By Jimmy Tobin-

It’s the smile, the mischief in it. There’s self-satisfaction there too, irrepressible, mocking. And something more sinister at work. A pleasure in cruelty perhaps? Even in the theatrical? A relish in the power to shape a moment according to one’s will maybe? To create a unity of the rapt thousands looking on? Yes, that’s certainly part of it. It is a conscious display, this smile, one understood by all—the crowd, the judges, the opponent—to signal one thing: that a beating is at hand.

***

Terence Crawford’s smile, like so much of the fighter, is charming in its menace. And like so much of the Omaha, Nebraska fighter, it was on display at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Saturday night where Crawford announced his arrival at welterweight by butchering Australian Jeff Horn in nine rounds. Crawford may find his ambition thwarted in his new division but if there was one message to take from watching him parse and punish Horn it was this: Crawford is not the welterweight who should be worried. And he is not.

That smile appeared in the third round when it became clear that all of Horn’s early success had been little more than the modest price of calculation, an allowance in the name of salting the meat. By the third round, Crawford found his range, appraised Horn’s rhythm, his power, his strength, and knew—like seemingly everyone save for Horn’s trainer, Glenn Rushton—that competition henceforth would bleed from the bout. Say what you will of Horn the fighter, of his disputed victory over Manny Pacquiao last year, he goes boisterously to his fate against everyone in the division not named Errol Spence. That may be an indictment of a division that even three years ago was considered as good as any in boxing; it may be a referendum on the merit of the fighters who once justified that esteem. Either way, in butchering Horn Crawford reminded us what divisional rankings cannot: that the distance between fighters on a list is anything but uniform.

Crawford was smiling in the ninth too, as he ripped double-hooks into Horn’s body, savoring the buckle and bend, the pain they produced. He was smiling again seconds later as referee Robert Byrd spared Horn, too tough for his health, the type of lingering abuse that ages fighters overnight.

Because Crawford is as good a finisher as you will find: patient, accurate, creative. Roman Gonzalez, also flawless in the pursuit of destruction, expressed a genuine appreciation for the person absorbing his punches, and that tangible intimacy kept his abuse sporting. But Crawford? Crawford is mean, irresistibly so. When he sets upon an opponent he isn’t exorcising demons, violence does not appear cathartic for him. No, Crawford is taxing opponents for their insolence, showing too those ungloved and uninteresting talking heads what he thinks of their criticisms. (Indeed he said as much when asked about his bullying of Horn, ostensibly saying that the people who questioned his strength needed to be reminded whose opinion the fighter actually credits.)

There is something Mayweather-like about Crawford (now the best American fighter in the world), in the way he first studies then disarms his opponents. But unlike the welterweight version of Mayweather, Crawford goes beyond merely establishing dominance, he imperils himself at his opponent’s expense. You do not hang around with “Bud”: if he thinks he can end you your daylights depend on convincing him otherwise. That may change at welterweight, where opponents are more stubbornly absorbent, but the strength and power Crawford displayed Saturday say otherwise.

There are some who will temper their enthusiasm for Crawford, noting that Horn was but one more hapless opponent heaped on the pile used to elevate Crawford’s accolades beyond his accomplishments. There is some truth to that, particularly given the model for developing fighters that flourished recently on HBO, where greatness was bestowed at the outset and opponents approved to preserve it. And really, did anyone save for Viktor Postol’s staunchest supporters expect Crawford to lose any of his thirty-three fights? There is something to be said for how you win, however, and in fighting the only opponents available to him Crawford has left little doubt of his excellence. Besides, any further fights below welterweight would only delay seeing Crawford challenged, which is precisely what those who have yet to embrace him need to see.

It would be interesting to hear who those same reluctant admirers would prefer Crawford face next. Because if the goal is to have Crawford prove himself there is but one name on that list. And while it might be interesting to watch Crawford chop Shawn Porter up, or hang the first stoppage loss on Danny Garcia, or show Keith Thurman the difference between a person who fights for a living and a fighter, the outcome of all of those fights would only move the bar on Crawford.

No, the fight for Crawford is with Errol Spence, and the time for that fight is now. No other opponent brings the same challenge, and scant others will teach us anything we don’t already know.

You can hear it already: “But the promotional issues, network alliances! Mandatory defenses! The fight could be BIGGER!” Stop. No one drawn to a bloodsport for the blood cares about the obstacles to this fight happening—those obstacles, however cutely worded, are only excuses long employed by promoters to deprive the public of what it wants. So fuck all that.

One imagines Spence when he looks at Crawford, sees a former lightweight coming for his crown. And Crawford, when he thinks of Spence, the strapping southpaw with the bricks in his fists? Don’t kid yourself—he probably smiles.

By Jimmy Tobin-

When Ukranian Vasyl “Hi-Tech” Lomachenko entered the ring at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night he did so as a nearly -1400 betting favorite. Those odds, near criminal, were soon rendered absurd. Across the ring, Venezuela’s Jorge “El Nino de Oro” Linares stood at the pinnacle of his career. For years Linares had traversed the globe, refurbishing himself, grinding his way back to relevance after a pair of brutal stoppages nearly extinguished him. Linares fought on this and that opponent’s turf, off television, away from the bright lights he was supposed to occupy fixedly nearly a decade ago—all this to stand cornered in what looked very much like a cashout well-earned.

He met the end those odds predicted, did Linares, but not in the manner they implied. Linares was subducted by Lomachenko, like the ocean’s crust rolled over by its continental counterpoint, and the result of their collision was fittingly volcanic. Lomachenko and Linares produced as compelling a prizefight as the year is likely to offer, one whose finish, sudden and satisfying, was both apropos and unexpected. In the tenth, Lomachenko shanked Linares with a left hook best discerned by the agony in its aftermath. Try as he might, Linares could not beat the count; unable to straighten himself, the fight ended with him stuck in a bow, a gesture he had every right to take.

You have what you wanted now, don’t you? You who have long wanted to see Lomachenko challenged, who have gnashed your teeth and cramped your thumbs fighting against the “Hi-Tech” hyperbole. Because Lomachenko looked appreciably human against Linares. Those confounding angles of his? Linares had an answer for them, mirroring Lomachenko’s pivots and firing straight shots as soon as he set his feet. The volume, those cascades of punches both throwaway and evil that Lomachenko uses to plague and punish? Linares met them in kind, knowing—as any opponent must—that Lomachenko’s chin cannot securely be hidden in such activity, and daring—as few opponents do—to find it.

Linares tagged Lomachenko with some consistency, but never more cleanly than he did in the sixth, when his right hand speared an arrogantly lackadaisical Lomachenko square in the face and spilled him for the first time in his professional career.

And it was here that you too got what you wanted, didn’t you? You who have bided your time while Lomachenko dismissed opponents uninspiring and outgunned, while you waited for him to prove himself deserving of the present if not historical—or mythical—accolades those paid to fawn over him have shoveled tirelessly. He earned enough of those Saturday to stop wondering about his grit, his champion’s comportment. Lomachenko is a fighter; it took three divisions and a significant size disadvantage to prove it—it also only took twelve fights.

Because there is nothing Lomachenko failed to deliver Saturday night. If you thought Linares hit him too frequently, too hard, then you are forced to concede that Lomachenko can take a lightweight punch. If you saw him slip, parry, roll with many of the punches Linares was credited for landing, well, all the better. Did you wonder how he would react when hurt? Linares showed you in the sixth—because Lomachenko was indeed hurt by that right hand, evidenced both by how uncharacteristically hurried he was in proving otherwise and how he fought the seventh.

He learned from it too, acknowledging his miscalculation afterward: “I knew about this punch, but I thought I already did what I needed to do. I was wrong and he caught me,” before adding, “He’s [Linares] a great fighter and he gave me one more lesson in boxing.” Post-lesson, Lomachenko adjusted his range and took the fight inside to first unseam and then hepatectomize his most dangerous opponent yet.

Was Saturday not confirmation of Lomachenko’s championship mettle? Is not getting up from a knockdown to win by stoppage what champions do? And would you not rather a fighter get caught for his pursuit of the knockout, than have him skirt the perimeter of peril, eschewing drama for dominance and the excuses such (even artful) preservation demands of a man who fights for a living?

The fight was reminiscent of last year’s rumble between Anthony Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko, where the victor’s vulnerability served primarily to further ratify him, and the loser, through his valiance, his agency in that ratification, earned greater accolades than he had garnered in any victory; where we learned the winner is not flawless, no, but that he is something better: a fighter who will calibrate his performance to the stakes, and in doing show why boxing, at its finest, knows no rival.

That does not make Lomachenko a historically great fighter (yet), and anyone with the time and interest could find a way to begrime his winning titles in three divisions quicker than any fighter in history. Such is the nature of boxing, such is the nature of its fans. The talk, spouted by manager Egis Klimas, of Lomachenko moving to junior welterweight should be tempered for now, especially considering the qualifier Klimas offered for the move: that Lomachenko won’t be at his best until he is challenged. Linares provided that challenge, teaching Lomachenko the perils of physics (that moving up in weight inevitably brings a fighter closer to his ceiling). Mikey Garcia could deliver that message with greater force, and so long as both Lomachenko and Garcia prowl the lightweight division both have unfinished business there—and both twiddle their thumbs with any other opponent.

But for perhaps the first time since his third bout, when he dismantled Gary Russell Jr., the answer to the question of what we want from Lomachenko is “more of the same.” This column once remarked of Lomachenko that he is a fighter who “in the minds of aficionados live primarily in the future.” Saturday the future arrived.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Jarrett “Swift” Hurd defeated Erislandy “The American Dream” Lara by split decision at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Saturday night, consolidating a little hardware and his claim to the division’s crown. More importantly, Hurd and Lara managed this junior middleweight sorting in a manner befitting a rematch were not one of the brothers Charlo ready to determine the class of the division. Hurd’s reputation for belligerence already precedes him, but incredibly Lara too was responsible for salvaging a mostly dismal card in a mostly vacant arena on mostly Sunday morning.

Why did this card, one that seemed somewhat promising, need salvaging? In the opener, Julian Williams went the distance with pedestrian Nathaniel Gallimore, showing recovery enough in his three fights since being decapitated by the other brother Charlo to become a mandatory for another remarkable beating, this time at the fists of Hurd. In the equally forgettable co-main, James Degale avenged by ugly decision his loss to Caleb Truax, proving that he is barely better than the fighter who lost to Truax in December. As for the version of Degale that drew with Badou Jack? That fighter is no more. And after all this, a Lara fight that began at 12:30am on the east coast?

Yet while rightfully maligned for his brand of inaction, Lara fought Hurd with an aggression he typically spares even his most overmatched opponents. He drew many a proverbial line in the sand, and when Hurd shuffled inexorably through it, threw not to escape Hurd but to punish him. When the punches landed—as they tend to against the ironically monikered “Swift”—and Lara again moved beyond reach, instead of preserving that range he readied himself to impose once more this aggression-tax.

This was not a man sublimating his instincts, mind you, as Wladimir Klitschko did in his valiant defeat to Anthony Joshua. It would be wrong to recast Lara on the basis of his performance Saturday night—he was courageous, yes, but fell short of endearing. Because Lara owed his decision to stand and fight his most imposing opponent yet to age, to the absence of a viable alternative. And, of course, to Hurd, who gladly let Lara draw those lines in the sand, believing full well that at some point the fight Lara dared Hurd to bring would be the only one unfolding—and that that fight, made earnestly as all Hurd fights are, would be too much for a fighter with aging legs and a negative style. There is no choice when options are removed, and even had Lara chosen (rather than been forced) to fight more doggedly, the price of stalling Hurd was clear enough to make a spectator await expectantly the fight’s second half.

It was over the last six rounds that Lara, whatever the camera angle, slowly disappeared, his dimensions seemingly shrinking with his prospects for victory. He became lost under Hurd’s shoulders, pinned away from view behind Hurd’s back. Glimpses of Lara first skipping, and then slipping, and finally tripping away from his looming opponent, revealed a fighter more and more broken the more infrequent his escapes. No surprise then, that the midround moment when they were longest and most clearly separated, when Hurd floored Lara in the eleventh, was the one that delivered Hurd the victory. That knockdown, a protracted crumpling of the legs, not chin, one born of attrition more than power, provided Lara his longest respite.

Yet Hurd did not have his way with Lara, at least not entirely, something that should not be lost in how he carried the action. His way reflects his physicality, his ability to absorb punishment as much as administer it. Because it is near impossible to believe a fighter can be coached to take as many flush punches as Hurd, as though wager of his chin were a calculated risk instead of simply a flaw uncorrected or ignored. Lara hit him hard, cleanly, and for a few rounds with impunity, and Hurd shrugged off convincingly that abuse, though it was difficult to watch him take leather and not think about how every Margarito meets his Mosley. Interviewed after the fight, future Hurd opponent, Jermell Charlo, quite rightly observed that Hurd cannot fight Charlo as he did Lara, that the penalty for closing distance behind his chin that night could be one Hurd might have to wake up from to fully appreciate.

Not that Hurd is likely to heed any such warning. He is not one to deny his opponent’s success because their success has yet to eclipse his own, and perhaps because he interprets their success as proof that every fight, regardless of its beginnings, turns inevitably in his favor. Yet one gets the sense there is less arrogance at work here than honesty, that Hurd appreciates the cost of imposing his advantages and thus sees no reason to deny it. A fighter whose primary and most mischievous tools are left hooks to the body and rear uppercuts doubled, even tripled, and who accepts all consequences of this, is honest. And honesty, a trait especially endearing and uniquely instantiated by volume punchers, is reflected not only in Hurd’s work but in its result: an ass whoopin’.

Hurd’s attempt to grind down the boxer Charlo, to confirm the matchmaker’s formula, will be one to watch. And if it isn’t next, because that makes too much sense, the least they can do is slate it for the day the broadcast starts.

By Jimmy Tobin

Heavyweight, Anthony “AJ” Joshua won a unanimous decision over Joseph Parker before a capacity crowd at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, Saturday night. The scorecards, lopsidedly in Joshua’s favor, reflected clearly the privilege he enjoys across the pond, but were hardly egregious as a tally that would edge the fight to Parker. So let us not bemoan too long judging that, however predictable, however convenient, renders the proper verdict. Joshua-Parker was anything but an entertaining fight, but the right man won, and if that is scant consolation for a dreadful 12 rounds, it is worth remembering that boxing often fails to provide even that justice.

It takes two earnest fighters to deliver a spectacle—no, wait, that is not what Saturday taught us, is it? No, the alchemy of the spectacular includes two parts earnest fighter and one part competent referee—and Saturday proved that by means of negation. Referee Giuseppe Quarterone injected himself into the action with a frequency and timing that left the fighter’s themselves confused. Too often he shimmied between Joshua and Parker, who took barely a step back between them, expressing not quite intent befitting the moment, but indifference enough Quarterone’s involvement as to make that involvement merely intrusive. The least a referee in a dull fight can do is become invisible when aggression percolates through the drudgery. Yet it was at these times that Quarterone was impossible to miss.

But enough about the officiating: it, like the judging, showed a preference for Joshua, but not one he needed to secure victory. Besides, referees, like judges, can be rendered irrelevant by the action. That involves some danger, of course, something neither Joshua nor Parker was particularly compelled to tempt.

Parker found enough success with his jab, his feints, his counters to make Joshua largely holster his weapons. But when the moment came to capitalize on that success, to add a right hand to the double jab, or weave inside behind it, when the moment for daring arrived, Parker passed. If his was a winning strategy, it might conceivably be expected to have won him the fight; yet Parker only fought to win until it became clear that his plan, absent the quantum of spirit demanded by the stakes, was not a winning won—whereupon he settled for a moral victory, handing Joshua his first decision win.

Nor is Joshua absolved of his role in what was his first eminently forgettable fight. He may have opened up enough to wed Parker to his inconsequential mix of jabbing and feinting, but when it was clear that Parker was either content to lose or unable to win, Joshua, perhaps because he was unnerved, perhaps because he was at a loss for how to deliver a stoppage, perhaps because he was content to coast, simply chaperoned Parker to defeat. He must reckon every fight, the future of boxing, not only with his opponent but with the expectations he has engendered and profited from, and on this night fell markedly short of the latter.

Is Joshua suspect then? Hardly. Had he knocked stiff Klitschko, Takam, and then Parker, he would earn, even grudgingly, the respect of his critics. Yet somehow, wins over all three, including stoppages of Klitschko (inarguable) and Takam (suspect) diminish significantly Joshua’s present and potential. Strange that, especially from those who hold Parker in some esteem. There is a chance Joshua benefitted from his history with Klitschko, their sparring sessions instilling in Joshua the confidence to take forcibly the mantle. Takam though has made a few bones begriming idols of late and Parker is fighter enough to trouble anyone in the division.

It would appear then, that Joshua is one of the few fighters denied the charity of a difficult night. He was an accomplice Saturday, yes, and that might be crime enough to deep-six him were he the only champion ever guilty of it, were he not in but his twenty-first fight, were the style matchup not so poor—were he defeated or even clearly hurt. Grant-Golota this was not. How quickly people discredit a fighter for simply winning. Better a return to the days of Tyson Fury? Have you forgotten what a miscarriage of violence his title-winning performance against Klitschko was? And the carnival that was his defenseless title reign?

Such short memories. Boxing, perhaps more than any other sport, makes us prisoners of the moment. Something about the action, the way the image of one man unmaking another (or not) not only refashions our recollection of the past but, often with too little evidence, manipulates our projections into the future. The schedule conspires here as well, for with so many quiet months between fights a fighter’s last performance often becomes his defining one—until, of course, he fights again and that definition changes, until the irons of another moment shackle us to its message. You can see this process at work with Joshua: reverse the order of his last three fights so that he rebounds from his first decision win over Parker to knockout Takam and Klitschko and how easily does Joshua defeat incumbent nemesis, Deontay Wilder? As if Joshua or his future has changed so drastically over the course of a year.

Matchmaking will set Joshua again on his concussive way, because Eddie Hearn understands that the best way to remedy a bad night is to give people something else to talk about and, more importantly, because the list of opponents who can stymie Joshua is short. Soon after Joshua will make the fight everyone wants from him. And the moment that night will imprison us, and perhaps even the fighters, for some time.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas, moonlighting junior welterweight Mikey Garcia ran his undefeated record to 38-0, turning back a spirited challenge from Sergey Lipinets over twelve tactical rounds. It was typical Garcia: in a fight of some risk, precision and poise ensured victory and little else. There is something resembling mastery in what Garcia does; even when pressed (and Garcia’s face today reveals just how mischievous Lipinets was) the rounds that do not go his way feel like rounds he lost, not rounds his opponent won. So tangible is his control of the action.

Some 1400 miles away, under an appropriately bruised sky at StubHub Center in Carson, California, featherweights Oscar Valdez and Scott Quigg engaged in twelve rounds of ritualized violence whose residuals could figure well after the marks of battle have faded. Valdez rightly had his hand raised in the end, and among his spoils the victor should find a longer than usual hiatus from the ring, one that will diminish not at all the memory of his performance nor the anticipation that will meet his return. Attrition need not be Valdez’ game, but he obliges any such invitation.

While it seems natural to contrast Garcia and Valdez there are problems with such an approach, not least of all the fact that this mode feels reductionist, if only because to establish clearly the demarcation is to pigeonhole both fighters, to misrepresent the breadth of their talents. Still, risks aside, there is a mirroring with Garcia and Valdez of some interest.

Garcia is a fighter who covets control; when it is his, he moves confidently. When that sense of control waivers though, so too does Garcia, and rather strikingly, unbecomingly, of a fighter with his reputation. It is in these moments that one wonders whether this once aspiring police officer who retired long enough to extricate himself from the control of Terence Crawford’s promoter is simply doing the job he is best suited for. And that he knows it. Because Garcia is as calculating beyond the ropes as he is between them—which is why his toughest fight to date was the one that kept him out of the ring.

There was another tremor of Garcia’s resolve on Saturday when Lipinets speared his nose; the product not only of a punch but of a rhythm and pressure that put Garcia on edge. Garcia responded as he always does, not with fire, but with the strategies of control: jabs and a return to space (along with a handful of hard combinations designed to preserve it). And the left hook that dumped Lipinets in the seventh round? An act meant to steady the action more than end it, with Garcia flashing an evil so that he might risk no more in asserting it.

Faced with challenges of his own, Valdez did not react this way, and it is fair to wonder if he would even want to.

No one would have faulted Valdez for pulling out of Saturday’s fight. Yet against an opponent who even given multiple opportunities passed on making weight, and whose disregard for the scale was a sign of how intent he was on winning, Valdez never waivered. Instead, he took the opportunity to punish Quigg for daring attempt to skirt the rules. And punish him he did.

Quigg hardly shied from his fate, fracturing Valdez’ jaw along the way, but every time he hurt the Mexican fighter Valdez responded like one. There is a chance—albeit slim, given the version of Quigg that showed up—that Valdez could have employed a more controlled and controlling strategy, could have mitigated the damage he incurred. But a fighter who tattoos his name on his chest is unlikely to suffer insults well or hush the bloody expectations of his devotees. No, it was always going to be the disassembly line for Quigg.

Whether Garcia recognizes similar expectations isn’t clear. As he has been through nearly forty fights, against Lipinets Garcia was simply too good to be denied control, and that trend should continue provided his talk of moving to welterweight remains only that. Garcia has teased the idea of fighting Errol Spence, but no one who cares about him is likely to encourage such delusion (and no one else is going to credit it). No, better to return to lightweight for a series of hypothetical wins over Vasyl Lomachenko, some fantastic historical comparisons, a few more laps around the track.

The pride of the Garcia clan is going to be remembered primarily for his dominance, greatness having fallen victim to finances, a stubborn hiatus, an eye for preservation—in short, to control. And should that offend Garcia’s supporters, expect them to hurl blame anywhere but at their idol (oh how Mayweather’s shadow still looms). Valdez, by contrast, is not going to achieve the longevity or dominance of Garcia because his style and temperament will not allow it, because the outlay of his success is simply too great, and because his need to succeed is too personal. Garcia is better than him, and shrewder too: where an eye to the future is concerned, he makes better choices. But he is the type of fighter, Valdez, who is remembered for what he does in the ring; there is already no need to consider Valdez outside the context of his fights, as someone isolated from his opponents.

Garcia delivers a verdict; a body is brought before him, he interrogates it and determines its fate. Valdez delivers a product; a body is brought before him, he subjects it to his volition and creates something of value. The appeal of the latter is so much easier to understand.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, American heavyweight Deontay “The Bronze Bomber” Wilder made the seventh defense of his title, knocking out Cuban, Luis “King Kong” Ortiz in ten rounds. In a tense and sporadically torrid fight, Ortiz went loudly to his fate, but Wilder, always louder, left him silent in the end. A right uppercut, the brutal punctuation to another of Wilder’s inarticulate tantrums, broke Ortiz, leaving him bowed like a penitent.

Of course, with a lucrative fight with Anthony Joshua looming, Wilder was unlikely to lose. Ortiz, 38 years old, had failed two drug tests in the past three years, including one in September that temporarily canceled the Wilder fight. When it was revealed that Ortiz’ second dirty test was the result of blood pressure medication he was free to pursue Wilder again, and did so, though the New York State Athletic Commission was so concerned about his condition that the PBC brass flew Charles Martin to New York as a replacement opponent.

Then there was the strange delay to the start of the eighth round, where Wilder, pulped by Ortiz in the seventh, was examined a second time by the ringside physician. If the precipitous fatigue that colored his ensuing efforts was any indication, Ortiz wasn’t going to end the fight in the opening seconds of the eighth, but the reason to deny him the chance is best explained with a nod and a wink. And the scorecards? Conveniently though not egregiously all in Wilder’s favor, and identical in their tally. With respect to Errol Spence—throw in an apology as well, considering the disparity in craft between the two—it is Wilder who most controls the fortunes of the PBC—and he benefits accordingly.

This is how boxing operates, and such privileges, while certainly not available to all, are there for enough that no one would prefer the potential for such preferential treatment removed. Nor will anyone be thinking about Saturday night when the opening bell for Joshua-Wilder rings.

Besides, Wilder earned his knockout of Ortiz and proved something of himself in the process. A scatologist could lose himself for hours examining Wilder’s technique; those ridiculous flaps of his wings, that backward-leaning and floppy bugalooing to safety. But Ortiz proved that Wilder can take a punch, and that, for however spastic he is defensively, it is difficult to hit him cleanly. Yes, much of that can be attributed to his height (and a little also to the perils of being countered) but there are few fighters in the division tall enough to negate that advantage. It is worth noting too that Wilder steadied himself through the sternest challenge of his career and won by knockout; that on the night he most had to prove himself he did, and in a manner that thrilled the crowd.

All of this is to say that Wilder did what he had to against Ortiz, which is all he can do, and that this remains enough for now. Imagining what a heavyweight version of Adonis Stevenson would have done to Wilder Saturday might make you laugh, might make you cringe, but as there are no such threats on the horizon, and considering Wilder can only fight the fighters available to him, it is possible that this reign of lucky genetics and auspicious timing persists well into the future. Size, power, and a fighter’s constitution have taken him some distance in this sport, and matchmaking has picked up the considerable slack.

Still, for all the earnestness of his effort, and for the improvements trainer Mark Breland has managed to instill, the notion that Wilder will one day suffer a beheading befitting of both his shortcomings and his personality is an easy one to endorse; one made easier not only by the eye-test but by the performance of Jose Uzcategui on the undercard. While talk of Wilder-Ortiz dominates—a fight characterized as much for its pregnant stretches of inaction as by those violent eruptions easiest recalled—Uzcategui, who unmade boxing repeat offender Andre Dirrell in nine rounds, was the most impressive fighter on the broadcast.

When Uzcategui and Dirrell first fought, the Venezuelan was sucker punched twice by Dirrell’s uncle after being disqualified for hitting after the bell—a foul “Bolivita” indeed committed, but one hardly worse than Dirrell’s cheap (and successful) efforts to steal another victory as a man unfit to continue. Yet to the rematch, Uzcategui brought little malice. Instead, wearing a smile impossible to suppress, he appeared appreciative of both the opportunity to remedy the past and his successes to that end. With intelligence and gusto, head, arms, fists, working kaleidoscopically within harm’s way, this king of limbs parried and slipped his way past Dirrell’s punches and battered him to (another!) bungling submission. In a manner reminiscent of Roman Gonzalez, Uzcategui treated Dirrell with a respect nearing affection and made multiple efforts to celebrate his victim in the aftermath. (One can only hope Uncle Leon was watching.)

No easy task that, following a performance of such skill and comportment. But then, a comparison isn’t quite fair, is it? Uzcategui is a very good fighter, and Wilder might not even be that. There is no fight Uzcategui can make that holds nearly the appeal of Joshua-Wilder, though, and criticisms of Wilder that fail to recognize this currency either ignore or miss this point. Somehow a fighter who doesn’t understand how to navigate a southpaw jab has managed to make himself into one half of the biggest heavyweight fight that can be made (Tyson Fury being irrelevant until he can prove otherwise). Any honest explanation of Wilder’s rise to that position will be complex, and the greater the complexity the less likely a favorable estimation of Wilder should persist.

But then, no one will be thinking about that either when the opening bell for Joshua-Wilder rings.

***Thank you to Anthony Wilson for the wonderful artwork in this column. Expect further contributions from him here. You can find him on Twitter at @antwonomous and more of his artwork at https://www.behance.net/collection/168268093/Boxing.***

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at the Forum in Inglewood, California, super flyweights Srisaket Sor Rungvisai and Juan Francisco Estrada gave HBO subscribers still forking over premium dollars for a mostly derelict product reason to temper their buyer’s remorse. Sor Rungvisai won a majority decision, proving once more that, however loose his grip on it, the division is his; Estrada, incredulous at the result, should ready himself for a rematch as daunting and winnable as its predecessor. HBO should encourage that rematch be scheduled immediately lest its promise be forgotten—taking a reason to maintain an HBO subscription along with it.

There is little need to revisit the action, assuming first, that anyone reading this column will have already seen the fight, and second, that their observations and analysis are equal or superior to those you will find here. Suffice to say that of the two it is Estrada who better instantiates the ideal: his craft, technique, ring intelligence, all superior and all on display Saturday night. He made a fool of Sor Rungvisai on a number of occasions, crashing an uppercut and left hook into his charging opponent before pivoting to safety, burying his cross and pulling back as a timed and measured counter hook whistled harmlessly (and to his noticeable relief) past his nose. And unlike Roman Gonzalez, who was visibly unnerved by Sor Rungivsai’s incorrigible belligerence, Estrada seemed barely to register what dirty work came his way.

And yet he lost, somehow outlanded by an opponent without a jab, one who rarely threw more than two punches at a time. How Sor Rungvisai managed that feat speaks to the craft complementing his presence and proclivities. You do not, after all, go (debatably or otherwise) 3-0 against Gonzalez and Estrada merely by taking better than you give and giving more than most can take (though he never accomplishes that feat without this ability). Sor Rungvisai has an uncanny ability to land punishing shots, but that is not where his charm lies. No, what is so endearing about Sor Rungvisai is that which is so often off-putting: the way he enjoys and exploits advantages in size and strength. There is little agency with such advantages—and scant credit typically attended to their use. Yet Sor Rungvisai wields them with undeniable appeal.

Like fellow southpaw Errol Spence, Sor Rungivisai is a hard puncher who throws hard punches; there is a harmony here between power and disposition, and the tax of so simple, so committed an attack compounds its effect. He could meet painfully the ceiling of his ability should he move up in weight, where his punch and chin may not follow. But at 115lbs, Sor Rungvisai is confined to attrition—and embraces that inevitability with a cool and unsettling arrogance. He can look clumsy, almost novice in his preoccupation with landing his power, yet this version of him, a giant gassed up on his success, has an orbit even world class fighters struggle to exit. It bears repeating that Estrada, and especially Gonzalez in their first fight, abused Sor Rungvisai. But a fight with the Thai is both too long (you cannot tame him for 36 minutes) and too short (you need more than twelve rounds to grind him down). Still, Estrada could very well defeat Sor Rungvisai with a second chance; even short on spite he is fighter enough to overcome both Sor Rungvisai and the bias toward aggression the latter seems to instill in judges.

There is no reason for that rematch to not happen, which means Sor Rungvisai could hang consecutive defeats on both Gonzalez, a generational fighter even past his prime, and Estrada, Gonzalez’ former nemesis. Such matchmaking places this diminutive fighter at a distance far enough from his peers to cast them in his shadow.

True, a fighter can only fight opponents who are available, and some divisions are wanting for talent. But that is hardly what is keeping fights from happening. Intrigue results from two evenly matched and complementary styled fighters meeting, so if your division is bereft of talent, or if you are peerless even in a good division, the solution is to find your challenges at higher weights. Promotional acrimony and pigheadedness scuttle some fights, like the Vasyl Lomachenko-Jorge Linares chimera, and even in-house fights can be difficult when you pay your stable discouragingly well. The fighters in HBO’s informal Superfly tournament suffer from neither a dearth of intriguing challenges nor promotional sabotage, and are, in a sense, paid according to weight—not even two 115lb Sor Rungvisai’s cost anything near what one 250lb Anthony Joshua does. (And there is nothing wrong with paying fighters in accordance with what dollars they generate. Doing otherwise has repeatedly proven a mistake.)

Sor Rungvisai was and is well-positioned then, for an impressive run, but he still has to deliver in the ring. He has, and in doing so has put both fighters and many of boxing’s business practices to shame. And while explanations (those brash and brawny excuses) for why others do not follow in his path may have some legitimacy, asterisks and apologies do not a memorable career make, and hypothetical victories have only hypothetical value—which is to say little if any.

Whatever reasons conspire to prevent other fighters from following his lead, they dull Sor Rungvisai’s shine not at all. In doing what others have not or will not do he enjoys something like a charity of imperilment: he could be 2-2 in his last four fights and his story would still be remarkable. And in a sport where each fighter is a protagonist and careers are stylized in the arc of fiction, such stories are not soon forgotten.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Errol “The Truth” Spence made the first defense of his welterweight trinket at Barclays Center in Brooklyn Saturday night, comprehensively battering Lamont “Havoc” Peterson until Peterson’s trainer Barry Hunter could offer only what he has always offered his fighter: compassion. After seven rounds, with Peterson lost for answers and looking for the one opportunity he dare not request, Hunter waved responsibly his white towel.

So ended what was always going to be an easy first defense for a fighter who wanted anything but. Fights of the magnitude Spence desires (and is there any reason to doubt him?) require the type of opponents PBC practices have long discouraged such opponents from taking. Eight months have passed since Spence travelled to Sheffield and made a repeat capitulant of Kell Brook. That may be an acceptable amount of time to secure a unification fight, something at least with a whiff of intrigue, but it is months too long a wait for a conclusion both arbitrary and foregone. Peterson has a name, yes, is endearing in both style and character, but had done nothing in his career to suggest he might trouble if not the best welterweight on the planet, the best threat to the bearer of that distinction. One fight in two years is hardly sound preparation for such a challenge.

Dogged, fearless as he may be—and he is both in charming amount—Peterson was there to be run over by Spence and run over he was. A slow starter who acclimatizes to opponents behind a wide stance and a high guard is unlikely to prosper against Spence, who works without any consideration for his opponent’s pace. Peterson paid dearly for what he gleaned of Spence’s attack; there was no parsing, no rejoinder, just a man who crumpled further in the rounds he expected to compete in. When Peterson turned up his aggression Spence varied his assault. To his headlong abuse he added a more elusive, mobile, yet no less destructive attack, countering Peterson and cracking him at angles. This wrinkle served as testament to Spence’s versatility and willingness to listen to trainer, Derrick James. These are qualities that will serve Spence when something more daunting than the eye-test awaits.

If there was some solace in watching Peterson teeter ominously under even the punches he blocked it was that Hunter did not wait long to begin the conversation that would end the fight. It says very little about the matchup that that dialogue started as early as it did, but it speaks volumes about what Peterson means to Hunter. And if that is romanticizing the cruelest sport so be it. A sport that is propelled by what-ifs and glorifies sacrifice has room for such idealizing.

Idealizing extends also to who is next for Spence, though perhaps it is too early in the new year to issue loaded questions—especially in this column, which has resolved to gripe less about a sport that can be discarded easily for alternative entertainment, a sport that will always—if not quite frequently—deliver thrills however long the doldrums in between.

Besides, Spence, at least for now, resides in the unique position of being compelling regardless of opponent. Such an assessment is a criticism of his opposition, otherwise the emphasis would not be on what Spence does in the ring but who he does it to. That such a criticism can be issued one fight removed from his breaking Brook speaks to the penalty of inactivity, yes, but also to how very good Spence is. For any other welterweight a win over Brook would make a victory lap tolerable.

Such grace periods should be short-lived, of course, and it is hard to imagine Spence devouring a pablum diet remains compelling for more than another fight or two. But that soft stretch shouldn’t persist any longer than that. Keith Thurman, the object of Spence’s obsession for years, will return to the ring eventually, and Spence will be waiting, unlikely as he is to be unmade by anyone willing (or allowed) to fight him until then. The financial realities of the PBC are such that the Thurman fight should be delayed only as long as it takes for “One Time” to return. Despite his inactivity, Thurman has never shied from taking a stern challenge after a long layoff (so make what you will of any shuffling of his feet where Spence is concerned). If Thurman is more professional boxer than fighter, and there is some evidence that he is, Spence will show it, titles will change hands, and the what-if that really follows Spence will loom greater than before.

Because what it takes to diffuse Spence doesn’t appear to be a semi-active, uninspired pseudo-puncher with the unfortunate habits of both relying on his legs for defense and wilting from body punches. Rather, Spence’s nemesis is more likely to be a fighter who can fight him as a fellow southpaw, one whose power is predicated primarily on accuracy and timing, who can fight coming forward or backing up; a fighter with the intelligence to put himself in the position to win, and the malice to deliver a victory once poised for it. Incredibly, that fighter exists, and he too is running out of suitable opponents. There are significant obstacles between the two, of course, but this is the sport of what-ifs, right?

So fuck it, let’s make it explicit: Errol Spence-Terence Crawford. What if?

By Jimmy Tobin-

He was the opponent that night in March, if not quite in the derogatory sense, where matchmaking calculus eliminates a fighter’s prospects in advance, then at least in terms of billing. He was supposed to fall, by knockout ideally, to play his role in a narrative no less true for it being dressed in the bombast of a network’s company men. But he left the ring a champion.

When super flyweight Srisaket Sor Rungvisai won a majority decision over Roman Gonzalez at Madison Square Garden he did more than play an earnest part in a fight near perfect in its brutality. More? Remarkably, yes, though we should stay there with the sweat, the blood, the attrition for a minute, no?

Unlike any number of Gonzalez’ previous opponents, who found themselves trapped in the line of fire against the finest offensive fighter in the sport, Rungvisai stood irreverently at arms reach. Bolstered by a size advantage that thwarted Gonzalez time and again, and what seemed a fortifying concoction of ignorance and disregard for the man before him, Sor Rungvisai welcomed the fight Gonzalez promised like no opponent has. He brought foul after disruptive foul, drawing first blood via a headbutt and doggedly persisting in his rough work until the seemingly unflappable Gonzalez looked tellingly to the referee for order.

And we should thank him for his belligerence. Because what he demanded of Gonzalez that night was nothing short of self-immolation. And Gonzalez responded. To watch “Chocolatito” in those championship rounds, drained of his blood from headbutts, his zest leaking out with it, chopping his blade dull against a man he could not fell, was to witness the type of performance only great fighters can manage—and even then only once or twice. Sor Rungvisai’s appreciation for that assault, his finding even some joy in all that leather, was awe-inspiring. Gonzalez was his greatest that March night; Sor Rungvisai was the reason he had to be.

Not to be lost in the debate about who deserved to win is the reality that Sor Rungvisai fought a great fighter on near even terms, and that barring some absurd veneration of the undefeated record, what the fighters produced that night trumped easily any assessment of that action by the judges. We do not watch (and rewatch) fights simply to see who wins—we watch to marvel at the journey to that result. The outcome is always secondary to the violence that produced it.

He was the opponent that night in September too, if only until the man he defeated six months prior began his ring walk wearing an uncharacteristically grim visage; until the thirteenth round between them started with the irreverence of the first, and the sixteenth ended unforgettably.

When Srisaket Sor Rungvisai augered Roman Gonzalez into the canvas in the fourth round of their rematch at StubHub Center in Carson, California, he ratified not only his career but that too of Gonzalez, who ended up where his ambition would inevitably lead him—at a point absent of questions either unasked or unanswered. What more could be asked of Sor Rungvisai, for that matter? Come September, the sabers that rattled in protest of the decision in March were as silent as Gonzalez on the canvas. Sor Rungvisai was twice the underdog against Gonzalez and twice emerged with victories. Surely fighters have bucked the odds this way before, but how many of them did so against a fighter like Gonzalez? Were the two to fight again, Sor Rungvisai would be the clear favorite—and the reasons for those odds are why Gonzalez is unlikely to ever consummate the trilogy.

HBO was validated that night as well, if not in the way they intended. And they took note too. In a span of eleven months, Sor Rungvisai will go from twice facing Gonzalez to fighting Juan Francisco Estrada, who, until this year, had given Gonzalez his sternest test, with all three fights televised by HBO.

For too long the pattern has been in place: fighter X is maneuvered by various means into HBO’s interest, he wins a showcase fight or two on the network, is dramatized into a protagonist, and then matched according to the outcome of a script, one that mostly preserves his image lest HBO itself encourage the idea that anything but the best be invited on its airwaves. But that pattern never manifested with Gonzalez, and that is, in part, because what Gonzalez found in Sor Rungvisai was not an opponent, but a nemesis. Which is why it feels near impossible to write about Sor Rungvisai without not only referencing but praising, Gonzalez, ensuring that Sor Rungvisai will forever receive his due. The intimacy of their fights is reflected in how inextricably they are linked: it was Sor Rungvisai that showed Gonzalez where his ambition left his ability behind, and Gonzalez who demanded Sor Rungvisai’s arrival on the world stage be something remarkable. Remarkable, it was.

It is awards season in our sport, an undertaking that often seems more about those who bestow such honors than those who (in most cases, unknowingly) receive them. Admittedly, such a curation extends beyond the interest of this column, which is guilty of consuming rather selfishly (and only conveniently) what violent fare the sport may offer and forgetting much of it soon thereafter. But the year Sor Rungvisai had casts a shadow over the entire sport, it looms as the year’s benchmark for achievement, and more importantly, as a reason to keep watching. So gift him whatever awards you like, if only as a token of appreciation that falls so very short of what he gave us.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night at Madison Square Garden Vasyl “Hi-Tech” Lomachenko convinced his fourth consecutive opponent to quit on his stool. His victim this time, fellow two-time Olympic gold medalist, Guillermo “El Chacal” Rigondeaux, retired with an injured left hand after the sixth round. What more need be said about the action, lopsided, clinical, predictable as it was?

Much will be made of Rigondeaux’s decision in the aftermath: some will wonder how a fist that seemed never to land could have been damaged, or why trainer Pedro Diaz seemed so ready to act on Rigondeaux’s cue to end the affair. Ringside, Tim Bradley, as honest and polite and warring a prizefighter as we have seen in recent years, voiced such skepticism when Rigondeaux, halfway through the fight but at the threshold of humiliation, chose to preserve a career he says he may pursue no further.

Rigondeaux is a proud man, indeed his disregard for audiences is proof of that; he is also a fighter at heart, something he confirmed in climbing off the canvas to butcher Hisashi Amagasa and in his utter and arrogant defusing of Nonito Donaire. For this, perhaps, his professed injury deserves a courteous ear. But every second of every minute of every round Saturday belonged to Lomachenko, and who could better appreciate that dominance, and the bruising mischief it wrought, than Rigondeaux? Perhaps for the first time in a boxing ring, Rigondeaux was without answers, and that hopelessness, made all the more real by the taunts and mockery that have become part of Lomachenko’s signature, was likely more than he could bear.

Now a 37-year-old (and injured?) persona non grata, Rigondeaux chose to walk away from what was likely his last chance at glory and the remuneration it brings. Yes, Lomachenko held every advantage; size, youth, activity aside, he is simply better than Rigondeaux and employs an ideal style for disrupting the Cuban’s measured violence. The fight Rigondeaux had lobbied so long for was finally his, however, and he revealed how much that opportunity meant to him. Offer whatever apologies for Rigondeaux you like, boxers are held to a higher standard because they have earned that honor, and in capitulating as he did, Rigondeaux showed that however brilliant a fighter he is, barring something remarkable and out of tune with the tenor of his career, greatness will elude him.

Did it also confound and abuse him on this night? Well, not yet. Lomachenko is not yet a great fighter. He has the makings of one, certainly, but dominance alone does not establish greatness—at least not in an eleven fight career that features more losses (one) than it does great opponents. That lone loss, to Orlando Salido, is too frequently glossed over to be forgotten. Yet Lomachenko is no longer the naive and inexperienced fighter that fell for Salido’s dirty charms, and the next man who hangs a defeat on the Ukrainian will accomplish something greater than Salido did. Unlike Rigondeaux, Lomachenko will end his career remembered for more than his amateur achievements.

Still, there is something missing from Lomachenko, or, more charitably, if not from him then at least from his fights. That something was on display this weekend, though.

You could find it in the ring in Hialeah, Florida, where light heavyweight neverender, Jean Pascal, took his first (and hopefully only) leave of the sport knocking out aspiring Ahmed Elbiali. Plenty pulped over the past few years, Pascal nevertheless faced yet another undefeated fighter in Elbiali—his fifth in his last six fights. And as he has done for years, Pascal drew a line in the sand behind which he lobbed one grenade after another, wagering on his ammunition outlasting his opponent.

It was there in the Copper Box Arena in England, where +5000 underdog Caleb Truax won the IBF super middleweight title from James DeGale. No meager feat that: taking a title on the cards on a champion’s turf, but there was Truax giving his best performance in his biggest moment and being rightly rewarded for it. That title came with a bullseye, and Truax, who understandably dropped to his knees as his name was read, now wears both happily.

So too, could you find it in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, where Miguel Roman extended his career at the expense of Orlando Salido, who bid us farewell with yet another self-immolating performance. Salido’s career ends the way it began, with a TKO loss, but what he managed in the sixty fights in between is what defines him. If a less-than-great fighter can have a great career, then Salido had one; if there is a question about Salido the fighter he left unanswered it has yet to be spoken. Like Rigondeaux, Salido too decided he had had enough, wilting finally under Roman’s bodywork and the slow bleed of a career remarkable for its brutality. But boxing forgives the bold (which is why any outcome other than Saturday’s would have been better for Rigondeaux), and Salido earned that soft spot on the canvas.

Pascal, Truax, Salido—Lomachenko is better than all of them by some margin. And yet these three each provided something more intimate, more vulnerable, and in their own way more endearing than Lomachenko’s perfection. Lomachenko is math not literature; the application of formulas not passion.

The implied request here is for moments of genuine peril for Lomachenko, the type of request last directed toward Floyd Mayweather Jr., whose fights also felt scripted in their dominance. It is because of comparisons like this that the goalposts are continuously moved on Lomachenko, and so they should be considering how close he was to them from the start, how easily he has triumphed since his stumble against Salido (because, again, that happened). But this is proof he is great, you say? Fine. Those goalposts, move them again and again and again.

By Jimmy Tobin-

There are worse ways to retire. In a sport that rarely bids its fraternity a kindly farewell, Miguel Cotto, who dropped a unanimous decision to Sadam Ali at Madison Square Garden Saturday night, left boxing via an earnest and entertaining prizefight before an adoring crowd at an iconic venue. Cotto should consider himself fortunate and move permanently into life after boxing. The fiercely polarizing fighter was not great, lest we dilute the meaning of the word, and barring that same dilution, he did not have a great career, but he had a proper one, and those too are cherished as they are rare.

To be remembered at our best is a courtesy we all want but infrequently extend. This is especially so in the case of Cotto, who, usually for reasons impossible to articulate without the use of this or that slur, an incoherent grunt of nationalistic programming, or much, much idle time, has long been characterized by his least redeeming qualities. Such a characterization ignores much of who he was. A parallel can be discerned between Cotto’s fights and the arc of his career: in each, he begins deliberately, aggressively, and in both, he fades late, the whispers of preservation growing into something undeniable and commanding. Yet how frequently people disregard the beginning.

There is an urge to romanticize our athletes; we interpret favorably, accentuate virtues, diminish and dismiss flaws until these people are who we want. And once the first truth is bent, the easier it is to hang further charms on it. Cotto benefitted from this refashioning; the man best suited to fill the void left by Felix Trinidad could expect to. If there is anything the age of identity politics has taught us, however, it is that the reverse is also true. It is surprisingly easy to tear someone down, having one fault however tenuously beget another and another until the truth is obscured. And if you were looking for that one fault, the thread to unravel Cotto’s career, you could find it, though never in the effort he put forth between ropes.

No, what turned so many off Cotto was his disregard for the proprieties of his trade. There was a time when this behavior seemed like the work of a man looking for retribution. Cotto, once obedient to promoter Top Rank, suffered brutal beatings at the hands of Antonio Margarito and Manny Pacquiao. Believing himself the victim of something nefarious in the first case, exploitative (and possibly nefarious) in the second, it was reasonable to think Cotto, by then a powerbroker among fighters, might exact his vengeance on the sport.

Years later this interpretation feels wrong. It implies Cotto understood that there was something untoward about demanding catchweights, refusing to conduct interviews after losses, treating promoters like employees, and that these tactics were the intended means of revenge. But payback was never part of Cotto’s calculus. He simply understood his place in the sport, the leverage he wielded, and acted accordingly: seeking every advantage, and gaining most of them. Cotto was not a warrior—he was a mercenary. That mercenary conduct ran counter to the selectively invoked nobility of the “manly art” and Cotto’s reputation suffered for it. Granted, this is not much by way of a defense of Cotto’s conduct, but then, it is far more than he would ever care to offer.

If it is a defense of Cotto that you want you need only ask yourself how he managed to achieve his industry leverage. The answer to that question forces you to examine the part of his career so strangely ignored: he made every fight the public could ask of him with the exception of one. Cotto, after giving Sergio Martinez a gold watch beating, perhaps should have fought Gennady Golovkin. Instead, he fought Saul Alvarez. Cotto was only ever going to make one of those fights because he was going to lose both. Forgive him then, for giving boxing’s most devoted supporters the fight they wanted.

But he lost so many of those signature fights, you say, as though this is only a criticism, as though there is not a rare compliment to be drawn from it. A greater attraction than he was a fighter, Cotto could have taken fewer risks than he did. Yet as Carlos Acevedo pointed out last week, he consistently imperiled himself, and in doing so left boxing better for his presence. His record shows losses to Margarito, Pacquiao, Alvarez, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Austin Trout, and Ali, and some dubious victories like his decisions over Shane Mosley and Joshua Clottey. Yet all but the Trout fight were worthy of your attention, and since one man cannot a compelling fight make, Cotto deserves credit for his part in that bloody bestowal. To ignore what he gave boxing with his fists, with his blood, or to consider his behavior beyond the ropes of comparable value to his conduct within them, is to take a jaundiced view of his career and deny the man what he earned.

What he earned over 16 years is all he deserves; no more, of course, but certainly no less. Whether he deserves a place in Canastota is a question that is only important if the answer matters to Cotto. Assuming it does, assume he’ll like the answer, and that plenty of people won’t.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Anthony Joshua retained his heavyweight hardware with a tenth-round stoppage of typically game Carlos Takam at the near-bursting Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales Saturday night. A right hand wobbled Takam at a time when he was as much a threat to Joshua’s unblemished knockout streak as Joshua was to Takam’s senses, and referee Phil Edwards, understanding which of the threatened most needed protecting, waived off the action. God save the King!…or at least preserve him.

Joshua rallying from an early knockdown to chop down Wladimir Klitschko six months ago this was not, and the discrepancy between the quality of that fight and expectations for Saturday’s is likely a force-multiplier for any disappointment with Joshua-Takam. Takam would not make any harrowing inquiries of the heavyweight future, for however sturdy, fit, even crafty by modern heavyweight standards he may be, he was still only a replacement for mandatory challenger Kubrat Pulev (who might make a compelling fight against Takam but would meet a similar fate against Joshua).

Yet in an era where a fighter can have developmental fights even after winning multiple titles, and where every stern challenge provides license for at least one unwatchable one, Takam was as good a replacement opponent as you will see. The Cameroonian went ten attritional rounds with the finest version of Alexander Povetkin chemistry could concoct, and it was Takam who first scuffed some of the sheen off Joseph Parker (validating him in the process). Without pressure from a sanctioning body, promoter Eddie Hearn might have tried to get away with a lesser opponent: after all, not one of the 75,000 or so devotees in Principality Stadium bought a ticket to watch Pulev, no one was there to catch an in-person glimpse of Takam. Joshua could have fought most anyone and the crowd would have left happy provided his opponent was riveted to the canvas.

But Takam can, and came to, fight. Joshua looked ponderous at times trying to corner Takam, and betrayed his frustration at this by too often loading up—and subsequently missing—when he was in range. The headbutt that crashed into and broke Joshua’s nose in the second round only compounded his troubles. Still, he dropped Takam in the fourth, cut him over both eyes, and however convenient the stoppage, was never remotely in danger of losing. Joshua should learn from this fight; expect his body punches (something he used to great effect against Klitschko) to figure more prominently in the future, for trainer Robert McCracken to remind Joshua that a 250-pound man with technique and intentions befitting his calling need prioritize landing clean punches—and trust their ensuing effect. And, as there is craft beyond the margins of sportsmanship worth learning, one also expects Joshua to treat the next opponent who repeatedly-accidentally leads with his head to an equally malicious response.

Joshua’s struggles, minimal as they were, serve as a reminder that however uninspiring the opponent, however suspicious the stoppage, Saturday’s fight was no formality. Indeed, finding anything suspicious at all about the stoppage only confirms this—no one would decry a premature ending to a pointless endeavor. Takam pushed Joshua a bit, revealed something of him, and fights that reveal tend to be entertaining. Admittedly, this may stretch the criteria for what constitutes entertainment and were you to pass entirely on watching what appeared very much like a foregone conclusion, you will find no objection here.

But the point about revelation is important: because any expectations that Tyson Fury’s dethroning of Klitschko two years ago would liberate the division, would result in matchups of refreshing novelty and quality, died quickly. The only heavyweight fight of any genuine intrigue since was Joshua-Klitschko, (which was phenomenal). Fury, the supposed liberator, cannot get himself in the ring, Deontay Wilder continues to suffer (benefit?) from drug testing, while Luis Ortiz only suffers from it; all of which speaks to how many of those aforementioned matchups of refreshing novelty have actually been made. (And while we’re at it, how about that bloody process of elimination establishing the cruiserweight pecking order looming as an unforgiving point of comparison?)

Joshua’s future then, promises more Takams than even forty-something-year-old Klitschkos—all the better if the challengers-in-perpetuity can make him sweat. Let them make a complete fighter of him, and confirm this creation with a few thrills along the way.

So Joshua will probably not clean out a division begging for such treatment anytime soon: mandatory defenses and the rest of the stifling rigmarole that keeps boxing forever in its own way will see to that. Should he fight two to three times a year, however, splitting those fights between tedious defenses and the challenges even his critics crave, then the division is in good hands. Oh, it’s mostly still a wreck, photographs of Tyson Fury with his shirt off, gifs of Deontay Wilder, and a handful of drug tests will tell you that. Still, if you find yourself in the food court of a mall streaming a Joshua fight on your phone, know that he is the rare heavyweight that warrants such efforts.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Jermall Charlo, the more aggressive, harder punching of Kevin and Terrie’s twin boys, climbed the ropes of the USC Galen Center in Los Angeles last December and hurled rhetorical questions about his dominance at a crowd reeling still from the spectacle of his worst intentions. Behind him, silent and humbled, Julian Williams gathered whatever of himself Charlo had not forever claimed.

That moment defined not only Jermall but also Jermell, the smoother boxing twin who in the aftermath of his brother’s violent arrival was relegated to being the other Charlo, the one that, whatever his merits and accomplishments, would for the time being be distinguished by accolades either absent and another’s. Frustrating that, as any brother can attest; and that frustration is only exacerbated when the proving grounds are shared. Any fighter would want a moment like the one Jermall enjoyed against Williams, and who amongst us wouldn’t be overjoyed to watch his brother awash in the glory of such a triumph? But surely, Jermell the competitor, the man who his entire life has been measured, sometimes even literally, against his twin, wished he too could be individualized in the crucible.

Saturday night, at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, Jermell got his chance. His opponent, undefeated Erickson Lubin, a one-time Olympic medal hopeful who passed on potential gold for real green. Like Williams, Lubin shied not at all from declaring his expectations of victory and had become a trendy upset pick in part because he was Charlo’s opponent. And like Williams, Lubin was left groping his way through the din of broken synaptic dialogue. It took Charlo less than a round to jab Lubin into place for the uppercut that made fools of Lubin’s handlers and, more importantly, made Charlo more than the other brother.

Twinning his brother again, in the aftermath of this defining victory Jermell spoke heatedly of payback, of what rage smoldered behind his prefight silence, how he had yearned for the opportunity to punish Lubin for his insolence. That talk, as it was with Jermall, is being branded by some as classless, as beneath the sport. Very well, let people selectively apply such standards of decency, tenuous moral superiority being the currency of the times. They should know, however, that such criticism leads back to the Charlo interview that birthed it, the context of that interview, and, inevitably, the punch that gave Charlo such license. Rest assured, Charlo would happily have critics trace that origin story for any purpose they like.

What is interesting about both brother’s vitriol is how fabricated it seems. Indeed, it was their silence in the build-up to their biggest wins that is out of place: rarely do fighters, irrationally confident, bulwarked against doubt, concede more than the possibility of attrition (and the nod to their opponents couched therein). Why are the Charlos so incensed by typical cliche? Surely they do not expect men similarly constituted to speak otherwise? Brotherhood is as likely an explanation as any other; that blood bond uniting them against their undoing and demanding that each brother meet the standard set by his kin. It is perhaps this motivation that helps explain why the brothers have similar trajectories of improvement, why their biggest challenges have produced their finest moments.

The counterexample, mind you, is obvious. Given the opportunity the Charlos would relish, the Klitschko brothers avenged one another, each hanging defeats on his sibling’s conqueror. The honor of the family name restored, Wladimir and Vitali seemed mostly drained of animus; their vengeance a sort of debt settlement, more arithmetical than existential. However malicious—and here Vitali made clear a striking sibling difference—there was none of the rage or frenzy that has marked the Charlo’s recent performances. A certain nobility born of perspective characterized the Klitschko’s (though one not without its lapses); one gets the sense they saw themselves always as mere participants in a sport, bloody as that sport may be.

For the Charlos however, everything is personal. Could you imagine either of them outsourcing their vengeance to their brother and finding any satisfaction in get back not wrought of their own hands? Or being as philosophical about a draw as Gennady Golovkin and Saul Alvarez were in what was supposed to be the highest stakes fight on American soil this year? Is it not difficult to envision either brother even touching gloves with an opponent? For years they were twins first, fighters second, a biological gimmick foisted on the public by an entity long reviled. It should come as no surprise then that having arrived as individuals and together they are indifferent to—even incredulous before—demands for decorum. Their conduct has, somewhat ironically, blurred the distinction between the brothers, though the fighting the expectation remains the same for both: ill-will artfully applied. They are the permanently insulted responding in kind, with a dash of injury thrown in for emphasis.

Pride and pridefulness are not for everyone, of course, and even those who persist in their appreciation of a near outlaw sport predicated on exploitation and the quickening of ends can have their delicate sensibilities. But honesty is something most everyone can appreciate. And is there anything more honest in sport than a man motivated by things greater than himself, armed only with his fists, endeavoring to leave every threat to his livelihood, his family, his name, in utter crisis? The Charlos will tell you no, and may not understand any answer to the contrary. May they never change.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady “GGG” Golovkin fought to a most convenient draw. If the fight fell short of expectations (and it did) it is mostly because those expectations, stewing as they had for two years, had become impossible to satisfy without the presence of a ten-count, a capitulatory knee, an urgent physician. Bereft of carnage’s markers, discussion of a bogus scorecard is dominating the aftermath. That is unfortunate, not just in the way those most outraged would have you believe, but because when the sabers rattle about scorecards it means neither fighter was left in a heap. And if that is an oversimplification, go on and rattle your saber about it.

Judge Adelaide Byrd’s 118-110 scorecard is absurd, yes. Should Byrd turn in the same tally with the same action but participants reversed, she would be incompetent. Were she to turn in a different card with that same reversal, she would be corrupt. But Golovkin had 12 rounds to convince two judges of his superiority and couldn’t and Alvarez, yet again, had an unfathomable card in his favor because there is no Golden Boy Promotions without him (in this respect Alvarez is quite right in asserting he is above any need for luck). Neither man is as good as his most passionate supporters or HBO would have you believe, and chopping up those thirty-six minutes into five-second clips that justify your interpretation of the action does nothing to change that. If you wish to harp about a bad card, attend these considerations to your bleating.

The spectacle produced by one of the most intimidating fighters of the decade and the latest Mexican fighting icon was well short on violence. Were there moments where each fighter was hurt? Perhaps, though not so glaringly that one might expect such moments to trigger a sequence culminating in unconsciousness. Golovkin drove home a few signature blows; Alvarez managed to bury this fist or that into Golovkin’s ribs or chin. To say with confidence that either man was hurt, however, required looking closely for evidence, which, considering what the evidence is, should be rather obvious. No, it was a cautious and defensive fight between reputed punchers—did you wait two years for cautious and defensive?

“Cautious and defensive” for Golovkin demands an explanation. Age and the recent improvement in his opponents have tempered Golovkin; the withering body attack that accompanied his arrival to American airwaves has left him seemingly for good. Whatever the reason, a mediocre trainer, a diminished ability to pull the trigger, aversion to the vulnerability bodywork demands against the best, Golovkin has become a headhunter and his two best opponents have benefited mightily as a result. Still, he stalked effectively enough, endlessly enough, that the potential for a stoppage seemed his alone. All the while he was as elusive as a pressure fighter can be, catching just enough of Alvarez’ punches on his guard to nullify one of boxing’s most creative offensive fighters. The subtlety of Golovkin’s defense can be a challenge to appreciate, but his chin, otherworldly as it is, is not what makes him so seemingly indestructible.

Enough about his defense though: it is his capacity for destruction that built the Golovkin mystique, and it was this that Alvarez had to reckon with. Reckon with it he did, (if as little as possible). Sometimes widely, sometimes by but a hair, Alvarez managed to make Golovkin miss punches that have broken lesser opponents. There is a flash to everything Alvarez does in the ring: his combinations are flamboyant, he dispatches spectacularly opponents selected for that purpose, his defense too, has an exaggerated flair. He does not embody the Mexican fighting spirit—there is a striking absence of his culture’s beloved attrition in his game, and too much privilege in his ascension—but he is skilled and professional and connected and those things can take you a long way. He fought Golovkin effectively in spurts, trying, as his promoter once did, to steal three minutes in thirty seconds, a tactic that will serve him so long as he fights for Golden Boy Promotions in Nevada and Texas.

And it served him on this night. If only in a few crucial rounds, Alvarez did what anyone who wants to slow Golovkin’s roll must do: fight back. And while there was a hint of desperation to those flurries—indicative of a fighter trying to fight off rather than fight an opponent—those combinations still stalled Golovkin and brought the crowd to life. Here the advantage of his flashiness cannot be understated. It is easier to appraise Alvarez’ work: his technique is clean, obvious, and it encourages fond assessment thereby.

It would be unfair to reduce Alvarez’ performance to optics, however. Yes, he retreated too often, too obviously to secure a win despite needing to convince but one judge of his superiority. Only one fighter did enough to have his hand raised Saturday, and he left with his belts. But the notion that Alvarez does not belong in a ring with Golovkin is nonsense. Alvarez planted his feet long enough for Golovkin to leave no doubt in the judges’ minds, to live up to his reputation. That he didn’t says something about Alvarez, lest you wish to strip Golovkin of his reputation (and whatever glory Alvarez, whatever victory his supporters, may find in a draw). It says something about Golovkin that Alvarez was anything but bold on a night that demanded it.

And it says too that neither fighter is great. A great fighter would have left no doubt Saturday.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, in the main event of HBO’s super flyweight tripleheader from StubHub Center in Carson, California, Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek augured Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez into the canvas with a right hook so ill-intentioned and unsparing as to make superfluous the ritual tallying of seconds and scores alike. A third fight between Gonzalez’ and his conqueror became superfluous too in the long minutes between Gonzalez’ departure and return to consciousness. Even boxing’s most ambitious man is likely to appreciate the options that reroute him from another opportunity to settle a now lopsided score.

To be sure, Sor Rungvisai would hesitate not at all to share the ring a third time with what was, even a week ago, arguably boxing’s finest practitioner. For he is now Gonzalez’ fighting superior; and while this superiority he owes primarily to his size, vitality, power (attributes one must lobby hard to take credit for) there is more to him than physicality—Gonzalez, of course, has been beating bigger men for years.

What Sor Rungvisai brought was an irreverence both inherent and inherited: he forced an ugly fight with Gonzalez the first time, and having watched the scale of suffering tilt in his favor, set upon Gonzalez with greater fervor the second. After all, Sor Rungvisai too was fighting for vengeance, fighting to silence those who discredited his victory in March, and his performance reflected as much. He did not just dare the greatest offensive fighter of recent years to fight him, Sor Rungvisai demanded it, believing belligerence the key to victory.

And he was right, hence the smirk on Sor Rungvisai’s face when Gonzalez implored referee Tom Taylor to police the headbutts that again figured in the action. This plea told Sor Rungvisai there were questions his opponent could not answer—so he posed them mercilessly and relentlessly and boldly and ushered the Nicaraguan to his undoing. He is deserving then, of the accolades that should attend that unforgettable end.

Could it also be that Gonzalez suffered the fate that he deserved? Consider the bitterness of his first loss to Sor Rungvisai, the frustration born of scorecards, of an outcome taken out of the hands most deserving of delivering it. Consider too, Gonzalez’ understanding of the intimacy of the knockout, for the uncorrupted truth it reveals, that responsibility free of blame—might not a definitive ending then, however chilling, prove more satisfying to him?

Stretched on his back, looking skyward, Gonzalez was shown his ceiling as a fighter, and there is some nobility in that. Sor Rungvisai represented the culmination of a career of staggering ambition: Gonzalez was not finessed onto HBO and fed an army of no-hopers while a makeshift narrative about his greatness was conjured out of mediocrity—he is the genuine article, immune to the red hot revisions aimed to incinerate legacies in the aftermath of defeat. A middling end was never Gonzalez’ fate: the very nature of his career prevented it. He has now lost consecutive fights, yes, but there are no bad losses on his ledger, nor will there be any, given how undeniably Gonzalez has slipped. The signs were there before Sor Rungvisai, and after Sor Rungvisai expectations and evaluations will be forgiving. You are allowed to age when you leave no challenge unmet—and it is respect, not courtesy, that dictates as much.

Yet even if it is too early to eulogize Gonzalez’ career, he looked like no better than the fifth best fighter on the card, which means the division likely moves on without him or at his expense. But it will not do so in anonymity, and for that, Gonzalez deserves much credit. He, along with K2 Promotions, not only prompted the return of the flyweights to HBO’s airwaves he justified it. Yes, HBO now has an army of dragons guarding its gold, and the departure of Top Rank could be a sign that boxing at least as longtime subscribers have come to expect it is not long for the network. But the response to Superfly was strong, the arena sold out, and the action as good as anything HBO has offered in some time.

These are reasons then, to invest in the lower weights, and any pairing of the best of the card’s fighters (Juan Francisco Estrada, Carlos Cuadras, Naoya Inoue and of course, Sor Rungvisai) will meet the lofty expectations Saturday set. HBO may not care to bankroll as obvious a tournament as they could make, not when their stars have opponents comeback, showcase, and stay-busy alike to pay, but it is nearly impossible to imagine them not capitalizing on the very real enthusiasm Gonzalez engendered. And there is an important lesson to be gleaned from that: his career, conducted as if in adherence to a fighting romantic ideal, will leave both Gonzalez and boxing for the better. That so few are prepared to follow his lead only makes that message more endearing.

All of that time Saturday, from the ring to the gurney, the ambulance to the hospital, and yet so few what-ifs to ponder. When people ask him what happened that night in Carson Gonzalez should find some peace in saying, “A better man.” And he should one day, and hopefully, one day soon, say it with a smile.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night at The Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, Vasyl “Hi-Tech” Lomachenko tormented Miguel “The Scorpion” Marriaga to a corner stoppage at the end of the seventh round. For the third consecutive fight, a Lomachenko opponent stayed on his stool, bereft of answers, reconciled to leaving the ring with his senses and whatever palliative might be salvaged from the better part of valor.

Lomachenko had his way with Marriaga as everyone expected, and as no other fighter has; though the point about expectations should dominate the narrative. He lost perhaps a handful of seconds over the course of the fight, scoring two knockdowns, including one at the end of the seventh that started with a Lomachenko left hand but finished courtesy of Marriaga’s stumbling escape. This is what Lomachenko does: beat opponents into a doomed retreat, one that ends with them slumped on their stools, peeking past protective handlers like baby musk oxen. There is no award for best between-round corner stoppage of the year, alas.

Thus went another showcase bout for Lomachenko, who for better and worse has turned his last half dozen or so fights into such spectacles; one-sided affairs that illuminate not the intimacy of combat so much as a fighter’s ability to resist it. The chasm between Lomachenko’s ability and that of his opponent’s is profound, which is perhaps why the commentary of those fights echo each other so. Only this showcase, televised on ESPN, was intended to present Lomachenko to a broader audience than HBO (and certainly HBO PPV) could reach. With the fight starting after midnight on the east coast, however, when you are more likely to find ab-routines and ultra-blenders showcased on cable than you are elite practitioners of niche sports, it is fair to wonder how many new eyes found Lomachenko that night. An NFL Hall of Fame broadcast that ran late and required viewers to switch from ESPN to ESPN2 and back to follow the card didn’t help. That is not Lomachenko’s fault of course, though should the ratings disappoint rest assured he will shoulder much of the blame.

So too will he be skewered for what little heat was born of the friction between him and Marriaga. Lomachenko treated Marriaga like he does all his opponents, which is to say disdainfully, though it took some time for that disdain to culminate in visuals that might leave a new viewer wondering what sharing the ring with Lomachenko might be like, and as a result of that thought experiment, what things might be preferable to such an experience. Yet it is abstractions like these that so often drive interest in a fighter.

Nor does Lomachenko’s wizardry—an entire catalogue of basics applied in spellbinding concert—easily lend itself to such abstractions. And in this sense he benefits from the commentary: a trained company eye will be able to point out for viewers the individual elements of Lomachenko’s craft. That process of identification is complete at about the time when an opponent too is finished; a measured approach begets a measured analysis. When the conclusion is not a prone fighter but one on his stool accepting mercy, however, the likelihood that talk of the fight survives to the watercooler Monday is lessened some.

And that is why you are as likely to find gifs of Lomachenko showboating against Marriaga as you are the two knockdowns he scored. In particular, there was Lomachenko’s homage to Roy Jones Jr.’s taunting of David Telesco, with Lomachenko backing himself into the corner and beckoning Marriaga to attack. Like Telesco, however, Marriaga quickly learned the penalty for accepting such an invitation and froze in the face of it. To you, the initiated, Lomachenko’s antics were probably a sign that either he could not put Marriaga away, or that he should have. And, if a fighter won’t accept what appears to be a free shot, what does that say about the quality of the fight?

In the context of a showcase bout, however, where a fighter, not a fight, is meant to dominate the discussion, the currency Lomachenko’s showboating may have should not be entirely dismissed. There are worse things for an unknown boxer to be than reminiscent of Jones. Generational talent and athleticism are bewitching at first, second, third, glance, and while you, the initiated, mark certain other similarities between Lomachenko and a great fighter who clowned no-hopers there are surely others discussing that little tattooed white guy who did “that thing Roy Jones did.”

Thankfully, for you, the initiated, that is not all Lomachenko showed against Marriaga. He looked significantly bigger than Marriaga which means Lomachenko can be expected to invade another division in confirming greatness already bestowed. His body attack, deliberate, ruthless, brings a smile, though it betrays what little regard he had for Marriaga that Lomachenko waited until the second half of the fight to employ it. Lomachenko’s response to a cut from a headbutt is also worth noting. Bleeding above his left eye, he stepped immediately to Marriaga when the action resumed.

That is a meager yield in terms of entertainment, sure, but for a fighter who in the minds of aficionados lives primarily in the future, where better opponents will make greater demands of him, these little forecasts are informative.

As for that future—it is coming, right?

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, New York, Mikey Garcia dealt Adrien “The Problem” Broner a wide and comprehensive 12-round defeat in a fight of little fire and scant revelation. Garcia is Broner’s fighting superior at any weight the two might conceivably meet at, a reality that speaks little to professionalism, however much Broner’s detractors might wish to see that flaw of his precipitate his undoing. No, Broner, on weight, clean shaven, and thus motivated anew (!), was found wanting (again) because he stepped up in class (again).

Since living too large for lightweight, where his imposing physicality acted as a force-multiplier for a handful of appreciable tricks, Broner has been anything but a problem. Like a ship in the swath of a lighthouse, Broner has spent years moving in and out of the spotlight, advancing on a course set for his own wreckage. Unfortunately for him, the response to his first defeat was so ecstatic that future ones will be fractionally satisfying.

If one does not go in for his antics, there is little that is particularly fetching about Broner, save for when he is matched appropriately: which is to say a few rungs below where his ego would prefer and even an hour or so earlier than a headliner hits the stage. But a fighter who makes for a few thrills, a nod, an appreciative smile or two, when matched against the mediocre; a fighter who loses conclusively against the best, who serves at best to confirm that his conquerors warrant consideration for if not membership in an elite fraternity—what title is ascribed to such fighters? Is “opponent” too harsh?

He is not yet an opponent, though his showing against Garcia smacked of a man who ranks preservation ahead of victory. Perhaps a forgivable order of concerns provided it be arranged under duress, such a change in priorities is hardly endearing when not prompted by pain (and whatever Garcia’s dominance, he appeared to hurt Broner not once). Speed, power, determination, Broner flashed all enough to remind us that there is a quality fighter under the patina of disorder and buffoonery that, more than anything he has done in the ring, have been his hallmarks. Outfitted with those glimpses of Broner’s best self, a commentary team equally concerned with preservation could encourage viewers to wonder what might happen if Broner were to next time or even the time after that, suddenly not be himself anymore. But at this point no one, not even his bandmates, can resuscitate such delusion. And why should they? Better to match Broner appropriately and drain what value from him you might. A stoppage of Broner? Why that still would mean something.

Is it any wonder then that Garcia agreed to fight him? Back but a year from a two-and-a-half year self-imposed retirement, a recently crowned lightweight titlist who, at least early in the promotion, made clear his plans to return to 135 pounds, why would Garcia accept the fight if not because he and his team recognized an easy mark? By fight time the odds may not have reflected the mismatch that was to unfold, but odds do not reflect competitiveness so much as promote gambling. Provided he did not get hit with something disastrous there was little chance Garcia would lose. Hit with something disastrous; wording the puncher’s chance in the would-be victim’s perspective does not alter whatsoever the message implied.

A counter-puncher by nature and craft, Garcia was able to eschew his trademark style and play the aggressor against Broner, figuring quite rightly that both the pace and Broner’s stiff switches between defense and attack would keep Garcia safe. If there was anything new learned Saturday night it was that Garcia is capable of initiating the action—a revelation that might shrink considerably the list of things he cannot accomplish in the ring—though the question of whether he could employ such a strategy against a more formidable opponent will linger until he finds one.

And should he find one, more vulnerability might come to bear. There was a tremor in Garcia’s resolve when Broner came for him late in the fight; typically unflappable, Garcia wavered, became hurried, a little too concerned with what damage might be accruing on his face. These were signs Broner intimated but could not fully exploit, but they showed Garcia vulnerable in ways his supporters might prefer to ignore for the moment. There is plenty of room for error in reading such behavior, of course, especially with the evidence Garcia has given to the contrary, but that behavior is there. Might he go to pieces should the right kind of fighter unnerve him? Perhaps, though there is likely only one fighter below welterweight with the skill and power to make Garcia consider again the lure of the badge.

His post fight comments, where Garcia expressed his desire to fight anyone willing and able to fight on Showtime were curious for the same reason that Adonis Stevenson’s talk of network/promotional allegiance was curious. Garcia understands the business, which bodes poorly for interest in his future. For the sake of that interest, one would hope the business allows ESPN fighters to fight on Showtime once or twice.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Welterweights Manny Pacquiao and Jeff Horn met at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia, Saturday night in a fight broadcast by ESPN; a fight that delivered an outcome in keeping with the off-brand look of the production and cacophony of inane commentary typical of a network that for so long was in the glorified club fight business. Horn was awarded a unanimous decision over Pacquiao, the most absurd one yet hung on the aging Filipino, though not so heinous that that title too couldn’t one day change hands.

There was once a nostalgic quality to the aged Pacquiao’s performances; all those signature moves, however diminished in their effect, conjured memories of the excitement his arrival, his ascension to dominance, the mania his very presence at LAX or in the Wild Card parking lot, once produced. Nostalgia too for a period when fighters identified as such; when there were fewer reasons to consider boxing a business or show interest in the machinations that delivered or failed to deliver this fight or that; when there were spectacles of consequence and futurity and an endgame still discernible in the wayward paths.

Granted there is some historical bias at work here (this is what nostalgia does) and any sober examination of the years before Pacquiao’s decline would reveal a sport as charmingly flawed and frustrating as ever. Indeed, a number of boxing’s more modern malaises can be traced back to Pacquiao, in particular, the fight that more than any other made managers and promoters of us all, made contract negotiations an acceptable substitute for the fight itself, and proved actively lowering expectations brings scant penalty to those responsible.

But it was only because he remained a relatively close approximation of his former self that Pacquiao could have this mnemonic effect (compare, for example, what feelings are elicited by the sad spectacle of Roy Jones Jr., or how tedious Bernard Hopkins, former executioner, became in the later years of his career). Yet despite deserving the victory, Pacquiao produced little of that nostalgia against Horn. Yes, his ring walk was rich in its usual levity, and Pacquiao flashed genuine relish at his opponent’s aggression, but his legs, and with them his accuracy and timing, have left him. So too, it looked, has some of his fighting joy, perhaps a casualty of where his career has been navigated in recent years. In an open air stadium in Australia, under the ruthless afternoon sun, against an opponent whose every forearm, headlock, and half-nelson was cheered—and this mess televised for free on ESPN? Even someone as sanguine as Pacquiao must have wondered how he ended up in such a state.

And then the scores were read.

In writing about bogus decisions like the one delivered at Suncorp Stadium, courtesy dictates one bestow a charitable judgment on the efforts of the victor; the goal being to separate the fighter from the scorecards he did not produce. One need only remember how Timothy Bradley fared in the aftermath of his reviled decision over Pacquiao to see the importance of not holding the fighter responsible for the judges’ appraisal.

Very well.

Did the punch stat numbers, overwhelmingly favoring Pacquiao, misrepresent the competitiveness of the fight? A bit. Human error corrupts their tally and they capture neither force nor effect; such stats are often only as credible as they are convenient. Is Joe Tessitore a fool for struggling to understand how a fighter nearly stopped could nevertheless win a decision? Yes (or maybe he’s just a loyal employee). Could the opinions of slowly emptying balloons Teddy Atlas and Stephen A. Smith promote controversy where there might not be any? Certainly. (Though if there is anything Atlas’ deafening lunacy engenders it is an urge to disagree. He makes for hypercritical if not antagonistic listeners, a fact that hurts more than helps the fighter he is endorsing. Smith probably does the same).

In the ring, Horn comported himself admirably in the biggest fight of his career (no meager compliment, that). The Pacquiao of even last year probably beats Horn conclusively, but on Saturday this smoldering version of the Filipino looked as far removed from his incendiary peak as he ever has, and Horn should claim some credit for that. Let him have it, then. And let him confirm his supposed potency against another top opponent—the decision, however dubious, must be reckoned with, and Horn, however undeserving, is for now belted and consequential.

Pacquiao-Horn played out similarly to Roman Gonzalez’ fight with Srisaket Sor Rungvisai earlier this year. The smaller fighter faced adversity early, fought through cuts from headbutts to wrest control of the action, nearly scored a stoppage in the later rounds, and lost not so much to his opponent as to the optics of blood and the larger man’s incessant aggression, to the rationale that an unheralded opponent should be rewarded for outperforming expectations.

Such factors should not victors of Rungvisai or Horn make, but incompetence in a sport like boxing is impossible to insulate against. Still, since neither Gonzalez nor Pacquiao was interested in grabbing a pitchfork and lighting a torch neither should we. Not when laughing is so much easier.

By Jimmy Tobin-
Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev got the opportunity he wanted Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. Seething from what he believed to be a bogus decision loss to Andre “Son of God” Ward in November, enraged by Ward’s conduct in a dead promotion leading up to their rematch, Kovalev swore to deliver a display of ultra-violence that would permanently remove Ward from the sport. In the eighth round, without a whiff of protest, Kovalev let referee Tony Weeks save him from that opportunity.

At least that is one way of interpreting the ending of a rematch that will be remembered for outdoing its predecessor in controversy. The outrage that met Ward’s disputed win in the first fight was mitigated by the likelihood of a rematch, one that Ward, after stringing Kovalev, HBO, and aficionados along as is his wont, agreed to.

Controversy, however, in the form of blows borderline and low and a stoppage either premature or appropriate will forever attend any mention of this fight. There are grounds for controversy here, objections rooted in something less trivial than a dislike of Ward. And for that reason, if you were looking for more than a boxing match waged at the highest level (not an unfair request given the price tag), complete satisfaction was not to be found in the ring Saturday. Ward indeed worked maliciously at the margins of sportsmanship—as everyone except Kovalev seemed to anticipate—and should you look for fouls in that work you will certainly find them. So too will you find a sympathetic ear if you believe the stoppage was premature. Many will argue that even if Weeks missed the low blow that punctuated Kovalev’s undoing, he should have offered a ten-count to a fighter neither protecting himself nor fighting back.

Perhaps Kovalev deserved a chance to try and recover; Ward, a chance to remove any controversy from the stoppage. Instead, Ward is left with a second disputed win over a fighter so many hoped would forcibly remove him from the sport, and that outcome, in the hands of those who do not respect let alone see greatness in the Oakland fighter, will only stoke the flames of animosity toward him.

But if what you wanted was the answer to the question of who is the better fighter, did Saturday not bring it? And in a manner that provides less room for debate than the outcome of either of their fights?

That is why there will be no trilogy: not because Ward should see no reason to provide it (true), not because Kovalev does not deserve it (true for now), but because the superior fighter has been established at the expense of yet another pay-per-view bomb. Ward is a fighter in ways Kovalev for all his formidable technique and power is not, and that has become increasingly clear since a second round knockdown in their first fight brought Ward as close as he has ever come to professional defeat.

It was Ward operating as a fighter that saw him fix his attack on, above, and below, Kovalev’s beltline. Had Kovalev, responded in a manner befitting the “WAR” cap he sported days earlier, which is to say, responded in kind, Ward would have tempered his assault. Weeks may have shown greater interest in policing such tactics, too. Instead, Kovalev turned imploringly to the referee, away from the action, bringing to mind lyrics from Alexisonfire’s “Get Fighted”: “Cuz all the fashion (in the world can’t save you now).” That behavior told Ward there were places Kovalev would not go, and that trapped in that uncomfortable territory he would break.

There is an education to be had when you share the ring with a dirty fighter, one that Kovalev has not acquired. This is not to defend such fighters (though they are certainly not without their charm). Still, it is naive to operate on the assumption that a man fighting for his livelihood will respect the rules if he knows how to skirt them. Naive too to expect referees, each with his own interpretation of how a fight should unfold and where his grounds for involvement lie, to enforce those rules ever to your favor. And yes, a feeble apology for Kovalev the sportsman can be offered here, but think what praise would have been heaped on him had he intentionally strayed his best cross to the belly six inches low and set clear for all the terms of engagement.

It was difficult to watch Kovalev, a fighter both vilified and adored for his relish in cruelty, look to the referee for help and not recall the concern he raised to trainer John David Jackson early in his career: that he might not hit hard enough to find success as a professional. There is a fragility there; a need for reassurance that should things go poorly Kovalev would have with him the means to a quick escape. This is something Ward, who has never been a puncher but does not doubt himself, would never ask for. Granted, Kovalev’s fragility only became an issue against a great fighter, which is where such weaknesses should be brought to bear, where they are most forgivable too. But for all Kovalev’s menace, Ward is the nastier of the two, and Kovalev conceded as much at about the time of his precipitous wilting from the fight.

Perhaps the fight came down simply to that, what with so little separating Ward and Kovalev technically: not fouls, not liberal officiating, but a question of poise and bearing in a bloodsport. Those seem like fine determinants of superiority in an evenly match prizefight. They would determine the outcome were Ward and Kovalev to meet again. And they would yield a similar result.

By Jimmy Tobin-

There was an infomercial of sorts at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Saturday night. In a rematch undesirable and undesired, Adonis Stevenson did away with Andrzej Fonfara in brutal fashion, requiring but twice the time a part-time construction worker needed one year ago. If ever you needed proof that Stevenson remains a bridge too far for Fonfara…ah, but you didn’t need such proof did you? Stevenson remains one of the best fighters in the division, your eyes can tell you that. Yet however successful, his has been a forgettable reign (which should sit just fine with a promoter who can keep Deontay Wilder belted).

If the broadcast was salvaged at all from relegation to the formality scrapheap (which is not to suggest it was) the co-main is to thank. There, Jean Pascal fought off yet again the creeping shadows of irrelevance in dropping a majority decision to Eleider Alvarez. True to form, Pascal left a little more of himself in the ring; and while what remains of him can barely be stretched effectively over three minutes let alone twelve rounds, it was enough to make a showboat, not a killer, of Alvarez. Pascal succeeded then, in making Alvarez look mediocre—which is audition enough for Alvarez to become the ninth successful defense of Stevenson’s title.

But a Stevenson hit piece this is not, at least not quite.

“Superman” made clear his intentions in 2015—after another two-hour infomercial—when an HBO microphone was put in his face with the expectation that he would utter a specific name and Stevenson swerved. Offer whatever apologies you wish, attribute blame wherever you like—that moment encapsulates Stevenson’s championship run, his conduct since then only reinforces the message, and no number of Fonfaras, Sukhotskys, and Karpencys, however savagely chilled, will convince people otherwise.

He is fighter enough to change all of that with a left hand on the right chin and to suggest he is anything less is to watch him with more than your eyes. The number of light heavyweights who can absorb Stevenson’s Sunday punch may not be exceeded by the number of fighters who can keep him from landing it. He knocked cold the only man to beat him, has gotten off the canvas to win, and responds to adversity as the fighter with greater firepower should, which means that Stevenson, if matched as a champion should be, will provide many a spectacle. He remains a nightmare proposition, but for the opponents that matter only ever a proposition.

That is something that cannot be said of Pascal. Nor was it ever really said of him, there being so few stretches in his career when he was not trying himself against men able to find him wanting. He faced another such opponent in Alvarez and watching Pascal lay on the ropes setting transparent traps, winging counter left hooks too slow to land, lunging with lead crosses carried on unsteady legs, provided the only compelling action on Saturday. Barring the lone scorecard meant to preserve him as a viable future opponent for Stevenson, Pascal’s efforts were more endearing than effective. That has been true for a few nights over his career, one that is marked more by high profile losses than victories.

It is easy to romanticize and recast aging fighters, to allow a more charitable view of them the more punishment they absorb; even the objectionable ones seem less so in their increasing absence. Pascal is as deserving as any of such a treatment, and should likely be treated to it the next time a younger, stronger man shortens his night. Yet that reimagining is unnecessary. There is almost always drama in a Pascal fight because he is an athlete above all else, which has resulted in a fighter who takes a goodly amount of punishment  and responds by trying to light up everyone in front of him. Nor do you get shorted on toughness with Pascal. Take a break from defending Kell Brook and revisit the night Pascal turned back a then-rampaging Adrian Diaconu while fighting nine rounds with a broken bone in his shoulder.

No, Pascal has never quite been elite, evidenced by his record against Bernard Hopkins and Sergey Kovalev (a meager 0-3-1 with two stoppage losses), but such are the consequences of flying too close to the sun. A sober appraisal of his time in the ring cannot be anything but complimentary, and of the two Haitian-Canadians on the broadcast Saturday, it is Pascal whose career is most endearing. It is also the one more difficult to replicate (an unfortunate reality considering that boxing would be better off for having dozens of Pascals). Again, this is not to romanticize his career, only to suggest to remember it accurately. Pascal has long suffered from mischaracterization.

Entertaining at something approaching the highest level, Pascal never shied from a challenge, never shied even, from a beating, and more and more those seem like fundamental criteria worth evaluating a fighter by. Where a fighter ranks in his division, how many titles he’s won, how often he has defended them, his standing with a major network or promoter, even how many tickets he sells—all of these details can mislead. And if there is anything to be learned from the proliferation of televised boxing in recent years it is that restricting your viewing to those fighters who are earnest and able in their violence, those who with some frequency place themselves in contests where the outcome is unclear at the opening and subsequent bells, deprives you of little.

Still, even if boxing is becoming more and more concerned with fabricating instead of cultivating excellence, it feels foolish to suggest that Pascal is the last of a dying breed. Such platitudes are out of place in a sport as resilient as ours—there will always be a need for men like Pascal, and those men will be found. This one feels right though: the spent bullet is preferable to the spare one.

By Jimmy Tobin-

American welterweight Errol “The Truth” Spence beat England’s Kell “Special K” Brook into submission before 27,000 or so of Brook’s supporters at Bramall Lane Football Ground in Sheffield, Saturday. In the eleventh round, Brook, feeling himself sufficiently mauled, escaped Spence via the only avenue remaining and kneeled before what looks more and more like the next man to rule the welterweight division.

For no welterweight has the futurity of Spence. Manny Pacquiao remains the greatest 147-pound fighter, easily its most distinguished. Futurity for Pacquiao, however, is almost entirely restricted to his opponents, who do little in defeat to further establish the Filipino’s greatness, but in victory would define their careers. Nor have Top Rank or Pacquiao shown much interest in ratifying the future, even with Terence Crawford ready to become it. And while Keith Thurman, undefeated, with two belts about his waist, is more accomplished than Spence, his ceiling feels lower, a byproduct of facing better opposition perhaps, but also of how he’s fared against it. It is likely that all in the division would be underdogs against Spence, and that he would prove why if granted the opportunity.

Spence was the favorite against Brook too, despite Brook’s credentials and considerable home-canvas advantage. That the fight bore those odds out provided some an opportunity to gripe that Brook, bursting at his welterweight seams, had been undone by the scale; or that he suffered residuals from his ill-fated cash-grab against Gennady Golovkin last September, a fight where Brook’s flashes of success continue to overshadow the substantial punishment he took. Perhaps Brook indeed entered the ring Saturday a ghost of the version that went undefeated in his first 34 fights. But what joylessness there is in such excuses. And how little proof. Better to let Spence have his moment, one that showed ambition and ability, that validated the expectations and intrigue surrounding him. Revisionist history awaits all fighters, but who can be so cynical as to already start tearing down Spence?

Especially considering the quality of his win Saturday. Spence went overseas and won a title by knocking out the defending champion on his home turf in a test that was more fight than formality. Brook had faced grotesque pressure before, using strength, nerve, timing to hold his ground and turn back a raging Shawn Porter. But against Spence, who scrambled Brook’s timing with his jab and who hits with a force and accuracy that Porter cannot match, the Sheffield fighter was quickly drawn into the wrong kind of fight. When it was clear that countering would only leave him pulped (a realization he had before all those malignant knuckles to the gut depleted him) Brook brought the fight to Spence with some success. In doing so he improved his prospects for victory and knockout loss alike, though the longer he employed that strategy the more only one of those outcomes loomed.

It was in Brook’s defiant moments that Spence flashed rare emotion, curling a wry smile at the ends of exchanges, enjoying what he gleaned from Brook’s body. It was here too that Spence quieted the whispers about his chin, taking well a number of stern punches. In a moment reminiscent of Anthony Joshua’s coming of age against Wladimir Klitschko last month, Spence dropped Brook with a barrage in the tenth only to find himself hurt and pursued soon thereafter. But Spence survived, a testament to his toughness and to the dividends of his unrelenting body attack. A note on Spence’s body punching: his left to the body is telegraphed a bit, and yet he throws it with such conviction that it need land only a few times before opponents abandon any notion of countering it, and concern themselves instead with bracing for its impact. It is then, a punch that not only whittles men away, but controls them.

If the ending was anticlimactic that is on Brook, who needed to last but five minutes more, who was defending his title before his people, and who pawed at his damaged eye but suffered no punches in the seconds leading up to his capitulation. This is not a suggest Brook needed to fight on, the decision to continue or not was rightly his to make. There are examples aplenty of fighters risking more under similar circumstances, though, and the reverence they enjoy Brook is not welcome to. Still, there is something satisfying about such stoppages too, where the specter of what the other man might do forces a fighter into the realm of taboo and the fallout that follows.

While he proved much against Brook, whether Spence revealed anything new—beyond a decent chin—depends mostly on how you apprised him and Brook heading into the fight. He is hardly flawless, and that which troubles an earnest pressure fighter will trouble Spence. But like his power, his disposition, his ambition, any weakness in Spence’s game is welcome: it makes him intriguing in a way the last American welterweight to lay claim to the division was not. Like Terence Crawford, Spence is the type of fighter American boxing has been waiting for, except the latter has a more compelling pool of opponents (and Crawford should be encouraged to join those ranks).

The man who guides Spence’s career, long been maligned for squandering resources, may no longer be in the financial position to cradle such an asset. Which means Spence could soon be embarking on the type of run that leaves the last American fighter to lay claim to the division dying for attention.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, undefeated American, Errol “The Truth’ Spence, meets the UK’s, Kell “Special K” Brook at the Bramall Lane Football Ground in Sheffield, England for Brook’s welterweight trinket. Should it meet expectations, the fight will be excellent, and should it reflect the stakes, will distinguish itself in what has been and should continue to be, a memorable year. Keith Thurman-Danny Garcia this is not.

Those expectations are born mostly of Spence, the undefeated southpaw and rarest of PBC fighters: one who is almost universally liked, and liked exclusively for what he does with his fists. He does not don an absurd mask, bark incoherent nonsense into the camera, post lewd videos on social media—there are none of the cheap tricks that make celebrities of the talentless or characters (caricatures?) of the dull about Spence. And the list of his PBC stablemates who, on more than a prayer, are willing to travel overseas to try and lift a title in a champion’s backyard begins and ends with him. In short, Spence does not have to be sold or made interesting; and it is perhaps indicative of the PBC’s struggles that they thought anything but fighters behaving as fighters would produce success.

If there are questions about Spence he owes them to matchmaking typical of his stable. None of his opponents will have prepared him for what awaits in Sheffield, but what he has done to that competition speaks to a potential that feels trustworthy. While too much was made of him being the first fighter to stop fighter/nutritionist, Chris Algieri—who should have been saved from Manny Pacquiao before the final bell—that five round wipeout was tantalizingly brutal. Algieri figured to have the legs and toughness to survive a little even if outclassed. He was battered to a heap. A similar fate awaited Leonard Bundu, who, like a growing number of his fraternity, was durable enough to go the distance with Keith Thurman, but who Spence left gasping, draped halfway out of the ring in the sixth round. So while his competition is unremarkable, Spence treats it as he should; and he has ruined his stiffest competition on the biggest stages he’s graced. There is this about Spence too, then: he understands his obligation to the moment.

It is fair to wonder what a more aggressive plan of development for Spence might have netted to this point, and just how accomplished he might be were he in the hands of a promoter who showed more interest in getting a quicker return on his investment, who cared to do more than showcase Showcase until a title shot materialized. Because the list of PBC welterweights who Spence scores the shine off of might well be exhaustive. If that is being too generous to a fighter whose best opponent is Algieri or Bundu, those would-be victims are partly responsible. For if real questions to determining Spence’s class haven’t been asked, nor have they been answered with the middling effect of his peers.

Whether he is fighter enough to beat Brook, thankfully, is a question that will hang in the air for only a few more days. Should he prove to be, Spence will validate the PBC in a way no other fighter has: responsible for his path to a title, Haymon & Co. will forever be able to point to Spence’s rise as proof—however dubious—that their model works (Deontay Wilder being proof of something else entirely). Brook is a world class fighter though, perhaps overlooked here if, like Julian Williams before him, Spence is benefitting from a sort of trendiness that exaggerates his abilities. Again, it is easy to like Spence, to see in him a fitting heir to the division, but he has yet to prove he belongs against anyone remotely as good as Brook.

Provided, of course, that Brook remains the fighter he was before his sideshow with Gennady Golovkin. It is not only the beating Brook took in that fight, one that left him with a broken orbital bone, but the consequences of his liberating venture beyond the 147-pound weight limit that could come into play. Recent photos of Brook show him to be in fighting shape, however, and if he has been medically cleared to resume his career, then there will be no time for excuses. Besides, while Brook fought like a man who expected neither to win nor to be allowed to suffer much for his daring, he showed his class against Golovkin, and before he was rescued by his corner managed to make the seemingly indestructible fighter look momentarily vulnerable. It will surely be comforting to know he won’t be standing across the ring from a middleweight monster next Saturday, and that Spence will not shake off the type of leather Brook slammed into Golovkin’s iron chin.

That trip up the middleweight gallows aside, Brook’s competition has been largely uninspiring, and yet he is more proven than Spence. His two two-fight history with hardscrabble journeyman Carson Jones showed that Brook not only has a fighter’s comportment but the ability to learn from and improve upon his mistakes, things you need not establish in finessing a fighter to a title. And his title winning effort against Shawn Porter—which Brook delivered on US soil—is aging well. There are stylistic considerations to make as well. Given his aggression, Spence is there to be hit; Brook not only has the size and nerve to stare down “The Truth” but his arsenal, traditional yet effectively employed, is well-suited to exploit aggression. The fight may simply come down to this: Who breaks first: Spence, under the penalty of his aggression, or Brook, from an attack he will suffer to dissuade?

The answer to that question has been compelling for as long as it’s been pondered. Very well, let’s have the answer.

By Jimmy Tobin-

This Saturday, undefeated American, Terence Crawford, meets Dominican, Felix Diaz, in a fight that is likely to only confirm junior welterweight supremacy. There should be an impassioned crowd on hand in Madison Square Garden that night too, at least in the rows that fit in the frame of a television screen, close enough to the production tables to mask the empty silence sprawling toward the exits.

The question of whether Diaz is a worthy challenger feels almost as out of place as the question of whether he is a deserving one. His lone loss, a disputed majority decision to Lamont Peterson, is respectable enough; his best win, a decision over Sammy Vasquez, was utterly complete. Diaz seems very much to fit into the modern contender mold: there is nothing especially remarkable about the southpaw, but he is capable. And should that assessment prove insufficient to glorify Crawford’s unmaking of him, rest assured the talking heads ringside will reference Diaz’ Olympic gold medal to buttress his professional credentials. Crawford however, knows no threat at 140 pounds, and efforts to fashion those members of the herd he culls into anything but his next opponent feel, if not insincere, then tedious, the product of too much abstraction.

Diaz may pocket a round or two if Crawford lets him, his confidence bolstered by the pyrrhic victories that begin him down the path to his doom. Crawford will measure, switch southpaw both frivolously and with purpose, decide at some point it is time to establish his dominance, and then thoroughly, maliciously, strip Diaz of his illusions. Quietly or otherwise, on his feet or his back, Diaz will go the way of his thirty predecessors; a fact that reflects matchmaking, yes, but also Crawford’s peerlessness. Few—if any—are the Crawford fights where the victor and not the manner of victory is in question.

It should surprise no one then, that Top Rank boss, Bob Arum, has been speaking of his obligation to pit the past against the future, and finally set Manny Pacquiao across the ring from Crawford. And for those who see impatience in the use of “finally” here, ask yourself this: after Crawford defeated Viktor Postol, was there any real challenge to his throne? There will always be opponents—Arum can spit shine a John Molina or Felix Diaz to delay in perpetuity the obvious—but since beating Postol last July there has been only one opponent for Crawford. Arum knows this, which explains his current enthusiasm: dangling a future opponent to distract from the present one is a tactic he has long employed. The bait is set, now await the switch.

There is a catch, of course, which can only mean further delays. Before making Pacquiao-Crawford, Arum would first like to see Crawford unify the division against Namibia’s, Julius Indongo. (And what does it say of Crawford’s next two fights that Arum is making plans beyond them?). Indongo may be a fine fighter, but a fight with Crawford would present aficionados the same uninspiring challenge: discerning how, not whether, Crawford will win (and if that is selling Indongo short, let him prove it first against someone better than Ricky Burns). The unification route makes some sense for Arum in that multiple titles means multiple mandatory defenses. When Crawford unifies he could be hogtied by mandatory defenses, none of which would accomplish more than further establishing the obvious, but each would be financed by HBO (which has already endorsed one fighter’s fetish for titles). For Arum, that is probably justification enough.

And then there is Pacquiao, who might be the underdog against Crawford but who retains enough athleticism and guile to flummox every welterweight on the planet. He is certainly too good for Jeff Horn, who owes his July fight with Pacquiao to his being Australian and little else. If Arum can successfully package Pacquiao elsewhere (and he recently stated he expects the 55,000 seat Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane to sell out), he will do so for as long as he can. He is acting like the retiree who burns through what he could have left to his heirs, living indulgently at the expense of a future he could reasonably be expected to preserve.

That bodes poorly for the future—because Pacquiao can ratify Crawford in a way titles cannot—but also for the present in that Pacquiao is being squandered. Perhaps asking him to immolate himself—even in the name of exposing recency bias—after a career that leaves so few questions is being unfair to a fighter who has earned a relatively tranquil twilight to his career. But such considerations must be made in the context of the price tag attached to his non-events and the obvious ability he retains. Mind you, talk of Pacquiao being squandered might be overly generous to a 38-year-old with 67 professional fights, one who could run aground against a fighter like Kell Brook or Errol Spence or Terence Crawford. But his undoing—so long as it is violent—remains a spectacle to behold, and Pacquiao in something other than a foregone conclusion is an event that need not be transported to Australia. That explains part of the appeal of a Crawford fight: if Crawford is fighter enough to defeat Pacquiao, he will set upon the aged icon with a healthy disdain, ensuring more than a twelve round transaction.

The hope then, is that this time Arum is being genuine and that he indeed intends to make the best fight he can. Crawford has had recent legal troubles and his relationship with the media is fragile at best. He could certainly use the right kind of attention, the right kind of opponent, because he too is being squandered. And in a year that is delivering a number of quality fights, perhaps a little forgotten too.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Heavyweights Anthony “AJ” Joshua and Wladimir “Dr. Steelhammer” Klitschko met before 90,000 or so strong at Wembley Stadium in London Saturday night and put forth a spectacle deserving of what national pride and expectations surged each man through the crowd and into the ring. It was Joshua who emerged victorious, ending Klitschko in the eleventh courtesy of a barrage born of a right uppercut likely to attend each man’s glory as a compliment from that moment forth. A proper heavyweight prizefight, delivered on the grandest stage—it is okay to feel good about that.

A word on what could have been. Joshua could have quickly cut down the 41-year-old former champion. There was proof enough in Klitschko’s recent performances to think he would go quietly. His unimpressive decision over debunked contender, Bryant Jennings, was evidence enough of slippage, though at the time that evidence was outweighed by a career of boring decisions against opponents with the audacity to strike back. Then there was Klitschko’s embarrassing effort against Tyson Fury, who lifted all of Klitschko’s hardware and much of his pride in 2015 and who has been an embarrassment in his own right ever since, reminding all that titles are made by the men who carry them.

Of course, there was nothing in Joshua’s résumé to indicate he was ready for Klitschko; the calculus for his victory drew primarily on his gaudy eye test scores and Klitschko’s deterioration. The aged Klitschko might’ve drawn Joshua into the type of fight the younger man had yet to experience, clutching and grabbing between right hands, waltzing dully the future of the division into limbo.

Instead, what transpired was drama the heavyweight division hasn’t offered in years, the type of fight that produces the rarest and often most painful of feelings in aficionados: hope.

As no such spectacle can be achieved without two willing participants it bears repeating that one of them was Klitschko; a man whose near decade reign was marked by dominance, yes, but also by the irreconcilable image of a 6’7”, 240-pound, chiseled specimen clinging desperately to men who would go willingly to their end should he only show the nerve to send them there. Yet in what might be his last performance, and almost certainly will be the last performance he could give of such quality, Klitschko was his most daring and inspired self, earning what his history never hinted at: a dignified defeat. For Klitschko to fight as he did required he suppress his strongest instincts and a decade of programming. He did not discover a more aggressive spirit or remove the patina of self-preservation—rather, he fought in spite of himself, fought remarkably, admirably, for as long as he could.

Yet did Klitschko momentarily heed the voices pleading retreat? Was it their warning that saw him squander a sixth-round knockdown and 100 seconds at arm’s length of an opponent dazed and temporarily exhausted? Perhaps. Perhaps it was timid old Klitschko getting the best of himself; but then, who is to say what the fifth round—a round likely to develop its own identity—took from him? Perhaps surviving a knockdown thirty seconds into that round and eventually turning the tide, battering Joshua as the round drew to a close took what fire Klitschko would have used to finish Joshua minutes later.

Either way, Klitschko pressed on to his own and Joshua’s glory. And that is for the better, not simply because of the quality of the fight—which was very good—but because those eleven rounds served to ratify the future, something Manny Pacquiao has yet to do, something Floyd Mayweather could not. The future, be it of the division, of boxing, of athlete earnings, looks like Joshua. And that can be said with greater confidence because of the quality of the challenge he faced. Had Klitschko folded at the first left hook it would be easier to still dismiss Joshua because it would be easy to dismiss Klitschko’s effort. But Joshua had to prove himself Saturday, and while he proved that there is some work to be done you cannot say he is a fabrication. Or perhaps you still can, because you are joyless, or committed to being contrarian, or have lost your love for boxing if not your obsession with hearing yourself speak about it.

Because Joshua is a reason to be excited. He crumpled from a perfect right hand delivered by a proven puncher, yet weathered not only that punch but all of the unknown awaiting him that night, and with the fight very much in the balance, stormed through his opponent to in the championship rounds. His chin is better than assumed, though his stamina is not, and his defense has holes, but he is a fast learner, evidenced by how few right hands Klitschko landed once Joshua figured out when to slip them. There is work to be done with Joshua, but it is not unreasonable to think that he will learn his craft turning back the best fighters in the division, which is almost all that can be asked of him. He will do so before crowds that would make American promoters, were they capable of embarrassment, blush.

There was his conduct in the aftermath of the stoppage, too. When referee, David Fields, wedged himself between the two fighters Joshua simply turned and walked away, no more than a brewing smile on his face even as his team mobbed him in jubilation; he is the anti-Wilder in that regard (and many important others). Joshua carries himself like a man who believes he is entitled to a success he cannot doubt is coming; the biggest win of his career merely confirmed what he believes of himself, which is why he responded to it as he did—without a hint of surprise. A champion constituted for his calling—it’s okay to feel good about that too.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at the MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Ukrainian super featherweight Vasyl “Hi-Tech” Lomachenko stopped New Jersey’s Jason “El Canito” Sosa in nine rounds. The fight was over within minutes, however long it took for the end to come. It was what could become a typical Lomachenko performance: one where an overmatched opponent exercises the only power remaining to him, choosing the moment to lose rather than lament that choice’s departure over another handful of hopeless rounds.

Sosa was a good opponent, good enough to make Nicholas Walters miss the featherweight division, good enough to win a fringe title by knockout, but his haplessness was evident before even a commentary team eager to celebrate Lomachenko would have it (a whiff of danger being welcome if only to celebrate its impotence). In the first round, Sosa threw a right uppercut/left hook counter so late he appeared to be shadowboxing alone. A deep breath followed, as did a nod, and in his body language Sosa betrayed his role in the forthcoming puppetry. Sosa’s greatest attribute was a doggedness that charmed for as long as the fight did; but courage, bravery, resolve—if all they can offer is confirmation of themselves, well, then a fight losses much of that which makes it sporting.

To make too much of Sosa’s comportment is to compensate for the severity of the mismatch. There is a proselytizing quality to such talk, a propagandistic one too; and the force of those arguments reflects the strength of resistance they meet. (It should come as no surprise then, that Lomachenko’s enthusiasts are so passionate: they are railing against the most passionate fanbase in the sport, one that will never find much glory in the practice of hitting and not getting hit).

And yet much of the criticism of Lomachenko smacks of inauthenticity too, seemingly the product of a bitterness, of a frustration with Lomachenko being offered the crown without having earned it. But why get upset over praise from people whose opinions you neither share nor credit? And why act as if a fighter is responsible for what is said of him? Especially when that fighter has on many occasions tempered the highest praise he has been paid?

What can honestly be said of Lomachenko is that he is stylistically and athletically unique among peers and that he has used this idiom to tantalizing effect. Lomachenko shrinks the ring not by closing avenues of escape but by giving his opponents turning sickness, and the angles and body positioning he uses leave opponents one-handed. All the while he chips away at their bodies and resolve with combinations of varying speed and power; surprise as much as leverage his force multiplier. Excellent defensively without being defensive, the moments in a Lomachenko fight when he is not on the attack are few; that it takes Lomachenko time to force a stoppage says more about his style than his mentality (though there is surely a relationship there). One need only see how Lomachenko responded to the concentrated belligerence of Orlando Salido to recognize there is something primal beneath his artifice. And his confounding of Gary Russell Jr. which, not coincidentally, was Lomachenko’s first fight after the Salido loss, was plenty malicious.

Those who relish in destruction, however, may not shine to Lomachenko’s brand of discouragement, especially when he imposes it on men who can offer little resistance. His performances are cold in the way Gennady Golovkin’s are, in a way Sergey Kovalev’s are not. Still, there is also something appealing about a fighter who makes his opponent’s quit; who can persuade men to relinquish their shields rather than leave on them, fully aware of what shame and humiliation may await such a reasonable decision. Yet when the challenge is minimal so too is the shame. And there is the challenge to fully appreciating Lomachenko: you begin by being impressed (even spectacularly so) and your mind conjures up images of his superlative ability tested by a world-class opponent, but then you remember how likely such a contest is, and that is when something too close to ennui or futility or disappointment sets in.

Still, though only nine fights into his career and with a loss on his record, Lomachenko is in a position where already every victory increases the magnitude of a possible defeat. Expectations for Lomachenko are such that he represents one of the premier scalps in the sport—and if you agree you also agree that he is one of its premier talents because knocking off a hype job means very little. Consider, for example, what praise the first man who knocks Deontay Wilder stiff will receive, and how hushed that praise will sound in comparison to the cacophony of laughs had at Wilder’s expense.

The penalty (and reward) for such esteem is that there are already but a handful of acceptable opponents for Lomachenko. If he wanted to clean out his division like Golovkin he would come under fire in a way “GGG” never has. And could you imagine the uproar if he created the 131-pound division? If you believe Mikey Garcia is the fighter to short circuit Lomachenko, you are paying the latter a compliment. If you believe Terence Crawford is Lomachenko’s Waterloo, you are acknowledging that it will take an immensely skilled junior welterweight to hang a defeat on a super featherweight with but nine fights. And then there are those who resort to evoking the 130lb versions of Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao to bring Lomachenko back to earth—as if such measures are anything but flattering.

Lomachenko’s mystique currently exceeds his accomplishments, but how many of the compliments he is paid are greater than those bestowed by the would-be matchmakers who want to see him beaten?

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez lost a majority decision to an unheralded if not entirely overlooked Thai fighter named Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek in a fight that was not expected to confirm Gonzalez’ greatness yet did just that, judges’ appraisal of his performance be damned.

For those who have never been particularly enamoured with Gonzalez, those who find little intimidating about a prizefighter who barely meets the height requirements of a rollercoaster, or who are predisposed to antipathy whenever a collective enthusiasm swells too quickly and coincidently, too utterly, Gonzalez’ loss to a fighter likely to be remembered not by his name but by some strung together series of attributes like “That-Thai-Guy-Who-Beat-Chocolatito” must be satisfying. More so even, considering “The-Bum-That-Exposed-Roman” is Gonzalez’ fighting inferior in every way, owing any advantage he held Saturday night exclusively to size—which is to say, to little he could take much credit for. Nor does decrying the decision mitigate the defeat. Gonzalez was dropped in the first round and abused regularly, such that establishing his dominance in a manner that was convincing not simply in its craft but in the response that craft produced required every one of the 33 remaining minutes he had.

Gonzalez falling just short should not come as a complete surprise both because of the diminished returns Gonzalez has found as a super flyweight and because he has been pursuing defeat his entire career. In hindsight, it is easy to trace a fighter’s path to defeat, to see the harbingers of the inevitable often overlooked in victory. This applies to Gonzalez as well, who is still a near-perfect weapon but one now short on firepower (ever a problem for an undersized pressure fighter). Yet Gonzalez is special in the way that he willingly, consistently put himself in a position to encourage this induction.

There is a telling moment in HBO’s “2 Days: Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez” where, speaking of fighters who have fallen short of their dreams, Gonzalez says: “They don’t realize that the more you win, the tougher the fights.” What is first striking about this statement is how naive it sounds. Gonzalez envisions a sport where fighters are not regularly rewarded for victories with easier fights, where their reputations are not frequently established off little more than a noteworthy win or two and preserved via machinations meant to secure a narrative rather than sound out the truth. And what of his speaking of tougher fights when so many of his fraternity would have employed the word “bigger”? It implies that Gonzalez still trusts in the role of meritocracy in his sport. Charming that; rare too, and indicative perhaps of what influence a country’s fighting idol can have on its gloved hopefuls. America, then, should not expect to produce the next Gonzalez.

His words also reveal the psychology of a fighter who pursues defeat; that it took Gonzalez twelve years to find it had nothing to do with risk aversion, his unbeaten streak is not the product of culling a feeble herd. A singular talent, that people still assert otherwise of Gonzalez when so many fighters make their reputations off the eye-test is baffling. In his march through four divisions, Gonzalez has cut down plenty of deserving adversaries while treating any Dierry Jeans, Dominic Wades, Blake Camparellos, and Alexander Brands he met along the way as a fighter of his stock should.

But you need know none of that—you need only watch him to understand what a unique fighter Gonzalez is.

And has he ever been greater than he was in the twelfth round Saturday night? When, with cuts from headbutts accidental and otherwise left his right eye streaming blood, taxed from twelve rounds with an opponent he could crack but not shatter, an opponent whose physical presence alone made demands of him that smaller better fighters could not, Gonzalez stepped to center ring and left no doubt about what kind of fighter he is?

While Wangek punched and pushed, pushed and held, Gonzalez set about his work: weaving into and chopping away at an opponent who more and more seemed eager to simply survive, to take whatever punishment he need to find sanctuary in a clinch. Using angles that not only allowed him to find softer targets for his punches but left his opponent one-handed, how masterfully did Gonzalez make his final bid for victory. There would be no dramatic stoppage, that much was clear, yet Gonzalez continued his assault, forcing the bigger, stronger, harder punching man into a fight he wanted little to do with until, finally spent, Gonzalez had to simply catch Wangek’s closing flurry on his gloves and offer one last jab as the bell sounded.

Against this latest daunting opponent, that effort was not enough. And that is as it should be, considering Gonzalez has spent so much of his career tempting just such a night. It is entirely possible that a series of losses come in the wake of his first if only because it is hard to imagine Gonzalez taking anything but a difficult fight. But his losses will never define him: they will be expected, forgiven, perhaps even celebrated.

What does it mean to pursue defeat? In short, to pursue greatness. Gonzalez finally caught up to the former which is why the latter was his long ago.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn New York, Keith “One Time” Thurman won a split decision over Danny “Swift” Garcia adding another alphabet trinket to his collection while doing little to stake his claim to welterweight supremacy. What distinguished Thurman-Garcia was not an interplay of fists, but an absence thereof. Thurman earned the victory because in those early moments when a fight appeared imminent, he seemed most eager to conjure one—and because when he wanted anything but Garcia could not coerce him enough to the contrary.

There were moments of drama between Thurman and Garcia, to be sure. Such moments are near guaranteed every time Thurman steps into the ring, and they came, as they almost exclusively now do in his fights, in the opening rounds. It is in those rounds that Thurman best embodies his moniker, trying to spark opponents with his considerable athleticism and less considerable power, throwing punches with a ferocity that speaks to the sense of performance he does not always honor but always carries within him. Thurman landed a few of those punches on Garcia who, whatever he suffered, responded without a hint of retreat, cranking little semi-circles from his left shoulder, measuring the counter left hooks that would soon enough inter Thurman’s daring.

Garcia proved, rather unsurprisingly, that he could handle whatever evil was delivered in Thurman’s early gusto. The clearer that message became, the more Thurman abandoned his combinations, his connection with the ground when he threw them, and eventually, his commitment to the moment. His chances of a finish quick and spectacular having evaporated, Thurman employed instead a brand of “boxing” antithetical to the reputation he—less convinced and less convincingly—encourages we preserve. If this is what passes for an offensive welterweight, perhaps Floyd Mayweather, who also landed less than fifteen punches a round but was at least skilled enough to stand directly in front of his opponent while doing so, was less a defensive specialist than he is often (disparagingly) remembered as.

For his part, Garcia was hardly better, worse even, if you consider his effort to take the rounds Thurman needed to spare and was willing to concede. Still, he stood his ground against Thurman, as he did against former boogeyman, Lucas Matthysse, digging the balls of his feet into the canvas and committing fearlessly a retort to every Thurman punch.

How undauntedly Garcia stares down daunting power; how quickly does this defiance shake an opponent’s confidence. Garcia is a more complete fighter than Thurman, there is more that is impressive and instructive in his game. But when all he needed were the basics, when a double jab would have won him the rounds Thurman tried to steal with an ill-placed blow and a cloud of smoke, Garcia too often holstered his weapons. If you believe enough of the Thurman narrative, he left an opportunity to distinguish himself in the ring. Garcia left victory there, however, and that mentality will make an opponent of him sooner rather than later.

What is perhaps most frustrating about what transpired is the absence of consequences both fighters stand to face for their performance. This is not to say fighters should be punished for poor performances, at least not exactly. But the lack of fallout for failing to live up to expectations, whether those expectations are the product of promotional ballyhoo or the proclamations of the fighters themselves, is a bit difficult to take. Again Thurman was placed in a position to distinguish himself as the future made present, and instead he was again left speaking laudatorily of his boxing ability (evermore a Thurman euphemism for a night he goes the distance). Garcia merely adds a disputed loss to his trio of disputed victories. He is likely to see little financial penalty despite scaling back his competition again in the aftermath of a loss that, as close as it was, he need waste no one’s time regrouping from. Matchmaking is already too glacial in its pace, and the concept of the comeback feels empty when a defeat carries none of the penalty, physical or otherwise, that need be recovered from.

The hope is that Thurman moves quickly, moves within the next four or five months to an opponent who presents the type of challenge that will not allow him to bore. Again, Thurman is a fighter, and pressed—as he was by Shawn Porter last year—he often responds like one. Whatever his limitations, he appreciates his responsibility to the crowd. And while he is not fighter enough to consistently embrace that responsibility a better opponent might give him no choice but to. For Garcia, there should be only fights that demand he comport himself like a loss means more than simply defeat—no more fights whose outcomes, good or bad, seem to barely register with him. And if that is asking too much of either fighter so too is asking for a charitable assessment of them.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at the Cintas Center in Cincinnati Ohio, Adrien “The Problem” Broner won a split decision over Adrian “El Tigre” Granados, in a fight whose outcome reflected what talent, yes, but also what geography and promotional favor were at play. If you were looking for something approximating a level playing field, Broner-Granados, like many a main event, left you wanting. What you got instead was a ten-round match at the welterweight limit because Broner was unable to make the contracted weight of 142 pounds and because Granados, understanding his role in the proceedings, dare not protest. The fight was, however, live streamed on Twitter, thereby sparing many an aficionado of having to beat back a swarm of pop ups to see the action.

Whatever the merits of Saturday night’s main event, it has been three years since Broner gave a memorable performance. That night, Broner danced into the ring in the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, got humiliated by Marcos Maidana, then hurried woozily out of the spotlight. For many, Broner’s appeal to that point lay primarily in seeing him humbled, that it came at the hands of an affable killer like Maidana only made it sweeter. Having scared Broner out of the welterweight division, Maidana parlayed his victory into a fight with Floyd Mayweather, that fight into a rematch, and ultimately, an early retirement. He gave Mayweather hell in their first fight, yet it was his solving of “The Problem” that Maidana will be remembered best for. And that speaks to the kind of presence Broner has.

That presence is a little difficult to explain. At lightweight, Broner treated his invariably overmatched opposition as a professional should: walking them down and whacking them away with left hooks and a particularly evil rear uppercut. For a time, there was something compelling about seeing him terrorize opponents if only because, his clownish behaviour aside, Broner was merciless when the bell rang. There was something endearing about his ambition too—however much it smacked also of poor discipline—when he moved directly to welterweight in pursuing his ten-digit dreams. Broner commanded attention then, with thousands of words being devoted to him, his future, his similarities to his sometime-friend and mentor.

But all that attention seems foolish now because really, there is nothing remarkable about Broner. Still glacial in his transitions between offense and defense, Broner now resorts to little more than holding and pot shotting, and however much the commentary team may have lauded him for landing the harder punches (whatever that means) Broner hurt Granados no more than Granados hurt him. Gone too, like the opponents he could bully, is his penchant for bullying, the redeeming element in Broner’s earlier violence.

He was done no favors Saturday, having to follow Lamont Peterson, who whittled his way to a victory over David Avanesyan on the undercard. At welterweight Peterson is even less a puncher than Broner, but he compensates for that middling firepower with volume proportional to proximity. Peterson demands you fight; there is real craft in his angles, his head movement, and in the combinations he pistons home. There is too, in Peterson’s dogged efforts to hammer out his fortune three minutes at a time, a reason to watch.

Except people do not turn in to see Peterson like they do Broner, a fact that must baffle and frustrate the latter’s remaining detractors. And such detractors remain, though they number far less than they did before Broner was thrashed against the ceiling of his potential by the beloved “Chino.” How to explain a fighter who so many found repellant becoming endearing? How does a fighter whose greatest appeal once lay in his eventual comeuppance enjoy a greater popularity since that supposedly ruinous defeat?

Perhaps it is because this version of Broner often makes better fights than he is credited with. No, he is not facing the more celebrated names in Haymon’s stable, but his efforts against Maidana and Shawn Porter are a glimpse into why. Broner’s name may have some star quality to it, but the fighter that owns it is hardly stellar. He is, however, especially considering his standing within Haymon’s universe, relatively well-matched, and in those matches, he comports himself respectably.

When he was turning the lights out on sympathetic characters like Antonio DeMarco or failing to make weight against Vicente Escobedo, forcing the already dwarfed fighter to either accept being further disadvantaged or walk away from a payday, Broner’s antics were more likely to offend. Now, however, with a pair of telling losses and some less than glossy wins on his ledger, with all that made him exceptional forfeited to the scale, and with him fixed at least a tier below the fighters he was supposed to separate himself from, Broner is too mediocre to be upsetting. The fighter who for years appeared to take neither himself nor his profession particularly seriously is undeserving of even the most complimentary enmity. When ya boy AB is just doing AB people are chuckling or yawning, not screwing up their faces.

His recent about-face is not the product of some awakened duty to be a role model or any other more noble rationale: it is born of Broner’s recognition that he cannot reconcile his words and deeds. A high profile win or two would surely see a return of “The Problem.”

So, gone forever, then?

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, lightweight, Mikey Garcia, participated in his first significant fight in three years, facing Montenegrin sparkplug, Dejan Zlaticanin. Having positioned himself to ladle a helping from the Waddell and Reed pot, Garcia returned finally to the only vocation that was ever going to provide him the lifestyle he desired. And, as he had before he left, Garcia looked masterful, dispatching Zlaticanin with a violence and efficiency that reminded witnesses what Garcia is capable of and what frightening consequences prizefighters tempt.

Boxers who forfeit a portion of their primes to out-of-the-ring considerations face a unique peril upon return: their sport does not pass them by so much as it lies in wait. Provided it is against an opponent of some merit, returning to the ring after a prolonged absence brings very real concerns. For Garcia, those concerns regarded not only ring rust—which he may not have shed entirely in an underwhelming tune up last July—but also issues of style. When offensively ablaze, Zlaticanin employs a volume that breaks icy opponents. But while the pressure fighter may be the boxer’s theoretical kryptonite, the abyss in class between Garcia and Zlaticanin, an abyss that figured immediately, made such abstractions moot.

It was, in many ways, a typical Garcia performance. With the opening bell, Zlaticanin entered into a fight not only with an opponent who could—and would—leave him senseless, but with his own frustration. The question for Zlaticanin was whether he could refrain from making mistakes against an opponent who invites them. And if Zlaticanin could not, could he at least survive those mistakes once made.

The third round brought answers. At a loss for how to kickstart his offense, Zlaticanin, chin extended over his front foot, lunged a desperate cross at Garcia, and suffered the uppercut Garcia had been waiting to whip. Spun from the blow, Zlaticanin teetered woozily into a right hook so vicious it not only sealed the win for Garcia but put his victory celebration on hold.

As he has throughout his career, Garcia forced an opponent to make a mistake—and then ruined him for it. Perhaps forced is the wrong word, though, because what Garcia really does is ensnare you in a battle of wills, demanding you choose between losing a dull decision and risking a strategy more likely to see you victimized than victorious.

He is then, anything but the typical Mexican fighter: if there is any of the attritionist’s mentality in him he has yet to show it. Indeed, Garcia is so measured in his approach that he can even bore; his fights are more impressive than exciting. That tempered violence could be a product of Garcia being trained by his brother Robert (a former fighter), and the fraternal concerns such a partnership might entail. Garcia’s wiring is likely another factor, as is the fact that he was born and raised in the US, away from the psychology of Mexico proper.

But were his last name Williams, were he born in Baltimore instead of Oxnard, into a fan base dwindling instead of eternal, one wonders how Garcia would be perceived. What would Garcia’s people say about his win over Orlando Salido, where, his nose broken by a headbutt, Garcia opted to take the win the foul afforded him rather than confirm his machismo? How would they judge Garcia’s refusal to accept a catchweight against the ghost of Juan Manuel Lopez, only to come in overweight himself, gaining an unfair advantage against an opponent who was getting sparked regardless? There are even examples of Mexican fighters with styles similar to Garcia struggling to capture the hearts of their people. Consider the cooler welcome that met a young Juan Manuel Marquez, how appreciation of him lagged behind that of countrymen Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera until Marquez became less perfect, more aggressive, until he had to defend the pride of a country from a rampaging nemesis.

Garcia has suffered little criticism for his conduct, he knows none of Marquez’ early troubles, and yet the hope is that things stop going so smoothly for him. There is little intrigue in yet another supremely talented fighter—and Garcia is most certainly that—merely reaffirming the obvious twice a year. The destruction of Zlaticanin proved that Garcia remains the nightmare proposition he was before his self-imposed hiatus. No one at lightweight is fighter enough to solve Garcia, and he is unlikely to find much trouble among the premier boxing champions at junior welterweight either. And if that is being naive, better to be so in support of Garcia than in support of those men with the opportunity but not the chance to beat him.

So how good is Garcia? And do he and his team care to answer that question? Because the fighter to pose it is out there. You know who he is, as do the Garcia’s. The Garcia’s also know, as anyone who follows the sport does, just how well-insulated the family’s fighting pride is from this threat. (What is less clear, though far more interesting, is whether that awareness figured at all in the departure from Top Rank).

Of course, the obvious fight to make for Garcia is likely to one day number among the casualties of boxing’s fractured landscape. But should he ever get the itch to really prove himself, he will to do so with Oxnard and Omaha in the stands.

By Jimmy Tobin-

It was easy to look past the character being interviewed; rare are the moments when much of interest ever issues from that mouth; easier still to ignore the antagonist conducting the interview, wholly unfit as he is to speak to men almost invariably his better. Behind this charade stood the fighter, silent, sullen, like a child toeing the ground in earshot of a conversation about him that he is not allowed to participate in. When finally allowed to speak, like so many of his fraternity he offered a cliché, but one that because of its veracity boasted some charm.

“I’ll fight anyone.”

Saturday night, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Badou Jack did not fight just anyone. For the fourth fight in a row, Jack fought a man capable of beating him, and not in the empty sense that says anything can happen in a prizefight—those who follow boxing understand how often matchmaking pares the potential for the unexpected down to mere theory, empty promise, tease. His opponent, James DeGale, a former Olympic gold medalist and fellow owner of a super middleweight trinket, fought Jack on mostly even terms leading to mostly even scores of 114-112 for DeGale, and 113-113 twice.

This was the second consecutive draw for Jack, who was unable to turn back a chemically enhanced Lucian Bute last April. But these draws, however bitter, are not the past Jack need bury. No, that past was etched into his ledger in 2014, when a then-undefeated Jack was splayed in the first round by a right hand from Derek Edwards. For many, it was a moment of a delicious schadenfreude: a member of Floyd Mayweather’s Money Team humiliated in a nationally televised showcase. Jack, yet too irrelevant to warrant such animosity, was vilified, his unmaking celebrated, by people who had desired a Mayweather failure for so long they were willing to accept a vicarious one.

If any of that ill will persists, Jack is undeserving of it. He is not his promoter, he is not his advisor, and he is not typical in the derogatory sense anyone who has grown frustrated with boxing understands. “The Ripper” rehabilitated himself by beating fighters who did not simply assuage his pride but actually confirmed his merit. He did not, like too many fighters of privilege earned or otherwise, secure victories primarily through matchmaking, but by steeling himself against greater challenges and answering the call of the moment.

Jack imperiled himself again against DeGale, the fighter of greater pedigree, the southpaw with a handful of tricks and some understanding—though not a mastery—of how to employ them. Degale dropped Jack in the first round with a lead left hand; and that auspicious start carried over through the early rounds while Jack parsed the frivolities of DeGale’s style, the empty threats in his movement, in all the hitting and not hitting and moving. Over the second half of the fight, however, when it became just that, Jack revealed who he has become since a lazy jab against Edwards cost him his daylights. Jack left DeGale looking like a man jumped into a gang. He rocketed DeGale’s mouthguard, and even a tooth, out of his mouth, setting up this facial reconstruction with a committed body attack. In the twelfth, punctuating the swing of control, Jack dropped Degale with an uppercut.

This second half surge (attributable in part to DeGale’s limitations and to the quality of the matchup), was improbable considering Jack’s struggle with the scale. Typically, a weight-drained fighter’s performance resembles a tractor pull: an explosive start is followed by a quick and steady exhaustion before the finish line. That Jack was able to improve as the fight wore on bodes well for his prospects at light heavyweight, where he is headed despite the appeal of a rematch with DeGale.

Could he make 168 pounds again, most everyone would expect him to pursue his satisfaction against DeGale. Certainly, the weight is the defining factor in his leaving a Degale rematch on the table. But there is also a sense that Jack is willing to leave another bitter moment in the past because he knows greater challenges await. No one will hold a draw with DeGale against him, nor should they, since perhaps the most pronounced takeaway from those twelve rounds (and many that preceded them) is that regardless of the outcome Jack guarantees action, and the moments that birth and sustain that reputation very often outshine the results.

Like all volume fighters, Jack will have to be mindful of the power that awaits him at light heavyweight: the element of attrition in his style he will always tempt disaster against opponents who need but one clean look. Nor can you, whatever your promotional or network allegiance, ascend to the top of that division without sharing the ring with a fighter known primarily for relieving men of their senses. But Jack, the fighter who professes a willingness to fight anybody and has the daring to make good on his words, has earned the right to worry about his future. His past—or at least the moment in it that once defined him—should hound him no longer.

By Jimmy Tobin

Were Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour theory more true than useful, this year would have seen many of boxing’s devotees fall just a few days short of becoming world class negotiators. Falling short of being world class is something not uncommon in boxing these days, despite publicists, promoters, trainers, and networks doing their absolute best to convince you that being one of the best anything in 2016 is qualification for being one of the best ever, and so there is a nice, deserving symmetry there.

While this second, propagandistic component makes sense—people who profit from boxing are compelled, rather easily, to telling fractional truths and whole lies about it—the first is harder to understand. Why the preoccupation with boxing negotiations? The simple answer is that in recent years there have been fewer and fewer barriers to information and more platforms for bantering about it. Why wouldn’t someone presented with a free and accessible opportunity to pursue an interest avail himself of it?

Except that is not what happened over the past year, where the motives for immersing oneself in the ins-and-outs of inking fights had very little to do with learning. No, the motivation this year—assuming, perhaps generously, that what transpired was not born primarily of so many having so little else to do—was rooted in prosecution and defense.

Nowhere was this clearer than in the (inevitably) failed negotiations for a Gennady-Golovkin-Saul Alvarez fight (Oh, and is that order of names, okay? Because even such minutiae matter when held aloft by the swaying arms of acolytes). Whatever the reasons, Golovkin and Alvarez—who each fought twice in 2016, finding among their four hapless opponents two welterweights to ragdoll—could not make the fight Golovkin wanted more than any other, the fight Alvarez professed no fear of.

Apologists for Alvarez had their reasons at the ready, all complimentary of the Mexican fighter who professed to “not fuck around” before ditching the title Golovkin was the mandatory for and spending his year fucking around with the chin of a twice-flattened welterweight and the flanks of someone called “Beefy”. And yet to focus on Alvarez’ conduct, his supporters will tell you, is to take your eyes off the real culprit, off Golovkin, who, according to sources as credible as they need to be for the purpose of supporting a doctrine presented as an argument, declined the opportunity he professed to so deeply covet.

What truth there is to any of these accounts is, as with too many things in boxing, mostly a matter of opinion. Like Gladwell’s theory, much of this grist derives its value not from its veracity but from its usefulness in pushing forth an idea, perhaps that Team Alvarez is staying his execution, or that Team Golovkin’s difficulty securing fights is their own doing.

That the fight, the event actually worth talking about does not happen gets lost somehow in the discussion about who is more to blame for it not happening, with the answer to that question of guilt reflecting little more than allegiances pledged long ago. Some consolation that is.

It would be bad enough if people could find the negotiations of a fight more interesting than the fight itself. Except it’s not about interest at all, not in the eyes of those devoted to fighters, even to promoters. Instead, they interpret in boxing’s failure to make fights something other than failure, finding instead hypothetical victories for fighters whose meaningful victories are delivered only by their fists and promotional outfits who should be judged by their ability to deliver intriguing fights.

Strangely, the response to failed negotiations is not a collective shoulder turn on all parties involved. Granted this response is extreme, but at least it is sensical: why support entertainers who disregard your requests for entertainment? Isn’t responding in disgust better than making excuses and attributing blame and doing so with a fervor typically found in support of the action? That these excuses come adorned in whatever information and misinformation those in the know actually care to reveal hardly makes them any better. Given the traction this blaming and absolving gains, making the fights people actually want to see seems almost counter-intuitive: if people find satisfaction in arguing about why fights are not made, if they are going to direct their hostilities at differing opinion rather than at the people perpetually kicking the chair away, why make fights?

The trendy retort here is to say that boxing is a business and that understanding its complexities both allows and demands a more nuanced response to disappointment than turning away. And there is some truth to that, as boxing requires among other things a tolerance for rigmarole and an appreciation for peculiarities that fly in the face of competition (like the fact that, however odd it may sound, rarely is matching two men at the height of their powers a priority). That is hardly a justification, however: boxing can be both a business and entertaining and to simply lower the first characteristic like a gavel on the discussion is to justify the status quo.

It should come as little surprise that if those drawn to boxing for reasons beyond a violent spectacle were to determine the sport’s fate it would look very much like it did in 2016.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at The Forum in Inglewood, California, Bernard Hopkins tempted boxing’s unwritten rules for the last time. Inviolable as they are, those rules made an example of him. Hopkins’ farewell fight ended with the 51-year-old where he planned to be: beyond the ropes, surrounded by his supporters, the object of every fixed gaze in the arena. Except he reached that position courtesy of union construction worker, Joe Smith Jr., who hammered Hopkins through the ropes and onto the floor below, handing “The Executioner” his first stoppage loss in his very last fight.

Retrospectives aplenty are promised in the coming weeks, and Hopkins’ career is rich enough that sifting through his past for celebratory moments presents a unique challenge. Every fighter has such moments—Smith himself, despite being a relative unknown last year, now has two—but unlike so many of his contemporaries, with Hopkins it is selecting from abundance, not scarcity, that provides the challenge.

Reference to his protracted dismantling of Felix Trinidad—a flawless performance with few rivals since—will figure prominently, as will his humbling of self-proclaimed “Legend Killer” Antonio Tarver, so completely embarrassed by Hopkins that night he was reduced to asking trainer Buddy McGirt for ways to simply survive. Perhaps Hopkins’ one-armed destruction of Antwun Echols will also be romanticized and retold. More recently there is this: in 2014, Hopkins, at age 49, lost a unanimous decision to Sergey Kovalev in the fight that ratified the Russian. It speaks poorly of the division that a win over a man near fifty could serve such a purpose, though it is testament to Hopkins’ mystique that in his career’s third decade he remained a standard for more than longevity.

Even the version of him that fought Kovalev did not step through the ropes in Inglewood, however. And if Hopkins should choose to fight on he will do so knowing that the ring no longer welcomes him. Smith put Hopkins on borrowed time with a short right hand early, and what followed was all-too-inevitable. Hopkins lost the fight, his aura of indestructibility, and some of his dignity to a fighter who would not have ferreted a round from him in his prime.

The headbutt that opened a cut over Smith’s left eye seemed barely to register with the Long Island fighter, nor did the lead right hands that Hopkins bounced off his head once or twice a round. Kovalev suffered perplexing moments against Hopkins, Jean Pascal seemed to mentally unravel when Hopkins employed his intimidation tactics. Smith, however, perhaps because he knew there was but one path to victory for him, knew that, having interpreted the effect of his blows, that path was the only one he would need, betrayed not a tremor in his resolve. He simply followed the aged fighter around the ring, kept Hopkins at the end of his punches, and swung with the express purpose of bagging a trophy kill.

That says something about Smith, about how he will comport himself—if not fare—against the better opponents he has now earned the right to face. But it also speaks to how little Hopkins, his body softer, beard grayer, had left. Smith crossed his feet in pursuit, yet Hopkins had not the legs to escape him; Smith telegraphed his punches, yet all Hopkins could do was steel himself against their effect. Take nothing away from Smith, who did what a professional fighter should to an opponent who had little business sharing the ring with him. If Hopkins does not belong in the ring with Smith, however, he certainly does not belong in a ring in a prime television slot on a premium network. That has been the truth for years, given Hopkins’ spoiling tactics, his preservatory style, and there is no longer sufficient argument to suggest otherwise.

The image of Hopkins careening through the ropes, sent there by the fists of a man with “The Future” emblazoned on the front of his trunks is lasting. So too was Hopkins’ response. A survivor par excellence, Hopkins’ interpretation of his final departure from the ring is both untenable and predictable. Asked about the action that precipitated his trip through the ropes, Hopkins suggested Smith shoved him out of the ring, so frustrated was he by Hopkins’ right hand, elusiveness, and body work. No manipulation of the facts can support such an interpretation: Smith knocked Hopkins senseless with a right and did not stop punching until Hopkins had fallen out of reach. When Hopkins came to he was in no shape to continue, and he knew it; knew too that the insult visited upon him exceeded his injuries. So he fabricated a story absurd even by the standards of a man concussed. To witness how deeply wounded Hopkins was by the outcome of the fight is to understand that he will cling forever to this revisionist history—and do so knowing full well the truth.

The truth is Bernard Hopkins took a professional prizefight in his fifties, miscalculated, and was treated as any fighter in his fifties should be, less boxing become so talentless that even a man half a century old can mock its ranks with his presence. It was a humiliating defeat, one that will haunt Hopkins not only for its result but for what that result confirms: the even he must bend to the rules.

By Jimmy Tobin–

Saturday night, at the USC Galen Center in Los Angeles, California, Jermall Charlo defended his sliver of the super welterweight championship by fifth round TKO. The victory came at the expense of earnest but overmatched Julian Williams, who, provided the opportunity to make good on a year of bold proclamations, delivered a belligerent moment or two where it actually mattered, before leaving the ring with his head barely attached.

What Charlo-Williams offered, what aficionados are offered too infrequently, is an evenly matched prizefight on a premium network; a fight where the winner is in doubt both before the opening bell, and frequently enough during the fight to imbue not only the exchanges but those tense moments of inaction with a drama so often absent from the inevitable. Never mind that both fighters were undefeated—an undefeated record is as much a masking agent as an indicator of merit. And never mind that Charlo held a title, given that he won that belt over a man in his forties, and first defended it against someone named Wilky Campfort. What mattered is that within minutes of them keeping no company but each other, Charlo and Williams recognized the quality of opponent before them and were concerned but unbowed by that knowledge.

There is no moment in the fight more significant than the one that saw Charlo roll Williams’ right hand and counter it with an uppercut. That punch, the beginning of the end, set Williams’ head at an angle almost perpendicular to his neck and drove him so forcibly to the canvas he nearly bounced up to his knees and elbows. Williams played off its affect as best he could, bringing to mind fellow Philadelphian, Eric Harding, who, ruined by Antonio Tarver’s left hand, offered the utterance, “I’m from Philadelphia” as justification for fighting on. Fight on Williams would, but only until Charlo, swinging not to prompt the referee’s mercy but to leave Williams in a heap, tumbled him to the canvas once more.

Whatever blows they exchanged prior, including the Charlo jab that floored Williams with in the second round, and the counter crosses Williams chased Charlo’s jab back with, were evidence enough that both men understood what tools might serve them best against each other and that none of those tactics would come free of charge. It was a fight fought evenly until, in a flash, one man could fight no longer, and since what matters most always transpires between the ropes, Charlo’s landing his decapitator is the defining moment of the night.

And yet, it may not be what he is remembered for. At least not entirely.

In the aftermath, Charlo, still burning, refused to accept Williams’ congratulations, a move that drove the crowd to boo him for his lack of grace. Asked by foremost expert in classlessness, Jim Grey, whether his poor sportsmanship might detract from his victory, Charlo responded: “Detract from what? I knocked him out?”

It is a fair question to ask, however unpopular it may have been to a crowd that responded to Charlo’s asking it like it should have been issued a trigger warning.

Williams, who became Charlo’s mandatory in March, dogged him for nearly year, calling Charlo out and promising to take his title. His bandwagon—strangely full for a fighter who, beyond being accessible on social media and having an appealing moniker, had done little to justify many of the absurd claims made about his ability—also got in on the act from bathrooms, bus stops, and bar stools across the country. That ten-month keyboard assault fueled Charlo, who remained at 154 pounds only to shut Williams’ mouth. That he made good on that opportunity hardly means he need be friendly to his tormentor afterward, and if that does not fit into some romantic notion of how a man who is stripped near naked and sent out to leave another unconscious should act, so what?

The challenge the Charlo twins always faced, quite understandably, was that they were near indistinguishable from one another; a problem exacerbated by the absence of star power in their division and the fact that neither had a signature moment in the ring. But that is no longer the case. Jermall is now the Charlo brother who turned “J-Rock” to rubble and then reveled in it with zero regard for decorum.

Had Charlo responded more graciously people might have felt better about enjoying the spectacle of one man beating another to the ground with his fists. But if one of the goals a fighter has is to leave the crowd wanting to see him again, that approach would have done less for Charlo than his heel turn. And proof of that is that days later, people are not still talking about how Charlo planked Williams: they are talking about how Charlo planked Williams then acted like a goon, and whether such behavior did him a disservice or otherwise. True, Charlo will squander all that buzz if his next fight is unremarkable, but his behavior Saturday with fist and microphone in his face make that fight worthy of anticipation.

Sergey Kovalev can attribute much of his popularity to his maliciousness, so too can Terence Crawford, who interestingly enough, was considered a bore until his mean streak became an undeniable fixture in his performances. Perhaps Charlo too has this uncomfortable yet alluring quality about himself, and all that was needed was a night of genuine enmity to usher it forth. If so, may he harbor such ill will toward all of his coming opponents.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, junior lightweight, Vasyl Lomachenko, made a quitter of Nicholas Walters in one of the most anticipated fights of last year. Walters found reasons enough in seven rounds of exposure to Lomachenko to suffer the fallout of an ignominious defeat rather than be further toyed with or worse.

Quietly ended a rivalry that would have provided greater drama had it played out at featherweight, where Walters—yet to lose a title on the scale, yet to suffer a draw a lightweight, still brimming with confidence from running roughshod over the worn and washed tributes offered to his mystique—was his most imposing. Perhaps too, had Walters not spent eleven months doing anything but fighting, doing whatever it was that made ominous the pictures of him as the weigh-in loomed, he would have mustered a better showing. Alas.

To conjure up a charitable narrative on Walter’s behalf seems like primarily the work of those embittered by the result (a Lomachenko victory even before a Walters loss). But what might they say?

Faced with a fighter near impossible to hit, it could be that Walters turned his back on his opponent, on his promoter, on a fight he never cared to participate in. Perhaps when Lomachenko unfurled his full arsenal, when he spun and struck Walters to dizzying effect in the seventh round, it was then that Walters decided that, while willing to endure 12 futile rounds he would not suffer another like the last. Maybe pride brought him to tell referee, Tony Weeks, he had no interest in fighting on, so humiliated was he by the prospect of being reduced to a sparring partner, a mere tool for practice.

Any one of these explanations is in keeping with a telling moment at the end of the fifth round. Lomachenko stood still in the center of the ring, and Walters, rather than seize the opportunity to walk Lomachenko down merely mirrored his opponent; when he did move, his first step was backward, away from Lomachenko, away, really, from any regard for the fight’s outcome. As the bell sounded to end the round, Walters simply shrugged his shoulders.

Walters had his reasons for quitting and so too will he have his consequences. The comeback trail for a fighter complicit in his defeat, a trail that already features less money and fewer television dates, is unlikely to be understanding let alone forgiving; nor, for that matter, is the collective pile-on that is the viewing public.

Underlying all of these interpretations of Walter’s conduct is Lomachenko, a generational talent, if not yet a great fighter. Fittingly, he went about his business last night in trunks and gloves patterned in a style resembling the work of pop artist, Roy Lichtenstein, who once said, “Art doesn’t transform. It plain forms.” Lomachenko is not transforming, altering, or changing his legacy so much as forming it in accordance with the ambition and talent he is endowed with. He is not held to the standards of a fighter with eight professional bouts because that would be an insult to him. And yet, it is important to keep that number in mind, because in that short span of time he has already beaten Gary Russell Jr., Rocky Martinez, and now Walters, which, while not the stuff of legend, is a feat unrivalled by any of his peers when they had less than ten fights. Even Lomachenko’s loss to Orlando Salido, which despite Salido’s manipulation of sportsmanship ended with the iron-willed Mexican on the brink, looks good.

It is not always a question of whether you win but how you do that matters, however. And while Walters must own some of the blame for the lack of fireworks Saturday night, Lomachenko’s performance was less riveting than his unmaking of Russell or his destruction of Martinez. And yet it was vintage Lomachenko (for better or worse).

Again Lomachenko erased the line between defense and offense as only he does: where punches are followed by defensive maneuvers that position him for further offense and so forth, all at the expense of opponents who are spun like flies in a spider’s web as the fatal bite closes in. Walters cocked his vaunted right hand repeatedly in the early rounds, but rarely threw it, nor did he stalk Lomachenko as he had even the most dangerous fighters he’d faced. He did not have to. Instead, Lomachenko brought the fight to Walters—and when that fight become its most intense, Walters capitulated. Here then, is the transformative element in Lomachenko’s work, best found on the bodies—in their wounds, in their language—of his opponents. Still, there are further transformations that need to take place for Lomachenko to monetize his talent.

Lomachenko’s mastery leaves some wanting more. Perhaps it is the incremental and protracted way he works, starting first with range and defense before incorporating his more hurtful—and compelling—elements of his game. Indeed, there is at least a moment or two in most all of Lomachenko’s fights where it is fair to ask why he is still fighting. He looks near flawless when he is shifting on opponents, slashing at them from improbable angles, but perhaps a little less precision, and a little more recklessness and savagery, would help him better resonate with the public. He is not a defensive fighter—his defense is a conduit for his offense—but his calculated attack understandably leaves the bloodthirsty cold.

There is a solution to his problem that requires Lomachenko make no stylistic concessions, however, one that could entrench him in a collective consciousness that extends well beyond the dwindling ranks of those who still turn to the ring for entertainment: seek out those fighters who fight with a passion you reserve only for your preparation, those fighters who carry both the hopes of a nation and a cultural obligation—and cut those men to ribbons.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, light heavyweights Sergey Kovalev and Andre Ward provided a proper prizefight for those weary of a year blighted with fights of little consequence and even less intrigue, of diluted titles both real and fantastic. To the surprise of many—including Ward, if anything can be read into the expression he wore as the victor was announced—and the disgust of plenty, Ward was awarded the victory by the narrowest of margins: 114-113 on all three cards.

The outcome is likely to be debated long after Ward and Kovalev have put the fight behind them; and for the most tenaciously outraged, perhaps even after the rematch—which there almost certainly will be—has provided some vindication. Because the explanation for Ward sweeping the last six rounds on two judges’ cards and picking up five of those six on a third, is near impossible to find in what transpired in the ring. This is not to imply judging corruption, only a sort of laziness, the judge’s fallacy that reasons that since Fighter A is no longer having the same success he had in the early rounds Fighter B must be winning. While it is true that Ward adjusted to Kovalev, and those adjustments got Ward back in the fight, the case that they won it for him was made most forcefully by people other than the “Son of God.”

Of course, a Kovalev victory in the rematch would not retroactively correct any perceived error in the scoring of the first fight; a clear, decisive (deserved?) second victory for Ward would not make his first any less controversial; nor, for that matter, should anyone expect anything more definitive in the sequel. If this is unsatisfying it is perhaps helpful to remember that, whatever your feelings on the outcome, the only nemesis either fighter has managed to find he found in the ring Saturday; and the animus they showed each other was born of respect.

Respect is something grudgingly given to Ward, who can be supercilious beyond the ropes, tedious between them, and until last night, was so far removed from a win worthy of comment he might well have been forgotten had HBO not paid so dearly for his services. But he is a great fighter—to suggest otherwise is to concede that Kovalev could struggle with anything less. Are you willing to make that suggestion?

When Kovalev sent Ward to his knees with a right hand in the second round, it seemed very much like the whispers of Ward’s decline had been right. And yet over the next ten rounds, things became more difficult for Kovalev—not easier.

Proof of this shift bore out in the clinches. Unhinged by Kovalev’s power, Ward’s early wrestling was preservative, which was telling considering his ability to work inside the clinch—and outside the margins of sportsmanship—figured to be his most glaring advantage. But as he calibrated his own offense to that of Kovalev’s, Ward turned the clinches in his favor. Working with his head on Kovalev’s shoulder, hitting while Kovalev wrestled and always delivering the last punch, Ward taxed the monster before him. That Ward managed as much while brandishing zero threat of a right hand, that he ostensibly defused a bomb with only his left, warrants praise that should not be denied him.

The effect of this inside work was nevertheless exaggerated by Max Kellerman, who approached each round like a 49er panning through the action looking only for those bits of it that allowed him to preserve a set narrative about Ward’s greatness. Kellerman also tried to dismiss the effect of Kovalev’s punches, as if his ability to force Ward to repeatedly retreat and reset was somehow inferior to the punches Kovalev calmly walked through. The commentary team’s efforts to guide rather than describe reached its low point during an absurd discussion about winning moments, as if the winner of a round could be determined by dividing each round into 360 or so moments and tallying, without any regard for quality, who earned more.

For those disgusted by Kovalev suffering so unconvincing a first loss there is this: the fight revealed that people will never see in Ward what they do not want to see and confirmed that there is more to Kovalev than the rhetoric about him suggests. Prior to the fight, it seemed plausible that his inability to put away Bernard Hopkins, a much older, slower, version of Ward, boded poorly for Kovalev’s chances. But he was better against Ward than he was against Hopkins because the moment demanded as much. As he did against Hopkins, Kovalev scored an early knockdown, and again, that knockdown came because an opponent underestimated his quickness. Unlike Hopkins, however, Ward fought to win, not stay upright, and when the outcome of the fight was thrown into doubt Kovalev responded with the type of comportment he need never have shown against the likes of Cedric Agnew and Blake Caparello. He is more than his puncher’s reputation reflects, and he out-boxed the boxer even if he could not overcome the judges.

Prior to Saturday night, Kovalev and Ward occupied somewhat tenuous positions in a sport that in lieu of quality matchups, devolves further and further into a mere cult of personality. Ward was preserved by a reputation that persisted despite his not engaging in a fight worth mentioning since 2012. But his effort Saturday night, if not the way it was awarded, provides little reason to further a grudge against him. Kovalev’s best win was a decision over a man half a century old, but if Kovalev is for you an overhyped product of HBO’s infatuation with Eastern Europeans, his disputed loss to Ward undermines your claim. Perhaps any new animus directed at them too, will be born of respect.