Canelo-Smith: A fight to die for

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – Friday afternoon this city landed the biggest prizefight of the rest of the year when promoter Matchroom Boxing announced Mexican middleweight champion and light heavyweight titlist Saul “Canelo” Alvarez would challenge for undefeated Englishman Callum “Mundo” Smith’s super middleweight Ring championship at Alamodome the Saturday before Christmas.  Four hours later every resident of this county got a text message that read:

936 new COVID-19 cases reported today – the most since July.  With the virus spreading, limit unnecessary outings, avoid social gatherings and wear your mask.

936 nuevos casos de COVID-19 reportados hoy, la mayor cantidad desde julio.  Limite las salidas innecesarias, evite las reuniones sociales y use cubrebocas.

If it appears these messages are at cross-purposes with an Alamodome superfight it’s because they are.  Here’s a sentence I didn’t before imagine writing: If you are not from here and planning to come for the Canelo fight, please do not.

The events of 2020 have made, for responsible adults, many previously unimaginable behaviors standard.  Everyone else has, in varying degrees, pretended things are normal, returning to normal, nearly normal or I’ve-waited-long-enough-for normal.  The contortions this has put folks in have been universally ugly.

A quarter of a million Americans have died from Covid.  That reality is too horrifying for all and leads some to dissemble by wondering about the numbers, asking if anything might’ve been done differently, picking nonsequitur fights with elected officials – threadbare arguments about “tyranny” and “free market” and (coming soon) “national debt”.  Looked at as goodfaith inquiries from reasonable people, these arguments raise immense ire in responsible adults.  Looked at as the castings-about of children, these arguments appear tantrums.  Which is what they are.

The formula for not spreading Covid has been unchanging for seven of the last eight months: Stay home unless you absolutely have to go out, wear a mask whenever you do go out, and keep six feet between yourself and others.  To avoid infecting yourself, do all these same things and wash your hands frequently and avoid touching your face.

The absolutely-have-to-go-out clause above raises plenty of socioeconomic questions.  I’m not oblivious of them or the injustice of declaring things like meat-processing plants vital to national security.  In this city, too, a number of busdrivers have died of Covid, their exposures to infected and generally asymptomatic folks – themselves commuting to jobs that preclude their families’ hunger – too great for too many hours to be properly mitigated by some flimsy cloth stretched across rubberbands.  These folks deserve our deepest sympathies and financial aid in whatever form we can provide it.

But the men filling Home Depot every day for six months because it’s what happens to be open and they can’t stand being alone or with their families?  They’re a different story.  Especially the jackasses who do so masklessly.  The uncharitable if understandable reaction to such folks’ almost inevitable acquisition of the virus is they had it coming, which they did, but here are two entities that didn’t: Employees and familiars of these folks, and the American healthcare system in the long run.  What is lost on those who fixate on mortality rates is a question like: What will be the lasting impact of 12 million Americans with lingering respiratory issues?  What will that do to gross domestic product, to healthcare costs, to their children’s prospects?

Aside from the fighters themselves, their trainers and cutmen, and a handful of officials, nobody must be in Alamodome next month.  Every national promoter has proved this, out of necessity, since August.  Canelo, angry his paycheck got affected by Covid like everyone else’s, declared an empty arena, or at least a paycheck empty of a live gate, unacceptable, and a scramble began for some state, any state, dumb enough to host large indoor gatherings during a pandemic.  Nobody had to look hard.

Twenty days before our 10-fold increase in Covid cases PBC held a “successful” pay-per-view event at Alamodome.  Did Davis-Santa Cruz cause the spike in cases?  No, probably not.  Rather there was a correlation between our once-vigilant city’s newfound complacency and a 9,000-person event in an indoor arena.

Oh, I know, Canelo-Smith’s promoter will find a podiatrist or dentist somewhere to say the precautions being taken by a part-time staff of minimum-wage security guards are topnotch, and every patron will get a free squirt of hand sanitizer with any ticket purchase above $30, and thousands of people drinking and shouting for hours cannot possibly spread anything because at least half the guards working the doors’ll have functioning forehead thermometers and half of that half will remember to use them, too, so never mind World Health Organization guidance or restrictions from Center for Disease Control.  They can’t tell us what to do!

Last week’s announcement brought to mind two anecdotes.  A month after The Legend of Muhammad Ali was published, I brought an author’s copy Christmas present to the gym for the kindly father of an aspiring pugilist.  He told me his son idolized Ali.  I told him be ready to talk his limited son out of a prizefighting career someday soon.  He told me not to worry because his son had a great chin and lots of heart like Ali.  I told him I didn’t want to see his son finish his days like Ali.  He assured me boxing had nothing to do with Ali’s condition.

My mother used to say of the most delicious things in life they were “to die for”.  I happen to be a big Callum Smith fan and give him a real chance against Canelo in December.  It should be an excellent, consequential prizefight.  But I don’t think it’s to die for.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry