This will not be a political piece by any means other than its acknowledgement of what tomorrow, known in these United States as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, or Election Day, will bring, which, it predicts here, is four more years, because American history says it requires a remarkable political talent to overcome the myriad of advantages an incumbent President enjoys, and this year’s challenger enjoys some talents shy of a myriad.
If four more years is how things are fated to go Tuesday, it is not a bad way to think about boxing this week, as the next four years will move us far from where we are now. In November 2016, Floyd Mayweather will be months from his 40th birthday, Manny Pacquiao will be heading to 38, and both Juan Manuel Marquez and Sergio Martinez will be too old to be making a living in combat – though Bernard Hopkins, 51 years young and still citing Graterford, will likely be calling someone out, and HBO will be negotiating a way to broadcast it with options on future matches if he wins.
The apparent bet is Adrien Broner will, in 2016, be an approximation of what Floyd Mayweather is right now. An approximation or facsimile is all “The Problem” will be because he’ll not have the benefit of discovery Mayweather has. Whatever one opines of Mayweather’s villainous “Money” character, Mayweather deserves recognition aplenty for inventing it, recognition whose reserves will not be spent on Broner if he never becomes more than Money May with a talking hairbrush, his current azimuth.
Or perhaps Broner will in four years be where most imitators end up in American entertainment: making an unreasonably good living as a courier from the last innovator to the next. We’ll surely not be rid of him, no matter what happens Nov. 17 within or without the confines of a new stretch of beach formerly known as Atlantic City, where Broner is scheduled to confront Mexican southpaw Antonio Demarco in what will be at least Broner’s biggest test in four fights and quite possibly more than he can handle. Broner-Demarco is the most consequential fight from here to New Year’s because its outcome is unknowable and will tell us if boxing is headed where its plotters and plotting wish to take our wallets.
Rocky Juarez’s upset of Antonio Escalante in San Antonio a few Saturdays ago brings a timely reminder: No favorite is safe in the main event of a Golden Boy Promotions card, especially if he is aligned with Golden Boy Promotions. If Broner or his team knows what they’re courting with Antonio Demarco, no evidence suggests it. Broner’s high self-esteem, one suspects, keeps him from watching others’ highlight reels, and Broner’s promoter never knows what an opponent will bring.
Broner’s shoulder-rolling, counter-right-uppercutting style is all wrong for a well-chinned southpaw three inches taller than him, a man whose straight left is the punch that picks the shoulder-roll lock (six years since Money May’s last southpaw opponent is no coincidence), one who brutalized Jorge Linares, a Venezuelan more highly touted by aficionados in his day than Broner is now, last year, and needed less than a minute to stop John Molina (24-0) in September. Demarco can be beaten, the late and prodigious Edwin Valero proved that, but Broner (24-0) has yet to merit inclusion in Valero’s company, which is a fine reminder of what makes this fight indeed so consequential: If Broner beats Demarco, however he does it, and especially if he does it spectacularly, the sharp edge of aficionados’ resentment will be dulled. Broner’s next four soft touches on HBO may not be suffered gladly, but neither will they be accompanied by feelings of betrayal for those exulting in the hairbrush narrative or the hairbrush narrator.
That a commodity annoyingly unproven as Broner can be in the most consequential of upcoming fights, with Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez set to take their rivalry from trilogy to tetralogy three weeks later, uncovers a comment on the difference between consequence and eventfulness. Pacquiao-Marquez IV at MGM Grand on Dec. 8 will be the largest event of the second half of the year, but it will not be consequential because no one mistakes the likely winner, Marquez this time, as the future of prizefighting, and even the specter of Marquez ending (muted) calls for The Fight to Save Boxing now brings with it a fraction of schadenfreude’s once tangy delight. Time and other agents, but time most of all, have corroded the fantastical Pacquiao-Mayweather brand such that even Pacquiao’s unexpectedly stopping – in his fourth try – a man Mayweather whitewashed three years ago will bring demands barely more than perfunctory for them finally to settle accounts in the ring. Make no mistake about either man’s coming need to settle accounts, though.
Chances are good Pacquiao will be busy enough this time against Marquez to win on cards scored with a 2009 pen but will see his opponent, for the second time in 2012, shown all the scoring benefits Pacquiao once enjoyed. That should be for Mayweather a frightening outcome while he plans next year’s Vegas fundraiser, particularly if Adrien Broner, the man scheduled to replace him, does something definitive against Antonio Demarco.
Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com
