By Bart Barry-
Friday’s super middleweight fight was awful. Saturday’s welterweight fight should be excellent. Saturday’s heavyweight farce wasn’t bad at all. There’s no laying out with T-square and drafting board a column that treats a sport dominated by a 54-year-old. The casuals can’t hear you, friends – they’re not sticking round for your junior bantamweights in Tokyo on New Years. In its superficial, hyperbolic way, though, pop culture gets some things right. Iron Mike is one of them.
Tyson got by Saturday with what gets him by always since he lost his invincibility more than half his lifetime ago: Charisma. It was instructive for this reason, if perhaps no other, to see him across from Roy Jones Jr. Both men dominated their eras for long as they lasted, but only one had charisma.
Jones has admiration and accomplishment and intelligence but not charisma. I’ve been in the same room with Jones for 10 minutes and not realized he was there till someone pointed him out. No one can say that about Tyson. Some of that is scale. Tyson is naturally a much larger man than Jones and in his prime felled much larger men still and carries himself as such.
There was always something strained about Jones; he memorized the Ali schtick and wore the Jordan shoes but couldn’t shrug things off the way the greatest do; he tried too hard, moving from overanimated to uninterested without pausing at connected. That came through Saturday.
Tyson lumbered forward with the same head movement and punch combinations he threw 35 years ago; deprived of his speed and power Tyson looked like no one so much as Mike Tyson. Jones looked like he didn’t want to be there. He did some of his nervous showmanship then leaped away and didn’t return but to hold and wrestle. He pulled his punches, too, which was interesting – and understandable.
Tyson didn’t want to embarrass himself but knew so long as he tried hard everyone would forgive him; he’s been fucking up in front of the world and getting forgiven for a quarter century. For Jones the stakes were higher. Jones was afraid of making Tyson mad. Anyone who’s sparred with a much bigger or better fighter has pulled his punches, in the sort of ironical twist you can’t anticipate till it happens to you. You turn over that cross and it lands crisply, finally, and you ain’t admiring your work – you’re apologizing in the name of deescalation.
Tyson winged away because, really, what was Jones going to do about it? Tyson is a born showman; it’s why he could come to the ring in his prime wearing nothing but black shorts, while Jones had to wear sparkly outfits and choreograph dance numbers to retain a fraction folks’ interest.
Reportedly the purses for Saturday went 10 to Tyson and three to Jones. The fairest metaphor of all.
What happened Friday on DAZN was much less a spectacle and a bad fight too. Danny Jacobs appears to be a genuinely good, likable guy. His every fight is a disappointment. In the leadup to his match with Gabriel Rosado he made the mistake of promoting his fight like a grudgematch. It’s not who Jacobs is. It’s not his temperament. When the opening bell rang and Jacobs spent the next 10 minutes cautiously looking for opportunities to peck away at the man he supposedly despises – that was Jacobs’ temperament.
Rosado was no better. Nobody expected him to be. There are a number of men both Jacobs and Rosado can lose controversial decisions to in their new division but neither should again be asked to shoulder the weight of an a-side.
Which brings us to Saturday’s match between Errol “The Truth” Spence and Danny “Swift” Garcia. About the only bad thing to be written about this fight is its pricetag. It’s not a superfight or a superspectacle. Fans should not be asked to bailout PBC’s fiscal year with three pay-per-view events in Q4.
For all the celebration of Spence and denigration of Garcia these last few years it’s a fair question who’s more deserving. Since icing Kell Brook 3 1/2 years ago Spence has gotten praise greater than his record merits. He hasn’t gotten any better. He played tag-and-go-seek with Mikey Garcia in his pay-per-view debut, a dud of a fight. He squeaked past Shawn Porter in a much closer test than aficionados expected. He survived a Formula 1-style crash.
Now Spence swaps blows at welterweight with a very good junior welterweight who has been, at best, a b-level welterweight. There’s no reason to think Garcia will offer Spence more than Porter did. At 140 pounds Spence wouldn’t want to run himself into Garcia’s lefthook, but at 147 there’s less to worry about.
The intrigue, here, the salespitch, is we don’t know what effects of Spence’s crash have endured after 14 months. Spence hasn’t been fighting, of course, and modern supercars like Spence’s Ferrari have extraordinary safety features, but if Spence isn’t right Garcia should be the man to expose it. Swift is crafty and feisty and commits to counters – he sees them and commits to them wholly. Spence has few weaknesses but he hasn’t Garcia’s experience.
The winner of Saturday’s match likely gets to coax Keith Thurman out of retirement. The loser probably gets to brush gently the rust off Manny Pacquiao. Enjoy Saturday’s fight for what it is, in other words, because it’s not leading anywhere.
I’ll take Spence, SD-12.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry