Shortly after prevailing by an unlikely decision in his rematch with California’s Brandon Rios, Colorado’s “Mile High” Mike Alvarado told Rios, a man in the throes of a disorderly, hyperactive, inattentive reaction to his career’s first loss, their third match, a rubber match clumsily promised already by one insatiable bit player, must happen in Alvarado’s hometown – since their first match was made in Rios’ homestate and their rematch was made on a neutral field in Las Vegas. Rios concurred because it is an excellent idea.

Ideas, in the form of pattern adjustments and round-robbing, were in abundance from Alvarado, Saturday, as he decisioned Brandon Rios by unanimous scores of 115-113, 115-113 and 114-113 at Mandalay Bay. My scorecard concurred, 115-114, marking rounds 1, 3, 4, 8, 10 and 12 for Alvarado, rounds 6 and 9 even, and rounds 2, 5, 7 and 11 for Rios – with round 2 going 10-8 in the Californian’s favor.

Mike Alvarado is a better athlete than Brandon Rios, which is not to imply Rios is not a good athlete, because one does not go fractionally far as Rios has in professional athletics without athleticism aplenty. But Alvarado is an especially good athlete: a person who understands the grammar of body movement, where one places a conjunctive foot to move an adverbial shoulder while revising the sentences of another man’s body.

Alvarado was able to make Rios look, at times, formulaic. Rios had an algorithm of maneuvers to apply, and when his IF statement did not yield an expected result he looped through it again, hoping to execute his THEN, having written no ELSE. In round 2, the punch Rios did not expect to flatten Alvarado, his jab – “¡Mucho pinche jab!” as Robert Garcia would succinctly beseech – set Alvarado on drunken pins. The moment held all the cancelled anticipation anticipated by what holes lightened Alvarado’s face and neck: This was a cashout affair because Alvarado was not nearly recovered from their first match, and finance alone returned him to a ring with Rios so near his last undoing.

But in less than a round, Alvarado struck Rios with a force that very much surprised Rios, who registered and moved with Alvarado’s right fist, before catching it in such a ripe spot that instantly nothing behaved below his waist as it should. While Rios grins reflexively and widely at pain – a valuable tick at the championship level, where contests can swing on the discouragement wrought in another man by imperviousness to his assault – there was no grin goofy or inappropriate enough to cover what Rios’ locked-picked-locked-picked knees showed Alvarado and the judges. Those knees told Alvarado he possessed the power to delay Rios for instants enough to prevent the suffocating, drowning feeling Rios’ pressure requires to succeed.

What Alvarado did with those instants makes him a better athlete, though not a better fighter, than Brandon Rios. Alvarado found space between the moments, and in that space he made creative physical choices greater than Rios’. He threw punches at varying speeds and levels of force, knowing Rios would parry a gradually uncoiling left with the same exertion he showed a fully committed right. Therein lay the adjustment no one believed Alvarado had time, discipline or cunning to complete: He kept his left hand much higher than he’d done in October, and he replied to Rios’ right with a right of his own.

Alvarado’s strategy posited two things about the righthand Rios used to ice him in their first match: One, if Alvarado could take even 30 percent off it, whether through compromised trajectory or partial deflection, he could withstand its impact; and two, the instant after Rios felt the knuckles of his right fist sink in Alvarado was the moment he was least careful about returning his head to safety. Alvarado absorbed Rios’ right then matched it right back, and he did it from the opening round. If Alvarado was no longer macho enough to trade uncovered righthands with Rios, no longer anxious to play naked lumberjack at the “Bam Bam” tree, he graduated from training camp convinced a lightweight titlist in his second career match at 140 pounds, whatever his Cro-Magnon reputation, could not play sponge to 40 or so such punches in a half hour.

Alvarado was right and Rios relented enough, which is to say barely. Once Rios considered braking –evident each time Alvarado skipped at Rios with a bowled uppercut Rios blocked every time but did not charge through – Alvarado was able to practice accomplished salesmanship, fleeing Rios for the opening 150 seconds of rounds 9 and 10, before landing punches enough to convince all three judges Alvarado took those decisively important scoring rounds, rounds Rios will return to, on tape and in memory, when he makes a case to himself Alvarado did not win their rematch. There was this irony in Rios’ reaction to those late, round, and late-round, punches from Alvarado: Rios’ greatest defensive strength, an incredible plasticity born of fantastic composure, caused his pliant neck to let its top snack backwards, crediting Alvarado’s clean shots with more force than they merited.

Still, the fight was very close, and while none of the three cards was wrong, Duane Ford’s tally, 114-113, was probably rightest of all.

Remember when Top Rank’s rematch between Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito was jeopardized for Madison Square Garden by Margarito’s blindness? The venue that topped the promoter’s list of replacements – or was rumored to replace it before Cotto’s understandable reticence made Bob Arum disconnect his own conference call – was Denver’s Pepsi Center. Denver has long boasted one of boxing’s beloved matchmakers, Don Smith, and now boasts one of its beloved fighters, Mike Alvarado. Pepsi Center for Alvarado-Rios III is a lovely idea.

***

Author’s note: This column will take next week off, returning April 15.

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

LAS VEGAS – Brandon Rios and Mike Alvarado promised more of the same. Sorry, Alvarado didn’t fulfill his end of the agreement. He couldn’t. If Alvarado had, he would have been left with only the promise of another defeat.

Instead, Alvarado did what Rios and few others thought he could Saturday night in a rematch at Mandalay Bay. He did more than break a promise. He beat a stereotype. He beat what was expected of him. And then he beat Rios.

Once a brawler, not always a brawler.

That was the surprise and the formula employed and sustained by Alvarado (34-1, 23 KOs) through 12 rounds of his second meeting with Rios (31-1-1, 22 KOs) within the last six months. Rios won the first one by a seventh-round TKO on Oct. 13 in a stand-and-fight slugfest in Carson, Calif.

Rios came into the rematch thinking it would be the same because Alvarado was the same. A few punches and the Alvarado seen in October would re-appear in March.

Didn’t happen.

In almost every round, Alvarado delivered a couple of solid right hands in the opening moments. Rios would smile as if to say thanks. But Alvarado never took the bait. He didn’t linger in a target zone where Rios is most effective. Instead, he danced backwards, then sideways throughout the middle of each round. Then, he would finish each round with an exchange of punches.

It was a strategy that convinced the judges. Bill Lerch and Dave Moretti scored it 115-113, each for Alvarado. On Duane Ford’s card, Alvarado won by one point, 114-113.

“My high-altitude training was the key to the fight,’’ Alvarado, of Denver, said in the middle of the ring after the scores were announced.

As expected, both fighters took a lot punishment. Alvarado suffered a huge gash over his left eye. Alavardo was taken to University Medical Center (UMC) after the bout. The ringside physician ordered Rios to go to UMC.

Alvarado’s victory also left each fighter with one win each. A trilogy looks to be inevitable.

“I gave you a rematch,’’ Rios said to Alvarado in the ring. “I deserve a third fight.’’

There’s another promise somewhere in that demand. Don’t expect it to be broken.

On The Undercard
The Best: Jose Ramirez’ nerves never had a chance. Neither did Charlie Dubray.
Ramirez (2-0, 2 KOs), a lightweight and 2012 U.S. Olympian, knocked out the nervousness he felt in his pro debut and then overwhelmed Dubray (1-1, 1 KO) for a first-round TKO. Dubray, of Hastings , Neb., was down twice within 66 seconds after he put in his mouthpiece.

“It’s all coming together,’’ said Ramirez, a farmworkers’ son from Avenal, Calif., who scored a first-round TKO in his debut on the Dec. 8 undercard of Juan Manuel Marquez’ stoppage of Manny Pacquiao. “I was a lot less nervous than in my first fight.’’

The Rest: There were headlines before Breidis Prescott-Terence Crawford, praise for Crawford from Bob Arum after it and boos throughout a dull bout during which Crawford (20-0, 15 KOs), a Nebraska junior-welterweight, made Prescott (26-5, 20 KOs), of Colombia, look stiff, awkward, frustrated and — in the end –defeated by unanimous decision. …Mexican super-featherweight Miguel Berchelt (17-0, 14 KOs) punches at a rate that leaves no time for an answer and Carlos Claudio (15-10-3, 8 KOs) had none in losing a first-round TKO to a Berchelt blitz. …A breeze blew through the Mandalay Bay Events Center from a body shot thrown by Las Vegas welterweight Michael Finney (11-0, 9 KOs), who scored a fifth-round KO with a paralyzing left that knocked the wind out of Osvaldo Rojas (7-3-2, 2 KOs) of Portland, Ore; Connecticut super-bantamweight Tramaine Williams (6-0, 2 KOs), nicknamed the Midget, came up big with a unanimous decision over John Herrera (4-6-1, 2 KOs); Las Vegas heavyweight Brett Rather (3-0) survived a first-round knockdown and endured successive right hands to score a unanimous decision over Juan Guajardo (2-1, 1 KOs) of McAllen, Tex.; Juan Heraldez (5-0, 4 KOs) of Las Vegas scored big points and left nasty welts across the forehead of overmatched Florida junior-welterweight Roberto Lopez (4-5-2) for a unanimous decision; and Denver junior-welterweight Manuel Lopez (2-0, 2 KOs) won a second-round TKO over Jason Tresvan (0-2) of Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS – Boxing is Brandon Rios’ playground. Show him a ring. Take him to a weigh-in. Doesn’t matter. He’s like a kid at recess. Friday was the weigh-in for his junior-welterweight encore with Mike Alvarado Saturday night at Mandalay Bay.

Rios jumped on the scale almost as if it were an empty seat on a merry-go-round. He came up a fraction of a pound too heavy, perhaps because of a jarring impact or just an abundance of enthusiasm.

No problem. Rios stepped behind a beach towel, stripped off his shorts and took another turn at the scale. This time, he was perfect — 140 pounds-even. Not a whisper of an ounce less or more. Alvarado also weighed 140.0.

Rios (31-0-1, 22 KOs) smiled, perhaps at the prospect of the bruising brawl he has promised in an HBO-televised rematch of his seventh-round stoppage of Alvarado (33-1, 23 KOs) on October 13 in Carson, Calif. Or, maybe, he heard from a handful of Alvarado fans in the weigh-in crowd. Taunts have to be a favorite on the Rios play list. They are his marching music.

“I love it when you guys talk bleep, just love it’’ said Rios, a 4-to-1 favorite who according to contracts filed with the Nevada State Athletic Commission will collect $1 million Saturday. Alvarado’s purse is $650,000.

Rios loves it almost as much as a brawl. Whether more brawling will be enough for another victory over Alvarado is one reason for the rematch, of course. There’s that and Juan Manuel Marquez’ upset of Manny Pacquiao in December.

Rios had been in line for a rich shot at Pacquiao until Marquez’ right hand got in the way, dropping the Filipino Congressman on to the canvas, face-first. Marquez altered a lot of promotional plans, but didn’t really seem to change anything about Rios, who fights to have fun.

Brandon Rios-Mike Alvarado II Saturday night at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay might be more of a continuation than it is a rematch. At least, all of the talk seems to promise a resumption of a brawl in Carson, Calif., that ended more than five months ago in a seventh-round TKO victory for Rios.

Make no mistake, Rios and Alvarado might still be fighting if Pat Russell had not ended a bout lacking in subtlety and skillful adjustments, yet spellbinding for its undisguised ferocity. There was some debate then about whether Russell’s stoppage at 1:57 of the seventh was premature. From this seat in Carson, it looked to be well-timed and wise. Moments before Russell intervened, a dazed Alvarado fell forward and into Rios’ chest. Instinct probably would have kept Alvarado on his feet, but only at the price of more punishment.

Nevertheless, Alvarado and his trainer/manager, Henry Delgado, argued then that he should have been allowed to continue. Had the fight gone the distance, it could have wound up as a draw. It was 57-57 on two scorecards. Rios led on the third, 58-56.

In the buildup for Saturday’s HBO-televised fight, Alvarado has repeated the argument, in part because of what he saw in Tim Bradley’s epic decision on March 16 over Ruslan Provodnikov, also in Carson. Russell let that one continue, despite evident signs that Bradley was in real trouble during the early rounds. Even Bradley said he thought he had suffered concussions.

“I thought Bradley got a good opportunity to prove himself, show that heart,’’ Alvarado said during a conference call. “He was knocked out on his feet pretty much. I thought the referee was fair, the more I saw it.’’

Translation: Alvarado is asking for the same chance that Bradley got. Given Russell’s apparent inconsistency, it’s a fair argument. But boxing is only a debate club during news conferences. For those of us fortunate enough to be in ringside seats, we’re only in danger of adding pounds to our ever-expanding cheeseburger bellies during the pre-fight meal.

A tough fight means heightened danger. It also means a tough call is likely. Referee Tony Weeks might have the toughest job of all Saturday night. Rios-Alvarado has taken on a predictable tone. Some blood lust is baked into the expectations. It’s hard to see how the Rios-Alvarado resumption will differ from the style witnessed on Oct. 13. By their own admission, Rios and Alvarado aren’t sweet scientists.

“We have the same type of style,’’ Rios said. “We both go and fight each other. We try to get the job done the only way we know how. We can try to change it up in the gym. But once the bell rings and we get hit, we go back to do doing what we know how to do. That’s the warrior mentality that comes out of us.

“Mike Alvarado is Mike Alvarado. Brandon Rios is Brandon Rios.’

There’s speculation that the prospect for more of the same will be altered by adjustments from Alvarado, who is believed to be more athletic because of his wrestling background. Alvarado has even hinted at possible adjustments. But that might be a pre-fight ploy in an attempt to keep Rios guessing.

“You can always train differently to try to change things up, but I think our styles and the way we approach the ring, it is automatically going to turn into that kind of fight,’’ Alvarado said during the conference call on March 21. “They are the styles we have. We are both warriors. We just fight and whoever comes out on top, that’s just the way it’s going to go.’’

Alvarado apparently got into an unscheduled brawl sometime in early February. Cuts on his right cheek and down the right side of his neck are visible in the video, Road to Rios-Alvarado II.

“It hasn’t hindered me,’’ said Alvarado, who said the cuts are no reason to worry. “It was just a little accident. I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time and it was a little accident.’’

What’s expected Saturday night will be no accident. But it’ll look like one, another one in a chapter that could have fans asking for even more.

What was he thinking? Guerrero wasn’t

It’s a good thing there’s no reliable test for stupidity. Boxing would come up positive every time. The latest example: Robert Guerrero’s arrest Thursday for trying to check baggage that included a handgun onto a flight in New York.

Remember Plaxico Burress? Guess not. Burress, then a New York Giants receiver, wound up doing nearly two years in jail on a 2009 weapons charge in New York. And he shot himself.

Circumstances look to be a lot different. Burress’ gun was concealed and loaded. According to reports, Guerrero informed the airline that he had a hand gun, unloaded and locked in a safe box, according to a joint statement Thursday from Team Guerrero, Golden Boy Promotions and Mayweather Promotions. Guerrero has a California license for the weapon, according to the statement.

Given the national debate over gun control, however, Guerrero could face trouble in New York, where gun laws are more stringent than anywhere else in the U.S. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a vocal proponent of banning guns. If New York is looking to make an example out of someone, Guerrero is in the political cross-hairs. He was all over the New York media during the last few days. His fight on May 4 against Floyd Mayweather Jr. at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand is already in the headlines.

Even if his arrest and arraignment on firearm charges don’t jeopardize the fight, he will have to deal with unwanted distractions He was booked on a flight for Las Vegas, where he had planned to get back into the gym as soon as possible. He was released on his own recognizance, according to the joint statement. His next court appearance is scheduled for May 14, 10 days after the fight.

Mayweather is enough of a problem. He asked for that one. Now, Guerrero has a complicated one that he could have avoided.

15rounds.com would like to congratulate ace writers Norm Frauenheim and Bart Barry for taking home multiple Barney Awatds and will be recognized at the 2013 BWAA Dinner at Capitale in New York City on April 11th.

Frauenheim took home a 2nd place in Event Coverage, Honorable mention for short feature and 3rd place for Investigative Reporting.

Barry took home a 3rd place for Column, Honorable mention for Long Feature.

15rounds.com is grateful for all the contributions from Norm and Bart

Saturday, California’s Brandon “Bam Bam” Rios will make a rematch with Colorado’s “Mile High” Mike Alvarado of the second-best fight of 2012, a relentless engagement Rios won in round 7 when California referee Pat Russell ruled Alvarado was too defenseless to continue at Carson, Calif.’s Home Depot Center in October. Rios-Alvarado II will happen at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

There is a feel of the cash-out to this rematch. It is too soon for Mike Alvarado to review his October mistakes, imagine theoretical corrections, apply theory to his gym routines, bend and memorize his muscles to new positions, then practice these new positions till they bore him. There is not time enough for an athlete who was not stopped brutally in his last fight to do this or time enough for an athlete of sound mind and body to do it, and so imagine for a moment how inadequately timed is Alvarado – who was solved conclusively by Rios in the middle part of their sixth round together barely five months ago and was then wounded in February in what Alvarado’s manager told Rick Reeno was a minor affair, calling what HBO’s camera made look like the shimmering claw-work of a mountain lion on Alvarado’s right cheek, chin and neck, “just a few scratches.”

Such abrasions are not likely to impede Alvarado, Saturday – however perilously close to vital parts of his neck Alvarado’s wounds happened, a fighter with a properly tucked chin shouldn’t have those wounds reopened by another man’s leathered fists – but it is unlikely Alvarado has been able to focus on much more than how those marks sting when perspiration glides its salt-depositing way across them.

Colorado boxing is a realm unto itself; there have not been many world champions from the Centennial State, but one of boxing’s most colorful and well-liked characters, matchmaker Don Smith, resides up that way and one afternoon recounted stories aplenty – liberally punctuating them with his delightfully autobiographical clause, “it is alleged” – of what happened in a place where regulations were wanting: bareknuckle scraps, toughman competitions, tag-team boxing. Out of remnants from that brannigan emerged a prodigious wrestler-cum-boxer named Mike Alvarado, nine years ago.

Alvarado is considered a toughman of his own now, a complement to Brandon Rios’ prehistoric fighting style, but he was not that when he began, and he was not that when promoter Top Rank had him featured on Telefutura years ago. Today, large holes in his résumé, face and neck betray Alvarado’s penchant for unsanctioned combat, which is why the cash-out comes, though without much of the nefariousness the term often connotes. Alvarado knows where his career is at this moment, and exactly how unlikely a Las Vegas main event, broadcast by HBO, was, 20 months ago when he won an IBF Latino title on a Denver softball field adjacent to a functioning railway.

Local shows like that one offer narrow vistas and few escape routes. Smalltown cards in the West are caldrons of reinvention and assumed identities, places where full rosters of flunkies nobody has ever heard of stomp their ways to VIP seats from harried local promoters whose favorite phrase is “Never heard of him!” Commission officials, overdressed and ubiquitous till a call for judgment or actionable information goes out, preen in the provincial authority common to small provinces. The packs that prey near ringside look nothing like what one sees in Las Vegas; however much his attendance at Marquez-Pacquiao IV may have enchanted Mitt Romney, if he gained fifty pounds of fat, three pounds of ink, a pound of beard, and a Harley-Davidson jacket, he still would not make it far enough to be wanded by an offduty cop at such a card’s improvised entrance, much less to his unfolded aluminum chair, beige or grey, with its same seat number handprinted on at least three other VIP tickets.

One does not come out an environment like this and ask for a tuneup or postponement, which is why Alvarado did not ask for either, and neither probably would have been granted him by a sage promoter with no way of knowing how free or healthy Alvarado might be in June. Saturday’s fight is unlikely to be good as its predecessor, which saw Rios undertake a brutal 17-minute apprenticeship from which he emerged with coordinates for a hellish spot heavyweight Ray Mercer once coined “Righthand City” – right before depositing Tommy “The Duke” Morrison there for an unforgettable 1991 exile.

Rios knows Alvarado has no workable solution for his right hand, and Rios knows Alvarado knows it as well, and that should bring the suspenseful round or three that opens their rematch Saturday, when Rios tries to cut Alvarado’s consciousness in two minutes and finds Alvarado, for whatever haplessness he showed in rounds 6 and 7 of their first fight, remains dangerous as any man Rios has fought, until he is softened by a hundred or more punches. One hopes Alvarado spent training camp fixated on other men’s right shoulders and thoughts of Rios’ right deltoid as it twitches the instant before he launches a right cross, or, better still, that Alvarado abandoned his low-lead-hand approach totally – though that seems too rich an account for Hope to settle.

It would be a wonderful thing for Alvarado and prizefighting if Rios were careless enough to hurl himself square on an Alvarado counter, early, wonderful for the spectacle that would ensue and the possibility these savages would make a rubber match, but probability does not favor it. So I’ll take Rios, KO-6, while wishing both men only the very best.

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

Robert Stieglitz recaptured the WBO Super Middleweight title with a stoppage over Arthur Abraham after Abraham could not continue due to his left eye being closed as the fourth round was about to commence in Magdeburg, Germany.

Stieglitz hurt Abraham in round two and almost had him out. But what he did do was cause massive swelling around the left eye of Abraham. It was more of the same in round three as Steglitz continued to pound on Abraham. Abraham, knowing he was in trouble tried to throw hayemaker punches but it was no avail as the fight was stopped by referee Michael Ortega stopped the bout due to the swelling of Abraham’s eye.

This was a rematch of last August bout that saw Abraham win a unanimous decision.

Stieglitz is now 44-3 with 25 knockouts. Abraham is now 36-4.

Heavyweight contender Robert Helenius scored a ten round unanimous decision over Michael Sprott.

Helenus looked good at times and very pedestrian at other parts of the bout as he took the first two and some of the middle rounds but was tagged on numerous occasions by Sprott.

Scores were 98-93 on two cards and 97-93 for Helenius who is now 19-0. Sprott is now 37-20

George Groves remained perfect by stopping an overmatched Baker Barakat in round two of a scheduled eight round Super Middleweight bout.

Groves was dominant and dropped Barakat in round and finished the fight with a big combination and it was stopped.

Groves is now 18-0 with 14 knockouts. Barakat is now 37-14-4.

It’s hard to imagine how many more times the deck chairs on the Titanic can be re-arranged, but boxing did it ad nauseam this week when Home Box Office slammed the door on doing any more business with Golden Boy Promotions.

If it has really changed anything, please wake me up.

It’s not as if Golden Boy and Top Rank were sending each other cards with best wishes during the Holidays, any holiday. It was a balkanized business before HBO told Golden Boy to drop dead. It still is. But there are a couple of losers, who can’t be too encouraged by a move that seems to harden each side of a feud with no apparent end.

Fans don’t like it. But they get over it. If it’s a good fight, they’ll watch if it on HBO, Showtime or in a parking lot. We’re not talking about Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, either. They had their chances and each, in their own way, managed to back away from the money, or the risk, or the demands for drug testing, or all-of-the-above.

But Nonito Donaire, of Top Rank, and Abner Mares, of Golden Boy, haven’t fought for wages that even approach the kind of money banked by Mayweather and Pacquiao. Unlike fans, they also don’t have a lifetime time to wait around for an opportunity at a career-defining fight.

They’ve been fighting at weights ranging from 116 through 122 pounds. If history is any guide, that adds up to a short shelf life. Mares (25-0-1, 13 KOs) is 27. Donaire (31-1, 20 KOs) is 30.

They want to fight each other. They, more than any other fighter in today generation, have asked their promoters to get it done. But the promoters seem to have put their own egos and agendas ahead of their best interests. Who is working for whom here?

Mares and Donaire could, perhaps should, shout a little louder about what they want, what their careers demand. But would Showtime, HBO, Golden Boy or Top Rank even listen? They’re too busy shouting at each other.

Anybody for the parking lot?

American welterweight Timothy Bradley was knocked-out at 2:33 of round 1 by Russian Ruslan Provodnikov, Saturday at Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif. Bradley began a right cross at the moment Provodnikov did, and while Bradley’s grazed harmlessly past, Provodnikov’s struck flush. Bradley buckled, fell forward, clutched Provodnikov round the yellow letters on the seat of his trunks, then fell to his knees and black gloves. Bradley rose, backpedaled, fell, rolled over, and rose again with the lunatic smile a man wears when no signal his brain sends down the spinal cord is obeyed by his lower body.

If consciousness is an awareness by the mind of itself and the world, Bradley was not conscious for most of the 33 minutes of fighting that followed. But in what variable moments of consciousness he experienced, Bradley sent communiques enough to the learned muscles of his body to decision Provodnikov by unanimous scores of 114-113, 114-113 and 115-112 and retain the WBO welterweight belt he took from Manny Pacquiao in June. Treated to valorous a display as an athlete can make, the sparse Home Depot Center crowd booed loudly the judges’ deciding in favor of the champion.

And there was Timothy Bradley, bouncing in his corner before the decision, trying to make a spirited sight of his readiness and fitness, showing Provodnikov he was not tired but anxious to come out and make war in the final round, except that the final round had come and gone minutes before, and Bradley seemed to have no idea of it. He was not in his right mind. If you told Bradley on Sunday morning he fought valiantly, did his level best, but finally got knocked-out by a well-fisted Russian who wore him to a nub at the end, Bradley would have had to go find his belt, if he even remembered where he put it, to be sure you were wrong.

Bradley is frailer than his detractors know. In 2011, I spoke with him in the Southwest hangar of the Detroit Metro Airport seven hours after he beat Devon Alexander, and the first thought I had as he shuffled anonymously along the gleaming tile hallway, taking tiny steps, no entourage in tow, his left eye shuttered, his face small and dark, was: “God, he looks fragile.”

The same could be said of him as he sat in a wheelchair beneath the MGM Grand dais last year after going more rounds with Manny Pacquiao than Oscar De La Hoya did, or Ricky Hatton did, or Miguel Cotto did – this must not be forgotten – and after the greatest moment of his career, one an entire industry then conspired ghoulishly to snatch from him. The same could be said of Bradley on Saturday night as he stood wideyed and confused, genuineness and goodness still shining through concussion’s miasma, and admitted he did not recall what he said three seconds before.

Timothy Bradley gives more than he has to every fight; he is ill-equipped for the combat he makes. He is a man with one knockout victory in six years who went for the knockout repeatedly, Saturday, against an opponent who’d rendered him senseless in their first three minutes together. Ruslan Provodnikov showed Bradley’s large flaws: He does not move his head until he is on an opponent’s chest, his balance is often not good as he believes, and his power at welterweight is a fraction his confidence in it. Bradley fights rather like what he is: a man whose teachers believed conditioning was more important than defense.

In the final 15 seconds of round 6, Bradley and Provodnikov threw 56 punches at one another, in as feral a display of desire and conditioning as can be seen in a prizefighting ring. Provodnikov threw many of his punches head-down and landed many more than Bradley did, head-up. Bradley needed to see Provodnikov to punch him, and that was difficult with his eyes scattering like brown marbles in sockets of polished obsidian. Provodnikov knew without having to look where Bradley’s chin would be, which allowed him, at various remarkable moments Saturday, to move his head well out of Bradley’s range as he put his wonderfully leveraged right fist in the geometrical center of Bradley’s face.

But promoter Top Rank is not yet rid of its Bradley problem, and Bradley’s flowering resentment, and how history will judge its catalyst, is to be a problem indeed. When Bradley went down in the final seconds of round 1 then got up, fell backwards, and landed on his shoulder at an angle obtuse enough to separate it, I thought of what Top Rank’s peerless matchmaker once said after an early undercard match when a local favorite got dropped by an unknown: “Nothing surprises me.” Provodnikov did exactly what was expected of him, and if he did not permanently alter the trajectory of Bradley’s career, Saturday, he likely will in the rematch Bradley will have to make long before he is given the payday he was promised if he beat Pacquiao, which he did.

We booed Bradley afterwards, again, in his home state this time, despite his making combat for a half hour his brain was too scrambled to record – booed him because three professional judges agreed he won another close fight. Bradley may forgive us, though he should not, but he will not forget, and he should not. He is a greater man than he is a fighter, and he deserves better judges than what we are.

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

CARSON, CALIFORNIA – Timothy Bradley Jr. was taken to the limit over twelve rounds by Ruslan Provodnikov in the HBO-televised main event at the Home Depot Center on Saturday night, but managed to escape with his WBO 147-pound title in tact with a debatable twelve-round unanimous decision.

Bradley and Provodnikov wasted no time, opting to stand and trade shortly after the opening bell. In the midst of an exchange, Provodnikov (22-2, 15 KOs) of Beryozovo, Yugra, Russia beat Bradley (30-0, 12 KOs) of Palm Springs, California to the punch with a short right hand. The punch downed Bradley, but referee Pat Russell ruled the fall a slip. Bradley began to pop back up, but fell back down again, a clear sign that he was legitimately hurt.

The second round picked up where the first round left off, as the two engaged in more wild exchanges. Bradley, still feeling the effects of the first round, was getting the worse of it as one combination sent him into the ropes, nearly scoring a knockdown again.

The fight took a turn in the third, as Provodnikov punched himself out after his incredible output in the first two rounds. Bradley wisely fell back on his jab and took the third by keeping the drained Provodnikov off balance at arms length. Bradley continued to potshot at range, effectively sewing up the fourth to miraculously even up the fight after four.

Bradley was drawn back into some wild exchanging in the fifth, but did so a bit more intelligently and cautiously. The balance worked as Bradley clearly claimed his third round in a row after being taken to the brink of a stoppage.

The fight took another turn in the sixth. After Bradley boxed well enough for two-and-one-half minutes, Provodnikov came out of nowhere and cleaned Bradley’s clock again with a left hand. Bradley moved from one corner to the ropes on the other side of the ring, but Provodnikov followed him, throwing every step of the way. Bradley fought back, but it just gave the challenger more openings to exploit as the bell sounded.

Both fighters took off the seventh round, which all three official scorers would give to Bradley. The champion boxed just enough to take round eight as well to somewhat sneakily move ahead in the fight 77-75 on all three cards.

Provodnikov was able to sucker Bradley back into firefight in spurts during the ninth, but champion did not cave in and swing for the fences like in the opening two rounds. Feeling confident after a solid ninth, Bradley was flashy with his combinations in the tenth, but did not commit to his punches like earlier in the fight. Though he landed less, this writer felt Provodnikov edged the tenth with his few power shots. However all three official scorers wound up giving the round to Bradley.

With the fight slipping away, Provodnikov came on again in the eleventh, clearly landing the more effective blows. Bradley spent too much time circling and moving, while Provodnikov landed clean blows. Though it looked to be a clear Provodnikov round, official scorer Raul Caiz Sr. would end up giving the eleventh to Bradley.

Reportedly told by his trainer Freddie Roach he needed a knockout to win, Provodnikov aimed to do just that as he came out for the twelfth and final round. As was the case nearly every time Provodnikov had Bradley in the trouble, the damage would came in the last half minute of the twelfth. After a sustained barrage, Provodnikov would finally down Bradley with a short right hand. Obviously hurt, Bradley managed to get out of the round and force the fight to the cards. Judges Jerry Cantu and Marty Denkin handed in cards of 114-113 for Bradley, while Caiz Sr. had it a puzzling 115-112 for the champion.

Boos would drown out the cheers for Bradley as the decision was read before the Home Depot Center crowd, a response the champion did not deserve after such a valiant battle. Bradley’s quest for respect was a hot topic heading into Saturday’s contest, given the fashion in which he attained victory over Manny Pacquiao last year. Unfortunately for Bradley, it appears that quest continues after another hard-fought, but controversial victory

In a battle of unbeatens, Jessie Vargas (22-0, 9 KOs) of Las Vegas, Nevada came away with a wider than deserved unanimous decision over Wale Omotoso (23-1, 19 KOs) of Hollywood, California by way of Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria in the televised co-feature.

After a methodical first round, Omotoso, 146.8, began to find his openings with great frequency in round two. Vargas, 146.6, decided to fight fire with fire much to his detriment in round three. After a solid exchange, a borderline body shot dropped Vargas early in the stanza. Vargas came back firing, but it was Omotoso that look better in the exchanges.

As the fight moved to the fourth, Vargas and “Lucky Boy” continued to exchange, but it was Omotoso that was landing the cleaner, harder shots. Although Omotoso was wide with many of his swings, he continued to catch Vargas on the end of many telling blows. However, by the end of the fourth, Vargas sprang to life, which led into the fifth, unquestionably his best round.

Vargas caught Omotoso early in the fifth with a solid right. “Lucky Boy” mocked Vargas with a dance, but another right followed which clearly stunned Omotoso. Vargas saw the change and pounced on his foe. Vargas landed as Omotoso retreated to different corners of the ring, before finally running out of gas as the round came to an end.

The fight climaxed in the fifth, as the pace dropped of dramatically beginning in the sixth.
Vargas may have held a slight edge in two or three of the following three rounds, but there was little to choose from as the output of both sank. Omotoso came on again to start the tenth. Vargas attempted to stem the tide, but really had little on his punches as the fight winded down.

In a fight that could reasonably have gone either way by a point or two, Vargas was awarded the bout by the shockingly wide scores of 97-92 and 96-93 twice. With the win, the WBA #5/WBC #9/IBF #15 ranked Vargas claimed the minor WBC Continental Americas Welterweight title while likely improving upon his world rankings.

In the last bout before HBO went on the air, Oscar Valdez (3-0, 3 KOs) of Tucson, Arizona by way of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico stopped tough as nails Carlos Iguera Gonzalez (1-3) of Los Angeles, California with a series of unanswered blows.

The durable Iguera Gonzalez, 128, had been beaten twice before, but never beaten down the way he was by the former amateur star Valdez, 128, at the Home Depot Center tonight. Valdez punished him from round one, getting the better of every exchange. Finally in the third a wicked left hook slumped Iguera Gonzalez against the ropes, with the ensuing combination forcing referee Tony Crebs hand. Time of the stoppage was 58 seconds of round four.

Fast-handed heavyweight Andy Ruiz Jr. (18-0, 12 KOs) of Imperial, California by way of Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico downed Midwest journeyman Matthew Greer (15-10, 13 KOs) of Saint Louis, Missouri three times in the first to force a mandatory stoppage.

Ruiz, 246, attacked the large body of Greer, 240, which created the opening for a right high on the head for the first knockdown. Soon after action resumed, Ruiz landed a left to the body that put down Greer for the second time. Greer continued to fade as a light shove forced him down and ate some time from the clock, but not enough. Another cuffing right high on the head, dropped Greer for the third and final time, prompting referee Jack Reiss to wave off the bout at 2:53 of the first.

Emerging local prospect Gabino Saenz (9-0-1, 7 KOs) of Indio, California excited his Southern California fan base with a horrific second-round stoppage of Cesar Valenzuela (3-2-1, 1 KO) of Phoenix, Arizona.

After a rough-and-tumble first, Saenz, 126, came out determined in the second round, eventually landing a left that rocked Valenzuela, 125. The Arizona resident attempted to hold on and regain his legs, but found himself on the canvas from a Saenz flurry capped by an overhand right. Shortly after action resumed, Saenz uncorked a short right that sent Valenzuela’s jaw one way and his body the other. Referee Tony Crebs immediately waved it off at 2:02 of round two. Thankfully Valenzuela was able to leave the ring under his own power.

In a brutal shocker, journeyman southpaw Victor Sanchez (4-5-1, 1 KO) of Houston, Texas starched one-time prospect Ramon Valadez (11-4, 6 KOs) East Los Angeles, California inside of one round. Sanchez, 127, dropped Valadez, 126.8, with a left hand midway through the first. Valadez was never able to regain his legs and was eventually stopped on his feet as a combination separated him from his senses along the ropes. Referee Jack Reiss leaped in to stop the contest at 2:39 of the first round.

Touted prospect Jesse Magdaleno (14-0, 10 KOs) of Las Vegas kept busy against a warm body, scoring three knockdowns en route to a third-round stoppage over Carlos Fulgencio (19-10-1, 12 KOs) of Santo Domingo de Guzman, Dominican Republic.

Fulgencio, 123.6, offered little resilience against the quick-handed Magdaleno, 123.4, who kicked off his 2013 campaign in style. Magdaleno dropped Fulgencio in the first with a right hook, again with his right in the second and ended matters in the third with a right uppercut. Referee Tony Crebs immediately waved off the bout when Fulgencio went down for the third time without a count. Time of the stoppage was 45 seconds of the third round. Fulgencio has now dropped five straight.

In the curtain raiser, decorated former amateur star Egidijus Kavaliauskas (1-0) of Oxnard, California by way of Kaunas, Lithuania employed a withering body attack en route to a four-round unanimous decision over a game Eridanni Leon Quintero (0-1) of Inglewood, California.

Kavaliauskas, 150.2, managed to routinely force Leon Quintero, 150.6, to the ropes while finding his foe’s ribs an open target. Kavaliauskas, whose stellar amateur career was highlighted by representing Lithuania at the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games, looked more like an experienced veteran rather than a fighter making his pro debut. All three judges scored the bout a shutout, 40-36, for Kavaliauskas.

Photos by Chris Farina/Top Rank

Mario Ortega Jr. can be reached via e-mail at ortega15rds@lycos.com or you can follow him on Twitter @MarioG280

MANHATTAN BEACH, CALIFORNIA — Long compared to the sometimes underappreciated Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Timothy Bradley Jr. finds himself in a position the middleweight great would have had a chance to sympathize with had he gotten the nod over Sugar Ray Leonard in 1987. Given the edge in scoring over beloved superstar Manny Pacquiao last year, Bradley felt the wrath of the Filipino fans and pundits alike. Despite what should have been a career-changing win, Bradley still has something to prove as he takes on determined challenger Ruslan Provodnikov in the HBO-televised main event tonight emanating from the Home Depot Center in Carson, California. Fighters weighed-in Friday at the Manhattan Beach Marriott.

Bradley (29-0, 12 KOs) of Palm Springs, California will be competing as a welterweight for just the third time in the last six years as he makes the first defense of the WBO 147-pound title he claimed from Pacquiao last June. Bradley was slow to recover from injures sustained in that bout and opted to sit out the winter before accepting the challenge of Provodnikov tonight.

A career 140-pounder himself, Provodnikov (22-1, 15 KOs) of Beryozovo, Yugra, Russia vacated his various world rankings at light welterweight to take tonight’s bout and now finds himself the WBO #3 ranked welterweight. Provodnikov worked his way into this opportunity by stringing together a five-fight win streak since his lone defeat to Mauricio Herrera back in 2011. Provodnikov and Bradley both weighed in at 146.6-pounds.

In an intriguing co-feature, one of two undefeated welterweight prospects will graduate to world contender as Jessie Vargas (21-0, 9 KOs) of Las Vegas, Nevada takes on Wale Omotoso (23-0, 19 KOs) of Hollywood, California by way of Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria in a ten-rounder with the minor WBC Continental Americas Welterweight title at stake.

Vargas, who scaled 146.6, has hardly been tested in his four fights since a close decision win over eventual titlist Josesito Lopez in September of 2011. Based out of the Wild Card Gym, Omotoso came in at 146.8-pounds. Despite his glossy record, Omotoso remains an unproven commodity, but a win over Vargas would go a long way in changing that perception.

In off-TV undercard action, Andy Ruiz Jr. (17-0, 11 KOs) of Imperial, California by way of Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico takes on journeyman Matthew Greer (15-9, 13 KOs) of Saint Louis, Missouri in an eight-round heavyweight bout. Ruiz, who comes in off of an impressive third-round shellacking of Elijah McCall, scaled 246-pounds. Greer, who opened his year on the losing end of a second-round stoppage against Deontay Wilder, weighed in at 240-pounds.

Well regarded prospect Jesse Magdaleno (13-0, 9 KOs) of Las Vegas looks to remain busy against Carlos Fulgencio (19-9-1, 12 KOs) of Santo Domingo de Guzman, Dominican Republic in an eight-round featherweight bout. Magdaleno, the younger brother of world ranked Diego Magdaleno, scaled 123.4-pounds, while Fulgencio made 123.6.

Oscar Valdez (2-0, 2 KOs) of Tucson, Arizona by way of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico will take on Carlos Iguera Gonzalez (1-2) of Los Angeles, California in a six-round super featherweight bout. Valdez’ original opponent Jose Morales came in way over the contracted limit at 137.8-pounds. Iguera Gonzalez was scheduled to fight unbeaten Victor Pasillas, but Gonzalez himself came in overweight. Pasillas weighed in at 124.6, but turned down the fight when Iguera Gonzalez came in at 128. Top Rank quickly matched Iguera Gonzalez with Valdez, who also happened to be 128-pounds, saving the spot the promising wunderkind.

Popular super bantamweight prospect Gabino Saenz (8-0-1, 6 KOs) of Indio, California makes his 2013 debut against Cesar Valenzuela (3-1-1, 1 KO) of Phoenix, Arizona in a six-round bout. Fighting as a featherweight tonight, Saenz weighed in at 126-pounds.
Valenzuela, who got off the deck to score a stoppage last time out, weighed in at 125-pounds.

Aiming to get back on the winning track after two straight defeats, Ramon Valadez (11-3, 6 KOs) East Los Angeles, California gets a softer touch in Victor Sanchez (3-5-1) of Houston, Texas in a bout scheduled for six. Valadez, whose recent losses came against fighters with a combined 24-1-2 record, weighed in at 126.8-pounds. Similarly Sanchez, who came in at 127-pounds, is 0 for his last two against fighters with a combined 28-1-1 record.

International amateur standout Egidijus Kavaliauskas of Oxnard, California by way of Kaunas, Lithuania will take on late replacement Eridanni Leon Quintero of Inglewood, California in a pairing of fighters making their professional debuts. Kavaliauskas weighed in at 150.2, while Leon Quintero made 150.6-pounds.

Tickets for the event, promoted by Top Rank, are available online at Ticketmaster.com.

Quick Weigh-in Results:

WBO Welterweight Championship, 12 Rounds
Bradley Jr. 146.6
Provodnikov 146.6

WBC Continental Americas Welterweight Championship, 10 Rounds
Vargas 146.6
Omotoso 146.8

Heavyweights, 8 Rounds
Ruiz Jr. 246
Greer 240

Featherweights, 8 Rounds
Magdaleno 123.4
Fulgencio 123.6

Super Featherweights, 6 Rounds
Valdez 128
Iguera Gonzalez 128

Featherweights, 6 Rounds
Saenz 126
Valenzuela 125

Featherweights, 6 Rounds
Valadez 126.8
Sanchez 127

Light Middleweights, 4 Rounds
Kavaliauskas 150.2
Leon Quintero 150.6

Photo by Chris Farina/Top Rank

Mario Ortega Jr. can be reached at ortega15rds@lycos.com.

Losses are as inevitable as scars. If you don’t have some of both, you probably haven’t done much. Or learned much. Freddie Roach, fulltime trainer and street-corner philosopher, has them, accepts them. Maybe even values them.

“Part of life in boxing is losing,’’ Roach said.

The other part to that equation is what Roach hopes to accomplish Saturday night in Ruslan Provodnikov’s bid to upset Timothy Bradley in an HBO-televised fight at Carson, Calif. Victory is a cure-all that eliminates the noisy contagion so symptomatic of defeat. Lose a few and the cheap shots begin to circle like pests in search of a free lunch

Roach has heard them. His own string of high-profile losses in 2012 attracted them. Amir Khan fell to Danny Garcia. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. lost every round but the 12th to Sergio Martinez. Then, Manny Pacquiao dropped face-first onto the canvas from a Juan Manuel Marquez right hand that landed like a wrecking ball. Even the one fight that seemed to be a lock for Pacquiao, went the other way on the scorecards and – inevitably — against Roach. Bradley got a split decision.

Is there no end to this losing streak? Hard to tell. But the tone has changed. Whispers about Roach went public. Roach even heard them on a conference call from Bradley trainer Joel Diaz.

“Freddie Roach is not my concern,’’ Diaz said. “My concern is the fighter.’’

Diaz could have stopped right there. But he didn’t. If Roach isn’t Diaz’ concern, he wasted a lot of conference-call time ripping him.

“Freddie Roach was just a name that was created,’’ Diaz said. “I think, Freddie Roach lost the love of the sport. He created a name and it’s out there, but he doesn’t have passion for the sport that he had a few years ago.

“I’ve seen it in the last Marquez fight. I’ve seen it in the fight before, the third fight with Marquez. Freddie Roach is the least of my concern for any fight. I just focus on the fighter. Freddie Roach is always trying to play mind games. Freddie says Tim is going to run. That is just Freddie playing mind games. They don’t know how we are going to fight. He is trying to get under Tim’s skin. At the end of the day, Tim is going to be a winner, and that’s what matters.’’

Whew, no telling what Diaz would say about somebody who does concern him.

In a sure sign that there’s been no erosion in Roach’s wisdom, he didn’t accept the invitation to indulge in some tired trash talk. He’s kept his attention on his Russian welterweight, which is where it should be.

“I could tell him where to go but he doesn’t know me,’’ Roach said “He doesn’t know what I do every day. He doesn’t see me in the gym working with these fighters. I know he’s just saying it to get under my skin. I have a game plan and the right fighters to carry that game plan through. On the 16th (Saturday), we’ll see who’s the better coach or who’s the better man.’’

It’s no secret that trainers are only as good as their fighters. It’s the same with coaches. Phil Jackson without Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant would have been just been another guy holding a clipboard on an NBA bench. Roach knows that. Diaz might learn that.

“It’s not about the trainers,’’ Roach said. “My fighter is the one who’s going to win the fight, not me. Whatever he says, I don’t care. I don’t have time to be mad at someone. I don’t read anything he says. I just don’t have time for that.’’

Roach doesn’t buy into the redemption angle. But a slice of it is there for the winner. It’s the element that injects some intrigue into Bradley- Provodnikov. A Provodnikov victory means Roach can begin to get beyond 2012. A Bradley win means Bradley can move beyond a victory so controversial that it turned him into a virtual loser.

Of the two, however, the stakes are bigger for Bradley (29-0, 12 KOs). A loss to Provodnikov (22-1, 12 KOs) would only confirm what the public believed about his split-decision in June over Pacquiao in his last fight. It was a coincidental gift created by incompetent scoring.

“Most of the public in the world knew Pacquiao won,’’ said Roach, who didn’t need to be reminded that two judges and Bradley were not part of that consensus. “Just three people and Bradley’s trainer thought Bradley won. So, you have four guys against the world. We’re not worried about that.’’

I’m not sure Provodnikov can beat Bradley. But Roach won the conference call.

AZ NOTES
Two-time Mexican Olympian Oscar Valdez (3-0, 2 KOs) makes his fourth pro appearance Saturday is in a junior featherweight six rounder against Jose Morales (6-4, 1 KO) in a junior-featherweight on the Bradley-Provodnikov card.

Valdez, who fought in the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Games, has family in Tucson. He grew up in Nogales on the Mexican side of the border with Arizona.

Saturday Timothy Bradley, inactive since decisioning Manny Pacquiao nine months ago, will return from exile to defend against Russia’s Ruslan Provodnikov the burnt-maroon WBO welterweight belt Bradley took from Pacquiao in June. Provodnikov, with three more knockouts in his 23 prizefights than Bradley has in 29, might well be the wrong style for Bradley, slugger to volume puncher, but wrong styles is where Bradley has found himself since inciting the wrath of a public still naïve enough in 2012 to believe Pacquiao, if he could just keep getting decisions, might meet Floyd Mayweather in the Fight to Save Boxing.

Bradley has appeared on a conference call and a television show recently, as part of his promotional duties, and done a fairly good imitation of the late Joe Frazier declaring forgiveness for Muhammad Ali – which is to say Bradley is unconvincing when he says he is done thinking about what happened to him, and his career, and his family, after he decisioned Pacquiao. He isn’t, and he should not be.

What will they say about what we said about Timothy Bradley? That’s a question to ask ourselves the next time television convinces us to pile on the performance of an athlete like Bradley, the next time we are drafted like pawns in a network’s or promoter’s army of self-interest and profitability, the next time we are convinced something like our proper identities is staked on how well we proclaim the favored man in a superfight was wronged by public servants with nothing to gain by his wronging.

“There is a difference when you view it live and when you view it on TV,” Bradley said on Tuesday’s conference call. “Completely different.”

Completely right. One needn’t bore into the untrustworthy properties of projected images – though one is welcome to, if it will help – to understand how very different, how very unreal, the experience of watching a fight on television is, with its jiggering cameras, close no far no close no from the back oops he moved to the front no not the ref show the face no back up back up change the angle, and its self-interested commentators and self-referential, and self-reverential, scoring and wildly distorting choice of replays.

Each time television must choose between more realistic and more entertaining, it chooses the latter, yet its celebrants assure themselves it chooses the former – till in a crescendo of absurdity they demand actual participants and actual observers actually present at an actual event, not an image projected through myriad filters, review the filtered projection to find truth. If only Van Eyck and Leonardo could see this spectacle, the way the lenses they used for making glorious illusions have supplanted persons’ faith in eyewitnesses, how heartily they would chuckle.

Some bored postgrad might someday arrange an experiment like this: Project a piece of gray slate on a high-definition television and ask a subject seated in a dark, empty, silent room whether the color is nearer blue or purple, and record his answer. Then set headphones on his ears and ask him again after exposing him to this:

“Big blue everywhere! Blue, blue, blue. Another big blue! This is a historic show of blueness.”

“Now I know a few people out there might be saying ‘purple,’ but I just don’t see it.”

“Reminds me of some of the blues I use. Some of them blue-on-blues, son!”

“I have it scored: blue, blue, blue. Look, it’s a pure blue. Not a sky blue or a robin’s egg blue. It’s as blue as the bluest blue you’ll ever see. Three to nothing – all blue!”

It was the week that followed Bradley’s decisioning Pacquiao in June historians will find offensive. The way the proudest moment of a good man’s career was whitewashed by an entire industry, shouting down dissenters and boarding a promoter’s self-profiting vehicle beneath a streaming banner that read: “No need for a rematch, because we already know who really won!” Bradley is right not to forgive them, he is right to admit his devilish side still finds schadenfreude in Juan Manuel Marquez’s unequivocal leveling of Pacquiao six months later.

Bradley is what they used to call “good people”; he is dignified, serious, friendly and confident. He did not fight his best that night against Pacquiao, and he would win a rematch – which is why none was offered, or will be – because Pacquiao would be watched with different sets of eyes, this time noticing his footwork was sloppy and tangled as he swam over and around Bradley and connected solidly with fewer than one in five punches, a sloppiness made manifest by diminished reflexes, a diminishment that later made openings enough to make Marquez, the master gambler, bet his eternal soul on a right hand no amount of promotional prestidigitation can now undo.

There’s a dramatic documentary here for ESPN to produce in 10 or 15 years, one that will say that although Pacquiao clearly lost the second half of his third fight with Marquez, folks still wanted to believe they saw him do things he simply did not do against Bradley, projecting an image of the man who blitzed Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales onto the one across from Tim Bradley seven months after Marquez asked stylistic questions Pacquiao could no longer answer.

“What they did to my son was wrong,” Ray Bradley, Tim’s father, will intone in a deep, stern voice. “He was undefeated, 28 and 0, and the worst he did was make a close fight with the world’s number one? They had no right.”

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

Sad to report that former Welterweight contender and USBA champion Tony Martin was gunned down on Friday while trying to collect rent for a property he owned in Philadelphia.

Martin had a record of 34-6-1 with 12 knockouts and had wins over the likes of Livingstone Bramble, Micky Ward and 2 wins over Kip Diggs and was a staple at the Legendary Blue Horizon in Philadelphia where he made 11 appearances according to boxrec.com

Martin retired in 1997 after losing a 10 round unanimous decision to Julio Cesar Chavez.

Martin was 52.

Follow all the action LIVE from Ringside at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York as the Legendary Bernard Hopkins tries once again to make history when he takes on Tavoris Cloud for the IBF Light Heavyweight championship. The action begins at 9:30 pm est with a Welterweight bout featuring Keith Thurman and Jan Zaveck

REFRESH BROWSER FOR LATEST RESULTS

12 ROUNDS–IBF LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP–TAVORIS CLOUD (24-0, 19 KO’S) VS BERNARD HOPKINS (52-6-2, 32 KO’S)

Round 1 Holding and referee earl Brown talks to both guys…Cloud misses a left hook..10-10

Round 2 Hopkins lands a right..Cloud comes back..Cloud lands a hard left..Hopkins gets in a right..20-19 Hopkins….as a big fight in the crowd

Round 3 Cloud lands a right..Hopkins lands a right to the body..Body shot from Cloud..Right from Hopkins…Body shot from Cloud..29-29

Round 4 Hopkins lands a left to the body..Good counter right..Cloud lands a right…Cloud misses a left and Hopkins sticks his tongue out..Good right from Cloud..Good right from Hopkins..39-38 Hopkins

Round 5 Cloud coming out jabbing…Right to the side of the head…Good jab from Hopkins..Both land good rights..Hopkins lands a counter uppercut..Cloud lands a body shot..48-48

Round 6 Hopkins lands a combo..lead right..Cloud bleeding over the left eye..counter uppercut..The doctor is checking Cloud’s cut..Cut ruled a headbutt…Cloud goes after Hopkins..Hopkins lands a combo..58-57 Hopkins

Round 7 Hopkins gets in a body shot…Hard bdy shot from Cloud..Hopkins landing combos from the Corner..68-66 Hopkins

Round 8 Cloud gets a right..Good left hook..counter uppercut from Hopkins..Hard right from Cloud..77-76 Hopkins

Round 9 Counter right from Hopkins and sneeks away..combo…left hook from Cloud..Counter right from Hopkins..Overhand right..87-85 Hopkins

Round 10 Hopkins lands a jab followed by a right..quick inside right…Hopkins showing good defense..97-94 Hopkins

Round 11vHopkins lands a leaping left…Hard right up the middle..107-103

Round 12 Hopkins lands a right..good trading inside..Cloud bleeding from both eyes…117-112 Hopkins

116-112; 117-111; 116-112 FOR THE NEW LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD BERNARD HOPKINS

12 ROUNDS–WELTERWEIGHTS–KEITH THURMAN (19-0, 18 KO’S) VS JAN ZAVECK (32-2, 18 KO’S)

ROUND 1 Thurman jabbing..Thurman lands a counter right..Thurman works the body..Good combination..10-9 Thurman

Round 2 Thurman lands 2 hard shots to start the round…Zaveck’s face starting to be marked up already…Hard body shot ..ripping combo..good body shot..20-18 Thurman

Round 3 Right / left from Thurman…Zaveck gets in a right on the ropes..Good left from Thurman…Zaveck continues to press but keeps getting hit…30-27 Thurman

Round 4 Right drives Zaveck into ropes that sets up 4 punch combo…Hard shot from Thurman…40-36

Round 5 Hard straight right from Thurman..Hard body shot...50-45 Thurman

Round 6 Zaveck gets in a left…overhand right..Right from Thurman…Jab..3 punch combination..60-54 Thurman

Round 7 Hard left from Thurman drives Zaveck back…70-63 Thurman

Round 8 Zaveck trying to press but ineffective…Zaveck gets in a right..79-73 Zaveck

Round 9 Fight getting sloppy with a alot of missed punches…Huge body shot from Thurman..89-82 Thurman

Round 10 Thurman beginning to pour it on,,Hard combinations…solid right...99-91 Thurman

Round 11 Leasping left hook 109-100 Thurman

Round 12 Good action down the stretch…119-110 Thurman

120-108 on all cards for KEITH THURMAN

BROOKLYN, NY–At age 48, Bernard Hopkins won the IBF Light Heavyweight title with a twelve round unanimous decision over Tavoris Cloud at Barclays Center

After a first round of absolutely nothing, the action picked up in round two started trading good shots with Cloud focusing on the body and Hopkins landing some solid combinations. Cloud focued more on the bidy early because his shots upstairs were wild and Hopkins was able to avoid them with ease. Hopkins started to control the action with his patented combinations and slick defense. In round six, a butt caused a cut over the left eye of Cloud that was later checked out by the ringside doctor.

The fight went on, and the few and far between times that Cloud tried to mount any offense it either wasn’t sustained or extremely ineffective. Hopkins continued to land some terrific combinations that drew ooohs and ahhs from the assembled crowd inside Barclay Center.

Hopkins was never threatened down the stretch and won by scores of 117-111, 116-112 and 116-112 to raise his 1st ballot Hall of Fame mark to 53-6-2. Cloud is now 24-1.—–More to come

Welterweight prospect Keith Thurman scored a twelve round unanimous decision over former titlist Jan Zaveck.

Thurman came out boxing and landed a nice hook in round one. Thurman continued to land blistering power shots in the second frame. Thurman continue to mix up the power shots on the former champion and was dominant with the exception of a nice overhand right that Zaveck landed in round six.

The second half of the fight started as more of the same with Thurman controlling the rounds. Thurman had a big round ten as he rocked Zaveck several times with hard combinations. The two fought hard down the stretch but Thurman was never in any serious danger.

Thurman, 145 lbs of Clearwater, FL is won by scores of 1201-08 on all cards. Zaveck, 146.6 lbs of Slovenia is now 32-3.

Michael Perez and Lonnie Smith battled to a technical draw after a headbutt opened up a cut over Perez forehead and the bout had to be halted in the seventh round of a ten round Lightweight bout.

Perez dropped Smith with a perfect left uppercut in round two. Smith came back in the round to land solid left uppercut and and left hook. Perez was bleeding from the left eye while Smith was bleeding heavily from the mouth. In round four, Perez started bleeding from his forehead but then rocked Smith with an uppercut on the inside. Late in round six, a nasty cut formed on the right side of Perez’s head. That cut was ruled by a headbutt after originally being ruled by a punch. Scores were 67-65 Perez while two judges ruled 66-66

Perez, 136 lbs of Newark, NJ is 18-1-2. Smith, 135.6 lbs of Las Vegas, NV is now 14-4-3.

Eddie Gomez scored a sensational 1st round stoppage over Javier Gomez in a sheduled six round Jr. Middleweight bout.

Eddie drilled Javier with a nasty left hook that rocked Javier. Eddie finished the fight with another vicious left hook that sent Javier down. When he got to his feet referee Arthur Mercante Jr. stopped the bout at 1:17

Eddie Gomez, 152 lbs of Bronx, NY is now 13-0 with 9 knockouts. Javiier Gomez, 153.4 lbs of Tijuana, MX is now 14-11

2012 U.S. Olympian Marcus Browne made quick work of Josh Thorpe as he scored a first round stoppage in a sxheduled four round Light Heavyweight bout.

Browne battered Thorpe all over the ring for the first round until a huge uppercut sent Thorpe down. Browne then landed eight straight hard blows that forced referee Pete Santiago to stop the bout at 2:42 of round one.

Browne, 175.6 lbs of Staten Island, NY is now 3-0 with all wins coming early. Thorpe, 175.4 lbs of Cincinnati, OH is 1-3.

Exciting Jr, Middleweight prospect Frank Galarza scored an explosive 2nd round stoppage over Guillermo Ibarra in round two of a scheduled six round bout.

Galarza rocked Ibarra with hard shots in round one. He dropped Ibarra in round two from a hard right hand. Galarza sealed the deal with a thunderous combination that was punctuated with a hard left hook and referee Arthur Mercante Jr. stopped the bout at 2:19 of round two.

Galarza, 153.4 lbs of Brooklyn is now 9-0-1 with 5 knockouts. Ibarra, 153 lbs of Los Mochis, MX is now 7-2

Claude Staten Jr. made A successful pro debut with a four round unanimous decision over Mike Hill in a Super Bantamweight bout.

Staten dropped Hill in round one from a right hand and cruised home from there on out.

Staten, 122 lbs of Brooklyn won by scores of 40-35 on cards. Hill, 121 lbs of New Orleans is 0-2.

Stivens Bujaj hung on to score a four round unanimous decision over Zeferino Albino in a Cruiserweight bout.

Bujaj controlled the bout bu landing the harder blows over the first three-plus rounds until Albino drilled Bujaj with a hard left hook the set off a furious exchange in the corner.

Bujaj, 201 lbs of New York won by scores of 40-36 on all cards and is now 9-0. Albino, 201 lbs of Philadelphia is 4-16-3

Nothing on Tim Bradley’s resume says his March 16 fight against Ruslan Provodnikov in Carson, Calif., should be called a comeback. He’s unbeaten. He’s got a title. He’s a good citizen. He never retired. Comebacks are for fighters coming off a loss, or rehab, or bankruptcy, or a jail sentence

But here he is, a good guy transformed into a villain in a comeback as bizarre as the scorecards that gave him a victory over Manny Pacquiao in June yet somehow turned him into something he isn’t.

“I don’t get any credit after the Pacquiao fight, whatsoever,’’ Bradley (29-0, 12 KOs) said Tuesday in a conference call. “People talk about me, my style, that I’m boring. Some people talk about my wife, my kids. People sent me death threats after the fight because I won undeservingly. I should have given the belt back.

“A lot of different things went on. I can talk all day about things that people said about me. But it doesn’t matter. None of these people are going to get in the ring with me. People can say whatever they want. It is a free country. So, I am going to say whatever I want, when I want to say it and how I want to say it.

“Those people don’t know me at all. If you get to know me, if you know what I go through, how I train and you still talk crap about me, then you have the problem. No one knows what I go through to prepare for my fights. People need to sell papers I guess.

“I am the nicest guy you will ever meet on the street. Ever.’’

The judges’ scoring in his split-decision over Pacquiao in a welterweight bout has been called the worst. Ever.

But that gives boxing too much credit. Let’s face it, the undisputed title for the worst decision ever is a dead heat in a very crowded field.

The way the public and much of the business treated Bradley, however, was the worst. Ever.

Internet vigilantes, all armed with anonymity, smeared Bradley with impunity and without giving his performance a second look. Did Bradley lose? Yeah, I think so. He suffered foot and ankle injuries. But can anybody remember another bout when the winner showed up at the post-fight news conference in a wheel chair? Didn’t think so. That’s how bizarre the entire night was.

But don’t blame Bradley. He didn’t score the fight. He fought and fought well. Review the tapes and you’ll see how he made Pacquiao look like a fighter in decline. Bradley exposed Pacquiao’s eroding hand speed and provided a preview of what would follow: Juan Manuel Marquez’ knockout of the Filipino in December. For that, Bradley deserves credit, if not a rematch. Instead, he gets death threats from people who aren’t fans. They’re gangsters. Sadly, there are a lot of them

“The result of the Pacquiao-Bradley fight was a very tough result for everybody in the sport and very tough for a lot of people,’’ said Top Rank President Todd DuBoef, who says Bob Arum’s promotional company has made peace with Bradley and his wife, Monica. “Fortunately Tim, Monica and myself have been able to communicate. There was no handbook for what the result of the fight was. No one knew how to handle it.

“We had death threats, Tim had death threats. It was a very spirited blogosphere campaign that we all got sucked into. Fortunately we have a healthy relationship moving forward. We are looking to keep him active and making the biggest fights we can for him.’’

Here’s hoping he wins them in a way that makes him Comeback Fighter of the Year.

Olympic Debut
American Olympic heavyweight Michael Hunter is scheduled to make his pro debut Saturday night on an Iron Boy Promotions card at Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix. Chad Davis (4-10), a Phoenix cruiserweight and heavyweight, is Hunter’s scheduled opponent.

Hunter lost in the opening round at the 2012 London Games to a Russian, Artur Beterbiyev, the 2009 World Amateur champion. Hunter led, 8-7, going into the final round. The Olympic preliminary ended, 10-10, but the decision went to Beterbiyev on a tie-breaking vote from the judges.

The Hunter-Davis bout, a four rounder, is one of 14 fights – 10 pro and four amateur – on a card scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. (MST).

Photo by Chris Farina / Top Rank

SAN ANTONIO – While there is no promotional formula for rising from small and local shows to large and national ones, there is perhaps a timeline: suddenly. The incremental approach that works well in most of life’s worthwhile doings does not work nearly so well in prizefighting promotion, as so many other good ideas do not work nearly so well in prizefighting promotion – wherein shortsightedness rarely finds its match in anything but cupidity. “Go large, be bold, and expect to lose” is probably good a slogan as any, and Leija-Battah Promotions certainly understands those first two.

Saturday at Our Lady of the Lake University, Leija-Battah Promotions held its final sparring session before a championship match it will make, both as promoter and challenger, on April 20, when Mexican Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fights New Mexican Austin “No Doubt” Trout at Alamodome, in the biggest consequential fight of the first half of 2013.

Is this city ready? That is a question Saturday answered incompletely. The main event certainly was not ready, or anything local promoters had control over. Golden Boy Promotions was to blame for Omar Figueroa unmanning someone named Henry Aurad in a few punches, but only insofar as a promoter overextended with television dates and fighters can be. There’s an underexplored conundrum here, one that having too large a stable, usually required by too many television commitments, can bring. It’s a thing storied matchmaker Don Chargin shared: You run out of opponents. When you have too many good fighters and they must be kept active against fighters other than your other good fighters, when your responsibility is to build fighters, not fights, appropriate opposition goes missing.

Golden Boy Promotions now finds itself often putting men like Henry Aurad on television. Top Rank, in its overstocked past, did this lots, too, but Top Rank has stropped itself in the last four months – one is tempted to hear the starter’s pistol the night Juan Manuel Marquez recalled Top Rank’s signature brand though the downsizing began months earlier – and is on the verge of having its least-active Q1 in memory.

Our Lady of the Lake University’s gymnasium was filled Saturday. OLLU is a small, old, lovely place a couple miles west – just to the Mexican side – of this city’s downtown. Any town has its ethnic enclaves, and while this one is probably the most Mexican of our country’s largest, the west side of San Antonio is even more Mexican than other parts with their enclaves of Chicanos or African-Americans or German-Americans.

Founded nearly 120 years ago by the Sisters of the Congregation of Divine Providence, a French order of Catholic nuns, OLLU is a school with a campus that is small but precious and home of its city’s most picturesque steeple, reminding students, or boxing aficionados as the case may be, their host is not secular. Catholicism is arguably a cultural artifact for Mexicans more than a religious one; the reevaluation of the Church the Irish, among others, now undergo is a thing Mexicans underwent in the late 1920s, when President Plutarco Elias Calles fired what might euphemistically be called a starter’s pistol of his own. Mexican Catholicism is a rich and irreverent species of Catholicism; its cultural tendency towards faith is leavened by a deeper indigenous recollection of how the faith was delivered by steel-bearing Spaniards the new God mysteriously chose as His emissaries.

OLLU is a local-knowledge spot Leija-Battah Promotions chose for a small show because it is a local promoter that understands the city in which it promotes because it is run by residents of the city. This month marks a year since Jesse James Leija, still a trainer and former prizefighter much more than a promoter, and Mike Battah, a local businessman, formed Leija-Battah Promotions and presented a Top Rank show that featured Kelly Pavlik in a corner of Alamodome called Illusions Theater.

Other shows followed, and while announced gates were encouraging, other elements were not. After Alamodome, there was a show at a dancehall followed by a pro-am at Alamodome, followed by a Freeman Coliseum show and a late-December card in an assembly hall. Throughout, there were rumblings of Leija-Battah wanting to bring Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to San Antonio. When Saturday’s show got announced in January with Henry Aurad in the main event of a card at a university wellness and activity center, though, well.

Then last week brought news Canelo was in fact en route, and not as a showcase talent against a designated opponent – the way Manny Pacquiao visited this city in 2007 and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. came in 2010 and 2012 – but in a legitimate title-unification match against a fellow champ with good a chance of winning as losing, if every scorecard were in an honest hand. Alvarez will fight Trout on the third evening of Fiesta, this city’s annual and colorful 10-day celebration of Texas independence – contextualized regularly by San Antonians as “our Mardi Gras,” which means plenty, from a live-gate perspective, when one considers Alamo City has about 400 percent New Orleans’ population.

Will Alvarez-Trout break the record set at Alamodome by Pernell Whitaker and Julio Cesar Chavez Sr. 20 years ago this September? No, but an attendance number above 25,000 is not out of the question. And when did those words last appear in a sentence about American-venue boxing outside Lone Star State?

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

SAN ANTONIO – When your main event is a joke, the undercard better be filled with punch-lines. Fortunately for Golden Boy Promotions and its local partner, Leija-Battah Promotions, the undercard, and the local talent that staffed it, had lots of punches in both straight and bent lines, redeeming a main event between an undefeated Texan and a man unfit for a swing bout.

Saturday at Our Lady of the Lake Gym, on a gorgeous campus in the western part of this city’s downtown area, Texas junior welterweight Omar Figueroa (20-0-1, 16 KOs), of Weslaco, leaped out his corner and obliterated frightened Floridian Henry Aurad (14-7-1, 11 KOs), dropping him once in the first half minute and stopping him decisively with an overhand right at 0:47 of round 1.

Aurad stood in the opponent corner, blue, before the match commenced, looking unprepared, spacey and nervous. If bystanders noticed this, you can bet Figueroa did. The Texan raced out his corner and assaulted Aurad, who appeared not to have any plan at all for fighting a man with 15 knockouts in 19 fights. Quickly enough, Aurad was on the canvas, rising on unconvinced legs and escaping a few seconds longer.

Figueroa’s right hand closed all exits a moment later, though, and the main event was through before it could earnestly begin.

JERMALL CHARLO VS. GILBERT VENEGAS
Houston junior middleweight Jermall Charlo (12-0, 8 KOs) made short work of fellow Texan Gilbert Venegas (12-9-3, 8 KOs), of Eagle Pass, stopping the overmatched lad at 0:24 of round 3, in the evening’s co-main event.

From the opening bell the disparity in height between the lanky Charlo and his opponent was dramatic; the fighters appeared to be from different sports more than different weight classes. Venegas did what he was able, applying pressure enough to land a left hook to the body and a right hand in each round, but against Charlo he hadn’t a chance.

Charlo did everything better than Venegas, using his enormous height and reach advantage properly, outjabbing Venegas through the fight’s full six minutes and landing crisp right hands. Charlo’s power has occasionally been questioned by aficionados, but against an opponent he dwarfed, there was little doubt what Charlo’s right cross possessed for a man at whom he could punch downwards, and who was there to be hit with it.

The two in Charlo’s 1-2 was ferocious against Venegas, dropping him for the fabled 10 1/2 count at the open of round 3.

ERROL SPENCE VS. LUIS TORRES
2012 U.S. Olympian “The Truth” Errol Spence (4-0, 3 KOs), of Dallas, decisioned local junior middleweight Luis Torres (4-3-3, 1 KO) by unanimous scores of 40-36, 40-36 and 40-36, in Saturday’s antepenultimate fight. While Spence was never imperiled by the San Antonian, he was touched more often by right hands than was expected.

Spence has a number of areas that will need steady improvement if he is to fulfill the high expectations that greet Olympians’ arrivals in the professional ranks. Spence often pushes-off with the jab more than he thrusts it, punching to get away rather than initiate attack. He throws the left cross from his southpaw stance in an almost premeditated way, appearing to put the punch behind the jab in obedience to a plan more than a moment. And finally, as evidenced by Torres being felled not once despite absorbing numerous power shots, Spence may not hit hard as hoped.

Nevertheless, Spence did what needed doing Saturday, outboxing Torres for every instant of their four rounds together.

JAIRO CASTANEDA VS. CHRISTIAN SANTIBANEZ
The night’s best match was its swing bout before the main event, when two San Antonio junior welterweights, Jairo Castaneda (2-0, 1 KO) and Christian Santibanez (0-1), fought each other like neighbors, or brothers, and relented not once in their 12 minutes of combat that Castaneda won by unanimous scores of 39-36, 39-36 and 38-37.

The otherwise even bout was decided, in largest part, by a counter right cross with which Castaneda felled Santibanez in round 2, clipping Santibanez on the way in and marking a 10-8 round that proved helpful. Santibanez, though, showing much composure in his professional debut, fought Castaneda better after being knocked down than he’d fought him before it happened. Neither man relented, and both fought with the familiarity that convinces a man the person opposite him is not his superior.

This match, along with others that featured local fighters like Emanuel Ledezma, Felipe Castaneda, Joseph Rodriguez and Kenton Sippio-Cook, filled Our Lady of the Lake University Gym with a capacity and energetic crowd. Leija-Battah Promotions, in its first year of work, has shown an inventiveness and insider knowledge every promotional startup claims but few actually possess. Its largest test will come next month, when it presents Saul Alvarez vs. Austin Trout at Alamodome.

In an ugly foul dest, Richard Abril retained the WBA Lightweight championship with a twelve round unanimous decision over Sharif Bogere at the Joint at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas.

The raggedness pace was set early was the two clutched and Bogere headbutted and Abril was even wrestled to the canvas in the first two rounds. Two traded rounds until the fight was turned in round six when a butt from Bogere opened up a cut over the right eye of Abril.

Bogere had a decent round seven and Abril was docked a point for holding in round eight but after that it was all Abril as he started to find a home with his right hand in between clinches. Rounds nine through eleven were pretty much the same as Abril continued to land pinpoint shots in between all the rough housing while Bogere tried to work the body but it was in effective. Bogere was docked a point himself for many headbutts in round twelve and by that time he was far behind on the cards. Despite cuts around both eyes, Abril dominated the last four rounds and came home with the victory by scores of 116-110, 116-110 and 115-111.

Abril, 134 1/2 lbs of Miami via Cuba is now 18-3-1. Bogere, 134 lbs of Las Vegas via Uganda is now 23-1.

“I am very happy to get the win, but I’m not happy at all with the way the fight went,” said Abril after retaining his WBA 135-pound title with a unanimous 12-round decision over previously undefeated Sharif “The Lion” Bogere in the main event of Saturday’s SHOWTIME BOXING – Special Edition live on SHOWTIME® from The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

“I was hoping for and expected a much cleaner fight,” Abril said. “It’s hard to show your skills in a fight against a dirty fighter. I kept getting warned for holding, but I really didn’t feel like I was holding. He was shorter and kept coming in head-first.”

“I definitely knew I would get the decision. I landed all the cleanest shots,” said Abril, who connected on 35 percent of his punches (152 out of 433) according to SHOSTATS provided by CompuBox. Bogere, who was busier but less effective, hit on only 15 percent (93 out of 614).

The right eye of The Tiger was cut from an unintentional head-butt in the sixth. “He used his head to come in on me the whole fight,” Abril said. “The bleeding made it hard for me to concentrate.”

Bogere said he felt the fight was much closer than the scores indicated and that he had “done enough to win.”

“He was taller and that made it difficult for me to get inside,” said Bogere, who fell short in his quest to join fellow Ugandan fighters such as Cornelius Boza-Edwards, John Mugabi, Ayub Kalule and Kassim Ouma to capture a world title. “But when I did get inside, all he did was hold.

“This is very, very disappointing. My dream was to win the world title. I’m not happy now and I’m pretty down, but I know I’ll come back. You haven’t heard the last of The Lion.”

Super prospect Gary Russell Jr. struggled with his hand and gloves more than he struggled with Vyacheslav Gusev en route to an ten round unanimous decision in a featherweight bout.

Russell got off to a blazing start as he showed his world class hand speed over the first three rounds which culminated with a knockdown in round three from a combination that made Gusev’s glove touch the canvas. After that it seemed that Russell hurt his left hand sometime in the middle rounds and threw nothing but jabs and hooks with the right hand.

Fortunately Gusev proved no threat and didn’t take any chances and Russell’s superior ability showed in what basically turned into a sparring session that Russell dominated to the tune of 100-89 on all cards.

Russell, 127 lbs of Capitol Heights, MD is now 22-0. Gusev of Russia is now 20-1.

The talented Russell fought the last several rounds with a bruised left hand. “I think I hurt it in the third round,” he said. “The last few rounds I was tentative with it and only showed it to him. My corner knew I’d hurt it and did a great job between rounds coming up with different strategies, like starting off with a stiff jab and maintaining it, and slowing down the pace.

“My right hand is bruised too, but I don’t think it is anything serious. I fully expect to fight again in three months.”

According to SHOSTATS, Russell landed 229 of 797 punches (29 percent). Gusev, making his second start in the United States, connected on just 15 percent. Of the 214 punches he delivered, he landed only 33 times, the lowest total in the history of CompuBox for a 10-round fight.

Knockout artist Jorge Melendez lived up to just that, a scintillating fourth round stoppage over Ryan Davis in a scheduled eight round Middleweight bout.

Davis had a nice first round as he tried to push the big punching Melendez on the ropes. Melendez got things going in round two by starting to land power punches. At the end of round of three, Melendez landed a hard right to the body that sent Davis to the canvas. It wasn’t long, actually just thirteen seconds into round four, Melendez landed a devastating right uppercut that sent Davis down with a thud and the fight was waved off immediately.

Melendez, 156 lbs of Vega Baja, PR is now 26-2-1 with 25 knockouts. Davis, 158 lbs of Granite City, IL is now 24-10-3.

Lightweight Jeffrey Fontanez scored a six round unanimous decision over former world title challenger Daniel Attah.

Fontonez won with activity over the first five rounds to built up an insurmountable lead and coasted home and won by scores of 60-54, 59-55 and 59-55.

Fontanez, 134 1/2 lbs of Caguas, PR is now 11-0. Attah, 135 lbs of Washington, DC is now 28-14-1.

Thomas Williams Jr. scored a third round stoppage over Kevin Engel in a scheduled eight round Light Heavyweight bout.

Williams was dominant throughout as Williams mixed up the shots with both hands and used a good variation of punches from jabs to uppercuts. Engel tried but was overmatched and in round three, Williams landed a hard combination that dropped Engel along the ropes. Referee Tony Weeks stopped the bout at the count of six at 1:31 of round three.

Williams, 175 lbs of Washington, DC is now 13-0 with 10 knockouts. Engel, 174 1/2 lbs of St. Louis, MO is now 20-8.

Follow all the action LIVE from the Hard Rock in Las Vegas as Rchard Abril defends the WBA Lightweight title against Sharif Bogere. The action begins at 8 pm EST / 5 pm Pac with bouts involving Jorge Melendez, Thomas Williams Jr. and super prospect Gary Russell Jr.

REFRESH FOR UP TO DATE RESULTS

12 ROUNDS–WBA LIGHTWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP–RICHARD ABRIL (17-3-1, 8 KO’S) VS SHARIF BOGERE (23-0, 15 KO’S)

Round 1 Abril lands a 3 punch combo…Bogere wrestles Abril to canvas..10-9 Abril

Round 2 Abril falls again from rough housing from Bogere..Bogere lands a left..19-19

Round 3 Lead left hook from Bogere…29-28 Bogere

Round 4 Right from Abril…Counter right..Bogere lands a left..Bogere Jabs..Abril lands a right..jab..overhand right..38-38

Round 5 Abril lands a right…uppercut…48-47 Abril

Round 6 Abril lands a combination..Jab..right..head keep clashing…Abril cut above the right eye..Bogere trying to bull rush…left from Bogere…body..Abril lands a right.andother right…right to body from Bogere..hard right..58-56 Abril

Round 7 Bogere lands a lead left hook..Trading shots…Bogere lands a 1-2..Abril 1-2..Bogere lands a body shot..Abril chastised for holding..67-66 Abril

Round 8 ABRIL DOCKED A POINT FOR HOLDING…trading rights..Abril lands a 1-2..2 rights..Right on the ropes..body shots in the clinch..2 rights from Bogere..Right from Abril..76-75 Abril

Round 9 Abril lands a 3 punch combination…right hand and another..left hook…1-2 combination..another 1-2..Bogere lands a body shot..Rught from Abril…86-84 Abril

Round 10 Straight right backs up Bogere…Counter right..Bogere slips to canvas..Bogere finally warned for Headbutts..1-2 from Abril..96-93 Abril

Round 11 Abril another 1-2..Bogere lands a body punch..106-102 Abril

Round 12 BOGERE DEDUCTED A POINT FOR A HEADBUTT…Abril lands a right uppercut..right..short right uppercut…116-110 Abril

115-111; 116-110; 116-110 and STILL CHAMPION—RICHARD ABRIL

10 ROUNDS–SUPER FEATHERWEIGHT–GARY RUSSELL JR (21-0, 13 KO’S) VS VYACHESLAV GUSEV (20-2, 5 KO’S)

Round 1 Russell jabbing…lead uppercut..Overhand left…Gusev lands a body shot…Ruseell explodes with a combination…Gusev wobbled at the end of the round 10-9 Rusell

Round 2 Russell gets in good body work…Sharp counter..3 punch combo finished with an uppercut…20-18 Russell

Round 3 HARD LEFT HOOK…GUSEV GLOVE TOUCHES…KNOCKDOWN…hard combo at the bell…30-26 Russell

Round 4 Gusev going to body…Nice left and right to the body from Russell…Hard body combination..Body shots..40-35 Russell

Round 5 Straight from Gusev..Russell lands a 3 punch combination..left uppercut..50-44 Russell

Round 6 Russell lands a double jab..Gusev lands a right..Russell lands 2 lefts and a right..60-53 Russell

Round 7 Russell straight left…double jab..70-63 Russell

Round 8 Russell lands a lead uppercut…Fight becoming a sparring session..3 right hooks from Russell..80-71 Russell—RUSSELL HAS A CUT ON HIS –THEY ARE CHANGING THE GLOVES

Round 9 Russell throwing nothing but rights and landing combinations..90-80 Russell

Round 10 Russell continues to be only one doing anything …100-89 Russell

100-89 ON ALL CARDS FOR GARY RUSSELL JR

8 ROUNDS MIDDLEWEIGHTS–JORGE MELENDEZ (25-2-1, 24 KO’S) VS RYAN DAVIS (24-9-3, 9 KO’S)

ROUND 1 Melendez lands a right…Good flurry from Davis..10-9 Davis

Round 2 Melendez landed a good left..Good right..Davis jabs to the body..Wicked uppercut from Melendez..Good right…19-19

Round 3 Uppercut hurts Davis…Body shot…BODY SHOT AND DOWN GOES DAVIS …29-27 MELENDEZ

ROUND 4 HUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES DAVIS AND THE FIGHT IS OVER UPPERCUT

6 ROUNDS–LIGHTWEIGHTS–JEFFREY FONTANEZ (10-0, 9 KO’S) VS DANIEL ATTAH (28-13-1, 11 KO’S)

Round 1 Attah lands a left..2 body shots from Fontanez…Good left to the head…10-9 Fontanez

Round 2 2 body shots by Fontanez..Attah tries to throw a long left…Good body shot from Fontanez..20-18 Fontanez

Round 3 Fontanez lands a left to the body followed by an uppercut…3 punch combination..Attah lands a right..30-27 Fontanez

Round 4 Fontanez lands a body shot..body shot followed by 2 head shots..40-36 Fontanez

Round 5 Clubbing left from Fontanez..slower action…50-45 Fontanez

Round 6 Attah being more active but not effective..59-55 Fontanez

8 ROUNDS–LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHTS–THOMAS WILLIAMS JR (12-0, 9 KO’S) VS KEVIN ENGEL (20-7, 16 KO’S)

Round 1 Williams lands a quick right..RIGHT hook and Engel slips to the ground…Engel lands a body shot..Willams lands a right..Right hook..Engel lands a right..Williams lands a right…10-9 Williams

Round 2 Willams lands a quick combination..double jab and left…3 body shots…4 punch combo..Engel starting to swell around left eye..Good body shot…Engel lands a couple body shot..Williams lands an uppercut..Right hand..2 Good body shots..3 hard rights…2 more body shots..2 more rights…20-18 Williams

Round 3 COMBINATION AND DOWN GOES ENGEL…FIGHT IS STOPPED

Opponents are like employees to Floyd Mayweather Jr. He talks as if he hires and fires them in his role as boxer, promoter, matchmaker and candlestick maker. But before Mayweather could tell Canelo Alvarez how much his purse would be and what would floors he’d have to sweep to earn it, Alvarez told him to take this job and shove it.

In a sure sign that Canelo has arrived as a star in his own right, he decided not to fight on the May 4 undercard of Mayweather’s bout against Robert Guerrero at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand.

According to various reports, Canelo’s bout against Austin Trout was moved to April 20 in San Antonio because Mayweather would not guarantee him that he’s next, the second act in Mayweather’s new Showtime deal.

Speculation still has Canelo-Mayweather happening on Sept. 14. Part of that, however, had included an assumption that Canelo would appear on the May 4 undercard as part of Mayweather’s supporting cast. But when Mayweather said no to the guarantee, Canelo made other plans.

Somebody more unsure of his credentials and unproven as an attraction might have accepted the denial and quietly resigned himself to a preliminary role. After all, Mayweather’s claim on power has been emboldened by a Showtime contract that, according to some reports, could be worth $250 million. A fraction of Mayweather’s potential income from Showtime could fund a nice retirement. Why offend him?

But Canelo’s move off Mayweather’s card and onto his own indicates that the Mexican junior-middleweight has begun to see himself as an equal. The guess from this corner is that’s how he will negotiate. To wit: Canelo will demand a lot more money that Victor Ortiz and Guerrero ever did. Forget all the predictable trash talk after contracts are safely signed. Guerrero, like Ortiz, is happy for the opportunity.

Unlike any proposed opponent other than Manny Pacquiao on the list of Mayweather possibilities, Canelo has drawing power. He proved at home in Mexico. He confirmed it on Sept. 15 with a record rating for Showtime in a victory over Josesito Lopez at the MGM Grand on the same night that Sergio Martinez beat Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center on an HBO pay-per-view telecast.

Mayweather has said often and in so many words that he has no equal. In the ring, maybe he doesn’t. But it will be interesting to see if Canelo’s box-office power makes negotiations as futile as they were with Pacquiao. Mayweather likes to dictate more than negotiate. But Mayweather also endangers potential revenue stream for himself and Showtime if he ignores Canelo and the big Mexican audience that he brings to the table.

After his upset of Miguel Cotto, Trout might prove to be a bigger challenge to Canelo than expected. If Canelo prevails, however, the television numbers will be the biggest factor to emerge from April 20.

If they continue to multiply, Mayweather might have to deal with a dangerous business partner, instead of just another carefully-chosen employee.

DALLAS – While the aficionados who peruse this column were dutifully enduring a first collaboration of Mayweather Promotions and Showtime, Saturday, one that worked better as prophesy than entertainment, after they’d already endured a week of contemplating another network switch certain to change the world once more – this time Floyd Mayweather following Manny Pacquiao to Showtime, or have we forgotten? – I was at American Airlines Center to see a hockey game between the Dallas Stars and San Jose Sharks.

The game was not very good, just as Mayweather’s May 4 welterweight fight with 2009 featherweight titlist Robert Guerrero will not be, but it did hold a moment at 8:21 of period 2, an instant of mutual malice satisfactorily resolved, that reminded me how rarely prizefighting brings such catharses anymore. The moment featured a face Mayweather flashes when he throws a punch with which he means to hurt, a contorted countenance that reminds you he is a fighter, a face both Sharks forward Joe Thornton and Stars forward Jamie Benn flashed as their fists and bodies crashed together, and that is what I will treat here.

Saturday’s epiphany: Ferocity of spectacle is what I have missed – a confrontation taken personally, the desire to hurt another man overcoming any fear of being embarrassed before 18,000 strangers. Thornton and Benn’s squaring-off brought a unique drama caused by two quite large professional athletes, neither of whom fights for a living but both of whom know how because one would not otherwise make his living the way they do. It held a tension most every prizefight will lack in 2013: Someone could be badly hurt quite suddenly, and neither man seems to care.

It was a ferocious face Joe Thornton wore as he went after Benn. Thornton, in his prime, now passed, was talented a player as the league had; at 6-foot-4, he moved as a much smaller man, with what balance and grace is expected of a centerman, though with four inches and 20 pounds more than tradition wears at the position. But his desire was questioned in Boston, where he was first pick of the 1997 draft, and then San Jose, where he has been captain for years.

Thornton’s is a finesse game of imaginative passing and awareness of the ice surface, done with what can feel like a complacent smirk; despite 328 career goals, he does not shoot often enough, and despite weighing at least 230 pounds – 235 according to Dropyourgloves.com – he rarely runs his body hard into another’s. In skates and full equipment Saturday, though, Thornton was a 6-foot-7, 240-pound man, nearly a Klitschko brother, under a burst of what sudden rage both Klitschkos avoid with a craftsman’s determination.

I was in row H, seven from the glass, in the zone where hostilities initiated. While any sport is best appreciated by its former practitioners, hockey is more decisively this way than others; because of its speed, and because of how poorly American cameramen, raised on football or baseball or basketball, anticipate plays, ever trailing the action or overcorrecting initial tardinesses, hockey – as separate from the bloodiest elements of its reputation – is rarely appreciated properly by those who’ve not played it. That is seldom a problem above the snow line, and never a problem in Canada, but things can get dicey in Texas.

Skating past, Benn speared Thornton in the groin, the soft fleshy part of the inner thigh where there is no protection, and Thornton reciprocated by chopping the blade of his stick precisely on the inch or so of Benn’s forearm that lay unprotected by the top glove and bottom elbow pad. A wrinkle happened across the ice, a surge in the game’s electrical grid; while most eyes in American Airlines Center followed the puck 20 feet away, those who played the game looked at Thornton and Benn in the instant before Thornton dropped his left glove and Benn shouted, “Let’s go!”

Thornton gently maneuvered one of the Stars defenseman out his way and began checking tape on his right wrist, to ensure his elbow pad did not slide downwards and soften any blow he landed. Benn glided backwards, ungloved hands at his side. The combatants began a large circle, the crowd took its feet with a ghoulish and shouted glee, and the officials backed away to allow space for a resolution. Thornton and Benn negotiated an agreement to remove their helmets, promising neither would break his hand on anything but the other’s bared skull.

Chinstraps undone and hats demurely removed and ceremoniously placed on the ice, the men raised their uncovered knuckles, squared up, circled once, Thornton took a deep breath, and they leaped at each other. The moment was packed to bursting with what chaotic rage the word “fight” should conjure. On a frictionless surface, each moved at the other much faster than two prizefighters would do.

“A fight is a fight” – those were what words happened in my mind. Whatever else these men were – masters in the balletic discipline of balancing on four razor’s edges at 25 miles per hour, careful teammates, loyal friends, fathers, sons – they were savages in the moment, rushing at one another in nearly formless rage, faces honestly contorted by the evil of wanting to hurt another man very badly. These were not, it must be reiterated, goons or enforcers putting on a rally-the-boys spectacle for violence-lusting Texans; these were skill players (Benn had a goal and an assist Saturday) under the spell of a genuine fury, the sort a man feels when he is wronged to requiring satisfaction.

The fight quickly devolved into the exhausting place hockey fights do, with Thornton holding Benn’s jersey with his left fist, yanking him into the jab, and landing a considerable right cross or two to Benn’s left temple – punches that pained both Sunday morning. Benn found Thornton with a right hand as well before both spun to their stockinged kneepads. By prizefighting standards, it was a mere brawl, a donnybrook, a wild-swinging matter of personal grievance with only fractional punching skill employed, which is what brought a catharsis prizefighting will too often lack in 2013.

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

Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s jump Tuesday from HBO to Showtime and parent network CBS is a move that will reveal whether he’s more about money or his place in history.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the deal, but it’s safe to say it will further enrich the fighter with a nickname, Money, that thus far defines him. Forbes is reporting that the 30-month contract could be worth $250 million if he fights as many as six times. On Forbes’ last annual list of top-earning athletes, Mayweather was No.1 with $85 million for two fights – victories over Victor Ortiz and Miguel Cotto.

Barring a string of undisclosed losses at Vegas books, Mayweather doesn’t need the money. What he does need, however, are fights that will substantiate his claim on being the best ever, better than even Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Leonard.

According to several reports, the contract includes a Showtime guarantee of Mayweather’s purses, no matter what the pay-per-view numbers are. It’s not clear if that guarantee is for the full amount, or a percentage. Six fights over the next two-and-a-half years also look unlikely. Mayweather has fought only four times over the last five years. But let’s say he does. And let’s say Showtime guarantees 100 percent of each purse. That’s about $41.66 million-a-fight.

Given Mayweather’s history, there’s danger in that kind of an agreement. He’s a counter puncher in the ring and by nature. Other than NBA and NFL wagers, he’s not known for taking chances. The smallest risk for the biggest reward has always been Mayweather’s formula. With a guarantee already in his pocket, it would be his nature — and human nature — to just protect his undefeated record (43-0, 26 KOs) against opponents who aren’t much of a threat.

If he fights all six times and wins each, he could end the Showtime deal with a victory that equals Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 record. Then, there’s the chance at history, 50-0, and a new network deal as rich, or richer, than the current one.

A lot can, and will, happen between now and then. There’s potential injury. There’s age. Mayweather turns 36 on Sunday. He’ll be 38 when the Showtime contract expires. In his last bout, a unanimous decision over Cotto in May, Mayweather looked as if he had lost some foot speed. The fading Cotto landed punches that left swelling and bruises on a Mayweather face that usually emerges unmarked.

If Mayweather is serious about making history, the damage done by Cotto is a sign that now is the time for him to do it. His Showtime contract opens on May 4 against Robert Guerrero at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand. The surprising Guerrero has turned himself into a credible opponent, but not one with much of a chance against Mayweather. Book makers give him no chance at all. Opening odds against Guerrero were about 11-to-1. History will remember this one only if Guerrero wins.

But we’ll give Mayweather a pass. After a long layoff and nearly three months in jail for domestic abuse, a tune-up is reasonable, especially against somebody as tough and resourceful as Guerrero. Then, however, the test of whether he’s in it for money or history will begin to unfold and ultimately be determined by whom he fights. His career has been built on a record that lacks the rivalries and comebacks that created a Robinson, Ali, Louis and Leonard. All of them encountered adversity and defeat, but each came back in a way that cemented their place among the legends.

A new deal offers Mayweather five chances to cement his own.

Here are the five:

Sergio Martinez. The middleweight champion has said he’s willing to fight Mayweather at 154 pounds. But Mayweather likes to brag that, from 140 to 160 pounds, he can beat anybody. At 160, Mayweather would have a chance to do exactly that.

Manny Pacquiao. Please, already. We’ve been talking about it ad nauseam. Even if Pacquiao’s best is behind him, the fight needs to happen. If it doesn’t, a hole in the Mayweather resume will always be there.

Canelo Alvarez. There’s talk that Mayweather-Alvarez will happen in September. For Mayweather, the sooner, the better. Mayweather’s eroding foot speed might leave him vulnerable to effective combinations from the young Alvarez, who is only going to get better.

Brandon Rios. Mayweather has avoided fighters who are tougher than they are talented. Rios loves to take two, three, four and five punches just to throw one. It’s a dangerous exchange. But there’s no history without one.

Gennady Golovkin. Golovkin needs more name recognition. At least, that’s the theory. During the last year, the middleweight from Kazakhstan has been getting more and more media attention. At least, we know how to spell his last name, even if Martinez promoter Lou DiBella doesn’t want to hear it. For now Golovkin falls into the “Most Avoided” category. That means he’s feared, which also means he’s somebody Mayweather should fight.

But it all depends on what he does with that Showtime contract. Pose, bet and brag about it? Or invest it in a legacy?

Ivan Redkach, of Los Angeles, improved to 14-0, 12 KOs, scoring a KO at 2:06 of the very first round against Sergio Rivera, now 27-11-2, 17 KOs. Scheduled for eight rounds in the lightweight division, the knockout artist Redkach came out of his corner like a tornado, throwing fast combinations to the head and body. Body shots bent Rivera in half and the southpaw Redkach followed up with uppercuts to the chin that dropped his foe for the full count.

The co-feature showcased Travis Peterkin (6-0, 3 KO’s, 175lbs) completely out-classed Thomas Turner (3-2, 2 KO’s, 173lbs) over the course of three rounds. Turner did not land a significant punch the entire fight, while Peterkin brawled his way through three rounds, hurting Turner regularly. Finally, after taking dozens of unanswered punches, the referee was forced to call a halt to the bout at 2:10 of the third round and Peterkin received a TKO victory.
2:10 rd 3

Coming off of his first professional defeat, Thomas DuLorme (16-1, 12 KO’s, 143lbs) took on Edward Brooks (9-3, 3 KO’s, 148lbs). DuLorme took the fight to Brooks from the outset, and it didn’t take long for the KO to come. A measuring left jab followed by a powerful right dropped Brooks hard. Brooks made two attempts to get to his feet, but fell both times. The referee counted to ten at the 1:35 point of the first round, giving DuLorme a first round knockout victory.

Keisher McLeod Wells scored a six round unanimous decision over Jacqueline Park in a Female Flyweight bout.

McLeod Wells, 109 lbs of Brooklyn won by scores of 59-55, 58-56 and 58-56 and is now 6-2. Park, 110 lbs of Burlington, Ontario is 0-2.

In a bout scheduled for four rounds, former amateur national champion Patrick Day (1-0, 1 KO, 154lbs) took on Dominique Foster (1-1-1, 0 KO’s, 154lbs). Day opened up the bout aggressively, and Foster had no answer. He weaved away wildly while he took hard blows throughout the entirety of the first round. As the round ended, Foster complained about pain in his neck, and all three ringside doctors were called over to observe. Eventually, Foster’s trainer made the decision to call the fight off in between rounds. Day was credited with a TKO victory at 3:00 of the first round.

The popular Louis Cruz(1-0, 1 KO, 141lbs) of the Bronx, NY took on a very talented Demond Brock (3-1, 2 KO’s, 143lbs) in a bout scheduled for four rounds. Both fighters didn’t take long getting to know each other. Cruz worked behind his jab and powerful straight right hand while Brock countered to the body. Cruz’jab eventually opened up a cut over Brock’s right eye early in the fight, and that might have been the difference maker for what came later. Two rounds later, while Brock tried throwing a left hook, Cruz threw a better left hook that landed flush on Brock’s chin, flattening Brock. Cruz won by way of stoppage at 1:12 of the third round.

Neuky Santelises (3-0, 2 KO’s, 132lbs) scored a first round stoppage over Denis Madriz (1-0-1, 1 KO, 130lbs) in a scheduled four round Super Featherweight bout.

It was a brawl from the get but Santelises gained control and landed some hard shots before the fight was stopped forty-six seconds into the bout.

Santelises, 132 lbs of Washington Heights, NY is now 4-0 with three knockouts. Madriz, 130 lbs of San Francisco is now 0-1-1.

This is how Saturday ended after Adrien “The Problem” Broner defeated Gavin Rees by corner stoppage in the fifth round.

Max Kellerman: “You beat the hell out of him, would you like to see, and comment, some?”
The Problem: “I mean, everybody knows sex sells. I’m pretty. I want to keep seeing myself on TV.”

Max Kellerman: “And then in round 5?”
The Problem: “Man, I cooked him. He was underwater like a neckbone.”

Max Kellerman: “What’s your best shot?”
The Problem: “Um, my best shot is when I take a picture. Somebody take a picture of me.”

Very good writing happened last week, with Adrien Broner as its subject. Much of it, though, thinned as it progressed, both gaining and losing animus as it applied itself to the chore of Broner’s excavation. Some of it craftily ended with a shrug, other of it marched towards a preordained conclusion, a tariff for what exhaustive access brought an exhausted broadcast, Saturday, once Broner finally did the one thing he is good at, which is fighting. His prefight appearances on camera betrayed a boredom with his own shtick, a boredom arrived at him prematurely as forehead wrinkles. His previous events were preceded and succeeded, immediately, by a self-consumption that betrayed either lunacy or immaturity. If it was lunacy, “The Problem” is cured; if it was immaturity, he is now aged. Broner is not fascinated by Broner any longer – which is one attribute of Floyd Mayweather’s, a genuinely childlike enthusiasm at his own voice amplifying clichés, Broner has not borrowed.

It is not possible a person adept at interpreting the rhythms of other men’s physiques as Broner is does not sense his inquisitors’ growing boredom, and the audience boredom it anticipates. Sycophants’ overwrought mirth convinces no one, finally, and sends natural showmen to the reservoir of their own emotions. But in this sense Broner is akin to the retreaded recording characters hip-hop cynically grinded out after Dr. Dre’s solo album in 1992, guys who rapped, effectively, about how much they wanted to be like other, better guys, rappers passable in the compulsory round – rims, guns, hoes – but bereft of material for the freestyle round, the meaningful one, and ignorant of how much stock even the naivest listener placed in an element of discovery.

Broner, too, confronts an audience conundrum hip-hop’s now-anonymous laggards did not. The Mayweather shtick of which Broner is already tired was not created for aficionados; it was invented years later to capture a millionth pay-per viewer. Mayweather already had aficionados’ esteem, begrudging as it was – for retiring in only his 18th prizefight Genaro Hernandez, for dropping Diego Corrales five times, for granting Jose Luis Castillo an immediate rematch – when he later invented “Money May,” a rapacious character designed to capture revenue by fulfilling stereotypes to provoke strong reactions, beggaring what shallow plots action movies provide.

Aficionados do not go for this. They generally compose an older, smarter set enchanted by violent competition, not special effects. They make ethnic identifications but care little for biography because their identities are settled, and because they’ve been force-fed the same “boxing saved him from the streets” script often enough to know fewer than one in a 100 kids from the streets can fight a lick – rendering such biographical tidbits useless to someone thoughtfully hoping to understanding an athlete whose prowess he admires.

Mayweather had a supporting cast Broner does not yet have; a crazy dad, a crazier uncle, charismatic and accomplished opponents like Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton, and an innovative set of producers at HBO who knew more about creating documentaries than they didn’t know about boxing. Broner has a hairbrush.

He also has a hell of an idea what he is doing in a boxing ring, and while he is not quite the beast he appeared across from tiny Gavin Rees, he is good a fighter as the world has under 147 pounds. He changes men, professional fighting men, from aggressors to targets. By round 4, Saturday, he made Rees do the very thing Antonio Demarco did in his own fourth round with Broner in November: Nervously rest his head someplace Broner’s right fist couldn’t help but find it. As noticed by analyst Lee Wylie, whose deconstructions of boxing’s language are consistently excellent, Broner’s left hook, whether leading or checking, is now among the most formidable punches in prizefighting. It makes rugged men look for refuge inside it – Demarco set his head against Broner’s right glove, Rees occasionally tried Broner’s left elbow – which is the place Broner wants them, and from which he snuffs their fighting spirits.

There is nothing Broner does so well as fight, and he should stop permitting others to ask him to do more than that. Broner is now told, by folks too inexperienced to know better, he should capture aficionados with a formula invented for casual fans, to whose heights a prizefighter does not build without a sturdy and committed foundation. Thoughtless as his detractors may imagine him, Broner does sense this. The very reflex that tells him to rock away from an opponent’s right hand in the first round but step into the same punch in the fourth is one that told him to end things Saturday just as Max Kellerman crashed their postfight interview into a monitor of highlighted knockdowns. Everything about Kellerman’s comportment told Broner the episode was a flop, and better to end it. He didn’t, and discomfited sighs everywhere else were the result.

It is time for an imagined slight of some kind to make Broner stop talking. The best thing Mayweather did after the way he finished the FaceLube spokesman, in 2011, was refuse to talk about it, subsequently bending a sucker punch into a dark bit of strategizing. To the myriad of things Broner borrows from Mayweather, he should now add silence.

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

At the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, NJ Golden Boy Promotions alongside R&R Promotions featured boxing’s best young talent take another step towards greatness. That boxer’s name is Adrien Broner (25-0, 21 KO’s, 134lbs), and on Saturday night he squared off against the rugged former world champion, Gavin Rees (37-1-1, 134 1/2lbs). Broner has remained undefeated by blending his amazing speed with raw power …. And of course a pinch of flash to go along. Rees came out swinging to start the bout. The smaller of the two fighters, Rees put his head down and charged in while taking head snapping blows right on the chin. His aggression might have won him that first round, but Broner was extremely efficient with his punches and was landing at a higher rate as the bout progressed.

Broner’s amazing ability drew “ohhs” and “ahhs” from the crowd, and Rees toughness and strong will drew cheers from his supporters. Entering the fourth round, the fight was already very entertaining, but Broner was completely in control. In a flash, a right uppercut landed clear on Rees’ chin, sending him crashing onto his back. With the crowd in a frenzy, Broner felt it necessary to break into a dance.

Rees made it out of the round, and seemed fairly competent in the fifth round until a vicious shot to the body sent him to his knees. It was a beautiful punch on the inside that was timed to absolute perfection. Rees, beat the count, but was in a difficult position. Broner proved that he could hurt Rees to the head and body. Rees had to make a decision as to how high or low he should place his guard; to protect his body or head? He decided to go with what probably hurt the most at that moment; his body. Broner capitalized by landing numerous punches upstairs. He was looking to close the show. Rees’ corner understood this, and his trainer wisely threw in the towel to spare his fighter more punishment. Adrien Broner won by TKO at 2:59 of the 5th round.

In an exciting clash of styles, Sakio Bika (30-5, 21 KO’s, 167 1/2lbs) squared off against the relatively unknown Nikola Sjekloca (25-0, 7 KO’s, 167 1/2lbs). Bika took control of the action quickly. Sjekloca possessed the typical European rigid style. Standing upright and moving straight backwards and side to side. While that works for some, it was not cutting it for Sjekloca. Bika’s awkward style gave his opponent fits while giving himself angles to land multiple combinations. After the first few rounds of the fight, many in attendance felt that Bika could win by knockout. Like flicking a switch Sjekloca got into his groove by the middle rounds. It was still clearly Bika’s fight, but Sjekloca now made it competitive. He was often able to time Bika’s unorthodox upper body movement with his right hand, and he certainly earned Bika’s respect during those middle rounds. Still, Bika managed to kit it up into another gear by the late rounds and essentially shut down whatever abilities Sjekloca possessed. The bout made it’s way to the scorecards and they read 119-109, 118-112, and 120-108 all in favor of Bika for a unanimous decision victory. He is now the WBC mandatory for Andre Ward’s title.

Demetrius Hopkins (32-2-1, 13 KO’s, 152 1/2lbs) came out to a throng of cheers when he took to the ring against Charles Whitaker (39-13-2, 23 KO’s, 154lbs) for the USBA light middleweight title. Those cheers quickly turned to boos as the action was anything but exciting. Hopkins has always been a methodical fighter, so the pace wasn’t unexpected for those in attendance. Whitaker, the bigger of the two fighters had very little desire to engage Hopkins, and this made for a very boring few rounds. After a round of boos, Hopkins lulled Whitaker into backing straight back into the ropes, and unleashed a solid overhand right that sent Whitaker down. This made things more interesting, but whatever little desire Whitaker had of throwing punches was immediately thrown out the window after the knockdown. Hopkins just continuously stalked his opponent and landed his right hand whenever he managed to get Whitaker to stop back pedaling. At the end of the sixth round, as Whitaker was hearing more boos from the crowd, he complained of loss of vision in his left eye. His corner was forced to stop the bout. The ruling was that Hopkins won by TKO at 3:00 of the sixth round.

The once rising star, Vincente Escobedo (25-5, 15 KO’s, 129 1/2lbs) took the ring for a comeback fight after losing to Adrien Broner last summer. His opponent was the battle tested Edner Cherry (30-6-2, 17 KO’s, 129 1/2lbs). He made a bad mistake. Cherry just simply out-hustled Escobedo from the get-go; putting in most of his work to the body, which completely opened Escobedo up for punches upstairs. Cherry’s work rate kept Escobedo off balance throughout most of the night and it prevented Escobedo from getting a rhythm. The second round saw Cherry floor his opponent, and it was more of the same from there on out. By the sixth round, Escobedo seemed completely spent, and a big hook sent him crashing down onto the canvas. Escobedo barely made it to his feet, and the referee allowed the fight to continue. Cherry, on the other hand was aware that time was running out on the round, and stormed right in once both fighters were cleared to box. More hooks came in and Escobedo went down again just as the bell to end the round. Referee Allan Huggins wisely stopped the bout right then and there, giving Cherry a TKO victory at 3:00 of the sixth round. Escobedo was once considered to be the top prospect in boxing. It seems unlikely that he will ever become a player at 130lbs or any other weight for that matter.

Former Olympian Rau’Shee Warren (2-0, 0KO’s, 116 1/2lbs) made easy work of Richard Hernandez (0-5, 0 KO’s, 115 1/2lbs) en route to a TKO victory. Warren, a friend and training partner of Broner, was just too fast, too strong, and just flat out too good for Hernandez. After a dominant first round, Warren kicked it into a higher gear in the second, scoring two knockdowns that prompted Hernandez’ corner to throw in the towel to spare him any further embarrassment and pain. Warren won by TKO at 2:04 of the second round.

In an anti-climactic fight, Robert Easter Jr. (2-0, 2 KOs, 133lbs) opened up a cut over the right eye of Jose Valderrama (2-3, 2 KOs, 135lbs). Easter was dominating the first round when the cut occurred. Valderrama was visibly distracted by the bleeding and placement of the cut. Nobody seemed surprised when the ringside physician advised the referee to stop the bout. Easter was credited with a first round TKO at the 3:00 point of the first.

Another Olympian, Jamel Herring (1-0, 1 KO, 134 1/2lbs) boxed beautifully against the outmatched Carlos Lopez (4-2, 0KO’s 137lbs). After a three-round beat down, the bout was called at the 3:00 point of the third round, giving Herring a TKO victory.

ADRIEN BRONER VS. GAVIN REES POST-FIGHT QUOTES

ADRIEN BRONER, WBC Lightweight World Champion

“I knew he [Rees] was going to come to fight. He’s a world-class fighter.

“He [Rees] kept coming. He threw every shot like it was his best shot. I knew he would hang.

“When you have two world-class fighters going toe-to-toe, it’s going to be a great fight.

“Thanks to everyone who came out. It’s [NBA] All-Star Weekend and you came to see an All-Star.

“He’s [Rees] tougher than a steak that’s been well done.

“If I fought Ricky Burns, he would get burnt out. I want to fight him, but if he doesn’t want to fight me. Oh well.

“There are high expectations for me to take boxing over after [Floyd] Mayweather and [Manny] Pacquiao hang up their gloves.

“Tonight was a nice fight. I have to go back and watch it. Overall I felt pretty. I just looked in the mirror and I still look good.

“I would fight 10 times a year if I could.”

GAVIN REES, Former World Champion

“He’s [Broner] the best I have ever been in [the ring] with. It’s not a case of whether he will go on to be a super star… he is already there.

“I made a lot of mistakes and I believe I have a better skill set than that.

“I knew he [Broner] hit hard, but his power just stunned me. I got reckless and that was the end of the night, but I was always going to get back up.

“I would have gone on until I was knocked out cold. I disagree with Gary pulling me out, but he knows that I would have gotten hurt. We are good friends and he was just looking out for me.”

MIKE STAFFORD, Broner’s Trainer

“We knew Gavin was going to come in [to fight]. I wanted Adrien to take his time and pick his punches.

“He made mistakes and Adrien countered each mistake he made.

“Gavin was a great fighter for two rounds. I knew he was going to try his best to take Adrien out and Adrien capitalized on his mistakes and picked him apart.

“Believe it or not, you haven’t seen the whole package deal. It’s a secret that we behold in the gym.”

GARY LOCKETT, Rees’ Trainer

“I was going to pull him out in the fourth. I considered pulling him out after the third, but I knew he would say ‘there is no way.'”

Los Angeles middleweight Sergio Mora has agreed to fight Jesus Gonzales on April 19 in Phoenix, Gonzales’ hometown, but only if the bout is televised.

No television, no fight, Mora said Thursday night.

“We’ve settled on the money, the weight, the date and place,’’ Mora said. “But I don’t want to go into the other guy’s town, get robbed and it’s not on TV.’’

As of Thursday, there was no television deal for the bout at a still undetermined location in Phoenix.

Mora (23-3-2, 7 KOs) said he hoped to hear within a few days as to whether Fan Base Promotions of Calgary, Canada, has a television deal. Fan Base promoted a Gonzales victory over Francisco Sierra in July 2011 at US Airways Center in a bout televised by ESPN2. An estimated crowd of 5,000 turned out to see Gonzales (27-2, 14 KOs), a former prospect who continues to be popular in Phoenix. Some argue that the live gate was hurt by an early start dictated by the ESPN schedule. The card at the downtown Phoenix arena began at about 5 p.m. on a work day.

There’s no guarantee that television coverage eliminate hometown bias in the judges and/or referee.

“I just want to make sure that the boxers, people in the business and fans know what happened,’’ Mora said.

Mora says he was robbed twice on the scorecards in losses to Brian Vera, a Texas middleweight. A split decision favored Vera in Fort Worth in 2011. Vera got a majority decision in San Antonio in August. Both were telecast by Telefutura. Mora argues he won both. The video won’t reverse either defeat.

“But it’s always there, if you want to see who really won,’’ Mora said.

Gonzales, who plans to be back at 160 pounds after fighting at super-middleweight, is already planning to train in Las Vegas. Jeff Mayweather will work as his trainer.

“I’ll be in training camp next week, in Las Vegas with Jeff,’’ said Gonzales, who hasn’t fought since emerging Adonis Stevenson knocked him out in a devastating first-round stoppage in Montreal a year ago. “I think Mora is a smart fighter, so I really have to be in top shape and sharp, because his goal is to try and make me look bad. I think this fight will put me back in a great position in my career.’’

Mora is also restless for a fight he hopes will re-ignite his career.

“It’s been a long layoff,’’ said Mora, who got a draw in 2010 with Shane Mosley, then a fading legend. “After that big knockout, I think that this would just be another fight for him. Nobody has ever beaten me decisively. I need a win that will put me back on track.’’

And on TV.

HOUSTON – At this city’s Museum of Fine Arts is a historic exhibition called “Portrait of Spain” that is historic, in part, because of the decimated Spanish economy that encouraged Museo Nacional del Prado to begin lending to American museums a trove of masterworks created for 17th century royalty and expected not to leave their homeland. While the reason to attend such an exhibition is to see, outside Madrid, six-foot-high works by Diego Velazquez, an artist Spain would argue remains the world’s greatest portraitist, the Velazquez works may not be the exhibition’s most awesome.

In our sport’s cancelled first quarter of 2013, it appears a better pursuit to examine our recollections of masterworks abstractly and apply what abstractions result than try the intellectual’s feat of elevating lesser events and their participants to prove it can be done. Let us consider, then, prodigy, like Adrien Broner’s and Floyd Mayweather’s, and prodigy-cum-mastery, like Muhammad Ali’s, in an age marked by its postmodernism – an architectural example of which, this city’s RepublicBank Center, adorns the page.

It is the embroidery on the stockings one is most likely to miss, whether gazing briefly at Antonio De Pereda’s “The relief of Genoa by the second Marquis of Santa Cruz” or studying it for hours at MFAH’s current exhibition. Of the many colorful figures in the enormous work (it is 9 1/2 feet high and 12 feet wide), six wear stockings that are visible and feature embroidery. It is a detail that belies the age of its artist – for Pereda was only 24 when he created it. In the masterpiece’s center, where the doge’s red velvet gown reflects the marquis’ steel breastplate that is itself reflective of the doge’s gown, one finds evidence of what tricks Pereda already knew, tricks enough to be invited to contribute to a Hall of Realms that would feature Velazquez himself. Pereda probably never surpassed, in four decades of trying, what he did at age 24.

Therein lies a lesson about prodigy: It is wrong to assume about it a steady rate of acceleration, though we invariably do – “If he is capable of this at such a young age, imagine what the future holds!” Prodigy rarely works like that. While most every master, of whatever craft, begins as a prodigy, very few prodigies grow to become masters, and more frustratingly still, many of them fail even to surpass their later-arriving peers whose rate of acceleration is both lower and more constant.

HBO’s Max Kellerman alluded to something like this during the telecast of Adrien Broner’s last match, an eight-round going-through of Antonio Demarco in November; most of the signature matches in a master’s career happen well past his physical prime, as the prime is a perishable thing. The greatest Muhammad Ali the world saw, according to Howard Cosell, was the 24-year-old who stopped Cleveland Williams in three rounds in a now-defunct concept called Astrodome that stands, still, six miles south of where this is written, and yet, who that recounts the achievements of Ali’s career thinks to include that Williams fight in his first 10 citations?

There is not yet evidence Adrien Broner’s talent may not be a prodigious one that grows into mastery, and no such evidence is expected Saturday when he defends his lightweight title against Gavin Rees, a 32-year-old Welshman making his maiden voyage across the pond for his 40th prizefight – which is another way of imparting that Rees is a designated opponent for Broner. Expect dancing and showmanship from Broner and zealous overselling by HBO who, in case it went unnoticed, has no real pay-per-view fixture to replace what revenue is now lost to Manny Pacquiao and will be lost soon to Floyd Mayweather.

Broner promotes himself as an eventual replacement for Mayweather, and while that is possible, it is unlikely, as Broner, who has most of Mayweather’s talent and maturity, is about to be asked to support an economy at a much, much younger age than Mayweather was when he assumed half the burden from Oscar De La Hoya and shared it four years with Pacquiao. The mistakes Mayweather made between his 24th birthday (Broner’s will come in July) and his fight with De La Hoya were many and also comparatively unnoticed because Mayweather’s then-promoter, Top Rank, had other assets in its portfolio, including De La Hoya himself. Broner, managed by Al Haymon and sublet to Golden Boy Promotions, hasn’t the same luxury of obscurity Mayweather had – and everything one needs to know about Broner’s emotional IQ can be learned by asking “The Problem” if he thinks obscurity and luxury may coexist.

There is worse news for those who would profit by Broner’s ascendency, though, and it is the judgment on imitation passed by this, our postmodern age. If one seeks to be a blatant imitation of another, he’d best do it ironically – à la Hector Camacho Jr. – and even then expect harsh reviews and, more importantly to anyone who’d try such a gambit, diminished returns. Postmodernism, as an aesthetic philosophy, allows junk to be praised so long as it is original but shows little mercy to others’ ideas reworked even carefully or faithfully.

There appears little that is careful or particularly faithful in Broner’s rework of Mayweather’s invention, and so, unless one thinks a talking hairbrush on free social media is the way to a million pay-per viewers, it is time to hope someone discovers originality within Broner by subjecting his prodigious talent to transcendent competition – which Broner, through no fault of his own, will not find at 135 pounds or even 140, if we’re being honest.

Unbeknownst to them, a growing number of people’s future paychecks depend on Broner’s willingness to do something startling, like leap from lightweight to welterweight, right now, while he is in his prime, that fleeting thing.

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

Makeup hid the facial tattoo, but there’s no disguise for Mike Tyson.

Never will be.

Tyson’s guest appearance Wednesday night on Law & Order: SVU has been called competent by television critics, who know a lot more about the performing arts than anybody in a ringside seat. Tyson plays Reggie Rhodes, a death-row inmate and victim of multiple child rapes.

Tyson’s role is complicated and controversial, mostly because of his rape conviction in 1992. From this ringside seat, there’s nothing new about that. He’s always been complicated and controversial, regardless of whether that role has him between the ropes, on stage, or in prison.

Like boxing promoters, that’s what Law & Order: SVU was selling. Complications and controversy attract an audience. No secret in that formula. Tyson wears both better than ever. Like the Maori tattoo he got in 2003, they look as if they’ve always been there

When NBC announced the episode a few months ago, there were predictable condemnations and a Change.org petition with more than 15,000 signatures demanding that Tyson be removed from the cast. No chance of that. Promoters and producers, alike, understand the value of publicity, controversial or not.

No matter what you believe about Tyson, his new found life on stage is as fascinating as his former one was in the ring. It’s also another contradiction among many in a personality that is predator, prey and everything in between. Tyson can’t act. He just plays himself. Few do it so well. It’s the genuine in him, I think, that makes him so compelling.

In the Rhodes role, Tyson appears in the prison garb he has worn and looks out from behind the bars he has seen. Early in the show, the predator’s anger flashes when he tells detective Fin Tutuola, played by Ice-T, to get the hell away from him. The prey’s vulnerability is there when he tells an attorney and detective about growing up as an abused kid. In the end, he hugs the attorney and a detective who saved him from the executioner’s needle. Within an hour, it’s Tyson in a shot glass, 180 proof.

There are some subtle touches. The Rhodes character is an inmate in an Ohio prison, which is the state where Tyson’s former promoter, Don King, served almost four years on a manslaughter charge committed in Cleveland during the 1960s. The Rhodes character was convicted for a murder in Cleveland, King’s hometown.

Since Tyson’s release in 1995 after three years in an Indiana prison for rape, he has always said he was innocent of the crime. Believe what you want about his conviction. I have no way of knowing what happened on that night in Indianapolis with Desiree Washington.

I do know this: As a writer for The Arizona Republic, I reported in 2001 that Tyson underwent a polygraph in Phoenix that showed he was being truthful when he said he did not commit rape. At the time, he was being investigated for sexual assault in Big Bear, Calif., where he had been training for a victory over Brian Nielsen in Denmark.

According to a transcript of a polygraph conducted on Aug. 8 of 2001, Tyson answered four key questions. Three asked whether the alleged victim was forced into sex, whether she was harmed and whether she was restrained. Tyson answered no to each. In the fourth question, he was asked whether the sex was consensual. Yes, he said.

On the polygraph chart, Tyson scored +24. According to a scale devised at the University of Utah, he needed a +6 to be truthful. A -6 would have judged him a liar.

About 10 days after the polygraph, the San Bernardino (Calif.) County Attorney’s Office dropped the investigation of an incident alleged to have happened in Big Bear in mid-July.

Then, there is Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who cast doubt on Tyson’s 1992 conviction in his 2004 book, America On Trial, Inside The Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation.

Dershowitz writes that evidence was withheld from the jury. Meanwhile, the jury also heard evidence that Dershowitz says was false. The professor also writes that three witnesses were not allowed to testify. He argues that their testimony would have kept Tyson out of a jail.

If this sounds familiar, it is. Wednesday’s fictional plot includes withheld evidence and altered evidence in a rigged process that resulted in the death penalty for Tyson’s character.

Coincidence? Maybe.

But Tyson’s life has always imitated art.