Host of masters, target of scorn

HOUSTON – Here is the largest city in the state that comprises the world’s most corrupt athletic commission, a beast of two backs that screws prizefighters and fans alike – to hear and read accounts of those outsiders who compose what member Paulie once called “the unsilent majority.” To walk this city’s streets and visit its museums and ride its METRORail, though, you’d never know its residents strain under the burden of such a facinorous bureaucracy. It’s almost like they’re oblivious of it.

But fear not, dear reader, Saturday’s postfight umbrage was thick in Reliant Arena, spread the way it usually is in boxing: Proportionate to one’s distance from the ring itself. Managers, writers, and – heaven help us – television viewers, were more outraged by how things unfolded in the co-main event than its participants, Carlos Molina and James Kirkland, who both seemed happy with their fine efforts and ready to make a rematch.

Ban this, investigate that, and so on. Saturday’s officials enforced the rules objectively: Molina’s cornerman was on the apron before the 10th round and its ref’s 10-count concluded – and that count does not conclude the moment Molina returns to his feet – and the rules say that disqualifies his charge, even if it has no effect on the action, as explained at every prefight rules meeting in every jurisdiction in the land, even the corrupt ones. Molina was leading on every scorecard save Gale Van Hoy’s, of course, and that made his necessary disqualification unfortunate.

“Use common sense!” the masses then chanted, voices hoarse and necks rippled white with indignation.

Be subjective, in other words. In Texas. Enough.

There is an exhibit currently at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston – “Elegance and Refinement” – that treats the works of an old master named Willem van Aelst and features one work in particular, “Still Life with Fruits and a Wineglass,” in which Van Aelst uses the reflection of a glass goblet to paint a silver plate and its contents, windows, the light from those windows, the way the goblet’s white wine refracts that light, the city beyond, and the artist within. He solves many technical puzzles of light and its behavior in a successful attempt to make what his Dutch contemporaries called “reflexy-konst” and considered “an effective demonstration of (the artist’s) mastery over nature.”

Erik Morales, an old Mexican master of a different canvas, the rigid and bloody blue one, failed in his attempt during Saturday’s main event to dominate a subject some three miles from MFAH. Ah, but he came close. He solved most of Danny Garcia’s technical puzzles by the end of round 10 and endeavored to impose his mastery on the much younger Philadelphian, to make a suspenseful ending to their junior welterweight title match while erroneously discounting Garcia’s limited power.

Morales’ derring-do took him a step too far in the 11th, possessing him to throw a right uppercut from distance – a technical mistake of a punch when thrown by anyone but that other Mexican master, Juan Manuel Marquez – and Morales suffered a fate different from what he anticipated. Danny “Swift” Garcia justified his moniker, clipped Morales with a proper counter left hook, dropped him on the blue mat and ended Morales’ comeback.

On the MFAH wall opposite Van Aelst’s “Still Life with Fruits and a Wineglass” hangs his “Hunt Still Life with a Velvet Bag on a Marble Ledge” – a masterwork coincidentally created one year before another Delft painter, Jan Vermeer, completed “Painter in His Studio,” the pound-for-pound champion of its era. Van Aelst’s velvet bag is now a brilliant blue, a curious color for a hunting satchel. When Van Aelst painted it 347 years ago, however, the velvet bag was green, a color Van Aelst made by mixing ultramarine with a yellow-lake pigment. Time and light have taken all the yellow from the canvas, revealing a gorgeous sort of hue that is nevertheless different from what its artist intended.

So it has gone with “El Terrible.” Taken are most of his refining hues of quickness and conditioning. Friday, he effectively showed up at the weighin and said: “The WBC what? No, no, tomorrow’s fight is for the Morales Championship of the World. It will be contested within three pounds of whatever I weigh right now. And give me a pull on that sportsdrink, will you?” And nobody argued.

With faded reflexes and conditioning, Morales’ underlayers – technique and wiliness – now shine through in a way they did not when he was in his prime, when he was an ass-stubborn antagonist who forewent convention, advice and even his orthodox stance to beat on men he wrongfully held in contempt. A prime Morales stops Danny Garcia in seven rounds. Saturday’s Morales, the master who took away Garcia’s right hand after the fourth round saw the young man celebrate its success just a little too much, knew what had to be done to win but waited too long to do it and was vulnerable when he hustled to catch up.

Will El Terrible retire? Nobody knows anything about that but this: Morales will do whatever the hell he wants.

Just like Texas. Great scorn will continue to be heaped on this state and its maddening officials – and the farther one is from Texas, the greater the scorn. Indeed. But it says here Texas will have the richest vengeance of all: Living well. See you next week in San Antonio.

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Author’s note: Special thanks to Skira Rizzoli Publications, whose excellent collection of essays in the “Elegance and Refinement” catalog provided whatever insights on painting happened above.

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