DALLAS – Four miles north of this city’s Main Street District, on Southern Methodist University’s beautiful campus, stands Meadows Museum – a collection of Spanish art so extensive it fulfills founder Algur H. Meadows’ vision of a “Prado on the Prairie.” Complementing perhaps the finest collection of Diego Velazquez’s work outside Madrid are works by Spanish masters Murillo, Goya and El Greco. Here hangs, as well, an excellent Fernando Yanez work of Saint Sebastian, cheekily called “the pin-cushion saint” by art students.

Sebastian, a third-century Christian martyr, was a subject treated often by Renaissance painters and always with arrows piercing his body. Tradition says those arrows represent pestilence. Martyrdom, pestilence and masterpieces compose a vantage fitting as any from which to preview Saturday’s undercard scrap between Colorado’s Mike Alvarado and California’s Brandon Rios, a junior-welterweight title-eliminator match that will begin HBO’s “Boxing After Dark” program. It is a fight to which both men seem eager to martyr themselves, a fight to rid boxing briefly of its pestilence, and a fight more likely to become a masterpiece than any this year or next.

Beside my laptop sits a six-year-old media credential that acts as a reminder Mike Alvarado was once something quite different from what he is today. On June 2, 2006, Alvarado represented a future of sorts for his promoter, Top Rank. That night in Tucson, Ariz., at a venue called Club Envy, Alvarado was the main event even if he wasn’t in the main event.

The night’s final match, actually, was Jesus Soto-Karass against “Cool” Vince Phillips in a brutal fight broadcasted by Telefutura’s once-invaluable “Solo Boxeo” program. Soto-Karass beat down the man who stopped hall of famer Kostya Tszyu in 1997 – and yes, Phillips, himself, is on this year’s ballot – in a fashion so assiduous and harsh Phillips tried to retire immediately afterwards. Programming issues, though, prevented Phillips’ public retirement, and so, unsurprisingly, Phillips was back in a prizefighting ring, this time in Russia, one year later.

But my credential makes no reference to Phillips or Soto-Karass. It emphasizes boxing, Top Rank and Mike Alvarado – in order of font size. Alvarado went through a welterweight target named Maximino Cuevas that night, stopping the overmatched New Yorker in round 5. One paragraph about Alvarez from the Tucson report stands out:

“Despite absorbing a number of right hands in the first round, Mike Alvarado quickly adjusted to Cuevas’s style by the start of the second, allowing more distance and landing straight punches. In the closing moments of Round 2, Alvarado rocked Cuevas with a fierce right uppercut that was the fight’s best punch.”

Two notes: 1. Six years ago Alvarado was open to right hands as he is today, and 2. Alvarado’s arsenal included, and one assumes still does, a fight-changing right uppercut. That is germane to Saturday’s match because the right uppercut is not a punch anyone but the peerless Juan Manuel Marquez throws as a lead. It is ever a counter, one thrown at a volume-punching aggressor who unadvisedly gets his weight over the lead knee. It is a punch executed by taking a quick hop backwards, planting one’s right elbow just about on the right hip and shooting both upwards at once. The counter right uppercut is devastating for a volume puncher – the one blow they all fear. It requires of its thrower poise enough to take a hop backwards, geometric awareness enough to establish a tempting plain for the aggressor to stretch himself over, and timing enough to drop that aggressor’s chin on an upcoming fist.

In 2006, after only 28 months of prizefighting, Mike Alvarado’s record was 14-0. Seventy-six months later, Alvarado’s record is 33-0. This dramatically slowed rate is attributable, in part, to time Alvarado spent in jail. His career has been a disappointment. He is 32 years old, which surprises fans who believe they’ve made the discovery of a new action fighter. Alvarado is more exciting than ever, now, because he has to be.

He and Brandon Rios are the sorts of fighters Top Rank makes an industry of. They are the prizefighters Bob Arum threatens other fighters with, the way he shook Antonio Margarito, like a fist, at Jose Luis Castillo when the latter got his rubber match with Diego Corrales canceled because of twice missing weight.

If that sounds at all familiar, it is because twice is how many times Rios has missed the lightweight limit of 135 pounds since ruining Urbano Antillon in July 2011. Remember, the plan was for Rios to fight Juan Manuel Marquez in Cowboys Stadium three months ago, not Mike Alvarado in a co-main event on the tennis courts of Home Depot Center.

Alvarado can outbox Rios because Alvarado is a better athlete than Rios and because, as Richard Abril demonstrated in April, Rios can be thoroughly outboxed. Whatever his amateur pedigree, Rios’ ring IQ is questionable. Alvarado chooses to make savagery with others because he has to, Rios because he can – for when he has to, as he did against Abril, Rios often trips over himself. Alvarado represents for Rios his largest opponent; Rios represents for Alvarado his best.

Both men need redemption. Their fight is, in essence, Margarito versus Margarito – and promises to be that entertaining. In redeeming themselves through suffering, in absorbing abuse that will probably shorten their lives and invariably compromise what health they take to retirement, Alvarado and Rios will also, like Saint Sebastian, rid us of the pestilence that adheres to our sport – for a spell anyway.

I’ll take Alvarado, MD-12, in a savage affair that redeems both men.

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

The nickname is Bam Bam. Bold and Bolder might be more appropriate for Brandon Rios, who isn’t afraid of promises or punishment.

Rios’ confrontation with Mike Alvarado on Oct. 13 at Carson, Calif., is generating buzz about a possible Fight of the Year. But Rios raised the bar, or at least the blood lust, for a junior-welterweight bout that could upstage the main event, Nonito Donaire versus Toshiaki Nishioka.

“A Micky Ward-Arturo Gatti kind of fight,’’ Rios said Thursday during a conference call.

For bruises, danger and drama, Ward-Gatti is the modern standard. It’s not the sort of fight that Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Andre Ward would seek. They see themselves as scientists who try to balance their craft with a sweet balance of offense and defense. Their philosophy has been heard for as long as there has been an opening bell. They live by one credo: Hit and not get hit. Delete the not from that formula and add as many hits as possible, and you’ve got a pretty good idea at what Rios hopes to inflict and perhaps endure.

That stretch of canvas between the ropes is no checker board for Rios, who is moving up in weight, to 140 pounds, after a controversial failure to make the lightweight limit, 135. He has no patience for what he calls “little chess games.’’

When Rios looks at the unbeaten Alvarado, he could be looking into a mirror. He sees a similar style and the same stubborn streak of pride that demands, if not welcomes, a walk though harm’s way.

“It’s going to be a bloody, massacre fight,’’ said Rios, who told trainer Robert Garcia that he has been dreaming about a chance to do battle in a fight that would be the equal of Gatti-Ward. “I’ve been telling Robert since I started as a professional I’ve been waiting for that type of fight and hopefully this is that fight.’’

Whether that chance will be there in an outdoor ring above the Home Depot Center’s tennis court, however, depends on Alvarado. Alvarado’s trainer, Henry Delgado, left it open-ended as to whether Rios will encounter the Alvarado he expects.

Fans and media have yet to see Alvarado’s boxing skill, Delgado says. His instincts draw him into exchanges from which there is no retreat.

“He makes it tougher than it has to be, because he’s a warrior,’’ Delgado said. “But we’ve got some surprises coming. We have options, lots of options.’’

Options are often forgotten after the first big punch lands, of course. That’s when even the most seasoned fighter reverts to what he knows and does best.

“He looks to come forward; I like to come forward,’’ said Rios, who says there’s nothing new about a heavier weight which he believes makes him stronger and able to hit with the power of a welterweight. “I don’t change my style.’’

Or his hopes of realizing a dream that many avoid like a nightmare.

Tyson can’t escape 20-year-old controversy
New Zealand’s withdrawal of Mike Tyson’s request to enter the country because of his conviction for raping Desiree Washington is just another sad chapter in a 20-year-old controversy.

Tyson, who was scheduled to speak at series of events in New Zealand, has long denied that he committed the crime. Legal experts, including Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, criticized the 1992 Indianapolis trial and Tyson’s legal defense.

In 2001, Tyson underwent a lie-detector test in Phoenix, where he was living at the time. According to test results acquired by The Arizona Republic, Tyson was truthful when he said he did not rape Washington. But the conviction will always be on his record. Fair or not, it also will always be there for people seeking to make political capital out of it, no matter what he says or they believe.

AZ Notes
Unbeaten Phoenix prospect Jose Benavidez Jr. (16-0, 13 KOs) has a change in opponents for his undercard appearance on Donaire- Nishioka undercard on Oct. 13. Benavidez now is scheduled to face Pavel Miranda (17-7-1, 7 KOs) of Tijuana, Mexico.

Iron Boy Promotions of Phoenix is back at Celebrity Theatre Saturday, Oct. 6, with a card full of young fighters, including Phoenix super-bantamweight Emilio Garcia (6-0-1) against Jensen Ramirez (2-1-1) of Tucson. Opening bell is scheduled for 6 p.m.

SAN ANTONIO – Five miles northwest of the Alamo stands a remarkable edifice and concept known colloquially as “The McNay,” Texas’ first museum of modern art. It comprises a collection of more than 700 works bequeathed by Marion Koogler McNay, a childless and eccentric heiress who, in her femininity and childlessness and eccentricity and wealth, helped compose a tiny cohort of 20th century Americans: Those who were not for sale.

Last week The McNay opened its fall exhibition, “Estampas de La Raza,” a somewhat forgettable collection of prints that nevertheless features a marvelous mini-exhibition, “America’s Finest,” by local artist Vincent Valdez. “America’s Finest” comprises, among other works, six large, graphite-on-paper portraits of prizefighters. Expertly hung in a minimalist style that spaces the rich works – pencil drawings with no backgrounds, framed by white wood – evenly across a bare white wall, “America’s Finest” reminds South Texas art aficionados what talent lives in our community and prizefighting aficionados how many things our sport is about.

What Valdez is after is boxing as metaphor. In interviews, he’s confessed he is not enamored of prizefighting. There is an element of brutality to it that likely offends what reservoir of empathy makes him capable of art. He is able to wade into brutality’s immediate effects and distant consequences and make art of them, but he is doubtfully drawn to the living, bleeding spectacle of one man pulping another’s face and spirit.

The nearly demolished human spirit is another thing Valdez is after. He is not interested in the underdog’s senseless self-belief – that uncertainty of outcome Carl von Clausewitz taught us is a prerequisite for courage – but rather what irrepressible thing makes a fighter lumber forward to collect a whupping in silence. Valdez is after what possesses a man, far removed from any chance of victory, to sanctify an unwillingness to be broken. As a creator Valdez knows such men are not like him; they construct nothing. But he understands, and proves, they are essential as fundament; they are the crushed and melted and hardened elements upon which an ethnicity constructs its identity in America. In this way the characters Valdez portrays are both our “finest” in their superiority of character, and in the nature of what particles remain once they’ve been pulverized for our amusement.

All Valdez’s works are evocative. None is substandard. They begin with a man whose shimmering trunks bear the Star of David atop the outside of his thick right quadriceps. He is followed by a Native American, done up in a headdress and trunks that partially read “Big Chief” – his promotional costume complemented by Saint Sebastian’s arrows, both as a reminder of what comical gimmickry boxing employs, and what cultural expiation the man performs.

The only of Valdez’s six drawings that features an immediately recognizable figure is his black prizefighter – one who, with his heavy eyelids and gangly frame, could be no one but the Motor City Cobra, Thomas “Hitman” Hearns. Curiously, Valdez situates him atop a black panther-skin rug. The next figure is either an Irishman or an Italian, coins and bills scattered at his feet, a tattoo of a sinking ship circled by banners that read “THIS TOO SHALL PASS” on his tensed left forearm.

Valdez’s most interesting study is his Latino prizefighter. Posed in a ready stance, his right heel lifted, the man wears two teardrop tattoos beside his left eye, signifying either familiars he has lost or others’ familiars he has taken. The band of his trunks has an “N” placed before its iconic “EVERLAST” brand. Beside the fighter a memorial wreath hangs on a squat stand, and across its flowers slumps a satin ribbon whose calligraphic letters spell “NI MODO,” a Spanish phrase used in dismissal. Literally translated, “ni modo” means “neither mode,” the exact opposite of what English speakers mean by “either way.” Figuratively translated, Valdez’s “NI MODO” means “it didn’t matter”; whatever volition the individual showed, larger forces predetermined his ruin.

The final figure is an Asian fighter, a serpentine dragon tattoo circling his shoulders and wrists, with his face, blood streaming from its right nostril, a reminder to those old enough to remember the misshapen countenance of Duk Koo Kim – a South Korean man killed by an American prizefighting ring. An improvised altar of tattered prayer cards and candles spreads before the toe of his left boot.

Much like the black and white photographs in Holger Keifel’s “Box” (a book found in museum giftshops), Valdez’s work shows what the violence of our sport does to the human form. Valdez’s “Big Chief” has much of the left side of his face caved-in from punches, his eye shuttered and its brow peaked and sharpened, his left cheek swollen, even the feathers on the end of his headdress seemingly shaved away. Whomever’s right fist hit him however many times, its concussion induced a stroke victim’s dull mask.

Valdez concerns himself with the aloneness in which a prizefighter traffics. While members of a prizefighter’s ethnicity elect him their savage representative, someone to remind other Americans what a man who goes to synagogue or lives in Chinatown can do them if wrongfully provoked, he is wholly alone in the violence he perpetrates and endures. In a poetic explanation stenciled on the wall opposite his drawings, Valdez is more celebrative than political but confident in what his work is about:

“These poor men, these boxers, these representatives of multitudes
ranked by color of skin, width of nose, and kink of hair,
stand guard above the sacred symbols that mortared and bricked,
hammered and sawed, planted and picked this country
with broken, bandaged hands.”

Praise boxing, then, for inspiring this art, for giving our flinching contemporary culture a place it can still revel in ethnic pride and work through its resultant conflicts. Boxing is America’s most truthful sport, and praise Valdez for capturing it.

*

Author’s note: Large photographs of four of Vincent Valdez’s six portraits, including the one above, can be found at the artist’s website.

*

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

Talk about Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. is back like a bad hangover. Everybody seems to have an interpretation, if not a prediction, in the wake of a settlement to Pacquiao’s defamation suit and his offer to give Mayweather the lion’s share in a 55-45 split.

It’s as if Pacquiao’s rematch with Juan Manuel Marquez in their fourth meeting on Dec. 8 doesn’t matter. Maybe, it doesn’t, which is good reason for Marquez to worry about Robbery IV. The public and media fixation on Pacquiao-Mayweather won’t go away and perhaps won’t let anything stand in its way

That said, there’s been a shift in public sentiment and in Pacquiao himself. Combine the two, and only Marquez matters – or should – in any talk about Pacquiao-Mayweather. If Pacquiao loses, the Filipino Congressman becomes a full time politician. He has talked about leaving the ring. Marquez could hasten that departure.

Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach is concerned on a couple of levels.

First, there’s sympathy for Marquez and his argument that he was robbed in the narrow decisions, split and majority, that went against him in the first and second rematches. Scorecards can be like ballots. They’re subjective.

“I think we go into the fight three to four rounds down already,’’ Roach said about the Marquez bout when it was still being negotiated a couple of days before he worked Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.’s loss to Sergio Martinez on Sept. 15 at Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center.

That means Pacquaio has to win by knockout. That would be a first. Marquez, who has six losses, has never been stopped. Given the narrow 36 rounds that already have transpired and Pacquiao’s record of no stoppages in five fights since a 2009 TKO of Miguel Cotto, Pacquiao by KO is a very tall order.

Roach says the task in camp at the Wild Card Gym will be to rediscover Pacquiao’s old aggression, which has withered for reasons that aren’t clear.

Compassion, perhaps the born-again expression of Pacquiao’s return to a Catholic lifestyle, has lessened the ferocity for which there was no refuge for so many of his fallen foes, Roach says. It was evident in 2010 when Pacquiao almost begged referee Laurence Cole to stop what he wouldn’t in a brutal decision over Antonio Margarito at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Tex.

Then again, it wasn’t enough in 2004 when Pacquiao, then at his ferocious best, knocked down Marquez three times in the first round, but never out during the next 11 in a bout that ended in a draw.

Roach says Pacquiao’s physical skills are as sharp as ever, although there seemed to be a missing gear in the hand speed throughout his controversial loss by decision to Timothy Bradley on June 9. From Erik Morales to Oscar De La Hoya, Pacquiao threw punches at a rate that overwhelmed. Against Bradley, that rate proved pedestrian.

But Roach is convinced that those hands will move at a ruthless rate if Pacquiao’s heart still has the streak of larceny needed in a brutal business.

Will it?

“I don’t know,’’ Roach said. “That’s the challenge.’’

The only one.

The best writing in Thomas Hauser’s new collection, “And the New . . .” (The University of Arkansas Press; $24.95), barely treats boxing at all. Hauser’s best writing, instead, comes in his book’s final piece, “Elvis (and Ali),” and concerns itself with the ruinous effect celebrity, and what brings celebrity, visits on the lives of exceptionally gifted Americans.

Hauser evidently set out to write about Elvis Presley, but because Hauser is a writer, because he discovers a subject during its writing and not necessarily before, he found in his treatment of Presley a unique metaphor and parallel with Muhammad Ali: Both men were shorn – of hair in Presley’s case, of the heavyweight championship in Ali’s – by the establishment, and then softened in exile, their sharpest edges grinded on, before being permitted to return as icons. Presley was not the same force after his time in the Army, and Ali was not the same force after refusing induction.

“And they were so good when they were young,” Hauser wistfully concludes about those two Americans on the final page of his latest book.

At 235 pages, “And the New . . .” is the shortest of Hauser’s recent collections about boxing. It is more digestible. There is little missing from the 80 or so pages not in this book. Any boy who is eight years old today and just hearing about this sport of ours, a boy who in 10 years will be an adult who visits a bookstore to learn about boxing generally and what happened in 2011 specifically, will find as apt a summary of the year in this Hauser collection as another.

The likelihood, though, is that no one who reaches adulthood in 2022 will have a bookstore to visit. If you’ve been in a Barnes & Noble lately you already sense it; the last of our country’s largest booksellers is a Starbucks sharing floorspace with Toys “R” Us and Sam Goody, with an airy attic of books whose covers sparkle with raised print. Hauser and his work stand athwart this movement because it is exceedingly important to Hauser that whatever he writes make its way onto paper, a medium of endurance for a few millennia now.

“And the New . . .” is a more optimistic book than Hauser’s last collection, “Winks and Daggers,” felt. If boxing is not in a more hopeful place today, it is at least in a place where sabotage is suspected less. Everyone is acting in a rapaciously self-interested way, business as usual, but there appears a modicum less cynicism now that the premium networks have had their little shakeups, with HBO Sports’ chief pursuing other opportunities, Showtime Sports’ leader replacing him, and a lawyer replacing him. To revisit some of the programming choices made in 2010 and 2011 by HBO is to wonder if there were not poison pills being sewn; if the network’s loyalty to certain fighters were not a means of subverting the next regime.

Ah yes, HBO – the subject for whose treatment Hauser is perhaps best known. No longer. In March, Hauser became a consultant for the network. Urgent criticism in our small community greeted this news, some of it in good faith, much of it not. The good-faith concern was this: HBO’s greatest critic is no longer free to criticize. That is indeed a loss. Calls for Hauser’s removal from the full-member rolls of the Boxing Writers Association of America went out and were heeded, showing, in a fine twist, that among writers, HBO is considered a promotional entity more than a journalistic one.

Touché. This decision on the part of the BWAA’s leadership, though, brought one terrible consequence: Hauser resigned from his post at the head of the BWAA membership committee, where he still retains a vote. Hauser is a writer first; he speaks the language of writing, cares about prose, and understands the rigors of rewriting in a way deadline reporters do not. Hauser’s motto of event coverage – not first but best – is authentically different from the wires’ or their editors’.

As head of the membership committee, Hauser combed the internet for good writing about our beloved sport, caring considerably more about what words he found on a page than what URL floated in the address bar above. Hauser reached out to otherwise unknown writers. He elevated our work. Because Hauser is a writer, he knows this: Only the words endure. Page views, Twitter followers, breakfasts with a promoter; all of that is ephemeral noise when set against a writer’s words.

“And the new . . .” has plenty of good writing, of course, and Hauser’s usual number of good choices. “It was as though someone had shoved a tennis ball beneath the skin and painted the entire area purple,” Hauser writes of a fighter’s countenance in “Rodriguez-Wolak: A Great Fight,” an unplanned piece he was moved to write after being ringside for Pawel Wolak and Delvin Rodriguez’s surprisingly excellent first match.

Much of Hauser’s event coverage treats Manny Pacquiao and the possible repercussions his move to Showtime would cause. It was a fling, we now know, and seismic only so much as it cost the leader of HBO Sports his job. But there is a strain in some of it; Hauser captures well the lugging that began 21 months ago when the announcement came that Pacquiao would fight Shane Mosley on Showtime. So desperate were we for change of some kind after 2010 that we squinted to find meaning that was not there, interrogating every press release like a poem by Hart Crane.

We’re in a better, more relaxed place now. No promoter today would schedule another midnight conference call about Pacquiao not-fighting Floyd Mayweather. No one would dial in if he did.

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

WOODLAND, CALIFORNIA – In a good scrap that he was leading, Paul Mendez unfortunately robbed himself of praise that he likely would have attained justifiably had the fight not ended with a clear-cut low blow in the seventh round of his Telefutura-televised main event against DonYil Livingston at the Woodland Community & Senior Center on Saturday night. After an errant left hand hit Livingston below the belt, the out of position referee counted the down fighter out and awarded Mendez the stoppage victory – a decision that will likely be overturned after an appeal.

Livingston (8-2-1, 4 KOs) of Palmdale, California opened the first as the aggressor, landing his jab, before Mendez (10-2-1, 4 KOs) of Delano, California backed him to the ropes moments later. When Mendez, 162, got Livingston, 162, trapped, he did not manage to land anything really telling as the Palmdale resident covered up.

In a close second round, Livingston found a home for a hard left hand, but midway through the act it was Mendez that found his range and kept his opponent on the end of his shots.

Mendez took control of the fight in the third, hurting Livingston with a solid overhand right and flurrying his smaller adversary to the ropes. Livingston looked steady on his feet as the fourth began, but not so much as the round came to a close. Mendez rocked the cousin of Andre Ward with a hard combination and had him in trouble before the bell to end the round.

Mendez had another solid round in the fifth, but Livingston began to show renewed life as the round ended. Livingston came on the start the sixth, landing in combination as Mendez’ shots turned a bit wide. Livingston landed a hard left, before Mendez closed the round with a decent combination.

What looked to be a fight going into the final two frames, ended abruptly as Mendez caught Livingston way south of the border with a hard lefthand. Unfortunately, referee Dan Collins was over Livingston’s left shoulder, in admittedly no position to make the call. According to the attending Commission supervisor, the referee should have polled the ringside judges for the call. Judge Kermit Bayless was asked and told Collins he did not see the blow. The other two judges were unavailable to make a comment to 15rounds.com on the fight’s ending.

Scores at the time of the stoppage, which came at 43 seconds of the seventh round, were 58-56 and 59-55 twice for Mendez. The result will very likely be overturned to a no-contest, considering the Telefutura replay will clearly show the blow was low. Livingston should have had five minutes to be ready to continue, according to the rules of the California State Athletic Commission. Had he not been able to continue at that point, Mendez would have been declared a TKO winner. Given the ending, it is unfortunate for Mendez that a solid showing will likely go to waste, at least in terms of his won-loss record.

Moving up to the eight-round distance, progressing super bantam Manuel Avila (10-0, 3 KOs) of Fairfield, California showed off his jab and lateral movement en route to a measured unanimous decision win over the naturally smaller John Alberto Molina (32-20-3, 20 KOs) of Fort Myers, Florida by way of Caucasia, Colombia.

Despite the size disadvantage, it was Molina, 121.5, who pressed the action throughout. Though getting on inside was Molina’s only hope, his plan played into the hands of the comfortable counter-puncher Avila. The young prospect, 123, seemed happy to jab and move his way to the points win soon after the fight got under way. The little bit of action the fight provided was in the few moments Molina managed to back Avila into a corner or to the ropes, forcing his undefeated foe to exchange before moving back out of range.

After eight rounds of bull versus matador back-and-forth, Avila was given the nod on all three judges’ cards. All three officials had Avila a winner in seven of the eight rounds, with the final tally of 79-73 across the board.

Local favorite Guy Robb (9-1, 4 KOs) of Sacramento, California sent his strong contingent home happy as he dropped the durable Jonathan Alcantara (6-9-2, 1 KO) of Novato, California en route to a wide six-round unanimous decision victory.

Despite his accomplished amateur background, Robb, 126.5, is becoming known for his relentless inside game and that trait stood out in the opening rounds against Alcantara, 128, a late fill-in opponent.

After utilizing his harder and more accurate shots through two, Robb dropped Alcantara with a combination punctuated by a stiff right hand in the opening seconds of the third. Robb applied pressure soon after Alcantara rose, forcing the Novato resident to stumble back with another clean combo. However, by the finals seconds, Alcantara seemed to have regained his legs and even began to offer back with some ineffective attempts of his own. Just to show Robb he was still present, Alcantara shoved Robb as the bell rang to end the third.

Robb, coming in off one of his longer layoffs as a pro, may have winded a bit after the third and eventually tempered his offense as the rounds wore on. Acting more as a counter puncher, Robb found success in the latter rounds. Picking his shots, Robb outboxed Alcantara in the final round en route to the shutout decision, 60-53 across the board. Robb will return to the ring October 6th in his hometown at the famed Sacramento Memorial Auditorium.

Despite an uneven start, Jonathan Chicas (7-0, 3 KOs) of San Francisco, California outgunned journeyman Jose Mendoza (7-7, 3 KOs) of Oxnard, California by way of Jalisco, Jalisco, Mexico for the second time in just under a month.

Chicas, 140, fought a bit recklessly in the opening rounds, but found a home for his power shots in each stanza. Mendoza, 139, was successful when he opened up, particularly in the second and third rounds. However, as was the case in their first encounter, Mendoza did not have the power to earn Chicas’ respect. Even when was hit clean, Chicas mostly walked through the punches and fired back in combination. Chicas regained complete control in the last two acts and was named the winner, 49-45 across the three cards. Back in August, Chicas took a shutout four-round decision over Mendoza in Fairfield, California.

A scheduled four-round super featherweight bout between former amateur standout Andy Vences of San Jose, California and Carlos Higuera Gonzalez (1-1) of Los Angeles, California was scratched from the card this afternoon. Gonzalez’ required blood work was not completed in time which forced the California State Athletic Commission to remove him from the fight. No opponent could be found to save the night for Vences, who was scheduled to make his debut. Vences now hopes to debut on the aforementioned October 6th card in Sacramento.

Photos by Erik Killin

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

Is anybody surprised that Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr., tested positive for marijuana?

Didn’t think so.

News of the test in the wake of Chavez’ loss by one-sided decision Saturday night to Sergio Martinez at Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center is just more of the same in an exasperating pattern of behavior from a man-child who won’t grow up.

Already, Chavez’ enablers are trying to muddy up the issue by arguing that pot is as much a performance-enhancer as a bacon-cheeseburger. It should be legal, they say. It’s already legal in some places. Smoke it for therapy. Smoke it as a sleep aid. Soon, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton will be tossed into all that smoke. The current president inhaled it and a former one said he didn’t. Blah-blah-blah

So what’s the problem?

It’s not the pot. It’s the irresponsibility.

If Chavez, Jr., smoked a joint after a fight that included an epic 12th round, that’s his choice. But the positive test indicates he was indulging when he wasn’t training throughout a haphazard camp, which included weird hours and sessions when apparently his road work was limited to a few laps around the couch in his Vegas’ living room.

Instead of fulfilling his obligations with some sweat equity, it looks as if the former middleweight champ was getting stoned. That was irresponsible to trainer Freddie Roach, who sometimes would be summoned to supervise a workout at midnight or 3 a.m. It was a breach of what Top Rank and fans expected him to do.

Chavez has been allowed to skate from accountability throughout his young life because of his name. He’s the son of Mexico’s beloved Julio Cesar Chavez, Father Legend. If there’s a burden in carrying on the name, it includes favors that have postponed maturity.

More troubling and perhaps ominous, he hasn’t learned from his father’s mistakes. In addition to a durable chin, there are signs that the 26-year-old Chavez inherited dangerous habits that led his dad into substance-abuse and rehab. Chavez Jr. talked about his dad’s problems a couple days before the Martinez bout. In a forthright manner, he talked about fears his dad would die. He called the experience “horrible.’’ But he didn’t call it a lesson.

It’s not as if Chavez Jr. didn’t know he would be tested. His history dictated that he, perhaps more than any fighter, would be. In 2009, he was suspended for seven months after testing positive for a diuretic. In January, he was arrested for DUI. In June, Andy Lee trainer Emanuel Steward questioned the legitimacy of a test that Chavez underwent before he beat Lee in El Paso.

By now, Chavez knows the rules. If he had trouble sleeping, he should have used something else other than pot to help him get his rest. Marijuana is still on the banned list. It’s fair to argue whether it should be. But that’s an argument for another day.

Today, the argument is only about Chavez Jr. In a Don’t Worry, Be Happy style, he’s likable. He has potential. But that’s all he’ll ever have if the people around him continue to postpone the battle to mature. For now, it’s the only fight that matters.

New York – Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez took to New York City as part of their three city tour to announce their upcoming showdown set for December 8th in Las Vegas. This would be their fourth time meeting each-other in the ring. All three of their bouts were closely contested and hotly debated, with two of the fights being fight of the year candidates.

To put things into perspective, combining all of the judges’ scorecards from all three fights, Pacquiao has a slight advantage on points over his rival by a margin on 1024-1017.

On Wednesday at the Edison Ballroom in Times Square, Pacquiao took to the podium and stated, “I’m looking forward to winning impressively and to make the fight as short as possible. We need to get back to the aggressiveness and hunger from when I was twenty-five years old.”

In his always improving English, Marquez stated, “December 8th I have a new challenge again. I don’t need to prove nothing, because I won the last three fights!.”

Kerry Davis took to the podium to briefly announce a the ongoing strategic alliance between HBO and ESPN, and to stay tuned for more in the future.

Promoted by Top Rank, in association with MP Promotions, Zanfer Promotions, Márquez Boxing, Tecate and MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, tickets to Pacquiao-Márquez 4 will go on sale Friday, September 28 at 1:00 p.m. ET / 10:00 a.m. PT. Tickets are priced at $1,200, $900, $600, and $400 and are limited to 10 per person. To charge by phone with a major credit card, call Ticketmaster (800) 745-3000. Tickets also are available for purchase at www.mgmgrand.com or www.ticketmaster.com.

The Pacquiao vs. Márquez telecast, which begins at 9:00 p.m. ET / 6:00 p.m. PT, will be produced and distributed live by HBO Pay-Per-View

LAS VEGAS – Only prizefighting, among all sports, is able to induce a vicarious sensation so near to personal tragedy one’s mind, in a headlong rush for homeostasis, begins to tamper with its stimuli, misreading moments and writing them in memory more creatively than truthfully. To see a man so large in what gorgeous violence he perpetrates on another suddenly diminished, panicked, desperately swimming towards his foe like a drowning child after pool’s edge, is to witness sport extended to its legal limit.

That is what happened Saturday in the final two minutes of 37-year old Argentine Sergio “Maravilla” Martinez’s successful defense of his lineal middleweight championship against 26-year old Mexican titlist Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at Thomas & Mack Center, a match Martinez won by lopsided unanimous-decision scores after being forced to the blue mat twice in its 12th round.

There was “Maravilla” in the final 80 seconds, eyes big, body failing, fright both overwhelming and accelerating his exhaustion – the man who boasted before training camp that in his matches “99 percent is studied” beforehand; every wink, every straightening of his trunks, every shoulder shimmy, every smile, every word, all of it, devised in his downtime, planned in his training, executed by a tyrannical actor/director who does not abide improvisation on the set after a bell calls Action. Then none of it was planned.

Felled as much by fatigue as Chavez’s short left hook, a punch that hadn’t found a meaningful mark more than a pair of times in Chavez’s 34 1/2 minutes of winging it, Martinez emoted a confused panic even he didn’t know was in his theatrical range. Martinez rose and tackled Chavez, causing a second knockdown ruled a slip because it didn’t matter how it was ruled because the scorecard never mattered a whit to Chavez. Entirely unconscious of himself or strategy or script, Martinez fought a just-exhausted-enough Chavez off him in a minute that Martinez’s curious mind and creative memory will now stretch to a width most hours of his life will not rival for duration or anxiety.

Anxiety was the large part of that extraordinary final minute. After a 10th round that saw Chavez cast his fourth and fifth urgent and nearly hopeless glances at referee Tony Weeks, beseeching him to do something about Martinez’s low punches or dangerous head, the Argentines in the arena began to serenade their champion and each other. They filled Thomas & Mack with song. A Buenos Aires fútbol rally in the middle of a city that was once Mexico, on the weekend of El 16 de Septiembre: ¡Pinches argentinos, hijos de la Chingada!

After the 11th, a round that saw Chavez land his most meaningful right hand of the evening then see another rally extinguished by Martinez’s sense of the moment and its augmentative, momentum, the aisle in section 112 began to fill with well-dressed Mexicans stomping up the stairs towards the exit. There was no suspense at the end of the 11th, and let no one tell you otherwise.

The suspense happened when the bell to begin the 12th rang and Chavez remained on his stool. Martinez raised both hands above his head, certain he’d beaten “Son of the Legend” yellow on the eve of Mexican Independence Day. Then Chavez, that child of privilege and man of an eccentric nonchalance almost goofy, showed Martinez his mouthguard and hopped off his stool.

When Chavez’s left hook came home and Martinez’s wondrous legs finally failed him moments later, an energy coursed through Thomas & Mack Center like no other. It was a catharsis whose pursuit is the very reason any self-respecting experientialist pays his airfare to Vegas and endures its gauche price-gouging ways – to experience a mindless union with 18,000 others, a burst of something so chemically pure the body hates it, an intensity unendurable for more than a few seconds. The moment could not have been improved upon; its potency was a product of surprise: “Maravilla” in an instant diminished, worn, fragile, spent, withered, more miserable than he’d made Chavez in a half hour of smacking his face with knuckles.

Does it detract from the moment to price it? Surely it does, but that’s why it’s called prizefighting after all. The most terrifying moment of Sergio Martinez’s career will be the one that makes him a much wealthier man. He is now damaged and old, more likely to find underestimation than over. Somewhere from Floyd Mayweather’s fighting soul – the sacred part of him as yet unsullied by “Money” – there must today be a voice that says, “You’re gonna tell me I gotta avoid a guy Little Chavez had out?”

And while Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., right now, knows just how physically ruinous Martinez’s 300 flush blows were to his young body and younger brain, Mexicanismo will ensure he forgets posthaste: “¿Qué haría tu papá, Júnior?”

Whatever he said about it afterwards on Saturday night, his head still thrumming with concussion and ears throbbing each beat of his heart, Sergio Martinez is too introspective, too gentle-spirited, not to have doubt. “Maravilla” is not delusional and does not wish to become so. He fought Chavez perfectly Saturday, just enough playfulness and just enough clean striking and just enough macho, and came within a punch of drowning. It will not be lost on him what will come if he fights imperfectly in a rematch.

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

LAS VEGAS – Two major cards separated by a short ride looked like an accident about to happen. Look again. Sergio Martinez-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at Thomas & Mack Center and Canelo Alvarez-Josesito Lopez at the MGM Grand were a lot of things. It was a good night to wear a sombrero. It was a long night in line for a cab and a longer line at the bar.

It was one shot of Pancho Villa, a shot of Peron, another shot of soccer and endless shots of tequila. Above all, it was thoroughly Vegas, at least Vegas before the recession. It was also boxing at its best, which also means some of its worst. Nothing can be so irresistible and so distasteful at the same time.

But there it was Saturday night, a double shot and 180 proof of what is so compelling about a sport that just won’t die no matter how hard it tries to kill itself.

It was impossible to see the depth of its unique resiliency Saturday. I tried. But there was just too much to see. My night started at the MGM Grand. It ended at Thomas & Mack with a brilliant victory by Sergio Martinez, who survived a wild 12th-round comeback from Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr.

My cab driver predicted the winner. But not the drama.

“Martinez by knockout,’’ the driver said beneath an old cowboy hat that he had to have been wearing 25 years ago when he collected fares from fans who watched Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin, Hagler, Robert Duran and Thomas Hearns.

But it was Chavez who almost won by knockout. Chavez sent Martinez spinning down and onto the canvas in the 12th round, immediately conjuring up memories of how his dad, Julio Cesar Legend, beat Meldrick Taylor with two seconds left so long ago.

An encore for the Chavez family didn’t happen, not even on a weekend celebrating Mexican Independence. Chavez blamed himself after losing a unanimous decision. He said he started his stubborn assault too late. Martinez, a proud Argentine, also put himself in harm’s way when he didn’t have to. In the end, however, Martinez wouldn’t let Chavez steal a victory or the middleweight title he had ensured himself on the scorecards. Argue with Chavez’ early rounds. Argue with Martinez’ last round.

But don’t argue with the climactic finish. A record crowd of 19,187 at Thomas & Mack loved it. Mexicans and Argentines, alike, cheered loudly, filling the old basketball arena with chants that echoed down the aisles and through time.

Boxing isn’t back. It never left.

Not long after leaving the MGM Grand, super-middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez scored a fifth-round KO of Josesito Lopez in a bout that was probably more significant for the number of people in the seats than it was for the victory. The undersized Lopez was overmatched. Canelo had been favored by odds as big as 14-1. Yet, a capacity crowd of 14,275 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena showed up. There’s been a nasty debate between Golden Boy Promotions and rival Top Rank about how many tickets were sold and at what price. Yet on a night when Canelo was a laughable favorite in a Golden Boy promotion up against Top Rank’s intriguing Martinez-Chavez Jr. showdown, Canelo filled the seats.

“That underlines just how big an attraction Canelo is,’’ Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer said.

It underlines much more than that. Two cards within a couple of miles of each other drew a total of 33,462 fans. That’s no accident.

LAS VEGAS – And in an instant, Martinez-Chavez went from Pacquiao-De La Hoya to Chavez-Taylor.

Not since Manny Pacquiao retired Oscar De La Hoya had a small southpaw looked so profoundly dominant against a larger titlist as Sergio Martinez looked against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. for 11 rounds. And not since Chavez Sr. came back to stop Meldrick Taylor in the final seconds of a fight he was losing lopsidedly had such a profound change of fortunes been brought to a world champion the way Chavez brought it to Martinez in the 12th.

Saturday night, in a match at Thomas & Mack Arena that disappointed all expectations of suspense for 33 minutes before becoming an unforgettable thing in its final three, Argentine middleweight champion Sergio “Maravilla” Martinez (50-2-2, 28 KOs) rose from the canvas in the final round to survive and decision Mexican Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-1-1-1, 32 KOs) by unanimous scores of 117-110, 118-109 and 118-109. The 15rounds.com ringside scorecard concurred, marking 117-110 for Martinez – while marking the final round 10-7 for Chavez.

“We are two professionals,” Martinez said afterwards. “And we comported ourselves as professionals.”

The fight began the way all prognosticators believed it would. Martinez’s class was too much for Chavez in the first round and each of its successors. What little sense of geometry Chavez showed in the opening round, extending Martinez’s circles to the perimeter somewhat, was gone by the third.

“I began slowly,” Chavez said in the ring after the judges’ cards were read. “But I will not do that in the rematch.”

In fact, not till the sixth round did Chavez land anything consequential. Though Chavez was the much larger man, Martinez was the far more balletic, polished, athletic and accurate, hitting Chavez with nifty left uppercut leads and other inventive combinations. Chavez, sporting a knee brace and suffering abrasions and swelling round both eyes, was not dissuaded, however.

“This confirms me in boxing,” said Martinez, to an outnumbered but surprisingly vocal Argentinean group of fans. “Long live Argentina!”

More fatigued than he knew as the bell for the 12th rang, Martinez walked into a short Chavez left hook that wobbled and shocked him in the final two minutes. Martinez’s eyes bulged and he collapsed in the ropes. A pair of rights and lefts from Chavez then tossed him limply to the canvas. But Martinez rose, ran, held, slipped, and ultimately punched his way to the final bell, as suddenly enchanted Mexican fans rabidly urged their man on.

“Of course,” Martinez said when asked if he would grant Chavez a rematch.

“Long live Mexico!” cried Chavez at the end of his postfight interview.

ROMAN MARTINEZ VS. MIGUEL BELTRAN JR.
In an attempt at prophecy, or at least wishful thinking, Saturday’s excellent Top Rank co-main event featured a hard-pressing Mexican slugger named “Junior” against a foreigner named Martinez. Unfortunately for the emotional Mexican crowd, the Mexican did not prevail.

Fighting for a vacant WBO super featherweight title, Puerto Rican Roman Martinez (26-1-1, 16 KOs) sneaked past Mexican Miguel Beltran Jr. (27-2-0-1, 17 KOs), besting him by split-decision scores of 116-111, 113-114 and 113-114. The fight would have been a majority draw, were it not for a penalty assessed to Beltran in the championship rounds.

Each round of Martinez-Beltran featured punches both well leveraged and well landed by both fighters, but in each of the opening six rounds, regardless of what Martinez did, Beltran appeared to do a little more. In the sixth, Beltran landed the match’s most-devastating punch, a right cross that snapped Martinez’s head back between his own shoulder blades.

The seventh round, though, saw Martinez begin to establish a more effective attack, catching Beltran on the way in, with oddly placed punches. But by the middle of the eighth, Beltran again appeared the stronger man. By the end of the 10th, Martinez, game as he was, did not appear to want much more.

The 11th brought a point deduction to Beltran’s tally from overly officious Nevada referee Russell Mora, though, tightening ringside scorecards somewhat. Martinez also flurried in the 12th, appearing to steal that stanza as well. Ultimately, the fight was a close one that might have gone either way and probably should have gone the way of a majority draw.

MATTHEW MACKLIN VS. JOACHIM ALCINE
Matthew Macklin makes his ring entrance to a hybrid song of “Mack the Knife” and “Rocky Road to Dublin,” in a two-part nod to his nickname and heritage. But Saturday, he didn’t have to take his opponent very far down a rocky road before knifing him.

In the penultimate match of the evening’s undercard, Macklin (29-4, 20 KOs) caught Canadian middleweight Joachim Alcine (33-3-1, 19 KOs) with a flush right cross in the opening moments of the fight then marched him down, dropped him a second time and brought the match to an exciting knockout conclusion at 2:36 of round 1.

Despite a record with four losses on it, Macklin again proved that he can rally a crowd and make an exciting, satisfying match whomever he is given for an opponent.

GUILLERMO RIGONDEAUX VS. ROBERTO MARROQUIN
After a 2010 showing in Cowboys Stadium that brought loud boos from those fans not yawning, Cuban super bantamweight Guillermo Rigondeaux needed two years of exciting knockouts to make fans forget how displeasing his defense-first style can be. Saturday in Thomas & Mack Arena, though, they were reminded once more.

Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KOs) successfully, and rather easily, defended his WBA super bantamweight title against tough if limited Texan Roberto Marroquin (22-2, 15 KOs) by unanimous scores of 118-108, 118-108 and 118-109. And if there is a prizefighter today who fights like Floyd Mayweather as well as Mayweather does, he is Rigondeaux, right down to the cautiousness.

Rigondeaux established a superiority of reflex over Marroquin – a superiority of reflex Rigondeaux enjoys over most every opponent he faces – and then put the match on a form of cruise control that did little to entice fans. Possessed of every punch and step in the boxing lexicon, Rigondeaux does not appear to enjoy physical matches with larger men, and he certainly did not look for one with Marroquin, who appeared a weight class or two larger than Rigondeaux on Saturday.

Twice in the match Marroquin managed to land a pulled left hook that temporarily destabilized the Cuban southpaw’s otherwise flawless footing, but from each of those faux scares, Rigondeaux quickly recovered and returned to mastering Marroquin technically if not combatively.

In round 10, bored by Rigondeaux-Marroquin, the crowd – partisan Mexican though with an Argentinean contingent – began to sing futbol songs at one another till the match was over, despite Rigondeaux’s scoring the match’s one knockdown in its final two minutes.

MIKE LEE VS. PAUL HARNESS
Mike Lee is undoubtedly the best light heavyweight on the Notre Dame campus, but he is decidedly not the best light heavyweight in the world. Further evidence of this came at the midway point of Saturday’s undercard when Lee (11-0, 6 KOs) whacked away at Kansas City opponent Paul Harness (4-4-1, 3 KOs) for four rounds and ultimately prevailed by unanmious scores of 40-36, 40-36 and 40-36.

Questions about Lee’s power – he landed at least four clean right hands in every round without once felling Harness – and his defense, though, remain, and grow, with every showing. Despite leading comfortably in the fourth round, Lee nevertheless was tagged by several knee-buckling shots by Harness.

UNDERCARD
Highly regarded super welterweight John Jackson brought his undefeated record in the Thomas & Mack Center ring for Saturday’s third bout, against Cleveland’s Willie Nelson, and Jackson’s ‘0’ left the ring before Jackson did. In a close fight that might have been scored either way, Nelson (19-1-1, 11
KOs) decisioned Nelson (13-1, 12 KOs) by unanimous scores of 96-94, 96-94 and 98-92.

Before that, in an eight-round super welterweight match, Mexican Michael Medina (26-3-2, 19 KOs) scored a lopsided decision victory over North Carolinian James Winchester (15-5, 5 KOs). All three judges had the match 80-70 for Medina.

The evening began with an eight-round, unanimous-decision victory for California welterweight Wale Omotoso (23-0, 19 KOs) over Puerto Rican Daniel Sostre (11-7-1, 4 KOs).

Opening bell rang on a sparsely populated Thomas & Mack Center at 3:17 PM local time.

Follow all the action from the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas as the long awaited Middleweight championship showdown with take place featuring recognized world xhampion Sergio Martinez and WBC champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. The action kicks off with a five fight undercard at 8pm eastern/ 5 pm Pacific featuring two world title bouts as WBA Super Bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux defends against Robert Marroquin. The WBO Super Featherweight title will be contested by Rocky Martinez and Miguel Beltran Jr. Also Joachim Alcine battles Matthew Macklin an and appearance by Notre Dame favorite Mike Lee.

12 ROUNDS–WBC MIDDLEWEIGHT TITLE–SERGIO MARTINEZ (49-2-2, 28 KO’S) VS JULIO CESAR CHAVEZ JR. (46-0-1, 32 KO’S)

Round 1 Martinez lands a left..Chavez lands a right to the body…Sergio more active…10-9 Martinez

Round 2 Hard left from Martinez…Body shot from Chavez…Combination and body shot from Martinez..Body shot and a jab..right hook from Martinez..Good body work on the ropes...20-18 Martinez

Round 3 Hard left from Martinez..Hard left from Chavez..Good body shot..Martinez landing to the body..Left hook from Martinez..straight left…Blood from the mouth of Chavez…30-27 Martinez

Round 4 Martinez lands a left..short right hook..Hard right from Chavez…hard right…Left/body from Martinez..Chavez landing left to the body..Big left from Martinez at the bell…40-36 Martinez

Round 5 Martinez lands 2 lefts to the body…50-45 Martinez

Round 6 Chavez lands a couple little shots in the corner..2 good rights…Good body shot..big rally from Martinez…Martinez picking Chavez apart…60-54 Martinez

Round 7 Straight left..Counter left…4 hard lefts on the ropes…Chavez landing and eating shots in return..70-63 Martinez

Round 8 Wide right from Chavez..Martinez going to the body..2 good left hooks from Chavez..Blood from Martinez left eye…79-73 Martinez

Round 9 Martinez lands a combination…89-82 Martinez

Round 10 2 good rights and 2 more from Martinez…body..Jab…99-91 Martinez

Round 11Great action with Chavez landing hard shots…Martinez landing in return…Martinez favce bloody…108-101 Martinez

Round 12 Big right hurts Martinez..WOW…CHAVEZ ALL OVER MARTINEZ AND DROPS HIM….MARTINEZ IS BLEEDING AND HURT…ITS A WAR…MARTINEZ LOOKS LIKE HE WILL GET OUT OF THE ROUND….116-111 Martinez

12 Rounds–WBO Super Featherweight Title–Ramon Martinez (25-1-1, 16 KO”s) vs Miguel Beltran Jr. (27-1, 17 KO’s)

Round 1 Hard right from Beltran…2 more rights…10-9 Beltran

Round 2 Good left hook from Martinez…19-19

Round 3 Trading shots …29-29

Round 4 Beltran pounding Martinez in the corner…Hard right from Martinez..Good left hook..Martinez lands a good right…39-38 Beltran

Round 5 Beltran lands a hard right…Big left and right from Martinez…Beltran lands a right…Blood from the left eye of Beltran…48-48

Round 6 Beltran lands a counter uppercut..Good right from Beltran..58-57 Beltran

Round 7 Good body shot from Beltran…Hard body shot…Good combo from Martinez…Good body shot from Beltran…68-66 Beltran

Round 8 Good uppercut and body shot from Beltran…left hook to the body..78-75 Beltran

Round 9 Hard right from Beltran...88-84 Beltran

Round 10 Beltran lands a left and right..Body shot..98-93 Beltran

Round 11 Good right from Beltran..Martinez 4 punch combination…Hard right from Beltran…POINT DEDUCTED FROM BELTRAN FOR HITTING BEHIND THE HEAD…Good right from Beltran…106-103 Beltran

Round 12 Martinez lands a right…115-113 Beltran

116-111 Beltran; 114-113 Martinez; 114-113 Martinez

10 Rounds–Middleweight–Matthew Macklin (28-4, 19 KO’s) vs. Joachim Alcine (33-2-1, 19 KO’s)

Round 1 HUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES ALCINE….Macklin ALL OVER ALCINE AND DOWN GOES ALCINE FROM A LEFT HOOK…2 HUGE BODY SHOTS AND A FLURRY AND REFEREE JAY NADY STOPS THE FIGHT

MACKLIN TOK 1 AT 2:36

12 Rounds–WBA Super Bantamweight Title–Guillermo Rigondeaux (10-0, 8 KO’s) vs Robert Marroquin (22-1, 15 KO’s)

Round 1 not mucj…10-10

Round 2 Rigondeuax lands a counter left…20-19 Rigondeuax

Round 3 Marroquin lands a hard left hook…Straight right…29-29

Round 4 Right from Rigondeuax..Marroquin landsa left hook..39-39

Round 5 PERFECT LEFT DOWNS GOES MARROQUIN..49-47 Rigondeaux

Round 6 Rigondeuax lands a left to the body..59-56

Round 7 69-66

Round 8 Rigondeaux lands a big left..Good body…Marroquin lands a left hook to the body…79-75 Rigondeaux

Round 9: Left from Marroquin drives Rigo into the corner…Right hand..88-85 Rigondeaux

Round 10 Rigondeuax lands a uppercut to the body..leaping uppercut and another..98-94 Rigondeaux

Round 11 Good straight left from Rigondeaux..Good right from Marroquin…Body shots from Rigondeuax..108-103 Rigondeaux

Round 12 HUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES MARROQUIN…118-111 Rigondeaux

118-108, 118-108, 118-109…RIGONDEAUX

10 Rounds–Jr. Middleweights–Willie Nelson (18-1-1, 11 KO’s) vs John Jackson (13-0, 12 KO’s)

Round 3 Jackson going to the body…

Round 4Nelson lands a hard right and left hook..Right down the middle

Round 5 Nelson Active

Round 6

Round 7

LAS VEGAS – A motorcycle accident took away Paul Williams’ legs, but not his confidence.

It was there, as evident as ever Friday when he came out of an elevator at the MGM Grand before the weigh-in for the Showtime-televised junior-welterweight fight between Canelo Alvarez and Josesito Lopez Saturday night.

Williams was in a wheelchair. But he made it sound as if that chair was a temporary vehicle until that day when he believes he will recover, perhaps enough to even fight again.

“I feel good,’’ Williams said. “This is a small thing for a giant.’’

Williams is in Las Vegas for a fight that was supposed to include him against Canelo before the accident in Atlanta left him paralyzed. In his brief comments to 15 Rounds and Lance Pugmire of the Los Angeles Times, it wasn’t clear what his condition was.

But his confidence was unmistakable. Williams has faith that he will walk again in a path that might even take him up those steps, through the ropes and into the ring for another opening bell.

“I think I can come back,’’ Williams said. “Give it two or three years. I’ll come back.’’

If Williams had been Canelo’s opponent instead of the undersized Lopez in a Golden Boy-promoted bout, there’s speculation that rival Top Rank would have moved Saturday night’s other fight, Sergio Martinez-versus-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. for the middleweight at Thomas & Mack Center, to a different date, possibly Oct. 6.

The consensus is that Williams-Canelo would have been more competitive and marketable than Canelo-Lopez.

Weights from the MGM

About 90 minutes before the Martinez-Chavez weigh-in, Canelo and Lopez stepped on the scales. Canelo looked solid at 154 pounds, the junior-middleweight limit. Lopez looked a little soft at 153, his heaviest ever.

“I’m not as weak as I look,’’ Lopez joked a day before the weigh-in. “I just look skinny.’’

At opening bell, Lopez expects Canelo to be at 170, which would mean about a 10-pound advantage for the favored Mexican, who holds the World Boxing Council’s version of the title.

Notes, Quotes

· Golden Boy announced a sellout Friday for the Canelo-Lopez featured card. Within minutes of the announcement, tickets were still available on Ticketmaster.

· Jose Benavidez Jr., an unbeaten junior-welterweight prospect from Phoenix, has been added to the Top Rank card featuring Nonito Donaire versus Toshiaki Nishioka at Carson, Calif., on Oct. 13. Benavidez is expected to fight Raul Tovar.

LAS VEGAS – The weekend’s first upset happened Friday, and it wasn’t by way of a punch at Thomas & Mack Center. In what may turn out to be the greatest surprise of Martinez-Chavez, barring of course an early stoppage, Argentine Sergio Martinez outweighed Mexican Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Friday afternoon at Wynn Las Vegas’ Encore Theater. But if either man was surprised, neither showed it.

Martinez, considered by most to be a small middleweight champion, and Chavez, considered by all to be an enormous middleweight titlist, shared a one-pound disparity on the scale: Martinez made 159, and Chavez made 158.

“He said it’s going to be a war,” Martinez said immediately after a talkative stare-down with Chavez that followed both making weight for their middleweight world championship match. “I want a war.”

Martinez, known as much for his cool demeanor and handsome countenance as his jazzy southpaw style, appeared uncharacteristically anxious Friday afternoon. Dressed in a black sweatsuit and dark shades, Martinez preceded Chavez to the stage and the scale and made a show of rallying a small Argentinean contingent waiving robin’s-egg-blue and white flags, stage left.

“He said that he is going to rip my head off,” said Chavez, when asked what words Martinez spoke to him after he climbed off the scale. Then Chavez, easily the cooler character Friday, laughed and shrugged.

While Saturday’s match for the lineal middleweight championship of the world – along with belts from The Ring, WBC and surely a few others – will be the biggest fight of both men’s careers, Chavez shows the demeanor of a man who knows other superfights will inevitably follow. Martinez, about whom the same cannot be said, appears to be channeling some of his handlers’ nervousness.

Part of what led to onlookers’ general surprise at Friday’s weighin, and specifically Chavez’s coming-in two pounds under the middleweight limit, were reports of undertraining by the Mexican champion. Numerous sources reported Chavez had skipped scheduled sessions with trainer Freddie Roach during his camp, preferring to work-out at home instead.

But Chavez’s promoter, Top Rank, expressed no concern. Chavez made weight easily, and apparently needs little instruction in how to cut-off a prizefighting ring, as he is expected to have to do against Martinez on Saturday.

Early Friday afternoon, one last thread of controversy was stitched in the Martinez-Chavez tapestry: Trainer Nazim Richardson will attend the wrapping of Chavez’s hands in behalf of the Martinez camp, Saturday. Richardson, of course, was the man who caught a hardening substance on the wraps of Antonio Margarito before the Mexican champion’s 2009 match with Shane Mosley.

Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director Keith Kizer said on Friday that while he’ll be at both of Saturday’s fight cards – Martinez-Chavez, and Saul Alvarez vs. Josesito Lopez a few blocks away at MGM Grand Garden Arena – the main event he’ll be attending is Chavez-Martinez, as Kizer anticipates potential prefight controversy at Thomas & Mack Center.

Photo by Chris Farina / Top Rank

LAS VEGAS – News conferences came like a one-two punch Wednesday and Thursday for dueling promotions Saturday night featuring Sergio Martinez-versus-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at Thomas & Mack Center and Canelo Alvarez-Josesito Lopez at the MGM Grand.

It’s been a rhetorical food fight, boxing’s version of Republicans and Democrats after back-to-back conventions. First, it’s Top Rank to the bully pulpit. Then, it’s Golden Boy’s turn. It’s Home Box Office- versus-Showtime. Ego-against-ego. An insult-fest. But should it be?

After widespread criticism for scheduling two major cards on the same night and amid all the ongoing negativity, there’s a chance at some numbers that might put a surprising spin on the business. Attendance at each could provide a powerful counter to an epitaph so often repeated, yet never proven.

If boxing is really dying, then a lot of people – maybe more than 30,000 at two venues within a couple miles of each other – have yet to hear the news.

There’s plenty of debate about box-office numbers promised by Golden Boy for Alvarez-Lopez in a 154-pound bout televised by Showtime. Golden Boy President Oscar De La Hoya said Thursday at the Canelo-Lopez news conference that 13,000 tickets had been sold.

“We are expecting a sellout,’’ De La Hoya said of a weekend celebrating Mexican Independence.

Top Rank doesn’t believe it. On the surprise meter, that ranks somewhere between zero and yawn. If the situation was reversed – and it will be one day, Golden Boy wouldn’t believe it either. Remember, Republicans and Democrats trust each other more than Top Rank and Golden Boy do.

For Martinez-Chavez, Jr., in a HBO pay-per-view bout for the middleweight title, Top Rank already has a sellout, 19,186, a boxing record at Thomas & Mack. Even if a sellout is announced for Alvarez-Lopez, there will be suggestions that Golden Boy gave away tickets to get there.

As of Thursday, it wasn’t clear what number Golden Boy needed for a sellout. Seating capacity at The MGM Grand Garden Arena has been 14,800. But Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer said 2,000 seats can be added before Saturday’s opening bell. If there’s time to construct the addition and the seats are filled, the crowd would be announced at 16,800. Add the Thomas & Mack sellout, and the total would be 35,186.

“That would tell you a lot about the sport,’’ Schaefer said.

With apologies to Mark Twain, t would tell you that all those dire warnings of imminent death are greatly exaggerated.

It might also tell you what could happen if Golden Boy and Top Rank made peace and did business together. But that’s another story, if not a miracle. It didn’t sound as if peace were even a remote possibility Thursday. The irony is that the fighters were the diplomats. Canelo and Lopez praised each other. The only real trash talk came from Keith Kizer, the Nevada State Athletic Commission’s executive.

In an apparent reference to the controversy over the judging of Tim Bradley’s decision over Manny Pacquiao in June at the MGM Grand, Kizer seemed to take exception at HBO’s criticism of judges Duane Ford, CJ Ross and Jerry Roth.

“There was another fight here in June, but some of the veterans at ringside that felt badly that night won’t feel so bad this time, because HBO, (Jim) Lampley and (Harold) Lederman won’t be there,’’ Kizer said. “I like the Showtime announcers much better.’’

Kizer’s shot followed one at Showtime from Top Rank’s Bob Arum.

“Half the people who’ve got Showtime don’t know they have it,’’ Arum said.

Shot, counter-shot. The beat goes on.

But if predictions are fulfilled and the numbers add up Saturday night, there won’t be an argument about whether the business still has a heartbeat.

Jesse Vargas christened a big fight weekend with a ten round unanimous decision over Aaron Martinez in a Welterweight bout at the Joint at The Hard Rock in Las Vegas.

Vargas was very solid throughout as he boxed well and the two engaged at times with Vargas getting the better of the action.

Vargas, 148 lbs of Las Vegas was making his debut under the Top Rank banner won by scores of 99-91, 98-92 ans 96-94 and is still perfect at 20-0. Martinez, 147 lbs of Los Angeles 18-2-1.

Jose Felix Jr. remained undefeated by scoring a ten round unanimous decision over Luis Cruz in a Lightweight bout.

Felix got off to a good start as he twice rocked Cruz in the first round. Felix was doing well until eating a straight left hand that sent him to the canvas. He shook that off well as mixed things up by boxing and coming forward and he controlled the ring over the last third of the fight and won by scores of 97-92, 96-94 and 99-94.

Felix Jr., 132 lbs of Los Mochis, MX is now 21-1-1. Cruz, 132 lbs of Las Piedras, PR is now 20-2.

UFC middleweight kingpin and pound-for-pound best, Anderson Silva,will headline UFC 153 against long time veteran Stephan Bonnar in Riode Janeiro, Brazil on October 13th according to USA Today.

Bonnar (14-7), currently riding on a three fight win streak, is well known for his epic battle against Forrest Griffin on the UltimateFighter 1 finale. He has also been a regular on ESPN’s MMA Livebroadcast as an expert analyst.

Silva (32-4) is coming off arguably the most satisfying win of his career against Chael Sonnen in July and has yet to have been bested inside the UFC Octagon.

The card, which was expected to showcase an anticipated featherweight title bout between Jose Aldo and Frankie Edgar, abruptly came to a halt when Aldo was forced to pull out after suffering a foot injury.

Making matters worse, former champion Quinton Jackson, who was supposed to challenge the prominent Glover Teixeira, has also pulled out citing injuries, putting an additional dent to the previously stacked card in Brazil. Countryman Fabio Maldonado is now slated to fill in to face Teixeira in a light heavyweight contest.

In other notable fights, former heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira returns against Dave Herman while rising welterweight sensation Erick Silva takes on the toughest challenge of his career against Jon Fitch.

LAS VEGAS – There was a time when the son couldn’t mention his father’s name. It was too painful. Legends don’t die. But dads do.

It was 2010. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. watched substance-abuse wash away the immortality that Mexicans have attached to his famous dad, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.

“I kept thinking this guy is going to die,’’ Chavez Jr. said Wednesday to handful of reporters after a formal news conference for his middleweight title fight Saturday night against Sergio Martinez at Thomas & Mack Center. “He’s going to die. I got used to thinking about it.’’

Dad changed his son’s mind, but only after the end so feared by his son ominously appeared one day in Tijuana. Julio Sr. said he didn’t feel well. His son recalls that he sought medical help. His father was sedated and then rushed to rehab.

Twenty-six months later, Julio Cesar Chavez Sr. sat Wednesday – clean, sober and proud — near his son just days before the family business continues against Martinez in an HBO pay-per-view bout.

“Right now, our relationship is good,’’ said Chavez Jr., about a 2-to-1 underdog in betting odds posted late Wednesday. “It can withstand the disagreements we have.’’

The relationship has healed so much that the son can now often joke about a dad who doesn’t often like to be the intended target of any sort of mockery. Julio Chavez Sr. has been in gym with his son and trainer Freddie Roach. But Chavez says he listens only to Roach. The son is a smart guy. He knows that old lesson about dads, even Hall of Fame Fathers. They don’t belong in their son’s corners.

“Freddie is the last word,’’ Chavez Jr. said. “Sometimes, my dad will run to my corner and say something. I’ll tell him: ‘Work the corner or get the hell out.’ ‘’

Dad always gets the message, Julio Jr. said.

At least, he does now.

A couple of years ago, he wasn’t certain. His father, he says, would come home early in the morning after a night of drinking.

“He would come home, sometimes at 5 a.m. and sometimes on the day I’d fight, sit down and start talking, while I was trying to sleep’’ he said. “He’d just talk and talk, talk for three and four hours.’’

About what?

“Not sure,’’ Chavez said. “About everything.’’

In the couple of years since his dad underwent rehab, Julio Jr., once dismissed as a lazy rich kid, began to mature as a fighter under Roach’s steady guidance. His training schedule might be quirky. Roach said he often trains in the early morning hours. Workouts can start at 1 a.m. and end 4 a.m. But the work is serious, Roach said.

In part, Julio Jr. appears to have inherited some his dad’s toughness. There’s the durable chin. There are also the body punches. Both made a Hall of Famer out of his stubborn dad.

“That’s why I feel sorry for Sergio Martinez,’’ Bob Arum, Julio Jr.’s promoter, said Wednesday during the news conference. “He’s going to take body shots like he’s never felt before.’’

But there can also be dangers in what a son inherits from his dad. For Julio Jr., it is a lifestyle that put his dad in rehab. A warning sign was there in January when The Ring’s Lem Satterfield reported that Julio Jr. was charged with DUI within a couple of weeks of his victory over Marco Antonio Rubio.

It was a lesson then.

It’s a lesson now, especially for a family business that needs to remember them if it hopes to fight on.

OAKLAND, Calif. – Last week’s fight headquarters were at Marriott City Center in the middle of this recovering town. Friday night Andre Ward sat in its lobby area, his back to the window, a white baseball cap pulled over his eyes. His face was darker than it appears on television, and meaner too. It was the first glimpse of a Ward that any unknowing stranger would avoid out of instinct. Ward wasn’t that playful chap taking his kids to school for HBO’s camera; he was a man concentrated on the manifestation of another’s pain.

In that lobby, with his dark and oblivious scowl, Ward was severed entirely from the dot-com millionaires who once made Porsches more ubiquitous than Hondas, 50 miles south of here. Ward was not, either, a delicate San Francisco artisan returned from complementing an hour in the SFMOMA collection with a crabmeat salad at Fisherman’s Wharf. He was not Silicon Valley or Bay Area. He wasn’t even East Bay. Ward was Oakland.

That portended the very worst for Connecticut’s “Bad” Chad Dawson, a unified light heavyweight world champion who fought Ward for his unified super middleweight championship Saturday at Oracle Arena. Whatever violence Dawson saw as a youth in New Haven, Conn., it was qualitatively different from the Oakland brand Ward showed him Saturday. Dawson, discomfited from the moment Ward’s short left hook dropped him in round 3, succumbed entirely at 2:45 of round 10 – when he rose from a spot on the mat Ward’s left hand put him, and gave referee Steve Smoger tacit approval for a TKO stoppage.

Ward and Smoger were and are a lovely combination, the one most likely to lead Ward, with his mauling and grappling and pressuring, into pleasing aesthetic spectacles. Another ref would have broken Ward and Dawson endlessly, Saturday, and it would have set a precedent that ruined everything – for when a fighter knows every clinch brings an officious ref leaping to the rescue, he does more of it, because even for a prizefighter not-fighting is easier than fighting. And this brings obvious choices whose consequences do not get tabulated till the next morning when that fighter reads about what a dullard he was, in Sunday’s paper.

Ward churns his feet in a clinch. That is his secret. He does not merely push and pull with his upper body, content only to throw a completely open punch at a completely open chin, as so many fighters today do. Ward continues to dig and bend, pivot and tilt, certain that waxed human flesh licked with perspiration is too slippery to hold still for long. He frees his hands with his legs. He sincerely wishes to sink knuckles in flesh, too, making the volume-puncher’s compact: I will hit you anywhere you let me, and let the art critics go to hell.

Writing of which, and continuing a theme of this city’s pleasant surprises – including a number-five placing on The New York Times’ “45 Places to Go in 2012” list – downtown Oakland plays host to the Bay Area’s most surprising art collection: Oakland Museum of California (OMCA). Located atop a history floor and another dedicated to science, OCMA’s paint collection features works by or about Californians. It is exhaustive and fantastic. It is not quite the de Young Fine Art Museum but is at least good, and in every way more accessible, as San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The less-artful compact Ward made with Dawson Saturday saw Ward follow every landed right cross with a chopping left hand. It was an ugly, barely legal punch that offended Dawson’s sense of decorum. It also took his balance and ruined him in the 10th round.

Poor Chad Dawson; he simply has no mean streak. He’s a superb athlete. But were he in the NFL, he’d play wide receiver, not tight end; in the NBA he’d swish gorgeous fall-away jumpers but never drive the lane; if hockey were his game, he’d be a perennial contender for the Lady Byng. There were numerous exchanges Saturday that told this tale: Dawson is an athlete who makes money fighting, but Ward is a prizefighter. Dawson was longer, taller, and ostensibly the harder puncher. And yet, when he hit Ward he got lunged at, and when he got hit by Ward he took a step backwards and showed Oracle Arena a look that said: “It’s cool, guys, I know he hit me, but we quashed all that and things are good between us now.”

Nobody in Oakland respected Dawson’s nonbelligerent stand. Frankly, they wanted to see him beaten for it. Attendance was announced at 8,500 but felt like more – with some local newspaper scribes estimating 10,000 or even 12,000. Imagine, an announced boxing gate that felt underestimated! Knockouts are louder, though, because they bring persons leaping upwards at once. Standing, shouting, high-fiving, fist-pumping men bring a force of feeling disproportionate to their number. There were plenty such men, and women too, Saturday, and the audience was darker-complected than most major boxing crowds. A splendid thing, that, and one that speaks to the authentic, and therefore sustainable, fanbase Ward is building in his hometown.

Andre Ward is becoming a professional sports franchise in Oakland, this pleasantly surprising place with a mean streak. Nobody has trod a fairer path to local acclaim than Ward. No prizefighter deserves acclaim more. And so, on nights like Saturday, in the roiling bodies and noise, for an hour at least boxing can feel like a meritocracy.

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

NEWARK– The Polish faithful were on hand at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ to see their hero, Tomasz Adamek (46-2, 28 KOs, 222.5lbs), take on Travis Walker (39-7-1, 31 KOs, 235lbs). The show was put together by Main Events and aired on WealthTV.

The bout started as expected, with both fighters aggressively moving towards each other looking to find an opening. The second round is where things got interesting. A straight right hand from Walker landed flush on Adamek’s chin, sending him down. Everyone at ringside was in disbelief. Adamek beat the count, but did not look 100%. Walker came on, landing more right hooks that had Adamek reeling all over the ring. After about a minute of this, Adamek tried fighting back, and began regaining the strength in his legs. Then both fighters threw right hands at the same time. Adamek’s landed first, and now it was Walkers turn to be on the canvas. When Walker got to his feet, Adamek pounced. The bell for the end of the round rang, but referee Eddie Cotton could not hear it and allowed the assault to continue for about fifteen seconds after the round was supposed to end.

Adamek controlled the next two rounds with his straight right hand, repeatedly stopping Walker in his tracks. It was in the fifth when Adamek opened up again. Another right hand badly stunned Walker. Adamek followed that up with over twenty unanswered flush punches onto a badly damaged Walker. Eddie Cotton was forced to call a halt to the fight at the 1:08 point of the fifth round, giving Adamek a TKO victory.

Steve Cunningham (24-4, 12 KO’s, 207lbs) took his first plunge into the heavyweight division when he took on Jason Gavern (21-10-4, 10KO’s, 239lbs) in a bout scheduled for ten rounds. Many in attendance were interested in seeing how Cunningham would fare against a much heavier opponent. Things were difficult for Cunningham when seconds into the bout, an accidental clash of heads cut Cunningham just over his left eye.

That didn’t seem to phase Cunningham much, as he completely outclassed Gavern over the course of the fight. Any time Gavern tried to mount any momentum, he was thwarted by Cunningham’s movement and volume punching. To make matters worse, in the middle rounds, Gavern managed to land a shot on the top of Cunningham’s head which broke his hand.

Cunningham continued his assault on Gavern for the rest of the fight, occasionally stunning him. The final scorecards read 99-91, 100-90, and 100-90 giving Cunningham a unanimous decision victory and his first win as a heavyweight.

Rising heavyweight sensation, Bryant Jennings (14-0, 6 KO’s, 230lbs) wowed the crowd when he took on Chris Koval (25-9, 18 KO’s, 226lbs). One of the first punches thrown was a left-right combination from Jennings, and it crushed Koval, sending him down hard. Koval somehow managed to beat the count, but was on very unsteady legs. Another righ-left combination sent him down again, and the referee waved the fight off before Koval even hit the canvas. Jennings won with a first round TKO at the :35 second mark. Jennings continues to impress.

The opening bout of the WealthTV broadcast featured an exciting matchup between Jerry Belmontes (16-0, 5 KO’s, 129lbs) and Joselito Collado (13-1, 3 KO’s, 129lbs). Neither fighter is known for their punching prowess, but they came out swinging early. Collado was the aggressor, pressuring his opponent with looping left hooks. That backfired when both fighters clashed heads, opening up a cut high on Collado’s forehead. Throughout the eight round bout, neither fighter let up. Collado continued to make use of his left hook, while Belmontes consistently took advantage of the opening by landing flush straight right hands. The early rounds were very back and forth, but by the sixth, Belmontes was the fresher fighter. It was a testament to his highly regarded attention to training.

At the end of the fight, the judges scored it 78-74, 78-74, and 77-75 in favor of Belmontes, giving him a unanimous decision victory.

The opening bout of the evening featured an interesting matchup between Karl Dargan (10-0, 5 KO’s, 136lbs) and Jesse Carradine (8-1-1, 4 KO’s, 130lbs). Despite the difference in weight, Dargan looked to be the faster fighter. In a weird moment towards the end of the fight, an exchange tripped up Carradine, forcing him to hold himself up with his gloves. The referee ruled it a knockdown, but went over and started counting at Dargan. Spectators at ringside shouted to him that he was giving an eight count to the wrong fighter, and he turned around and counted the correct fighter. Only in boxing.

The next two rounds were competitive between both fighters, but Dargan was in control with with his superior all around talents. As the third round opened up, Dargan began opening up with power punches and landing very effectively. It was all to set up one huge straight right hand that buckled Carradine and sent him crashing onto the canvas. He managed to beat the count, but was on very rubbery legs. Dargan went in for the kill, but Carradine held on and didn’t let go. The referee had to pry Carradine off of Dargan. This happened two more times, and the referee finally had enough of Carradine’s antics and waved the fight off. Due to his unwillingness to fight, Dargan was credited with a TKO victory at 1:04 of the fourth round.

Jose Peralta (9-1, 5 KO’s, 141lbs) took to the ring against Christian Steele (3-4, 1 KO, 140lbs) in a bout scheduled for six rounds. Peralta started early with a viscious body attack that had Steele on the defensive. Steele, to his credit, is better than his record shows and was able to land some short counter hooks to slow down Peralta’s onslaught. Peralta didn’t waver and continued to work into his opponent. In the second round, while Steele was trying to side step his way out of danger, Peralta landed a picturesque left hook that sent Steele down. Steele beat the count and seemed steady on his feet, but it was evident that he was concerned with Peralta’s power and he went into survival mode. In the third round, a right hand landed on Steele’s temple and sent him down again. Steele beat the count again, but the referee saw that he was out of it and waved the fight off. Peralta scored an impressive TKO victory at :40 of the third round.

It’s hard to know whether September’s promise is a new dawn or just a familiar set of oncoming headlights in another head-on collision with a demise predicted and heightened by August’s doom and gloom.

No matter how you look at Andre Ward-versus-Chad Dawson Saturday in Oakland, Calif., and a dueling Las Vegas’ twin bill on Sept. 15 featuring Sergio Martinez-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at Thomas & Mack Center and Canelo Alvarez-Josesito Lopez at the MGM Grand, however, it is hard not to see potential for a comeback that is a boxing specialty. No business does it better.

Reliable resiliency is there in a shifting alignment that offers a way out of the never-never land of talk and only talk about Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. Yeah-yeah, it could still happen. But a generation of lost fans doesn’t care anymore. The good news is that there is always a new one. In part, chances at winning over generation-next rest in what happens with fighters poised to succeed Pacquiao and Mayweather.

For now, the intriguing battle is for No. 2 spot in the pound-for-pound debate. The fading Pacquiao, second on most lists behind Mayweather, is in jeopardy of falling to third or even fourth after evidence of decline in his last two fights, controversial decisions over Juan Manuel Marquez and Timothy Bradley.

“Me, I believe I’m No. 2 at this moment,’’ Martinez said Wednesday in a conference call for his showdown with Chavez Jr. in a HBO pay-per-view bout for the middleweight title.

A better argument might come from Ward, if he remains unbeaten (25-0, 13 KOs) Saturday in a HBO-televised bout against light-heavy champion Dawson (30-1 17 KOs), who agreed to come down in weight for a 168-pound fight in Ward’s hometown. Mayweather stays at No. 1 because of his perfect record (43-0, 26 KOs). Martinez can’t make that claim. Even if he beats Chavez Jr., there are still losses to Antonio Margarito and Paul Williams and two draws on his resume (49-2-2, 28 KOs).

Predictably perhaps, the more circumspect Ward isn’t as bold about his place in the pound-for-pound debate as Martinez, who has become more outspoken in an escalating exchange of trash talk with Chavez Jr.

For the most part, Ward’s attention isn’t easily diverted by anything beyond the challenge immediately in front of him. That means the dangerous Dawson. Everything else is just talk that would take him away from the task at becoming an equal of fighters he admires, including Mayweather and Sugar Ray Leonard.

“They’re masters,’’ Ward said. “I’m trying to be a master.’’

The guess is that Ward will never quit trying. The goal will be there for as long as he is fighting. It’s a motivational piece to a Ward persona that in a couple of years could put him at the top of the pound-for-pound crowd.

Even in the build-up for Dawson, he seemed to look for something that would drive him to knock out slights, imagined or real. Dawson’s camp praises him. But the skeptical Ward deflects it.

“I think they’re giving us some superficial credit because they have to,’’ he said. “…To listen to them tell it, they have every advantage in the book. I think they’ll discover that isn’t the case.’’

Ward’s insightful trainer, Virgil Hunter, had his own spin.

“Our advantage is being at a disadvantage in their eyes,’’ Hunter said.

If there’s a disadvantage during the next nine days, it is expected to be in betting odds against Chavez Jr. and Dawson. But even those are slim. Spring an upset, and one or both will suddenly leap to the front of a line in the fight for spots at the pay window long occupied by Pacquiao and Mayweather.

Bob Arum, Chavez Jr.’s promoter, said an earlier opportunity for big money against Martinez was resisted precisely for the moment that will transpire on Sept. 15.

“We could have taken a chance against Martinez a year ago,’’ Arum said. “If he wins – and we believe he will, he will become an attraction on the level of Pacquiao, Mayweather.’’

Meanwhile, a hint at Mayweather’s immediate future could unfold at the Canelo-Lopez fight at the MGM Grand. Canelo keeps talking about how he wants to fight Mayweather. His representatives at Golden Boy Promotions have advised caution. At least, Golden Boy President Oscar De La Hoya did on May 5 in the wake of Canelo’s victory over Shane Mosley. But an impressive victory over a smaller Lopez on Showtime might sweep aside concern that Canelo is getting ahead of himself.

If Mayweather decides he wants to fight the popular Mexican redhead now instead of later, there’ll be no waiting.

Another future will have arrived.

Saturday evening in Oakland, Calif.’s Oracle Arena super middleweight world champion Andre Ward will defend his title against light heavyweight world champion Chad Dawson. I will be there, I’m happy to report, and eager to make the trip. What follows is an opinion-laden exploration of why.

Ward-Dawson will be a match between the world’s two very best prizefighters between 161 and 175 pounds. That is enough for the purist in me to make the trip from South Texas. It is a rarity anymore the best fight the best, regardless of popular demand, or its absence, and when that happens, it merits a celebration oblivious of subjective or aesthetic concerns.

Oakland’s Andre Ward is a chance to see a better version of a young Bernard Hopkins. Ward does nothing spectacularly but everything quite well. He hasn’t chloroform on either fist but keeps stronger men the hell off him. His footwork is steady, not inventive. He is confident more than stylish. He is self-conscious in the best sense of the term; thousands of concentrated hours have taught him how to keep comfortable in a fight, and the man who can discomfit him has yet to be found (a boy in his 12th year, Jesus Gonzales, was the last to do it, in 1996). And Ward likes to smoke where another man lives, as Joe Frazier put it, to fight on an opponent’s chest – a singularly endearing quality.

Today’s Bernard Hopkins apologists, kids who were usually too young to know or care about Hopkins when he stopped Segundo Mercado 17 years ago and began his middleweight title reign, have little interest in Ward. He is not confrontational enough. He is a careful father rather than a reformed crook. He does not fill a three-minute answer with five minutes of self-aggrandizement. He conforms to the system rigidly, and the system takes care of him. Nothing dangerous there. He is a professional who, by his own estimation, took boxing training too seriously in his youth and now, as he matures, has learned to remand it to a less dominating place – consider for a second how different from the average prizefighter’s career trajectory that is. Ward is not particularly charismatic, and there is little to discover about him outside the ring: Loving dad, religious devotee, proud man, disciplined citizen. Yawn.

Connecticut’s Chad Dawson is less knowable still. Surely there are a few dangerous corners in New Haven, Conn., and Dawson was right to avoid them as a teenager, but there is an element to the Dawson biography, as told by HBO anyway, that feels effortful. Not Victor-Ortiz effortful, of course, but effortful just the same.

Dawson is not a bad guy. Ward is not a bad guy. Both are excellent fighters, the very best in their divisions, and that is not enough? For me it is. I did not believe Ward was at all special when the Super Six tournament began. I expected Mikkel Kessler to prove how meaningless an Olympic gold medal is these days – meaningless as the advisors of each member of our last two Olympic teams did, and will, tell us. But the very opposite was true, wasn’t it? There is a reason Andre Ward is both our country’s last gold medalist and very best prizefighter over 154 pounds.

Ward is a winner. He has a sense of exactly where he stands in relation to another man and where their performances stand in relation to one other. The day a man bests him, Ward will know it and likely concede it, publicly. Chad Dawson does not have this sense. Dawson is talented enough to beat anyone put in front of him, and beat him convincingly, but Dawson does not know how good he is. He does not trust himself or the roster of trainers hired over the years, and how could he? They tried to make him what he is not, he laments. It is hard to imagine Andre Ward mouthing those words.

I am going to the Bay Area, in part, for the same reason I went to Michigan 20 months ago for Bradley-Alexander: as a silent challenge to the black community to support its fighters. In conversations with black boxers and trainers, there is a confidence, or conceit, that relies on a belief that, at any time in the last century, one of their own was the best prizefighter in the world, recognized or not. That’s a conceit I share. But if black men, as a community, are not supporting boxing’s ecosystem, will it always be so? Timothy Bradley does not touch your souls, OK; I do not understand that but accept it. If a community turns away from Bradley, Ward and Dawson to celebrate Floyd Mayweather’s comic-book id or Adrien Broner’s hairbrush, though, that’s another thing entirely, one that raises a question of perspective.

I am also going to the Bay Area because, culturally, it is one of our country’s richest places. I spent two years there as a young, overpaid, Silicon Valley software developer during the dot-com boom and haven’t been back since 2001. There’s a nostalgia for those lovely, hopeful times.

No, this is not a full-throated or objective endorsement of Ward-Dawson, which is why I chose to write it in the first person. I do not expect a great fight. I expect each man to employ his very best technique, and for those techniques to offset each other. I expect Ward to win by using his head – make of that what you will – but think Dawson is uniquely qualified to upset him. Yet I am nearly as excited about seeing Oracle Arena, Saturday, as Thomas & Mack Center seven days after. Call it wanderlust.

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

What’s known about Kazakhstan by a U.S. audience that gets most of its news from late-night comedians probably comes from the film, Borat, a so-called mock-u-mentary. If Gennady Golovkin has his way however, his homeland will be remembered for its boxing more than jokes about potassium and clean prostitutes. It won’t be easy. Perceptions are as durable as a memorable punch line. But maybe — just maybe — Golovkin has a chance. The journey from a Central Asian nation as faraway as a remote planet for geographically-challenged Americans has already been attempted. Vassiliy Jirov did it a decade before Borat landed in American theaters..

Jirov arrived in the U.S., upset Antonio Tarver at the 1996 Olympics, won a gold medal for Kazakhstan, was awarded the Val Barker trophy for being the best boxer at the Atlanta Games, learned English, got an Arizona driver’s license and lost in 2003 to James Toney in one of the best fights during the last decade. Jirov never got a rematch with Toney. He never got a shot at the money that might have been there in a bout with Roy Jones Jr. Big dollars eluded him. So, too, did many of the dollars owed him for fights he won and contracts he signed.

No, the American dream wasn’t there for Jirov, who is the first of what has become a Kazakhstan tradition for great Olympic boxers. But he served as a pathfinder, a guide perhaps for Golovkin (23-0, 20 KOs), who introduces himself to the U.S. Saturday night against Poland’s Grzegorz Proksa (28-1, 21 KOs) in Verona, N.Y., at Turning Stone Casino in a middleweight title fight televised by HBO’s Boxing After Dark.

“They’ve talked,” said trainer Abel Sanchez, who once worked Terry Norris’ corner, yet says Golovkin is the best he has ever trained. “Gennady says Vassiliy just told him to be himself. Every fighter is different. He told Gennady to use his own strengths.”

Jirov, who lives in Phoenix and works as a trainer in the city’s many gyms, said he didn’t try to advise Golovkin on what and what not to do during their first meeting about two years ago.

“My experience is not anybody else’s,” said Jirov, whose Barker Award in 1996 was followed by two more for Kazakhstan with welterweight Bakhtiyar Arkyev in 2004 and Serik Sapiyev, also a welterweight, at the London Games a couple of weeks ago. “My experience was a good one. I’m happy with what happened. I’m happy that Gennady is trying. I like anybody who tries something new. That’s what creates opportunities.

“From talking to him, I really think he has very good chance of being very good as a pro in this country. With his power and skill, his potential in this country is great. He’s smart, very smart.”

He also has at least a couple of advantages that Jirov did not.

One is the weight class.

“A key difference, I think, is that Gennady is a middleweight and Vassiliy fought mostly as a cruiserweight,” Sanchez said.

Jirov was at his best in a lost division. There’s a reason fighters like David Haye are quick to to move up and out. No matter what the passport says, nobody pays much attention to the snoozerweights. For Jirov, that meant an even more difficult task at becoming known in the American market. He was always most comfortable at 190 pounds. A move to heavyweight, a business decision, led to mixed results with a TKO loss to Michael Moorer and a strange fight in 2004 with Joe Mesi, who won a decision, yet suffered a dangerous head injury — reported bleeding on the brain. The Mesi bout cemented Jirov’s fate. He wasn’t known by many fans, yet was feared by every potential rival. On the reward scale, Jirov wasn’t worth the risk.

Golovkin, the World Boxing Association’s 160-pound champion, is employed at a much more marketable weight. He also is working in a world-wired era. Although he lacks the name recognition of the known Americans, Mexicans and at least one Filipino, he fights for the first time in the U.S. with the internet and social media as an introduction. Digital hype has preceded him. Jirov didn’t have that advantage. Of course, Golovkin has to fulfill the promise.

“Gennady understands that the American public wants knockouts,” Sanchez says. “Whichever round it is, they want to see a knockout.”

Intriguing knockout power is evident both in anecdotes from Golovkin’s training camp and his record. Twenty knockouts in 23 victories add up to a hint of power that is hard to resist for even a casual fan. Golovkin is worth a look. But Jirov had plenty of marketable power himself. A missing element in Jirov’s marketing plan was an interim step. Golovkin has taken it. Instead of jumping straight into the American market in the transition from amateur to pro, the 30-year-old silver medalist from the 2004 Olympics first created a European market for himself. He moved to Germany and pounded out an unbeaten record impossible to ignore in any language and on any continent.

Can Golovkin take that next step with an entertaining style that will make him known, feared and worth the risk for familiar names always seeking the biggest reward?

“I really hope so,” said Jirov, who deserves a thank-you if Golovkin completes what he began 16 years ago.

Javier pulls open the matte-gray door and sees the fresh black and yellow paint and so much heat. The gym’s heat is palpable, visible even. The heater’s flat hum leans on the beeping timer as three sounds pierce the haze of summer South Texas humidity. There is a deep stench of old perspiration and new latex sealant.

“He wanted it bad the other night,” Javier says to himself, “now we’ll see what the little bitch’s got.”

He snickers at the formality of gloving-up, headgear, vaseline. His first three overhand rights push Enrique backwards, landing: shoulder, shoulder, collarbone. But the little guy straightens and raises his gloves, white mouthpiece protruding.

Javier’s hands weigh 40 pounds each now.

The timer beeps thrice, someone calls “Tiempo!” and Javier spits his bloody mouthpiece out the ring and bites down on the top of his left glove, gnawing and tugging.

“C’mon, dude,” Enrique says, “we’re just starting to move around.”

*

Javier starts at how full the gym is inside. There must be 10 guys for every car in the lot out back. He recognizes no one but everyone looks familiar. No one talks. A few take terse instructions – “yab, gancho; no upper” – from a round coach with thick, prickly black hair. He squirts water in their mouths.

There is little sound except smacking, rope on rubber, wet leather on wet leather.

Soon as both gloves are tied tight round Javier’s wrists, his left palm starts to itch. The little brown guy who puts one strip of tape over his laces smiles and shrugs. Then he theatrically slaps the knuckles of each glove and says, “Listo!”

The bleeding parade down the four steps from the ring is embarrassment tempered by exhaustion, and shaking legs underneath a forehead enveloped by unnatural heat, the veins in his temples throbbing hundreds of times that minute.

*

Javier pauses at the top of the ramp to reminisce on the smacking sound it made when he cuffed Enrique behind the ear outside Bar Cielo last Thursday morning round two. One of Enrique’s crew, tatted on the neck with a sleeve to his left wrist, stepped between Javier and the putito.

“Vamos al gimnasio, mejor,” he said.

“Que sea, cabrón,” said Javier. “Tuesday, don’t be late.”

Javier feels stung and even a little concussed by Enrique’s left hook. Those gloves looked so round and soft, shapeless and dumb, till Enrique put the center of the left one on Javier’s right nostril.

Yup, that’s what blood tastes like. Warmer’n you’d think.

Mostly Javier feels fatigue. His hip bones hollow-out and everything below, clear to his heels, starts to shake.

*

Javier strides down the ramp, eyes fixed on the table with piles of headgear and 16-ounce gloves. So old, used and putrid, that gear, smack-faded red and sweat-yellowed white. The leather spokes atop the headgear were gone years ago, and got replaced with elastic bands that say “why bother?”

Get in quick. That’s how you do at Bar Cielo. Then go all maníaco on him. Hit him till the bouncers pull you off. Make him take the steps back. Just beat him down, it don’t matter where, but go for the head. It ain’t gonna last but five minutes. Hold and smack. Make him bleed, take a souvenir of shirt collar or something. Shake it at las pollitas, show’em what you did to their man.

*

Javier likes that nobody stirs when he gets to the table. Nobody shows him his respect. You’re just making it worse for your bitch, he thinks. Enrique and his boy are there, but neither does more than tip his forehead slightly upwards. Settle this like men?

“You are ready, or you want the warm-up?” says a little brown guy in a white t-shirt, worn green sweatpants and scuffed oxblood penny loafers. “I hit you the pads, yes?”

“Just put the gloves on,” Javier says. “Nice shoes.”

“I go to the work after,” the little brown guy says, and he shrugs.

Javier doesn’t bother to touch gloves when the bell rings. He flies at Enrique. First three rights land somewhere. Easy work.

*

Javier climbs the blue-painted steps on the opposite corner of the ring. It’s elevated a little. He pushes through the narrow space between the third and top ropes. He sees Enrique use the space between the second and third. Use my height, he thinks.

Wherever he puts his head, now, Enrique smacks it. Javier points his face at the gray mat and pulls his palms against the headgear. Just make myself tiny, he thinks. So Enrique smacks Javier’s gloves.

Javier comes out his crouch and lashes at Enrique with a right haymaker. But Enrique is evasive, now, without moving. There is no available air. Javier’s eyes bulge. Enrique nearly fits three knuckles of his left glove in Javier’s mouth.

The little brown guy in the penny loafers smiles, shakes his head and waves at Enrique’s friend in the other corner.

“Basta, ya,” he says, and he pulls the strip of blood speckled medical tape from round Javier’s left wrist. “Ya.”

*

Javier notes how rough-taped the ropes are, like shaking strings with full rolls of shiny white and red wrapped their lengths. Give him a burn when I mash him against them, he thinks.

He is sure they extended the round on him. He was so strong that first minute. Chasing Enrique, smacking him. They extended the round, los cabrones!

There had to have been five minutes, then, before that single beep made the little brown guy yell “30 segundos!”

Everyone looks at Javier, shaking and scuffing up the ramp to the matte-gray door. None of them says a thing.

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

Roberto Ortiz scored a second round stoppage over Florencio Castellanos in round two of aq scheduled ten round Super Lightweight bout in Tellum, Mexico.

Ortiz dropped Castellanos twice in the second round. The first knockdown was from a right to the top of the head. Castellanos got to his feet but was dropped from a flurry of punches and his corner stopped the bout.

Ortiz, 138 1/2 lbs of Torreon, MX is now 26-0-1 with twenty-two knockouts. Castellanos, 135 1/2 lbs of La Boquilla, Colombia is now 16-7

Tall southpaw Gilberto Ramirez remained undefeated by scoring a ten round unanimous decision over veteran Richard Gutierrez in a Middleweight bout.

Scores were 100-90 on all cards for Ramirez, 160 lbs of Mazatlan, MX and is now 23-0. Gutierrez, 158 lbs of Miami is now 26-10-1.

Former world title challenger Raul Martinez scored a devastating knockout over Jose Jimenez in round three of a scheduled eight round Bantamweight bout.

Martinez landed a crunching right to the nose that sent Jimenez down face first with blood dripping out his nose and the fight was stopped.

Martinez, 117 1/2 lbs of San Antonio,TX is now 29-2 with seventeen knockouts. Jimenez, 116 1/2 lbs of Chihuahua, MX is now 9-4.

The dog days of August, an unexpected offseason, is full of more idle speculation than medal winners among the American men at the London Olympics. There’s little to celebrate and much to anticipate before it starts all over again next month. A busy September includes one night — the 15th — with two good cards: HBO’s telecast of Sergio Martinez-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center and the Showtime telecast of Canelo Alvarez-Josesito Lopez down the street at the MGM Grand. A couple of miles of Vegas neon will separate the two. After a barren August, an embarrassment of riches awaits. Or maybe just embarrassment. Until then, it’s just a guessing game.

A few more guesses:

Manny Pacquiao. Further uncertainty is about the only way to interpret his latest decision. Reports about him moving his next bout from Nov. 10 to Dec. 1 seem to say he doesn’t really know what he wants. Advisor Michael Koncz says the new date is a political necessity. It eliminates a potential interruption of training by allowing Pacquiao time in October to refile his candidacy for re-election to the Filipino Congress, according to Koncz, who was quoted as saying he has to be in the Philippines to file the documents. But Filipino media reports that he does not have to be there. He can mail in the documentation, according to the reports. The contradictions only muddy uncertain waters. Just who does he plan to fight? Reported options are Juan Manuel Marquez, Miguel Cotto and Timothy Bradley. There would be a lot less uncertainty about Pacquiao if he had announced the opponent along with the new date. As it is, there are questions about whether retirement is another option.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. It’s been three weeks since he walked out of a Las Vegas jail after serving about two months for domestic violence. There’s still no word on what his plans are. Pacquiao doesn’t seem to be among them, at least not during the final months in 2012. Keep an eye on Twitter, Mayweather’s favorite way to communicate. Also keep an eye on Canelo-Lopez. It’s not the biggest fight on Sept 15. Martinez-Chavez is. But Golden Boy Promotions has dropped hints that Canelo might be Mayweather’s next opponent if Lopez doesn’t score an encore of his upset of Victor Ortiz.

50 Cent. Keep another eye on the rapper whose birth name, Curtis Jackson, is included on the promotional license that sets him up as a potential rival to Golden Boy and Top Rank. He might have some very different ideas about who Mayweather, his friend and confidante, should fight next.

Juan Manuel Marquez. He plans to write a book. At least three of the chapters figure to be about how he says he got
robbed against Pacquiao, who won two disputed decisions after a draw against the tactically-skilled Mexican. A fourth chapter looks doubtful, if only because the proven risk isn’t worth an iffy reward for Pacquiao

Ricky Hatton. Yeah-yeah, we read the rumors about a Hatton comeback, possibly against Paulie Malignaggi. Can another Oscar De La Hoya rumor be far behind?

Andre Ward and Chad Dawson. It looks like the best of September. Martinez-Chavez Jr. is getting most of the attention, which also means all of the expectations. Those might be very hard to fulfill. Ward-Dawson on Sept. 8 in Oakland, Calif., isn’t surrounded by all of the hype, in part because neither fighter engages in much braggadocio. But the fight, an All-American bout, might introduce a new argument to a pound-for-pound debate grown stale by the unresolved blather about when or whether Pacquiao and Mayweather will fight. Ward-Dawson “sells itself,” Ward told the media Thursday in hometown Oakland. It does.

Gennady Golovkin. Never heard of him? That’s a question Golovkin, an unbeaten middleweight and Olympic silver medalist from Kazakhstan, hopes to quit hearing in the U.S. sometime after he fights for the first time in America on Sept. 1 when he kicks off next month’s schedule on HBO After Dark against Grsegorz Proksa at Turning Stone Resort in Verona, N.Y. “We’ve made it clear we’ll fight anybody in the middleweight division,” Tom Loeffler of K2-Promotions said of Golovkin. In a month that includes middleweight Chavez Jr. and Martinez, Golovkin needs to make his American debut a memorable one.

Devon Alexander and Randall Bailey. Showtime and HBO will stage a preliminary Sept. 8 to their Sept. 15th duel for viewers. That’s when Showtime will televise the Bailey-Alexander welterweight at Las Vegas’ Hard Rock Hotel and Casino on the same night as HBO’s telecast of Ward-Dawson. Alexander-Bailey has the makings of a classic boxer-puncher confrontation. Bailey already is making it fun. Bailey, who says his one-punch KO power makes him the last of a kind, has little patience for Alexander’s speed and boxing skill. “Everybody gets hit with that right hand,” Bailey said during a conference call. “Question is, when you get hit with that right, what are you gonna do?”

In September, at least, we’ll get the chance to find out.

A partial rupture of the MCL has forced former Strikeforce light
heavyweight champ Dan Henderson to pull out in his anticipated
showdown against the UFC light heavyweight champ Jon Jones originally
scheduled for September 1st at Mandalay Bay Center in Las Vegas. The
entire card has now been canceled and Jones is now slated to take on
Lyoto Machida in Toronto on the 22nd.

UFC president Dana White held a press conference today with the
disappointing news. It’s been revealed that recent middleweight title
challenger Chael Sonnen has offered to step in as a replacement, but
Jones and his trainer Greg Jackson did not accept.

White, furious at the fact that Jones was unwilling to put his title
on the line against a late replacement had no choice but to cancel the
entire card.

Sonnen, who twice unsuccessfully challenged Anderson Silva for the
middleweight crown was to face old rival Forrest Griffin later in the
year, but already had his sights on a showdown against Jones. The war
of words had begun through tweets, but it looks like Sonnen will have
to wait his turn.

Jones beat Machida in their initial encounter in last December,
coincidentally, in Toronto where the rematch will take place.

FORT WORTH, Texas – Our beloved sport continues its mid-year recess, a deserted time before the mania of September. There were no fights here Friday or Saturday. There will be none here next weekend. What is here, though, are collections – those of The Modern, Kimbell Art Museum, and Amon Carter Museum of American Art – so detailed, well-presented and complete, only an ambitious, energetic fool would traverse them in seven hours’ time.

But indulge anyway, why not, because you must attend works of art the same way you must attend fights. A piece of fruit tastes nothing like a picture of a piece of fruit. There are art books and exhibition catalogues galore, works of careful photography and prose, but they encourage what literary critic Harold Bloom termed “misprision” – a sort of fundamental misreading that, if imitated, will cause an original interpretation. Original interpretations by dilettantes are mostly rubbish.

How many trainers in how many American gyms have seen dilettantes’ original interpretations of Floyd Mayweather, recently, and of Roy Jones before him, and of Muhammad Ali before him? These are the artistic equivalents of one who sees the works of a single artist in a book, goes to a supply store, and begins hurling paint that same afternoon.

Much contemporary American art, like much contemporary American prizefighting, looks haphazard and improvised, when seen upclose, like the work of people trained by people who watch videos but never put themselves in the loneliness of a ring with another man then consign themselves to a week alone on a heavybag to solve technical problems. It is a derivative of a derivative; a shallow misreading of another’s shallow misreading of an original style.

These are what thoughts happened as I walked through a different collection – Dallas Museum of Art’s abstract expressionism – Saturday. Works by people more concerned with being artists than making art; persons who sought the straightest possible line to acclaim, men who suffered from a want of solitude, seeking companionship and affirmation at every turn – with a work by their patron saint, Andy Warhol, supervising the entrance.

There was a Warhol self-portrait, too, at The Modern, thirty miles west of Dallas. It was neon, lineless, loud and famous but suffered a genuine misfortune: It hung outside this city’s astounding new exhibition of Lucian Freud’s portraits. Warhol and his t-shirt-ready screen prints of Marilyn and Jackie look insubstantial set beside a contemporary like Freud’s works (if perhaps not Freud’s early, is-that-a-Modigliani efforts).

Walking round Saturday, I thought of Marco Antonio Barrera, as I often do. I thought of the rarity of what he did to “The Prince” Naseem Hamed in 2001 and the three years and seven fights that separated Barrera’s second loss to Junior Jones and only loss to Erik Morales – the solitude of those matches in Caesars Tahoe and Fantasy Springs. I thought of his stylistic overhaul in the three fights between Morales and Hamed, the solitude of New Orleans Arena or an opponent like Jesus Salud. Then I thought of how, after undressing the astonishingly overrated Hamed for a half hour, Barrera summoned the fury of those years in the woods to ram The Prince’s goofy face in a turnbuckle, risking disqualification, caring not a whit.

The careless chance-taking of a master craftsman; that is what one sees in Freud’s 1997 work “Sunny Morning – Eight Legs,” hung expertly at The Modern adjacent to 1993’s “And the Bridegroom.” In both paintings, a dressing screen stands in the background, and when one looks at the way the middle of the piece is protuberant while its floor and ceiling distend, one sees what Freud was after: He is behind the screen, painting what is reflected by a large, convex mirror. In Freud’s work one sees a thing most rare in contemporary paint: a direct link to Van Gogh and his collapsed space between foreground and back; the Spanish master, Velazquez, and his use of mirrors; the Italian master Caravaggio and his genius for human form; and the German master, Durer, and his compulsion for movement. The grandson of another and more famous genius, Freud had the influences and resources and talent to absorb masterworks then retreat to solitude, puzzle them out, and repeat their techniques. Only then, his toolbox complete, did Freud set about going where the daemon took him.

Great artists fail. One sees dreadful works by Cezanne and worse by Picasso. Failure in boxing is different from losing, just as artistic failure is sometimes subjective. There are informed critics who see genius in Pollock’s works like “Cathedral,” which hangs at Dallas Museum of Art; but if one has been to Museum of Fine Art, Houston, and seen young Pollock’s attempts at more academic painting, he can be forgiven for saying “That’s why he evolved to drizzles and splatters.”

Barrera’s failures were not his knockout loss to Jones in 1996 or Manny Pacquiao in 2003 or unofficial loss to Rocky Juarez in 2006. Barrera’s failures were his too-cautious performance with Juan Manuel Marquez in 2007 and his cash-on-delivery, rematch showing against Pacquiao seven months later.

But indulge anyway. Attend the fights; attend the canvases. You can see a prizefighting masterpiece on television no better than a Rembrandt in a book, after all. Plan trips. Do not worry about outcomes. A master’s failure is ever more informative than a dilettante’s triumph.

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

Warriors Boxing Promotions presented Miami Warfare II at the Miami Airport Convention Center in Miami tonight and the crowd was treated to a delight of a card which was headlined by a very entertaining bout between hard hitting Colombian Breidis Prescott 26-4(18KO)and Bronx native Gato Figueroa 20-5-1(13KO).

Prescott is often noted for handing Amir Khan his first shocking knockout loss and has been since dubbed as the Khanqueror. However, the tall and lean Prescott had not followed up strong; he was 5-4 in his last 9 fights. Figueroa the former NABF Welterweight champion, recently faced tall and very tough opposition in dynamite fisted Randall Bailey and rangy brawler undefeated Alex Perez. The slick southpaw found himself with another taller strong fighter tonight.

Prescott started strong in the first round and was firing heavy shots where he knocked an off balanced Figueroa down twice. Gato returned the favor in round five with a straight left hand that deposited the Colombian to the canvas. Where the much taller rangier Prescott set the pace winning the early rounds it was a hard charging Figueroa who came on strong late to keep it competitive and interesting. The two tangled often with the bigger Colombian fighter leaning on and holding the Puerto Rican, Figueroa pushing him down trying to work his legs. A deep cut was caused to the back of Gatos head by some sort of an elbow while engaging the typical entanglement often seen in a southpaw orthodox skirmish. Figueroa came on strong at the end of the fight, he was catching the tiring taller fighter with straight lefts however Prescott used his feet to stay out of reach for follow up punches. The final judges’ cards were 79-71, 77-73, 78-71 all for Prescott.

In the Co-main event prospecting slowly turning contender super featherweight Rances Barthelemy 17-0(11KO) knocked Mexican Alejandro Rodriguez 14-7(7KO) down in the first round in what appeared to be an easy and quick night for the Cuban fighter. In turn, the iron chinned Rodriguez made him work for it over hard fought 8 rounds where Barthelemy earned a unanimous decision. Rodriguez showed a ton of heart as he was hit with everything often and kept coming with true Mexican pride. In the final two rounds Barthelemy toyed with Rodriguez with his hands down slipping punches, more impressively would have appreciated a stoppage. With his perfect record now growing I would assume Barthelemy will start stepping up the competition to get closer to the titles.

In the opening bout of the night Cuban fighter Leosvy Mayedo 3-0(2KO) made easy work of Altantas’ Joseph Benjamin 3-22-2(3KO). Mayedo dropped the over-matched Benjamin in the first and last round however was unable finish off his opponent. Mayedo was clearly looking for a knockout as he was reaching with big punched rarely throwing more than one or two and usually all power punches. More boxing to set up the power punches could have yielded the KO in this fight.

Malcom Stimthil 1-0 dissected Tampa based Cassius Clay throughout a four round entertaining welterweight bout and looked very composed for a debuting fighter. Stimthil rocked Clay often and cut him over his left eye in the second stanza. Stimthil who had 28 amateur bouts, fights out of Palm Beach Boxing in West Palm Beach and is trained by Adam Bram. All three cards read 40-36

Light Heavyweight Radivoje Kalajdzic 7-0(6KO) from Zenica Bosnia went right to work on Jerrod Caldwell 2-1-1(1KO) from Gainesville Florida and scored a blistering first round TKO. Kalajdzic landed a pair of laser fast straight right hands followed by an unanswered flurry that prompted Sam Burgeos to step in and call it a night at 1:49 of the first round.

Middleweight Roberto Acevedo from Puerto Rico improved to 6-0(4KO) with a convincing unanimous decision win over Pnesacolas’ Donald Clark who fell to 2-3(1KO). The card read 60-54 twice and 59-54.

Cuban Super Bantamweight Hairon Socarras, fighting out of Miami, scored a four round unanimous decision win over southpaw Socarras DeWane “The Pain” Wisdon from Indianapolis, IN. The Pain kept it competitive and was caught in the third round in which the tide turned slightly, however not overly impressive and Wisdom did a great job defensively to avoid the big punches from the Cuban fighter, who seemed to be loading up on hopeful punches one at a time, never really putting a meaningful combination together. The cards read 39-37 and 40-36 twice.

In the final bout of the night, Light heavyweight Yunieski Gonazlez improved to 9-0(5KO) with a long and hard fought ten round unanimous decision win over tough, tested and iron willed, Jermaine Mackey 18-6(14KO) fighting out of Nassau Bahamas. Gonzalez threw his heaviest punches at the feisty southpaw Mackey who refused to go away. The two brawled to the fans delight at the end of the fight, leaving this animated Miami crowd begging for more. All three judges saw the fight 100-89.

USA Boxing’s search for a national coach might be as futile as winning an Olympic medal. After the American men came home from the London Games without even a bronze and about as much respect, the proposed job hunt looks like mission impossible. Then again, it can’t get any worse. If the sell-high-and-buy-low strategy applies, there might be an opportunity lurking in the mess.

Anybody who dares take the job, however, faces a big challenge in trying to convince young Americans that Olympic boxing is even worth it anymore. For the last couple of decades, the best have been moving away in an exodus that kept the American men off the medal stand for the first time ever. The 15-year-old who watched the 2012 debacle could not have seen a reason to try in 2016.

Only a competent cornerman with the right name has a chance at rebuilding an American franchise. By the right name, we’re talking about a resume that includes professional champions, some celebrity and credibility that comes with being a teacher. If Olympic boxing trashes computer scoring for pro-style cards and the international ruling body (AIBA) doesn’t become another pro acronym, there’s much to gain for somebody willing to assume the risk.

Three nominations:
Freddie Roach. Can we try this again? Please. Roach was never given much of a chance at helping the 2012 team as a consultant because of American coaches jealous of their turf. Then, there was turmoil that led to a staff shuffle just months before opening ceremonies. Roach’s busy schedule with Manny Pacquiao and Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr., looms as a problem. But give him the funds to hire a staff this year, and he could have time to develop medalists four years from now. As the best trainer of his generation, he’s known to emerging prospects who hope to forge pro careers. Roach’s name recognition and clout could go a long way in re-establishing an Olympic medal as a steppingstone to the pros. After all the confusion over his role with the 2012 team, Roach also knows what’s wrong. Only a real boxing guy can fix it.

Emanuel Steward. Steward was the American choice to coach the 2004 team at the Athens Games until politics knocked him out of the job. Turns out, it was a sign of what would happen eight years later in London. Steward wanted the 2004 Americans to re-emphasize KO power. HIs old-school idea was to take the judging out of the equation. Given the bizarre decisions made by key-punch operators posing as judges at every Olympics since 1992, what could make more sense? Even if computer scoring is trashed in favor of a 10-point-must system, decisive power is the answer. Power also retains the element demanded by young Americans, who want to learn how to deliver it as they prepare to go pro. Like Roach, Steward has a busy schedule, including ringside analysis for Home Box Office and corner work with Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko and Irishman Andy Lee. He has become something of an ambassador for boxing. Steward in the job would mean the Americans are serious, which they were not in London. Subjective judges, whether punching a computer pad or writing on a scorecard, notice those kind of things

Teddy Atlas. He’s a lot less diplomatic in his talk and opinions than either Roach or Steward. But maybe that hard-nosed approach is what’s needed. Atlas’ uncompromising commentary for NBC in London left no doubt about what he thinks of USA Boxing, AIBA and international judging. All of those bureaucrats and officials heard it the way Michael Moorer heard it from Atlas, then Moorer’s trainer, during a 1994 loss to George Foreman for a heavyweight title. Atlas couldn’t stand what he was witnessing.

It’s time to hire somebody who won’t stand for what happened to American boxers in London.

Notes, Quotes
Timothy Bradley chose the wrong word, but had the right idea when he told The Desert Sun that “a lot of people on that side are scared” about Pacquiao fighting him on Nov. 10 at Las Vegas MGM Grand in what would be an immediate rematch of his controversial victory by split decision on June 9. A better word than scared? How about worried? Juan Manuel Marquez and Miguel Cotto are Pacquiao’s other options. Pacquiao’s corner should be worried about any of the three. Unless there’s a reversal in the evident erosion of hand speed, Pacquiao is vulnerable.

And Chavez Jr. weighed 176 pounds 30 days before his middleweight showdown against Sergio Martinez on Sept. 15 at Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center, according to news reports from Chavez’ training camp. Reaction: What do you want to bet that Chavez is 180-plus at opening bell, 24 hours after the formal weigh-in?