Legend has it the gambling term “chalk” precedes World War II. In the days when horsetrack bettors watched a chalkboard for odds, the action on a favorite would change so often, causing erasings and re-markings in such a frenzy, that a pile of chalk dust would accumulate on the favorite’s name, often obscuring it.
A bettor who walked to the window and took the chalk, then, might not even know the name of his horse – just that it was favored.
Today, the accumulated chalk dust that can obscure a fighter’s name is HBO. Bet the chalk for Saturday’s HBO pay-per-view scrap between Floyd “Money May” Mayweather and WBC welterweight titlist Victor Ortiz at MGM Grand. Wherever betting closes in Mayweather’s favor – the fight opened at 8-1 odds – the chalk bet will be a safe one for a couple reasons.
First, Mayweather is an astute handicapper. In all of boxing, only Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler might have a better eye for prizefighters’ limitations. Mayweather opens as the favorite in every fight because professional gamblers, uninterested in opponents’ heroic biographies, trust Mayweather’s eye and know he does not fight anyone he isn’t sure he will beat.
Second, HBO televises mostly mismatches. A careful apologist surely could visit all of HBO’s recent offerings and explain the political intrigue and promotional connivance that made them what disappointments they were. But here’s something to keep in mind as a subscriber: It’s none of your business. Your only job as a customer is to enjoy a product.
The “24/7” documentary HBO uses to sell pay-per-view fights was, this time as always, one episode too many. An episode’s worth of time for each fighter and what the men will do to one another, really, is a proper model. That’s three episodes. Because “24/7” is an infomercial vehicle now on autopilot, we get four, and one of them invariably comprises robustly silly skits like Money May car shopping.
Money May, as we learned in episode 3, has lost interest in HBO’s hagiographic treatment of Victor Ortiz’s childhood. Touché. Something about the Kansan’s story does not feel well-reported. Ortiz is strikingly eloquent about the trauma of being left for dead by both parents before his 13th birthday. And when he says that, at age nine, he told all and sundry he would be the guy to beat an Olympic bronze medalist named Mayweather, well, he seems – borrowing Larry Merchant’s term – to be trying too hard.
Ortiz has always come across as an edgy suburban kid more than a street tough. In any other field of endeavor, of course, that would be a compliment. We spent a 15-minute bus ride to the Alamodome together in 2007. Ortiz showed none of the eyes-lowered wariness of most traumatized kids. Rather, he was gregarious, opinionated and bright. If he was merely eight years, then, from living on the streets, his transformation was indeed miraculous.
But if a product of wholesale poverty – pecuniary, spiritual, intellectual – is what you’re after, look no further than Money May’s made-for-TV chat session with American soldiers in the latest “24/7” installment. Racing through his mansion with a laptop, hyperactive enough to outpace the boundaries of his home’s wireless network, twice, Money May showed $30,000/year heroes his collection of meretricious toys. It was a concise report on American values.
If Victor Ortiz were to read what is written about him above, he would likely reply, “Whatever, dude, I don’t care if you believe me or not.” Mayweather, meanwhile, would go into a righteous fit, the reflexive lunacy of a man wrongly accused. Mayweather the businessman against Ortiz the trauma survivor, then, has all the congruity of a Shakespearean bed-switching caper.
So, we can agree the subplots for this event are mostly if not entirely contrived, but what about the fight itself?
It should not be close. Some of us may have forgotten the look on Ortiz’s face when he quit against Marcos Maidana in 2009, but rest assured Mayweather has not. That Victor Ortiz, and not the beast who decisioned Andre Berto in April, is the guy Mayweather expects to face Saturday.
Ortiz, who has learned from his handler Oscar De La Hoya the media is only useful as a lapdog, criticizes those who criticize him. He explains that we do not understand how much fire he has inside him, and he is likely correct. But Ortiz has yet to show Ricky Hatton’s fire in the ring, and we saw how Mayweather extinguished that.
But Ortiz is so much bigger than Hatton was!
Actually, Ortiz has exactly as many fights at welterweight as Hatton had when he was stopped by Mayweather four years ago. Ortiz has 1/7 as many fights at welterweight as Mayweather. Ortiz will bring exactly no power advantage to Saturday’s fight.
That leaves his awkwardness and youth. He is a southpaw, and he has 24 years to Mayweather’s 34. If aficionados agree Ortiz would have no chance against a prime Mayweather, their reason for purchasing Saturday’s show must be: Mayweather is no longer in his prime.
That may be. Certainly, the day Mayweather’s reflexes dull, nobody in his entourage will be the wiser. Mayweather’s trainer and uncle, at age 50, isn’t likely to catch his charge slipping with handpad tricks, and Roger Mayweather remains Floyd’s only chance at an honest appraisal.
For all his childishness, though, Floyd Mayweather might just be a genius of physical motion. If he had detected an erosion in training camp, he likely would have spent “24/7” taunting Ortiz instead of buying cars.
Alas, we’re supposed to be selling this fight in the hopes that next year will bring a fight to save boxing – “The World Awaited” – and so it behooves us to proclaim this match will be more than another tune-up for Mayweather. OK, then, probably . . .
Sorry, couldn’t do it. The chalk is right. I’ll take Mayweather: KO-10.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
