By Bart Barry-
More historic happenings, Saturday, more unforgettable things you’ve already forgotten, more unbelievable events you believe completely. At New York’s Hulu Theater Ukrainian lightweight Vasiliy Lomachenko unified titles by decisioning Puerto Rico’s Jose Pedraza after Mexican super bantamweight Emanuel Navarrete beat up charismatic Ghanaian Isaac Dogboe and took his title. All the while a oncegreat broadcaster bid itself a weteyed goodbye in a very private ceremony.
It was a night of good prizefighting that acted, in collaboration with the calendar, a fine contrast with a night of great prizefighting six years past. With Dogboe’s selfbelief and Lomachenko’s craft came a reminder of a man, Juan Manuel Marquez, who epitomized both qualities and emerged from a much hotter crucible more heroic than both men, in 2012.
“Ohhhhhh!” went Roy Jones’ call on that HBO pay-per-view broadcast – writing of contrasts.
And let us use this as a proper contrast. When a broadcaster has the time and wherewithal to roll out of his prescripted, canned and shelved tagline during a knockout, trust little what hyperbole follows. “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling,” quipped Oscar Wilde, and so it be with ageful boxing commentary; the commentator’s desire to make the soundtrack of something historic is sincere as can be but what often comes out are sounds of unseemly striving. Moments are not memorable because someone tells you they’ll be memorable, and no matter how hard he tells you how unforgettable this moment is won’t make it so either. Moments are memorable when they make you fully present, which is impossible while someone fills your ears with his loud forecast about the unknowable future.
In its dotage HBO fell prey to this much as any broadcaster, fell prey to what straining happens when the importance of the platform and its presenters surpasses the importance of what events they present. The amplification, the absurd analogies, the vending. Now that it ends whimpering we get told what a loss we suffer, but that’s neither appropriate nor accurate either. Inappropriate because the departed don’t get a vote in the matter. Inaccurate because boxing has recrudesced during (if not because of) HBO’s demise. The montages and incessant lookingsback to come will play on our vanity, telling us it’s only narcissism if our lives aren’t fully historic happenings, which of course they are, else we’d not have been chosen to witness such historic happenings – and so on in a loop of lugging, effortful prepositional phrases mostly intended to prime us to consume the next historic product.
Salesmen in one aisle, amplifiers the other. One side shepherding and bullying for consensus, the other side adding eight exclamation marks for every witticism.
We return briefly to RJJ’s Marquez-Pacquiao 4 call. The moment was perfect because it was unscripted and Jones’ reaction to it pure. No context needed. Marquez, bloodied and buzzed, planted and threw, consequences be damned. What followed for Marquez was perfect a moment of vindication as sport can afford a man. Hours later on the way out MGM Grand’s main entrance the promotional ring had a guard dissuading Mexicans from climbing on the apron and posing for pics on their faces, hands tucked behind them, Pacquiao style.
Saturday had none of this. It had a charismatic titlist in the comain gutting out an ugly loss and a prodigy – we’re now told ceaselessly – looking less than prodigious in victory. Pedraza proved of Lomachenko what Marquez proved of Pacquiao: They don’t like fighting in mirrors. They are best when their opponents try to react conventionally to their unorthodox attacks, and they are much less when their opponents move symmetrically away from them. If Pedraza is obviously not Marquez he proved Lomachenko is not so much Pacquiao as a standardbearer for our collective desire to find another Pacquiao.
The best part of Saturday’s broadcast came when Tim Bradley asked his cocommentator a direct question about his opinion of Lomachenko’s performance. With that Bradley yanked the broadcast out of the thirdperson past – where experts have said and noted authorities have shared and highly regarded trainers have assured and pundits have never before seen – into the firstperson present. Hey, pal, tell me what you think right this moment.
Firstperson present, like RJJ yelling ohhhhhh. Nobody yelled ohhhhh Saturday. Dogboe barked NeHo a few too many times. We saw very good prizefighters wellmatched. We got told we’d see footwork that was sublime and teaching that was genius. But nobody yelled ohhhhhh at home or in the theater because nothing in the main or comain merited it.
While that happened, the former heart and soul of boxing paid a final tribute to itself in a stadium populated and passionate as a television studio.
If we let the matter be, if we let our sport enjoy its new stature and riches, we will surprise ourselves with how quickly we forget HBO Boxing, with how unstoppably our beloved sport marches on. If there’s an argument it’s ungracious to interrupt a eulogy this way, there’s a counterargument against eulogies in general. We burden ourselves with others’ pasts that we may soon burden others with our pasts. To hell with all that.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
