By Norm Frauenheim–

PHOENIX — Vasyl Lomachenko’s pro resume hasn’t quite caught up with his passport. But give him time. The resume was stamped with a major title, the WBO’s featherweight crown, in only his third trip inside a pro ring. No telling how many stamps are in his well-worn passport.

He’s on the road, all over again, as he prepares to go back to China where he won his first Olympic gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Games. Last week, the two-time gold medalist was at home, training in the Ukraine.

This weekend, he’s in Phoenix to visit an old Olympic teammate, light-heavyweight Oleksandr Gvozdyk, a 2012 bronze medalist who hopes to go 3-0 as a pro Saturday night against Lamont Williams on a UniMas-televised card at Celebrity Theatre. Next week, he’s in Oxnard, Calif., to train at Robert Garcia’s gym.

Final stop: Macao on Nov. 22 on a pay-per-view card in the first defense of the title he won in June in a majority decision over Gary Russell in Carson, Calif. A first-time defense for a first-time champion is often a gimme. But Lomachenko, who faced and lost to tough Orlando Salido in his second bout, is not in the habit of accepting handouts.

On a Top Rank card featuring Manny Pacquiao-Chris Algieri, Lomachenko faces a dangerous challenger, who is unknown in West, yet popular in Asia. Ever heard of Chonlatarn Piriyapinyo? Didn’t think so. But here’s an introduction. Piriyapinyo, of Thailand, is 52-1 with 33 knockouts. His lone loss is to one of the few Asian fighters known in the West. He lost a decision in 2012 to Indonesian Chris John, who beat Juan Manuel Marquez in 2006.

“Vasyl wanted to fight another guy with a title,’’ said his manager Egis Klimas, who is also in Phoenix for a card that includes two-time Olympian Egidijus Kavaliauskas (7-0, 6 KOs) of Lithuania in a welterweight bout and Russian welterweight Konstantin Ponomarev (24-0, 12 KOs) in the main against journeyman Cosme River (37-18-3, 26 KOs). “But nobody was available.

“So he went down the list and just asked for the most dangerous guy. For him, it was the guy from Thailand. In his mind, this fight is like a mandatory. He wants these tough fights, because he wants to learn. Then, may we’ll get a shot at (WBC champion) Nonito Donaire or (IBF champ) Evgeny Gradovich.’’

Donaire is scheduled to fight Jamaican Nichols Walters on Oct. 18 in Carson, Calif., on the Gennady Golovkin-Marco Antonio Rubio card. Klimas also manages Gradovich. Meanwhile, there are lessons for perhaps history’s most accomplished amateur. Like stamps in that passport, Lomachenko is trying to acquire as many as he can.

At Friday’s weigh-in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb, Ponomarev was 148.6 pounds and Rivera tipped the scales at 145.6. Gvozdyk, who is trained by Robert Garcia, was 175.2 pounds and Williams (5-5-1, 2 KOs) 175.8. Kavaliauskas, also trained by Garcia, was 147.8 pounds. His opponent, Eduardo Flores (17-14-12 KOs) of Ecuador was 145.6. Phoenix light-heavyweight Trevor McCumby (15-0, 12 KOs) was 173.6 and his opponent, Martin Verdin (20-18-2, 11 KOs) of Louisiana, weighed 176.0.

By Norm Frauenheim–

Floyd Mayweather Jr. is boxing’s undisputed Drama Diva.

The latest from The Money Team’s long-running soap opera is an apparent split between Mayweather and his longtime advisor and promotional partner Leonard Ellerbe. So much for the team in TMT.

In comments to FightHype.com , Mayweather complained about a breakdown in communication, a lousy ringside seat for his daughter and his disagreement over the decision to put two of his titles, the WBC welterweight and WBA junior-middle, at stake in his decision last Saturday over Marcos Maidana.

Al Haymon will be back, he said. But he made it sound as if everybody else is as expendable as spit in a bucket. A new team might surround him, he said, if he fights in May, although he suggested during the post-fight news conference that he might not fight again until next September.

Blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, Mayweather and Ellerbe might be headed for splitsville. But this is boxing. There are no friends. There are just associates. Mayweather’s primary loyalty is to money and the manager who generates it for him. In Haymon, he trusts. But it’s the money end of the equation that is forcing him to at least talk about changes. Reports of 925,000 for the pay-per-view telecast of the rematch with Maidana were actually better than expected, especially after a week of noisy controversy surrounding his comments about former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice and domestic violence.

It represents a jump of between 25,000 to 75,000 PPV customers. Reports on the first Maidana fight put the PPV number between 850,000 and 900,000.

But better isn’t good.

Showtime, a CBS subsidiary, is paying Mayweather a minimum of $32-million a fight. The contract includes two more fights. Mayweather can count on another $64 million. At that price, the network has a right to expect one million pay-per-view customers per fight. So far, Mayweather has exceeded the one-million mark only once with 2.2 million in his revenue-record setting victory over Canelo Alvarez.

Throughout the week before the Mayweather-Maidana rematch, there were rumblings that CBS President and CEO Les Moonves was pushing for a Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight. There was speculation — started by Bob Arum – that there were behind-the-scene talks between HBO and the CBS-owned Showtime about finally putting it together.

When asked about the rumors, Stephen Espinoza, Showtime executive vice president for sports, was cryptic. Espinoza didn’t say no. Didn’t say yes. He joked. But, come on, if you’re the CBS boss and on the hook for another $64 million, you’re demanding Mayweather-Pacquiao.

The real question is whether Mayweather will ever let it happen. He opened the door in the immediate aftermath of his unanimous decision over Maidana, but then began to throw out reasons that it never will. He’s called himself the A side, which means he would demand more than a 50-50 split. A couple of days later, he talks about a split with Ellerbe. It sounds like a feint. Promise a few cosmetic changes, and before you know it, the deal is done and Mayweather’s money is safely in the bank.

But Mayweather’s promises don’t always match up with what he delivers. To wit: He said his goal was to knock out Maidana in the rematch. He had a point to make, he said. He wanted to do it more for himself than even the fans. What happens? In the 12th and final round, he protects his lead on the scorecards by staying away from Maidana. What happened to the point he wanted prove? What happened to the KO? He never even pursued it. That was no goal. It was garbage.

Even his complaints to FightHype.com about the two titles are suspicious. It’s fair to wonder if there was, in fact, a hidden agenda. Putting up the WBA junior-middleweight title alongside his WBC welterweight belt might have been a clever attempt at forcing Maidana to wear 10-ounce, instead of 8 ounce, gloves. The WBA title is 154 pounds, a weight at which both fighters are required to wear 10 ounces. At welterweight, the mandated glove is eight ounces.

A few days before opening bell, there was a potential controversy. Maidana trainer Robert Garcia said 10 ounce gloves were mentioned on a document. He called it a typo. The controversy passed. The fight was contracted to be at welterweight. They fought at eight ounces. At 10 ounces, Maidana would have had less of chance than he had anyway. The 10 ounces might have been a way for Mayweather to avoid the fat lip he sustained.

If the ploy had worked and 10 ounces would have been the weapon of choice, it’s unlikely there would have been a complaint from Mayweather. Mere typo or not, it didn’t work. But it does give Mayweather reason to complain and another reason to make another promise.

By Norm Frauenheim–

Top Rank’s attempt to resurrect a dormant Phoenix market continues Saturday night in a partnership with Iron Boy Promotions in a UniMas-televised card at Celebrity Theatre that includes a couple of ex-Olympians, Shane Mosley’s son and a Russian prospect.

The prospect, welterweight Konstantin Ponomarev (24-0, 12 KOs), faces perhaps his biggest challenge against Mexican Cosme Rivera (37-18-3, 26 KOs), whose well-traveled resume includes a 2005 loss to Zab Judah in a bid for the WBC’s 147-pound title.

Light-heavyweight Oleksandr Gvozdyk (2-0, 1 KO), a bronze medalist for the Ukraine at the 2012 Olympics, will appear in his third pro bout with trainer Robert Garcia in his corner. Egidijus Kavaliauskas (7-0, 6 KO), a two-time Olympian from Lithuania, is scheduled for a welterweight bout.

Shane Mosley Jr. (2-0, 2 KOs) will fight for the third time as a pro as a super-welterweight on an11-bout card. First bell is scheduled for 6 p.m. (PST).

The weigh-in is scheduled for Friday (2 p.m.) at Crescent Crown in Mesa. It is open to the public.

By Bart Barry–

Saturday at MGM Grand Garden Arena in a rematch few aficionados demanded, fewer still watched, and fewer yet found entertaining as its predecessor, American welterweight and super welterweight titlist Floyd “Money” Mayweather unanimously decisioned Argentine Marcos “El Chino” Maidana. After promising to prove himself to himself, not you, by stretching Maidana, Mayweather finished the fight circling shamelessly away from his limited, winded opponent, citing numbed fingers in his left hand. Maidana, who cares no more if he’s called a dirty fighter than called an Argentine, apparently crushed Floyd’s fingers in his mouth during an eighth-round clinch.

The entire “Mayhem” spectacle was subdued in a way Mayweather fights have not been since the Carlos Baldomir farce of 2006, and one briefly wondered during the ringwalk, when Mayweather was accompanied by his two mountainous bodyguards instead of musical mascots, if early revenue projections might have slashed the budget for Team Money Team; or if perhaps Floyd, having publicly provoked men professionally obligated to take every provocation in petulant and personal a way as possible, couldn’t find a Canadian castrato or Southern stereotype brave enough to accompany him in public; or if, most charitably, Floyd was determined to be determined and have his fate determined by himself alone. The last interpretation is the best interpretation, one hoped and hopes, and Floyd’s stark entrance was a stark reminder how incredibly lonely a boxing ring can be.

One doesn’t get to the championship level of this hurting business without being able to read other mens’ bodies fluently, and Floyd’s capacity for processing every tick and twitch is among his greatest predatory assets. But mirrors are strange things, and Floyd, publicly vulnerable even when he wishes not to be, is no longer reflexive or interested enough to be impenetrable while he penetrates others’ weaknesses. It didn’t take a minute of Saturday’s fight to see Floyd’s legs were, in a word, soggy; though his footwork remained impeccable, he moved round the canvas like it was memory foam over the ring’s plywood base, not an inch of padding. He was skittish as his movements were laborious, and one now wonders what might have happened if an enhanced Maidana answered the opening bell, rushing him disrespectfully as he rushed Adrien Broner 10 months ago.

Floyd was waiting for that, yes, but he was waiting for it their first fight, too, and it made precious little difference. No one likes to be struck in the face, but it hurts Floyd doubly for denting both his face and deep pride at once. Like any champion prizefighter, Floyd’s opening tactic is requesting his opponent’s metaphorical signature on a tacit contract that reads: “You may strike me here and here, but not there.” Floyd is all fighter, and he expects to be hit. On his terms. Maidana, with his skyhook right and his frequently thrown forearms and elbows, violated a contract Floyd had far more accomplished fighters like Oscar De La Hoya and Shane Mosley and Miguel Cotto sign. Worse yet, when Floyd, enkindled by the Argentine caveman’s impertinence, sought to castigate El Chino, he did not at 147 pounds have the power or accuracy to imperil the Argentine and as always had to worry about his brittle right hand in the event he did land it flush on anything but Maidana’s lightswitch.

Every other round, when Floyd’s age and (over)training regimen made him rest, he looked singularly uncomfortable. He was not enjoying himself before or during or after his rematch with Maidana, especially when an unfortunately close shot of his postfight interview showed Floyd’s swollen and misshapen lips quivering involuntarily. Maidana, face clean after 36 minutes of sanctioned assault by Mayweather’s fists as it was during his ringwalk, showed Showtime’s buffoonish inquisitor exactly the respect Jim Gray deserved, irreverently lying to him in Spanish, in a reminder it would be nearly impossible for a Spanish-only Argentine to care less what a c-level American journalist from a b-side American cable network opined of his forthrightness or general mien.

Commentator Paulie Malignaggi was the only one who caught the face-smothering tactic Mayweather employed in order to wedge the fingers of his left hand between Maidana’s eager teeth. Malignaggi caught Mayweather doing it to Maidana the same way Malignaggi caught Mayweather doing it to Saul Alvarez a year ago; being suffocated sucks, and that’s the reason Canelo fired his right fist at Mayweather’s cup and Maidana chomped down.

One foul begets another, this is fighting after all, and much as Maidana’s impertinence flummoxed Mayweather for a minute or so, you knew immediately Floyd would not refuse to fight on so long as referee Kenny Bayless took his stern warning like a good supplicant. Floyd’s point was not made to Maidana – there was no reaching El Chino, after all – but to Bayless who, true to form and expectations, ensured the rematch comprised a ratio of athleticism-to-menace more favorable to Floyd than Tony Weeks’ unforgivably permissible performance did in May.

Provided Manny Pacquiao does not look too good in his upcoming match with Chris Algieri, a probable thing, that, as Algieri has some tools to make Pacquiao’s night a long one, Floyd’s advisor should begin negotiations with Pacquiao’s team, secretly, and use Floyd’s diminished reflexes, and both men’s diminished drawing power, to find something close enough to common ground to get signatures on at least one of Don King’s old blank contracts. Fill it in later, once casual fans find inspiration enough to care again about the last fight they wanted to see, and finally make a match that hasn’t looked this likely to entertain in five years.

Floyd will win – forget not how steadily Pacquiao declined after his night in Cowboys Stadium with Antonio Margarito four years ago – but there’s no shame in admitting this much: There were a few moments during Saturday’s match, when Marcos Maidana feinted an old Floyd Mayweather to the ropes and hit him with everything he threw, we all might have taken Pacquiao, even money.

Bart Barry can be found on Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action live as Floyd Mayweather defends two Welterweight world titles plus a Jr. Middleweight world title in a rematch against former world champion Marcos Maidana. The actions off at 7 PM ET / 4 PM PT with a 4 fight undercard featuring Leo Santa Cruz defending his Super Bantamweight title against Manuel Roman. Miguel Vazquez defends his Lightweight title against Mickey Bey. Alfredo Angulo takes on James De La Rosa in a Middleweight bout and the action kicks off with a Jr. Welterweight tussle between John Molina Jr. and former world champion Humberto Soto.

12 ROUNDS WBA/WBC WELTERWEIGHT & WBC SUPER WELTERWEIGHT TITLE–FLOYD MAYWEATHER (46-0, 26 KO’S) VS MARCOS MAIDANA (35-4, 31 KO’S)

Round 1 Mayweather jabbing to the body..Maidana lands a right to the head..Mayweather lands a left..Mayweather moving all over the ring…10-9 Mayweather

Round 2 Maidana throws a 3 punch combo..Mayweather jabbing to the body..Jab from Maidana..Mayweather lands a right and a left hook..lead right..20-18 Mayweather

Round 3 Maidana coming with a combo..Mayweather lands a counter right..counter right..2 more rights..hard right..another hard counter right..Maidana lands a right..jab..Hard right from Mayweather…Maidana lands a hard right at the bell…30-27 Mayweather

Round 4 Maidana is crowding and hitting Mayweather..Right from Mayweather..right…counter right..double jab from Maidana…39-37 Mayweather

Round 5 Jab – right from Mayweather..Counter right from Mayweather..counter right from Maidana…Short left from Mayweather...49-46 Mayweather

Round 6 Counter left from Mayweather..right..59-55 Mayweather…mayweather outlanding Maidana 97-64

Round 7 Maidana lands a right to the body..Mayweather lands a right to the body…body shot..Double jab from Maidana..Mayweather lands 2 rights..69-64 Mayweather

Round 8 Mayweather counters with a right and intiates a clinch as he has been doing for a lot of the fight…Maidana lands a jab and overhand right…Good right from Maywather..Overhand right from Maidana…Good right..Mayweather lands a lead left..Mayweather is claiming he got bit on his hand…Counter left from Mayweather…79-73 Mayweather

Round 9 Counter right from Maidana…Good hook from Mayweather…Counter left hook..Maidana gets in a couple of rights..Jab and right from Mayweather..left,…89-82 Mayweather

Round 10 Right from Maidana..Combination from Mayweather..Maidana throws Mayweather down and MAIDANA IS DOCKED A POINT…Maidana chasing Mayweather in corner…counter right from Mayweather..uppercut..jab..999-90 Mayweather

Round 11 Sharp left from Mayweather…Left to the body..Mayweather lands a low blow..Mayweather lands 2 lefts (Body/head)…Good right to the head..left hook to body and a right…Maidna lands a jab…109-99 Mayweather

Round 12 Mayweather dancing around the ring..Maidana traps Mayweather in corner…118-109 Mayweather

Mayweather 166-326 Maidana 128-572

115-112….116-111….116-111 Floyd Mayweather

12 ROUNDS–WBC SUPER BANTAMWEIGHT TITLE–LEO SANTA CRUZ (27-0-1, 15 KO’S) VS MANUEL ROMAN (17-2-3, 6 KO’S)

ROUND 1 Santa Cruz lands right to the body..Left hook to the body...Santa Cruz 10-9

Round 2 BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES ROMAN…ROMAN GETS UP AND 8 BUT ROBERT BYRD STOPS THE FIGHT

12 ROUNDS–IBF LIGHTWEIGHT TITLE–MIGUEL VAZQUEZ (34-3, 13 KO’S) VS MICKEY BEY (20-1-1, 10 KO’S)

Round 1 Sharp left from Vazquez..jab…10-9 Vazquez

Round 2 double jab from Bey…19-19

Round 3 Counter right from Bey..stiff jab..29-28 Bey…Vazquez cut on the right side of his head

Round 4 Counter jab from Bey…Vazquez lands a jab..left..Bey landing on the inside..39-38 Bey

Round 5 Vazquez lands a chopping right//counter left from Bey…49-48 Bey

Round 6 Double jab from Bey…59-57 Bey

Round 7 69-67 Bey

Round 8 Vazquez lands a jab..left from Vazquez..right..78-77 Bey

Round 9 Bey lands a jab..Vazquez lands a left hook..87-87

Round 10 Vazquez lands a jab..97-96 Vazquez

Round 11 107-106 Vazquez

Round 12 Bey lands a left hook..Combination..116-116

Vazquez 89-404 Bey 81-394

115-113 Bey…..115-113 Vazquez….119-109 Bey….Bey the New IBF Lightweight champion

10 ROUNDS–MIDDLEWEIGHTS–ALFREDO ANGULO (22-4, 18 KO’S) VS JAMES DE LA ROSA (22-2, 13 KOS)

ROUND 1 Angulo lands a jab…Body shot…double jab from De la Rosa..Body from Angulo..jab to body..10-9 Angulo

Round 2 Overhand right from De La Rosa..Jab..BIG LEFT AND DROPS ANGULO ON THE ROPES RULED A KNOCKDOWN..19-18 De La Rosa

Round 3 De La Rosa lands a combination..straight left.right…Body, hook and uppercut from Angulo..Counter overhand right from De la Rosa..29-27 De La Rosa

Round 4 1-2 from De La Rosa…Angulo lands a body shot..left to body..left hook..left hook from De La Risa..Right to body from Angulo..left and right…38 37 De la Rosa

Round 5 Combination from De La Rosa..Angulo lands a body shot..4 punch combo from De La Rosa..ANgulo lands a left to the body..nice right..48-46 De La Rosa

Round 6 Combination from De La Rosa..Angulo bleeding around the right eye..De La Rosa lands a combination…2 rights from Angulo…58-55 De La Rosa

Round 7 De la rosa landa an uppercut..Uppercut from Angulo..straight left from de La Rosa..nice right..ANGULO DEDUCTED 1 POINT FOR A LOW BLOW..68-63 De La Rosa

Round 8 De La Rosa landing combination..Angulo lands a counter left hook and straight right..short uppercut..Good right..combination..77-73 De La Rosa

Round 9 Left hook from Angulo..De La Rosa is hurt…86-83 De La Rosa

Round 10 Right from Angulo…Right from De La Rosa..3 punch combo from Angulo..Right and left..left hook..Angulo coming on strong…De La Rosa lands a left..Angulo trying to make 1 last stand…95-93 De La Rosa

98-90, 96-92, 99-89 FOR JAMES DE LA ROSA

10 ROUNDS–JR WELTERWEIGHTS–HUMBERTO SOTO (64-8-2, 35 KO’S) VS JOHN MOLINA JR. (27-4, 22 KO’S)

Round 1 Exchanging hooks..Big right from Soto..left hook..4 punch combination…10-9 Soto

Round 2 Right from Molina…overhand right..good right..right..Molina landing the right from distance..Left hook from Soto..another left hook..Left hook from Molina…good toe to toe action..Soto lands a 1-2..Molina lands a right…19-19

Round 3 Left hook from Soto….2 rights from Molina..Right from Distance..Right from Soto..Bih exchange AFTER the bell…29-29 Molina

Round 4 Molina lands a right..right hand..right..Soto comes back with a left uppercut..Soto backing Molina up..Uppercut from Soto..Body shot..Soto goes down from a Low Blow…38-38

Round 5 Molina lands a right…jab from Molina..Jab from Soto..right….Molina lands an uppercut to the body..Left hook by Soto..Combination…48-47 Soto

Round 6 MOLINA DEDUCTED A POINT FOR A LOW BLOW…2 hooks from Soto..Right from Molina..3 punch combo from Soto..Right from Molina..Hook from Molina..Uppercut from Soto…58-55 Soto

Round 7 Right from Molina..2 right hooks from Soto..Counter right from Molina..Left from Soto..Another Low blow from Molina and Soto goes down…Soto down on canvas in pain AND ANOTHER POINT DEDUCTION..right from Molina..67-64 Soto

Round 8 Left hook from Molina..Jab to body from Soto..right from Molina…3 punch combo from Soto..Left hook from body from Molina…Right to Molina and he goes down from a Low Blow…Big exchange at end of round..77-73 Soto

Round 9 Soto lands a left hook that goes low..Right and left from Soto..Soto lands a left that Molina complains that its low..Left from Molina off the ropes..uppercuts…1-2 from Soto..87-82 Soto

Round 10 Right from Molina..Soto lands a low blow…SOTO IS NOW DEDUCTED A POINT FOR A LOW BLOW..1-2 from Soto..4 punch combo…left hook from Molina…96-91 Soto

Punch stats…Soto 245-587 Molina 181-51

96-91, 95-92 on two cards for Humberto Soto

By Norm Frauenheim-

LAS VEGAS – Oscar De La Hoya got a key to the city Saturday and promised major cards in Vegas around each of the Mexican holidays in May and September.

“I have to thank the great Julio Cesar Chavez, because that man got that tradition started,’’ De La Hoya, president of Golden Boy Promotions, said to fans and politicians while accepting the symbolic key in front of the old sign that welcomes tourists to Vegas. “I promise to continue the tradition.’’

Over the last couple of years, Floyd Mayweather Jr. has moved into those dates. He fought Marcos Maidana in a rematch Saturday night at the MGM Grandin a bout scheduled to be part of the annual celebration of Mexican Independence on Sept. 16. He also has been fighting in early May as part of the Cinco de Mayo party.

A potential conflict looms if De La Hoya fulfills the promise. In an interview after the ceremony under a hot sun in the Nevada desert, he told reporters from 15 Rounds and the Los Angeles Times that he is obligated to schedule fights for Canelo Alvarez on those dates.

De La Hoya, the promoter of record for the Mayweather-Maidana rematch, said he will meet with Canelo on Wednesday to discuss options, which will include possibilities in May. There’s a lot of talk about Canelo-Miguel Cotto in a bout that would rank among the biggest in the great tradition of the Mexican-Puerto Rican rivalry.

“Canelo-Cotto is the biggest fight out there, other than Manny Pacquaio-Mayweather,’’ said De La Hoya, who was a Vegas headliner in May and September throughout his Hall of Fame career.

For years, Pacquiao-Mayweather has only been a lot of futile talk. There’s no reason to believe it will happen next May or ever. There’s speculation that Mayweather might decide to fight Amir Khan next May. Let’s say the choice is between Mayweather-Khan and Cotto-Canelo.

“Who would you pick?” De La Hoya asked.

By Norm Frauenheim-

LAS VEGAS – Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Marcos Maidana were all business Friday at a weigh-in that sounded like a rap concert with speakers that packed more power than some of the fighters on the undercard.

At 146.5 pounds, Mayweather was a half-pound heavier than Maidana and comparatively understated after days full of off-the-scale controversy generated by Mayweather’s comments about former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice and domestic abuse.

If there was potential that Mayweather might be distracted Saturday night at the MGM Grand in the welterweight rematch of his majority decision over Maidana, it wasn’t evident. Mayweather was as cool as the green color on the sweats that he and his entourage wore as the paraded onto the stage.

That green could have meant Money, too. Mayweather is guaranteed $32 million, according to a contract filed with the Nevada State Athletic Commission before the formal weigh-in for Showtime’s pay-per-view card (5 p.m. PST/8p.m. EST). Maidana’s guarantee is $3 million. The $29 million difference might say all you need to know about Maidana’s slim chances. It also explains how big an upset it would be if Maidana landed a punch that would knock out Mayweather’s attempt to retire undefeated.

“I know I can make adjustments,’’ Mayweather (46-0, 26 KOs) said after stepping off the scale and posing for a
ritual, face-to-face photo with Maidana (35-4, 31 KOs) that was quick and didn’t include any insulting or derogatory gestures.

Despite saying his goal was to knock out Maidana, the common wisdom is that Mayweather will try to exert control with patience and trademark precision. His father and trainer, Floyd Mayweather Sr. said he thinks his son was distracted in the May bout, which was preceded by controversy involving his former fiancé, Shantel Jackson, who last week filed suit against Mayweather alleging abusive behavior.

In the early rounds of their first fight, Maidana’s aggressiveness seemed to rattle Mayweather, who suffered a rare cut above his right eye from an apparent head butt in the fourth round. Mayweather, who also talked about knocking out Maidana in May, forgot some fundamentals, according to his dad, who wants his son to rely more on his jab.

“I’m going to take my time and listen to my dad,’’ said Mayweather, whose up-and-down relationship with the senior Floyd has not included too many moments of Father Knows Best.

The biggest news from the weigh-in could be heard in the crowd, estimated to be 8,000. It seemed to favor Maidana, although that might have been the result of noisy fans from his native Argentina. In his parade to the stage and onto the scale, Maidana was serenaded by fans, who sang and chanted, almost as if they were following a bouncing soccer ball.

“I’m here to change history and beat Mayweather,’’ said a thirsty Maidana, who weighed 146-even and looked thirsty as he gulped down a sports drink in an apparent rush to replenish fluid lost in a sauna.

Unlike Mayweather, there’s doubt that Maidana can do anything different in the rematch. Mayweather and his dad accused him of dirty tactics in the first fight. A ringside microphone caught Maidana trainer Robert Garcia urging the Argentine to “fight dirty.’’

It will be interesting to see if Mayweather’s complaints about Maidana’s tactics will affect how referee Kenny Bayless polices the fight. Mayweather was unhappy with referee Tony Weeks’ work in the first bout. He said Weeks let Maidana get away with too much.

“Definitely, I’m going to come out aggressive like I did in the first fight,’’ said Maidana, who enters the encore with as little to lose as he had in the first one.

That might be his biggest advantage.

By Norm Frauenheim-

LAS VEGAS — Floyd Mayweather Jr. has his “May-vinci Code.” Nobody can crack it, he says. And nobody has. His 46-0 record is perfect proof. But impossible puzzles aren’t always confined by the ropes. Mayweather has his own outside of them. Mayweather wants to be liked, a desire expressed in a press-conference rant Wednesday by his promotional partner Leonard Ellerbe. Stop the hating, Ellerbe, said. But without the haters where’s the money?

Call it the “May-vinci Dilemma.”

Mayweather is who he is — The Money Team and at the top of Forbes’ annual dollar-for-dollar list among the world’s highest-paid athletes — because of the haters who pay for a chance to see him get beat. Perhaps, that’s cynical. But as a business model, it’s little bit like the ring style that has produced that unbeaten record. It works.

At 37, however, there are growing signs that Mayweather is tired of being the bad guy. You can almost see it in his face. Lengthening shadows below his eyes are there, evident even on the promotional posters for his rematch Saturday night with Marcos Maidana at the MGM Grand in the fourth bout on his six-fight deal with Showtime. Maybe, it’s a distracted look. Or, maybe, it’s just middle-age. Or, maybe, its the look of an aging fighter with an eye on retirement.

Mayweather, in fact, talked retirement this week amid the usual tumult of the pre-fight circus.

“A year from now will be my last fight,” said Mayweather, whose current Showtime deal would probably end with a September fight in 2015.

Even the mention of retirement a few days before an opening bell raises a red flag. It’s often interpreted to mean the fighter is looking past the dangerous task at hand, which in this case happens to be the free-swinging, heavy-handed Maidana. Then again, this is Mayweather, who will say just about anything at anytime. To wit: On Tuesday, he sympathized with former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, who was caught on video knocking out his wife with a vicious left hook. A day later, Mayweather was backtracking, saying he meant no offense and that he didn’t condone what Rice had done.

There’s always some kind of craziness swirling around Mayweather. We wouldn’t recognize him without it. But the retirement possibility is a flashing signal that perhaps he’s grown weary of training, controversy and the ever-present danger of the one punch that could beat him. Could he change his mind? Dumb question. He could decide to return to the ring faster than Michael Phelps was back in world-class waters.

“They may come with a contract or I could stop right now,” Mayweather said the day after he he proclaimed that his last fight will be next year.

If Mayweather does the expected, beats Maidana and wins two more in 2015, there’s a lingering question about whether he would want to extend his career by at least one fight for a chance at a milestone 50-0.

“No, two and one,” he said. “Why not? I could walk away right now.”

First, however, he has to make sure he doesn’t walk into a Maidana punch.
Santa Cruz talks Frampton

Super-bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz faces Manuel Roman on the undercard in a featured bout that could be a steppingstone toward a showdown against Carl Frampton, the Northern Ireland sensation who scored a unanimous decision over Koko Martinez last Saturday in front of 16,000 in Belfast. Santa Cruz said he watched the fight. “Frampton really looked great,” Santa Cruz said Thursday after a news conference for Saturday night’s undercard. “Watching him made me want to fight him even more. He has a lot of followers. I have a lot of followers. It think that would make for a great, great fight.”

When asked if he would fight Frampton in Belfast, Santa Cruz said he would leave it up to his management.

“If my management can work it out, if it’s right, I’m willing to go there,” he said.
Another Maidana

Maidana’s brother is on the undercard. Fabian Maidana, a welterweight, hopes to go 3-0 against Jared Teer. “Fabian boxes a little more more than Marcos,” Golden Boy Promotions matchmaker Eric Gomez said. “But he’s still got that big punch.”

Notes
There are reports that former Golden Boy CEO Richard Scheafer is in Vegas for the fight. However, he’s been seen about as often as Al Haymon has been quoted. …Potential controversy came and went with the gloves. According to Maidana trainer Robert Garcia, there was some sort of document that said the fighters would wear 10-ounce, instead of 8 ounce, gloves. It was a typo, Garcia said. In the heavier 10-ounce gloves, the heavy-hitting Maidana’s chances would have gone from slim to none.

By Norm Frauenheim

LAS VEGAS – Floyd Mayweather Jr. and his promotional partner Leonard Ellerbe tried to put an end to questions about the domestic abuse scandal engulfing former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice Wednesday after the final news conference for his rematch Saturday with Marcos Maidana.

The questions continued the day after Mayweather said he wished Rice “nothing but the best’’ during a session with reporters following his formal arrival Tuesday to the MGM Grand.

“If I offended anyone, I apologize,’’ Mayweather said Wednesday. “I don’t condone what happened.’’

Ellerbe said: “Floyd doesn’t condone this behavior. Period, end of discussion. No more questions about that.’’

Mayweather served two months in jail for a charge related to domestic abuse. He pled guilty to domestic battery in a 2011 incident involving his former girlfriend Josie Harris.

Mayweather’s ex-fiance is suing him. Shantel Jackson filed a lawsuit last week in Los Angeles Superior Court. Jackson, who is represented by feminist attorney Gloria Allred, alleges Mayweather beat and humiliated her.

In news reports of Tuesday’s media session, Mayweather did not criticize Rice, who was indefinitely suspended by the NFL after video obtained by TMZ showed him knocking out his wife, Janay Rice, with a left hook while inside an elevator at an Atlantic City hotel.

“I think there are a lot worse things that go on in other people’s households also,’’ Mayweather was quoted as saying Tuesday. “It’s just not caught on video.”

He also expressed sympathy for Rice, saying: “I know he’s going through a lot right now, because football is his passion, football is his love. It’s no different than me being in the fight game if they told me, ‘Floyd, you have the biggest deal in sports history’ and a couple months later they said, ‘Your deal is taken away from you.’ It’s not really the money it’s the love for the sport, the passion … I know it’s drastic on him and his wife.”

During the news conference, Ellerbe took the media to task for being too critical of the unbeaten Mayweather.

“All of this hating and criticizing needs to stop,’’ said Ellerbe, who argued that a negative press has prevented boxing from reaching crossover fans and gaining the mainstream popularity enjoyed by the NBA . “…We must find a way to acknowledge greatness when we see it. There have been great fighters, but never anybody like Floyd, who has put the whole package together.’’

Mayweather has always been able to ignore distractions, although many of them were of his own making. Three days before opening bell against Maidana, it was hard to know whether the ongoing controversy over Rice would distract him from what some believe could be a dangerous fight. Mayweather’s goal is a stoppage of Maidana.

“A knockout is important,’’ he said. “I want to make a statement. Not a statement to the world, just for myself.’

By Bart Barry–

Saturday at MGM Grand, over which a 20-story Manny Pacquiao banner likely will not drape, American welterweight Floyd “Money” Mayweather will make a rematch with Argentine Marcos “El Chino” Maidana as part of Mexican Independence Day festivities. Mayweather will seek the definitive victory that eluded him Cinco de Mayo weekend. The fight will happen on Sept. 13 in part because nothing cries ¡Viva México! quite so proudly as an American fighting an Argentine in a casino’s sanitized climes.

Consensus among aficionados is that Mayweather won their first tilt while being beaten upon most satisfactorily, beaten upon in a way that can bend a career trajectory and eventually enable more realistic record comparisons with prizefighters of greater accomplishment. Those who would dissent with official scorecards, though, raise an interesting thought experiment: What if the fight had been scored like Maidana was the prohibitive favorite, not Mayweather, with a full 25-percent anchored to ring generalship?

What is most alarming about the latest installments of Showtime infomercials, alarming at least for the rematch’s box-office revenues, is how, with fewer dramatic scores and gasping narration, and frumpy Warren Buffett in lieu of spacey Roger Mayweather, Floyd is no longer odious at all. He wishes to be. Like an aged magician trying to conjure one more white bunny out the black hat for a birthday party whose kids have seen the trick nine times without promised cake or ice cream, Floyd inadvertently loops back on himself, often in the same clip: I don’t have to talk about how great I am, because I am the greatest and nobody is better than me, because I don’t have to talk about how great I am.

Made to look like a witling on social media by a scorned rapper pal, Floyd can no longer shout smug witticisms at an upturned camera; now YouTubers get Professor Mayweather, fatigued in yellowing light, offering a discourse on how little he cares what anyone says, shortly before securing his yoga mat in a perimeter of hundred-dollar bills. Hip-hop culture, such as it has been for 20 years now, is more synonymous with thespians teaching suburban kids how to appear menacing than anything militant or self-assured, or even clever, and Floyd has long, and oddly, wished to supplant the genuinely macho thing he does for a living with a ruined art form’s hamfisted thuggery. Still, has any public figure in even this meretricious age performed so many hours of heartfelt insecurity as the “Money” documentaries, invented by HBO and aped by Showtime, drive Mayweather to?

A living, breathing antonym for the word contentment, Mayweather has unflinchingly shown how much cannot be bought with so much money. After years of giving neither strippers nor a fiancée nor a harem of ageing women a dot of genuine enthusiasm, in Episode 2 Mayweather spiritlessly drives his squadron of luxury automobiles to his boxing gym – wherein he joyfully watches other men smash one another for the duration of a sadistic, 31-minute round. An embellished $500 million in career earnings, the Big Boy Mansion, an apartment’s worth of footwear, nine employees just to count rope skips, $10 million in sports cars – and the only time the man flashes the feral grin of his true nature is when watching a spectacle men perform round the world, free of charge, outside a hundred thousand bars every Friday night.

Is it any wonder someone grounded as Marcos “El Chino” Maidana does not respect Mayweather? One gathers from watching the men at choreographed “media” events Maidana looks Mayweather’s way and thinks: I’ll never box like him, I’ll never have a fraction his money, but, che, I’m so much happier than he is that, pues, oh well.

Expectations are unusually low for this event – not only does one hear nary a peep from his peers about the fight, but an unknown middleweight vacating a meaningless belt, midweek, stole its headlines, and an incredible Friday morning performance by a different Latin American, Nicaragua’s Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez, assured aficionados would have better things to discuss last weekend – and they might yet be missed. The feeling is that Maidana had his best possible fight against Mayweather in May, and Mayweather ultimately made adjustments enough to prevail, and so, whither something finer?

Worse yet, Maidana appears to believe an abundance of desperation was his greatest flaw last time, a belief both his trainer and his trainer’s trainer rushed to disabuse him of, and a pensive Maidana standing unperturbed across from a 37-year-old Mayweather, one whose brittle hands have fairly stiffened but one opponent in 8 1/2 years, make for a pay-per-view spectacle almost certain to leave Mayweather’s endearingly thrifty new advisor Warren Buffett feeling cheated. While referee Kenny Bayless is quite good and generally not officious, he was recently selected to atone for Tony Weeks’ disobedience in May, allowing Maidana to punch Mayweather several times after Mayweather specifically told him not to, and Bayless knows better than to ignore what prefight instructions he’ll be given in Mayweather’s dressing room.

Expect a far more sanitized thing, one that resembles a sporting event more than a fight, immediately after Maidana’s first skyhook righthand caresses the back of Mayweather’s head, Saturday. Barring a delightful surprise, the circus barking will commence round Round 9, comparing Mayweather to whichever great comes to mind, asking in a solemn tone if there’s anyone left for Mayweather to face, without pausing to ask how this legend who needed 24 rounds to win definitively against Marcos Maidana might have done in a Montreal ring with Roberto Duran.

It matters little, alas. Floyd Mayweather is now the ringmaster of boxing’s dilapidated big top.

Bart Barry can be found on Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim–

Now that Floyd Mayweather Jr. has publicly addressed questions about his reading skills from rapper 50 Cent, here’s another question:

Doesn’t Mayweather deserve a public apology?

It might be foolish to expect one from the musician, promoter and entrepreneur. But 50 Cent’s insult went beyond foolhardy and sunk into obscene depths.

“Making fun of a person because they can’t read is not funny,’’ Mayweather told reporters during a conference call Wednesday, the day after he first addressed the slur at his Las Vegas gym during a media day for his rematch with Marcos Maidana on Sept. 13. “It’s tragic. If I couldn’t read, it would make my accomplishments that much more impressive.’’

It’s hard to turn Mayweather into a sympathetic figure, but 50 Cent managed to do it. From money to attitude, there’s a laundry list full of reasons to dislike Mayweather. His polarizing personality is part of the marketing profile. Take your shots. But don’t mock his — or anybody’s — level of literacy. It’s as much of a no-no as everything else on the isms that dot the out-of-bounds list.

The insult has been kicking around the media ever since 50 Cent promised on August 21 in an Instagram post that he would donate $750,000 to charity if Mayweather could read one page of a Harry Potter novel. Then, the hope in this corner was that it would just vanish. But radio hosts and the twitter mob wouldn’t let it. It could have stayed there, but Mayweather decided to take it on, thoughtfully and fearlessly.

“Would God not let me in Heaven if I didn’t read like a news anchor?’’ asked Mayweather, who went on to say: “Me, myself, I would be perfect at reading if it was how I made a living and how I fed my family, but once again, intelligence and education are two different things.’’

He’s right. Nobody ever questioned whether Jack Johnson or Joe Louis could read. Their hands communicated with power that has lasted a lot longer than words from many authors.

The unanswered question is why 50 Cent did it. After all, the former Mayweather partner continues to say that he still likes Mayweather. He said he cares about him. But mocking a guy’s literacy isn’t exactly an expression of concern. Mayweather’s income says it’s not even accurate.

“Read this $72,276,000.00. God bless,” Mayweather said on his Twitter account.

In the end, Mayweather’s forthright comments about the controversy points the finger at 50 Cent. You’ve got to wonder about his intelligence. Right now, he just looks stupid, which means a public apology would be the smart thing to do.

According to Dan Rafael of espn.com, world Middleweight champion Miguel Cotto will not fight again in 2014.

The reason for Cotto’s decision was simple logistics. Freddie Roach, Cotto’s Hall of Fame trainer, also trains welterweight titlist Manny Pacquiao, who is preparing for his Nov. 22 defense against Chris Algieri. But because the fight will take place in Macau, China, Pacquiao’s training camp will take place in his native Philippines with no part of it slated to take place at Roach’s Wild Card gym in Los Angeles, which is typically where Pacquiao does half his camp for fights in the United States.

“We were trying to coordinate having [Roach] with him at all times during his camp for the planned December fight, but at the end, it was not possible due to his prior commitments with various fighters that will train in Asia during a good part of that period,” Gaby Penagaricano, Cotto’s adviser, told ESPN.com. “We looked at various scenarios, but at the end, Miguel decided to wait until next year. He has no problem at all not fighting this year and is very happy with his decision.”

Top Rank president Todd duBoef, Cotto’s promoter, told ESPN.com that Cotto would fight in either February or March on pay-per-view. As for a venue, duBoef said the No. 1 choice is Madison Square Garden, so he will need to talk to Garden executives about available dates.

“Obviously, the Garden is home to him. It’s a wonderful place,” duBoef said.

By Bart Barry–

FORT WORTH, Texas – There was a fight card in my hometown Saturday night, and I didn’t hesitate for a tick to forego it and make holiday plans to spend the weekend hundreds of miles away looking at buildings, yes buildings. In fact, hesitate is the wrong verb altogether because it implies choice, a pause over two competing courses of action before pursuing the victor’s. That is not what happened.

Early last week, in the throes of architecture critic Martin Filler’s gorgeous prose – and one cannot appreciate the written word without marveling at passages in Filler’s “Makers of Modern Architecture,” regardless of a literary appreciator’s appreciation for edifices – it struck me I’d not visited the Renzo Piano Pavilion at the properly acclaimed Kimbell Art Museum, and like that I contacted an art-appreciating friend, arranged accommodations at her place and decided the four-hour drive was better made early Saturday morning than late Friday night, the better to avoid a stretch of I-35 that Austin makes a parking lot during daylight hours. Not till two mornings later when a press release arrived from the publicist for the event whose press conference I attended the previous Saturday was my memory agitated sufficiently to make a choice of the weekend’s itinerary, and by then the made-choice was 50 hours old.

As I write this, I haven’t an inkling the results of Saturday’s local card because the local daily did not cover it either, remanding its senior columnist, a ringside veteran of thousands of matches during twentysomeodd years of covering boxing, to a college football game or Champions Tour qualifier or somesuch. If he didn’t argue his case with an unsympathetic editor it is either because he’s lost so many like arguments in the withering years since Cowboys Stadium was becoming/unbecoming prizefighting’s new home, or because, more likely yet, the local daily no longer has an editor with whom to argue.

The local card brought little interest because, whatever the sincerity its participants and supporters, my hometown has connoisseurship enough to know what’s what. Since health concerns removed the late Joe Souza from San Fernando gym, downtown, no talent finds proper development there: Kids who even a decade earlier might have learned to move forward behind a jab now throw an impotent, skittish left hook from weight improperly set on the front foot, and the one local man whose name is synonymous with the sport expends more of his time with promoting and whitecollar aerobics, pursuits with a chance of profitability, than developing our limited talent pool. In fact, his outfit returned Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to the city proper, Sunday, for a snapchat about being famous for a festival called People En Español – or so my inbox reported while I composed this.

The same inbox last week reported our sport’s next savior, Kazakhstani middleweight titlist Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, will invade Carson, Calif.’s StubHub Center to survive what promises to be a dauntless test from the journeyman Mexican a fully drained and barely trained Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. spitefully battered 31 months ago, in my hometown, and that press release got dutifully succeeded by news Golovkin mania has grown feral enough for an unconfirmed, but voluptuous, thousand tickets to be gobbled up by the most voracious of California’s 38 million residents. A “record” apparently.

More and more I find myself appreciating Bernard Hopkins, a fighter I stopped liking about 13 years ago, and the manly way he is about to put life and limb at risk with a Russian-speaker who finds what tests ever evade Comrade Golovkin, and I like myself for adoring Hopkins once more, and I know my flagging interest in prizefighting is but a symptom of what ailment may seat a 50-year-old atop our sport’s pinnacle.

So it was away to this steer town, underrated a place of aesthetic greatness as I know, and a visit to the limitless grandeur of this masterpiece by Louis Kahn – second only to Frank Lloyd Wright among American architects of the 20th century – known as the Kimbell. Great events are great writing’s uniquely reliable origin, and so, from Martin Filler:

“The interiors of the Kimbell, washed with a pearlescent natural light that gives its arching vaults an ethereal presence, is as close as we are likely to come in modern times to an architecture of the infinite.”

This free-admission museum, Michelangelo here, Caravaggio there, in November got complemented by contemporary architecture’s great Italian innovator, Renzo Piano, with a pavilion that honors Kahn’s brutalist vision, exposed concrete softened by light, and a large number of translucent panels that bathe its auditorium and galleries in a light not quite Kahnian but better than most. At a robustly charming talk he gave in my hometown a year ago, Filler lamented what photos he’d seen of Piano’s latest work – “they say the camera does not lie, and in this case it does not lie nearly enough” – before completing his Texas tour in Fort Worth and later recanting in a review of the pavilion that called it, at least, “far from the disaster feared.”

Because art inevitably meanders moneywards, Texas, with its oceanlike expanse of frackable dinosaur remains, hosts much much more than a fiftieth this country’s greatest art and architecture, a place where even Dallas, a stereotype-monger’s fantasy of luxury cars and gaudily dressed women and hermaphroditic boys, redeems itself with a museum by Algur Meadows and a bridge by Santiago Calatrava and a masterwork, Nasher Sculpture Center, by Piano (whose other masterwork, The Menil Collection, stands in Houston). My hometown slouches not, either, and the closing of its museum’s wonderful Henri Matisse exhibition, Saturday, will find me there and not in Laredo to see Juan “Baby Bull” Diaz continue an increasingly uninspired comeback.

When boxing historian’s apply their finish to this era, they must note: We did not leave prizefighting, my friends, before prizefighting left us.

Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com

By Norm Frauenheim–

Floyd Mayweather Jr. has been called the face of boxing about as often as Caesar has been called the face of ancient Rome. Anybody who has been to the modern Rome and walked around the crumbling Coliseum, knows what happened the Caesar’s version. But more on that later. From tickets to T-shirts, Mayweather is the man in charge. He controls everything. That, at least is the portrayal, which presumably he also controls.

But the build-up to his rematch with Marcos Maidana on Sept. 13 at Las Vegas MGM Grand includes signs of erosion in the power that Mayweather is said to have in a chaotic business.

Let’s start with the idea that he picks and chooses opponents the way a potentate picks a butler.

Maidana trainer Robert Garcia suggests that he had no choice but Maidana.

“I truly believe that he had no other options,” Garcia said during a conference call. “He was forced to take the rematch. He was forced to fight Maidana again. There were no other big names out there that Mayweather could fight in September that made sense. The rematch with Maidana is the only fight that made sense to sell pay-per-view and to please fans. He had no other options and that’s why he took the fight.”

If Garcia is to be believed, there was no else on Mayweather’s list of possibilities. But did anybody ever sense a groundswell of public demand for a Mayweather-Maidana rematch? Didn’t think so. Truth is, Maidana was Mayweather’s choice for September at the very moment his difficult victory by majority decision was announced last May. His motivation for the rematch might be rooted in the fact that the May win was less than convincing. It also fell short of the knockout he seemed to say he was pursuing.

“It was a close fight and he probably wants to prove a point,” Maidana said during the same conference call. “He wants to demonstrate that he can beat me outright.”

True enough. But here’s the problem: If this was an ordinary time, Mayweather’s decision to fight Maidana again would make sense. To wit: Clean up the mistakes and move on. But these aren’t ordinary days and haven’t been since Mayweather signed a landmark deal, reportedly worth a potential $250 million, with Showtime. It’s deal that promises superlatives and surprises. As an attraction, Mayweather-Maidana II doesn’t offer much of either.

The best guess is that Mayweather re-exerts his jab, controls the fight and scores a runaway decision. The expectation is that Mayweather establishes the dominance predicted before the first fight. At a median price of $70- per-view, that represents a tough sell. That kind of price tag screams for something yet unseen, or at least an element that further defines Mayweather as one of the best ever. The rematch promises a lot of the old. But the demand is for something new.

The ongoing decline in PPV sales this year is an indication that potential customers will continue to stay away until there’s fundamental change in the way the business is ruled. Showtime has never announced the PPV numbers for Mayweather-Maidana I. According to various sources, it fell short of one million, a milestone. It’s also a Mayweather expectation, which — fair or not — is built into the The Money Team nickname. Media reports placed it at between 850,000 and 900,000.

In a possible attempt to secure more pay-per-view revenue for the rematch, Showtime altered scheduling for the Mayweather-Maidana II card. It will start an hour earlier, 5 pm PST/8 pm EST. It’s a good move. Maybe, it attracts customers who might have stayed away because of the late start in the East. But there’s also a sense that a scheduling move merely chips away at what is the real problem. The public has always wanted Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao. Mayweather Promotions, which polled fans via social media to pick between Amir Khan and Maidana last February, doesn’t need to conduct another poll or hire Gallup to prove that one. Instead, disaffected customers are offered a second version of Mayweather-Maidana, which left them indifferent the first around.

If there are any doubts about brewing trouble within the game, there’s confirmation in a recent step taken by its most enduring star, Bernard Hopkins. Hopkins agreed to a deal to fight dangerous Sergey Kovalev within a day. Hopkins never sought a rematch of his split decision over Beibut Shumenov. Fans just would’t buy a repeat, despite the split cards. A good businessman has to know when there’s a shift in customer sentiment. The guess from this corner is that Hopkins, also a promoter, understands that the customers are fed up. They don’t want re-runs. They want a whole new show.

A further indication came from Pacquiao came this week in a story reported by Yahoo’s Kevin Iole. Pacquiao is thinking bout moving down in weight, from 147 pounds to 140. It’s also a move that would take him further out of Mayweather’s orbit of possibilities. Or impossibilities, depending on the point of view.

According to the story, Pacquiao is looking for big fight at junior-welterweight. Danny Garcia was mentioned. Garcia also has been speculated as a Mayweather possibility.

Mayweather is still a force, of course. But his rules aren’t everybody else’s. Whether it’s Hopkins or perhaps Pacquiao, there’s an emerging sense that more fighters are looking around and seeing a growing number of empty seats in that proverbial Coliseum. Multiply those empty seats over time and you wind up with ruins. The only way to save the place is by exercising available options. If Mayweather won’t, somebody else will.

By Johnny Schulz-

Former undisputed welterweight world champion and future Hall of Famer Cory Spinks has come full circle with his passion for boxing and is contributing to the humble grass roots of the sport that gave him a long and successful career. Since retiring Spinks has become a certified USA Amateur Boxing trainer and has flourished in South Florida as a coach to kids from the ages of 6 to adults. StrikeGym in Coconut Creek Florida is his boxing home now and his boxing family consist mainly of a bunch of young kids who love his playful but strict coaching style, however most are far too young to really know who he is, and what amazing accomplishments he has made in the sport of boxing. The parents know and they also know their kids are in great hands. He is also grooming a team of young amateur boxers who know exactly who he is and what he has accomplished and follow his lead precisely.

Spinks will be leading his team of young amateur boxers as they compete in their home ring. Spinks the former 5 time world Champion was one of the best boxers of his era and one of few recent boxers to hold unified titles. Spinks comes from a strong boxing bloodline, both his Father Leon and Uncle Michael Spinks won Olympic Gold and were at one time Heavyweight Champions of the world. Most recently Cory has added to that lineage and his wife Christy just gave birth to a baby boy named Cory Leon Michael Spinks. The next next Generation. StrikeGym is located at 6814 Florida 7, Coconut Creek, FL 33073.

By Bart Barry–

The temperature in the parking lot is a reminder just how badly abused is the word “sweltering” by Americans anywhere above of the 30th parallel, a plane deeper than most of the Deep South. Heavy with wet, the heat does not sap or wilt or hang or haunt but envelops, and then saps and wilts and hangs and haunts.

Outside Club Cabana, a mixed-ethnic locale that began as a Latin revue and will be this afternoon too but whose seal-brown wood door sports a sign prohibiting what hats and baggy shirts anticipate Lil’ Money, not Banda Ensalada de Frutas, a few hangerson lull with a fewer fighters, and no, there is never a doubt, even before eyes innocent of pugilism, which man in a group of four pays bills by experiencing and causing pain with other men. That toughguy American author – who wrote like this, and this is how he wrote – called bullfighters’ eyes cold and dead, because of death, one inferred, and that marks their difference with prizefighters’ eyes, whether debuting or in a fiftieth match. Prizefighters’ eyes can be lifeless during fightweek, casualties of weightmaking’s demon fraternity, Dehydration & Starvation, but their eyes sparkle during combat, and keep sparkling for days to come, unless they get rolled white or shuttered.

The slovenly dressed moons that revolve round prizefighters use transitive verbs like hospitalize and kill. Prizefighters do not. Do unto others and have done unto you, they silently observe – the Silverish Rule. Children of chaotic circumstances, usually, they crave a purchased respite from violence and borrow the language of their moons’ vicarious achievements during fightweek to increase future purses because folks who’ve not experienced death’s ultimate monotony dote on its metaphors, and often buy ringside tickets.

“I don’t know what hap – oh wait, is this on?” says a handsome man in his twenties, accoutered in black guayabera, black slacks, black socks, black loafers. “OK, I’ll run the podium, then, if Marcus cain’t make it.”

At the far wing of the polyester-skirted dais’ 15-chair span sits Ronnie “Excuses” Velazquez, a sweetheart chap who learned to box in the army and is dogged as anyone, dogged in a way his 0-3 (2 KOs) record belies radically enough to make doggedness an antonym for wisdom. Ronnie’s nom de guerre was not chosen but given him by an exasperated gymworker who mistook in Ronnie’s smiling reasons a passel of pretexts instead of honest embarrassment about his impossible predicament of single fatherhood, working 60 weekly hours while making a go at prizefighting – kids’ mother still in Afghanistan. Mother, not mom, because of the divorce.

Six days out, Ronnie’s scheduled opponent has him by two weightclasses, and while the promoter promises the contracted weight is different from the billing weight and Ronnie suspends disbelief acrobatically, they both know the contract means nothing because a member of the state commission has a son and two prospects on the card, and Ronnie’s pride will put him in that Saturday ring to buy his kids’ school clothes. They would rather handmedowns than fatherlessness, so it goes unsaid.

“This guy is what I like to call ‘a warrior’,” says the emcee promoter. “He’s had tough, tough losses. Everyone said he shoulda’won two. Thing is, I told him, ‘This is what you do to take it to the next level, eh?’ Margarita over there, before we kicked-off this presser, Margarita, y’know, the owner of this fine place, she told me, ‘I don’t ever want one of my sons to have to fight a monster like that Velazquez cabrón!’ I couldn’t believe it. That’s what a warrior he is.”

When his rambunctious seven-year-old gets too rowdy, Ronnie corrals him by the shoulders in the gentlest way for a father to turn the feat. For quelling his masculine rage publically and legally and violently, and for once being the target of his father’s drunken lunacy, “Excuses” handles his children too softly by half.

“I wish it was at a lower weight,” Ronnie says during his time with the handheld mic. “It is what it is, I guess.”

The local daily’s tireless, tired veteran navigates the conference’s midway point under a spell of indifference – Is the reason why you don’t cover my son because you hate the Mexicans? / I love about you how writed mijo, because you are great writer! / You ain’t got a clue on boxing, pinche joto! / Best writer in the whole country, I saying to everybody, right here – and arrives beside a fellow writer anonymous enough to wear a nametag and lanyard. The two chat, oblivious of what happens onstage, about the moribund periodical industry and their shared interest, trending moribund itself, until the charismatic young promoter in Riverwalk-foodservice attire gives the veteran reporter a special shoutout from the podium for the promotional article he expects in Monday’s edition.

The main-event fighter, an undefeated lightweight from the local-gym scene who invites a donnybrook even from novices, says his fight will be a great one, thanks everyone, and plays to the promoter’s implication his opponent didn’t make the gathering because fear, not traffic, deterred him.

“Everybody else got here,” says the promoter. “Anyways, I need to say a quick thank you to Ropa Increíble, one of our sponsors and the best place to get school uniforms or custom-logo tees. Also Mil Corazones Auto – on the corner of Reyes and Durango, beside the Washateria. And my moms, of course, for making this all possible, because without her, sin mi mama, I would not be here!”

In a lightless spot just behind where the dining room becomes the club stands the local welterweight who was to be next week’s co-main until he got spearchiseled earlier in the month by a Lithuanian, TKO-5. The other guy wore those Everlast gloves Mayweather said Maidana couldn’t wear, and they shouldn’t be legal because they felt like he was getting hit with bare knuckles, and the other guy was really strong. Now his medical suspension reads: 60 days.

“Can’t wait to get back in,” he says. “I feel sorry for my next opponent.”

Bart Barry can be found on Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Leo Santa Cruz is known for volume. In boxing speak, that means one thing. Translation: Lots of punches. But the traditional definition applies to Cruz, too. To wit: Call up Pharrell Williams song, Happy, and turn it up.

In a sport often known for angry lyrics, Cruz is a happy warrior. Williams’ hit could accompany him on his walk to the ring.

Happy, happy, happy. It’s what he hopes for the fans and it’s what he hopes for himself in a career that some believe is destined make everybody happy.

Cruz, who has the sport’s best smile since Manny Pacquiao stepped through the ropes and into stardom, is anxious to please the customers on the Floyd Mayweather-Marcos Maidana undercard on Sept. 13 against Manuel Roman in a bout he hopes will propel him to new heights.

In about six months since his last fight, Cruz has been trying on new tactics. The lesson plan, he said in a conference call, is to adjust to fighters who have increasingly employed movement as a way to avoid his buzz-saw rate of stinging punches.

“I think that, before, I was knocking out people and everything, but I think that it was their styles,’’ said Cruz, (27-0, 15 KOs)a former bantamweight champion who will defend his super-bantamweight title for the fourth time at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand on a Showtime pay-per-view card. “I was never really used to fighters that box a little bit more. I wasn’t used to those kinds of styles, you know, running and boxing.

“But, now, we’re working on that in the gym. We’ve been fighting boxers that move a lot and we’ve been chasing them. So I think that we’re getting used to them and we’re going to be able to start doing what we were doing before.’’

There’s criticism of the bout with Roman (17-2-3, 15 KO), who is not considered a threat. Roman, who is 3-2-2 over his last seven bouts, is not ranked among the top 10 in any of the ratings. Roman is a former sparring partner for Cruz. Their familiarity, Cruz says, will make the fight more interesting. Roman knows him and his weaknesses. He’ll be good test of what Cruz is attempting to add to his skillset.

“On paper, they might say this is not a tough fight, but I’ve known Roman since the amateurs, and he was really good in the amateurs,’’ Cruz said. “As a pro, too, I’ve sparred with him two or three years ago, and we used to work pretty good in the gym and we used to go to war in the gym with our sparring and everything. So, for all the people don’t know him, he has great punches and great technique and he looks good and everything.’’

Despite the criticism, the Roman bout represents an interesting steppingstone to some potential biggies. Kiki Martinez of Spain has been mentioned. Scott Quigg of the UK is a possibility. There was a lot of talk about Northern Ireland’s Carl Frampton in Belfast, Frampton’s hometown

“Of course, hopefully, everything goes well and we look good in September, and then, we want to look for the harder fights,’’ said Cruz, who expects pressure to look spectacular against Roman. “We want to look for those fights that I want.’’

What he wants, above all, is a showdown with Guillermo Rigondeaux, the unbeaten Cuban who de-railed Nonito Donaire’s career. A sure preliminary is some trash talk between Rigondeaux and Cruz.

“First, I read that he thinks that fighters are running away from him, and that he said that he thought that I was scared to fight him,’’ Cruz said. “But I want to prove that I’m not scared to fight nobody. I’m here to fight the best, and if he is the best, then why not fight him. Like I’ve said, he has a hard style and everything.

“But hopefully, everything goes well on Sept. 13, and hopefully, next year, we can get a fight with Guillermo Rigondeaux and we can have a helluva fight and a helluva war out there. We know that it would be a great fight and a hard fight for me.

“I might lose, but we’ll win if we give the fans what they want.’’

Insert a Pharrell Williams lyric here. It makes for a happy ending.

By Bart Barry–

A couple years ago, apropos of violence and documentaries and Pablo Picasso, too, a writer whose work I admire mentioned in a correspondence with me that when he blurred his eyes at an Italian photojournalist’s treatment of pornography he “could arrange a fight image.” The idea has not left me. This column, then, will not treat one Brit’s counterpunching triumph over a poorly balanced American slugger Saturday – so plan accordingly.

There is a primal urgency in prizefighting, or even its tamer athletic stepbrother, boxing, rivaled by little but sex. Outlier fetishists embroider both, of course, but purveyors of prizefighting take greatest offense generally at the same juncture purveyors of pornography do: When the participants don’t understand what their viewership is about. Even Floyd Mayweather, who, but for awkward moments every decade or so when an opponent makes him do or endure something primal, understands what of his sport appeals mostly, sates many of his fans with shows of feral spending power they mistake for a compensatory sexual potency that offsets what violence he plans to not-offer during fightnight.

Not long after corresponding with my friend about blurring one’s vision, a lifetime’s practice of directionless reading brought me, as well, to the Kama Sutra, Hinduism’s unabashed exploration of human sexual behavior, a tome that preceded by millennia the West’s abominable rewrites and will survive them by millennia. In the well-reported pages of this quite clinical book come passages about the intimacy of shared breathing – which is not shared breath so much as shared rhythm, a voluntary matching between two persons of the rate at which they perform survival’s first act. Eastern disciplines, of course, emphasize breathing in a way Western religions do not, placing immediately the human mind upon a dot that is the present tense, balanced preciously between endless beams of past and future, and an incredible bond can be formed almost instantly between two persons who consciously match one another’s breath.

The best prizefighters learn their opponent’s breathing patterns – matching them initially, the better to learn them, and rendering both men predictable to one another, for a time – before using the voluntary alteration of this involuntary exercise to become devastatingly unpredictable. At our sport’s highest levels, timing an opponent’s inhalation is about the only way to drive one’s left knuckles in his liver, and may help answer for some the riddle of why two blows to the exact same spot on a man’s body often take such disparate effects.

My friend’s idea about blurring one’s eyes also approaches other possibilities, such as the voyeurism inherent in sports viewership, a possibility that, at one of its extremes, reduces to the loony belief a man’s anonymous witness to an event may affect its outcome; because of some woolly form of what social psychology calls confirmation bias someone in Dallas becomes convinced the headband he wears on gameday sends positive energy to Cowboys starters taking the field in San Francisco (and in his defense, good luck falsifying that). This idea returns us, fitfully though not anxiously, to the mindless dot of present time, and what exhilaration can happen there.

I am too detached to be a good and loyal fan; it is a rare moment of watching sports in a stadium seat or through television’s distorting lens that I am lost in a moment, that I am present, in other words, and careful about what is going on. I looked enviously out my apartment window the third Sunday night in June as a hundred thousand of my fellow San Antonians spontaneously alighted on downtown to be present with one another in a celebratory communion that marked what 13 men, strangers to all but a few, did together with an orange ball a few miles away. Some of that is cultural, of course; San Antonio is 63-percent Latino, and Latinos embrace communal participation much the way other ethnicities in America celebrate individualism, both rugged and antidepressant-induced. But some of it is also about having a predisposition for being present, neither lamenting nor contriving, and being unconscious in the best sense of the word: devoid of self-awareness.

There was, however, a moment that brought me to this quite unexpectedly, and brought nearly 20,000 of my fellow participants to it at the same instant, and that was the 1:33 mark of the 12th round of Sergio Martinez versus Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. on Sept. 15, 2012, at Thomas & Mack Center, when Chavez winged a left hook that buckled Martinez and began the most suspenseful 80 seconds I have experienced in sports. It remains a standard because of the mindlessness it impelled in me and so many others, and between this column and “The Ring” magazine, I have written about that moment no fewer than seven times. The intimacy of the experience Martinez and Chavez shared, I have found, is never captured so effectively as when doused with allusions to sex, when drowned in the brutal language of fucking, when a blurring happens to the images our memories recall.

Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com

Follow all the action as Shawn Porter defends the IBF Welterweight title against Kell Brook in a battle of undefeated fighters. The action kicks off at StubHub Center with the WBC Lightweight title bout between Omar Figueroa and Daniel Estrada as well as a rematch for the WBC Super Middleweight title between Sakio Bika and Anthiny Direll

12 Rounds–IBF Welterweight champion–Shawn Porter (24-0-1, 15 KO’s) vs Kell Brook (32-0, 22 KO’s)

Round 1 Brook lands a counter left…Jab from Porter..right Upper cut from brook..Jab from Porter..lead right..Right from Brook..10-9 Brook

Round 2 Jab from Brook..jab to the body..Body shot from Porter..Brook cut on left eye brow (accidental Headbutt)..Nice right from Brook..20-18 Brook

Round 3 Good exchange of rights…right from Brook..30-27 Brook

Round 4 Counter right from Brook..right…jab..1-2..Body work from Porter..right..40-36 Brook

Round 5 Jab from Brook..Nice right..Jab..Jab…right..1-2…Clubbing right from Porter..50-45 Brook

Round 6 Porter lands a right..Brook lands a jab..Porter lands 3 lefts inside…Right from Brook..59-55 Brook

Round 7 Porter cut over right eye (accidental Headbutt)…Good body shot from Porter..Body..Jab..right to body…straight right from Brook..right..Porter lands a right..Good uppercut from Brook..left hook from Porter…68-65 Brook

Round 8 Left uppercut from Porter…left hook on inside…right cross from Brook..3 punch combination…combination..jab…Porter working the body...78-74 Brook

Round 9 Jab from Brook..double jab..Porter working body..short left hook from Brook..double jab/right hand..jab..88-83 Brook

Round 10 Nice left hook from Brook…short left hook..Porter working the body..Good right..98-93 Brook

Round 11 4 punch combination from Brook..chopping right from Porter..1-2 from Brook..nice sweeping left hook..right cross to the jaw..108-102 Brook

Round 12 1-2 from Brook..jab..body…Porter lands a counter right..combination from Brook..118-111 Brook

114-114; 117-111 and 116-112 for THE NEW IBF WELTERWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD——-KELL BROOK

12 Rounds–WBC Super Middleweight title–Sakio Bika (32-5-3, 21 KO’s) vs Anthony Dirrell (26-0-1, 22 KO’s)

Round 1 Dirrell coming out swinging…Wild fighting…10-9 Dirrell

Round 4 Bika going to the body

Round 5 Jab from Bika…Counter right from Dirrell…

Round 6 Good counter from Bika..counter from Dirrell…Left from Bika…Dirrell lands a right…Left to the body..Straight right..Left hook from Bika…59-55 Dirrell

Round 7 Good right from Dirrell hurts Bika..Short right from Bika…straight from Dirrell…hard rights from Dirrell…69-64 Dirrell

Round 8 Bika deducted a point for a low blow…Big Flurry from Bika…Hard right from Dirrell..79-72 Dirrell

Round 9 More rough stuff…Bika lands a right…88-82 Dirrell

Round 10 The fight cant get any rythym

Round 11 Bika lands a right to the body…Dirrell lands a jab…Counter right…Jab from Bika..Double jab/right from Bika…

Round 12 Dirrell lands an uppercut…Body shot..Sharp right

114-113; 116-111 and 117-110 FOR THE WINNER AND NEW WBC SUPER MIDDLEWEIGHT CHAMPION ANTHONY DIRRELL

12 Rounds–WBC Lightweight title–Omar Figueroa (23-0-1, 17 KO’s) vs Daniel Estrada (32-2-1, 24 KO’s)

Round 1 Right from Figueroa…Estrada counters..Estrada lands a left and right..Straight from Figueroa…Sraight right and lead right from Estrada..combination,,right…10-9 Estrada

Round 2 Estrada lands a left hook..left hook on the ropes..Lead left uppercut from Figueroa..Left hook from both…left from Estrada…20-18 Estrada

Round 3 Figueroa was hit with a low blow..Estrada lands a right..Jab..and right from Figueroa…good right...29-28 Estrada

Round 4 Estrada lands a short left uppercut…Jab..Head shot from Figueroa..body and uppercut from Estrada..double jab..Right from Figueroa…body combo that is followed by a left to the jaw..Lead right…Straight left from Southpaw stance..jab to body from Estrada…2 rights and jab from Figueroa..left hook to body…..38-38

Round 5 Figueroa lands a right to the body..48-47 Figueroa

Round 6 Figueroa lands a jab..Estrada goes to body…jab..Figueroa lands a right…58-57 Figueroa

Round 7 Combination inside from Figueroa…Right from Estrada…left hook from Figueroa..right cros…Jab from Estrada…68-66 Figueroa

Round 8 Nice combination from Figueroa…lead right right…Blood around left eye of Figueroa..Estrada lands a right in the corner…Figueroa coming back with a left 78-75 Figueroa

Round 9 Cut caused by accidental head butt….BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES ESTRADA…Figueroa all over Estrada..CombINATON ON THE ROPES AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED….

By Norm Frauenheim–

Getting a shot at Floyd Mayweather Jr. has been called a derby and a sweepstakes. There are no rules on how to get in line, if in fact there is one. Still, Shawn Porter and Kell Brook will try to win a chance Saturday at StubHub Center in Carson, Calif.

They’re fighting for Porter’s International Boxing Federation (IBF) version of the welterweight title. But the acronym-sanctioned belt is window dressing. The real fight is to get into the Mayweather conversation.

Thus far, Porter’s name has been dropped, but a mere mention is a little bit like winning a state lottery. Not much chance there. With an impressive win over the unbeaten and dangerous Brook, however, maybe Porter will be more than just another name in a crowded pool of alternates after Mayweather begins searching for another opponent following an expected victory in a September rematch with Marcos Maidana. Porter (24-0-1, 15 KOs), a slight favorite to beat Brook (32-0, 22 KOs) in a Showtime-televised bout, acknowledges the Mayweather stakes, which are impossible to ignore anyway.

“I don’t consider my fights as auditions,’’ he said in a conference call. “I consider them performances. Again, you know this is boxing. We don’t look ahead. But at the same time, yes, Mayweather, we all know he’s on the clock. We’re all right there, hoping we’re next in line.’’

The confident Porter is bold enough to exhibit showmanship. That’s a fine line and he could pay for it if he loses to the quick and versatile Brook. But showmanship is one way to get noticed, which might keep him in the Mayweather conversation and in headlines that could generate pay-per-view sales.

Porter, also mentioned as a possibility for Keith Thurman, hit the pads blindfolded at a Wednesday workout for the media. Maybe, the blindfold was a pre-fight message, warning Brook that footwork and lateral movement would not take him out of harm’s way. Maybe, it was Porter’s way of saying he was looking only at Brook and not ahead to the Mayweather possibility. Whatever it was, it was a theatrical prop. It was designed to get some attention and it did.

Porter’s showmanship was evident on July 12 when he met a handful of writers at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand before Canelo Alvarez’ decision over Erislandy Lara. Porter talked about how he felt invincible, especially after successive victories over Paulie Malignaggi and Devon Alexander.

A lot of good fighters, Porter said, call themselves Superman.

“But I’m Mister Superman,’’ he said.

He’s just another Mister if he loses to Brook, who is fighting in the U.S. for only the second time. Brook might be the UK’s best-kept secret. It’s the UK connection that could make him a viable Mayweather possibility if he upsets Porter. There are rumblings that Mayweather, who promised a surprise for the next Mayday on his Showtime deal, wants a fight outside of his usual Las Vegas neighborhood in a move that could add to his claim on global celebrity.

A fight in the UK fits the bill and might pay a few too. A World Cup-like crowd of a reported 80,000 was at London’s Wembley Stadium for Carl Froch’s rematch stoppage of George Groves on May 31. If in fact Mayweather has further international ambitions, a Wembley bout with Brook could help fulfill them.

Brook is fighting to be a Mister too.

Mister Next.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – This city’s largest art museum, SAMA, is now in the throes of a three-month exhibition, “Matisse: Life in Color,” that is exceptional by any museum’s standard of quality and particularly exceptional by this one’s. Frenchman Henri Matisse, a painter and sculptor and printmaker and papercutter and architect who resides in the top five of any critic’s pound-for-pound list of 20th-century artists, as a metaphor has nary a tangential relationship with anything to happen in boxing since June.

Not that he needs another recommendation.

If a distinction might be drawn between Matisse and those who run our beloved sport, and one will need be drawn if any of what follows is to happen, it is this: The more expert one is at visual arts generally and painting specifically, the more impressive Matisse becomes; while the more one learns about boxing today, the less impressed he is by those who do it, manage it, promote it, broadcast it and write about it.

There is a startling economy to each thing Matisse depicts, a fixation on minimizing the number of times his implement need touch its medium to depaint a full expression of the human form. Between the larger canvas works and bronze statues at SAMA’s exhibition hang sketches Matisse did, often of subjects later depicted in nearby canvases, sketches in which Matisse worked to decipher the boundaries of his expression. Many charcoal drawings, necessarily black and gray on white, say “There! it can be done without color, all those patterns and shapes kept distinct, and so, I may fill it with whatever colors I wish.”

There is a learned fixation, as well, on luminosity, a play upon the realization a human eye has but three cones for discerning color but a hundred thousand neurons for contour, and therefore, whatever decorative value it provides, color is a thing our ancestors did without for quite some time (and no sooner did we sense color but our brains devised a filtration system for removing it from most light sources). So long as the contours of a treatment resemble a human face, Matisse demonstrated, it matters nothing if the beard is turquoise, the chin is tangerine or the hair is flaming purple; we see the world in black and white, and our eyes answer their most essential binary inquiry – human face Y/N? – many milliseconds faster than computers ever may.

Matisse, and here he followed Claude Monet, got at an idea best expressed like vision-as-narrative, a concession, or perhaps proclamation, we very much see what we are looking for and then remember nary a fraction of it – a form of honest rendering, to revise an American courthouse oath, which goes: The truth, never the whole truth, but nothing but the truth. When one remembers any Matisse painting an hour after seeing it, he remembers its colors, radiant and voluminous; first in the mind of both tyrant and tyro comes always the incredible breadth of Matisse’s inspired palette. And yet, and yet.

It is the solid blacks and whites, and grays between, that allow delineation enough in what signals our brains collect from our eyes to allow the colors to remain intact, and not make of them what muddiness should logically come of such swirling, competing hues. No one remembers Matisse’s black outlines, absorbed from Post-Impressionist predecessors and specifically Paul Gauguin’s studies of Cloisonnism, a way of making oil on canvas mimic stained-glass windows’ authority, that wrap most of Matisse’s objects, or the flat white paint that dots so many such objects, or all the matte-gray mirrors one sees, when he returns home and tries to remember his favorite piece, because Matisse mastered the narrative of human sight taught him by Renaissance masters like Rembrandt and Diego Velazquez, and then surpassed their understanding, inverting the harmony of their form, goaded doubtlessly by his cobber and competitor Pablo Picasso, and seeing what the human mind might sense through its retina, communicate to its brain, and retain in its memory.

But Matisse absorbed the masters’ craft before he subverted it, a thing lost on all but the very best athletes, managers, promoters, broadcasters and writers of our beloved sport, today: Every kid with reflexes thinks to carry his hands below his view, every new manager thinks he’s the first to read Dale Carnegie’s 77-year-old bestseller or any of its 77,777 knockoffs, every upstart promoter is certain he knows the city better than what dozen failures preceded him, every broadcaster discounts his viewers’ perceptiveness, and every young writer suspects no one before him dabbled promiscuously in first-person pronouns or exclamation marks.

In the Matisse works that now hang at SAMA, one sees most prominently an homage, irreverent, yes, but an homage nonetheless, to the 17th-century Dutch master Jan Vermeer. Matisse was on to the Dutchman’s every trick – academics today might argue whether Vermeer traced his subjects from the projected image of a camera obscura, but Matisse knew it straight away – and gently ribbed the master with fisheye distensions of planes introduced by a light source from the left, covered either by a curtain or open window. Matisse knew from a blessed combination of maturity (his 35th birthday preceded his originality) and deep observation what his influences were about and where to place the detour of his genius.

From empty local gyms to bankrupted managers, impotent promoters, plunging viewership and impecunious scribes, today the woes of our sport’s woeful state, contrarily, reduce often to a stubborn obliviousness of what preceded us.

*

Author’s note: The photo above is of Matisse’s “Interior, Flowers and Parakeets” – a featured work in San Antonio Museum of Art’s current exhibition.

Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com

Follow all the action as unified Jr. Welterweight champion Danny Garcia takes on Rod Salka in a Welterweight bout live from Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The action gets underwy at 9 PM ET / 6 PM PT with 2 world title bouts as Daniel Jacobs and Jarrod Fletcher vie for the vacant WBA Middleweight title while Lamont Peterson defends the IBF Jr. Welterweight championship against tough New Yorker Edgar Santana

12 ROUNDS–SUPER LIGHTWEIGHTS–DANNY GARCIA (28-0, 16 KO’S) VS ROD SALKA (19-3, 3 KO’S)

Round 1 Garcia lands body shot.Right to the body..double body..hard left hook…10-9 Garcia

Round 2 HARD RIGHT ROCKS SALKA…HE BUCKLES AND GOES DOWN….2 body shots…2 hard left hooks..3 more RIGHTS AND DOWN GOES SALKA..DEVISTATING LEFT AND SALKA IS KNOCKED OUT

12 ROUNDS-WBA MIDDLEWEIGHT TITLE–DANIEL JACOBS (27-1, 24 KO’S) VS JARROD FLETCHER (18-1, 10 KO’S)

Round 1 Jacobs Battering Fletcher all over the ring. Fletcher hurt but doesnt go down 10-9 Jacobs

Round 2 Jacobs lands a right…jab...20-18 Jacobs

Round 3 Fletcher lands a body shot..right on ropes..Left from Jacobs…29-28 Jacobs

Round 4 Hard left from Jacobs…Right rocks Fletcher…3 punch combo…left..39-37 Jacobs

Round 5 3 good rights from Fletcher..Big right and combo from Jacobs..Hard right rocks Fletcher…JACOBS ALL OVER FLETCHER LEFT HOOK AND DOWN GOES FLETCHER AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

12 ROUNDS–IBF JR. WELTERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP–LAMONT PETERSON (32-2-1, 16 KO’S) VS EDGAR SANTANA (29-4, 20 KO’S)

1-3…Lots of Holding not much action

Round 4 Santana trying to land to the body. Peterson lands later in the round.

Round 5 Hard left hook buckles Santana. Peterson landing continously on he ropes. Peterson ripping shots in middle of ring

Round 6 Left to body from Peterson…Body…body/head combo

Round 7 Santana lands a left…right…body..trading rights..Peterson left inside…body/head…
left to head..
Round 8 Peterson lands a left to the body…Body/head combo..Left to head…left to body…

Round 9 Tradong jabs…Good right from Peterson..Hard 8 punch combination.good left hook

Round 10 PeTERSON BATTERING SANTANA AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

By Norm Frauenheim–

A few days after Oscar De La Hoya talked about upsets during a contentious conference call involving Danny Garcia’s perceived mismatch against Rod Salka , Bernard Hopkins scored the biggest one of the year with his decision to fight Sergey Kovalev in a many-sided move that is bold, risky and perhaps a lesson for a balkanized game divided by conflicting interests and colliding egos. Hopkins is taking a chance. Somebody has to.

Leadership is hard to find these days, but it was there in Hopkins, whose contract for a Kovalev bout in November is a declaration of independence from practices that are pushing the business beyond the fringe and into irrelevancy. It’s important, first and foremost, because Hopkins is still a fighter. He has several other roles, of course. He’s a promoter, street-corner philosopher, ex-con, CostCo customer and provocateur. Ex-promoters and feuding promotes, managers and advisors are everywhere with quotes and hidden agendas, yet not much in the way of solutions. They’re in it for themselves. But I can’t help but think that Hopkins is fighting for the craft that has made him wealthy in ways he could never have imagined as an inmate at Pennsylvania’s Graterford prison. He, more than anybody, knows what it has done for him.

An inseparable element is his relationship with Oscar De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions. De La Hoya is retired, yet he is a fighter whom Hopkins beat in 2004. They shared a ring and and now share an understanding of all that goes into what defines them. Circumstances surrounding the Hopkins-De La Hoya alignment still aren’t clear. Nevertheless, it has survived the Golden Boy shake-up that led to Richard Schaefer’s exit as CEO. In the wake of Schaefer’s resignation on June 2, there was reason to think the Hopkins, a limited partner in Golden Boy, would also leave De La Hoya’s company. Then, Hopkins told the media that Schaefer could not be replaced. About six weeks later, Hopkins signs for a Kovalev fight that strengthens Golden Boy’s prospects in an HBO fight.

The HBO angle, one of many, is a key. It means Golden Boy and HBO will be doing business again. HBO had not televised a Golden Boy fight since March 2013, when Hopkins beat Tavoris Cloud. In the week after the bout, HBO terminated its relationship with Golden Boy, which proceeded to work with only Showtime. The surprising twist in Hopkins’ return to HBO is that he had been expected to fight Adonis Stevenson on Showtime. Stevenson had jumped the shark, from HBO to Showtime, by signing with manager Al Haymon. Between then and the aftermath of the front office upheaval at Golden Boy, there was an evident change in Hopkins’ thinking. Instead of moving away from De La Hoya, he’s grown closer to him.

Thus far, Hopkins and De La Hoya have shown they can be an alliance with power enough to unify that part of the sport not already tied to Haymon and Floyd Mayweather Jr.

The HBO renewal represents a further step in De La Hoya’s promise to re-open doors slammed shut throughout the deadly feud between Golden Boy and Top Rank. First, De La Hoya approached Bob Arum, mending their relationship in a move that apparently enraged Schaefer. Then, Hopkins stepped up and said — through Golden Boy — that he wanted to fight Kovalev, a light-heavyweight promoted by Main Events. Within a day, the deal was done without one word that reminded anybody of the familiar rancor. What feud? The moment was a breath of fresh air for a suffocating business better at producing insults than great fights.

Make no mistake, Hopkins is also motivated by self-interest. A businessman has to be and Hopkins is a good one. Kovalev is an emerging threat, perhaps even more dangerous than Stevenson. Stevenson is powerful, yet emotional. It’s that emotional component that could have been manipulated by Hopkins, a proven master of the head-game tactic, an indispensable part of any good fight plan. Kovalev appears to be more sure of himself and less likely to be lured into a diversion that turns into defeat. Just a few months from his 50th birthday in mid-January, however, Hopkins is in a no-lose situation. The 31-year-old Kovalev will be expected to beat a man two decades his senior. If Hopkins win, a timeless legend marches on.

The fight’s timing, scheduled for Nov. 8, comes amid a decline in pay-per-view numbers and television ratings for non-PPV bouts. There’s not a whole lot on the horizon. Garcia-Salka in New York Saturday night? According to one betting site, Bovada, Salka is a 50-to-1 underdog. Manny Pacquiao-Chris Algieri on Nov. 22 in China? Algieri is a 16-to-1 underdog. Odds are, not many will watch either fight.

Meanwhile, it’s likely that Gennady Golovkin will retain his informal title as the world’s most feared fighter, which means he’s the one to avoid. It looks as if Puerto Rico’s popular Miguel Cotto will. There’s talk that Cotto, a newly-crowned middleweight champ, will follow up his dramatic stoppage of Sergio Martinez against Andy Lee in December in New York. Lee, an Irishman best-known for a loss to Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., is seen as safe stop before a big money clash in another chapter of the Puerto Rican-Mexican rivalry against Canelo Alvarez next year.

On Sept. 13, there’s Mayweather-Marcos Maidana at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand. But it’s a rematch, a remake, of Mayweather’s majority decision in May. It’s a second chance to see if Mayweather can get it right after running into a Maidana whose chaotic style appeared to unsettle him. It’s interesting, but the guess is that Mayweather will prevail in a careful, yet overwhelming fashion. He won’t hurt his claim on the pound-for-pound title. But he doesn’t figure to improve much on the pay-per-view numbers, reported to be between 850,000 and 900,000 for the first fight.

It looked like a dismal fall card, until Hopkins swiftly capitalized, filling a void with a light-heavyweight fight that promises to be a game-changer.

For him, his business partner and his craft.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in Atlantic City in another hideous but portentous mismatch on HBO, Russian light heavyweight titlist Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev raced through a helpless Australian named Blake Caparello, stumbling out the block and getting flashdropped in round 1 before spearchiseling his way to a TKO-2 result whose time was irrelevant and preordained. For the first time in Kovalev’s career as an HBO fighter, though, Saturday’s portentous match actually portended something, as word came last week Kovalev will fight Bernard “The Alien” Hopkins in November.

Bless Bernard Hopkins for making this fight.

Bless Kovalev, too, and Kovalev’s handlers, too too, and HBO and Oscar De La Hoya – whose canning of Richard Schaefer allowed others to begin imagining something like this – and even Showtime, whose subversion of HBO’s plans for a Kovalev match with Adonis Stevenson ignited, finally, a fire beneath the throne at HBO Sports. Barring a similar act of audacity by Gennady Golovkin’s handlers, Kovalev-Hopkins is now the most-anticipated fight of 2014.

There is a very real chance Bernard Hopkins will beat Sergey Kovalev, and whereas it might once, even recently, have brought a foreboding that went “what the hell kind of professional sport gets dominated by a 50-year-old?” the fact becomes ever clearer this probably is the worthiest era in our sport’s history for a stamp in crimson dye that reads: DOMINATED BY A 50-YEAR-OLD. Why the change of heart? In signing to fight Kovalev, remorseless and mean-spirited as any contemporary practitioner of fisticuffs, Hopkins demonstrated a willingness to imperil himself for greatness’ sake that none of his young inferiors possesses.

Hopkins now acts both as a counterargument to Gennady Golovkin’s small army of apologists who just can’t seem to find a fitting opponent anywhere they look, and a large black asterisk historians’ minds must set beside Floyd Mayweather’s name: *Did not fight his era’s best.

Notice what did not precede last week’s delightful announcement. No mention of Machiavellian advisors, no bickering about purse splits on message boards, no talk of one man’s cowardice matching the other’s stupidity, no insiders’ analysis of why promoters are obdurately opposed to what is best for their sport, and most blessedly of all, no midnight conference call to announce people not-fighting.

Two thoughts on why Hopkins may beat a genuinely frightening dude in his prime – frightening because who but Kovalev in the annals of boxing tragedy increased his knockout percentage after killing a man in the ring? – and apply with an alien precision his looniest stroke yet to this era: 1. Something Kovalev’s first U.S. trainer said, and 2. Kelly Pavlik.

Going in reverse order, and for those old enough to remember, Pavlik, in 2008, was the undefeated, undisputed, lineal middleweight champion of the world, having done it the right way, stretching the man, Jermain Taylor, who beat the man, Bernard Hopkins, who, by 2008, was a sprightly 43 year-old super middleweight six months removed from being outclassed by Welshman Joe Calzaghe. Pavlik was expected to overwhelm Hopkins the way volume punchers tend to overwhelm boxers, especially volume punchers possessed of a right cross like Pavlik’s. Suddenly Hopkins was not a boxer or counterpuncher, though, but a slugger, leaping at Pavlik in the opening round with left-hook leads to the Ohioan’s durable liver.

It was impossible Pavlik had trained for such an attack from a man who’d managed to take an athletic actionfigure like Taylor in 2005 and make with him 72 minutes of defensive awfulness not to be surpassed in dullness until Erislandy Lara fights Erislandy Lara. With those Hopkins left hands, though, went the trajectory of Pavlik’s right cross. Whatever ailments and dissipation Pavlik suffered immediately before he threw hands with Hopkins, his cross never flew right because Hopkins lowered Pavlik’s elbow six reflexive inches in the opening three minutes. Hopkins will do something similarly unexpected to Kovalev in their opening stanza, something neither the Russian nor his American trainer John David Jackson prepares for, and how Kovalev adjusts, what sort of plan-B game Kovalev possesses, will determine the match’s outcome.

Beside Jackson in Kovalev’s corner in November will be Don Turner, one of the few remaining sages in our sport and the man into whose North Carolina gym Kovalev strolled years ago.

“(Sergey) doesn’t hit that hard,” Turner told me in September. “He hits you on-time. When you hit a guy on-time, you’re punching him twice as hard as you naturally would.”

Here then, in the form of a question, lies the enormous challenge rushing at Kovalev: Who has ever hit Bernard Hopkins on-time? Kovalev runs opponents into his power, cocking a right cross with a left hook that was cocked by a right cross. He is a volume puncher with menacing force and radioactive meanness. But Hopkins has fought dozens such men. Whom that Kovalev has fought begins to approximate Hopkins in craft, experience or wiles?

But as a friend of mine said Saturday night, crashing together metaphors in the way men do in relaxed conversation after witnessing barbaric spectacles: “So long as you don’t look in Medusa’s eyes, Father Time stays undefeated.”

If Kovalev does not bite on Hopkins’ prefight lures, and here language barrier shall serve the Russian well, he can set a pace Hopkins cannot possibly abide a few months before his 50th birthday, and if that happens, the beating Kovalev bestows on “The Alien” will be otherworldly. But there remains a very real chance it will not happen, and if it doesn’t and Hopkins somehow beats Kovalev, may this period henceforth and universally be known as the Hopkins Era.

Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com

By Norm Frauenheim-

Roy Jones Jr. continues to fight and we wish he wouldn’t. Andre Ward doesn’t fight and we wish he would.

It’s hard to explain and harder to understand. Then again, business-as-usual has never made much sense in a sport where the primary goal is to render the other guy senseless. In one form or another, it gets repeated, ad nauseam. Ward might not be the worst example. He’s just the current one.

Ward is still included among the top five on those pound-for-pound lists, yet he’s persona-non-grata in discussions about middleweight Gennady Golovkin’s options after a predictable stoppage of Daniel Geale in New York, or speculation about light-heavyweight Sergey Kovalev’s next move after a likely victory Saturday over Blake Caparello in Atlantic City. This was the same Ward who beat Carl Froch and would probably be the pick to beat him in a rematch. Yet, Ward was bypassed without a mention in ongoing discussions for a Jan. 24 bout with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., who once flirted with the idea of Ward, yet moved on.

Ward fought once in 2012. Once in 2013. He hasn’t fought at all in 2014. Shoulder surgery contributed to the inactivity. More problematic, however, is a lawsuit filed last December against promoter Dan Goossen. Ward is attempting to end a contract that ties him to Goossen until November 2016, according to an arbiter’s ruling — one of two that upheld the deal.

In the wake of the filing, Ward said he planned to be active in 2014. He told www.ringtv.com that he hoped to be back in the ring in March or April. The closest he’s been, however, is on the talking side of the ropes. He’ll be there Saturday night as an analyst for HBO’s Boxing After Dark telecast of the Brandon Rios-Diego Chaves from Las Vegas in triple-header telecast that will include Kovalev-Caparello.

Ward is in legal limbo. Amend that. More like legal hell. The lawsuit is a messy web that includes Ward co-promoter Antonio Leonard, who alleges Goossen failed to pay him for his work in Ward’s last fight, a unanimous decision over Edwin Rodriquez in November, 2013. No telling when, if ever, it all gets resolved.

The longer it goes, the more Ward has to lose. He’s 30, his prime. Inactivity also comes with a price to his reputation. He’s unable to prove the naysayers wrong and there are plenty. Fair or not, Ward is known to be difficult in negotiations. He was criticized for not traveling to Europe for a bout in the super-middleweight’s Super Six tournament, which he eventually won. Mention his name as a possibility for Golovkin at 168 pounds or Kovalev at 175, and he’s immediately dismissed as a fighter unable to sell tickets or generate television ratings. Floyd Mayweather Jr. labored under the same assumption until he was allowed to prove it wrong with history’s two highest pay-per-view audiences against Oscar De La Hoya and Canelo Alvarez.

As long as he doesn’t fight, the unbeaten Ward can’t prove himself as a worthy attraction. Until he can, criticism of him from Golovkin’s promoters or Kovalev’s managers is gratuitous. Until his legal situation is cleared up, few would agree to fight him anyway. That’s not good for him or a business that can’t let a valuable resource waste away. It’s already been a year of declining pay-per-view numbers. In a non-PPV bout, Golovkin’s ratings fell in his third-round stoppage of Geale. According to Nielsen Media Research, the bout averaged 984,000 viewers, down from the 1.41-million average for Golovkin’s stoppage of Curtis Stevens in November.

The decline has been blamed on the quick stoppage. The theory is that there would have been more viewers if the fight had gone beyond just three rounds. Golovkin’s victory over Stevens went into the eighth. A summer lull also been blamed. But both sound like spin. Sure, maybe, many of the usual customers were at the beach instead of in front of their television screens. If they were, however, it might have been because one fighter, Golovkin, is from Kazakhstan, still better-known for Borat than GGG. Then, there was Geale, who is from Australia, better known for Russell Crowe and Crocodile Dundee than middleweights.

The numbers, pay-per-view or non-PPV, would have been a lot higher had Golovkin fought Ward. That’s a safe guess, a slam dunk. If only a Golovkin-Ward, or even Kovalev-Ward, was a sure thing.

It’s not. Without it, the decline in television numbers figures to continue. It makes me think of an old lyric by Jones, who will be in Atlantic City as an HBO analyst for Kovalev-Caprello Saturday one week after his fifth-round stoppage of somebody named Courtney Fry in Latvia.

In 2002, Jones released a rap CD that included Ya’ll Must Have Forgot. Jones re-states his pound-for-pound claim in the old song. More than a decade later, it has a different meaning, yet might be as relevant as ever. Fans might forget Ward in a business that needs him and them.

By Bart Barry-

“Geale had the best credentials of anyone that’s gotten in the ring with him. Geale is a former two-time titlist.” – Gennady Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler, July 26.

Saturday at Madison Square Garden, 32-year-old Kazakhstani middleweight titlist Gennady “GGG” Golovkin stopped Australian challenger Daniel Geale at 2:47 of round 3. It was another attraction-building event televised by HBO, a portentous sort of happening intended to entice viewers with the chance one of Golovkin’s next three or four matches might come against enticing, or at least appropriate, competition – even if a $60 pay-per-view tariff must be levied upon subscribers to see it.

Daniel Geale fought like a self-taught hobbyist, Saturday, a man who wanted out of his contract during introductions and was unheard of in the United States for good reason until last week, when aficionados who know better began exercising their minds with the calisthenics of thought-experiment, proving they possessed dexterity enough to imagine a means by which Geale might vanquish Golovkin. Geale was, after all, the guy some Americans watched via buggy videostream in 2012 decision Felix Sturm, a middleweight titlist still better known by Americans for being wronged during a De La Hoya-Hopkins infomercial 10 years ago than anything he achieved afterwards.

There is some simple calculus in matchmaking, to complement its much more difficult intuiting, and that is: Volume punchers solve boxers who solve power punchers who solve volume punchers. That’s an indirect way of saying a volume-punching guy like Geale – who unloaded his best righthand on an onrushing Golovkin in round 3, and landed it flush, and didn’t so much as compromise the trajectory of Golovkin’s own righthand, an already started one stiff enough to land Geale on a blue mat from which the Aussie rose with seven beats to go in a 10-count he then stretched to a standing 4-count before quitting on his feet with a spiritless shake of the head – was a better showcase for Golovkin than even cynics anticipated.

Here’s a direct way of putting it: Daniel Geale hadn’t a prayer against Gennady Golovkin. Much of that is Golovkin’s fantastic professionalism, a professionalism supporter and dissenter alike would dearly like to see tested by a worthy adversary, more overdue for Golovkin now than any HBO fighter since Andre Berto, but a goodish amount of it is also due to matchmaking and Geale-promoter Gary Shaw’s noteworthy penchant for getting no-hopers on HBO.

If there was a first noteworthy moment in Saturday’s main event, it came in the final seconds of round 1, when Golovkin measured Geale with straight rights. What made it noteworthy was Golovkin’s fearlessness across from Geale, a fearlessness that allowed Golovkin to paw and tap with a right glove extended fully from his chin even while he remained in an orthodox stance. Youngsters are taught to time and punish opponents who hang their jabs, returning their lead heads at half the rate they deploy them, but how often does a prizefighter in a title match have the chutzpah to hang a cross, and leave it there?

That it took fewer than 170 seconds for Golovkin to realize Geale’s freshest haymaker mightn’t imperil him speaks to matchmaking, finally, more than another element. Once the man across from you is incapable of hurting you, he becomes a target, not an opponent, and while reducing challengers to such marks a champion’s greatness, having opponents ready-reduced in round 1 is a mark of attraction-building more than matchmaking.

Talk now turns to a Madison Square Garden superfight between career welterweight and new middleweight champion Miguel Cotto and Golovkin, which, conducted at a catchweight between 155 and 155 1/4 pounds, would be compelling. Such a fight, though, loses its attraction by 30 percent with every pound that happens above 155 – still, technically, middleweight – since the men’s styles are similar enough to reduce their competition to one of size, and Golovkin would be considerably larger. Cotto, of course, graduated beyond the Daniel Geales of the world almost 10 years ago, when he stopped Randall Bailey (26-2, 24 KOs) in 2004, and Cotto is only 18 months older than Golovkin – which ought to help statisticians recalibrate the meaningfulness of Golovkin’s 90-percent knockout ratio.

If the best match for Golovkin is at junior middleweight with the middleweight champion of the world, or at middleweight with a man enjoying a career rebirth round 154 pounds, so be it, but can we please cool the silly banter about GGG’s willingness to fight great men at 168? Golovkin has fought exactly two times above middleweight, when he defeated Amar Amari and Malik Dziarra in 2008, and to say his Saturday untethering of Daniel Geale qualifies him for a match with Carl Froch or Andre Ward at super middleweight is, frankly, inappropriate.

The same night in 2009 Ward unmanned Mikkel Kessler, a favorite to win the Super Six tournament, Golovkin laid waste to Mikhail Makarov in Makarov’s 11th prizefight. Two weeks before Froch gave Lucian Bute his first career loss, in 2012, Golovkin stamped Makoto Fuchigami’s record with its seventh. The question, then, is not if Ward and Froch would each be 30-0 against the 30 men Golovkin has faced but instead: Would either Ward or Froch have less than a 100-percent knockout ratio?

A hundred victories over Daniel Geale do not approach one victory over Andre Ward, and a thrashing of little Miguel Cotto, asked by many to retire 4 1/2 years ago when Manny Pacquiao whupped him, does not approach so much as a decision victory over Carl Froch. It’s long past time for Golovkin’s handlers to do something bold.

Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com

By Norm Frauenheim

PHOENIX –- He was a 16-year-old prodigy. Then, he was a 17-year-old prospect with a contract before he had a high-school diploma. Now, Jose Benavidez Jr. is 22 with something to prove.

“I want everyone to know that I’m ready for tougher fights,’’ Benavidez said. “It’s time for me to step it up a notch.’’

Benavidez (20-0, 14 KOs) hopes to deliver that message Saturday night against Colombian Henry Aurad (16-8-1, 13 KOs) in only his second hometown appearance at Celebrity Theater in Phoenix on a UniMas-televised card that includes two-time Mexican Olympian Oscar Valdez (11-0, 11 KOs), a Top Rank prospect and featherweight from the border-town of Nogales with roots in Tucson.

Boxing’s rite of passage is a well-worn path, but there’s no sure way to travel through it. Most don’t. Some get lost along the way. Some get exposed. Some are forgotten. It all starts with the hyperbole attached to any news conference that promises a phenomenon.

For Benavidez, that meant comparisons to the biggest star in today’s game. He was called the next Floyd Mayweather Jr. By now, history is littered with futile examples of the next Michael Jordan. Pity the next LeBron James. For media familiar with the hype, it’s an easy headline. But for an impressionable 17-year-old introduced as an heir-apparent, it’s seductive stuff. Misleading, too.

The fine print always includes adversity, which for Benavidez began with injuries to his right wrist and hand. Pain in a ligament and a bone spur turned him into a one-handed fighter, which Benavidez overcame with his eye-catching jab. It allowed to him to survive in October, 2012 for a decision over Pavel Miranda, who in the eighth and final round landed a left hand that nearly knocked out Benavidez.

There was surgery and rehab. There also was sudden inactivity in an internet-ruled business that quickly moves onto the next heir-apparent. Benavidez had not been forgotten. Not exactly. But the YouTube fascination with him had faded. His dad and trainer, Jose Benavidez Sr., worried.

“It was just little things,’’ his dad said. “Sometimes, he was a little late to the gym. That never happened when he was younger. I didn’t know whether he was frustrated, or his body just needed some rest, or what was going on. I just decided not to push him, to let him go his own way for a while’’

His son said there was never any thought about leaving the sport.

“No, boxing has always been there for me,’’ said Benavidez, who was always at ringside for Phoenix bouts staged by Iron Boy Promotions, a Top Rank partner for a card scheduled to begin Saturday at 6 p.m. (PST). “I always knew that.’’

Not fighting, Benavidez said, helped him re-evaluate his commitment to a sport he has been around, in one way or another, since grade school. As a kid, there was no choice. As a grown-up, there is. Watching others fight, he said, made him realize how much he missed it and how much he still wanted to prove.

“Physically, I feel a lot stronger at 22 than I did when I was 17,’’ said Benavidez, who started at junior-welterweight and will fight at welterweight Saturday. “As a person, I’ve just grown up.’’

He says he’s had no problems with his hand in training or in three straight victories since he got rocked by Miranda, an unknown junior welterweight on the undercard of Brandon Rios’ victory over Mike Alvarado in their first fight at the StubHub Center in Carson, Calif.

“It’s just time for me to get back to work and prove I’m ready for the next level,’’ said Benavidez, a kid-no-more. “In my hometown, this is the fight to do just that.’’

Meanwhile, it’s no coincidence that Valdez is sharing a card with Benavidez, who five years ago was seen as a fighter who could re-awaken an Arizona market dormant since Phoenix Hall of Famer Michael Carbajal’s heyday during the 1990s. Valdez, who is scheduled to face Juan Ruiz (23-13, 7 KOs) was a well-known Mexican amateur who fought often in Arizona. Valdez, who is bi-lingual, re-calls going to grade school in Tucson.

“At this point, he’s very good, a terrific prospect,” Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler told reporters after Valdez stopped Adian Perez on the undercard of Manny Pacquaio’s rematch victory over Timothy Bradley last April at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand “We have a credo: Ability and marketability. We think he has both. When a guy can fight, brings an audience from Mexico, Arizona and California, that’s a big fan base.’’

By Bart Barry-

Saturday begins an eight-day Soviet-boxing siege on HBO.

No, you’re right, “siege” is more than a bit over the top, and the Soviet Union survives today only in the American minds of Cold Warriors and millionaire defense-contracting executives, and what politicians and media outlets they employ, but those clicks count much as others in online-traffic ratings, so let’s let it roll. This siege, in the form of warmongering by Kazakhstani middleweight titlist Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and Russian light heavyweight titlist Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev, will be conducted in Manhattan and Atlantic City, respectively, and will mark an act of belligerence perpetrated not on America but our Australian allies, in the form of New South Wales middleweight Daniel Geale and Victoria light heavyweight Blake Caparello. HBO will be promoting, er, reporting, from the front.

Far as manias go, this Russian invasion of our sport is a bit short of maniacal. More frustrating still, it does not appear either its participants’ faults, exactly, that our current era produces so little in the way of meaningful opponents for network-anointed lions to feast upon. Spotchecking the records of the Aussie dishes undergoing preparations for Golovkin and Kovalev, one finds bland fare not to be improved with spice or garnish. This is their time, Geale and Caparello, which sounds like a name for a tandem of hardhitting talkshow hosts more than hard hitters, and while they are not prepared for GGG and Krusher, they are ready as they’ll ever be – that inane little cliché anxiety drives persons to use just before they confront an obstacle fated to be insurmountable: When you ask someone’s fitness for a task and he says he is “ready as I’ll ever be,” hedge your bets, because the only acceptable answer is “yes.”

That’s the answer you’d draw from Golovkin or Kovalev, in part because the word accounts for no less than 10 percent their working English vocabularies, which is a refreshing twist that ought delight their comrades in the former Soviet Union much the way Julio Cesar Chavez and Felix Trinidad delighted their Spanish-language followers by sticking to the mother tongue, regardless how it enkindled publicists and whatever mousy-faced retread anticipated Showtime’s Jim Gray. The pressure is ever on athletes who ply their craft in the United States to speak English, a nearsighted demand that misses the point nearly every time it’s made, since these men are not interested in assimilation – they aren’t allowed in this country for it, either – but rather performance; they are here to provide a spectacle experts assert an American could not. That is particularly true of Golovkin and Kovalev, two men whom American Andre Ward would beat if he still fought, but since he no longer does, P1 visas are granted the former Soviets because, in a twist Chavez fans can appreciate, they are willing to do the sort of work Americans won’t.

The plea for more words in English is trite and misplaced because having a man speak to you in sounds connected to no moral force for him or you is just noise better communicated with Golovkin’s disarming smile or Kovalev’s menacing everything. Let that remind us, too, ever and again, the only thing one should value of a fighter as an individual is what he does between the ropes and bells. If you are flummoxed by an athlete not speaking your language because you think he’d make a great role model for your son if only your son might feel a native-language connection, your perspective is wanting.

These men, to paraphrase Charles Barkley, whose 1993 Nike commercial set a candor standard never since approached, are paid to bludgeon with their fists half-naked men to unconsciousness; some of that dwells in all of us, yes, being as we are the descendants of those willing to brain man or beast for food, but we’re all better served by keeping such impulses in vicariousness’ fantastic arena. The profession of hurting other men chooses and is chosen by a special sort of athlete, a neanderthal type better captured by Kovalev’s resting posture, still coiled, than Golovkin’s goodnatured grin, the sort of man a father instinctively knows will protect his daughter as a wife till the day she needs protection from him, and no amount of heuristics or memorized English phrases will bring aficionados any nearer the reality of a man like that than what that man does during 36 minutes of sanctioned violence thrice a year.

Or has the last decade of Manny Pacquiao saying “happy” helped you cultivate a deep, meaningful connection with the Filipino’s soul?

On paper, Geale looks the better, more tested sacrifice, he hasn’t taken an opponent’s consciousness in four years but still, and Caparello looks like Kovalev’s least-hopeful HBO opponent yet. Kovalev’s fights are no longer about anything meaningful as anticipating the next match bound to anticipate the next anticipatory match for an anticipation-filled match with the guy who left HBO, but they’re nigh tolerable as Golovkin’s because, for reasons that might reduce to simple publicity, Kovalev’s prizefighting image floats upon a hyperbolic cloud fractionally puffy as Golovkin’s. Not in recent memory, or distant, has a fighter won so many hypothetical battles in the minds of experts while winning so few actual ones.

The “most feared” label is by nature fraudulent – right, Erislandy? – and most commonly evinces a promoter unwilling to pay opponents a fair wage. Odds would say every Floyd Mayweather opponent hospitably entertains the high probability he will lose to Mayweather, and yet never do we hear Mayweather called “most feared” because opponents win career-best paydays by losing to him.

Either HBO’s parsimony is impeding Golovkin and Kovalev’s fighting appropriate opponents, or else neither man is interested in climbing weight classes till he comes to someone who wrongly views him as a sure-thing. Regardless, both men, victims of circumstance perhaps, now make haste solely for footnote status in the Manny & Money Era.

Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com

By Norm Frauenheim-

Gennady Golovkin has one title he’d like to keep for as long as possible and another one he’d prefer to shed as soon as he can. Time makes the second of the two problematic. Golovkin is the latest in a long line of fighters who have been called the Most Avoided.

It’s unofficial, yet older than any acronym. It comes with grudging respect and even some popularity among fans looking for a people’s champ. But in terms of a career, it’s best only as a temporary step. For Golovkin, Most Avoided has been an inevitable stage in his move from Kazakhstan to Europe to the United States, from anonymity to Home Box Office.

But now Golovkin is 32.

The clock is ticking on when the middleweight champion gets a big-money shot in a fight that will allow him to relinquish a burdensome mantel inherited from Winky Wright and Antonio Margarito.

His chances at moving on and into a higher income bracket are hard to figure. For now, at least, his career resumes on July 26 at New York’s Madison Square Garden in an interesting bout against Australian Daniel Geale, a former middleweight champ who is among the division’s top five contenders. Geale is competent and clever enough for some to think he could take the fight into the later rounds against the unbeaten Golovkin, whose 26 stoppages in 29 victories give him the best KO ratio among current champions.

Through boxing’s twisted prism, a 12-round decision over the Aussie could turn into a good business decision for Golovkin, despite inevitable criticism that would be there in the immediate aftermath of the unexpected. No stoppage might lessen the fear and finally open the door to an opportunity against Miguel Cotto, or Canelo Alvarez, or Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. or Andre Ward. Another stoppage might be just another reason to continue avoiding him.

Golovkin says he doesn’t worry about whether that big opportunity will ever be there. What else can he say?

“I don’t think much about this,’’ he said during a conference call Thursday from his training camp in the mountains of Big Bear, Calif. “But I know, I just heard, that when my team is finding fights, it is sometimes hard to get the fight with some fighters. That’s just what I hear. But I don’t think much about this.’’

Still, Golovkin is at an age when other fighters step into their prime for their biggest money in career-defining bouts. A couple of examples: Floyd Mayweather Jr., now 37, was 30 when he scored a split decision over Oscar De La Hoya in front of history’s biggest pay-per-view audience on May 5, 2007. Manny Pacquiao, now 35, was 11 days from turning 30 when he stepped into big money and international celebrity with his stoppage of De La Hoya on Dec. 6, 2008.

Then, there was Wright and Margarito. Wright was 32 when he shed the Most Avoided tag in March 2004 with the first of two straight victories over Shane Mosley and then a stunner over Felix Trinidad. Margarito was 30 when he got out from under the label with an upset of Cotto in July, 2008.

From Mayweather and Pacquiao to Wright and Margarito, the timing is similar. For Golovkin, it’s becoming urgent.

By Bart Barry-

When Mexican Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fought countryman Alfredo Angulo in March, I attended a viewing party at the home of a Puerto Rican boxing trainer who, despite no rooting ethnic interest whatever, found his home filled by seven other Puerto Rican aficionados. Saturday, when Alvarez decisioned Cuban southpaw Erislandy Lara at MGM Grand, by a split decision that might have gone to either fighter fairly, I attended a viewing party at the home of that same boxing trainer, and this time we were two. Total.

Puerto Rico’s proximity to Cuba cannot explain such clairvoyance, alone, but might begin to tell why otherwise committed aficionados decided to mend fences with their spouses, Saturday, rather than give an hour of one evening to an Erislandy Lara match. Lara is indeed as near to unwatchable as a main-event fighter dare be, and if my friend’s house may act as an informal revenue predictor, Alvarez, though he may not have deserved Saturday’s decision, does deserve begrudging respect for enduring a fight with Lara for what inevitably will be a cut in pay.

It became once more apparent sometime in the early part of Saturday’s match Saul Alvarez is exactly what we believed he was during a reign of terror he began in 2010 on the oddly, albeit timelessly, named Queer Street, against Miguel Cotto’s resentful older brother, a thoroughbred’s gallop through pasty competition done at a canter, plodding as Alvarez occasionally was against foes unremarkable as Matthew Hatton and Ryan Rhodes. Three years ago Alvarez appeared a b-level fighter with a great marketing team and surprising poise. The marketing team has fallen-off a bit, after a hell of a run, but Alvarez is otherwise very much a b-level fighter with remarkable poise.

More than any quality that served him Saturday was Alvarez’s self-belief. Perhaps Erislandy Lara is not a puncher serious as other men Alvarez has faced, though he can’t be far behind, but Alvarez was unyielding in his self-belief, wandering wantonly at Lara’s fists regardless of their accuracy. Likely that was the fulcrum upon which the judges’ decision got leveraged: The fighters’ reactions to each other’s punches.

When Alvarez got pasted with a stiff left cross or impaled himself on Lara’s jab, he immediately shuffled his feet and sped forward like a kid trying to impress a prospective coach with hustle on his first day of tryouts. When Lara got kissed by so much as the soughing breeze caused by Alvarez’s right fist flying harmlessly overhead, he jogged the perimeter of the ring like Barry Bonds rounding second after dunking a ball in McCovey Cove. It was absurd the joy Lara brought himself by not getting hit, the way an avoided blow pacified him and revealed his curious fighting character, one to take no umbrage with another man’s attempt to decapitate him; were it not ostensibly a savage happening for which Americans paid $60-per-view, a full day’s wages in many cases, Saturday’s fight would have been a spectacle of Christian forgiveness to rival any Papal Mass.

Lara’s abundance of ruth and want of vengefulness, finally, was the reason most aficionados’ eyes were dry over Saturday’s conceivably unfair decision, and why Lara’s postfight corner comprised a full tally of those in the world who desire Alvarez-Lara 2. Spare us, Lord, please! the misery of ever again enduring a match like that one, and if that means somehow bestowing a fortune so vast upon Erislandy Lara he does not don boxing gloves once more, why, may Thy will be done!

Canelo Alvarez would be an asterisk in a better era, a picture of profitable precocity whose carrot coif would not have won him a match with the era’s best, Floyd Mayweather – though, of course, in a better era, Mayweather himself might struggle to be in the Top 5. And no, there isn’t a prizefighting era in which Erislandy Lara’s pacifism would have been welcomed.

In a different if not better era, a Soviet era in which Moscow paid Cuba sugar prices justifiable only if Fidel were an alchemist converting cane to nukes, Lara might have remained a career amateur in the Cuban system and found his lifestyle suitable enough not to defect, amassing four or five gold medals. Lara’s mastery of amateur tactics is unrivaled: In the last century of American sport, only golf’s Bobby Jones perhaps accomplished more as an amateur against professionals than Lara has.

Alvarez may be limited but he has more dimensions than Lara, a man with seemingly no transitional capacity, defense to offense. How different an outcome might Saturday have brought if Lara had seen his opponent’s misses as occasions for retribution, not revelry? Several times early in the fight, Lara stood under his feet, delivered a crisp 1-2 to Alvarez’s ever predictably placed head, and then, as Alvarez began his impress-the-coach shuffle, Lara launched a homerun trot for reasons even a defensive specialist like Pernell Whitaker would not have fathomed. In those instants, Alvarez, hands low, freckled neck freshly stiffened by clean shots, wanted no part whatever of more contact from Lara, who, had he followed with even a measuring jab after those 1-2s, might have taken the fight, 10 rounds to 2 at least, on two scorecards, while earning a draw from judge Levi Martinez, reliably scoring another match for the promoter’s favorite color, red corner or blue.

It’s what makes Mayweather a special prizefighter where Lara is a special amateur; Mayweather showed Alvarez a new rhythm each round, keeping the fearless if not perspicacious Mexican unbalanced throughout, preventing the very sort of belligerence Alvarez showed in the final five minutes of Saturday’s match, flying at Lara like a man confident no more than two punches would come in succession, punches he didn’t mind swallowing in behalf of what loyally loud countrymen dutifully filled MGM Grand.

That Alvarez made a choice for violence Lara did not is reason enough to see a close fight Canelo’s way, keeping him boxing’s third most-reliable draw in this soggy era. Erislandy Lara, meanwhile, can content himself with remaining one of the greatest amateurs of this era or any other.

Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com