By Bart Barry–

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

*

But how will this influence resolve itself?

Three of the most influential artists of the 20th century – Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro and Salvador Dali – grew up in Catalonia, wandering through Barcelona looking upwards at the architectural masterpieces of Antoni Gaudi, edifices that, in their sublime eccentricities, gave the artists permission. That is perhaps what is most essential in any consideration of influence: Good artists encourage imitation, but the greatest give permission.

Find an aspiring American writer who has read Ernest Hemingway and not endeavored, at once, to ape his style. It rarely succeeds but presents a valuable exercise of sorts for long as it is tried. To read the last 100 or so pages of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” or Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”, though, is to attain a permission slip; in his closing philosophical treatise on world history and its actors, an awkward and fully unpredictable turn at the end of a work of fiction, Tolstoy permits his successors to intervene in the course of their narratives wherever creative impulse dictates; in the unorthodox arc of Melville’s whalechase, its steady acceleration till very nearly the last sentence, Melville permits his successors to toy with the shape of what stories they recount, breaking with the linearity young novelists now infer from cinema.

A visit to Museu Picasso de Barcelona shows the importance of influence, of Picasso’s journey as a young artist from wishing to imitate Francisco Goya to interpreting Bartolome Esteban Murillo to his frequent returns, through 50 years, to Diego Velazquez, returns that culminated in his many renditions of Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” – probably the greatest masterpiece of Spain, a country that measures its masterpieces in kilometers. But everywhere within Picasso’s work, finally, is the first influence, Gaudi, and the permission Picasso gathered from wandering among the unpredictable and impractical masterworks of Gaudi – the way Barcelona’s celebration of Gaudi influences, via what permission it gives, any artist who wanders its streets. It is a permission one might interpret like: Pursue beauty, however construed, and worry not where the pursuit takes you.

There is an important influence that happens now in boxing, and it may be better than expected for fighters, while it lasts, and much worse for aficionados. Floyd Mayweather, when he encourages stylistic imitation, leads nowhere friendly for his successors, exactly as Roy Jones and Muhammad Ali did before him, and Mayweather’s influence is large: Spend a year asking young fighters whom their favorite active fighter is, and regardless of your phrasing, those fighters invariably will answer a question like “what contemporary prizefighter who shares your ethnicity or physical attributes have you heard made the most money last year?”

As Ali launched a generation of fighters shuffling sideways with their hands senselessly low, Mayweather now encourages a generation of fighters – most lacking his reflexes, many lacking his chin, all lacking his foundational footwork – to make an ‘L’ with their right elbows and left forearms while tilting sideways. However well it worked as a career extender for Mayweather, once his navigating to higher classes voided what substantial power he showed at lightweight, it is a terrible way to teach a youngster to box on his first day.

Stylistically, then, Mayweather’s influence has not benefitted his successors. Philosophically, though, Mayweather’s influence may be a better one than usually considered. In creating an odious character popular culture alternately finds repugnant and wonderful, in being nimble enough to piss-off Americans with means, anew and afresh every six months, Mayweather has made sums of money disproportionate to what peril attends his prizefights. That a professional fighter found a way to become exceedingly rich for what he does outside the ring more than what he does within it, in a way spectators find perverse as retired fighters find it envious, ensures Mayweather’s influence for many years to come.

No fighter in history has finagled a reward-to-risk ratio like Mayweather’s, and when one considers the age of our sport, that is a feat. Even May 2, the toughest match of Mayweather’s career, is more hypothetical risk, as usual, than real: Whatever miracles mark the career of Manny Pacquiao, this fact remains: In 5 1/2 years as a welterweight, Pacquiao has never knocked-out a 147-pound man (Miguel Cotto was 145 when Pacquiao stopped him in their 12th round together).

The peril that adorns May 2, then, is not physical so much as reputational; is there some way Pacquiao can give Mayweather his first professional loss? That’s something, sure, but it’s disproportionately less than Mayweather’s projected purse should require. Disappointed as most aficionados will be the morning of May 3, when, hungover, they realize they were duped again, this time, more painfully still, duped by a fight they wasted years demanding, there is a small part within most of us that feels sympathy, ugliness really, for the hundreds of fighters we’ve watched sacrifice their wits for $200 a round.

Setting aside empty rhetorical devices like “honor” or “legacy” or “pride” – political words whose employment routinely precedes a sinister manipulation of some sort – what Mayweather has done for himself, and thus far himself alone, is reset the price-to-entertainment balance dramatically in a fighter’s favor. If this were to become a sustainable thing, it would not be the worst development in our sport’s generally sordid history. It will not be a sustainable thing, most likely, regardless of whatever May 2 ends up meaning in the year 2025 (probably very, very little), but it’s a fun exercise, nevertheless, and a doorway to the nature of influence, a thing boxing shares with all arts.

No, Mayweather is not Gaudi – though the late Andy Warhol surely would have delighted himself with portraits of “Money May” – but then, neither was Picasso or Miro or Dali . . .

*

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

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Jackie Nava retained the WBA/WBC Super Bantamweight titles with a 6th round stoppage over Mayra Gomez at the Centro De Convenciones in Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico.

Nava landed a huge flurry on the ropes and the fight was stopped at 1:22 of round six.

Nava, 122 lbs is 32-4-3 with 14 knockouts. Gomez is now 16-4.

Luis Nery remained undefeated by scoring a 4th round stoppage over Jether Olivo in a scheduled 10-round Bantamweight bout.

Nery dropped Oliva twice in round two from hard left hands. the fight was stopped after four rounds.

Nery, 117 lbs of Tijuana, Mexico is now 16-0 with 11 knockouts. Olivo, 117 lbs of General Santos City, PHL is now 22-3-2.

Angel Rodriguez won a 6-round unanimous decision over Orestes Pereya in a Super Bantamweight bout.

Rodriguez won by scores of 60-54 , 59-55 and 58-56 and is now 11-1. Pereya is now 13-3.

By Norm Frauenheim–

Jean Pascal is called quick for hands that can put punches together in rapid succession. He’s called quick for graceful feet that are a human version of rapid transit. But a quick thinker? Not so much.

At least, Pascal’s sudden-strike agility in hands and feet was not evident in anything he said Tuesday during a conference call with Sergey Kovalev for a HBO-televised bout on March 14 in Montreal.

Maybe Pascal didn’t get the memo. But if Kovalev is vulnerable, this might the time. He’s coming off the November 9th demolition of Bernard Hopkins in a fight significant because it represents a changing of the guard at the top of the light-heavyweight division, if not the sport itself. He is The Ring’s Fighter of the Year. He’s first-time father.

If there’s a chance at upsetting Kovalev, this is the time. Maybe, the unbeaten Russian is distracted or content. That’s doubtful, but it’s a possible hedge, and Pascal needs every one he can find if he hopes to beat Kovalev. Instead, he only managed to eliminate that possibility with cheap trash talk during a conference call last week that was mostly a disagreement about drug testing.

Pascal rattled the lion’s cage.

Pascal, Kovalev promoter Kathy Duva of Main Events said, “is clueless, quite clueless.’’

Duva was expressing her exasperation at Pascal for the reasons he said no to more stringent testing by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association.

VADA has no credibility because it tests only boxers, Pascal said repeatedly during a call gone free-for-all.

“We had been approached by the Pascal camp about doing drug testing,’’ said Duva, who argued that Kovalev had the right to dictate the protocol because Kovalev is the defending 175-pound champion. “We agreed to go to the people at VADA. Jean Pascal said he did not agree to VADA. He originally offered to pay for it. He wasn’t going to pay for VADA. We decided that since he didn’t want to pay the lower fee for the much more credible organization, then he must not have been serious about that, so there will be no drug testing.”

Greg Leon, CEO of Jean Pascal Promotions, then stepped into the rhetorical scrum.

“VADA didn’t come into the game until the 11th hour,” Leon said. “I was negotiating with Main Events attorney Patrick English, and we were trying to land in a place that Pascal originally planned on with the protocol he’s had in place since 2013. Out of the two athletes fighting on March 14, only one of them has been tested randomly over 10 times, and that’s Jean Pascal. It’s unfortunate we could not land on a mutual organization, but it is what it is. Main Events shouldn’t be caring what Pascal is spending on a test if he’s willing to pay for all of it.”

According to Leon, Pascal has been tested by the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) for the last two years.

It’s an argument the figures to go on – and on – until opening bell, mostly because Angel “Memo” Heredia is Pascal’s strength-and-conditioning coach. Heredia, who was involved with disgraced track-and-field Olympian Marion Jones, also works for Juan Manuel Marquez, who has never tested positive, yet has been suspected of PED use ever since he knocked out Manny Pacquiao in the fourth fight.

It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Main Events had in fact said okay to WADA. Maybe, they should have. Heredia in Pascal’s corner, however, guarantees that he’ll have to deal with the suspicions no matter what happens against Kovalev. He could have eliminated them had he said okay to VADA.

Then again, Duva was right. Pascal has been clueless. Pascal, of Montreal, said a victory would make him TBE in Canada. No world on how much rent he had to pay Floyd Mayweather Jr. for the right to use that acronym. Then, Pascal suggested that the fight against Kovalev would play out like the Rocky sequel that takes Balboa to Russia for a fight against Drago. He referred to a 2011 bout in Russia when Roman Simakov lost a seventh-round TKO to Kovalev. Simakov lapsed into a coma. Three days later, he died.

“This fight reminds me of Rocky IV and I think it’s going to be like a remake,” Pascal said. “You have the North American guy versus the Russian. You’ve got the East versus the West. You’ve got Drago, who killed Apollo Creed in the ring. Sergey Kovalev did the same thing, maybe a couple of years ago.

“I am a huge underdog like Rocky was in the movie. The odds I think are about 4-1, but in this movie I’m not going to be Apollo Creed. I’m going to be the Black Balboa.”

Yo, Jean. Wake up. Kovalev has already faced the best trash-talker in the business. Word-for-word, nobody rivals Hopkins. Kovalev never blinked. There’s a lesson there, but Pascal missed it, because he was too busy with talk that has turned him into a target.

By Bart Barry–

The announcement came sometime Thursday, or maybe Tuesday, the announcement there would be an announcement coming soon from a professional athlete about a future sporting event. It was a reminder how unserious our time is that adults awaited such silliness, but there we were, men who are otherwise grandfathers, fathers, professionals, role models, even, collectively saying, “Whatever the petulant demands, just satisfy them, please, so we can have our event, finally.”

Now we will, May 2 at MGM Grand, when American welterweight Floyd Mayweather fights Filipino Manny Pacquiao.

It’s OK to be happy about this development. Boxing, like perhaps no other sport in the world, makes curmudgeons of its fanbase. All begin by reading bitter men unimpressed by any development in the sport, and all promise themselves they will not become like those men; I’ll stop following it long before I become cynical as those guys, one thinks.

But shortsighted greed – to which boxing’s failures universally reduce – eventually affects in some profound and detrimental way a fighter who enchants a new follower of our sport, and his innocence and hopefulness gradually gives way to distrust and an unseemly pride in knowing things. None of us is immune to this; some of us express more loudly our distaste with what machinations subvert generally our sport and specifically its fighters and fans, but all of us experience it.

Winston Churchill accurately reported about those of us in the States: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” Floyd Mayweather, in announcing he will fight Manny Pacquiao five years and two Pacquiao losses after he was supposed to, has satisfied Churchill’s report once more, agreeing to do the right thing, finally, because he is, quite frankly, out of palatable options – after he’s tried everything else.

One imagines CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, who is wealthy where Mayweather is rich, said he was done seeing his child network, Showtime, embarrassed by Mayweather. With each new fight in the Mayweather contract bringing less money than his 2013 match with Mexican Saul Alvarez, the onus on Mayweather to make a larger prefight spectacle grew, until in September Mayweather produced his way to a potsmoking harem and human dogfighting circuit, captured by Moonves’ cameras, then went before a government commission and said it was all fake, edited to inaccuracy by Moonves’ staff.

Whatever it might have cost CBS to break its ill-advised Showtime contract with Mayweather, CBS’ revenues in 2014 were $13.81 billion – that’s 13, followed by 81, followed by seven zeros – which is enough to pay Mayweather $120 million, every fight, for 115 fights, and precluding Mayweather from accelerating the erosion of CBS’ journalistic brand would have been worth whatever pennies it cost the corporation.

For a chuckle, though, do imagine the conversation promoter Bob Arum, age 83, and Moonves, 65, had about what nonfinancial terms of the contract were most important to Mayweather: That he, and no one else, be allowed to announce the fight, via crappy digital image on a social network. Like adults patiently watching a child open birthday presents before they head back to work, Moonves and Arum must have marveled at the euphoria such a trinket brought the little tyke.

Immediately after Mayweather’s historic announcement, the heads of the sports departments at Showtime and HBO held a joint call and bubbled with what enthusiasm generally attends the salvaging of one’s job. “This is the biggest boxing event of all time,” said the president of HBO Sports, in an ahistorical attempt, one hopes, to target the same teenage demographic Mayweather’s announcement did. Or maybe Mayweather insisted on scripting HBO’s announcement, too – he is an executive producer at Showtime, after all – and desperate to return its status from official network of the Soviet Bloc farm leagues to “Heart and Soul of Boxing”, HBO had little choice but do as it was told.

The hyperbole above will be justified in one way, though: Mayweather-Pacquiao will feature prognostications from more and more-uninformed sportsfans than any fight in history. And here’s why: Every time biggest boxing events of all time happened in the past, be they Lewis-Tyson or Frazier-Ali 1 or Louis-Schmeling 2, boxing had at least a small place in America’s consciousness. Persons accidentally saw a fight on “Wide World of Sports” or read about a local kid in the newspaper, at least, before sallying forth with an opinion.

There’s a fair chance last weekend 10 million Americans hatched fully formed opinions, opinions they are now eager to share, having watched no boxing since Lewis beat-down Tyson 13 years ago.

“Money is the best ever, like his hat says . . .”

“Manny fights with a mandate from God . . .”

“It’s like that time at Wrestlemania when Hogan and Savage . . .”

Fact is, this is the second-best time for this fight to happen, from an aficionado’s perspective. The best time, of course, was immediately after Pacquiao dashed through Miguel Cotto, the man Mayweather retired to avoid in 2008, when Mayweather-Pacquiao might have happened in Cowboys Stadium and launched a historic trilogy our grandchildren would talk about. After 2009, Mayweather took six fights intended not to imperil him in the slightest, and he was right five times, until Argentine Marcos Maidana repeatedly hit him with skyhook rights in 2014 and revealed Mayweather is either badly overtraining himself or much older in the legs than his string of sponsored sparring sessions anticipated.

Pacquiao took the opposite route, coincidentally, being chased in 2010 by the monstrous Antonio Margarito – whom Mayweather bought-out a contract to avoid in 2006 – being decisioned by Timothy Bradley and being iced by Juan Manuel Marquez, before making farcical matches in remote places with hopeless underdogs in 2013 and 2014. In other words, Pacquiao might be recuperated enough, and Mayweather might be worn enough, now, to make their May match a good one.

Or maybe not. Vegas knows boxing much better than America at large, and Vegas has Mayweather a comfortable favorite – watching, as Vegas did, the absurd size disparity between Mayweather and Marquez in their 2009 sparring session, and knowing, as Vegas does, Pacquiao is much closer in physical stature to his nemesis Marquez than he is to Mayweather.

Pacquiao will land left crosses on Mayweather, just as Marquez landed right crosses, but will they have any memorable effect? That is a question worth answering that will be answered in May. Rejoice.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim–

A nervous rash escalated to full-blown panic on social media Thursday when speculation about the Floyd Mayweather Jr.- Manny Pacquaio negotiations reached a new high. Or is that a low?

Whatever it was, the monster got fed, leaving the world atwitter with anxious expectations that at any minute, any second, Mayweather would announce the May 2 fight is a done deal.

As I write this late Thursday, I’m still waiting and wondering why I am. It’s a fool’s errand. But the endless speculation has become a show unto itself. It’s enough to wonder what will happen when it ends with either a real fight or just more futility. If the fight is on, opening bell might not be preceded by as much attention as the talks were.

The fight is five or six years too late. Still, it’s intriguing, still worth a look, although maybe not at a rumored pay-per-view price of $100. But the bout can’t ever live up to the negotiations. Mayweather played it for every tweet and mistaken headline it was worth. The bet here is that the fight would be a letdown.

Mayweather’s feet don’t move at the blinding rate they used to. Marcos Maidana, a wild puncher without precision, got to him repeatedly.

Those same punches from a better tactician would have hurt Mayweather more than they did throughout 24 rounds against Maidana. It’s just one sign that Mayweather would hold, clinch and shoulder-roll as often as possible against Pacquaio.

Then, there’s Pacquaio, whose punches from countless angles overwhelmed Oscar De La Hoya. Pacquiao’s power lifted Ricky Hatton into midair and dropped the Brit onto the canvas like a guy falling off a diving board.

But that fear factor and much of the power are gone. Pacquiao knocked down Chris Algieri six times. But he couldn’t knock him out. Brandon Rios is a sturdy brawler, but he’s no De La Hoya. Rios is hittable. Yet, Pacquiao couldn’t stop him, either. Without a resurrection of that old power, Pacquaio figures to practice caution against Mayweather.

It’s become increasingly evident that neither Mayweather nor Pacquiao is the fighter of five, six years ago. Nevertheless, social media has been ablaze, motivated by their celebrity and the memory of who they were instead who they are. In large part, that’s a pretty good reason to believe that the deal is done and that they’ll fight in May instead of a later date, say September.

If they chose to fight in the interim, there are a lot of emerging faces in a younger generation who might beat them. Against a Keith Thurman or an Amir Khan, they might lose a fight and their share of a total purse reported to be $250 million. If they don’t do it now, they risk throwing away a fortune.

Follow the money. It says the fight is likely, but it’s hard to imagine how it could ever be more exciting than the talks were.

By Bart Barry–

Editor’s note: For part 4, please click here.

*

It is a question of competence much as intent.

That is where boxing now stumbles in an exaggerated way that defies expectations more than most things in America do anymore. Whether the larger part of this country was ever competent is a question for fantasy, not history, but it is not uncommon now for the world to accept American incompetence, raising awareness of it till the printing press rolls and the dollars fan out. Today, payoffs are what we do better than we do anything: We shower problems with money till they resolve themselves or drown in our largesse.

Do not mistake that, either, for a form of contemporary competence. It is not. We own the world’s reserve currency because of what the Europeans, Russians and Japanese did to one another in the last century, and what we helped do to them once we finally participated in their carnage. Whatever autohagiographies America’s private sector pens to itself about itself, there is nothing essential being done here, and there hasn’t in 50 years. Most of the technology required to read this column, whether on your phone or laptop or PC, came from the Department of Defense, or at least financing from the Department of Defense – whose primary purpose is to kill others, or threaten to kill others, before others can kill Americans.

Your technology came from the public sector. The shiny, white-plastic cover with a glowing piece of fruit in its middle? That’s the private sector.

Probably this system is unsustainable, but that hardly passes for an indictment. Whenever it ends, our system has already proved more resilient than expected. There’s solace in that.

Most people are bad at most things, and Americans are no different, whatever exceptionalism we attribute to ourselves. We are outfitted with extraordinarily overgrown minds that conjure up 10,000 inane patterns for every workable one, and if you doubt that, and you have a biological impulse to do so, of course, ask yourself what activity in your day might impress another species on Earth. There’s efficient acquisition of food, and reproduction. After that, the list thins.

We invent goals and reward ourselves for their accomplishment, in a way all other creatures must regard with something between amusement and fright. If an announcement were made tomorrow Homo sapiens is a virus devouring its host, not a predator, would it surprise you?

There’s precedent for being bad at most things: The human mind does not abide repetitive tasks. No sooner is the mind asked to concentrate on the same thought more than five or so times, and it wanders elsewhere, pulling any one of the six or seven fully developed cinematic storylines playing at all times on its edges to center stage, and the repetitive task immediately begins to suffer in its execution. It’s a large reason computers fascinate us; even more than their speed, their competence at repetitive tasks strikes us as supernatural. Computers do not have our creativity, and will not, but they have a sort of concentrated presence we struggle to fathom even while watching it.

A moment after we successfully complete some task a half-dozen times, we declare mastery in a quietly triumphant way, fold our hands behind our heads, and begin rummaging about for a new task. Mastery, meanwhile, requires thousands of repetitions, hundreds of hours of aching boredom, and finally informed risk-taking that brings some new efficiency. But who wants to dedicate his life to something trite as all that when he can do badly a thousand trite things every year?

What has happened with Mayweather and Pacquiao negotiations, playing vacuum to the oxygen of interest in our sport, reduces, once more, to competence. The fighters themselves, whatever leverage they fancy they have, are both destined for what punchy bankruptcy awaits men who make a career doing what they do. The heads of participating television networks, whose compensation is, in the contemporary corporate tradition, proportionate to the amount of culpability they will accept in a case of failure – a failure American corporations now dedicate more resources to obfuscating than research or development – have been plainly hoodwinked by the fighters’ handlers and now dodder about, having serious conversations about infomercials and announcing crews.

Realize this, if you realize nothing else: These are the concerns of a cabal looking to trick consumers one time.

Nobody involved in any of this expects a good fight that births a three-part franchise, a historic trilogy that brings a billion dollars to be split four or five ways, for if they did, all of this could have been resolved with a profit-sharing agreement years ago. No, these enervating, incompetent negotiations are about wringing all that can be got from the desiccated towel of American interest in prizefighting. “History repeats itself!” will sing philistines in a chorus that implies this has all happened before and boxing survived it. But history only repeats itself until it doesn’t, and it doesn’t-repeat itself far more frequently than it repeats itself.

There is no reason, then, to be assured boxing will survive the final consequences of 2010-2015. And so, we bear witness . . .

*

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

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

A week-long celebration of the 25-year anniversary of Buster Douglas’ upset of Mike Tyson is a revealing look at where boxing has been and where it is, or perhaps isn’t these days. Nostalgia is a good thing. It’s a personal attachment to dramatic moments in a rich history that the UFC will never have.

But nostalgia is also a refuge and I suspect that’s why there’s been so much of it in the days before Wednesday’s anniversary of a stunner that rivals hockey’s Miracle on Ice and New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath’s upset of the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

Douglas-Tyson comes with that inevitable question: Where were you? Anywhere is better than the ongoing uncertainty of the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. talks. A trip into the past is as good an escape as any.

For the record, I was in Miami at a silly Slam Dunk Contest that precedes the NBA All-Star Game. I didn’t see a single dunk and I’m sure my newspaper story reflected that. Douglas-Tyson was a pretty good escape on the night it happened, too.

There have been other great upsets, of course. Other fights are remembered with that defining, where-were-you question. My late dad would always tell me about Joe Louis’ first-round knockout of Germany’s Max Schmeling in a 1938 rematch of Schmeling’s 1936 victory. He was in the barracks, in basic training for a much bigger fight.

Louis-Schmeling was the fight that captured the collective imagination of my dad’s generation. It represented his attachment to boxing. For my generation, it’s been Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier and increasingly, Ali-George Foreman. The 40-year anniversary of Ali’s upset of Foreman in Zaire on Oct. 30, 1974 was celebrated just a few months ago in a wave of nostalgia that, by the way, was also an early escape from a resumption of the Pacquiao-Mayweather talk.

For younger generations, it’s Douglas-Tyson. Douglas’ upset, a 10th stoppage in Tokyo, was so unscripted — so unthinkable — that has become unforgettable. There’s a great anecdote this week in an Associated Press story about Douglas. Legendary AP boxing writer Ed Schuyler landed in Tokyo and was asked at customs how long he would be working in Japan.

“About 90 seconds,’’ Schuyler said.

Schuyler summed it up as only he could. Tyson was the most feared fighter since Sonny Liston. Over time, the magnitude of Douglas’ upset has multiplied simply because Douglas never did anything else. Douglas’ triumph on the night of Feb. 11, 1990 stands alone. In his next fight, he surrendered to Evander Holyfield in a bout that was preceded by reports that Douglas had pizza delivered to him while he sat in a sauna trying to sweat off excess pounds.

Then, it began to look as if Douglas’ victory was an aberration. Tyson was as feared as ever. Even after three-and-a-half years of lousy food and no sparring during three-plus years in prison, Tyson scared the fight out of just about anyone who dared step in the ring with him. Everybody, that is, but Holyfield.

On this list of great upsets over the last 25 years, Holyfield’s 11th-round TKO of Tyson in 1996 before their Infamous Bite Fight in 1997 ranks as a close second to Douglas-Tyson. It was thought that Holyfield was shot. There was even fear for his life.

He had suffered a reported heart condition in a 1994 loss to Michael Moorer. He opened as a 25-to-1 underdog at some of the Las Vegas books. Holyfield wasn’t as big a long shot as Douglas, whose fight with Tyson was off the board at every book but The Mirage. But the opening odds added up to the same conclusion: No chance.

Holyfield did what Douglas had done before him. He didn’t let Tyson bully him. Douglas showed Holyfield that Tyson couldn’t think through adversity. The rest is history, which is a lot more interesting than anything we’ve heard – or not heard – in the here and now.

By Bart Barry–

Editor’s note: For part 3, please click here.

*

Another week comes to pass in the decisive erosion of public interest in our sport. Those curious about The Fight to Save Boxing do not migrate elsewhere within – they do not, anymore, find a minimumweight master or junior middleweight from a few towns over and redirect their gazes; they migrate away. Intention in these matters cannot be read easily as action, so there’s this to impart, once more: If manager Al Haymon detested boxing and wished to see it abolished from the public consciousness before the year 2025, would he alter a single act he has taken in the last three years?

Nearly every active fighter worth watching between 140 and 160 pounds, right now, awaits a resolution of some sort on The Fight to Save Boxing – even Mexican Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who has the youthful defiance and fanbase to do as he wishes, and a promoter with little left to lose, doesn’t dare schedule his next match on a weekend commemorating his people’s successful default on their loan from the French, lest an African American and Filipino prefer Mexicans’ pay-per-view buys for themselves.

Mayweather and Haymon and promoter Bob Arum are empowered by our collective imaginations and very little more. Whatever monetary estimates Haymon or Arum feed the media – giving reporters two or three numbers, and letting those aces decide whether to separate them with ‘+’ or ‘x’ or assign them as exponents – not a penny of that money will make its way to you, so stop caring about it. Without the obfuscating factor of gross sales, which, regardless of what today’s economists tell you, are not the same as gross items produced, the match that now issues ransom notes to an entire industry comprises a past-his-prime welterweight who needed two fights last year to defeat Marcos Maidana conclusively and a past-his-prime welterweight reduced in his last match to fighting a Stony Brook nutritionist in China.

Alvarez and De La Hoya, in other words, should announce Alvarez vs. Austin’s James Kirkland at Alamodome on May 2, already, open the bidding to whichever television network wishes to cover it, knowing Mexican television will do so happily, and give Haymon and Arum and HBO and Showtime an option: Watch their superfight’s revenues subverted by the exodus of boxing’s last reliable fanbase, Mexican – or did you think a man unoriginal as Mayweather covets Cinco de Mayo and El 16 de Septiembre because his schedule as Showtime executive producer is otherwise full? – or pay De La Hoya and Alvarez and Kirkland a large sum of step-aside money. A large sum of very poor previous choices now limits De La Hoya’s mobility, sure, but he works for Alvarez, needing Canelo far far more than Canelo needs him, and however much his foundering company now needs to be peaceful with Arum and Haymon, if De La Hoya loses Canelo, he becomes a regional promoter with a magazine.

Canelo’s chutzpah and self-assurance are not justified by anything he does in the ring, no, but who cares? Mexicans know he’s the best they can do right now, and so does he, and he’s right, and so are they, to be enkindled by an American and a Filipino taking hostage a calendar entry fully meaningless but for what significance Mexicans assign it.

Goodness, this column has veered too deeply into meaninglessness. Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”, frankly, is the righteous subject of today’s spire, because it is tangible and excellent, not ephemeral and unneeded, and because it stars Spanish actor Javier Bardem, about whom I’ve written enthusiastically before. Back then, though, I was more confined by convention than I am now; we were only one year into negotiations for Mayweather-Pacquiao, and there was still interest enough in boxing for talented young writers to believe covering our sport might some day provide a sustainably supplemental sort of income, even if the days of making a living from it were expired, and so the sentences were shorter and crisper and often isolated in paragraphs of their own.

That can still be done.

The point of this series, though, is to obey no conventions whatever, a betrayal of the conventional wisdom that betrayed a generation of young sportswriters, and so we return to Javier Bardem and his wonderful portrayal of Juan Antonio, a Catalan painter desperately and violently enamored of Maria Elena, a desperately and violently enchanting Catalan painter played expertly by Spanish actress Penelope Cruz – expertly enough to win an Oscar. So rich is the movie that neither the name of Bardem’s character nor Cruz’s appears in its title – as those names belong to a grounded American tourist, Vicky, played by British actress Rebecca Hall, and seduced first by Juan Antonio, and Cristina, a flighty American tourist played by American actress Scarlett Johansson, and seduced second by Juan Antonio and then Maria Elena. The story’s arc is gentle, its narration relying on the word balmy, its writing excellent, and its acting superb; whatever wealth of ill will some Americans now bring to Woody Allen’s work, it is hard for anyone to watch “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and not enjoy it.

The title, and its reference to the movie’s third and most important character, is revelatory. Like the city it portrays in beautiful and soft colors, the movie’s title is nonsensical, and the city of Barcelona, cooler than any city more famous, follows no conventions, either, because of its inspiration, Antoni Gaudi.

Perquè el Barcelona és la ciutat de Gaudí . . .

*

Editor’s note: For part 5, please click here.

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Spencer Bohm-

It is not unusual for actors and actresses to transform their normal physical appearance for a specific role. Some, such as Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones’ Diary, actually gain weight to heighten their credibility as the character. Others have dieted considerably to fit a role or a particular character like Natalie Portman in Black Swan of Christian Bale for, well, almost every role he’s done.

Many have “bulked up” for particular roles. Five recent examples of this type of transformation have been Bradley Cooper, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sylvester Stallone, Mark Wahlberg and Hugh Jackman.

Bradley Cooper for American Sniper

????In order to portray the real-life sniper, Chris Kyle, Bradley Cooper needed to add strength and increase his weight from 185 to 225 pounds. Not only that but he had to look like, and be, actually strong, not just cut in a way the cameras like. For him it meant a grueling two-a-day workout plan (four hours in total) with his trainer Jason Walsh. The main focus was on building a solid foundation on Cooper, this meant deadlifts and squats in the A.M. and traditional weight training in the P.M. using body weight at first and then building up from there. To fuel these intense workouts Cooper claims to have ate every 55 minutes and consumed around 8,000 calories a day. He also

Jake Gyllenhaal in Southpaw

????To be a convincing boxer, Jake Gyllenhaal needed to “muscle up” substantially. In a prior role, he had lost 30 pounds, but now he needed to gain weight, mostly muscle. He also learn to box convincingly. The target was for him to look and move like a real middleweight fighter as opposed to a weight lifter. He spent time training Floyd Mayweather’s gym in Las Vegas and Church Gym in New York so he could not only get fit, but also understand the boxing world better.
??
??The regimen was designed for him to be lean, quick and fast. The twice a day, seven day a week workouts featured, in addition to many rounds in the ring, regular 8 mile runs, pull-ups, core work, and squats. His regimen was so intense that it reportedly cost him a girlfriend.

Sylvester Stallone for the Rocky movies

????Stallone has been training off and on since 1976 for his Rocky and Rambo movies. Most particularly, it was for the Rocky 3 movie when Stallone began to work to seriously to shape up his physique where he got so fit he was down to 2.8% bodyfat. And, at age 60, for the revival of his Rocky role in Rocky Balboa (more details on how to watch all the films here) , he reshaped his body with two very long workouts per day. However he’s quick to warn against pushing your body too far telling Muscle and Fitness “Over the years, my biggest flaw was overtraining. In the gym six days a week, doing more sit-ups at night…my body was in a constant state of breakdown. Now I focus on a variety of exercises, working out three times a week for 90 minutes per session. I really feel good–much stronger than I’ve ever felt, actually. Something’s working.”

????Diet has always been an important part of Stallone’s regime, usually restricting himself to virtually an all-protein diet while in serious training. For average times in his life he claims “I follow a high-protein diet: Anything with a face, that’s what I eat, with something green next to it”.

Mark Wahlberg for The Fighter

????Wahlberg trained to be a boxer for his role as Mickey Ward, a real life fighter. The mission was to make Wahlberg look, move and act like a professional boxer. His workouts were extensive, though geared to improving his boxing skills and, in doing so, to trim down and muscle up for realism. His regimen included two a day workouts, six days a week that featured boxing in the A.M. and a rotation of spot training and basketball.
?
???The boxing workout included sets of shadow boxing, heavy bag, focus pads for aim and combinations, and the speed bag for timing and speed. Shifting to his strength workout, Mark worked on his legs, back and biceps with leg extensions, squats, chin-ups, and various curls and crunches. Next came chest, shoulders and triceps with extensive and crunches.

You Can Do It Too

????All of these actors achieved a goal of improving their bodies for a specific role. These were essentially normal men in reasonable shape who, with motivation and commitment to succeed driven by a contract and career, were able to transform their bodies to achieve their goals. Some of their programs may be considered extreme, but usually because of the limited time to achieve their goals.
?
???You can clearly see the importance that diet plays in all of these mens plans. You can train and workout until the cows come home but if you’re gonna enjoy a few beers and a plate of nachos afterwards you’re back to where you started. Sure, it seems like common sense but you’d be surprised how many people overestimate the number of calories they burn in a workout and overindulge using that false information.

????The one similar vein in all of the workouts is variety and changing things up. This can be trading a lifting session for a long run or swapping your free weights for old fashion body weight. Repeating the same exercises you’ve always done will get you the same results you’ve always gotten. So, if you’re in a rut take a cue from these men and mix things up.

Alex Saucedo scored a 3rd round stoppage over Eduardo Flores in a scheduled 8-round Welterweight bout.

The time of the stoppage was 2:05 round three for Saucedo, 145 lbs and is now 17-0 with 12 knockouts. Flores, 146 1/2 lbs is now 20-17-3.

Eduardo Garza won a 4-round unanimous decision over Hector Gutierrez in a Featherweight bout.

Scores were 40-36 on all cards for Garza, 124 1/4 lbs and is now 2-1. Gutierrez, 121 lbs is 2-7.

By Norm Frauenheim –

Wladimir Klitschko’s return to America coincides with talks that are holding a sport hostage all over again. The heavyweight’s April 25 bout with Bryant Jennings at New York’s Madison Square Garden arrives in time to take attention off the paralysis-by-analysis of you-know-what.

It’s impossible to know what’s happening, or who’s to blame, or if the reported talks are fact, fantasy or futility.

It’s also hard to know whether frustration will lead to further erosion in the pay-per-view numbers if Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. does not happen. Renewed speculation and anticipation are symptoms. But of what? An imminent backlash? The cancer is back? Or resiliency in a sport that outlives its obituaries?

There’s no safe answer here, but Klitschko’s appearance Wednesday at a news conference in New York offered hope and certainty to what has otherwise been an exercise in exasperation. The Pacquaio-Mayweather tease could continue for another three weeks and that’s if we’re lucky. The first Mayweather-Marcos Maidana fight last May wasn’t announced until Feb. 24.

The only thing anybody knows for sure at this point is that Mayweather-Pacquiao won’t happen in Australia, which denied Mayweather a visa on Wednesday.

In Klitschko, however, there’s reliability in an intriguing pursuit of what has become today’s most over-used word: Legacy. Mayweather advertises it with TBE, The Best Ever, on shorts and caps. If he never fights Pacquiao, will an asterisk be attached to the acronym?

Meanwhile, Klitschko is fighting for his place in history with a steady, patient career. Too patient, too steady for some. Nevertheless, he is closing in on Joe Louis’ reign of eleven successive years as the heavyweight champ. It’s a record that would allow him to be mentioned alongside others in the TBE debate. There’s more than one and there always will be.

Klitschko knows that his longevity and record (63-3, 53 KOs) are generating comparisons to Louis, Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes.

“I hear this once in awhile,’’ he said. “…I don’t want to put myself in line with those legends. I respect and love them. I cannot put myself with others. You can do it, but it’s not my job.”

It’s an ambitious job, part political and unmistakably dangerous for a fighter who will be 39 years old on March 25. It’s no coincidence, perhaps, that he’s back in the U.S. for his first fight in seven years. He’s in the country and city that has produced so many of the best moments in the heavyweight division’s fabled history.

“It’s kind of incredible to me to think that I’m coming back now as the champion and still doing this,” he said. “Fortunately, knock on wood, I don’t feel my age. I’ll be 39 by the time we fight but I don’t feel that way. I feel good and I want to show the people here in the U.S. how far I’ve come since I was last here.”

Klitschko’s return to the U.S. market makes business sense, too. There are signs that of renewed interest in American-born heavyweights. The television audience for Alabama-born Deontay Wilder’s one-sided decision over Bermane Stiverne for the WBC’s slice of the title was a hit.

The Showtime-telecast of the bout drew an average audience of 1.24 million, fourth highest in the network’s history of non-PPV bouts. It was a surprise, because half of a crowd announce at about 8,400 at Las Vegas MGM Grand had freebies. But the Nielsen numbers said fans are curious about the outspoken, entertaining Wilder, the last American to win an Olympic medal – bronze in 2008.

It’s a number that says they’ll be back, maybe in larger numbers, for a PPV showdown with Klitschko, who has employed Wilder as a sparring partner.

“We need to do it and we have to do it,” Klitschko said of the Wilder possibility. “There is certainly a reason why I’m back here and why I’m fighting on U.S. television live on U.S. soil. (Wilder) is the most valuable opponent for me to fight and the price is the title that he has.

“The demand is here.”

Klitschko, at least, is taking a real step toward fulfilling it.

By Bart Barry–

SAN ANTONIO – This column was supposed to be about a live theatrical performance by Mike Tyson, a review of sorts from ringside by a writer who lives above the historic Majestic Theatre, downtown, and attends most Broadway-musical productions that visit. “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth” was scheduled for Saturday night in the Lila Cockrell Theatre, a 2,000-seat venue attached to this city’s large and expanding convention center. A boxing-trainer friend would stop by, and we would amble 10 minutes along the River Walk to the edge of HemisFair Park, home of the Tower of the Americas and the 1968 World’s Fair.

Instead, Thursday night brought an announcement there would be no Mike Tyson. Sluggish ticket sales were cited. It’s no wonder. There aren’t five of us in this city who write regularly about the sport, and few of us knew about Tyson’s performance till Monday evening at Cowboys Dancehall, where Leija-Battah Promotions presented a main event that would prove Rocky Juarez’s last – and yes, these things share a thread.

Between Monday’s card, which Tyson did not attend, and Saturday’s scheduled performance, the excellent and deservedly celebrated musical “Chicago” began a six-show run at Majestic, with the uniquely talented Mexican actress Bianca Marroquin shining in the role of Roxie Hart. To watch Marroquin act and sing and dance, and somehow project subtle gestures hundreds of feet – and this, along with the live nature of stage acting, is what makes it a craft of such greater depth and refinement than anything that happens on a movie set’s 41st take before the tightly cropped frame of an HD camera – was to be blessed with an entirely too-infrequent reminder about talent: It is inarguable.

If ever you find yourself preceding an assertion of some artist’s talent with the words “really” or “actually” you should treat those adverbs as alarms: You don’t mean what you’re about to say, you are not convinced, and you hope to argue your way into a faith in that artist’s talent while stiffening that hope into a conviction by way of others’ affirmation.

On a stage filled with touring professionals, most in the same costume, Marroquin was the figure one’s eyes immediately found, often without seeking her. The foundation of her stage presence – and this is what acting shares with all other arts – happened in the layers with which she entertained. This is something that transcends mere range, which is a flat spectrum that delineates how many distinct characters an actor can portray; Marroquin’s presence was created by the number of emotions she portrayed at the very same time. Much of that is excellent writing, even more of it is a character, Roxie Hart, about to celebrate her 40th year of performance – and what richness the geology of creativity produces in a character subjected to time and pressure by talented actors’ interpretations of her – but the execution of a transcendent performance, finally, belongs to the stage actor alone, an artist talented and textured enough to invent pleasant surprises between scripted lines.

These notes about talent and texture and transcendence refer directly backwards to Houstonian Rocky Juarez, who announced his retirement immediately after losing lopsidedly Monday night on the northeastern outskirts of this city. It is rare, anymore, almost miraculous, unfortunately, that a prizefighter, or any professional athlete, can summarize his career coherently, but Rocky did it over the PA system, Monday, closing a short goodbye speech thusly:

“I had a great run. And I tried, I tried. I love you guys. Thank you.”

“And I tried, I tried” – those words capture perfectly the often-frustrating arc of Juarez’s run as a world-title challenger. In 2005, Juarez lost a very close decision to Humberto Soto for an interim world title. Nine months later, he beat an underprepared Marco Antonio Barrera, only to hear a questionable draw decision announced, only to see it later changed by the California State Athletic Commission to a split-decision for Barrera. Four months after that, Juarez was undressed by Barrera in their rematch. Fourteen months later, Juarez went to Tucson to challenge the master Juan Manuel Marquez for the title Marquez took from Barrera, and Marquez beat him soundly. Fifteen months after that, Juarez drew with Chris John before losing another rematch decision seven months later. A three-year losing streak ensued until Golden Boy Promotions brought Juarez to this city late in 2012 to lose to Antonio Escalante – but Juarez ruined Escalante in eight rounds.

Juarez did not quite have talent enough for a transcendent performance; his silver medal at the 2000 Olympic Games played as his career’s metaphor well as his farewell address captured his profoundly honest efforts as a prizefighter.

Mike Tyson had transcendent talent and only partially squandered it with the many poor choices he made during his adolescence, prizefighting career and retirement. His cancellation of a performance in San Antonio will not be tallied among these – it’s doubtful Tyson even knew he was supposed to be in Texas last week – but it will work as a tidy reminder how ephemeral comebacks in boxing are.

In 2013, HBO put the full might of its marketing programs behind Tyson’s next comeback, stage performer, and boxing writers dutifully wrote ad copy for “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth” in time for HBO’s presentation of director Spike Lee’s cinematic adaptation of Tyson’s soliloquy. Tyson, too, was a boxing promoter, we learned, and bringing his charismatic self wrapped in a feelgood bow to that enterprise.

Now it is 2015, and Mike Tyson just cancelled a show because the public has lost interest.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim

Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao went one-on-one in an old-school way almost forgotten by all the methods offered by social media. Face-to-face. Imagine that.

What took so long? It’s a fair question, one that they probably will ask themselves if they finally sign a deal to fight. But Twitter didn’t get in the way of their chance meeting in Miami during and after a Milwaukee Bucks-Heat game Tuesday night.

They looked into each other’s eyes instead of simply engaging in an exchange of taunts through various digital platforms that have become today’s stage. It’s mostly about ego and entertainment, Hits and followers are like laughs and applause. Gain them with jokes and insults. But it’s no way to negotiate.

According to various media reports, Mayweather initiated the meeting by approaching Pacquiao at court side. Then, the real business was conducted in Pacquiao’s hotel suite, according to Pacquiao advisor Michael Koncz. Koncz told the Associated Press and www.ringtv.com that Tuesday’s two meetings were the first between the two rivals. That’s astonishing. They didn’t run into each other at the Ferrari dealership?

Boxing is a small community, after all But it’s also tribal. Fighters stay with those they trust. Loyalty is their first commandment. The second, third and fourth, too. So, yeah, it’s not beyond belief that Mayweather and Pacquiao have been avoiding each other like wary rivals circling the same prey.

Cheers to Mayweather for initiating the night’s first meeting and asking for the second one. Cheers, too, to Koncz for seemingly encouraging the personal exchange.

A snowstorm in the Northeast might have put Mayweather and Pacquiao in the same place for one night.

But the coincidence provided an opportunity and Koncz knew it. It was beginning to look as if negotiations for a May 2 showdown were dead on arrival. But that was before Mayweather and Pacquiao looked at each other during an hour-long conversation that they’ve never had. Suddenly, there’s optimism instead of the same old futility.

According to Koncz and Pacquaio promoter Bob Arum, there’s an agreement between the networks, Time Warner’s HBO and CBS’ Showtime. Each would produce a special on its own fighter – HBO with Pacquiao and Showtime with Mayweather.

It still isn’t clear who will do the blow-by-blow account and ringside analysis. But it sounds as if an agreement is in the works.

Would there be renewed hope — if not a real chance — for one if Pacquiao and Mayweather had not met?

No.

It’s not the first time that the fighters themselves have broken what seems to be an impossible deadlock. Still, it’s a reminder that, in the end, there’s some real leverage in their dangerous hands.

For as long as there has been an opening bell, fighters have talked about taking the judges out of a fight. It’s one way of promising a stoppage. It’s another way of eliminating the subjectivity that has always haunted the sport. Controversial decisions are bad for business.

In effect, the Pacquiao-Mayweather summit is an attempt at exactly that: Eliminate the middlemen. Talks between CEOs, promoters, managers, advisers, trainers, broadcasters and conditioning coaches appeared to be going nowhere other than in the way.

In the end, only the talk between unlikely business partners might matter. In the end, only Pacquiao and Mayweather will throw punches at each other. Only they can agree to do so.

By Bart Barry-

Ring the bell already, fool.

I’ve written so many great columns in the past. That’s why you read me. And I’m more prepared for this column than any of those. This is the column for not just readers but writers, too, because they know what hard writing looks like. It’s for the readers also, don’t misunderstand, especially readers in the 210, Alamo City – throw up the Spurs sign, y’all!

First time I covered “Mile High” Mike Alvarado, I didn’t listen to my editor, and I got too aggressive, went on and in about what an athlete he is, and then he lost to Brandon Rios, and I found a way of not admitting I was wrong. Real writers call that semantics. Haters call it hypocrisy. Whatevs, dude.

All I know is that it takes a lot to put yourself out there in print every damn Monday for readers to judge you, always with the niggling about three or four disagreeable words of a 1,000, none of the critics able to make a coherent toddler’s thought in 140 characters, not words, characters, but full of advice for a writer who brings it every time his hands bless a keyboard. Real recognize real, though, and real readers know real writers don’t need to read or worry grammartical about, like, because being a writer is something you either got inside you or don’t, and I’m a writer to the bone because I came up round real wordsmiths, eloquent folk, creative types unconstrained by deadlines.

Really, with the deadlines thing again? Fine. Here we go:

Technically my column is due on Sunday nights. Christians, you see, treat Sunday as the day of the Sabbath. My editor is on the East Coast. I’m in the 210 – for life, playa! – and there’s this time difference. And I don’t mean daylight savings, either, OK? So if it’s midnight in Alamo City, then it’s not midnight on the East Coast. Simple mistake. I’m sure lots of writers make it.

All I know is this: I’m a writer, I make sentences from words, paragraphs from sentences, pages from paragraphs, and sometimes runon sentences when prepositional phrases get mixed in later and forget to correct them, in there, go back, and I’m not saying I’m perfect because nobody’s perfect, and y’all can’t judge me.

Mail in this column like I don’t give a, um, dickens? Not me:

When even the noblest fighters begin to . . . nah. When a fighter who once frequently boasted he’d not been felled, amateurs or pros, in . . . whatever. It’s a new thing, this punching effect, and as luck would have it, being concussed can compromise ocular . . . next time. To sabotage the rudimentary how-many-fingers quiz, yell out an even multiple – seeing double! – evinces a brain unscrambled enough to know its times-tables, and reveals a bit of the roguish . . . later.

No, well going? Probably should an have outline tried. thought Even a few moments private of or. Something to who loyally my readers show came to this with the page expectation, right wrong under, write hard I could, as true, and prepared work to be all that it takes day, what! I’m a little unhappy for myself with. My editor is with for myself for way unhappy me. This very is badly. see Got it published too SOON. my mom, my sisters, people I came up with, other writers, anybody reading this! peeps in the 210,,

Can I get a word count?

Damn. There’s no way 573 makes 1,000.

*

This column was not my best work. My readers know this wasn’t the real me. They know I’ll return. I’ve got to go back to the usage dictionary. Yes, I’m angry with myself! There, I wrote it. That means y’all better not be mad with this effort or you’ll look like bullies for piling-on a man when he’s down.

Clever, eh?

Wait, I got lots more.

Where were these words, this clarity, when I was supposed to be writing an original commentary in my weekly column?

(Editor’s note: One more nasty, sarcastic or satirical comment about Bart’s writing, and I’ll block you. After what he’s given this column? Show some damn respect!)

One bad column. One column, one, where maybe I was distracted by assembling that Ikea chair I got yesterday. A column where maybe there’s a weighin this afternoon, 20 minutes away, for a Monday night card, and it’s at 1 P.M., and I’ve already got plans for tonight, and so there may not be time to give this column my everything.

I’ll be back. Next Monday. Y’all gonna see. The readers who stand by me, I give them nothing but love from the 210. The doubters ain’t gonna win this one. Hell no, I’m not about to stop writing. I’m a write till the day I die.

There’s nothing else in the world I’m good at. And I’ve got too much free time.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim–

It’s hard to recall when there wasn’t talk about Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. Brandon Rios and Mike Alvarado are about to fight for a third time. We’re still talking.

Gas prices fall from $5-a-gallon to less than $2. Cheap talk continues. A German Pope quits the Vatican and a pope from Argentina moves in. Still talking. Maybe praying, too.

It’s almost as if the talk has always been there, embedded in the public conversation. When a time capsule buried in a corner of the Massachusetts State House was opened about a month ago, newspapers were found alongside stuff left by Paul Revere in 1795.

Nobody opened up the old newspapers, which is lot like today’s newspapers. But I would love to see the headlines, just to make sure there was no mention of Pacquiao-Mayweather. I’m pretty sure, too, Revere didn’t shout “the fight is coming, the fight is coming’’ on that midnight ride more than two centuries ago. It just seems like it.

In an era defined by 140 characters, little has a shelf life longer than yesterday’s tweet. But Mayweather-Pacquiao is inexhaustible. It’s a virtual commodity, a little bit like Kim Kardashian’s posterior. It just never goes away, which also makes it hard to know what’s fantasy and what’s not.

The talk is as loud now as it was when it started more than half a decade ago. Other than the volume, however, is any of it real? Or is it just more exasperating buzz in another rhetorical sequel to the same old futility?

I was in Las Vegas last week for Deontay Wilder’s heavyweight decision over Bermane Stiverne at the MGM Grand. It was a good fight and a better story. But all of the talk was about you-know-what. There was more speculation in the media workroom than losing wagers in the casino. It’s happening; it’s not happening.

Anticipation has created a bubble and perhaps boxing’s version of Deflate-gate. There’s a growing sense that the air has begun to go out of the talks.

That said, there’s always another rumor, or maybe a daydream. According to one, the bout could be announced in the grandest style possible, say, during the Seattle-New England Super Bowl on Feb. 1. Buy a 30-second spot of advertising for $4 million and announce the Super Bowl of boxing.

A fanciful reach? Maybe. By now, everything about Pacuiao-Mayweather appears to be a reach. In terms of timing, however, it makes some sense. Pacquiao has said his deadline is the end of January. If he doesn’t get an answer from Mayweather by then, it looks as if he’ll move on, perhaps to a bout with former stable-mate Amir Khan.

Meanwhile, Mayweather loves the big stage and nothing is bigger than the Super Bowl.

He said during a radio interview in Australia that talks were ongoing. But red flags are everywhere. In the same interview from Down Under, Mayweather blamed Pacquiao promoter Bob Arum, his bitter rival, for the apparent stall in the reported negotiations.

There’s also plenty of renewed speculation about a Mayweather rematch with Miguel Cotto, whose talks with Canelo Alvarez for a May 2 bout are off the table. Alvarez promoter Oscar De La Hoya said last Saturday before Wilder-Stiverne that Canelo was looking for a different opponent after Cotto failed to accept an offer by Jan. 16. Now, talk is reportedly ongoing for Canelo-James Kirkland.

Going on, but going where? It’s been nowhere for longer than many can remember, or maybe long enough to just hope that it just goes away.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in Las Vegas, undefeated American heavyweight Deontay Wilder saw his 32-fight knockout streak come to a quiet end against Bermane Stiverne. Expected to force a violent conclusion to the match, regardless of victor, Wilder instead cautiously and exhaustedly made his way to the closing bell and won a wide decision, 120-107, 119-108 and 118-109. Stiverne, who wore a title of some sort during his ringwalk, fought like a man trained and conditioned for an entirely different affair than which one his contract mandated.

And American boxing fans, in all our learned helplessness, dutifully expressed pride, surprise and admiration for our new partial titlist in the heavyweight division, saying things like: “I was really impressed with Wilder’s intelligence, prudence and temperament.”

It’s incredible to’ve been reduced to this. There was genuine interest in Wilder’s match with Stiverne, despite a half-full and probably papered MGM Grand Garden Arena, and none of that interest, not an iota of it, reduced to someone’s hankering for a show of intelligence, prudence or temperament. Not a jot. Much as boxing fans were instructed to do in November immediately after a man named “Krusher” imperiled not once a quinquagenarian in 36 minutes of trying, though, Saturday’s match, a frankly dull 12-rounder, caused us to cast about for expressions of marvel at a fight, expected to be violent and shortlived, that heard its final bell.

That result is not incredible or amazing for having such a minority of prognosticators predict it; that result is disappointing in a fundamental way. The reason no one predicted a decision victory was because American fans wanted so badly for someone new to emerge in the heavyweight division, someone American, and Wilder would be that man, decapitating the crafty Stiverne sometime between early in the fight and its opening bell. Instead, American fans’ ardor gets obtunded, once more, to protesting we didn’t expect what we got, though, really, it’s for the better, I mean what did we know, actually, in an odd sort of way, the disciplined, cerebral decision victory was truly much much better for everyone involved than the violent knockout we begged for.

Does any other sport demand from its spectators so much narrative-lugging, forgetfulness and self-loathing?

There is a large difference, though, between being disappointed in Saturday’s fight and being disappointed in Deontay Wilder. I sat ringside in Tucson for Wilder’s sixth and seventh professional matches, first round knockouts of men with a cumulative record of 4-6-2, and had anyone told me – and possibly someone did – Wilder would someday be a titlist in the heavyweight division, I would have scoffed at the suggestion, made a corruption quip, or predicted his matchmaker, whoever that might be, would go in Canastota on a first ballot. Wilder had size, a right hand, and athleticism, but otherwise he was like every other American heavyweight who tries boxing after washing-out of two or three other sports. Wilder was an athlete, ever and again, not a fighter.

That assertion stands, however much Wilder continues to exceed initial expectations. One other thing: Wilder is a charismatic guy you’re right to cheer for.

Before Wilder’s seventh prizefight, a round 1 shellacking of a lad named Travis Allen, colleague and friend Norm Frauenheim agreed to a friendly over/under bet placed at 90 seconds. While I no longer recall which way Norm went, I do recall this: When the official time got read, “one minute and thirty seconds of the first round,” we needed a tiebreaker. It seemed only just to ask Wilder’s opinion. When he visited press row, we sought his counsel, since his knockout came right on our number. Wilder looked down, pondered the question, looked up, shined his infectious smile, and said, “I would have bet the under.”

That a man with such limited boxing experience and skill has parlayed his size and athleticism to a title of some kind, in a way none of thousands of other similar such American heavyweights has managed, is wonderful for Wilder. His personal achievement should be applauded, and Wilder himself should be supported. To pretend Saturday was a victory for our struggling sport, though, is an absurdity.

Let us set our pompoms down once more, too, and reflect on how unseemly the final two minutes of Saturday’s match were when set against the first 30 seconds of postfight celebration. Wilder leaned and clinched and clung and absorbed Stiverne’s ineffective aggressiveness for most of the final 120 seconds of Saturday’s match, doing a successful imitation of a man riding a nag named Exhaustion in circles round Death’s abode. Then the final bell rang, manager Al Haymon’s flunky reported his dancing shoes to the blue mat, and Wilder came alive. As Muhammad Ali rope-a-doped George Foreman in 1974, Deontay Wilder rope-a-doped Showtime viewers in 2015. His fatigue was a ruse! He wasn’t really too weariful to stop Stiverne; he was conserving energy for a ferocious postfight microphone session. In an extraordinary display of incongruence, Wilder, who’d appeared not to take a single Stiverne punch personally in seven minutes, unleashed a wrathful display on Showtime’s innocent and defenseless cameras, whacking his own chest and roaring about his boxing ability, before turning his suddenly ungovernable rage towards press row, where he repeatedly shouted haterswards: “Who can’t box?”

One snickers to think what Wladimir Klitschko – who, on a bad night, wouldn’t need 10 rounds to ice both Stiverne and Wilder – thought of America’s savage new champion of the heavyweight division.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action LIVE from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas as Bermane Stiverne defends the WBC Heavyweight title against undefeated knockout artist Deontay Wilder. The action kicks off at 10 PM ET with a Jr. Welterweight bout between undefeated Amir Imam and Fidel Maldonado Jr. The co-feature will pit undefeated WBC Super Bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz and Jesus Ruiz.

12 ROUNDS–WBC HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE–BERMANE STIVERNE (24-1-1, 21 KO’S) VS DEONTAY WILDER (32-0, 32 KO’S)

Round 1 Right from Wilder..1-2..1-2..Left and right from Stiverne..right from Wilder..10-9 Wilder

Round 2 Uppercut from Wilder..Body shot from Stiverne..right from Wilder..right..left hook from Stiverne..left hook from Wilder..left hook from Stiverne ..hard 1-2 from Wilder…Stiverne is hurt…Stiverne falls after the bell and tackles wilder…Stiverne wobbled walking back to the corner.20-18 Wilder

Round 3 Right from Wilder..Good body shots from Stiverne..right from Wilder..30-28 Wilder

Round 4 Body shot from Stiverne..right from Wilder..Stiverne lands a hard left hook..2 hard shts…Body shot from Wilder..good right from Stiverne..jab from Wilder..right from Stiverne…39-38 Wilder

Round 5 1-2 from Wilder..Stiverne lands combo…big right from Wilder…hard 1-2…49-47 Wilder

Round 6 Hard combo from Stiverne..Big left hook.Jab to the body..58-57 Wilder

Round 7 Left right..from Stiverne..right..Jab from Wilder..Big right from Wilder hurts Stiverne..Big uppercut..right from Stiverme…68-66 Wilder

Round 8 Big left and right from Stiverne..right to the bodu…right uppercut..77-76 Wilder

Round 9 Jab from Stiverne…double jab…Jab from Wilder…lead left hook from Stiverne…1-2 from Wilder..jab to the body..jab…87-85 Wilder

Round 10 lead right …left and right from Wilder..left hook..right uppercut from Stiverne…97-94 Wilder

Round 11 jab from Wilder..Stiverne lands a left and right to the body..right to body..left to head…lead right from Wilder..106-104 Wilder

Round 12 2 rights to the body for Stiverne…right to body…uppercut..115-114 Wilder

118-109, 119-108 120-107 for the winner and NEW CHAMPION DEONTAY WILDER

Pucnh stats

Stiverne 110-327 Wilder 227-621

12 ROUNDS–WBC SUPER BANTAMWEIGHT TITLE–LEO SANTA CRUZ (28-0-1, 16 KO’S) VS JESUS RUIZ (32-5-5, 21 KO’S)

Round 1 2 rights from Ruiz..left from Santa Cruz..Right from Ruiz..Jab from Santa Cruz..right uppercut to the jaw..left hook to the body..Ruiz landing body shots…left hook to live from Santa Cruz..right cross..Jab to body from Ruiz..10-9 Santa Cruz

Round 2 Body shot from Ruiz..Goood oody work from both guys..Nice right from Ruiz..Santa Cruz working the body..left hook..uppercut from Ruiz..Santa Cruz lands an uppercut..body from Ruiz..head shot from Santa Cruz..20-19 Santa Cruz

Round 3 Cut over right eye and nostril of Santa Cruz..Right from Santa Cruz..left hook..right uppercut..right..1-2 from Ruiz…Jab from Santa Cruz..right from Ruiz and body shot..Hard combo from Santa Cruz…30-28 Santa Cruz

Round 4 Santa Cruz getting better..2 jabs from Ruiz..Right from Santa Cruz,,,40-37 Santa Cruz

Round 5 Santa Cruz lands a jab..2 left hooks from Ruiz..Santa Cruz lands a right cross..Clubbing left from Ruiz..2 jabs and a right from Santa Cruz..Nice combination (2 head/2 body)..50-46 Santa Cruz

Round 6 Ruiz lands a counter left hook..59-56 Santa Cruz

Round 7 Santa Cruz lands a left hook to the head..left hook to liver…2 left hooks from Ruiz..sweeping right from Santa Cruz..Hard flurry..Shirt right from Ruiz..Stiff left hook from Santa Cruz…69-65 Santa Cruz

Round 8 Big right rocks Ruiz…Santa Cruz landed relentless…Ruiz trying to fight back but Santa CRUZ CONTINUES TO LAND AND REFEREE KENNY BAYLESS STOPS THE FIGHT…

LEO SANTA CRUZ WINS VIA TKO 8

Punch Stats

Santa Cruz 277-641 Ruiz 120-554

10 ROUNDS–SUPER LIGHTWEIGHTS–AMIR IMAM (15-0, 13 KO’S) VS FIDEL MALDONADO JR (19-2, 16 KO’S)

Round 1 Counter left from Maldonado…left to the body..Imam lands a jab…3 lefts…2 good lefts from Maldonado..counter left hook…exchanging body shots..10-9 Maldonado

Round 2 Maldonado lands a jab..good right hook..sweeping right from Imam..Straight left from Maldonado..Jab and right from Imam..BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES MALDONADO AT THE BELL…19-18 Imam

Round 3 BIG LEFT AND DOWN GOES IMAM..2 hard rights from Imam…counter left hook..left from Maldonado..left to body…big left buckles Iamm..right hook…BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES MALDONADO..2 big LEFTS AND MALDONADO GLOVE HITS THE CANVAS…29-26 IMAM

ROUND 4 Body shot from Imam..straight right..Left hook from Imam…39-35 Imam

Round 5 Left from Maldonado…HUGE LEFT AND DOWN GOES MALDONADO…FIGHT OVER

Punch Stats Imam 87-254 Maldonado 76-242

By Norm Frauenheim–

LAS VEGAS – Canelo Alvarez still plans to fight on May 2, but it looks as if he won’t be fighting Miguel Cotto.

In a story first reported by www.boxingscene.com, Canelo promoter Oscar De La Hoya said Saturday that he is looking for alternate opponents after Cotto did not accept an offer Friday night.

“The deadline has passed,’’ De La Hoya told reporters at the MGM Grand after he and David Lemieux talked about the Montreal middleweight’s new multi-year deal with Golden Boy Promotions.

Timothy Bradley is rumored to be a Canelo option. James Kirkland is another.

Negotiations broke down over money, according to De La Hoya. Cotto, the reigning middleweight champion, didn’t get as much as he wanted.

A bout between Canelo, a popular Mexican, and Cotto, a Puerto Rican, would have been another chapter in the rich Mexican-Puerto Rican rivalry. It also was seen as a good way to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday and a traditional time for big fights.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. has said he wants to fight Manny Pacquiao on May 2. Pacquiao representatives have said the Filipino has agreed to terms. However, there’s been no response from Mayweather and — as of Saturday – still no agreement.

Cotto-Mayweather has been speculated if Pacquiao-Mayweather breaks down. There’s also a financial motivation for a Mayweather-Canelo rematch. Mayweather’s decision over Canelo in 2013 set revenue records.

By Norm Frauenheim

LAS VEGAS – The heavyweights undergo more study than a species near extinction. That means everybody has a theory or maybe an autopsy.

They’re either vanishing faster than Arctic ice, or they’ve moved to Germany, or they’re NFL linebackers, or they’ve been eliminated and forgotten by Wladimir Klitschko’s consummate skill.

Take your pick.

None-of-the-above is the hope held by promoters and Showtime for the Deontay Wilder-Bermane Stiverne bout Saturday night at the MGM Grand. Picking the fight’s winner is a tough call, which is also a damning reflection of a division that has fallen from prominence.

Stiverne is said to have more experience at a higher level, but it’s really not enough to proclaim him a clear-cut favorite over Wilder, a former Klitschko sparring partner who has a record of proven power yet doubts about his opposition and chin.

It’s safe to say that neither Stiverne nor Wilder strikes much fear in the Klitschko empire. Wladimir will be happy to fight, either. In a business still consumed by talk about whether welterweights Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr will ever fight, however, there’s unmistakable hope that Stiverne and Wilder will deliver the kind of drama that gets people talking.

The heavyweights have been here before. Too many times. Promoters are calling Stiverne-Wilder a Return To Glory. From Michael Grant through Shannon Briggs, however, it’s been a deadly succession of reasons to forget the heavyweights. More like a requiem than a return.

On Muhammad Ali’s 73rd birthday, however, maybe Stiverne and Wilder can stage the beginnings of a resurrection. The records are there. Stiverne, who holds the WBC belt, is 24-1-1 with 21 KOs, including a solid stoppage last May in a rematch with Chris Arreola, pronounced Orreo-la by promoter Don King. Wilder is 32-0, all by stoppage within four rounds.

Then there’s some edgy talk. Both have played their roles, uttering insults and often in a tone that says they mean it. Just listen to Stiverne. Before Wilder, he was as quotable as a doorknob. Now he has plenty to say.

The words continued after the weigh-in Friday when he looked a little soft at 239 pounds, a half-pound lighter than he was for Arreola. Wilder was 20 pounds lighter at 219.

At Thursday’s news conference, Wilder said a prayer he had written. To Stiverne’s ears, however, it sounded blasphemous.

“An insult to God,’’ Stiverne said. “That prayer was disrespectful.’’

Perhaps that was Stiverne’s way of saying Wilder has no prayer at taking the WBC’s green strap.

“This green belt is staying right here in this green hotel,’’ Stiverne said of the shade that gives the MGM Grand its distinctive look.

Stiverne also said that he detected something less than confidence in Wilder eyes during another nose-to-nose pose for the cameras. After a few seconds, Wilder broke it off, turned and walked to the back of the stage.

“One thing you got to know,’’ Stiverne said. “Eyes don’t lie. I could see it all in his eyes. He ain’t ready for this thing.’’

Then again, Stiverne has to look up to look into Wilder’s eyes. At 6-feet 6 ½, Wilder is four-and-a-half inches taller than the 6-2 Stiverne. Wilder’s advantage in height, according to some analysts, represents a stylistic problem for Stiverne.

If Wilder employs his long jab, Stiverne will have to work his way inside. But that’s when he could run into the huge right hand that Wilder has used to stop 32 straight opponents. But Stiverne has promised he knows a way to win, a way that he says will make everybody forget about Wilder.

“We’ll have to see,’’ Wilder said. “But I’m sure the People’s Champ, soon to be the world’s champ, will be around for a long time.’’

Maybe the heavyweights will be too.

NOTES: Wilder will collect $1 million, $90,000 more than Stiverne’s $910,000 minimum, according to contracts filed with the Nevada State Athletic Commission.

Junior featherweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (28-0-1, 16 KOs) was at 122 pounds at Friday weigh-in. His unknown challenger, Mexican Jesus Ruiz (32-5-5, 21 KOs), was at 121.5. Santa Cruz is guaranteed $750,000. Ruiz will collect $50,000.

Emerging welterweights Amir Imam (15-0, 13 KOs) of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Fidel Maldonado Jr. (19-2, 16 KOs) of Albuquerque meet in 10 rounder in Showtime’s first bout. Imam was 140 pounds at Friday’s weigh-in. Maldonado was at 139.

Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions has already begun to re-build a roster that lost several prominent fighters in the settlement with his former CEO, Richard Schaefer. Golden Boy announced Friday that it has signed middleweight David Lemieux, who was impressive on HBO in December with a stoppage of Gabe Rosado. De La Hoya and Lemieux are scheduled to meet with media Saturday.

By Norm Frauenheim

LAS VEGAS — At times, it was bizarre. At times, downright goofy. It was also long-winded, sometimes dull. Yet, it was also unpredictable, often entertaining and controversial enough to keep everybody interested.

Welcome to a boxing news conference that has begun to vanish, especially the heavyweight variety. But it was back Thursday, which is another of way saying the bully pulpit witnessed the return of Don King, malaprops and all. He’s an octogenarian, but there’s still a boom in those 83-year-old vocal chords.

For King, talking is like breathing. He exhales strange references, twisted metaphors and unexpected references the way the rest of the world exhales oxygen. Pretty much all of the time. It lasted for at least two hours at the MGM Grand.

Deontay Wilder and Bermane Stiverne were supposed to be the featured performers. After all, they fight for the WBC’s version of the heavyweight title Saturday night in a Showtime-televised bout. Wilder, of Alabama, and Stiverne, a Haitian, played their roles in what was a performance art.

“I’m gonna put the Haitian on vacation,’’ said Wilder, who is as good at the rhyming game as King.

But most of the rest of the show belonged to King, who wore a familiar denim jacket covered in flags, sequins and who-knows-what-all. He talked about former Army General and CIA director David Patreaus, who has been accused of telling classified secrets to a woman in an alleged affair

“Send a national, American hero to jail for a mistake so many people make?’’ King said. “That don’t send out a good message. Pray for Prateaus.’’

Pray, too, King said, for Nevada Senator Harry Reid, who hurt himself on a treadmill.

“Falling off treadmills and things, that’s really disasterly,’’ said King, who also found time to wish Golden Boy Promotions vice president Bernard Hopkins a happy 50th birthday. “Pray for Harry Reid.’’

Pray, too, for those of us who were trying to figure out what King would address next. Global warming? Islamic terrorism? Obama care? At some point, however, the immediate task at hand had to move front and center. Trying to sell a heavyweight fight these days isn’t easy, especially amid talk and only talk about whether welterweights Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr will fight on May 2.

But King hasn’t lost his voice, or his salesmanship, or his ability to counter trash talk with a quip of his own. King promotes Stiverne.

During Wilder’s turn at the podium, he turned to King and said:

“I heard, Don, that if there’s a chance of your guy winning, they’re going to get rid of you,’’ said Wilder, who went on to suggest that Stiverne would sign with Mayweather Promotions.

Wilder’s source? Connect the dots: Wilder’s advisor is power broker Al Haymon, whose No. 1 client is Mayweather.

“Don’t feel bad when you lose,’’ King said to Wilder when he returned to the podium and began a long-winded intro of Stiverne. “I know you think it’s your time, but there’s going to be an interruption for refreshments.’’

The interruption, King promised, would be Stiverne. The guess is that Stiverne will also be the refreshment. We tried to ask King about that, but he was already off and running with some speech about George W. Bush. Or was that Jeb Bush? Maybe both. But you get the idea.

The unflappable Stiverne did his best to answer the rumor posed by Wilder.

Stiverne stood at the podium, turned to King, shook his hand and called him ”my promoter, who I’m staying with. Now, you’ve heard it.’’

We heard a few other things, too.

Wilder’s 32-0 record includes an astonishing 32 stoppages, all within four rounds.

“I’m going to keep your record clean, cause you ain’t getting past four rounds,’’ Stiverne (24-1-1, 21 KOs) said to Wilder. “And that’s a ridiculous suit you’re wearing.’’

The rhetoric intensified. Wilder called Stiverne “a tourist with a belt.” Stiverne promised Wilder that he’s “gonna get hurt, hurt bad.’’

After the talking was done, they posed in a news-conference ritual. They stood there, eye-to-unblinking eye, for several minutes. The stare-down ended only when both were pushed away in opposite directions. Then, the talking resumed.

“Heh-heh-heh,’’ King chuckled.

A man, who has seen it all, was happy to see it all over again.

By Bart Barry-

Editor’s note: For part 2, please click here.

*

MARFA, Texas – This city sits in a little known region of our country called “Big Bend” for the curve the Rio Grande takes. There is a national park that boasts Texas’ most challenging and beloved hiking trail to the top of the Chisos Mountains, but the basin of the Chisos is a 2 1/2 hour drive, despite being only three towns over. Texas is secluded or lonely, depending what one makes of solitude, and rugged.

Marfa is the town 20th century minimalist sculptor Donald Judd chose for the creation and display of his work. While he divided his time between Texas and New York, he prized the light and vastness of the American Southwest, and today Marfa is both a town and a Judd museum of sorts.

Donald Judd was more than indifferent to art museums; he was hostile to them. He recognized the de facto mediocrity of anything done by a committee, an arrangement in which, by definition, consensus is more important than quality – where the lowliest members win by filibuster, and the one or two talented members either acquiesce from exhaustion or resign immediately. Judd did not trust either the curatorial process, and he sure as hell did not trust the light in which his works would be displayed.

Judd’s academic work at Columbia University was in philosophy, not art, and his promiscuity of literary taste – he read both widely and deeply – gave him an iconoclastic bent not appreciated by the artistic community, which in its tastes and associations reliably followed and follows the academy’s definition for diversity: People who look different and think the same. Judd, contrarily, understood the scandalous diversity of unfettered human thought. He read in English, Spanish and German, one notes from the volumes on the pinewood shelves he had made for his library, and perhaps a dialect of sorts, too: Catalan.

There was in Mr. Judd’s library a disproportionate emphasis on Barcelona, City of Gaudi.

Judd wrote widely, more than 600 articles of artistic criticism, and made acquiantenceships and often friendships with his subjects. He called his own forays in painting “sophomoric” and soon abandoned the medium altogether, moving from painting’s illusion of three-dimensionality to the actual third dimension via mixed media and the minimalist sculptures for which he would gain recognition and celebrity and a fortune.

Judd was right not to trust museums. Seen in museums, held in isolation from their comrades, hung on a wall among complicated paintings or stood on a floor among other busy creations, Judd’s simple shapes and flawless lines can look ironic, lazy and dull. Seen within edifices he selected for their light and spatial properties, seen in other words, in the exact single spot on earth Judd intended his works to be seen, Judd’s minimalist sculptures are another thing altogether. They glow. One looks forward to each new roomful of them. Bathed in natural light that descends at the artist’s chosen angle, these metal boxes and fibonacci progressions invigorate the spirit with their perfection.

Judd did not make mistakes, and in this way, like his works, he was unnatural in his creative process. Every room among the many properties Judd acquired in this small Texas town – population 2,500, 200 miles east of El Paso, 400 miles west of San Antonio – whether a studio or gallery or architectural workspace, contains somewhere a bed, as if to conquer nature’s most subversive tactic: fatigue.

Judd broke with a foundation he created over touring works of his he felt were permanently installed and not to be moved. He believed passionately an artist is responsible for the space in which his pieces are seen as he is responsible for the quality of the pieces themselves. It is maniacal, probably, but it is also great – and when given the choice between sublime experiences born of mania and mediocre experiences born of soundness, one should choose the former, or choose to stay in his hotel room watching television (the latter).

Juan Manuel Marquez – that is who came to mind as I stood in Judd’s library, squinting to see if there might be a column to make of the experience. Marquez, because summoning in cold blood an offensive precision and perfection of attack is not natural – whereas flinching and feinting and desperately endeavoring to avoid an attack from man or beast is exceedingly natural, however efficiently performed. And also the creation of a specific space in which one might exhibit his work, a space that shapes the art made for it, over time, more than any single work in the space itself, and this idea of Judd’s is large and flexible enough to comprise everything from an airplane-hangar-cum-museum to a prizefighting career to a single prizefight to a column ostensibly dedicated to prizefighting’s celebration: Take as much care with creating a space for your work as your work itself.

No one who comes to Marfa or visits Chinati Foundation comes away from the experience thinking: If only Judd had cared a little more, this would be perfect. Notice, too, no commentator questions the precision of Marquez’s punch placement or where he chooses to invest his offensive output in the early parts of a prizefight, creating, as it were, a space in which his finishing blows might find greatest effect – because “Dinamita” is a historic closer.

And as this space, too, continues to grow in directions senseless as they are satisfying, each contribution must find its own way . . .

*

Editor’s note: For Part 4, click here.

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim–

Gennady Golovkin’s stop in Los Angeles Wednesday at the end of an international tour for his Feb. 21 bout with Martin Murray in Monaco was an anti-dote, timely relief from speculation about what’s happening or not happening in negotiations for Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Canelo Alvarez-Miguel Cotto.

Boxing is stuck in never-never land these days, but at least there’s Golovkin, who brings a clear sense of purpose and direction to what he’s doing.

Some of the best-known names continue to avoid him with a litany of tired excuses. The latest, Peter Quillin, said Golovkin just isn’t a draw. Huh? Didn’t he just sell out the Stub Hub Center in Carson, Calif., for his quick stoppage of Marco Antonio Rubio? Quillin wishes he could draw crowds like GGG.

But with that unflappable, what-me-worry grin, Golovkin moves forward, telling a news conference that he plans to fight four times in 2015. The Murray bout is intriguing and perhaps Golovkin’s toughest to date.

Murray knocked down Sergio Martinez and lost a 12-round decision to the then middleweight champ in Buenos Aires. The durable Murray promises to test GGG. But the guess here is that Golovkin wins in the late rounds for a 19th successive stoppage.

Then what? Some familiar names were mentioned Wednesday. Golovkin trainer Abel Sanchez continues to talk about Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Chavez, he says, has a style that would produce a dynamically dramatic bout with Golovkin. But Chavez’ contract problems with Top Rank could put him on the legal shelf for a while.

Here’s another idea: Go straight to Canelo Alvarez, the popular Mexican who is moving up weight for a shot at Cotto’s 160-pound title. Canelo has said he’s willing to fight Golovkin. Representatives for Canelo and Cotto are reportedly close to a deal for a May 2 bout, another potential classic in the great Mexican-Puerto Rican rivalry.

There was talk that the agreement would be announced Tuesday. Tuesday came and went with no news. As of Thursday, there was still nothing. A snag? Breakdown? Maybe not. But you never know.

If talks stall, Golovkin should let Golden Boy Promotions know that he’s willing and available for the May 2 date that Canelo wants, no matter happens with Mayweather-Pacquiao and Mayyweather’s attempt to take ownership of the Cinco de Mayo celebration. Mayweather, who calls the prized date Cinco de Mayweather, showed up at a Pacer-Lakers game on Jan. 5 at Staples Center in Los Angeles decked out in Mexican colors.

It was his way of courting Mexican fans. But it could backfire. Mayweather in the green, white and red might be seen as trespassing on Mexico’s historical turf. Meanwhile, Mexican fans already have begun to embrace Golovkin. Before GGG’s victory over Rubio in October, some of those same fans arrived at the Stub Hub Center wearing T-shirts that said: “Mexicans for Golovkin.’’

If Canelo-Golovkin gets done and Canelo wins, then a Golovkin bout could be negotiated for the September date that celebrates Mexican Independence. Mayweather wants to own that date, too. Golovkin could help Canelo in his fight to re-claim it.

By Bart Barry-

Editor’s note: For part 1, please click here.

*

The week that began in February, ended in March and became the pinnacle of HBO boxing’s viewership feats in 2014 did not fool any of its participants or witnesses and still hasn’t. The ratings phenom who is Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. is not phenomenal at all when his numbers are put against nearly any other televised athletic competition, and his rematch with Bryan Vera in March was treated with contempt by most aficionados who treated it at all.

Then there was its choice of venue, a city in Texas – most despised of all boxing states by pundits who do not reside here. Chavez returned to Texas, place of lost drug tests and delayed weighins and scorekeepers decried by Paulie Malignaggi, to ensure he was given benefits of the doubt California and Nevada occasionally show dereliction in granting Son of the Legend, but this time he didn’t much need them.

There was a doubt in no one’s mind but Vera’s and maybe Ronnie Shields’ that a semiserious Chavez would beat Vera convincingly, and what suspense remained after the weighin expired with Chavez’s tardy arrival at the arena, as there were rising doubts at ringside he would bother being in his dressing room at his HBO- or commission-appointed time. Chavez does not care a whit about American television; he knows the herculean efforts made to keep him off premium-cable airwaves during the early part of his career, he knows his ratings happen in spite of HBO’s coverage of him and not because of it, he knows fully half his American audience watches solely in the hopes his ass gets beaten nearly to death, and he knows 90 percent of the other half of his viewers do so out of abiding loyalty to the Legend, not Son of.

Chavez Jr. is a millionaire despite his worst efforts, and he is just aware enough to be tickled by it. If you need a reason to like the kid, try this: He’s made absurdity his business partner.

*

The week that began in February, ended in March and became the pinnacle of HBO boxing’s viewership feats in 2014 gave the IABWA an occasion for its first meeting of the year. The association, such as it is, was born of Kelsey McCarson’s perennial rejection by the BWAA’s membership committee, and it was born of camaraderie, not protest; the folks who run the BWAA are for the most part good and decent, and Kelsey is good and decent, and if the two sides ever had aligned it would have been happier for both but much sadder for Kelsey’s followers on Twitter who so enjoy Kelsey’s satirical criticisms of the true boxing writers association.

We are all better and funnier than our public faces, and this holds particularly true for boxing writers – a group of talented and often hurt people describing other talented and hurt people hurting people.

There may be no better place than ringside, whether in Michigan or Colorado or Arizona, but in San Antonio, the next best place is McNay Art Museum, The McNay, where I took my friend and houseguest David Greisman hours before Chavez-Vera 2. David liked the pieces by Picasso, Matisse, Renoir and Mondrian well enough, but none of them resonated with him quite nearly like lines from his beloved E. E. Cummings do.

*

The week that began in February, ended in March and became the pinnacle of HBO boxing’s viewership feats in 2014 saw more of Russian light heavyweight titlist Sergey Kovalev than one anticipated. He was at a Doubletree mixer with promoters and managers and HBO handlers, he was at a special-access dinner at A—-r, he was ringside at Alamodome, and he was at Mi Tierra restaurant after Chavez finished beating Vera. He wore a full beard and showed a Russian interpretation of a trait once attributed to American President Richard Nixon: His smile and his face did not appear to be in the same place at the same time.

Kovalev sold menace, mostly, and the more menacing for failing to be in any coherent way friendly while publicly playing a friendly person. That he was later unable to beat Bernard Hopkins to unconsciousness tarnished his menacing image more than anyone now admits and few will realize for the next two or three years of relentless HBO promotion, and the contortions Kovalev’s absence of menace in November bent aficionados into would be amusing were they not tragic:

“No, no, a knockout, what? No! I wanted to see Kovalev cautiously outpoint a man about to turn 50. I wasn’t sure he could do it, and man, when he did, it made my year!”

Right, guys.

*

The week that began in February, ended in March and became the pinnacle of HBO boxing’s viewership feats in 2014 was seen by most who gathered round the Alamodome for the Friday weighin as the starter’s pistol for another decent year to come. Had you asked any of them if they believed the next evening’s match would be viewed by more HBO subscribers than another, to a person, they would have chuckled or said no or chuckled and said no. It was a testament to 2014’s overarching badness that in almost 300 days of trying, HBO made not one, more-enticing offering to its subscribers than Chavez-Vera 2.

The incongruent wardrobe of my return to television beneath a shower of ferocious South Texas sunlight brought to mind an old Chris Rock bit about a Sir Mix-A-Lot video in which the rapper wears a mink coat at a Seattle carwash where everyone else dances in bikinis. But never mind that.

People look to experts for authority. I was authoritative.

And just about perfectly wrong from beginning to end.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

The New Year gets a quick start, which is another way of saying there’s an early chance to forget about an old – a very old – year summed up by declining pay-per-view numbers.

The message in the PPV trend is unmistakable. The customers want to see something different or they’ll pay to see something else altogether.

Attention on 2015 begins on Jan. 17 at an end of the scale that has been forgotten in the United States. Remember the heavyweights? Deontay Wilder and Bermane Stiverne at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand might re-inject some interest in the Klitschko Division.

For while, at least, Wilder-Stiverne might quiet the ceaseless noise about a welterweight fight that never seems to happen.

More on that later on a 2015 scorecard, a checklist, that includes a few other wishes:

ü Waldimir Klitschko against the Wilder-Stiverne winner in a bout that would get some media attention in the U.S. It also would be a chance for Klitschko to gain some respect and perhaps enhance his place in heavyweight history.

ü No more talk from or about Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. Just fight, please. There are better bouts out there, but a dysfunctional game needs this one just to prove to an eroding fan base that it can still do business.

ü Pacquiao versus Terence Crawford at 140 pounds. If Pacquiao-Mayweather continues to produce only rhetoric and no fight, Crawford could end the talk. Crawford, a leading contender for Fighter of Year, is in his prime and as capable of beating Pacquiao as an aging Mayweather is.

ü A quote from Al Haymon

ü A real fight, instead of a one-sided blowout, between fighters represented by Haymon, who didn’t do anything for his matchmaking/promotional reputation with the Danny Garcia-Rod Salka schlock in August.

ü After an idle 2014, Andre Ward back in the ring, in a fight against somebody, anybody.

ü Gennady Golovkin versus Andy Lee, whose dramatic stoppage of Matt Korobov for the WBO’s middleweight belt transformed him into an intriguing GGG possibility. Maybe one who won’t avoid him, too.

ü A bout in the U.S. for breakout star Roman Gonzalez, the unbeaten Nicaraguan flyweight and pound-for-pound contender who hasn’t appeared in the American market since November, 2012.

ü Roman Gonzalez versus Naoya Inoue, who made a late run at Fighter of the Year with his stunning second-round KO of Omar Narvaez for a 115-pound belt. Inoue, a former 108-pound champion and two-time titlist with only eight pro bouts, skipped 112 altogether, perhaps because that weight class belongs to Gonzalez.

ü No more references to a Mayweather sweepstakes for opponents who are at the short end of a winner-take-all business model, boxing’s wealth gap. For two fights, Marcos Maidana got about $6 million. Mayweather’s minimum for both added up to $64 million. Maidana got less than 10 percent of the total. That’s a lousy tip.

ü A re-appearance of master tactician Mikey Garcia, unbeaten and an ex-junior-lightweight champ who hasn’t fought in almost a year. It’ll be 12 months since we saw him in the ring on Jan 25 in a victory over Juan Carlos Burgos in New York.

ü An end without a bout to the sad story of former undisputed middleweight champion Jermain Taylor, who suffered a brain bleed in 2009 and now faces a trial in Arkansas on charges of shooting a cousin. Every time Taylor answers another opening bell, it’s scary.

By Bart Barry-

The week that began in February, ended in March and became the pinnacle of HBO boxing’s viewership feats in 2014 began on a Thursday with dinner at La Gloria restaurant in the Pearl Brewery complex of the northern part of downtown San Antonio, a dinner that marked the first of the year’s biannual meetings of the Irish-American Boxing Writers Association and concluded with a trip to the airport to retrieve a perennial winner of awards from the Boxing Writers Association of America.

Those 7,323 of us gathered at cavernous old Alamodome on March 1 were wholly unaware we were witnessing HBO history when Mexican “Son of the Legend” Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. beat up Austin’s Bryan Vera in a super middleweight match legally conducted below the 168-pound limit, but we were. It was that rarest-of-all historic event: One forgotten entirely for nine months by its witnesses. Not until HBO announced a few weeks back no boxing broadcast of this lamentable year surpassed in viewership Chavez’s sole match of 2014 did we, its witnesses, realize our great good fortune.

Those who might otherwise conflate the words historic and historical, take note: Chavez Jr.-Vera 2 was historic because every time Son of the Legend dons the gloves, something “famous or important in history, or potentially so” – and do mind that last clause – happens, and it was historical because HBO’s announcing not one of its boxing broadcasts in the final 297 days of the year had more viewers marked on HBO’s enduring record that Chavez Jr.-Vera 2 was indeed “of or concerning history.”

Forget not, either, this historic and historical broadcast featured Mexican Orlando Salido’s relentless assault on the protective cup of an undefeated Ukrainian, Vasyl Lomachenko, who, it turned out, was fighting for a title in only his second professional match that was actually his eighth.

There was a prefight promoter meet-and-greet followed by a special-access dinner that Friday, too, with Sergey Kovalev, the Russian light heavyweight who would decision while barely imperiling a 49 5/6-year-old Bernard Hopkins in November.

Friday’s weigh-in, the most suspenseful part of Chavez-Vera 2, found a hardworking friend of mine, and co-founder of the IABWA, who now has more readers on Bleacher Report than all my other hardworking friends put together, Kelsey McCarson, filming a preview of Saturday’s matches, a preview I happily participated in, looking stupendous enough to gain international acclaim as a boxing fashionista.

And yet, the best part of the weekend that brought HBO’s most-viewed boxing broadcast of 2014 was my houseguest and fellow Monday columnist, and perennial BWAA-award recipient, David Greisman.

*

The week that began in February, ended in March and became the pinnacle of HBO boxing’s viewership feats in 2014 personally marked an enduring departure from considering seriously coverage of our beloved sport, though that marking went initially unmarked.

It was born of lost access: Nine years, 450 weekly columns, 83 ringside fight reports, 28 articles for The Ring magazine and website, and nine writing awards from the BWAA, all, were replaced in 2014 by a simpleton’s rating system that sat me far enough from the ring to make accurate reporting impossible, hundreds of feet farther from the ring than ever I had been previously, including my first credential in 2005, when my readership comprised fewer than 10 friends and familiars. The nature of boxing credentials, ever impenetrably arbitrary, met in 2014 the budding trend of diminishing ringside seats and an automaton’s reliance on site-traffic ratings – which might begin a meritocracy if such things were not open to such naked manipulation, #PacquiaoWillFightMayweather – and brought our sport ever closer to the promoters’ nirvana of promoters’ employees exclusively covering promoters’ events, with a definition for promoters expanded to include cable-television networks, as it should be evermore.

There were fairminded concerns for Bryan Vera’s health, when the remarkably unserious Chavez who nevertheless missed Vera with hardly one punch in their first match arrived at Friday’s weighin for their rematch a half pound below a limit he ate right through in 2013, but those concerns were only slightly well-placed. Trainer Ronnie Shields praised himself for revising mightily the style Vera arrived in Shields’ Houston with – and Vera’s own postfight allusions to needing to become a smarter fighter did not belie Shields’ praise for Shields’ work – but Vera’s defense was porous, still, in San Antonio, porous as it was in California months before, though Vera’s pride and chin were stout as ever, thankfully for aficionados who did not wish to see Vera’s candle snuffed by Chavez.

Coincidentally, the wisest act I took the entire weekend was snuffing in a booth at The Esquire a Friday evening PED debate between David and Kelsey, rescuing Kelsey’s wife and me from hours more of a topic no more likely to find resolution in 2014 than it was in 2013 or 2012 or 2011 or 2010.

*

The week that began in February, ended in March and became the pinnacle of HBO boxing’s viewership feats in 2014 marked the beginning of the end of Son of the Legend’s affiliation with promoter Top Rank, though no one imagined it possible in San Antonio.

Instead, gathered members of the media were fed a report Chavez Jr. was offered by Bob Arum, earlier on fightday, a match with Kazakh middleweight titlist, and HBO junior middleweight and middleweight and super middleweight champion, Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. Chavez, who has sparred enough with Golovkin to know two things – Golovkin would likely win a decision, and Golovkin’s made-for/by-television power is unlikely to travel to 168 pounds with him – chose to request via his new manager a pay increase, promptly and publicly and loudly rejected by Arum, before Chavez signed with his other new manager, Al Haymon.

At the Kovalev meet-and-greet before the special-access Kovalev dinner, I handed the Russian’s Russian manager a copy of an issue of The Ring magazine that featured my 1,800-word treatment of his fighter, and he regarded it with as much interest as a lion looking at buttered popcorn.

***

Editor’s note: Part 2 will be posted next Monday.

***

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim

It’s a year that will be remembered for what didn’t happen. There was still no Manny Pacquaio-Floyd Mayweather Jr., despite the resumption of tired talk. Andre Ward, in his prime and perhaps the sport’s greatest pure talent, didn’t fight at all.

Take 2014, put it in a hefty bag and bury it where nobody can ever find it. Please. It’s been a forgettable year.

“Fans are fed up,’’ Oscar De La Hoya said during a media round-table before Amir Khan’s victory over Devon Alexander on Dec. 13.

Declining pay-per-view numbers are proof of what De La Hoya said. Fans, who made Mayweather the highest earning athlete in the world, are headed for the exits. They’ve already forgotten 2014. The question is whether they’ve forgotten the sport, too. We’ll find out in 2015.

It was a lousy year, but it did produce resiliency that has always been there. Comebacks define boxing. Terence Crawford, Sergey Kovalev, Gennady Golovkin, Roman Gonzalez and Nicholas Walters are the leading names in what might be the beginning of another one. They displayed poise, power, skill and charisma throughout a year that ends with Pacquaio-Mayweather talk still dominating blogs and twitter.

It’s impossible to know whether Pacquiao-Mayweather will ever happen. It’s also reasonable to wonder why anybody should even care anymore. The good news is this: There’s a lengthening line of fighters who look as if they could beat either. Behind Crawford and Golovkin, there was a resurrected Khan and an emerging Keith Thurman.

A year from now, maybe we’ll wonder why we continued to even mention Mayweather-Pacquiao. Maybe, the troubled business can move beyond futile speculation that is more a symbol of what’s wrong than right.

If it happens, a look back at 2014 will include the seeds of the rebirth. Here’s a quick look back at what was right and what might make 2015 memorable:

Man of the Year: Bernard Hopkins. A fighter nearly 50-years-old did what a younger Mayweather and a younger Pacquiao have not. He took a huge risk, a chance against the feared Kovalev. He took a beating, too, in what stands as a tough lesson from a wise elder in how to do business.

Fighter of the Year: The collective (no pun intended) face of the fighter from the former Soviet Union. Without Kovalev, Golovkin, Wladimir Klitschko, Vasyl Lomachenko, Ruslan Provodnikov and others, the future would look a lot more uncertain than it does already.

Comeback of the Year: De La Hoya. He re-opened doors and renewed hopes for again doing business across promotional lines when the Golden Boy Promotions chief approached Bob Arum in a peace offering. It’s still not exactly clear how it will all shake out, especially when it comes to messy questions about who has legal contracts with which fighters. Golden Boy or Al Haymon? But De La Hoya’s initiative is a potential beginning.

Promoter of the Year: Kathy Duva. She had the courage to stand up to Haymon and then the Main Events chief staged Kovalev’s one-sided victory over Bernard Hopkins in a bout that represents a game changer, a model for a New Year and a way out of a very old one.

By Bart Barry-

Editor’s note: Part 1 can be found here.

*

Every kid under the age of 25 on the Metro de Madrid has Sergio Martinez’s haircut, and while none is likely imitating Martinez so much as imitating Martinez’s influences, whoever they are, an hour on the Madrid metro – with aspiring supermodels, male and female, all practicing their vacuous look, that unique fixture of Homo sapiens, the ability to will oneself into a countenance that appears too stupid to formulate an emotion even – reminds any interested onlooker boxing could have done many times worse than we did with Martinez. He may not be missed, but we should still be grateful we had him.

That brings us, somehow, to Muhammad Ali, a man who at 72 was admitted recently to an undisclosed hospital to be treated for pneumonia. No worries, says Ali’s spokesman – as apparently Ali’s malady was caught early, and besides, how serious can pneumonia be? For a man who has suffered Ali’s afflictions, pneumonia is quite serious indeed, and aficionados should expect Sunday’s rosey prognosis to worsen steadily in the days to come, and if not this time round than certainly in the next year or so.

This will not be pleasant. In the days or weeks or months to come, expect every man with a right hand he can raise and make in the shape of a fist to come forward, in as public a manner as possible, to tell us his affiliation with “The Champ.” The tributes will be universally embellished and self-important, a million or more tales subtitled “My Time with The Greatest,” without one telling us anything we do not already know about Ali. From this legacy-borrowing stampede, expect one knight to rise on rear legs and make a social-media scene about Ali’s marital infidelities, known and otherwise, and watch with awe as, just that quickly, the myriad of Twitter feminists, female and male, pivot from Cosby Watch to leave their lasting mark, finally, by undermining the world’s memory of an icon.

They’ll not leave a mark because they never really do; their audience’s collective attention span can be measured in minutes, not decades, and some new tragedy or travesty will have their anxiety redirected in a fortnight or less.

What will remain months and years and decades after the souvenir gatherers are gone is Ali’s legacy with us, the dwindling number of persons who care about prizefighting with any measurable frequency, and Ali’s legacy with us will begin with 7-2 (4 KOs), Ali’s record against prime versions of Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton and George Foreman. Unlike those who might tomorrow sue posterity for greatness when their careers soon conclude, Ali fought four great prizefighters an aggregate of nine times. He made real fights with other great men, yanking his legacy from the hypothetical realm in which today’s largest draw resides, with his empty blather about alphabetized sides and alphabetized titles, dotingly broadcasted via shameless interviews no one believes any longer.

In a different astonishing interview last week, the president of HBO Sports told The Ring he is “thrilled” with his network’s coverage of boxing in 2014. Evidently, it is difficult for him to imagine how his network could do better with our sport in 2015, and well it ought be: Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. versus Bryan Vera II in San Antonio, a Boxing After Dark undercard match in nearly any other year, or a Latin Fury headliner, set a mark of viewership-enormity HBO managed not to surpass in nine subsequent months of trying. Incredibly, not even Gennady Golovkin’s record-breaking performance in Carson, Calif., the one where Golovkin devastated the fragile psyche of that guy who lost to Chavez Jr. in 2012, could unseat “Son of the Legend” from his brink-pink throne, or lift the cannabis wreath from his head.

While Chavez may not fight again for a while – a common benefit of signing with Al Haymon – HBO should hurry its cameras to Verona, NY, next month, as Vera, one half of HBO’s Broadcast of 2014, will be in action with Willie Monroe Jr., and anyone who doubts more “thrilling” things will be in store lacks the imagination to run HBO Sports.

It’s all spires now, friends, and some of them come with crossing bridges: “Son of the Legend” would be continuing his reign of terror over the middleweight division, entering the ring to giggles, proudly wearing round his bunching waist the WBC’s gaudy, cream-of-green strap at catchweights from 170 pounds to 200, today, were it not for Sergio Martinez, who did a favor to whatever seriousness remains about our sport when, in 2012, Martinez stood on his shot knee and fought Chavez off him. We now know Chavez would have whupped the broken Martinez in a rematch, and with a genuine ticketseller and viewerseducer like “Son of the Legend” in its stable, why, HBO might not have shown what noteworthy imagination it has employed discovering Gennady Golovkin.

However poorly the network now broadcasts boxing, it makes good documentaries, for the most part, and last week’s premiere of “Tapia” was not an exception to a record that is no longer quite exceptional as it was. The story of Johnny Tapia is familiar to all aficionados, of course, but “Tapia” is somewhat predictable even for those unfamiliar with his story; the documentary follows an arc one recognizes every step of the way, and the hero’s demise is preordained as his ascent. It is not a causal observation, though, to say the movie’s most intensely watchable parts comprise footage from Tapia’s championship career.

It is quite possible, in fact, the highlights from Tapia’s matches with Danny Romero and Paulie Ayala mark the highest-quality, competitive fighting seen on HBO in 2014 – with all due respect, of course, to Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. . . .

*

Editor’s note: For Part 3, click here.

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim

Controversial decisions and interim titles are little bit like scars. If you haven’t got at least one of them, it’s time for a different line of work. It’s a mixed bag, but it’s a sure a way to measure progress in a chaotic game.

Jose Benavidez Jr. returned to Phoenix from his Dec. 13 victory over Mauricio Herrera in Las Vegas with two of them – a controversial unanimous decision and the World Boxing Association’s interim version of the junior-welterweight title. There were no scars. Not yet anyway. But it’s safe to say that they’ll be there in bigger fights for the unmarked and unbeaten 22-year-old.

His career was launched in one night.

There’s been plenty of reasonable debate about the cards. It continued on web sites and in social media for a couple of days after the 116-112, 117-111, 116-112 scores were announced and then booed. Subsequent attention on Benavidez might not have been there had he stopped Herrera.

In this era of short-attention spans, an extra day or two of tweets and blogs add up to potential marketability. Above all, there’s interest in a rematch. Herrera, who argued his work-rate and body- punching were ignored by the judges, said he wants one.

“If he wants a rematch, sure,’’ Benavidez told 15 Rounds while standing in a ballroom outside of The Cosmopolitan’s arena with the interim belt hanging off his right forearm like a charm bracelet. “He’d be easier to fight.’’

Benavidez said it coolly.

Confidently.

That cool, confident persona was there before opening bell and throughout 12 rounds. Despite doubts about his experience and his ability to go the distance, there was never a word, tone or gesture that said Benavidez ever had a doubt about what would happen or how it would happen.

Even in negotiations for the fight, Benavidez raised some eyebrows when he said no to an offer to fight at a catch-weight – 142 or 143 pounds – in a 10-rounder with no title at stake.

But Benavidez didn’t want an interim step.

He wanted an interim title, the first major belt won by an Arizona fighter since Hall of Fame junior-flyweight Michael Carbajal, who held the WBC and IBF titles before retiring as the WBO champ after a victory over Jorge Arce in 1999.

The day before opening bell, there was another surprise. The 6-foot Benavidez stepped on to the scale at 138.5 pounds, lighter than the shorter Herrera. He looked drawn, refugee hungry. It looked as if he couldn’t last eight rounds, much less 12. Maybe, that’s what he wanted Herrera to think.

Then came the biggest surprise of all. In the opening round, his back was on the ropes and his hands were up in a defensive posture. It was a tactic he used throughout the fight. His father and trainer, Jose Benavidez Sr., kept urging him to get off the ropes and into the center of the ring.

“My dad didn’t want me there, didn’t want me on those ropes,’’ said the junior Benavidez, whose 18-year-old brother, super-middleweight David Benavidez, makes his American debut Saturday night in Phoenix at Celebrity Theatre on a UniMas-televised card (6 p.m. MST) that includes Top Rank prospect Oscar Valdez and heavyweight Andy Ruiz against former champion Sergei Liakhovich. “But I wanted to go 12 rounds. That was important to me. Nobody thought I could do it.’’

He conserved his energy, which allowed him to fight in furious bursts with eye-catching punches, including a jab that is as long and lethal as any. The judges noticed, prompting an argument about whether they were watching at all.

Yes, the punch stats say Herrera outworked Benavidez by a wide margin. He threw 870 punches; Benavidez threw 647. Arguments en behalf of Herrera, however, often exclude accuracy. Benavidez landed 39 percent; Herrera 33 percent.

Stoppages are the result of a punch that lands. Not one that misses. But there are judges whose scoring philosophy favors defense over aggressiveness and vice-versa. It’s not clear-cut and never should be. If Benavidez is as successful as many now expect, he one day will feel as fleeced as Herrera did. Like interim titles, controversy, scars, death and taxes, that’s inevitable.

Against Herrera, however, he displayed an instinctive feel for what, how and when to act. Frustration at the scoring includes complaints that he stole rounds. No doubt bout it. His quick bursts of energy and accuracy won rounds that otherwise might have been even or scored for Herrera. But stealing rounds is a time-honored skill, as fundamental as a jab. Floyd Mayweather Jr. does it. Bernard Hopkins does it.

So does Benavidez, despite his youth and inexperience. Go ahead and argue that Herrera got robbed. Fair enough. But don’t compound the theft by robbing Benavidez of credit for a surprising performance that says this interim champion might be champ for a long time.

What is it about the iconic Rocky films starring Sylvester Stallone that makes them so appealing? Why do we find ourselves settling in on the couch to watch one whenever they’re on broadcast television, like a moth to the proverbial flame? Ultimately, was it necessary for the series to be “capped off” by the sometimes questionable last film in the series, Rocky Balboa? The answers to these questions, though mainly steeped in opinionated reflection, have a lot to do with the “underdog scenario,” and the way in which audiences tend to gravitate to these stories; here is an everyday neighborhood figure many of us can relate to, who smashes through the odds against him no matter how large or seemingly unstoppable his opponents appear to be…and that’s always the underlying power behind a feel-good film.

Interestingly enough, the Rocky franchise plays much like a superhero/comic book series in structure: With each passing film, our main character boxes his way through tougher and tougher adversaries, much like a comic book hero does with his rogues gallery of villains, even though it sometimes goes a bit too far with regard to suspension of disbelief (if anyone punched as hard as Dolph Lundgren’s character did in Rocky IV, no one would survive the hit, let alone come back for more). Rocky, the first entry from 1976 directed by John G. Avildsen – who would go on to direct the fifth film to bring the “Philadelphia” theme full circle – introduces us to down-on-his-luck street/club fighter Rocky Balboa, who collects debts for a local loan shark by day and battles local thuggish boxers by night. This original classic introduces us to key players in the remainder of the franchise, including manager and trainer Mickey (Burgess Meredith), girlfriend-turned-wife Adrian (Talia Shire), her unkempt and alcoholic brother Paulie (Burt Young) and heavyweight boxing champion of the world at the time, Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers).

Many die hard Rocky franchise fans, like enthusiasts of any culturally popular series a la Star Wars and Star Trek, tend to categorize their favorite and least-favorite entries based on strength of characters, storylines, plot cohesion and sheer entertainment value; again and again, it’s unanimously felt that 1976’s Rocky remains the most influential and powerful of the series, introducing us to all the characters and setting up the main character’s love/hate relationship with adversary Apollo Creed, further explored in Rocky II. In the original Rocky, we witness with somewhat empathetic eyes Stallone’s punchy – a bit of pun intended – character endure the hardships of being a local, rather unpopular almost-unpaid boxer while being a frowned-upon collector for the local mobster. Yet as the film progresses, we cheer him on as he wins Adrian’s heart, accepts Apollo’s challenge for a match with a local Philadelphia underdog and trains his tail off under Mickey’s supervision. Of course, the concluding boxing match’s draw sets up the inevitable sequel, which Stallone himself would go on to direct.

Rocky II, released two years later and helmed by Stallone, takes a page from Halloween II’s book and becomes a great sequel because of it, picking up exactly where the first film leaves off. Balboa and Creed both suffer from injuries relating to the beating they gave each other at the end of Rocky, and are shown being transported to a local hospital where Creed spews a series of rematch challenges at Rocky. While Rocky doesn’t initially want it and trainer Mickey advises against it due to Balboa’s state of health after the first tussle with Creed, a rematch is set up, with the premise being that Apollo didn’t wholeheartedly agree with the “draw” ruling in their fight.

It’s often believed by enthusiasts of this franchise that once 1982’s Rocky III arrived, the series took a downward turn, mainly because of the almost cartoonish foes our main character was forced to face in the ring. Rocky, in winning the championship belt from Creed, is now living the good life with wife Adrian and their son, as Balboa defends his title in win after win. However, lurking in the shadows is the ridiculously tough Clubber Lang (Mr. T), a brutal fighter that becomes Balboa’s number-one contender for the title and who uses every demeaning trick to lure Rocky into the ring with him – even coming onto Adrian at a statue unveiling ceremony in Philadelphia. As a sort of turning point in the series, Rocky III is remembered for the way in which Balboa loses the title and then wins it back again under unprecedented odds against him, how his once arch nemesis Apollo Creed becomes his trainer and how the main character endures unthinkable pain with the death of his mentor and trainer, Mickey.

By the time Rocky IV rolled around – with Stallone again in the director’s chair – the “plausible plot” element had become out of control, at least to many diehard fans of the now-enduring franchise. Here, our main character faces his most lethal and powerful opponent yet in Dolph Lundgren’s “Ivan Drago,” a hulking machine of a boxer who comes from Russia to engage in a friendly exhibition match against world renowned champ Rocky Balboa. But when ex-champ Apollo Creed sees an opportunity to face Drago first, he seizes it…and pays a big price for his ego-fueled posturing when he is defeated – lethally – by the massive Russian at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. This sets up the inevitable match between Drago and the physically outmatched Balboa, the two pumped-beyond-belief super athletes duking it out on Christmas in Moscow. Of course, Rocky IV has been heavily criticized for being somewhat beyond believable, what with the unrealistic inhuman blows delivered by Lundgren’s Ivan Drago and the fact that none of them actually kill Balboa in their match, or the way in which Drago receives all sorts of “boosting” chemicals to make him even stronger than he actually is, while Balboa continues to take him on in the ring.

With seemingly nowhere left to go with the plot structures, Rocky V returned the action to the streets of Philadelphia where it all began, reuniting much of the main cast from the original film with its director, and shifting the focus from Rocky being a fighter to him becoming a manager and trainer. Rocky Balboa, meanwhile, felt like an unnecessary bookend to the series by many fans, with Stallone again directing and attempting to create some kind of “closure” that wasn’t really needed; Adrian has passed away and Rocky finds himself visiting her grave every so often, to Paulie’s dismay, who is attempting to put all the pain of the loss behind him. What ultimately feels so odd and out of place about this last Rocky entry (to date) is the way in which the final inevitable fight between a “real” boxing contender and Balboa plays out, for the first time in the franchise, like a genuine pay-per-view event at a Las Vegas resort. Making the situation even more uncomfortable is the way in which Balboa has become so arthritic and downright old, forcing his antics in the ring to appear strangely “off” as he faces his younger, seasoned opponent; this didn’t feel like a Rocky film, at all, but it can be argued this is exactly what Stallone was going for.

Perhaps the most recognized sports underdog story, the Rocky series continues to endure for many reasons and on varying (and a rapidly expanding number of) mediums – including iTunes, DirecTV, and, perhaps the best option for those fanatics out there, MGM’s Rocky Anthology DVD box set, considered to be one of the definitive versions of the collection to own – proving why everyone likes to root for the come-from-behind unlikely favorite.

By Bart Barry–

BARCELONA – At the metaphorical center of this autonomous place on the Mediterranean Sea, an ostensibly Spanish city much nearer France than Madrid, stands La Sagrada Familia basilica, masterwork of its city’s greatest architect, Antoni Gaudí i Cornet, known the world over as Gaudí, a man whose patronymic bears a curious resemblance to the derisive modifier “gaudy.” His edifice has been under continual construction for 132 years, and today cranes fly hundreds of feet in the air all round its untouchable spires, attesting to a full hardhat crew whose business-hours labor ceases but once monthly, for the sole Catholic mass the basilica hosts.

There appears no coherent plan for the cathedral though construction is slated to complete, supposedly, in 15 years; La Sagrada Familia simply grows higher and more unique and more astounding with each passing generation of Catalans set to work on it – unified by one theme: a pursuit of beauty. If it has proved a wondrous, unpredictable approach to the church’s many columns, it shall prove itself as an idea, here, too, in this single and singular column.

So begins Column without end, a series that shall continue until it doesn’t and shall happen whenever boxing supplies inadequate material or ample material inadequate for sagacious commentary or, frankly, any commentary whatever. There were five or more boxing matches Saturday on two cards in the United States, televised simultaneously once more by America’s two premium cable networks, both cards came from Las Vegas, Twitter reported, and excepting only Timothy Bradley’s characteristically fine effort, none warrants the commentary its network might insist it does.

It never should have entered the charters of HBO or Showtime to develop talent on their airwaves – if promoters are good for anything, and but for Top Rank, they probably are not – it might be the development of fighters, the making of them ready, that is, for a chance on HBO or Showtime. That makes me sound old fashioned, I know, a fossil clinging to some sentimental sediment, some sediment of sentiment, about the the very word “premium” – one that in its adjectival case remains, in dictionaries if not as a modifier for cable networks, denotative of exceptional quality or greater value, but tiresomely often is left by our premium boxing providers as a noun that denotes a prize, bonus, or award given them in the form of an absurdly large monthly bill. Instead, HBO has put itself deeply in the talent-development business, calling its picks for future stars and then making them so, or anyway insisting it has, while Showtime has lost its way altogether.

It is neither channel’s fault boxing gyms are shuttered or shuttering in American cities where they long thrived, but it is both networks’ faults a fraction of one percent of prizefighters have been so grossly enriched by network money they devastated boxing’s ecosystem in a way a generation’s repairs will, or would, not remedy. Ever and again and however often it must be repeated: The consumer’s role is not to justify vendors’ misdeeds, and a boxing aficionado neither should endeavor to justify the era’s two best men not-fighting each other nor waste a moment’s energy absorbing any press release, either by the press or its owners, seeking to explain what boxing historians will rightly conclude was unpardonable, blemishing into perpetuity the legacies of Floyd Mayweather, Bob Arum, Manny Pacquiao, HBO Sports and Showtime. In that order.

If Saturday Amir Khan made himself Mayweather’s likely May opponent, a fight Saul “Canelo” Alvarez would be well-advised to join Miguel Cotto in confronting headon, it excites no one’s soul but Kahn’s, and yet, a select bunch of knowledgeable folks has long asserted Kahn’s style should trouble Mayweather’s more than anyone else’s, including Pacquiao’s. Kahn has no chin, true, but he is deep enough in his career, now, to know that and skir anyone who would test it, as Mayweather’s accuracy could not help but do, and when was the last time an opponent strategized to fight Floyd in flight from the power of “Money”? Kahn’s footwork is skittish, amateurish in a way proportionate to the peril he senses, but Mayweather is well past his physical prime, and if he somehow convinces manager Al Haymon to allow him a fight away from MGM Grand, in London, say, where someone other than Haymon controls the ticket-spraying nozzle on the secondary market, a profoundly unlikely event, Mayweather might not receive by default the scoring of any round in which he is not felled outright, and that could conceivably make for an intriguing three or four rounds relative to contemporary prizefighting’s eroded baseline.

None of this will happen, of course – did Amir Khan just fill Wembley Stadium to decision Devon Alexander? would Mayweather consider making a fight outside the compliant jurisdiction of his handpicked athletic commission? is Justin Bieber enough of a royalist to return to his pal’s side as a pawn on the other side of the pond? – but it cannot be wrong to make a lunge for 15 seconds of SEO celebrity by driving traffic to this column via “Wembley” and “Bieber”, can it?

Oh, enough – this city is too marvelous, funky, offset and unique to burden its dateline with another syllable about any of the prizefighters whose names appear above (except maybe Bradley’s).

La Sagrada Familia basilica, during the sun’s 90-minute descent to the horizon, when its light hits the enormous and numerous expanses of stained glass that adorn the basilica’s facade, and its tons of stone columns suddenly become skybound popsicles, limegreen and watermelonred and orangeorange, is unlike any other place one might experience and the very thing for which a word like “sublime” was coined. When one sees its nearly endless spires from inside, its glorious and absurd crucificial adornment that makes the slain Christ appear in parachute to the altar, and how its glass transforms the metal of its organs’ pipes to iridescence, one experiences gratitude more than another emotion. One becomes thankful he is experiencing it, thankful for what optimism it induces: There may be more experiences like this to come, and I can find them . . .

*

Editor’s note: Part 2 can be found here.

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry