By Bart Barry–
“It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books – setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them.” – Jorge Luis Borges
SAN ANTONIO – The Alamodome, just east of this downtown area’s center, has hosted prizefights both great and consequential since its grand opening in 1993. Unfortunately its most recent event will be remembered only in the latter tally.
Saturday, before a partisan-Mexican crowd of 63,392, one which publicists insist smashed seven unique attendance records, Mexican Saul “Canelo” Alvarez laid ruin to Puerto Rican middleweight champion Miguel Cotto, thrashing Cotto, who weighed in on the contracted dot of 154 1/4 pounds, for 9 1/2 of their 11 rounds together before Texas referee Laurence Cole, in an uncharacteristic and unappreciated (by Alamodome attendees), act of insight and empathy, waved a stop to the match at 1:00 of round 11, making Alvarez the first man to contest and win both the WBC’s world junior middleweight and middleweight championships in the same match. Stubbornly scheduled to coincide with Cinco De Mayo weekend, even if the calendar rendered it impossible, Saturday’s Siete De Mayo fiesta was more a cynical ethnic cashout than a party.
“I fight for the people,” Alvarez said immediately afterwards. “Because without the people, there are no people.”
“Miguel Cotto tried to win,” said Cotto.
The miracle was not so much in the fight’s happening, although that was unusual in a year already bad enough to divide two into prizefighting’s committed fanbase yet again, but that it was competitive for long as it lasted. Cotto, effectively retired since battering marvelously the crippled Argentine formally known as Maravilla almost two years ago – and the ‘almost’ is essential, we know, since Cotto employed his now infamous “Point Per Day from Puerto Rican Parade” clause, insisting Alvarez pay a significant penalty for scheduling the superfight in Mayo, not Junio – made a better showing than many forecasters feared when the fight’s contract finally was published during the weighin.
Cotto promoter Roc Nation, a still-novice outfit captained by Big Daddy Kane’s longtime hypeman, has brought none of the innovation promised its semifull Barclay’s Center houses, proving with rapper Jay-Z’s tepid success th’t rapper 50 Cent’s abject failure in the very same gambit was not an anomaly but a trendsetter: Hip-hop artists, evidently, are multiples better at selling hustler epics to suburban teens than combative mismatches to urban adults. Or perhaps that’s a touch unfair to Roc Nation: It did, after all, invent for its Canelo-Cotto weighin a contract-unveiling gamechanger in which the terms of a fight – weightclass, purse, trunk colors, trim, glove size, referee, drugtesting policy, and even permitted punch combinations – remained variables unknown to ticketbuyers until DJ Truth 1 revealed them Friday while Alvarez and Cotto loitered near the scale.
Oddsmakers, themselves doubleblinded as ticketbuyers till Friday’s afternoon announcement, quickly installed Alvarez a 4-1 favorite, upon learning last-minute negotiations by promoter Oscar De La Hoya and cable broadcaster HBO restored Canelo’s left hook to the permitted-use column from which it was struck deliberately by Miguel Cotto’s own pink pen Thursday evening. Writing of HBO, the network’s palpable relief was felt from New York to Lone Star State when the match’s opening line came in well below the unwritten threshold (5-1) determining a match’s fitness for pay-per-view.
“It’s not complicated,” explained an HBO programmer who requested anonymity: “If there’s less than five times the chance our favorite will beat his opponent, take out your wallet. ‘Championship Boxing,’ our flagship program, is for less-competitive matches, obviously, though our 10-1 sweetspot is considerably lower, still, than Showtime’s. Once a fight goes off at 15- or 20-1, we’re going to lean ‘Boxing After Dark’ unless it’s (Gennady) Golovkin.”
Cotto trainer Freddie Roach, ubiquitous as a popup ad since the fight was signed, whenever it was signed, prepared his charge for a seemingly slower version of Alvarez, as Alvarez had little issue finding the Puerto Rican from about the second round to the match’s merciful end in the 11th. Alvarez, the naturally larger man, succeeded where others failed before him, successfully hooking with the hooker in a way 2015 Cotto victim Daniel Geale did not, starting a left hook to the head each time Cotto started a left hook to the body, and twice topspinning Cotto in a way not seen since Manny Pacquiao cleaned the Puerto Rican’s clock in 2009.
There are no sixth chapters in prizefighting, and Cotto’s inability to imperil Canelo even once in their 34 minutes together Saturday portended the end of a career marked by popularity more than greatness. Had Cotto retired immediately after Pacquiao stopped him, or Floyd Mayweather or Austin Trout outclassed him, his legacy might have included as much goodwill as it lacked decisive victories over great fighters in their primes, but the rapacity of Cotto’s cashgrab since 2012 – excepting only his match with Sergio Martinez, since Martinez and his handlers and New York’s athletic commission and HBO are more culpable for a one-legged man’s assault than its perpetrator – has cooled what warm feelings aficionados long reserved for the Puerto Rican.
Cotto’s surly disposition and spartan interview style conclusively wore better on a doomed warrior than a finicky diva.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
