By Bart Barry–

Saturday American Floyd “Money” Mayweather will fight once more at MGM Grand, this time with Argentine Marcos “El Chino” Maidana, in a welterweight title match the prestigious WBA has honored with “Super World” status, defying courageously those haters who argued for its belt to bear an “Average World” or “Lopsided World” appellation. Mayweather, who doesn’t care what anyone thinks, probably wouldn’t have paid their fees for anything less than a shot at “Super World” supremacy. How serendipitous.

If a Buddhist monk who spends his days meditating in a burlap coverall tells you he doesn’t care what others think, you might believe him. But if ever a man who spends tens of millions of dollars on conspicuous displays of his wealth tells you he doesn’t, check your wallet. Recently Robin Leach came out of retirement – surely he doesn’t need the money, because everyone who comes out of retirement never needs the money, just a rekindled love of the game – to walk us through the Big Boy Mansion in the 15th or so vacuous homage to Floyd Mayweather’s residence, showing us the million-dollar automobiles Mayweather drives alternately to a boxing gym and fastfood eatery, and the bedizened jewels Mayweather wears over white t-shirts.

It was another tired move from a tired franchise in a tired sport. Most of the off-television coverage of Saturday’s match has treated the prohibitive ratio oddsmakers assign the fight, declaring in a short declarative sentence not unlike that last one that Marcos Maidana hasn’t a jot of a chance of beating Floyd Mayweather. Those guys know their craft, and they understand probability better than Mayweather’s companions do, and they see no reason Maidana should beat Mayweather, and they are correct, there really isn’t a reason to expect anything that resembles a competitive main event Saturday. If you’re reading this, though, you’re part of the reliable half-million or so Americans our industry needs to buy every fight, and for your loyalty you deserve some reason to watch better than what pap Showtime infomercials offer.

Floyd Mayweather has to be in control of everything to be comfortable. Raised in what might euphemistically be called an unstable household, Mayweather imposes order wherever he can and does not relinquish it. He is perhaps the greatest handicapper of opponents boxing has ever seen, never endangering himself in a real fight against a real opponent when it can possibly be avoided. If Mayweather did not know about Antonio Margarito’s propensity for liberal hand-wrapping techniques in 2006, Mayweather absolutely knew something was off about him and wanted no part of a guy who was that big, somehow made 147 pounds for a few minutes of every year, and was incapable of discouragement.

Mayweather got the hell out of his contract with promoter Top Rank, in retrospect the best business decision made by a boxer in a generation, and fought Margarito’s wornout sparring partner Carlos Baldomir instead, because the Argentine surprised everyone and beat Zab Judah, three months before Mayweather did (don’t ask), and then changed his name to “Money” from “Pretty Boy” – a somewhat lamentable choice, as Mayweather has more beauty in person than cameras credit him, and money is, well, an idea so mundane it’s what every American dad spends 40 weekly hours making.

When he’s on, “Chino” Maidana does an excellent imitation of a fighter who is not in control. His footwork is a jumbled mess, his right hand is more like a club than a piston, his left hand is thrown with many times more commitment than technique, and his defense is poor enough that, after 38 prizefights and many more amateur bouts, his dad felt compelled to interrupt a televised barbecue and tell Chino to employ head movement. Odds are, that’s not the way to beat Mayweather – odds are, once more, pronouncedly that way. But in about the only reasonably unfiltered answer Mayweather gave his conference-call audience last week, “Money” did mention Emanuel Burton-Augustus as his toughest opponent, and Burton/Augustus was an old-time opponent who understood the value of dropping a competitive fight to a hometown favorite, quite often a more lucrative way to make a living than Maidana’s approach of whupping someone like Victor Ortiz in Staples Center, and imagine for a second the skill it takes to travel the country losing competitive fights without imperiling yourself unnecessarily. It also takes a lad who’s a bit off-kilter, and Burton-Augustus was surely that.

Maidana’s style was not built to solve the Mayweather style – Maidana’s style was built only to pulverize whatever object, animate or otherwise, came in its way – but it might have the ancillary effect of discomfiting Mayweather enough to make him entertain us for a brief respite, at least entertain us more than the aggregate of Mayweather’s last two opponents, Ghostly Canelo, managed to do. When I asked Paulie Malignaggi a few months ago how you fight a guy like Maidana, Malignaggi said you do nothing you didn’t learn in your first six months in a boxing gym. You go back to basics till you’re boring yourself.

Mayweather knows to do this; unlike the impostor buffoon Maidana traumatized in December, Mayweather comes right out of his cutiepie defense the second he’s touched for real. In their 2010 match, Shane Mosley dropped a right hand on Mayweather that made Money’s knees clap, and what did Mayweather do next? He set his hands high, went forward behind his jab, and applied pressure, like they teach on your first day in a gym.

Mayweather has much better footwork than the men whom Maidana has beaten up, and he’s physically stronger, too. He knows Maidana can be discouraged, and he will locate, before the bell sounds for round 4, the guy who dropped every minute to a 147-pound Devon Alexander and barely outboxed at 140 an unretired version of Erik Morales knocked-out twice by Manny Pacquiao five years earlier at super featherweight.

As ever, if this fight goes nine minutes without Mayweather being hurt badly, it will not be competitive. I’ll take Mayweather, UD-12, then, and hope for the sake of this increasingly moribund sport and its committed fans to be entirely wrong.

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

By Norm Frauenheim-

Floyd Mayweather Jr. has said repeatedly during the promotional push to his May 3 bout with Marcos Maidana that nobody has ever seen him at his best.

He said it again Tuesday during his media day at his Las Vegas gym. He introduced the idea on March 8 during a
round-table session with reporters before Canelo Alvarez’ victory over Alfredo Angulo at the MGM Grand.

“I still haven’t been able to move my ‘A’ game up,” Mayweather said then. “I’ve beaten fighters with a ‘C’ game, probably a ‘D’ game. I’ve never had to do it with an ‘A’ game.”

The suggestion is that Mayweather’s best-ever in an 18-year, unbeaten career will be on display against Maidana. There’s salesmanship attached to that. Mayweather, advisor Leonard Ellerbe and associate Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy Promotions have been effusive in their praise of Maidana. They have to be. Betting odds against the Argentine have ranged between 7-to-1 to 11-to-1. Showtime’s pay-per-view price tag is approaching sticker shock. At $64.99 to $74.99 for the PPV telecast, they have to assure a reluctant public that the Argentine has a real chance, despite overwhelming odds that say otherwise.

But there’s something else too. The best Mayweather ever would seem to be Mayweather by knockout. During the round table, Mayweather wouldn’t go that far. He knows not too. If he had, he would be left with the task of having to explain why there was no stoppage. It’s the very problem still confronting Manny Pacquiao after a rematch victory on April 12 over Timothy Bradley by decision following weeks of promising a knockout.

When asked in March whether Mayweather’s ‘A’ game meant a knockout, he quickly countered, saying:

“No, no, just winning.”

The KO prediction comes with a real downside if it doesn’t happen. But there’s plenty of upside if Mayweather does what he hasn’t promised. Can he stop Maidana? The one-sided odds say, yes, hell yes. Mayweather’s history of picking opponents indicates he believes there’s a real shot at a stoppage, too. First, it would fulfill some of the unspoken promise Showtime had in him when it signed the welterweight to a contract for a possible six fights and worth a potential $250 million. Then, it would end a knockout drought. Mayweather has won three straight by decision over Miguel Cotto, Robert Guerrero and Canelo since a stoppage of Victor Ortiz in 2011. But the fourth-round Ortiz stoppage was clouded by controversy over the way it happened. Ortiz was looking at the referee when the KO blow landed.

Mayweather hasn’t had a clean stoppage since a 10th-round TKO of Ricky Hatton in 2007. Maidana’s power makes him a lot more dangerous than Hatton. Maidana has been knocking out 81.58 percent of his opponents. Hatton’s KO ratio was only 66.67 percent. Still, there are similarities. Like Hatton, Maidana has spent more of his career at light-welterweight then welter. Maidana’s height is listed at 5-feet-7. Hatton was 5-7 1/2.

In a national conference call Wednesday, there were a few Mayweather comments that hinted at the KO possibility.

“We must realize that I am the bigger guy,” Mayweather said. “I walk around at 150, and I don’t go no higher than 152. I’m naturally the bigger guy because I’ve been at 147 for almost 10 years now. So I’m naturally the bigger guy.”

Big enough apparently to go toe-toe with Maidana.

“I’m not going to do a lot of moving,” Mayweather said. “I’m going to come straight ahead and do what I have t

The what sounds a lot like a KO.

PHX Homecoming
Referee Tony Weeks, who will work the Mayweather-Maidana fight, will return to Phoenix Saturday night for an Iron Boy Promotions’ card at Celebrity Theatre. Weeks, who started his career in Arizona, is schooled to work a Phoenix card that includes junior-middleweight Siju Shabazz (3-1, 3KO) in his co-main event bout against Rollin Williams (23-16-2 8KO). Shabazz was an Olympic alternate in 2008. Opening bell is scheduled for 6 p.m.

By Bart Barry–

What if Michael Jordan came back tomorrow, at age 51, and won an NBA championship with, say, the Washington Wizards for whom he last played in 2003? It would be a massive event, an orgy of media celebration as one of the world’s most famous athletes, nay, men, returned to a field of glory and dominated at an age that was absurd. But once the orgy got tired and broke up and media folk went their separate ways, showing the promiscuity of spirit for which they are notorious, what would it say about professional basketball that a man in his sixth decade was able to dominate the best professionals in their 20s?

Now imagine for a second that Jordan never did retire in 2003 but rather finagled from that lousy Wizards team a four-corners offense, and as part of an ownership group selected referees prone to ignoring the shot clock, and won his 2014 championship in five games by an average score of 38-36. Would kids still wish to “Be like Mike” or would they perhaps decide football players were cooler, and spend a generation in cleats instead of Jordans?

Saturday in Washington D.C., 49-year-old American Bernard “The Alien” Hopkins decisioned 30-year-old Kazakhstani light heavyweight titlist Beibut Shumenov in a match uncompetitive enough to bring heaps of dudgeon upon the lone judge who narrowly scored the match for Shumenov – in a nod to this fact much as another: Boxing aficionados are a cantankerous lot, and they like writers who tickle their lesser impulses, and also because tributes to agelessness are, almost invariably, insipid.

Through three rounds Saturday’s match was unwatchable as any Hopkins fight. Whatever else Shumenov was in his title-winning San Antonio match in December, and he was not particularly active, he was fearless. He had a willingness to stand wherever his opponent’s punches were bound to land, arms spread, chest bared in willing reception, and blast his way through them. Shumenov was not a picture of athleticism or class, perhaps, but he was verily a picture of self-belief. Hopkins removed that from him almost instantly and instead of seeing the dangerous puncher Texans watched flatten Tamas Kovacs, a man whose 23-0 dossier was, in retrospect, filled with hot air enough to fuel at least two questions of a Hopkins interview, fans in Washington D.C. got treated to an entirely untested man who did not belong near even a WBA light heavyweight title of the Eastern Bloc, much less the world.

Hopkins’ style remains defensively flawless – he has righted what balance issues sprung up years back against men of faster reflex and activity, and his skills as a handicapper, too, have kept pace, ensuring nobody busy or quick need apply for the privilege of standing across from him. Hopkins still flashes a silent dissent that takes men’s fingers off their triggers, and make no mistake about this either: Hopkins still punches hard and accurately enough to dissuade even men previously mistaken for portraits of fearlessness.

Boxing is not a dying sport in the sense of an entity that has a terminal condition – as anyone who reads about our sport knows already. Most arguments for boxing’s health treat either this certainty, that the spectacle of men swapping blows in a primal reenactment of what was done for finite resources millennia ago will not cease in our lifetimes and draw always paying spectators, or else fetishize the iota of one percent of licensed prizefighters still making massive fortunes from duping the public semiannually with large promotional budgets, special effects, roadtours, conference calls and a medium, television, ever compelled by itself to sell its customers reheated products they’ve already purchased.

It’s all missing widely a point quieter debate fails rarely to unearth: Ours is a sport fantastically diminished. Every number, from subscribers to media-day galas to earnings to punch stats, is open to wildeyed interpretation or misunderstanding in the name of profit, in the short-term or long-. What cannot be faked but easily confirmed in the urban area of any city in the United States, though, is this: There is a fraction the interest in boxing among kids today as there was even a generation ago. The gyms are not filling the way they always did before, and if your city is blessed with a full gym here or there, you can be assured your city once hosted five more than it does right now. Every local initiative to get kids in boxing begins with a wealthy donor and an employed politician and so much hope, and every local initiative quietly loses its impetus for one reason or another and is forgotten.

There is a desire among many to conflate probability and possibility, and so now is the time we excavate a gym here or there in an urban area that hasn’t hosted a fight and hasn’t a commission to confirm it, hold that concept aloft and give fullthroat to it as if its unverified existence disproves the very thing we all know already. And those that stick around to hear this conflation get convinced anew, inevitably, but their number dwindles each time.

Bernard Hopkins’ longevity and wondrous agelessness is good a monument as any to this. Were Michael Jordan still able to ply his Washington Wizards craftsmanship and win titles, outclassing LeBron James and friends in championship games, the NBA would know there was something dreadfully wrong with its product, would know how embarrassingly it appeared to those just discovering the physics of its nature, cylinders and shots and nets and reflexes and vertical leaps and the like, and would know better than to project images of half-filled arenas on the public’s consciousness as if all were just wonderful.

No, there will never be another Bernard Hopkins.

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

By Norm Frauenheim

During a noisy week when the shouting got louder and the insults grew more insulting, there was a moment of relief that seemed to say a crazy game hasn’t changed at all.

Marcos Maidana was answering questions last Saturday during a polite news conference at a restaurant on the floor of the MGM Grand’s casino in Las Vegas when an uninvited voice screamed:

“Please, just kick Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s ass.”

The plea from the party-crasher begged a question. What did Maidana think of that?

Maidana didn’t seem to know what to say. Trainer Robert Garcia, conditioning coach Alex Ariza and everybody else around the Argentine welterweight already has said the expected. Maidana’s punching power gives him the proverbial chance. His unorthodox style will confuse Mayweather. His whirlwind pace of a promised 100 to 120 punches-a-round will confront Mayweather with a challenge he has yet to encounter. There was an answer for every question, a slice of pizza for every attendee. Even Leonard Ellerbe, CEO of Mayweather Promotions, dropped by, ready to counter any doubts about a bout that has put Maidana at the wrong end of 7-1 odds. Ellerbe was also prepared to dismiss rival promoter Bob Arum’s condemnation of the May 3 fight and and rant at the MGM Grand’s preponderance of advertising for the bout on the very day of Top Rank’s promotion of Manny Pacquiao’s unanimous decision over Timothy Bradley in the same arena.

“Maidana’s a tremendous fighter, and that’s what we’re preparing for,” said Ellerbe, who called Arum a liar Wednesday during a conference call. “We know that we’re in a fight. “This guy, right here, he’s the real deal. Everybody else is taking this lightly. But Floyd’s busting his ass, day-in and day-out. That’s because he knows what this guy is bringing to the table. He’s young. He’s hungry. He knows that he’s in the fight of his life.”

Ellerbe also said during the news conference that Mayweather-Maidana was the big event. Then, he called Pacquiao-Bradley a good fight. But Ellerbe’s tone said something else. To wit: Pacquiao-Bradley amounted to small change when compared to what Ellerbe expects from Mayweather-Madiana. According to the Nevada State Athletic Commission, the live gate for Pacquiao-Bradley was $7,865,100. For Mayweather-Madand, Ellerbe and associate Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy Promotions are saying the live gate will be at least $14 million.

Why the difference? Why nearly twice as much ticket revenue for a 7-to-1 fight over a fight that was nearly a toss-up? Odds favored Pacquiao to win the Bradley rematch by fewer than 2-to-1. The reason was summed up in the simple plea from a guy nobody invited or knew. In the Bradley-Pacquiao fight, there was no villain. Fans and media liked both fighters. There were cheers for Pacquiao and polite applause for Bradley. It would have been okay if it had ended in a draw. Two good guys make for a fight without a compelling, perhaps necessary edge of drama. But fights are about emotions and polarization. The more extreme, the bigger the gate.

Mayweather has toned down the trash talk by a decibel or two. But the bad-guy role still belongs to him. There’s money in being a villain, especially an unbeaten one. It’s the unbeaten side of that well-rehearsed routine allows him to pick Maidana or anybody else he wants to fight. The idea is to make sure that fans think that the designated opponent has a chance, no matter how small.

That’s why people buy lottery tickets, play slot machines and throw dice. It’s probably why that guys as in a Las Vegas casino in the first place. Maidana might not be the smart bet. But it’s the emotional way to wager and Mayweather was won that one every time in a style and with a method in a business the sounds different, yet isn’t. One crazy guy said it all.

By Bart Barry-

LAS VEGAS – Having scored the first match between American Timothy Bradley and Filipino Manny Pacquiao the wrong way from ringside, I found myself situated in a spot from which scoring was impossible at the rematch. With the back wall as my headrest, peering at the ring from a seat meters above the ceiling camera and a full level above a concourse kiosk advertising binocular rentals, I saw Pacquiao and Bradley approximate the choreography of modern dance, which approximates the behavior of molecules in an excited state: colliding, racing apart, reversing course, colliding again, racing apart.

Pacquiao won a fair and unanimous decision at MGM Grand Garden Arena, Saturday, in a match more competitive than great, a balletic sort of confrontation that required a 12th round headbutt to make either guy’s face look as a prizefighter’s should. Neither guy landed cleanly a fraction his power punches, and the match was marked more by hollowed-out suspense than building drama.

Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley fought like grade-A natural athletes, tested and stamped Certified. For the first time in years, a spectator could watch a championship prizefight and assume from the data his eyes sent him, instead of what haranguing an agency or promoter or reporter did him, the two men making combat were not using performance-enhancing drugs. They appeared slow, inaccurate and generally winded much of the night. Gone was the Filipino wildcat who haunted trainer Nacho Beristain’s preparatory ruminations, and likely still haunts Erik Morales’ conscious thoughts. In his stead was a comparatively docile veteran who didn’t miss openings presented him when he went for them, and generally did not go for them.

Round 2 was the best Pacquiao and Bradley had made in their first 42 minutes of trying and better than anything they made in their next half hour. It was final evidence Pacquiao no longer has a three-minute round in him and evidence, too, that for whatever reason – and overtraining cannot be ruled out – Timothy Bradley cannot go a hard 36 minutes either; Bradley’s strategy was about conditioning, all about making Pacquiao fight more frantically than he wanted to, tossing punches at a pace unfamiliar to any version of Pacquiao over 130 pounds. It was the very thing, too, and Bradley sensed it and went for it, bringing what he once called “the dog” out, snarling and nipping, never imperiling exactly, but leveraging punches with his all body to make the other guy wilt.

If Pacquiao did not wilt, in rounds 3 and 4 he did wonder why the hell he had to keep doing this violent thing, and why he’ll have to do it for the foreseeable future, and where his fortune went. That happened after Pacquiao finally found Bradley in round 2 with his signature jab-feint-jab-cross combination, the one with which he felled everyone from Marco Antonio Barrera to Juan Manuel Marquez, and multiple times each, too, and Bradley did what everyone will now do in retaliation: Set his weight on his back foot and wing his right hand in a baseball pitcher’s homage to Marquez. The punch didn’t land, not till the fourth, but it made Pacquiao stop and ponder things in a way he never did in his prime.

The gambit worked too well for Bradley, and for the next seven or so minutes he threw his right hand with an enthusiasm so reckless it surely was a missed right in round 4, or early in round 5, that caused his calf muscle to sever and lump beneath him. Afterwards Bradley insisted his plunged activity level was not a matter of conditioning, and that is at least partially believable – although one must imagine how it saps a man’s stamina and fighting spirit to have to stop punches that hit only air. Stopping one’s own punches, after all, is a contingency for which no man trains; to replicate its effect, a trainer would have to yank a heavy bag entirely out his charge’s way on the final punch of each combination.

It took Pacquiao about six minutes – or 5:30 longer than it once might have – to realize Bradley was diminished. Pacquiao may not have thrown a punch in the opening minute of round 6. Round 11 brought justifiable boos from a slightly exasperated MGM Grand crowd, an acknowledgement Bradley no longer had the wherewithal to make a fight with Pacquiao, and Pacquiao was evidently scoring rounds in his head, locking in early leads and protecting them from a guy uninterested in taking them away.

The 12th was a competitive stanza between two good guys who like one another and like competing and really like the paychecks pay-per-view matches bring them but do not see any particular reason to endanger others unnecessarily. Each threw hard punches and hoped for a knockout, but finally it was a relenting sort of Timothy Bradley that Devon Alexander would have appreciated greatly, and a kindhearted sort of Manny Pacquiao that Erik Morales would have treated terribly. That brought a postfight scene long on words like “competitive” and short on words like “great” because, frankly, nobody believed Saturday’s match determined the world’s best welterweight.

As everyone at MGM Grand got reminded constantly all week, the world’s best welterweight is Floyd Mayweather, and he has a shrine window in the front entrance of MGM Grand to prove it. Mayweather’s countenance was ubiquitous during Pacquiao fight week – as promoter Bob Arum reminded everyone, in a show of indefatigability his main-event fighters could not emulate – and that is more than partially attributable to the casino’s sorrowful financial state; walking round and looking for postfight dining, one suspected that for a nominal fee the casino would have hung “Steve Wynn Wants You” posters with the hometown entrepreneur, and MGM competitor, pointing his finger in top-hat and tails.

Mayweather’s group took advantage of MGM’s finances in a move that was tacky, sure. But then, what in Vegas isn’t?

*

Editor’s note: The photo above is part of an extraordinary tapestry sewn by the Canadian artist Sola Fiedler and exhibited at Trifecta Gallery in the 18b Las Vegas Arts District.

*

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

By Norm Frauenheim

LAS VEGAS – It’s a fight without a villain. Timothy Bradley tried to play the role Friday at the weigh-in for his rematch with Manny Pacquiao. He arrived on stage wearing black and to pounding rap. His eyes were hidden by sunglasses. His headphones were an appropriate red. But only the Devil wears Prada. There’s no costume to hide the good guy in Bradley.

He beckoned the crowd to boo with friendly gestures. The Pacquiao partisans among the estimated 4,500 tried comply, but their booing had a hollow ring. There was none of the genuine passion you heard when Floyd Mayweather Jr. fought Oscar De La Hoya or when fought Mike Tyson fought just about anybody. Take off the sunglasses, remove the headphones, and there’s that Bradley smile. It even made Pacquiao grin when both engaged in the ritual face-off for the cameras.

Bradley promised Pacquao that he would knock him knock out. But Pacquiao said nothing. He just smiled back at his business partner. Their sequel Saturday night at MGM Grand is scripted to include violence, perhaps more controversy and maybe even a knockout. But at this moment they were what they have always been and will be: Friends.

If styles make fights, dignity makes this one.

“He’s ready,” Bradley (31-0, 12 KOs) said of the look in Pacquiao’s eyes after he tipped the scales at 145.5 pounds, half-a-pound heavier than the Filipino Congressman. “He’s fierce, he looked ready and determined for the fight.”

In other words, Bradley, who is guaranteed $6 million, liked what he saw. He and his trainer, Joel Diaz, have called themselves Pacquiao fans. In part, that means they hope to encounter the best possible Pacquiao. Friends, after all, don’t disappoint.

Pacquiao (55-5-2, 38 KOs), whose guarantee is $20 million, was reminded of Bradley’s promise to score a stoppage that would eliminate any repeat of the controversy that engulfed Bradley after he won by a split-decision in June 2012.

“Well, he’ll have to prove it in the ring,” said Pacquiao (55-5-2, 38 KOs), who hasn’t scored a knockout in seven straight fights. “That’s where he’s going to have to try to knock me out. But I’m prepared for that. A lot of people tell me that they’re going to knock me out, but it’s another thing to do it.

“‘He said ‘Let’s do this, let’s do this’ and I said, ‘Okay.’ I have to finish business in the ring this time. I’m happy to be back in Las Vegas again. I have peace of mind. No worries. There will just be rest, prayer and belief.”

And after it’s all over, a likely friend.

That sounds like a pretty good decision no matter what the scorecards say.

LUNCH WITH COTTO: Miguel Cotto, who has been training alongside Manny Pacquiao this week in Las Vegas, met the media Friday at the MGM Grand to talk about his June 7 middleweight clash with Sergio Martinez at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Cotto’s trademark poise and understated confidence was there, as always. Roach, he said, has re-energized him and helped correct some bad habits he picked up over his long career. He also wasn’t worried that Martinez might target some facial scars in an attempt to open up some old wounds.

“I’m a boxer,’’ Cotto said. “I’ve bled before. I’ve found out the way to work with the bleeding on my face in the fight. If that happens on June 7, I’m going to be able to work with it again and beat him.’’

Photo by Chris Farina / Top Rank

By Norm Frauenheim–

LAS VEGAS – A compassionate Manny Pacquiao can’t win. That’s the popular theory, anyway. Pacquiao Freddie Roach introduced it. Media and fans have been repeating it ever since. But compassion is also the reason Pacquiao is still fighting. That’s Timothy Bradley trainer Joel Diaz’s theory.

“A lot of people need him,’’ Diaz said.

Diaz said Thursday that Pacquiao would already be retired if it weren’t for the people who work for him.

“A lot of people would be out of jobs if he left the ring,’’ Diaz said during a roundtable session with reporters before the Bradley-Pacquiao rematch Saturday night at the MGM Grand. “Pacquiao has a corporation behind him. He’s done a lot for boxing. I’m a big Pacquiao fan. He’s a great guy.’’

But he also happens to be a guy Diaz is plotting to eliminate, along with a lot of paychecks.

“Everything has a beginning,’’ Diaz said. “Everything has an ending. Manny is getting old, that’s all.’’

Diaz’ theory is an intriguing one, mostly because of Pacquiao’s political instinct and reputation for generosity. As a politician, the Filipino Congressman is in the business of pleasing all of the people all of the time. It’s no coincidence .perhaps, that as a fighter he often says the same thing. He wants to please the people, he says, with an exciting fight. From Roach’s perspective, that means only one thing: A knockout. Fans want knockouts and that’s the result Roach has been predicting.

“In training, Manny threw a combination and said: ‘That’s what I’m going to finish him with,’ ‘’ said Roach, who hasn’t seen Pacquiao win by stoppage since a 12th-round TKO of Miguel Cotto on November 14, 2009. “I was so happy to finally hear it from his mouth and not mine.’’

But a knockout of Bradley is not a simple task. In fact, it would unprecedented. It hasn’t happened in Bradley’s unbeaten career. Sure, maybe the scorecards were wrong in Bradley’s split decision over Pacquiao in 2012. Sure, maybe the decision should have gone to Pacquiao. Even if it had, Pacquiao would not have shown he could knock out Bradley, who was hobbled by injuries to both feet. At closing bell, Bradley was still standing. He was only in a wheelchair at the post-fight news conference.

If Roach is to be believed, the challenge confronting Pacquiao in the sequel is to do what couldn’t be done the first time. Eliminate the compassion. Leave it in the spit bucket. But can he?

If Diaz is to be believed, the Filipino can’t. If he could have, Pacquiao would have eliminated the payroll and quit the game altogether. But he didn’t, or perhaps couldn’t, because compassion is a very stubborn dilemma.

MGM Controversy, Part II: According to ESPN, Richard Sturm, president of entertainment and sports for MGM Resorts International, issued a statement Wednesday night, responding to promoter Bob Arum’s condemnation of the MGM’s signage for the May 3 Marcos Maidana-Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight.

“I was truly shocked by Bob’s comments at (Wednesday’s) press conference and honestly disappointed,” Sturm said in the statement reported by ESPN. “MGM Grand hosted a fight March 8 and has three additional fight events scheduled now through Memorial Day weekend. We always do everything possible to properly promote the events throughout our resorts and over the decades have promoted many, many sporting events with enormous success.”

MGM Resorts International Resorts President Bill Hornbuckle said: “Apparently Bob’s definitions of respect and class are different than ours.”

By Norm Frauenheim–

LAS VEGAS – A rematch Saturday marked mostly by polite exchanges between Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley suddenly got a shot of some old-school trash talk from promoter Bob Arum, who is angry at the MGM Grand for selling Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Marcos Maidana on May 3 with advertising throughout the casino.

A Mayweather mural, estimated to be 20 stories tall, soars up the side of the MGM Grand and overlooks the busy intersection at Tropicana and Las Vegas Boulevard, The Strip. For nearly every Pacquiao-Bradley poster on the sides of slot machines, there’s one of Mayweather-Maidana staring back at it. Outside the door to the media’s workroom, a Mayweather-Maidana ad hangs from the ceiling, above a Pacquiao-Bradley poster.

By the time the 82-year-old Arum arrived at the formal news conference Wednesday, he had seen enough, especially of Mayweather looking down at him.

Arum began the news conference by introducing Richard Sturm, MGM President of Entertainment & Sports as “the president of hanging posters for the wrong fight.’’

The media asked for a response from Sturm following the news conference. Several hours later, none was forthcoming.

Meanwhile, Arum was just getting warmed up during a one-man stand-up that included a vague reference to Frankie Carbo, a 1950’s gangster who owned a piece of Sonny Liston.

“I know that at the Venetian, they wouldn’t make a mistake like this,’’ said Arum, who is friends with Sheldon Adelson, who owns the Venetian in Vegas and Macao, China’s gambling mecca and fledgling boxing market. “They would know what fight they have scheduled over the next three or four days.

“They wouldn’t have a 12-to-1 fight being advertised all over the building that’s going to take place three weeks from next Saturday. But that’s why one company makes a billion dollars a quarter and the other hustles to pay its debt. So there it is.”

Arum’s bitter feud with Mayweather is hardly a secret. It too was evident in a discussion that Arum had with Bradley while still on stage and not far from the microphone.

“Why don’t you ask the guy whose picture is all over the building? When is he going to fight somebody real?’’ Arum said in a booming voice that really didn’t need any electronic amplification.

Bradley replied: “I’ll let you ask him that.’’

As it turned out, Bradley might have been the only one who had anything nice to say about the MGM.

“I’ve never been in a hotel room with stairs,’’ Bradley said of his suite. “You need an elevator in there.’’

An elevator decorated with a Mayweather-Maidana poster, of course.

By Bart Barry–

Saturday at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, not Macao, undefeated American welterweight Timothy Bradley will make a rematch of his 2012 fight with Filipino Manny Pacquiao, one sure to provide scoring quandaries, and what bad-faith and acrimony our beloved sport attaches to such. A shame, that, since Bradley and Pacquiao are generally good-faith guys.

Whatever his faith, Bradley, a former champion at 140 pounds, has yet to fight his best at welterweight. He made the best match seen in quite a long time at welterweight about 13 months ago, against the ruinous “Siberian Rocky” Ruslan Provodnikov, a grotesquerie of volition from which Bradley is unlikely ever to recover fully, followed by a busier-is-better decision victory over Mexican master Juan Manuel Marquez in October. Not yet has Bradley shown anything like the identity-snatching form he employed against Joel Casamayor, Lamont Peterson, Nate Campbell, Kendall Holt or Junior Witter – the British junior welterweight titlist Bradley dropped and decisioned in Nottinghamshire in 2008, launching “Desert Storm’s” unanticipated championship reign.

With few exceptions, every man at the elite level of sport is an overachiever – certainly Pacquiao and Marquez are – but Bradley appears to have done more with his talents than nearly anyone has. What is his signature fighting style? The man who at 140 pounds flashed righthand leads to corral opponents towards the ropes, and then, in a nod to Joe Frazier, another undersized overachiever, smoked where those men lived, has done nothing of the sort in his move to welterweight, a move whose stylistic understatement was anticipated by a lackluster 2010 welterweight debut against Argentine Luis Carlos Abregu. Bradley’s identity at welterweight is that he finds a way to win, but if you took even a Bradley partisan and told him to teach a youngster the Bradley Style, he’d lack the clarity of objective a request for the Pacquiao Style or Marquez Style would surely summon.

Bradley does not naturally place his head in an auspicious place for avoiding other men’s punches; with no opponent was this more obvious than Provodnikov, a puncher who, for all his primitive merits, consistently placed his head out of the sights of Bradley’s gloves while throwing much better leveraged punches. Bradley was, that evening, the better athlete, and a miracle of conditioning and resolve too, but he was not the better fighter – not even close. He was not the better fighter, either, against Marquez in October, though little shame might be extracted of that.

Ringside for both, I saw Marquez decision Bradley, 116-114, similarly to the way I saw Bradley decision Pacquiao, 116-115. We return to the scene of the robbery, then. I was one of three credentialed media ringside for Bradley-Pacquiao who scored the match the way the official judges did. I was uncertain of my scorecard as the judges’ collective verdict was; I marked five rounds as either/or affairs, and the judges were unanimous about fewer than half the rounds. My scorecard was, as ever, fallible, and it is important to impart, once more, the reason: A writer honored with a ringside credential should honor that honor by scoring truthfully, not “correctly” – seeking to record what he senses, not what he predicts others will sense.

It was and remains memorable to me how little import persons assigned my immediate admission of fallibility; saying my scorecard was a truthful if imperfect representation of what I saw from row H was wholly inadequate, since anything but capitulation was intolerable to those who knew what they saw on television; somehow, to a surprisingly large but unsurprisingly unseemly mass, unless I joined the other 100 guys in the Pacquiao column, the browbeating shouldn’t cease. Among other mildly amusing pastimes, the experience of others’ reactions to my Bradley-Pacquiao scorecard launched me on a hobbyist’s investigation of the science of optics, one that quickly led away from high-definition television and towards camera obscuras, camera lucidas and fiber optics though not before uncovering this: A boxing broadcast’s most powerful filter is not its audio commentary or unofficial scorecard but what 30-second replays it shows between rounds.

Less than a 10th of the round is repeated for a viewing audience programmed by the medium to believe whatever is repeated is what is priority. The punch you thought you saw the other guy land at the 47-second mark of the round apparently wasn’t essential as the punch landed by the A-side guy in the final 19 seconds, else why isn’t it being repeated? And the antidote to an awareness of such influence is no antidote at all: Assuming nefarious intent and scoring against it makes a tally no more objective than otherwise.

Saturday’s match will likely be another hard-scoring affair. The erosion of Pacquiao’s reflexes continues apace, yes, but Bradley’s recent stylistic conversion, and his newfound expectation that he’ll receive the benefit of every scoring doubt, at least from official judges, tend to diminish Bradley’s activity at the exact moment it should increase, and this is bound eventually to be a problem for him – and quite possibly a problem, come Saturday, when official judges look to score close rounds for Pacquiao because, well, who wants to be part of another investigation?

Wait a tick, way back at the beginning of that ran-on monstrosity, didn’t you mention an erosion in Pacquiao’s reflexes, which would seem to indicate you missed Mastery in Macao when Pacquiao proved to himself and trainer of the year Freddie Roach he was all the way back? For a championship-caliber prizefighter, finding Brandon Rios with a combination rates in difficulty between a heavybag and the red-brick façade of what boxing gym houses it; nothing Pacquiao did in Macao indicated he was better than the man decisioned by Bradley 22 months ago in Las Vegas – and no matter what one opines of that decision, he must concede this: Pacquiao was outhustled and outhit in the 12th round by a man who was immobile enough to require wheelchair assistance a half hour later. And since then, Pacquiao was the B-side of what HBO analyst Max Kellerman, in a nod to his medium’s penchant for understatement, called “arguably the greatest one-punch knockout in the history of boxing!” And yet.

I’ll take Pacquiao, MD-12, in a fight Bradley wins, and judge Glenn Trowbridge nevertheless scores 119-109 for the Filipino.

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

By Norm Frauenheim–

A couple days after 40-year-old New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter began a long goodbye to baseball with the first stop in a farewell tour, 49-year-old Bernard Hopkins talked during a conference call Thursday about a new beginning in the cruelest game of all. Jeter got golf clubs, cowboy boots and a Stetson as big as the old Astrodome before a game in Houston. That’s a lot better than a punch in the face, which is about the only thing Hopkins can be sure of getting on April 19 in a fight with light-heavyweight Beibut Shumenov, who was a four-and-a-half-year-old kid in Kazakhstan when Hopkins lost his pro debut in October 1988.

Hopkins has been fighting for so long that it’s getting hard to remember what boxing was like before him. Indeed, the youngest generation of fans and fighters have never known the sport without Hopkins, who has been around since Ronald Reagan and at this rate might still be fighting after Barack Obama moves out of the White House. Truth is, there are some in his own generation who would be happy to see him retire. They’d even buy him the boots, Stetson and clubs if he would.

But Hopkins fights on, in part out of familiar defiance, in part for an ongoing pursuit of history and, mostly, because he can.

There’s a compelling argument that Hopkins continues to fight at the highest level because of a shallow pool of world-class talent. There are fewer good Americans than ever. But an arrival of tough and talented fighters from Eastern Europe, Kazakhstan and other locales have turned that shrinking pool into dangerous waters. At light-heavyweight, there’s Haitian-turned-Canadian Adonis Stevenson and Russian Sergey Kovalev. They were supposed to fight each other in a bout that was near the top of the fans’ wish list. But Kovalev-Stevenson wound up in the trash, right next to Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr., when Stevenson signed with Al Haymon and moved across the street, from HBO to Showtime. Only the promotional feuds are older than Hopkins.

But there are plenty of reasons to think fans will continue to watch Kovalev and Stevenson, even if they don’t fight each other. To wit: The audience for Kovalev’s seventh-round stoppage Saturday of Cedric Agnew exceeded one million, according to HBO. In an HBO doubleheader on November 30, 1.305 million watched Stevenson beat Tony Bellew and 1.254 million saw Kovalev beat Ismayl Sillah.

Kovalev or Stevenson? Stevenson or Kovalev? Doesn’t matter. For Hopkins, they are just different sides of the same coin. Against either, the likely expectation is that Hopkins would finally encounter his own mortality. That, of course, was the expectation in 2008 against Kelly Pavlik, now retired and never the same after Hopkins did what few thought he could. No wonder Hopkins sounded so confident Thursday. The same circumstances are on the horizon.

“Been there, done that,” said Hopkins, who sounded as if he were anxious to be there and do it once more.

Stevenson’s move to Showtime for a May 24 bout with Andrzei Fonfara sets up a showdown with Hopkins if he beats Shumenov, a 30-year-old fighter who is hard to judge mostly because of a small sample. Shumenov, who reportedly had more than 100 amateur bouts, has only answered a professional bell 15 times for a 14-1 record with nine KOs.

“It’s bad to think beyond April 19 and Beibut Shumneov, but the Stevenson fight is going to be mentioned,” said Hopkins, who will be able to put an AARP card next to his Costco card when he turns 50 next year on January 15. “It’s out there. It’s been out there since Stevenson came on board to eventually unify titles.”

There was no hint of a farewell in anything Hopkins said. He wouldn’t know how to say goodbye to a threat anyway. He’ll let younger guys do that.

By Bart Barry

Quick, off the top of your head, name the contracted terms of Sugar Ray Robinson’s rematch with Jake LaMotta in 1943. No? OK, how about the purse split between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns for “The War” in 1985? Not springing to mind. What about the name of Israel Vazquez’s advisor during cable-network negotiations for his second fight with Rafael Marquez?

It’s hard to recall such trivia because, contrary to today’s coverage of our beloved sport, history rightly consigns these details to its dustbin, recalling only the swapping of punches. And it does not remember at all fights that were never made – hell, not even a YouTube search can find Floyd Mayweather’s matches with Kostya Tszyu or Antonio Margarito.

Saturday, Russian light heavyweight titlist Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev stopped someone named Cedric Agnew in forgettable fashion to set-up a long-longed-for fight with fellow titlist Adonis Stevenson, one Kovalev and Stevenson’s network, HBO, dedicated quite a lot of its subscribers’ time to setting-up – except that shortly before Kovalev’s match, subscribers learned Stevenson was no longer with HBO, rendering them suckers for caring a whit about Kovalev’s meaningless tilts with Agnew and someone else named Ismayl Sillah, or Stevenson’s 13 forgettable rounds with, let’s see, Tony Bellew and Tavoris Cloud.

As 2014 continues along, matters become incrementally more futile. If an aficionado took every fight worth seeing this year and added them together, he would have trouble paying for a month’s subscription to HBO or Showtime, and no chance of justifying both, much less both and a gaggle of overpriced pay-per-view offerings. Everything is marketed to him like it is portentous; nothing is meaningful in and of itself, but each thing might be consequential someday in a where-were-you-when sort of way.

HBO has taken two Russian-speaking prizefighters, Sergey Kovalev and Gennady Golovkin, and promised its subscribers historic things from them, creating hours of highlight reels in lieu of paying meaningful opposition to fight them. After losing Floyd Mayweather, the network locked-in Andre Ward as its pound-for-pound superstar, giving him a microphone without requiring that he fight. It marketed Nonito Donaire in all his portentous finery only to see him lose the first meaningful fight of his HBO tenure, only to have no apparent opposition for Donaire’s vanquisher, only to transition to Mikey Garcia – as settled along a path as the network’s Next Nonito as any fighter currently plying his wares.

Maybe Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. is not serious about his craft as Ward or Donaire, but he does a lot more fighting than they do, and he does it in matches that sell tickets and happen on HBO. That’s scheduled to change, though, as it appears Chavez may fight Golovkin on pay-per-view in the summertime, in a fight with no right whatever to an additional tariff: Chavez is 0-1 against world class opposition, and Golovkin has yet to face any. In a serious era, Chavez-Golovkin would make a fantastic Boxing After Dark main event and a passable World Championship Boxing offering, and so it takes tremendous chutzpah to threaten beleaguered subscribers, the long-suffering fools who’ve sat through meaningless Golovkin match after meaningless Chavez match, seasoned in Golovkin’s case with hysterical allusions to all-time greats before Golovkin has proved himself even an all-time good, with tollgated access to their match.

Last week’s machinations with Adonis Stevenson’s migration to Showtime, after a pair of preparatory Stevenson fights on HBO to prepare us for more preparatory fights on HBO, since HBO hadn’t the budget to cajole Stevenson’s signature onto a contract with Sergey Kovalev – a possibility too absurd to consider – are relevant to Golovkin and Chavez, and Mikey Garcia and Andre Ward and Guillermo Rigondeaux and a roster of hitherto anonymous lads whose greatest collective attribute is being unmarketable enough not to interest Al Haymon, for this reason: HBO’s want of credibility now subverts its marketing of every fight and fighter.

Kovalev appears to be an excellent puncher whose offense may be susceptible to a touch on his chin, but he’s fighting in a division Roy Jones Jr. dominated in bygone days, and even Krusher’s kinfolk might have a konniption at komparisons between Kovalev and Jones. When Jones fought meaningless matches, that is, at least subscribers knew they were seeing a once-in-a-generation talent icing unknowns, instead of a man who may or may not be better than a hard-punching Haitian journeyman unhinged when unhooked from his canary-yellow bra-cape.

Kovalev-Stevenson was the fight aficionados most wished to see in 2014, and it was wholly makeable, and HBO deserves all the blame for not making it; it shall be remembered as the greatest failure of the current regime and possibly its last. So much of the promotion of Kovalev’s fight with Agnew focused on Kovalev’s fight with Stevenson that not-overlooking Agnew was the advice served to what journalists attended Kocktails with the Krusher in San Antonio a month ago, when Kovalev was in town for Chavez-Vera II and answering questions, sort of, in his rich Russian brogue.

Kovalev is a large man, an alpha male, who should have no trouble being moved to cruiserweight, if Andre Ward cannot be enticed out of semi-retirement to fight him, but Kovalev probably will not go anywhere, or fight Ward, because, you know, promotional issues and purses and all the complications of making a prizefight, ideas so legally entangled and algorithmically indecipherable no member of the laity should expect to understand them. No member of the laity should be expected to understand them, regardless of complexity, because they make not a whit of difference to the experience for which any audience member at any spectacle pays.

There is nothing Adonis Stevenson will do on Showtime that will have him remembered long enough to show up on a Canastota ballot after he retires – he chose currency over legacy, and his accountant will have to render ultimate judgment on him because boxing historians shan’t be bothered. By agreeing to fight the Ismayl Sillahs and Cedric Agnews of the world, Kovalev now unwittingly ambles a similar path to well-paid obscurity, or however one says “if it makes dollars it makes sense” in Russian. If Krusher hopes to be remembered at all, he’ll have to do something far more audacious than Saturday’s offering.

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

By Norm Frauenheim
Just when Bernard Hopkins, Floyd Mayweather Jr., most of the NFL, NBA and major-league baseball have us convinced that disrespect is an athlete’s best friend, along comes Timothy Bradley with a different take and some real friends because of it.

“I don’t feel I’m disrespected at all, honestly,” Bradley said.

It was an astonishing comment, straight out of the man-bites-dog variety, especially from Bradley, who wondered if there was anything resembling respect in a world overrun by social-media vigilantes with no accountability and armed with 140 characters to express anger at his controversial decision over Manny Pacquiao.

Disrespect isn’t just another cliche when it comes in the form of death threats.

Bradley heard them, battled them and exorcised them in a personal journey through what he called “a bad place.” He whipped them and Ruslan Provodnikov in a blood, sweat and tears drama that was the 2013 Fight of the Year. He had “a look of anger in him” against Provodnikov, Bradley trainer Joel Diaz said of reckless tactics that earned him a unanimous decision at the price of a concussion. He followed up with a patient, poised split decision over Juan Manuel Marquez. The disrespect was left behind in a passage that has transformed Bradley into a fighter who sounds more confident, self-assured and perhaps wiser than ever.

Convenient excuses and that tired pursuit of motivation from imagined slights just aren’t there in Bradley’s clear sense of who he is and what he must do to beat Pacquiao on April 12 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand in a rematch of his split decision over the Filipino icon on June 9, 2012.

“It’s all about staying on TV, showing my craft,” Bradley said Thursday during a conference call. “It’s about fighting. That’s what it’s all about. Staying on TV, fighting the best fighters out there and beating them. That’s it. I came up the hard way. I came through the back door.”

Over time Bradley said, fans have gotten to know him and the way he works at his craft.

“I think now fans and people are beginning to gravitate toward me,” said Bradley, who is convinced he can beat Pacquiao with a decision that will leave no doubt on the cards or among those in the social-media mob who attacked him as if he were responsible for scores turned in by judges C.J. Ross and Duane Ford. “Before, they didn’t know me. They didn’t know me before Pacquiao. And after the controversy, they really didn’t. Like I had something to do with anything. I didn’t have anything to do with anything. I’m not a judge. I always did my job. But it’s hard to make people realize that. At the end of the day, all I’ve got to do is to continue to win. Then, they’ll have no choice.”

No choice, but to respect him.

By Bart Barry

Tuesday the WBC’s official Twitter account posted a picture of Roberto Duran embracing the late Esteban De Jesus, a picture I retweeted excitedly. Saturday, May’s edition of The Ring magazine arrived, and while it bore a cover photo of Timothy Bradley and Manny Pacquiao beneath a title that read “The Rematch Issue,” it might well have included a subtitle like “The Roberto Duran Appreciation Issue.” On page 20, Anson Wainwright captured Marvelous Marvin Hagler thrice citing Duran in his “Best I Faced” feature, declaring Duran the best Hagler faced in three of 10 categories, including its most important. On page 80, Thomas Hauser published the results of a 26-expert poll that, when asked to determine the greatest modern lightweight, found definitively in favor of “Las Manos de Piedra.”

The photo of Duran hugging De Jesus has a spontaneous sheen to it belied today by a realization nobody might have had, in April 1989, a smartphone with which to snap it. A camera was present when Panama’s greatest celebrity, some months after decisioning Iran Barkley to become the WBC’s middleweight champion, visited the bed of Puerto Rican Esteban De Jesus – the man who gave Duran his career’s first loss, in Madison Square Garden in 1972, and dropped Duran on the canvas for the first time in Duran’s professional career too, in round 1, a feat De Jesus repeated 2 1/2 years later in their rematch, a fight Duran won by 11th round knockout.

Four years later, Duran and De Jesus fought a third time, and Duran, concluding his reign of terror over the lightweight division – his record was 62-1 (51 KOs) when he vacated the WBC and WBA titles and moved to welterweight – stopped De Jesus in round 12. Before the fight Duran said he did not like De Jesus “for a lot of reasons” but then, once pressed, conceded to Sports Illustrated’s Pat Putnam, “mostly because he is the only man ever to beat me.” De Jesus, a bad man by any workable definition, got the better of Duran in prefight quotes, imparting gratitude for what he declared evidence of Duran’s squeamishness:

“I tell him that I will fight him in the street anytime for nothing,” De Jesus said. “He ignored me. For this I am glad, because I need the money.”

De Jesus murdered a man named Roberto Cintron Gonzalez 3 1/2 years later, 16 months after retiring from boxing, and was still in a Puerto Rican prison when symptoms of the AIDS virus led to a gubernatorial pardon allowing him to return to his family to die from a disease it is believed he acquired from sharing needles with a brother who also died of the AIDS virus. It is important, for context’s sake, to revisit for a moment the pre-Magic Johnson era in which Duran comforted De Jesus. It is not nearly enough to say little was known about how the disease was spreading; I recall distinctly my parents, educated and openminded folks in a suburb of Boston, deciding to forego anniversary meals at their favorite restaurant, cancelling a 10-year tradition, because the restaurant was gay-owned, and well, what if one of them inadvertently came in contact with the food?

It is impossible Duran knew any better how the HIV virus was spread, and yet there he is in as aggressive a display of humanity as one might find in a decade of searching. There is no politician’s curled lower lip or straight-armed show of hand-holding compassion. It is Manos de Piedra, instead, his arm thrust beneath his former opponent’s withered body to wrap him in a lover’s desperate embrace and ensure Esteban wherever death took him, he would go swaddled in his friend Roberto’s arms.

The photo, and the text of my retweet of it – “¡Puro Duran (Pure Duran)!” – sent me spiraling back in the 15rounds archives for Roberto Duran’s Magical Realism, a column I wrote nearly eight years ago when Duran’s shortlived tenure as a promoter, the ‘R’ in DRL Promotions, brought the Panamanian to Phoenix for an inaugural press conference that comprised more fighters than media in a fortuitous twist that allowed The Arizona Republic’s irreplaceable Norm Frauenheim and me an opportunity to converse with Duran, nearly as good a raconteur as a fighter, through more than 40 minutes of absurd and absurdly engrossing stories. Norm was through his third decade at the craft by then and didn’t hesitate to call the encounter with Duran a highlight of his time covering boxing. I was not yet in my 15th month of boxing writing but suspected something time has confirmed: The conclusion of those 40 minutes, at which I wore the scent of Duran’s cologne for the number of times he embraced me, held euphoric a moment as boxing writing would provide.

It is Duran’s enormous humanity that makes one feel ownership of his career even at a distance from it as large as mine. When I opened the plastic wrapper of The Ring on Saturday afternoon, anxious to see whom Marvelous Marvin Hagler, my all-time favorite fighter, told Anson Wainwright was the “Best I Faced,” I did not even remember Hagler and Duran had fought and expected various allusions to Thomas Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard. To see Hagler call Duran – whom Hagler faced very near the top of Marvelous’ powers as middleweight champion, in Duran’s 82nd prizefight, one that happened 25 pounds above Duran’s prime weight and came after a 5-3 stretch that saw Duran decisioned by someone named Kirkland Laing – the “Best Overall” Hagler faced induced in me a brief and totally unexpected spike of euphoria, one whose height exceeded its brevity.

Sixty pages later, Thomas Hauser’s “Greatest Modern Lightweight” poll found Duran running away with the prize, scoring 23-percent better than runner-up Pernell Whitaker, 34-percent better than Floyd Mayweather and more than 100-percent better than Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez. Combined.

Or as the legend likes to put it: “¡Roberto Duran es extraordinario!”

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

By Norm Frauenheim

It’s not everyday that Bob Dylan just drops by. But there he was last week at the Wild Card Gym to see Manny Pacquiao. The singer, song-writer, poet and Sixties’ icon posed for photos with the fighter, Congressman, singer and Filipino icon. It was an intriguing meeting, in part because both are as enigmatic as they are likable. No telling what they said to each other, if anything at all. I have no idea whether Dylan is a fight fan. The guess here is that he likes fighters and their compelling stories, yet isn’t sure what to think about their brutal craft.

We have only his lyrics, and they are full of an ambivalence about boxing. Dylan is best known for Hurricane, the popular song about ex-middleweight contender Rubin Carter, who was convicted in 1967 for a triple homicide, re-convicted in a 1976 trial and released in 1985 after the conviction was overturned. Dylan’s powerful lyrics about a wrongful arrest and conviction have long been disputed. But the song’s influence on the controversial case never has. It turned Carter into a cause célèbre.

Before Hurricane, Dylan wrote Who Killed Davey Moore?

Moore, a featherweight champion, died after a 1963 loss to Cuban defector Sugar Ramos at Dodger Stadium. The lyrics are a pointed examination of the circumstances, attitudes and business that are part and parcel of a sport where death is always a risk.

Who killed Davey Moore
Why an’ what’s the reason for?

“Not me,” says the boxing writer
Pounding print on his old typewriter
Sayin’, “Boxing ain’t to blame
There’s just as much danger in a football game”
Sayin’, “Fist-fighting is here to stay
It’s just the old American way
It wasn’t me that made him fall
No, you can’t blame me at all”

Laptops have replaced typewriters at ringside, but there’s still no answer for the question in Dylan’s refrain. I couldn’t help but think about the uncomfortable lyrics as I read about his visit and looked at photos of the poet and the Pac Man. Pacquiao is in camp, trying to regain his “killer instinct” for a rematch on April 12 with Timothy Bradley at Las Vegas MGM Grand.

“We are training for big game in this fight,” Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach said in a press release Tuesday, just a few days after Dylan’s visit. “Manny knows he is going to have to hunt Bradley down and close the show this time. The first fight with Bradley was so easy for Manny that after six rounds he just took it easy on him. Not this time. Our Mantra is ‘Close the show. No Mercy.’ ”

For the last few years, Roach has worked hard to re-instill aggressiveness that Pacquiao had in his astonishing emergence to international stardom. Somewhere along the way and for some reason, he lost his finishing touch, or perhaps his will to deliver it. Since becoming more religious, Pacquiao hasn’t scored a stoppage since a 12th-round TKO of Miguel Cotto in November, 2009. He appeared to back off against Antonio Margarito in winning a decision in 2010. In his last fight — a November comeback from the 2012 KO he suffered against Juan Manuel Marquez, he appeared to do the same against Brandon Rios.

Against Bradley, the stage is set with plenty of motivation for Pacquiao. It’s a rematch of Pacquiao’s controversial loss, a split decision, on scorecards condemned by nearly everybody who witnessed the 2012 fight. In the rematch, Pacquiao can correct the mistake, can take back what was stolen from him. But Bradley appears more confident than ever, especially after a gritty stand in a decision over Ruslan Povodnikov and then a poised decision over Marquez. Even he has asked whether that “killer instinct” is still part of the Pacquiao persona.

“For Bradley to say ‘Manny doesn’t have the hunger anymore and it’s never coming back’ and ‘Manny no longer has his killer instinct,’ that tells me that Bradley is still suffering from the concussion Provodnikov laid on him,” Roach said in the press release.

Dylan had another way of saying it at the end of his haunting song.

Who killed Davey Moore
Why an’ what’s the reason for?

“Not me,” says the man whose fists
Laid him low in a cloud of mist
Who came here from Cuba’s door
Where boxing ain’t allowed no more
“I hit him, yes, it’s true
But that’s what I am paid to do
Don’t say ‘murder,’ don’t say ‘kill’
It was destiny, it was God’s will”

It sounds like something Pacquiao might say.

By Bart Barry
A few weeks back I did something I rarely do: I made plans to attend a Las Vegas fight, Timothy Bradley versus Manny Pacquiao on April 12, without having much of an idea why. What follows, then, is an effort to understand better my interest in this event.

If there was a hint of the overrated about Pacquiao going into his first match with Bradley in June 2012 at MGM Grand, a hint that became still more than a clue six months later as Pacquiao laid on the same blue mat, facedown and motionless, there is a similar if somewhat more subtle hint of the overrated about Bradley as we head to April 2014. I believed in his third match with Juan Manuel Marquez, Pacquiao was credited with punches that didn’t land, footwork that didn’t exist, and power that didn’t remain. Is that why I scored close rounds for Bradley in June 2012? Sure, yes, guilty.

In retrospect, that match might have gone either way but should have gone to no man widely. And yet. Spurred by an irresponsibly lopsided broadcast, complete with an unofficial scorecard that told few truths, a large number of persons to this day think the decision for Bradley was farcical. It was not.

While Manny Pacquiao looked considerably better in his final conscious rounds with Marquez six months later, able to land punches more cleanly, certainly, than he’d been able to land them on Bradley in June or Marquez in any of the 35 rounds that followed his three-knockdown blitz of the Mexican master way back in 2004, the probability is that Marquez was more open to be punched because Marquez – perceiving with a preternatural predatory precision – took note of Pacquiao’s eroded reflexes, married those to a powerfully newfound belief in his illgotten new physique, and looked to make offensive ploys he’d not have dared pursue in their 2008 rematch. It’s not that Pacquiao was suddenly a much better fighter for a few rounds in December 2012 than he’d been in June or the previous December – his defense hadn’t improved a jot, as evidenced by gloves unnaturally folded beneath his body in perfect serenity at the end of round 6 – just that Marquez was emboldened by how much less Pacquiao was then than the guy he’d spend 108 minutes being punched by in bygone fights.

There is an argument to be made Pacquiao’s reflexes dulled sometime during his Silly Season, the two-year stretch, 2009-2011, between his match with Miguel Cotto and his third fight with Marquez. The reduced competition did this, yes, along with an improved risk-to-reward ratio and the decadence that wrought, but there may have been, too, the sockdolagers Margarito put on his body and, perhaps most to the point, the brutality of Pacquiao’s sparring with campmate Ruslan Provodnikov.

“Siberian Rocky” is in a different class; veteran writers will describe the way a world champion sounds on handpads as opposed to a career challenger, but much of that is show, and none tells of a chin. The sound of Provodnikov’s fists on Mike Alvarado’s body in October, though, was in a different class and far more telling than handpad tricks because, well, Provodnikov had to throw those punches under the rational assumption a world titlist might endeavor to punch him at the exact same moment, and assumptions like that scumble one’s commitment.

Provodnikov is relevant, here, because he is the one man, apart from Marquez, whom Pacquiao and Bradley have in common, and while Marquez iced Pacquiao in a special sort of way, one would almost prefer the cutting of the lights to what excruciating happenings must compose rounds opposite Provodnikov on a blue mat. Almost always the term “most feared” is a marketing slogan applied by someone who has never fought to a client who never makes big fights, but Provodnikov should be called most feared by any and all; he is the man who shortens careers and changes men, compromising the very fabric of their identities, and if Timothy Bradley never again sells it out to fight like a noble fool, Provodnikov will be the reason why.

To beat Pacquiao again, Bradley will not need to engage at nearly the maniacal level he engaged Provodnikov. Las Vegas judges are already sympathetic to Bradley, as evidenced by his winning more October rounds against Marquez in Las Vegas than he deserved, and they will look thrice as closely at how many of Pacquiao’s actual punches actually land in an actually effective way this time, thrice as closely as HBO’s broadcast crew did the first time the two men fought.

Another note about that, and the effect it takes: I was a member of boxing’s laity in 1999 when Felix Trinidad decisioned Oscar De La Hoya in what I remembered from that time to be perhaps the most egregious superfight robbery since Julio Cesar Chavez’s 1993 draw with Pernell Whitaker. Apropos of a retrospective I worked on last week for a magazine piece timed to coincide with Trinidad’s June induction in the IBHOF, I reviewed the fight and was flabbergasted by the bias of its commentary – a piece of work that comprised one veteran broadcaster calling every Trinidad right cross “another left hook by Oscar!”, and a former heavyweight world champion finding himself so enamored of De La Hoya’s jab that he eschewed speaking Trinidad’s name altogether in the match’s opening half. One’s sense of the match 15 years later is that a draw was fair, but if not a draw then tie-goes-to-the-puncher, and De La Hoya’s skittering flight from Trinidad in the final six minutes subverted his claims on any lasting dissent. So different was the tone of that match in Puerto Ricans’ eyes that in December, at the press conference announcing Tito’s selection to the Hall, Trinidad was asked sincerely if he thought De La Hoya even belonged there (Trinidad stated empathically that he did).

The cost to attend superfights anymore is prohibitive, I know – even for credentialed media – so do not consider this a remedy for bias’ woes, but I will be at MGM Grand on April 12 because I’m interested in the descent of Pacquiao’s career and the prime of Bradley’s, and frankly, I do not trust what I see on pay-per-view broadcasts.

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

By Norm Frauenheim

Danny Garcia might be the only fighter not trying to elbow his way toward the front of the line that leads to the big paycheck that comes with a bout against Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Garcia wouldn’t turn down the opportunity. Too many numbers after the dollar sign to do that. But he’s not going to launch a social-media campaign in a noisy attempt to get himself on Mayweather’s short list. Yeah, all that money can buy a lot. But there’s a sense that Garcia is investing in something that can’t always be bought.

“At the end of the day, I’m working on my own legacy,’’ he said.

Legacy-building is a gamble. It’s also long-term, which can require patience when confronted by the temptation to cash in as quickly as possible. Garcia is in the Mayweather mix whether he wants to be or not. Media speculation, twitter and the blogosphere have put him there. So has he, of course. But he hasn’t talked his way into consideration.

The junior-welterweight’s unbeaten record (27-0, 16 KOs) including upsets of Amir Khan and Lucas Matthysse, says it all. It’s a resume tough to ignore and perhaps wise to avoid. He wasn’t a finalist in Mayweather’s last deliberations, which led to him pound-for-pound kind picking Marcos Maidana over Khan for May 3.

But the Garcia name was there, maybe as an alternate or a future possibility for a spot on Mayweather’s Showtime dance card. It’s difficult, if not hazardous, to guess what might be next for Mayweather, anyway. The latest example of that is explosive allegations in a TMZ story about Mayweather’s role in a beat-down of two people, whom he suspected of stealing jewelry. The story is short on sources. But TMZ is often right.

Whether the story unravels or leads to further trouble with law enforcement for Mayweather, it’s a warning for any fighter who hooks his hopes on to the Mayweather bandwagon.

Garcia hasn’t.

“If a Mayweather fight came along, I’d fight him,’’ Garcia said. “I’d fight anybody. But don’t expect me to call him out or anything. That’s just not me. I’m just trying to stay in my own lane.

“Whoever they put in front of me, I guess that’s who gets beat up that day.’’

On Saturday, that somebody appears to be Mauricio Herrera (20-3, 7 KOs) of Riverside, Calif. In part, the Showtime-televised bout is a way for Garcia to introduce himself to his roots. He’s fighting in Puerto Rico, the boyhood home for his outspoken dad and trainer, Angel. Although unknown, Herrera has shown he can be dangerous. He beat Ruslan Provodnikov in 2011. Garcia only has to look in the mirror to know the price of overlooking anyone. He was overlooked by Khan and Matthysse. He promises that he won’t commit the same mistake. Besides, a loss might damage his chances at ever facing Mayweather.

“As a fighter, I deserve to fight him more than anybody,’’ he said. “But there’s a plan to all of this.’’

Garcia’s plan. About that, there’s little doubt.

By Bart Barry

Saturday in Las Vegas the redhead anointed by one very powerful Mexican television network as the man most likely to continue his country’s outstanding pugilistic tradition, mainly on the virtue of his unique hair color and pigmentation, victimized, via 10th round technical stoppage, a hopeless fellow Mexican in a dog collar. In preventing the man in the dog collar from fighting any further, the match’s outstanding referee did what a trainer and team of evaluating Nevada neurologists should have done long before. For this act of mercy, the outstanding referee was treated to bald derision from morons.

The redhead, of course, was Saul “Canelo” Alvarez – a prizefighter who, had he appeared on Shobox with a last name like O’Brien, Friday, instead of a Mexican-themed pay-per-view broadcast on Saturday, would not have caused more than an obligatory second glance. The man in the collar was Alfredo “El Perro” Angulo. The outstanding referee was Tony Weeks. And the morons were a myriad, though only one had a microphone.

The horse sense of the generally Mexican, generally intoxicated crowd congregated in the MGM Grand Garden Arena being what it was, the boos were misplaced, or perhaps misinterpreted, but they were an accurate reflection of what becomes increasingly plain about Cinnamon Alvarez: He is not that good. Canelo is an A-list guy in a B-list era, as was made plain by his inability to win convincingly a minute against Floyd Mayweather on Mexican Independence Day weekend, or fell a pre-ruined man like Angulo despite hundreds of clean shots to do so.

Saturday’s match was not competitive. Did Tony Weeks stop it too early? Only for sadists and those who pander them. For those interested in fair competition, Weeks might have stopped “Toe to Toe” after the second minute of its first round when, already, Angulo’s head was getting sent shoulderwards by Canelo’s hooks, and coming off his shoulder in a motion somewhat less elastic than a verb like “snap” should connote.

In the fight’s opening 30 seconds, Alvarez threw a left-hook lead Angulo did not know was coming and hadn’t an idea how to counter with any but the absorption method he and trainer Virgil Hunter apparently perfected in training camp, a method, acceptably nicknamed rope-till-a-dope, wherein a fighter allows himself to be punched hard as possible by an opponent, in the lunatic hopes striking a man repeatedly on the chin with one’s fist will be more taxing for the attacker than his victim. And the lighter the victim punches in the opening minutes, the better this method works, it appears, as Angulo moved his arms perfunctorily enough in round 1 to be salsa dancing, as if his hands were in motion to accessorize whatever his feet and hips did.

Not sure what folks said while y’all watched the fight, but round me were a trainer, a former amateur fighter, and a professional basketball player, and before 90 seconds were done in the main event, there was nothing but disbelief, expressed in phrases hopping about like “Are you kidding?” and “Really?” and “My God!” OK, the last was mine, and it came when I saw how uninhibited Alvarez was in his punching, how oblivious he was of Angulo’s volition, much less his power, as Alvarez stretched his arms wide as an eagle taking flight while throwing the hook and stepped into his cross like a pitcher delivering a full windup to the plate.

Then the second round came and Alvarez landed a right-uppercut lead, a punch that began near his right hipbone, traveled across his chest, traveled across Angulo’s chest, and struck “El Perro” flush on the inch of flesh just beneath his chin, all, before Angulo detected the punch and so much as blinked his consent. Should Tony Weeks have stopped the fight in the 10th? We’re not being serious. Boxing ought to incorporate a mercy rule like little league baseball: The moment one man is so overmatched his opponent has the chutzpah to throw, let alone land, a right-uppercut lead, the judges quietly rise from their stools and walk to the parking lot.

That a group of fans, deep in their cups, expressed displeasure with Weeks’ intervention is exactly no indictment of Weeks, and yet, there was Showtime’s postfight performer trying to get to the bottom of the malcontents’ discontent, and bless Weeks for giving Jim Gray the Major League Baseball treatment, whether it was for Pete’s sake or his own, leaving his new boss at NSAC to feign seriousness concerning Angulo’s incoherent protest afterwards. That’s not an English-as-second-language issue, either; Angulo speaks Spanish in a halting, laboring, frustrated way that argues convincingly his Saturday fight with Canelo should have been stopped in the fifth round of Angulo’s 2011 match with James Kirkland – a loss Angulo attributed to then-trainer Nacho Beristain’s distraction with training Juan Manuel Marquez.

The truth of what actually caused Angulo’s extended stay in a California immigration detention facility shortly after that Kirkland fight likely will never be known, though in our 20-minute conversation 15 months ago, he struck me as a person to whom life happens much more that what a violent criminal the detention facility was designed for. He has a nervous, high-pitched giggle, surprisingly effeminate, that disarms any inquisitor, and he’s quite good at sweet openers that lead quickly to acidic criticisms, as he did to Tony Weeks after Saturday’s match. Angulo might be punchy, but he’s far from stupid. There’s no way he or Virgil Hunter actually thinks he was on the precipice of anything but a terrible ending when Weeks’ mercy did what Hunter should have done rounds before, stopping the sort of winding-down vacuousness no fan pays to see, however much he enjoys the luxury of booing another’s consciousness afterward.

Mexico’s anointed star won by technical stoppage, Saturday, and nary a centile of Americans cared at all. Had Mexico’s anointed star put Angulo on a stretcher, in a coma, or in the ground, live from Las Vegas, today would feel considerably different for anyone reading this. Thank Tony Weeks for sparing us another such examination of conscience.

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

By Norm Frauenheim

LAS VEGAS – Floyd Mayweather Jr. was an hour late Saturday for his own news conference. But a crowd stuck around, waiting for him to arrive anyway. It just goes to show that Mayweather can draw a crowd even if he’s fighting nobody.

Marcos Maidana is next on Mayweather’s rich Showtime card, May 3 in a pay-per-view bout at the MGM Grand. Maidana didn’t make it to the first formal news conference since he was picked to fight Mayweather instead of Amir Khan. Maidana stayed at home in Argentina to be with his pregnant wife.

“He did the right thing,’’ said Mayweather, who apologized for being late and blamed it on a late night at the
tables in the MGM Grand’s casino. “He’s supposed to stand by his wife.’’

Maidana’s understandable absence didn’t matter much anyway. It’s the Mayweather brand that accounts for the biggest numbers in boxing these days. The HBO audience for his victory over Oscar De La Hoya in 2007 is still the pay-per-record. His victory on Showtime over Canelo Alvarez in September set the revenue record.

“They used it to call it pay-per-view,’’ Mayweather said in a video promo for a fight dubbed The Moment. “Now, it’s May-per-view.’’

Some early odds indicate that Maidana will go the way of Robert Guerrero and Canelo, who was getting ready to fight Alfredo Angulo while Mayweather was holding court. Some off-shore odds-makers have favored the unbeaten Mayweather by as much as 10-1. That’s the kind of chance a nobody gets. Yet, Maidana’s heavy-handed power and his December upset of Adrien Broner, a Mayweather wannabe and friend, moved him to the head of the line, or least ahead of Khan.

“Marcos Maidana is young, strong, a great competitor and one I can’t overlook, because anything can happen,’’ Mayweather said, his promotional mouthpiece firmly in place.

By now, it’s no secret that Mayweather picks and carefully choose who he fights. Maidana was the choice in many social media polls. In his own poll, Khan was the choice. But he picked Maidana anyway. The decision, he said, was based mostly on each fighter’s last four fights. Maidana had earned his way onto the ticket; Khan had not.

But it’s clear that polls didn’t make the choice. Only Mayweather did. And does

“I’ve earned my stripes,’’ said Mayweather, who said he began sparring last week. “I earned the right to pick and choose who I fight.’’

Nobody at the MGM Grand had any complaints about that prerogative Saturday. Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer, Mayweather’s promotional partner, said 14,700 tickets were gone within hours after they went on sale at 10 a.m. (PST). According to Schaefer, the early rush amounts to a live gate of more than $12 million. Tickets were still for sale. A crowd of about 16,000 for a gate of about $16 million is expected.

“Nobody is forced to watch,’’ Mayweather said.

But they do.

By Norm Frauenheim

Canelo Alvarez hears the question more often than he saw Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s shoulder roll, roll and roll on a long, one-sided night nearly six months ago. Defeat is a lesson, says Alvarez, who really can’t say anything else about his first pro loss. If it’s not a lesson, it’s a problem. Simple as that.

Multiple-options are nice, but Alvarez doesn’t have that luxury Saturday night against Alfredo Angulo in his first bout since suffering his first loss in a September wipeout administered by Mayweather.

Win, and he leaves the ring with proof that the lesson was learned and his identity intact. Lose, and he leaves with damage to his career and agonizing self-doubt about whether he was ever the fighter who had been hyped as perhaps the brightest prospect in a new generation.

It’s not complicated. It’s just dangerous.

“This will be a savage, savage affair,” Angulo trainer Virgil Hunter said Thursday during the formal news conference at Las Vegas MGM Grand.

Hunter’s prediction probably helps boost the pay-per-view sales for the Showtime bout from the same Grand Garden Arena where Canelo lost a decision to Mayweather. Savagery, or even the promise of it, sells. It’s hard to to judge whether the always cool Canelo is buying into all the talk about a knock-down, blood-and-guts encounter between Mexican warriors. Angulo is known for his well-advertised power. He knocked down Erislandy Lara twice, Yet, he suffered a grotesque welt above one eye in losing a 10th-round TKO to Lara because of a couple of other things well-advertised:

Angulo gets hits often. His scarred face bloodies and bruises easily.

The 23-year-old Canelo (42-1, 30 KOs), seemingly wise beyond his years, must know that and even more. At the news conference, he talked about how styles make fights as if to say that, yeah, watch this one, because it will provide the violence so often promised. But Angulo’s style also seems to be perfect for Canelo’s skill-set. He couldn’t find Mayweather. But Angulo (22-3, 18 KOs) figures to be there, stubbornly moving forward and providing a willing target for Canelo’s arsenal of well-executed combinations. There’s a hedge, however. There’s growing sentiment that Angulo might have a chance after all, because of lingering questions about Canelo’s endurance. He seems to tire in later rounds. The task for Angulo is to take him beyond the sixth. Perhaps, Angulo has learned how to do that in sparring with the Hunter-trained Andre Ward and Amir Khan.

“There seems to a shift going on,” Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer said about a tide of second opinion that suddenly favors Angulo.

A patient, cautious Angulo in the early going could lead to a more tactical fight and not the one promised in the Toe-To-Toe advertising. Hunter, in a somewhat ominous tone, made it sound as if a wild, chaotic fight is the only possibility. He talked almost as if he feared for each fighter.

“I don’t think both men will walk out the same,” said Hunter, who during Thursday news conference also said: “It’s been taken out of my hands.”

Hunter sounded nervous. Perhaps, he knows that Angulo will have a hard time resisting the temptation to slug it out early, especially in the first pay-per-view fight of his career. The junior-middleweight also will be making his debut at the MGM Grand.

Canelo has been there. Has lost there.

Maybe, learned there too.

Angulo will be the first test of whether in fact he has.

SAN ANTONIO – In this city’s Alamodome on Saturday, before Mexican Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. could whup Austin’s Bryan Vera and position himself for a match with undefeated Kazakhstani Gennady Golovkin, Mexican Orlando Salido took undefeated Ukrainian Vasyl Lomachenko to school and found him wanting, decisioning him by split scores of 113-115, 116-112, 115-113. Salido also forced upwards a number of tardily raised eyebrows about the propriety of his vacated title even being available to such an untested challenger.

What was lost on most, prefight, and understandably so, was the injury to Orlando Salido’s pride the Lomachenko match inflicted. There were other matters that needed consideration, of course: Vasyl Lomachenko was in pursuit of an ambiguous sort of history, one that came with editorial disclaimers galore of the sort that sparks proportionate debate among insiders as yawns among fans; the ongoing invasion of boxers from the former Soviet Union was set to continue; and Orlando Salido didn’t care enough to defend the WBO title, one he won from Orlando Cruz in 2013 after losing it to Mikey Garcia in 2013 after winning it from Juan Manuel “Juanma” Lopez in 2011, to come within 2 1/2 pounds of the featherweight limit.

For the second time in about as many months, one is put to remembering Mexican Marco Antonio Barrera’s 2001 victory over Englishman Naseem Hamed, or at least the disproportionate attention the business of boxing paid the sparkly object that was “Prince Naseem” at the expense of a former world champion and possessor of 52 professional victories. Lomachenko was polished to be another of our sport’s sparkly objects, a man of incomparable sparring prowess, one who emerged from behind an Iron Curtain that exists, anymore, solely in the collective imagination of what ageing generations still buck giddily round allusions to the Cold War.

Salido had earned his featherweight title, though, and if he was unable to retain it at Friday’s weighin that did not change what natural resentment he harbored for a rival and boxing infrastructure that allowed a man in only his second fight since turning “pro” the sort of title-challenging opportunity Salido was not afforded till his 34th prizefight. In some sense, it is not unlike what distrust and faint derision an autodidact feels for a degreed colleague, whichever their field. One man toiled in obscurity, often doing a number of coincidental other jobs in the hopes of someday having but one, learning his craft quietly and passionately, delaying indefinitely a wholly unguaranteed reward, while the other enjoyed an academy’s protection and comfort, longer in others’ expectations, yes, but much much shorter in risks.

If Salido and an army of other veteran fighters did not give voice to what resentment they surely felt for Lomachenko – going from headgear, spongy gloves and a cutiepie points system straight to a title challenge, via a 12-minute way station named Jose Ramirez in October, and getting a chance to wear a world championship belt without first navigating others’ elbows and heads and shoulders and skinned gloves and irregular calendars and hometown favoritisms – they surely felt the resentment in their collective marrow and cheered unsilently at home for Salido. Or as the Mexican journalist to my left said about the entire idea of the fight, after round 4, when it appeared Salido had a very real chance of beating Lomachenko: “¡Que insulto!”

That sense of insult was expressed best and most graciously by the aforementioned Juanma Lopez, a man twice vanquished by Salido, who nevertheless called Salido in his Alamodome dressing room before Saturday’s match.

“I’m with you 200-percent,” Juanma told his surprised former rival. “Go win the fight!”

And it was a fight for Salido, from the opening bell, in the sort of personal sense December’s match with American Adrien Broner was a fight for Argentine Marcos Maidana. Salido fouled Lomachenko continuously. He used a rangefinder hook to Lomachenko’s protective cup in the first round, and when that went undetected by referee Laurence Cole, he drove the knuckles of his right fist, bolo-style, at the front of Lomachenko’s left hipbone whenever Cole meandered over to break them. Salido’s awareness of Cole’s positioning was fantastic and very much better than Cole’s awareness of Salido’s positioning, which is a special sort of indictment when one considers Salido was extrapolating Cole’s position while calculating, at once, the acceleration and trajectory of another man’s onrushing fists.

Lomachenko had little idea what to do with Salido for much of the fight. The Ukrainian’s defense of Salido’s body blows, and later Salido’s mere feints, was a jackknifing sort of motion that involved throwing his abdomen backwards to where his spine had been and causing a forward-folding that anticipated no chance of retaliation. Salido might not have seen such amateurishness since he was a teenager in Sonora, if ever, but 54 previous fights told him one thing: This man is not in a position from which he can strike me. The American journalist to my right, happily enough my favorite Monday columnist, recognized early the surprising fact Lomachenko did not know how to use an uppercut to discourage Salido’s attack on his abdomen (and hips, and cup, and thighs, and right knee).

Lomachenko deserves plaudits, nevertheless, for comporting himself like a fighter, realizing in round 1 he was in a state where fights are often barely sanctioned things and reserving his complaints only for Salido’s most egregious infractions. After the fight, one that ended with Lomachenko very nearly stopping Salido, who made a four-limbed poncho of himself when hurt in the final 90 seconds, reveling in what lawlessness governed the small blue patch of Texas territory policed by Sheriff Cole, Lomachenko shrugged away questions of Salido’s tactics with an appeal to the profession both chose.

Sometime before Lomachenko’s 0 had to go, Saturday’s press section rippled with news that, mourning the recent death of his father, undefeated Kazakhstani middleweight titlist Gennady “GGG” Golovkin would be unable to make his unofficially scheduled next match, affording Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., in town primarily for Friday’s weighin, one chance at least to proctor for Golovkin the sort of stern test Salido gave Lomachenko. GGG’s legion of enthusiasts should welcome it.

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

Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s biggest challenge on May 3 won’t come from Marcos Maidana. Not even Maidana’s heavy-handed power has much of a chance at knocking Mayweather off his pound-for-pound perch.

But Mayweather’s promotional skill faces a real test as he reaches what could be the halfway point of a Showtime deal for a possible six fights and a potential $250 million. Maidana-Mayweather looks to be a tough sell, especially at a pay-per-view price for the Showtime telecast that figures to be $60, or $70 for high definition.

Mayweather’s biggest rivals will be in a busy PPV market during the next few months. There’s Canelo Alvarez-Alfredo Angulo on Showtime PPV on March 8. On April 12, Manny Pacquiao and Tim Bradley engage in a PPV rematch offered by Home Box Office. After Mayweather-Maidana, there’s Miguel Cotto-Sergio Martinez on June 7, also an HBO pay-per-view bout.

To watch all four in high-def, it’ll cost $280. That’s not much if you’re in Mayweather’s income bracket. For the average fan, however, that’s a lot of groceries.

Mayweather’s marketing team will invest time and ad money into saying that Maidana is dangerous. He is – he was – in beating Adrien Broner in a December upset that shoved Amir Khan to the back of the line and earned Maidana the big payday that comes with a shot at Mayweather.

But some of the early betting odds indicate that the public will need a lot of convincing. Mayweather could be a 10-1 favorite. Translation: The bookies are saying that the betting public thinks that Maidana has no chance. Compare that to Pacquiao-Bradley in a sequel of Bradley’s hugely controversial decision over the Filipino Congressman in June, 2012. Pacquiao is a slight favorite.

Odds are, Pacquiao-Bradley is the better buy.

There’s a theory, often offered by Showtime, that people will watch Mayweather no matter who he fights. OK, Mayweather possesses singular speed and skill. But this isn’t Olympic figure skating. It’s a fight. If there isn’t much doubt, there isn’t much drama.

Maidana is a tough sell for at least two reasons:

· Khan, whose reputation has taken the biggest beating in the polling and guessing game over who Mayweather would anoint as his next foe, beat Maidana in what was the 2010 Fight of the Year.

· Maidana lost a one-sided decision to Devon Alexander in 2012. On only one of three scorecards did Maidana win a single round. He was shut out on two cards. The 10-round loss to the quick Alexander could serve as a preview to what might happen to Maidana against Mayweather, who has lost some foot speed but still had enough to confound Robert Guerrero and Canelo. Maidana has one thing in common with Guerrero and Canelo. He’s flat-footed, which represents two more reasons to think he has virtually no chance on May 3.

Mayweather, whose career has generated a reported 12.8 million PPV customers for about $800 million in gross revenue, is averaging 1.5 million PPV buys over his last eight bouts, according to reports from the networks and television media.

It’ll be harder to maintain that average than it will to stay unbeaten.

SAN ANTONIO – Mexican “Son of the Legend” Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. returns to this city sometime in the next few days, returns to a local scale sometime Friday afternoon, and returns to an Alamodome ring Saturday night against Austin’s Bryan Vera. The middle spectacle, Friday’s, should prove the week’s most suspenseful, and if Chavez somehow misses weight also its most tragic. If Chavez makes weight, evincing proper preparation for his rematch with the profoundly limited Vera, though, let us hope Saturday’s match does not end tragically.

But for that possibility, this is all a bit tired, isn’t it? The “Road to Chavez Jr. vs. Vera II” promotional piece felt obligatory as a husband’s trip to the mall. Gone are the mildly alluring touches of collaring whichever journalists were in town for whichever other event, to give aficionados a chance at least to see admired writers mention, in very short clips, why they think this fight may be compelling (with the flashed and handsome exception of our site’s intrepid editor at 1:21). Instead we get HBO’s commentary team rehashing what they said the night of the first fight with what they’ve digested since, in promotional spots that boast all the journalistic panache of actors from this season’s cast of “Dexter” holding their fists aloft while advising viewers they’ve been buzzed – and if that is a mashup, as the kids are calling it, of two different networks’ original programming concepts, it’s honestly arrived at because no enterprising mind should keep 2014’s thus-far-banal prizefighting offerings compartmentalized.

That promises to change, at least in spirit, Saturday, when this city opens its gracious arms to a rematch of a not particularly compelling 2013 match, one that finds Chavez once more collecting his father’s back wages from his promoter or his network or his Mexican fans, a collective that must be dwindling.

Into the curiousness of this arrangement meanders Junior, never hurried, marking promoter Top Rank’s return to a city whose venues it has not graced in the 23 months since Kelly Pavlik used the force to smash apart Aaron “Jedi” Jaco in the debut of Leija-Battah Promotions, an outfit that looked a temporary license-holding company for Las Vegas- and Los Angeles-based promoters, alike, before evolving, quickly and audaciously, into something more and better. What consequently drove the local promoter from Top Rank after one show is anyone’s guess, but it was a thing that did carry consequences, as Top Rank has since made medium-sized Texas shows in Houston, Dallas, Corpus Christi and Laredo but not Alamo City, a place where Son of the Legend began to become more than a mascot by decisioning John Duddy in 2010 at Alamodome, the venue where his father, The Legend, set an attendance record still standing.

There’s no telling how ticket sales might be going for Saturday’s show for a couple reasons: First, there isn’t an engaged local promoter endeavoring to recoup its large investment by blitzing inboxes with promotional tidbits, and second, with most of the money for this fight coming exclusively from HBO, there’s not nearly the same urgency there was round this time last year when, openly snubbing his proximate rival, Mexico’s Saul “Canelo” Alvarez declined to fight on Floyd Mayweather’s May undercard – firing the starter’s pistol on a frantic effort to find a venue, and accompanying local entrepreneur, to host Alvarez on short notice. What resulted, an April match between Alvarez and New Mexican Austin Trout, brought nearly 40,000 fans to Alamodome, an attendance figure that established in a bold stroke Alvarez’s coveted standing as Mexico’s most popular prizefighter. Alvarez then sprinkled cinnamon in his promoter’s gears in September, winning perhaps 90 seconds of his 36-minute match with Mayweather.

Displaying his father’s relentlessness and talent for smashing microscopic fissures into gaping wounds, then, Chavez Jr. snatched the corona right off Alvarez’s bowed redhead by icing his countrymen’s bruised national pride, 14 days later, with a victory over Bryan Vera that is remembered, still, for its preparation, savagery and workrate.

Oh, if ever a sentence were typed round derisive giggles.

Instead of doing something memorably good or even forgettably bad, Son of the Legend chose that inauspicious time to hold a pound-auction at the Friday weighin, having done the considerate thing, he explained for HBO’s “Road to” cameras, and informed the Vera camp ahead of time he would weigh, well, something higher than what 168 pounds he was legally obliged to make. Then Son of the Legend made a lionlike contender of Bryan Vera, a good guy of good work ethic and giver of a goodish impersonation of Colorado’s Mike Alvarado, were Alvarado not a once-great high school athlete.

Wait, Vera a “contender”? Yes, contender: As Son of the Legend reminded viewers, apropos of his figurative hunger – unmistakable in its modesty for Junior’s literal hunger – he was a “world champion” once, wearing proudly the garish, gold-and-whipped-pea strap the WBC stole from lineal middleweight champion Sergio Martinez in 2011, making Chavez technically a champion and making Vera technically a contender – cute a reminder as any that Vera outworked television’s original “Contender,” Sergio Mora, in August 2012 at the converted Alamodome venue called Illusions Theater, in a Leija-Battah-promoted rematch of Vera’s finest hour, a controversial 2011 decisioning of Mora in Fort Worth, an hour not nearly fine as Vera’s decisioning of Chavez Jr. in a September match official judges, alone, scored widely for Son of the Legend.

We circle back to Saturday, then, meandering round the subject like a pothead in peach underwear doing living-room laps for roadwork – so great is his hunger as world champion – to address briefly a match that should not be competitive, and, one prays, will not end tragically for Vera. Whatever long list of bad habits Vera’s trainer Ronnie Shields credits himself with red-penning from the Austinite’s dossier, he sure as hell did nothing for Vera’s plunging right hand, a hand Vera holsters at his waist before throwing either glove at opponents. That flaw portends nothing good for Vera.

I’ll take Chavez, then, KO-11, in a terribly lopsided spectacle even Junior’s legion of detractors will wish had been stopped after nine.

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

The first two Saturdays in March are a window that will provide a look at whether two heavily-hyped fighters, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Canelo Alvarez, have retained their popularity among their loyal fan base.

Chavez comes off controversy on March 1 in a rematch of his hotly-debated decision over Bryan Vera. Then, Canelo tests his Q rating on March 8 against Alfredo Angulo in his first bout since losing to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a decision seen as one-sided by everybody but a judge, C.J. Ross, who scored it a draw.

Chavez and Canelo may never share the same ring because of all the usual divisiveness in boxing’s balkanized business. Still, they are linked, almost like a couple of rival politicians, in an ever-shifting race for allegiance among Mexican and Mexican-American fans. If presented a ballot these days, some of those fans might be tempted to vote none-of-the-above. Neither distinguished himself in his last outing.

Of the two, however, Chavez suffered more damage to his reputation and legendary name than Canelo sustained in a predictable loss. The difference: Chavez did it to himself. Canelo had it done to him.

Chavez appears to be closer than ever to losing a nation of fans who revere his dad, yet have grown ever more exasperated with the son’s apparent sense of entitlement and lack of maturity. Chavez continued to make a mockery of making weight and training before he got a gift on the scorecards against Vera in September. They booed him.

“I owe the fans,’’ says Chavez, a brand new father.

Is Chavez just talking or serious about sustaining a commitment to his craft this time around? It’s fair to wonder about that. Ratings for his HBO rematch at San Antonio’s Alamodome with Vera will say a lot about whether fans have given up on him.

That said, fans also might decide to wait-and-see. It will take more than one good fight from Chavez to win them back. If he is in shape, he figures to beat Vera easily. But the real proof would be in what he does over the next couple of fights. After a victory, he too often gets comfortable, falls off the wagon and into a lifestyle with no discipline. Roadwork consists of midnight laps around the couch and to the fridge.

For Canelo, there’s a different kind of skepticism. His pound-for-pound credentials took a big hit when he was so out-classed by Mayweather in September. Not to worry, Canelo promised in a conference call.

“I learned a lot from that fight,’’ he said. “I learned a lot from the Mayweather fight. He’s got a style that’s very complicated. He’s got a style that’s very intelligent and he fights intelligently. I think that his whole purpose is just to win. But I learned a lot. I learned a lot about the fight itself inside the ring and outside the ring as well.’’

In Angulo, Canelo took a fight he figures to win. Still, it’s dangerous. Angulo is tough and heavy-handed. He knocked down accomplished Erislandy Lara twice in June, before losing 10th-round stoppage. He also might have learned some valuable new tricks in sparring with Andre Ward. Virgil Hunter trains both Angulo and Ward.

Let’s put it this way: Angulo has better shot at scoring an upset than Vera does.

Yet, Golden Boy Promotions is betting that Canelo will emerge with his career and popularity intact. Canelo’s Showtime-televised comeback against Angulo at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand is a pay-per-view bout.

“I have loyal fans and I’m very grateful for that,’’ Canelo said. “They’re always going to be with me. I feel that they’re going to support me through thick and thin. They’re going to follow me in this Pay-Per-View.’’

If they don’t, only Canelo will pay.

Philadelphia, PA (February 20, 2014)– Tomorrow night at the Edgewater Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, Boxcino 2014 kick offs with the opening round in the lightweight division. In addition to the four quarterfinal lightweight bouts, two members of the Banner Promotions stable will be in action.

2012 Olympic bronze medal winner Taras Shelestyuk will fight Francisco Flores in a jr. middleweight bout scheduled for four rounds. Also seeing action will be undefeated jr. welterweight Cornelius Whitlock battles Luis Hernandez in a 4-round bout.

Shelestyuk, of Sumi, Ukraine, has a record of 6-0 with 4 knockouts and will be making his first start of 2014 after a busy eight-month stretch in 2013 when he turned pro and racked up those six wins, including a decision over then undefeated Travis Hanshaw (7-0).

Shelestyuk fights out of the famed Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, California, and is managed by Vadim Kornilov.

Flores of Mexico City is 2-3 with 1 knockout.

Whitlock, of Baltimore, Maryland, has a record of 2-0-2 with one knockout and is coming off a first-round stoppage over Josue Rivera on November 14 in Washington, D.C.

Hernandez of San Bernadino, California has a record of 2-6 with two knockouts.

“We are very excited to have this great night of boxing,” said Banner Promotions CEO Arthur Pelullo.

“Obviously this is going to be a great tournament but we are also looking forward to seeing the continued development of Taras and Cornelius.”

February 21st lightweight quarter final
FIGHT WEEK SCHEDULE:

HOTEL & EVENT LOCATION:
Edgewater Casino
2020 South Casino Drive, Laughlin, Nevada 89029 Phone: (702) 298-2453

Thursday, Feb. 20th
Weigh-in: 5:00 PM
Location: Edgewater Casino – Rio Vista Room (down stairs next to the Buffet)

Friday, Feb. 21st
Fight Night: E Center at the Edgewater Casino
Doors open – 4:30 PM
First fight (and first fight on ESPN) – 6:00 PM

Former world title challenger and promoter Dmitry Salita talks about the recent political unrest that is going on his native Ukraine.

1. What are your thoughts of Vitali Klitschko going into Politics

I think Vitali is a man of the people. You look at his career and see how he over came difficulties early on
to become one of the greatest heavyweights in history that says something about a man. His character and persistence can not be denied. In the ring through sports and definitely through boxing you can see what ingredients a man is made off. Over coming learning from your experiences and becoming better is the goal of all of us in life and Vitaly was able to do that. He also represented Ukraine on the world stage in a very honourable way for many years. He has the education of Europe as well as America as a politician being able to identify with different people from all over the world is essential. I believe that Vitaly has those ingredients from being
an elite boxer and a star around the world.

2. What are your thoughts of boxers going into politics in General.

I think it’s very good! Boxers are hard working people that come from humble and usually poor beginnings! Boxing is a poor mans sport, and to be a good politician you need to identify with the common man and with people that are struggling you need to have empathy for those people and experiences. Most boxers understand what those feelings are about. Manny Pacquiao and Vitaly Klitchko are great examples of boxers that remember about their roots and want to improve the life of their countryman.

3. You are from the Ukraine. What Problems does that country face

Well Ukraine become more westernized and Democratic certainly since I left Odessa, Ukraine in 1991. People want to voice their opinion and make their feelings known. Now I believe is a crucial stage in the direction that the country will go. Most important is for the common man and people to feel satisfied. It seems that the situation has stabilized some what and both sides are talking.

4. Do you think with Klitschko being a high profile man, he will help or hurt The Ukraine.

I think it will help, the fact that world news is focusing on what is happening in Ukraine is to a large extent because Klitschko is the Heavyweight champ of the world. One of the premier titles in the sports world. He has the experience of dealing with people from all over the world and the Klitschko brothers are their own promoters so they made some pivotal decisions in their career as fighters and business man. The Klitchko brothers have proudly and positively represented Ukraine on the world stage. I think that their understanding of world culture, media and politics will only benefit the people. Several years ago when Wladimir fought at MSG he has a press conference for the Russian community in Rasputin restaurant. Vitaly was starting his political career then, I told him that he will make Ukraine proud and I think he will be president of Ukraine one day. He smiled and I think that day will come one day.

5. He was just involved in a couple of incidents that were obviously politically motivated. What were your thoughts when you saw those videos?

He is out in the street protesting with his people on the front lines a peoples man. I saw that he held himself back after he got attacked that to me was very mature and a sign of a leader.

Rene Alvarado scored a 9th round stoppage over Robinson Castellanos in a scheduled 12 round Featherweight bout at Centro de Convenciones in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico.

Alvarado beat Castellanos in the corner until the fight was stopped at 1:59 of round 9.

Alvarado is now 20-2 with 14 knockouts. Robinson Castellanos is now 19-10.

Roberto Manzanarez scored a 2nd round stoppage over Carlos Rodriguez in a scheduled 8 round Lightweight bout.

Manzanarez dropped Rodriguez in round’s one and two from body shots with the 2nd knockdown leading to the stoppage.

Manzanarez is now 26-1 with 22 knockouts. Rodriguez is 8-1.

Guillermo Rodriguez scored a 8 round unanimous decision over Ricardo Hernandez in a Super Bantamweight fight.

Rodriguez is 9-1. Hernandez is 6-12-1.

16-year Damian Vazquez remained undefeated with a 3rd round stoppage over Adonay Diaz in a scheduled four round Flyweight bout.

Vazquez dropped Diaz in round two and continued the assault until the bout was stopped at

Vazquez, 112.6 lbs is now 2-0 with 2 knockouts. Diaz, 117 lbs was making his pro debut.

HOUSTON – Returned to Texas’ largest city and the fourth-largest city in our country, a day before a day we celebrate the father of our country’s birthday by acknowledging all the presidents’ birthdays in a single day because federal holidays, if mismanaged, might force the private sector to pay time-and-a-half, I looked across boxing’s landscape, barren yet again, and thought making a reciprocal tribute of sorts to a tribute of sorts was a workable idea. To wit:

This city’s Museum of Fine Arts’ “Age of Impressionism” is an exceptionally good exhibition that has little to do with boxing but may be instructive in its parallels to boxing writing, a discipline that requires a weekly entry even though nary a meaningful thing is yet to happen in prizefighting this year, as we enter 2014’s eighth week. And so, afforded a chance to celebrate Presidents Day, I made a Friday decision to spend Saturday and Sunday at Museum of Fine Arts’ outstanding exhibition, one I initially partook of in December and was prompted to revisit by a guest piece Kelsey McCarson wrote for us Tuesday.

In “Juan Diaz and the Age of Impressionism,” McCarson juxtaposes Juan Diaz and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, among others, in a way I’d not considered, or at least not quickly as I’d considered juxtaposing McCarson and other fine young boxing writers, Jimmy Tobin in particular, with mid-19th-century Paris’ Salon de Refusés, a groundbreaking show in 1863 that came about when works by Impressionism’s predecessors – Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet and Camille Pissarro, most notably – got rejected by the Paris Salon, the French state’s annual recognition of its best painters, and held an exhibition of rejects that was successful enough to erect a bridge between an academic style Manet mastered and an entirely new movement whose greatest practitioner, Claude Monet, initially found himself accused by Manet of stealing the great man’s name. McCarson and others who write regularly and seriously about our beloved sport, and take the craft of writing seriously, have been denied entry in the Boxing Writers Association of America, our craft’s equivalent of the Salon, and might be well advised to form their own association of rejects – an idea McCarson toys with on Twitter.

This city’s Juan Diaz remains one of my most favorite fighters I’ve covered, though I cannot think of a painter or movement to whom I would readily liken his style. He’s not an Impressionist, he’s not experimental enough, and he’s not an academic or Renaissance type, either, as his use of offense as defense offends purists’ sensibilities. He might be a Modernist or Surrealist but for his never effecting stylistically radical devices; he’s not endeavoring to interpret anything so much as strike his opponent often as he can.

The worst part of visiting an art museum is its patrons. Most are not interested in seeing art so much as being seen seeing art – Kelsey McCarson and his wife, of course, being noble exceptions – and the audio tours and white-plate explanations museums proffer do not palliate this. Viewing others viewing “The Age of Impressionism” shows all too clearly what is wrong with fields like art history, where future curators expend many times more time memorizing biography than practicing technique.

What makes unique the Impressionist painters, Monet and Eugène Boudin, especially, but also Renoir when he is best, as he is in MFAH’s current exhibition, is not that they painted outside or quickly or with fewer layers than Renaissance masters but that they offered an original rebuttal to the invention of photography, not an effort to imitate it. Perhaps the best piece in MFAH’s exhibition is Monet’s “Spring in Giverny,” a landscape done in light pastels. It is best, and Monet is his movement’s best artist, because it improves proportionate to the time one spends before it.

Writing about Renoir’s “Sunset at Sea,” McCarson partially captures why: “Isn’t this completely unlike any picture even the most advanced camera could help you collect?” It is exactly that because it is binocular, using the requisite imperfection of images pieced together with data from two different points, à la human sight, and not monocular, as photography is. Impressionism captures a moment, and in any moment, a human eye is unable to see with its fovea, the part that perceives fine detail (the part of the eye with which you are able to read no more than two of these words at a time, regardless of font), more than a comparatively tiny percentage of what its eye perceives. All the rest is perceived in the periphery and necessarily coarse.

Human peripheral vision is marvelous and comprises what stimuli necessarily compose our senses of things. Peripheral vision, and the brain’s handling of its coarse data, are what the Impressionists were after, and for this reason, as one’s eyes fatigue, causing their neurons to misfire, the best of Monet and Renoir’s works begin to dance on the canvas, coming to life the same way, and for the same reason, Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” smiles when you look her in the eyes but not the mouth.

The first work in MFAH’s “Age of Impressionism,” somewhat ironically, is a large portrait by William Adolphe Bouguereau, an academic painter whose later work “Admiration” received the highest award in the 1900 Paris Salon, 37 years after the first Salon de Refusés. And today, Claude Monet’s name is known even to philistines, while Bouguereau’s is lost to all but connoisseurs – something the BWAA’s membership committee might note.

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

Sergey Kovalev’s projected path to the top of the light-heavyweight division is at a stage in a well-worn process that is necessary, yet often dangerous for promising fighters who don’t know their history. The good news is that Kovalev has a promoter who won’t let him forget it. Kathy Duva has lived it.

Duva’s historical lesson was delivered a couple of times Thursday during a conference call for Kovalev’s next fight, March 29 in a HBO-televised bout in Atlantic City against Cedric Agnew. Agnew, of Chicago, is unbeaten and has impressive amateur credentials. But he could have been Cedric The Entertainer for all anybody knew.

Repeatedly, Kovalev was asked more about Adonis Stevenson, possibly in a fight later this year. Repeatedly, Duva reminded an audience, which included Kovalev, about a fight that happened 24 years ago, almost to the day.

Main Events, the Duva’s family business, promoted Evander Holyfield. A Holyfield-Mike Tyson fight was a hot possibility. First, however, Tyson had a fight with Buster Douglas on Feb. 11, 1990 in Tokyo.

“We know what happened,’’ Duva said.

Douglas beat Tyson, scoring a 10th round knockout, in an upset as big as any in history. Momentum for Holyfield-Tyson was gone. Instead of late 1990, six years and nine months came and went before Holyfield and Tyson fought for the first time – Nov 9, 1996. Excuse Duva, but she doesn’t want to re-live the past. One Upset of the Century is enough in any lifetime.

Kovalev might not be as big a favorite to beat Agnew as Tyson was over Douglas. But it doesn’t matter. In real time, a loss to Agnew would be devastating for the Russian, who has stopped six straight opponents within four rounds.

For now, Kovalev finds himself in a situation similar to middleweight Gennady Golovkin. Both are at a stage where their drawing power isn’t enough for a big-name opponent to take the chance. They fall into that most-feared category. Like Golovkin, however, HBO is interested in Kovalev. If HBO begins to attract an audience for Kovalev, money and opponents will follow. It’s a potential formula that dictates some urgency, or at least due diligence.

“On March 29, Sergey will be fighting two things, in my opinion,’’ Duva said. “He’ll be fighting Agnew and the temptation to look past him.’’

Reasons to look past Agnew are on his 26-0 record, which includes 13 knockouts. Agnew went the distance with Yusaf Mack in March, winning a 12-round unanimous decision. Against well-known fighters, Mack didn’t last. Carl Froch knocked him out in three rounds in 2012. Tavoris Cloud stopped him in eight in 2011. Glen Johnson stopped him in six in 2010.

Agnew believes he has the right skillset to beat Kovalev, whose nicknames include Krusher and the Terminator. Kovalev’s intimidating record (23-0-1, 21 KOs) includes a tragic death. Roman Simakov died three days after he lost a seventh round TKO to Kovalev in Russia in December, 2011.

“I don’t look at him as no Terminator,’’ Agnew said. “He’s a human being. He can be hurt just like anybody can.’’

If Agnew was impressed by Kovalev’s knockout ratio and the hype that comes with it, he didn’t reveal it.

“My personal opinion: I think he’s ordinary,’’ Agnew said.

Meanwhile, Kovalev seems to understand the stakes. He can’t afford a misstep if he hopes for a showdown with Stevenson, a power puncher in his own right with 20 stoppages in 23 fights on a record that includes one loss. Stevenson might fight in May on HBO in Montreal. A possible opponent is Polish light-heavyweight Andrzej Fonfara (25-2, 15 KOs), now of Chicago.

“Last year, the best in my division was Stevenson,’’ Kovalev said. “I have to beat Stevenson if I want to be the best.’’

To get that chance, he has to remember to take care of business against Agnew. Kathy Duva’s history lesson is good reason to believe he will.

In the 1870s, a group of artists in Paris, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, decided to stop submitting their works to the official annual exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, also called the Salon. Dubbed “Impressionists,” these brave new visionaries instead mounted eight independent exhibitions of their own, featuring works done in a new, informal style based on modern subjects of everyday life and leisure, an idea which had originally been pioneered at and rejected by the Salon.

At least, that’s what the sign outside the door told me as I entered the Houston Museum of Fine Arts last Saturday afternoon after spending the morning watching former lightweight titlist Juan Diaz train and spar at his new gym, Baby Bull Boxing Academy.

I don’t know as much as I should about art. My wife and I are members at the museum, but only because we like to look at the paintings. I don’t know much about history or theory, but when we travel through the giant halls of paintings and such, I can’t help but read all the boxes of text surrounding these magnificent works.

This particular collection, The Age of Impressionism, has traveled all around the world. It was put together over time by Sterling and Francine Clark, heirs of the Singer Sewing Machine Company fortune. It features 73 paintings by artists such as our friend Renoir, as well as Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley and others. This was the last stop of the tour. After traveling to Tokyo, London, Barcelona, Milan, etc., etc., etc., the collection would stop in Houston before returning back home to The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Juan Diaz has traveled the world, too. He’s the heir to his own fortune, though, wrought the hard way and from a very young age. Diaz was born Sept. 17, 1983 in Houston, Texas to Fidencio and Olivia Diaz, a young couple from Guerrero, Mexico. When he was just eight years old, Fidencio, a rabid boxing fan, took little Juan to Willie Savannah’s boxing gym.

Diaz entered and won his first tournament at 12. At 16, he qualified for the Mexican Olympic team, but was three months too young to compete at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Later that year, with a 105-5 amateur record, Diaz decided to turn pro.

Diaz had a solid career as a professional. By the end of things, he was one of HBO’s regularly featured darlings. He won lightweight title belts and even fought two big money fights against all-time great Juan Manuel Marquez for the lineal lightweight championship. Diaz was a fan favorite during his heyday, and after the second loss to Marquez he seemed to be getting out of the fight game while the getting was still good. At age 27, with all brain and bodily functions still intact, Diaz decided to hang up the gloves and get on with the rest of his life.
But Diaz is back in boxing now. After almost three years of pause, Diaz unexpectedly returned to the ring and knocked out Gerardo Cueves in April 2013 in six rounds. Houston’s most popular fighter rounded out the year with two more wins over similar fare, knocking out Adailton De Jesus in five and going the 10-round distance with Juan Santiago.

Diaz is older now. He does not fight with quite the same frenetic energy but he still appears aggressive and hungry. At 30, he has won three straight on his way back up the ranks, and he’s still able to make the lightweight division with relative ease, something that should only help him in his effort to recapture former glory. And that’s what it’s all about for him.

“It’s not about money,” Diaz said. “It’s about world titles.”

I don’t know as much as I should about boxing. My wife and I cover the fights for various websites, but only because we like the sport. I like boxing history and theory but wouldn’t consider myself a great historian or anything. I’ll read a boxing book if I come across one that suits me, though, because I can’t help but read about these magnificent figures of sport.

As I watched Diaz spar that morning, I mostly wondered what he’d look like when he steps up past tomato cans like March 1 opponent Gerardo Robles. Diaz thinks he’ll be the same champion he was before, only smarter and more skilled. But fighters always think that. They have to. The minute they start believing otherwise is the minute their careers are over.

This is what I’m thinking about during the brief seconds between standing and staring at paintings at the museum. I don’t know many genres of art, but the Impressionists always seem to catch my eye. To me, they capture the beauty and the power of life but in a way that appears at once magical and realistic.

Take Renoir’s Sunset at Sea. Is this not what you’d see looking across the ocean at the glimmering majesty of the setting sun? But at the same time, isn’t this also completely unlike any picture even the most advanced camera could help you collect? To me, Impressionism is both less and more than life.

Diaz sparred eight rounds that morning. He went three against TV fighter Lanard Lane and five against local lightweight Danny Garcia. Diaz was aggressive but not stupid. His corner men, Derwin Richards and Timothy Knight, hurled instructions at him from across the ring, telling him more or less exactly that.

“Bend your knees,” said Richard. “Now turn…turn!”

“Keep that jab going,” added Knight. “Jab!”

Diaz did all these things, but he threw hooks and uppercuts to the body and torso of his opponent less like a man who wants to box smart and more like a man who just wants to be in a good fight. That kind of thing is what made him so popular in the first place, I suppose, but it was also his undoing.

But Juan Diaz is going to be Juan Diaz, and that’s something we could probably all learn from.

After witnessing the two Saturday exhibitions, Juan Diaz and The Age of Impressionism, I can’t help but wonder if Diaz will be able to pull off what the Impressionists did all those years ago. Reactionaries to the prevailing sentiment at the Salon, artists like Renoir have now become measuring sticks for others. No one who studies art skips over what they did during their time. And no one has forgotten them now that they’ve turned to dust.

In a similar way, our present culture’s Salon doesn’t think Diaz should be boxing anymore either. After all, they reason, Diaz has a college degree and several successful businesses. More than that, he’s smart, sharp and affable enough to get along better than most everyone else without trading punches in the ring for money.

So I think Diaz’s comeback might also be a reaction, one to the idea that men should only fight if they have no other way to earn, the one that says boxing isn’t suitable for Diaz now because he could make money doing other things. It’s as if we are to believe the dignity of a human being, the value of a soul, is something that can be measured by one’s capabilities or by how one chooses to make his way through the world.

Diaz rejects this premise. And who knows? Perhaps 150 years from now, some silly writer and his wife will roam around a museum on a Saturday afternoon to revere Diaz the way we did Renoir and the Impressionists.

I wonder what they’ll do that morning.

SAN ANTONIO – A small band of boxing media and bystanders gathered Sunday afternoon near an entrance of the Home Depot Center in Alamo Heights, an incorporated city in this city’s central-north quadrant, to see the weigh-in for Monday’s “Golden Boy Live!” show in the bullring of a local cowboy dance hall named, unerringly, Cowboys Dancehall. At least one of us was there because a Saturday blast email from Leija-Battah Promotions promised Paulie Malignaggi would host. Yet there was Jesse James Leija playing emcee.

Halfway through the roster for Monday, there was a slight rustling, and then, sporting a black sweatsuit of some crushed fabric or other, along strolled the 2013 winner of the Boxing Writers Association of America’s award for excellence in broadcast journalism, an award named after Sam Taub, a fellow New York commentator. Malignaggi’s eyes bulged in the nearest thing he has to a signature look, and his gestures, just as customarily, pushed through whatever it is that delimits energy and anxiety. Leija hurriedly handed boxing’s best broadcast journalist a microphone – whereupon Malignaggi announced he didn’t know anything about hosting the event, he’d just got off a plane, and he was exhausted.

It was a frank declaration with a staccatissimo delivery, and vulnerable. Just like Malignaggi’s best commentary.

The very thing that makes Malignaggi’s career knockout ratio slight is, in large part, what makes his insights on the air timely and exceptional. Malignaggi does not punch hard, and he did not punch particularly hard even before his chronically injured hands were so prone to injury. His smallish frame and surgically reconstructed right fist, both, contribute to his acclivity for icing opponents, especially at the championship level, but they also evince a courage that is easy, quite easy, too easy, to miss after a Malignaggi promotion comes to its end with an opening bell – after he finishes playing a caricaturist’s Yankee Fan, and sets about swapping blows, usually in a weirdly tassled trunk or eccentrically coifed do.

If journalistic compulsion has stayed me from ever exactly cheering against Malignaggi, I confess, it has hardly strained its binds in keeping me from cheering him on. Not until I prepared in January for a magazine piece that had nothing to do with Paulie Malignaggi did I pause long enough to realize how much my distaste for his pre/postfight persona had kept me from properly appreciating a fighting style every bit courageous, in its way, as any volume puncher’s.

Malignaggi needs more wiles than even that guy, really; he doesn’t move forward into opponents’ space and discomfit them. He courts their aggression even while knowing he hasn’t a punch, or reliable enough hands, necessarily, to keep-off him men who, first and foremost, endure human fists expertly hurled. Malignaggi must read other men’s bodies, and compile that data and send its resulting queries to his repository of foiling techniques, and incorporate whatever algorithm returns him, many times faster than a man possessed of a weighty punch. When he’s on the air watching what aggression he has watched for tens of thousands of rounds in gyms, he can’t help himself: He sees what happens many times faster than men who’ve never had their consciousnesses on the line in front of millions, and he says what he sees many times clearer than other pugilist-broadcasters.

Malignaggi is a talker, a social creature, a man who likes to be seen and talked to and challenged to explain himself; he is comfortable in a public role – he talks over an interviewer in a voracious desire to assert a new point or clarify an old one, in a way few prizefighters do – he wants to share himself and his mind. This is much of the rest of his talent for broadcasting; most fighters, whatever they tell themselves about their prescript and preheated shtick, know from experience in elementary schools they have little to contribute but autobiography, and untimely reticence recurs when their microphones greenlight.

Malignaggi, conversely, must be quieted – he has lots to share and a desire to share it – and in a very short amount of time, he has married this need to quiet himself with what proclivities for abnegation mark a man who makes weight to make money, and made himself, according to my peers in the BWAA, boxing’s very best broadcaster in 2013.

When I spoke to Malignaggi last month, the usable material of our interview didn’t exceed five minutes – still plenty – but we spoke for 47 in the sort of meandering way social creatures do, unscripted, vulnerable, free to differ in good faith, and it caused me to conclude our conversation by imparting an anecdote well-suited to close this column.

In 2008 I had the good fortune of exercising in the same L.A. Boxing gym in which cruiserweight contender B.J. Flores trained. Flores shares much of Malignaggi’s garrulousness, but where Malignaggi’s upbringing, New York, liberates him to disagree with a man even if he doesn’t dislike him, Flores’ Midwestern upbringing makes him more likely to be agreeable, and this makes his commentary, at times, vibrate with the low-growling hum of salesmanship. Both, though, are men who, unlike their peers, could have succeeded in fields where intellectual merit civilly delivered composed their essential parts. Apropos of a recent Malignaggi outburst – Texas judging maybe? – I told Flores in concise a way as I could muster I did not like anything about Paulie Malignaggi, and the following interaction resulted.

B.J.: Have you ever met Paulie?
Bart: No.
B.J.: You need to meet him.
Bart: Why would I need to do that?
B.J.: It’s impossible to meet Paulie and not like him. He’s a good man. Meet him.

It took seven years to prove, but I’m happy to say Flores was right. Congratulations to Paulie Malignaggi on winning the 2013 Sam Taub award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism.

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