By Bart Barry
Saturday in California on a surprisingly rich card of mostly anonymous fighters (outside the Golden State anyway) DAZN and Golden Boy Promotions delivered something wondrous as it was unexpected: American super featherweight Andrew Cancio beating to broken undefeated Puerto Rican titlist Alberto Machado. With unfortunate infrequency does an underdog win a world title and still less often by round-four bodyshots stoppage. Even if it now starts happening monthly it will never be tiresome.
One might fairly infer from this the glimmeringest of hopefuls, yes? We are a dissatisfiable bunch, the aficionados, drawn as we are to violence, subjected as we are to disappointment oftenlike, that no sooner do we have airwaves (cablewaves? satellitewaves?) saturated by our sport than we begin loud lamentations – in volume relative to our experience – the offerings’ quality shall plummet. And it shall. The same way teamsports leagues become diluted with each expansion so too has our beloved sport with its each new league, be that league DAZN, ESPN, Fox or Showtime.
What happens when network trafficopters filled with cash cropdust cities that haven’t opened a new boxing gym in a decade but have closed three or four. When the undeserving suddenly get rich the deserving make comebacks or delay retirement plans under the auspices of what Golden Boy Promotions partner Bernard Hopkins once called “back wages”. Nobody amongst us generally blames them because we know the brutality of this entertainment medium, what grisly things these men do for our amusement, and even a band of misanthropes misanthropic as ours can’t quite cross the line to begrudge them. We suffer it then, unenthusiastically, caustically, characteristically, so long as commentators properly stay their throats and scribes stay their fingers, admitting the fare be reheated retirementplan mush and not worldclass prime.
We’re not the suckers they think we are but a resentful lot. Anyone ever attached to any local boxing scene gets this; every carpetbag promoter comes cantering about with his unique recipe, asking insiders his same rhetorical questions we’ve all heard from each of his predecessors, the conman’s shimmer in his smile, and no sooner do we try to answer earnestly, telling him what we’ve seen work and what expectations are reasonable, but his head swivels elsewhere, the better to spot a new mark. A friend and colleague of ours who’s forgotten more about Arizona’s boxing market than Phoenix’s next dozen promoters will know in the aggregate, Norm Frauenheim, has a typically sanguine view of those swivelheaded promoters: “I figure, hey, it’s their money.”
The new broadcasters don’t care because they’ve run the numbers and know if aficionados were a mass critical enough to seduce HBO’d’ve found a way to sate us and stay in the game. So it’s a game of capturing the naive, which is itself a game for the naive. For among the target demographic of naive combatsports fans who’d fall for such swindles regularly or longly enough to justify recent budgets are gaggles of former boxing fans who pretty loudly declare their lost allegiance attributable to dilution – in the form of too many champions and too many weightclasses and too many too-manies making worthless fights too many.
Shoving into this maw an annual Gervonta Davis mismatch is a surefire way to get canceled (two months ago I finished with Showtime nearly a year to the day after I finished with HBO). Which leaves three leagues: Fox, free, ESPN+, cheap, and DAZN, cheaper than premium cable but more than ESPN+ and Fox combined.
In the apparently revived WBSS, DAZN has something uniquely special, something no other league approaches, and that is meaningful combatants making meaningful fights that go somewhere. It’s a best-of-the-rest strategy aspiring to be more and quite possibly succeeding at such aspirations: No one has come close to building an Oleksandr Usyk mightily or quickly as WBSS just did.
Which brings us to Saturday’s wonderful surprise and what it might portend. Golden Boy Promotions, since its figurehead’s plunge and CEO’s termination a few years back, is a regional attraction with a single moneymaker – currently prizefighting’s greatest – and a magazine. Three years ago that wasn’t just not-much but barely anything at all. But the outfit got through the thinnest of years by equally thick margins and is out the other side, with a meaningfully massive infusion of cash via its association with Canelo Alvarez and a committed network which doesn’t want for dates.
Five years ago this would’ve meant fizzing cases of Tecate commercials stacked shamelessly atop shameless mismatches. But Saturday it surely did not. The favorite got canvassed in the final undercard bout, the favorite got canvassed in the comain, and the favorite got keelhauled in the main. More of that, please, whenever you can, thanks.
There’s something simply cynicism-proof about watching an unretired longshot like Andrew Cancio win a world title by breaking an undefeated favorite in half, especially after that favorite drops him in their match’s opening 90 seconds. It speaks to Golden Boy matchmakers’ matchmaking prowess, too, it does. Years ago, at the firm’s inception, Golden Boy’s fatted matchmakers made ugly showcases; their CEO scammed HBO with sparkly a-sides, and the matchmakers’ job was not to blemish the records attached to those names. Golden Boy didn’t build many fighters and didn’t make many great matches either. That matchmaking staff, now, is chastened and leaner. When the company’s primary earner fights all comers, too, it’s nigh impossible for coworker talents, whether contenders or prospects, to refuse whoever they’re offered. Which is how we get matches like Saturday’s – matches made to be entertaining contests more than gory coronations.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
