Keep Andre Dirrell in your prayers. What happened to him Saturday is graver than a disqualification victory. It’s about Dirrell being struck with a right uppercut on the chin and then reaching for a spot over his left eye. It’s not about a breach of sportsmanship by Arthur Abraham. It’s about Dirrell needing ice eight inches from where Abraham hit him.

It’s about Dirrell’s incoherence after the fight. It’s about his crying, “I’m hurt, man!” It’s about the way he winced and scrunched the left side of his face. It’s about an ambulance ride to the hospital for a CT scan – apparently negative, thankfully.

What a terrible way to get two points in Showtime’s Super Six World Boxing Classic.

Saturday in Detroit, American Andre Dirrell got those two points when Armenian Arthur Abraham got disqualified for an intentional foul at 1:13 of round 11. Behind by prohibitive margins on all scorecards, Abraham landed a perfect right uppercut with Dirrell on the seat of his trunks after he slipped on a Cemex Tolteca ad on the canvas.

Abraham still leads the tournament with the three points he won in October. That’s the best that can be said after his second trip to the United States from Germany, where he resides. The rest comprises the derogatory things now being thought about him in America, a country that’s still pretty important to the prizefighting world.

In some sense both men were victims of Abraham’s concussive power Saturday. Had Abraham missed with his right hand he might have stopped Dirrell in the five minutes that remained. Dirrell was fading. Had Abraham caught Dirrell with a glancing, or anyhow less-effective, punch he would have lost a point that didn’t matter anyway – à la Marco Antonio Barrera against Juan Manuel Marquez. Instead he knocked Dirrell senseless and left referee Laurence Cole no choice but to disqualify him. His record is now blemished in more than one way.

That’s nothing compared to what Abraham’s right hand may have done to Dirrell, who was on the precipice of a career-defining victory.

Gone were so many of the bad habits that had ruined Dirrell’s last fight with Carl Froch. In Saturday’s first six rounds Dirrell damn near threw a shutout against an undefeated former world champion. He threw leveraged, scientific punches, looped correctly round Abraham’s customarily high guard. He slipped punches like he wanted to counter them, not just impress his boys back home. He did almost everything the professional way.

Almost everything. There was one glaringly amateurish trait that survived Dirrell’s training camp. It happened five or six times. It was his move to the right. It was all wrong. Hands at his waist, feet crossed, chin pointed skyward, Dirrell leaped away from Abraham’s left hook. It made Abraham look ridiculous and slow. But to learned eyes, it made Dirrell look ridiculous, too.

Guess what Dirrell was doing when he slipped in the first minute of the 11th round. Dropped in the 10th from a right cross, Dirrell began the 11th wisely intending to play Keep Away. But he unwisely switched from Andre Dirrell to “The Matrix” – the kid with too much athleticism for his own good – and began to bounce back and forth, hands low. He Matrixed rightward. His right foot landed on the ‘x’ in Cemex – the sticker wet and frictionless – and his legs splayed.

That has to be the last thing Dirrell remembers from Saturday.

His hands on the canvas, Dirrell looked at Abraham’s onrushing right fist. The punch landed on the left side of his chin. Dirrell appeared disappointed, betrayed. Then the left side of his face contorted. Dirrell closed his left eye and brought his left glove to his forehead. He did not rub where he’d been struck. Rather he rubbed the place his jarred brain would have struck its protective shell. He rolled on his back. His legs began to shake involuntarily. It was ugly and frightening.

Abraham stood to the side, believing Dirrell was being theatrical – a belief he confirmed afterwards – and disbelieving he was about to lose by disqualification. What Abraham did was intentional. He deserved the result he got. But what Abraham did was not premeditated. That must be remembered.

Imagine you are Arthur Abraham. Like any man in the 31st minute of a championship prizefight, you’re more than a little buzzed from your opponent’s punches. You are desperate to sink your knuckles in the other man’s flesh. He has hit you repeatedly. He has taunted you. He has also been to the canvas minutes before. He is weakened and slowing. You have to render him unconscious or you lose.

For a half hour, he has evaded you with unorthodox moves. He drops his hands, changes levels and swoops away. You have cornered him. He struck the top of your chest with a jab after his head dropped oddly away. Now his hands are down. He is absolutely defenseless. That is a green light for you, not a red one. You throw the right hand you have cocked. You finish the defenseless man because that’s your job.

Moral judgments on Abraham need not apply here. Within the relative world of prizefighting, Abraham broke the rules and received a proper punishment. Had Dirrell been just as defenseless while standing, though – out on his feet, hands down – we’d be applauding Abraham as a great finisher for throwing that right hand.

None of this relativity helps Dirrell – a fighter about whom many things became more serious Saturday in Joe Louis Arena. If he is able to return to previous form, if subsequent tests come back negative, that is, expect the last vestiges of “The Matrix” to go away. Expect a far less playful guy in the ring. Expect a man who uses his athleticism to hurt other men. Expect some resentment at the end of those punches.

Expect that everything about Andre Dirrell just got a lot more serious.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

Angles, hand speed, reflexes, foot work; we fetishize these things in boxing. They have the allure of the uncommon. But they’re not uncommon in the ring. “Slow” is a speed. Shifting weight back-to-front is something you learn in kindergarten gym class. And “he uses angles” could mean just about anything, geometrically speaking. Why do we do it, then? To end debate, to intimidate laymen.

But you know what actually works in a boxing ring? Jab-cross. Left-right. Force = Mass x Acceleration.

Evidence of this came in Dusseldorf, Germany, last weekend when Ukrainian heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko beat on American Eddie Chambers for 11 rounds then rendered him unconscious in the 12th.
More evidence will come this weekend when Germany’s Arthur Abraham fights American Andre Dirrell in Detroit’s Joe Luis Arena – the first Group Stage 2 match of Showtime’s “Super Six World Boxing Classic.”

An appeal to fundamentals brings us towards a topic treated in Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball” – a book about baseball you can enjoy even if you don’t enjoy baseball. Major league scouts for years preferred the magic of tools like arm strength and bat speed to answering baseball’s fundamental offensive question: “Does he get on base?” Anyone can look at stats and answer that question, but the scouts figured it was their eye for talent one needed to see the attributes of a special prospect.

Boxing has many such scouts. They love things they can’t see, like flurried combinations and angles. They find a kid who has these attributes and allow him to reinvent the sport a little. You don’t want to obscure your view with high hands? No problem, kid, you’re so fast they can’t touch you! You don’t want to settle down, stay in one stance, and punch? Go ahead and switch it up, kid, they’ll never figure you out!

You get the sense something like this might have happened with Andre Dirrell, who calls himself “The Matrix” and who, despite being the most physically gifted fighter in the Super Six, will likely be eliminated from the tourney Saturday. He’s been allowed – maybe encouraged – to eschew boxing fundamentals for a fruit salad of natural movements that showcase his reflexes.

His October loss to Carl Froch was a mess. Much of the blame for that belongs to Froch, a man who really wants to fight even if, at times, it looks like he might not know how. Dirrell’s constant stance switching – dare we use “Matrix” as a verb? – helped nothing, though. Dirrell showed up in Froch’s hometown and turned a prizefight into an athletic fashion show. It was Dirrell’s fight to lose, and that’s exactly what he did. But has anyone told him yet?

We see this in the gyms before boys become men. There’s the stand-out amateur with all the talent who’s allowed to build confidence at his lessers’ expense. These lesser kids don headgear and make a go of it, and often grow to make good trainers. They rarely hang with the junior superstar. That job goes to the kids who are in the gym – hats cocked to the side, dress code just right – working combinations on an imaginary bag and never wrapping their hands. Tomorrow’s hangers-on.

Has too much time around the hangers-on compromised Dirrell? He seems to have a good mind for the sport. He beat Froch pretty convincingly in the minutes he fought. Showtime’s “Fight Camp 360” program shows Dirrell determining quite quickly that Arthur Abraham uses a “hit me till you’re done then let me hit you” defense. Dirrell said the solution aloud. But will he use it?

Sometimes even having the solution and using it isn’t enough. Ask “Fast” Eddie Chambers. Slip Wladimir Klitschko’s extended left glove and leap underneath with a body shot. That was the blueprint. Chambers flew to Germany in good shape and tried to follow the plan. Then physics intervened.

At this point as Americans, it’s safe to put our hope away. Chambers really was our last best chance. He had the temperament and character a 209-pound man needs against one who weighs 245. But Klitschko’s mastery of trainer Manny Steward’s style is finally here, and so we can stop talking about angles and hand speed and the rest of that jazz. If you’re not big as Wlad, you’re not going to beat Wlad.

Why not? Saturday showed us when Chambers’ shoulders fit within the width of Klitschko’s chest. To slip Klitschko’s jab properly – to the outside – required too much motion on Chambers’ part. To get outside Klitschko’s jab, never mind his hook, Chambers had to go a meter or two away from Klitschko’s chin. Since Chambers is a fighter, that wouldn’t do.

Now you’re slipping Klitschko’s jab to the inside. You’re putting your head in the direct line of Klitschko’s right cross. You can block that punch, but know this: So long as Wladimir Klitschko’s right cross is regularly colliding with any part of your body, you will not remain conscious for 36 minutes. Chambers came awfully close. Then at 35:55, he tipped head-first into the ropes, ruined from the exhaustion and profound unpleasantness of being struck by a giant who knows how.

Chambers didn’t lose to Klitschko so much as physics itself.

And so will Andre Dirrell if he tries to Matrix his way past Arthur Abraham, a man who’s slighter than Klitschko but also knows how to punch. Abraham can be outworked. It hasn’t happened yet. So, in order to outwork him Dirrell will have to pick a stance and stay with it. He’ll need to leverage punches correctly and hurt the man across from him. Until he has Abraham’s respect, he’ll be merely an 0-1 contender in a tournament Abraham currently owns.

But he’ll also be a crowd favorite fighting only 50 miles from home. A little adherence to boxing’s millennia-old common wisdom could go a long way. It could at least make the fight interesting.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

GRAPEVINE, Tex. – To look across the atrium of the Gaylord Texan resort on a Sunday morning – Alamo replica here, River Walk replica there – is to wonder: How did this place get built between Dallas and Fort Worth and not Mandalay Bay and MGM Grand? It would work well on the Strip; borrow a roller coaster from Arlington’s Six Flags and name the compound Texas Texas.

Bright as the atrium is with late-winter sunshine filtered through its domed ceiling, the natural light is but a solar imitation of what shone down from the roof of Cowboys Stadium Saturday night. To sit underneath “Jerrytron” is to bathe in artificial light so gentle and brilliant you start to wonder, Why can’t we do something like this with the sun?

A gentler question, itself, than what ringsiders asked as Saturday became Sunday: Why can’t we do something with Joshua?

No, Mr. Clottey did not acquit himself gloriously in his largest challenge before the largest crowd to see a prizefight in America since 1993. Mr. Pacquiao did. Of course.

The main event of “The Event” saw the fighting pride of the Philippines, Manny Pacquiao, unanimously decision Ghana’s Joshua Clottey by scores of 120-108, 119-109 and 119-109. The minority card in that trio is the one that had it right. The match was for a welterweight title, but only one man seemed to care.

Here’s the pep talk someone needed to give Joshua Clottey in his dressing room before the fight: “Josh, they call you ‘a good loser’. You make fun fights with guys expected to beat you, and you lose. You’re not going to win by decision tonight. So help me God, Josh, if you let this fight go 12 rounds, you damn well better not go to another post-fight press conference and say you were robbed. If you don’t stop this little guy by the end of the sixth, I’ll knock the microphone right out of your hand before I let you whine to the press again!”

Actually, that speech should have been given on the first day of training camp and followed by breakfast recitals each morning for the next six weeks. Clearly it wasn’t. Or it was, and Clottey’s impervious to speeches as he is to opponents’ punches.

Rather than a resentful b-sider ready to use every ounce of his likely 20-pound advantage on Pacquiao, we got a Ghanaian gentleman fully committed to winning the perfect way or no way.

At least he committed to something.

Clottey committed to a few uppercuts in the 10th round too, to be fair, but by then his discouragement had won the race with Pacquiao’s fatigue – a race on whose outcome the fight pivoted.

For the first time since he began making superfights, on Saturday Manny Pacquiao fought scared. Not cautious, like he began with Oscar De La Hoya or Miguel Cotto; not patient, like he began with Ricky Hatton. Scared. Muscle memory ensured Pacquiao’s combinations were tight and well-schooled. But quite often in the fight’s opening half, Pacquiao threw his hands because it was the one way to keep Clottey from punching him. And Pacquiao wanted no part of being punched by Clottey.

But everything had to be just right before Clottey would even attempt the feat. It was reminiscent of the way novelist Philip Roth once described the opening forays of a poet who discovered the craft late: He set off with all the confidence of a person who’s never succeeded at anything.

That’s not counterintuitive as it looks. It’s an apt way to depict someone who cruises through life attributing all past failures to carelessness: Once I decide to mean it, the world will be jarred by my genius.

That man needs things to be unconditionally perfect before he begins. Clottey fought like a guy who had 36 or so rounds to find the perfect platform for landing his perfect combination on Pacquiao. He was in absolutely no hurry. He was never in trouble; he knew in the first round that Pacquiao – for all his unorthodox angles and speed – didn’t hit anything like a natural 147-pounder does, certainly nothing like Antonio Margarito, a supernatural welter, did.

Pacquiao, though, had Clottey figured out quicker still. Not enough credit is given to Pacquiao’s ring IQ. But he’s been in 56 prizefights, guys, so maybe now’s a good time. Pacquiao noticed in round 1 that so long as his hands were in motion, Clottey’s were still. For the next 35 minutes, then, Pacquiao simply moved his hands every time Clottey found confidence enough to throw more than a meek, range-finding, right-hand lead. Clottey’s only meaningful punches all night came when Pacquiao imitated his shell defense.

Then Pacquiao would sample Clottey’s power, decide he wanted no part of it and start his body back in motion. And Clottey would follow along, expertly cut off the ring, then show Pacquiao’s onrushing knuckles the full brunt of his forearms. An unofficial count had Pacquiao striking Clottey’s gloves, forearms, ribs and face 1,300 times. Pacquiao didn’t have enough power to shake Clottey – nobody does – but he had power enough to keep Clottey from throwing back. That’s getting the job done.

So what’s next for the best fighter in the world, perhaps the only entertainer in history that could interest 51,000 people in a fight with Joshua Clottey? Probably not Floyd Mayweather. Their emissaries now speak different languages: My guy’s ticket sales against your guy’s pay-per-view buys. Probably Antonio Margarito, whose apology-free rehabilitation tour made him ubiquitous last weekend: Lobby, weigh-in, elevator, ringside, restaurant.

Promoter Top Rank’s masterful matchmakers will watch closely when Margarito next fights with unloaded gloves. You’ll know he’s more shot than you think if he and Pacquiao plan a two-step for September.

That’s how they dance in Texas. And after Cowboys Stadium was “The Event” last week, there are now reasons galore to make a second step in Arlington.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

Photo by Chris Darina / Top Rank

ARLINGTON, Tex. – “The Event” was promoter Top Rank’s largest happening in years – a championship prizefight featuring the worldwide phenomenon of Manny Pacquiao in a breathtaking new edifice before the largest domestic boxing audience since 1993. So as one sportswriter thought to put it, “Joshua Clottey fought like a loyal Top Rank employee.”

Much to experts’ surprise and ringsiders’ chagrin, Pacquiao (51-3-2, 32 KOs) had no trouble whatever with the tense and tentative Clottey (35-4, 21 KOs), beating him to the punch roughly 1,200 times and cruising to a lopsided decision: 120-108, 119-109 and 119-109.

Clottey – who once changed his moniker from “Hitter” to “Grand Master” and might next try “Reluctant” – surprised even knowledgeable fans with his complete unwillingness to hit until conditions were perfect. It took no expertise to know Pacquiao would never grant him such conditions, and so, after some initial nervousness, Pacquiao spent the first round keeping Clottey uncomfortable.

Then in round 2, Pacquiao began to exploit the obvious disparity in the men’s reflexes, moving casually and snapping jabs and hooks to the body. An ill-advised retreat by Pacquiao, though – hands up, chin tucked – brought life to Clottey’s hands, which by then had been dormant for four minutes. Through the fight’s opening quarter, whoever was punching was winning. That happened to be Pacquiao most of the time.

Somewhat frustrated by his inability to hook around Clottey’s shell defense in the fourth round, Pacquiao – in an uncharacteristic bit of clowning – threw a hook with both hands at the same time, resulting in a warning from the referee. Clottey, on the other hand, was far too respectful, following Pacquiao around the ring as if waiting for the other man’s approval before throwing his next punch.

At the fight’s midpoint, it was a shutout: Pacquiao 6-0. A while later, it would be 12-0.

If Pacquiao felt any psychological pressure from being stalked by a bigger man, after the opening rounds he didn’t show it. Boxing confidently and discouraging Clottey whenever he had to, Pacquiao took rounds 7, 8 and 9 as easily as he’d taken their six predecessors.

In round 10, things got interesting for just that many seconds as Clottey landed four punches in-a-row for the first time in a half hour of boxing. Then Pacquiao got serious, came out his shell and took away Clottey’s spirit yet again. The championship rounds saw no new excitement. Clottey fought as if happy to have spent 36 minutes in a ring with Pacquiao, and nothing like a challenger should.

If there was suspense at the reading of the judges’ cards it was sparked by a doubt that all three judges would give Pacquiao all 12 rounds. They didn’t, of course. End of suspense.

“I can’t believe it,” Pacquiao (modestly) said of his victory after the fight.

Neither could the rest of us, Manny, unfortunately enough.

HUMBERTO SOTO VS. DAVID DIAZ
If Mexican lightweights Humberto Soto and David Diaz wake up feeling a wee bit cheated of due affection on Sunday morning, they’ll be well within their rights. Both men gave what they had to the crowd and judges, Saturday, though neither party was paying them much mind.

In a fight significantly closer than two judges had it, Soto (51-7-2, 32 KOs) defeated Diaz (35-3-1, 17 KOs) by unanimous decision – 115-111, 117-109, 117-109 – to become the WBC lightweight world champion.

A fine indication of the Cowboys Stadium crowd’s interest in fighters not nicknamed “Pacman,” though, came at the midway point of round 2 – just as Soto scored a flash knockdown – and continued for five minutes, as the capacity crowd invoked a part of eighties sports lore, doing the wave for 10 stadium-wide swells.

Unbeknownst to many of the wavers, though, a very good fight was going on before them. Despite being the slower, less technically sound man in the ring, southpaw David Diaz was handling everything Soto hit him with and still stubbornly marching forward. Diaz’s experience – comprising many more fights at lightweight than Soto – told, as he was undissuaded by the smaller man’s accurate counterpunches.

Round 9 featured especially feral action as Diaz blasted Soto with left crosses, and Soto fired back with left hooks and uppercuts. While Soto was landing the more accurate punches, Diaz was surely getting his money’s worth from each exchange.

The next round saw an ounce of give in Soto. Diaz’s relentlessness – probably his most distinguishing trait as a prizefighter – took a bit of resolve from Soto’s legs and some snap from his punches. Combined with Soto’s evident fatigue, Diaz’s constant hustle made the championship rounds extremely close.

After embracing before the 12th and final round, Soto and Diaz then committed to a mutually brutalizing finish, using shoulders, elbows, heads and low blows to wear one another out. Diaz’s legs gave first, though, tossing him onto his knees with 10 seconds remaining in the match. That knockdown, and the one that came in the second round, combined to give Soto a victory on the one card that properly captured the fight – judge Gale Van Hoy’s, interestingly enough.

ALFONSO GOMEZ VS. JOSE LUIS CASTILLO
Whatever motivation Mexican Jose Luis Castillo had for rising to 145 pounds and then fighting anyway did not sustain him for all of 15 minutes Saturday. So his corner wisely canceled the final five rounds of his fight with fellow Mexican Alfonso Gomez – waving things off after round 5. With any luck, they’ll cancel Castillo’s future hopes of fighting, next.

Meeting Gomez (22-4-2, 10 KOs) in “The Event’s” second televised match of the night, Castillo (60-10-1, 52 KOs) began in a way that looked initially tentative and then outright sluggish. He threw few punches with authority but seemed at least partially engaged in the fight’s opening three minutes.

An exchange in the next round spoke volumes about Castillo’s chances, though. Closing space against Gomez – who’ll never have the class Castillo showed in his prime (many years ago) – Castillo got a bit too close, and Gomez simply tossed him away, a welterweight throwing a lightweight. Then round 3 saw a clash of heads that sent Castillo spinning towards the referee as if already looking for an honorable discharge.

Rounds 4 and 5 saw Gomez land right uppercuts that took far greater effect than Castillo’s counter left hooks. After dragging his feet back to the corner at the end of the fifth, Castillo made no protest when his corner stopped the match.

While you never wish to speculate about a prizefighter’s financial well-being, today, Castillo – once marked by an obsessive will to win – appears to be going through the motions merely for a paycheck. Dangerous motions, indeed. You can no longer love boxing and still hope Castillo keeps fighting.

JOHN DUDDY VS. MICHAEL MEDINA
If you weren’t sure how things might go when Ireland’s John Duddy (29-1, 18 KOs) squared off with Mexico’s Michael Medina (22-2-2, 17 KOs) in “The Event’s” first televised fight, a 10-round middleweight match, you needed look no further than the color of both fighters’ gloves: Green.

That color said Irish, and so did two judges, scoring a split-decision victory for Duddy: 96-93, 93-96, 96-93.

After starting fast, seasoning his shamrocks with chile by putting left hooks on Medina’s body, Duddy collected a pair of right-hand counters in round 3 that slowed his attack and made onlookers think that if Medina were the larger man, Duddy might be in genuine peril.

After five rounds, both guys’d had enough of jabbing and commenced to swapping left hooks and counter right uppercuts, with Duddy winning most exchanges and Medina scoring with plenty of his own punches.

By the eighth round, the hooks each man had landed on the other began to tell on the fighters’ legs, as Duddy and Medina had both slowed considerably. But in an effort to sap Duddy’s reserves further with hooks to the liver, Medina’s left glove strayed south one too many times, resulting in a point deducted from the Mexican’s tally for low blows.

Befitting their proud fighting traditions – Irish and Mexican – Duddy and Medina closed the fight winging punches without regard for defense or respect for one another’s power. The luck of the Irish prevailed, though, and Duddy escaped with his split-decision victory.

UNDERCARD
“The Event’s” final off-television match saw Fort Worth’s Arthur Trevino (5-3-3, 2 KOs) wage a sustained four-round featherweight scrap with Arizonan Isaac Hidalgo (6-5-2, 1 KO). One ringside judge declared Hidalgo the winner of every round, 40-36, while the other two saw the rounds split, turning in cards of 38-38. The official result, then, was a majority draw.

Before that, California super welterweight Rodrigo Garcia (6-0, 5 KOs) walk directly through Calvin Pitts (5-12-1, 1 KO), needing until only 2:21 of the second round to stop the overmatched Texan. It was a very limited test for Garcia, whose unblemished record was never in danger.

Local interest was piqued when two super bantamweights from Dallas – Roberto Marroquin (13-0, 10 KOs) and Samuel Sanchez (4-2-1) – touched gloves and came out fighting in Saturday’s fourth undercard match. Local interest then reached a peak when a second-round left hook from Marroquin felled Sanchez with such violence that no count ensued. Marroquin was declared the winner by TKO at 1:36 of round 2.

The afternoon’s next fight was of patronymic importance to Mexican fans if no one else, as Salvador Sanchez (19-3-2, 9 KOs) and Jaime Villa (8-8-2, 3 KOs) made an enjoyable eight-round featherweight match that featured some hooks, some uppercuts, some fouling and plenty of misses. After scoring an early knockdown, the Mexican named after a famous prizefighter, Sanchez, stopped the Mexican named after a famous revolutionary fighter, Villa – throwing left hooks to the liver till 1:09 of round 6, when Villa could not continue and Sanchez became the victor.

Before that came a featherweight bout between the Philippines’ Michael Farenas (26-2-3, 23 KOs) and San Antonio’s Joe Morales (20-13, 4 KOs), ended as a no-decision at 2:25 of the second round when an accidental collision of heads opened a deep gash over Morales’ right eye, causing the ringside doctor to prohibit further action.

Saturday’s action began with an eight-round bantamweight slugfest between Filipino Eden Sonsona (19-5, 6 KOs) and Columbian Mauricio Pastrana (35-13-2, 24 KOs). After dropping Pastrana several times in the middle rounds, Sonsona brought the match to a sudden end at 1:33 of the final round – striking Pastrana with a left cross of such authority that no count was attempted.

Announced attendance was 50,994 – the largest American crowd to see a fight in 17 years.

First bell of “The Event” rang through Cowboys Stadium at 5:20 p.m. CT.

Photos by Chris Farina/Top Rank

GRAPEVINE, TEX. – Tasty local appetizer cards have become a staple of promoter Top Rank’s superfight weekends, and Friday night’s fare at the Gaylord Texan Hotel & Convention Center – an opening course for “The Event” on Saturday – was no exception. Featuring a Filipino and a Mexican in the main event and crowd-pleasers from around the world in seven other matches, the card delighted its capacity crowd in a sweeping luxury compound northwest of Dallas.

Filipino flyweight Richie Mepranum (16-2-1, 3 KOs) and Mexican Hernan Marquez (25-1, 18 KOs) made a fantastic 10-round battle in Friday’s main event, one in which the light-hitting southpaw from the Philippines absorbed everything the Mexican could throw his way and hung on to win a unanimous decision: 99-91, 96-94 and 98-92.

After starting slowly before a suddenly quiet crowd, Mepranum and Marquez gradually increased their punch output through the next six rounds, turning the eighth into the beginning of a three-stanza crescendo in which both fighters threw knockout blows, while failing to finish – or even much hurt – the other man.

Though the fans in attendance were evenly split between Filipinos and Mexicans, there was little outrage expressed from the Mexican side over the judges’ awarding the fight to Mepranum.

SAMUEL PETER VS. NAGY AGUILERA

Friday’s co-main event saw a fit and fired-up Samuel Peter (34-3, 27 KOs) box, counter and then blitz Dominican Nagy Aguilera (15-3, 10 KOs), winning by technical knockout at 2:24 of the second round.

Clues to Peter’s newfound seriousness were in evidence at Thursday’s weigh-in when the “Nigerian Nightmare” – whose fitness and heart have been questioned in the past – tipped the scale at 237 1/2 pounds, his lowest weight since 2001. After that, Peter showed surprising patience and technique (and abdominal muscles), countering Aguilera whenever the Dominican hung his jab. One such counter, a patented overhand right from Peter, took Aguilera’s knees from under his thighs, dropping him early in round 2.

Peter, never a shy finisher, showed uncharacteristic finesse after that, taking his time and waiting for Aguilera to hang one more jab. Aguilera complied, hanging another left hand – and Peter blasted him with a right cross that sent Aguilera sprawling into the ropes where Peter assaulted him till the referee waved an end to the match.

JOSE BENAVIDEZ VS. BOBBY HILL

In a showcase bout to close the opening hour of Fox Sports Español’s telecast, undefeated Phoenix prospect Jose Benavidez (3-0, 3 KOs) – a seven-time national amateur champion now fighting under the Top Rank banner – made decisive work of southpaw Mississippi lightweight Bobby Hill (1-4), stopping him at 2:59 of round 3. Benavidez, who at 6-foot-1 is an enormous 135 pounder, showed the joy of battle and willingness to exchange one hopes to find in a young prizefighter.

At times, though, that joy of battle led Benavidez to show the amateurish habit of dropping his lead hand to waist level while throwing the right cross. Under the watchful eyes of trainer Freddie Roach and mentor Jose Benavidez, Sr., however, that perilous habit should be eradicated soon.

“This was the first left-hander I’ve fought as a pro,” Benavidez said after the third opponent of his career. “But I had a lot of experience against them in the amateurs, and body shots always work.”

“After the second round, I was worried,” Jose Benavidez, Sr. said about a cold from which his son had been suffering all week. “But I told him to do what he had to do.” And that he did.

UNDERCARD

The night’s second televised bout saw super welterweight Houstonian Omar Henry (8-0, 7 KOs) race out his corner and ruin Mexican Francisco Reza (5-2, 4 KOs) in a half minute of relentless offensive assault. Henry dropped Reza 10 seconds into the match with lefts and rights everywhere. Reza rose and then dropped 10 seconds later. At 0:32 of round 1, the fight was over – Henry by TKO.

The evening’s final pre-television match saw Filipino welterweight Dennis Laurente (34-3-4, 17 KOs) decision Ghanaian strongman Ben Tackie (29-12-1, 17 KOs) in a competitive eight-round welterweight scrap. Though each round was close and Tackie clearly thought he’d won at least four, the official scorecards did not agree, unanimously seeing things for Laurente by scores of 77-75, 77-75 and 78-74.

Before that, Freddie Roach-trained Mexican heavyweight Andy Ruiz, Jr. (3-0, 3 KOs) made quick work of Texan Luke Vaughn (0-2), stopping him with a textbook left hook to the liver at 1:55 of round 1. That was about the only thing that looked like it does in a textbook, as Ruiz – at 271 pounds of much more than striated muscle – wore a physique bearing no resemblance to that of his trainer’s most famous charge.

Starting the card was undefeated Washington D.C. lightweight contender Anthony Peterson (30-0, 20 KOs) in a 10-round bout with overmatched Puerto Rican Juan Ramon Cruz (16-8-1, 12 KOs). Peterson moved well, using his shell defense and waiting for openings, and did exactly what an undefeated contender is supposed to do with an eight-loss journeyman, off-television.

After felling Cruz in round 2, Peterson landed an impressive right uppercut/left hook combination in the third to begin the end of Cruz’s night. Dropped a second time, Cruz rose once more, got clipped with a right uppercut and dropped a third time. And so his night ended by TKO at 1:11 of the third round, preserving Peterson’s unblemished record.

The evening began about a half hour later than scheduled, as an ambulance had to be located before the card could commence. Attendance was good in the convention hall despite Friday’s card being made mostly for television.

Doors for Saturday’s fights open at 5:00 p.m. CT. 15rounds.com will have full ringside coverage of “The Event” in its entirety.

Photos by Chris Farina / Top rank

First, an anecdote. The night before Ghana’s Joshua Clottey fought Miguel Cotto, we took a cab from the BWAA awards dinner to Times Square. The driver was a Ghanaian. When I told him we were in town for Saturday’s big match at Madison Square Garden, he said, “Who’s fighting?”

The morning after Clottey lost to Cotto, I went to Central Park in a different Ghanaian’s cab. When I told him I’d stayed up late to cover Saturday’s big match at Madison Square Garden, he said, “Who fought?”

Joshua Clottey can bring a violent end to such anonymity Saturday night by beating Manny Pacquiao. The fight happens in Arlington, Tex. That can mean only one thing: Cowboys Stadium – the House that Jerry Built, and the anticipatory roar of 45,000 spectators. A tip of the cap to Mr. Jones and promoter Bob Arum for having a long enough view of things to make it happen.

Now let’s treat vulnerability. Pacquiao hasn’t been this vulnerable since the last time he fought in Texas, which was the last time he ran for congress in the Philippines. On Friday, Norm Frauenheim examined Pacquiao’s distracting political aspirations but couldn’t divine a reason for them. Neither can the rest of us.

Joshua Clottey is Pacquiao’s least-noteworthy opponent in the 35 months since Pacquiao’s last fight in Texas. Oh, Clottey’s more formidable than David Diaz turned out to be – more formidable than Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton, too – but not better known.

If you were Pacquiao, then, how excited would you be about a guy who lost his last fight to the guy you stopped in November?

Well, there’s the stadium. Surely that gets Pacquiao’s attention? Not necessarily. Cowboys Stadium means more to the rest of us, as Americans, than it means to Pacquiao. After all, the Cowboys aren’t “Philippines’ Team” and Pacquiao could draw 45,000 folks to a “Wapakman” DVD release party in Manila.

Then how about a chance to preserve his undefeated streak in the Lone Star State? Pacquiao’s 2-0 (2 KOs) in Texas. His first fight was the breakthrough event of his career. In November of 2003, he blitzed Marco Antonio Barrera when many of us thought Barrera was invincible. Still, Pacquiao’s second knockout in Texas is more important to this week’s fight – and not because you missed it.

Both Pacquiao’s previous fights in Texas happened at Alamodome, the cavernous venue named after a Catholic mission that hosted a battle 174 years ago last Saturday. Alamodome is a mile east of where this column is now written, which puts it about two miles east of Pico de Gallo restaurant – where Jorge Solis sat anonymously sipping menudo the morning of his fight with Manny Pacquiao on the second Saturday of April 2007. As I recall, Solis looked kinda hopeless 10 hours before he faced Pacquiao.

He didn’t look hopeless in the opening rounds, though. Pacquiao was less than himself that night. His trainer Freddie Roach had been in Puerto Rico working with Oscar De La Hoya for “World Awaits” or “Fight to Save Boxing” or whatever it was called. Pacquiao had been in the Philippines campaigning for congress; “Vote for Manny” buttons were all over San Antonio. Team Pacman was out of sync.

Then an accidental clash of heads made Pacquiao see his own blood. That did it. Pacquiao went directly through Solis after that. Order was restored.

Which returns us to Joshua Clottey. There are only two things to break Clottey’s concentration in a prizefighting ring: Rules infractions, and a belief he’ll win.

A head butt, a hip toss, clinching, a low blow – any of these can send Clottey’s mind spiraling away from the matter at his hands. Against Cotto, he reacted theatrically to roughhousing. Then he did some corner-stool calculus, decided he’d won the fight and didn’t do much after the 10th round.

Clottey might never get convinced he can win Saturday. But with Pacquiao leaping at him from a southpaw stance, there’s a good chance Clottey’s head is going to get bumped by Pacquiao’s. Cotto tells us how Clottey reacts to such infractions. And Solis tells us how Pacquiao reacts to the sight of his own blood.

Does Clottey have the physical toolbox to beat Pacquiao? Sure does. Clottey’s much bigger than Pacquiao. He’s rugged as hell. He starts fast. He outboxed both guys who decisioned him. He’s got good power, good defense and a great chin.

Does Clottey have the mental toolbox to beat Pacquiao? Doubtful.

You have to think Pacquiao’s promoter Top Rank knows this. They might have been scrambling after the Mayweather fight fell through; they knew Pacquiao in Cowboys Stadium was an idea not to be squandered. But there’s exactly no chance they would risk boxing’s one globally transcendent commodity in a fight they thought he might lose. They had Cotto pegged, didn’t they?

We know what Clottey is. We know what Pacquiao is. Pacquiao could possibly lose to Clottey – en route to winning a congressional seat in the Philippines – but Clottey is not going to beat Pacquiao. At least, I don’t think he is. Besides, whatever I know about Clottey or Pacquiao, I don’t know nearly enough about Cowboys Stadium.

Can’t wait to see it. Can’t wait for the moment the lights dim before the main event and the fighters begin their ringwalks. The electricity of those four or five minutes is the one part of a prizefight television will never adequately capture.

After that, Pacquiao will hit Clottey with a variety of unexpected punches. Clottey will block many more. Pacquiao will do enough to win most rounds. Clottey will do enough to believe he won most rounds.

Or maybe something unexpected will happen. I’d love to see Clottey become famous. I’d love to see Pacquiao tested. I believe these things could happen or I wouldn’t go to Dallas. But I sure don’t expect them to happen.

I’ll take Pacquiao: UD-12.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

Photo by Chris Farina / Top Rank

“Regard friendship as the greatest thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity. But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle: Friendship can only exist between good men.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, “Treatises on Friendship and Old Age”

There is a certain refreshing selfishness about prizefighting. Rare is the fighter who is admonished by the boxing community for pursuing his own best interests. The most we do is criticize a prizefighter for misapprehending those interests and allowing shortsighted greed to send him careering away from what’s memorable.

Because boxing has no league, there’s no chance for the disingenuous spectacle of a television spot in which a participant recounts his selfless donation of time to children or elderly folks (when he’s told he has to). The boxing ring abides no half truths, and as a rule you should believe all sacrifices in prizefighting end at the apron’s edge.

But there are exceptions. One happened a couple of Thursdays ago in Brooklyn. Friends gathered at New York’s St. Francis College to announce the creation of the Arthur Curry Scholarship Fund on what would have been Curry’s 50th birthday had he not perished from a staph infection on April 6. Curry was a long-time employee of HBO’s. The nature of his position, colleagues and friendships at the network provides a different perspective on our beloved sport.

Following his beginning in the mailroom – a corporation’s least auspicious starting line – Curry worked his way into a self-made position of liaison between his employer and its talent. That is, Curry represented HBO to the prizefighters that fought under its banner. Often his job was to join under the tent of his credibility those who practice the sincerest profession – prizefighting – with entertainers whose insincerity is high art, and managers and promoters whose insincerity is lowest art.

The role was essential because by the time a prizefighter gains esteem enough to fight on HBO, he’s distrustful – not always because he started that way. Most prizefighters come from backgrounds in which their would-be perpetrators don’t trifle with stylish presentations; those who would do them harm rush across the street and do so.

Not until a fighter has shown a superlative spark, then, does he get introduced to men who assure his best interests before they fleece him with punches he can’t see. The unscrupulous manager or promoter may be among the first men in a young prizefighter’s life who say they give a damn about him. That sort of hard-won trust gets violated, and the prizefighter finds it easiest to distrust everyone going forward.

Arthur Curry’s job was to speak to prizefighters in their language and establish enough trust between them and his employer that mutually beneficial shows could be put together. His role was not without self-interest. Curry was a company man, in the best sense of the term. He kept a closet’s worth of HBO apparel. He was immensely proud of his opportunity. He represented his network from a position of gratefulness impossible to fake.

Curry had seen enough fakes. Those who would remember him on his 50th birthday mentioned how deftly he detected a hustle. Curry’s youth had been a picture of urban inhumanity, a portrait of the cruelty perpetrated on young folks by areas overcrowded with poverty and immorality. So he saw instantly the sorts of hustles fighters might see and try to exploit, or fear.

What made Curry’s position unique, though, was that he offered prizefighters a good deal. Think of all the criticism HBO Sports has taken in the last decade, and ask yourself: Does any of it reduce to profiteering at fighters’ expenses? To its viewers’ occasional dismay, HBO has made a habit of overpaying for talent. Curry may have represented a large corporation that made money by broadcasting prizefights, but he sure didn’t represent any ruinously one-sided deals.

That’s part of the reason Roy Jones Jr. was the keynote speaker at Curry’s 50th birthday party. As distrustful a champion as we’ve seen in a generation, a man whose legacy was made on HBO, a man who was later fired by HBO, Jones spoke happily of his close association with a person introduced to him by HBO. That said a lot about Curry’s character. It also said a lot about the character of Roy Jones.

Today fundraising efforts for Chile officially commence. They enter a life-and-death struggle with efforts in behalf of Haiti. Both countries suffered earthquakes. Both countries are about to suffer man’s finite capacity for caring about others’ misfortunes. A last commentary on what made the St. Francis College event special: It happened almost 11 months after Curry’s passing.

In the days that immediately follow a friend’s death, we all make memorial plans. We often renege as time passes. No one blames us. Commemoration promises are part of grieving’s calendar and sometimes go better unobserved. But Roy Jones, HBO commentator Jim Lampley and writer Thomas Hauser, among others, deserve recognition for remembering and exemplifying Henry Ford’s definition of quality: “Doing it right when no one is looking.”

None of this says you need to cheer Jones in his next fight. You don’t need to agree with Lampley’s play-by-play. Go right ahead and rebut Hauser the next time he fires a broadside at HBO management. But also acknowledge the friendship they shared with Arthur Curry by nodding to Cicero and giving them the benefit of the doubt as good men.

Too, when you get a chance, google “Roy Jones, Jr. & Jim Lampley Celebrate Life of Arthur Curry” and watch their video. Boxing needs more men like Curry. You didn’t need me to tell you that.

But boxing also needs more of the men that make guys like Curry possible – the very purpose of the Arthur Curry Scholarship Fund.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

The second event I covered was a Top Rank card on May 6, 2005 at Fort McDowell Casino in Fountain Hills, Ariz. Televised on “Solo Boxeo,” the marquee comprised Mexican prospects like Giovanni Segura, Mike Alvarado, Jesus Soto Karass and Jesus Gonzales. But that night no one stood out like Urbano Antillon.

I miss “Solo Boxeo.” I miss Urbano Antillon.

An easily hit facsimile of Antillon was in action Saturday on Fox Sports Español. He stopped a fellow Mexican named Luis Arceo who’d lost eight of his preceding 11 fights. The match goes on the books “TKO-3” for Antillon. That’s a very happy rendition of what actually happened, though.

Referee Juan Jose Ramirez called the fight off, on doctor’s orders, 2:25 into the third round. Could Arceo have continued? Sure. He had an ugly gash on his left eyebrow, but had the same gash happened over Antillon’s brow, the fight wouldn’t have stopped. The nature of the entire televised card was one of over-protectiveness. Who was protected? That’s the question. Every time the favorite got his man in trouble, the referee’s intervention came quick. Records got preserved.

Did the cut over Arceo’s brow come from a punch? That’s another question. Arceo’s trainer said to the referee, “Juan, it’s a ‘t’.” And the cut did have the sort of ‘t’ shape that rarely comes from a gloved fist and more often from a man’s head. Replays were inconclusive because there weren’t any.

Had the cut been ruled the result of a butt, and had the fight lasted another round, it likely would have been a draw on my card. I gave the first to Arceo. I had the second even. The third was trending Antillon. Don’t know what would have happened after that. Point is, Antillon (27-1) and Arceo (22-10-2) were a lot more even than their records.

This was supposed to be a rehab fight for Antillon, who was stopped in his last match by Miguel Acosta, a Venezuelan whose previous exploits did not anticipate a round 9 knockout victory over Antillon. Arceo was put there to be hit by Antillon. Trouble was, Antillon’s chin was available like he held a “Vacancy” sign between his gloves.

Where was the guy who boxed confidently, occasionally slipped punches and dropped a smooth left hook on the liver? Abandoned in the corner of some Southern California gym, I’m guessing.

The So-Cal gym scene is a delight to aficionados and visiting trainers. It’s a great place to get sparring for a champion who readies for a title defense. It’s where hungry young guys hone their craft, prove their toughness and impress fellow gym rats – then wear themselves into injury-prone strongmen with diminished coordination and a reflexive appetite for abuse.

The more a young Mexican demonstrates he has a strong chin, the more he gets to use it. That’s the trouble with reflexivity. At the same time he uses his strong chin to take a more direct route to his opponents, forsaking head movement and punch parrying, he also sustains the sorts of blows that slow the signals passed from brain to body. Soon enough, he’s brazen about getting hit and begins down a path that ends the same way for everyone who takes it – with an opponent whose punch he cannot withstand.

Urbano Antillon’s defense of a left hook, Saturday, was to throw his own left hook. His defense for a right hand, it seemed, was to eat the punch then throw another left hook. That sort of thing can be inevitable when you find yourself across the ring from an equal. But if Luis Arceo is now Antillon’s equal, Antillon’s last five years have been awfully damning.

That’s a real possibility. Antillon made his first noteworthy gym war in 2004 with Edwin Valero. Yes, that Valero. The Venezuelan got the better of Antillon. Not as much better as some have come to remember it, but better enough. Since then, Antillon has been on an atonement tour.

He made another gym war with Juan Manuel Marquez in 2007. Just last year, he was the toughest sparring Manny Pacquiao found while readying for Ricky Hatton – and much tougher on Pacman, as it turned out, than Hatton was. When you make hellish battles with Marquez and Pacquiao, though, aren’t you supposed to make lots of money?

The fights Antillon has been paid for include wearying brawls, too. There was an Olympic Auditorium scrap with Ivan “El Relampago” Valle in only Antillon’s 10th fight. Then came a 10-round battle of attrition with Fernando “El Pillo” Trejo right after Trejo stopped Jose Armando Santa Cruz. Antillon won both and gained experience. He gained experience in hard sparring with world champions as well. But at some point, Antillon’s valuable experiences became counterproductive proofs of machismo.

Saturday, Antillon seemed too deliberate. Nothing happened with the ease it used to. Some of that might be attributable to Arceo having a good opening round; Arceo does, after all, have 22 victories on his resume. But Antillon also seemed graceless. He was trying much harder and accomplishing less. That’s the troubling trait of a guy who’s been fighting either too often or too much. That’s a troubling trait to have at age 27 with nary a title fight on your record.

It’s time for Antillon to stop proving his toughness and start preserving himself. Next time some junior welterweight champion calls for sparring, Urbano needn’t answer the phone. He needn’t prove himself against hungry young prospects who remind him of his 2005 vintage either. He should work on defense with sparring partners who don’t take his hard counterpunches personally.

There’s little room for hope; Antillon appears to have lost too much already. But we’re loath to end things on a down note. So, there’s news that Antillon has a refreshed outlook on life with new trainer Abel Sanchez!

Still down? Well, how about the rumor that “Solo Boxeo” might come back . . .

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

Wednesday brought some good news about Kelly Pavlik. All is ready but the contracts for Pavlik to defend his middleweight championship in April against Sergio Martinez. It isn’t the rematch we wanted for Martinez after his fantastic fight with Paul Williams two months ago, but it’s better than any match we’ve seen Pavlik make since Bernard Hopkins in 2008.

It’s also an occasion for examining personal bias, something I’ve wanted to do for a while. The last three years in the boxing gym – privy to arguments between numerous ethnicities and nationalities – have seen me play a role like neutral solon. When a Filipino and a Mexican argue about who won Pacquiao-Marquez II, I’m the tiebreaker, in other words, chastening both for ethnic bias.

But observing’s not as much fun as participating. That’s why I promised the next time a prizefighter who looked like me and came from my country was in a major fight, I’d do an examination of conscience – as the Xaverian brothers at St. John’s High School used to put it.

Kelly Pavlik meets those criteria. What follows, then, is a good-faith effort to better understand why we cheer the fighters we cheer, and where to draw a sensible line for cheering against others.

Folks who put on gloves and headgear tend to cheer fighters according to this hierarchy: 1. Race, 2. Fighting style, 3. Nationality, 4. Personality. This is supposed to be the post-racial world of 2010, I know, so if it makes things more palatable, go ahead and attribute our fixation on race to the forum in which it appears: We routinely get punched in the head.

As a white man in a country led by a black man, I’m now able to enjoy some newfound liberty. I think cheering for someone because he shares your race does not make you a racist. Cheering against someone because he does not share your race, though, may be something you shouldn’t do.

In an important essay about the need for affirmative action, written 23 years ago and subtitled “Reckoning with Unconscious Racism,” Professor Charles Lawrence made a thought-provoking case that anticipated a day when all racism was unconscious. Those of you who’ve suffered through some form of corporate diversity training are surely rolling your eyes right now, saying, “‘Unconscious racism’! Where does it end?”

Point taken. But consider: When the CEO of a Fortune 500 company acts ethically in the task of choosing his replacement, what qualities does he look for? After all, he’s done a fine job for the shareholders, and it’s his professional obligation to find someone who’ll do the same.

Acting in the best interests of his employer, then, he’ll select someone who reminds him of himself. That’s why there aren’t many latina women leading Fortune 500 companies. They’re not all less-qualified. Their predecessors aren’t racists. And yet the boardroom remains monochrome.

Two points, there, pertaining to prizefighting. First, we don’t need to be racists to cheer guys who remind us of ourselves. Second, we do need to be conscious of this predisposition before having our shoulders measured for that cloak of objectivity. That’s true for all sports fans, of course, but boxing, for all the criticism we accept, has always treated ethnic bias more openly than our peers; we expect more honesty from ourselves as fans.

Kelly Pavlik is white like me. He fights in the simple way – jab, hook, cross – that appeals to someone with my slower reflexes. He’s an American. He never belittles an opponent.

That role of the neutral solon I play in the gym? It partially reduces to my people not having a very impressive run in boxing these last 25 years.

That’s also the reason I feel an initial spark of interest about Pavlik that I don’t feel when I hear about Sergio Martinez or Paul Williams. After I think about Martinez or Williams matching up against Pavlik, I might well favor them or even cheer them against Pavlik. But that happens afterwards, and consciously.

What fearlessness I have in wandering about this minefield of bad faith and ruined reputation comes courtesy of Shannon Briggs. Before his 2006 fight with Sergei Liakhovich in Phoenix, Briggs called himself the “Great Black Hope” – in contrast to all the Eurasian heavyweight champions at the time. Intoxicated by a chance to represent his people, Briggs also made allegations of racism at the Liakhovich camp.

How much did this bother a Belarusian making a first title defense in his adopted hometown? In the post-fight press conference, after he’d lost his WBO belt in the fight’s final second, Liakhovich brought it up almost immediately. He turned to Briggs and said, in broken English, he wanted everyone to know he’d never said anything derogatory about black Americans.

Briggs said, “I know.” Then he explained it was just a ruse to sell the fight and get in Liakhovich’s head. Don King cackled away. Liakhovich looked more relieved than offended. And I promised myself I’d never be called a racist and take it seriously again.

Still, voluntary examinations of conscience can’t hurt, especially when I cheer against people.

I cheered against Fernando Vargas when he fought Oscar De La Hoya, but obviously not because he was latino. I’ll cheer against Floyd Mayweather when he fights Shane Mosley, but obviously not because he’s black. I’ll cheer against Wladimir Klitschko when he fights Eddie Chambers, though I can’t imagine it’s because he’s white.

I don’t like the personalities of Vargas or Mayweather, or the fighting style of Klitschko.

I’ll cheer for whomever I wish, then, for whatever reason – and that will probably mean Kelly Pavlik. But when I cheer against someone, I’ll do my best to ensure it’s not for ethnic reasons. I think that’s about as much as we can ask of ourselves.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

Photo by Chris Farina/Top Rank

There’s an old adage in prizefighting – or if there isn’t, there should be – that you can neither trust a knockout victory on a South American’s resume nor a loss on a Mexican’s. Sometime early in a South American’s career someone determines he’s a puncher then uses matchmaking to prove it. Mexicans, meanwhile, can find themselves against former champions in spotty weight classes before their 10th bouts.

More evidence of the South American case comes from Richard Gutierrez, who fought on the undercard of Showtime’s Saturday broadcast from Nuevo Leon, Mexico. In Colombia, Gutierrez was a power-punching terror, starting his career 18-0 (11 KOs). Since coming to the United States, he’s 6-4-1. Such’ll also be the case with the man who just decisioned Gutierrez, Luis Carlos Abregu, whose record in his native Argentina was 19-0 (16 KOs) but who’ll suffer his first loss soon as he fights any current titlist.

Such is not the case with Venezuelan Edwin Valero.

Saturday in Arena Monterrey, Valero defended his WBC lightweight title against Mexican Antonio DeMarco by causing the tall southpaw to quit on his stool after the ninth round. To make a Mexican quit on his stool against a foreigner, in Mexico, is no mean feat. Afterwards, DeMarco explained: “My body did not respond (correctly).”

As is the case every time a prizefighter accuses his body of not responding, what DeMarco meant to say is: “My opponent’s body did not respond (correctly).”

It sure didn’t. DeMarco had the right style for a wild-swinging Venezuelan southpaw who gets in street fights and arrested for DUIs, might be brain-damaged, and keeps his hands low, his mouth open and his head still. DeMarco could blast a guy like that with right-hook/left-cross combos. The Venezuelan boxer-puncher who showed up Saturday with fantastic footwork, better balance and a willingness to clinch? No chance DeMarco could get that guy to respond correctly.

Edwin Valero is not what you think he is. He’s good as you think he is. But he’s not good like you think he is.

The reason DeMarco’s left cross couldn’t find an opponent three inches shorter was because of Valero’s surprising footwork. Valero would see DeMarco’s right shoulder cock – so as to deliver torque to his left cross – and rock from back foot to front. Valero would next drop his head beneath DeMarco’s onrushing left glove. Then he’d pivot 90 degrees to the right and snap his left foot around. By the time DeMarco’s punch was spent, Valero would be set 18 inches behind DeMarco’s back shoulder.

That’s not the maniac we see on YouTube.

Valero does more thinking than reacting. He’s more young Roberto Duran than young Manny Pacquiao. And at 28, he ain’t that young either.

In round 2 against DeMarco, Valero answered some important questions. He got DeMarco to the ropes and started a right jab. DeMarco caught it with his left glove, took a step forward and winged a right hook that fell short. Valero threw an odd right jab to where DeMarco’s head had just been. The jab landed instead on DeMarco’s left glove – pinning it to the top of DeMarco’s head. But DeMarco had already started a left cross. His glove stayed put, and the rest of his arm completed the punch. His left elbow smashed against a spot on Valero’s head halfway between the right eyebrow and hairline.

Valero immediately touched his own elbow. DeMarco charged. Valero signaled again, remembered he was in a fight, blocked a punch, took a step back and signaled once more. Uh oh, you thought, another Kermit Cintron; another hard-punching head case.

Referee Lawrence Cole stopped the action, saw the deep gash on Valero’s forehead and had the doctor take a look. What ensued was fantastic theater. Cleared to fight on, Valero became the savage we were promised. Half his face covered in blood, his wild hair flying, his rat tail swinging, the Venezuelan swam at DeMarco with lefts and rights, barking as he threw them. ¡“El Inca” está aquí!

Then Valero relented. He’d tried DeMarco’s resolve and found it stiff. No need to let the drunkenness induced by another man’s elbow cause sustained carelessness. He committed to taking openings, not forcing them. When the taller man landed solid punches with his longer arms, Valero did not lunge in or hit back. He clinched and reset. Giving up plenty of height, Valero still made his opponent fight on his terms.

When DeMarco initiated, Valero used his legs to leap out of range while keeping his lead hand low, back hand high and chin tucked behind his right shoulder. If Freddie Roach even dreams of Pacman making a defensive move like that, he’ll wake up with wet sheets.

But let’s be honest. Edwin Valero is a weird dude. He has the eccentric look of escaped convicts and college professors. At times he shows a frantic fighting style that will enchant sadists so long as his knockout streak – currently at 27 – does not break. But he also has a foundation, especially in his lower body, that purists will enjoy interrogating; he breaks rules, yes, but that’s very different from being oblivious of them.

He’s too much of a thinker in the ring, though, to be forgiven gang-related activity and a Las Vegas DUI – and if you were in MGM Grand’s media center after Pacquiao-Cotto, you know Bob Arum sure hasn’t forgiven him. If he’d frightened the hell out of DeMarco, making him bless himself countless times before the bell, then blasted him in 90 seconds, we’d shout, “CAT scans and visa issues be damned, get this beast in an American ring!”

Instead, Valero gave us a complicated personage to think on. As he comes from a country that is more antagonist than feel-good-story, marketing him, too, will require a template of its own.

Valero might well become a great fighter. But he might never be more than an internet legend.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

LAS CRUCES, N.M. – And you thought it was flat and dark on a nighttime drive from Phoenix to Tucson? The current view from I-10 East: Indian reservations, 18-wheelers, dust and an unobstructed view of where the sky touches the road. It is not picturesque. Still, you can understand the metaphorical appeal; a boundless expanse that enchants wandering souls.

There’s lots of time to think out here. Lots to think about, too. For boxing fans, Saturday brought a pleasant surprise worth treating. So let us.

All indications are that Floyd “Money” Mayweather will make a welterweight title match with “Sugar” Shane Mosley on May 1 at MGM Grand. Your reaction to this announcement passes for a litmus test. If you smile, shake your head and say “I never thought Mayweather’d do it, but I’m glad he did!” you’re capable of an objective view, despite Mayweather’s shenanigans. If you can’t pass even a smidgeon of begrudging admiration Mayweather’s way, though, you might be everything “Money’s” obnoxious fans say you are.

Chemist, reveal thy composition.

I will by way of a confession and a pledge. The confession? Back in December when 15rounds.com’s intrepid editor Marc Abrams sent a questionnaire that included “Fight you’d most like to see in 2010,” I didn’t choose Pacquiao-Mayweather. That fight won our survey, of course. But I chose Mosley-Mayweather and meant it.

Shane Mosley presents a more complicated challenge to Floyd Mayweather. There’s a good chance that if 2010’s most-demanded fight had happened – if it does yet happen – Mayweather would retreat to the ropes, take away much of the leap in Pacquiao’s left cross, solve Pacquiao’s timing, pop him with short rights, threaten him with a high left elbow, and then hold him till half the television sets in Manila were switched off in disgust. None of that plays with Mosley.

Mosley’s style is not complex as his speed makes it look. But it’s plenty complex. It’s also a style employed by a fighter that has seen every defense there is and knows that, often as not, physicality wins the day. Or as “Mad Men’s” Don Draper thought to put it: “At a certain point seduction is over, and force is actually being requested.”

Mosley understands force. And he will not be surprised by Mayweather’s reflexes. Mayweather, though, might be surprised by Mosley’s fearlessness. However underestimated Mayweather’s strength might be, there’s no chance it’s greater than Antonio Margarito’s. You saw how Mosley manhandled him.

Whatever the fighters’ history over the last decade, today Mosley offers Mayweather his best chance at redemption. But how in the world did a former multi-divisional champ with a 40-0 record come to require redemption? Steadily.

Whenever things first kicked-off and the name Floyd got switched to “Fraud” by a writer or two, doubts really got rolling round the time of the Carlos Baldomir fight. Mayweather bought his way out of a contract with promoter Top Rank and forwent a lucrative offer to fight Margarito – then the WBO welterweight champion – to face Baldomir instead. The fight was dreadful.

Then came the fight to save boxing with Oscar De La Hoya – a made-for-TV event that launched HBO’s “24/7” franchise and revealed Mayweather as thoroughly unlikable. Not unlikable in the professional-wrestling-heel sense so much as in the kid-who-shoplifts-a-candy-bar sense. Mayweather delighted in his own cleverness and originality while stringing together hip-hop clichés. Afterwards he retired. Then he came back. Then he retired.

Boxing fans realized they didn’t miss him. But he came back again anyway. He chose the lightweight champion for his welterweight return. He made no effort to weigh 144 pounds – as Golden Boy Promotions had promised he would – and looked three weight classes larger than Juan Manuel Marquez by the time the opening bell rang. But then Mayweather ran into R.A. the Rugged Man, a Long Island emcee, and got thoroughly outclassed on the radio; Rugged Man ran a check on Money’s credit and found him wanting.

The end of negotiations for a fight with Manny Pacquiao, combined with rumored invitations issued to junior welterweights, were the last confirmation Mayweather’s myriad of critics needed. Mayweather stood on the precipice of irrelevance, three years or so from a VH1 reality series like “Where’s my ‘Money’?”

But an earthquake struck Haiti, and the WBC’s Haitian-American titlist Andre Berto suddenly had to withdraw from his welterweight unification bout with Shane Mosley. And with Mosley and Mayweather sharing the same promoter and both available in the spring, well, redemption presented itself – cornering Mayweather. To his credit, Mayweather has met the challenge.

That brings us to the pledge. 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. I praise him today just for agreeing to the fight.

Mosley will turn 39 this year and might well be an old man by the time May 1 arrives. So be it. The assumption we must make is that Mosley is the same beast that went directly through Margarito a year ago. That also must be the assumption under which Mayweather signed, and now prepares, for this fight. Mosley is the sort of relentless body-puncher against whom making a “boring fight” would be a mark of excellence. If Mayweather makes May 1 dull, in other words, he’ll deserve our admiration.

If something happens to preclude this fight, though, scorn will be the order of the day. There likely won’t be press conferences or future “24/7” episodes enough to restore Mayweather’s standing.

The kids’ll forgive you, Money. A smug sound bite, a tour of the Big Boy Mansion, another roll of Benjamins unfurled at an HBO camera, Uncle Roger explaining why you’re better than Sugar Ray Robinson – they’ll get the job done. But remember, kids don’t write history. Adults do. And the adults are now gathered and watching closely. Your ultimate legacy is in the offing.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

Before you put all your money on the single toss of Yuriorkis Gamboa over Juan Manuel Lopez in a featherweight superfight, consider this: Gamboa just razed a guy with 13 losses coming up (or not) from a weight class below; Lopez just rose four pounds to take the WBO belt from a titlist with one career loss. Sobriety is warranted.

But not much. Gamboa’s ruination of Rogers Mtagwa in their WBA featherweight title tilt at Madison Square Garden’s theater, Saturday, was a good show. It was improved by Gamboa’s needing only 5 1/2 minutes to stop Mtagwa, a feat Lopez didn’t pull off in 36.

Lopez, for his part, was not idle. In the main event of HBO’s “Boxing After Dark” doubleheader, “Juanma” outfought Steven Luevano to claim a second title in as many weight classes, stopping the veteran Californian at 0:44 of round seven.

The more telegenic display belonged to Gamboa. Every time he saw Mtagwa’s right shoulder twitch for a cross, Gamboa fired a left hook. And he didn’t miss. Mtagwa was a pitiable target for the fight’s duration, leading referee Steve Smoger’s TKO signal to get the old “merciful” label.

How much was Mtagwa affected by what he and Lopez did to one another in October? Why didn’t Mtagwa come within 3 1/2 pounds of the featherweight limit for this fight? Good questions, both. But we’re not much interested in the answers. We’re interested in how Gamboa’s undoing of Mtagwa helps ensure Gamboa’s next opponent is Lopez. Saturday’s action helped.

Puerto Ricans were always going to turn out for Lopez in a world title fight. Now many of us can turn out for Gamboa, a 126-pound Cuban version of Mike Tyson with better habits in the ring and out.

Thoughts of Tyson had to have gone through a few minds Saturday. The spite for an opponent’s primitive skills combined with well-leveraged short hooks, quick feet and a brutal ending. Such thoughts will go through many more minds if Gamboa finds a way to make Juanma into Michael Spinks – a prospect by no means impossible and by all means unlikely.

Because he’s been kept on Top Rank pay-per-view undercards and long lacked a ringside identity, Steven Luevano has not been properly appreciated. By extension, few fans will credit Lopez properly for what he just did. Luevano hasn’t concussive power, incalculable speed or impenetrable defense. But he has wiles. And he’d had class enough to make it through six title fights without being beaten, much less stopped. He was not, then, the sort of prizefighter you hammer with a right uppercut.

Yet that’s what Lopez did early in the seventh round. Once he saw Luevano’s chin rise and eyes grow, Lopez, a southpaw, threw a left cross, stepped his back foot to the front, and blasted Luevano with a right hook. That was a finisher’s move.

Lopez had a lot of reminding to do Saturday, and he accomplished most of it. But after Rogers Mtagwa took him cruising up and down “queer street” – that GPS coordinate old timers employed before there was GPS – just 105 days ago, Lopez now has a somewhat scuffed image in most serious fans’ minds. That’s fine.

We turn to the fairer sex for an idea about scuffing things. Women have a learned distrust for the smooth. Dollar bills and shoe soles, specifically. Until you’ve roughed-up a newly minted bill, it has an unfortunate tendency to adhere to other bills. And until you’ve roughed up the underside of a sole, it has a dangerous tendency to treat dust and water like ice. Both bills and shoes, though, retain their value long after you’ve scuffed them.

Lopez is now scuffed and trustworthy. We know that when he is semiconscious from fatigue and blows to the head, his impulse is to swim at an opponent, forsaking unreliable reflexes and raising the stakes for both men.

Norm Frauenheim captured something like this idea a few years ago in The Arizona Republic when he wrote “undefeated is untested” then disqualified any unvanquished fighter from his all-time Top 5 list. There’s wisdom in that, which is probably why it incites young fans.

About a decade ago when Roy Jones Jr. terrified civil servants in the light heavyweight division, RJJ was fond of dismissing fans’ pleas for larger challenges by saying, “Y’all just wanna see me bleed.” Today he wishes he could have those bloodless days back.

While it behooves managers and promoters to demand the highest pay for the slightest risk, ultimately it cheats both fighters and aficionados. If you are a fan of prizefighting – not merely your favorite prizefighter’s cheerleader – you want to see a fighter bloodied, roughed up, scuffed. It reveals his character and worthiness of your devotion.

If you love an athlete too much to bear the sight of his being bludgeoned by another man’s fists, that’s understandable. Boxing isn’t your sport.

To date, Yuriorkis Gamboa has been dropped several times but never hurt. He’s taken a fantastic amateur career and used its lessons to see wide openings and exploit them completely. Gamboa has not yet had to create openings against an equal. He’s not yet had to clip someone like Steven Luevano with a right uppercut in the seventh round of a competitive fight. Does Gamboa know how to do this? Yes. Can he land that punch on a veteran titlist? We have no idea.

But we should desperately want to find out. Gamboa contends Juan Manuel Lopez is not in his category, and he may be right. It’s hard to think of anyone currently at 126 pounds who’s better capable of matching Gamboa’s speed, power, technique and experience than Lopez, though.

If Lopez-Gamboa happens, even with Vazquez-Marquez IV already on the docket, there’s good reason to think it will be the best mix of violence, class and consequence we see in 2010.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

Photo by Chris Farina/ Top Rank

We come to the end of our Pacquiao-Mayweather mourning season. Fun as it is to gnash teeth and tremble at the future of prizefighting, the sun has risen anew, men still don gloves to resolve conflicts in manly ways, and a major venue awaits a major event in a couple months. Let’s think about that.

It will help us inter the ordeal of arrogance and incompetence we’ve been subjected to since the morning of Nov. 15. More importantly, it should clear our palates for Shane Mosley versus Andre Berto. So now, some thoughts about Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey on March 13 in Cowboys Stadium – Jerry Jones’ 73-acre architectural marvel, featuring an arch truss planar section that comprises 110,000 pounds of grade-65 Luxembourg steel.

Wait, how many pounds? Check the “Architecture Fact Sheet” at Stadium.DallasCowboys.com. I’ll be in Dallas – Irving, if you want to be pedantic – in March, not because I like Pacquiao more than Floyd Mayweather or because I think Top Rank does better than Golden Boy Promotions or even because I have a soft spot for Ghanaian challengers.

I’ll be there because I want to say I covered a historic figure in a historic edifice.

A historic figure who won’t subject himself to random blood tests for performance-enhancing drugs? Yes. But.

Welcome to our era’s unfortunate cynicism. The best athletes aren’t guilty till proved innocent, exactly, but they are suspect – no matter how many times they’re proved not-guilty.

This is an opinion column, not a report, so take this in the spirit it’s intended – as Adam Carolla might put it. I felt a certain relief when Floyd Mayweather Sr.’s unsubstantiated allegations about Pacquiao got wide coverage. It felt better to have the self-imposed gag order lifted. Any writer who’s covered any other sport in the last decade and tells you he’s never wondered about the world’s best prizefighter – whoever he is or was – is being dishonest.

Stop shaking your head, because here comes something you didn’t already know. Sometime after Manny Pacquiao went directly through David Diaz in 2008, I began using a hypothetical PED-usage test on my Filipino-American friends at the boxing gym. I wanted to see their reactions. They were mixed and revealed nothing we don’t already know about how little we already know.

Did I do this to besmirch the character of a superstar athlete from a Pacific island? Not even a little. I did it for two selfish reasons. First, before I committed time, expense and words to covering Pacquiao’s future exploits, I wanted to ensure that – in the year 2020 – I wouldn’t feel the way so many pundits who provided breathless coverage of Mark McGwire’s 1998 exploits felt this week.

Second, I offered the hypothetical, because on a philosophical level, I don’t know what to think. In the 1990s, I watched a lot of baseball, especially the McGwire-Sosa race, with a suppressed suspicion something like this: If I’m the only one who knows, and nobody else broaches the subject, must it truly compromise this wonderful spectacle?

I also spent time around competitive bodybuilders and power lifters. I watched guys inject themselves with vitamins, drink amino acids, drop stimulants under their tongues before workouts, and participate in “natural” contests. That is, these were guys not using PEDs. And despite their routine departures from what you did in your basement with a Nautilus machine, they weren’t nearly big as McGwire.

The entire debate strikes me as profoundly arbitrary. At their most basic, PEDs expedite healing. That’s why Barry Bonds’ I-worked-harder defense implicated more than it exculpated: Of course you did; everyone else was too sore.

The New York Times reports a Canadian doctor performed “platelet-rich plasma therapy” on Tiger Woods. Blood was drawn, altered in a machine and then injected back in Woods’ body. Apparently this is kosher. But are you allowed to do it to a racehorse? And what’s the difference between recycling blood to help a golfer recover from knee surgery, and doing it to help a cyclist recover from fatigue?

Intent, I guess. Which is why exasperated fans want this debate to go the hell away. They slam their fists on the table and demand Olympic-style testing. But does it check for caffeine?

Yes. Why? No. Why not?

I’ve used all sorts of over-the-counter diet pills, in my day, to suppress appetite. Some euphemism for “speed” is all that works. Metabolife once worked. Then ephedrine got banned. But now you can buy it in the supermarket. If I take it with caffeine, I can replicate the Metabolife formula that was legal in 1999 and illegal in 2004. Should I be able to pass a pre-employment drug test?

Yes. Why? No. Why not?

Can anyone be sure Manny Pacquiao is clean? Can anyone be sure Floyd Mayweather is clean? We don’t even know to whom we should turn for a definition of the word “clean” at this point. We’re simply not there yet – and if “there” is an arbitrarily agreed-to list of testing schedules and banned substances that changes monthly, we can’t be sure we’ll ever be there.

I suspect Joshua Clottey of cleanliness. He bears all the late-fading hallmarks of a PED-less athlete. Or he’s just mentally fragile. Still, I give him a chance against Pacquiao – though I respect Top Rank’s matchmakers too much to give Clottey too much of a chance.

But I’m not going to Dallas to celebrate Clottey’s probable cleanliness. Or even Pacquiao’s legend. I’m going to see the stadium. I want to wander about looking for the media center. I want to see paid-for seats filled before television goes on the air. Most of all, I want to remember my time of covering the fights as something more than a tourist’s brochure of Las Vegas Boulevard South.

I want to see Cowboys Stadium so badly I’d watch Floyd Mayweather fight Nate Campbell there. Honest.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

By 2005 Arizona was very much the Helpdesk State, whatever hold the Grand Canyon still had on tourists’ imaginations, and a few wiseasses in a Tempe call center said we should change the state bird from a Cactus Wren to a Head Set. One such chap was Bob Benedetti. He started a local sports portal, named it Bob44.com and asked me to write for him.

So began my tenure as an Arizona boxing writer – a journey rife with pleasant surprises. The boxing-writing part of that journey continues so long as you read me. The Arizona part, though, concludes Feb. 1, the day I move to San Antonio, Tex.

What follows, then, is a meandering tour of the last five years of Grand Canyon State boxing. Please join me.

In March of my first year, Arizona boxing had attached its fortunes to a former U.S. amateur champion readying for his 15th professional fight under Top Rank’s banner. Jesus “El Martillo” Gonzales was 14-0 (9 KOs) and expected someday to approach the fame and accomplishments of Michael Carbajal – whose shadow always looms over local prizefighting.

I visited Central Boxing Gym, learned Gonzales’ training schedule and returned the next day to interview both Jesus and his father and trainer, Ernie Sr. A week later MaxBoxing.com’s Thomas Gerbasi wrote a Tuesday profile of “El Terrible” Esdrick Isaac Morales, and I sent him an email inquiring about boxing writing. He replied quickly and generously, even encouraging me to pursue a credential for Gonzales’ next fight. A month later Top Rank’s Lee Samuels introduced me to local rep Phil Soto who gave me that credential.

That year there were 23 fight cards in Arizona. Top Rank – doing business with local promoter Peter McKinn – staged about a dozen. Startup outfit Golden Boy Promotions did six of their own in Tucson.

But Top Rank’s interest in Arizona boxing crashed Sept. 17, 2005. That night, the last of the “Adiós” cards featuring Julio Cesar Chavez, saw Jesus Gonzales ruined by Jose Luis Zertuche – just before Ernie Sr. punched McKinn – then Chavez blame a broken hand for his fifth-round surrender to Grover Wiley, and finally Michael Carbajal escorted from the premises by security. Bob Arum was ringside. “¡Adiós Phoenix!” indeed.

Along the way, though, I met John Raygoza – the owner of 15rounds.com and author of the first piece I read about “El Martillo.” John invited me to Tucson where I met Desert Diamond Casino’s excellent staff. Six weeks after Top Rank said adiós, Golden Boy returned to Tucson to make its most ambitious desert show, “Boxing World Cup” – a 50-round monster between Mexico and Thailand.

The following March, with Bob Benedetti’s encouragement, I started writing for 15rounds.com. Two months later undefeated cruiserweight BJ Flores rented Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum, home of the Arizona State Fair, and made a card the late Norman Mailer might have called “Advertisements for Himself.” Phil Soto, who handled seating for Flores, put me on the canvas next to The Arizona Republic’s scribe – some guy named Frauenheim. I spent the next 150 minutes laughing at 30 years’ worth of stories.

That month, the median value of a Phoenix home was $330,320.

Towards the end of 2006, the end of Arizona as a boxing destination became apparent. Don King made his last visit in the fall, staging “Red November: The Hunt for the White Wolf” on the pitcher’s mound at Chase Field. Liakhovich-Briggs, the main event, followed the worst 35:30 of heavyweight championship boxing with perhaps its most suspenseful conclusion when Shannon Briggs knocked Sergei Liakhovich onto the scorer’s table at 2:59 of the last round.

Golden Boy Promotions used Desert Diamond as a Plan-B venue 364 days later, bringing Juan Manuel Marquez and Rocky Juarez to the southern desert after lagging ticket sales, er, an injury to Marquez’s knuckle, knocked the fight out of Las Vegas.

But by then Arizona’s economy was in free-fall. Frightened Arizonans did what frightened Americans always do in bad economic times: Blame the immigrants. A novel law got passed, work visas became mandatory for Mexican fighters, and one year later matchmaker Eric Gomez called Arizona the hardest place to put a boxing card.

Showdown Promotions made a noble effort to resurrect prizefighting with a Gila River Casino card in the fall of 2008. Ivaylo Gotzev promised a rising Phoenix 13 months later. Fact remained, though, that in the four years since 2005, Arizona boxing had gone from 23 cards to eight – with only half comprising more than four fights.

This month the median value of a Phoenix home is $177,000. That’s 46 percent less than it was in 2006. You can imagine what such a reversal has done to the mortgage offices, restaurants, car dealerships and banks that employed Arizona fight fans.

Golden Boy Promotions’ last Tucson card was possibly the worst in “Friday Night Fights” history. Peter McKinn spent some of his fall in Fourth Avenue Jail. And BoxingTalk.com reports Ivaylo Gotzev filed for bankruptcy two months after “Phoenix Rising.” Arizona boxing deserved better.

As I leave for the Lone Star State, though, let me acknowledge some friends.

All the best to my three favorite local fighters – two of whom try never to fight locally – Donnie Orr, BJ Flores and Juanito Garcia. Many thanks to the good folks at SIMG in Tucson. Thanks for the good chats to Showdown’s Gerry Truax. And for providing my first credential, and being a first-rate person, Phil Soto, especially, has my gratitude.

Finally, the writers: Keep your eye on Albert Alvarez at DiamondBoxing.com. Know that there isn’t a finer, or funnier, baseball writer on the wire than the AP’s Andy Bagnato. If ever you’re in southern Arizona, get a copy of the Green Valley News; Nick Prevenas is Arizona sportswriting’s best-kept secret. And that guy named Frauenheim? Turns out he’s a legend of sorts. You can find him here every Friday.

See you guys at the Alamodome.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

“This one storm is going to change the face of our planet. When this storm is over, we’ll be in a new ice age. My God.” – Professor Jack Hall, “The Day After Tomorrow”

Thank heavens the hyperbolic professor didn’t have an internet connection and an interest in boxing these last 40 days. Who knows how many worlds he might have seen ending? But then, if he’d had those things there’s an outside chance his carrying on might have been ridiculous enough for us to snicker, find our equilibrium and realize that – much as in the poorly scripted case above – the end of the world is not nigh.

Nor is the end of boxing. Nor – mercilessly enough – is the end of negotiations for Manny Pacquiao to fight Floyd Mayweather and determine the mythical pound-for-pound titlist of 2010. Soft deadlines have passed. Hard deadlines have come and gone. New Year’s Day is in the books. Both sides are unwilling to budge. And with March 13 looming but 68 days from here, there’s not nearly enough time to fill Cowboys Stadium!

Get a hold of yourself. This fight was never going anywhere but Las Vegas. With MGM Grand the settled site for Pacquiao-Mayweather, there are no tickets to sell; attracting pay-per-viewers is the only point of the promotion. That means HBO’s “24/7” program is the de facto promoter and the ultimate deadline needn’t come before Feb. 1.

That could be the last word in optimism if optimism were warranted. It isn’t.

Anyone reading this column cares enough about our sport to cast a wary eye at outsiders who assure us boxing’s future relies on this fight coming off. I know, I know. We finally had the New York Times and Wall Street Journal’s validation. Well, so long as this fight looked doable, it behooved us all to agree this was the most important happening of the millennium. Now that Pacquiao-Mayweather in Texas has gone the way of Pacquiao-Valero in Macao, though, ask yourself: How does this fight affect me?

Manny Pacquiao is considered the world’s best fighter. Floyd Mayweather is considered the world’s second-best fighter. If they were to fight, those positions would likely switch. How is that good for boxing?

Pacquiao is a charismatic action fighter who’s created a market for prizefighting in the Philippines and made it popular as ever throughout Asia. Mayweather is a foul-mouthed defensive specialist whose fights lose more fans than they gain. Pacquiao is good for boxing. Mayweather is good for Mayweather.

Mayweather is also too smart by half, this time. He’s devised a strategy of implying Pacquiao has been cheating, without exactly saying it. He didn’t want fair play; he wanted another psychological advantage over another opponent. He knew Pacquiao would consider the blood testing intrusive. He knew in Pacquiao’s mind it would be “Money May” himself reaching in those veins and doing God knows what with the blood.

Hey, as an American immune to superstition, I’m with Mayweather on the testing. I’d probably agree to the testing even if I did have something to hide – betting on the testers’ incompetence. But most Filipinos would refuse blood tests even if they had nothing to hide.

If the fight’s off because neither side flinches on blood tests, Pacquiao remains the world’s best fighter. Mayweather holds down the two spot. Works for me.

But let’s hope it doesn’t work for Mayweather. Let’s hope being a runner-up enkindles him enough to declare war on the welterweight division, demand the head of whoever wins the upcoming match between Shane Mosley and Andre Berto, and then issue beatings to Joshua Clottey, Miguel Cotto and Luis Collazo.

Wait, stop laughing.

A more likely scenario of course is that Mayweather will pursue dwindling-money fights with old guys and b-level talents until he, too, becomes an old guy. If that happens, Mayweather’s ultimate legacy will look like this: Top 10 talent, Top 100 resume.

Oh, no it won’t! I’ll remind the world till the day I die that Pacquiao ducked him by refusing blood tests!

No, you won’t. Someday you’ll be married with kids and a full-time job and no more than an hour of every week for message boards. Then, only Mayweather’s record of actual fights will matter, and some youngster half your age will say: “Not one prime hall-of-famer on that 50-0 record.”

Based on their past exploits, we can assume Pacquiao really wants this fight, Mayweather sort of wants this fight, Golden Boy Promotions really wants this fight, and Top Rank sort of wants this fight. Though they share similar levels of enthusiasm, Mayweather is wrong and Top Rank is right – coincidentally, for the same reason:

If anyone can solve Manny Pacquiao, it’s Floyd Mayweather.

Pacquiao and his millions of fans don’t know this. Mayweather and his dozens of fans do. And so, one assumes, do a few people in Top Rank – the company that developed Mayweather before it developed Pacquiao. Top Rank won’t jeopardize the Pacman party till it gets plenty more concessions at the negotiating table.

If Pacquiao-Mayweather does happen, though, it will be an event. The New York Times will be there. The undercard will be unwatchable. The fight itself will be dull. Mayweather will hold the sport of boxing hostage – whupping the daylights out of the Matty Hattons of the world – for five more years. And we’ll all be $100 million richer.

No we won’t. Yet, that’s the final reason why many seem to think they have a vested interest in this fight happening: Because it will make a lot of money. Money for whom? In prizefighting the money distributes like the talent on a super-fight’s marquee: 90 percent in the top 10 percent.

So, dry your eyes. And remember, less money in boxing, not more, is what made 2009 so much better than 2008.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry