SAN ANTONIO – There was an excellent festival here called “Jazz’Salive,” downtown, Saturday. Some rain and lots of clouds, too. The rain was unwelcome but the clouds weren’t. No charge, though. Anyone who followed his ears to Travis Park got free jazz. And while that happened, a half mile down West Travis Street a whole lot of boxing happened for only $8 more.

That’s why it was so easy to forgo “200” later that night.

For a little less than 1/6 the price of “200: Celebrate and Dominate,” a four-fight Golden Boy Promotions pay-per-view card that certainly should not have been, a boxing fan round here could see 30 amateur bouts in a club show presented at San Fernando Gym by the South Texas Amateur Boxing Association.

The name of Saturday’s other card referred to the 200-year anniversary of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla’s famous “Grito” of death to the Gachupines and long life for the Virgin of Guadalupe. The shout launched Nueva España’s battle to become México and sufficed for 100 years till something like a Mexican civil war, oddly called “La Revolución,” led to another anniversary and sundry schoolhouse-renaming efforts.

San Antonio Parks and Recreation’s card featured more than a few kids whose lineage traces back to Spanish rule, too. Most names on the bout sheet that didn’t end in ‘s’ or ‘z’ went Guajardo or Garcia.

San Fernando Gym, itself, had a celebratory feel. Or maybe that was just the air conditioning. Some members didn’t know the basement could boast temperatures below 100 degrees; a heater blows year-round at the gym, even when it’s 95 outside. There was yellow tape across the heavy bags, and the speed bags, slip bags and double-end bags were in storage. In their stead were hundreds of aluminum folding chairs, convenient if not comfortable for five hours of boxing.

And it’s boxing, not fighting, by the way. The distinction is often a pedantic one, but there is a difference. Amateurs are boxers that outpoint one another in bouts. Professionals are prizefighters that hurt one another in fights.

There are some other differences. Amateurs wear headgear and heavy gloves and punch for shorter durations. Fatigue takes its same effect, though. That’s where it gets interesting. If you have less time and fewer means of inducing fatigue in your opponent, what do you do? Try harder. That means more punches and less defense. And that means quicker pace.

Quicker pace than, say, Saul “Cinnamon” Alvarez and Carlos Baldomir? Indeed. That fight on the “200” card featured an under-proven Mexican hopeful and a worn-out Argentine, and opening reviews were not positive. Then Alvarez stretched the hard-headed former welterweight champ, and hope was restored.

Alvarez is not the next great Mexican prizefighter. But he’ll suffice until Bob Arum finds him.

Hundreds of punches fly every couple of minutes in an amateur bout. Knockouts are few. Not many kids have the skill or strength to render another boxer unconscious. Too, there is a focus on process – one kid was penalized twice Saturday because his mouthpiece protruded – as much as on winning. And that’s a good way to build upstanding citizens if not future prizefighters.

Even with all the extra cushioning, though, future stars separate themselves. Saturday, that was Jairo Castaneda – a San Fernando product who knocked his opponent out hard. You can tell right away; some kids have a certain poise, regardless of fighting style. It’s impossible to fake. Castaneda measured his opponent for a round then exploited his every weakness.

Sounds like Victor Ortiz did the same thing to “Vicious” Vivian Harris in Staples Center later on. Good. Harris should not have been allowed back in a prizefighting ring after the stunt he pulled in Tucson 13 months ago. Realizing Mexican Noe Bolanos was going to beat him, Harris used an accidental collision of heads to fake a brain injury. His gurney ride from the ring actually drew taunts from the crowd at Desert Diamond Casino. When have you ever heard a gurney booed?

Worse yet, out of concern for Harris’ health we spiked a great lead that night:

“Vivian Harris entered the ring wearing ‘Vicious’ as his nickname and ‘Sugar Factory’ on the back of his trunks. The trunks won.”

That brings us to the Saturday bout that, for personal reasons, comprised the most interest: San Fernando’s Jimmy Martinez Jr. against Cutting Edge’s Henry Arredondo in a 119-pound bout of three, 90-second rounds. See, Jimmy Jr. and his father Jimmy Sr. train every weeknight at San Fernando. And they are a picture of class.

“I’m teaching him boxing because that’s what I know,” says Jimmy Sr., once a local amateur standout. “If I knew tennis, I’d teach him tennis.”

He’s also going to have to teach him not to cock his jab before throwing it. Arredondo read this hitch in Jimmy Jr.’s swing early and managed to slip every jab thrown his way. Still, the bout was excellent and worth the wait. And that’s saying something about less than five minutes of boxing that came in a card’s 325th minute.

Anyone think the main event of “200” was worth the wait? Then forgive but don’t forget. That goes for Golden Boy Promotions, of course, but more for HBO – who lent its dwindled credibility to the card.

Oh, let me guess. If it weren’t for pay-per-view, Shane Mosley and Sergio Mora would have had to split the gate – a fraction of their Saturday purses – and those of us not in Los Angeles would have missed the chance to see them. Such a bad deal?

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

Another bad month in a dreadful year. Dudgeon is high, patience low. Civil disagreements between smart folks deteriorate into fights. Even high-minded dialogue shows a tincture of personal pettiness. And still no one actually fights. A barren calendar for a month forwards and a month back. Promises for a great November that no one truly believes.

Let’s see if we can stretch the tether just a bit more, then. Make the leash taut.

I had come to defend Money May, not to bury him. Then he complemented his racist diatribe against Filipino Manny Pacquiao, the world’s best fighter, with a lame apology. That was the hardest part for reasons worth exploring.

Nothing else is going on. What, that phenomenal scrap in Glasgow on Saturday? Nah, it wasn’t televised in the U.S.

It was available on the internet. Puerto Rican super featherweight Roman Martinez against Scotsman Ricky Burns for the WBO belt. That “trinket”? Yes, but don’t tell the Scots; they derived a good bit of pride from their new world champion.

You know what else was on the internet last week, don’t you? Floyd Mayweather Jr – the great annoyance calling itself “Money May.” For reasons unclear to anyone, he was checking in with his myriad fans, answering his cell phone and stuttering about Filipinos’ skin color, culinary tastes and average height. He insulted a national icon of the Philippines because that’s what he does. Trainer Nassim Richardson knew it better than any; he didn’t talk about Islam in front of HBO’s camera – Money May’s great enabler – because he knew where Mayweather’s small brain would go with it, and he knew that could cause real trouble.

But let’s talk about racism for a moment. Actually, let’s let Mickey Sabbath, the protagonist of novelist Philip Roth’s masterwork “Sabbath’s Theater,” have a shot at it:

“I’m proud to say I still have all my marbles as far as racial hatred is concerned. Despite all my many troubles, I continue to know what matters in life: profound hatred. One of the few remaining things I take seriously.”

Sabbath was speaking the unspeakable, then, expressing a deep contempt for an entire country’s worth of citizens. Much of Roth’s point was satirical, though: Don’t demand “real” if hatred, in whatever form it expresses itself, makes you uneasy.

It’s doubtful Mayweather hates Pacquiao; he lacks that much focus. But Mayweather’s rage is genuine, rage about something, the American system, perhaps, whose name even he dare not speak for fear of losing revenue. Mayweather is unworthy of comparison to Muhammad Ali in any context, of course, but we’ll make one anyway, and be done with it: Ali would not have apologized two days later. Ali espoused things far more offensive – to his own countrymen – in his time, and he lost a lot more than a Reebok sponsorship, too.

But see, Ali had character.

Here’s one more bit of bad news about Mayweather. Last week’s antics did not cost him a single fan. Not one. As time washes the miasma of dudgeon away, we think a lot more like Mickey Sabbath than we confess; we don’t take racism a fraction as seriously as we tell others to. Besides, an American who’s black, rich and powerless insulting a Filipino congressman is about a ‘1’ on the racial-grievance meter.

But, but, that’s a double standard! Of course it is.

Writing of not losing fans, though, how about that Tony Margarito? He was out and touring the country last week. He’ll be one half of a pair that breaks the domestic attendance record in November. For if Pacquiao was able to approach that mark with a Ghanaian sharing the marquee, he’ll surpass it easily by fighting a Mexican in Texas.

There’s the promotional calculus: Pacquiao vs. Mexican in Cowboys Stadium sells tickets. Margarito was the only notable Mexican in the Top Rank stable Pacquiao had not beaten. “If it makes dollars, it makes sense,” right?

That brings us to a Labor Day thought or two. What Mayweather and Margarito have in common is an exploitation of Americans’ belief in the free-market system. There was a time not long ago Americans saw the market for what it was: an amoral means for setting prices imperfectly. Then out of a combination of laziness and cowardice, we made the market our country’s moral arbiter.

A free market could not have handled that burden, and our market was far from free. After President Nixon floated the world’s reserve currency in 1971, Americans began playing an economic game different from any the world had seen. Those that tell you today that a national debt of $10 trillion will bankrupt our country said it about $10 billion years ago and $10 million before that.

We haven’t handled the world’s printing press all that badly, but we haven’t handled it too well either. We allowed the market an authority it did not deserve, and it took us down a long road towards collective misery. Americans’ wages are deplorable, given the reported values of the corporations for which they work. And while the market cannibalizes itself and its participants, we still pay it homage.

On this first Monday of September, we might ask, Where did labor go? The market took care of it; a generation ago, a man could support his entire family writing columns like these.

So we come to a moment of disgust, whether with Floyd Mayweather’s speech or Antonio Margarito’s hand wraps, and devoid of a moral compass, we look to the market to fix it for us. We ask a corporation to cancel a contract or a stadium to cancel a show. We demand the market do our job of punishing Floyd and Tony. Goodness, that’s rich.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

“Everyone always asks us who is going to be the next great heavyweight. Well, on Sept. 11, we feel it will be Sam Peter’s shining moment.” – Todd DuBoef, president of Top Rank, Aug. 27

There is no possibility Sam Peter is going to be the next great heavyweight. He auditioned for the post years ago and was found wanting in savvy, dedication, heart and bottom – in everything but power, actually. Todd DuBoef is Peter’s promoter, of course, but he’s also a pretty sharp guy. So take a second look at the above quote: He cocks a haymaker then throws a jab.

In DuBoef’s defense, it should be remarked that his quote came at the end of a conference call tough to finish. Peter was indecipherable and taciturn. He did not want to discuss the past or future. He just wanted folks to watch him on Sept. 11.

That day on ESPN, Peter will challenge Wladimir Klitschko for one half of the heavyweight championship of the world, in Frankfurt, Germany. It will be a rematch of an entertaining 12-round scrap that happened almost exactly five years before. In promoting the fight, Peter did not give meaningful answers to any questions of strategy last week but, again, instructed us to watch Sept. 11. Why should we?

As it happens, there are two good reasons: what Peter did in his first fight with Klitschko, and what Peter did in his last fight in Texas.

Let’s journey back to 2005 and recall the time of Klitschko-Peter I. A different time indeed. If there were a Klitschko anyone took seriously, it certainly was not Wladimir. His older brother Vitali was coming off a pair of knockout victories in 2004 and about 10 months from announcing his retirement to go into Ukrainian politics, after injuries kept him from defending his WBC belt against Hasim Rahman. Wladimir, meanwhile, had our pity.

He’d not lasted four minutes against Corrie Sanders in 2003. He’d been unable to answer the sixth-round bell against Lamon Brewster in 2004. He’d hired trainer Manny Steward in the hopes Steward might play Wizard of Oz to his Lion. And every time he got hit, he wore a queasy look on his face that said, “Get me out of here.”

He was desperate to revive his career. So desperate, in fact, that he agreed to a fight against a wild-swinging undefeated African strongman incapable of being deterred by good boxing. If you’re new to the heavyweight division, that is, you might be shocked to learn that, in September of 2005, Wladimir Klitschko was perhaps boxing’s most sympathetic figure.

Klitschko-Peter I was about two questions: Is there a single well-delivered punch to Klitschko’s head that won’t knock him down? and does Peter have any boxing skills whatever? Neither question was answered. Most every time Peter landed a clean punch, Klitschko went down. And in 36 minutes, Peter landed about three clean punches.

But you cheered for Klitschko that night against Peter because he was so obviously fighting a fragile psyche as much as an undefeated opponent. He was dropped thrice and rose each time. Manny Steward bolstered his spirit between rounds, and Klitschko survived to win a unanimous decision.

But had you then told anyone watching that, in 2010, two Klitschko brothers would be seen as essentially indestructible, you would have needed to invent a third brother – Mikhail, Boris or Nikita, maybe? – to be taken seriously.

Today, Wladimir Klitschko is a monster of sorts; former contenders threaten their children with tales of his right cross before bedtime. And if you could take a model of Samuel Peter and give it any other name, Klitschko would ruin him. But there’s a very real chance that in a couple Saturdays, once the bell rings and Klitschko’s nimble brain runs a query on the image of Peter before him, some frightful values will get returned.

Then we’ll enter a laboratory of fear with Klitschko as our guide. Fear has a weakening effect whenever you experience it, of course, but it writes sentences with exclamation points in prizefighting. It begins with a hollowing-out of the upper legs and spreads to the knees, burning energy at an accelerated pace for which no conditioning regimen can prepare you. Run a marathon in camp, spar 100 rounds on Fridays, skip rope for six hours – go right ahead. Once you are afraid, once your body gets the message from your brain, you’re not conditioned well enough to finish a championship prizefight.

Is this guaranteed to happen? Of course not. Wladimir may in fact look across the ring on Sept. 11 and see the guy his older brother embarrassed in 2008 and Eddie Chambers decisioned in 2009. He may hit Peter with so many long jabs in the first six minutes that Peter reverts to form.

But Peter’s form, coincidentally, is the second reason his rematch with Klitschko could be interesting. Were you at the Gaylord Texan in March? If not, here’s the most surprising appearance made that weekend: Samuel Peter’s abdominal muscles. They were visible. At his lowest weight since 2001, Peter looked fantastic against Nagy Aguilera. He counterpunched with patience. He wasn’t shy about finishing his overmatched opponent, but he wasn’t reckless either. He waited for Aguilera to hang jabs and blasted him with right hands.

Klitschko does not hang his jab; frankly, he’s too skittish to hang any punch. But he does like to extend his left glove and use it as a sensor cum patty-caker. If Peter were somehow able to land his right hand over Klitschko’s outstretched left arm, he might just get another look at Wladimir’s queasy face.

It’s a long shot, but Todd DuBoef’s quote above could prove right on both counts. People are indeed always asking – and will still be asking – who is going to be the next great heavyweight. And Sept. 11 might actually be Sam Peter’s shining moment.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

There was “Trancazos” on Friday night. He waved to an Arizona crowd that didn’t much respond to his post-fight salute. He applauded his victorious opponent. He held the other man’s glove aloft and nodded. He raised his own taped fist when he thought a photographer asked for it. Then his opponent went off to celebrate, and “Trancazos” stood there, guileless as ever, awaiting his corner’s instructions.

It brought some memories that turned the nostalgia crank with old teeth I’d mistaken for nubs.

There was Mexico City’s Genaro Trazancos, whose nickname, “Trancazos,” was chosen because it means “punches” in Spanish and because, well, can you think of anything that rhymes with Trazancos? He had just lost by convincing knockout to undefeated Filipino Mercito Gesta. He’d been balanced on his stool in center-ring by a doctor. And now he was upright once more and going through an odd ritual of indulging his vanquisher.

Five years and some months ago, I sat in a Days Inn conference room in downtown Phoenix and waited for a Thursday weigh-in to happen. Chance put me in a seat beside Trazancos. A 30-minute conversation ensued, just as soon as Trazancos apologized if his breath smelled bad – as he’d not so much as sipped water in days.

He was in Arizona as an opponent for a touted prospect on Telefutura’s “Solo Boxeo” program that Friday. He had a roundtrip plane ticket he lamented. He’d wanted to stay in Phoenix for another day and buy a truck he could drive back to Mexico. But he didn’t want to waste the ticket. He wanted to know why my credential showed a large picture of Steven Luevano but no picture of him. He really wanted a drink of water. And he was sure he’d win the next night, which of course he would not.

Last Thursday afternoon in Tucson, “Trancazos” was in the same situation, five years later, though I was not, and neither was Arizona. In 2005, Grand Canyon State hosted 15 televised fight cards. In 2010, it needed eight months and 20 days to host its first. Arizona’s economy, as measured by its property values, has not deteriorated at quite that rate. But to its homeowners, you can bet it feels like it has.

And Arizona’s property values are a smart place to look for an explanation of SB 1070, the piece of immigration law that is now a national issue. The entirety of the debate is wrapped in cynicism – a mindset that makes you believe nobody means what he tells you. But Americans’ outrage at illegal immigration is ever related to the economy, not the immigration rate – which has been steadily declining in Arizona since 2007 and HB 2779.

How do Arizonans feel about their new law, which was defanged by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton in July? I can’t say. But here comes a good anecdote for how others in the Southwest feel about it.

I’d been a Texan for almost three months when SB 1070 became law in April. I had no plans to change my cell-phone number from its Phoenix area code. And then, in one week, I had three conversations like this:

“That’s not a local area code. Where is 480 from?”

“Arizona.”

“You mean where they hate Mexicans?”

How do you combat that? I chose flight over fight and changed my phone number.

Promoter Top Rank chose a similar tack in May and canceled plans to host a “Top Rank Live” show in Phoenix, citing disapproval from broadcaster TV Azteca and sponsor Tecate.

And yet, there was Tecate everywhere you looked, Friday. Ring posts, canvas, between-rounds commercials.

Apparently Judge Bolton’s injunctions meant quite a bit to the brewer. Which makes little sense. If Tecate’s refusal to sponsor boxing in Arizona was a principled stand against Arizonans, whose elected congressmen wrote and passed SB 1070, how did a judge’s temporary ruling nullify that? Seems muddled as the immigration debate itself.

So let’s offer a point of clarity for that debate then move on.

A person who enters this country illegally knows the difference between a place where work is and a place where work isn’t. If you are serious about restricting the flow of undocumented immigrants to the United States, go after their employers – yes, the sainted small-businessmen whom politicians court with their inane “lifeblood of the economy” bit. Because if criminal employers are not your first target for immigration reform, you’re a huckster or a cheerleader; you’re not a reformer.

Genaro Trazancos is not a huckster, cheerleader or reformer but a decent man who’s made a passable living in a brutal profession. Five years ago in Phoenix, he got done-in by Steven Luevano, who would go on to win and defend the WBO featherweight title five times before being done-in himself by Juan Manuel Lopez in January and announcing his retirement last week. Best of luck to you, Steven.

“Trancazos” had been promised a big fight if he beat Luevano. He got a bigger fight for losing; nine months later in Japan, he became the first of 18 men to last a full round with the late Edwin Valero.

Friday, he faced Mercito Gesta (19-0-1, 9 KOs) and did so having gone 2-9 in seven years, having been knocked-out seven times in his last 11 fights, and having lost in one round to Mike Dallas Jr. four months ago. He fought in an announced temperature of 104 degrees and lasted till the first minute of the seventh round. Gesta looked spectacular blasting him into unconsciousness. Mission accomplished.

Then “Trancazos” rose from his precautionary medical exam and clapped for Luevano. He had shown no hit-back reflex or savvy, just pride and diminished reflexes. He induced others’ sympathy because he had no idea how pitiful he looked.

If “Trancazos” is ready for his final bow in prizefighting, though, he’s also fine a reminder that goodness can outlast small-minded acrimony.

Bart Barry can be reached at [email protected]

LAREDO, Tex. – A great Texas writer named John Graves once wrote a great Texas book named “Goodbye to a River” in which he described South Texas as “a piece of country with four or five different breeds of men and a consequent easygoing messiness of tone.” He got that right.

We honor Graves’ description with a stroll through this historic place and the prizefighting that happened in its confines Saturday.

You can’t start much better on the messiness of tone than with the climates you find in South Texas. There’s San Antonio – “Deep in the Heart” – that’s tropical as any city in the country. There’s Corpus Christi and Padre Island, which comprise some of Texas’ hundreds of miles of Atlantic coastline. And then there are the green and brown grasses and sturdy oaks that line the Rio Grande, a treacherous river that divides old Laredo from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

It’s all Old Mexico, though, whatever arbitrary lines mapmakers eventually drew, whatever today’s overheated immigration debate says about it. A secret well-kept from legislators thousands of miles to the north: Laredo was here before there was a United States or Mexico; Laredo will be here whatever comes of them.

San Agustín de Laredo cathedral, a Catholic church a couple hundred meters from the Rio Grande, was founded in 1755 – 21 years before the American colonies declared their independence, 33 years before nine states ratified the Constitution and made ours a country of its own. The cathedral’s steeple still makes it Laredo’s second-tallest building.

Across Zaragoza Street sits something called the Republic of the Rio Grande Museum. It was closed three hours early, Saturday, locked up though its shudders were open. But the kindly concierge of the palatial La Posada Hotel next door knocked on the windows and insisted the proprietor must be round here somewhere.

That’s good a place as any to wade into the prizefighting that happened a few hours later in the Energy Center, a 10,000-seat edifice miles northwest of San Agustín, near the international airport. Its marquee had to compete for viewers with both a larger boxing telecast in Montreal and a local card from eight days before.

Energy Center’s director of marketing, Anissa Trevino, who deserves high marks for the hospitality she shows out-of-towners, said that local card bit into South Texans’ willingness and ability to support a second event in two weeks’ time.

Attendance was sparse – generosity said 2,000 folks were there – for “Top Rank Live,” a two-fight broadcast headlining a seven-fight card of mostly Texans. Among the visitors that acquitted themselves best, Oxnard, Calif.’s Mikey Garcia merits first mention.

Garcia went against Detroit southpaw Cornelius Lock, a man whose nickname could have become “Conquistador de Los Garcias” had he been able to handle Mikey well as he handled Juanito in 2008 and Jorge and Luis in 2002. Lock, you might remember, fought Juanito Garcia, a then-undefeated prospect out of Phoenix, on Telefutura’s “Solo Boxeo” program, on two-days’ notice, and starched him in the fourth round.

He had nowhere near so much luck with Mikey Garcia, Saturday.

Garcia appears to have every tool you look for in a prospect cum contender. At 22, he’s young. In 23 prizefights, he’s undefeated. And having now beat up Lock in an IBF featherweight eliminator, dropping him twice and making the referee stop the match early in the 11th round, Garcia’s 19 knockouts are validated. Keep an eye on him.

Writing of eyes, or perhaps views, we come to some of that South Texas messiness Graves told us about. “Top Rank Live’s” main event was a scrap for the vacant IBF lightweight title between Mexican Miguel Vazquez and South Korean Ji-Hoon Kim. The ringside judges scored the fight widely for the Mexican: 119-109, 120-108 and 118-110.

I wasn’t close to the action as they were, but my scorecard varied wildly from theirs. I had it 116-114 for Kim, and the Mexican beside me had the South Korean by an even wider margin. I scored rounds 1, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12 for Kim. I had Vazquez winning rounds 3, 4, 6 and 11. And I made rounds 2 and 5 even.

Way I saw it, Vazquez was all head and shoulders and clinching, while Kim did the clean punching. If you haven’t seen him – and now, regrettably, you might not get the chance – Ji-Hoon Kim is fun to watch. He starts every round with a 1-2. He puts a light jab out there then launches a right cross. It’s thrown from the shoulder, correctly, and with so much intent that Kim’s right foot sometimes comes wholly of the mat. It takes some extra fortitude to expose yourself that openly time and again.

But Vazquez was bigger and stronger. He walked Kim 10 feet backwards in every extended clinch, as the South Korean unsuccessfully tried to free his arms and find space enough to punch. Vazquez wore Kim down, yes, but he didn’t land 20 consequential punches in 36 minutes of trying. And that 120-108 scorecard unfortunately says more about officials approved by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation than either fighter.

As someone who was in Energy Center Saturday, I can say I’d love to watch Kim fight again and will likely have to be reminded who Miguel Vazquez is when promoter Top Rank puts him in its upcoming lightweight tournament.

Which brings us back to the “Streets of Laredo” – old and Nuevo – and the Larry McMurtry novel that bears that famous title. You didn’t think I’d drive 150 miles each way without a literary soundtrack, did you? Augustus McCrae is dead by the time we get to the final audio book in McMurtry’s deservedly esteemed “Lonesome Dove” tetralogy. And Woodrow Call is an old man chasing a bandit through South Texas.

A bandit in Laredo, eh? Seems a good place to end things.

Bart Barry can be reached at [email protected]

LAREDO, Tex. – The Lone Star State has developed an unfortunate reputation for awarding hometown fighters inexplicably wide decisions. But Guadalajara is not in Texas, and so it was very hard to understand Saturday’s scorecards.

In a fight for the vacant IBF lightweight title at Laredo Energy Center, one that was part of Fox Sports Español’s “Top Rank Live” program, Mexican Miguel Vazquez (26-3, 12 KOs), of Guadalajara, defeated South Korean Ji-Hoon Kim (21-6-1, 18 KOs) by unanimous-decision scores of 119-109, 120-108 and 118-110.

The 15rounds.com scorecard did not concur, scoring a very close match 116-114 for Kim.

While Vazquez was the physically stronger fighter and at times the more aggressive one, Kim was clearly the better puncher and landed the evening’s more-telling blows, from opening bell to closing. The South Korean began each round with a 1-2 combination whose right cross often missed but always succeeded at putting Vazquez on his heels for at least the next 30 seconds.

After that, in many rounds, Vazquez closed distance, grinding Kim with clinches and wide hooks. Still, despite having his punches smothered, Kim was often the only one in the ring trying to make a fight.

Because each round in the match’s second half was close, it was nearly impossible for any professional scorekeeper to mark every single one for the same fighter. And yet, that’s exactly what one official did, scoring the fight 12-0 for the Mexican.

Kim, for whom Saturday’s match marked his third appearance in Laredo, handled the unreasonably lopsided decision with dignity, congratulating the new IBF champ and leaving the ring to applause from his adopted hometown.

OXNARD HAS A NEW STAR: GARCIA STOPS LOCK
Oxnard, Calif.’s Mikey Garcia came to South Texas with a simple plan: Corral Detroit’s Cornelius Lock with left hooks and blast him with right hands. Garcia knew it, Lock knew it, and after the second round, everyone in Energy Arena knew it, too. That a crafty veteran like Lock was powerless to prevent it says a whole lot about Garcia’s class.

After assaulting Lock (19-6-1, 12 KOs) for 10 rounds with right crosses, at 1:09 of the 11th, Garcia (23-0, 19 KOs) stretched Lock with a right-hook lead, and the fight was over. In beating up Lock, Garcia did something that no other prospect has been able to do recently. And Garcia looked fantastic doing it.

After an even first round, in the second Garcia’s corralling left hook paid off quickly, as he persuaded Lock to leave his chin directly in the line of a right cross, one that put Lock’s sparkly trunks on the blue mat. Lock rose, though, and fought back with sledgehammer overhand rights, punches the Detroit southpaw has used in the past to upset other prospects.

But Garcia might just be what baseball aficionados call a “five-tool” player, as he appears to have everything one looks for in a future world champion, including an excellent chin to complement his ferocious right cross.

After a couple of competitive middle rounds, Garcia caught Lock at the end of the sixth – again with a left hook followed by a right cross – that made Lock wobble and clinch. Then Garcia showed a veteran’s composure, stomping after Lock while keeping his combinations and footwork tight and well-balanced.

Lock, though, continued to show all the attributes that have made him such a successful spoiler in the past, straightening Garcia up with right hands whenever he was imperiled. But finally, Garcia was too much, causing the referee to wave an end to the match in the 11th, with Lock swollen and bruised and once more on his back.

BUDLER DANCES TO SPLIT DECISION OVER PRIMERO
Top Rank knows better than any outfit in boxing how to develop a young prospect. It has an apparently unlimited stable of tough Mexican opponents – journeymen with strong chins and pride – from which to choose, as charismatic and undefeated South African Hekkie Budler learned Saturday night.

In a 10-round junior flyweight scrap the judges scored 98-92, 93-97 and 96-94, Budler (17-0, 5 KOs) narrowly defeated El Paso’s Evaristo Primero (14-14-1, 7 KOs) by split decision. It was a stern test for the strong but light-hitting South African, a test that he passed, if not with flying colors.

The match began on a surprisingly even footing – given the men’s records – with Primero touching and testing Budler’s chin. Right uppercut-left hook, the combination Juan Manuel Marquez made famous among Mexicans, was the mix with which Primero had the most luck. Budler, though, did not budge, controlling distance effectively despite the Texan’s pressure.

Reminiscent of a small Paulie Malignaggi, Budler displayed quick hands and decent defense. He also entered the ring to a World Cup-themed Shakira song, written especially for his native land. And in the ninth round, a Primero low blow indeed had him dancing the “Waka Waka” as his knees weakened and he dropped to the blue canvas, writhing.

But Budler rose soon thereafter, like a professional footballer, and boxed his way to a win.

UNDERCARD / OVERCARD
Saturday’s opening fight was an uneventful heavyweight match – originally scheduled to be at cruiserweight till the scales intervened – that featured two Texans fairly uninterested in attaining a first professional victory. Fort Worth’s Zakariah King (1-2) swapped a few blows with Aleda’s “Cool Hand” Luke Vaughn (0-3) and did just enough to win a unanimous decision all three judges scored 39-37 for King.

The evening’s walk-out fights featured six Texans and for the most part lived up to their billing.

San Antonio bantamweight Issac Cantera (1-0, 1 KO) won his professional debut with a knockout, stretching Laredo’s Antonio Pena Jr. (2-4) at 0:15 of round 3.

Laredo lightweight Javier Luna (1-1) decisioned Edinburg’s Gino Hernandez (0-2) by split scores of 40-36, 37-39 and 39-37.

And Laredo junior lightweight Enrique Rodriguez (2-0, 1 KO) made quick work of Alice’s Raul Almeida (0-2), stopping him at 1:33 of the first round.

The evening began at 7:30 sharp, local time, and opened to a small but vocal Energy Arena crowd. By the time of the main event, attendance was estimated at 2,000.

Devon Alexander “The Great” says he is his own worst critic. He’s lucky that position is filled. Because if Alexander were accepting applications for his Worst Critic position, this week he might be inundated with resumes.

Sifting through such applications, Alexander would likely find critics long on enthusiasm as they are short on expertise – just like the folks who’d already anointed him boxing’s next prodigy and tuned in to Saturday’s fight expecting a coronation that did not come.

What did come, however, was an entertaining fight Alexander won with heart, chin and activity. Saturday on HBO’s “Boxing After Dark” program, at Scottrade Center in his hometown of St. Louis, Alexander outhustled Ukrainian Andriy Kotelnik to win by three scores of 116-112. How consequential were those scores? Their reading drew the loudest applause of the night.

I had it for Alexander, too, but by a slimmer margin: 116-115. I gave him rounds 1, 2, 5, 10 and 11. Rounds 3, 6, 8 and 9 went to Kotelnik. And I scored rounds 4, 7 and 12 even.

It was a fight that posed a fundamental question of preference. If you like activity, you scored it for Alexander. If you like craft, you scored it for Kotelnik – who landed more, meaningful punches than Alexander despite throwing a fraction as many.

Well, I like activity. I favor ineffective aggressiveness only slightly less than I favor its effective cousin. Rewarding busier fighters, over the long haul, leads to better fights. It encourages those who are busy to remain busy. And more importantly, it tells those who are not busy to keep fights out of the judges’ hands. Both make for good results.

I almost didn’t get a chance to score Alexander-Kotelnik live. Comedian Ron White was playing downstairs at the Majestic Theatre. And after watching Alexander’s fight with Juan Urango in March, I was not expecting a coronation.

White is a native Texan, a breed of persons you grow fonder of the more time you spend round them. He’s been practicing his craft for 26 years, while only being famous for about eight of them. On stage, he is comfortable. He relaxes. His persona is well-aged. White fears no sudden call for improvisation.

Alexander, meanwhile, seems not yet to have been allowed proper aging as a professional. He has the biography – kid from a dangerous neighborhood adopted by a trainer who’s a retired cop – that storytellers never tire of telling, even as their audiences wither under the repetition. He has fast hands, and one enormous technical flaw.

It’s his jab. No, not the way he pushes it sideways like someone who’s watched too many Apollo Creed highlights or worked in Cleto Reyes bag gloves for more than a week (a column of its own). Rather, it’s what happens to the left hand in his southpaw stance while his right hand is out flicking. It’s the sort of thing that happens when a youngster hears the word “snap” too many times, as in “Snap that jab!”

You see this in the gym. A kid comes to the bag or mitts ready to snap those jabs. But generally, that requires a cocking of some kind. The kid either drops his lead glove first – like a baseball hitter hitching his swing – or he pushes his opposite hand away from his face, as Alexander does. It is incumbent upon a trainer to stop whatever else is going on, at that moment, and tell the kid to get his guard back in place.

How did the rest of us miss this during Alexander’s last fight? That’s the very question I asked a respected peer in Dallas the night before Pacquiao-Clottey, six days after Alexander stopped Urango. His explanation? Writers who have never boxed are spellbound by hand speed.

From a foundation of quick hands, that is, there’s almost no edifice of acclaim for a prizefighter they cannot erect. They start to see accuracy, power, footwork, defensive wizardry, and finally, greatness. Along the way, they stop looking for flaws.

Kotelnik sure wasn’t spellbound by Alexander’s hand speed Saturday, and he found plenty of flaws. He did not exploit Alexander’s questionable defense often as he should, no, but he exploited it enough to give a lot of Alexander enthusiasts pause. He also gave Alexander’s trainer Kevin Cunningham pause. Cunningham began the night as a fire-breathing motivator and ended it with a much quieter mien.

“Listen to me, man, listen to me, hey, you gotta listen to me, man, listen to me,” said Cunningham for the first half of Alexander’s one-minute break after the eighth round. “You’re getting suckered into some bullshit.”

That he was. Ultimately, though, Alexander got through the fight with the one part of his arsenal which does seem verifiably great: His chin. Alexander took a number of clean shots in the championship rounds but never relented. His first impulse was to fire back at his inquisitor. You can’t teach that, and it probably won him some new admirers.

Then came the standing ovation the nervous St. Louis crowd gave the judges’ decision. Then came the last of the night’s bad decisions when – in what seemed to be a tactic better planned than most, Saturday – Alexander borrowed from his trainer a shirt that read “Bradley U Next” during his post-fight interview. Timothy Bradley, the recognized champion at 140 pounds, is the opponent Alexander wants next.

Bad idea, Devon. Bradley would go right through Alexander’s defense and test that excellent chin at least thrice as often as Kotelnik did. Bradley’s a more effective puncher who has better footwork than Alexander, is at least as well conditioned, and is more accustomed to winning ugly.

For the time being, Alexander needs to eschew the greatness track and get back on the Andre Berto track, blasting former champions from smaller weight divisions and outpointing predictable South Americans for good money. Lucky for him, he’s on the right cable network to do exactly that.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

LAS VEGAS – Juan Manuel Marquez might not be the man in this world you least wish to see in a dark alley. For at 135 pounds, he is slighter of frame than an average Homo sapiens. But if you’ve ever seen him pause in the frenzy of combat to study another man’s weakness, Marquez is the last man you’d ever want to see in a dark alley if you were hurt.

“Predatory” is the word that comes quickest to mind. It sure came to mind Saturday night. And chances are good, it came to mind every day of Juan Diaz’s last training camp, too.

That was the time of solitude, rigor and starvation Diaz put himself through before his rematch with Marquez at Mandalay Bay’s Events Center on Saturday before a goodish crowd of 8,383, a rematch Marquez won convincingly: 116-112, 118-110 and 117-111. “The Rematch” to determine the lineal lightweight world champion was not good as its predecessor, but that didn’t make it bad.

I, too, scored it 118-110 for Marquez. I gave Diaz rounds 2 and 3. Did he perhaps deserve the 11th or 12th? Sure. But by then, it was easy to be mesmerized by Marquez.

Here’s what was clearest: Diaz was not to allow the weight of his upper body to fall over his front knee. Naturally aggressive, if not heavy fisted, Diaz has long shown the habit every volume puncher must overcome; he lets too much of his upper body bend too far forward. Against some fighters, it does not matter so long as Diaz keeps whacking them. Against a fighter of Marquez’s caliber, though, it will always matter.

There was not an instant Saturday, in 36 minutes of those two men trying to hurt one another, that Marquez did not look for Diaz’s weight to tilt forward. Capable of throwing an uppercut with either hand from any position, Marquez wanted one more chance to catch Diaz with his head down and his arms wide and cocked – exactly as he had in 2009’s Fight of the Year.

Diaz did not take his weight too far forward too often all night. And so, Marquez took him directly out of the match.

The Diaz strategy went like this: I’m going to stay on my back foot, be careful this time, and hope that at 36 years-old Marquez is not prepared to go 12 rounds with a 26 year-old like me. It was a good plan for remaining upright. But there was no chance Diaz was going to outbox Marquez and no chance he was going to wear him down, either.

If anything, Marquez was the aggressor in “The Rematch,” and that made you sympathize with Diaz. When the man across from you is a better puncher with better balance and better combinations from which to choose, you’d be crazy to rush him and crazy to think you can win if you don’t.

Which brings us to Marquez’s studying regimen, perhaps his most frightful trait. After every exchange – that won’t end till he’s punched you one more time – Marquez bulges his eyes and examines you, looking for any hint of breakage. Woe is you if he finds it.

Sort of makes you long for an in-game camera like they have in team sports, doesn’t it? Would that we could connect sensors to Marquez’s eyes in a prizefight. The images from those cameras might reveal that Marquez looks in the exact right spot at every moment; those images would make a marvelous tutorial for aspiring prizefighters.

Then we’d just have to teach them how to throw an uppercut-cross-uppercut combination, switch the order of their hands, and throw the same combination again. See, there are things you don’t do in a championship prizefight if you want to remain conscious, and one of those is lead with an uppercut of any kind. Yet Marquez does it all the time.

He bets on his balance and your inexperience. He knows he’ll be in position even if that lead uppercut misses. And he knows no sparring partner has thrown uppercut-cross-uppercut at you in camp. There’s only one way to solve that sort of arsenal, and Floyd Mayweather showed it to us 15 months ago: Come to your fight 15 pounds bigger than Marquez, and keep your distance.

Diaz was no larger than Marquez and had no choice but to close distance, Saturday. And they don’t call him “Baby Bull” for nothing. In the championship rounds, when a decision victory was entirely out of reach, Diaz took chances. He engaged Marquez much as his well-being could abide.

How gorgeous was that final round? The Mexican template for bringing fans to their feet in the closing three minutes: You touch gloves, express mutual admiration, and then fight with utter contempt for the man across from you. Such spite is one more detail that marks the great ones. Look at the last 10 seconds. Marquez kept punching till the referee was collecting blows more than Diaz, and then he turned away from Diaz’s embrace. The blood was still too hot for hugging: Give me a few minutes, kid, and I’ll come visit; right now I still hate you too much for that.

Ah, contempt. It brings us to the opponent who consumes Juan Manuel Marquez’s legacy, the Filipino whale to Marquez’s Ahab, the man Marquez would likely fight to the death if those were the terms for a rubber match: Manny Pacquiao.

“I am ready right now for Pacquiao,” Marquez said in this post-fight press conference, as he said after his last fight with Diaz. “The priority is Pacquiao, more.”

That last word – more – made no more sense in Spanish than it does in English. It was an emphasis imprecise as it was meaningful.

If you were Pacquiao, though, would you give Marquez one more chance to find your weaknesses? Me neither.

Bart Barry can be reached at [email protected]

LAS VEGAS – It was entertaining as a one-sided fight could be, but finally, “The Rematch” was a one-sided fight. Blame it on Marquez’s class – the ageless type.

Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Events Center, in a rematch of 2009’s Fight of the Year, Mexico City’s Juan Manuel Marquez (51-5-1, 37 KOs) and Houston’s Juan Diaz (35-4, 17 KOs) squared up to determine the lineal lightweight champion of the world. Twelve rounds later, it was the same guy as it was when the night began, with Marquez winning by unanimous decision scores of 116-112, 118-110 and 117-111.

The 15rounds.com scorecard concurred, scoring it 118-110 for Marquez.

Diaz’s strategy, to box and keep his weight from falling over his front foot, was a sound one for survival. But starting in round 1, and with only a brief exception in rounds 2 and 3, it was not a strategy that would ever bring him victory.

For his part, Marquez was the same master craftsman he has always been, riddling Diaz with left uppercut-right cross-left uppercut combinations whenever the younger man’s enthusiasm brought him within range. The rest of the time, Diaz was safe, but he wasn’t in the fight.

Afterwards, Diaz hinted at the possibility of his retirement, saying he still wasn’t sure about his future and thanking his hometown of Houston for its undying support.

Marquez, meanwhile, addressed the possibility of a rubber match with pound-for-pound champion Manny Pacquiao, after his victory.

“I think the third fight with Pacquiao is the one the aficionados want,” Marquez said. “And it’s the best thing for the fans.”

Class tells: Pirog ruins Jacobs
Golden Boy Promotions’ eye for talent has been questioned often since its inception. What Russian Dmitry Pirog did to Golden Boy prospect Daniel “Golden Child” Jacobs in the co-main event of “The Rematch” will make such questions all the more prevalent.

Pirog (17-0, 14 KOs) outclassed Jacobs (20-1, 17 KOs) in each round, using fundamental boxing to solve the speedy Brooklynite, before catching him flush with a perfect right cross, knocking Jacobs out cold at 0:57 of the fifth round to become the WBO middleweight champion of the world.

After a fairly even opening stanza, round 2 began with Pirog marching forward behind a right cross and extremely efficient footwork, entirely neutralizing Jacobs’ reflexes. Then Jacobs wisely began the third on his bicycle, circling away from Pirog, fighting part of the round as a southpaw and regaining his composure. Round four, too, passed in a somewhat even fashion.

Pirog came out in the fifth, however, backed Jacobs to the ropes and waited for him to start a tentative punch. At that moment, Pirog stepped fully into a right cross that landed on Jacobs’ chin and dropped him to the blue mat in a pile. Referee Robert Byrd wisely forwent his 10-count, waving an immediate conclusion to the fight.

Guerrero brushes away “Cepillo”

Boxing may never know Joel Casamayor’s true age, but Saturday it learned how old he now is: Too old.

In a junior welterweight scrap some in Mandalay Bay’s Events Center hoped would be competitive, California’s Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (27-1-1, 18 KOs) easily decisioned Cuban Joel “El Cepillo” Casamayor (37-5-1, 22 KOs) by lopsided unanimous scores of 98-89, 98-89 and 97-90.

Down in each of the match’s first two rounds and penalized a point for holding, the previously resilient Casamayor looked old and spent, Saturday, as Guerrero hurt him with every landed left hand. In round 2, a Guerrero left cross even stunned Casamayor to the point of dropping both gloves and looking around in disbelief before rallying to wrap his arms round Guerrero’s trunks.

Never a strict adherent to the Queensbury rules, Casamayor looked particularly sad in his opening six minutes against Guerrero, when he was reduced to fouling to survive rather than win.

After such a shaky start, though, Casamayor, whose chin has never been doubted, found enough of his stride to give Guerrero quality rounds. Still, a Guerrero left hand or two seemed to buckle Casamayor’s old knees in almost every round.

But as the fight progressed, and Casamayor threw more punches, Guerrero began to holster his left hand, gradually sapping the match of its emotion. By the ninth round, a few vocal fans began to boo the action in the ring while the large majority of the Events Center crowd expressed its displeasure with abject silence.

The final stanza, though, saw Guerrero over-commit to a left hand and impale himself on Casamayor’s outstretched right glove. But the suspense passed quickly when Guerrero rose and boxed to a comfortable victory.

Linares plays bus driver, takes Juarez to school

Venezuelan Jorge Linares literally towered over Houston’s Rocky Juarez at Friday’s weigh-in. Saturday night, Linares towered over him figuratively too.

In the first fight of “The Rematch’s” pay-per-view telecast, Linares (29-1, 18 KOs) easily decisioned Juarez (28-7-1, 20 KOs) over 10 one-sided rounds to win the WBA’s vacant lightweight title by unanimous scores of 99-90, 97-92 and 99-90.

The fight began as Juarez fights always do, with Juarez doggedly chasing his opponent, eating punches and unable to let his own hands go. Linares, who would look nimble in the ring with anyone, looked positively balletic across from the heavy-footed Juarez. Snapping jabs and dancing away, Linares gave Juarez a boxing lesson in the fight’s first four rounds.

Towards the end of round 5, Linares landed one of many left uppercuts, and this one caused Juarez to stumble backwards and drop to the blue mat, a place one rarely finds him. Unable to hurt Linares and now worried that Linares might hurt him, Juarez, who’s hesitant even when he’s winning, began trading two Linares uppercuts for his every landed jab – a formula destined to fail.

What few vocal fans there were gave a number of halfhearted “Rocky, Rocky” chants as the fight progressed, and Juarez’s eyes continued to close, but the arena was otherwise silent enough for the bell to cause echoes at the end of each round.

The final round saw most of the fight’s sustained action, but those three minutes did not feature nearly enough pressure from Juarez to undo the 27 minutes that preceded them. The problem for Juarez, finally, is not just that he is now 0-6 in world title fights. It’s that he’s losing by larger margins in his every subsequent challenge.

Undercard

It was a case of dog attacks man in “The Rematch’s” final off-television match, as undefeated junior welterweight Los Angeleno Frankie “The Pit Bull” Gomez (5-0, 5 KOs) went through Minnesota’s Ronald Peterson (2-3, 2 KOs) without a modicum of resistance. A Gomez left hook to Peterson’s liver ended the match at 2:14 of round 1, when Peterson chose not to continue.

The fourth match on the untelevised undercard might well have been its best, as unheralded Mexican lightweight Juan Manuel Montiel (6-3-1, 1 KO) swapped blows and taunts with Nevadan Mike Peralta (4-6, 1 KO) in a well-matched six-round bout, which Montiel won by unanimous scores of 58-55, 60-53 and 58-55.

Despite spitting blood for half the fight and appearing fatigued throughout, Peralta nevertheless entertained the local crowd with his heart and will. Finally, though, Montiel had too much class, and the judges did not see the fight competitive as fans did.

The night’s third bout came to a rapid and ugly end when Australian Sakio Bika (28-4-2, 19 KOs) fouled undefeated and unarmed Frenchman Jean Paul Mendy (29-0-1, 16 KOs) at 1:19 of the first round of their IBF super middleweight eliminator, losing by disqualification and bringing some well-deserved hostility from the desert crowd.

In a maneuver disappointingly reminiscent of a different super middleweight – Arthur Abraham and his right hand to a kneeling Andre Dirrell in March – Bika knocked Mendy to the canvas and then stepped forward and fired a point-blank right uppercut at the defenseless Frenchman. Mendy, who had almost no power to speak of while upright, tilted forward and landed on his own forehead. Referee Joe Cortez called an immediate end to the match.

Mendy was later able to walk from ringside unassisted.

At Friday’s weigh-in, ESPN commentator (and cruiserweight contender) BJ Flores said the man to watch on Saturday’s undercard was a Brit by the name of George Groves. Flores was right. Accompanied to ringside by heavyweight titlist David Haye and favoring a left hook-right cross combination, Groves (10-0, 8 KOs) chopped away at Mexican Afredo Contreras (11-8-1, 5 KOs) until a somewhat early intervention by referee Russell Mora halted the match at 0:48 of the sixth round.

While Contreras did not appear to be in any trouble, and never went down, Groves, for his part, appeared to be committing fully to each of the right crosses with which he tagged Contreras with increasing frequency.

Before that, “The Rematch” got off to a quick and violent start Saturday afternoon as Maryland heavyweight Seth “Mayhem” Mitchell (18-0-1, 12 KOs) went directly through overmatched Philadelphian Derek Bryant (20-6-1, 17 KOs), stopping him at 1:45 of the first round.

After firing a succession of left hooks to Bryant’s body, Mitchell went upstairs with lefts and rights to the head and continued his assault till referee Kenny Bayless had seen enough.

The opening bell rang on a sparse Events Center crowd at 2:40 PM local time.

Photo by Tom Hogan/Hogan Photos

LAS VEGAS – This town might be only a little bit closer to Houston than it is to Mexico City on a map, but if a town’s heart can be measured, this one’s a lot closer to Chilango than Houstonian. Or so it sounded Friday afternoon.

That was when Mexico City lightweight world champion Juan Manuel Marquez (50-5-1, 37 KOs) took the scale with Houston’s Juan Diaz (35-3, 17 KOs) in Mandalay Bay’s Events Center before a small but enthusiastically partisan-Marquez crowd.

As the challenger in Saturday’s fight, which is being billed simply as “The Rematch,” Diaz was first to be weighed. Looking relaxed and customarily fit, if a little soft, Diaz marked the lightweight limit on the nose, weighing 135 pounds for his first fight since two ill-advised trips to 140 last year.

Those fights, of course, came after his knockout loss in 2009’s Fight of the Year against Marquez a couple Februaries ago. Marquez, meanwhile, appeared both the taller and more muscular fighter, Friday, marking a well-defined 133 1/2 pounds.

If the Mandalay Bay crowd favored Marquez, so too did most boxing insiders milling about the stage during the weigh-in for Marquez-Diaz II. Though all gave Diaz a chance at an upset, knowledgeable fighters such as Shane Mosley and BJ Flores confidently predicted victories for the lightweight champion of the world.

Also taking the stage were Golden Boy Promotions fighters and partners. Michael Katsidis, David Haye, Amir Khan, Bernard Hopkins, and of course Oscar De La Hoya all greeted gathered fans.

LINARES TOWERS OVER JUAREZ
First on the Events Center scale Friday were Venezuelan lightweight standout Jorge Linares (28-1, 18 KOs) and perennial Houston contender Rocky Juarez (28-6-1, 20 KOs). Though Linares weighed only a half pound more than Juarez – 132 1/2 to Juarez’s 132 – he appeared to have significant physical advantages over the Texan. And the advantages didn’t stop there.

While Juarez has made unsuccessful challenges in five world title fights – all happening at or below the super-featherweight limit of 130 pounds – Linares sported a 4-0 (4 KOs) record in championship matches until a shocking first-round knockout to Mexican Juan Carlos Salgado last October.

Is Linares’ chin suspect? That is a question Juarez will have to ask early and often, Saturday, if he is to pull the upset in a fight most are only giving him a “puncher’s chance” of winning.

GUERRERO AND CASAMAYOR JAW THEN EMBRACE
Following a quiet run-up to his Saturday showdown with California lightweight Robert Guerrero (26-1-1, 18 KOs), Cuba’s Joel Casamayor (37-4-1, 22 KOs) briefly returned to form on Friday’s stage. After he’d made 138 pounds and Guerrero had made 138 1/2, Casamayor stepped into Guerrero’s chest and began speaking his trademark Spanish – which always features a Cuban rhythm and is often seasoned with unthinkable vulgarity.

After exchanging a few unfriendly phrases, though, the fighter’s made nice and embraced before leaving the Events Center.

Also making weight Friday were undefeated middleweights Danny Jacobs (20-0, 17 KOs), from New York, and Dmitry Pirog (16-0, 13 KOs), from Russia. In Saturday’s co-main event, Jacobs and Pirog will swap blows for the WBO’s vacant middleweight belt.

MOSLEY MAKES AN EARLY PACQUIAO PREDICTION
Receiving the largest ovation of any Golden Boy Promotions dignitary, Friday, was future hall of famer Sugar Shane Mosley. After exiting stage right, Mosley, cordial as ever, posed for photos and gave impromptu interviews that included, among other things, some details about his recent made-for-television match with NBA great Shaquille O’Neal – a fight in which, apparently, Mosley buckled the 350 pounder.

When asked for a prediction on rival promoter Top Rank’s upcoming fight between Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito – the Mexican prizefighter Mosley knocked out 18 months ago – Mosley was initially reticent, sticking to the old cliché about styles making fights. Asked on whom he would bet the proverbial house, though, Mosley opened up slightly.

“Bet the house?” he said. “Probably Pacquiao.”

COVERAGE OF THE REMATCH
Saturday’s card will feature nine bouts. Four of them will be broadcast on the pay-per-view portion of “The Rematch.” 15rounds.com will have full ringside coverage.

Photo by Tom Hogan/Hogan Photos

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” – Ernest Hemingway, “The Sun Also Rises”

And so it is with a prizefighter’s energy and legs. He begins a championship fight doing as he planned. He loses strength at predictable intervals, familiar intervals, intervals commensurate with his opponent’s. Then suddenly he finds himself weak and discomfited.

So go championship prizefights. So go champions’ careers.

That race, right there, who gets from gradual bankruptcy to sudden first, will determine the loser of “The Rematch” at Mandalay Bay. That is what they’re calling the second fight between Ring magazine lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez and Juan Diaz, to remind us Marquez-Diaz I was 2009’s Fight of the Year.

Think of this fight as a race – Marquez’s legs against Diaz’s energy – where the loser will be lightweight champion of the world. The gradual bankruptcy of Marquez’s legs can be measured in years. The gradual bankruptcy of Diaz’s energy will be measured in minutes. And then, suddenly, one of those will be measured in instants.

Something like that happened when Marquez and Diaz fought the first time, in Diaz’s hometown of Houston, 17 months ago. Few of us knew it at the time, and no one knew it at ringside. The closest anyone came, probably, was Marquez’s trainer Nacho Beristain. He couldn’t be sure his fighter’s legs wouldn’t wilt under the heat and humidity of Diaz’s relentlessness, but he knew his fighter’s spirit was implacable and courage unquestionable. And he knew he wasn’t going to stop the fight regardless.

“Juan is not fragile.” That’s how Beristain explained it an hour after his fighter knocked-out Diaz in round 9. Beristain was certain to a point of dismissive about his charge’s fortitude in those opening rounds when Marquez’s mouthpiece was visible for two of every three minutes. He was amused by an inquiry about his own state of mind when Marquez was bullied to the ropes by the “Baby Bull” time and again. No, Beristain wanted it understood, he couldn’t have been less preoccupied by what he saw.

He was about the only one. Diaz appeared to have his way with Marquez in the fight’s opening half. He had me fooled; I scored the opening six rounds 4-1-1 for Diaz. And after round 6, when an esteemed fight scribe leaned over and said Marquez wouldn’t get out of the eighth, I nodded.

But by then Marquez had begun to do something we mistook for a ruined spirit. He’d begun to pivot away from Diaz rather than fighting Diaz off him. It was uncharacteristic of Marquez. He was the more accurate puncher in every minute, of course, but he was also the smaller and older man. His sudden change of strategy appeared, if not a surrender, certainly the opening sentence of an unfavorable treaty: You let me finish on my feet, and I’ll stay out of your way.

What had really happened, though, was different. Marquez had seen the first cracks in Diaz’s relentless spirit. Those cracks lent Marquez time enough to take a look around. And when he did, he realized he was not being outmaneuvered but cowed. Diaz was not pinning him to the ropes with superior footwork but merely corralling him with activity. And that reminded Marquez he hadn’t survived the rings of Mexico City without discouraging a few relentless left-hookers.

That was when the 35 year-old switched from brawler to dancer to assassin. He pivoted away from Diaz and struck the younger man now searching for an abruptly elusive target. He stopped trying to break Diaz on Diaz’s terms and began to stretch him on the rack of fundamental boxing: straight punches hurt more than crooked ones.

Diaz must have been surprised. He had, after all, faced larger, tougher men at lightweight, wearing each down with his knuckles, the cuffs of his gloves, the commitment of his blows, his self-belief. Here was a smaller man whose temples he’d assaulted with 20 minutes of hooks. Here was a lighter man whose neck he’d whiplashed with battering-ram jabs. Here was a boxer, a craftsman, whose sensibilities he’d surely offended.

And now he pivots away on fresh legs? And now my knees are suddenly hollow?

But Diaz did the right thing when bankruptcy visited him suddenly: He pressed forward. He was either about to fool Marquez, or bring a mercifully quick conclusion to his evening. And Marquez wasn’t fooled.

Marquez is hard to fool. Ask Floyd Mayweather. Mayweather apologists – a species the great man himself is rendering extinct – may still insist that after knocking Marquez down in the second round of their mismatched fight, Mayweather didn’t press because he “needed rounds.” But that’s inane. Rounds to do what, sharpen his potshots on a man 15 pounds smaller? Mayweather could get better work in the gym.

No, Mayweather didn’t press Marquez because, 15 pounds or 50, you don’t stop Marquez without making a slow tour of hell to get there. That’s not Mayweather’s style. Even when Marquez was hurt, especially when he was hurt, he fought back with harshest intentions. Mayweather was against the best counterpuncher he’d ever faced, and he backed off. Mayweather couldn’t stop Marquez in 100 rounds of trying.

Diaz, on the other hand, hasn’t Mayweather’s luxury of reflexes or class. He will have to go straight at Marquez because it affords him the best chance of making Marquez’s now-36-year-old legs go bankrupt. And in so doing, Diaz will afford Marquez a chance to take Diaz’s energy to bankruptcy, by pivoting away earlier and finishing Diaz quicker than the first time.

Marquez has been losing his legs gradually since he moved from featherweight. So is it possible they could go bankrupt suddenly on Saturday? Yes. Does Diaz have the style to cause it? Yes. Does Diaz have the energy to do it? I don’t think so.

I’ll take Marquez: KO-7.

Bart Barry can be reached at [email protected]

Here’s how I’d planned it. Timothy Bradley might be my favorite American prizefighter and so why not write a column mimicking his style with relentless sentences words upon accurate words and rare combinations with no punctuation or pause? For Luis Carlos Abregu: Small words, lots of breaks, some heft. The conclusion seeing Bradley’s varied run-on sentences overwhelm Abregu’s short phrases by the 12th paragraph.

Then reality intervened. The fight didn’t correspond to expectations. Let’s explore why not.

Saturday, Bradley, the man widely recognized as the world’s best junior welterweight, made an ill-advised welterweight fight with Argentina’s Luis Carlos Abregu at Agua Caliente Casino in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Bradley decisioned Abregu by scores of 118-110, 117-111 and 116-112. The match marked Bradley’s debut on HBO.

That seems like part of the problem. After five intriguing, 140-pound matches on Showtime – an upset of titlist Junior Witter followed by victories over Edner Cherry, Kendall Holt, Nate Campbell (later declared a no contest), and Lamont Peterson – Bradley arrived at HBO and made a dull fight. Until Saturday, Bradley, a forward-pressing volume puncher whose offense can double as defense, seemed incapable of a dull fight.

Recently I read “Only the Ring Was Square” by Teddy Brenner, Madison Square Garden’s longtime matchmaker. His responsibilities were several. He always had to fill the Garden. And he often had to satisfy whichever television network broadcasted from the Garden. He was obligated not to managers or fighters but fans and viewers. That book raised some questions of particular relevance Saturday.

Does HBO have an in-house matchmaker? If so, where is he? If not, why not?

Matchmaker or no, why did HBO let Bradley fight Saturday at welterweight? The network has feinted at the possibility of a junior-welterweight tournament similar to Showtime’s acclaimed “Super Six.” HBO has now showcased all five of the hypothetical tournament’s four participants – Bradley, Devon Alexander, Amir Khan, Marcos Maidana and Victor Ortiz (alternate). And yet, there was Bradley at welterweight, Saturday.

Bradley’s people want their guy in the Plan B sweepstakes. They’d love for Bradley to fight either Manny Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather this fall, since those two won’t fight each other. A fight with either guy would bring Bradley, and his handlers, a windfall. And it would have to happen at 147 pounds.

Let’s go on the record right here: It’s a bad idea.

Pacquiao’s next opponent will be a Top Rank fighter. This is not news. That leaves Mayweather. This is not good news.

Here’s the calculus. Bradley was unable to hurt Abregu more than twice in 12 rounds. Shane Mosley would not have needed five rounds to stop Abregu. In 12 chances, Mosley did not win three rounds against Mayweather. There’s no chance Bradley, right now, gives Mayweather a competitive match at welterweight. No chance at all.

Did Bradley look slow and tentative enough Saturday to leapfrog to the top of “Money May’s” prospective-opponents list? Quite possibly, and quite unfortunately.

Gone was Bradley’s frantic pressure. Gone was his quickness. Gone was his fearlessness. In their stead was a talented boxer who’d seen more complicated styles than Abregu’s and who determined he was safer outside it than in.

After the fight, Bradley said Kendall Holt hit harder than Abregu. Bradley didn’t fight that way. In the fight’s fourth minute, Bradley saw Abregu’s one enormous flaw, but he did little to exploit it in the 32 minutes that followed. That flaw was Abregu’s left hand. The Argentine brought his jab back lazy and low. Bradley stepped into him with a fantastic right cross in round 2 and then left things alone after that.

Abregu cocked punches from his own waistband and returned his hands there. The times Bradley committed to precise combinations from inside, he found Abregu. The rest of the time, Bradley either stayed outside and threw fewer punches or got in manic exchanges with Abregu and tasted enough power to back off.

Blame the weight. The additional seven pounds on Bradley rendered him slower, less confident in his own quickness. The additional seven pounds on Bradley’s opponent meant even deflected punches hurt Bradley more than square shots did at junior welterweight.

The fight comprised no drama. There was no building narrative or set of basic questions for the fighters to answer. At best there was the suspense of wondering if Bradley might get sloppy and give Abregu a chance at one leveling blow. That doesn’t read like a suspenseful foundation because it wasn’t.

Which returns us to the question of why this fight happened. If we’re going to suspend disbelief and say no one wants to fight Bradley at 140 pounds, we’re still left with a question of why Bradley’s debut at welterweight was with a guy who barely cracks the Top 30. Here’s a theory, in retrospect: Timothy Bradley is only a Top 20 welterweight.

That might be the best development yet for the Bradley brand. He’s a good name opponent – a legitimate champion till proven otherwise at junior welterweight – for a 147-pounder with an aversion to risk. Chances are good we’ll look back at last January as the month Mayweather-Pacquiao came closest to fruition. Even if Mayweather doesn’t fight again till 2011, he’s going to need an opponent next May. Bradley could triple his previous purses against Mayweather. Good for the Bradley brand. Terrible for the Bradley legacy.

If Bradley’s handlers care at all about legacy, they’ll send their guy back to 140 pounds and make the concessions that make HBO’s junior-welterweight tournament a reality – with their guy its favorite. Surely that’s why HBO televised Bradley, Saturday.

Then, all HBO would need is a plan and a matchmaker. Because a lackluster showing by Bradley at welterweight has to have been the craziest possible way to create demand for a junior-welterweight series.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

“The conduct of both Mr. Margarito and Mr. Capetillo was unacceptable and threatened the health and safety of another licensee.” – Carrie Lopez, Director, State of California Department of Consumer Affairs, Feb. 10, 2009

“We’ll figure out a fight for (Margarito) in Mexico. It will be on one of our pay-per-view shows this summer. I think we’d have the opportunity to do 200,000 or 300,000 buys.” – Bob Arum, CEO, Top Rank, Feb. 10, 2009

And so here we are, 506 days later, and Mexican Antonio Margarito is no nearer to having a license to fight in the United States than he was on the day his license was revoked. Has he “served his time” or “paid his debt to society” or “(insert courtroom drama cliché here)”? Irrelevant, your honor.

Right now, Margarito is no more permitted to climb in a prizefighting ring in this country than an eight year-old boy is allowed to take Dad’s car for a spin. He has no license. And he will not have a license until the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) gives him a license. Or until some other athletic commission determines California’s handling of his case is unjust enough to be overruled. The rest is just noise.

And there’s plenty of that.

On Friday, the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) refused to give Margarito a license and make the details go away. Instead, the NSAC told Margarito to go back to California with his application. Bravo. However you feel about Margarito’s innocence or guilt, you cannot condone a fighter shopping for a sympathetic commission – first Texas then Nevada – and still say you care about the cleanliness of our sport.

Margarito did not have his license suspended in California 17 months ago. He had his license revoked. Because the right to appeal is one of America’s defining traits, Margarito was told he could return to California in 365 days to ask for a new license.

Fighters have their licenses suspended all the time. Margarito has had his license suspended twice before. He had a one-week “rest” suspension in 2001 after he knocked out Robert West. He had a 45-day “hard fight” suspension in 2007 after he lost to Paul Williams. He attended no hearings, hired no attorneys, fired no trainers, and was back in a prizefighting ring on schedule.

Margarito knows the difference between the Spanish verbs “revocar” and “suspender.”

And yet, to hear him tell it to the NSAC on Friday, he’s already met every requirement for a new license, and he’s just been looking to swing by Austin or Las Vegas to pick up the license as a matter of convenience.

“I’ve paid a high price,” Margarito said Friday in Nevada. “But I think I’ve earned the right to come before you and respectfully request to receive my license and fight for my fans.”

To hear his attorneys tell it, Margarito is the victim of more sinister goings-on in the Golden State, as well as the victim of his former trainer Javier Capetillo, a contract worker who absconded with Margarito’s hands just before that 2009 fight with Shane Mosley and accidentally put the tiniest bit of slightly used gauze in Margarito’s knuckle pad. Attorney Daniel Petrocelli – to whom Margarito never should have given the pass code for his Apr. 5 conference call – views the CSAC’s treatment of Margarito as a direct violation of our country’s founding document, of course:

“About the contracts, Capetillo wasn’t an employee of (Margarito’s),” Petrocelli ruled three months ago. “You can’t be penalized because somebody did something without your knowledge or participation, let alone something as severe as taking away your right to earn a living (sic). That’s just unconstitutional.”

Right now, it’s hard to imagine how Margarito could have handled the revocation of his license and reputation much worse. From his disappearing act in 2009, to his lawsuit against the CSAC, to his lack of remorse, to his presenting himself as a victim, to Friday’s unsatisfactory conclusion, Margarito has put himself on a path to become boxing’s version of Pete Rose.

Rose, you’ll remember, was found to have bet on baseball and, in accordance with Rule 21(d) of Major League Baseball’s code, banned from the game in 1989. Since then, Rose has gradually admitted, usually in tortured language, to a variety of unscrupulous things – just never that for which he was banished.

He had a friend named Paul Janszen whom he called just before games and who placed calls to bookies from Rose’s hotel room.

“No, no, don’t start on the phone records,” Rose said in an interview with Sports Illustrated in 1999. “I am at the ballpark. So I can’t be in my room making a phone call if I’m at the ballpark. And it is obvious to me once again Paul Janszen is making bets, and he is making them from my room, because he had adjoining rooms with me.”

As things concern the plaster-like substance smeared on a pad that was placed over his knuckles, Margarito, too, was victimized by a person he trusted.

“Before the fight, my former trainer, Javier Capetillo, put old knuckle pads on my hand,” Margarito said Friday. “As I learned later, there was an irregularity with them.”

And this is where lawyers are a hindrance to Rose and Margarito, not a help. They give them words like “irregularity,” lend them their cloaks of certainty, and send them before panels to haggle over the difference between responsibility and culpability. But all anyone wants – all anyone will accept – is contrition.

Instead of contrition, Margarito, like Rose before him, presents his years as a well-liked professional as evidence that he’s incapable of wrongdoing. People loved Margarito because he fought in an unglamorous way. People loved Rose for running to first base every time he was walked. Trouble is, the admiration of others, which they cite, is gone by the time they cite it: I’m not sure I ever knew Antonio Margarito, are you?

There are a number of differences between Rose’s case and Margarito’s. Rose was a much larger figure in baseball than Margarito is in boxing. Rose made wagers. Margarito, or his trainer, plotted to harm another athlete. And most importantly for Margarito, Rose was retired from playing the game when all his troubles happened.

Margarito is 32 years-old. He’s past the prime of his career but was very much at its apex, in accomplishment and popularity, two years ago. If he’s not licensed to fight in the United States in 2010, he’ll lose what remains of his drawing power. That’s something he should consider while his attorneys assure him of victory in a case slowly making its way through the California Court of Appeals.

If the CSAC is injudiciously biased against Margarito, he needs to get them on the record saying something new and biased. What’s currently there is not persuasive enough for other commissions to overrule the CSAC.

But, see, it’s not overruling! It’s a brand new license to do something entirely different in a place that is not California. It’s unconstitutional to deny the man a right to feed his family!

That didn’t work Friday. And the NSAC just set a precedent that says it isn’t going to work later or elsewhere.

Writing of elsewhere, Margarito still can fight in Mexico, of course, because he’s licensed to fight there. But 50 percent more people were in Aguascalientes at his May return fight with Roberto Garcia than paid to see it on pay-per-view. Exit drawing power.

It’s time for Margarito to try something wholly different. The Spanish word for it is “contrición,” Tony.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

No, the upcoming rematch between Juan Manuel Marquez and Juan Diaz does not belong on pay-per-view. Two fighters whose cumulative record is 1-2 since their first match should not charge extra for a second go. And no, this fight does not belong in Las Vegas. Chilango versus Houstonian, surely, has more appropriate host cities.

There, that takes care of the disclaimer. In keeping with the sprit of this long weekend, in fact, let’s call what’s above a Preamble. Now for the salvaging.

On July 31, Marquez and Diaz will fight for Marquez’s WBA, WBO and Ring magazine lightweight titles at Mandalay Bay. It will be the first fight for Marquez since his 10-unanimous-rounds-to-none loss to Floyd Mayweather in September. It will be the first fight for Diaz since his one-sided loss to Paulie Malignaggi in December.

It will also be a rematch of 2009’s Fight of the Year. That lends the match a distinction its combatants’ recent showings cannot sully. Yes, Marquez was foolish to make the mercenary’s choice and take that high-paying fight with that high-weighing superstar. And yes, Diaz was nobly foolish to grant Yankee Fan an immediate rematch on neutral ground. But there we are.

Where we also might consider being in four Saturdays is Las Vegas. Marquez-Diaz I really was that good – especially if you were in Houston’s Toyota Center to see it.

I was in Houston 16 months ago. That’s why I’ll be in Las Vegas later this month – to honor the combatants and see if they can do it again.

A doubtful proposition. After all, there was a reason Diaz began the post-fight press conference by assuring his mother he was OK. There was a reason Marquez called-out Mayweather – aside from Manny Pacquiao’s not wanting a rubber match. It was because none of us who sat in that Toyota Center conference room hankered for Marquez-Diaz II.

The fight was excellent. Sensational, actually. But it left few questions unanswered. Act One saw Diaz apply great pressure, assaulting Marquez’s vanity with the rude force of his youth. Act Two saw Marquez change from veteran boxer to hot-blooded finisher. The fight’s arc resembled that of Margarito-Cotto, but with a more decisive ending and no later allegations of foul play. Its decisive ending also saw Marquez set a new standard in right uppercuts.

You had another chance to see that right uppercut, Friday night, when Golden Boy Promotions replayed Marquez-Diaz I in something of a Telefutura infomercial on its weekly “Solo Boxeo” program. The purpose of that 90-minute program was to promote “Marquez-Diaz 2” of course. But Golden Boy Promotions deserves credit for another thing it did, and has been doing: Easing Israel Vazquez into retirement.

For the third week in a row, Vazquez was a major part of the Telefutura broadcast. You hope he enjoys his time in front of the camera enough not to return to the ring. Looking at his face and listening to his speech gives you the impression that if a pending retirement comes in time for Izzy, it will be just barely.

But Golden Boy Promotions also has a different kind of infomercial it routinely does that is less creditable. That would be the emphasis it places on sponsors in conference calls and press conferences – ostensibly media events. This has never felt right for reasons that couldn’t quite be identified.

Until the opening part of last week’s conference call when CEO Richard Schaefer recognized Cerveza Tecate, AT&T and NCM Fathom. It sounded exactly like a Wall Street earnings call – that quarterly tradition in which an executive tells analysts why others should invest in his company.

Which is where the incongruity sets in. Golden Boy Promotions is not a publicly traded company; no one on these calls or at these press conferences is a potential investor. It’s akin to a Hollywood studio inviting critics to a movie screening and then discussing concession sales. It seems to miss the point of American journalism.

We’ve gone along with it for years as part of our advocacy for a thing Top Rank’s Todd DuBoef recently called “brand of boxing” in an interview with Thomas Hauser. We want the sport to succeed. We were ecstatic when we thought corporate sponsorships would somehow lead to mainstream interest. That hasn’t happened. Instead, these sponsorships are but another way to help millionaires get richer.

Which is fine. It’s part of the system formerly known as democratic capitalism. But it is not news, and it should not be treated as such. Journalism is not public relations.

Got it? Good. Now let me don my PR cap.

Las Vegas needs your help. No city has felt the depredating effects of the Great Recession more. It looked desperate, starving even, last November. And since then, there’s nary a report of its having improved.

Juan Manuel Marquez and Juan Diaz, too, could use your help. Both need to strike their most recent fights from folks’ memories. They promise to make a compelling match – master boxer-finisher against young volume puncher – any time they share a ring.

And the brand of boxing? It should be championed. Supporting a city that has been an important part of that brand is an admirable thing to do. But the best reason to attend Marquez-Diaz II is this: We cannot allow our sport to be held hostage by a fight unlikely to happen.

We must celebrate the fights we have and the fighters who make them. There’s no need to waste words or time on others. No need to waste them on sponsors, either.

See you in Las Vegas.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

Photo by Gene Blevins/Hogan Photos

SAN ANTONIO – Here’s something you didn’t know. Saturday afternoon round 3:30 P.M., a young Texas amateur named Adam Reynolds almost didn’t make his boxing debut at a 34-bout smoker in San Fernando Gym. Despite his youth and fitness, Reynolds’ blood pressure was too high for a ringside doctor to let him answer the opening bell.

The prospect of being struck in the face can play havoc with your heart.

Eight hours later, about a mile southeast of San Fernando, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. put the finishing touches on the best match of his 42-fight career. It was a performance marked unexpectedly by Chavez’s relaxation under fire.

There’s something to be said for growing up around the sport. There’s something to be said for knowing boxing.

Saturday at Alamodome, before a few fans more than 8,000, Chavez headlined “Latin Fury 15” and beat Ireland’s John Duddy in an entertaining 12-round middleweight scrap that saw sustained action in every round. It also saw Chavez win by two proper scores – Judge Crocker’s 116-112 and Judge Lederman’s 117-111 – and Juergen Langos’ unacceptable tally of 120-108.

For those who watched on pay-per-view or the south side of the ring, if the Texas crowd sounded unenthusiastic, here may be an acoustical explanation. Alamodome, which is cavernous, was configured to seat fans in its northernmost 1/3. That meant cheers had to go through a curtain and then across 200 feet of emptiness before they could hit the south wall and reverberate back to themselves.

There were plenty of folks there, though, and they cheered plenty too. Some cheered the Chavez brand, recalling fondly the night 17 years before that Julio Cesar Chavez Sr. posted a record attendance number in Alamodome. Some, no doubt, went to see a Mexican child of privilege get his ass beat by a tough Irishman. But all were there, in part, because they had no idea what was going to happen.

Chavez was considered soft by even some of his admirers, heading towards the ring Saturday. Among those who didn’t admire him, there was a belief that a 12-round match absolutely favored any Chavez opponent but especially a man rugged as John Duddy. Both were wrong.

“We took (Chavez) into deep water,” Duddy said at the post-fight press conference. “And, yes, he can swim. He’s a tough kid. A tough kid.”

Duddy wore dark sunglasses as he spoke those words. He wore them because Chavez had left bruises and shallow lacerations around his eyes. And there was a good metaphor in those glasses for anyone who had been at Wednesday’s press conference.

There, Chavez sauntered on stage like a kid hoping to become a matinee idol – jeans, open-collared shirt, stylish blazer, sunglasses. Duddy, meanwhile, watched him in a business-casual getup of khakis, belt, dress shirt and green Chuck Taylors. The contrast was stark: Working class meets spoiled brat.

At Saturday’s post-fight press conference, on the other hand, Chavez wore no sunglasses. He didn’t hide the damage round his eyes Duddy’s fists had inflicted; he’d completed a rite of passage in his own mind from novelty to contender.

“Now I am more – how to say it,” Chavez said in Spanish, and he paused. “I am more convinced of myself.”

And to prove it, he employed self-deprecation – the sign of a secure identity. Asked what difference his new trainer Freddie Roach had wrought, Chavez said he’d just needed someone to take out of him the “huevón.”

“Huevón” is a wonderful Mexicanism. It begins with the Spanish slang for a man’s balls, eggs, adds the augmentative “ón” and suggests a man with balls so big he doesn’t bother himself with trying at anything. It’s like laziness on PEDs.

Roach took that from Chavez in their four-week training camp, transforming him from a lazy fighter. Saturday night, in the opening three rounds, Chavez retreated behind an occasional jab and let Duddy impose himself. But at the start of the fourth, confident Duddy could not hurt him, Chavez went out and began to walk the Irishman down.

Duddy couldn’t have asked for more. He got a fair battle with a man who would not run from him. Had you told Duddy before the fight that Chavez would stand in the middle of the ring and trade with him for nine rounds, Duddy might have said, “Then I’ll have me way with him.”

But he didn’t. Duddy managed to buckle Chavez with a counter right hand in the sixth round, but after that, Chavez’s confidence grew in proportion to Duddy’s age; one man got quicker while the other got older. Take nothing away from Duddy’s character, though. After losing the ninth badly enough to justify a stoppage, Duddy went on to win the 12th on one judge’s card.

But Chavez was not in danger. He was entirely untroubled. It surprised a number of folks at ringside. It didn’t surprise Freddie Roach.

“Not at all,” Roach said afterwards. “That’s how he is in the gym. I’m telling you, he knows the ring. He knows boxing.”

Now all Chavez needs is more discipline and some improved balance. He has the right teacher for that. And he has most of the tools he’ll need to contend.

Boxing is a harsh master, of course, but it’s also one that teaches those who wish to learn.

Look at Adam Reynolds. After a second opinion from a ringside nurse allowed his first bout to happen Saturday afternoon, Reynolds fought a tense opening round. But by the third, he was loosened up – enough to win his debut with a knockout.

Bart Barry can be reached via [email protected]

Photo by Chris Farina/Top Rank

SAN ANTONIO – By the 10th round, Mexican Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. was marching forward, legs wide, feet crossing over, left shoulder lowered and ready to fire a hook. He no longer respected John Duddy’s ability to hurt him at all. That says more about Chavez’s conditioning, chin and heart than it says about Duddy.

Saturday night in the main event of “Latin Fury 15,” before 8,172 Texans at Alamodome, Chavez (41-0-1, 30 KOs) went toe-to-toe with Duddy (29-2, 18 KOs), a throwback Irishman if there ever was one, handled him roughly and won a unanimous decision by scores of 120-108, 116-112 and 117-111, in the first 12-round fight of Chavez’s career. The 15rounds.com scorecard concurred, 117-112.

After two rather even opening rounds that might even have favored the Irishman, Chavez began to employ a jab that trainer Freddie Roach had implored him to learn in training camp. It worked, backing Duddy up and successfully keeping him off. Throughout the night, Chavez’s surprising speed, power and ability to relax while under fire proved the difference.

Duddy got the fight his people hoped for; much of the night Chavez stood in the center of the ring and traded with him. It was of no use, though, as Chavez was simply too young, too fit and too good for Duddy to figure him out.

“I fought a very strong fighter tonight,” Chavez said of Duddy. “A real warrior.”

Accompanied by his famous father to ringside, Chavez comported himself in every way as a main-event attraction on Saturday.

“There’s a new star in boxing!” said an elated Bob Arum after the match.

Duddy, a consummate sportsman, also offered praise to Junior.

“I thought it was a good fight,” he said in the ring after the cards were read. “I take my hat off to Julio Cesar Chavez.”

LEGENDS FIND A WAY
Although his name was only the second-most-famous in the ring Saturday night, Mexican Marco Antonio Barrera was easily its greatest fighter.

Facing Brazil’s Adailton de Jesus (26-5, 21 KOs) after a long layoff, Barrera (66-7, 43 KOs) found a way to neutralize the younger man and cruise to a decision victory by unanimous scores of 100-90, 98-92 and 99-91.

After a somewhat uneventful opening round, Barrera began the second with a commitment to the left hand – hook, uppercut, hook – that made his longtime fans smile. It also made De Jesus wince, as a Barrera left to the body quickly lowered the Brazilian’s right elbow and sent him spinning leftwards and away.

By the end of round 4, though, Barrera’s age and softness began to tell. Despite maintaining his placid expression from bell to bell, Barrera found himself clipped by left hooks that he would never have been hit with in his prime. He also forced his first clinch of the fight, validating the concerns of those who noticed his less-taut midsection at the Friday weigh-in.

But any veteran of 72 prizefights knows a few tricks, and Barrera – arguably the smartest fighter of his era – knows more than most. Without increasing the match’s pace, Barrera began to control it. He jabbed De Jesus on the way in, hooked him hard on the way back and rested in the moments between. Despite bloodying Barrera’s nose in the eighth, De Jesus, whose trunks rose practically to his sternum, often found himself reduced to complaining about low blows.

The match’s final two rounds brought no new action, and the fighters embraced afterward, both knowing whose performance had won the day.

In the co-main event of “Latin Fury 15,” Barrera proved himself an intelligent competitor who still resents the hell out of anyone who tries to hit him. And he can still easily beat b-level opponents. But as the old master approaches his 37th birthday, one wonders if he’ll not soon run out of reasons to fight on.

MARTINEZ WINS BATTLE OF SAN ANTONIO
Raul Martinez and Gabriel Elizondo may have come of age in the same amateur program, but they were in two different professional classes Saturday night.

Martinez (27-1, 16 KOs) came out scowling at Elizondo (22-4-1, 10 KOs), his friend and fellow resident of the Alamo City, and never relented throughout, winning every round, dropping Elizondo four times and eventually forcing referee Rafael Ramos to stop the match at 2:00 of Round 7.

After a competitive start to the fight, in the opening moments of round 3 Martinez saw Elizondo start a jab, took a step back and blasted him with a right-hand lead that buckled the veteran. Elizondo’s conditioning and pride kept him upright, though, and the next five minutes made a fairly even affair that nevertheless favored Martinez.

But early in the fifth round, an accidental collision of heads put Elizondo in an uncertain place. Ninety seconds later, both men started right hands, Martinez’s got there first, and Elizondo dropped to the canvas for a second time.

Round 6 began with a fight in the crowd, which brought Alamodome spectators to their feet, and ended with Elizondo being felled once more, this time by a Martinez left hook at 2:59. Elizondo rose again, though, and withstood Martinez’s onslaught for the first two minutes of the seventh.

But a last right cross from Martinez ended Elizondo’s night. Referee Ramos did not so much as begin his count, choosing instead, and wisely, to wave his hands over his head and declare Martinez the Texas junior bantamweight champion.

TORTOISE BEATS HAIR
Salvador Sanchez II came to Texas for the second time in 2010 and waged a battle of patronymic importance against a second Mexican named Villa, Saturday. Unluckily for Sanchez, Tomas proved twice the hombre Jaime was.

Texan Tomas Villa (23-7-4, 14 KOs) battered Tianguistenco’s Sanchez (19-4-2, 9 KOs) – the nephew of famous Mexican champion Salvador Sanchez – and chased him around the ring before ultimately decisioning him by unanimous scores of 77-75, 79-73 and 78-74.

Sanchez proved to have inherited little more than hair and charisma from his uncle Salvador, never establishing pop enough in his punches to keep Villa off him. But for a flurry every two or three rounds, Sanchez’s gloves slapped and his power wanted, and despite Villa’s plodding manner and predictable attack, Sanchez was unable to win a single round on all three judges’ cards.

Too bad. Sanchez had charmed San Antonio’s fight aficionados all week. His class as a person will be missed, even if his class as a fighter won’t be.

LEDEZMA KEEPS SAN ANTONIO UNDEFEATED
The last match on Saturday’s untelevised undercard saw a third battle of Texas, as San Antonio middleweight Emanuel Ledezma (9-1-1, 2 KOs) squared off with Houstonian Nelson Ramos (4-1, 2 KOs). As it turned out, Ramos’ 0 had to go, and Ledezma won a unanimous decision by scores of 39-37, 39-37 and 40-36.

SON OF PHOENIX SHINES
Top Rank matchmakers are very excited about young Phoenix super lightweight prospect Jose Benavidez (7-0, 7 KOs), and Saturday, Texans got a chance to see why. Wasting little time without seeming to be in a hurry, Benavidez made quick work of Rhode Island’s Josh Beeman (4-7-2, 2 KOs), stopping him at 1:20 of round 1.

Benavidez, who is extremely tall for a fighter weighing only 138 1/2, kept Beeman at the end of a long jab before wading in with two hooks to Beeman’s body. The first shot, a right hook, did little more than tilt Beeman leftwards and open him for a second shot. And that was a left hook to the button, Beeman’s liver, that brought a decisively early end to the match and kept Benavidez’s perfect knockout record intact.

OH! HENRY
Houston’s Omar Henry (10-0, 8 KOs) began Saturday’s third fight by tearing out his corner and assaulting Idaho middleweight Hilario Lopez (12-10, 8 KOs), throwing a dozen unanswered punches in 30 seconds and showing why Texans are so excited about “O. Henry.” But as much as Henry committed to his punches, winging them with the baddest of intentions, he was unable to chop down Lopez.

Henry finally cracked the light-hitting Lopez’s granitic chin in round 4, dropping him with two minutes to go in the bout. Lopez would not be stopped, though, finishing the fight on his feet, despite bleeding from above his right eye. Still, the match was not close, and Henry won decisively, 40-34, on all three official scorecards.

LONE STAR SCRAPPERS
The evening’s second undercard match featured a theme similar to its first – two Texans swinging freely – as San Antonio super lightweight James Cantu (6-0, 3 KOs) matched up with Laredo’s Antonio Gamez 3-3-1, 1 KO) for four entertaining rounds. Ultimately, Cantu prevailed via unanimous decision scores of 39-36, 39-36 and 40-35, after dropping Gamez in round 3 and winning enough of each the match’s other three stanzas.

Saturday’s action began with a six-round Texas welterweight battle between San Antonio’s Jose Juan Fuentes (6-1, 3 KOs) and Fort Worth’s Rogelio Barron (12-7, 4 KOs). Fuentes started the match in every way the classier fighter but then found himself assaulted by right hands and hit the canvas in both rounds 1 and 3.

In the end, though, Barron’s conditioning betrayed him, and Fuentes dusted himself off to win by TKO at 1:12 of round 5, when a succession of unanswered right hands forced the referee’s hand.

As scheduled, Saturday’s first bell rang at 6:25 P.M. local time.

SAN ANTONIO – Friday afternoon at the Arneson River Theatre on the River Walk, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Ireland’s John Duddy both made the 160-pound weight limit for their “Latin Fury 15” main event. Or at least Duddy did. Chavez didn’t. And then Chavez did.

“He was a little bit over,” promoter Bob Arum said afterwards of Chavez’s first trip to the scale. “Then they moved it back (to 160), and he still made it. Nothing to get excited about.”

But that’s exactly what members of the Duddy camp did, at least initially. After Duddy made 159, a crowd gathered for the weighing of Chavez, who climbed on the scale, came close enough to 160 for WBC officials, and then quickly walked to strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza for the customary swigging of sportsdrink. But Duddy manager Craig Hamilton was unconvinced.

One of Duddy’s cornermen followed Chavez and blocked his path to rehydration, ensuring that if Chavez were in fact over-weight, it would be discovered upon his return to the scale – before he could attribute his missed weight to anything he’d since drank. All went well on Chavez’s second visit to the scale, though, and members of both camps left without further incident.

Friday’s weigh-in happened at a particularly charming spot along the River Walk. With fans gathered on grass-covered amphitheater steps before the stage, participants in the televised portion of Saturday’s card arrived via river taxi, floating up Rio San Antonio then disembarking to take the stage. Above a black “Furia de Mexico” banner hung the five Hugman Bells that commemorate the city’s founding Spanish missions – San Antonio de Valero (Alamo), San Jose, San Juan, Concepcion and Espada.

Also attending the weigh-in were co-main event fighters Marco Antonio Barrera – who weighed 141 pounds – and his opponent Adailton De Jesus, who made 138. Next to the scale were local attractions Gabriel Elizondo and Raul Marquez, two friends who will fight on Saturday’s broadcast; Elizondo weighed 114, and Marquez was a half pound heavier. Finally, Salvador Sanchez II – fighting Tomas Villa in “Latin Fury 15’s” first televised bout – took the scale and weighed 125 1/4, with Villa making 126 1/2.

Saturday’s card will happen at Alamodome and comprise a total of nine bouts. Doors open at 5:30 P.M., and the opening bell is scheduled to ring at 6:30. 15rounds.com will have full ringside coverage.

SAN ANTONIO – Wednesday afternoon in Alamodome’s cavernous but air-conditioned arena, “Latin Fury 15” participants, managers and trainers joined Top Rank’s Bob Arum on stage for their final press conference before Saturday’s card. Some wore jeans, others wore t-shirts, three even wore blazers. But only one had green Chuck Taylors on.

That would be Ireland’s John Duddy, of County Derry in the North, proudly wearing a color that’s as universally associated with Ireland as any color is with any land. Duddy will fight Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. for the WBC Silver middleweight title in Saturday’s main event.

And yes, Top Rank knows what you might think about that.

“A lot of people say, ‘What the hell is the WBC Silver belt?’” said Bob Arum from the stage on Wednesday. “The winner becomes the WBC mandatory challenger, so it has great significance.”

Duddy confirmed the significance when his turn at the podium came, describing a world title shot – in this case with Sergio Martinez, the middleweight champion – as being a dream of his since childhood. But first he must beat Chavez.

“I’ve had this fight on my mind for a long time,” Duddy said of battling the son of Mexico’s most famous champion. “It’s a crossroads fight for us both.”

One of the themes of this week’s promotion has been Duddy’s family in Northern Ireland, specifically the uncle after whom he was named, John Francis Duddy, who was killed during a demonstration on Jan. 30, 1972 that came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” Last week, a 10-volume tribunal report exonerated the Irish citizens killed that day, concluding all were unarmed. Duddy’s uncle, known colloquially as Jackie, will be honored with the tolling of a 10-count before Saturday’s main event.

While last week’s Saville Report brought joy to long-suffering members of Duddy’s family, on Wednesday Duddy emphasized how important it was to him to have their permission before using his prizefight as a way of honoring Jackie Duddy.

“My family were thrilled with this decision,” Duddy said when asked about the tribunal’s finding. “But I was never a part of that (struggle). I don’t want to seem to be jumping on the bandwagon.”

Duddy confirmed, though, that he would be fighting in his uncle’s honor with the blessing of his aunts and uncles Saturday, and also the blessings of his father – who will be in Alamodome.

But neither father nor son is likely to see much green in the Alamo City, at least not without it accompanied by Mexican red and white. Asked if he thought maybe his opponent would be the crowd favorite at an event alternately called “La Furia de Mexico,” Duddy was quick but charming in his answer.

“No maybe about it,” he said. “They better be for Chavez.”

Then he smiled and promised there was a chance he’d convert the crowd and have them “singing ‘Juan’ Duddy” by the end of the night.

SALVADOR SANCHEZ REMEMBERED
Leading Saturday’s “Latin Fury 15” telecast will be Salvador Sanchez II, the nephew of Salvador Sanchez, a Mexican fighting legend who made nine professional appearances in Texas, including four in San Antonio. The younger Sanchez is eager to garner a fraction of the acclaim his uncle won in a career defined by 10 world title fights.

“To be here, where my uncle defended his title, is an honor,” said Sanchez, Wednesday afternoon.

RAUL MARTINEZ WANTS TO BE YOUR CHAMPION
Local interest will also focus itself on Saturday’s second televised card when Raul Martinez and Gabriel Elizondo, two friends who grew up together in San Antonio’s amateur program, put their camaraderie aside and prove there are no friends in the prizefighting ring.

“It’s a great privilege, a great honor, to be fighting on this card,” said Martinez from Wednesday’s podium. “I want to show San Antonio they’ve got a future world champion here.”

Martinez also acknowledged the city’s last world champion, Jesse James Leija, whose Championfit Gym hosted an open workout Tuesday.

ALAMODOME CONFIGURED FOR 15,000
Saturday night, Alamodome will have roughly half its seats curtained-off. An upcoming convention will take the south side of the building, with the north side reserved for boxing. This is great news for local fans. A quick peek at the ringside area Wednesday revealed that upper-deck seats are also covered in curtains, meaning that every seat Saturday will be a good one.

Top Rank officials confirmed ticket sales have been pleasantly brisk, but plenty of seats still remain available.

FRIDAY WEIGH-IN ON THE RIVER
The weigh-in for “Latin Fury 15” will happen along the River Walk at 1:30 P.M. on Friday afternoon at the Arneson River Theatre, just north of La Villita. It is open to the public.

Anyone willing to brave June’s humidity will be rewarded with perhaps the most picturesque setting in which any boxing weigh-in has yet been conducted.

SAN ANTONIO – Tuesday afternoon, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and his new trainer Freddie Roach conducted an open workout for local media that was much more than advertised. Far from the scripted, lather-me-up-for-the-press exercises these events usually comprise, Chavez and Roach worked long and hard. And it looked like one of them needed it.

Chavez (40-0-1, 30 KOs) arrived later than initially planned at Jesse James Leija’s Championfit Gym – part of “Latin Fury 15” fight week festivities – though not for the reasons some might expect. Originally scheduled to walk through the paces before Saturday’s co-main event star Marco Antonio Barrera, Chavez instead had his costar go first so that Chavez could have more time for stretching, shadow boxing and lots of pad work.

Before working on his new charge’s balance, timing and occasionally questionable defense, Freddie Roach answered questions with typical honesty.

“More time would have been better,” Roach said of his short training camp with Chavez. “He’s not lazy. He’s trying. But he doesn’t have all the moves yet.”

Asked to list Chavez’s strengths, Roach treated his guy’s height and reach.

“He has a great jab, but he doesn’t use it as much as I want him to,” Roach said. “He’s not 100 percent there right now.”

If Roach thought he was getting a lazy underachiever in Chavez – a label that has haunted the young Mexican with the country’s most famous name – he was pleased to learn that was not the case.

“He’s actually a very nice kid,” Roach said. “I was really surprised.”

When asked what most concerns him about Ireland’s John Duddy (29-1, 18 KOs), Chavez’s Saturday opponent, Roach was candid.

“Duddy has a pretty good right hand,” he said. “My guy tends to get hit with those.”

Probably a few left hands, too. Once Alex Ariza, Roach’s strength and conditioning coach, was done stretching Chavez and watching him shadow box, Roach put on the hand pads and began a session with Chavez that could best be called instructive. Trainer and fighter looked well-rehearsed and tightly in-sync while doing 1-2s but quickly stumbled on dead patches when their focus turned to hooks and defense.

As Roach promised, Chavez looked particularly susceptible to right crosses, as his left hand strayed low much of the time. More troublesome still were the balance issues Chavez showed while trying to come off the ropes by pivoting leftward on his lead foot. A rudimentary move, the pivot’s requisite weight shift befuddled Chavez enough for Roach to spend the better part of a round on it, belying the merits of Chavez’s pristine record and making ringsiders wonder what will happen if Duddy forces Chavez to the ropes Saturday.

That match will be the main event of a nine-fight card promoter Top Rank will stage at Alamodome, downtown.

MARCO ANTONIO BARRERA BACK IN FIGHTING TRIM
Also present Tuesday afternoon were Mexican three-division world champion Marco Antonio Barrera (65-7, 43 KOs) and undefeated Phoenix hopeful Jose Benavidez (6-0, 6 KOs). Barrera will fight little-known Brazilian lightweight Adailton De Jesus (26-4, 21 KOs) in Saturday’s co-main event, while Benavidez will face Rhode Island’s Josh Beeman (4-6-2, 2 KOs) in the card’s opening bout.

After skipping rope, doing some light shadow boxing and saluting gathered fans, Barrera took a shower, changed and greeted the media, looking trimmer than he had during a press conference last month.

Asked how high his weight had climbed after his loss to Amir Khan 15 months ago, Barrera was truthful if not proud.

“One forty-seven,” Barrera said. “I let it go a little. It was the highest it has ever been. But I have lost the weight slowly, little by little. I feel good.”

At some point a word for the art of inducing black magic, “mojo,” became a synonym for momentum. Today there’s even a popular Hollywood website that tracks movies’ box-office momentum and calls it mojo. Boxing has its own such mojo.

It’s a variation on the risk-reward ratio that keeps managers awake at night. A fighter with mojo makes lots of money relative to the risk his competition poses. If you were to take a fighter’s purse, then, and divide it by his opponent’s assumed risk rating, what you would have left is a fighter’s mojo.

Well, this weekend somebody’s mojo is going to go in San Antonio. That’s where Mexican Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. battles Ireland’s John Duddy for something called the “WBC Silver Middleweight Title” in the 15th installment of promoter Top Rank’s “Latin Fury” pay-per-view series. Marco Antonio Barrera will also be there, accompanied by local prospect Raul Martinez, Mexican namesake curiosity Salvador Sanchez, and Phoenix superstar-in-the-making Jose Benavidez.

Top Rank is as much a participant in this show as any fighter because the risk-reward ratio of its main event has an uncharacteristically asymmetrical look to it. Neither Chavez nor Duddy will see his mojo improve greatly with a victory, and either Chavez or Duddy will see his mojo vanish with a loss.

This event will happen in a stadium, Alamodome, and feature two Top Rank fighters. It will be the third time Top Rank has employed this formula in 2010. Earlier this month, it put Yuri Foreman and Miguel Cotto in Yankee Stadium. Earlier this year, it put Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey in Cowboys Stadium. Top Rank takes some deserved criticism for using only its own fighters in major events, but it also deserves credit for being an anomaly: It’s the only promoter better at selling tickets than pitching television executives.

Both of Saturday’s Top Rank fighters have fan bases disproportionate to their achievements. Duddy has built a large following among Irishmen, both in the Old Country and the new, with his handsomeness, charisma and an action fighting style that in any other context could be called Mexican. He’s also benefitted from a paucity of prizefighters in shamrocks; the turn of this century gave Irish eyes fewer men to smile on than the turn of the 20th.

Chavez, meanwhile, built his following the real-old-fashioned way: He inherited it. Trafficking in his father’s name, Chavez has become the biggest draw in the “Latin Fury” franchise. How much genuine affection Mexicans feel for Junior is debatable. Mexicans’ brand loyalty, though, is not; they cheer the name of the one man who gave them anything to cheer about during Mexico’s abysmal stretch from 1988 to 1996. In return for such loyalty, Chavez often treats them to a rousing impersonation of someone uninterested in fighting.

Chavez made his professional debut almost seven years ago as a super featherweight. Without once challenging for a world title, he has climbed five weight classes. That distinction is remarkable when you consider the WBC’s profligacy with championship belts, the WBC’s Mexico City headquarters, and what the Chavez name means to Mexican athletics.

Most of Chavez’s wins have been “Big” – in the collegiate sense of the word. Junior recently finished up a five-year reign of terror on the Big 10 and Big 12 conferences. After back-to-back-to-back bludgeonings of Hoosiers, Chavez vanquished a total of 11 representatives from Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota and Michigan. Not since Pancho Villa’s raid in 1916 has a Mexican made so many Midwesterners so nervous.

And perhaps not ever has a Mexican prizefighter been so protected. Possibly, Top Rank is fed up with Chavez and done protecting him. His latest caper was a failed drug test in November, when he apparently needed diuretics to make 160 pounds.

Chavez’s recent hiring of perennial Trainer of the Year Freddie Roach only makes things more curious. Right now, Chavez could don a Philthy Rich Records t-shirt and boast, “Forty-two have tried, and forty-two have failed.” Isn’t a prospect supposed to lose before a rehabilitation tour with his new trainer?

All signs would point to a victory for John Duddy, were it not for Duddy’s performance against Mexican Michael Medina in Cowboys Stadium three months ago. Duddy looked rather hittable in that affair and won a close split decision. But both fighters wore green gloves, prompting one ringside handicapper to quip, “When a Mexican wears green gloves into a fight with an Irishman, bet the Irishman.”

Saturday in San Antonio, on the other hands, both fighters will wear the equivalent of red, white and green gloves. Or will they?

There’s a curious affinity between the Mexicans and Irish – two peoples that love battle with only a secondary interest in victory. A bottle of tequila, a bottle of whisky and a good row; really, you’d be hard pressed to find a frown in that crowd of Mexicans and Irish, whatever the result.

And that’s before you consider Los San Patricios, a battalion of Irish artillerymen conscripted to fight as U.S soldiers in the Mexican American War of 1846. Told to kill fellow Catholics, Los San Patricios deserted the American army, fought on the side of the Mexicans, and were hanged for treason by the man who would become America’s 12th president.

In South Texas, the way men acquit themselves in battles with Mexicans still means plenty. Which is why Alamodome is a proper venue for this match. It is also the place Chavez’s father fought before the largest indoor crowd a domestic prizefight has yet recorded, in 1993. That record will not be in jeopardy this week.

Wither Saturday’s fight? Duddy will fight as he always does, reducing the match to a question of courage, if he’s able. Chavez will fight something like a child of privilege – a “fresa” in Mexican parlance – who resents usurpers. And odd as that combination might sound, Chavez-Duddy will be a hell of a fight.

Bart Barry can be reached at [email protected]

“Now is my time. I have to show and prove.” – Allan Green, June 8, 2010

“The non-resistible, non-competible – no, no, I’m not sayin’ I’m the best! . . . I’m just sayin’ I’m f–kin’ incredible.” – Big Daddy Kane, “Show & Prove,” 1994

There’s something witty and even charming about Allan “Sweetness” Green. Whether it’s his Sooner upbringing, his zigzagging career path or his willingness to say unpopular things, Green is the sort of self-scripted character American athletics needs more of. He’s also an American athlete who has come, somewhat suddenly, to a dream opportunity.

We’ll see what he does with it.

Saturday, in the third and final fight of Group Stage Two of Showtime’s “Super Six” tournament, Oklahoma’s Allan Green will battle California’s Andre “S.O.G.” Ward in Oakland. Oracle Arena, a 20-minute drive from Ward’s home, will play host to a match for both the WBA super middleweight belt and an almost certain advancement to the semifinal round for Ward.

For Green, things will be more complicated. Green is, after all, a replacement. After a violent knockout loss to Arthur Abraham, Jermain Taylor withdrew. Green inherited Taylor’s spot in the tourney and Taylor’s accumulated points – zero.

“No offense against Jermain,” Green said last Tuesday about an April 2009 Showtime telecast. “But we fought on the same show, and I won my fight, and he lost his fight. I got pushed back to ‘ShoBox,’ and he got put into the tournament.”

But Green’s here now, and he bears something of a grudge. So does Andre Ward – whose nickname is an abbreviated “Son of God.” Neither man feels properly respected in his profession.

Ward is America’s last Olympic Gold Medalist boxer, a title he’s held for six years and might well hold for six more. He has been handled judiciously, building a strong hometown following in Oakland without challenging for a world title until his last match. He is a humble and likable man. Accusations of coddled treatment, though, have followed him, with many observers mistakenly using “coddled” as a synonym for “soft.” It isn’t. And it sure wasn’t on Nov. 21.

That day, Ward manhandled Mikkel Kessler, whom most considered the tournament favorite. Ward took the “Viking Warrior,” roughed him up, and reduced him to blaming dirty tactics and bad refereeing for his second career loss. It was a more conclusive performance than anyone expected.

But then a recurrent knee injury led Ward to postpone his match with Green, and Green was unhesitant in speculating about the seriousness of Ward’s next opponent, if not his injury. Green said, had that opponent still been Jermain Taylor, there would be no delay. Ward took the comments personally – as they were intended. Asked Tuesday if the comments bothered him, Ward responded with typical seriousness and grace.

“Bother me? No,” Ward said. “Use them? Yes.”

There’s no telling how much Green intended to rile Ward. Frankly, there’s no telling lots of things about Green. If you’re just now tuning in to the Allan Green show, you’ll quickly learn: Green is a little off his rocker.

But he has a sense of timing and self-deprecation, and a powerful punch, so you want to watch. Things like that fantastic stare-down picture with Carlos De Leon Jr. last April, one in which Green looked like a lunatic frightened by De Leon’s fist, the day before he went through De Leon in about five minutes. And then there was that memorable speech Green gave on Nov. 4, 2005.

That day Green fought on “ShoBox” against New York City’s Jaidon Codrington, one half of a posse calling itself the “Chin Checkers.” Codrington, in keeping with his blossoming professional identity, gave Green little respect in pre-fight comments. Green caught him with a left hook in the opening 10 seconds and then beat him to stiffened unconsciousness in the eight that followed. Mayhem ensued, as doctors and officials tried to get through Codrington’s people to the unconscious fighter.

And while this happened a few feet away, Green did his post-fight interview. Having just scored Ring magazine’s 2005 Knockout of the Year, Green – in lieu of showing concern for Codrington – began a radio-style advertisement for a local car dealership.

It was a bizarre gesture that made Green look oblivious. But he wasn’t oblivious. More like ironical. Green’s post-fight interview, in retrospect, was the work of a person who stood beside himself and noted life’s absurdity.

Still, it wasn’t until Green used “show and prove” last week that any sort of a line could be drawn to another unlikely American ironist: Big Daddy Kane, a Brooklyn rapper, who despite recording hits in the late 1980s and launching a number of other stars’ careers, never quite achieved the acclaim he deserved. He was another man with a touch of self-deprecation, and a mock-epic style.

“I won’t say I’m the baddest or portray that role,” Kane wrote in 1990. “But I’m up to Top 2, and my father’s gettin’ old!”

You can almost hear Green saying something like that.

Something Green actually did say in the last episode of Showtime’s “Fight Camp 360,” last week caused the conference-call equivalent of what Kane derisively labeled “half-steppin’.” It was Green’s use of the word “jive” to describe Ward’s style. A few people wanted to know what Green meant, but no one wanted to talk about race.

Let’s deal in good faith, folks. Allan Green was saying that, as a black-American prizefighter, he will not be confounded by Andre Ward’s black-American-prizefighting style, the way that Green believes Kessler was. Green was saying that, where Ward’s reflexes, athleticism and slipperiness disarmed Kessler, they will have no effect on him because he comes from the same tradition as Ward. Green considers himself a native “jive” speaker. Big Daddy Kane would approve.

So now, Mr. Green, it’s time to show and prove.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

CORPUS CHRISTI, TEX. – All’s clear on the bay. While most boxing writers dined together and canvassed Yankee Stadium in the Bronx this weekend, I was in the heavy, salty air of South Texas. In this part of the Gulf of Mexico, it’s good to report, there’s no oil on the beaches – thank the currents – or flotillas to board, though there is an aircraft carrier.

That would be the USS Lexington, a vessel that holds the American record for “catches” – planes landed on her flight deck. Commissioned in 1943, the Lexington existed before the State of Israel did, before there were Israeli blockades or Israeli world champions. It’s not the stretch you might think; sitting on a humid beach and contemplating sea craft wasn’t a bad way at all to prepare for Yuri Foreman’s first title defense.

Saturday, Foreman, a Belarusian-born Israeli who lives and trains in New York City, met Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto in the first fight of the new Bronx edifice called Yankee Stadium, to contest the WBA light middleweight title. Cotto won at 0:42 of round 9 when Foreman, whose knee gave out twice in round 7, collected a shot to the liver, and referee Arthur Mercante Jr. waved an end to the match.

It was an odd ending that merits an oddly fashioned treatment.

Yuri Foreman came in the ring wearing a brace on his right knee. He didn’t appear to favor the right knee, though; his somewhat brittle circles seemed no harder on that side than the other. But a minute or so into round 7, his right foot hit a wet spot and slipped from beneath him. He rose and limped about. Were it not for the telltale brace, you’d have thought he’d sprained his ankle.

His knee gave out a second time, and Foreman dropped to the canvas again. It was an appropriate time to stop the fight – however badly New York officials wanted a grand show for boxing’s Yankee Stadium debut. But the referee really, really wanted the fight to go on. Mercante Jr. implored Foreman to “suck it up!” and “walk it off!” like a dad trying to make a man of his son. Foreman obliged because he’s a fighter.

The next round saw Foreman, whose mobility was his only asset against the better, stronger Cotto, rendered immobile. He limped about, straight legged, and hit Cotto hard as he was able – which wasn’t that hard even when he could still bear weight on his power leg. Joe Grier, Foreman’s trainer, threw a white towel in the ring after crying “stop the fight!” from his corner, ascended the ring steps, and said his charge was through. Mercante Jr. said he wasn’t.

Mercante Jr. asked Foreman if he wished to continue. Foreman said he did. Mercante Jr. cleared the ring of trainers, officials and hangers-on, and insisted the fight continue.

Foreman fought on, nobly, for a few more minutes. Then Miguel Cotto found him with a left hook to the liver, the button, and the fight ended. What was gained by subjecting Foreman to those additional two or so minutes of abuse is anyone’s guess. He proved his mettle and won some transient new fans, perhaps, but most of those fans were already Foreman’s – after hearing his intriguing life story and seeing him defend his title in baseball’s most-celebrated venue.

HBO analyst Max Kellerman, himself a New Yorker with what can fairly be called a rooting interest in the event’s success, was ecstatic with Mercante Jr.’s decision. HBO’s ringside scorekeeper Harold Lederman, also a New Yorker, explained that Mercante Jr.’s ignoring of the thrown towel was kosher; referees never know who throws a towel in the ring.

Fair enough. But what about a chief second standing on the apron? When did a trainer climbing in the ring and calling an end to the match become a starter’s gun for negotiations with the referee?

But Foreman said he wanted to continue! Well of course he did.

This is not a good precedent. We’ve spent years decrying cornermen who are too brave on their fighters’ behalves. We’ve said a fighter’s judgment is impaired by courage, and blows to the head, and his trainer must be willing to stop a fight he feels his charge cannot win. Then a trainer does exactly that, a referee disregards him completely, and we lionize the referee? Call me unconvinced.

And keep calling me that when it comes to the revitalized Miguel Cotto. This match’s calculus went like so: Cotto is a much better fighter than Foreman, but Cotto’s faded, and Foreman doesn’t hit hard for a man of 154 pounds, and Cotto has a new trainer and a new look. It was typically astute matchmaking by promoter Top Rank. It led to a fight that was much better than expected. Far as Cotto’s concerned, though, it proved little more than this: When a light-hitting and taller fighter retreats, Cotto is very good at tracking him down. Oh, and let’s not pretend Cotto learned to throw that left hook in this last training camp.

A lot of very knowledgeable boxing people wanted this show to work. Two large New York City ethnicities – Jewish and Puerto Rican – were represented in its main event. Attendance was announced at 20,272, a fairly good showing.

But in South Texas, we’re a bit shy of persuaded. About 400 miles north of here in Cowboys Stadium, 50,994 Texans showed up to watch a fight with no ethnic interest whatever – Filipino versus Ghanaian – in March.

Still, Top Rank’s stadium tour of the United States remains a wonderful idea that should be applauded. In fact, I think I’ll scout Padre Island for a baseball field before I head back to the Alamodome City.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

It’s easy to find a professional athlete who will talk to you about his strengths. It’s only slightly harder to find one who will tell you about his peers’ weaknesses. A professional athlete who will speak to you in good faith about his own weaknesses, though, is a rare thing.

Those were my thoughts Thursday afternoon as I walked up the Alamodome ramp to Parking Lot A. They were thoughts that came courtesy of an interview with Mexican Marco Antonio Barrera. Still under the spell of Barrera’s courteousness, friendliness and apparent openness, I was about an hour from noticing something I’d missed with Barrera.

He hadn’t told me half as much as I’d imagined.

Barrera was at Alamodome to help Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. promote Top Rank’s “Latin Fury 15,” which happens June 26 in San Antonio. Until last week, “La Furia de México” had a different Mexican in the co-main event. Jorge Arce was scheduled to fight Puerto Rican Eric Morel but sustained a fight-canceling gash in sparring. That meant Barrera’s match with Brazilian lightweight Adailton De Jesus acquired a new importance and mandated his presence at a rescheduled press conference, Thursday.

Barrera, dressed in a striped charcoal suit with a raspberry-sherbet tie, arrived late and strode in the arena with his wife. He stood on stage beside Chavez and posed for pictures, looking darker and duller than usual. He spoke in the hastily acquired English he’s been using since Golden Boy Promotions decided he had crossover potential five years ago, and he told us his goal was to win a fourth world title. Then he switched to Spanish and became Barrera once more.

His upcoming match with De Jesus will add nothing to his legacy, a legacy that includes a historic trilogy with fellow Mexican Erik Morales, a legacy that will win him a first-ballot vote to the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He understands his role in this promotion; he lends his name, a famous one in Mexico, to the name of Chavez’s dad, a more-famous one in Mexico.

Certain people radiate with intellectual horsepower. You find them occasionally on college campuses, rarely in corporations, and almost never in professional athletics. It is not the athlete’s place to supply such radiance, and to look for it is often a sign of envy: What kind of society values this guy a thousand times more than me?

Barrera is an exception. As you interview him in Spanish, a language he’s mastered, you feel him examining you right back. There’s no moral intent, per se; he doesn’t seem to care if you’re honest or will treat him honestly. Rather, he examines you as a rival, as though he wants you to challenge him with a question. He’s confident you can’t, of course, confident to a point that is often taken for arrogance. He shows no defensiveness.

Now that he’s done protecting the Golden Boy Promotions brand as a “partner,” he is accessible. Now that he’s temporarily under Top Rank’s banner, he is even more accessible.

Top Rank lets you put hands on its people. It understands the importance of access better than its rivals. It allows public arguments within, or even against, the media, because it understands what a younger generation of promoters has yet to learn: So long as people talk about you and your event, whatever they say, they promote your event.

Thursday, I didn’t want the interference of a translator, and I sure as hell didn’t want Barrera’s English-speaking imposter. I wanted the most eloquent prizefighter I’ve met, alone, and in Spanish. I approached the table where Barrera and his wife waited for print media to finish interviewing Chavez, shook Barrera’s hand and told him that whatever he opined of my questions, he should understand they were good-faith inquiries from someone who admired him.

“Of course,” he said, and he smiled.

I asked him why, demons, he returned. What did he hope to gain by fighting on?

“Something to prove, there is not,” he said. That sentence was about as different in Spanish as it looks in English. He didn’t say there was nothing to prove, in the double-negative way of pedestrian, if still proper, Spanish. He used an alternative emphasis.

“The open television in Mexico permits more people to see me now,” Barrera said. “People who did not, before, have the opportunity to see Barrera. There are Mexicans who know solely the Barrera from that last time.”

In 2006, just before its presidential election, Mexico passed the “Ley Federal de Radio y Televisión.” This law effectively deregulated Mexican television, in the name of bringing digital cable to the people, and eventually returned boxing to free channels. Like most deregulation ploys, though, it disproportionately enriched a very small number of people. A Mexican Supreme Court ruling in 2007 delayed its implementation. And there would be further delay in converting average Mexican cable viewers’ hardware. Barrera’s contention, then, is that very few of his countrymen were able to see him for most of his career.

Since 2007, Barrera has fought thrice. A 2008 fight happened in China. An early 2009 fight was the Mexican equivalent of an Off-Off-Broadway show, in Zapopan, Jalisco. And then there was that U.K. fight 14 months ago.

“That was a bad experience,” Barrera said, of his match with English sensation Amir Khan. It saw Barrera’s upper forehead sliced opened and bleeding freely in the first round. U.K. officials, though, allowed the fight to continue until the fifth round, at which time the result went from a no-decision to a technical-decision in Khan’s favor.

“It is an experience that I am going to erase,” Barrera said. “If a fourth championship comes along the way, good. But I return to erase that fight.”

At this point in our interview, someone handed Barrera a cell-phone with a picture of the cut. It was a scripted move, and as a script is beneath Barrera, I moved away from it:

As someone who admires you for your intellect as well as your boxing, I am nervous, if not sad, about your return, I said. Tell me how I am mistaken.

“To the contrary, friend, you are not mistaken,” Barrera said. “Boxing is filled with bad experiences. Many bad experiences.”

And when you bade farewell to “this beautiful sport” at Mandalay Bay in October of 2007?

“That was all about my promoter,” Barrera said, and he laughed. “I was not happy with my promoter, and I did that to escape them.”

The day after Barrera easily survived 12 rounds with Manny Pacquiao, never imperiling himself or Pacquiao, en route to a unanimous-decision loss, I wrote of his relationship with Golden Boy Promotions: “Barrera had become an overqualified employee in De la Hoya’s company, a guy who was too smart for the corporation, quietly resenting each new workday and the boss who caused it.”

“Exactly,” Barrera said, when I paraphrased this for him.

A better reporter would have plumbed the depths of Barrera’s resentment for his former promoter, a resentment he didn’t seem at all interested in hiding. Instead, I asked Barrera about a curious relationship he’d developed with a man whose life ended terribly last month.

On that night of your goodbye to boxing, I reminded him, you brought Venezuelan Edwin Valero on stage with you. You complimented him at length and called him a friend more than a sparring partner.

“We invited him to the city,” Barrera remembered of that training camp. “It was a friendship. A very good friendship. That night, I said he would beat Pacquiao. That was true. Unfortunately, they were never able to have that fight.”

And when he heard that Valero had murdered his wife, on April 19, before apparently committing suicide in a Venezuelan jail cell?

“I regretted it, I felt very badly,” Barrera said. “We waited to hear confirmation of the news. I regret it even now. I flee that date. But none of it surprised me. (Valero) had many psychological problems.”

I thanked Barrera and his wife, both, for being the people they have been, and for handling their celebrity with such grace.

On my way out, I stopped and spoke to Carlos Hernandez – who now resides in San Antonio – because on my way in, Jesse James Leija had told me Hernandez and Edwin Valero had trained together and been friends in Los Angeles. Few prizefighters are charismatic or likable as Hernandez. When I asked him if he were surprised by the news of Valero’s end last month, Hernandez shook his head.

“I wasn’t surprised,” Hernandez said. “But we didn’t talk about family much in the gym. We talked about other things.”

Such as?

“Venezuelan politics,” Hernandez said, and we both smiled at the oddity of such a conversation in the gym. “He was really into it.”

“Too into it,” Hernandez’s wife added.

Bart Barry can be reached at [email protected]

SAN ANTONIO – The son of legendary Mexican prizefighter Julio Cesar Chavez was at the Alamodome Thursday morning. He shared the stage with Mexican prizefighting legend Marco Antonio Barrera. He posed for pictures with famous American prizefighters Jesse James Leija and Carlos Hernandez. His name was the most recognizable, though. Even if his resume was the shortest.

Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. can take a big step toward finally justifying his celebrity and paychecks next month when he fights Ireland’s John Duddy in the main event of Top Rank’s “Latin Fury 15.” Chavez, who dressed in an open-collared shirt and fashionable jeans that appeared bloodstained, at Thursday’s press conference, said the right things, looked trimmer than usual, and expressed a long-overdue desire to become a great fighter.

“We are going to prove that I am ready to prove that I am ready to fight for a world title,” Chavez Jr. said from the podium.

June 26 will mark Chavez Jr.’s second match in Alamodome, his first as a headliner. And the venue has been good to La Familia Chavez.

“I am happy to be coming back to San Antonio,” Chavez Jr. said. “This is where my father set the attendance record (against Pernell Whitaker). This city has been good to us.”

Top Rank president Todd DuBoef, too, had good things to say about his company’s return to the Alamo City.

“In this show, we felt, nothing better than the Alamodome,” DuBoef said Thursday. “San Antonio is an incredible hotbed for boxing.”

ENTER FREDDIE ROACH
Chavez Jr. and his people seem to realize that John Duddy is by far the best opponent Chavez has faced in his 41-fight career of beating setup men from the Midwest. To prepare for Duddy, then, Chavez Jr. acquired the services of esteemed trainer Freddie Roach and moved his training camp to Los Angeles.

“They’ve been in L.A. the past couple of days,” DuBoef said Thursday.

Asked for an early opinion of his new trainer, Chavez Jr. didn’t wait for a translation, and even switched from Spanish to English.

“Best trainer in the world,” Chavez Jr. said of Roach.

Asked how familiar he was with John Duddy’s style, though, Chavez Jr. was a bit less emphatic.

“I know he is a fighter with a punch,” Chavez Jr. said. “He is strong. He has had many fights at middleweight.”

Next month’s fight will happen at junior middleweight, though, the lowest weight at which Duddy has ever fought. That will be six pounds lighter than Duddy was the night he decisioned Yory Boy Campas at Madison Square Garden in 2006. Chavez Jr. has yet to prove himself anywhere near Campas’ caliber. What, then, does Chavez Jr. believe he’ll have on June 26 that Campas did not?

“Campas didn’t have his youth in that fight,” Chavez Jr. said. “And I am going to be in my best form.”

Finally, Chavez Jr. listed his current weight as 175 pounds. Asked if that were a normal weight for him, one month from a fight, Chavez Jr. and his manager Fernando Beltran were both adamant.

“Better!” said Chavez Jr.

“Much better!” said Beltran.

TOP RANK’S SILENCE STILL GOLDEN
Nothing newsworthy was said Thursday of Top Rank’s negotiations with Golden Boy Promotions for a November fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr.

“Nothing,” said Todd DuBoef, when asked what might be new.

And those rumors that DuBoef is in constant communication with Richard Schaefer to ensure the fight gets made?

“I haven’t had a conversation with him since December,” DuBoef said.

LOS ANGELES – In the hot blood that came immediately after his loss, blood that had streamed in his left eye and made a red mask of his face yet again, Israel Vazquez expressed a desire to fight Rafael Marquez a fifth time, to break their tie. Thirty minutes later, when everyone’s blood had cooled, Vazquez’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya shared a wiser sentiment.

“It’s 2-2,” De La Hoya said, “and that’s the way that it should be.”

Saturday in Staples Center, Vazquez and Marquez made an unusual fourth fight that ended at 1:33 of round 3 when referee Raul Caiz Jr. astutely read Vazquez’s body language and precluded any further damage from being done to one Mexico City native by the other. Before Vazquez could drop to the canvas a second time, Caiz stepped in front of Marquez and waived the end. Marquez had evened the series. There was no reason to fight any more.

Finally, there was little reason for Vazquez and Marquez to have made their legendary trilogy into a disappointing tetralogy. If any energy coursed through Staples Center during the Friday weigh-in and Saturday undercard, it was an obligated sort. Those of us present showed dutifulness more than excitement. The larger venue and paychecks, too, were more honorary than celebratory:

We’d like to give you guys an apt send-off and pension, but to do it, unfortunately we’re going to need you to fight once more.

Vazquez and Marquez obliged – or should it now be Marquez before Vazquez? – and made an uneven end to their fantastically even beginning and middle. But if the fourth fight had to happen, its conclusion was unexpectedly merciful. For that we should be grateful.

Throughout, there was an appropriate theme of unity. Both men were Mexicans, world champions and gentlemen. This theme happened best during ring walks, when for the first time in memory, two fighters shared the same band, a Mexican mariachi group that paid homage to “La Patria.” The Staples Center crowd of 9,236 – a couple thousand more than attended Vazquez-Marquez III in nearby Carson, Calif. – was predominantly Mexican, too, if smaller than hoped.

If there was a moment that reminded you of the last time Vazquez and Marquez fought, it came in the opening seconds. The two men touched jabs more than gloves, and then Vazquez tossed a wild right hand Marquez’s way. It said, “We both know how you were at the end of our third fight, why don’t we pick things up right there?”

That was Vazquez’s most confident moment of the night and perhaps his last. Asked afterwards when he knew his opponent was in trouble, Rafael Marquez said he felt it on the end of his jab in round 1. As he once more sunk knuckles in Vazquez’s flesh, that is, Marquez noted something less resolved, a bit softer, somewhat less steeled. Fighters do sense that sort of thing; it’s a requisite tool in the box when your craft is hurting other men.

Ringsiders would not notice the slice Marquez put beneath Vazquez’s left eyebrow till it became gruesome in round 2. But it was there. Even from 30 feet away, a redness could be seen over Vazquez’s damaged eye in the first minute. And looking at pictures from early in Saturday’s fight, you now see darker blemishes in the tissue than the rosy hue that has dusted Vazquez’s eyebrows at his public appearances since 2008. Were it anyone else, you’d wonder if some handler had taught the man how to apply makeup en route to press conferences and award ceremonies, to ward away errant inquiries from careful journalists.

Marquez’s masterful right hand, among the finest seen in a generation, instantly knew better. It quickly took the flesh over Vazquez’s eye from nick to gash to wound.

“You could see the bone,” explained Vazquez’s veteran cut man Miguel Diaz afterwards. “You cannot stop these things with the medicine that we have.”

Then you stop the fight! Well, yes. Or maybe no.

Better that you do what Vazquez’s corner did. You tell your charge he gets one more round. You give him a last chance to measure himself, and you hope nothing gets permanently altered within him but his desire to fight on. And so, in the third round of his fourth fight with Rafael Marquez, Israel Vazquez relented.

He went down differently than he’d gone down in the fourth round of their third fight. He didn’t get knocked to the canvas by a concussive blow. He blindly wandered into a Marquez right cross, instead, and kneeled hopelessly. It was a distress signal from one of prizefighting’s noblest men. All read it. And had Caiz not closed things a few seconds later, Vazquez’s corner would have.

Had the fight been stopped by a ringside physician after round 2, the prospect of Vazquez-Marquez V would haunt both men, and their managers, and their fans. Were Vazquez able to attribute his loss to an accident of some kind, chances are good some of us would have to make another trek to California and see things to their bitter end. Who, after all, would deserve another chance if not Israel Vazquez?

No, it ended better this way. Vazquez was beaten, his incredible will subdued. Pushed for a retirement announcement at the post-fight press conference, he used the Spanish verb “meditar” – to meditate. He and his family will meditate on his future, think about it thoroughly, and see what it holds for them.

Those of us who came to this city to honor Vazquez and Marquez, to stiffen the ranks on press row or stand and cheer the men’s sacrifices as they walked to the ring, could never return for a fifth fight. All the reasons that brought us to this one would bar us from another.

Bart Barry can be reached at [email protected]

LOS ANGELES – Despite bleeding profusely from both eyes before 10 minutes of combat were up, Israel Vazquez never retreated in his fourth match with Rafael Marquez. He made no backwards laps round the ring, a tactic that, in boxing parlance, is called “getting on your bicycle.”

Unfortunately, a number of local aficionados who might otherwise have been at Staples Center to honor Vazquez and Marquez in “Once and Four All” were unable to make it – mostly because so many men were on their bicycles outside.

Saturday’s crowd arrived late and, with an announced attendance of 9,236, was perhaps a few thousand lighter than hoped and many thousands fewer than deserved. Blame the Amgen Tour of California bicycle race time trials, which began just outside Staples Center, at L.A. Live, round 1:00 p.m., causing street closures and barricades all round the arena ticket office and main entrance till about 5:00 p.m.

“Parking was a nightmare” was the theme on press row. This caused one prominent scribe to ask, “How many Mexicans got within a mile of the stadium, saw the road closures, and went home to watch on television?”

A fair question. Both main-event fighters hail from Mexico City. Mexican fight crowds are known throughout boxing as “walk-up crowds” – those that buy tickets at the box office the day of a fight. That raised an interesting question: What happens to a walk-up crowd, if it can’t?

The upper deck was closed Saturday, and good seats were available for $25. But to collect a ticket from will call at 2:50 p.m., 10 minutes before doors were originally scheduled to open, required a security escort and a long stroll round the outside of the arena. Ticket buyers, too, were required to wait till their escort returned – so fearful were the Amgen organizers that fight fans might abscond with free food from one of their otherwise empty tents.

When the first bell rang at 4 p.m., fewer than 500 people were in the arena. Standard attendance for Las Vegas, but disappointing for Southern California.

One fight fan who strolled through the front door, ticket in hand, was trainer Freddie Roach, who performed as Israel Vazquez’s chief second in the first match of the Vazquez-Marquez tetralogy, in 2007.

Asked if he’d had to buy his ticket, Roach gave a big smile.

“No,” he said. “They gave it to me.”

Pressed for an insider’s view of what might happen, Roach was quick to concede he was no insider at Vazquez-Marquez IV.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know anything you don’t.”

Shortly before Vazquez-Marquez II, when he was no longer training Vazquez, Roach said that he wished Vazquez would retire. He felt his former charge was taking too much punishment and no longer the fighter he’d previously been. Vazquez would prove his old trainer wrong a few months later.

Saturday, fans learned that Roach was not wrong – just early.

LOS ANGELES – A place called the Star Plaza outside Staples Center on a Friday afternoon was a curious spot to stage a weigh-in between two of the era’s least-frilly, least-flashy and least-assuming prizefighters, but there it was. Under a hot sun and before a black backdrop, the “Once and Four All” fighters took the scale and completed a collective journey from underappreciated craftsmen to stars.

Mexicans Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez each made the featherweight limit for their Saturday fight, the fourth in their rivalry, with a half pound to spare. Vazquez took the scale first, looking fitter than he’d appeared in his previous fight, and marked it at 125.5 pounds. Marquez followed immediately behind and made an identical 125.5.

Then the men turned and faced one another. Their expressions were serious and no words were exchanged. But that was expected. No trash-talking, no faux rage, no unseemly shtick. On the eve of what could well turn out to be the finest boxing tetralogy in 50 years, the combatants stuck to a formula they’d employed in their previous three encounters.

Honorable to a fault, Vazquez and Marquez might have arrived at Staples Center earlier if they’d joined hands and lunged at the promotion of another tired blood feud, like so many lesser combatants have in recent years, but that has not been their way. And because they did things the right way, a crowd gathered to celebrate them.

Round the press area in Star Plaza, a common sentiment was expressed by scribes. Vazquez-Marquez IV might be good as its predecessors, or it might not, but either way, attendance was mandatory to honor the sacrifices the men had made and would make at least once more.

Those sacrifices have been, and will remain, brutal. The terrible prospect of facing the same man a fourth time is one few prizefighters have confronted. The last American to do it, San Antonio’s Jesse James Leija, addressed the hardest part of the feat, earlier this week.

“You know him so well,” Leija said of his four-fight series with Ghanaian Azumah Nelson. “You know he’s not going to give up. Knowing they’re not going to give up, I’d say, is the hardest part.”

Adjustments can be tried in training camp, and the rumor of a new strategy can be dangled before fans and media, but according to Leija, none of it matters much.

“Not really,” Leija said about the likelihood of either fighter making significant stylistic changes. “Nothing is going to happen that’s going to change who you are once the fight starts.”

That hasn’t stopped Rafael Marquez from making one rather large change going into this fight with Vazquez. Saturday night, Marquez will fight without legendary trainer and instructor Nacho Beristain in his corner, for perhaps the first time since Marquez began wearing gloves. In a quiet homage to Beristain – the man who taught him to box – though, Marquez has selected Mexican Daniel Zaragoza to be his chief second.

But Zaragoza, a hall of famer who was also trained by Beristain, does not expect to provide Marquez with much that Beristain did not.

“Nothing more than attention,” Zaragoza said Friday, when asked what more he could offer. “Solely attention.”

Zaragoza was also quick to assert that no strain exists between Marquez and Beristain.

“All is well between them,” Zaragoza said. “And, of course, all is well between (Beristain) and me.”

But when asked if there was anything he might have changed in the 12th round of Vazquez-Marquez III, had he been in Marquez’s corner, Zaragoza was emphatic.

“Right hands, right hands,” Zaragoza said, and he punched his left palm. “More right hands!”

Certainly, that was the strategy that worked for Vazquez, was it not?

Saturday’s card will be broadcast by Showtime at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT. Its co-main event will feature an intriguing fight for the IBF bantamweight title between Colombian Yonnhy Perez – who weighed 117.5 pounds Friday – and California’s Abner Mares, who made 116.8.

Staples Center doors open at 2:55 p.m. local time, with the first fight, of seven, expected to commence at 3:00.

GOLDEN BOY FANS SEE ONLY BRONZE
Any local fight enthusiasts who attended Friday’s weigh-in hoping to catch a glimpse of Golden Boy Promotions’ Oscar De La Hoya had to content themselves with a statue in Star Plaza. De La Hoya, whose company is a co-promoter of “Once and Four All” and who has not been seen at events recently, was not present at Staples Center though his bronze likeness was.

Last Tuesday while the “Once and Four All” conference call happened, I sat beside Mexican Jorge “El Travieso” Arce. He was at Dave & Buster’s restaurant in San Antonio to promote a different fight, with Eric Morel on June 26 at Alamodome. Arce likes to opine. Saturday’s match is two Mexicans in a historic fourth fight. So I asked him who’ll win.

“¡Híjole!” he said. “It is going to be a fight!”

Right on, Jorge. Saturday at Staples Center in Los Angeles, Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez will make the fourth fight of a rare tetralogy, after their trilogy ended in 2008 with Vazquez leading 2-1. The fight will be broadcast by Showtime.

Not on pay-per-view, mind you. No need to belabor the point, but one of the greatest trilogies in the history of prizefighting happened with no extra charge to Showtime subscribers. The fourth fight happens the same way. That’s a commendable model if boxing ever had one.

Back to El Travieso, whose nickname translates to something like “Naughty One.” Soon as he heard mention of Vazquez-Marquez IV, he said “¡Híjole!” – a word with no apt translation in English. It’s what would happen if you appended the personal pronoun “him” to “boy.” It’s a Mexicanism that makes no more sense in Spanish than English. It’s also a wonderfully expressive term that works like “Wow!” and usually gets accompanied by the speaker shaking his hand as if he just burned it.

Point is, Saturday’s fight is one that finds even Arce – a showman who promotes his own bleeding – using interjections and raising his voice. That says quite a bit about the evenness, drama and suspense of this series.

This says even more. Rafael Marquez won the first fight after Vazquez was unable to continue at the end of round 7. Israel Vazquez won the second fight when the referee stopped it a minute into round 6. The third fight, as you know, went the distance – barely. That’s 24 complete rounds worthy of revisiting old scorecards over.

So I did. Here’s what I found.

In the first fight, I gave Vazquez rounds 3 and 6, with the third going 10-8. Second fight, I had Vazquez winning rounds 2, 3 and 5. Third fight, he got rounds 2, 3, 6, 8, 11 and 12 – with the 12th going 10-8.

First fight on my card, Marquez won rounds 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7. Second fight, I gave him rounds 1 and 4. Third fight, he got rounds 1, 4, 5, 7 and 9, with the fourth going 10-8.

That comes to 226-226. Fitting, no?

Whither “Once and Four All” then? There’s no telling. Jorge Arce shared the conventional wisdom that Vazquez is the more-damaged of the two fighters; that Marquez, despite losing twice, hurt Vazquez in more permanent ways. Maybe.

The old adage says boxers gain weight on their chins more than their fists, and as this match is being made at 126 – four pounds above the weight limit for the first three – it’s worth asking whom that favors. Marquez seems the obvious choice.

After all, he would have won the second fight had he had perhaps a round or two more to work on the cuts above Vazquez’s eyes. He would have won the third fight if he’d just stayed upright in the final 10 seconds. His increased ability to withstand Vazquez’s punches, with the addition of four pounds, seems to portend victory for Marquez.

But what if the only thing that kept Vazquez from finishing Marquez in the final round of their trilogy was the 15 or so extra seconds Marquez’s fantastic right hand bought him over the preceding 11 rounds? That is, what happens if Vazquez tastes Marquez’s right cross early on Saturday and finds more fat on it and less chile?

Marquez says he’s better for the fights that he’s had with Vazquez. “The only thing that is different with me this time is that I am more mature,” Marquez said last Tuesday. He didn’t say but verily believes he would have won the second fight had it continued. He believes he won the third. Marquez, too, hears the whispers that Vazquez is no longer the man he was, that his reserves are spent. But he says, “I have always said that Israel is a great fighter.”

Asked if it’s a negative or a positive to know an opponent well as he now knows Marquez, Vazquez answers, “I see it as a positive . . . I know where to attack him from.” Note that Vazquez emphasizes the offensive benefit: If each man attacks the other’s weak point, the stronger man wins. So goes his calculus.

Rafael Marquez is a special talent. He has won 79 percent of his fights by knockout. His long right cross is devastating as any punch of this era. He is one half of the best brother combination in boxing history. He is one half of the best boxing trilogy in at least 30 years.

Israel Vazquez is a special talent, too. But Vazquez also has a component of will few athletes before him have possessed. When Showtime replays Vazquez-Marquez III Friday night, watch him in the 12th round. Watch him explode off his stool after 33 minutes of combat and a knockdown – with two damaged eyes and a surgically rebuilt nose. Watch him throw right hand after right hand without regard for consequence. It is a performance that, within its proper context, is demonical as any boxing has seen.

That kind of man should not be doubted. All indications are that Vazquez expects this match to be every bit as long and brutal as its immediate predecessor. Marquez might not. His promoter says Vazquez won’t last five rounds.

I beg to differ. This time, I think Vazquez gets to Marquez a half-minute earlier. So I’ll take Vazquez: KO-12.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

SAN ANTONIO – Whoever turns out to be the better prizefighter on June 26, one thing is already certain. Puerto Rican Eric Morel is a much better pool hustler than Mexican Jorge Arce.

That much was established on Tuesday afternoon at Dave & Buster’s restaurant where participants in Top Rank’s “La Furia de México 15” gathered for a rescheduled press conference in the northern part of the city. Morel and Arce posed for pictures, answered questions and expressed lots of mutual fondness both before and after their impromptu pool match, as part of the promotion for their co-main-event fight at the Alamodome in June.

The two rivals confessed to being good friends outside the ring and admiring one another’s accomplishments. Both assured local fans and members of the press, however, they would not fight that way when facing one another for the WBO’s interim bantamweight title.

“Very hittable,” is how Morel described Arce’s appearance in recent fights. He also called Arce a “great fighter who’s very, very tough.”

For his part, Arce emphasized Morel’s background as a Puerto Rican, saying, “All know that when a Mexican and a Puerto Rican fight, it is always a battle.”

Arce, who goes by the nickname “El Travieso” (Naughty One) also spoke of the recent birth of his son, Nazareth. Asked about the name, Arce explained, “It was a promise I made to God that if he gave me a son, I would name him after the birthplace of His son.”

More interesting still was Arce’s explanation for his poor showing against Vic Darchinyan last year in Anaheim, Calif. Arce held up the back of his right hand, which sports a noticeable bump at the attachment of his thumb, and explained, “I have to have my hand wrapped extra tight, with extra wraps of tape, or it hurts when I punch. The week before (the fight with Darchinyan), all those things happened in California with (Antonio) Margarito and the wrapping of his hands. So, before my fight, they’re all standing over me, as a Mexican fighter, and saying ‘no, no, no’ about the extra tape. . . . It hurt every time I hit Darchinyan.”

Whatever happens against Morel next month, Arce, one of prizefighting’s most colorful personalities, is certain to have a colorful explanation.

RAUL MARTINEZ & GABRIEL ELIZONDO
Also taking the stage at Tuesday’s press conference were local bantamweight standouts Raul Martinez and Gabriel Elizondo. Much like Arce and Morel before them, Martinez and Elizondo spoke of their close friendship, with Elizondo saying, “(Martinez) is a good friend of mine. We have been friends for a very long time.”

Martinez took the podium and agreed. He then thanked his team and assured the gathering he would be ready for a “very difficult fight.”

He had better be. Very often when two longtime friends make a match together, the fighting is clean but savage, with the lesser man giving more than expected and the better man having to transcend previous performances.

LATIN FURY 15
The Top Rank pay-per-view event will feature Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. vs. John Duddy as its headline fight and is expected to be the most successful event of the “Latin Fury” brand. The card takes place at Alamodome on June 26.

Here’s what we know. Saturday two welterweight titlists made a non-title match at junior-middleweight on HBO’s “World Championship Boxing.” In the middle of the fourth round of a fight neither was winning conclusively, the mens’ limbs tangled. One ended on the canvas. The other ended outside the ring, where a doctor said he was unfit to continue. His opponent won by technical decision.

Here’s what we can consider. A normally fine fight venue was two-thirds empty. Two normally fine fighters made three insipid rounds. The much taller fighter caused the tangle by dropping his head to waist level. The fighter outside the ring got there by leaping. A man was carted off in a neck brace while waving his arms. And, oh yes, the result.

It went: Paul Williams TD-4 Kermit Cintron. An unusual line, that. Williams won by scores of 39-37 and 40-36 on two judges’ cards and lost 36-40 on a third. I had it 39-37 for Williams. Any combination of numbers that did not have one guy winning all four rounds was acceptable. Calling a 3 1/2-round fight complete may not be.

Writing of unacceptable, though, how about the size of that crowd in Carson, Calif.? The tennis stadium at Home Depot Center is an excellent venue for a prizefight – when it’s full. But it was nothing like full Saturday. Why not?

Ethnic interests, maybe. Williams is a black Southerner. Cintron is a Puerto Rican raised in the Northeast. Carson crowds prefer Mexican prizefighters. Combining the three didn’t work at all. And the fight’s promotion was overshadowed by “Who R U Picking?” hoopla.

Set ethnicities aside. Williams enjoys significant physical advantages over opponents, but he doesn’t make dull fights. Cintron has a famously fragile psyche, but he also has a higher career knockout ratio than Mike Tyson. There was ample reason to expect an entertaining match from two prime craftsmen.

And yet Southern Californians knew better. They stayed away, and the rest of us found out why. After a month of threatening one another, Williams and Cintron met in a place of sanctioned violence and showed no such impulse for nine minutes.

When two fighters publicly state the worst of intentions for one another, they are, in many cases, quite sincere. But they rarely tear out their corners and bludgeon one another. Why not? Fear. Not a fear of pain; a fear of humiliation. Much as one might desire to render the other senseless, he desires more intensely to foil the other man’s fantasy. This is how we get tense and tentative opening stanzas even between action fighters who feel mutual animosity.

Things picked up in round 4, though. Williams increased his pace. Cintron clocked him with a counter right hand. A fight began. But unfortunately for Williams, lately that means the start of some bad habits.

Williams enjoys an extraordinary edge in height and reach with opponents. Yet he eliminates that advantage by dropping his chin to theirs and ducking punches. Men who would need to leap and turn-over shots or toss ugly overhand rights instead find Williams’ chin level with their power hands. It’s a gift to opponents who mightn’t otherwise have a chance of hitting him.

It was a gift Williams bestowed on Cintron several times and an opening he offered in round 4. Williams dropped low and fired a long left cross from his southpaw stance. It landed. Cintron, though, rolled with it and loaded a right-cross counter. Williams, whose head was actually below the plane of Cintron’s punch, ducked still lower, parried Cintron’s cross with his left shoulder and put himself in a headlock with Cintron’s right arm.

Williams continued forward, trying to punch. He also twisted leftward and down. His long legs went out from under him. Williams fell to the canvas on the seat of his trunks.

Cintron began forcefully in the opposite direction. His feet were not tangled. Perhaps he feared Williams’ long body would land on his ankle because he came to the ropes and exploded through them, pushing off his left foot. Cintron did not fall out the ring; he hit its perimeter like a safety lowering his right shoulder into a wide receiver. He somersaulted onto the scorer’s table, legs splayed. He appeared to come to rest. He raised his glove to his right temple. Then he somehow fell on the tennis court below and finished directly before the event’s promoters, Lou DiBella and Dan Goosen.

A ringside doctor rushed to Cintron. You imagine reflexivity took over from there in a precaution-rich way like this: “Are you all right?” “I hurt my back.” “It could be serious, so don’t move.” “I won’t move.” “You can’t move?” “What?” “Get a gurney!”

That brought the oddest spectacle of all. After only slightly moving his arms and legs while paramedics made their ways to ringside, Cintron got furious when they wheeled him from the ring. Once he was buckled in, Cintron began to resist, waving his arms. After the judges’ decision was read, he punched the ambulance door.

It was a poor night for boxing.

The California State Athletic Commission has a rule that states if three rounds are completed and a fighter cannot continue for some reason other than a punch, a decision must be divined from the judges’ tallies. That rule should be revisited.

Saturday’s ruling, though, should not. A bad law was enforced. Blame the legislative branch, not the executive.

Does that mean anything to either fighter? Not really. Cintron has a third loss on his record. Williams has a 39th win. No title was at stake. Nothing monumental was gained or forfeited. A rematch would be an appropriate remedy.

But that will require an outcry from fans. Based on Saturday’s attendance and the fight’s opening rounds, such out-crying fans had better bring megaphones and an amplifier.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

On Jan. 31, I wrote, “If he makes this fight with Mosley at the welterweight limit and beats him, however he does it, I’ll give Mayweather nothing but praise.. . . If Mayweather makes May 1 dull, in other words, he’ll deserve our admiration.” I stand by that.

Mayweather made May 1 dull. No one thought a dull fight could be made with Shane Mosley at welterweight; Mosley was too big, too quick, too experienced, too crafty, too physical, too powerful. Turned out, he was none of these things for Floyd Mayweather.

Mayweather just won the most important fight of his career in surprising fashion, but another surprise awaits. Call it the apogee of the Mayweather mood.

Can’t happen. Not after Mayweather took the greatest challenge of his career, on paper, and won it by unanimous scores of 119-109, 118-110 and 119-109. Guys like that experience no apogees! We’ll see.

I had the fight even after round 4. A half hour later, like everyone else not being paid to score the fight, I wondered why I’d bothered.

Whatever you opine of Mayweather’s everyday character, you now must recognize his character in the ring. Saturday night Mayweather was hurt by the best finisher in the welterweight division, and he fought back when flight was still an option. He put his hands up and walked forward, punching. Mayweather was tested, and he passed.

Make no mistake, Mayweather was hurt. He was rocked in the second round, twice. The first time was a right cross on the chin that bent Mayweather dramatically backwards. He grabbed desperate hold of Mosley’s right arm. Gone were the good balance and low lead hand. Mayweather used both arms to pin Mosley’s right glove to his chest. He didn’t let go when referee Kenny Bayless politely asked him to. He barely let go after Bayless and Mosley worked in tandem to wrestle it away from him.

A minute later, Mayweather threw a lead left hook – the one punch he wasn’t quick enough to land on Mosley – and Mosley threw a right hand over it. The punch struck just above Mayweather’s ear; a balance shot. Mayweather’s left knee buckled.

A few rows back of the canvas, Oscar De La Hoya, ostensibly the event’s levelheaded promoter, leaped to his feet. An enormous grin – unusually sincere – rushed over his face. He began to shout for Mosley. Nobody in all of MGM Grand, nay Las Vegas, wanted Mosley to stretch Mayweather more than De La Hoya. In that instant, wonderfully enough, De La Hoya’s inner fighter overwhelmed his inner businessman.

Mayweather did enough clinching, elbowing and punching to survive the round. Then he walked to his corner – where Handpad Jockey and Towel Boy merely cried “box!” at him – and rested. Mayweather’s conditioning refilled his legs, and his confidence came shortly behind.

He climbed off his stool, took Mosley’s good fortunate at having hurt him and turned it against the game, if aged, champion. Mayweather showed openings enough to make Mosley flex his fast-twitch muscles, then he closed them right before Mosley’s startled eyes. Then he did it again.

Through round 3, though, things went as Mosley’s trainer Brother Naazim Richardson said they would. Mosley put it on Mayweather, and Mayweather turned into a fighter. Then Mosley tried to box, and well, ah, at least Richardson had the first three rounds right, no?

Confident he could hurt Mayweather with the right punch, Mosley stopped trying to throw anything but the right punch. For the next nine frustrating rounds, Mosley looked and looked. Mayweather was stronger, sharper, quicker and far, far more confident. Between rounds, Mosley nodded along with Richardson in the corner, even audibly promising to do better, but it was little use. Mosley was under 30 punches per round, and nobody will ever beat Mayweather that way.

Other things might have happened in rounds 6 through 12. But if you remember only a blur of silence, potshots and Mayweather’s left elbow, you’re forgiven.

That brings us to the fight “everyone wants to see” between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.

Spoiler alert: If you’re a company recently contacted by Golden Boy Promotions about a potential sponsorship deal for Mayweather’s next fight, please stop here.

We all admire the hell out of Pacquiao, and his record of 5-1-1 (3 KOs) against Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales and Juan Manuel Marquez likely ensures his legacy as the era’s greatest fighter. But setting aside all paeans to styles making fights, it’s hard to imagine a way for Pacquiao to beat a 147-pound man too quick for Marquez and too physical for Mosley.

Calm down. Once the pay-per-view receipts are counted for Saturday’s fight, anyway, Pacquiao-Mayweather will come to the end of its trip from improbable to impossible. So, we’ll never know. And trust me, Pacquiao fans; it’s better that way.

Which returns us to the apogee of the Mayweather mood. Mayweather’s achievements are nearer his self-assessments, today, than ever before. No, he’s not Muhammad Ali or, God help us, Sugar Ray Robinson. But he’s now done enough to be entitled to delusions. That means the acceleration of his rhetoric can no longer outpace his achievements. He’s antagonized his critics more than he ever will again.

And that’s a marketing problem. Mayweather’s fans enjoy antagonizing others more than they enjoy their guy’s fights – which they never understand. Neither Mayweather nor his fans want capitulation; they want someone to hector.

Denied a way to antagonize critics further, Mayweather is left with what he does in the ring. Aficionados are only going to pay $54 again to see Mayweather genuinely imperiled, and you’d probably need to look to the winner of the “Super Six” for a guy that could do that.

So finally, Floyd Mayweather proved his doubters wrong. And irony says it could be the very day we all started to lose interest.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

“Don’t be afraid of the player with a good grip and a bad swing. Don’t be afraid of a player with a bad grip and a good swing. The player to beware of is the one with the bad grip and the bad swing. If he’s reached your level, he has grooved his faults and knows how to score.” – Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book

That comes from a short but sage hardback of golf instruction. Harvey Penick was a Texas club pro who taught hall of famers Ben Crenshaw, Tom Kite and Betsy Rawls how to play. There are more than a few parallels between golf and boxing, and Penick’s warning is one that pertains well to Carl Froch. Beware the world champion who delivers punches awkwardly as he stands; if he’s got to this level, he’s somehow better than he looks.

Saturday, though, Froch wasn’t quite good enough.

In an outstanding fight broadcast from Denmark as part of Showtime’s “Super Six” tournament, and in defiance of an Icelandic volcano, Mikkel Kessler took Carl Froch’s WBC super middleweight title by unanimous decision. The official result was fair if imbalanced. Judge Guido Cavalleri’s 115-113 card was right. The others – 116-112 and 117-111 – were progressively less so.

My card did not concur with the official result. I had it 116-114 for Froch, to whom I awarded rounds 1, 4, 5, 9, 10 and 11. I gave Kessler rounds 2, 6, 7 and 8. I had rounds 3 and 12 even. But if you gave the rounds that were close enough to be even to Kessler, my card was a draw. If you gave Kessler the first round, too, my card was the same as Cavalleri’s. I’ll not file any protests.

Nor will Carl Froch. That’s both troubling and reassuring. The former WBC champ was yielding in his post-fight interview, conceding that he’d not “put it on (Kessler) more,” that he’d “sat back a little bit,” and that he might have been tardy in “biting down on (his) gumshield.” It did not escape Froch that, after the fifth round, it was his fight if he wanted it badly enough.

Froch’s post-fight demeanor also reassured, though, because of the dignity he showed in defeat. It was not a challenge to Froch’s class to fear what might be uttered by an expressively proud man who’d just lost his title in a close fight on foreign soil. Or, for the Yanks in attendance: Does anyone think Floyd Mayweather will react so temperately if his first loss happens that way Saturday night?

Froch was not stunned by losing to Mikkel Kessler. It seems Kessler was the man Froch had circled in his mind as one who might be worthy of vanquishing him. Froch may have seen that Kessler was “quite conclusively outboxed” by Andre Ward, but he didn’t absorb it. He didn’t infer the possibility Kessler was not the same man he’d been a couple years ago.

Because Kessler is not that guy any more. He is no longer the agent of a classic 1-2 that battered Librado Andrade in 2007. As noticed immediately by Antonio Tarver – a fantastic new commentator, by the way – Kessler no longer blasts you with his 2, a straight right cross. Now it’s alternately looped and pushed. Among Kessler’s best punches Saturday was a right hand in round 7 that landed to the back of Froch’s head. Froch is awkward, yes, but a prime Kessler never floated his right elbow enough to hit someone there.

Unsurprisingly, Kessler’s power has gone with his form. His most effective punches Saturday were the ones Froch ran into. Kessler won on determination and hustle. He outworked Froch. He did not outhit him. Kessler used Froch’s momentum to supply his power, the sort of power Kessler once had from a standing start.

There are no standing starts for Froch. So here comes another golf analogy. Carl Froch throws right crosses the way Gary Player used to hit fairway woods. He crosses over. Froch commits all of his weight, all of his person, to the right hand. He starts in an orthodox stance and finishes as a southpaw. If he doesn’t hit you with the right cross, he fires a left hand while correcting his stance, then tries the cross-over right again. It’s combination punching in its most awkward sense and hardly what you’d teach a beginner.

How the hell does it work, then? Partially because it’s planned, partially because Froch believes in it, and partially because combination punching – however it’s accomplished – is never a bad thing. Froch’s stellar run as an amateur makes him the embodiment of Penick’s warning: He has a bad grip and a bad swing, but he’s grooved it. He knows how to score.

He also knows a way to keep you from scoring. How does he barge into a puncher like Kessler’s wheelhouse, arms dangling at his sides, and keep from getting beheaded? The secret is in the dangling. After he tags you with his cross-over right, Froch’s entire body goes limp. Anything but a direct hit, like Kessler’s in round 8, gets harmlessly absorbed by Froch’s body. It’s like punching a sponge.

Still, a little more overall tension from Froch after round 5 likely would have won him the fight. He knocked Kessler backwards with a right hand in the final minute of the fifth. Then he held his glove up and showed it to the Danes, without deigning to press his advantage. He should know better next time.

What happened Saturday made a great tournament better. Kessler-Froch was the best fight of the “Super Six” thus far. And round 12 was the best three minutes in prizefighting’s first third of 2010. What’s next? Kessler may get stretched by Allan Green, the quirky Oklahoma slugger, or he might not. And Froch against Arthur Abraham? No earthly idea.

But know this: “Super Six” will continue to surprise and satisfy.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

To see Sergio Martinez’s exuberance after Saturday’s fight, to hear him call a feeling inspired by the world middleweight championship “a tremendous and incredible pride that is impossible to describe,” was to feel nostalgia for the days Kelly Pavlik inspired the same in fans. So long ago.

Instead, by the time of Martinez’s ecstatic proclamation, the larger part of the smaller Youngstown contingent that made the trip to Atlantic City sadly filed out of Boardwalk Hall, many for the last time. Pavlik protested that he was still a young man, but by then he was protesting too much to an almost empty arena.

So it went Saturday. In an excellent fight broadcast by HBO, Argentine Sergio “Maravilla” Martinez decisioned Ohio’s Kelly “The Ghost” Pavlik to become the lineal middleweight champion of the world. And for once the ringside judges had it right and unanimous: 115-112, 115-111, 116-111.

My scorecard concurred. I had it 116-112 for Martinez, to whom I gave rounds 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 and 12. Rounds 5, 6 and 7 went to Pavlik – with the seventh being a 10-8 round because of a missed tripping call by referee David Fields. I had round 8 even, 10-10.

That wasn’t a ring-side scorecard. It wasn’t even a live-TV scorecard. Instead it was a two-hours-later-via-DVR scorecard. I forewent the live action to attend a San Antonio Symphony Orchestra “Fiesta Pops” performance at Majestic Theatre, which featured Los Tres Reyes and Campanas de America. Fiesta is a big deal in my new hometown. I suppose I like orchestral music and mariachis, too.

But had you told me in 2007 I would forego a live Kelly Pavlik broadcast to watch guys in tight pants accompanied by a woodwinds section, I’d have hit you with a right cross – then snapped my wrist back over the ear like “The Ghost” himself.

Thirty-eight months ago, Pavlik blasted Jose Luis Zertuche, and a lot of us got excited. He then knocked out Edison Miranda. After that fight, I wrote that Pavlik’s simple style was perfect for undoing Jermain Taylor. It was indeed. Pavlik flattened the undefeated, undisputed world middleweight champion in seven rounds. Nothing has been the same since.

I have no regrets about attending last night’s concert in lieu of Pavlik’s fight. Sergio Martinez might have deserved better, though.

Martinez, after all, is the closest thing we’ve seen to a prime Roy Jones Jr. in about a decade. Ten years of combing urban American gyms – 100 “RJJ” imitators in each – turned up nothing. We were looking in the wrong country; an Argentine soccer player who tried boxing at age 20 was the professional we sought. Go figure.

Martinez’s secret? His legs. They never stop firing. He has good head movement. He punches well enough to keep much bigger guys like Pavlik and Paul Williams honest, obviously. But his legs are what make him exceptional. He eschews the skittish upper-body flinching of American boxers and all their talk about “angles” and “footwork” for the more reliable force of his quadriceps. He keeps his hands down – never a great idea in prizefighting – but he makes that play the only way you can: with a tucked chin and constant legwork.

That’s what discouraged Pavlik Saturday. And “discouragement” is the perfect word to describe what has plagued Pavlik in his two career losses, and one borrowed from Pavlik’s trainer Jack Loew. So long as he is engaged in a test of courage with an opponent, Pavlik prevails. You hit me, I hit you, and we keep doing this till one of us is unconscious; there’s still not a 160-pounder in the world who’s going to beat Pavlik at that game. But once you disengage from battle with Pavlik, you remove courage from the equation – almost as if Pavlik were raised in Culiacán, Sinaloa instead of Youngstown, Ohio.

Martinez disengaged Pavlik’s bravery early in the fight and left him discouraged throughout. That’s how an inflated super welterweight beat the hell out of a shrunken light heavy.

Pavlik did rally to make the fight interesting. In the fifth round, Martinez stumbled into a straight left – the very way Loew promised he would – and that emboldened the champ. In the sixth, Pavlik tried to follow Loew’s directions by corralling Martinez with left hook/right cross combos, those “three-twos” Loew demanded. But ultimately Martinez was too fast and countered too hard for that gambit. In the seventh, Pavlik combined a right uppercut and a left leg to send Martinez to the mat. Both guys knew it wasn’t a real knockdown, though, and Pavlik didn’t gain any advantage from it but an extra point.

Martinez cut Pavlik three ways in the ninth: long, deep and often. It changed everything about both men. Afterwards, Pavlik pushed off his jab – nervously moving his glove and body in opposite directions. Then Martinez outhit and outclassed him through the championship rounds.

After the 11th, Pavlik, pale face bright with blood, walked with his shoulders slumped to a somber corner that looked discouraged as he did. Martinez, on the other hand, caught a flurry of verbal abuse from his trainer; why hadn’t he pressed the attack and stopped Pavlik? From impossibility to expectation in 33 minutes.

Whither Kelly Pavlik? Promoter Top Rank will stick with him – hell, they’re sticking with Antonio Margarito, aren’t they? – and at some point, as a heavy underdog, Pavlik might just surprise the eventual winner of Showtime’s “Super Six” tournament. For now, though, he’s off the radar. But he’s still a class act, and so he might well prefer it that way.

Sergio Martinez, meanwhile, is boxing’s new thing. He has a rematch clause with Pavlik and an unofficial mandate for one with Paul Williams. But since neither of those guys can now sell tickets in Atlantic City, here’s an idea: Fight both in Buenos Aires. Put the “world” back in world middleweight champion, Sergio, why not?

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

Photo by Claudia Bocanegra

Recent criticisms of Showtime’s “Super Six World Boxing Classic” are beginning to make a pattern, faint but detectable. The tournament’s critics appear not to be actual Showtime subscribers. That is, to justify the 10 monthly dollars they save on cable bills, otherwise thoughtful observers now discount the network’s innovative concept by implying it hasn’t met expectations.

Whose expectations? How not?

Among writers, smart ones at least, there’s ever a pessimistic bent to resist. Failure, for being quantifiable, attracts intellect. Smart people like to sort and group things, and success is more elusive than failure. And the writer’s job, often, is to say anything at all even when he can’t say something nice. So it goes.

But it’s time to check that pessimism and take another look at this tournament. And then another and another. A couple Saturdays from now, on April 24, the second fight in Group Stage 2 features Carl “The Cobra” Froch against Mikkel Kessler – to whose surname Hamlet fans might attach “The Dane.” The fight happens in Herning, Denmark. It will likely be the most consequential prizefight in that country’s history.

Last week the Nottinghamshire Cobra and Kessler the Dane joined a conference call without many American writers. They were counterprogrammed by a Kelly Pavlik call in what appeared to be part of HBO’s strategy for undermining Showtime’s tournament, regardless of long-term consequences. Those writers that went for the bigger domestic name missed a chance to learn more about Froch and Kessler. Kelly Pavlik, meanwhile, is strong and ready. Got it.

Asked for an opening comment, Carl Froch began in the third-person beloved by megalomaniacal dictators and prizefighters: “This is the WBC super middleweight champion.” Froch went on to say lots more in the hour that followed, but far as opening comments went, that was it.

Froch is a person of no extraordinary intelligence who speaks eloquently. The ideas he expresses are no larger than other prizefighters’. To his workaday ideas, though, he brings a surprising flamboyance and authority.

Goodness me, might that be an apt metaphor for his fighting style? Come to think of it, yes.

Here’s another thought about Froch’s eloquence. It is a high commentary on the English school system’s deservedly fine reputation. There is no tradition of unintelligent eloquence in America; instead, we revel in smart people expressing themselves badly and call it “egalitarianism” or something. But Froch is a boxing epitome of the peculiar English tradition whose standard bearer is Jane Austen, a writer of no particular intelligence who was still a genius. Solve that riddle, and you’re an Anglophile.

Asked about Mikkel Kessler’s allegations of roughhousing and otherwise dirty tactics by Andre Ward in his last fight – to hear Kessler tell it, Ward only stopped clinching long enough to head butt him – Froch was unwilling to lend Kessler’s excuses credence or Ward any bona fides as a roughhouser. About Kessler, Froch said, “From what I saw, he was quite conclusively outboxed.”

“Quite conclusively outboxed”; how rich is that? It’s precise, short and brooks no disagreement. It doesn’t say anything folks outside the Kessler camp didn’t already think in more expansive ways. But it says it just right. And it also implies there’s more to Froch, as a man and a fighter, than just a surplus of pride and awkwardness – which is about all American writers have credited him with having.

Froch should be exposed by Kessler in his next fight. But Froch should have been exposed by Andre Dirrell in his last fight. He should have been exposed by Jermain Taylor in his penultimate fight. He should have been exposed by Jean Pascal in the fight before that. Had you shown an American bookmaker a tape of any one of Froch’s first 23 fights and asked for Pascal-Taylor-Dirrell parlay pick, there’s no way you would have gotten: Froch 3-0. But that’s exactly where Froch stands.

Froch is proudest of three things: his championship belt, his unblemished record and his high knockout ratio. It’s the third that makes the least sense, though, when you watch Froch’s awkward, often-unbalanced and always unorthodox approach to punching. Asked for a mechanical explanation of the concussion that nevertheless affixes to the ends of his fists, Froch had little insight but plenty of well-chosen words.

“It’s a biological mystery,” he said before exploring, then dismissing, other possibilities such as lower-body strength: “But I have skinny chicken legs, so it’s not that.” So he settled on a combination of mystery and good genes.

Whatever it is mechanically, psychologically it’s about commitment. Carl Froch punches with power because Carl Froch believes he punches with power. There’s more to it than that, of course – accuracy helps, and so do his odd angles – but belief has to be the foundation. Froch hits opponents hard for the same reason Mickey Ward was a great body puncher: He believes.

Someone has to. Whoever was the favorite pick among experts when the Super Six tournament began – Kessler or Arthur Abraham, mostly – no one outside Nottingham had Froch to win. And yet, Froch began by decisioning Dirrell while Dirrell searched for a professional identity. He now faces Kessler in the throes of an identity crisis. And in Group Stage 3, he’ll face an Arthur Abraham who might be more tentative than usual. Get in the playoffs, as they say, and anything can happen.

Which is exactly the point of this tournament. It is unpredictable. It is dramatic. And it’s supported by a “Fight Camp 360” program blessedly focused on boxing and devoid of Mayweathers. The episodes move well and filter the noise some think prizefighting is about. Unlike HBO’s “24/7” programs, then, “Fight Camp 360” is made for people who care about boxing those other 50 weeks of the year.

The Super Six remains the best thing to happen to our sport since Vazquez-Marquez III.

I didn’t spend last weekend at Mandalay Bay. I couldn’t afford to. Even with the “media rate” for a room, it was too pricey – before airfare from San Antonio. Hopkins-Jones II was the main event of a $49 pay-per-view card called “The Rivals.” I couldn’t afford that either. Apparently history was made. Sorry I missed it.

Friday, May 21, though, I’ll board a flight to Los Angeles ($110). Then I’ll stay in a hotel near Staples Center Friday ($80) and Saturday ($80). Then I’ll fly home Sunday ($110 again). I can afford Vazquez-Marquez IV.

After food, “Once and Four All” should cost me eight times more than I couldn’t afford to spend on “The Rivals.” I know what you’re thinking because I’m thinking it too: “Eight times? Even at 10x, Vazquez-Marquez is a steal!”

Indeed it is, friends. On May 22 at Staples Center, Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez will make the fourth fight of their rivalry – the finest of my lifetime. Three Thursdays ago, Golden Boy Promotions held a kickoff press conference to announce it. Whenever the officers of that company come out of hiding for what happened last weekend, do congratulate them: Vazquez-Marquez III deserved a larger venue than Home Depot Center’s tennis stadium, every prizefight deserves a better venue than a casino, and Golden Boy Promotions is the reason “Once and Four All” is in a large stadium where real fans can purchase real tickets.

A quick note about the tagline. “Once and Four All” is very much better than “Who R U Picking?” but you’re right to fear that “four” will play too large a role in coverage of this event – as in “Fourward Four You!” or “Fourever UnFourgettable.” Here’s why. The word “trilogy” is well known, while the word “tetralogy” doesn’t come standard in the MS Word dictionary. But a tetralogy is what this fight will make. That word can be added to the custom dictionary to ensure spell check doesn’t ding it and send you careering back towards “Fourtunate Foursome!”

Now a note or two about ambivalence.

I was in the camp that didn’t want to see this fight happen. I was ringside for Vazquez-Marquez III. It was wicked. Israel Vazquez’s face was a grotesquerie in the post-fight press conference – and he was the winner. Selfishly, too, I was content with having written about the finale of a series that will be the standard by which aficionados still judge prizefighting rivalries in 2035.

Great writing chooses solely great figures for subjects. Words are elevated by their topics. Even an average writer could put together a very good piece were he present for, say, Marvin Hagler’s match with Tommy Hearns. Meanwhile, Hopkins-Jones II would hamstring a ringside report by Shakespeare on lede and Cervantes on sidebar.

We should choose carefully, then, and Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez are great as sport makes men.

But unlike in Vazquez and Marquez’s fights at super bantamweight, it’s very hard to believe that, come May 22, we’ll be looking at the world’s two best featherweights. This fourth fight will happen at 126 pounds, where neither Vazquez nor Marquez could be ranked in the Top 6. Both men are now years past their 30th birthdays, and if they can no longer be asked to make 122 they shouldn’t either be asked to make fights with Juan Manuel Lopez or Yuriorkis Gamboa.

Which brings us to this: No matter how competitive the fourth fight is, it won’t be great as the third. Fighters don’t improve after what Vazquez and Marquez did to one another two years ago. The most we can hope is that 25 consecutive rounds together eroded the men equally.

There’s evidence that suggests this. Vazquez did not look very good in his October fight with Angel Antonio Priolo, 19 months after his third fight with Marquez. He looked hittable as ever. He ground out a win by grinding Priolo into a dusty film on the Nokia Theater canvas. It took him nine rounds and more scars over his oft-damaged left eye, though.

But if you’re only exposure to Rafael Marquez’s win over Colombian Jose Francisco Mendoza in May comes from BoxRec.com – Result: TKO-3 for Marquez – you’re incompletely informed. That fight happened in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon and was available on TV Azteca 7, a channel nary an American had access to. Marquez did not look well-adjusted to his new weight. And Mendoza’s 21-2-2 (17 KOs) record was a Bogota fiction; he’d gone 0-2-1 just before Marquez stopped him, and he’d go out like a light 100 days later when Jhonny Gonzalez starched him thrice as fast as Marquez had.

Still, I think I’ll pick Marquez. He is a special talent with a special trainer in Nacho Beristain; on paper, he should have won the second fight and the third one, too. Just like I picked. That’s the insincere part. I’d hate to jinx Vazquez by picking him now.

I’ve written more words about other fighters. But there is no one – perhaps no subject – I’ve enjoyed writing about more than Israel Vazquez. By May 22 he’ll have fought once in 26 months, but I’ve still made him the subject of four columns since he beat Marquez in Carson, Calif.

So let’s end with a Vazquez anecdote.

At last year’s BWAA dinner, I sat across the table from Israel. He was with his brother-in-law, and PR ace Bernie Bahrmasel. Late in the night, Israel’s brother-in-law went to get his picture taken with some of the glamorously clad gals who’d presented awards. Vazquez nodded in his direction and said, “Look at him.”

“He tells them he’s with Vazquez, and they all want a picture,” I said.

“But I am Vazquez!” Israel said, pointing at his chest and smiling.

Three was enough. Four is too many. But if Izzy and Rafa must fight on, may the exchange rate be fair. And may they be paid properly, too. See you in Los Angeles.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry