By Bart Barry-
— Photo Credit : Chris Farina – K2 Promotions
SAN ANTONIO – So goes a Sunday afternoon at Brown Coffee some miles north of downtown, across Broadway from The Pearl:
This is the sort of thing you do when there’s nothing interesting you in a sport about which you’ve found a way to write 1,000 words every Sunday for a dozenyear: You’re well away from writer’s block which handicaps you counterintuitively enough since you no longer worry what might come of your column if you approach it unprepared – gone years from sweating Saturday nights over the blank page – you come to the page blankly filled with enthusiasm at some capacity for improvisation then don’t improvise and don’t worry but do begin wondering when the alarm might sound. And sound it doesn’t because you’ve muted it – experience, presence, other numbing agents. There you sit bypassing the alarm right to indifference, certain the alarm will sound later and you’ll not end so uneventfully as apathy, then begin combing YouTube hoping something’ll spur you to begin wordstringing and it does, Golovkin-Jacobs on mute, having watched it as you did with a roomful of others live, the room comprising East Coast lads in the house of a Brooklynite Puerto Rican, a collection of guys crying Robbery at the screen when scorecards got read, you wonder if, as you suspected then, the room’s commentary offset HBO’s banter, interested as the Golovkin promoter HBO immodestly became a few years ago.
Instead a welladjusted and attractive woman, 19 years your junior, comes in the coffeeshop where y’all’ve conversed before and you offer a seat at your table and confess you’ve not an idea what this week’s column should treat, and since she knows it’s ostensibly about boxing she says:
“How about that new Ed Sheeran video?
“It’s bad, but he’s boxing. You could write your column about the way boxing is done in that video.”
And you playfully laugh and return to Golovkin-Jacobs, round 2, and get bored and do in fact watch the Ed Sheeran video, song muted, and the boxing isn’t bad at all. Sheeran, a southpaw, was on an episode of “Top Gear” you saw years ago and seemed humbly likable, and you find yourself cheering for him more in that video with the female pugilist than you cheered for either Golovkin or Jacobs eight days ago (though you made theatrical overtures to Jacobs’ chances to ensure you got invited back for Chavez-Canelo in a couple months) then the love interest disappears from Ed Sheeran’s video while the deus ex machina cranks rustily along and a sumo wrestler shows up bareassed, and it’s back to Golovkin-Jacobs a spell.
Golovkin has maybe a robot’s head movement so his defense is but punching power, though occasionally he picks-off a shot, keeping his redtaped black-n-white Grants up till an opponent strikes them; an ability to catch shots on his chintip and not buckle composes his defense mostly. Therein lies the reason Golovkin is not moved upwards in weight and will not be: Without chloroform on each knuckle he surely would not take with him to 168 pounds, Golovkin has little technique or tactical whatnots in his tricksbag – sorry, Abel! He would make an average super middleweight and way too much has been promised about him to afford any average happenings. Round 3 Jacobs lands his first lead shoulder of the match, a tool upon which he relies increasingly, but bless his heart it’s a fight, so why not (he writes, in large part because Jacobs’ shoulder slamming Golovkin’s jaw is not some Thai super flyweight’s head slamming Chocolatito’s head – and you can’t adjust for bias until you recognize bias).
And now a muscular and charismatic lesbian – who insists against all evidence she’s actually bisexual – comes in the coffeeshop and starts talking trash about your new haircut while the young attractive girl at your table recommends for your column a hypothetical effort on what might happen if you and she sparred, and you assure her the hypothetical is already welltrod in these columns.
Now Jacobs begins grimacing and flexing at Golovkin, and it’s not a good idea. Perhaps in the mirror or across from outmatched sparring partners what Jacobs elicits in his shows of rage is fear but in the ring with a man who punches hard as he does and absorbs better Jacobs’ glares and ripples make him look mentally fragile and a little too hopeful: He doth protest his toughness too much, wethinks.
It’s impossible to tell in realtime if Golovkin’s punches felled Jacobs in the fourth because HBO cameraswitches between Golovkin righthands, and it’s one more reminder how much presentation influences what we think we see when we watch a boxing broadcast. While Jacobs doesn’t appear particularly compromised by the knockdown or what blows caused it he does switch wisely out his southpaw stance when combat resumes. The knockdown on replay looks a touch tangled, and before anyone reports it’s not a tangle but Golovkin’s nuclear power, he’s advised to recall Jacobs withstood that power for 24 more minutes after the knockdown. And by the end of round 8 Jacobs is quite obviously the faster fighter even while the order of his punches doesn’t make much sense.
Now the charismatic, muscular lesbian joins our table and you introduce her to your attractive friend from a loving family and nothing chemical or dangerous happens but talk turns to loves lost, and it’s right depressing – so back to Golovkin-Jacobs and a finish you know won’t be suspenseful for anyone who knows its result.
In the ninth Golovkin actually ducks a punch and then eats a shoulder and then for some reason Jacobs begins clowning rough again while Golovkin breathes deeply round his gumshield. In the fabled championship rounds there appears to be little on either guy’s punches and even less on Jacobs’. Clearly exhausted Jacobs begins to throw floppy wrists like Steven Seagal running.
The decision’s a fair one for an honest scrap between two good middleweights. But let us have no more loose talk of greatness.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
