By Bart Barry-

Saturday on Showtime Pay-Per-View Filipino senator Manny Pacquiao looks to avenge his 2015 loss to Floyd Mayweather by shoving his left fist through the face and out the other side of American welterweight Adrien Broner. This match belongs on pay-per-view only in the sense no network would offer what purse guarantees either man expects, and therefore distributing its financial risk across what remains of the gullible public is the rationalest way to make it happen.

Pacquiao should win well enough to spark six months of rumors about his next opponent, and Broner should collect savage enough of a beating to sate pay-per-viewers’ bloodlust at least until Error Spence does wicked things to Mikey Garcia in March. That’s the assumption, anyway: Those with the means to purchase the fight either revere Pacquiao or hate Broner because nobody hates Pacquiao and nobody who reveres Broner has the means to purchase the fight.

Socioeconomic realities being what they are, and their hatching what priorities they do, the prose excoriating Broner over the years has been exponents better than what writing celebrates him. When he was calling himself Mr. HBO a halflife ago, the usual suspects copy+pasted press releases about him and wrote round them, barely, and a writer or two, too, wrote well about him, one even visited a Colorado trainingcamp, if memory serves, but there was no bottom there to plumb; AB was a caricature of Floyd Mayweather’s caricature of a darkskinned man for lightskinned men to hate.

In that doublenegative of sorts Broner made something positively charged – in the electrical sense if not the ethical one – something Broner was for, where Floyd was mostly against things. How much of television happens in writing and editing, we don’t know necessarily, how much of what we are told to feel about fighters is manufactured by producers who know how, but one gives everyone the benefit of the doubt by writing some nugget of unlikability glowed from Floyd early on and got produced for maximum effect. Floyd was presented as invulnerable even when he looked like he was about to cry.

At root, though, Floyd is a deeply unlikable person – read: on a personal level, nobody likes him – whose fights were for the most part tired and tiring repetitions of one another. It’s worth repeating, the more we got to know Floyd, the more cameras were trained on his personal life, the more we saw someone asleep in most every frame. Floyd wasn’t unlikable because of the caricature he played or because of how gleefully fraudulent the 12th rounds of his fights felt, but because no matter what he did or spent he was a dullard.

To be in any room with Floyd for more than an hour is to be bored.

Broner feels different from that. There’s a vulnerability to Broner. Sure, most of that is born of the losses on his ledger, the salesman’s instinct with an inferior product, but that might be the wrong way to see it. Floyd talked about his undefeated record as a means of comparing himself to whatever fighter aficionados held dear; he wasn’t TBE because he cared about being the best ever – he’s learnèd enough to know no historian could look at the men he fought, and when he fought them, and what they weighed when he fought them, and put Floyd in any top 20 list – but rather because he knew it would drive you nuts enough to buy his next fight no matter how silly its premise or demonstrative it oddsmakers’ eyes-rolling.

Floyd didn’t promise he wouldn’t be hit by his opponent, though in retrospect it would have made his fights more interesting if he had, but rather that he’d make an entertaining fight. That he never did do that accumulated resentment enough among aficionados for nobody to miss him.

Broner, on the other hand, makes an entertaining fight every time he puts gloves on. Broner’s defense is porous, his footwork often a tangled mess. He’s quick enough and strong enough to hit any man and flawed enough to be hit right back. He doesn’t sell his fights like: Come see AB the technician perform flawlessly again. He says: Come see this obnoxious clown get his clock cleaned.

Anyone who was in Alamodome for the signature beating of Broner’s career – Chino Maidana’s 2013 assault – knows there was tension in the championship rounds when, after absorbing everything Maidana could throw, Broner looked the fresher man, the abler combatant. (Another feature of that match that speaks to Broner’s otherwise inexplicable staying power: Never in 14 years of covering fights have I seen a more unambiguously joyful crowd than the one that spilled out the stadium in San Antonio.) And who among Broner’s eloquent undertakers didn’t shudder a bit when AB clipped Shawn Porter in the final round of Broner’s second career loss?

Had Broner an iota of discipline he might’ve proved himself an elite lightweight before eating his way two divisions up; if there’s little doubt prime Pacquiao would’ve beat Broner at 135 pounds there’s much more doubt than what greeted Pacquiao’s fight with David Diaz at that weight.

Which brings us, feet tangled and retreating with gloves overhead, to Saturday’s match. Here’s one way to look at it: Since 2017 Pacquiao is 1-1 and Broner is 1-1-1, making neither guy the rational a-side, and since when do you put a match on pay-per-view without an a-side?

Another way to look at it is . . . well . . . maybe there’s not another way to look at it.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Manny Pacquiao is back in America amid a mix of inevitable questions faced by any boxer about to fight for the first time since turning 40. It’s an old face. Yet a fresh one, too, perhaps because he really is renewed or maybe because we’ve just missed him.

During an era ruled by noisy narcissism Pacquiao has been missed for everything he doesn’t say, which has always been a lot. Everybody flexes their mouth these days. Even LeBron James is calling himself the greatest (lower case intended).

After a couple of decades that have included titles at eight weights and political titles in two Filipino houses, however, the former Congressman and current Senator leaves over-the-top exaggeration to somebody else.

For the next week-and-a-half, that somebody happens to be Adrien Broner, who gets headlines more for what he does outside of his boxing career. Only Broner’s warrants are outstanding.

Broner loves the bully pulpit, and he figures to use it loudly and profanely before his last chance for welterweight relevance on Jan. 19 against Pacquiao at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand in a Showtime pay-per-view bout.

Standing in a striking contrast, there’s Pacquiao, a few years older than he was in his last American visit, yet as modest as ever.

“My journey in this sport is still continuing,’’ Pacquiao said Wednesday to the assembled media at trainer Freddie Roach’s Wild Card Gym. “I’ve accomplished everything I’ve wanted to, but I also want to continue to keep my name at the top.

“Even at 40-years-old, I can still show the best of Manny Pacquiao. I’m going to give the fans the speed and power that they’re used to seeing.’’

That’s boilerplate Manny. Five years ago, it would have sounded naïve, more moments of Manny uttering platitudes. But today there something comforting about those familiar words. At one level, at least, he’s the same guy. Only at opening bell will we know whether he’s the same within those ropes. But that unchanged modesty is a sure sign that at least some of the physical skills are still intact. Bragging is a symptom of insecurity and there has never been sign of that in the quiet poise still evident in Pacquiao.

Can Broner test him? Beat him? Yes and yes. Broner’s right-handed counter is dangerous enough to put a premature end to Pacquiao’s comeback. But will he? It says here he won’t for reasons already seen. Broner’s defining fight was a 2013 loss to Marcos Maidana. It was damning then and Broner has yet to prove he isn’t the guy who shrunk in retreat under Maidana’s furious rate of punches during a long night in San Antonio.

Video of Pacquiao at a media workout this week indicated he’s in terrific condition, good enough to at least rain down successive punches onto Broner during the early moments. Guess here is that Pacquiao’s power is still very much there. Let’s just say it’s as genuine as that modest streak. If Broner feels it a couple of times, he’ll use his speed in much the same way he did against Maidana more than five years ago. He’ll retreat, straight into another defeat.

That would spark intense speculation about what – who – is next for Pacquiao. It also would set up talk about a rematch with you-know-who. Fact is, there’s already talk about a rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr.

In history-repeats-itself, Pacquiao ran into Mayweather at another NBA game this week, this time at a Clippers game at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. The immediate and inevitable parallel was their meeting at a Miami Heat game, a key encounter that finally led to the disappointing Mayweather decision over Pacquiao in 2015. For a lot of fans, I suspect, a sequel would be more of a historical redundancy than a good rematch.

“My plan is to take it one fight at a time,” Pacquiao said. “I can’t talk about future fights until I do what I have to on January 19. You can ask me again after this one.’’

Trite, true and good enough for me. Welcome back, Manny.

By Bart Barry-

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

Local politicians say San Antonio is the fastest growing city in the country, which may be true or wildly false – who bothers knowing the truth of anything anymore? – but if one trusts his intuition he’s able to confirm a coarsening, at least, the sort of coarsening that happens when strangers get crowded together; I felt similar traffic patterns living in Silicon Valley in 2001, and since most of the country is a couple decades behind Silicon Valley, it feels about right South Texas should be arriving at San Jose-2001 in 2019.

I believed persons might change themselves through force of will then saw no one turning the feat in more than cosmetic ways, then I believed no one changes but becomes solely more deeply himself then saw folks years later unrecognizable, then I decided no one changes himself but does get changed by life.

Ringside for Ramirez-Hart 2 in Corpus Christi brought further evidence of a mysterious sort of thing like physical IQ, something Norman Mailer jabbed in his treatment of Ali-Foreman, “The Fight”, whereby one’s experiences in combat, or one’s ancestors’ experiences for that matter, make the non-thinking, or anyway non-selfconscious, parts of one’s body abler to respond in a boxing match via bypassing consciousness than pinging it for preapproval, and meandering deeply enough in this thought brings an intersection with one’s selfconcept, one’s identity, that might explain why professional athletes often sense the pain of failure just like the pain of injury.

I can’t envision any viable model whereby unbought boxing-writing pays a living wage for more than a handful of its practitioners, whereby more than a dozen writers work for publications independent from promoters and pay their rents that way, much less mortgages, and this doesn’t make boxing-writing an anomalous form of journalism so much as a predecessor form: when you don’t expect to get serious pay for something you don’t worry about capturing consensus or abiding by it, and that means you strain for objectivity very little, which is probably fine since the obvious bias of opinion be more palatable than what dishonesty can accrue when wellintentioned objectivity becomes your objective.

Pause.

Jesse Hart appeared uninspired during the opening half of his rematch with Zurdo, a rematch Hart demanded, almost begging, which made veteran observers wonder if Hart were unwell or if Ramirez were specialer, and it unraveled thoughts about failure in prizefighting – rarely unaccompanied by somethought like “I’m unable to do this” – which quickly reraveled into thoughts about the essence of relenting, that it isn’t so active as quitting but rather passive like nonresistance; far oftener does a man fail at prizefighting by shrugging than shaking his head.

There’s a hint of schadenfreude for aficionados as the richest prizefighter of our last generation now wears down mixed martial artists and walks down teenage kickboxers; it proves nothing about any of the three sports except economic circumstances disparate enough to drive a man and a boy to seek a payraise by imperiling themselves and failing painfully at someone else’s craft.

There’s nothing yet on the 2019 calendar that rivals Fury-Wilder at last year end; there are curios where old guys fight and little guys dare to be great by scaling classes, and such spectacles, like Kell Brook’s getting expunged by GGG or (again) Amir Khan getting knockout-of-the-yeared by Canelo, bring to mind a distinction strategist Carl von Clausewitz inspired when he defined courage as a trait a warrior uses to overcome doubt; we can invert this and imagine a doubtful outcome is a prerequisite for courage, which is to infer it is no braver to enter in a hopeless contest and lose than vanquish a hopeless opponent.

I wrote all that once before, more than 10 years ago, and now that I read it I realize how much more careful I was then – we were aligned with CBSSportsline.com at the time, and if one hoped to appear on those pages he had to write for a verily casualer fan – and my initial dismay at returning to rehash so easily an idea I explored a decade ago now changes in realtime to a consideration this idea, failure being more passive than active, is better when revisited, else why keep revisiting it?

Boxing keeps posing this question, after all.

(Feet got a bit tangled there.)

Apropos of HBO Sports’ demise, a month ago I wrote a harsh sentence-fragment eulogy for eulogizing, “To hell with all that”, and the words weren’t uninspired; both parents passed in 2018, and their passings afforded me chances to see how voluntary grieving might be, and in some circumstances, I discovered, it can be altogether voluntary, which asks assorted additional questions about both the deceased and their survivors.

Pause.

American Bank Center felt emptier in December than February, much quieter, which spoke in a declarative sentence about the trendline of Zurdo Ramirez’s drawing power, and since nobody’s ever read such a graph better than Bob Arum, one imagined Southpaw Ramirez will get put in hard in 2019: Who better to welcome Gennady Golovkin to the super middleweight division on ESPN?

If boxing is no more hopeful at the beginning of this year than usual it is more ubiquitous, which means something in the future even if it means precious little in the present – there are more American kids, potential NFL running backs and NBA point guards and Major League center fielders, now being exposed to our beloved sport, and at least a few may make their ways in local gyms and replenish our ecosystem – and we’re never more than a great American heavyweight away from being kings again.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Predictions are like punches. Some land. Many miss. Some are wild. A few are silly. Some are feints. Some are cheap. A year later, most don’t matter.

A few from every angle for 2019:

· One fight on the schedule is already creating a buzz. Mikey Garcia takes a risk on March 16 against Errol Spence, a big welterweight with the division’s biggest punch. Garcia, whose natural weight is at 135 and 140, loses a decision, but makes it interesting with skill that helps him elude the knockout. The scorecard decision creates momentum for two fights many fans have wanted to see for a couple of years:

· Spence-versus-Terence Crawford in the biggest 147-bout in years. Talks between rival promoters – Premier Boxing (PBC) for Spence and Top Rank for Crawford – are problematic. But momentum means money and it would be there amid the intrigue created by Spence-Garcia.

· Garcia-versus-Vasiliy Lomachenko. It’s a fight that captivates the public imagination. It pits Garcia’s fundamental skill against Lomachenko’s creativity. Against Lomachenko, Garcia is bigger, meaning an advantage in power. Jorge Linares knocked down Lomachenko, who sustained a shoulder injury. Again, talks might be trouble. Top Rank promotes Lomachenko. Garcia is an ex-Top Rank fighter. But money solves a lot of differences.

· Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder II. Controversy over the Dec. 1 draw and 12th-round drama dictates an immediate rematch. Anthony Joshua will have to wait. But this time Fury won’t get up. The fight at Los Angeles’ Staples Center was Fight-of-the-Year worthy for the astonishing way Fury recovered from a crushing right-left combo. In the sequel, Wilder promises to be at least 20 pounds heavier. He was at 209 at opening bell. That’ll mean more leverage — more power — on punches that to figure land all over again.

· Oleksandr Usyk. The 2018 cruiserweight will celebrate his Fighter-of-the-Year award with an immediate impact at heavyweight against a veteran contender. Luis Ortiz? He’ll be impressive enough to make Joshua wait even longer.

· Andre Ward. Rumors about a comeback won’t go away. He’ll be 35 on February 23. He retired unbeaten (32-0), suggesting that there’s still something left to do in his Hall of Fame career. But a return to light-heavy or an attempt at cruiser – it rhymes with snoozer – might not be worthwhile. Heavyweight would generate interest and money. One look at Usyk, however, might be another reason for Ward to sidestep the questions.

· Adrien Broner. Only his warrants are outstanding. His performances in the ring have been disappointing and there’s not much reason to believe that will change much against 40-year-old Manny Pacquiao on Jan. 19.

· Pacquiao. An impressive victory over Broner would lead to talk about tougher challenges, including a fight against the winner of Spence-Garcia. Pacquiao against either would be easy to do because all three are linked to PBC. Then, of course, there will be the inevitable speculation about a rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr.

· Mayweather. He’ll say he’s retired and then say something that sets social media on fire with talk of Pacquiao and a comeback. Mayweather loves attention. He loves money even more. In 2019, however, he runs out of gimmicks or at least mixed-martial artists who would fight him blindfolded. On New Year’s Eve, he beats a Japanese kickboxer who isn’t allowed to kick?? Those are rules that lead to talk of a fix. What’s next? Who’s next? Pacquiao. But that rematch figures to be a little bit like Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns II in 1989. Forgot that one? You’ll forget Pacquiao-Mayweather too.

· Canelo Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin III. Has to happen, right? But there’s not been much news about GGG. After his disputed loss by decision to Canelo in September, it looks as if he would need at least one tune-up, perhaps in early spring. Seemingly, that would eliminate the May date on Canelo’s schedule. But it leaves Mexico’s September holiday as a possibility. Canelo’s landmark $365-million deal with DAZN might make it happen.

Happy New Year.

Attachments area

By Bart Barry-

2017’s end-of-year romp, a mosaicked effort about Chocolatito’s abrupt plunge from boxing’s apex, brought an examination of conscience that lauded what salutary effects result from travel to cover our beloved sport, a quiet promise, it now seems in retrospect, to travel much oftener for boxing in 2018, a promise quite exactly broken by its maker with two exceptions, exceptional trips to Corpus Christi – home of Selena – I now hope to explore like a cumbia: left foot and right foot neutral, right foot back, left foot neutral, right foot neutral, pause, left foot back, left foot neutral, and again.

I planned to travel thricely, at least, to locales farflung to cover boxing in the new year when I wrote about traveling to Santa Monica Pier but then life happened, and deaths, too, and the calendar never quite shaped up – the interestingest events being in Eurasia or saturated or not enticing enough in some other way.

Somewhere buried in quips about the size of Top Rank’s platform on ESPN+ for Mexican Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez and the champ’s awkward threats to other super middleweights and awkwarder threats to ascend to light heavyweight resides a conceit like: Zurdo might outwork WBC’s David Benavidez, a formerly pudgy kid PBC now fights but annually, but he can’t beat WBA’s Callum Smith, so let’s swerve tourneys like that.

I can’t pretend to enjoy the drive into Corpus or imagine anyone else does, but I still believe there’s no place like ringside, no place so honest, to remind you why you excavate these 900 or so words every Sunday, and I like Shell’s in Port Aransas, too, a 40-minute drive, offseason, and a short ferry ride away.

Pause.

The first week of February found Zurdo in American Bank Center to defend his WBO fraction of the championship against Habib Ahmed, an undefeated Ghanaian making his first boxing trip outside Ghana, while the world’s best 168 pounder, Callum Smith, readied for his WBSS semifinal a few weeks later in a tournament from which Zurdo was noticeably absent.

Now the WBSS schedule sits colorful empty after months of reports about missing bonuses and disintegrating investment, and the WBSS is such a good thing and DAZN such a proper platform, one hopes its organizers dust themselves off, draw a black line through any stateside venues and bring to fruition season 2 in Scotland and Japan and Russia and Poland, places where a proper gate helps purses get paid.

San Antonio doesn’t host big events these days, which is unjust, well as Canelo’s tilt in Alamodome went some years back, and the main reason cited is a dearth of local ticketsellers, which is unjust, well as Canelo’s tilt in Alamodome went some years back, but there’s also a certain relief that comes with such an absence: I can skip hours upon wasted hours of fightweek festivities, empty if hyperbolic tributes to sponsors, and get right to the broadcast itself, which is better earlier and much better with a twoperson booth or fewer.

I sat beside Don Smith in February at ringside – he was visiting Corpus from Phoenix to cover Jose Benavidez’s comeback – and he epitomized the essential eccentricity of the boxing writers you meet as a boxing writer, the guys who publish offline newsletters and set clippings from their bestknown works beside themselves on pressrow, guys fond of conspiracy but fonder of fighters, and a few months later matchmaker Bruce Trampler tweeted about Don Smith’s demise, killed by a motorist at a bus stop, and as I write this I believe more deeply than before Top Rank’s facility with and affinity for journalists separates it from other promoters; it’s the part of the job (along with don’t steal from your employer) Golden Boy Promotions’ Richard Schaefer just never got; it’s the part of the job PBC’s founder founded PBC on avoiding.

Boxing shows itself today nothing so much as adaptable, gliding forward from HBO Sport’s collapse, an event unthinkable to aficionados even five years ago, with barely a blink of acknowledgement, and that gliding happens even as 2019’s calendar looks weak so far.

I don’t find nearly so much discovery in boxing writing these days as I did, say, 10 or 12 years ago, and I don’t seek it, either, like I did that many years ago, and when I wonder why it returns me to a question Lee Samuels asked a few weeks ago at American Bank Center – “What sites do you read?” – and a realization I don’t visit boxing sites to read writers anymore but use my favorite writers on Twitter like portals to the sites that publish them, and if this is a good new bent, writers not publishers, I’m not sure it feels like one.

Pause.

Two undercard guys stood out February in Corpus, Jose Benavidez and Jesse Hart, and this too evinced the importance of matchmakers who know what they’re doing, matchmakers able to balance the oftcompeting priorities of entertaining in the moment while building another moment a halfyear away, so in October it wasn’t a surprise Benavidez got worn to torn by Bud Crawford and a couple months later Hart, so relentless in February, looked nigh relentful against Ramirez.

When dilettantes pontificate about boxing’s failures, assuring the miasma boxing will die or already did, they underestimate the simple inertia of a sport with a century or two of aficionados’ influencing other aficionados, they forget boxing moved on from irreplaceable men like Muhammad Ali to utterly replaceable men like Floyd Mayweather and just kept selling.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

It was preceded by great expectations. But it began amid disappointment, delay and controversy. Another year ends and new one is about to begin amid all of usual suspects.

Still, 2018 was a little bit different perhaps because of the way it ended in a spontaneous display of emotion in one fight that exceeded expectations.

In early December, Tyson Fury got up from a crushing Deontay Wilder combination in a moment that reminded us that boxing never ceases to surprise. It is nothing if not resilient. It is always re-creating itself.

Not long after Fury somehow regained consciousness and somehow was able to stand upright late in a 10-count that began like last rites, he stood, resurrected, in front of the assembled media in a work room at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

He held his long arms above his head like an old-time preacher and asked:

“Did we entertain you?’’

There was no argument about the answer, unlike the deafening controversy over the judges’ scores in a split draw.

The fight was a hit on every level other than the scorecards. Yet, even the debate was reason to celebrate. A rematch is in those cards. For 2019, more of Wilder-Fury can only be a good thing. Wilder-Fury I was reason to forget everything that didn’t happen in 2018. It also happened in the very division that has been written off for at least a decade.

The heavyweights are a relic of what they were. On Dec. 1, however, Wilder-Fury reminded us how much fun they can be. Nobody will confuse Wilder or Fury with Evander Holyfield or Lennox Lewis or any of the other legends who were in the Staples crowd.

But Wilder’s instinctive power lands like a force of nature. Add Fury’s stubborn will and clever skill, and you had a dynamic mix, the kind that creates great moments. Their performance was Fight of the Year here and, I suspect, on nearly every other ballot, too.

In terms of tone, Wilder and Fury left the boxing audience wanting more at exactly the time when there was lingering frustration over Canelo Alvarez’ PED suspension, the subsequent delay of a second fight, contentious negotiations and then a September rematch without a knockdown and just more controversy over Canelo’s narrow victory on the scorecards.

There were other moments, names and reasons to remember.

A few samples:

Aleksandr Usyk looked like Fighter of the Year, putting himself into the pound-for-pound discussion with cruiserweight victories that should make Fury, Wilder and Anthony Joshua nervous.

At the top of the pound-for-pound debate on this ballot, it’s still welterweight Terence Crawford at No. 1, Vasiliy Lomachenko at No. 2 and Mikey Garcia at No. 3. All three have good arguments for the top spot. They are redefining the sport — moving it beyond the careful, risk-to-reward ratio that ruled Floyd Mayweather’s Jr.’s rich career.

Crawford is a finisher. Lomachenko’s many punches from many angles are unprecedented. Garcia, a natural lightweight and junior-welterweight, is taking a risk, a massive one against welterweight power-puncher Errol Spence Jr. in March.

Throughout 2018, they did what Mayweather didn’t in a year that ended with Fury and Wilder, who reminded us that anything is possible.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in Brooklyn on Fox, in the debut of a new business model by which the PBC receives money for presenting its fighters on public airwaves instead of paying to do so, Houston super welterweight Jermell Charlo got decisioned by Detroit’s Tony Harrison, controversially, and Houston middleweight Jermall Charlo decisioned Russia’s Matt Korobov, uncontroversially. Another uncontroversial point: Neither Charlo exceeded expectations.

Either the Brothers Charlo are the future of prizefighting or they’re a couple more in an eyeless promotional group’s attempt to manufacture by dint of hardwork and stubbornness future pay-per-view stars, b-less a-sides, in strict adherence to a moribund business model that made a very few folks very rich some years ago. Saturday neither solved that riddle nor brought the riddle any nearer its conclusion, featuring, as it did, a public-airwaves broadcast sans knockouts. For he is an elusive consumer indeed who’ll say in 2020: “Let me pay $80 to see the two brothers I saw on that Fox show at the end of 2018.”

One can fixate on scorecards, like we’re told to do after every single title match that ends with a final bell, or one can concede he’d not be fixating on scorecards were the favored fighters good as commentators promised him they’d be. Or just as possibly these are the musings of a pundit who missed the narrow Charlo window by virtue of poor timing.

If a search of Google Drive be trustworthy I began covering the Brothers Charlo from ringside about 10 years ago. Jermell Charlo decisioned a lad named Juan Serrano in Houston’s Toyota Center some hours before Juan Manuel Marquez memorably hooked, lined and sank Juan Diaz. Charlo’s record was 6-0 (3 KOs) and his opponent’s was 2-5-1 (2 KOs), and yet the fight was an entertaining one because Charlo’s opponent, despite having no power of his own, walked directly through Charlo’s punches. Four months later I began a report of Charlo’s match with Federico Flores in Tucson like so: “Light hitting or otherwise, Jermell Charlo’s got class.”

In 2012, on the undercard of Garcia-Morales 1, Jermall Charlo (9-0, 5 KOs) made that Saturday’s second match in an empty Houston arena against Sean Wilson (5-9, 1 KO) and did not fell him but did stop him. A year later, I covered Jermall in the gymnasium of a small San Antonio college, on a Golden Boy copromotion card, and while a better journalist would take the time to divine whom Charlo fought that evening it’s more fun to share this: When the match was near enough to publish a bout sheet that bout sheet read Charlo (11-0, 7 KOs) vs. T.B.A.

For some stark contrast, there’s this: Vasyl Lomachenko just made his 12th prizefight, in May, and won a world title in his third weight division.

I covered the Brothers Charlo a halfdozen times from ringside and came away from the experiences unable to discern which was who and struck by how little stopping power either’s fists comprised. Sometime after that PBC launched as a venture and I used its indifference to unbought media like an excuse not to perform what acts of diligence previously got me to watch the Charlos.

Imagine my surprise, then, when writers whose opinions I respect began writing unironical accounts of Houston’s lion twins’ savage dismantling of fellow prospects. Was it enhanced matchmaking, or an enhanced training regimen? Yes, it was/were.

But now I do wonder about any newly aspiring aficionados who came upon the Brothers Charlo for a first time Saturday night. No matter how little expertise an American male actually enjoys about our beloved sport, very few American males are more than a nationally broadcasted knockout or controversial decision away from amplifying loudly and confidently whatever they heard they saw. They’ve seen Tyson highlights enough on YouTube to know what’s important and trust their guts in all matters of sanctioned violence. While they may infer a faint affiliation between a promoter and the network for whom that promoter acts as an exclusive supplier of prizefighting talent they trust that network’s commentating team much more than the scorekeepers who turn in official tallies – in a wonderfully American way that confers more legitimacy on any authority whose bribe is right out in the open:

“The judges are on the take.”

“So are the commentators who make you think that.”

“Yeah, but they’re getting paid to give their opinions.”

Which is why Jermell’s getting decisioned by Tony Harrison brought so much more outrage from Fox viewers than Jermall’s 11-rounds-to-1 favoring on an official scorecard published by the son of Fox’s unofficial scorekeeper. The first event was unforgivably offscript while the second aligned neatly with what viewers got promised they’d see.

The bent of most boxing viewers is such that if you don’t give them a violent catharsis they’ll tend to make one, with judges and referees topping their lists of wouldbe victims. If they say they’re leaving because of corrupt officiating they’re not leaving. If they actually do leave trust it’s this: There wasn’t enough violence. That is a problem for any boxing broadcaster but particularly a problem for those who align themselves exclusively with PBC, as PBC does not specialize in violence but rather promise and potential and charisma and skills. For more than a decade the Brothers Charlo have shown lots of all four, and so?

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Jermall Charlo defends the WBC Interim Middleweight title against Matt Korobov.  The action starts at 8 PM ET / 5 PM PT with the WBC Super Welterweight title bout between Jermell Charlo and Tony Harrison.  The action kicks off with a heavyweight contest between Dominic Breazeale and Carlos Negron.

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY.

Round 1: Korobov lands a straight left

Round 2 Counter from Korobov..Hook from Charlo..Lead left from Korobov..Combination.

Round 3 Nice right to body from Charlo..Hard left from Korobov..

Round 4 Big left Korobov..Right Hook..sneaks in another left..Good left

Round 5 Jab from Charlo..Good left hook

Round 6 Counter hook from Charlo..Straight left/right uppercut from Korobov

Round 7 Good Right from Charlo..Left from Korobov..Combination from Charlo.

Round 8 Good exchange in center o the ring..Jab from Charlo

Round 9 Charlo lands a right..2 jabs and a straight right..

Round 10 Combination from Charlo…Right..Good right

Round 11 Lead left from Charlo..Left from Korobov..right from Charlo..Left..Counter hook..Jab..Good hook from Korobov..

Round 12 Right hook rocks Korobov..Huge shots staggering Korobov..Left from Korobov..Big right from Charlo

119-108…116-112 TWICE FOR JERMALL CHARLO

Round 1 2 big rights from Charlo

Round 2:  Harrison looking sharp with his punches..

Round 3: Charlo beating Harrison to the punch..Combintion from Harrison

Round 4 Big Right from Harrison

Round 5 Hard counter right stuns Charlo..Right from Charlo..Jab from Harrison..Right hand buckles Harrison

Round 6 Straight from Charlo..

Round 7  Hard right from Charlo..Combination from Harrison….Big left from Charlo

Round 8 Good left hook from Charlo..Nice left from Harrison..Jab

Round 9 1-2 from Charlo..Counter right from Harrison..combination..Right from Charlo..Left from Harrison

Round 10 Right from Charlo..

Round 11 right hook from Charlo..Great left uppercut..Jab and body shot for Harrison

Round 12 Big left hurts Harrison..Charlo following with a barrage on the ropes..Harrison hold on..Short left hook from Harrison..Big right from Charlo..

116-112; 115-113 TWICE FOR TONY HARRISON

Round 1 Jab from Breazeale..

Round 2 Good right from Negron..Right from Negron..right to body..Negron jabs to body..Right

Round 3 Good 3 punch combination from Negron..Good right hurts Negron..Negron is cut over left eye..Right from Breazeale…Negron lands a big left to body..left to body

Round 4 2 jabs from Negron..Big left..left to body..Right..Right from Breazeale…Right..Body shot from Negron….2 Big rights wobble Negron at the bell

Round 5 Hard left from Breazeale..

Round 6 Right from Breazeale..Jab..Good left hook

Round 7 Big left from Negron..left hook/right hand from Breazeale..Good right..Uppercut from Negron

Round 8 Body work from Brezeale..Left uppercut

Round 9 HUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES NEGRON…FIGHT OVER

Follow all the action as Josh Warrington defends the IBF Featherweight title against former world champion Carl Frampton.  The action kicks off at 1 PM ET/ 6 PM UK time with Tommy Fury making his pro debut.  Also Nathan Gorman takes on Razvan Cojanu; Michael Conlan battles Jason Cunningham; Martin  Murray fights Hassan N’Dam; Mark Heffron fights Liam Williams

NO BROWSER REFRESH IS NEEDED.  THE  PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY.

Round 1 Good right hook by Warrington and they are going at it..Frampton backing up…Heated pace

Round 2 Left hook from Frampton..Right from Warrington..Body shot..Warrington opening up..Short right

Round 3 Uppercut from Frampton..Body shots

Round 4  Right from Warrington..Warrington working on the ropes

Round 5 Barrage of punches from Warrington..Left..Body work..Uppercut..Frampton trying to land the uppercut

Round 6  Warrington applying pressure..Right from Frampton..Uppercut from Warington..right to the body

Round 7 Heavy body shots by both guys…Right from Frampton….Warrington outlanding Framton 142-76

Round 8 Body shots from Frampton..Uppercut from Warrington..Good shots from Frampton..Combination..Warrington trying to answer

Round 9 Right Counter from Frampton..Good right from Warrington..Combination from Frampton..Body punches..Warrington lands a 4 punch combination

Round 10 Jab from Warrington..Uppercut from Frampton..Warrington upping his punch output..Frampton getting better of exchange..Jab from Frampton

Round 11 Jab from Frampton..Right..1-2 from Warrington..Jab..Good combination from Frampton.

Round 12 Body work from Warrington..Pop shotting from the outside

116-113; 116-112 TWICE FOR JOSH WARRINGTON

Round 1 Williams lands a 1-2..Right

Round 2 Clash of heads..Another…Cut over right eye of Williams

Round 3 Good combination from Williams

Round 4 Right from Williams..Jab

Round 5 Hook from Heffron..Good left from Williams..Jab

Round 6 2 hard rights from Williams..Heffrom warned for low blow..Right from Williams..Hard right..Chopping right

Round 7 Right from Williams..Right over the top

Round 8  Right from Williams..Right..Williams warned for low blow

Round 9 Hook from Heffron..Body..Right from Williams

Round 10  HUGE RIGHT AND HEFFRON SLAMS INTO THE ROPES FOR A KNOCKDOWN..Williams landing big shots..REFEREE STOPS THE FIGHT

Round 1 Left to body from Murray..Body shot

Round 2 Left hook from Murray..Uppercut from N’Dam..Left to body from Murray

Round 3

Round 4 Combination from Murray..Combination in close by N’Dam..RIGHT FROM MURRAY AT BELL AND RULED A KNOCKDOWN

Round 5 Murray working the body..Uppercut from N’Dam

Round 6  Combination from N’Dam..Body shot

Round 7 Good uppercut from N’Dam..Combination..Body shot

Round 8 Body shots from N’Dam..Right from Murray

Round 9 Combination from N’Dam..Another combination on the ropes..

Round 10 Right from Murray..

Round 11 N’Dam boxing and moving

Round 12 Murray pressing..Uppercut from N’Dam

114-114; 117-112; 116-112 FOR N’DAM

Round 1

Round 2 Good right from Conlan..Left from Conlan…

Round 3 Body shot from Conlan

Round 4  Right from Conlan..2 lefts from Cunningham..Good body work from Conlan..Right to body

Round 5 Jab and combination from Conlan

Round 6 Conlan deducted a point for a low blow..

Round 7 Combination from Cunningham..Good exchange

Round 8 Good right from Conlan..Uppercuts

Round 9 Jab from Conlan..Good right

Round 10 Cunningham coming forward..Good left hurts Cunningham..Huge right buckles Cunningham

97-92 TWICE AND 98-92 for Conlan

Round 1 Body and uppercuts from Gorman

Round 2 Right from Cojanu..Left from Gorman..Lead left hook..Combination from Cojanu..Left hook

Round 3 Right from Gorman…Gorman getting more active

Round 4  Right from Gorman

Round 5 Left hook from Gorman..Right snaps Cojanu’s head back

Round 6 Hook to body and right from Gorman..Right from Cjanu..Nice uppercut..Body shots..

Round 7 Uppercut from Cojanu..Good left hook..Left hook from Gorman

Round 8 Left from Gorman

Round 9 Left from Gorman…Right to body from Cojanu

Round 10 Nice right from Gorman..Right from Cojanu..Hard right from Gorman

Round 11 Good right from Gorman..Good left from Gorman drive Cojanu to the corner

Round 12 Good left from Gorman..Body shot

119-109 twice and 120-108 for GORMAN

Round 1 Body shot from Fury..Uppercut…Body shot

Round 2 Right hand from Fury..Right

Round 3 Hard uppercut from Fury..Good body shots and right hand..Fury warned for low blows..Right to body

Round 4 Lead left hook from Fury

FURY WINS BY 40-36 SCORE

By Norm Frauenheim-

John McCain’s name will be added to the Boxing Writers Association of America award for courage, alongside Bill Crawford, a Medal of Honor winner.

McCain also is one of five nominees for the award, which will be presented at the Writers’ (BWAA) annual dinner in 2019.

The BWAA voted to add the former Arizona Senator’s name to the award and nominated him for it at meetings in Los Angeles and New York earlier this month

McCain, a longtime boxing fan and leading advocate for boxing regulation, died at his northern Arizona home on August 25, just hours before an ESPN-televised card in Glendale, Ariz., featuring Jose Pedraza’s upset of Ray Beltran.

When news of McCain’s death was reported, Top Rank immediately staged a haunting 10-count, a touching moment remembered at ringside as a Requiem for a Heavyweight.

In comments to 15 Rounds, The Ring and The Los Angeles Times, Top Rank’s Bob Arum called McCain “the boxing Senator.’’

McCain, a Republican, and retired Nevada Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat, joined forces for passage of the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act, a legislative attempt at protecting a fighter’s finances and health.

McCain also expressed his interest – and frustration — in boxing on the Senate floor. After Timothy Bradley’s controversial decision over Manny Pacquiao in 2012, McCain grabbed the bully pulpit and suggested that the federal government investigate judging.

McCain, a boxer at the Naval Academy, also worked tirelessly for a posthumous pardon of Jack Johnson, an iconic heavyweight champ who had been jailed for violating a 1912 law, the Mann Act, which prohibited the transportation of women across state lines. Johnson, a black man, had been seeing a white woman.

McCain had been pursuing the pardon since 2004. It finally came in May, three months before he died at 81 from brain cancer. President Donald Trump didn’t mention McCain when granting the pardon.

The newly named John McCain & Bill Crawford Award for Courage bring together two heroic figures from different eras, yet with similar experiences. Both were amateur boxers. Both were Prisoners-of-War.

Crawford won the Medal of Honor in 1943 for taking out three German machine-gun nests during combat in Italy. He was captured and presumed dead. Initially, the Medal of Honor was awarded to his father. While in captivity for 19 months, Crawford knocked out a German guard with punches he threw as a Golden Gloves boxer.

Later in life, Crawford went to work as a janitor at the Air Force Academy. More than four decades after he took out the German machine guns, President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Medal of Honor in person during a 1985 Air Force Academy graduation. An Academy grad went on to write a book about him, titled A Janitor’s Ten Lessons In Leadership. Crawford died in 2000 and is buried on the Academy’s campus near Colorado Springs.

Like Crawford, McCain also was a POW. McCain, who is buried at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, was captured by the North Vietnamese after his fighter-jet was shot down over Hanoi on October 26, 1967.

At the time, his father, Admiral John Sidney McCain, was stationed in Hawaii as CINCPAC – Commander-in-Chief Pacific. The North Vietnamese offered to release John McCain. But he refused. He was beaten. He was tortured. He survived. On March 14, 1973, McCain finally came home, a profile in courage then and nearly 46 years later a perfect complement to Crawford.

By Bart Barry-

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – A mile south of American Bank Center stands the Selena Memorial, known as Mirador de la Flor. It overlooks a small harbor that abuts Corpus Christi Bay, which floats to Mustang Island, a crescent sliver of land separating this city from the Gulf of Mexico. Far as coastal cities go, this is an ugly one, truly, but Selena, as both an ideal and a memory, is beautiful, and it feels good when I tell folks I’m heading southwards that they ask about visiting Selena, now, rather than an aircraft carrier.

I’m here because of a fightcard at American Bank Center, of course, one that wasn’t good as its February predecessor, here, though probably better than its Saturday successor in New York, an interminable DAZN insomnia cure with Canelo Alvarez’s tri-spiking of hapless Rocky Fielding’s liver like its Sundaymorning alarm. Fielding was what we knew he was, and Canelo did exactly what a dominant force should do a submissive one. Aside from what matchmaking gripes all sounded months ago the only fair complaint about Canelo’s debut on a new network was the ungodly hour it finally happened.

Does that suffice for a topical summary? It does.

“El Zurdo” Gilberto Ramirez, a Mexican super middleweight titlist who neither participated in WBSS’ first season nor seems slightly interested in matching himself with those who did, gained a lukewarm vengeance on the halfdozen or so aficionados who told people they thought Jesse Hart won his first match with Zurdo 15 months ago, by decisioning Hart narrowly Friday night. Ramirez is the better fighter, the harder puncher, even the handsomer man. He may ultimately have more grit, too, than Hart. But if Ramirez won acclaim from official judges in Friday’s rematch he surely won no new fans and lost some old ones.

Ramirez explained his poor form in rounds 8-11 by citing an elbow injury. Could be. Hart obviously sensed something and stopped hesitating to walkdown Ramirez after the seventh. But Hart did something else, too: He showed how limited Ramirez is. A rangy frontrunner who’s very good from his preferred distance Ramirez hadn’t an inkling what to do with a man inside said distance, even while that man was not punching or holding but mostly just leaning on him. Hart turned the boxing match to a shouldering chesting necking contest and Ramirez didn’t do nothing about it. He planted his feet and waited for the ropes to break or the ref to yell it.

Soon thereafter Ramirez said he wants to move to 175 pounds, where his lack of infighting should adhere itself to a lack of power and get him either decisioned or protected so unflinchingly by Top Rank’s matchmakers he might as well have been.

The more interesting story was Hart, who looked a feral beast against Thomas Awimbono 10 months ago. Still scowling when he approached press row after merely 88 seconds of uberviolent work in February, Hart demanded a rematch as his proper due and convinced those of us who were listening. How much more fragile Hart looked in the opening half of that rematch, though! Talking to himself through an open mouth as he absorbed bodyshots and retreated from Ramirez’s feints Hart appeared like no one so much as a fighter ready to reveal, postfight, a trainingcamp injury or case of foodpoisoning (preceded necessarily by the “I don’t make excuses” tagline).

It led me to a ringside thought like: I have no idea what this man is thinking. Not in the sarcastic sense of “what were you thinking?” but in the much larger sense of an unknowable inventory of factors in Hart’s life that brought him to that moment, as a lubricated female voice a few rows back besought him to do what only she believed he could do, over and over and over, and over, and his corner urged him on, and the rest of the arena cheered heartily against him. Probability says I shouldn’t have had any better idea what Zurdo was thinking – regionally at least, I’m from a part of the world much nearer Hart’s Philadelphia than Ramirez’s Mazatlan – but Hart felt so deeply unknowable it was a thought and word into which I burrowed as Hart went dispiritedly backwards.

This isn’t a pledge to understand a fighter like Jesse Hart better in the future but a confession I probably never knew a thing about a fighter like Jesse Hart and a soft promise not to act like I do.

Which gets me thinking about the art of matchmaking and those who do it better than others. Top Rank does just about everything better than every other promoter, save perhaps signing prospects, but its complexion has changed noticeably these last few years. There are the legends on its staff, another of whom deservedly goes in Canastota next June, and they occupy the same ringside seats as ever they did. But tucked in the left corner of pressrow now sits a braintrust of laptops and tablets and smartphones, and what youngsters understand their mechanics and reach, that represents Top Rank today, a company endangered by economics two years ago and now a lesson in adaptability. Such adaptation has bestowed on Top Rank’s legends a sheen of fated contentment, pleasant to observe as once it was unlikely.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action from ringside at Madison Square Garden as Rocky Fielding defends the WBA Super Middleweight championship against Middleweight world champion Canelo Alvarez.  The action kicks off at 6 PM and three world titles will be on the card featuring IBF Super Featherweight champion Tevin Farmer and female sensation Katie Taylor.  The action kicks off at 6 PM ET.

NO BROWSER REFRESH IS NEEDED.  THE  PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY.

Round 1 Fielding jabbing..2 hard body shots from Canelo..Combination from Fielding..Right from Fielding,…BODY SHOT AND DOWN GOES FIELDING..2 more hard body shots..Left…Right from Fielding….Big right from Canelo at the bell

Round 2 Body shot from Canelo..Right from canelo..Combination from Fielding..Left to body from Canelo..Hard right from Canelo..Right to body..Right..uppercut..Hard left to body..LEFT TO BODY AND DOWN GOES FIELDING..

Round 3 Left from Fielding..Right to body from Canelo..another..left from Fielding,,Canelo landing crunching bod shots..2 lefts to bod..Combo from Fielding..HUGE RIGHT TO THE HEAD AND DOWN GOES FIELDING…UPPERCUT AND LEFT TO THE BODY AND DOWN GOES FIELDING…FIGHT OVER

Round 2 Farmer boxing and moving..Farmer lands a left to the body…Left to body..Straight left,..Left to head..Right hook..Hard right to body

Round 3 Left from Farmer

Round 4 Right from Fonseca..left from Farmer

Round 5 Good left from Farmer

Round 6 Right from Fonseca..Left from Framer..Right from Fonseca..Uppercut from Farmer..Fonseca bleeding from right eye..Hard uppercut from Farmer..Left off the ropes

Round 7 Jab from Farmer…Left

Round 8 Left to body from Farmer..Trading body shots..Combination from Fonseca…

Round 9 Left from Farmer..

Round 10 Fighting on inside…short uppercuts from each guy..Right to body from Farmer..Good uppercut..Uppercut from Fonseca..Hard right from Farmer..Uppercut to body

Round 11 2 lefts from Farmer..Farmer jabs to the body..Right to body from Fonseca..series of body punches..Chopping left from Farmer

Round 12 1-2 from Farmer..Jab to body..Fonseca swinging at air

Round 1  Not much..Ali jabbing

Round 2 Good right from Ali…Ali lands a series of land hooks

Round 3 

Round 4 Good right from Ali..

Round 5 Double jab from Herrera…Left from Ali..

Round 6 Ali lands a left hook..

Round 7 Hard right from Ali…

Round 8 Ali gets in a right..Left to side of head..Right lead..

Round 9 Ali jabbing and moving..right..Right to side of head..

Round 10 Right hand from Ali

Round 1 Right from Rodriguez..HARD LEFT AND DOWN GOES RODRIGUEZ..Hard jab..

Round 2 Jab to body…Left…Rodriguez trying to showboat..Left inside from Garcia.

Round 3 Garcia sneaks in a left during an exchange..RODRIGUEZ DEDUCTED A POINT FOR A LOW BLOW..Good left hook from Garcia..Combination and Rodriguez mimicking Garcia..

Round 4 Hard combination on ropes and Rodriguez holds on..Body work..Rodriguez swinging wildly..Chopping lefts

Round 5 Hard right from Garcia, followed UP BY A PERFECT LEFT HOOK AND DOWN GIES RODRIGUEZ…FIGHT OVER

Round 1 Left from Taylor..Right to the body

Round 2 Left hook from Taylor..

Round 3 Taylor lands a 1-2..

Round 4 Left to body from Taylor..

Round 5 Taylor starting to up her workrate..Uppercut..Right on the inside…Body work on the inside..

Round 6 Right drives Wahlstrom to the ropes..Straight right..good right

Round 7 Taylor lands a body shot..Right..

Round 8 Left to body from Taylor..Right from Wahlstrom..Left from Taylor

Round 9  Good right from Taylor..Toe to toe action..Wahlstrom cut from her forehead

Round 10 Combination on inside from Taylor..Wahlstrom cut around the left eye..

By Bart Barry-

More historic happenings, Saturday, more unforgettable things you’ve already forgotten, more unbelievable events you believe completely. At New York’s Hulu Theater Ukrainian lightweight Vasiliy Lomachenko unified titles by decisioning Puerto Rico’s Jose Pedraza after Mexican super bantamweight Emanuel Navarrete beat up charismatic Ghanaian Isaac Dogboe and took his title. All the while a oncegreat broadcaster bid itself a weteyed goodbye in a very private ceremony.

It was a night of good prizefighting that acted, in collaboration with the calendar, a fine contrast with a night of great prizefighting six years past. With Dogboe’s selfbelief and Lomachenko’s craft came a reminder of a man, Juan Manuel Marquez, who epitomized both qualities and emerged from a much hotter crucible more heroic than both men, in 2012.

“Ohhhhhh!” went Roy Jones’ call on that HBO pay-per-view broadcast – writing of contrasts.

And let us use this as a proper contrast. When a broadcaster has the time and wherewithal to roll out of his prescripted, canned and shelved tagline during a knockout, trust little what hyperbole follows. “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling,” quipped Oscar Wilde, and so it be with ageful boxing commentary; the commentator’s desire to make the soundtrack of something historic is sincere as can be but what often comes out are sounds of unseemly striving. Moments are not memorable because someone tells you they’ll be memorable, and no matter how hard he tells you how unforgettable this moment is won’t make it so either. Moments are memorable when they make you fully present, which is impossible while someone fills your ears with his loud forecast about the unknowable future.

In its dotage HBO fell prey to this much as any broadcaster, fell prey to what straining happens when the importance of the platform and its presenters surpasses the importance of what events they present. The amplification, the absurd analogies, the vending. Now that it ends whimpering we get told what a loss we suffer, but that’s neither appropriate nor accurate either. Inappropriate because the departed don’t get a vote in the matter. Inaccurate because boxing has recrudesced during (if not because of) HBO’s demise. The montages and incessant lookingsback to come will play on our vanity, telling us it’s only narcissism if our lives aren’t fully historic happenings, which of course they are, else we’d not have been chosen to witness such historic happenings – and so on in a loop of lugging, effortful prepositional phrases mostly intended to prime us to consume the next historic product.

Salesmen in one aisle, amplifiers the other. One side shepherding and bullying for consensus, the other side adding eight exclamation marks for every witticism.

We return briefly to RJJ’s Marquez-Pacquiao 4 call. The moment was perfect because it was unscripted and Jones’ reaction to it pure. No context needed. Marquez, bloodied and buzzed, planted and threw, consequences be damned. What followed for Marquez was perfect a moment of vindication as sport can afford a man. Hours later on the way out MGM Grand’s main entrance the promotional ring had a guard dissuading Mexicans from climbing on the apron and posing for pics on their faces, hands tucked behind them, Pacquiao style.

Saturday had none of this. It had a charismatic titlist in the comain gutting out an ugly loss and a prodigy – we’re now told ceaselessly – looking less than prodigious in victory. Pedraza proved of Lomachenko what Marquez proved of Pacquiao: They don’t like fighting in mirrors. They are best when their opponents try to react conventionally to their unorthodox attacks, and they are much less when their opponents move symmetrically away from them. If Pedraza is obviously not Marquez he proved Lomachenko is not so much Pacquiao as a standardbearer for our collective desire to find another Pacquiao.

The best part of Saturday’s broadcast came when Tim Bradley asked his cocommentator a direct question about his opinion of Lomachenko’s performance. With that Bradley yanked the broadcast out of the thirdperson past – where experts have said and noted authorities have shared and highly regarded trainers have assured and pundits have never before seen – into the firstperson present. Hey, pal, tell me what you think right this moment.

Firstperson present, like RJJ yelling ohhhhhh. Nobody yelled ohhhhh Saturday. Dogboe barked NeHo a few too many times. We saw very good prizefighters wellmatched. We got told we’d see footwork that was sublime and teaching that was genius. But nobody yelled ohhhhhh at home or in the theater because nothing in the main or comain merited it.

While that happened, the former heart and soul of boxing paid a final tribute to itself in a stadium populated and passionate as a television studio.

If we let the matter be, if we let our sport enjoy its new stature and riches, we will surprise ourselves with how quickly we forget HBO Boxing, with how unstoppably our beloved sport marches on. If there’s an argument it’s ungracious to interrupt a eulogy this way, there’s a counterargument against eulogies in general. We burden ourselves with others’ pasts that we may soon burden others with our pasts. To hell with all that.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Vasyl Lomachenko and Jose Pedraza square off in a lightweight unification bout.  The action kicks off at 9 PM ET with a lightweight bout between Teofimo Lopez and Mason Menard.  Next up will the The WBO Super bantamweight title bout between Isaac Dogboe and Emanuel Navarrete.

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY.

Round 1: Right from Pedraza..Crowd Screaming “LOMA..LOMA…LOMA”…Hard left from Lomachenko..

Round 2: Good straight left from Lomachenko..Jab..left….Pedraza gets in a right

Round 3 Jab from Pedraza…3 punch combination from Lomachenko..

Round 4 Left from Pedraza..Combination on inside..Right hook from Lomachenko..Good jab..left..hard ;left

Round 5 Lomachenko lands a left to the body…Body shot from Pedraza..Jab and 2 lefts from Lomachenko

Round 6 Right from Pedraza..Ripping combo from Lomachenko..Left…Pedraza gets in a right…Hard left from Lomachenko

Round 7 Lomachenko gets in a right..Left to body..Right inside…Straight left..Body shot that was answered by a combination from Pedraza

Round 8 Right to body from Pedraza..2 hard right hooks from Lomachenko….Left to body..3 punch combination..Inside right hook

Round 9  Right from Pedraza..Right to body..Combination on inside..Hard uppercut/left from Lomachenko

Round 10 Body shot from Pedraza..Another,,,Right hook..Uppercut/left combination….Left from Loamchenko

Round 11 Straight left from Lomachenko..Hard left hurts Pedraza..Lomahenko ripping shots…ALl over Pedraza..Body Shot…LEFT TO HEAD AND DOWN GOES PEDRAZA…ANOTHER LEFT AND DOWN GOES PEDRAZA AGAIN

Round 12 Right hook from Pedraza…Good Straight left..Right hook..

119-107; 117-109 TWICE FOR VASYL LOMACHENKO

Round 1 Left to body by Navarette..3 body shots from Dogboe..Jab..Left and right to body..Left as Navarrete came off ropes..Jab..Right from Navarrete..Right from Dogboe

Round 2 Navarrete trying to use long jab..Right to body from Dogboe..Counter uppercut..Jab from Navarrete..Left to body from Dogboe…Hard right from Navarrete…..Big body shot and left hook..Combinations has Dogboe on ropes..

Round 3 Left to body from Navarrete..uppercut..Hard left..Left from Dogboe…1-2 from Navarrete

Round 4 Body work from Dogboe…Left to body..Jabs

Round 5  Right from Dogboe..good uppercut from Navarrete..another uppercut…Navarrete chasing Dogboe..missing a lot..Left from Dogboe

Round 6  Uppercut from Navarrete..Right..Left..4 punch combination..Body shot from Dogboe..uppercut..right

Round 7 Body work from Dogboe..Body work on inside…Combination from Navarrete..Good body shot from Dogboe..

Round 8 Hard body shots from Dogboe…left to body..Good right and left to body..2 lefts to the head…Long right from Navarrete..Left from Dogboe..Good left to the body

Round 9 Jab from Dogboe..Right to head–Navarrete slips to canvas,,Left from Dogboe….Good right

Round 10 Dogboe has swelling over right eye..Doctor checks it to begin the round..Left to body from Navarrete..Left drives Dogboe into ropes..Body work from Dogboe..Dogboe slips in corner..Body shot from Navarrete..Right from Dogboe..3 punch combination from Navarrete

Round 11 Left to body from Navarrete..Body shot with the uppercut…Digboe slips again..

Round 12 Right from Navarrete,,,Left..Right from Dogboe..Body shot from Navarrete..Digboe thrown to the canvas..

115-113 ; 116-112 TWICE FOR WINNER AND NEW CHAMPION EMANUEL NAVARRETE

Round 1 Right over top from Lopez…Hard right..HUGE RIGHT AND MENARD FALLS FACE FIRST…FIGHT OVER…TIME 44 SECONDS

By Norm Frauenheim

It’s been called a heavyweight resurrection and maybe that’s what it was when Tyson Fury climbed to his feet while Jack Reiss was about to complete the count in delivering last rites to an astonishing comeback in the fight of his life and for his life.

It was as compelling a moment as any. It defined the reason why people watch and why boxing always defies the doom so often predicted. Better writers have called it life in a shot glass and that’s what we witnessed last Saturday in Fury’s controversial draw with Deontay Wilder last Saturday at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. Within a few seconds, it unfolded with undiluted power. One-hundred-and-eighty proof drama.

But did it really mark a heavyweight revival?

Only if there is an immediate rematch.

Business is often about momentum and the heavyweight division captured a lot of it with a fight that was a hard sell. Tickets, hands full of them, were available from scalpers and at the Staples box office hours before opening bell. Showtime’s pay-per-view telecast was tracking this week to do between 300,000 and 400,000. Decent, but not great.

If you missed it live, you can watch the replay on Showtime Saturday night (9 pm ET). Guess here: A big audience will watch. The replay, itself, will serve as a good platform to market a rematch that has emerged as a lot more attractive that Anthony Joshua against either Wilder or Fury.

That’s what Wilder said in a conference call Tuesday, just days after he and Fury defied expectations. Forget Joshua, Wilder said, who in effect told Joshua to go pound nails, or Dillian Whyte.

“Let him continue to fight second-tier fighters,’’ Wilder said. “Maybe one of them knocks him out.’’

The drama and controversy generated by Wilder-Fury stole the bully pulpit right out from under Joshua, who reportedly had ducked a $50-million offer to fight Wilder.

Joshua had all of the momentum in his corner after his victory over Wladimir Klitschko in an April 2017 bout. That fight, too, was dubbed a heavyweight revival. But the revival and momentum were squandered, in part because there was not motivation for Joshua to risk his UK popularity. He had been drawing huge, soccer-like crowds in the UK. Why jeopardize the box office with a risky fight? But who remembers, or even cares, about his subsequent victories over Alexander Povetkin, Joseph Parker and Carlos Takam?

Now, however, Fury returns to the UK riding a huge wave of popularity. There are reports in UK media that Joshua and his promoter Eddie Hearn want to resume negotiations with Wilder for his next fight. But wouldn’t a Wilder-Joshua fight instead of an immediate Fury-Wilder rematch further enrage fans who already think Fury got robbed on Saturday’s scorecards?

The split draw had a lot of people alleging fix and screaming for an investigation. From ringside, I scored it a draw. From round to round, it was close, hard to judge. I scored the first, fourth, fifth and seventh rounds for Fury. I scored the second and fifth for Wilder. I scored the second and eighth even. In each round, there was not much that separated the two. There was Fury’s jab and Wilder’s erratic power, both of which were exerted in the late seconds in an evident to attempt to steal rounds.

On this card, it was 4-2-2 for Fury after eight. In the ninth, Wilder scored a knockdown. Fury won the 10th and 11th. In the 12th, there was the knockdown and Fury’s come-back-to-life moment. It was astonishing and emotional. On this scorecard, however, it was still a draw.

The dramatic moment, I suspect, influenced many to argue that Fury should have won. A further factor was his personal triumph from drinking, drugging and dark thoughts that included suicide. He reportedly weighed 400 pounds a year ago.

He sang at the post-fight news conference and asked reporters to sing with him. Bye, Bye Miss American Pie, Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry filled the Staples Center press room with voices from reporters who joined the Fury choir. It was unprecedented. It was hard not to be won over. I wish he had won. But my scorecard said something else.

It was a draw. But it was a performance that should ensure Fury and Wilder a rich rematch. Only then can anybody call it a true heavyweight revival.

By Norm Frauenheim-

LOS ANGELES – Deontay Wilder wore a mask. It covered his mouth and nose in menacing black. Tyson Fury laughed at the costume, in part because he thinks nothing can hide Wilder’s true character.

“He’s a fraud,’’ Fury said Friday beneath a bright Southern California sun while standing on a stage within a block from Staples Center and the ring where Fury promises to prove just how fraudulent he believes Wilder’s championship credentials are.

Delivering on that promise Saturday in a Showtime pay-per-view bout (9 p.m. ET/ 6 p.m. PT), however, might not last beyond the first right hand that Wilder lands. That’s a prevailing theory.

At some point, the guess is that Wilder will exercise that one-punch power like a paralyzing laser from Darth Vader. Just like that, it’ll be over and Fury will be headed back to Manchester City’s pints and pizzas that a year ago had turned the former heavyweight champ into a sumo-sized mess. The sumo size is gone, however.

If not exactly slim, Fury was a scaled-down 265.5 pounds at a weigh-in that did not include the ritual face-to-face pose for the cameras. It was eliminated because of fears that tension between the two camps might escalate into a fracas, or worse.

It’s notable, perhaps, to know that it is the lightest Fury been since he was at 247 for his 2015 upset of Wladimir Klitschko, then the heavyweight’s undisputed champion. But a reported loss of 150 pounds over the last 12 months continues to generate skepticism about Fury. To wit: Was more than just cellulite lost in Fury’s battle to regain a heavyweight belt?

He’s confident he can take Wilder’s WBC belt, mostly because he sees the same limited skillset others have detected in one of the few athletes from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, not in shoulder pads. But Luis Ortiz saw the same limitation and yet could do nothing about it. Wilder got up from a knockdown and soon followed with right that knocked out of the Cuban.

“I’m going to knock him out, too,’’ Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) said Friday at Fury behind a mask still in place and not there because of the Los Angeles smog.

It was gesture of intimidation, an ominous promise that Wilder’s right will land no matter what Fury does.

Yet, there were questions about just how much leverage Wilder would have behind that feared right in a title defense that could put the winner in line for very rich payday against Anthony Joshua. According to contracts filed with the California Commission, Wilder is guaranteed $4 million and Fury $3 million.

If Fury was a scaled-down version of his former self, Wilder was simply skinny. In a surprise, Wilder was at 212.5 pounds Friday. It’s the second lightest he’s ever been. He was at 207.25 in his pro debut a decade ago.

Perhaps, Wilder hopes fewer pounds will augment his quickness and allow him to move away from Fury in a cat-and-mouse game. If Fury’s astonishing weight loss has in fact left him depleted, it’ll become evident in the later rounds. Fatigue in Fury could set him up for the right, which is feared as much as it dismissed as Wilder’s only weapon.

It all depends on who shows up Saturday. There’s the man who was wearing a mask Friday. And there’s man who wore a cellulite costume a year ago. One or both is about to be exposed.

By Norm Frauenheim-

LOS ANGELES – There aren’t many hints. Just the taunts, trash talk and everything else expected in the parade of hyperbole before any opening bell. Deontay Wilder glares and issues ominous threats like a preacher promising Armageddon. The bearded Tyson Fury smiles knowingly, then maliciously.

It’s been a show without a clue, a crap shoot, which is a label with one word that has often been used to describe the heavyweight division.

This week’s build-up to Saturday’s bout for Wilder’s World Boxing Council belt in a Showtime pay-per-view bout even included a little strip tease a couple of days before Friday’s formal weigh-in.

Fury stripped off his designer shirt, a step in the marketing dance that looked to be spontaneous. It also exposed the first real sign of what might happen after opening bell, although even that tea leaf can be interpreted a couple ways.

Fury, whose turbulent career has often been more Tyson-like in lifestyle than furious in the ring, appears to be in great shape. The look suggests he is in the kind of condition he will need to be if he intends to elude singular power Wilder possesses in a right hand that has fashioned 39 stoppages in 40 victories. That big right is the reason Wilder is a slight favorite.

Stay away from its wrecking ball impact for 12 rounds and Fury wins. That, at least, is the conventional wisdom. The theory is that Fury’s skillset is more thorough and effective efficient than else Wilder can throw at him.

Fatigue in the later rounds, however, has appeared to be Fury’s fatal flaw. That’s the moment when the narrow odds suggest that Wilder’s game-ender lands, putting a tired Fury onto the canvas and Wilder in line for a shot at Anthony Joshua.

But a conditioned Fury is a different kind of fury altogether. It’s how he frustrated and beat Wladimir Klitschko before Joshua sent the great Ukrainian into retirement. Freddie Roach, who will be in Fury’s corner along with Ricky Hatton and lead trainer Ben Davison, says that if he can beat the accomplished Klitschko he can beat a one-dimensional Wilder.

Hard to argue with that thinking.

Then again, it hard to imagine how difficult it was for Fury to regain his conditioning and what that might mean on Saturday (9 pm ET/6 pm PT).

According to reports in the UK media, Fury was at about 400 pounds a year ago. There are photos of him shirtless, alongside Hatton. A sagging beach ball has more muscle definition. A year later, he is shirtless again, looking fit and perhaps renewed. He reportedly lost between 130 and 150 pounds, give or take a few pints. In other words, he shed about a welterweight to get ready for a title bout, a decisive moment on what he is calling his Road to Redemption.

By now, Fury’s crazy lifestyle is no secret. After Klitschko, The Gypsy King and son of a bare-knuckled Irish Traveller drank and drugged his way into obesity and out of the ring. He served a long suspension. Now he’s back with an upper body that looks good. Yet, the transformation in diet and conditioning could not have been easy.

Did a radical restoration come with a price? Could the toll be an erosion in the resources Fury figures to need in the later rounds if he hopes to elude Wilder’s wild power for what some believe could be a scorecard victory?

Maybe.

But, maybe, Wilder’s one-punch power, delivered with an 83-inch reach from awkward stance, has run its course. For the last couple of years, the prediction is that somebody with a more versatile skillset will eventually beat Wilder. There’s even talk that Fury will win by a stoppage with a well-executed combination that Wilder will never see.

Maybe.

At least, a shirtless moment this week seemed to say so.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in Los Angeles undefeated 6-foot-9 Brit Tyson “The Gypsy King” Fury will toe the line with undefeated 6-foot-7 American Deontay “The Bronze Bomber” Wilder in 2018’s most-interesting heavyweight title match. Wilder is a professional athlete who fights like he’s insane. Fury is an insane man who boxes conventionally. Either the affair will be insipid-cum-suspenseful, with Wilder pansearing Fury after nine or 10 eventless rounds, or it will be suspensefully insipid, ending without Wilder landing but one of 1,000 threatened punches.

Embrace the madness – that’s the only sage council for this week. Nobody has any idea what will happen. We’ll all opine freely in a sporadic if predictable game of casual-capture, as none brings the casuals coming like heavyweight prizefights, and those of us who are wrong will disappear from the prediction game till January and those of us who are right will crow toldyousos, keeping and publishing an embellished tally of our past predictions, till everyone is bored(er) of us.

The wisest among us forego the prediction game altogether, the wiser among us forego the prediction game unless we believe fully in an underdog, the gormless among us predict the favorite will win then hogstomp about fightnight reminding those who disagreed what fortunetellers we be. It’s most fun to have no idea what will happen and nearly as much fun to cheer the longshot and anxiously funless to pick the favorite, in the name of being right, and see the underdog transcend himself.

If you’re reading this you’re serious enough about our beloved sport to know following it for any reason but fun is a fool’s errand. You’re also, one hopes, introspective enough to look deep inside your reasoning about Saturday’s match and conclude how much fun it will be, how wickedly suspenseful, when the opening bell rings and you get to cheer for one loon or the other without much idea what comes next.

There’s a good chance not a damn thing, actually, comes next. For 36 minutes, that is, absolutely nothing might happen. Fury is a good boxer but not much of a fightnight entertainer; Wilder is an entertainer but not much of a boxer. From time to time fortune commands such a combination entertain us mightily but most of the time it does the other thing.

If every experience in a lifetime is equal parts impossible and inevitable till it happens, this fight shall make it manifest in real time. If Wilder clocks and clears Fury it will’ve been inevitable an undefeated Olympic bronze medalist should wallop to snot a dilettante exchampion struggling with every known form of autosabotage. When Fury throws a nohitter Wilder’s way it will’ve been impossible a barely tested freestyle puncher might land on a man who slaptaunted Wlad Klitschko 12 rounds deep.

Pressed to choose an outcome, I’d lean impossible, but the good thing is I’m not pressed at all, and the better thing is I’m choosing anyway because it’s fun to watch with a rooting interest and it’s fun to be wrong, too. Were Wilder a product of any but the PBC I’d consider this match a farce, probably, thinking any pay-per-viewer be courting the swindling, Gypsy King and all. But PBC’s approach to boxing has been: Sign everyone, match them with no one, and try to seduce broadcasters.

PBC acquired Wilder via its quadrennial Olympic signing spree then kept him miles from any honestly ranked contender till year 10 of his career. That’s no typo: Deontay Wilder began fighting professionally in 2008 and didn’t get tested till 2018. For a little context, Mike Tyson lost to Buster Douglas in the fifth year of Tyson’s career; Tyson had unified the heavyweight division, peaked and begun his descent five years shallower in his career than Wilder was when he escaped Luis Ortiz in March. For a little more context, Muhammad Ali had won the heavyweight championship of the world from Sonny Liston, defended it nine times, endured a three-year exile, returned to the ring, fought a couple tuneups and lost a decision to Joe Frazier before he was 11 years in prizefighting. There’s no need to pretend times’ve changed is the reason for Wilder’s dossier, either; Anthony Joshua, world’s other heavyweight champion, has accomplished more than Wilder, in five years.

No, by any precedent, historic or otherwise, Wilder is a matchmaking miracle – it’s miraculous in what was often considered a dying sport so many willing victims were excavated from the heavyweight mines. Yet here Wilder is, unencumbered by his resume and earnestly wondering why so many Americans haven’t an idea who he is. Well.

There’s a certain horsesense among even casual fans that values competition more than hyperbole-followed-by-showcase-followed-by-hyperbole. It’s why market forces have shown HBO Sports’ signature-destination philosophy to a signature destination; ain’t nothing compelling about broadcasting LeBron dunking on highschool teams whilst panelists extrapolate how he might’ve fared against Wilt.

Wilder is Saturday’s wildcard. Loopy as Fury’s last few years have gone, variable as his psyche may be, he’s still more of a constant when the bell rings. He’s odd and weird and does everything on an offbeat but he throws the 1-3-2 like a man taught how. Wilder primarily crawlstrokes crazy at shorter men, bodies them backwards incidentally, then hammerstrikes their bowed heads. He inventively uses others’ disbelief against them.

The question, then, is: Can Wilder get Fury to hold in his mind any belief long enough to turn it disbeliefwards?

Each man has the best chance of besting the other man by being himself. Wilder would be a fool to try boxing Fury, and Fury would be a greater fool if he tried to slug Wilder. In the decisive moment that should come in the final four rounds Saturday, when Fury’s lack of conditioning greets Wilder’s abundance of it and Wilder mashes Fury’s head with something dastardly, both men will go hotblooded mindless and their basest combative tendencies will prevail. Wilder will appear a man committed to murder and Fury his resigned victim, and if the referee goes for it Wilder will attain a new stature, and if the ref doesn’t all three scorecards should go 119-110, Fury.

I’ll take Fury, UD-12.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Manny Pacquiao’s return to the United States this week has a nostalgic feel. He stopped in New York. Then, Los Angeles. It was fun to see him.

That shy, enigmatic smile is still in place. His reunion with trainer Freddie Roach for a Jan 19 fight with Adrien Broner was the perfect touch, especially on Thanksgiving week. The family is back together. But I’m not sure it’ll mean much in a couple of months.

Does he beat Broner? Maybe. He’ll be 40 in a few weeks – Dec. 17. It’s tough to hazard a guess on how any 40-year-old fighter will do. Broner has speed and an overall skillset that Pacquiao didn’t see against Jeff Horn or a shot Lucas Matthysse.

But Broner also has shown – again and again – that he bails out at the first sign of adversity. Power is the last thing to go in any aging fighter. Pacquiao probably still has enough of that to force Broner into surrender or a hasty retreat into a scorecard defeat.

Then what? The widely-reported plan is for Pacquiao to then fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a rematch of their revenue record-setting bout in May 2015. Could it happen? Of course.

For Mayweather, celebrity and legacy are like T-shirts and caps. They are commodities, transactional in every way. He won’t turn away from a chance to cash in all over again. Reportedly, that’s what he and Pacquiao talked about weeks ago, supposedly in a chance meeting in Tokyo, where Mayweather’s on-again, off-again New Year’s Eve date with an unknown kick boxer is apparently on again.

By all accounts, Pacquiao is again in need of money. He reportedly earned between $160 million and $180 million for his decision loss to Mayweather in 2015. It’s anybody’s guess where all that money went within three-plus years. Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s ex-promoter, once said that the Filipino Senator was the Pacific Island nation’s only social welfare system.

To wit: He gives it away, apparently at such a rate he can’t even write a lot of it off. He has fought in the U.S for two years because of a reported IRS bill. Apparently, the IRS problem has been resolved. His spending habits, however, are still enough of question to wonder if he won’t still be fighting at 50.

Above all, there are reasons to think he and Mayweather have overestimated the market’s appetite for a rematch. It’s not as if the under-whelming first fight would ever sell a rematch anyway.

The other issue is that the overall market has changed. HBO is exiting after this Saturday’s telecast of Dmitry Bivol-Jean Pascal in Atlantic City. HBO, a key to Pacquiao’s international celebrity and huge purses, is leaving within two months of Pacquiao’s return. Gone are the nine-figure paydays.

Consider this: Terence Crawford, the best welterweight of the day, is earning between $3.0 and $3.5 million for each of his bouts under his current deal with Top Rank and ESPN. If that’s the new pay scale, Pacquiao can forget $160 million or $180 million. He has name recognition, but would anybody rank him among today’s five best welterweights?

On this list, Crawford is at No. 1, Errol Spence No. 2, Keith Thurman No. 3 and Shawn Porter No. 4. You could put Pacquiao at No. 5, but that would put him ahead of Horn, who beat him in a controversial decision. It also would put him ahead of Mickey Garcia, who is jumping two weight classes – from light to welter – to challenge Spence on March 16.

Garcia, who now has to considered at welterweight, never even mentioned Pacquiao as a possibility early in his dangerous pursuit of Spence. It’s not clear Pacquiao would have agreed to a date with Garcia anyway. But Garcia’s decision to bypass any consideration of the Filipino might say it all about what the market place thinks about Pacquiao’s value these days.

By Norm Frauenheim

TUCSON – It’s the beginning of a comeback, for a father and a son.

The dad, Oscar Valdez Sr., will take the first step Saturday in his return to the corner as a lead trainer at Casino Del Sol after a long battle with a virus that left him hospitalized for months in Mexico City and kept him in a wheel chair in London while his son fought for Mexico at the 2012 Olympics.

“It was serious, very serious,’’ Valdez Sr., who will make his comeback for nephew Thomas Valdez of Nogales, Sonora, against Luis Coria of Robert Garcia’s Boxing Academy in southern California in a super-featherweight main event on a Michelle Rosado-promoted card.

“Couldn’t run. Could hardly move.’’

Valdez Sr. is still fighting the effects of a food-borne virus he got in Rio De Janeiro during an international tournament with his son in 2011.

The dad’s comeback coincides with one from his son, Oscar Valdez Jr., a featherweight champion who is in his own battle to come back from a brutal victory over Scott Quigg in the rain at StubHub Centre on March 10 when he suffered a fractured jaw that left his face misshapen and his future uncertain.

The son’s jaw, dad said, has healed. About the future, he said he’s never had any doubt. His son, a WBO champ, has been working with new cornerman Eddy Reynoso, Canelo Alvarez’ trainer, in San Diego for a bout – a test run — projected to be on Jan. 12 in either Mexico City, Tucson or Phoenix.

“My son’s mind is the same,’’ Oscar Valdez Sr. said Friday after Thomas Valdez (17-3-2, 7 KOs) was at 128.5 pounds and Coria (9-1, 4 KOs) at 129.5 for the main event on a 10-fight card scheduled to begin Saturday at 6 p.m. (MT). “Has always known exactly what he wants and has always been willing to do whatever it takes to get there.’’

His jaw might the knocked out of place. But never his goals, Valdez Sr. said.

An unshakable will was evident throughout 12 rounds against a bigger Quigg, who was three pounds heavier than the featherweight limit at the weigh-in and at least seven pounds heavier than Valdez Jr. at opening bell.

Valdez Jr. lost blood and guts, leaving both in puddles of gore on wet canvas throughout the later rounds of a leading Fight of the Year contender. But he would not lose the fight or the WBO title.

Will, as intangible is it is inexhaustible in Valdez Jr, has been strengthened by the test, his dad said. But there’s more to it than that in a story about father and son sharing adversity and then the motivation to battle through it. The dad was there on that rainy night, a second carrying a bucket that collected more of his son’s blood than it did rain. He was there to wash his mouthpiece, urge him on and – yeah, he said—sometimes pray.

“After all of these years, I’m still battling to come back from being sick,’’ Valdez Sr. said. “That illness is still in me. With Thomas, I’m probably a more of a strategist and tactician than anything. I can’t hold the mitts. But I feel good, really good.’’

Now, it dad’s turn. Like Son, like Father.

By Norm Frauenheim-

Deontay Wilder is a man with one punch and many words.

Those words – unending, often contradictory and always brash – were there, again and again, Thursday throughout a conference call for his heavyweight title fight Dec. 1 against Tyson Fury at Los Angeles’ Staples Center.

The call ended, but not because Wilder was finished. He talks the way he breathes. He exhales words and I’m sure there were more, many more, throughout a workout that was scheduled to follow his telephonic session at the bully pulpit.

He preached.

He promised.

He bragged.

It was part sales-pitch, part silly, mostly over-the-top and yet sometimes a genuine expression of a fearless fighter willing to risk it all.

“To do this, you gotta be crazy,’’ Wilder said. “We already know you’re not supposed to get hit in the head. Every time you do, there’s deterioration.’’

Then, Wilder slipped into a sing-song tone, including what sounded like a weird lyric to the drum-like thump that comes with every concussive blow to the head.

“You’re, changing, you’re changing,’’ he hummed

It was just one moment among many from Wilder, who has often been dismissed as one-dimensional. That single dimension is his big right hand, which he delivers with Tommy Hearns’ old-school leverage. Wilder’s answer for that one is also one dimensional. It never changes, because he has never lost. That right is a dimension that nobody has been able to beat throughout 40 fights. Thirty-nine of those victories have been knockouts. Maybe, Fury will be the first to find a way to negate, or simply elude that right. Maybe, Fury has the dimensions to finally beat him.

But, in so many words, Wilder said that wasn’t going to happen.

“Never been anybody like me,’’ Wilder said. “No one is going to beat me on Dec. 1. No one, not on this special occasion.’’

There’s a chip-on-the-shoulder motivation behind much of what Wilder says. He often refers to his scrabble-poor roots in Alabama. He often talks about how promoter, matchmakers and rival heavyweight Anthony Joshua have failed to give him just due.

“This is my time to shine, my coming-out party,’’ he said of Dec. 1. “I should have been here a long time ago.’’

Despite the prevailing criticism of what he does within the ropes, Wilder’s abundant words reveal an out-sized personality full of multiple dimensions.

He’s brash enough to be outrageous. A couple of examples:

“You all want to see Ali and the Golden Era, I’m here.’’

“Excuse me Holyfield, I’m The Real Deal, too.’’

A couple of reactions:

Groan.

Groan.

Then, however, Wilder reminded me of the unknown kid I saw and spoke to at the Beijing Olympics. He won a bronze medal, modest by any standard, yet the only medal won by any U.S. boxer the 2008 Games.

Modest and mouthy, all at the same time.

“I’m a Wilder, a different breed,’’ he said a decade after those Olympics.

Among all the words he said Thursday, those were the truest.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in England undefeated Ukrainian southpaw Oleksandr Usyk defended his trove of cruiserweight world titles – Ring, WBA, IBF, WBC, WBO – from the challenge of England’s Tony Bellew, last seen doubleaxing heavyweight David Haye, by emphatic eighth-round knockout. In these United States the match happened before dark, aficionados’ hour, on DAZN, aficionados’ network, while American casual fightfans reliably watched college football.

What a wonderful secret is Usyk for the longsuffering American aficionado. He has fought but twice in our hemisphere, and once in Inglewood on the undercard of Bernard Hopkins’ unforgettable if entirely forgotten farewell to boxing (a lesson from the B-Hop archive: when a man tirelessly tells you you’ll miss him when he’s gone, you won’t). When last Usyk fought in our hemisphere it was 18 months ago and he won via lopsided decision on HBO, which is to write if anyone watched him and remembered him that person has since endured disappointments enough to’ve lost his memories of Usyk in the strogranoff of former Soviet fighters served by Comrade Pyotr during HBO Boxing’s pominki.

Since then Usyk has fought on afternoons, here in the States, on YouTube streams and apps; the nearest he’s come to slickly produced punchstats and pedantic commentators is when he stepped in the WBSS’ whitelight show before unmanning Murat Gassiev in July to hoist the bestlooking new trophy in sport.

It gets better. There’s nothing cool about Usyk in the way American influencers understand the term. He’s zany and awkward and devoutly religious. He’s more likely to kiss a felled challenger than taunt him. And since he doesn’t cherrypick opponents or fight on terms bent to prohibitive there’s no telling how good or bad he’ll look when the opening bell rings. Then there’s the way he fights. He’s none of countryman Lomachenko’s pizzazz, especially not to what untrained eyes have yet to try DAZN. He’s more obviously awkward than innovative, which means whenever the American laity eventually catches up with him they’ll unlikely sense the innovation of making every man across from him, even the most obdurately orthodox, awkward unto paralysis. Usyk is an acquired taste and American casuals haven’t the palate or patience to acquire tastes, accustomed as they are to forcefeedings.

Round 5:30 PM ET on Saturday Usyk began to study and pull apart Bellew in yet another packed English arena (it would be a surprise and mistake if semifinal rounds of WBSS Season 2 happened in many American venues, large and cultivated as the European fanbase is become, comparatively funereal and hollow as American venues now sound). Usyk did nothing outlandish to Bellew. He respected the Brit’s power from the open. He established the quirky beat ever playing between his temples and fought to it till Bellew made him stop. And Bellew did do that numerous times.

As it should be. Two judges in fact had Bellew ahead many rounds later, and whatever DAZN commentators said about it in English, the Spanish booth had Bellew ahead, too. If Usyk was winning on any honest card it wasn’t by much.

There’s not any way to argue Usyk won round 1. Perhaps Bellew didn’t either. That’s a 10-10 round, then, which is not a scorekeeping impossibility, by the way, no matter how anomalous. Usyk and Bellew fairly well split their first 12 minutes together, however that shook-out on the cards. By the midway point of the match the match was close enough not to care about the decision; if one man didn’t snatch the other’s consciousness he wouldn’t have a sympathetic ear among aficionados when his handlers whined about a robbery afterward, as they’re wont to do.

Usyk heard us thinking that, he did. He next invited Bellew to lefthand city, a place not quite inhospitable as Ray Mercer’s fabled righthand city, but a place in the vicinity nonetheless. On the way there Bellew realized he was fully spent.

That’s what will be lost on American casuals most frequently – the psychology of what Usyk does other cruiserweights. Because Usyk is not ferocious his physicality can be lost on careless eyes. Usyk’s combination of size and relentlessness, though, is unprecedented. Nobody his size moves continually for every minute of every round. There’s a tacit assumption harbored by any man who confronts a man big as Usyk: So long as I don’t get hit flush by this beast there’ll be respites aplenty. But there aren’t. Instead there’s a dancing madman with a belligerent jab that portends a lampswitch left. Standing armslength to that is exhausting for any 200-pounder the world over. It’s why Usyk’s attack evinces no urgency. So long as he’s on his rhythm and jabbing and you’ve ceded centermat, he’s swapping your energy for fatigue, and he knows it and you know it and now you know he knows it. And that is terrible depleting.

Bellew was so beaten so instantly Saturday th’t American casuals will mistake the finale for force, they’ll expect other men Usyk touches with his cross to backsplash like Tony, and when they don’t American casuals will accuse Usyk of deterioration and aficionados of exaggeration. So be it. Usyk doesn’t need the bigoted buffoons of the Mayweather faithful to surpass what expectations he’s set for himself, and if he immediately ascends to heavyweight and fights Anthony Joshua at Wembley Stadium it will be unwise but lucrative, and it will happen on a Saturday afternoon in the States, blessedly.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Oleksandr Usyk defends the undisputed cruiserweight title against Tony Bellew.  The action begins at 5 PM ET / 10 PM UK time

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1: Left to body from Bellew..Jab from Usyk..Right from Bellew

Round 2 Right from Bellew..Jab from Usyk..Counter right from Bellew..

Round 3 Left from Usyk..Counter right from Bellew..Straight left from Usyk..Counter right to body from Bellew..Lead right..Right off the ropes

Round 4 Left from Usyk..Good right lead from Bellew..Body shot from Usyk..lead left..Bellew lands a right..Jab from Usyk..Good left..left..Good bidy shot from Bellew..

Round 5 Jab from Usyk..Right from Bellew..Combination from Usyk..Good left..Looping right from Bellew.

Round 6 Good left from Usyk…Jab..3 rights from Bellew

Round 7 Jab from Usyk..Good left..Hard jab..Jab..straight left

Round 8 Left in the corner for Usyk..Jab..Good right from Bellew..right and left from Usyk...HUGE LEFT AND DOWN GOES BELLEW…THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

By Norm Frauenheim-

The gap-toothed smile is Alfred E. Neuman-like. But the eyes are mad, full of enough menace to definitively answer that comic-book question:

What, me worry?

Yeah, Tony Bellew should.

Oleksandr Usyk is scary, more so than perhaps anybody in a business full of fighters who use fear as much as their fists. Bellew knows that, of course. He knows a lot more, too. He possesses clever instincts, has more experience and is still motivated by an inexhaustible love for a dangerous game.

“I just love to fight,’’ Bellew said a couple of months ago at a news conference.

It’s a love that’s bound to be tested, perhaps even exhausted by Usyk, who is favored Saturday in Manchester, England, to keep his unified title in what looks to be a cruiserweight stepping stone to heavyweight, perhaps against Anthony Joshua.

“He’s a monster,’’ said the engaging Bellew, who is coming out of retirement and moving down in weight – he lost 34 pounds – for a chance to become the first UK fighter to ever win a unified title. “I admire him.’’

But he doesn’t fear him. At least, no fear was evident in Bellew’s voice or gestures throughout the build-up to the intriguing bout, which can be seen in the United States on the DAZN streaming service (1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT).

There are reasons for Bellew’s confidence. He’ll have a loyal UK crowd in his corner. If it’s close, that could emerge as key factor on the scorecards. He also knows his way around the ring. Translation: He figures out a way.

“Retired or not, this fight had to happen,’’ said Bellew, whose record (30-2-1, 20 KOs) includes more than twice as many bouts and perhaps twice as many lessons than Usyk’s resume (15-0, 11 KOs). “I will find a way to win.’’

Maybe, but all of the momentum is with Usyk, who has rapidly emerged as a pound-for-pound contender. He’s No. 5 in The Ring’s current ratings, which has his Ukrainian Olympic teammate Vasiliy Lomachenko still at No. 1, ahead of Terence Crawford at No. 2, Canelo Alvarez at No. 3 and Gennady Golovkin at No. 4.

Usyk and Bellew look to be at a career crossroads. Bellew says he’ll retire after Saturday night. Meanwhile, Usyk, an Olympic gold medalist at heavyweight, appears to be just approaching his professional potential.

But Bellew believes he will introduce Usyk to adversity he has yet to encounter. Above all, Bellew said, it will be at the end of his power punches.

“When he feels my power, he’ll know,’’ said Bellew, who is convinced he his power will prove to be the edge in a bout that promises to take the snoozer out of cruiser, perhaps the best fight in a forgotten division since James Toney scored a decision over Vassiliy Jirov in April, 2003. “He doesn’t have my kind of power.’’

Bellew made the claim about his power when the fight was formally introduced during a news conference in September. When Bellew’s remark was translated into Ukrainian for him, Usyk flashed that gap-toothed grin.

“He’s kidding,’’ said Usyk, with eyes that clearly said he wasn’t.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday brought yet another delightful multihour multiplatform celebration of a sport even weekly columnists feared might die four years ago (Pacquiao-Algieri, for bottomwatchers). The World Boxing Super Series delivered another pair of quarterfinal matches on DAZN, late afternoon, and ESPN+ presented an entertaining if not historic scrap from El Paso a few hours later. Our wonderful recrudescence continues Saturday with the return of Oleksandr Usyk on DAZN, in a match to ensure he is recognized as 2018’s best fighter.

Going last to first Mexican super featherweight Miguel Berchelt diswilled Mexican Miguel Roman in a Texas beating brutal as promised. Scottish super lightweight Josh Taylor denuded American Ryan Martin in Scotland. Nonito “Filipino Flash” Donaire benefited from an uncommon bit of bad luck when Northern Ireland’s Ryan Burnett lost his bantamweight title via searing backache.

One of the German philosophers, must’ve been Nietzsche, posited sympathy was the worst emotion because it required its possessor be unseemly superior to its object; a person may feel many emotions towards a person of circumstances superior to his own but sympathy be not one of them. One keeps such a teaching behind his lifelong thoughts after he reads it and especially as he watches prizefighting and especially especially as he watches prizefighting to write about prizefighting. Beatings, hundreds to thousands of them, he witnesses without perching himself highly enough to sympathize with the vanquished because, frankly, why should he? Even the loser of a prizefight has engaged in a display of public courage.

Still, Saturday brought a genuine and weird tingling of sympathy for Ryan Burnett. To see a fighter so dramatically reduced so rapidly through no decipherable fault of his own was unpleasant. So freakishly, too. One sees injured hands, eyes and noses enough to be immune their happenings. Where brittle hands are tragic they’re also to prizefighting what height is to a professional basketball player – sure, theoretically, you could make it to the NBA at 5-foot-9, but it is unlikely your destiny.

But to see a 26-year-old championship prizefighter slip a disk while throwing a cross?

Yet there was Burnett after 10 minutes of movement both mechanically correct and innovative suddenly near paralyzed across half his body. Donaire, having done nothing to cause the injury, had no choice but to exploit his opponent’s weakness unto unconsciousness if possible. Burnett didn’t allow that but neither was he allowed out his corner for round 5 and not too long – though excruciatingly – after that he was wheeled out the arena, unable to make the walk. One winces at thoughts of Burnett’s next week ambling about his house.

Weird and deep as went the pang of sympathy for Burnett, one suspects there was selfishness in the brew. The opening three rounds of Donaire-Burnett were fantastic compelling. Donaire was outclassed but giving an excellent account of himself, and Burnett was beginning to invent and transcend, hitting Donaire disrespectfully and unusually for a fighter his size.

Remember, the last time any aficionado saw Donaire at 118 pounds he was electrocuting Fernando Montiel and unilateraling Omar Narvaez; nobody at that weight who stood and swapped with Donaire did so without fear he’d be Darchinyan’d. Burnett did so fearlessly and creatively. Donaire’s seven years and 15 fights (11-4, 6 KOs) removed from his best bantamweight days, of course, but during lots of exchanges Saturday he was similar enough to prime Nonito – Victor Conte affiliate, future VADA posterboy – to make Burnett look awesome to trained eyes.

No one looked better in a mainevent Saturday than Burnett did those opening 10 minutes against Donaire. The creative way he used the lefthook to corral Donaire into a right uppercut, throwing the 3 as a wide lead, and the way he chalked Donaire with the cross. Then came the cross that felled Burnett, and if you didn’t immediately think “pre-existing condition” you’ve not spent sufficient time round boxers or Democrats. It’s the only sensible explanation that burst over the synapses: Burnett did some sort of campy crosstraining something, whether sledgehammering a tire or pulling a tractor, that made him unright a month out. But with massages, painkillers and pilates, hopes were high things’d hold up. And they did, too, enough for Burnett to move not-gingerly until the moment he was unable to move.

All that is merest speculation but more believable, anyway, than a fighter’s 10,000th thrown punch disconnecting his back from itself.

It was in the shadow of this climactic anticlimax Josh Taylor outclassed Ryan Martin. Readers are duly admonished to suspend judgement on Taylor, as he did nothing more than exactly what he was supposed to do Saturday and in unremarkable fashion. Oh, but his footwork is bewitching!

If that’s true it will manifest itself quickly enough in a tournament designed to reveal character. See, there’s no longer any need to be early on these things. There’s no longer a need to squint at the screen in the hopes of being the only one to see how special a fighter is before he’s proved it, lest he never have the chance to prove it. The WBSS proves it. If your guy is a great fighter he’ll win his season of the WBSS, and in so doing will justify for at least a halfyear your belief in him by being recognized as the world’s best in his weightclass.

Tournament boxing eliminates the matchmaking (cherrypicking) that brought so much misplaced anxiety and argument to Money May’s era and GGG’s middleweight reign. HBO’s gone now, too, so there’s no need to rehash the banal hypothetical hash that became the network’s lowly specialty once Larry Merchant left: Our middleweight champion just poleaxed a welterweight, which proves if he were to campaign at super middleweight he’d have no trouble dominating there, either.

That brings us to Saturday’s third mainevent and a commentary like: Blessed be Timothy Bradley among all ESPN mainevent commentators (Brian “Bomac” McIntyre is fantastic, too, but he does undercards) for realizing our beloved sport is moved on from HBO so there’s no reason to audition for Max Kellerman’s seat, there’s no need to interrupt insights about the present with cliched musings about fighters’ pasts, there’s no need to reargue and reheat and recycle whatever tiny detail your cohosts didn’t buy fully enough, there’s no need to unearth the human condition with every single punch.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Miguel Berchelt defends the WBC Super Featherweight title against Miguel Roman.  The action kicks off at 9:30 PM ET with a battle between former world title challenger Miguel Marriaga and Jose Estrella

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1: Overhand right from Roman..Jab and combination from Berchelt..Hard right from Roman..Body shot from Berchelt..

Round 2 Body shot from Berchelt…Right from Roman..Hard right…Lots of punches being thrown..toe to toe in the center of the ring..Left from Berchelt..Left hook..Hard uppercut

Round 3 Berchelt moving more..Right from Roman..Good right from Berchelt..Hard left..Roman staggered..Body shots..Big left…Roman shows a great chin

Round 4 Left from Berchelt

Round 5 Roman gets in a right..Left hook from Berchelt..Right to body..Left from Roman..

Round 6 Right from Roman…Right from Berchelt..Body shot..Left from Roman..Right and left from Berchelt..3 hard punches..Hard body shot..BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES ROMAN…big LEFT AND RIGHT AND DOWN GOES ROMAN AGAIN

Round 7 Left hook by Berchelt..Left to body and head..Double left hook..3 flush punches bucjle Roman..4 punches to the head

Round 8 Roman trying to land a left..Combination..Big right and left from Berchelt…Right and left to head..2 body shots and a left to head..2 more rights..Flush shots..Roman taking heavy shots

Round 9  Big right from Berchelt..right from Roman..Huge head and body combination…BIG COMBINATION AND DOWN GOES ROMAN..Roman trying to hang around..3 more head shots from Berchelt..BARRAGE OF PUNCHES BY BERCHELT ON THE ROPES AND MERCIFULLY FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1 Jab from Estrella..Jab from Marriaga…

Round 2 Body shot from Marriaga..Another…3rd body shot..

Round 3 Hard body shot from Mariaga..Left hook and DOWN GOES ESTRELLA..Hard combination on the ropes..Hook from Estrella

Round 4 Right from Marriaga…Jab from Estrella..Combination..Marriaga lands a combination on the ropes….HARD LEFT HOOK TO THE BODY AND DOWN GOES ESTRELLA…HE DOES NOT BEAT THE COUNT AND THE FIGHT WAS OVER

Follow all the action from Glasgow Scotland as Ryan Burnett defends his bantamweight world title against Nonito Donaire as well as Josh Taylor taking on Ryan Martin.  The action starts at 3 PM ET.

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY.

Round 1: Jab to body from Taylor..Body shot,,,Left..Right from Martin..Combination from Taylor..Left..

Round 2 Taylor lands a body shot..Right hook..Left..right to body..Jab from Martin..Uppercut from Taylor..Taylor dictating the fight

Round 3 Left from Taylor…Jab from Martin..Combination..Jab..Body and jab from Taylor..Body shots

Round 4 Left-Right from Taylor..Good jab..left to body..left..Right Hook..hard left to body..Swelling around right eye of Martin..Body shot from Taylor..Right from Martin

Round 5  Left from Taylor

Round 6 Right to body from Taylor..Right hook..Straight left…Right hook..Martin not doing anything..Martin cut around the left eye,..Left from Martin..Body shot from Taylor..Left to body..Right..Taylor dominating

Round 7 Good right to body from Martin..Right..Combination from Taylor..Left hook..Body shot..HARD SHOT..MARTIN CAUGHT IN ROPES..FIGHT STOPPED–2:21

Round 1 Jab from Burnett..Jab..Left hook to body. from to Donaire..Right..Right from Burnett..

Round 2 Donaire lands a jab..Good right from Burnett..Right to body..Left hook from Donaire..Right..Jab from Burnett..Good Right..Good combination

Round 3 Jab from Burnett..Good right from Donaire,,another Right…Combination from Burnett..Hard shots from Donaire

Round 4 BURNETT THROWS A PUNCH AND HIRTS HIS BACK,,,HE TAKES A KNEE..Donaire all over Burnett

FIGHT IS OVER…BURNETT CAN NOT CONTINUE..THE OFFICIAL TIME IS 1 SECOND OF ROUND 5

By Norm Frauenheim-

Michael Conlan’s obscene gesture at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games threatens to become a symbolic goodbye to Olympic boxing in a political fight that is just another outrageous example of deeply-rooted corruption.

In a meeting this weekend of amateur officials in Moscow — of all places, there apparently will be a last ditch-effort to save boxing from getting eliminated from the Tokyo Games in 2020. The allegations are dark. Media reports read like a spy novel, or the Mueller investigation:

https://sports.yahoo.com/underdog-candidate-fights-boxings-olympic-future-192048341–box.html

But none of it is exactly a shock, either. It’s disappointing, profoundly sad, for anybody who remembers Muhammad Ali in Rome, Joe Frazier in Tokyo, George Foreman in Mexico City and Sugar Ray Leonard in Montreal. But it could have been corrected and ultimately avoided had there been a vigilant International Olympic Committee more concerned about integrity than rights fees.

Truth is, the IOC should have suspended the amateur ring in 1988 after Roy Jones Jr. got robbed of gold in Seoul. It was then and there that boxing should have been put on notice and told to get its act together. Serve a suspension in 1992 and then come back in 1996 with new procedures, honest judges and without the bagmen.

But the Lords of the Olympic Rings turned a blind eye to the mess. They moved on, collecting huge money from politicians willing to spend taxpayers’ money for the right to stage the circus.

The Lords got richer. Olympic boxing just got more corrupt. I’ll leave it up to somebody else to decide if there’s much of a difference.

For now, it’s just easy to get rid of the obvious blight. Boxing and blight have always been neighbors, of course. But the IOC allowed the sport to become irreparable. It simply ignored it, literally pushing it to the fringe.

In Seoul, boxing was staged within walking distance of the pool and main stadium. The summer games have always been divided into two parts — swimming over the first eight days; track-and-field over the second eight. Over the last few Olympics, that meant Michael Phelps the first week and Usain Bolt in the second.

Between races, there was boxing and gymnastics. After the 1988 scandal, however, boxing got shoved off the midway and into places increasingly hard to find. By 2004 in Athens, the Olympic ring, was hidden in a rough neighborhood, far from the Big Top and NBC’s studios. For the Lords, it was out of sight, out of mind. Too bad. Andre Ward’s gold medal on the last day of those Games was as compelling as any performance in Athens.

Even then, however, the whiff of corruption had begun to cloud the future of Olympic boxing. In 2008, there were allegations of an Eastern European offering bribes to the chief of judges. According to the allegations, he was offering payola for certain judges to get assigned to specific bouts. It was an alleged scheme to fix fights in the medal rounds.

At about midnight in Beijing, a news conference was scheduled. A handful of reporters, including this one, showed up. Nothing much was decided. Nothing much was reported.

The Lords looked the other way. The corruption deepened.

A couple of months after Conlan’s middle finger said it all after the Belfast fighter – now a professional featherweight – lost a controversial decision in the quarter-finals, every judge and referee at the Rio Games were suspended.

Only the boxers and fans were – still are — there. But it’s beginning to look as if they were just forgotten, lost like a business expense incurred by an IOC more interested in big fees than fair fights.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday on DAZN, boxing’s now-essential network, the quarterfinals of the World Boxing Super Series super lightweight tournament happened in New Orleans. Belarusian Ivan “The Beast” Baranchyk (19-0, 12 KOs) walloped the sparkle out Sweden’s Anthony Yigit (21-1-1, 7 KOs) in the first mainevent. And in the second New Orleans’ Regis “Rougarou” Prograis (23-0, 19 KOs) decisioned unanimously England’s Terry Flanagan (33-2, 13 KOs). It was puncher-versus-survivor, both matches, and if that pitting didn’t make the best fights the WBSS has delivered thus far, they were still widely better than what American premium-cable swill they usurped.

Prograis doesn’t hit nearly hard enough for the posing he does. One suspects the origin of this posturing bent of his can be found in his record and generally soft stuff he’s built his resume with. He knows exactly how to throw the blastoff counter and admire its results but is less adept at following the counter with a few more punches. At no point in Saturday’s match was he better balanced and prepared for what came next than after he dropped Flanagan in round 8. He had the pose just right and the strut to the neutral corner down, too, much more than what finishing tactics one’d need to cut the lights of a former titlist.

Prograis has oodles of what the kids call swag – something like a young Yuriorkis Gamboa, without the Olympic gold medal to justify it. He is the fighting pride of transplanted New Orleans, a group generally longer on fight than pride. He’s also the number-one seed in a tournament bound to reveal whatever weaknesses he has, even if they don’t unravel him, and deserves a nod of approval for testing his fistic skills in single-elimination rather than some documentarian’s imagination in an episode of HBO’s defunct “2 Days” series.

Prograis will be 30 years-old round about the time of his semifinal match, which is to write he’s in the permanent period of his career, the time when any loudly publicized alterations to his fighting style will be cosmetic (he’s a lopsided-decision loss away from an Abel Sanchez Mexican-style makeover [though, while we’re on the subject, will any boxing figure’s profile go flaccider absent HBO stimulus than Abel’s?], where he’ll learn not to compromise his punches with head movement).

A prototypical U.K. prizefighter, full of heart and chin as he is bereft of power, Flanagan was an excellent opening exam for Prograis. Flanagan knew some tricks. While he did nothing to raise a referee’s suspicions he intended to elbow Prograis if given the chance, he sure brought his elbows back high and wide on the inside for a guy ostensibly defending himself from counters. He dipped low before clinches, too, the better to butt his assailant. Which is to write, he made Prograis earn victory the right way – by fighting.

Few are the men – no current practitioner save Naoya Inoue springs to mind – who have talent enough to win at the championship level and remain virgin pristine in tactic. Great fighters are dirty fighters, men who in their most challenged moments draw on experiential reserves of every trick employed against them by veteran fighters who often didn’t know and always didn’t care about the potential of the men across from them.

To wit, here’s an anecdote a young prospect recounted some years ago about sparring with Yori Boy Campas:

I knew he was going to hit me in the liver if he could. I’m bigger than him, so I don’t need to get too close to him. His arms don’t look that long. We’re two minutes in and he catches me there and nods. Just to tell me he could do it anytime he wanted. I was like, that’s pretty sneaky. He sees me get ready and throws the hook, really big. Except it doesn’t do anything because his glove is open and he’s hitting me on my elbow. But he’s not hitting my elbow. He’s, like, cupping it. Shoving it out of the way. And he’s still on his right side. Then right behind it come the knuckles. It was tap-slam.

You don’t pay the rent for long with hurting other men unless you’re a supernatural talent, which Campas wasn’t, or you master the patterns of your body and others’. Campas won his 107th professional fight in March, how easily we forget, and will never make any historian’s Top 50 list, true, but upon exiting the crucible of a boxing ring with him no man ever did not admire him, in large part because Campas knew, knows, every single way one man may hurt another with gloved fists. Flanagan is no Campas but surely taught Prograis some things Saturday, things Prograis will call upon unexpectedly someday if he’s humble enough to be wise, which he mightn’t be.

If Prograis challenges himself consistently for the next five years his defense is such he’ll find himself exactly where Flanagan was in round 8, eventually, and if Prograis was conscious of anything more than his own aesthetics after he dropped Flanagan, which he mightn’t’ve been, he’ll draw upon the experience of his own frustration in being unable to foreclose on a man like Flanagan who pays the mortgage but sporadically.

Another reason to evangelize for the World Boxing Super Series, and the concept of tournament boxing in general: There aren’t but a handful of gainfully employed matchmakers anymore worth a ha’penny – there are easily a dozen matchmakers worth quite a bit more than that, but the current marketplace has overvalued signature-destination storytelling, or whatever be the PBC’s equivalent, more than earnest competition – and so, select eight men in any division overlooked by American networks, and then let competition, talent and chance do the rest. Throw in a visionary broadcasting platform and some cool white lights and keep the tournament moving.

Whoever emerges with the Muhammad Ali Trophy (named after Muhammad Ali, we learned Saturday) is henceforth a signature-destination fighter for aficionados; if you’re less excited for Usyk-Bellew than you were for Jacobs-Derevyanchenko you’re a publicist, aspiring or actual, not an aficionado. Tournaments value competition over narrative (the 2009 narrative went: Andre Ward, a spoiled American gold medalist, will be stapled to the canvas by Mikkel Kessler in round 1 of the Super Six), achievement over character development.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Daniel Jacobs and Sergiy Derevyanchenko vie for the vacant IBF Middleweight title.  The action kicks off at 10 PM ET with 2 world title fights featuring Alberto Machado fighting Yuandale Evans.  The action kicks off with a rematch between Heather Hardy and Shelly Vincent.

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1 HARD OVERHAND RIGHT AND DOWN GOES SERGIY

Round 2 Hard left and right from Sergiy

Round 3 Good left hook from Jacobs…Good right from Sergiy..Body shot from Jacobs

Round 4 Good body shots from Jacobs..Another body shot..Left from Sergiy..2 rights..Hard right from Jacobs..Hard left from Sergiy

Round 5 2 body shots from Sergiy..Another body shot..Left to the body and a right to the body..hard body shot from Jacobs..Hard left from Sergiy..Right to body..left

Round 6 Right to body for Sergiy..Left from Jacobs..good body shots..Right..Good right to the body..hard right from Sergiy..Right to head..Body shots from Jacobs..

Round 7 Hard right from Jacobs..Hard body shot

Round 8 Right and left from Sergiy..Uppercut from Jacobs..Hard left uppercut..Left hook from Sergiy..

Round 9 Good left to body from Sergiy..2 hard body punches and left to head..Jab..left hook to body

Round 10 Left hook and hard right from Sergiy…

Round 11 Sergiy lands a right..uppercut from Jacobs..uppercut and straight left..Hard combination from Sergiy..Uppercut from Jacobs…good left hook..Hard left

Round 12 Counter right from Jacobs…2 left hooks from Sergiy..Good body shots from Jacobs..right..Body shot

114-113 SERGIY; 115-112 JACOBS; 115-112 JACOBS

Round 1 HARD LEFT AND DOWN GOES EVANS…Good right from Evans..Hard right ROCKS EVANS…EVANS STAGGERS FOR A KNOCKDOWN…HARD LEFT AND BIG UPPERCUT..DOWN GOES EVANS …FIGHT OVER

Round 1 Right from Hardy

Round 2 Right to body from Hardy..Another right to the body..

Round 3 Hardy lands a right to the body..Hardy cut over her right eye

Round 4 Right to body..Left hook and straight left.  Overhand right and left hook from Vincent.  Good body shot from Hardy..Hard right to body from Vincent..Body combination from Hardy..Good right to jaw from Vincent..Good left hook..

Round 5 Left from Vincent…Good body shot from Hardy..Good body shot from Vincent..Right to body from Hardy

Round 6 Jab from Hardy..Combination from Vincent

Round 7 Hardy cut over her left eye..

Round 8 Left hook from Vincent.  2 lefts to the body..2 rights from Hardy

Round 9 Left from Hardy..Jab..Good uppercut..Good left hook from Vincent..

Round 10 Left from Hardy..Good body shot from Vincent..Body shot from Hardy..Solid right

97-93 twice and 99-91 HEATHER HARDY