For Roach, it’s been Parkinson’s, which attacks the central nervous system. For Mayweather Sr, it’s sarcoidosis, a lung disease.

Their response has been almost identical. The fight game is in their DNA. In their blood. It’s what they’ve always done. There was always another dangerous opponent to fight when they were younger. On Saturday night, they’re in opposite corners, Roach for Pacquiao and Mayweather Sr. for his son at the MGM Grand in the biggest fight in decades.

No matter who wins, however, their own personal fights will still be there, a daily battle and similar in a way that transforms lifelong enemies into comrades no matter what they continue to say to and about each other.

Both have gone about the battle the same way everyday.

“I work my ass off,’’ Roach said Thursday.

Mayweather Sr., 62 and a former welterweight, said he has whipped his disease.

“I don’t have sarcoidosis any more,’’ he said

A furious work rate, he said, whipped sarcoidosis, which can affect organs throughout the body. He works at it, sunrise to sunset, in old gyms surrounded by weathered bags, discarded hand wraps and fighters.

For Roach, the fight continues. It always will. Parkinson’s is a progressive disorder. But Roach is stubborn. He battles in a daily fight to keep the symptoms at a standstill.

Daily workouts with fighters at his Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, Calif., have slowed the symptoms.

“Haven’t shaken in 10 months,’’ said Roach, 54, a featherweight and lightweight from 1978 through 1986 who believes he got Parkinson’s because he fought too long.

Roach takes 15 pills a day to relieve rigidity and control the shaking. He also undergoes epidural injections to alleviate pain from a couple of bulging discs.

“Rigidity is the key,’’ said Roach, a seven-time Trainer of the Year. “People slow down and let it take over. Sometimes, I wake up in the morning and don’t feel so good. But once I get to the gym, everything is okay.’’

It’s within the gym that Roach and Mayweather Sr. feel like they can beat just about anybody. And anything.

On Saturday, each vowed that he would beat the other.

“This fight has already been won,’’ said Mayweather’s dad, who continued to call his rival Coach Roach. “We can beat Manny any day, any time, any year, any moment. “…Manny’s best performance was when he got stretched by Juan Manuel Marquez.’’

He even had one of his poems.

“I must confess, I am the best,’’ said Mayweather Sr., still fighting in a way that has kept him and his rival alive.

By Norm Frauenheim

LAS VEGAS – Manny Pacquiao is back at the bully pulpit like a saint among sinners. Boxing has never been much of a congregation, at least not in traditional terms. Pass the plate here, and you’re liable to lose it and its proceeds.

But Pacquiao is here, talking about his faith and looking as if he knows something no one else does. His convictions are religious in an arena where that usually means a felony.

Pacquiao believes. So does Floyd Mayweather Jr. But the only belief they have in common is that each is convinced he’ll beat the other Saturday night at the MGM Grand. What they hope to accomplish, however, tells just you how different they really are.

Pacquiao wants converts.

Mayweather wants cash.

No wonder Mayweather is favored. Records amount of cash are expected to come out of a pay-per-view fight that could turn a hedge fund into a religious order.

The task is a little tougher for Pacquiao. But don’t disbelieve him. His faith is no feint. He has repeatedly said he hopes world-wide attention on the fight will be a vehicle for his born-again message. His missionary zeal even includes Mayweather.

“I want him to know God,’’ Pacquiao told a roomful of reporters Wednesday before the two welterweights took to the stage for a formal news conference at the ornate KA Theatre.

Mayweather doesn’t talk about his faith as much as Pacquiao. But it’s no secret that Mayweather, who again wore The Money Team acronym on his cap and shirt Wednesday, is well-acquainted with the God whose name is on the dollar bill. In that God, he trusts.

Since the fight was announced on Feb. 20, Mayweather has been strictly business.

“This fight is not good-versus-evil,’’ Mayweather said to reporters after Wednesday’s news conference. “This is about one fighter at the top against another fighter at the top.’’

According to the market place of odds, Mayweather is the best of the two. He’s narrowly favored to beat
Pacquiao. His understated manner and tone throughout the weeks of hype preceding opening bell have been the subject of speculation and interpretation. Is it a sign of confidence? Or uncertainty?

At the first news conference in Los Angeles, Roach noticed what everybody else has seen ever since. Roach sees Mayweather’s subdued manner it as a sign of somebody who really didn’t want the fight in the first place It makes him wonder what kind of Mayweather will be there.

“I wonder if he’s going to show up,’’ said Roach, who says speed will win the fight. “I really do.’’

In the opposite corner, there is no doubt. For a couple of years, there have been questions about whether Pacquiao’s born-again faith softened his aggressiveness, knocked out a so-called killer instinct.

For Roach, that question is gone. He says he has the bruises to show for it from holding the mitts while Pacquiao pounded away at them and often through them, with a powerful impact throughout training at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, Calif.

For Pacquiao, it is back, perhaps like a faith he says he abandoned for a few years.

“The killer instinct, it’s back,’’ said the Filipino, who hasn’t scored a stoppage since Miguel Cotto in 2009. “It’s a good feeling.’’

Maybe an old-time feeling.

By Norm Frauenheim

LAS VEGAS – Look into the 0 and you’re supposed to get a look into Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s soul.

But the zero on the right side of his unbeaten record, Mayweather says, is the wrong place to search for hints at what motivates him.

Only one symbol really matters. It’s in his wallet.

“Absolutely, because at the end of the day my daughter can’t eat the zero,’’ Mayweather told reporters Tuesday after his formal arrival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena where he faces Manny Pacquiao Saturday night in one of the biggest fights in years.’’

There always been a debate about whether legacy or money is the reason Mayweather fights. On Tuesday, at least, money ruled. He wore his TMT logo in black on white. At his own arrival at the Mandalay Bay earlier in the day, Pacquiao said that the acronym stood for The Manny Team.

It was a good quip. But money, piled higher than it ever has, was the only sure bet five days before opening bell. First, foremost and forever, this one is about finances and Mayweather wanted to remind everyone that there wouldn’t be record revenues if it weren’t for his keen business sense.

“If all my kids get, say, $50 million apiece, I can say I did my job,’’ he said.

Four kids equal $200 million, which would surpass even the most optimistic projections for the pay-per-view bout. Depending on the source, the number has jumped around, all the way from $80 million at the low end to $180 million at the high end.

“A lot of people criticize me for being a defensive fighter,’’ said Mayweather, who again called Pacquiao reckless, saying it was a gift and a curse. “Last night, I was sitting at home with my mother and daughter. I thought to myself:

‘You know what, I’m proud of myself that I can be in a sport for 19 years and that I’m able to get out of that sport and still be sharp. Be sharp and have all my faculties. That’s remarkable

“The money is about my children and their children.’’

Yeah, it’s also about a so-called Big Boy mansion in Vegas, homes in South Beach and Miami, a private jet and a garage that would make the Ferrari family jealous.

On Tuesday, at least, it sounded as if Mayweather wanted to make sure that he would to be remembered for all of his wealth. He repeatedly said one fight would not define him. Presumably, that meant Saturday night’s fight.

If he prevails over Pacquiao, the guessing game is that the 0 in Mayweather’s resume would drive him to fight at least two more times, once in September in the final fight of a six-bout deal with Showtime and then a 50th fight in a bid to surpass Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 record.

Surely, he wants to go 50-0. Right?

“No,’’ he said.

Instead, he talked about retirement. His dad and trainer, Floyd Sr., has hinted that it’s time to quit or risk permanent injury.

“My father was right,’’ he said. “It’s about time for me to walk away.’’

But the pursuit of money could always draw him back through the ropes. He said Tuesday he had earned an $11 million dollars over the last 48 hours from an investment. He wouldn’t describe the investment, other than to again say “remarkable.’’ At 38, that’s a word he uses as much as he once used profanities.

Yes, he contradicts himself as much as anybody.

“I try to be perfect, but I might have said me and Manny Pacquiao would never fight,’’’ he said. “Now, we fight.

“I’m not perfect.’’

Only the 0 is.

By Bart Barry–

Saturday at MGM Grand Garden Arena, before a crowd likely to comprise not one person reading this column, American Floyd Mayweather finally will fight Filipino Manny Pacquiao. The time for manufactured enthusiasm is upon us, for tossing oneself wholly into the futility of shouting in print towards a volume to rival the industrial din of Time Warner and CBS and Walt Disney Company. To wit:

MAYWEATHER WILL WIN THIS FIGHT!!!

At long last, the event anticipated to break revenue records we’re told we care so deeply about arrives on our video-display devices – so order live today! Boxing promoters or managers or advisors, or whichever new euphemism they next hide beneath, are the direct descendants of yestercentury’s circus barker; they believe in an inexhaustible supply of nitwits to whom they can provide the tricky service of relieving one of his wallet, and they fail disproportionately more often than they succeed. But they will not fail Saturday, provided Saturday’s one-off cashgrab is the end of their tabulations.

There’s no way to calculate, immediately, the sum of resentment to be felt among boxing’s comparatively tiny band of loyal supporters – the ones who wasted money on Mayweather-Baldomir, or paid to be in Cowboys Stadium for Pacquiao-Clottey and its egregiously priced parking – but it will be an increasingly easy number to derive in the next five years, as local gyms continue to shutter and ticketsales at local shows continue to follow. Attendance for Saturday represents a proper perspective from which to consider the coming resentment; priced to ensure no rightminded aficionado attends, tickets that, bizarrely even for boxing, were not available till a few days ago betray the organizers’ organizing vision: the biggest boxing matches, made-by-television spectacles, someday soon will happen in broadcasters’ very studios.

Logistics are the reason the largest American boxing outlets cite when asked why they couldn’t broadcast live from, say, Wembley Stadium, where 80,000 Brits gathered to watch Carl Froch in 2014. Putting fights directly in studios should solve that problem. Promoters do not promote any longer in any event; they organize and book and contract vendors of every kind to do all the jobs promoters once did, though boxing was admittedly a touch late to the outsourcing trend, and the inaccessibility of Pacquiao-Mayweather would be collectively maddening if boxing fans did not, as one clever wag on Twitter put it, have Stockholm Syndrome.

That does little, however, to explain MGM Grand’s tolerance for the consequences of a rivalry between promoter Bob Arum and adviser Al Haymon in something so great and complicated as the historic gouging of sportsfans; why the hell is MGM Grand overpaying for this spectacle if not to bring folks to its slot machines? And because of the boxoffice delay, rest assured there will be fewer handles pulled along the Strip this week. Whatever inflated earnings reports crash down on aficionados’ bowed heads in the next month – the pay-per-view number has already been set over 3 million, and anyone who’s been interested in boxing for more than the last month, no more than 500,000 Americans in a nation of 300 million, knows no match has ever officially missed its predicted number; missed numbers do not get announced – rest assured total revenue should have been more.

A week after Pacquiao-Mayweather, Mexican Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will fight Texan James Kirkland at Minute Maid Park in Houston, and will do so before a crowd that should be about three times MGM Grand’s crowd.

“But oh,” cries a passel of aspiring businessmen from their parents’ couches, “they won’t make as much money!”

First of all, why the hell are you so excited about strangers making money?

Second of all, three times as many aficionados and potential aficionados will have a chance to see a major event in a sport you care about, which is better for your sport in every single way.

Third of all, when you cheer against your own self-interests, you don’t look wise or even pragmatic – no matter how expertly you cock the brim of your TMT hat – you look like a damn sucker.

Writing of which, there is a good chance Floyd Mayweather will win 10 or 11 rounds Saturday night. He is much larger than Manny Pacquiao, he has the back of a middleweight, however noble his perfectly ineffective 2010 crusade against PEDs proved, and Pacquiao has not been anywhere near the storm at 147 pounds he was at 130. Pacquiao is better than every opponent Mayweather has dared to fight, yes, and Pacquiao will hit Mayweather with more left hands than the sum of Mayweather opponents since Oscar De La Hoya, but there is a very good chance they will not affect Mayweather very much at all. The recent appointment of Kenny Bayless as Saturday’s referee, too, ensures Mayweather will be allowed to hold to a point of tackling Pacquiao if he’s so compelled, and Pacquiao has never been mistaken for Roberto Duran on the inside, anyway.

Is there a chance Pacquiao’s extraordinary conditioning and unique punching angles will cause fatigue enough to bring the bitch out of Mayweather? Actually, no, not really; whatever Mayweather supporters and everyone else may think, Floyd Mayweather is all fighter when he has to be. Much like Pacquiao’s match with De La Hoya 6 1/2 years ago, this fight will be incredibly intriguing for a round or two – though not $100 worth of intriguing. Much unlike Pacquiao’s 2008 match with De La Hoya, the things Pacquiao will need to do to cause an opponent’s slumpshouldered retreat to his own corner will not be things Pacquiao can do.

I’ll take Mayweather, UD-12.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry