By Norm Frauenheim–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Johnny Schulz-

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

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

By Bart Barry–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bart Barry can be found on Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Bart Barry–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Round 4 Bika going to the body

Round 5 Jab from Bika…Counter right from Dirrell…

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

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

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

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

Round 10 The fight cant get any rythym

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Norm Frauenheim–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But I’m Mister Superman,’’ he said.

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

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

Brook is fighting to be a Mister too.

Mister Next.

By Bart Barry-

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

Not that he needs another recommendation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1-3…Lots of Holding not much action

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

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

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

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

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

Round 10 PeTERSON BATTERING SANTANA AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

By Norm Frauenheim–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For him, his business partner and his craft.

By Bart Barry-

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

Bless Bernard Hopkins for making this fight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Norm Frauenheim-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Bart Barry-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Norm Frauenheim

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Bart Barry-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Bart Barry-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Norm Frauenheim=

A catch-weight clause in the Canelo Alvarez-Erslandy Lara contract quickly became a forgotten controversy Friday when each fighter weighed in at 155-pounds at the MGM Grand for a Showtime pay-per-view bout Saturday night with a lot hanging in the balance, yet no significant title at stake.

It’s a mystery why a catch-weight was in the deal at all. Canelo demanded it. Lara was angered by it. There was a theory that it was Canelo’s way of saying he couldn’t make the junior-middleweight limit of 154 anymore. Perhaps, it’s a sign he’s moving up in weight to 160 after Lara, the World Boxing Association’s champion.

Or maybe it was just a question of money. Why pay the WBA a sanctioning fee? It would have cost Canelo three percent of his purse. According to contracts filed with the Nevada State Athletic Commission, Canelo is guaranteed $1.5 million, which doesn’t include an undisclosed percentage of Mexican television revenue. At minimum, he would have paid the WBA $45,000.

Whatever the motivation, Canelo (43-1-1, 31 KOs) saved himself and Lara (19-1-2, 12 KOs) some money. Lara’s contract guarantees him $1 million. Lara also walks away from Saturday night’s fight with his title no matter what happens.

Yet, Lara still looked like an angry young man at Friday’s formal weigh-in. After the fighters stepped off the scale, there was the ritual eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose pose for cameras and fans. Lara, about a 2-to-1 underdog late Friday, rolled his head one way, then another, in Floyd Mayweather-like fashion. It was a menacing bit of theater. But it didn’t seem to affect the ever-unflappable Canelo, who faced Mayweather in the same ritual before his loss to the pound-for-pound king in September. Canelo never blinked then. He didn’t blink Friday.

“I wanted to break his face then,’’ Lara, a Cuban, said in Spanish interpreted by manager Luis DeCubas Jr.

A crowd of about 4,000, dominated by Canelo fans from Mexico, roared its disapproval. Saturday night, Lara said, those fans will change their tone. He seemed to say that in the very least they’ll learn to respect him.

“They will find out exactly what the Cuban school of boxing means,’’ Lara said through DeCubas

But Canelo wasn’t buying into Lara’s school of thought.

“Tomorrow,’’ he said, ‘’we’ll find out who takes who to school.’’

Notes: Abner Mares weighed 126.5 pounds for his comeback in a bout with Jonathan Oquendo Oquendo also weighed 126.5 pounds.. …Ex-WBO featherweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez was at 130-pounds for his junior-light-weight bout against Francisco Vargas, who came in at 129.

By Norm Frauenheim-

Oscar De La Hoya often talks about Canelo Alvarez as though he is looking at himself, or maybe at what he had hoped for himself. In the reflection, there are huge aspirations. Maybe some illusions, too. A mirror can bend reality into some funny shapes. Tricks lurk behind the blind spots for anybody susceptible to a feint. Yet, the truth always appears, which is what De La Hoya is about to discover in a critical test of Canelo’s right to be the heir-apparent in a domain long ruled by Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.

Erislandy Lara, who has quick feet and sneaky power, is in the way and dangerous enough to make Canelo’s potential look like false advertising.

For Canelo, the stakes have never been higher than they will be Saturday night at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand in a Showtime pay-per-view bout crisscrossed by plots and subplots. Here’s just one: It’s a fight that could be critical to De La Hoya’s business, Golden Boy Promotions. His company is fighting for relevancy in the wake Richard Schaefer’s resignation as CEO and questions about whether fighters presumed to be with Golden Boy are in fact tied to Al Haymon. Lara is a Haymon fighter. Lara’s tie to Haymon might have been an interesting footnote and nothing more if not for the De La Hoya-Schaefer split. Now, however, it’s a key element that has spawned further plots and garden-variety conspiracy theories. To wit: Was Schaefer setting De La Hoya up for a fall by putting Canelo into the most dangerous fight possible?

Believe what you want about how and why Canelo agreed to face Lara in a junior-middleweight fight perilous to him and De La Hoya. It’s no secret that Canelo is Golden Boy’s most valuable commodity. His drawing power was evident in the record revenues produced in his pay-per-view loss to Mayweather in September. His one-sided loss to Mayweather was predicted and has been written off as a learning experience. Fair enough. But his Pied Piper-like ability to attract fans, especially in his native Mexico, has heightened the fight’s urgency and probably the anxiety for anybody invested in him.

Can he win? Yeah, definitely.

Can he lose? Yeah definitely.

But this isn’t just another pick ’em fight. The potential consequences make this one extraordinary.

De La Hoya’s brilliant career included at least a couple of bouts that confirmed his stardom and propelled him to the big money that he would later collect. Two come to mind.

There was Pernell Whitaker in 1997, five years after De La Hoya’s Olympic gold in Barcelona. At 23-0, De La Hoya had an unblemished record and unmarked face. But he had yet to prove whether he was more than a pretty face. Whitaker represented a critical test. He was 40-1-1 and thought to be the best defensive tactician of his generation. De La Hoya won, claiming a unanimous decision — 116-110 on two cards and 115-111 on the third. But the scoring was ripped, especially by East Coast media which argued that the bout was at least a draw. Many screamed from their ringside seats that Whitaker, of Philadelphia, had been robbed.

Then, there was Ike Quartey in 1999. Quartey, strong and skilled, was 34-0-1 and thought to be the world’s most dangerous welterweight. De La Hoya had won six more times since Whitaker. He was unbeaten, yet still unproven. There were questions about whether he could take much punishment. He could, he did, getting up from a fourth-round knockdown while flooring Quartey twice, once in the sixth and again in the 12th. But the bout was not without controversy. De La Hoya won a split decision, 116-112 and 116-113 on two cards. The third had it for Quartey, 115-114. But disagreement on the cards subsided, allowing De La Hoya to move on, up and into the biggest star of his generation.

Both fights were at Thomas & Mack in Las Vegas, a city where De La Hoya was popular enough to be called the house fighter. It’s a label that Canelo has today.

From this corner, the guess is that Canelo-Lara will resemble De La Hoya-Quartey more than De La Hoya-Whitaker. Canelo’s strength is power. Lara has enough of it to also do some damage. Knockdowns appear inevitable, perhaps decisive in a bout that could be controversial. However, Lara could rely on his quick feet and left-handed style with Whitaker-like defense, although that strategy might backfire just as it did for Whitaker 17 years ago.

From his ringside seat Saturday night, De La Hoya might remember Quartey and Whitaker. He might look at Canelo and recall two difficult victories that were so important to his own career. He might see something else, too. It could look a lot like his future.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand, home of Floyd Mayweather’s entranceway shrine, Mexican Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will make a pay-per-view match with Cuban Erislandy “The American Dream” Lara to determine who will be considered the world’s best junior middleweight until Mayweather returns to the division. Those who consider themselves insiders are, in many cases, expecting an overrated Alvarez to lose to what they believe is an underrated Cuban boxer-puncher.

Were official sportsbook Boxing Betting Odds right about Alvarez?”

Erislandy Lara has gotten extended mileage out of his and trainer Ronnie Shields’ claims of others’ avoidance. He is aesthetically displeasing, often in the very worst way of sloppy retreat, hopping sideways in shows of inefficiency to make Amir Khan’s head shake, while he is possessed of wiles enough to make his unconsciousness in a prizefighting ring unlikely. He approached the dais after Alvarez’s last fight, a sanctioned assault of Alfredo Angulo in March, with the trepidatious look of a man pushed from the wings by a stagehand longer on enthusiasm than prudence. Alvarez fielded him nearly with pity, sensing almost immediately Lara was driven by others, not restrained, confidently patted his shoulder, and told Lara to wait his turn.

Their encounter bore the markings of a nervous little guy in a struggling beard sent on a dare by his gamer buddies to game a supermodel on the arm of the bar’s largest and most masculine presence; the podium was the lass and Lara the nervous suitor. After a quiet and somewhat rambling bit of Cuban Spanish from Lara, Alvarez relieved his command and asked who wanted to see them fight, laughed at most of the room’s silence, then asked two of those who spoke up if they, too, were Cubans. Then Alvarez dismissed Lara, as if empathetically.

Some weeks later, with Alvarez wanting back on pay-per-view soon, and his U.S. promoter privately unraveling towards a soon-to-be-public firing of its CEO, Alvarez-Lara got announced, a match Lara’s true believers believe will justify years of their man’s contending he is the game’s most-avoided prizefighter, a match that may prove an aesthetic disaster, but may not, and will be Alvarez’s to lose – either via brutal stoppage or sympathetic judging by some who know a healthy Las Vegas economy is a burden no Cuban’s popularity should be asked to support.

There will be very few Lara supporters at Saturday’s match because most Lara fans are committed to misanthropy more than boxing. In Lara they see a soulmate spoiler of sorts, a man who makes their contrary impulses dance like disco lights in a kaleidoscope. Alvarez is the sort of person a Lara fan never expected to fight their guy. For having been ushered to stardom via haircolor and Mexican daytime television – and Mexicans’ rapacious desire to claim prizefighting’s best as their own – “Canelo” is the anti-Lara, a man whose image surgepumps lighter fluid on the dull if ever-breathing embers of resentment from which many casual boxing fans, and even some serious ones, draw their animating force.

Not enough is yet known about the fiscal health of Alvarez’s U.S. handler, Golden Boy Promotions, or even if it has been acting legally as Alvarez’s promoter – a Florida courthouse will begin sorting this out in October, when All Star Boxing, headed by one of the more charismatic promoters our sport boasts, Tuto Zabala, sees the fruition of a lawsuit it initiated in 2011 – to comment intelligently on the outfit’s future. There is doubt, though.

While Golden Boy Promotions’ deposed executive Richard Schaefer is arguably the least-charismatic promoter our sport boasts, or boasted anyway, he built a robust company while answering to about as zany a boss as any serious professional ever did. In and out of rehab and surely suffering worse and deeper troubles than ever had their day in the tabloids, Oscar De La Hoya disappeared frequently, appeared sporadically, and rarely said an insightful or particularly coherent thing while in public during much of the last half of Schaefer’s tenure.

Indications are that Schaefer did not represent De La Hoya’s best interests at all times, though a day may come when it is apparent De La Hoya’s best interests were not necessarily the same as his company’s, and while Schaefer auctioned off assets of the corporation, many possibly to manager Al Haymon, they were assets Schaefer nevertheless acquired in the first place, assets that were going to float away regardless of the promoter’s attaining some fees from them in the meantime. Floyd Mayweather may well have been a free agent, in other words, but the buffet of substandard Golden Boy Promotions fighters upon which he feasted, instead of Manny Pacquiao, was no accident and brought Golden Boy Promotions much greater revenues than it would have raised on its own, whatever conditional promises were made to attain them.

How well boxing’s second-best promoter will function in Schaefer’s absence is anyone’s guess. No knowledgeable person expects De La Hoya to have the acumen or attention span to replace Schaefer by himself. One hopes, for our sport’s longterm health, then, De La Hoya is busy interviewing potential replacements, sifting through an impressive stack of impressive resumes, at this very moment.

One hopes, yes, but one does not expect.

Where Top Rank comprises a roster of esteemed professionals and Don King Productions once comprised one of the world’s most relentlessly enormous personalities, Golden Boy Promotions comprised a rightfully famous figurehead and a savvy CEO. It no longer has a savvy CEO.

Despite himself in many cases, De La Hoya was en route to becoming something our sport lacks and truly needs: a happy ending. The tenuous partnership of De La Hoya and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, tenuously linked, may not be any handicapper’s best place to put his money, but for now, it’s what’s on the quick sheet and deserves at least well-wishes, if not additional investment from fans.

Either way, I’ll take Alvarez, UD-12, in a match that proves Erislandy Lara is not underrated.

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

By Norm Frauenheim-

Erislandy Lara, a Cuban defector, calls himself The American Dream. Nothing new about the nickname.

David Reid, a junior-middleweight from Philadelphia, got the same name after winning an improbable gold with a 1996 Olympic knockout of a heavily-favored Cuban at the Atlanta Games. His dream ended quickly and sadly. Reid, who won a WBA title in only his tenth fight, was finished as a pro after 19 bouts (17-2, 7 KOs) in 2001, because of a detached retina and drooping eyelid that led to fears his vision was in jeopardy.

Henry Cejudo, a wrestler from Phoenix and a U.S.-born son of illegal immigrants, was The American Dream in 2008 when he won gold on Beijing’s Olympic mats in a moment as compelling as Michael Phelps’ record-setting eighth gold in the pool.

Different dreams.

Different stories.

It’s hard to know where the Lara edition of The Dream is headed, mostly because his July 12 showdown against Canelo Alvarez at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand in a Showtime pay-per-view bout is tough to pick. Styles make fights and Lara appears to have an edge in that proven category. He possesses the quick footwork and counter-punching precision that Floyd Mayweather Jr. employed in a dominant decision that left Canelo looking bewildered and overmatched last September. However, bouts of inconsistency on Lara’s resume are impossible to ignore. He drew with Carlos Molina in a bout many thought he lost during a 2011 that included a controversial loss by majority decision to Paul Williams. Yet, Lara was more impressive in beating Austin Trout than was Canelo, who escaped from that one with a decision in April, 2013.

More recent and perhaps more problematic was Lara’s 10th-round TKO over Alfredo Angulo in June, 2013. Angulo knocked down Lara twice, first in the fourth round and again in the ninth. In March, Canelo was never in any serious trouble in stopping Angulo, also in the 10th.

Lara survived Angulo’s one-dimensional power. But Canelo is at his best with combinations, which means a follow-up that Angulo couldn’t really deliver. Lara got up twice from one-punch power. But two-fisted power? It’s one question among many in an intriguing match between fighters closer to the prime than the twilight. Golden Boy Promotions is calling it Honor & Glory. Don’t be surprise if there’s Controversy, too. There’s a 155-pound catch-weight, which means Lara’s 154-pound title, the WBA’s interim version, won’t be at stake. The catch-weight clause appears to be an invitation to miss weight altogether. Canelo has played the scale game before. In 2011, he failed to make a 150-pound catch weight for Matthew Hatton, weighing in at 151.8. Against Angulo, the weight was re-negotiated when Canelo realized he couldn’t make the junior-middle limit. It was re-set at 155.

“Canelo can’t make the weight, so he refused to fight for the title,” Lara said through manager and translator Luis DeCubas, Jr., Wednesday during a conference call. “It’s very disrespectful and my motivation to beat him has increased because of it.”

It appears Lara has managed to annoy Canelo at news conferences and through social media. He interrupted Canelo’s post-fight celebration of his victory over Angulo. At the news conference, he taunted Canelo, demanding that fight him. He has called Canelo “a baby.” Much of it sounds orchestrated. Lara is not the free-wheeling trash-talker that fellow Guantanamo native and Cuban defector Joel Casamayor was. Casamayor used every obscenity and probably introduced a few new ones to the book of expletives. Lara appears to be more distant and calculating. Nonetheless, he’s not afraid of controversy. He kept the pot stirring Wednesday with the conference call’s best comeback. He was asked if he owes Canelo a thank-you for the opportunity in a bout that could be career-maker.

“I don’t owe him nothing other than left hands,” he said through DeCubas. “I forced this fight. It wasn’t because Canelo wanted to take this fight. I’ve been after this fight for two years.”

There’s arrogance in that comment.

Fearlessness, too.

Lara already has encountered plenty to fear. His journey from Cuba isn’t unique. Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig traveled it in his own way. Lara in another. No matter what the path, peril is there. For Lara, it started in Brazil. He and Cuban teammate Guillermo Rigondeaux tried to defect before the 2007 Pan-American Games. They were caught by Brazilian authorities, who sent them back to Cuba. An angry Fidel Castro banned both from boxing. In 2008, Lara escaped Cuba and fled to Mexico on a boat. Then, he headed to Germany. He made his pro debut in Ankara, Turkey, fought once in Germany and then headed for America. But his Dream sometimes looked unattainable. In 2009, he was not granted a license to fight in Tucson. The Arizona State Boxing Commission said he was not able to get a work visa, then mandated in a state which was about to be embroiled in the 2010 immigration controversy over the SB 1070 legislation.

But he endured. Lara fought through the setbacks, came back from each in a way that could have prepared him for
Canelo. There’s no Dream without comebacks. Against Canelo, Lara might have to pull off another one.

By Bart Barry-

After nine years of sitting ringside at Top Rank shows – my first media credential came from Lee Samuels, in April 2005 – one flatters himself to think he can discern the difference between a well-built fight and a well-built fighter, noting hallmarks of the promoter’s extraordinary eye for talent and talent for matchmaking in the differences between a well-built fight like Donaire-Montiel and a well-built fighter like Miguel Cotto. In Dallas one year ago to see Mikey Garcia continue his ascent, while actually witnessing its antithesis, I believed the best-built fighter I saw at American Airlines Center was not Garcia but an undefeated kid from Nebraska named Terence Crawford.

Saturday confirmed that opinion and ratified Crawford as one of the world’s two best lightweights (and if a fight’s probable aesthetics should require ambiguity, may it ever do so in the case of Crawford and Miguel Vazquez), when Crawford overcame undefeated Cuban Yuriorkis Gamboa’s initial superiority of reflex and craft to make a first defense of his world title the proper way: TKO-9. At Omaha’s CenturyLink Center, Crawford switched from orthodox to southpaw, socked Gamboa from most every direction, dropped him four times, and commanded referee Genaro Rodriguez’s mercy, in a performance that made aficionados everywhere suddenly invest in the Nebraskan’s fortunes.

Crawford-Gamboa was an excellent fight conducted near the height of boxing’s current powers, though not quite as much as HBO’s hyperbolic commentating crew proclaimed – so thrilled were they to be somewhere new in front of a spectacle competitive. Terence Crawford is a rarity among contemporary prizefighters: A talented fighter able to sell tickets at home though nevertheless willing to travel anywhere and make fight real fights against real fighters. He is a monument to how Top Rank alone can build a fighter when it wishes to, when it takes a nothing-much-to-lose approach and moves him properly, making sterner tests steadily, and giving him a chance to surprise himself and others when his moment comes.

If a prizefighter improves considerably by becoming a champion, Crawford just became better again by defending his belt before a hometown crowd. Whatever collectedness Crawford showed throughout the match and afterwards, however much the ferocity of Gamboa’s attack elevated Crawford’s demeanor in aficionados’ eyes from insipid to poised, there can be no doubt he was surprised and overjoyed by his performance and its result. Watch him immediately after being hoisted on his handler’s shoulders in the traditionally celebratory way; he begins with the menacing glare one sees predominately in staredowns and hip-hop clubs then surrenders his face to a wide and nearly disbelieving grin.

It was, in its way, a metaphor for the transition in demeanor our sport’s fans underwent these last 30 days: After a scowl-inducing opening five months, 2014 righted its course, if it didn’t fully redeem itself, with definitively heroic showings by Carl Froch, Chris Algieri, Vasyl Lomachenko and Terence Crawford, interrupted early by a coronation of sorts for Miguel Cotto, aficionados’ consensus pick for the veteran prizefighter most deserving of one. While a single stretch in a mediocre run would not save a programming regime in a meritocracy, in the current state of premium-cable programming it likely buys those running HBO Sports another year or so.

As if in late-arriving rebuttal to Showtime’s groundbreaking work with Chuck Giampa in 2012, HBO unveiled Saturday its own fan-battle and groggy-cam innovations, the former a feature in which, rather than feign objectivity at the outset, Max and Roy each pick an opposing fighter and comb a match’s every indecisive moment for evidence his fighter took it, while Jim scores their efforts and Steve agrees. Max selects the object of his greater overstatements in bygone fights, and Roy picks whichever guy resembles Roy. Perhaps the fan-battle innovation, then, marks not an innovation but a feedback mechanism: Any time Max tore his eyes from Gamboa’s spellbinding athleticism, Saturday, it meant Crawford did something exceptional, and each time Roy got Gamboa’s name right it was because the Cuban showed much heart, son.

The groggy-cam innovation, though, was exactly that: Effectively as Chuck Giampa once took Showtime viewers inside the mind of a judge so did HBO’s camerawork take subscribers inside the massively concussed brain of a nearly unconscious man in a championship prizefight. Viewers who delighted in HBO’s rope-obstructed shots in the opening rounds had no choice but to concede the close of Saturday’s main event was nigh intoxicating, if not intoxicated. After Gamboa rose from the blue mat and readied himself for his final act of self-immolation in round 9, HBO gave its viewers a jerky Omaha-crowd-as-Pacific-Ocean angle nonsensical as broadcasting a Tiger Woods sudden-death putt from the Goodyear Blimp.

Self-immolation was indeed the phrase that often came to mind while watching Gamboa in Saturday’s final rounds. Gamboa, who has been rendered HBO-camera-like just about every time a fight of his makes television, brought to mind the Mike Tyson whom Evander Holyfield stopped in their first match, though without a chin fractionally reliable as Tyson’s. Just as Holyfield weathered the initial onslaught of Tyson’s reflexive rage and raging reflexes, weathered it to remind Tyson who the physically stronger man was, so did Crawford get too close and then too far in his opening 12 minutes with Gamboa, determining what he might be missing in the Cuban’s all-offense-always style and what the consequences of his carelessness later might bring, before marching forward and imposing himself the way a man should in a confrontation.

Unlike Crawford, Gamboa had no means of countering a force that moved him backwards, asserting once more his claim on contemporary prizefighting’s largest delta between physical ability and ring IQ – that somewhat fuzzy quality one needn’t define precisely before knowing Crawford has much larger stores of it than Gamboa. More enticing, still, is this: Crawford utilized his IQ to make a wager worthy of prizefighting’s master gambler, Juan Manuel Marquez, choosing to absorb Gamboa’s overhand rights, from a southpaw stance, in the hopes of deploying his own arsenal with more devastating effect.

When such hopes find full satisfaction in an arena filled with one’s hometown fans, it’s OK to break character afterwards and smile widely, Terence. You’ve got lots of folks smiling.

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

By Norm Frauneheim-

It’s a season of declining expectations. Miguel Cotto’s dramatic victory over Sergio Martinez represents the third straight time that pay-per-view numbers for a major fight were disappointing. Once might be an aberration. Twice is cause for concern. But three straight? That’s a trend.

The reported number for HBO”s PPV-telecast of Cotto-Martinez on June 7 was 350,000. The projection was 460,000 to 500,000. That follows reports that Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s decision on May 3 over Marcos Maidana fell short of the one-million mark, an expectation built into the Money May nickname. Mayweather has generated more than one million in six fights — Oscar De La Hoya (2.4), Canelo Alvarez (2.2), Cotto (1.5), Shane Mosley (1.4) Victor Ortiz (1.25) and Juan Manuel Marquez (1.06). Against Maidana, the buy-rate was reported to be about 900,000, although Showtime has not announced a number.

The first domino to fall was Manny Pacquiao’s rematch victory over Timothy Bradley on April 12. The HBO telecast did between 750,000 and and 800,000 according to various media sources. Like Mayweather, Pacquiao failed to meet the million milestone that the Filipino has often surpassed. His PPV average was 1.079 million for seven fights between his victory over Oscar De La Hoya on Dec. 6, 2008 and his majority-decision over Marquez on Nov. 12, 2011 in their second rematch.

The 2014 decline has been blamed on a lot of things, all reasonable. There have been too many pay-per-view shows for ho-hum fights, Top Rank’s Bob Arum told ESPN. There was too much competition for eyeballs on the Cotto-Martinez weekend, when the Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers played for the Stanley Cup and the Triple Crown was at stake in the Belmont, Martinez promoter Lou DiBella said.

Yes and yes.

But the conversation ignores a very big fly in the troublesome ointment.

Sliding numbers are further confirmation that the promotional feud has taken a toll. It appears that the bitter divide between Golden Boy and Top Rank has begun to heal because of De La Hoya’s initiative. He reached out to Arum and promised to renew a working relationship with ex-Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer’s sworn enemy. The move was gutsy, yet risky. It led to immediate turbulence at Golden Boy, the company he founded in 2002. Schaefer resigned. Chief Operating Officer Bruce Binkow soon followed. But it’s hard to know what will happen, long-term.

What the PPV numbers say, however, is that the so-called cross-over crowd, the casual boxing fan, has moved on. It’s safe to say that the cross-over fan isn’t interested in the blow-by-blow coverage of insults exchanged by feuding personalities. Nasty divorces, done over and over again, are tired events. Good fights aren’t. The best of the good just hasn’t happened because of a feud that might be healing, but isn’t resolved.

The guess here is that a key clue to Golden Boy’s future will be revealed this fall. On October 13, a lawsuit filed by All-Star Boxing against Golden Boy involving Canelo is scheduled to go to trial in Florida’s Dade County. The allegation is that Golden Boy signed Canelo when he was still under contract to All-Star.

If it was business as usual, the lawsuit might come and go like so many others have. But these are unusual times, even for a sport that has seen it all. The October trial looms as critical. Canelo is the biggest draw in Mexico, boxing’s biggest market. Retaining his promotional rights would appear to be a cornerstone to Golden Boy’s viability. Whatever happens in that Miami courtroom, it’ll have lasting impact throughout.

Until October, however, the business is in limbo. There are some very good fights, the biggest of which is Canelo-versus-Erislandy Lara on July 12 in a Showtime pay-pew-view fight at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand. But will the cross-over fan watch? The first half of 2014 says no.

That cross-over demographic is critical. It’s what turns a good fight into a blockbuster and what makes Mayweather worth the potential $250 million that Showtime invested in him. Thus far, however, that crowd isn’t there anymore.

For now, the NHL, or horse racing, or the World Cup, or a movie looks as if it’s a better investment than pay-per-view boxing. Winning back that fan is the biggest fight, but doing it is a challenge complicated by a sport that has yet to repair itself.

By Bart Barry–

“Looks like in the next year or two, he is going to be a threat for any featherweight champion.”

The quote above belongs to the late Emanuel Steward, an utterance he made about three years ago while watching Gary Russell Jr. decision someone named Eric Estrada, a Chicagoan who then promptly retired with a professional record of 9-2. Russell was 16-0 at the time. Mr. Steward had a penchant for saying most every event, regardless of outcome, had gone “exactly as I thought it would” – though doubtfully even he had a twinkle in his eye sparkly, or smile endearing, enough to say such a thing about Russell’s career.

Saturday in Carson, Calif., in a fine featherweight title fight, Ukrainian Vasyl Lomachenko defeated Maryland’s Gary Russell Jr. by split scores of 116-112, 116-112 and 114-114, giving Russell his first professional defeat and Lomachenko his second professional victory.

Gary Russell Jr. did not deserve a full helping of what derision was heaped on him previously, and he proved as much Saturday. Vasyl Lomachenko deserved at least 2/3 the praise initially heaped on him, too, and he proved as much Saturday. Their fight was excellent, deserving of better treatment than their scorecards engendered, certainly, with both men acquitting themselves about as well as hoped, neither embarrassing himself, and both men’s records now becoming beacons, one hopes, boxing might follow to a better place.

More important for the future of our sport than the milquetoast armistice reached between a promoter and the shell of its rival – review the undercard of Pacquiao-Barrera II for a reminder how well such treaties served aficionados last time – are the losses that adorn the records of both Lomachenko and now Russell, two of the more talented prizefighters in a fantastic division. There’s no sense protecting either anymore, in other words, though the plan for promoter Top Rank seemed never to protect Lomachenko in the first place or else never again to serve him an overweight Mexican veteran in South Texas.

Gary Russell was more than at least one of his predecessors, Andre Berto, and likely more than the other of his predecessors, Adrien Broner – though Broner fought much better opposition en route to being undressed by Marcos Maidana than Berto saw en route to Victor Ortiz, and Russell’s dossier from the last four years makes Berto look Frochian, though Russell is likeable, not odious, so he’ll get forbearance Broner did not (and sell fewer tickets too). In Broner and Berto, aficionados recognized almost immediately profound technical flaws and felt betrayed by a pair of networks that would pretend otherwise, or not know any better despite budgets meriting they should.

With Russell there’s some difference in the sense of betrayal’s origin – there’s a sense poor management has taken a prodigy and made him somewhat ordinary by moving him inappropriately, or not at all, putting altogether too much emphasis on keeping zero down the loss side of his ledger. Russell’s manager, Al Haymon, in other words, may be something of a one-trick pony in his means of developing an attraction, and it’s a trick Floyd Mayweather Jr. taught him. In the case of Berto, the trick was a good one, truthfully: Andre Berto was able to make multiples more money by having his manager hoodwink HBO than his talent held claims on. Broner was not untalented so much as overhyped, forcing his 0 to go earlier than perhaps it needed to – but then network budgets had thinned considerably by the time Broner fought Gavin Rees, thinned anemic beside the halcyon days of Berto locking horns with a guy on a 1-3 tear like Steve Forbes in 2008.

The New Normal, and all that.

Gary Russell was announcing too many fight dates too late in his development with TBA as his opponent, and a goodish amount of the displeasure knowledgeable folks feel for Haymon’s machinations and the effect they’ve taken – precluding fights, not enabling them – got projected on Russell. That should stop now; Russell is not everything we were told he is, neither is Floyd Mayweather or any Haymon-managed fighter, but then, would Haymon be doing his job correctly if any were?

Lomachenko is a solid prizefighter who is fighting a quality of opposition that far outpaces his professional experience and surely speaks to his amateur accomplishments, age, and someone’s avarice – either his, his handlers’, or both, since promoter Bob Arum rarely sounds genuinely prouder than when he says, as he did before Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fought Sergio Martinez, his company does not put fighters in matches for which they are unready. Lomachenko was unready for Orlando Salido, the Mexican who decisioned him just 3 1/2 months ago in San Antonio, in much the same way Gary Russell was unready for Lomachenko on Saturday. (And yes, there’s something tragicomic about a sport in which a man with a record of 24-0 is unprepared for a man with a record of 1-1, but then, like World Cup fans, fight aficionados love the sweet suffering that accompanies being a malcontent.)

Lomachenko still shows a crazy aversion to others’ body punches, hula-hooping his torso backwards with sincere fright, but he otherwise serves auspicious surprises to opponents, both in his quickness and commitment, that justify most of the confidence he has in himself. And it is to his redounding credit that he complained so little during and after his match with Salido and returned from it so quickly, too.

No longer getting others to fill their dateplanners with a farfetched combination of what potential he showed at 16 and a record built by cheap laborers like Juan Ruiz and Miguel Tamayo, Gary Russell Jr., now, can enjoy the durable sort of esteem that comes from knowing whatever he gets from 24-1 till retirement is earned, forcing him finally to tuck his chin and improve himself in ways the seven fights that directly preceded Saturday’s did not.

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

By Norm Frauenheim-

Much has been attached to the Golden Boy Promotions card Saturday night at the SubHub Center in Carson, Calif.

Too much.

It’s there mostly because of hope that it represents an initial step beyond the balkanization of a business full of feuding promoters, who get bigger headlines than the fighters do these days. It’s also there because an Al Haymon-represented featherweight, Gary Russell Jr., is fighting Top Rank’s Vasyl Lomachenko in an undercard bout that figures to overshadow the main event, Robert Guerrero-Yoshihiro Kamegai.

“Honestly, it’s a big honor to break the cycle of the Al Haymon and Bob Arum Top Rank and Golden Boy dissent,” Russell said during a conference call. “I think you have these great fighters you know on both sides of the fence that the fans would love to see.”

Against Lomachenko, Russell sees a chance to tear down that fence.

“I think it’s a big breakthrough for me and Lomachenko to be able to be one of the first to actually do it, and hopefully this will open the door for a lot of the other fights that the fans would want to see take place.”

I hope Russell is right. But I’m not optimistic that Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr., or even Sergey Kovalev-Adonis Stevenson, is any closer because of a Russell-Lomachenko bout that was put together before Richard Schaefer quit his post as Oscar De La Hoya’s CEO. There are still too many unanswered questions. To wit: Who will De La Hoya hire to run Golden Boy’s day-to-day operations? More troubling is continuing uncertainty over who is contracted to Golden Boy and who to Haymon.

Not even Guerrero’s contract status is clear. He tried to split with Golden Boy in January. He was asked about it Tuesday during a conference call and again during a media day.

“It’s … you know, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” said Guerrero, who is back for the first tine since a one-sided loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in May, 2013. “I leave that stuff to my management and take care of my business in the ring.”

Instead of opening bell, most of the sport is waiting for an opening argument. That can’t be good for business.

Still, Russell and Lomachenko might put on a show that could embarrass the feuding promoters. A great fight would provide a glimpse at what could be if promotional egos and/or greed stay out of the way. There’s a chance that could happen.

Russell-Loamchenko has elements of a potential classic. Both are storied amateurs. Russell was a prodigy. He won a national Golden Gloves title when he was 16. Lomachenko was a legendary Olympian, a two-time gold medalist (2008 and 2012) for the Ukraine. At 24-0-1, Russell has pro experience. Yet in a curious switch, there are more questions about him than there are about Lomachenko (1-1), who got ahead of himself in his apprenticeship against Orlando Salido in only his second pro bout. Salido has been called a gatekeeper for a reason. He’ll throw the gate at you if he has to. Salido came in overweight and then he roughed up Lomachenko and his Olympic pedigree in winning a split decision. Some say that Russell’s fast hands move at a rate unseen since Meldrick Taylor. Yet, there are doubts about the quality of his opposition. He has never faced anybody with Salido’s willingness to win at any cost.

“Gary Russell is much faster than me” Lomachenko said during his media day. “He’s a very quick, speedy fighter, and I won’t know until we get into the ring how I plan to deal with it. But we’ll find out soon enough. I fought really fast guys in the amateurs. But those were only three-round fights, so I didn’t have time to try and figure out the style of who I was fighting.

“…I got good experience from my two professional fights. I came on the last half of my first fight so I think my stamina and conditioning is good. But every fight is different, so we’ll have to see.”

A great fight might not change the business. Not in the short term anyway. But it’d be nice to see what could be different.

By Bart Barry-

Two Saturdays ago in Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden our sport bade a tempered farewell to former middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, squinting at a hobbled impostor sent hobbling to his stool by Miguel Cotto, even while recalling fondly the innovator who once, as a 154-pounder, stood brazenly, gloves on thighs, before middleweight world champion Kelly Pavlik. Saturday in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center our sport bade a fond hello to New York junior welterweight Chris Algieri, a smartly stylish innovator of his own who just unmanned boxing’s most-feared puncher, Russian Ruslan “Siberian Rocky” Provodnikov, to score 2014’s biggest upset by split-decision scores of 114-112, 114-112 and 109-117.

After weathering a one-punch knockdown and a timeout knee in Saturday’s opening round, Algieri proved himself intelligent and unflappable as a man might be in his world-title-fight debut. Perhaps no tactic employed by Algieri Saturday betrayed the cleverness of his unorthodox craft better than how he repeatedly thrust himself at the ropes each round, performing a feat of balance and leverage that would merit bonus ring-generalship points from judges, were our sport’s scorekeepers reliably able to observe from a mindset more sophisticated than “hit the damn guy!”

A man driven to the ropes by another, the way, say, Mike Alvarado was driven ropesward by Provodnikov in October, generally gets flattened against them, his feet and shoulders squared in tacit agreement his better deserves the largest conceivable target upon which to whale. But Algieri was rarely found in such a helpless posture when his back touched the ropes, ropes against which the New Yorker was rarely trapped by Provodnikov. Instead Algieri’s left leg remained well in front of his right, and his weight shifted dramatically from front to back each time he arrived within a meter of the ropes. He exploded, in other words, backwards to the ropes, employing them much as a slingshot from which he hurled himself forward, either to smother and clinch and counter Provodnikov, or to pivot more quickly away.

It was an innovative and innovatively ballsy way to fight the hardest puncher in the junior welterweight division, a man whose blows temporarily claimed Timothy Bradley’s consciousness any number of times, and in one half hour succeeded at transforming Mike Alvarado from a tatted badboy to a wincing pragmatist – a feat still eluding Colorado’s criminal-justice system in a decade of trying.

Algieri’s achievement was still more impressive when one considers Provodnikov did not have an off night. His head movement under trainer Freddie Roach’s instruction has improved steadily, and his footwork, while perhaps plodding, is nevertheless Mexican-like in its efficiency. Provodnikov was on, Saturday at Barclays Center, and did not appear dismayed or frustrated during the first defense of his WBO title. Both guys made the fights they drew up in camp, both men executed their gameplans, and Algieri was simply the better prizefighter.

He hit Provodnikov with every punch in the boxing lexicon, from uppercut counters to a left-wheeling righthand lead thrown like a jab with more than a tincture of Muhammad Ali. Algieri suspected, and quickly proved, that while the acceleration Provodnikov applies to the mass of a fist is unique among even professional punchers, Provodnikov is not physically stronger than most 140-pound prizefighters, and certainly no stronger than Algieri – part of a riddle of human musculature, flexibility and form that finds a man who can military press his body weight often incapable of hurling a football more than 20 yards using the same deltoids. Bounding off the ropes, time and again, Algieri met Provodnikov in full forward press and stopped the Russian’s momentum, and in some cases drove him backwards – and only one man was in any way able to punch while moving backwards, Saturday, and it decidedly was not the Siberian Rocky.

Every punch Provodnikov landed was ferocious, though, do not doubt; until a man has been ringside while Provodnikov is punching, until he has heard the quantitatively louder sound Provodnikov’s leather makes when it smacks flesh, he cannot appreciate quite how brutal the Russian’s attack is. Better put: Perhaps only those aficionados who have been ringside for a Provodnikov prizefight fathomed judge Max DeLuca’s dissenting 109-117 score, a card to make roseate the cheeks of even professors in the “hit the damn guy!” school of scorekeeping. Rumor is, HBO’s unofficial scorekeeper, too, awarded too many points to Provodnikov, though that faux-pas is pardonable for an entirely different reason: Steve’s job is to ratify whatever Jim and Max shout in his headset through the preceding three minutes; these days, HBO’s unofficial scoring could as easily be done from the production truck.

After the match, Algieri, as cogent a postfight interview as memory retrieves, said only the first left hand Provodnikov landed, the one that unceremoniously dropped the New Yorker on the blue mat in round 1, actually hurt him. That is nearly believable, as unflappable as Algieri appeared while fielding Provodnikov’s other clean punches, even with Algieri’s right eye closed or closing for the fight’s final 33 or so minutes. Or perhaps, in a counterintuitive twist, Algieri’s closed right eye helped him.

As demonstrated two Saturdays ago by Miguel Cotto, Roach-trained fighters are particularly adept at throwing left hooks their opponents do not detect; Sergio Martinez stubbornly believed he could see Cotto’s left-hook lead coming, even though he couldn’t, while Algieri, well aware he could peripherally detect nothing right of his nose, relied instead on what data his left eye recorded of Provodnikov’s shifting weight well before Provodnikov had his hook fully cocked, allowing Algieri to block and duck Provodnikov hooks in a way that looked perfectly magical to casual fans.

For his part, after the match Provodnikov implied Algieri ran away instead of fighting him, a curiously slanderous thing to say of a man whose knuckles just touched one’s head and body some 250 times. Such was the one-eyed Christopher Algieri’s masterful control of space and time, though, that a man who stood within arm’s length of him for a minimum of 300 instants Saturday still openly wondered where the hell Algieri had been during their fight.

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

By Bart Barry–

If we choose to believe all was well with Argentine southpaw Sergio “Maravilla” Martinez’s lower body when the opening bell rang on his match with Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto, Saturday, a match Martinez’s corner ended after nine rounds and a few perfunctory protests from Martinez, a match that ended with Cotto leading by three insurmountable scores of 90-77, we must also believe Martinez didn’t know Miguel Cotto had a left hook he should slip or duck.

Whatever the delta between Martinez’s expectations and Cotto’s actual speed and power, and whatever exaggerated praise we’re now prompted to give trainer Freddie Roach by the network that gave us “On Freddie Roach,” Martinez did not successfully evade 10-percent of the left hooks Cotto hurled his way in an opening round that saw the Argentine driven to the blue mat thrice. It is impossible to believe Martinez is that dumb. His handlers, though, seem to believe we are.

Saturday Sergio Martinez commenced with an apology the final postfight interview he’ll conduct after a world-championship match, offering his regrets to Argentines and Puerto Ricans and whoever else made the trip to Madison Square Garden to see him defend his lineal middleweight world championship against a smaller man who was, himself, considered done with world title fights 4 1/2 years ago. It was an uncommon start to a postfight autopsy. Jermain Taylor, the man who beat Bernard Hopkins twice to become and remain the middleweight world champion Kelly Pavlik beat twice to become and remain the middleweight world champion Sergio Martinez beat four years ago to become the middleweight world champion, certainly did not begin his interview after being stopped by Pavlik in round 7 of their 2007 championship match with an apology.

Martinez’s apology meandered about in the shady terrain between a lamentation all did not go perfectly as needed for him to remain upright and a concession he knowingly participated in, and promoted, a profitable event for which he was unfit. Telling was this: In the moment after Cotto’s first left-hook lead sent Martinez wobblehobbling across the canvas, Cotto looked surprised by the development as Martinez, who began Saturday’s match hopping senselessly leftward, the hybrid of a kangaroo and an Amir Khan, as if to present evidence that, whatever happened henceforward, he was right and right mobile when the match began.

While boxing bookmaking is a fool’s errand, did there even exist a way to calculate prefight the probability Miguel Cotto would open with a 10-6 round? That score, right there, says plenty about Martinez’s fitness to make Saturday’s fight: It says a man was knocked to the canvas three times without a referee much considering waving the match off, which says the knockdowns Cotto scored on Martinez were at least in part like the second knockdown Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. scored on Martinez, improperly ruled a slip, in the 2012 fight that unbuttoned them both.

After Saturday’s first round, the match was little more than a sadist’s ball, as Martinez’s legs were always what made him unique, and without them, with a lead right leg that looked splinted from heel to hamstring, Martinez would be unable to find a rhythm or punch trajectory worth a dash, and would have no anchored force on any punch, or subsequent acceleration on his knuckles, on the odd chance he did land one. After the second knockdown of the first round, when the lineal middleweight champion got muscled to the mat by a man in his middleweight debut, one Cotto made while weighing a few sips of sportsdrink above super welterweight, Martinez’s handsome countenance was the picture of hopelessness. If he was frustrated by the failure of one or both of his knees, he was not appalled – Martinez’s face, Saturday, said “Already?” where his face against Chavez once said “My God!”

There was something nigh fraudulent about the entirety of Cotto-Martinez, beginning with an asinine plot that went from “I must punish Miguel Cotto for not saying thank-you to the barista who served coffee at our first photo shoot” to “I sell more tickets than Sergio Martinez” before arriving at “Max, since we are both bored with this idiocy, may we interview you?” It was a middleweight championship fight contested by men whom former champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler could have beaten in a handicap match, two on one, and Bernard “The Executioner” Hopkins would have undone in one evening’s consecutive matches without ordering Richard Schaefer to fetch his alien getup in between.

But our sport retains its feelings of goodwill for both Martinez and Cotto, and well it might. Even had those who absolutely knew better, from Martinez’s trainer to his promoter to his cable network, told us of Martinez’s true condition, the high probability he’d be unable to evade Cotto for more than a minute or two, few aficionados would have begrudged “Maravilla” a pension fight against Puerto Rico’s only active ticket-seller, in Madison Square Garden the day before National Puerto Rican Day Parade 2014. The fight satisfied all matters of curiosity and suspense, and settled them quickly, and rewarded Cotto for repeatedly making since 2007 what daring matches Floyd Mayweather does not.

And to Martinez it gave a final and robust payday with his dignity diminished but still intact, an amicable goodbye in the tradition he bids farewell to others – “con un abrazo fuerte (with a big hug).”

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

Follow all the action Live from Madison Square Garden when Sergio Martinez defends the Middleweight championship of the world against 3-division champion Miguel Cotto. The action begins at 9 PM eastern time with a 3 fight undercard featuring Andy Lee taking on John Jackson, Jorge Melendez battling Javier Maciel and a rematch between Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. and Marvin Sonsona.

12 ROUNDS–WORLD MIDDLEWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP–SERGIO MARTINEZ (51-2-2, 28 KO’S) VS MIGUEL COTTO (38-4, 31 KO’S)

Round 1 COTTO KNOCKS MARTINEZ DOWN 3 TIMES…10-6 Cotto

Round 2 Hard lefts from Cotto…Martinez looks shakey...20-15 Cotto

Round 3 Combination from Cotto..3 punch combo from Martinez…Hard right from Cotto..quick right from Cotto….right from Martinez..29-25 Cotto

Round 4 Martinez jabbing..left from Cotto..Left buckles Martinez..good right..Hard left from Martinez..hard left..39-34 Cotto

Round 5 Right from Cotto…Right hook from Martinez..Hard left from Cotto..right and left to head..49-43 Cotto

Round 6 Left gook from Cotto.3 hard shots on the ropes..right hook from Martinez..left hook from Cotto..hard left hook and a body shot…59-52 Cotto

Round 7 Left to body from Martinez…left…2 body shots from Cotto…good cunter right buckles Martinez..hard left hook..Good body work…hard right..Right hook from Martinez at the bell…69-61 Cotto

Round 8 Cotto lands 2 inside..Jab from Martinez..right from Cotto..Hard left hook..Big right from Cotto..79-70 Cotto

Round 9 Straight left from Martinez..Counter right rocks Martinez..big uppercut…landing thudding shots…Jab…MARTINEZ GLOVES TOUCHES CANVAS….89-78 Cotto

Round 10 THE FIGHT IS STOPPED JUST AFTER THE BELL RINGS

10 ROUNDS–SUPER BANTAMWEIGHTS–WILFREDO VAZQUEZ JR (23-3-1, 19 KO’S) VS MARVIN SONSONA (18-1-1, 15 KO’S)

ROUND 1 Sonsona lands a left and down goes VAZQUEZ..10-8 Sonsona

Round 2 Straight left from Sonsona..3 punch combination…20-17 Sonsona

Round 3 Sonsona lands 3 body shots..crisp combo…straight left..30-26 Sonsona

Round 4 Vazquez lands a left to the body..right to head..39-36 Sonsona

Round 5 Good exchange…Vazquez lands a right...48-46 Sonsona

Round 6 Hard combo from Sonsona…Sonsona docked a point for hitting on the breadk…57-55 Sonsona

Round 7 Good combination from Sonsona…67-64 Sonsona

Round 8

SONSONA WNS BY MAJORITY DECISION 96-92 TWICE AND VAZQUEZ WINS A CARD 96-92

10 ROUNDS–JR. MIDDLEWEIGHTS–JORGE MELENDEZ (28-3-1, 26 KO’S) VS JAVIER MACIEL (28-3 ,20 KO’S)

Round 1 Maciel lands 2 rights to the head…10-9 Maciel

Round 2 Melendez working combinations…Good in fighting...19-19

Round 3 Melendez lands a right..right and left..29-28 Melendez

Round 4 Maciel lands an uppercut…Melendez docked a point for a low blow…Good straight right by Melendez..Uppercut from Macial and a hard RIGHT AND DOWN GOES MELENDEZ…38-36 Maciel

Round 5 Maciel landing hard shots on the ropes..Melendez with a 3-punch combination…driving Maciel back..47-46 Maciel

Round 6Hard body shots from Melendez..right to head..body shot…nice right..56-56

Round 7 Right from Melendez..Maciel teeing off on Melendez in the corner..66-65 Maciel

Round 8 Maciel lands 3 to 1 in the corner..right from Melendez…76-74 Maciel

Round 9 Hard right from Maciel..Melendez lands a hard right at the bell…86-84 Maciel

Round 10 Melendez lands a hard right and stuns Maciel…solid right…Macial now coming back…right to the heas…95-94 Maciel

97-91, 96-92 and 94-94 for Maciel

10 ROUNDS–JR MIDDLEWEIGHTS–ANDY LEE (32-2, 22 KO’S) VS JOHN JACKSON (18-1, 15 KO’S)

Round 1 Jackson going to the body…HUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES LEE…10-8 Jackson

Round 2 Jackson lands a straight left on the ropes..Jackson lands 2 nice counter rights..20-17

Round 3 Jackson lands a nice right…30-26 Jackson

Round 4 Jackson lands a jab..Lee lands a left to the body..Jackson gets in a body shot..3 rights…Hard left..40-35 Jackson

Round 5 Jackson lands a counter right to the body..Lee gets in a counter left but gets tagged on the ropes and THEN LEE LANDS A PERFECT LEFT AND JACKSON IS KNOCKED OUT

By Norm Frauenheim–

Oscar De La Hoya’s induction to the International Boxing Hall of Fame Sunday a few days after the tumult of Richard Schaefer’s resignation as the CEO of his company, Golden Boy Promotions, could be mere coincidence. Could be something else, too. Friendship is the biggest feint of all in a balkanized business defined by shifting alliances and suspicion more abundant than loyalty. The timing of Schaefer’s resignation is just another suspect. Couldn’t it have been scheduled for, say, next Monday? Couldn’t it have been put off until De La Hoya was allowed to enjoy a short afternoon in honor of his long ring career? It’s not as if Schaefer’s departure was a surprise.

Bad timing? Bad manners? Or all of the above? Pick your poison, but it’s awkward, first and foremost. It’s a symptom of real rancor within the messy divide that split De La Hoya and the able executive, who turned his company into a promotional power. It’s also a further sign of what’s next and it’s not pretty. Nasty lawsuits loom. Lawyers figure to collect bigger purses than the fighters. Can it be avoided? Yeah, maybe. But there’s been a certain sense of inevitability about this whole affair. Only a fool would have predicted there’d be no Schaefer-De La Hoya divorce.

It’s hard to know where it goes once the first legal brief gets filed. That’s because De La Hoya has yet to know what’s left of his company. He issued a short statement Wednesday night.

“Golden Boy Promotions is moving ahead on all fronts,” De La Hoya said. “We look forward to continuing and expanding our key position in the boxing world and to providing the public with the very best the sport has to offer.”

Translation: Get back to me after I can figure out who is under contract and who isn’t. That could take a while. In the end, only a court might be able to decide.

Other than junior-middleweight star Canelo Alvarez and former featherweight champion Abner Mares, it’s simply not clear who has a contract with Golden Boy and who has one with Al Haymon. Emerging light-heavyweight Adonis Stevenson thanked Haymon and called him his “manager” after a Showtime-televised victory over Andrzej Fonfara a few weeks ago. Yet, Haymon isn’t licensed as a manager or promoter in any boxing jurisdiction. As far as anybody knows, he only has driver’s license

During a news conference before Floyd Mayweather Jr, Haymon’s celebrity client, beat Marcos Maidana on May 3 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand , De La Hoya said that he didn’t know who he had under contract.

He doesn’t know because of a wrinkle that only threatens to make the mess a lot messier. While still the Golden Boy CEO, Schaefer was quoted by Yahoo as saying that some fighters were under contract to Golden Boy and some weren’t. The lingering question is why and when Schaefer allowed them to sign with Haymon while fighting under the Golden Boy banner. Did the fighters seemingly aligned with Golden Boy sign with Haymon while De La Hoya was in rehab? Whether Schaefer fulfilled his fiduciary responsibility to Golden Boy is beginning to look like another issue only a court can decide.

Meanwhile, there’s widespread speculation that Schaefer will eventually join Haymon in a formal alliance with Mayweather in a re-constituted rival to Bob Arum’s Top Rank and a further impediment to the chances of Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao ever happening.

“I’m in the fight of my life,” the 41-year-old De La Hoya said a month ago.

It’s a fight that will demand the resiliency, resourcefulness and energy he displayed in two victories over Julio Cesar Chavez, again against Ike Quartey and then Fernando Vargas.

He figures to get help from Arum, who is 82 and still fighting because of the very battles that have exhausted so many others, yet energize him. De La Hoya renewed his relationship with Arum, his original promoter. The move further angered Schaefer, who has vowed to never again work with a tireless personality who has given new meaning, if not life, to the term octogenarian.

At some point, it’s inevitable that Arum and De La Hoya will again do business. That could renew chances of Canelo in a fight against the Arum-promoted Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in a bout that was such a hot possibility among Mexican fans a few years ago. The weight difference might be an issue. Nevertheless, Gennady Golovkin, a small middleweight, was close to an agreement for a fight with Chavez Jr. The bout fell apart because of a squabble between Chavez and Arum over a contract extension. It had noting to do with weight. If Golovkin can fight Chavez, so can Canelo, who is growing out of the 154-pound division.

An intriguing, perhaps promising byproduct of the De La Hoya-Schaefer split is similar talk about fights that had been dismissed for the last couple of years because of the Golden Boy-Top Rank feud. Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach is talking about Danny Garcia as a possibility for the Filipino superstar. It still has to be determined whether Garcia is under contact to Golden Boy or Haymon. But at least there’s talk where there was none among disaffected fans weary of a feud that has shut so many doors.

It’s a beginning.

Still, theres no way to know if and when it will ever end.

For now, we can only be certain that Schaefer won’t introduce De La Hoya for his Hall of Fame induction.

By Bart Barry–

Saturday at London’s Wembley Stadium British super middleweight titlist Carl “The Cobra” Froch stood before 80,000 of his countrymen, and across from a particularly obstinate one named George Groves, and told them to set aside the ample achievements of a career he casually calls “unbelievable” and judge his legacy on one criterion: How he acquitted himself in what 36 minutes followed. And then in the final 20 seconds of round 9, roughly 27 minutes into a pitched rematch, Froch struck Groves with a right cross so pure that in a flash it made Froch the historic sports figure he desperately wishes to be.

Whatever aficionados opined of him Saturday morning or opine of him today, Carl Froch knows what he is about. That attribute distinguishes him much as another. It is what allowed him to take his talent to a place his athleticism did not anticipate, an athleticism that suffered no loneliness, there: Who seeing Froch for the first time across from Andre Dirrell, in their memorably awful 2009 fight, anticipated the run Froch concluded Saturday?

Froch has been for the most part unabashed about conceding his use of a sports psychologist, which is likely not his first psychologist nor his last, and that sort of disinterested observation, reportage and maintenance from another can be quite a boon for an athlete who seeks an advantage of any kind over an athletically superior opponent – especially since many if not most of the men Froch has vanquished since 2008 have been, on paper, or in a gym, or on a track, or anywhere other than a prizefighting ring, superior to him. If Froch’s self-belief is by definition absurd it is nevertheless held deeply enough to be unreachable by any punch or word.

When Froch’s identity, not his shtick but his identity, is challenged – and unlike many an American athlete, Froch is exact in his separation of identity and shtick, knowing where they overlap and where one is devoid of the other, as evidenced by his self-deprecation about using the autobiographical title “international superstar” before his November match with Groves, a touch of self-awareness Floyd Mayweather couldn’t find on Freud’s couch itself – Froch looks upon his inquisitor not with contempt so much as incredulity: If you told Carl Froch his comportment is not the finest example of such in contemporary prizefighting, he’d not give you a look reserved for the enemy so much as a three-headed extraterrestrial.

Because Froch knows what he is about he can be vulnerable in moments that strike unpredictably as his jab, he can kneel before Rachael Cordingley, the model and mother of his children, minutes after the greatest moment in his storied career and sheepishly ask her hand in marriage, and then, sitting mashed on the apron against a man he put in an oxygen mask not a half-hour before, confess even more sheepishly he’d gone and asked his “sneaky question” and that she’d said yes. That vulnerability is what makes his courage and confidence and arrogance still more fascinating, especially when presented to American ears not accustomed to the mother tongue spoken well by athletes.

That fascination came through in Paulie Malignaggi’s voice, Saturday. The man voted by the Boxing Writers Association of America 2013’s best broadcast journalist was part of a three-man Sky Sport’s telecast that offered more insight between rounds than HBO’s four-man crew offered in the month of April, and he was not timid in his praise of Froch, saying Froch had done something exceptional – an observation no doubt aided by Malignaggi’s presence in Wembley Stadium, where, coincidentally, the biggest prizefight of 2014 happened approximately a continent and an ocean away from HBO’s nearest production truck. Malignaggi is a real dude, oftentimes too real, a man whose struggles for an unshakeable identity have happened publicly – who does not remember what befell his coiffure when last Malignaggi graced a British boxing ring? – but a man whose self-belief, too, is more settled than most, and a man who captured with his words and voice what every man who watched Saturday felt: Right now, I wish I was Carl Froch.

It strains one’s imagination to think the man who fought Albert Rybacki in 2008 would be fighting before 80,000 of his countrymen six years later, and it is exactly impossible to imagine that same man in that same situation would land the punch Froch did to take his rematch with Groves, instantly, from competitive scrap to sympathetic spectacle. Who that saw Groves reduced from a man to an accordion in round 9 by Froch’s perfectly leveraged right cross did not for a second or two feel remorse for the cruelty that felled Groves, the unrelenting self-promoter?

It was not Froch’s 3-2 combo, left hook-right cross, that ended Britain’s largest post-war prizefight so perfectly, or at least not just Froch’s combo. No, it was the feint that did it, too, the threatened malice, fortified by what 3-2 combos Froch landed imprecisely in rounds 5 and 6 and 8, that froze all but Groves’ rear guard, allowing Froch to step deeply into Groves’ space and connect flush with the hardest righthand thrown by a Brit since heavyweight Lennox Lewis nearly decapitated Hasim Rahman with the same combination in 2001.

Froch should retire on that perfect punch, and he acknowledged such on Sky Sports’ telecast, conceding nothing he does for the rest of his life will surpass what he did Saturday, but he’s a fighter, all fighter, and that means his retirement timing is necessarily poor as his courage is long, and he’ll come to the late-arriving artificiality of a Las Vegas prizefighting crowd sometime before he’s done and “see my name in lights” – whatever exactly he means by that. If his options comprise a beating of Mexican Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., a rematch with American Andre Ward, or a tilt with unproven Kazakhstani middleweight Gennady Golovkin, Froch ought choose Chavez – allowing Ward the ongoing joy of semiretirement and telling Golovkin first to prove himself at least George Groves’ equal.

It matters little, ultimately, as this truism will persist: If every prizefighter were like Carl Froch, ours would be the world’s most popular sport.

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

Follow all the action when Carl Froch and George Groves get it on in an highly anticipated Super Middleweight title rematch that will take place in front of over 80,000 fans in Wembley Stadium. The action begins at 4 PM ET / 9 PM in London.

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12 ROUNDS–WBA/IBF SUPER MIDDLEWEIGHT TITLE–CARL FROCH (32-2, 23 KO’S) VS GEORGE GROVES (19-1, 15 KO’S)

Round 1 Both guys jabbing…Groves lands a jab..Froch lands a jab..right…10-9 Froch

Round 2 Exchange of rights..quicjk left from Groves...19-19

Round 3 Froch lands a hard right…Groves lands a better right..jab to the body..right over the top…2 good left hooks…right..29-28 Groves

Round 4 Right from Groves…Left and right from Groves…good 1-2…1-2…left hook from Froch..left…Froch lands to the body…39-37 Groves
GRound 5 Hard right by Froch..wobbles Groves to the ropes..Groves lands a right..Hard right..Hard body shots from Froch…48-47 Groves

Round 6 Froch lands a right…Froch lands a combo on ropes...57-57

Round 7 Hard left from Groves…another left..Froch lands a flurry of body punches..Good right…67-66 Froch

Round 8 Froch lands a right…Body shots..HARD RIGHT AND DOWN GOES GROVES AND THE FIGHT IS OVER