LAS VEGAS – In the years since Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez began their rivalry, fans have debated what might have happened had Pacquiao not felled Marquez four times with left hands in the men’s first two fights. Saturday, they found out. But somebody forgot to tell the judges.

In a fight at MGM Grand likely to be remembered for Marquez’s technical mastery of Pacquiao through its second half, Pacquiao inexplicably prevailed by majority-decision scores of 114-114, 115-113 and 116-112.

The 15rounds.com ringside card did not concur, scoring the fight a clear victory for Marquez, 117-113.

After four uneventful but even rounds, 12 minutes in which each fighter showed the other perhaps too much respect, Pacquiao (54-3-2, 38 KOs) and Marquez (53-5-1, 39 KOs) began to exchange in round 5, with Marquez throwing left-uppercut leads Pacquiao surely had not seen in training-camp sparring sessions. Marquez also kept Pacquiao off-balance and somewhat confounded by his counter movement and patience.

Through the fight’s midway point, only round 5 had been decisive for either fighter. That round went Marquez’s way.

By the end of round 8, it had become apparent that Marquez understood Pacquiao better than Pacquiao understood Marquez, and that if Marquez could stay fresh and away from the left hand, he’d have the fight won. In the ninth, the fight’s best round to that point, Marquez appeared to expose the myth of Pacquiao’s improved footwork, causing the Filipino champion to swim at him, flailing wildly with both hands.

As each round passed, it became more apparent that uneventful rounds should be scored in Marquez’s favor for demonstrating the Mexican’s superior ring generalship.

Heading into the championship rounds, Pacquiao still did not have a solution for Marquez’s left uppercut lead, but Marquez had picked up every Pacquiao left cross and slipped it or ducked it, sending Pacquiao careening over his lead shoulder. As the fight ended, Marquez triumphantly raised his fist while Pacquiao turned and walked slowly away.

After the judges’ scorecards were read, fans’ disapproval grew so loud that Pacquiao’s voice could not be heard over the roar, and Pacquiao’s postfight interview yielded no new insights.

TIMOTHY BRADLEY VS JOEL CASAMAYOR
While most fights open with a contest between combatants to see who can establish his jab, California junior welterweight Timothy “Desert Storm” Bradley’s match with Cuban Joel Casamayor began with a contest to see who could establish the head.

And so it went in Saturday’s co-main event, a fight for Bradley’s titles and a foul-fest that was every bit as ugly as boxing insiders, and even outsiders, expected it to be. Referee Vic Drakulich earned his pay, warning Casamayor (38-6-1, 22 KOs) repetitively for butts and low blows and presiding over an aesthetically displeasing fight in which Bradley (28-0, 12 KOs) eventually prevailed by corner-stoppage TKO at 2:59 of round 8.

From the opening bell, Casamayor pursued a prefight strategy that could best be classified as slip-butt-hold, establishing his bald head as his best weapon. Bradley, who has often and somewhat unfairly been classified as a dirty fighter, held his own head high, keeping Casamayor at a safe distance and whacking him with accurate right hands.

The match’s result was never in doubt – with Bradley too active and Casamayor too old – which left lots of room for doubt as it concerned the making of Bradley-Casamayor in the first place. Matched correctly and given a chance by fans, Bradley could likely be a star in one of boxing’s best divisions. Matched against a cagey Cuban against whom no one has ever looked particularly good, and fighting before a partisan Filipino and Mexican crowd, Palm Springs’ Bradley had little chance to win new fans for himself.

MIKE ALVARADO VS. BREIDIS PRESCOTT

Coloradoan “Mile High” Mike Alvarado, long seeking a career-defining win that would make him popular as his undefeated record says he should be, might have gotten just such a win against Colombian Breidis Prescott.

Appearing to trail by a significant margin in the match, Alvarado (32-0, 23 KOs) rallied in the final round to bludgeon an exhausted Prescott (24-4, 19 KOs) with ferocious uppercuts till referee Jay Nady stopped the match, awarding Alvarado a knockout victory at 1:53 of round 10.

After giving away most of the match’s opening four rounds, Alvarado was bleeding from his nose, right eye and mouth but still marching forward, undissuaded, by the end of the fifth. Rounds 5 and 6 were the best Alvarado put together to that point in the match, and Prescott began to evince fatigue, fighting within Alvarado’s range and backpedaling awkwardly, after the fight’s midpoint.

Rounds 8 and 9 saw Prescott regain his stamina and reestablish distance, outboxing the heavier-punching Alvarado, who appeared at times to be fighting as if protecting a lead. But then the 10th round struck and Alvarado went for broke, leveraging uppercuts that completely changed the fight and kept him unbeaten.

JUAN CARLOS BURGOS VS. LUIS CRUZ
The first televised fight of Saturday’s undercard, Puerto Rican lightweight Luis Cruz (19-1, 15 KOs) against Mexican Juan Carlos Burgos (28-1, 19 KOs), featured two guys who appeared to want to fight each other quite desperately but just never found the rhythm needed to turn the trick.

Although caught by a number of clean punches during the 10-round match, Burgos nevertheless prevailed by majority-decision scores of 91-95, 97-93 and 98-92, in a fight with numerous tough-to-score rounds.

DENNIS LAURENTE VS. AYI BRUCE
After six rounds of even if not particularly enthralling combat, Filipino Dennis Laurente’s (38-3-4, 20 KOs) undercard match with New York’s Ayi Bruce (13-5, 6 KOs) ended abruptly with a perfectly leverage left cross from the Filipino southpaw that ended Bruce’s night. Laurente’s left-handed lightning struck with effect enough to score Saturday’s first knockout at 0:57 round 7.

JOSE BENAVIDEZ VS. SAMMY SANTANA

Phoenix super lightweight Jose Benavidez may well represent promoter Top Rank’s best shot at a superstar for the year 2020, but he is not there just yet.

Against tough but limited Puerto Rican Sammy Santana (4-5-2), Benavidez (14-0, 12 KOs), who hurt both hands during the match, moved well and struck hard but was unable to stop Santana despite dropping him three times in the fight’s opening two rounds and winning a decision all three judges scored 60-50. Benavidez, whose lanky frame and perilous right cross are a little reminiscent of a young Thomas Hearns’, still relies on reflexes too much – often dropping his hands and pulling his head back from punches, in an amateurish maneuver that needs to be remedied.

VICTOR PASILLAS VS. JOSE GARCIA
Saturday’s second bout featured a battle of California featherweights in a four-round match between Victor Pasillos (1-0) of East Los Angeles and Jose Garcia of King City (0-4). Pasillos prevailed in his professional debut by three, one-sided scores of 40-36.

FERNANDO LUMACAD VS. JOSEPH RIOS
Latino versus Filipino, the ethnic theme for Pacquiao-Marquez III, began with an entertaining and competitive eight-round scrap between Philippines super flyweight Fernando Lumacad (25-3-3, 12 KOs) and Texan Joseph Rios (10-6-2, 4 KOs). Lumacad prevailed by unanimous decision scores of 77-73, 77-74 and 78-72.

The match began uneventfully, with neither fighter risking much of himself in the opening five minutes. With little time remaining in round 2, though, Lumacad caught Rios with what appeared to be a balance-shot left hook that sent Rios stumbling straight-legged to a far corner. In round 5, Lumacad dropped Rios a second time. But in the three rounds that followed, Rios fought back admirably, even winning the sixth on two of the official judges’ three cards.

Opening bell rang on Saturday’s card at 3:23 PM local time.

Photos by Chris Farina / Top Rank

LAS VEGAS – Diego Magdaleno may not have blown through his opponent the way some hoped he would, but he made a dominant showing just the same.

Friday night at the Islander Ballroom in Mandalay Bay, a venue hard to locate but telegenic enough for promoter Top Rank’s fight-weekend-appetizer purposes, Magdaleno (21-0, 7 KOs), a local super featherweight favorite, cruised to a unanimous and well-deserved victory over New York’s Emmanuel Lucero (26-8-1, 14 KOs). Judges scored the match 100-87, 100-88 and 100-89.

After an even beginning, Magdaleno, a quick-hopping southpaw, began to hurl his straight left at the slower Lucero and find him most every time he did. Though Lucero was game throughout, often goading Magdaleno as if to seduce him into further punishment, Magdaleno was too quick and accurate with the assault he mounted.

Round 7, the most lopsided of the fight, saw Las Vegas’ Magdaleno catch Lucero with a left cross as the New Yorker bounced of the ropes and came forward. Magdaleno’s left landed with force enough to send Lucero directly back to the same ropes. Though Lucero did not drop to the canvas, he hit the ropes hard enough to get the referee’s attention and collect a 10-count. That knockdown accounted for the one-sided scorecards Nevada judges submitted.

While Magdaleno is a contender with a fair degree of class, there are concerns about his ability to hurt opponents. At some point in the near future, Magdaleno will need to start brutalizing tough but limited men like Lucero by grinding them to stoppages, if he is to become more than a local attraction.

MERCITO GESTA VS. RICARDO DOMINGUEZ
The Philippines’ Mercito “No Mercy” Gesta may not be Manny Pacquiao – no one is – but he does a workable enough cover of the southpaw champion’s style to deserve a spot in crooner Pacquiao’s band.

In Friday’s co-main event, and only other televised match, Gesta (24-0-1, 12 KOs) worked over Mexican lightweight Ricardo Dominguez (34-7-2, 21 KOs) for 10 somewhat-uninspired rounds, easing his way to a unanimous decision the official judges scored 99-91, 97-92 and 98-92.

Skipping forward from his southpaw stance and propelling an educated left hand, Gesta had Dominguez in trouble for a moment of the fourth round but ultimately allowed the Mexican to remain standing till the match’s final bell six stanzas later.

Gesta has feasted on b-level opponents in the past and seemed somewhat surprised at Dominguez’s durability. Going forward, Gesta will have to make fantastic strides to take himself from backup-player to main-event participant, with Pacquiao, in his countrymen’s minds.

Photo By Chris Farina / Top Rank

LAS VEGAS (Nov. 11) – After ripping his shirt neckline to bellybutton and tossing its remains to a group of aghast Filipino fans, Mexican Juan Manuel Marquez mounted the MGM Grand scale Friday and weighed in at the welterweight limit. Marquez’s musculature was grotesque enough to make Manny Pacquiao’s strength and conditioning coach, Alex Ariza, plead for an immediate ruling from “anyone who knows anyone with the USADA, great God!”

Now be honest. If you are a boxing fan sitting on the fence about his investment in Saturday’s Pacquiao-Marquez III pay-per-view, would a spectacle like that make you more or less inclined to buy the match? It’s a rhetorical question, frankly, for at least three reasons we’ll treat in a moment.

Tuesday brought news that a man in the Marquez camp – one known as Angel Hernandez and Angel Heredia and a few other friendly cognomens – 10 years ago provided performance-enhancing drugs to disgraced American Olympian Marion Jones. This revelation raised the possibility Marquez, a lightweight world champion who looked awful in a welterweight fight against Floyd Mayweather in 2009, had found someone to help him take advantage of Pacquiao’s skittishness round blood-testing needles, as it were.

Despite a temptation to bask in what irony the Pacquiao camp’s refusal to do blood testing may have wrought, we’re well-advised to dismiss the hypothetical weigh-in explored above.

Firstly, Marquez has been a man of integrity in our sport, one of its genuine shining lights, for a long time. He deserves every benefit of the doubt, no matter the rippling, back double biceps pose he hits on Friday’s scale.

Secondly, for all the reactionary dudgeon about PEDs sportswriters have heaped on the public in the last decade, fans, as a general rule, could not care less. We now know at least one of the stars of the Boston Red Sox 2004 World Series team was ingesting any PED he could get in his body, and yet, to this day, have you heard one Bostonian say “Boy, do I regret our snapping that curse!”?

Better yet, despite what we now know about Sammy Sosa’s historic run, have you ever heard a Chicagoan say “You know, when I think back to what happened in 2003, the possibility we might have won a World Series with the help of a PED-using athlete, I’m certainly glad we didn’t get out of the NLCS”?

Thirdly, promoter Bob Arum assured us Wednesday in two different conference calls that if, in the year 2011, we’re still fixated on steroids, why, we’re idiots.

“Many of you are really behind the times,” Arum said. “The conditioners who know what they are doing wouldn’t touch steroids because they are not as effective as the natural substances and the sophisticated training methods now used.”

There are lots of appropriate rebuttals to such a statement. A reader named Joel Stern offered an excellent one on Twitter: “I expect baseball players to start hitting 70 home runs a year again next year once they adopt (Arum’s) modern training methods.”

This year’s leading slugger belted 43 home runs. In 2001, Barry Bonds hit 73. That’s the difference between “the natural substances and the sophisticated training methods now used,” and steroids.

And before anyone offers up a loony rebuttal that boxing trainers have discovered some secret the rest of the sports world knows nothing about, he should visit a boxing gym. Eating ice chips, rubbing one’s body with Albolene and training in a garbage bag is the way most boxers still make weight in 2011. From such a laboratory next year’s Nobel Laureate in chemistry is not likely to emerge.

Tuesday’s news, though, can only help Pacquiao-Marquez III’s pay-per-view buy rate. The most commonly cited reason for not planning to buy the rubber match is that it will not be competitive because Pacquiao has beaten up natural welterweights while Marquez is not even as big as his lightweight opponents. The specter of Marquez being unnaturally large will help the fight sell because it will restore some hope to Marquez’s fans their guy has a chance.

He does. Marquez will always present a challenge to Pacquiao because Marquez has high ring intelligence and knows Pacquiao well. Pacquiao’s left cross, thrown from a southpaw stance, is his difference maker. But Marquez neutralizes that punch by doing two things other Pacquiao opponents do not: He hooks to Pacquiao’s lead shoulder, and he ducks down and to the right.

As an orthodox fighter, Marquez has few opportunities to hurt Pacquiao with left hooks to the head or body. The angles are all wrong. What Marquez has determined, though, is that a hard left hook to Pacquiao’s right shoulder spins Pacquiao leftwards, which takes away the balance upon which Pacquiao’s left cross relies. By the time Pacquiao gets resettled and launches the left cross, Marquez has time to find it and duck beneath it, sending Pacquiao over his left shoulder.

One other thing to consider is what happened when Marco Antonio Barrera made his third match with Erik Morales. Barrera had been summarily undone by Pacquiao a year before. Morales, meanwhile, was on a six-fight win streak and the larger man. As Barrera later said about their 2004 rubber match, “(Morales) came to bury me.”

Morales wanted to knock Barrera out so badly, though, that he eschewed good boxing. He held his right hand high and cocked, with no thought of defense. Barrera caught Morales with an uppercut in the fourth round and outboxed him the rest of the night, winning a majority decision.

Could Pacquiao be outboxed by Marquez? Sure. It has happened twice already. Can Marquez survive Pacquiao’s maniacal onslaught? Yes. That happened twice before, too.

But it says here it won’t be enough, again. Marquez will probably make it to the final bell, and Pacquiao will follow his corner’s instructions – something Morales never did – and win a comfortable decision.

I’ll take Pacquiao: UD-12, then – unless Marquez splits his seams at Friday’s weigh-in.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

In his latest collection of boxing writing, “Winks and Daggers” (The University of Arkansas Press; $24.95), Thomas Hauser provides his signature, last-word treatment of nine fights from 2010. Of those nine events, only three happen after June. That absence of coverage, the lack of eventfulness it reports, might just be the best metaphor in Hauser’s new book.

Last year was likely better than this year, but the outsized hope that greeted 2010 made it a disappointment. That is, 2010 began with serious talk of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao making a historic match in Cowboys Stadium; 2011 began in frozen and defunct Pontiac, Mich., with Timothy Bradley and Devon Alexander accidentally fouling one another.

Hauser was not in Michigan 10 months ago, wisely enough, but he was in Texas, New Jersey, New York and Nevada in 2010. “Winks and Dagger” opens with a ringside and dressing-room account of the Manny Pacquiao versus Joshua Clottey event that happened in March 2010 at Cowboys Stadium, a happening about which promoter Bob Arum said, “This is going to be one of the biggest events in the history of boxing.”

Well. Today, future prizefighting events in Cowboys Stadium warrant nary a consideration. Hauser does boxing historians a favor by putting promotional statements made by men like Arum and Golden Boy Promotions’ Richard Schaefer on the public record. It is important that such proclamations be held to account.

Arum’s words about boxing’s debut in Cowboys Stadium were indeed hyperbolic but not nearly far-flung as they appear today. They have not aged well because boxing has not aged well. In February 2010, our sport was generally disappointed that negotiations for a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight had collapsed but still hopeful the fight would be made in the fall, with Cowboys Stadium set to break domestic attendance records.

Reading the opening 100 pages of “Winks and Daggers” brings a feeling near nostalgia. No longer would major prizefighting be seen in casino settings only by moneyed hotel guests but enjoyed instead by the masses in stadiums! Hauser captures this hopefulness well, a hopefulness that endured through May when Floyd Mayweather made his consolation bout with Shane Mosley.

Later in “Winks and Daggers,” Hauser writes of the PED controversy that ruined Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiations and also of Mayweather’s bizarre behavior during the lead-up to Pacquiao’s November 2010 match with Antonio Margarito. There’s an urgency even in the title of Hauser’s “Floyd Mayweather Jr: When is Enough?” piece; Hauser writes at Mayweather more than about him, with a ferocity usually reserved for HBO Sports executives.

Much of Hauser’s ferocity toward Mayweather has now been replaced by indifference. Hauser recently led a treatment of Mayweather’s latest match by reporting:

“There came a time about a month ago when I tuned out Mayweather vs. Victor Ortiz. I didn’t read the conference-call transcripts. I didn’t go to Las Vegas for the fight. I didn’t buy the pay-per-view.”

That is Mayweather’s loss, not Hauser’s.

The writing in “Winks and Daggers” is customarily crisp. In what is probably his finest treatment of 2010, Hauser journeys to San Antonio to cover Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. versus John Duddy in what turned out to be Duddy’s final fight. Duddy is one of Hauser’s favorite subjects, and there’s something delightful and unexpected about the way Duddy as a subject brings Hauser’s prose alive. All the other Hauser marks – unique anecdotes, exhaustive sourcing, experimentally placed semicolons – can be found in Hauser’s other eight fight treatments, of course, from Yankee Stadium to Madison Square Garden to Boardwalk Hall, but some of his wittiest writing concerns Alamodome, and Judge Jurgen Langos’ scoring of Chavez Jr.-Duddy in June 2010:

“The most charitable explanation for Langos’s scorecard is that Jurgen was tired after his long trip from Germany and might have had trouble concentrating on the fight. State athletic commissions in the United States should make a point of sparing him the burden of similar trips in the future.”

Finally, there is Hauser’s sharp criticism of what can now be called the former regime at HBO Sports. Along with Steve Kim, Hauser has written insightful and important analyses of HBO Sports for years. Hauser’s 2010 contribution, “HBO and the State of Boxing,” is no exception.

Hauser’s methods of prying open the inner workings of HBO have been criticized occasionally by other writers but none so persuasive as Tim Starks, whose writing about Hauser’s use of anonymous sources has offered an ongoing, good-faith critique. In its way, such criticism is an honor; Starks chooses Hauser because of his stature.

In an excellent book about reporters on the campaign trail of 1972, “The Boys on the Bus,” Timothy Crouse offers two ideas about covering President Nixon that might be instructive here:

“Conjecture was a necessary tool in cracking the secretiveness of the Nixon Administration” . . . “the press needed some new form of journalism to deal with the obscurantism and dissimulation of the White House.”

“Secretiveness”, “obscurantism” and “dissimulation” are prevalent enough in boxing that they’d make a good title for Hauser’s 2011 collection. Very few honorable persons in our beloved sport speak uncomfortable truths on the record. Internet writing about boxing, for all its flaws, has likely flourished because, in its comfort with anonymity and conjecture, it is possibly the very “new form of journalism” Crouse called for.

Hauser’s writing, in other words, consistently beats the hell out of traditional media sources that disseminate publicists’ inflated claims as fact.

As for internet writing about boxing today, disinterested funding is gone. Most independent sites’ dwindling revenue comes from promotional companies’ advertisements. One promotional company owns a prominent site. Hauser himself has published pieces on a different promoter’s site in 2011.

Boxing may not be a dying sport, but sometimes it’s hard to imagine how it would look different if it were.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Right on, Roy.

The quote above belongs to HBO analyst Roy Jones, who said those words Saturday in a context far different from how they deserve to be remembered. Jones was selling the HBO audience, pre-fight, on a chance oddsmakers had things all wrong about the main event to come. But the oddsmakers were right, of course.

Saturday, in the latest of what could be a string of sabotaging efforts by the outgoing regime at HBO Sports, Filipino Nonito Donaire decisioned Argentine Omar Narvaez by scores of 120-108, 120-108, 120-108, 120-108, 120-108, 120 . . . in another mismatched event that should not have happened on public airwaves much less a subscription channel. The fight happened in The Theater at Madison Square Garden and moved from curiosity to farce directly after the opening bell.

That was when the discrepancy in the men’s sizes became apparent. There are ways of tricking the public into buying the competitiveness of a match before it goes off, tricks like platform shoes and multiple layers of clothing boxing has long used, but there are no believable lies once men strip to their waists and meet at center ring.

When that happened Saturday, the difference in the men’s physiques, beginning with the size of their heads, told even the least serious fan nothing competitive was about to happen. Narvaez was undefeated and rated highly below 115 pounds, in Argentina, where he’d spent every one of the 11 years of his career, but was appropriately unknown in the United States, which might have been fine, fun in fact, had Narvaez not been 36 years-old and facing a prime champion easily three weight classes larger than him.

Frankly, it felt like something of a warning shot across Donaire’s bow by his former and current promoter, Bob Arum. Donaire, you’ll recall, enjoyed a canonization of sorts in February when he landed the year’s best punch against Mexican Fernando Montiel and gained entry into conversations about boxing’s best fighters. Then Donaire signed a contract with rival promoter Oscar De La Hoya, launching one more Top Rank v. Golden Boy Promotions lawsuit, and got himself benched for eight months.

Donaire returned to Arum’s company a media-friendly prodigal. This was his first match since coming home. Fighting about 3,000 miles east of the Bay Area, where he lives, and 10,000 miles from his birthplace in the Philippines, Donaire defended his 118-pound belt against a 115-pound defensive specialist from South America in a small Manhattan theater.

As New Yorkers in attendance chanted “This is bulls—!” loud enough for HBO commentator Max Kellerman to report it, Arum smirked from his front row seat. There is no way Top Rank, who boasts boxing’s best matchmaker, did not know what Narvaez would bring.

“So you wanted to be the next De La Hoya, kid?” Arum’s smirk seemed to say to Donaire. “Wait till you get a load of what’s said and written about you next week.”

Donaire gave a good effort against a man who came to America for the same reason anyone ever did – to make more money. Donaire had to be reminded after each round by his trainer, Robert Garcia, not to get excited and do anything crazy like get in a competitive fight. Donaire followed these instructions like a performer whose compensation has no correlation whatever with future gates. Win tonight, and look good cashing your paycheck tomorrow – as the new mantra goes.

for his part, narvaez was small. he wished to offend no one. he kept his little hands high. he kept his tiny face tucked behind them. he did not antagonize. he did not hit. he would not be hurt.

DONAIRE WAS ENORMOUS, MEANWHILE.

Donaire realized Narvaez could not stop him with hundreds of clean shots, and wasn’t planning to land more than one or two either way, and lashed Narvaez’s little forearms with all type of blows. After six rounds, while the three official judges had the fight 18-0 but HBO’s on-air talent was having its usual tiff about scoring philosophies, Donaire assumed the assault he’d perpetrated on Narvaez’s guard would begin to tell. When it didn’t, the rest of the night was a bust.

Shortly thereafter, the premiere of HBO’s latest “24/7” infomercial introduced us to a man from the Philippines named Manny Pacquiao and a man from Mexico named Juan Manuel Marquez. Wait, you’ve heard of these guys? Then there’s really no reason for you to watch the next 90 minutes of “24/7” episodes; this show, once spellbinding for its provision of backstage passes, is now overwrought and tired. Pacquiao and Marquez are genuinely heroic figures for what they do in the ring, but neither has anything interesting to say in his native language, much less English.

Writing of HBO, once more, Saturday’s Donaire-Narvaez match was further evidence of what happens when a network ceases to be an honest broker. Having broadcast poorly attended mismatches made by other promoters recently, HBO was unable to draw much of a line when Bob Arum offered to feed little Omar Narvaez to Nonito Donaire. Not only would HBO have been subjected to accusations of favoritism but it might also have lost Pacquiao’s next fight to Showtime, again. It had little choice but to approve Saturday’s mess.

So, right on, Roy: 20-1 odds are indeed too much. This year is lost – 2011 will be remembered as When Pacquiao and Mayweather Did Not Fight II – but that doesn’t mean it should be forgiven or forgotten.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Thursday the indefatigable Lem Satterfield broke news that Ken Hershman will replace Ross Greenburg as President of HBO Sports – a position akin to Commissioner of Boxing. The choice of Hershman was generally and enthusiastically applauded by boxing insiders hither and yon. Hershman, for the innovative way he handled a similar position at Showtime, is well regarded by aficionados.

A quick note about that word above. Anyone who thinks “indefatigable” is not an apt way to describe Satterfield has never been in a media center with him. Even veteran reporters marvel at his volume. Any youngster hoping to become a boxing reporter someday would do well to study Satterfield. If you can work even half as hard as Satterfield does, you’ll be reporting circles round your peers in no time.

Back to Hershman. Within hours of his appointment, some insightful pieces were published online. A few comprised parting shots at the disastrous-for-boxing Greenburg Era, others summarized Hershman’s accomplishments at Showtime – with well-deserved nods to the Super Six World Boxing Classic – and most gave HBO Sports’ new chief some advice.

The best of this came from Kevin Iole, who wrote, “The HBO Sports dogma during the Hershman regime needs to be simple: Fight your way onto the network and fight to remain on the network.”

That’s an easy-to-remember remedy for what ailed the network’s coverage of boxing much of the last decade. For a number of reasons, some indecipherable and most nothing a subscriber should have to worry about, HBO Sports made terrible boxing decisions under Greenburg. Saturday’s Dawson-Hopkins debacle on HBO pay-per-view should stand as a 21-gun salute to the departing Greenburg regime.

Writing of pay-per-view, that seems good a place as any to offer Mr. Hershman a little more advice: Audit pay-per-view receipts for the last three years.

Sept. 19, 2009, Floyd Mayweather fought Juan Manuel Marquez on HBO pay-per-view. Six days later, HBO released a statement proclaiming its event had been purchased by a million buyers. Ludicrously symmetrical numbers like 525,000 cable homes and 475,000 satellite homes added up to a million. Everyone went along with the number because, well, it proved our sport was healthier than any of us would have believed before that number got published.

Sept. 17, Floyd Mayweather fought Victor Ortiz. Thirty days have passed. Pay-per-view results have not yet been published.

Whatever the reason for this, now that we know there’s nothing automated about HBO’s tabulation, we’re afforded a chance to look skeptically backwards at other numbers we’ve been fed. The difference between the 750,000 pay-per-view buys many expected for Mayweather-Marquez and the announced “more than 1 million” is 250,000, which, when multiplied by $50 each, comes to $12.5 million. That’s a princely sum in boxing. But it represents 0.048 percent of the 2009 revenues generated by HBO’s parent company, TimeWarner. That’s not even an accounting error; it’s a nick on a penny.

Mayweather-Marquez, remember, happened when HBO Sports was rather brazenly using Golden Boy Promotions – lead promoter for the fight – as a counterbalance to promoter Bob Arum’s machinations. Arum had Pacquiao, and Golden Boy Promotions was representing Mayweather. Negotiations for the Fight to Save Boxing were not even two months away. Would it have behooved someone to apply creative-accounting techniques to the buy rate for Mayweather-Marquez? Is that something HBO Sports would do?

We don’t know. But it’s one of the first questions Hershman should ask before his tenure begins in January. Starting in Q1, after all, any drop in pay-per-view sales will be his fault. There’s plenty of corporate precedent for this sort of audit; anymore, Wall Street earnings are restated almost as often as they’re stated.

Something else for Hershman to consider came courtesy of an interesting point made by Tim Starks, Thursday. “In fact, it’s fair to wonder,” wrote Starks, “when looking at what comes next for HBO under Hershman: Was Showtime creative because it has had the right personnel, or because it had no choice?”

Starks’ question goes directly to the nature of Hershman’s promotion. Hershman is our sport’s new emperor. He is no longer the leader of an underdog outfit for which aficionados reflexively cheer. His budget has grown considerably. How effectively will he grow with it?

That’s a question two titans of the 1990s, Bill Gates and Newt Gingrich, might help him answer. Gates was the leader of a Microsoft insurgency that challenged IBM’s primacy in what was not yet called IT. Gingrich was the leader of a Republican party that had not held the Speaker’s gavel in the U.S. House of Representatives in 40 years. Neither man made a successful transition from guerilla leader to governor. Gates bullied Netscape and got his company hamstrung by the Department of Justice. Gingrich bullied the president and had to leave the Capitol before Clinton left the White House.

What is charmingly feisty when you are in a minority position becomes off-putting once you assume power. Hershman might combat the corrupting tendency of his new power by silently shrinking his boxing budget. HBO’s documentaries have been for the most part much better than its boxing in the last 10 years, and it might not be a bad idea for Hershman to use this fact to tell the ever-warring factions of boxing advisors, promoters and managers there’s now a much smaller pie for them to gorge on. Since Hershman is intimately familiar with what Showtime can bid for a fight, he might also limit HBO’s future bids to a formula like this: Showtime plus 10 percent.

It is not hard to imagine a more just, if not immediately better, system is coming to our beloved sport. That is cause for rejoicing. Dawson-Hopkins is what bottoms look like, after all, and so we welcome Mr. Hershman to the throne – even while our knives are sharpened.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

SAN ANTONIO – The withering aridity that made this city consider water rations has finally broken. The drought is on, many inches of rainfall are still needed in Edwards Aquifer, but local worries now subside as the recharge zone gradually fills.

Would that the same could be said of Alamo City’s championship-prizefighter drought.

Saturday the drought continued – a championless stretch that began 17 years ago when Gabriel Ruelas took Jesse James Leija’s WBC super featherweight belt in MGM Grand – as local contender Raul “Cobrita” Martinez lost a unanimous decision to Rodrigo “Gatito” Guerrero after an accidental head butt opened a gash over Martinez’s right eye in round 6 and brought their IBF super flyweight title fight to a technical decision in Tijuana. Official scores went 59-55, 57-56 and 57-56 for Guerrero.

My scorecard concurred, 48-46. I had rounds 2, 3 and 6 for Guerrero. Rounds 4 and 5 were Martinez’s. Round 3 went 10-8 for Guerrero because he dropped Martinez with a left cross from his southpaw stance.

Wait, what about round 1? Good question. To answer it, we return to the rains.

Saturday marked the first rainy weekend in what felt like ages for South Texans. Artpace San Antonio, a downtown gallery that describes itself as “an international laboratory for the creation and advancement of contemporary art,” hosted its annual Chalk It Up event. Professional artists, dilettantes and students all gathered to adorn the sidewalks of Houston Street with colorful dust. Then, as the old rhyme goes, down came the rains and washed the chalk dust out. Bad timing is all.

If you are a baseball fan, or a connoisseur of delayed Spanish-language boxing broadcasts, you already know San Antonio was not the only Texas city that got wet Saturday. Game 1 of the American League Championship Series saw the Texas Rangers and Detroit Tigers suffer two rain delays in Arlington. On the English-language channel, that meant enduring witty clubhouse banter. On Fox Deportes, it meant cutting to a feed of Guerrero-Martinez two minutes into the first round.

What happened in those opening minutes may be lost to posterity, but it can be extrapolated from the 16 minutes of combat that followed. Raul Martinez was likely the classier boxer, and Rodrigo Guerrero was the better fighter.

Not this digression again? Afraid so.

Martinez is a two-time national amateur champion. He is 28 years-old, and going into Saturday’s fight – a rematch of a split-decision victory over Guerrero in November – his record was 28-1 (16 KOs). Martinez turned pro at age 22, and guided by knowledgeable folks, tore through the table-setters put in his way. Then he faced another world-class talent, in his 25th fight, and Nonito Donaire undid him.

Mexico City’s Rodrigo Guerrero trod an entirely different path to Saturday’s Tijuana arena. He turned pro at age 17 and won only half his opening four matches. His record was a comparatively unimpressive 15-3-1 (10 KOs) coming into his rematch with Martinez.

Martinez is a better athlete than Guerrero. Martinez loves to win. He is enamored of the idea of being a world champion. He has heart and a bit of contempt, too; if you hit him, he’ll hit you back. But Martinez does not love hurting and being hurt by another man.

Guerrero does. Where Martinez’s combinations are scoring devices, Guerrero swings his right fist to hurt you. Switching between southpaw and orthodox, Guerrero chases exchanges with an opponent, and if that means punches stray low or heads collide, well, so is the way of the world. It’s a fight after all.

Martinez would likely beat Guerrero in any three-round amateur bout. But prizefighting is a different thing altogether.

At the end of round 1, a Guerrero punch went low on Martinez. As the bell rang, Martinez doubled over before recuperating quickly enough to walk to his corner. Halfway through the fourth, Martinez struck Guerrero with an equally low blow. Guerrero backed off and signaled for the referee, who did not intervene. Martinez put an effective combination on the distracted Guerrero, and in an instant Guerrero returned to his fighting stance and plotted to punish Martinez.

(It was the antithesis of Victor Ortiz’s reaction to Floyd Mayweather’s left hook a few weeks ago.)

Two rounds later, Martinez’s and Guerrero’s heads collided as they’d done a number of times. Head butts happen when a southpaw fights an orthodox opponent, and they happen, too, when one fighter crosses-over and punches on the second and third step like Martinez did Saturday. The accidental butt damaged Martinez more than Guerrero. And Guerrero’s ripping left uppercuts in the minute that followed pulled apart the skin over Martinez’s right eye further still.

If Martinez had not yet started to fade, he was not gaining pace either. He returned to his corner at the midway point of the fight with his face covered in blood. According to Dr. Jose Luis Hernandez, the ringside physician who stopped the match, Martinez said he could not see out of his right eye, making the doctor’s decision an easy one.

Guerrero’s corner was ecstatic at the stoppage. Their man had won the fight. This would have been true even if the official judges – all three American – had said otherwise. Since the match ended on a cut caused by an accidental foul, not a punch, the judges’ collective opinion had to be heard when Martinez could not continue. The judges got it right.

There was no time for postfight commentary, as the rains in Arlington had stopped by then and the baseball game was about to restart. While we’ll never know what the fighters would have said, it’s a safe bet each man thought he won.

Guerrero and Martinez’s rivalry now stands at 1-1. A rubber match is a fair way to determine the better man and prove decisively whether Martinez belongs in this city’s pantheon of world champions.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Saturday continued the happiest development our sport has seen in years. Sergio “Maravilla” Martinez, a southpaw Argentine who prefers Spain but lives in California, is an accidental champion. A career 147- and 154-pounder who won the middleweight title in his first meaningful middleweight fight, Martinez makes a match with a larger man every time he defends his belts. He gets hit plenty and finishes each defense with a knockout.

He is not running for office in the Philippines. He does not have charges pending against him in Nevada. Martinez is, rather, one boxing story every aficionado should feel a sense of ownership about.

Saturday in Atlantic City, Martinez extended his record as undisputed middleweight champion to 3-0 (3 KOs) by putting in an effort more workmanlike than marvelous and finishing England’s Darren Barker at 1:29 of round 11 in a fight more competitive, and therefore more enjoyable, than predicted.

American writers predicted a whitewash for Martinez because no one knew who Darren Barker was. European fighters often bring sparkling resumes like Barker’s 22-0 mark to American arenas then acquit themselves as well-intentioned frauds. Not so with Barker. Martinez was ahead in the fight at the time Barker crumpled but not by the margin American boxing writers expected. Why not?

Here’s an idea. Sergio Martinez is not a natural middleweight. Every fight he makes at 160 pounds, then, features a man who hits him harder than he spent the first 13 years of his career being hit. Martinez relied on reflexes and elusiveness to acquire the middleweight crown from Kelly Pavlik, after consecutive fights with former welterweight champions Kermit Cintron and Paul Williams. That is worth noting.

Pavlik and the man from whose head he lifted the middleweight crown, Jermain Taylor, both worked their ways through the middleweight ranks, preparing for and fighting the Darren Barkers of the world before getting on national television. Martinez, contrarily, is learning how to be a middleweight after becoming middleweight champion. It’s a joy to watch.

There’s a spontaneity to Martinez fights that should be celebrated. He does things differently and often gets whacked for doing so. He stands before larger men, hands dangling at his hip pockets, and bobs his naked face at them, even as they shuffle to within a foot of him. He waits for them to throw then leaps out the way and counters them, or doesn’t. That’s part of the fun: An orthodox middleweight challenger like Barker – no mystery whatever to a Pavlik or Taylor – had good a chance as any of striking Martinez with meaningful punches.

Before you go to the scorecards against that claim, confirming your own prefight bias the match would not be competitive, revisit what happened in round 4. Barker, that limited Brit with a fraction the champion’s athleticism and pizzazz, splattered Martinez’s nose all over Martinez’s gorgeous face. It was a fine manifestation of an old adage that says the right combination is unlimited for being thrown by a balanced man creating leverage at little expense.

Barker was not busy enough, you say? Probably not. But until the start of round 6 – the first to show Martinez looking better than uncomfortable – Barker was making a decent case to his supporters that he was winning. No, nobody in America or watching HBO’s telecast imagined it, but if you watched the fight in the U.K., tuning in to see an undefeated prospect from London, Barker gave you plenty of reason to score two or three of the opening five rounds for him. Imagine that.

Martinez’s punches started to tell after the fight’s midway point, and his theretofore ineffective aggressiveness acquired quite a bit of effect by round 10 when, adhering to a different teaching adage and finishing a combination with a jab, Martinez staggered Barker. A Martinez right hook to Barker’s guard in the next round proved forceful enough to make Barker tip over and decide against rising. It was an honest ending to an honest effort; Barker didn’t stand at 10 1/2 and pretend he wanted to continue. Barker’d had enough, and Martinez had another well-deserved knockout defense.

Then the fretting began. “Whither this man without a country?” went the lament about Martinez’s lack of marketability. He lives in California but vacations in Spain, and half of Argentina could not pick him out of a fashion-show runway. Even if they could, Martinez’s ineffectual promoter tells us, there just aren’t enough Argentines in America! Well, that settles it, then: Keeping him in front of funereal Atlantic City audiences is the way to go.

Never mind that the late Arturo Gatti’s Italo-Canadian roots did not foreshadow popularity in New Jersey. Forget that Lennox Lewis, an Englishman who fought on Team Canada and considered himself Jamaican, made a fortune fighting in America. Sidestep the fact there are 35 million other Spanish speakers in the United States. Go whole hog on the man-sans-homeland narrative, if you wish, but then answer this question: Why must Martinez fight here?

Sergio Martinez holds the world middleweight title; take his show on the road. He surely would have drawn better in London against an undefeated Englishman than he drew at Boardwalk Hall. We learned Saturday that Martinez – as his own matchmaker – found Barker on Twitter. Martinez ought to fire his manager and promoter. He already trains himself, after all, and that has to be harder than scheduling a date with HBO.

Stories rich as Sergio Martinez’s do not visit our sport often enough. We are fortunate to have him. But he is a small middleweight who nears his 37th birthday. His title defenses will soon combine with their 49 predecessor fights to wear him down. The more people who have a chance to enjoy him before then, the better for our sport.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

photo By Claudia Bocanegra

We are where we were 20 months ago. Floyd Mayweather knows he can beat Many Pacquiao, doesn’t understand why the rest of us don’t, and wants every detail just so before he’ll agree to do it. Pacquiao, when he thinks about boxing at all, fears Mayweather less than he feared a half-dozen previous opponents. Promoter Bob Arum wants no part of a Mayweather match. Boxing fans are polarized. Everyone else has moved on.

In frustrating and disillusioning moments such as these, it can be a valuable exercise to imagine the future, 30 years along, and ask yourself if any of this will truly matter.

If Mayweather and Pacquiao never fight, none of this will matter even a little. That’s worth remembering as you look back on two years of Mayweather and Pacquiao fights and imagine two more years of Mayweather and Pacquiao fights.

Probability says neither man will retire. Probability also says they will not fight each other. There will always be something. If the drug-test hurdle is surmounted, it will be a matter of what gloves to use. If there’s a treaty on the gloves, it will be a question of who enters the ring first. And all of this assumes – assumes ridiculously, by the way – that a revenue-sharing agreement could ever be reached between Mayweather Promotions, Top Rank and HBO.

HBO, after all, is more responsible for Mayweather’s ascension in pop culture than even Mayweather is. It has also put its weight behind making a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight before. Forget not: It was an HBO executive who told the MGM Grand media center immediately after 2009’s Pacquiao-Miguel Cotto fight that a Golden Boy Promotions rep had just called and promised negotiations with Top Rank to begin Monday. That was 23 months ago.

While the subject of HBO is up, let’s discuss the rousing finale of the HBO Mayweather-Victor Ortiz movie that premiered Saturday. Along with showing us Ortiz was two parts the guy exposed by Marcos Maidana and one part the monster Andre Berto built, episode 5 of “24/7” provided this: All-access passes make us dumber about boxing, not smarter.

When Mayweather announced he would fight Ortiz, every aficionado said it was easy work for Mayweather. Professional gamblers concurred. Then four, all-access episodes narrowed odds and made aficionados consider a way for Ortiz to win. Most of us didn’t do anything crazy as change our picks, but with the one noble exception of Thomas Hauser, we all wrote previews and watched to see if something unexpected might happen.

Alas, something unexpected and ultimately unsatisfying happens in every Mayweather fight, no? This time it was Mayweather’s exploitation of Ortiz’s fragile brain. Last time it was Mayweather’s exploitation of Shane Mosley’s eroded reflexes. Time before that, it was Mayweather’s exploitation of Juan Manuel Marquez’s slighter frame. There’s always some exploitation.

Mayweather fights are marketed at a very specific type of fan. When a Mayweather fight ends, this sort of guy immediately tells whoever is in earshot that Mayweather reminds him of that time he almost had to throw a beatdown on a guy at the mall. Then this guy goes back into hiding. He threatens to support Graterford Prison’s own Bernard Hopkins, of course, but pay-per-view receipts later prove that threat hollow.

The rest of our sport’s casual fans feel dissatisfied and sort of stupid. They punish what Mayweather did to them with a tool devastating as it is unnoticed: their indifference. That is how it happens, ultimately. It’s a thing Mayweather senses even if he does not know what to call it. But for the 30 minutes he spends in a boxing ring every 18 months, he does not exist in the collective mind of the American mass. It makes him loopy.

Like General George McClellan at the outbreak of Civil War hostilities, Mayweather wants to win his largest battle without having to fight it. He wants us to credit him with beating Pacquiao without he does it. You know what? Most aficionados do assume Mayweather would beat Pacquiao with something between ease and moderate difficulty, but we’ll be damned if we’re going to shout over Mayweather’s inane self-aggrandizement to tell him so.

If this time in boxing is not the Pacquiao Era, in other words, what is it? A mediocre stretch of lumbering European heavyweights and overpriced mismatches that compose either boxing’s final era or an eventually forgotten one. Mayweather is the king, as the saying goes, and boxing is nothing – and that makes Mayweather the king of nothing. If Mayweather never does fight Pacquiao, he won’t be remembered for not-fighting Pacquiao. He won’t be remembered at all.

Some day 30 years from now, some enterprising journalist may do a retrospective on the Greatest Fight that Never Was instead of, say, a feature on women’s figure skating, and what will he treat? Bob Arum will be long gone. Mayweather will be a broke trainer. Pacquiao will be the former president of the Philippines, a man history regards as a better prizefighter than national leader.

Under the poorly lighted staircase of a defunct gym, Mayweather will shout, “You know that I woulda beat that motherf—er!” Those of us still alive will nod and shrug and think about how little it mattered, finally. For a moment, we’ll remember what we were doing back then, remember it the way we remember our aunt’s wedding reception each time we hear Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” play. And then all of life that has happened to us since will wash back over the moment, and it will be lost.

Mayweather makes veteran journalists wonder why they still bother. He makes young journalists wonder if they should continue bothering. No Mayweather victory is a victory for anyone but Mayweather. Figures like that do not live on as legends; they are either forgotten in time or become cautionary tales.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

If the day ever comes that you spar with a prizefighter, you’ll find yourself defenseless soon enough. Exhausted or confused, you’ll drop your hands or head in a silent plea for leniency. That’s when you’ll see it, no matter the other man’s decency: a click behind his eyes, almost audible, before he hits you to hurt you because you are defenseless in front of him and that is what a prizefighter does.

It is difficult to believe a professional fighter could rise to the titlist level and somehow forget this. Yet that is what Victor Ortiz did Saturday.

The result – his unconsciousness – was no surprise whatever. That is how Ortiz lost his WBC welterweight belt to Floyd Mayweather in MGM Grand at 2:59 of round 4. He stood before a world champion, hands lowered, and expected leniency. Mayweather checked this idiocy with a left hook. Ortiz turned toward the referee and showed incredulity. Then Mayweather took Ortiz’s consciousness with a right cross.

We can return to what oddities preceded this exchange in a bit. But for now, let’s put it here: Saturday night, one man acted like a fighter, and the other did not.

Mayweather did not look invincible in the first moments of his fight with Ortiz. Absent from the ring 16 months, Mayweather lunged with lead right hands that showed an erosion of foot and leg speed. Still, Mayweather knew that if his reflexes were superior to Ortiz’s, which they were, the rest would be details. He landed right-hand leads enough in the opening three minutes to know Ortiz’s only chance of beating him was if Mayweather made a mistake.

If Ortiz had a chance against Mayweather, it came early. As Shane Mosley clipped Mayweather in the opening five minutes of their 2010 fight, so Ortiz needed to clip Mayweather before the second round ended, Saturday. Ortiz did not. He winged wild right hooks from his southpaw stance, punches Mayweather saw easily enough to duck, rock his weight from back foot to front, and pivot away from. The opening bell of round 3 marked the start of hunting season for Mayweather who followed his trainer’s advice and walked Ortiz down.

Some of Ortiz’s subsequent retreat was conscious trap-setting. Most of it, though, was doing as his superior ordered. Ortiz had been hit hard in previous fights by slower and less-accurate punchers than Mayweather. He’d also shown a certain spaceshot-edness, a likelihood of putting his mind in a place far away. HBO may have made boxing fans forget this by hypnotically chanting “big, young, strong welterweight.” But Mayweather was not fooled.

If there were insights to be mined from HBO’s “24/7” infomercials, they were two: 1. Mayweather held Ortiz’s victimized-upbringing story in absolute contempt, and 2. Mayweather heard in Ortiz’s explanation for the Marcos Maidana debacle – that Ortiz didn’t remember any of it and therefore was not responsible for quitting – a set of spoken instructions for how to undo the 24-year old.

Ortiz wrestled Mayweather to the ropes toward the end of the fourth round, in the match’s most competitive moment. For an instant, it seemed possible Mayweather might fixate on how little his opponent’s last punch hurt at the expense of slipping the next. But Mayweather gathered himself and had Ortiz neutralized while the referee meandered over. Ortiz then left his feet in an attempt to spear Mayweather with his head. It was flagrant and vulgar. Even Mayweather didn’t have a proper defense for that, and despite yanking backwards still incurred a cut on his lower lip.

The sort of cut that stings like hell.

The referee began his penalty dance, and Ortiz – temporarily returned to his right mind – ran to hug Mayweather in apology. Mayweather rather graciously accepted the apology, even allowing Ortiz to kiss his cheek without clocking him. But Mayweather was rightfully furious. Then the referee sort of brought the fighters together and sort of indicated the fight was live again. Ortiz walked to Mayweather, hands down, and gave him another hug. Mayweather halfheartedly returned the embrace and did not yet retaliate for Ortiz’s head butt. Once the men were at fighting distance, though, Mayweather snapped a left hook at Ortiz, in an acceptable act of retribution.

At that very moment, a world champion – a Manny Pacquiao or Juan Manuel Marquez – would have acted like one. Marquez would have raised his hands, dropped his chin and circled away; Pacquiao would have leaped at his foe.

Ortiz dropped his hands, arranged a disbelieving look on his face and glanced 60 degrees from his opponent, seeking a score-evening penalty call from the referee whose own gaze was 60 degrees from the fight he was paid to supervise. Only Mayweather’s eyes stayed were they belonged. Then Mayweather put Ortiz’s lights out.

The ending brought a nervous tension Mayweather fights rarely do. For once, it became clear, Mayweather disliked his opponent more than his opponent disliked him. Mayweather saw in Ortiz an insincere usurper – a fraudulent stage prop created by HBO to evoke sympathy – and genuinely did not like the man. When Ortiz added to Mayweather’s estimation with a remarkable act of cheating, Mayweather served Ortiz the comeuppance he believed he deserved.

Only if you believe Mayweather – or believe even Mayweather believes Mayweather – when he says he belongs in a conversation about boxing’s greatest, do you ask a rhetorical question like: Was that any way for Mayweather to win a world title?

Mayweather – destined for jail, bankruptcy, or both in the next 20 years – speaks to fill the air with sounds till he provokes a reaction. Outside the ring, he is a whirligig of poor choices. Entertaining any of his claims says more about you than him.

But in the ring, Floyd Mayweather is a remarkable specimen. He is a fighter, and comported himself like one Saturday. His opponent did not. The better man won – as it should be.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Legend has it the gambling term “chalk” precedes World War II. In the days when horsetrack bettors watched a chalkboard for odds, the action on a favorite would change so often, causing erasings and re-markings in such a frenzy, that a pile of chalk dust would accumulate on the favorite’s name, often obscuring it.

A bettor who walked to the window and took the chalk, then, might not even know the name of his horse – just that it was favored.

Today, the accumulated chalk dust that can obscure a fighter’s name is HBO. Bet the chalk for Saturday’s HBO pay-per-view scrap between Floyd “Money May” Mayweather and WBC welterweight titlist Victor Ortiz at MGM Grand. Wherever betting closes in Mayweather’s favor – the fight opened at 8-1 odds – the chalk bet will be a safe one for a couple reasons.

First, Mayweather is an astute handicapper. In all of boxing, only Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler might have a better eye for prizefighters’ limitations. Mayweather opens as the favorite in every fight because professional gamblers, uninterested in opponents’ heroic biographies, trust Mayweather’s eye and know he does not fight anyone he isn’t sure he will beat.

Second, HBO televises mostly mismatches. A careful apologist surely could visit all of HBO’s recent offerings and explain the political intrigue and promotional connivance that made them what disappointments they were. But here’s something to keep in mind as a subscriber: It’s none of your business. Your only job as a customer is to enjoy a product.

The “24/7” documentary HBO uses to sell pay-per-view fights was, this time as always, one episode too many. An episode’s worth of time for each fighter and what the men will do to one another, really, is a proper model. That’s three episodes. Because “24/7” is an infomercial vehicle now on autopilot, we get four, and one of them invariably comprises robustly silly skits like Money May car shopping.

Money May, as we learned in episode 3, has lost interest in HBO’s hagiographic treatment of Victor Ortiz’s childhood. Touché. Something about the Kansan’s story does not feel well-reported. Ortiz is strikingly eloquent about the trauma of being left for dead by both parents before his 13th birthday. And when he says that, at age nine, he told all and sundry he would be the guy to beat an Olympic bronze medalist named Mayweather, well, he seems – borrowing Larry Merchant’s term – to be trying too hard.

Ortiz has always come across as an edgy suburban kid more than a street tough. In any other field of endeavor, of course, that would be a compliment. We spent a 15-minute bus ride to the Alamodome together in 2007. Ortiz showed none of the eyes-lowered wariness of most traumatized kids. Rather, he was gregarious, opinionated and bright. If he was merely eight years, then, from living on the streets, his transformation was indeed miraculous.

But if a product of wholesale poverty – pecuniary, spiritual, intellectual – is what you’re after, look no further than Money May’s made-for-TV chat session with American soldiers in the latest “24/7” installment. Racing through his mansion with a laptop, hyperactive enough to outpace the boundaries of his home’s wireless network, twice, Money May showed $30,000/year heroes his collection of meretricious toys. It was a concise report on American values.

If Victor Ortiz were to read what is written about him above, he would likely reply, “Whatever, dude, I don’t care if you believe me or not.” Mayweather, meanwhile, would go into a righteous fit, the reflexive lunacy of a man wrongly accused. Mayweather the businessman against Ortiz the trauma survivor, then, has all the congruity of a Shakespearean bed-switching caper.

So, we can agree the subplots for this event are mostly if not entirely contrived, but what about the fight itself?

It should not be close. Some of us may have forgotten the look on Ortiz’s face when he quit against Marcos Maidana in 2009, but rest assured Mayweather has not. That Victor Ortiz, and not the beast who decisioned Andre Berto in April, is the guy Mayweather expects to face Saturday.

Ortiz, who has learned from his handler Oscar De La Hoya the media is only useful as a lapdog, criticizes those who criticize him. He explains that we do not understand how much fire he has inside him, and he is likely correct. But Ortiz has yet to show Ricky Hatton’s fire in the ring, and we saw how Mayweather extinguished that.

But Ortiz is so much bigger than Hatton was!

Actually, Ortiz has exactly as many fights at welterweight as Hatton had when he was stopped by Mayweather four years ago. Ortiz has 1/7 as many fights at welterweight as Mayweather. Ortiz will bring exactly no power advantage to Saturday’s fight.

That leaves his awkwardness and youth. He is a southpaw, and he has 24 years to Mayweather’s 34. If aficionados agree Ortiz would have no chance against a prime Mayweather, their reason for purchasing Saturday’s show must be: Mayweather is no longer in his prime.

That may be. Certainly, the day Mayweather’s reflexes dull, nobody in his entourage will be the wiser. Mayweather’s trainer and uncle, at age 50, isn’t likely to catch his charge slipping with handpad tricks, and Roger Mayweather remains Floyd’s only chance at an honest appraisal.

For all his childishness, though, Floyd Mayweather might just be a genius of physical motion. If he had detected an erosion in training camp, he likely would have spent “24/7” taunting Ortiz instead of buying cars.

Alas, we’re supposed to be selling this fight in the hopes that next year will bring a fight to save boxing – “The World Awaited” – and so it behooves us to proclaim this match will be more than another tune-up for Mayweather. OK, then, probably . . .

Sorry, couldn’t do it. The chalk is right. I’ll take Mayweather: KO-10.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

As a philosophy major in the mid 1990s, I never had a chance to do an internship. A decade’s worth of hindsight now tells me I should have been a communications major. Since everyone’s going back to school these days – “financial aid” rings so much sweeter than “unemployment” – I spent Saturday imagining myself an intern . . .

LOL, what a night for us! Meet the new boss same as the old boss, like my supervisor says. Social media had so many predictions about where this network was going a few months ago when the boss said he’d be pursuing other opportunities, everyone freaked out for absolutely no reason. “Easy, killah,” I told my buddies. You hear stuff in the halls, but nobody’s changing anything really. We had more credentials for Saturday than Beau Rivage had security and concessions staff. One pal, I think he’s salaried or freelance or hourly or whatever, he told us it was like this in Michigan in January. Some big football stadium. He said they actually parked trailers on the floor where the fight was supposed to happen. To save money and material on black curtains, they just plopped the ring in the far corner. Genius. So, Saturday, there were some problems with taking our brand to the next level. We had that young kid in the eight-rounder, the Olympian that Papa, like, hinted might have been a victim of politics. Wasn’t too clear on that. Didn’t ask questions about it because, dude, it ain’t my place. While I’m on the subject: Just because it isn’t my place doesn’t mean it isn’t yours. Fans like you are what give us these amazing opportunities. Your feedback is so very important to us. Be sure to log-on to our message board and express your feelings. And if you can, y’know, log-on from a number of different devices (so their IP addresses register as unique hits), that’s even better! Make your voices be heard. Antihero, that was totally the angle for Berto. Kid can’t sell tickets because Haitians don’t care about boxing. Plan was to repackage him innovatively. Build him up as a guy who didn’t know he couldn’t draw a stick figure at the box office. He was brash. That was the keyword we focus-grouped. “Brash” scares older people, reminds them of flash mobs and stuff. We were going to make him brash, and the viewers would hate him for his not knowing they hated him. And then, just like that, the youngest 1/3 of our viewers would make him their favorite and just go sick with talk of skillz. But dude messed it up. He’s been in two awesome fights. Now we have to start over. And don’t even get me going about Max! What was that crap he pulled during his closing soliloquy? He basically sold out the shop. He told the viewers – sorry, “our guests” – that we know they know about Berto’s advisor. He implied our guests might consciously choose to cheer against a guy like Berto because they resent his advisor. Thanks, Max. We gave him the red light on that one. He got the message. You see the way he went away from that point? We zoomed him out anyway. That let Papa know to take the mic back. Max is an awesome guy, but sometimes he’s too smart for himself. Then it was Money time. It’s not like we scheduled a Berto fight just to lead-in to Money time, but that’s probably what we did. Like they’d tell an intern about that? My supervisor did watch me a lot more while we watched “24/7” than “Boxing After Dark.” He thinks I still live at home with my parents, which I don’t. Well, in the summer I do, but I’m back in the dorm this week, so I don’t know how he thinks convincing me to convince my dad to buy the pay-per-view is such a brilliant strategy. (Nobody in that Campus Survival class told us our bosses would always be dumber than us.) You see some of that mic work on the Money shots? That was me. Some of it, I’m not trying to brag. I was there for the scene with 50 Cent, Money’s BFF. I told my director I thought it was like Money and 50 had rehearsed the phone call with the money stacks. He asked me if it wasn’t twice as delicious to imagine they hadn’t. Still don’t get that. My buddy was there in Money’s home theater when Money kept yelling at him, at my buddy with the boom arm, to tell him who trains harder. My buddy, like, totally shrugged at Money, but he kept yelling at him. He said it took 17 shots to get the right feel. Then my buddy told our supervisor, “Floyd’s a douche.” That’s how I got my shot. Dude, 50 Cent looked mad uncomfortable during those scenes! Goodbye, cred. I haven’t been over to the Ortiz camp, though I tried to cold-call his dad and schedule a surprise training-camp visit (epic fail), but I hear Oscar totally dissed every word Oscar’s ever said in a Mayweather promotion. Maybe he’s working his program? Going to the convenience store to get Roger a sandwich wasn’t fun as it looked but still cool. I got a text from a chick whose internship took her to the VMAs a week ago. I replied: “I’m with Roger Mayweather right now … 2nd place is still a winner LMAO.” But those midnight runs are a bitch, I won’t lie. Money runs for about 45 minutes. He talks the whole time. We get 38 seconds of usable footage. You do the math. Oh well, I have to be in class on Tuesday. My amazing summer is over, yo. But I had to share. Ur welcome.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

A friend visited me from Mexico last week. Between trips to Austin and strolls along the San Antonio River, we had occasion to watch a number of old Marco Antonio Barrera fights – the Junior Jones debacles and the classic trilogy with Erik Morales. But it was the first Manny Pacquiao fight that filled me with a dull sense of foreboding about November.

What does Barrera have to do with November? Probably not much unless Top Rank needs undercard filler. What Barrera tells us about Pacquiao’s waning interest in combat, though, might be plenty instructive as we begin to look forward to Pacquiao’s third fight with Juan Manuel Marquez.

First, a note or two about what it was like to be an average boxing fan in Mexico for the last decade. My friend lives in Tampico, Tamaulipas, a city located about 300 miles south of the U.S. border. In the 1940s, he boxed in amateur events as a boy in the Mexican state of Veracruz. He loves boxing at least as much as you do.

But until last week, he had never seen Barrera-Morales I, II or III. Those fights, you see, were on pay channels, and a municipal employee in Tamaulipas’ fifth-largest city didn’t earn a salary large enough to justify such an expense. That meant, in some way, boxing stopped commanding his interest. There were the old days, nostalgia for such scrappers as Rodolfo “Chango” Casanova, sure, but with its accessibility issues, boxing moved to a distant second behind soccer.

That is now changed. Boxing is everywhere on Mexican public airwaves again. But the lost decade of Mexican prizefighting, and its consequences for the quality of product coming out of Mexico today – read: Canelo and Junior – is worth an annual reconsideration or two by American fight fans looking at bandwagons to jump.

The Barrera that fought Morales in February of 2000 has never been seen again. He would go on to teach Naseem Hamed how to box in 2001 and decision Morales in their 2002 rematch, but he would never fight with the abandon he showed in his first match with “El Terrible.”

Seventeen months after winning a first decision over Morales, Barrera would come to San Antonio and get fully undone by a young Filipino prodigy nicknamed Pac Man. With trainer Freddie Roach whispering in his ear about Texas judges – with the ghost of Chavez-Whitaker still haunting the Alamodome scorer’s table (and yes, trivia buffs, Gale Van Hoy was an official judge for Barrera-Pacquiao I) – Pacquiao would make no mistakes in his championship rounds with Barrera.

Fresh as an insolent child after 30 minutes of combat, Pacquiao would hunt and raze Barrera. Beginning in the ninth round, Barrera would glide, retreat and engage only when imperiled. And Pacquiao’s ferocious fighting spirit would not stop imperiling the champion till Barrera’s corner stopped the match.

Four years later, in a fight that marked a temporary rapprochement between Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions, Barrera challenged Pacquiao to a rematch Barrera had no thought of winning. Barrera cashed himself out, gliding and retreating for 36 minutes, engaging only when imperiled and announcing a retirement immediately afterwards.

And Pacquiao let him. Fighting as the favorite in Las Vegas, Pacquiao had no fears of crooked Lone Star scorecards. He did enough to win each round. Drained from making 130 pounds for the last time, Pacquiao did a 12-round dance with Barrera that looked like nothing so much as a business transaction.

What happens, then, if that Manny Pacquiao meets the wrong Juan Manuel Marquez on Nov. 12 at MGM Grand?

To this point, worries about Pacquiao-Marquez III have all treated Marquez’s health. Marquez, great as he is, does not belong in a fight one ounce above the lightweight limit of 135 pounds. Pacquiao is an established, if ever-light, welterweight. Their rubber match will happen at 144, where Pacquiao seems most comfortable.

Marquez has shown us that he, too, is capable of a business transaction. Told by his trainer and longtime manager Nacho Beristain not to fight Floyd Mayweather at welterweight in 2009, Marquez did it anyway to gain a career payday. Dropped early in the match, Marquez fought hard enough to frighten the ever-cautious Mayweather from pursuing a knockout in the half hour that followed. Mayweather could not knock out Marquez, in other words, because he hated the thought of a hellacious exchange.

After losing most every round to Mayweather, though, Marquez showed no regret. On the contrary, he stated plainly that he had nothing about which to feel shame. He’d challenged a much larger man, remained on his feet and cashed a much larger check.

Since then, Manny Pacquiao has shown, in fights with Joshua Clottey and Shane Mosley, that if an opponent is hellbent on not-fighting, Pacquiao won’t force him to do it. The likely beneficiary of every close round, Pacquiao now stays busy, picks his moments, flurries and leaps out, and collects decision victories and immense paydays.

What happens, then, if that Pacquiao squares off with that Marquez? Two words, actually: Uh oh.

We’re readying the boxing rally caps, I know – the now-annual rite of Pacquiao-Mayweather-fight promises will soon spill forth as if on a timer – but it might be helpful to remember this. Whatever happens from here, however easily Mayweather decisions Victor Ortiz in a few weeks, however easily Pacquiao decisions Marquez two months after that, Pacquiao-Mayweather will never again hold the promise it held at the end of 2009.

The Fight to Save Boxing, 2012 vintage, is an event already corrupted by greed and shortsightedness. Let us hope nothing happens in November to cause further erosion of interest.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Photo by Chris Farina / Top Rank

“Blood, Steel and Canvas: The Asian Odyssey of a Fighter” by Craig Alan Wilson (Diversion Books; $4.99) is a spare and enjoyable e-book that uses boxing as a celebration of life instead of using life as an excuse to box. It radiates with a light-hearted warmth that many books about our beloved sport lack.

Here are its major themes: disliking corporate law, relocating to the Philippines, learning to box, enduring a coup d’état, returning to Washington D.C., suffering colitis, surviving colon cancer, running a marathon, moving to Thailand, boxing in famous Thai venues, and becoming a father.

*

Much of this book’s best writing has nothing whatever to do with boxing, though. Its commentaries on Yale undergrad work, Harvard Law School and the clerkships and striving that follow set a refreshing pace.

The boxing writing, too, is often crisp and well-reported, and its treatments of the sport’s rudiments are graceful. You may already know what hand pads are, but Wilson’s presentation of them is still a pleasant surprise. And there’s no doubting his love for the sport.

But what delights most about this book is its author’s self-deprecation. Whether examining the discomforts of wearing an ileostomy pouch – effectively carrying one’s intestine externally – or being staggered by a superior while sparring, “Blood, Steel and Canvas” happily chides itself and its first-person narrator.

*

“Long stints in the library and my Type-A personality had propelled me to the pinnacle,” writes Wilson, “but as I labored into the night and on weekends, canceling dates and eating Chinese take-out dinners at my desk, I came to an eye-opening conclusion: success sucks.”

Deprived of a life around people from whom he could learn things worth knowing and wary of an expanding waistline, Wilson chose to begin his boxing adventure in the Philippines of all places. Boxing, for all its self-induced hardships, was better for him than at least one other discipline.

“The logical move, forswearing chocolate, I would not even contemplate,” Wilson writes, “so I resolved to lose weight by taking up exercise, a novel proposition that ultimately led me to the Elorde Sports Center.”

This boxing journey took Wilson from the Philippines back to Washington D.C. and ultimately to Thailand, where he still lives, and a gym that complemented his self-deprecating style.

“At first the Sot Chitrlada [gym] professionals treated me with kid gloves, but as the months went by and my zest for combat became apparent, they abandoned the Mr. Nice Guy approach and went full steam ahead,” he writes. “(I outweighed most of them by at least twenty pounds; otherwise this book would have been published posthumously.)”

*

Among Wilson’s well-explored subtler themes, its underlayers, is the nature of life as an ex-pat. He has plenty to contribute on this subject, and his observations are insightful ones. Of those American ex-pats who reside in Thailand but make no effort to learn its language, he writes:

“Not only is their refusal hypocritical, but it is counter-productive, as they miss out on one of the real joys of expatriate life, experiencing and being a part of the local culture.”

If “Blood, Steal and Canvas” has a weakness, though, it comes in an unexpected spot. While reporting or expounding, Wilson writes good sentences that, to borrow his term, “effervesce”; but when he switches to motivational-speaker mode, his prose takes on a salesy hue; he reaches in the self-help cereal box and pulls out toys that can feel clichéd:

“A cancer diagnosis does not mean that your life has hit a brick wall. Pardon the expression, but you have to roll with the punches.”

Wilson knows better than to do this and subsequently takes things into his “gloves” – instead of his hands – and occasionally precedes what he knows to be a cliché with a plea for pardon like the one above.

*

All is indeed pardonable because Wilson otherwise makes so many good choices throughout his book’s 121 pages.

“At the end, I held up my gloves and nodded to show that I wanted to continue,” he writes of his first knockout defeat. “The referee looked in my eyes and watched as I rocked on my feet. Putting his arm around me, he escorted me back to my corner. The bout was over. Secretly I did not mind.”

When in another boxing book have you read a last sentence honest as that one?

“Through boxing I gained self-confidence,” writes Wilson. “I discovered that I could take care of myself, not just in the sense of the adolescent’s ‘let’s settle this outside’ mentality, but – much more important – in the belated realization that I need not be scared of what others might think.”

And a fear of humiliation is undoubtedly one that haunts a fighter more than pain or injury.

*

There is another curious decision Wilson must have made, and it merits mention. A boxing book that dedicates most of its opening 1/3 to Manila never once makes itself about Manny Pacquiao. “Blood, Steel and Canvas” is its author’s memoir, and if Wilson didn’t meet Pacquiao while he was in Manila, he also didn’t meet boys who “had Pacquiao’s hunger” or “threw a left cross like Pacquiao” or any of the other Pacquiao-isms a marketing team would have added.

A choice like that deserves a comment like this: You will learn more about what made Pacquiao what he is today in the first 40 pages of Wilson’s book than in anything you read this November.

*

Through its author’s willingness to tread lightly with life’s most serious subjects – cancer, law, combat, failure and fatherhood – “Blood, Steel and Canvas” provides a quick and valuable experience.

“I am not a great lawyer,” concludes Wilson. “I have not enjoyed the professional renown and monetary rewards that have flowed to many of my classmates.”

Perhaps not. But by living an interesting life and writing a book about it, Wilson has done us a service.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

That quote belongs to Showtime commentator Al Bernstein. Its subject is Nevada referee Russell Mora. Bernstein made the comment between rounds 11 and 12, when a replay showed Mora had called a lowblow a clean punch – a mistake he’d made numerous times during a championship fight he officiated and Showtime televised. Bernstein is not known for hyperbole; if anything he leans too far towards equanimity.

Immediately after the fight Showtime personality Jim Gray – yes, that Jim Gray – began his postfight interviews with Russell Mora instead of the match’s winner or vanquished champion. Gray indicated to Mora that Mora changed the very result of the match. Strong words indeed.

What Showtime’s talent said about Mora’s performance is worth treating, but first some details. The match was Mexico’s Abner Mares against Ghana’s Joseph King Kong Agbeko. It was the final of Showtime’s short but delayed Bantamweight Tournament. It was also for the IBF title, which belonged to Agbeko. Mares won by majority decision scores of 113-113, 115-111 and 115-111.

My scorecard concurred. I had it 115-113 for Mares. I gave the Mexican rounds 1, 3, 6, 7 and 11. I had the Ghanaian winning rounds 2, 4, 8, 10 and 12. I had rounds 5 and 9 even. And with Russell Mora’s help, rounds 1 and 11 went to Mares by two points, 10-8.

There were two knockdowns that were not actually. Mares benefitted from both. Does that make Mares a rotten kid or second-tier fighter who is only competitive at the championship level when it’s two-against-one? Not at all. It just makes the result of Saturday’s match sufficiently wrong to be disregarded by aficionados, and such disregard is punishment enough.

It’s what will happen to Referee Mora, fear not. Boxing has never been a very large community. Today it is a tiny and shrinking one. With the help of modern communication tools, it is a community capable of suffocating state commissions into complying with its will. This sort of thing can turn to bullying but generally hasn’t in boxing. Of course Texas’ Gale Van Hoy – about whose future judging efforts some fans still want email alerts – might disagree.

Don’t hold Mora against Mares. The young Mexican bantamweight earned that first knockdown by looking better in his opening two minutes against Agbeko than anyone has. Mares was sharp and tight. Agbeko was wild and unbalanced. When Agbeko planted to throw an odd-angled punch and his feet splayed, it wasn’t on account of anything Mares did in that preceding instant. But you know what? Mares had done enough in the preceding 120 instants to make a knockdown seem plausible.

Russell Mora was not looking at the combatants’ feet. He wasn’t much looking at their gloves either. His eyes were on the combatants’ heads. These are likely his mechanics; he watches the heads – where most action happens – and relies on peripheral vision and feel (as a former Golden Gloves state champion) to take care of the rest.

These mechanics explain why, time and again Saturday, Mora’s primary concern was Agbeko’s pressing on the back of Mares’ neck, not where Mares’ left fist went. The Showtime crew, meanwhile, sat well beneath the action and saw each lowblow as if thrown in slow motion. Welcome to perspective.

Mares is not necessarily a dirty fighter. He is a fighter who commits to throwing lots of left hooks to the body. And if you throw lots of those punches at a moving target, you land lowblows.

How? Because the left hook to the body is not a punch thrown on a flat plane. In order to find an opponent’s liver, many things must go right at the moment of impact. Along with your opponent’s breathing rhythm being on inhale, the knuckles of your left hand must be rising. You can do this one of two ways: 1. Throw a flat punch with an upwards twist at the end, or 2. Throw an uppercut-hook hybrid that begins low and ends high.

Mares chooses the latter option. He starts many of his left hooks low and relies on an opponent to stay still at least until the punch is above the belt line. Mares does not seem to realize this: His postfight justification for lowblows – that his opponent often moves away – was exactly backwards.

The fight’s most offensive punch, the cherrypicker Mares threw in round 11 – a punch that dramatically improved the fast-fading Mexican’s fortunes – was an act of miscalculation. Mares started the punch too low and too close. He wanted to throw an uppercut to the forward-bent Agbeko’s abdomen. Mares missed his target by about 10 inches. We know this because the top of Agbeko’s glove was at the belt line, and Mares’ glove landed beneath the bottom of Agbeko’s glove, way below its intended target. Mares deserved a one-point penalty, one he would have agreed with later.

Referee Mora, eyes fixated on the fighters’ heads, blew the call – awarding Mares an extra point when Agbeko took a knee, rather than deducting one. This caused a four-point swing in round 11. In missing an important call, Mora directly altered a championship fight’s outcome. He’s not fit to referee another major fight for some time. That’s sanction enough.

How to otherwise remedy the injustice done Agbeko? That part’s simple.

Showtime, by virtue of its tournament, is the de facto promoter of the bantamweight division. Mares and Agbeko, two fighters who owe what exposure they’ve had to the network – their promoters, after all, couldn’t fill a nightclub at Hard Rock Hotel – will do what Showtime tells them to. Instead of lobbying the IBF or writing protest letters to the Nevada State Athletic Commission, Agbeko’s people need only send Showtime a tape of its on-air talent.

The credibility of Showtime’s tournament has been comprised. Showtime will remedy this by ordering an immediate rematch.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By now you’ve read the press release about my Monday column, the one that was to be a workaday review of Kelly Pavlik’s comeback match with Darryl Cunningham, written for a transcendent website that gets more daily hits than every boxing site combined. After that would come a masterwork that announced my comeback as a serious voice.

I cancelled all that, Wednesday. After Pavlik cancelled his fight and offered a telling interview to Alec Kohut on Tuesday, I had a contentious phone call with the editor of the site for which I’d intended to write my next two columns. A transcript follows.

Me (cutting in): Listen, hey, wait, I’m tired of spending hours each week fretting over what strangers will opine of my subject. I need to start thinking about me, and riffing on art museums and favorite novelists. And I’m getting that tattoo of 15rounds.com on my lower back changed to a dolphin, just so you know – with the 5 becoming a dorsal fin.

Editor: Do what you want with your body. But remember our deal.

Me: I remember it and planned to honor it. A throwaway review of a mediocre fight, something to reintroduce me to readers as a writer who can fashion a passable report without experimenting, followed by a sprawling epic about Marvin Gaye’s use of boxing to overcome drug addiction, written to the chord changes of “Inner City Blues” and featuring interviews with much of Detroit.

Editor: That was the plan.

Me: Right, and then I realized you’re using me. You’re going to use my Marvin Gaye opus to drum up a hundred more clicks then tell me to scram.

Editor: Depends on how the second column goes over. You have to prove –

Me: I’m a famous writer. If I end a sentence with a preposition or use a hyphen in lieu of a semicolon, everybody talks about it. I coauthored a book with Thomas Hauser, for goodness’ sake! People know Bart Barry.

Column: And that’s why we offered to pay you what we thought was reasonable.

Me: “Reasonable”? I know you offered David Greisman $10,000 per column. Now maybe on the East Cost or the West Coast or the Midwest, Greisman’s name means more than mine, but in South Texas, in San Antonio, the Centertown portion – Houston Street? – my name is bigger than his. He gets $10,000 per column, and I get $50. C’mon!

Editor: What are you talking about? That $10,000 number is preposterous.

Me: I know what I know. At least offer me, like, $59, or fly me to Los Angeles, where boxing occasionally happens. I’d do my column for $50 in L.A. But you’re asking me to write about a deceased Motown talent, in South Texas, for $50. It’s outrageous, pardon my French.

Editor: Your what?

Me: It’s despicable – and I don’t mean to cuss. About my invoice . . .

Editor: We have a standard way of reimbursing our writers, one you are familiar with and –

Me: I don’t do this for the money, OK? I’m not one of these knucklehead boxing writers who acquires contemporary art or manages an expensive designer-eyeglass collection. Believe me, I’m fine. And if I’m fine, and I don’t write for money, obviously I’m not going to write unless I get paid what I think I’m worth! I don’t mean to swear, but it’s illogical.

Editor: You seem worked up. Are you back on the caffeine?

Me: Really, this again? Find me one writer who so much as tweets without a mug of coffee in his fist. I’ve been honest about those few times I had too much at Starbucks and it made me incoherent. Do you have any idea how hard it is to generate words out of thin air and have others question your talent and craft?

Editor: That’s what you are paid to do. Do you how many boxing fans would love to get paid for their opinions?

Me: You know what, I’m like any other guy. When some Wal-Mart greeter goes to a job where he makes less in a day than I make in an hour, does he do it for me? No. I write for the money – money I do not need. Frankly, I don’t even care if anyone reads my Marvin Gaye masterpiece.

Editor: For which we would pay you $50.

Me: How is a writer going to make $35 for a column comparing Marco Antonio Barrera to Jane Austen, a column maybe 20 people finished, and fewer than 10 enjoyed, and then take short money for a story on Marvin Gaye?

Editor: This was supposed to be a redemptive effort for you. After your issues with editors.

Me: Every writer fights with editors. One time, one time, Frauenheim and I get in a conversation and miss the early shuttle to Cowboys Stadium, and Abrams calls, and I tell him what happened, and he says it’s not a big deal, and I say it is. The only reason people talk about that is because Bart Barry is a famous name.

Editor: This is an impasse.

Me: Look, there are knowledgeable people out there. One guy, we call him “Spandex” – he knew a guy whose grandfather met Henry Miller in Paris – and he told me I need to not just write about art museums but really bore into them, controversial stuff about minimalism.

Editor: And when readers say it’s nonsensical?

Me: Maybe if they’d get off their asses and pay a subscription fee or send an eloquent email, instead of worrying about what Bart Barry is writing, maybe then . . .

(End Transcript)

As you can see from what’s above, my side of the story, I walked away from that other gig for good reasons. We can all agree this was the best thing for my boxing-writing career. Don’t miss my next column.

Bart Barry can still be reached at [email protected], where he’s still happily writing, having never once fought with his editor.

Colorado’s Mike Alvarado successfully continued his comeback Saturday. Ohio’s Kelly Pavlik will successfully continue his comeback Saturday. Top Rank continues to promote both. And American boxing aficionados who are not within driving distance of Southern California’s thriving gym scene continue to be nostalgic about better times.

Saturday’s Fox Sports Español telecast was a reminder of this. There was Alvarado, fighting in Denver at a venue called Softball Country Arena – which appeared to be a field with a set of tracks behind it where trains moseyed past. Rumor is, ticket sales went well. But Alvarado is in a much different place from where he once was.

Today he is 31-years old. He is fighting Off-Off-Broadway, to be charitable. Since his quick rise on the professional scene, one aided by Telefutura’s “Solo Boxeo” (its invaluable predecessor, not the current imposter), he has fought in cities like Cicero, Ill., Gary, Ind., and Commerce City, Colo. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Sixty-two months ago, Alvarado fought in the co-main event of a Top Rank card in Tucson, Ariz., in a venue called Club Envy. The club itself was small, as I recall it. The parking lot was converted to a fighting venue. There were folding chairs and a chainlink fence and metal tubs of beers on the perimeter. The turnout was mediocre, as Arizona boxing was by then nine months into a cruel freeze – one our own Norm Frauenheim reports may just now be thawing.

Some of the usual characters were at Club Envy, though not as many. Phil Soto, Top Rank’s Arizona publicist, placed seat assignments on ringside tables and put me beside TheSweetScience.com’s Phil Woolever – arguably boxing writing’s most poetic soul. Woolever spoke his observations into a handheld voice recorder, and we shared a few jokes about the hot pink trunks one of the undercard combatants wore in the ring that night.

Alvarado was sharp, threw tight combinations, impressed observers with his right uppercut, and got hit plenty with right crosses. His opponent that night, Maximino “Holy Hands” Cuevas, boasted an 8-3-1 record that was headed for 10-11-1. He was there to lose and found his way out of the match with a left-eye injury after round 5.

Alvarado was disappointed the fight didn’t go longer, implying he would have been hit with fewer punches as it went on. Saturday’s junior welterweight fight against Gabriel Martinez showed that either Alvarado’s five-year-old claim was never particularly true, or he’s lost some of the fast-twitch from his reflexes. He still gets hit hard with right hands.

But he also shows the same impressive chin he showed in his youth, back when Top Rank very nearly called him a top prospect in its stable – before the arrests and private disappointments. Last June, as Top Rank spent a week in San Antonio to promote Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.’s match with John Duddy, Alvarado’s career had collided with another obstacle, and Top Rank personnel were not timid about expressing their displeasure with Alvarado.

Yet, there was Alvarado on a Top Rank broadcast Saturday – a marker we’ll return to.

Kelly Pavlik, too, has performed a sabotage of sorts on his prizefighting career, a career Top Rank’s Bob Arum once promised would eclipse in riches and acclaim Oscar De La Hoya’s. Pavlik was his hometown’s professional-sports franchise. Youngstown, Ohio, perhaps the closest thing boxing has to a sister city, rallied round its one excuse for optimism. Pavlik let the city down.

Talk to folks above the legal drinking age in Youngstown, and you’ll find most have a story or two about the hell-raising Pavlik brothers. A few weeks ago that hell-raising won national attention, as Kelly and his brother staged a sparring match to whose credentials list local police were belatedly added. Pavlik doesn’t want to talk about it. Boxing media, excepting only Michael Woods, were happy to comply with the fighter’s wishes during last week’s conference call.

You know who’s happy to talk about it, though? Guys in boxing gyms. In South Texas at least, where most heavybag habitués’ names end in an s or z, there’s a long-held suspicion Pavlik was the beneficiary of what President George W. Bush once called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Pavlik’s white skin lowered expectations, Pavlik sprang over the shortened hurdles, and Pavlik became far more famous than a Mexican or Puerto Rican might have for knocking-out middleweight champion Jermain Taylor.

Is this accurate? Not really. Boxing gyms are often racially fixated and cruel places, and Pavlik deserves better than the “white hope” and “middleweight drunk” titles his name now triggers.

Just the same, by now, Pavlik was supposed to be a pay-per-view mainstay, selling-out edifices like Ohio State’s Horseshoe or Cleveland Browns Stadium. Instead, Pavlik now hopes for a “walk-up” crowd in Youngstown’s Covelli Center on Friday. He’ll be fighting someone named Darryl Cunningham on Showtime’s “ShoBox” program, one whose subtitle is “The New Generation.”

Top Rank will promote that show, too. Just like Alvarado’s show Saturday. Why is this worth mentioning? Because it tells you something about the fabric of Bob Arum’s company.

Contrary to general impressions, Arum engenders loyalty by showing loyalty. He may bark at his fighters. Hell, he may even crow about them in the press. But Top Rank always answers the phone when one of its stable calls. It finds a place for tough action fighters, regardless of their private mistakes. People, it seems, like Arum more the better they know him.

If Oscar De La Hoya is the future of boxing promotion, this is a trait he should learn from his former promoter. De La Hoya has an opposite track record: He is most beloved by those who are farthest from him.

Meanwhile boxing’s own comeback remains in neutral, exactly between first gear and reverse.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Englishman Amir Khan will never fail to look unbeatable against an opponent who considers contact optional. If you are a prizefighter who relies on once-youthful reflexes to get the better of every exchange, there’s a good chance you have no chance against Khan. He is too fast and confident. He is going to hit you, and if being hit ruins your prefight strategy, ruined you will be.

Brooklyn’s Zab Judah, older and slower and newly devoted to the Prince of Peace, was just such a man – one who wanted no part of being hit.

And so, Saturday at Mandalay Bay, Amir Khan stopped Judah at 2:47 of round 5 with a punch that hit Judah on the belly button, making Khan a unified titlist at 140 pounds. And Judah – who try, try, tried again to get the fight stopped – was left with little more than another professional paragraph that ends “, if only.”

After the fight, Khan said he believed Judah a better boxer than Timothy Bradley, the recognized champion at 140 pounds. Khan is right. If you understand the word “boxer” in the headgear-and-big-gloves, hit-and-don’t-get-hit, make’em-say-“ooh! ahh!” sense of the term, Judah is a better boxer than Bradley. But Bradley is twice the fighter Judah is.

Don’t for a second think Khan’s ability to dominate a formerly flashy prizefighter with diminished reflexes is indicative of how Khan would fare against a prime volume puncher. Khan looked unstoppable against Paulie Malignaggi. And it told you nothing about how he’d look when Marcos Maidana laid hands on him. Maybe Malignaggi was no Zab Judah, but neither was Maidana any sort of Timothy Bradley.

Frankly, it’s hard to concentrate on another disappointing match in a papered (but still sparsely occupied) arena in a depressed American city when there is a looming debt crisis.

Let’s spend some time thinking about this looming crisis, then. No, not the politics of it. That part is beneath us. Rather, let’s look at the consequences of our Treasury bonds losing their AAA rating.

Since July of 1944, America has effectively owned the world’s printing press. When the Allies met in Bretton Woods, N.H., and agreed to make the dollar the world’s reserve currency, our country was given an extraordinary economic advantage. We have not used this advantage predatorily as European history tells us we could have, no, but we’ve still taken some liberties with it. In 1971, President Nixon “temporarily” suspended the redemptions we’d promised the Allies – dollars to gold – and floated the world’s reserve currency, and every other currency along with it. In the 1980s, President Reagan used the printing press to lose a race to bankruptcy with the Soviet Union.

Today we are told to fear a takeover of the world’s economy by China – as if the yuan were poised to replace the dollar. That is unlikely. After all, it took 65 million deaths in World War II for the world to agree on a common currency.

But what if our Treasury bonds were to lose their AAA rating?

It is instructive to look at the case of American International Group (AIG) in 2008 to start answering that question. AIG, believe it or not, never exactly defaulted on its debt. Instead, it issued an incredible number of bonds to borrow money to leverage its positions. And AIG’s bondholders bought those bonds based on their AAA rating – with an agreement that if AIG were to lose its high rating, it would provide additional collateral.

When AIG’s debt was downgraded by rating agencies, it suddenly had to produce tens of billions of dollars in additional collateral to meet its obligations. Its ability to raise additional capital reflexively cancelled, AIG faced default, and our federal government – owner of the world’s printing press – intervened, covered AIG’s debt, and prevented default.

Now, imagine AIG were a country whose debt the entire world owned and who suddenly lost its AAA rating. Then imagine there was no federal government to step in and prevent default.

Welcome to the United States of America in 2011.

What happens if U.S. Treasury bonds lose their AAA rating? Nobody knows. The quality of American debt is the one constant in every economic model designed and used for the last 67 years. America is uniquely empowered by the rest of the world to print money in a crisis. It has never struck anyone that a country with this advantage would consider not using it.

Every fixed-income model used by every country relies on the U.S. Treasury bond to be a standard. If this were to change, one assumes, the algorithms on which the world’s financial models are built would trigger immediate downgrades of every entity that owns U.S. Treasury bonds.

And you thought AIG was interconnected?

If American debt loses its AAA rating, it will be ruinous to our way of life, and more ruinous to everyone else’s. Quickly enough – deprived of its standard – the credit-rating system, itself, will disappear. And without a way to know who will pay and who will default, the entirety of the global economy will congeal.

Take solace in this, though: Unlike the case of 2008, when a tiny and private band of men conspired to end the world’s economy, this time it will be elected officials of the United States that publicly raze it. A democratic solution for ending the world as we know it – which does seem fairer.

Oh, about Amir Khan? It’s hard to say. He seems to be positioning himself for a run at the winner of Mayweather-Ortiz (Mayweather) at welterweight. Timothy Bradley seems to be positioning himself for a run at Manny Pacquiao. That is, both Khan and Bradley are mapping their careers on the assumption that Pacquiao-Mayweather never happens. Hard to argue with them.

Chances are, we’ll be deprived of both Bradley-Khan and Pacquiao-Mayweather, then. Let’s hope that’s the extent of our deprivations.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

CORPUS CHRISTI, Tex. – Contrary to stereotypes about South Texas, held by the rest of the country, yes, but also other Texans, this city plays home to a superb contemporary-paint collection by local artists. Art Museum of South Texas is a jewel of sweeping modern canvases and craftily presented views of the bay on which it stands.

It is also home to work by Dorothy Hood, creator of large-scale and abstract works that challenge as much as they delight. A woman doing abstract paintings in 1960s Texas and finding enduring appreciation 150 miles from the border with Mexico: not exactly the impression of Lone Star State one gets from reading The New York Times.

A pox on the stereotypes, then!

Sing it out for South Texas, and sing it out for junior welterweights Amir Khan and Zab Judah.

Khan, a 24-year-old Englishman of Arab descent, currently holds the WBA’s version of a 140-pound title but is not his division’s king. Judah, a 33-year-old New Yorker of Brooklyn descent, has held a number of titles and routinely stretched his fans to the end of their emotional tether. The two will meet Saturday at Mandalay Bay in a match HBO will televise.

Their fight will be filled with the absence of Timothy Bradley, the junior welterweight champion last seen manhandling Devon Alexander in a deserted Pontiac Silverdome about six months ago. Bradley will still be the best 140 pounder after Khan and Judah finish a battle for mandatory-challenger status.

Bradley, it seems, has run into promotional difficulties. One didn’t have to be a cynic to suspect this the morning after his last fight. Then, Bradley strode through Southwest’s terminal at Detroit Metro Airport round 7:00 a.m. The best prizefighter in one of boxing’s best divisions not only didn’t have a first-class ticket but had to hustle to get a decent seat on a flight that rose with the sun.

Rumor is, Bradley may head to promoter Top Rank, after forgoing a chance to extend his professional relationship with Gary Shaw. Leaving a matchmaker for a promoter is a good idea. That Top Rank will know what to do with an African American from Palm Springs, Calif., though, is disputable.

What is indisputable is Bradley’s fear of Amir Khan. There is none. Whatever Bradley’s actual reason for declining a title-unification bout with Khan, fear can be dismissed. Khan’s stand-up, boxer-puncher style is custom made for Bradley. Khan is no faster than Devon Alexander and has roughly half the chin. And Bradley fearlessly gave Alexander the business till he quit in January.

Khan, though, could do Bradley quite a favor by beating Zab Judah on Saturday. Judah, in his latest incarnation at least, is more than capable of beating any of the top-5 junior welterweights. He is a wildcard and always has been.

Since his 2008 loss to Joshua Clottey – yes, the timid turtle from Cowboys Stadium – Judah has turned his life around and figured things out and adjusted his priorities and, why, every other cliché used by athletes whose talent outpaces their achievements. He’s had impressive wins against unimpressive foes and one unimpressive win against an impressive foe.

He’s also gotten a recent helping of positive press disproportionate to recent accomplishments. Most of this can be attributed to his promoter Kathy Duva, a refreshingly accessible craftsperson who treats the print media much better than many of her peers. Much of the rest of Judah’s darling treatment is attributable to the residue left by hopes appended to him years ago.

That was before Kostya Tszyu sent Judah stumbling everywhere in 2001. It was before Carlos Baldomir put him on Queer Street in 2006. It was before Floyd Mayweather solved him 90 days later. And it was before Miguel Cotto brutalized him in 2007.

Thing is, if you add Mickey Ward and Cory Spinks to the names above – Tszyu, Mayweather, Cotto and Clottey – and consider that Judah fought all of them in their primes, you come to a conclusion Judah himself has come to: He’s faced much better men than Amir Khan has. Much better men than Amir Khan is, too.

But Judah is a stereotypical front runner, one of the modern era’s greatest four-round fighters. And when the going has got tough in his career, Judah has not got going.

Khan, for his part, is considered by many the stereotype of a protected European champion. He roars like a lion when standing before overmatched opponents like Paulie Malignaggi or an old and blood-blinded Marco Antonio Barrera, but he cut a significantly different figure peddling frantically away from Marcos Maidana in December – yes, the same limited Argentine who just had a terrible time with old Erik Morales.

So what? Corpus Christi is supposed to be a warm-water, oil-rigged net for catching tourists of modest means and more-modest tastes. If you’re not standing at the end of a jetty with a fishing rod and fears of heat stroke, you’re supposed to be watching sea otters at the aquarium, marching across the USS Lexington’s 100-degree flight deck, or gobbling freezer-to-fryer seafood inside the humid belly of a concrete shark.

And yet, mere yards from that bazaar is South Texas Museum of Art. So much for stereotypes.

A prediction, then? Khan-Judah will be a fine match that either guy might win. The difference-maker, likely, will be Khan’s trainer Freddie Roach. He’s had plenty of time and case history from which to shape a strategy that will unman Judah. He may not be able to protect Khan’s chin from Judah’s quick hands, but he’s had an entire camp to teach his charge how to counter those hands.

And Judah, well, his record in big fights speaks for itself.

I’ll take Khan, SD-12.

***

A special note of thanks to local artist Miranda Gonzalez whose “Alejandro the Sea Horse” inspired the better parts of what’s above.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Boxing insiders will forgive David Haye. Many of us have already. What he did some Saturdays ago against Wladimir Klitschko, the ballsy hustle of it, was different to us only for reasons of scale. We see the same embellishment and churlish irony from smalltime promoters each month. Supposedly, it’s part of prizefighting’s charm.

We endure it out of self-interest. If the heavyweight division could just get back on the front page of . . . well, OK, the homepage of, well, something, laymen would again talk about our sport. They’d want to read about it, too. Advertisers would return. Writers would be paid.

But what about those laymen? If you know any, they approached you this week about Klitschko-Haye because you’ve mentioned boxing to them at Starbucks. These aren’t your friends from the gym. These are the people with whom you talk about boxing, work or federal-debt-ceiling negotiations.

And what they wanted from you, believe it or not, was a little outrage. They watched Klitschko-Haye, because it was for the heavyweight championship of the world, and they were unimpressed. So, they wanted your eyes to flash or your voice to rise Monday. They wanted to hear what Haye did was unacceptable. When you explained the fight wasn’t that bad and Klitschko is very effective at what he does and Haye’s trash-talking is just the way of the world, you know what these laymen thought?

Hadn’t watched boxing in ages. Seems I haven’t missed anything.

We won’t mourn these absentee fans’ future absence because that’s what the 1990s and 2000s were for – fretting over a dwindling interest in our sport. Today, God love us, we’re defiant; those moronic ghouls, we say, they just want senseless violence and don’t even know what a counterpunch is!

There went the last three casual fans? Very well. No one here but the choir, then, so let’s preach to us.

We found comfort on Friday and Saturday – a couple reminders of why we stick with this sport no matter how little this sport cares that we do. Arizona super middleweight Jesus “El Martillo” Gonzales made a fine scrap with Mexico light heavyweight Francisco Sierra on ESPN2, Friday. And Saturday “Bam Bam” Brandon Rios made one of the finest three-round championship fights of the last 30 years, with Urbano Antillon on Showtime.

But it was all ruined by HBO. There is a temptation to think that way, sure. It was hard to watch Saturday’s fare in the aficionado’s proper order – Showtime first, HBO second – without going to bed a little downtrodden. HBO set out to rehab one of its house fighters, and he lost, and the Atlantic City judges – unaware HBO had quit on its house fighter – turned in majority-decision scorecards confirming a rehabilitation.

Paul Williams’ victory, contrary to popular sentiment, was not all that is wrong with boxing. At this point, a 100-round fight couldn’t turn that trick. Williams’ victory instead was a lesson in the corrupting effect of vesting a small group of people with disproportionate power, but if we’re going to play the boxing-as-metaphor game, we might as well find a worthier subject to treat than some Machiavellian advisor or other.

You know what? Let’s scrap the game altogether and just celebrate what Gonzales, Sierra, Rios and Antillon gave us.

Jesus Gonzales, possessed of one remarkable punch and many flaws, returned to the place where he was comprehensively undone by Jose Luis Zertuche almost six years ago. He dropped Sierra in the fourth round with a left cross he throws to the body as well as any southpaw in the game. Then he was dropped in the fifth by a Sierra right hand to the chin Gonzales leaves unguarded as any southpaw’s in the game. But Gonzales rose from the canvas to win a fair unanimous decision.

His attack consists of a bunny hop, a pair of jabs and a lunging left hand followed by backwards hops and a reset. Something like this.

Gonzales bounces, sets. He jabsjabs, then leaps. Right hand in his front pocket, chin good and high, he dives forward. The left fist uncoils perfectly from behind his left shoulder, and his wrist turns over at the instant before impact, to make a punch forceful enough to crack a human rib – a feat Gonzales achieved against Kendall Gould 50 months ago in Fountain Hills, Ariz. – the very sort of punch that would fold Andre Ward in half were it to land. The odds of that happening are long. Ward is much better than Sierra. Much better than Gonzales, too. But anyway.

Gonzales is not the future star promoter Bob Arum thought he was in 2003. But ESPN2 could do a lot worse than televising Gonzales’ next three or four fights.

Writing of Arum’s roster of future stars – the fluctuating team of a curmudgeonly coach – how about that Brandon Rios? Little was missing from his 8 1/2 minute destruction of Urbano Antillon but the finish. With Antillon dazed and stumbling away, Rios just missed a chance to run across the ring and finish him like Marvelous Marvin Hagler finished Tommy Hearns in the only better three-round fight you can think of.

This was a fight for a world lightweight title. It was a fight in which neither man gave ground. A fight that saw Antillon, felled twice and on the verge of unconsciousness, scoff at a ref’s suggestion the fight should not resume. A fight of gorgeous uppercuts and hooks and no defense for its own sake. A treat that Rios ended by catching Antillon’s left hook to the body and countering it with a right cross, twice. Poetic.

Yes, sport in general has forgotten but not forgiven David Haye. And there are fewer prospective boxing fans today than there were two weeks ago. But there are still prizefighters from the Mexican tradition out there. And in that, friends, we must find our solace.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com @bartbarry

In the moments after two contemporary prizefighters meet at a press conference to question each other’s class, family, sexual orientation and all the rest, each man invariably wants to beat on the other in hot blood. But by the time their fight arrives months later, each man has a higher motivation: Prevent that sonofabitch from embarrassing me in front of the world.

That is how we get what we got from David Haye and Wladimir Klitschko for the last two months. That is how we get what we got Saturday afternoon.

And what we got was not good. It was another dull half hour from Wladimir Klitschko, whose reign has been so unexceptional that we no longer blame him for its dullness. And Klitschko was the exciting part of Saturday’s production, too, beating Haye by unanimous-decision scores of 118-108, 117-109 and 116-110.

My scorecard concurred, 117-109. Its details are unimportant.

What is important, though, is a durable rule of contemporary prizefighting that rarely fails: The violence in the ring will be inversely proportionate to the violence of the promotion.

Somewhere between salesmanship and Hamlet’s line about an actress protesting too much lies the above truth. But still they hooked us with the spectacle of a palpably furious Ukrainian giant across from a cocky Brit, one who nervously predicted the men’s pending collision would cause a great, great fight.

They hooked us because of a residual or-die-trying ethic that still adheres to our sport, or better put, adheres to our imaginations when we think about our sport. Today that ethic is gone from most of prizefighting and all of the heavyweight division.

What caused its general exit from the world stage – deregulation maybe – is anyone’s guess. But everyone’s honor is now for sale, flamboyantly so.

David Haye just cashed the largest check of his career, honor be damned. He will live happily ever after this disgrace – one that began with a promise of beheadings and ended with his flopping on the canvas to draw penalties like a soccer player. Haye will sleep each night on a mattress stuffed with money and tell himself – and have young people believe that – his main purpose was making money. If that required a con, well, all the better.

What he needed to say after his shameful effort was this: “Bollocks, that guy can hit! I sat across from him at press conferences, and all I saw was an oaf I’d have no trouble whacking. But in that ring, mate, he’s a monster. He looked nine-feet tall, he did. And he’s fast, too. I tried to rush him a few times. He hit me. I realized the best chance I had of staying conscious, being in a healthy state of mind when I collected my purse, you know, was to keep him afraid of my right hand. That required me not to throw it but threaten with it. He was the better man tonight, and he’ll be the better man tomorrow. I’m sorry I crossed him.”

Instead, Haye removed his boot from his right foot and implored interviewers to look at the right toe he claimed to have broken three weeks before. It was about selling the next sham, of course. It was the first line of a pitch you’ll hear soon enough: “I went 12 rounds with the best heavyweight in the world, on a broken foot! You can be right sure the next time you see the ‘Hayemaker’ at 100 percent, some unlucky bloke is going to sleep.”

Which is why fight fans should hold men like Haye to account. Trouble is, most of the men old enough to remember honor as more than a slogan have abandoned boxing. And those who’ve replaced them find a certain postmodern charm in prizefighters’ unreliable first-person narratives. “Fighting” as a word, anymore, is a decorative tool for improving one’s prize.

None of this excuses Wladimir Klitschko. Saturday brought another serving of a delicious between-rounds show that never fails to please: Trainer Manny Steward imploring the reluctant “Dr. Steelhammer” to nail a much smaller man.

Steward, with an assist from Larry Merchant, provided frustrated HBO viewers the affirmation they needed. Steward assured us we were not alone in our disbelief: The hardest punching man in the world really would skitter round the ring before he’d fight toe-to-toe with an opponent he outweighed by 30 pounds.

Klitschko jabbed. Jabbed. Feinted and jabbed. Hooked off the feinted jab. But that’s not to say there’s anything wrong with jabbing, nothing at all, don’t misunderstand, please! Klitschko jabbed. Jabbed.

And Haye circled and looked menacing. He leaped forward and back. He impressed Roy Jones. Then he did something major that will be covered in the next paragraph.

Haye circled. He growled. He shouted inciting words at Klitschko. He promised a right hand. He then did something major that will be covered in the next paragraph.

Haye landed on his left foot. He got to the final bell and waved his right fist. Then he did something major that will be covered in the next column . . .

So it went. The fight boxing badly needed was a dud. Apologists will emphasize the conditioning each man showed. His skilled footwork or hand speed. The possibility that a lot of things could have happened. Apologists, in other words, will make a prizefight for the heavyweight championship of the world sound like the summary of a Women’s World Cup match.

In an interesting interview with RingTV.com last week, Many Steward said, “People don’t see Wladimir’s footwork. That amazes me.”

Klitschko’s footwork, though, balletic, backwards moving, tuned to the retreating commands his sharp mind sends it, is not what anyone wants to see from a baddest man on the planet. It’s not that we all don’t see Wladimir’s footwork, Mr. Steward; it’s that those of us who do are amazed by it.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

SAN ANTONIO – Fight fans looking for the next southpaw sensation to come out of the Philippines, someone to play heir to Manny Pacquiao, had best keep looking. Mark Melligan is not their man.

Friday at Freeman Coliseum, in the main event of a card broadcast on ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights” – a program featuring boxing in 3D for the first time – Argentine welterweight Sebastian Lujan (38-5-2, 24 KOs) swarmed, swatted, slapped and ultimately starched Melligan (21-3, 14 KOs), knocking him out at 0:48 of round 9.

At the time of the stoppage, the 15rounds.com ringside scorecard had Lujan ahead 76-73.

The fight began auspiciously for Melligan, who threw tight combinations and set effective traps, repeatedly tagging Lujan with counter left uppercuts. But Lujan’s chin proved a stubborn one, and Lujan’s spirit was not persuaded by Melligan’s class.

Beginning in the fifth round, though, Melligan’s legs began to show signs of their own of persuasion. No longer were Melligan’s combinations crisp, no longer were his hooks tight. At the end of the sixth, Melligan went down for the first time – a feat he would duplicate at the end of the seventh and eighth as well. Then Melligan began the ninth round on shaky pins, Lujan swarmed him, and no 10-count was needed.

MICKEY BEY VS. ALEJANDRO RODRIGUEZ
There’s a good chance Alejandro Rodriguez still doesn’t know what the count is.

In Friday’s co-main event, a lightweight scrap scheduled for eight rounds but ending in fewer than half that many, Cleveland’s Mickey Bey (17-0-1, 9 KOs) turned an initially competitive match into a one-punch rout when he drilled Rodriguez (12-4, 6 KOs) with a gorgeous counter right cross, and then saw the fight waved-off a few seconds later at 2:10 of round 4.

Bey’s right cross actually dropped Rodriguez twice. After slipping a Rodriguez left jab, Bey connected with a right hand that – despite partially catching Rodriguez’s left shoulder – landed with force enough to put Rodriguez on the seat of his trunks. Rodriguez rose, walked towards the referee, and then stumbled into the ropes.

With his victory, Bey remained undefeated and served notice to the lightweight division that he will make a competitive match with any of its current titlists.

INAUGURAL CLASS OF SAN ANTONIO BOXING HALL OF FAME RECOGNIZED
An hour before ESPN2 went on the air, the Freeman Coliseum’s ring filled with local legends composing the inaugural class of the new San Antonio Boxing Hall of Fame.

This city’s three world champions – Jesse James Leija, John Michael Johnson and the late Robert Quiroga – joined legendary trainers Tony Ayala, Sr. and Joe Souza in the Hall’s first class. The SABHOF, a brainchild of Texas promoter Lester Bedford, will be housed within Freeman Coliseum.

UNDERCARD
Friday’s TV swing bout saw San Antonio lightweight Ivan Najera (2-0, 1 KO) make a fantastically entertaining opening round with Laredo’s Pedro Martinez (2-1) before eventually prevailing by technical knockout before the second round could begin. Martinez appeared to tear a muscle in his right forearm just as the bell rang to end round 1. He crumpled in his corner and asked to have his gloves removed, ending what might have proved to be the fight of the night, and giving Najera his first career knockout.

In the evening’s third match, local lightweight Abraham Esquivel (4-1, 1 KO) had surprisingly little trouble with fellow Texan Pedro Dominquez (2-2) , stopping him at 0:48 of round 1. Esquivel’s victory came on an unusual finishing blow – a right hook to the body – that somehow dropped Dominquez for a rolling, writhing count of 14 or so. Moments later, though, Dominquez had made a full recovery.

Before that, undefeated Dallas bantamweight Ray Ximenez, Jr. (3-0) breezed through New Mexico’s Aaron Fernandez (1-5), decisioning him by three unanimous scores of 40-34. Showing flashy if not particularly heavy hands, Ximenez twice received benefits of the referee’s doubt, winning credit for two questionable knockdowns. But there was nothing questionable about the outcome as Ximenez had Fernandez outclassed from the first bell.

Friday’s undercard began with a four-round welterweight match between two Texas welterweights – Edinburg’s Randy Fuentes (1-0) and San Antonio’s Mark Trujillo (0-2) – a fight that saw the southpaw Fuentes prevail in his pro debut by three unanimous-decision scores of 40-36.

With help from a well-publicized ticket giveaway, opening bell rang on a respectable Freeman Coliseum crowd of about 3,000 at 8:11 PM local time.

We all knew Wladimir Klitschko was a chinny smart guy who took no unnecessary shots and worried openly about what might happen if the right man put a punch on his chin. We had our suspicions, expressed openly and often in the United States where he was more of an Off-Broadway attraction than a demigod, suspicions of what form he would revert to if put back in that scary mid-career place where Sanders then Brewster found him.

Suspicions confirmed.

Saturday in Hamburg, a record number of German fight fans watched in stunned silence as Klitschko was decisively undone by a single punch from Englishman David “Hayemaker” Haye in the first minute of round 3. It took another 80 seconds of grappling and referee interference before Haye could drop Klitschko for a count of 20 – officially at 2:03 of the third – but the fight’s conclusion moved from startling to inevitable in the instant after the first right hand landed for Haye.

Exactly as Haye promised it would.

And yet the match began on such an affirming note for the fragile Klitschko. He kept his left arm fully extended during the opening round. Gone were the tension and quiet fury he’d showed HBO analyst Max Kellerman in that eerily scored promotional sitdown with Haye. Instead it was the prototypical Klitschko of other title defenses: left jab, left jab, left jab, balletic backwards leap, left jab.

Then David Haye sold his soul and took the sort of chance that marks heavyweight champions. He hurled himself at greatness and caught Klitschko flush. “Untergeht Klitschko! Untergeht Klitschko!” cried the Cosell of Cologne, over Germany’s airwaves.

Immediately afterward, as a brash and further-emboldened Haye donned his infamous beheaded-brothers t-shirt and ensured his diamond earrings were properly replaced, Klitschko spoke tentatively about any athlete being capable of a bad night, and his legacy, and a rematch.

Let’s simplify things. Wladimir, your legacy is this: A properly matched giant whose reign as heavyweight champion saw boxing’s popularity plummet. The very man, in other words, Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewster said you were.

*

Well, that was futile, wasn’t it? To see David Haye in person is to be as surprised at his height as his sprightly tongue. The man is bigger than he looks on television. He has all the confidence needed to be heavyweight champion of the world. He looks the part. Or so we thought.

What other excuse do we have as the witlings who picked him to upset Wladimir Klitschko?

Saturday in Hamburg, a record number of German fight fans watched in cruel ecstasy as Haye collected an indecent number of blows from Wladimir “Dr. Steelhammer” Klitschko before Haye’s corner climbed in the ring and threw its white terrycloth at the Ukrainian ogre. The official time of the Klitschko TKO victory was 1:19 of round 11. But it should have come five rounds earlier.

By then it had become obvious to even a casual observer Haye was a media creation, an inflated cruiserweight with the British accent Americans traditionally mistake for learnedness and wit.

It started in the first minute of the second round, after a dull opening stanza that saw Haye pace five feet from Klitschko’s extended left arm, imitating a caged version of Lion from “The Wizard of Oz.” Then something clicked behind Haye’s eyes and he went for greatness. His head raced into a Klitschko jab that struck with unmanning force.

Three rounds later, with a softened foe before him, Klitschko began to offer right crosses, and it looked like a pro golfer bludgeoning his caddy with a three iron.

The tragic irony of the evening was that Klitschko badly wanted to knock Haye senseless – a merciful conclusion. But each time Klitschko had his finishing blow ready, Haye would feint a blow of his own, and Klitschko would leap backwards. Finally, it was Klitschko’s skittishness that turned him from gentleman to enhanced interrogator.

After the fight Klitschko offered to cover part of the cost of Haye’s time in a Hamburg hospital room, where reports indicate Haye is recovering and expected to announce his retirement from prizefighting by week’s end.

*

Which outcome will it be? There’s no telling just yet, and that means the suspense of what may unfold might entice American viewers to spend an hour of their Saturday afternoon next week to watch the first anticipated heavyweight title fight since Lewis-Tyson. This is a fight boxing badly needs.

Not because it’s consequential, mind you. It’s too late for that. Five years ago, a heavyweight title-unification match would have been reason enough to spend $50 on a pay-per-view fight broadcast from Madison Square Garden. But that was five years ago.

Today, when even aficionados forego weekly offerings from ESPN, Telefutura, Fox Deportes, and increasingly Showtime and HBO, a consequential fight is not enough. No, this match in Germany, Klitschko-Haye, must transcend itself. It must surprise us in a way that wins fans back.

Too tall an order for these men, you say?

We’re all afraid you might be right. We’re afraid Klitschko will come out and keep Haye six feet away as rounds accumulate – like Haye were a braided version of Sultan Ibragimov. Or that Haye will flex and threaten and wing unbalanced shots from a safe distance, never imperiling Klitschko.

If those things happen, it will not be the end of boxing. It will be but another eroding wave that washes away a little more of the majestic bluff boxing once occupied – taking with it another handful of people who’ll no longer notice if boxing continues or doesn’t.

David Haye has an opportunity to dam that erosion by introducing doubt to our flagship division. The best thing, really.

But best things don’t happen in boxing anymore. So I’ll take Klitschko: KO-11.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @barbarry

“Give us more of Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez!” we cry. There, was that enthusiastic enough? It’s part of a new scheme to explore. If we tell the networks and promoters what they want to hear as they launch new prospects, er, champions, perhaps they’ll listen to us later when we declare “enough”?

An inane suggestion! Maybe. But being optimistic about our sport right now requires a touch of buffoonery, so why not?

Mexican Saul “Cinnamon” Alvarez, better known, still, for his red hair and freckles than any punch he’s thrown, won again on Saturday in his home state of Jalisco, against an Englishman named, let’s see, um, Ryan Rhodes. Alvarez won by preordained stoppage when, about seven rounds after he’d last imperiled Rhodes, referee Hector Afu could abide no more carnage and waved the match off, giving Alvarez another knockout victory – this one coming at 0:48 of round 12.

Afterwards, Alvarez offered to fight “El Diablo” (a curious nickname for the next balding British victim he’ll be fed) if “El Diablo” is who his manager asks him to fight. HBO commentator Bob Papa listed three junior middleweights likely to bedevil Alvarez. But Papa’s suggestions won’t be taken seriously. We’ll return to that in a bit.

There’s almost a hint of the agent provocateur to HBO Sports these days. The quickest way to turn most aficionados against a young man, now, is to have HBO feature him. Perhaps, then, Ahab is at the helm, and we’re sinking all boxing to a common pool.

Thus we rolled to Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, once more, to showcase one of the few prospects Golden Boy Promotions can be said to have developed on its own. Except that it didn’t. Alvarez, though only 20 years-old and a beneficiary of counsel from the Golden Boy himself, was a 31-prizefight pro when Oscar De La Hoya’s company found him.

Enough of the negativity, alas. No more allusions to the captain of the Pequod either. It’s time to revel in what’s good about “Cinnamon” Alvarez.

He sells tickets. Hunger is the best sauce, as they say, and the Mexican populace is surely on the sauce. Prizefighting is finally back on the public airwaves, and Mexicans are drunk with expectations. A red-haired horseman from a ranch near Guadalajara is indeed a quirky choice, but, along with a child of privilege who can fight a little, it’s what’s on the menu. ¡Vámonos entonces!

Alvarez throws combinations better than many Mexican prizefighters, even great ones. He uses the left hook to set up the right cross, too, and that’s almost novel as his hair color among Mexican prizefighters. There’s an old saw that says if you can throw the third punch in a combination, you’ll land it. The trick, of course, is throwing it. Events can obstruct that third punch; your opponent can make the first or second miss, or he can counter them and make you holster the third.

To his credit, Alvarez is rarely dissuaded. He decides to go 2/3/2 at you – cross/hook/cross – and throws that third punch, the right cross, regardless of what comes. And as the saw above promises, that punch lands. Rhodes, playing the grateful visitor after the fight, attributed Alvarez’s effectiveness to Alvarez’s body punches. But it wasn’t Alvarez’s hooks to Rhodes’ body that disarmed him; it was Alvarez’s right hand.

Early in the fight, when Rhodes did a reasonable imitation of a fighter who’d done his homework, there was some switching, orthodox to southpaw, for Alvarez to contend with. Those were his most impressive moments. Alvarez picked up Rhodes’ left cross properly, slipped outside it and returned fire with a counter right cross or uppercut. The uppercut, particularly, was nifty as it was brave. Alvarez took some chances that Rhodes’ left cross was just a trap, nervously thrown as it was, and that a missed uppercut would leave Alvarez naked and freckled in the middle of Vicente Fernandez’s arena, for all his countrymen – and future opponents – to see.

With the exception of his uppercut, Alvarez throws his straight punches, jabs and crosses, much better than his crooked ones. When Alvarez throws the jab or cross, he snaps his hips correctly and stays, for the most part, on balance. His hooks, though, are wide and sloppy and, more importantly, dependent on an opponent to stabilize their thrower. A craftsman would take a hop back when Alvarez clicks into must-throw-hooks mode and catch him with counters.

A craftsman? Well, maybe for Alvarez’s 50th opponent.

Writing of which, Bob Papa created a three-man roster that included Alfredo Angulo and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. as possibilities for Alvarez’s next opponent, after Saturday’s fight. Alvarez then threatened to fight the Devil if asked to. The first name on Papa’s list, though, was more interesting: Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto.

Cotto, you’ll remember, was believed a protected prospect – slow, if heavy, of hand – until the moment he outjabbed a still-young Shane Mosley. Alvarez seems like no other superstar so much as a slower version of Cotto. Alvarez has a little of Cotto’s stalk-you-till-I-find-you approach. Cotto is faded now, and a fight with Alvarez would be an interesting spectacle indeed.

Goodness, where did that come from? There is a better chance of Alvarez dying his hair black and running for governor of Arizona than fighting Cotto next. Papa’s suggestion, still, was a worthwhile exercise.

While his partner Roy Jones spent the night reading from the HBO/GBP script – stating over and again that Alvarez has one-punch power, even while a cumulative 513 such punches failed to render Matthew Hatton or Rhodes unconscious for an instant – Papa withdrew the glove and cast it on the floor.

Whoever the next pasty Brit to get the Alvarez-victim assignment is, remember he is not Cotto or Angulo or Chavez Jr. Now give us more Cinnamon!

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By now you’ve read reminiscences of Genaro Hernandez from men who knew him far better than I did. Some covered his matches, others worked with him in broadcasting, a few were his promoters. This, by contrast, is not an adequate eulogy but an account of three memorable encounters with “Chicanito” and what they taught me about the man and his profession.

His profession, of course, was prizefighting. And the man, a two-time world champion, succumbed to rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer, last Tuesday, at the age of 45. Services for him will be held on Monday in East Los Angeles’ Resurrection Church at 11 AM. They are open to the public.

The day L.A. Boxing-Ahwatukee opened in Phoenix, I knew Genaro Hernandez only as the man who had lost to Floyd Mayweather nine years before. Jason Bress changed that directly. Jason was the head instructor at L.A. Boxing and a Muay Thai fighter who’d begun as a collegiate wrestler and later learned how to box from Genaro. Jason treated few men with reverence, but nobody ever said an unkind word about Genaro in front of Jason.

Later I would learn that nobody ever said an unkind word about Genaro in front of anyone, but I didn’t know it the day I met him.

That was March 31, 2007. It was L.A. Boxing-Ahwatukee’s grand opening. As a means of honoring his teacher, Jason asked Genaro to fly in from California. If you didn’t know who Genaro Hernandez was when you walked in that gym, it became quickly apparent. There was a professional on the speed bag doing things nobody had done on that bag in the gym’s first month and never did rival in the next three years of trying. Genaro was in the back of the gym, better dressed than most, hitting the bag with his elbow and head while spinning underneath it.

He had not fought professionally in nearly a decade but wasn’t a six-week training camp from being a super featherweight, despite standing 5 foot 11 inches. He happily fielded questions about most anything and gave serious answers.

Back then, the world was awaiting “The Word Awaits” because it was going to save boxing. The conventional wisdom was that Floyd Mayweather was a better fighter but a victory for Oscar De La Hoya would be better for the sport. Genaro doubted that.

“Wait, you want Oscar to win?” Genaro said. “I don’t know about that. Floyd’s real. I could text message Floyd right now, and he’d reply. Floyd’s a real person.”

If Genaro’s confidence in Mayweather’s character has not been entirely justified – though there are reports Mayweather is covering all funeral costs for the Hernandez family – his questions about De La Hoya’s character were indeed prophetic.

Fifteen months later, Jason Bress made a comeback fight in California. Though it was not a boxing match, and though he had not trained properly for it, he asked Genaro to work his corner. The match ended on an early stoppage Jason lost because of cuts.

I saw Genaro a month later in the media center at MGM Grand before Antonio Margarito’s fight with Miguel Cotto. I wandered over and shook his hand and reminded him of when and where we’d met. He cut me off, smiled, and said, “I remember you.”

I told him I’d heard Jason’s side of what happened in that comeback fight but wondered what Genaro had seen. He was dismayed at Jason’s conditioning. He said you could tell Jason did not want to fight when he complained about fouling.

“He came back to the corner and said the other guy was butting,” Genaro said, and then his face changed, and he grabbed my near shoulder and raised his left thumb. “I told him, ‘Then you take your thumb and you shove it in his eye, right to his brain! This is a fight, man.’”

I have often marveled at the chasm between how fighters are when fighting and when not fighting. These vicious men are the truest and gentlest souls I’ve met. No chasm, though, was greater than what Genaro showed me that day.

In an instant, he was in a fight, someone else’s, even, and ready to hurt another man. A moment later, he was back to his kind, debonair self. We talked a little longer, and he gave me the small handshake and large, genuine smile that was his signature.

A few months later, Jason Bress came in the gym distraught. He’d learned of Genaro’s cancer. Jason was “hard core” in the strict sense of the term. When you met him, he came off as a mean little fighter who disdained you. Then you got to know him, and he turned out to be a careful and empathetic guy. Then you really got to know him, and he was a mean little fighter who disdained you. He was hard at his core.

But he was sad the day he told us about Genaro’s cancer. Our gym had a better grasp on how things would go than the optimistic coverage Genaro’s announcement brought. Our co-owner, Allen Shellenberger, the drummer from the rock band Lit, had been diagnosed with brain cancer months before. After chemotherapy, he appeared at a June fundraiser and wasn’t the same person at all.

The final time I saw Genaro was at Mandalay Bay in July. He had aged considerably. He was no longer wiry but frail. He had little hair. He was at ringside doing a broadcast. After the fight, I tapped him on the shoulder and shook his hand. We talked about Jason Bress and that L.A. Boxing grand opening. We briefly reminded each other of a better time.

Now, Allen is gone, passed away at age 39. Jason was fired and returned to California. And now Genaro has passed on, too. That day in March of 2007 holds nothing but sadness. Boxing’s brutality does not stop at the apron.

Bart Barry can be reached at [email protected]

The greatest joy of Showtime’s Super Six tournament has been one of discovery – a joy that makes anything worth playing audience to. It is a different joy from what the unexpected brings. The unexpected, husband of anticipation and father of suspense, is born of wrong assumptions disproved, while discovery comes from the unknowing state that wisdom promotes.

If not-knowing how its fights would turn out has been the great joy of the Super Six, Englishman Carl Froch’s fights have been the least-knowable of all, and therefore the most joyful to watch.

That joy happened again on Saturday when Froch decisioned the ageless Jamaican-born super middleweight Glen Johnson, to retain his WBC title and win a match with Andre Ward in the finals of the Super Six. Fighting before a nonpartisan crowd in Atlantic City, Froch beat Johnson by majority-decision scores of 114-114, 116-112 and 117-111. The match was a fine one, if not quite the fight-of-the-year candidate hoped for by some.

My scorecard concurred with the judges’ ultimate decision, favoring Froch 118-112. I had rounds 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 12 for the champion. Rounds 1 and 7 went to Johnson. And I scored rounds 2 and 8 even. Had those even rounds gone to Johnson, my card still would have gone to Froch, 116-112.

It is sometimes important to separate a prizefighter’s score from his performance. Often the two are similar, but there are occasions when a fighter transcends himself without winning rounds. Saturday’s match was not one of these, but it is an interesting possibility just the same.

Though he fought gamely, and at age 42 perhaps surprisingly, Johnson made a performance that left more to be desired of its performer than Froch’s did. Johnson’s supporters, and they are legion, expect their man to expose an opponent’s fragility – both physical and mental. Johnson is a lie detector, in other words.

You may squeak out a controversial decision against Johnson, of course, but your character, whatever it is, will be denuded by Johnson’s assault. You can ask Allan Green about that.

Froch’s character, a charming combination of arrogance and chin and what his countrymen call “bottom,” passed Johnson’s test with high marks. Froch’s performance outranked Johnson’s because, of the surprises that each man brought, Froch’s were the pleasanter.

When he is on, Johnson is relentless. He cannot be dissuaded. He wishes you to engage him. He signs the volume-puncher’s oath: You will hit me, I will hit you, and we’ll see what happens. He does not relent under a rain of clean punches. He cares not a whit for his own appearance. He will wither, he figures, and so will you. It is not a style that is pretty. Johnson does not rely on reflex, or at least he does not fight with a style that does. He steps as he throws the jab. He goes at you low, weight forward, as the best volume punchers must. He wings a left hand at your body to distract you. He hurls a right hand over the top of your lowered guard. The punch hurts you because it surprises you. It surprises you because you cannot imagine such a pedestrian entrance bringing something unanticipated.

“Very strong and durable” is how Froch described Johnson after their Saturday fight. “Sort of like sparring an oak tree.”

Solid as he was against Froch, solid as he always is, Johnson is not without vulnerabilities. One, obviously, is age. The crass vigor of Froch’s youth, akin to a willingness to wager against Johnson’s conditioning – previously a lunatic’s bet – made much of the difference. Johnson would crack Froch, stunning his balance. And Froch would fix an insulted tension to his face and whack Johnson back directly, he would.

The other vulnerability of Johnson’s belongs to every volume punch: the uppercut. To apply constant pressure a fighter must wade forward and often rely on his opponent’s force to stabilize him. The best volume punchers, those of the most inevitable assaults, invariably find their weight too far forward. So long as an opponent throws jabs and crosses and hooks, though, they are safe; only the tops of their heads are exposed. But the first uppercut that grazes their chests or whistles past their ear gives even the most fearless of them pause.

Froch’s right-uppercut lead made a large difference, it did.

And if Froch was surprised by Johnson’s resilience, surely Johnson was startled when his right hands did not affect Froch hardly at all. Some of that was Froch’s conditioning. Some of it was Froch’s chin. And much of it was that Froch’s chin is the one part of his body not even Glen Johnson could find with gloved fists.

Froch does not merely lower his chin in a classic boxer’s pose. Froch sets his chin a full face behind his forehead. Even if Froch did not deflect 50 percent of every right hand with his left shoulder, it would be hard to hurt him.

Froch might not look like Americans expect a fighter to look. He might not have Joe Calzaghe’s genius of motion, either. But he has a fire-tested economy of attack that makes him special.

Still, he has no chance against Andre Ward! So we say about the upcoming finals match. So we believe. Let he who rightly picked a Super Six final of Froch versus Ward, 19 months ago, make the first certain bet against Froch, though.

Hmm, what’s that? No takers?

Well, Froch-Ward is what we’re going to have, a fitting reward for boxing fans who stuck with this tournament through its obstacle course. And the greatest thing that can be said of it is this: The final match will be joyful because its outcome is unknowable.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Prizefighting now draws near to completing its most innovative concept in ages. Showtime’s Super Six World Boxing Classic is days from matching its finalists. It is a tournament that has fully altered the professional paths of its every participant, including the network that hatched it. Whatever pundits opine of its anfractuous path, the Super Six has satisfied the praise it initially garnered.

Last week Englishman Carl Froch, whose career might well be the one most dramatically altered, by tournament’s end, captured what has made the Super Six different and essential:

“People are seeing fights that would not have been made.”

Has any sport been undone more completely by the events it didn’t make than boxing?

Saturday at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, Froch will make a fight with Jamaican Glen Johnson to determine who faces Andre Ward in the Super Six final. Johnson, a late sub who earned his place by stretching Allan Green, an unfortunate sub, in November, will face one of the tournament’s original super middleweights. Froch is in the semi-final by virtue of his shutout of Arthur Abraham in November and his aesthetically displeasing points victory over Andre Dirrell in 2009.

The latter was a victory over an opponent Froch dismissed on a Thursday conference call thusly: “I’ve done more damage training myself than Andre Dirrell did.”

Dirrell is the fighter whose career will have suffered the most from this tournament. A fighter who was put in the tournament because of talent, not accomplishments, Dirrell is now in a small cadre of fighters for whom knowledgeable fans feel actual contempt.

Of the tournament’s initial participants, Jermain Taylor was retired by the tournament, Kessler was knocked out of the tournament by Ward and Froch, and Abraham was exposed as a one-dimensional strongman. But Dirrell is the only person to whom a tincture of fraud adheres.

Nothing fraudulent adheres to either of Saturday’s men. They both make honest fights. Despite the integrity of his attack, though, Johnson is somehow less knowable than Froch. Johnson is mysterious more than complicated. Froch is no mystery at all and only complicated as a question to him is dumb.

“Glen Johnson is not the sort of guy you knock out,” Froch explained Thursday, when asked if he’d be looking for a knockout. “At the top level, to go in there looking for the knockout is a little naïve or stupid.”

To ask a top-level fighter such a question, Froch implied, is a little naïve or stupid.

There is an authority in Froch’s words that comes with his British accent. Americans, whether we realize it or not, and perhaps especially when we don’t, infer great authority from British diction and word choice. Froch makes proclamations to us more than he answers our inquiries.

He is not prepared for a match; he is “ready to do the business Saturday week.” He does not underestimate his opponent, but rather says “without being cheeky at all towards Glen Johnson, he can’t beat me.”

Johnson’s English, a searching choice of words seasoned by Patois, is hesitant. Courtesy wins its highest premium. Johnson calls himself “Gentleman”; Froch calls himself “Cobra”; both men’s alter egos come through in their speech.

What also comes through, what is most important to Saturday’s fight, is a collection of qualities Froch and Johnson share: Ruggedness and politeness.

Both men understand that boxing is the one combat sport that requires an opponent’s assault. There is no championship fighter with defense so complete he will not be beaten upon by his every challenger. Thirty-six minutes across from a professional puncher is a brutal test. Froch and Johnson appreciate this and take greater umbrage with an opponent who will not punch than one who tries to separate them from consciousness.

Johnson has fought all round the world, often as a b-side, and been jobbed in numerous decisions on foreign soil. Still, he insults no opponent. Froch derides only Dirrell – the one man who didn’t hit him.

Neither man considers deriding the other. That is how you know their fight will be a fine one.

The ability to see what inverse proportionality ever exists between prefight venom and sanctioned violence is what separates aficionado from casual fan. The champions who are politest to their opponents are those that impart the greatest cruelty. They are the men who understand this question: Why get angry when you’re going to fight anyway?

The aficionado is attracted by the orderly attack to which championship prizefighters subject one another. The casual fan, meanwhile, gets giddy over buffoonery and trash-talk. The aficionado comes to boxing from his own time in gyms or other contact sports. The casual fan came on boxing the day he couldn’t find professional wrestling to watch. One demands character; the other demands characters.

Froch and Johnson promise character. There is no chance either will feign injury or shrink from conflict. Johnson will come forward and hope to find a spot on Froch’s chest to rest his forehead while he does the man bodily harm. And Froch will target Johnson’s low, charging head and try to dissuade the Jamaican forcefully as possible. Neither man expects the other to break. Each man, though, would be euphoric at leaving the other broken.

“I am fresh, fit, strong, powerful,” said Froch, Thursday. “I’ll be honest, I wish this one was 15 rounds.”

No man asks for 15 rounds with Glen Johnson. Froch might well get what he desires and not know what to do with it. Something tells you, though, that Froch wants exactly what he requests.

Those who appreciate symmetry can’t help but cheer for Froch to advance to the finals against Ward; the last two men standing of the original six, as it were. But no aficionado ever cheered against Johnson.

I’ll take Froch, UD-12, then, while cheering for both men.

Bart Barry can be reached at [email protected]

Apropos of my own irreverence last week, 15rounds.com’s indispensible editor Marc Abrams addressed the consequences of Saturday’s fight thusly: “A man winning the lineal light heavyweight title at 46? Yeah, I think that’s pretty (frigging) important.” I thought about that for five days and decided he was right.

It sure could have happened to a nicer guy, though. Hopkins, I mean – not Abrams.

Saturday at Montreal’s Bell Centre before a record-setting crowd of 17,750, American Bernard Hopkins became the oldest prizefighter to win a world title, when he decisioned Canadian Jean Pascal by unanimous scores of 116-112, 115-114 and 115-113.

My scorecard went 115-115. I had Hopkins ahead 88-85 after nine rounds. Then I muted the volume on HBO’s telecast and gave Pascal rounds 10, 11 and 12. Ultimately, Hopkins won rounds 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9 on my card. Pascal took rounds 1, 4 and the aforementioned final three. I had rounds 2 and 8 even.

I’m sure a card like that makes me a “hater.” But like the last time I scored a Hopkins fight, I confess that I couldn’t care less what you opine of my card. I tried to be impartial. That meant balancing the conflicting signals sent brainward from my eyes and ears.

Something is a bit less than objective when the host of a telecast allows his eyes to water with joy over a participant’s victory.

The fight did not follow the path HBO’s viewers were promised. Not quite. The plan, of course, was for Pascal to use youth and strength to manhandle Hopkins in the opening rounds. Then Hopkins’ wiles and monkish existence – and let us not forget his time at Graterford – would bring home the final eight rounds, in a boxing clinic, proving the doubters wrong, reasserting his legendary status, and establishing once and for all that quarterback Donovan McNabb is an Uncle Tom.

No, that wasn’t the script? Sometimes it’s hard to keep Hopkins’ self-promotion separate from his fights.

Hopkins has achieved legendary status by winning prizefights at a startlingly ripe age. But because of the way he’s conducted himself while doing it, Hopkins is a legend the way Victor Niederhoffer is a legend. Niederhoffer is permanently enshrined at Yale – home of the United States Squash Hall of Fame. But if he’s known to common folks at all, it is for a 24-hour liquidation of his hedge fund in 1997.

Non-boxing media congregates at Hopkins’ press conferences to see the man sabotage his legacy. His favorite strategy is to punctuate rambling non sequiturs with jarringly Spartan commentaries on race. Joe Calzaghe was a “white boy” and McNabb is “suntanned” – a not-so-crafty way of implying any black athlete from a two-parent home, without incarceration on his résumé, is not black enough.

How the black community chooses to discipline Hopkins – with longterm indifference, likely – is not boxing’s problem. Having a petulant racist as the legendary face of our sport is a different story. Kind of makes you wish we could find an error on George Foreman’s birth certificate and give him back the title of “Boxing’s Oldest Champion,” doesn’t it?

That’s really too bad. What Hopkins accomplished Saturday was more impressive than what Foreman did to Michael Moorer in 1994. Seventeen years ago, Foreman was dominated pillar to post for 29 minutes by Moorer, then lightning struck and Big George landed a 1-2 that made Moorer silly. Hopkins, on the other hand, just won at least 14 of 24 rounds over two championship-length fights against a puncher in his prime and hometown.

Pascal is not a classic boxer or slugger. The man is slop3y and He hts. you, in places th’t my not be legal while he circls & mkes circlz and leaps and fouls. Gosh bt he looks ferrotious, no, when Hs knuckles, and hed, concuss u on teh nck, sholdrs and ears!

Hopkins is precise. His motion efficient. He does not take two steps if one suffices. He strikes more than he punches. His fists go to the place he wants them. He hits you where he desires.

Pascal mde the fite a mess whn he was on. He out-bullyd Hopkins by pnch1ng him on the brainstem, and again.

Several times Hopkins stopped to complain to the referee. When he gained no favorable ruling, though, Hopkins fought. This was a better showing than what Hopkins pulled against Calzaghe, flopping shamelessly to the mat. Saturday, he was fouled by a man who wanted to fight more than he knew how. To Hopkins enduring credit, at age 46, he returned fire without regard for personal safety.

Pascal wnted his fns to sweigh the judges n hs favor. But he didnt’ do enuf to win rounds in the midddl3, holdng, hufing and pufffing.

Afterwards, Hopkins reminded us he was a legend. Ever the gracious winner, he complimented his interviewer and promised that exciting fights at age 46 were part of his master plan. Hopkins’ interviewer didn’t think to ask what part of Hopkins’ plan a 2006 retirement was.

Pascal, meanwhile, did what he did after their first fight: he agreed to the official scores and expressed gratitude.

Yeah, but he’s no legend! Well, no, he’s not and won’t be. But he is able to attract a hometown crowd 400 percent larger than Hopkins can draw. Surely someone else thinks that fact is correlated with the men’s varying levels of sportsmanship?

Pascal’s hometown is Montreal. Saturday it hosted Philadelphia’s Hopkins in its main event and Connecticut’s Chad Dawson in its co-main. Between its showings for Lucian Bute, Librado Andrade and Pascal, Montreal has perhaps garnered more credit as a fight town than it deserves.

There is a way for Montreal to achieve pound-for-pound status, though, and prove its haters wrong with a full house. Host Hopkins-Dawson.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

It should surprise no one that boxing is a plebe-year requirement at the United States Military Academy. West Point’s ultimate purpose is to prepare students to lead men into combat, and striking and being struck in the face isn’t a bad introduction to such training. It should also surprise no one that after four years of unique preparation, West Point graduates possess a unique form of character.

What may be surprising, though, is that unlike in football and basketball – where the post-grad service requirement can chase away the best recruits – West Point still produces some of the finest amateur boxers in the country. These are superstar athletes, then, whose athleticism is leavened by a sense of honor and humility not always common in our beloved sport.

Boyd Melson is a 29 year-old southpaw prizefighter with a record of 2-0 who turned pro, in part, to raise awareness about the need for spinal-cord-injury clinical trials. He fights Thursday at Roseland Ballroom in New York City. He is also a West Point graduate – Class of 2003 – who is making a unique show of character for a friend.

Her name is Christan Zaccagnino, a young woman paralyzed at age 10 in a diving accident, someone Melson met in his third year at West Point. Their friendship led to a 7 1/2-year romantic relationship that survives today as a friendship and motivation for Melson’s young prizefighting career. It has also taken them on an intriguing journey to lands far-flung as China and Jordan and enlisted their impassioned support for the nerve-conductivity work being done by Rutgers’ Dr. Wise Young.

But boxing came first.

Melson, the son of a Creole father and Israeli mother, first laced up boxing gloves at the late age of 19 as part of West Point’s physical-education requirement. Some of us spend freshman year gaming classes like epistemology and theater of the absurd; cadets learn to leverage punches and break noses. Melson did it better than his classmates.

“I was always aggressive growing up,” says Melson of his theretofore undiscovered talent for pugilism. “I liked the contact and the one-on-one element.”

Plebe year at West Point begins with an initiation known as “Beast Barracks.” Before classes begin, cadets spend their summer in a form of basic training more harrowing even than a prizefighter’s training camp.

“Beast Barracks, there’s no break,” Melson says. “In boxing, you get to take a break. Boxing is more mentally exhausting. But Beast . . . Beast just sucks. That’s the word to use. It just sucks.

“I woke up a couple times, in the middle of the night, stood and saluted. I must have been dreaming about it.

“And Beast is all you know. You just got there. It’s all you know. Four years of that?”

Later, Melson’s company entered him in a boxing tournament dominated by upperclassman. They did it for the reason upperclassman at USMA do many things.

Says Melson, “They liked putting plebes in boxing just to haze us.”

Melson startled a number of people in that tournament and caught the eye of the All-Army team’s boxing coach. After graduation, Melson would go on to win the Armed Forces Boxing Championship in 2004, 2005 and 2007. He would also be asked to return to West Point.

“They let me put Officer (Candidate School) off,” Melson says. “West Point let me come back and teach plebe boxing as a second lieutenant.”

Shoulder injuries ended Melson’s amateur career in 2007. Forced to justify a full workday, Army boxers trained thrice daily. Combined with the rigors and dehydration of making weight, that much training for that many years proved to be too much.

Melson went to work in the private sector and found things different from what he was accustomed to, as the son of a career soldier and adherent to the Cadet Honor Code.

“The biggest thing is that people say they’re going to do things and then they don’t,” Melson says. “I had to learn the code language (of corporations).”

The Honor Code is short and direct: A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do. The corporate code is short but circuitous: Please the shareholders however you may.

Melson was not the first to grapple with this transition. Without the joint regimens of boxing and West Point in his life, Melson struggled.

“It didn’t work out,” he says. “I was in a weird place.”

He worked as a personal trainer, and his romantic relationship with Christan Zaccagnino came to an end. His return to boxing, though, coincided with a return to the corporate world.

“I’m turning back into my old self now that I’ve got a regular job,” Melson says of his current sales position with Johnson & Johnson. “And Christan laughs and tells me that she told me I’d become a professional fighter. I used to tell her, ‘You’re crazy. I don’t even want to box.’”

Melson has now combined his disparate interests – boxing, spinal-cord injuries, and overall competitiveness – into a compelling package bound with a charismatic ribbon. His father is in a wheelchair. His close friend is paralyzed. And Dr. Wise Young needs funding to conduct clinical trials in the United States.

The work Dr. Young is doing occasionally gets dropped in the unpalatably political stew of stem-cell research. There are compelling arguments to be made on either side of the debate about using cells from fetuses. Those arguments, though, have no part of the cause that Boyd Melson is raising awareness for.

“These cells are coming from the umbilical cord, after birth,” says Melson. “It has nothing to do with abortions.”

According to Rutgers.edu, Dr. Young’s research has “upended concepts that spinal cord injuries (are) permanent, refocused research, and opened new vistas of hope.”

Dr. Young’s work concerns itself with cell regeneration. It’s an idea like this: Few injuries see the spinal cord fully severed. If the right kind of cells can be introduced properly, they can spark a form of healing in the spinal cord not unlike the scar tissue that forms in other organs. And patients can begin to feel sensations in previously insensate parts of their bodies.

“I don’t know what the ‘cure’ is,” says Boyd Melson of this experimental treatment. “But independence is a cure.”

If Dr. Young is able to raise funds enough to continue in this country clinical trials he’s begun in China, a breakthrough is possible in the next 10 years.

“Ten years?” says Melson. “One year! Next year. I’m betting my life on it.”

No one needs a reminder of how dangerous prizefighting can be. What can be equally daunting for a person trying to raise awareness about a medical program, though, is America’s collective attention span. We are a charitable but distractible people, in a recession. While the late Christopher Reeve – a patient of Dr. Wise’s – brought attention to the need for spinal-cord-injury research, Reeve is no longer with us, and our attention has turned to a plethora of other noble causes.

Melson will be donating his prizefighting purses to a clinical-trial fundraiser called JustADollarPlease.org. It is a novel concept put together by the mothers of children afflicted by spinal-cord injuries. Rather than requesting a million dollars from a single philanthropist, the group hopes to raise a single dollar from a million philanthropists.

An undefeated prizefighter championing the group’s cause is a major asset. But that prizefighter had best succeed in the ring. If Melson can continue winning in the junior middleweight division, his story will become an international one. If he makes lackluster showings on the blue mat, though, the merits of his cause will lose nothing, but others’ interest in it will flag; there are 0-3 prizefighters who care deeply about important causes, surely, but nobody interviews them.

“I’m very serious,” Melson says about his prizefighting career. “I love it. I train hard.”

A world championship is what Melson hopes to accomplish. He’s giving himself four years. As a cerebral southpaw, he is fondest of middleweight world champion Sergio Martinez’s style. It is an unorthodox one that relies on athleticism and timing.

“I’m trying to find my space,” Melson says of life in general right now.

The search for that space comprises three important influences. One is boxing. Another is Christan Zaccagnino. And the third will be visible this week.

“Thursday night,” says Melson, “I’ll be wearing ‘West Point ‘03’ on my trunks.”

Bart Barry can be reached at [email protected]

Those interested in making a contribution to the cause Boyd champions should visit JustADollarPlease.org.

There is a time of the year in professional golf when the four tournaments collectively known as “the majors” are finished, the Ryder Cup, in even years, is through, and made-for-television and -sponsor events happen. Men pair with women. Seniors play against their peers’ college sons. Celebrities abound. The PGA Tour offers its endorsement sparingly, and while tape-delayed telecasts do end up on network television, they get a fraction of the coverage afforded The Masters.

Professional golf properly refers to this time as its “silly season.”

Many Pacquiao’s career is in the throes of its own silly season. A large difference between professional golf and prizefighting is that our sport affords its silly season Masters coverage.

Saturday the silly season continued apace at MGM Grand – on Showtime pay-per-view, with additional promotional support from CBS! – as Filipino Congressman Pacquiao dominated an old and tired Shane Mosley for 12 listless rounds in a match its judges scored 120-107, 120-108, 119-108. Don’t trouble yourself with the math; it was a whitewash.

The majors of Manny Pacquiao’s career ended in his rematch with Juan Manual Marquez, 26 months ago. Pacquiao had compiled an incredible record of 5-1-1 (3 KOs) against the prime versions of Mexico’s hall of fame triumvirate – Marquez, Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera.

Then the stadium concerts, made-for-television showdowns, and legislative feats began. Spectacle overwhelmed substance. One fight was about size difference with a faded veteran. Three more were about once-dangerous foes in new weight classes. Two were about Cowboys Stadium. And Saturday’s was about boxing having infomercials broadcast by a terrestrial television network.

That’s putting the “silly” in silly season.

Could Pacquiao have lost any one of his last six fights? Sure. But there’s a reason matchmaker Bruce Trampler is in Canastota. Boxing insiders figured this out a couple years ago. Oddsmakers got the gist shortly thereafter. And now even casual fans have learned their lesson. This traveling circus is out of big tops.

A year ago Shane Mosley lost 11 of 12 rounds to the world’s second-best prizefighter. In September, Mosley made a pay-per-view show so dreadful his longtime fans begged him to retire. Eight months later, without so much as a get-me-over tune-up tussle, Mosley got a chance at the world’s best prizefighter. What qualified him for this opportunity?

He left promoter Top Rank’s rival Golden Boy Promotions. To his credit, Bob Arum didn’t much pretend it was more than that. There was some initial talk about name recognition, but that quickly was replaced by press releases about Pacquiao becoming the new face of a produce company and recording a remix of some 34-year-old ballad.

Shane Mosley feigned outrage at being a 10:1 underdog. His trainer Nazim Richardson performed the street-tough shtick he learned from Bernard Hopkins. Manny Pacquiao gave the same interview he has given before every fight since learning English in 2006. And Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach lent his wit and sense of irony.

Then the big story became the network broadcasting the match. Only boxing could come up with this. Imagine the NFL selling the world a Super Bowl with a tagline like “Watch it on Fox!” We were peddled a Showtime broadcasting team of Gus Johnson (no Jim Lampley), Al Bernstein (better than Max Kellerman) and Antonio Tarver (better than Roy Jones and Lennox Lewis put together). Jim Brown played hype man, and Jim Gray played, well, himself.

The opening bell rang, and Shane Mosley played himself, too. Mosley is one of boxing’s good guys. His career has been a model of what risk-taking makes athletes immortals.

And yet, if Saturday was the first time you watched boxing or Shane Mosley, on Sunday morning you woke up hating them both.

But for a career-reviving effort against Antonio Margarito in 2009, Mosley has been an imposter of his younger self since a narrow loss to Miguel Cotto 42 months ago. He has been given more opportunities than he’s earned because aficionados expect him to lose valiantly.

Those days are now over. Saturday he began the same way he finished with Mayweather. He offered a woodpecker jab to Pacquiao’s gloves. He was savvy enough to make Pacquiao miss for six minutes, but he never imperiled the southpaw Filipino.

Then Pacquiao gambled because that is what he does by feinting a jab then throwing one and finding range with a third before leaping on his piston legs and blasting Mosley with a left cross that hurt him because nothing in Mosley’s first 54 prizefights prepared him to be struck from such a weird angle by such a heavy fist.

And for the 28 minutes that followed, Mosley did his legacy no favors. Apparently the lactic acid in Pacquiao’s calves did the rest of us no favors either; Pacquiao attributed his diminished punch output and accuracy to cramping.

It mattered little. After the opening round, you knew you were in for a violent rout or a dull one. You knew the $54 you had just paid to make a handful of millionaires marginally richer had not gained you a competitive fight.

And now you cry out again for a match between Many Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather. Do know that your voice is hoarse and barely audible, and that you’re begging for a diminished brand. The time to make Pacquiao-Mayweather was March of 2010 in Cowboys Stadium. Pacquiao had just stopped Cotto – a fighter Mayweather retired to avoid – and Mayweather had just shut-out Pacquiao’s nemesis Marquez.

Today, the demand for that fight is an ultimatum, not a plea: “Make Pacquiao-Mayweather, or find a new idiot to buy your next fight.”

Calm down, tough guy. Boxing is just going to do what it always does. It’ll take the path of least resistance to its next payday. The hunt for a new idiot is already afoot.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

There are prizefights that begin with one participant looking so confident and establishing such a superiority of craft that you wonder if this mightn’t be a genuinely unique experience in the presence of a genuinely unique talent. But then, with a comfortable lead built, the participant takes a middle round off before ultimately showing skill enough to earn a decision victory.

“The Sweetest Thing” by Mischa Merz (Seven Stories Press; $18.95) is a book very much like that sort of prizefight.

Merz, an Australian journalist and masters-division amateur champion, has no want of talent. The book’s opening pages include a wealth of well-shaped insights like this description of the women’s dressing room at Gleason’s Gym in New York City:

“. . . boxing boots stuffed in every spare bit of space, a mirror and bench designed for makeup application, pink bandanas drying off along with hand wraps, and exfoliating sponges and bottles of conditioner jostling for space. It was an object lesson in the human capacity to absorb many conflicting ideas into a complex identity . . .”

“The Sweetest Thing” introduces the sport of boxing in such a joyful first-person voice that a reader sympathizes immediately with the narrator. You do not start by cheering for Merz to trounce a rival so much as find a fight. She has traveled from the other side of the world, combed YouTube.com for footage of opponents, and put herself through the rigors of a training camp. You hope someone grants her the test she seeks.

This is a book about women’s boxing and its search for respectability, but it is not a book of sermons. For being a double outsider – an Australian woman in American boxing – Merz has an uncommon perspective. And her observations about fighting are first rate.

“People assume that pain is what a fighter fears most,” Merz writes. “But actually it isn’t. Pain is familiar and tolerable. Humiliation lurks like a hidden phantom, it can tower over you, it is mysterious and confusing. Very few fighters are willing to sacrifice their trademark style for victory.”

That is a fantastic series of sentences. It explains a great deal about why, despite fans’ and commentators’ urgings, fighters rarely toss caution windward and rush crazily at even light-hitting opponents. It is a sensation anyone who has sparred knows well; you are more willing to take abuse from a sparring partner in an empty gym than a crowded one, which sets the hands on the clock of your true fear – humiliation, not pain.

One page later Merz provides even better writing about the experience of being hit in the face, one that nature prepares none of us for. And in the next chapter – aptly named “Big Hat, No Cattle” – Merz expands on the nature of her own discomfort:

“The turmoil within comprised a potent mix of distress, humiliation, and many different and disorienting facets of existential pain, but no actual physical pain.”

All odes to the writer’s eye aside, there is no alternative path to that insight. You do not write a sentence that good unless you’ve donned headgear and sparring gloves and been struck in the face by someone who knows how.

A little bit before the halfway point of “The Sweetest Thing,” Merz’s fistic adventuring brings her to a boxer worthy of a quick detour. Melissa Roberts, a USMC boxer from New York, is a special combination of talent, ferocity, arrogance and charm.

Merz knows this in part because of renowned trainer and former world champion Anne Wolf’s familiarity with Roberts. Here’s something Merz and Wolf might not know about Roberts (though one suspects they do): In February, Roberts, now known as Melissa Parker, made one of the finest four-round fights, professional or amateur, seen in years.

Fighting in the Regional Golden Gloves tournament held at San Antonio’s Municipal Auditorium, Parker boxed a hellacious 12 minutes with 132-pound local favorite Selina Barrios, beating Barrios by a score of 3-2. The decision was disagreeable to Texans in attendance. But afterwards, Parker was friendly and confident as could be the right woman had won.

Merz’s own championship victory in a Ringside tournament, surprisingly, leads to her book’s least-pleasant chapter, a regrettable 27-page departure from the likable character found in the other 255 pages. Merz trains her prose on a transsexual competitor once named Paul but now calling herself Pauline. Merz comments relentlessly on Pauline’s oddity. As a reader, you play along, anticipating an amiable conclusion to the anecdotes. But there isn’t one. Pauline is a curiosity for curiosity’s sake, a freak, in other words, whose purpose is to illustrate boxing’s eccentricity of characters.

You suddenly stop cheering for Merz. You stop overlooking mishaps like reporting that dogs called Camacho and Hagler “were named after the two greatest welterweights of the modern era.” Or numerous references to the Wild Card Gym’s “Freddy Roach.” And you begin to wonder about the origin of Merz’s mean-spirited fixation on American obesity.

Fortunately, one chapter later, a very interesting treatment of training alongside former world champion Lucia Rijker, Merz is back in form. She returns to being a participant journalist, a narrator who won your loyalty with such descriptive gems as “spank of gloves on bags,” “affirmative action overstatement,” “compelling androgyny,” and “bland microclimate.”

The book ends on a well-written if dubious note, chronicling the unprofessionalism of a Gleason’s Gym fighter named Melissa Hernandez. After weeks of buildup and silly trashtalk Hernandez refuses to fight in a main event because she is not present to see an opponent’s hands wrapped. When some predictable palliation comes from Hernandez’s camp, Merz does her profession a service by gently ridiculing it.

“The Sweetest Thing” is an enjoyable read, finally. It is a book that will please anyone, male or female, who has become a fighter or wondered what it would be like to try.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com @bartbarry

LOS ANGELES – To live in this city one must be pathologically optimistic. It is a machine designed to do wondrous things but comprising 10 million self-interested parts. Every day two or more of these competing parts collide, and the machine seizes up. The trick to residing here is to identify the culpable pieces and assume that tomorrow, finally, the machine will run as planned.

It won’t. It doesn’t. That’s where the pathology comes in.

Not altogether unlike being a boxing fan. On Tuesday, Joseph Agbeko acquired a nerve condition called sciatica and cancelled his championship fight with Abner Mares – the concluding event of Showtime’s Bantamweight Tournament. That meant a fight-week upgrade, from consolation match to main event, for Vic Darchinyan and Yonnhy Perez, two men who’d fought hard but unsuccessfully in December’s semifinals.

Darchinyan was ready for primetime billing. Perez was not.

Neither was I, frankly. But on Wednesday morning, it was too late to cancel my flight. I traveled here, then, to see what else besides boxing the city had to offer.

The unique cause of each day’s traffic mess is ever in the air round here. Sometimes it’s a tanker-truck sprawled across four lanes. Other times it’s a bicycle race down the middle of the busiest surface streets in the West. Thursday afternoon it was the arrival of President Obama in pursuit of diners affording $13,000-per-plate comestibles.

Before you’re even to your rental car, then, someone’s explaining how today’s traffic event reflects nothing systemic about the city. It’s an isolated incident, and tomorrow will be different.

What actually was different was Thursday’s entertainment. After staging one of the better post-lockout NHL playoff games, on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks were at it again two nights later in Staples Center. A few single-seating tickets were still available.

And the players are twice as big and thrice as fast as I remembered them from my days as a Massachusetts schoolboy hockey player in the early 1990s. The game has changed.

So has boxing – or at least the promotion thereof. Friday’s weigh-in for Darchinyan-Perez happened at the JW Marriott, part of a sprawling downtown idea called “L.A. Live.” It was two escalators and three hallways from the entrance and fit comfortably in a small conference room. There were no t-shirts for sale, no fight posters, no keychains for fans. There was, really, no reason at all to be there, which is why most of the media was not.

Did Joseph Agbeko’s sudden misfortune affect the Bantamweight Tournament’s promotion? Of course. You never want to cancel a main event, and Abner Mares is a Mexican prizefighter managed by Californians. He would have sold tickets.

Which is more than could be said for the event’s co-promoters. It was a three-way effort made by Oscar De La Hoya (absent all week), Don King (absent all week), and Gary Shaw. You might recognize two of those names, King and Shaw, from January’s “Silence at Silverdome” debacle in Pontiac, Mich.

At some level King gets a pass because he is four months from being an octogenarian and was a ticket-selling dervish in his prime. Shaw is a different story. This year his shows have come under increased scrutiny for their inability to draw fans. Shaw has a remarkable eye for talent, but he is not a promoter in the traditional sense of the word.

It has reached shameless proportions. On Saturday, about 10 minutes before Showtime went on the air, a ring announcer took the microphone and beseeched those gathered at Nokia Theatre to move into the three panels captured on television.

Three minutes after that, a venue security guard confirmed the ticket count at “about 2,000.” Even without imagining how many of those tickets were given away, the numbers are discouraging. Nokia Theatre, without seating people on its stage as it does for boxing events, holds 7,000. That is, 2/3 of Saturday’s available seats were empty.

If promoters still tried to feed their families by attracting crowds, such a turnout would be disastrous. But today, so long as a check from HBO or Showtime clears, all is well. It is not an original commentary but still a poignant one: Boxing has cultivated the seeds of its demise.

Alas, there’s always the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. That is where I spent Saturday afternoon. It is a splendid place with an exhaustive contemporary-art selection. Too, if you like the work of Pablo Picasso, and it seems Americans certainly do, “LACMA” is a good place to spend an afternoon.

A lesser place to spend an evening was waiting for Darchinyan-Perez, though the undercard was passable, and the usual delay before the televised part of the card was not more than 15 minutes.

But the main event was a dud. Even before an accidental bump of heads made blood to shoot from a spot between Jonnhy Perez’s eyebrows, causing ringside doctor Paul Wallace to stop the fight a minute into round 5, it was obvious Perez was overmatched.

Vic Darchinyan rushed out his corner to assault Perez from the opening bell; no feeling-out, no establishing the jab. Darchinyan landed that left uppercut he throws so well from his southpaw stance then brought a barrage of seeing-eye overhand lefts to Perez’s jaw, dropping the Colombian in round 2.

The match wasn’t close. All three judges had Darchinyan by the wide score of 50-44 at the fight’s conclusion.

Darchinyan is more than a bully. He is savage. He is arrogant. But he finds accomplished boxers with power punches in early rounds, and that is no mean feat. And he also fights whomever he is asked to fight.

This city, meanwhile, is a bit different than promised. But its temperate climate and friendly people make you like it more each time you visit. There are lots of reasons to come to Los Angeles, then. Sadly, boxing is not among them.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry.

LOS ANGELES – An accidental collision of heads happened as Vic “Raging Bull” Darchinyan charged Yonnhy Perez in the fifth round of their consolation-cum-main-event bout. A cut opened over Perez’s eyes, and the match was stopped and sent to the scorecards. Those were academic, though. Perez hadn’t been in the fight for one minute of its opening 13.

Saturday night at Nokia Theatre in the downtown area, Armenia’s Darchinyan (36-3-1, 27 KOs) blitzed, bullied and blasted Colombia’s Perez (20-2-1, 14 KOs), beating him by three scores of 50-44 in a fight that saw only four rounds completed and none competitive.

Darchinyan, a southpaw and former world champion originally scheduled for the consolation match of Showtime’s Bantamweight Tournament but elevated to the main event when Joseph Agbeko withdrew from his championship fight with Abner Mares, dropped Perez in the second round then measured him for left uppercuts and crosses that didn’t miss.

When an accidental collision of heads came in the fifth round, referee Jerry Cantu acknowledged the cut and motioned the fighters together. Perez, though, shook his head and walked to his corner, where ringside doctor Paul Wallace eventually stopped the match, citing “arterial bleeding.”

“The ref said, ‘Do you want to fight?’” reported Darchinyan of his opponent’s comportment, after the match. “He said, ‘No.’ He quit.”

Asked about future opponents, Darchinyan first named the man who beat him by split decision in December.

“I’d like to fight (Abner) Mares, if he’ll fight me,” said Darchinyan. “Otherwise, I’ll fight Nonito Donaire.”

Donaire remains the only man to knock Darchinyan out in his prizefighting career.

UNDERCARD
Having a name that ends in a phonetic “?-?n” may win you a following in Glendale, Calif., but it ensures nothing else in boxing, as junior lightweight Armenian Azat Hovenensian (0-1) learned in his professional debut against Mexican Juan Reyes (1-1) in the final fight of Saturday’s undercard. Hovenensian engaged throughout the match’s four rounds and absorbed a rain of blows from Reyes, who won by unanimous-decision scores of 38-37, 40-36 and 40-36.

“Figueroa versus Figueroa along Figueroa” went the theme for a junior welterweight fight between Texan Omar Figueroa (11-0-1, 8 KOs) and Puerto Rican John Figueroa (7-10-3, 3 KOs) midway through the evening’s scheduled undercard. A Figueroa won of course – in this case Omar – by second-round knockout at 2:05.

Saturday’s third bout featured two Californians and the first of what would be four fighters of Armenian background, as Glendale’s Art Hovhannisyan (13-0-1, 7 KOs) swapped blows with Richmond’s Jose Alfredo Lugo (11-16-1, 5 KOs) in an entertaining six-round junior welterweight fight. Hovhannisyan, often moving like fellow Armenian Vic Darchinyan but generally showing better balance when attacking, grinded-down Lugo for four rounds before stopping him with a right cross at 1:57 of round 5.

Before that, an inspired four-round flyweight bout between Pennsylvania’s Miguel Diaz (5-0, 3 KOs) and Californian Alejandro Solorio (4-4, 3 KOs) saw Diaz remain undefeated by dropping Solorio in round 3 and cruising to a unanimous decision all three judges scored 39-36. But Solorio, a local fighter, made things interesting in each of the bout’s 12 minutes.

Saturday’s seven-fight card began with a slow-to-develop heavyweight match between Washington, D.C.’s DaVarryl Williamson (27-6, 23 KOs) and Floridian Michael Marrone (19-3, 14 KOs). The match temporarily came alive in round 3, when Williamson landed a counter right hand that knocked Marrone to the blue mat just before the bell. Four rounds later – at 2:30 of the seventh – the fight ended in similar fashion, with Williamson prevailing by technical knockout.

Opening bell rang on a silent Nokia Theatre at 5:06 PM local time. At 7:25, a venue security guard confirmed the door’s ticket count was 2,000.

Photo by Tom Casino / Showtime

LOS ANGELES – Friday afternoon on the second floor of the never-ending JW Marriott Hotel in the middle of downtown, last-minute main-event bantamweights Armenian Vic Darchinyan and Colombian Yonnhy Perez made weight for their Saturday consolation fight. But in an existential twist, the room was filled with the absence of Agbeko.

Ghana’s Joseph Agbeko, scheduled to fight Mexico’s Abner Mares in the finals of Showtime’s Bantamweight Tournament at Nokia Theatre, was not there and will not be in action Saturday. Citing sciatica – a nerve condition of the lower back and legs – and a pain so extreme that it caused him to collapse on Tuesday, Agbeko officially withdrew from his fight with Mares, at Thursday’s final fight-week press conference.

Friday’s weigh-in sagged somewhat from the deflation caused by that announcement. Like its host edifice, the weigh-in for what is now Darchinyan-Perez was resplendent but empty. There was ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr. There was a pair of lasses scantily accoutered like ring-card girls. And there were Darchinyan, who weighed 117.8 pounds, and Perez, who made 117.6. But there was no Agbeko and no Mares, no Don King and no Oscar De La Hoya – who, along with Gary Shaw, co-promote the event – and those were not good omens for Saturday’s gate.

“We may have to give refunds,” said Golden Boy Promotions matchmaker Eric Gomez, Friday. “It’s up to the venue, but it’s tough when you lose a main event. Tough on the fighters, too.”

Asked how close he came to finding a replacement for Agbeko on short notice, Gomez confirmed there were hopes on Wednesday. “Very close,” said Gomez. “We tried to find an opponent that resembled Agbeko’s style. But ultimately, Abner said, ‘What if something happens?’”

While Saturday’s new main event – which features two fighters who lost in the Bantamweight Tournament semifinals in December – should nevertheless be a very entertaining spectacle, much of the enthusiasm that accompanied the start of fight-week was gone by Friday afternoon.

The weigh-in could have used the robust charisma and cackle of co-promoter Don King, but he was not in attendance.

“Don was getting on a flight on Thursday morning, and this was Wednesday night,” said publicist Alan Hopper. “And I told him, ‘No, it’s OK, you don’t have to be here.’”

The show will go on just the same. Doors are scheduled to open on Nokia Theatre at 4:00 PM local time, with the opening bell set to ring at 5:00. 15rounds.com will have full ringside coverage.

SAN ANTONIO – Saturday night as the HBO fights were getting under way, an enormous event happened here in the downtown area. Fiesta Flambeau, the annual commencement of this city’s 11-day Battle of San Jacinto celebration and our country’s largest illuminated night parade, sent brilliant floats and marching bands through the town, eliciting roars of gaiety from Texans along the route.

A parade that begins after dark in America’s seventh-largest urban area says many things about its city’s safety and sense of community. All of them good.

While this was going on, HBO showed British junior welterweight Amir Khan make an enthusiastic homecoming in Manchester’s M.E.N. Arena. A few hours later, Showtime presented Puerto Rican champion Juan Manuel Lopez in a homecoming of his own before a similarly raucous gathering at Coliseo Ruben Rodriguez.

Then there was the sobriety of Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, where welterweight titlist Andre Berto swapped blows with Victor Ortiz – and the cheers of a few hundred paying customers soughed over the canvas like a gentle breeze on a field of blue bonnets.

For once, the attendance at these three shows was inversely proportionate to the quality of their prizefights. The Mancs went wild, as ever, for Khan’s talented-amateur routine, as he won a technical decision over someone named Paul McCloskey, after a protect-the-brand stoppage by a squeamish British doctor. The Puerto Ricans, meanwhile, expressed some robust displeasure with referee Roberto Ramirez when he decided Lopez’s fourth minute of walking unconsciousness was somehow more disagreeable than its three predecessors and raised Mexican Orlando Salido’s glove in the eighth round.

These were authentic crowds, though, whatever else they were.

There was nothing authentic about the purses or celebrity enjoyed by Andre Berto and Victor Ortiz before Saturday night. Had someone thought to follow Berto’s career four years ago and drop breadcrumbs, today he could walk that path backwards to the place HBO Sports lost its way. And Victor Ortiz reminded Oscar De La Hoya of himself, which was the main reason he was still fighting on HBO.

Much of the derision both men’s careers had merited went away Saturday. Ortiz manhandled Berto, beating him by unanimous decision in a fantastic scrap – and a tip of the cap to Norm Frauenheim, who took us to task for questioning Ortiz’s heart and character last week. Berto proved to be about what we thought he was, though after looking frightened in the opening round fought back hard and made it to the closing bell.

And that brings us – smoking, juking, feinting – to what will happen at Los Angeles’ Nokia Theater on Saturday when Ghana’s Joseph King Kong Agbeko fights Mexican Abner Mares in the finals of Showtime’s Bantamweight Tournament.

What does Agbeko-Mares have to do with Berto-Ortiz, Lopez-Salido, Khan-McCloskey or Fiesta Flambeau? Authenticity, and how we perceive it.

There was a time in our sport when shortcuts to authenticity were abetted by network television. Excite a programmer’s fixation with viewer demographics, put together a snazzy out-of-ring persona, and cash checks disproportionate to your achievements.

But as Thomas Hauser emphatically noted almost two years ago: “A television network has the power to give fighters exposure. A television network has the power to steer fighters to a particular promoter. A television network cannot (repeat, cannot) create stars.”

In its novel tournament structure, introduced with the Super Six and furthered by the Bantamweight Tournament, Showtime gave 10 lesser-celebrated prizefighters a chance to earn stardom. From the original Super Six, two fighters – Andre Ward and Carl Froch – have emerged as authentic stars. Two others, Arthur Abraham and Mikkel Kessler, have proved to be good but somewhat less than their reputations implied. Andre Dirrell is now considered suspicious if not fraudulent. And Jermain Taylor was driven into retirement.

Of the four men elevated by the Bantamweight Tournament, all have acquitted themselves according to form thus far. Armenian Vic Darchinyan was already seen as a bully with a fragile psyche who nevertheless made entertaining matches. Colombian Yonnhy Perez is a man who is capable of beating anybody when he is on, and carries a chance of being a little off each time he fights for a title.

Abner Mares surprised plenty of folks in December when he bullied the bully, roughing up Darchinyan and beating him by split decision. And Agbeko, as it turns out, might be boxing’s best-kept secret.

Joseph King Kong Agbeko – what his Ghanaian birth certificate apparently reads – comes from an East African country much better at producing world-class prizefighters than supporting them. Agbeko is soft-spoken and polite. Aside from the gorilla mask and manacles he used to wear to the ring, preceded by a leggy blonde as his moniker demanded, Agbeko is nondescript. But he is a special talent.

Agbeko does many things well. He reminds us that a low lead hand and good legwork mustn’t always make for an insipid style. He can box, slug or fight. He is a pleasure to watch. He is worth the trip from South Texas to Southern California – especially if he’s sharing a ring with Mares and a marquee with Perez and Darchinyan.

I’ll be in Los Angeles on Saturday because I believe in what Showtime is doing with the Bantamweight Tournament. I’ll not be in Las Vegas two weeks later because I am unsure what Showtime is doing with Pacquiao-Mosley. Manny Pacquiao and Shane Mosley are authentic stars, but Pacquiao-Mosley may not be an authentic superfight.

Authentic stars: Agbeko-Mares creates an opportunity to find another one. The winner of the Bantamweight Tournament will be the best 118-pound prizefighter unless Filipino Nonito Donaire demonstrates otherwise. Donaire is crazy talented, yes, but his authenticity, of one kind or another, seems to face annual crises.

Communities see through promotional noise and find authenticity where it exists.

I’ll take Agbeko, SD-12, on Saturday – and regard him as his division’s ruler until he’s beaten, and hope you all do the same.

Bart Barry can be reached at [email protected]