By Bart Barry-
There were recent fights aplenty with which a grateful boxing writer might fashion a column, and this writer should be grateful as any, writing weekly columns, as he did, through yesteryear’s summer famines. But important as it is to write well about great fights and the courage that makes them so is how difficult it is to write well about poor fights and the mismatchmaking that makes them so.
One of the Brothers Charlo iced a two-sentence-Wikipedia opponent a couple Sundays ago, the other Brother Charlo decisioned a multi-sentence-Wikipedia opponent Saturday, and Demetrius Andrade kept his resume spotless by keeping away from a featherfisted Pole. Surely 80 minutes of prizefighting affords material enough for 1,000 words of opinion. Or surely not.
I plead ignorance from the top. I don’t know enough about either Charlo to tell one from the other. Both fought in the last calendar week, both were defending a title of some sort because the Brothers Charlo are PBC veterans enough to be titlists, though I can’t say which Charlo beat whomever to attain whichever title or if either Charlo has changed weightclasses anytime recently or really was defending a title (Editor’s note: Actually, never mind).
Full disclosure: The closest I ever followed a Charlo fight was when one of them sparred writer Kelsey McCarson for charity.
I expected the Brothers Charlo to be fighting on Fox these days – didn’t they both do so a while back? – but I couldn’t find either of them on my local Fox affiliate, and I haven’t had Showtime since December. I watched their joint postfight pressconference Saturday night on YouTube and came away feeling like I’d missed not a thing since losing interest in them many years ago during a Houston undercard or two.
The usual: Everybody respects us, nobody respects us, the world is going to respect us; we’ve done so much, we’re just getting started, wait till you see what’s next; nobody knows us, everybody recognizes us, the people who know us best don’t know us at all; lions only, lions Only, Lions Only! If this were an effort to be mysterious or conflicted or even controversial it would mean something more than all it actually means, which is the standard and tired marketing fare of being all things to all people, this time with a scowl of some sort. One of the Brothers Charlo implied he might’ve sold so many more tickets if he’d put himself in a larger venue, which seemed an odd swipe to take at himself or his promotional partner, the other Brother Charlo, sitting next to him and apparently in charge of booking.
What everyone realizes by now is the Brothers Charlo and many of their PBC brethren are hamstrung by management. They can dominate whomever PBC’s network of matchmakers conjures up and wear whatever belts complicit sanctioners cobble together, but they’ll not unify anything or attain universal recognition.
They wear the PBC on ShowFox belt, while an ESPN champion makes war on his network’s nonentities, and a DAZN champ has a modicum more respect, or much more respect, for having beaten a known opponent – read: an opponent whose name you knew before the ESPN or ShowFox pressrelease – sometime and somewhere in the last two years.
This shouldn’t be read, or at least not precisely, as an indictment of PBC champions. Most of their safetyfirst exhibition title defenses happen before unenthusiastic crowds and overly enthusiastic television crews, perhaps, but at least they’re getting paid way more than fairmarket value for their efforts. DAZN champions, meanwhile, are getting overpaid, too, but with the very real chance they may be upset, through poor fortune or tournament whimsy. ESPN champions get paid about the least and contend with the anxiety of a mercurial boss and ingenious matchmaker; keep Bob happy and Bruce’ll get you opponents that make you better, but make Bob unhappy and Bruce’ll get you beat by Christmas.
Which all adds up to what? About half a column, according to the count in the bottomleft corner of this screen.
Then let’s dive shallowly into Demetrius “Boo Boo” Andrade, the nearest DAZN has to a Brother Charlo of its own (unless you count Danny Jacobs, whom you probably shouldn’t count because, after all, Jacobs has tested himself by narrowly losing to his division’s two best men).
So much potential, that Boo Boo!
Literary critic James Wood once wrote, and I could swear I once quoted but Google does not confirm, that potential is only potent so long as it goes unused. Nobody muses today about Roberto Duran’s potential as a lightweight or Floyd Mayweather’s potential as a pay-per-view attraction. Potential is what we assign teenage prospects, not 31-year-old middleweight titlists.
Andrade gets this. If you were to ask him about his potential this morning, probably he would take it as the insult it intends and tell you how many tickets he just sold in Rhode Island of all places. He should add but wouldn’t: “It’s 20-percent more tickets than Charlo sold in his hometown the same night, and Charlo’s hometown is 12 times the size of mine.”
The reason he should add that is the reason he won’t: Charlo, not Canelo, is whom Andrade should target as his breakthrough opponent. Who would win that match? Nobody knows. There are potential-fetishists on either side of the debate.
The proper broadcaster for the match, however, be doubtless – “ShoBox: The New Generation”.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry