We came to the moment for which we assembled, Saturday, the telling collection of intervals, two predecessors succeeded by the aptly named championship rounds, the young contender, having had the bridge of his nose crushed by the top of the other man’s head, would have to beat back the old champ, making him quit or at least relent enough to bring a satisfyingly definitive conclusion. Instead, his test sheet confidently filled, our prodigy strode to the room’s front and handed it to the proctor, and the proctor nodded sagely, took the crisp leaf from the student, turned, slipped it in the shredder beside his desk, and said: “That’s an A, champ!”
American Mikey Garcia dropped Mexican Orlando Salido four times in the opening four rounds of their Saturday fight for Salido’s WBO featherweight title – tempting, briefly, a line like “Trampler KO-4.” Noticeably, Garcia did not drop Salido again after round 4, though he staggered him a few times, notably in the sixth, after which, at the halfway point of the match, Garcia’s trainer and older brother, Robert, beseeched his charge to knock Salido out before any shenanigans ensued. A couple rounds later, shenanigans ensued when Salido landed a long right hand then brought his head crashing into Garcia’s relocated nose, breaking it. A ringside physician was hastily summoned and convinced noses are not broken in prizefighting, and the match was complicitly waived-off, giving Garcia a technical decision, Salido’s maroon belt and enough exculpation to keep an asterisk out of his biography – even if the young man never protested.
Likely, Mikey Garcia would have passed Salido’s inquisition well enough, but then, likelier still, Sergio Martinez would have made a quite different spectacle from the one he made in his final 90 seconds with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in September, no? The pair of minutes that followed Salido’s splintering Garcia’s cartilage, belaboring his breathing for what was to come and at least fraying the edges of Garcia’s composure, held in them a chance to learn everything left to know about Garcia, but instead left aficionados ignorant of Garcia’s capacity for adversity as we were when the night began.
Saturday’s main event also did nothing to help televised boxing’s mounting credibility problem. Without Larry Merchant to check enthusiasms any longer, HBO’s journalistic role has succumbed to its promotional one, and Showtime – whose Al Bernstein has nearly Merchant’s credibility but whose dissent is a negative thing (it is found in what he doesn’t say about a fight or fighter) – has rapturously embraced the role of “in association with” promoting.
This was what Saturday’s co-main brought on HBO, when, instead of forcing guest commentator Andre Ward to say what he doubtlessly noticed with wide eyes – that limited little Gabriel Rosado couldn’t miss Gennady Godzilla Golovkin with right uppercuts, as many as four in a row – viewers were treated to “middleweight Mike Tyson” comparisons, as if Rosado were a fraction of the light middleweight Michael Spinks was a light heavyweight, as if Tyson needed a corner stoppage after 20 1/2 minutes to finish Spinks rather than 91 seconds. Or is that analogy too much? It is too much, alas, and perhaps less appropriate than Shakespeare, so we’ll have some:
“As on the finger of a thronèd queen
The basest jewel will be well esteemed,
So are those errors that in thee are seen
To truths translated and for true things deemed.”
It is a sense that now overcomes viewers of the showcase events that have in the past composed an unseemly number of HBO matches: Regardless of what the a-side guy does, it will be celebrated. When Mikey Garcia (or Floyd Mayweather) retreats to the ropes, lands a potshot, clinches, and begins canvassing the canvas for a referee, it is at best evidence of the opponent’s inability to get anything done, and at worst a slightly boring but tolerable bit of strategizing by a master boxer. Which is fine, probably, so long as violent endings or accomplished opponents are en route.
But as Golovkin nears his 31st birthday, the best name on his resume remains Kassim Ouma, 2-5 in the 4 1/2 years before Golovkin got him; and while Garcia was probably going to beat Salido comfortably and possibly going to stop him, well. There was nothing to celebrate Saturday, and it does future celebrations no favors to force a celebration over what proved unsatisfying. These things need to happen organically, lest we get cases like Andre Berto or Victor Ortiz or James Kirkland, which seem, somehow, to check fans’ future enthusiasm fractionally much as they multiply their inevitable discontent.
Mikey Garcia is absolutely one of boxing’s best prospective attractions, and Golovkin is almost as likely the beast he appears in the gyms of Big Bear, Calif. But until Garcia is made uncomfortable by an opponent, or allowed, as the case may be, to continue with an opponent whose foul tactics render him uncomfortable, should anyone be sure? And while Golovkin probably is the robotic tenderizer of men’s flesh he appeared while walloping a 154-pounder with five losses – a man, it may be helpful to remember, whom Alfredo Angulo finished in less than a third of Golovkin’s time, at junior middleweight – must the coronation commence already, because it behooves ratings at boxing’s flagship network to manufacture and market new faces to viewers?
No and no – those are the answers, but since no one likes a scold, here’s a better note: Saturday’s three-fight card from New York was an excellent matchmaking start to HBO’s 2013, bereft of what cynicism we’ve seen from the network in bygone days; the main event featured two fighters from one promoter, yes, but Salido was universally believed a stern test for Garcia and proved to be, or would have. Neither fighter in the co-main belonged to the main-event’s promoter, and that too was excellent. There is quality control afoot at HBO, and since the on-air talent is going to sell instead of report to viewers whatever happens in front of them, this is something welcome as it is overdue.
Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com
