By Bart Barry-
Saturday in three mainevents that miraculously did not conflict and more miraculously concluded before midnight ESPN’s Joe Smith beat the fight out light heavyweight former titlist Eleider Alvarez, former titlist “Showtime” Shawn Porter won each of his 2,160 seconds with a German welterweight named Sebastian Formella on Fox, and Russian former heavyweight contender Alexander Povetkin put the cuss in concussion against British hopeful Dillian “The Body Snatcher” Whyte on DAZN.
Smith was the evening’s best winner, even while Povetkin was its biggest and Porter its least-surprising, at least so far as mainevents went, and whosoever has time or desire anymore to endure much more than those? (Actually, that’s a touch disingenuous; bantamweight southpaw Robert Rodriguez has emerged as something of a bubble phenom, needing fewer than seven minutes to ice fighters with an aggregate record of 19-0-1.) Saturday favored men who work hard without needing inspiration from without.
Pressure guys, volume guys, the undissuadable. While Smith fetches all the bluecollared clichés Porter fights no less doggedly, even while trying to sparkle. Povetkin doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.
He’s chinnier than publicists colored him as a young Soviet, and at 6-foot-2 almost prohibitively short for a contemporary heavyweight, but he can crack and crack proper. I recall a local trainer telling me about Povetkin’s power, wildeyed, while standing in a tent at Camp Verde, Ariz.,13 years ago, an hour before Tommy Morrison’s MMA debut, many years before Povetkin began flunking IQ tests administered by various sanctioning-body-approved drug examiners.
I know, I know, the two guys who beat Povetkin and looked ready for a Mr. Olympia posedown were clean as whistles, of course, and you can’t possibly judge an athlete’s substance regimen by something unreliable as your own eyes and experience, but whatever put Povetkin in position for a perfect left uppercut Saturday was no more likely a banned substance than what put him on the bluemat twice a few minutes before.
Aside from the knockdowns, at 40 Povetkin didn’t look any worse – slow, robotic, predictable – than his heavyweight peers do and hardly worse than Whyte did at 32. He looked chinny and uninspired to Whyte’s merely uninspired.
There’s a counterintuitive element of cardiovascular fitness required simply to stand across from a heavyweight, it’s damn taxing even when nothing happens, and it makes a decent argument for busyness: You’re going to be heaving for breath after three minutes of trying not to get whirligigged, anyway, so why not move round a bit and give folks a show? Heavyweights used to do this, really, before all became lumbering headhunters.
Povetkin, for being the shorter man in his career’s biggest fights, knew better, somehow, to snatch Whyte’s body than did the Body Snatcher, and while the previous round’s crumplings on the bluemat weren’t premeditated to make Whyte overconfident they had that effect, and Povetkin’s telegraphed hook to Whyte’s body was indeed premeditated. Whyte’s eyes followed Povetkin’s head and Whyte’s mind followed the pattern Povetkin’s earlier hooks set. Then suddenly Povetkin’s fist was through Whyte’s chin, not after his liver, and if Whyte tells you he remembers any of the 10 minutes that followed he’s fibbing.
If Eleider Alvarez tells you he still enjoys prizefighting he’s fibbing too. Alvarez hadn’t the tools nor will to dissuade Smith in Saturday’s best match, and Smith gobbled him up.
A few months ago I purchased a Roomba and have spent hours, fully unpredicted hours, mind you, diverting myself with its observation. I didn’t envision writing about Carlota – that’s her name – but then I didn’t either expect to think of her while watching Joe Smith. It’s the undiscouraged relentlessness they share. About halfway between Carlota coming in my consciousness and Smith snatching Alvarez’s, too, I read a book by Melanie Mitchell, Complexity: A guided tour, that explores genetic algorithms, first explored by the irreplaceable John Henry Holland, and how they might be used in a self-learning program to teach a digital robot to collect cans on a virtual grid.
The simple strategy – go in a straight line till you hit a wall then pause and look around – succeeds in a way much more complicated strategies do not. It succeeds with machines for the reason it fails with most humans: Without a need to find meaning in their universe, machines suffer never from discouragement or boredom and do not mind repeating work. It’s how a Roomba like Carlota, who “cares” not a whit whether surfaces are sparkling or filmed with dust, outperforms humans who care deeply. Carlota’s job is to go in straight lines till she hits a wall then turn slightly and go in another straight line and keep doing so till her power is cut; if she’s not entirely oblivious of feedback from her environment neither is she staking her identity on it.
Similarly volume punchers like Joe Smith find satisfaction in the doing much more than the effecting. They begin with a wisely limiting strategy of doing the same thing over and over in a faith that looks nigh machine-like: If I simply hit something with my fists 30 times next round I succeed. They are constants who rely on other men’s variability, other men’s reliance on feedback, other men’s proneness to discouragement.
Alvarez exhibited all these things, Saturday, and eventually got knocked out the ring for them. Showtime Shawn exhibited none of these things and went 36-0 on official scorecards against a German who didn’t have a chance at a thing more than moral victory even before making his trip from Hamburg. Porter is a pro. He takes every opponent seriously and goes hard. He’s the PBC fighter for whom I most often catch myself cheering.
I like him the way I liked Juan Diaz and loved Timothy Bradley; they beat over 12 rounds flashier guys who undress them in three-round sparring sessions; they don’t have off nights because they haven’t a plan B. That makes them vulnerable to their sport’s alpha predators, yes, but they reward their supporters disproportionately to their talent.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
