Salido-Lopez II: Only the Violence Mattered

All that is essential about our sport, in both amateur boxing and prizefighting, happens between its ropes and bells. What occurs during a match, the gravity of fists crashing against skulls, and how, is complicated enough to occupy a nimble mind for hours with conditional clauses. The rest of our sport comprises noise mostly, and the more oblivious of it one remains, the better.

What Mexican Orlando “Siri” Salido and Puerto Rican Juan Manuel “Juanma” Lopez did with each other Saturday on Showtime’s “Championship Boxing” in Puerto Rico’s Coliseo Roberto Clemente, the honesty with which they made their rematch for the WBO featherweight title, the way they contrasted and locked and made a gorgeous violence, was a celebration of what is true in boxing. Salido prevailed by technical knockout, as he did in their April match, felling Lopez in the 10th round with force enough to bounce the Puerto Rican’s right ear off his own shoulder and cause referee Roberto Ramirez Sr. to stop the match though Lopez was on his feet well before the count of 10, stumbling about.

Saturday’s match was a reminder of what is important in boxing and why it overwhelms the unimportant – erroneous descriptions, postfight happenings – with the enduring marks its violence carves in one’s memory.

Regardless of what television persuaded viewers to think, Salido-Lopez II was an even fight through four rounds. Orlando Salido, whose amateurishness – a grade-school jab and habit of touching his gloves before every surge – is offset by a faith in power and activity, was able to land seeing-eye rights over Lopez’s negligent guard.

How does Salido, his head down and weight too far forward, land such punches on an elite fighter?

He sets his eyes on an opponent’s chest and trusts a piece of anatomical geometry short fighters know well: The chin is one head above the chest. If you look at a man’s lower sternum and throw your fist a head’s length above, you’ll find a chin more times than not, and never worse than a jaw. Some fighters learn this through experimentation. Most learn it from an exasperated trainer in a monologue that goes: “Damn it, don’t get over your front knee! . . . Don’t throw that . . . Hey, if you’re going to do it, remember his chin is only a head above his chest, OK? Stop bouncing that punch off the top of his head.”

Juan Manuel Lopez, a southpaw whose left guard floats when he throws rights and whose chin floats generally and reliably, believes in his right hook nonetheless, whether using it as a lead or a check counter, and he nearly changed the trajectory of his career with it Saturday. Catching Salido at the end of a fifth round that was an even heat for 2 1/2 minutes till Salido opened up Lopez and had him retreating, Lopez checked Salido and sent him corkscrewing forward, into the ropes and onto the blue mat. Salido beat the count and wobbled towards his stool, grateful the knockdown happened in the round’s last 20 seconds, not its first.

Here it became plain Showtime’s play-by-play broadcaster, Gus Johnson, was capable of transcendent badness, embracing a sensationalistic impulse that would steer another wonderful fight towards the perilous territory of yet another scoring controversy and yet another made-by-television “disgrace” for boxing. It wasn’t so much that he mistook Lopez’s perfect right hook for a Salido slip but rather how his shouted messages collided with one another: The strongman Salido was beating down a shellshocked Lopez, outlanding him by a frightful margin, in the most competitive fight of 2012! Can a fight be both one-sided and competitive? Apparently so. Johnson preps to call the greatest fight in history or the greatest robbery in history each time his microphone goes live; all the better if both happen in the same fight.

The ninth round was a special one that saw Lopez plow obstinately forward, his mouth open and power undone and footwork a knot, in a distressed try to make Salido win by doing something even Salido’s gym mates probably didn’t know he could: counterpunch off the ropes. It was a round that was too good to score with conviction, though Lopez probably took it.

Which made the series of punches Salido landed in the first half minute of the 10th – a definitive set of combinations begun and ended with a right hand – so thrilling. Salido broke Lopez, ahead by majority-decision scores after nine rounds, as he did their first time and predicted he would again. Salido is every good thing people say about him.

Then came Lopez’s postfight comments, boldfaced assertions the referee who stopped the rematch, and his son who stopped the first fight, share a gambling addiction about which Lopez had warned the commission that appointed them. This was not a stunt by Lopez; he believed the veracity of the allegations he made. You want reality? There it is. We can fetishize people being real and celebrate Lopez’s candor, or we can say performers have a responsibility to maintain artistic distance, a barrier of insincerity. But we can’t have both – and especially not from concussed men still in the hot blood of a fight. The nature of Lopez’s allegation, and the appearance that Ramirez Sr.’s decision to stop the match was justified, mean Lopez now must produce evidence or a recantation very soon.

Whatever the outcome of that and however Showtime’s broadcasts lately compromise aficionados’ enjoyment of its product, nothing can be allowed to detract too much from the spectacle of Lopez’s heart or Salido’s desire to dominate it. The solace, as ever, is here: Only the 27 1/2 minutes Salido and Lopez made war on one another will be remembered.

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