By Norm Frauenheim–

The Forbes list used to belong to Floyd Mayweather Jr., who became better known for dominating the money ranks than the pound-for-pound ratings.

Dollars buy crossover fans and Mayweather seemed to have an endless supply. The cash filled his suitcases and the minds of young fighters, who wanted to spend like him even if they couldn’t fight like him.

The biggest reward for the smallest risk, a ratio and a role model, became as important as any combination of punches. No matter what the sport, Mayweather employed it as effectively as anyone ever has.

But the ratio is vanishing in a pandemic for which there has been no apparent immunity. The risk is still there. Boxing without risk is aerobics. Have a nice workout. But the reward is eroding at a rate that will soon force fighters to think twice about that inherent risk.

The latest Forbes list of the world’s highest-paid athletes was released about a week ago. It includes four boxers – Tyson Fury at No. 11 with $57 million, Anthony Joshua at No. 19 with $47 million, Deontay Wilder at No. 20 with $46.5 million and Canelo Alvarez at No. 30 with $37 million.

At the top, Roger Federer, who is the first tennis player to ever be ranked No. 1 with $106.3 million in earnings and endorsements for the period between June 1, 2019 and June 1, 2020. He won’t be standing in line at any food banks before his next match.

Nevertheless, the list is a red flag, an early earning sign of financial trouble awaiting all sports and especially boxing, which includes few guarantees, other than stitches and scars.

Start at the top. Federer is there with income less than half of what Mayweather earned during days when he was No. 1 often enough to be named for the list. In 2018, Forbes Mayweather led the way with $285 million, most of it from his all-reward and no-risk dance with Conor McGregor, a mixed-martial arts performer then posing as a boxer.

Two to three years later, the money looks to be vanishing faster than a full-time job. Top-to-bottom, the pay-for-play list for the top 100 is down nine percent from what it was a year ago. Cancellations started in late February and never stopped until the entire sports landscape went dark in April.  Forbes predicts a steeper decline in its next list. No play, no pay.

https://www.forbes.com/athletes/#696328ea55ae

There are signs that some sports will return this summer in an abbreviated format. The NBA and NHL are talking about schedules at single sites in a format that would essentially be a payoff schedule. For now, baseball is locked into talks about money. Thus far, players are balking at proposed pay cuts.

Boxers aren’t that lucky. During the pandemic, they aren’t collecting any pay anyway. They are independent entrepreneurs. They have to fight to get paid, contract-to-contract. Boxing is set to hit the re-start button on June 9 in a bout featuring emerging featherweight champion Shakur Stevenson against Felix Caraballo in Las Vegas. Further bouts are scheduled throughout June and July.

But, essentially, they will be studio shows. In an effort to safeguard fighters and officials from catching the lethal coronavirus, there will be no fans. No ringside media. The bouts will be televised by ESPN, which is desperate for live content.

Yet, the absence of a live crowd limits the purse. That might be OK for young boxers still fighting to make their name. But for the established star, there’s no chance at earning the big money that was a hallmark of the Mayweather era and its immediate aftermath during pre-pandemic days.

Without a live gate, it’s hard to foresee Fury-Wilder 3 or a third Canelo Alvarez-Gennadiy Golovkin fight any time soon. How about Terence Crawford-versus-Errol Spence Jr.? Not this year, if ever.

No live gate also looms as a potential complication for Manny Pacquiao, the Filipino Senator who had been hoping to fight sometime this summer.

Pacquiao had been fighting for about $20-million. That’s a big number. He’ll be 42 on Dec. 17. That’s a short window for a fighter near retirement.

A solution? There might not be one during a stretch when the money will be short and Forbes forgettable.

By Bart Barry-

beeenk … beeenk … beeenk

Get it swinging stiff it arm it bring the hook hard sand unsoftened heaviness heaviness dig the hook “Carve you up” pat the jab pat the left put the right out touch it get the back heel up touch it bring the left shoulder slam the back heel no no time it slam the back heel put the right hand out there slowmotion if you have to just tap it ignore them ignore them now swing the left round swing the

Slam the back heel

Slam the back heel

snap

there it is there there time it time it now touch put the right out to cock the shoulder bring the front hip round only a touch tap the bag move the elbow move his elbow now bring the hook no recock all hip dig it dig it in “Give it up, giving it up – mmmmhmm” front foot out slide round slide round again victory lap no one cares right foot left toe left foot jab it out jab jab knock with the jab move him back stiffarm knockknock looks like punches, Iceman Adams, stiff arm knockknock hook low clumsy bad knockknock down uncocked have to fix the right the upsnap have to fix fucking Reyes gloves get closer smell paint sweat ignore the black go to the red nobody up in the black dig in the red dig in the red the heavy sand unchastened “What do you want now, girl?” snap the head round the left follow the head spin another lap where’s the timer hot hot idiot heater second round no bullshit, kid, first round slap it out put the bag back with the jab use the archer try it two-step back shortstep leave the lead fist move with the shortstep

snap

Better again again

Better better body it

beeenk …

shoulder it make it swing keep steady don’t flurry better than that shoulder it swinging case anyone sees it make it swing body it tire it “Put your weight on it” dig the hook dig it again knucklescuffer don’t drag stab stab the hook spin out don’t pander don’t flash same rate pace pace cruise a little heat keep the legs be aware beware reminder re-mind-er jab out finish jabbing jab jab

beeenk … beeenk … beeenk

dent admire the dent, yes.

“Safe Hands, man, what’s up!”

“Just over here on my beautification grind, eh.”

“Your what?”

“You see Benjamín on the uppercut bag?”

“He didn’t hit himself, did he?”

“He was showing those two Haitian kids – the brothers? – how to rip the right uppercut as a lead –”

“You’re bullshitting –”

“I’m kidding –”

“I was going to say –”

“He looks much better, man, I’m not kidding.”

“What did you tell him?”

“He asked how to get a guy to throw the cross so he could impale him on that new uppercut –”

“Oh I gotta hear this –”

“Told him to hang the jab to draw the cross.”

“You’re gonna get him killed –”

“Not in here, not with eighteen-ounce gloves.”

“You find the eighteen-ouncers?”

“Bought a new pair.”

“Safest hands in the gym.”

“Working on The Margarito today –”

“Not The Marquez?”

 beeenk … beeenk … beeenk

“A la chamba, ya.”

Stiffarm it make it swing damn heat is an envelope tastes salty good good use the jab move the back foot cmon over mon over follow the jab synchronize the back foot righthandrightfoot one move together one now the left

Everything the left everything everything the left everything everything

bump

dance away spin reset light reset jab jab take a lap jabbing ignore them ignore them nobody knows “This is ours, all ours, nobody’s but ours” again again follow the jab follow the right with the right one now dig dig dig

bump

slap it right palm reset back foot jab jab who’s in the ring who jumps rope in the ring? damn this heat damn this heat laces loosening front shoe laces loosening they’ll hold no excuse no permission slip, dude, onetwothree get that back heel up higher bring the hook bring the hip not the hook hit the bag with it hipbone to bag it now the left now

snap

proper rest the forehead on the bag add some weight to it put some weight on heavybag adds weight to punches make it heavier “You’re going to get it now, no more games, no more playing” left left Foreman left left make a grapefruit dig it out left right just cocks right shoulder just cock it left left break your hand break the sand let the bitches hit waterbags sand makes the man dig dig nobody hits this hard pretty bitches nobody dents this bag my bag nobody “Who else does this to you, puts it on you?” step out push the jab knockknock no laps throw the cross back hip comes first hit the one-iron upsnap damnit upsnap anemic

beeenk …

dig the hook rather hook hook circle breathe take a lap breathe shut your mouth nosebreathe do what you do body it weight it shoulder forearm shimmy shimmy let it swing past circle it take a lap now catch it left

snap

proper again “You’re not satisfied till I am” nothing else be done spin slap spin playful playful watch it swing past now catch it square right “Who else, tell me, who else?” get lighter get lighter never see a man this heavy so light back foot tap the toe resettle but light light front toe barely touches barely “Not the best; the only” finish lefthook finish better off finish stride off.

beeenk … beeenk … beeenk

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Canelo Alvarez is fighting for history. At least, he was, pre-pandemic, last November in his light-heavyweight stoppage of Sergey Kovalev. But history, like profit, has been suspended for who-knows-how-long because of COVID-19.

Alvarez is lucky. He was a wealthy man before the virus appeared and spread its deadly appendages like a weapon of mass destruction. Over just three fights in his rich DAZN deal, he earned $97.5 million, more than enough to pay for a lifetime of bills and a few Ferraris.

Canelo doesn’t have to fight, unlike most in the prize-fighting profession who are praying for some sort of paycheck in studio shows that figure to begin next month. But if money isn’t a motivation anymore, Canelo’s immense pride is. That’s why the reigning middleweight champion talked – and talked — about history before an 11^th-round knockout of Kovalev Nov. 2 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand in his first and only fight at 175 pounds.

For Alvarez, history isn’t complicated. It’s simple. Singular. Julio Cesar Chavez is the defining face of Mexico’s fabled boxing history. He was when Canelo was born in 1990. He has been ever since.

In winning a title in a fourth weight class, Canelo had begun his monumental pursuit of supplanting Chavez. His run at history was underway. Now, a pandemic-altered landscape includes a potential dilemma for Canelo and DAZN.

History or profit?

Money or legacy?

Canelo’s claim on legacy is hard to make, much less sustain, when he’s not fighting. Inactivity opens the way to a skepticism that’s hard to counter. Think of LeBron James in his great debate over who’s The GOAT: James or Jordan?  James’ only argument is to play, just play. Yet just as the pandemic shuts down the NBA, the ESPN documentary, The Last Dance, reminds us just how good Michael Jordan was. Without another season and another title run, James has no way to further his claim on being basketball’s best ever.

James has to play.

Canelo has to fight.

Until then, it’s hard to argue with legendary trainer Nacho Beristain, who questions whether Canelo will be remembered as Mexico’s best ever.

“I think it is going to be a little difficult for him to end up being one of the best fighters to come out of Mexico,’’ Beristain told El Boxcast. “He is a good fighter, no doubt about that. I particularly feel how he boxes is attractive. But for him to be the best pound-for-pound, he’s not and he’s not going to be.

“I think they are intelligently evading some middleweight fighters who may harm him and are taking care of his career because they are making a lot of money. To a certain extent he is good, but I think he is not the best.”

The money is a staggering complication, the proverbial devil in the looming dilemma.

It’s easy to say that making history is the goal when you’re making $32.5 million-a-fight. That has been Canelo’s guarantee for each fight in the landmark, $365-million contract he signed with DAZN in 2018. He beat Rocky Fielding, Danny Jacobs and Kovalev in the first three bouts of an 11-fight deal. They were solid victories, but forgettable on a historical scale. Canelo, a former junior-middleweight champion, won a fringe 168-pound title against Fielding, retained his middleweight supremacy against Jacobs and won a fourth division title against a fading fighter, yet a known name in Kovalev.

Short-term, it did not answer questions still lingering in the wake of two fights with Gennadiy Golovkin. There was a draw and then a narrow scorecard victory for Canelo, who won a majority decision in the rematch. History and DAZN demand something definitive. But the world is operating on a different a timetable these days. Tick-tock, we’re all on the pandemic clock. There was talk about a third GGG-Canelo fight in September. Then, there was talk of interim bouts — Canelo-versus-Billy Joe Saunders and GGG-versus-Kamil Szeremeta before the final leg in a trilogy.

“We realistically want two fights this year,” Canelo trainer Eddy Reynoso told Box Azteca. “We couldn’t fight in May, so we are looking at September and December. We’re talking about [opponents] like Billy Joe Saunders.

“There’s also Caleb Plant and the WBC world titleholder at 168 pounds [David Benavidez]. There are several [options] … Golovkin could be the fight for December. His people have already said that he doesn’t want to fight Canelo until after the [Kamil Szeremeta] fight.”

When fights were cancelled, DAZN lost subscribers. Can the streaming network even afford to pay Canelo his minimum anymore? Will former subscribers renew after months of lost wages? Would Canelo be willing to make less money while he tries to make history?

Only the virus knows.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – A curious scenario now plays in this city re COVID-19.  Told they can come out their residences and resume consumption at the previous pace, told they simply must resume consumership to save Texas business interests, er, liberty, residents are noticeably less inclined to do so than they were a month ago when it was verboten.

As I sit at the same window I’ve now sat every week at the same time since March, I’m able to report traffic isn’t 50-percent what it was during lockdown.  This be the fruit of unintended consequences.  When there was an authority remanding South Texans to their homes there was an object for their natural, childlike defiance; now that Lone Star government has gone proudly missing South Texans realize they’ve been abandoned to their proper fates, the cavalry ain’t coming for or against them, and much of April’s animating bravery has vanished.

Most thinking folks have spent this pandemic imagining the sundry ways life might be worse when it resumes, officially or otherwise, but few of us have considered how it might be better.  We’ll not get the full resetting many have wanted for a decade or two, life never is so symmetrical, but we’re already getting a partial resetting.

Airfare prices, for one, are undergoing a resetting not seen before.  No, they’re not going down the way every experience informed you they should, are they?  That’s because there’s no demand to compete for; most of us wouldn’t board a Southwest flight for free right now, so why drop the fare from $105 to $5?

A similar thing is about to play-out in malls across the fruited plain: Businesses expect loyal Americans to be so thrilled to have their inalienable rights to inessential and conspicuous consumption restored they’ll gladly pay a 30-percent markup for what heroic decisions retail CEOs have made on their employees’ behalves; meanwhile every American risking her health and familiars’ lives to go shopping expects Black Friday.  What happens, in other words, when supply and demand disappear together?

That question underlies much of the hesitancy you see in professional sports’ reluctance to return.  Oh sure, there are all the concerns they express publicly and often.  But there’s one longerterm concern they don’t express.  What happens if they turn the cameras back on and there’s not the pent-up interest they assumed in their budget?  The longer we adapt to a life without sports the fuller the resetting when they come back.  Sports gamblers, we learned last week from John Cassidy, have moved zealously to the stock market, a place where the Federal Reserve now backstops their wagers effectively as David Stern used to do with NBA Playoff games.

Ten years ago there were 100,000 boxing junkies who purchased every pay-per-view no matter how rank.  Are there still?  It sure wouldn’t be hard to find out if any promoter wanted to.

This week MUBI dropped in its curated queue the 1922 German silent film Nosferatu, and I watched it on a lark, the way you wouldn’t seek-out a history of Ecuadorian cacao cultivation but if one happened to be on the shelf of your Airbnb in Quito, why . . . I didn’t not-enjoy the “Symphony of Horror” in part because of the way I found myself preprepared as an audience member.  I didn’t expect action or explosions or color or dialogue; on its own terms it was fine once I got past an expectation Chaplin’s tramp would appear in each next scene.

Sunday I watched 30 minutes of TaylorMade Driving Relief on NBC and didn’t enjoy it.  Stripped of their accoutrements the best golfers in the world look like highschool fourball players on a Wednesday afternoon.  Much of the reason we believed what they did was essential and special was because thousands of our fellow men were behind them in every shot jostling for a chance to be close to them.  That conferred an authority no amount of commentary can – and no, none of the commentators considered shutting up long enough to allow the players’ undoubtedly insipid banter be heard.  Even money, that oldest authority-conferring trick in America, failed to land: When each month brings news of another $1 trillion in government relief that does little to relieve, how much of a fuck does anyone give if Rory or Rickie putts for $50,000?

If you’re going to look like TikTok you need teenage spontaneity, not fiftysomething Mike Tirico laughing over Bill Murray’s jokes before they’re told.  And yet, it dawns on me as I peruse YouTube today’s kids mightn’t be so good at improvisation as their predecessors, and there’s an element of improvisation required in broadcasting even something monochrome predictable as professional golf.

But the ongoing resetting requires much reimagining.  Every single item in the value stream of professional sports, right down to something insignificant as this column, must be reevaluated.  While the networks and teams and promoters and agents fumble about doing this, iterating their ways to a new normal, they need to start giving their product away and keep giving it away long after brave fans consider returning to their arenas.  If that means men in costumes playing children’s games no longer get 2,000 times the salary of a U.S. soldier, why, that’s an adaptation we’ll all have to stomach.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim

In case you haven’t heard or seen, Mike Tyson is coming back. That’s news, of course. But it’s strange to call his plans a comeback. When did he ever leave? He’s always in the public imagination. In deed. In name. In words. And now in video.

Video of Tyson in the gym went viral during a time when a real virus has kept so many at home with nothing much to do other than fantasize. Yeah, It’s Mike all right, waking up the past with echoes of his crazy power.

It’s fun to watch. It’s even fun to wonder.

Still, I’m not sure Tyson can still fight at 53 years old. Precedent and caution say no. But Tyson is nothing if not unprecedented.

Above all, the power in his ability to fascinate and entertain remains undiminished. Forgettable he’ll never be. At one level, it’s astonishing how much attention he can still generate. The internet is on fire with talk of him fighting Evander Holyfield.

Forget that it’s supposed to be a four-rounder for charity. Headlines, driven by runaway imaginations, frame it as the third fight in a rivalry with more imagined sequels than just another trilogy.

The hunt for the last piece of Holyfield’s ear from the 1997 Bite Fight might already be underway. In perhaps an apocryphal story, it was found on the canvas by maintenance, placed on a cocktail napkin and then lost in a cab during a wild ride from the MGM Grand to a Las Vegas emergency room after Tyson bit it off in the third round.  Maybe, the National Geographic Channel can find it preserved in gold at a pawn store or buried in liquid nitrogen in a cryonics coffin beneath the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign.

It’s a story that will never go away. Then again, neither will Tyson. In a twist on an old line, you just can’t make him up. His craziness is a jagged collection of contradictions, yet genuinely compelling.

To this day, I’ll always remember him from a moment a couple of decades ago when he was living and training at the old Central Boxing Gym in downtown Phoenix. It was July. In the Arizona desert, only hell is hotter and not by much. Tyson was in the gym. The doors were wide open. A few box fans provided the only AC. Tyson was happy. I was sweating.

Turns out, it was a day when Tyson just wanted to talk. There were pigeons and food and philosophy and history and music. He talked and talked some more. Finally, I told him I had to leave. He follows me out of the gym and to my truck. I open the truck’s door and put my right foot inside the cab. Suddenly, I feel a hand as heavy as an anvil land on my left elbow.

Whoa.

Remember, Mike wanted to talk.

So, I listened.

I’ll never forget the power, running from his hand through my arm, like a force of nature. With one yank, he could have ripped my arm from my shoulder. I stood there, right foot in the truck and left foot on the street, planted by that one hand.

He was frightening.

He was fascinating.

He was everything then that he is today.

Even on video, that compelling mix is evident. People watch, still watch, in part because Tyson’s extremes can’t be faked. Genuine is an increasingly rare commodity in our fake-news world. In Tyson, it’s still there, abundant as it is vulnerable

Truth is, I’d rather Tyson not fight at all. There’s too much risk for him and the 57-year old Holyfield. I’m not convinced either will ever answer another opening bell anyway. Mind and name recognition might withstand the cumulative damage from blows over more than half a century. But the body will not.

Injuries in training are a real risk, perhaps one that will be enough to cancel plans to fight again. We don’t need to see a Tyson comeback. He’s not going anywhere anyway.   

By Bart Barry-

Editor’s note: Since 2016 we’ve allowed Bart Barry to interview himself about the state of the craft once annually when he is particularly bereft of ideas for his weekly column.  Each week since March 23 we’ve expected him to request a self-interview opportunity (yes, he uses a proper hyphen when he emails).  This week it came.

BB: We only get to go to this well once every –

BB: Let’s not begin with a cliché, kid.

BB: Surprised it took this long to revert to form?

BB: A little, yes, but you do realize, right, there’s no need to use prepositions when we interview ourselves?

BB: Surprised it took long revert form?

BB: Much better.  The prepositions are for others’ clarity; when we picture a glass of TexaCola we never need of in the picture.

BB: Frankly –

BB: It’s a glass with TexaCola, obviously, not a glass constructed of cola.

BB: Be neither tedious nor insipid, lad.

BB: I loved last week’s column.  I love Kevin Barry.  He’s the writer who comes nearest the ideal of writing in the mind’s proper code.

BB: An Irishman, naturally.

BB:  Land of James Joyce, but oh so much more enjoyable.

BB: Twas a legendary matchmaker who set the hands on the Joyce clock for us –

BB: Denver weighin –

BB: Sweatbox firehazard –

BB: “You know anyone who’s ever enjoyed Ulysses?”

BB: Literature for people who enjoy feeling smart more than reading.

BB: What’s this, then?

BB: Easy to write.

BB: Does that inoculate it?

BB: One hopes.  Anything th’t can be written fastly and funlike can’t be too Joycean.

BB: How’s quarantine, son?

BB: Lovely, if I’m honest.  Haven’t read so much in 20 years.

BB: Tell me about American energy.

BB: I love that we can use italics here instead of quotes because I can’t make myself put the punctuation mark inside the quotation marks.  It looks all wrong to me.  Looks fine in dialogue; looks awful elsewhere.  I assume it’s a vestigial ask from some 18th-century typesetter.

BB: Tell me about “American energy”.

BB: Peggy Noonan used that term recently in a column, or quoted someone who did, and it struck me like a perfect euphemism for desperate anxiety.  Even in its context – a man whose wife won’t let him quarantine peacefully on his La-Z-Boy but instead remands him to Home Depot – it reads like desperate anxiety.

BB: One man’s desperate anxiety be another man’s entrepreneurial zeal.

BB: Lockdowns have shown us what’s what.  Revenge of the unenergetic, as it were.  Good to see the hyperactive boys, be they 15 or 75, trying to sit still, and they can’t.  All that hyperbolic bullshit about “hustle” we’ve been hearing from them for centuries –

BB: Turns out it wasn’t ever the choice they credited themselves with making.

BB: Monkeys moving wood.

BB: “You don’t think I’d like to just sit around all day on my couch doing nothing?”

BB: Turns out, dude, you can’t sit on your couch in your own home in the presence of your own spouse and offspring for a full hour, can you?

BB: Sounds like someone’s dad yelled at him for not sprinting from the dugout each inning.

BB: You miss him?

BB: Nope.

BB: What about her?

BB: This is the second Mother’s Day since her passing – though there’s not been the void we were raised to expect.  I miss none of the zaniness, and all her best qualities are somewhere in her daughters already, so . . .

BB: Whither our beloved sport?

BB: I credit it with staying for the most part quiet, with recognizing there’s no optimization right now, and thus no reason for selfimprovement or willful change.

BB: Boxing ain’t been on its grind.

BB: All the better.

BB: Tis a bit of a surprise.  One’d’ve thought callouts and socialmedia threats’d’ve been at record highs, right?

BB: Bullied into silence, a little, methinks.  When they show us Ali marathons or Tyson clips or items from the Pacquiao and Mayweather vaults, it quiets them, even the dummies.

BB: What does the return look like?

BB: Ask someone knowledgeable.

BB: Right.

BB: I’m not sure I’ve the imagination for that even if I thought about it in selfinterested terms for a month, and I damn sure have not.

BB: Empty arenas?

BB: We’re well-practiced at that.  Even our best ideas –

BB: The DAZN tournament, the one with the –

BB: The one Usyk won –

BB: And Callum Smith and Inoue –

BB: World Boxing Super Series!

BB: There you go.

BB: Even that had its prelims go off in what were effectively cavernous television studios.  Just bring them inside the studio.  Surprised Top Rank hasn’t built that yet.

BB: Or PBC.  It’s what they’ve been after for years.

BB: Do you miss traveling?

BB: Not nearly so much as previous years’ expenses predicted.

BB: I don’t miss any of it.  I didn’t prepare for this, but I’m well-prepared somehow.  The music stopped, and I like the chair I find myself in.

BB: Tell them a secret.

BB: We didn’t expect to be doing this, still, in 2020.  There was a final interview with the boxing writer by the boxing writer tacitly planned for last December then the new job fell through and with it the relocation and a justification to end all this, and here we are, sans regret.

BB: And still kicking long enough to write a review of Carlos’ book and Jimmy’s.

BB: I’ve not had a regret since puberty, but in November I felt a twinge of disappointment I’d not have the column when those guys’ books got published.

BB: Reading takes care of its own.

BB: Every experience in every life is equal parts impossible and inevitable.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as it happens as Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje battle for the UFC Interim Lightweight title.  The Prelims kick off at 6 PM ET with main card beginning at 10 PM and the main card will also have Henry Cejudo defending the Bantamweight title against former champion Dominick Cruz

The page will update automatically every 60 seconds…NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED

Round 1 Nice right from Gaethje…Leg kick from Ferguson..Left hook from Gaethje..Leg Kick..High kick and jab from Ferguson..Kick to body..Right from Gaethje..Good right..Right..2 left hooks

Round 2 Sharp right from Gaethje..Big left..Stinging left..Right over the top..1-2 from Ferguson..Hard left hook from Gaethje..Hard left..Gaethje landing heavy blows..Leg kicks from Ferguson…Big right from Gaethje..Huge Uppercut that rocks Gaethje at the bell

Round 3 Good right from Gaethje..Ferguson cut around the left eye…Right from gaethje..Ferguson right eye is very swollen..Counter right from Gaethje..Massie=ve right rocks Ferguson…another Huge right…Right from Gaethje..Left from Ferguson..Nice leg sweep..Hard right from Gaethje..Left hook

Round 4 Left hook from Gaethje…left…Good front kick to body from Ferguson..Both land big shots…Hard right hurts Ferguson..Body shot..Jab..Left hook..Leg kick from Gaethje

Round 5 Right over top from Gaethje..Hard combination..Ferguson hurt…Ferguson is limping from kicks..Hard 1-2 Jab..Leg kick from Ferguson..More hard shots..Ferguson is getting beat up..Big right and left..Ferguson limping bad…FIGHT OVER…GAETHJE SCORES THE WIN

 Round 1 Leg kick by Cejudo..another..another and another..Knee from Cruz, but Cejudo takes him down..Left from Cejudo..Leg kick..Kick from Cruz..Lg kick from Cejudo

Round 2 Leg kick from Cejudo..Right from Cruz…Right from Cejudo..another right..Right from Cruz..left..HEADBUTT AND CEJUDO IS BLEEDING FROM THE FOREHEAD..HARD KNEE KNOCKS CRUZ DOWN..CRUZ LOOKS HURT…CEJUDO JUMPS ON CRUZ..SEVERAL PUNCHES AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

CEJUDO RETIRES IN THE OCTAGON AFTER THE FIGHT

Round 1 HUGE WILD LEFT HOOK AND DOWN GOES ROZENSTRUIK…FIGHT OVER

Round 1 Stevens lands a low kick and 2 punches..Nice Right..Body shot from Kattar..Nice low kick..Good low kick..Stevens lands a good low kick..Inside leg kick..Trading leg kicks…Good right from Stevens..left hook and body shot..Nice jab by Kattar…combination,,Huge right by Kattar..Big Body shot by Stevens

Round 2 Right from Kattar..Good low kick…Nice Combination..Hard uppercut..Good low kick…HUGE RIGHT DROPS STEVENS..2 FOLLOW UP ON THE GROUND AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED…STEVENS LOOKS WOOZY AND IS BLEEDING FROM FOREHEAD

Round 1 Low kick by De Castro…Left hook..Low Kick…Hardy lands a low kick..Right from De Castro stings Hardy..Low Kick..Hardy stings De Castro with a right…Nice Kick

Round 2 Powerful leg kick by Hardy…

Round 3 Leg kick from Hardy..Hard leg kick..Right kick

30-27 on ALL CARDS FOR HARDY

Round 1 Pettis gets a good right to the body…Nice right..Leg kick from Cerrone..Right hand..Cerrone takes Pettis down after a Pettis kick…Combination from Cerrone..Good left by Pettis…Spinning back kick to the body..Good counter right..Left from Cerrone…Swelling from Cerrone Left eye

Round 2 Left from Cerrone..Stinging left from Pettis..Good low kick from Cerrone..Good right counter..Good combination from Pettis..Cerrone lands a kick to the body..Nice takedown..Knee to body….Short right from Pettis

Round 3  Cerrone lands a flush body kick..Nice combination..Pettis kicks to body, Cerrone catches it and then lands a knee to the body of his own…Low Kick..hard left from Pettis stuns Cerrone…Big high kick from Cerrone…Petts lands a left and a jab..

29-28 Pettis on all Cards

Round 1 Right from Oleinik..Leg kick from Werdum..Big right from Oleinik..Nice right from Werdum..Nice knee..Huge uppercuts from Oleinik..Werdum face is bleeding

Round 2 Spinning back-fist from Oleinik…Kick..Nice leg kick..Kick to head by Werdum..Big Knee..Right from Oleinik..Big right

Round 3 Take down by Werdum..Armbar..Punches by Olienik..

29-28 Werdum   29-28 Oleinik Twice

Round 1 Good right from Esparza..Kick by Waterson..Good right from Esparza..Kick to body from Waterson….Kick..

Round 2 Knee to the body from Waterson..Another..Flurry from Esparza..Knee from Waterson

Round 3 Good right from Esparza..Kick from Waterson..2 rights from Esparza,,Good knee..Good low kick..Big Right..Good knee to body from Waterson..Good flurry Esparza

30-27 Waterson  29-29 Esparza..30-27 Esparza

Round 1 Right from Price..Good right from Luque..Price swelling on right side of face..Counter right..Nice counter from Price….hard right,,..Submission attempt..Jab from Luque..good left hook..Hard right rocks Price at the bell

Round 2 Right and left from Price.Jab…Knee to the body..Right from Luque..Uppercut from Price..Price is cut under his right..left..Nice combination..Jab from Luque..Kick to body from Price..Nice body shot….Right to head

Round 3 Uppercut from Price..Lead kick…Huge left hook drops Price..Doctor looking at Price as he is cut very bad..FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1   Mitchell applies 2 Arm Triangles and Rosa was close to tapping both times

Round 2 Arm Triangle….Another by Mitchell…Hard elbows to the body and head

Round 3 Mitchell takes Rosa down again..

30-25 TWICE AND 30-24 FOR MITCHELL

Round 1 Spann takes down Alvey…Alvey gets back to his feet..Spann applies an arm triangle..Alvey stays calm and gets out of it..Alvey lands a lefr hand..Right and left..Leg kick..Good right hand from Spann..Nice right and follow up knee..Alvey lands a knee to the body

Round 2 Counter right hand from Spann..Big right from Alver..Spann lands a right and left hook…Alvey lands a Good left and right..Spann lands a nice front kick to the body…Left..Nice combination

Round 3 Front kick from Spann..Left from Alvey..Big leg kick to head from Spann..Left From Alvey..Combination from Spann..High kick from Alvey..Right hook hurts Spann..Alvey trying to choke out Spann..Left..Right hook hurts Spann

30-27 SPANN ON ALL CARDS

By Norm Frauenheim-

Mike Tyson wants to fight four-rounders. So, does Evander Holyfield.  I’ll let you figure out where that leads. The public imagination is capable of just about any fantasy these days. There’s not much else to do.

The imagination is an escape, a refuge from the tragedy of a pandemic that kills those we love, those we admire and those we wish we had known. There are no baseball standings. No NBA box scores. No opening bell. There’s only the obit page. It’s endless, columns of names, some celebrity and some anonymous, yet all gone.

There’s been a lot of talk about business-as-usual this week. That would be nice. Something to hope for. Pray for. But, for now, it’s another fantasy, just like Tyson-Holyfield 3. The obit page says that intensive care and funeral homes will be doing most of the nation’s business for a while.  

Jimmy Glenn’s name is on that page today. Glenn, 89, died early Thursday after a long battle with coronavirus. He was an amateur boxer, trainer, a cut man, manager and bartender. It was his bar, Jimmy’s Corner near New York’s Times Square, that has become a defining piece of real estate for a sport that has seen it all.

Glenn had seen it all. Or at least most of it. He used to talk about fighting former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson as an amateur. Patterson won.

“But I went the distance,’’ Glenn told The Sweet Science in 2005.

He could have been a contender, too.

For 50 years, his bar became a gathering place for the contender in all of us.

The walls are covered with the posters and memorabilia that decorate scarred gyms everywhere. History fills the place like a shot glass. Tourists step in to gawk. Fight fans gather to debate or celebrate what they’ve just seen at Madison Square Garden. Writers are there to drink in the history and any other potent spirit.

Like so much else about boxing, the place is a mix of fact and fable. Among all of the photos, there’s one of Muhammad Ali, overlooking the bar. Then there’s a still from Raging Bull, the classic film starring Robert De Niro in his role as Jake LaMotta. The movie’s closing scene was filmed at Jimmy’s Corner.

Jimmy is gone.

His Corner is still there, a heartbeat for a sport and world in desperate need of one.

By Bart Barry-

Hotel Viejoyhermoso, San Jacinto Plaza, El Paso, Texas, on a Friday evening in June 2012

Worst scorecard I’ve seen, you, Bruce?

What were you thinking and are you embarrassed by it?

Stocky writer standing presenting performing for three salts, old, nervous the lad, wee in his presentation, stocky to quickshrunk, iffy – though not quite.

Gorgeous old bar here, he says.  Read somewhere there are more free museums here per capita than another city.  Any American city.  Isn’t that something?

Timmy told us he knows he lost.  Went back and rewatched it, knows he didn’t win it.

But your scorecard.  Just the damndest thing.

Dastardly.

Who paid you post such shite?

I’m at The Courtyard across the way, he says.  Pool on floor seven.  Can see Juarez.  Warning words or pleas for help on a mountain.  Y’all see it?

You and two other jokers.

There were three of you scored it blindfolded.

Six if you count the officials, he says, annoyed finally.

Make sure Bob doesn’t catch you.

Do you one better, he says.  Lee’s got me writing for AP tomorrow night.

Old salts cackle.  Just don’t –

They ask you to score it?

Don’t score it.

If you score it run her past me first so I can fix it.

Will do, he says.

___

Sun Bowl field, UTEP, on Saturday afternoon

Spicy hot midday midfield no shade till outside sidelines hot like picosa hot till your mouth burns or hot like caliente blisterbubbles your tongue? Yes.  Deranged hot.  Texas sun showing out for its bowl.  Print media, no meal, sippy bottles warm water runny cooler a sixty dasher off tables.  McCarson’s got a hat on, only Irish with half a wit.  Barry bareheaded like an ass, stocky writer.

Juan Carlos, good to meet you.

Barry – what time you get here?

Hours ago.  Nobody told me.  What time the fight is?

Hell if anyone must be nine or ten Eastern, no?  Su acento no es mexicano.

Soy hondureño.

The crime reporter!

Supposed to be trouble tonight else they don’t call me.  Hope so.  Mexican kid, what’s his name?

Chavez Jr.  Failson dated someone’s deceased son’s wife.

Laughing.  Givesn’t a quarterfuck.  Bluemat reads America’s Safest City.

___

Courtyard, North Santa Fe Street, El Paso, Texas, on Thursday night

I like your shape, muy nalgona, extraordinary.

I told you, she says.  But you didn’t believe me now you believe me see it’s for real.

Surreal, he says, so real.  What do you want to order?

I’m nervous.

Don’t be.

Tell me more about the boxing thing.

Filibuster it, he thinks, warms up, goes in, script reading from flight home from Vegas from flight away to El Paso, many hours thinking.

Do you know who Pacquiao is?

Duh.

He lost by decision a few days ago.  A few of us scored it for the other guy, Bradley, good man.  Institution’s pissed.  No dissent be brooked.

You use fancy words like you’re trying to impress me but you don’t have to you know?

C’mon let me show you the best view here.

On the roof?

No my room.

___

Sun Bowl field, UTEP, on Saturday evening

Did you get the time?

Right here, says McCarson.  It was a right hand.  Two fights to go.

Or a left.  Doing double duty.  AP expects five hundred a few minutes after the bell.  Trying to write for Abrams too.  Got a crime reporter check me out.

Judges: Filipino, Texan, Brit.  Referee: Failson Texas.  Mayor John Cook please remove your hats and take your feet dim the lights and I sing for you, a cappella, just a guitfiddle for the anthem and a key to America’s Safest City for Mr. Bob.

Freddie’s giving Junior a shoulder rub.  Pulled up in a stretch Humvee.

See the snipers on the roof, says Juan Carlos, make sure you mention them, Barry, and scare the angrydolt gringos back in New York.

Good idea.

Who wins?

The shootout or the fight?

You funny – I gave up on the shootout hours ago.

Cannot imagine we’d be all the way out here next to Juarez if they planned to nod at the Irishman.

Ut’s his name?

Irish Andy Lee.

Who’s the guy with him looks familiar?

Steward.  Kronk Gym.  Trained Hearns.

Motor City Cobra!

Every Latino calls him that every American calls him Hitman.

No heroes in Honduras are hitmen, güero.

___

Hotel Viejoyhermoso, San Jacinto Plaza, El Paso, Texas, on Friday evening

Look who it is.

Who’s this kid?

One of the dummies scored it gainst Manny.

I was in good company, he says.

You guys sit next to one another like penpals?

Nope.

HBO guys told me the scores fore it got announced.  Ducked out.  Didn’t want the reaction.

They know the scores before they’re announced? he says.

Salts chuckle one looks askance the other two, two of the three irate a rube happened their huddle.

Who’s this, Bruce?

Barry.

Never heard of him.

___

Courtyard, North Santa Fe Street, El Paso, Texas, on Thursday night

That was a helluva round three.

Me hechaste al plato, cabrón.

What time your kids expect you home?

They’re with their dad this week.

Let’s go eat.  You must be hungry.

Then we make a little güerito with green eyes mmm.

God no please.

___

Sun Bowl field, UTEP, on Saturday evening

Junior didn’t punch for a couple minutes stomped slowly about hoping to make up what he lost making weight and drained.  Irish Andy much smaller defter too moved more better more schooled.  Freddie looking weird between rounds Manny looking confident.  Fifteen minutes in gears shift with a snap.  Irish Andy fading fading bleached white redfaced white paled; Manny proper nervous cornerways.  Junior pounds his balls out.

Shit that was fast.

I get you quotes, says Juan Carlos.  Just write, Barry, I come back.

Honduran madman over one table under another comes up middle of HBO screen cuts in the interview like he’s Larry or Max comes back to write half the five hundred with quotes.  Pro’s pro.

___

Tamaulipas Tacos, Rojas Drive, El Paso, Texas, on Sunday morning

I’m not from the Eleven Families or nothing.

But raised affluent.

Juan Carlos shrugs sated looks the yellow posted menu more food.

Good food, fair prices, says Juan Carlos.

On me.

What I want to do is build up great credit get a huge cash advance move the hell out of here, straight abscond, can it be done?

Nah by the time you get that far you believe in the system and never leave, makes whores of us all.

This was fun for my first boxing fight.

Yeah they’re not all like this, eh?

___

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Nostalgia will survive the pandemic. So, too, will boxing, the world’s second-oldest profession.

A sure sign of boxing’s resiliency, its heartbeat, is in the interest for the video about the good old days that the networks are playing during coronavirus shutdown.

From Ali and Frazier, to Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Hagler, Hearns and all the rest, the legends are as current as they’ve ever been. They live on while the world has stopped, anxiously awaiting an end to a virus as dangerous as any since 1918.

The Spanish Flu was around then.

 So, too, was Jack Dempsey.

I’m not sure there’s another Dempsey, who won his first heavyweight title on July 4, 1919 and went on to be one of history’s iconic champions during the 1920s. Film on ESPN and Showtime of the greats over the last 50 years is a library full of evidence that confirms how much better the fighters of yesterday were than they are today. Above all, there were just more of them.

But the coronavirus tragedy is a painful lesson about history, good and bad. It does repeat itself.  Boxing’s history is as rich as it is long. There’s plenty to repeat.

It’s anybody’s guess as to whether it will. Or even can. The economics, post-pandemic, are problematic, at best. But the attempt is already under way.

Last Saturday, there was a card in Nicaragua at a Managua arena named for another legend, Alexis Arguello. Fighters went into the ring wearing masks. Former pound-for-pound No. 1 Roman Gonzalez was there, doing interviews with his mask in place. Fans were scattered throughout the arena, separated by at least two empty seats between them.  It was awkward, but it was a first bell after a couple months of a sobering silence.

Expect more.

More of the awkward.

A card is scheduled for May 23 in Patzcuaro, Mexico. It’s a joint promotion – Roy Jones Jr. and Carlos Molina’s King Carlos Promotions. Fans won’t be there. The card will be available, live-streamed with Molina (31-11-2, 10 KOs), a former junior-middleweight champion, in the main event against Michi Munoz (27-10-1 8 KOs).

Then, there are plans for junior-bantamweight champion Emanuel Navarrete to fight in an Azteca TV studio in Mexico City on June 6, according to The Athletic. The bout is subject to approval from Mexican health officials, who presumably would try to protect the fighters from the virus before they endanger each other.

Meanwhile, there are plans in the UK for a possible return to the ring in July. The British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC) announced it was ready to work with UK health officials, if and when restrictions are lifted sometime this summer.

“Depending upon Government decisions it is hopeful that professional Boxing will commence in July 2020 and we will continue to use our best endeavours to do so and are working closely with our Promoters,’’ the BBBofC said in a statement this week.

The initial plan is to stage the cards without a live audience. Only fighters, a referee, judges, regulator, cameras and health officials will be there. Given fears about crowds these days, there’s a chance that few fans would show up, even if allowed.

According to a poll from National Public Radio (NPR)/PBS News Hour/Marist this week, 91 percent said it was a bad idea for large groups of people to attend sporting events.

The other nine percent might have been boxing fans, a small number, yet maybe as historically resilient as ever.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – Nothing is returned to normal, not even our last catastrophe’s new normal, and it becomes more obvious the few times you catch someone trying to act like normal.  Thursday’s first trip to a supermarket in 10 days found everyone’s adapted to these bizarre circumstances except the employees.

While customers’ habits have changed enough to have the marketplace nearly empty of shoppers the marketplace’s wellmeaning attempt to keep a full staff in place works against itself as more employees than customers makes the employees frantic in their habits of busylooking, the product of 200 years of post-industrial-revolution habitry – “time to lean, time to clean!” – so the only ones constantly breaking sixfoot radii are the workers everyone wears equipment to protect.  They swerve round you and dash before you in a futile attempt to burn a surplus of energy that makes you batty if you retain it – for what else is anxiety, ultimately?

A better boxing writer would be playing along with his peers, livetweeting decades-old matches because they happen to be broadcasted as if live on Disney’s sports property, but I can’t bring myself to it.  These fights are available on YouTube forever and watching them with commercials to support multinational revenues doesn’t feel patriotic as it did when we used to drive to the mall with Old Glory flying.

Saturday, which has become lovely in its timelessness, found me bouncing between The New Yorker and Shakespeare.  In the 35 or so years since I watched my grandmother read The New Yorker I’ve often marveled at the quantity of sparetime one might need to justify a subscription.  Piles and piles of them I’ve accumulated over and over, refusing to dispose of them till I’ve surveyed every page, while never surveying more than a third the pages before peeling off their labels and walking them to a nearby lobby, coffeeshop or laundromat.

All that’s changed.  On the one end I have, on average, 16 perfectly empty hours every Saturday, and on the other end I have an evolving surfeit of self-forgiveness for not-reading whatever I once believed I must read.  It’s not nihilistic as all that, though I have noticed for six years now a creeping nihilism (blame meditation?); it’s an honest accounting of how much I’ve read and how microscopically little I retain of it.

Saturday I began reading new short fiction by Ben Lerner, which isn’t great, and wondering why his name was enticingly familiar to me.  The Contributors page didn’t help.  Google did: Lerner’s first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, was marvelous, and I enjoyed it in 2011 and thought of it often while using said station in 2014.  That trip to Madrid was about nothing so much as standing before Velazquez’s masterpiece, Las Meninas, at El Prado, a 10-minute northwards hike from Atocha Station.

A couple Saturdays ago I came on a short piece in The New Yorker that treated, in part, that very painting, as its author, believing himself terminally ill before coronavirus, chose as his dying wish of sorts to spend many hours looking at the painting again with new eyes.  He made a wonderful comment: Velazquez could not have been painting himself via a mirror positioned where you, an observer, stand, set between the canvas and the royal couple, unless he and everyone else were lefthanded.  Touché!  There is quite a bit of chromatic aberration edging the shadow at the centerpiece’s feet, though, so lenses were employed even if Velazquez put himself in freehand.

It came to me Saturday morning Petruchio might be Shakespeare’s most enjoyably masculine character, and a couple hours got gobbled up a couple hours later by The Taming of the Shrew.  The play hasn’t aged badly as its critics.  Shakespeare, as critic Harold Bloom wrote quite a few times, buries his undertakers.  Reading the play with a father’s eyes – my sixyearold daughter is nearer Kate than my fiveyearold son is Petruchio – I found some essential wisdom in the play’s courtship, particularly as Petruchio treats so directly the subject with his future father-in-law, Baptista:

Though little fire grows great with little wind,

Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all.

So I to her, and so she yields to me,

For I am rough and woo not like a babe.

Far from dashing for his rifle or assuming a postfeminist fetal position (practical redundancies, those), Baptista sincerely wishes Petruchio luck.  Many of the comedic elements are still funny, despite 430 years and thousands of renditions, and the language is gaudy rich: “You peasant swain, you whoreson malt-horse drudge!”  Petruchio’s ultimate motivation – “I come to wive it wealthily in Padua – / If wealthily, then happily in Padua” – doesn’t feel congruous today as it likely felt in 1592, being that Petruchio is already wealthy and today’s ruling class, ironically, better insulated from what economic calamities now befall the rest of us decennially.

Petruchio laughs at himself and circumstances, embraces absurdity, acts as a dutiful wingman, knows his purpose, speaks to his elders respectfully if directly, and woos not like a babe – would that young American men were reliably given such an example.  By the end of Taming of the Shrew you can envision Petruchio sharing an ale with Jack Falstaff while laughing merrily at a Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. match, something one cannot say for Hamlet or Othello or Romeo (or even Henry V unfortunately).

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenehim-

Big fight weeks are little bit like the seasons. They are on the calendar, a date to anticipate, celebrate and debate. Next week was supposed to be Canelo Alvarez-Billy Joe Saunders. Maybe, the May 2^nd bout in Las Vegas would have been a good one. Maybe, it would have been a colossal dud.

But at least it would have been there, a reliable moment for the week-long routine before any opening bell. The give-and-take can be funny, then compelling, sometimes bloody, always edgy and often outrageous. It’s a crazy mix, but the chaos is imminent.

You can plan for it.

Not much to plan for now.

That calendar is as empty as the Vegas Strip. The emptiness is unnerving. It’s impossible to plan for what can’t be seen.

No neon, no nothing.

There’s no telling when the lights will come back on for boxing, or much of anything else these days in a world gripped by a crippling pandemic. We stay at home. We stay a so-called safe distance away from friends and neighbors. We stand in line outside of grocery stories, hoping to score a roll of toilet paper and looking for shelter at the first sound of a dry cough.

We watch bikers stare down nurses wearing masks in front of state capitols in protests that include people wearing AK-47s. I like the nurses’ chances at shooting down coronavirus a lot better than any of the thugs with weapons. The nurses are lot smarter. A lot tougher too.

I’d also prefer to see a Canelo-Saunders stare-down, too. It’s a lot safer.

There was a time when it looked as if Canelo-Saunders might mark the beginning of a boxing comeback from the pandemic. But that was before the Strip went dark, before the crowds moved out and the coyotes moved in. That was a couple of months ago. Seems like a different era now, and it was in ominous ways that continue to emerge.

There’s no telling how long the virus will hang around. There’s no idea whether it will vanish during summer heat and then make a vicious comeback in the fall. There’s just that emptiness.

Canelo, himself, hopes to be back in the ring in September, perhaps for a third middleweight-title fight against Gennadiy Golovkin.

“In my mind, I’ll be fighting in September, so hopefully this whole issue will pass and we can follow through with that possible date,’’ Canelo told Box Azteca.  “I do not know what is coming next, because everything is off. There were very good plans for this 2020, so hopefully in a month we will see positive results.”

If there was anywhere to place a bet on that in Vegas right now, you probably wouldn’t get very good odds. Increasingly, sports look as though they won’t be back as we know them until there’s a vaccine. That probably means next year.

Big crowds are where the virus gets transmitted the most. The beginning of the pandemic in northern Italy has been blamed on a soccer game in Milan. The pandemic took root in Louisiana because of the Mardi Gras party up-and-down Bourbon Street in New Orleans. If the virus has a chance to come back after a summer departure, it’ll happen while tailgating before a college football game or in the beer line before opening bell to a big fight in Vegas.

Germany just announced it has cancelled Octoberfest, Mardi Gras with a German accent. It’s a sure sign that the virus is expected to be around in some way through the end of this year, or at least until there’s a vaccine.

Boxing already has modest plans for its initial return. Top Rank’s Bob Arum is exploring ways to put together cards that will provide some live content for ESPN, perhaps as early as this summer. But the big bouts – a Canelo-Saunders kind of bout – will have to wait.

“There’s a limit to what we can do,” Arum told Top Rank’s Crystina Poncher in a two-part interview in the Catching Up With Crystina series. “It’s not going to be easy. Everybody has to be patient.’’

The cards would essentially be studio events, featuring fighters who would ordinarily appear on undercards for major bouts. There would be no fans. No live crowds mean no known stars. Promoters need the big gate to pay the big purses.

“Where the gate money is so much a big percentage of the revenue, I don’t see how you can do it without spectators,” Arum said.

That raises another question. When the pandemic ends, will anybody have enough money to buy a ticket at pre-coronavirus prices? Will the game’s richest fighters be willing to accept a fraction of the money they earned before the pandemic? Unemployment is projected to be at Depression-like levels.

Pockets figure to be empty.

Hard to plan for that, too.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – Ten years ago I moved here and
promptly failed an eye test for my Texas drivers license so badly the examiner
and I both thought the other was joking about its results: I thought she was
kidding when she said there were letters on the left side, and she thought I
was kidding when I began reading from the middle. I’d lived most of my adult life
in Arizona, whose licenses have extended durations, and hadn’t taken an eye
test in 15 years or so.

In a few weeks I had my first pair of glasses, and
suddenly the world was in such high-def I immediately ceased my lifelong
indifference to visual arts. Soon, as longtime readers and friends know, I was
deep in a survey of painting that would last and last. By 2011 my survey had taken
me to the 17th-century Dutch masters and their seven-layer practice, and since
layers were all I was after in writing I eventually hatched an inside-out writing
process.

Now seems good a time as any to share it:

I. Cartoon Layer: Create a precise structure of
borders between areas of highlight and light, light and halftone, halftone and
shadow, and reflections – the lines are all there, and they might even be a
mess, but they are there; this sets the hard outline of what is to come.

“After his third match with Rafael Marquez, a
classic that happened in the bowl of Home Depot Center’s tennis stadium in
Carson, Calif., Israel Vazquez sat on a makeshift dais in the bowels of the
structure and listened to Marquez’s promoter and manager threaten pointless
protests and journalists. Izzy’s face was a mess. He gently mumbled when his
time to speak came, complimenting his opponent and thanking everyone.”

*

II. Imprimatura Layer: The degree of darkness or
lightness of imprimatura should be chosen in relation to the largest light area,
defining the absolute middle tone, determining the mood of the portrait – to
enable a newfound clarity in the next layer.

“El Magnifico deserved
better than what postfight shenanigans he endured in the moments that followed
his career’s greatest feat, one that would someday claim half his eyesight but
none of his goodwill. After his third match with Rafael Marquez, a classic
that happened in the bowl of Home Depot Center’s tennis stadium in Carson,
Calif., Israel Vazquez sat on a makeshift dais in the bowels of the structure
and listened to Marquez’s promoter and manager threaten pointless protests and
journalists. Izzy’s face was a mess. He tenderly rose and gently mumbled
when his time to speak came, complimenting his opponent and thanking everyone.”

*

III. Umber Layer: For defining values between lights
and darks by presenting them near one another, setting characters’ most positive
and negative traits – this is where absurdity must be injected if at all.

“El Magnifico, ever humble
in victory as he was vicious in its pursuit, deserved better than what
postfight shenanigans he endured in the moments that followed his career’s
greatest feat, one that would someday claim half his eyesight but none of his
goodwill. After his third match with Rafael Marquez, a classic that happened in
the bowl of Home Depot Center’s tennis stadium in Carson, Calif., Israel
Vazquez sat on a makeshift dais in the cold bowels of the structure and
listened to Marquez’s obnoxious promoter and more obnoxious
manager threaten pointless protests and accuse journalists of cheapening the
event for asking why a protest needed filing. Izzy’s face was a mess at
rest and worse when he smiled. He tenderly rose and gently mumbled when his
time to speak came, complimenting his sullen opponent and thanking
everyone.”

*

IV. Dead Layer: For creating space and distance by
making the largest quality too large, embellishing it till it casts a shadow on
its characters, this may also be where mystery is introduced – this is where
dialogue may be added if at all.

“El Magnifico, ever humble in victory as he was
vicious in its pursuit, deserved better than what postfight shenanigans he
endured in the moments that followed his career’s greatest feat, one that would
someday claim half his eyesight but none of his goodwill. After his third match
with Rafael Marquez, a classic that happened in the bowl of Home Depot Center’s
tennis stadium in Carson, Calif., Israel Vazquez sat on a makeshift dais in the
cold bowels of the structure and listened to Marquez’s obnoxious promoter and
more obnoxious manager threaten pointless protests and accuse journalists of
cheapening the event for asking why a protest needed filing.

‘That you would ask such a question,’ crowed
Gary Shaw, ‘after what these men just did, after the bravery they just showed,
is disgusting!’

Izzy’s face was a mess at rest and worse when he
smiled. He tenderly rose and gently mumbled when his time to speak came, complimenting
his sullen opponent – Rafa, after all, had just volunteered to die in the
ring rather than be subjected to a standing eight count – and thanking
everyone with a sincerity both pained and painful.”

*

V. Color Layer (Dark): Make shadow areas darker
and more colorful by placing them near positive qualities – challenging questionable
verbs and modifiers.

“El Magnifico, ever humble in victory as he was
vicious in its pursuit, rated higher than what postfight shenanigans he
endured after his career’s greatest feat, the fight that one day
claimed half his eyesight but none of his goodwill. Thirty minutes after
his third match with Rafael Marquez, a classic that happened in the bowl of
Home Depot Center’s tennis stadium in Carson, Calif., Israel Vazquez sat on a
makeshift dais in the cold bowels of the structure while Marquez’s
obnoxious promoter and more obnoxious manager threatened pointless
protests and accused journalists of ruining their event.

‘That you would ask such a question,’ crowed Gary
Shaw, ‘after what these men just did, after the bravery they just showed, is disgusting!’

Izzy’s face was a mess at rest and worse when he attempted
a smile. He tenderly rose and gently mumbled when his time to speak came,
complimenting his sullen opponent – Rafa, after all, had just volunteered to
die in the ring rather than lose a point to a standing eight count – and
thanking everyone with a sincerity both pained and painful.”

*

VI. Color Layer (Bright): Lighted areas should be
made lighter and more colorful, using paste-like mixtures applied rather
thickly, in a hard break from its predecessor layer – and inserting actual
colors.

“El Magnifico, ever humble in victory as he was
vicious in its pursuit, rated higher than what postfight shenanigans he endured
after his career’s greatest feat, the fight that one day claimed half his
eyesight but none of his goodwill. Thirty minutes after his third match with
Rafael Marquez, a classic that happened in the cement gray bowl of Home
Depot Center’s tennis stadium in bluecollar Carson, Calif., Israel
Vazquez sat on a makeshift dais in the cold bowels of the structure while
Marquez’s obnoxious promoter, stretching an emerald track suit, and more
obnoxious manager, scowling in funereal black, threatened pointless
protests and accused journalists of ruining their event.

‘That you would ask such a question,’ crowed a
redfaced Gary Shaw, ‘after what these men just did, after the bravery they
just showed, is disgusting!’

Izzy’s face was a mess at rest and worse when he
attempted a smile round his lipstick-red eyes and swollen mouth. He
tenderly rose and gently mumbled when his time to speak came, complimenting his
sullen opponent – Rafa, after all, had just volunteered to die in the ring
rather than lose a point to a standing eight count – and thanking everyone with
a sincerity both pained and painful.”

*

VII. Finishing Miksture Palette: Details of
textures, thickly applied highlights and bright reflections, this is the place
for impasto – doing audio revision and looking for places to lighten.

“El Magnifico, ever humble in victory as he was
vicious in its pursuit, rated higher than what postfight shenanigans he endured
after his career’s greatest feat, the fight that one day claimed half his
eyesight but none of his goodwill. Thirty minutes after his third match with
Rafael Marquez, a classic that happened in the cement gray bowl of Home Depot
Center’s tennis stadium in bluecollar Carson, Calif., Israel Vazquez sat on a
makeshift dais in its cold bowels while Marquez’s obnoxious promoter,
stretching an emerald track suit, and more obnoxious manager, scowling in
funereal black, threatened pointless protests and accused journalists of
ruining their event.

‘That you would ask such a question,’ crowed
redfaced Gary Shaw, ‘after what these men just did, after the bravery they just
showed, is disgusting!’

Izzy’s face was a mess at rest and worse when he
attempted smiles round lipstick-red eyes and a swollen mouth. He
tenderly rose and gently mumbled kind words when his time to speak came,
complimenting his sullen opponent – Rafa, after all, had just volunteered to
die in the ring rather than lose a point to a standing eight count – before
thanking everyone with a sincerity both pained and painful.”

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

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By Norm Frauenheim-

Pro wrestling is essential, at least it is in Florida, which apparently needed something to replace spring break and Mickey Mouse as a necessary diversion during the pandemic.

It sounds silly. Make that bizarre. Then again, pro wrestlers do wear masks, more to shock and mock than to protect. They’ll wear them into the ring, but maybe not into the grocery store.

Put it this way: There’s no disguise for it. Crazy is essentially everywhere these days, especially in Florida, my old home state. But the essential craziness knows no borders, any more than coronavirus does. It infects, destroying body and mind in just about any zip code. These days, home is Arizona, where golf has been deemed essential.  

At opposite ends of the Sun Belt, common sense, essential to survival in just about any time, is a casualty at this time. Try telling medical personnel that golf and pro wrestling are essential, too. A 9-iron is as essential as a respirator? If you say yes to that one, you’re essentially a fool or a Donald Trump supporter.

Trump is in the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) Hall of Fame. It’s no coincidence, then, that Florida deemed the WWE as essential at a cuckoo kind of news conference Monday in Orange County, Orlando, where the WWE has a rehearsal/training facility somewhere near Disney World. Only the citrus is real.

WWE chief executive Vince McMahon and his wife, Linda McMahon have given millions to Trump’s campaign. Trump, a Florida resident, appointed Linda McMahon to lead the Small Business Administration. She quit about 14 months ago to take a leading role in Trump’s 2020 campaign.

Nothing in this scenario is surprising. The money is a map. Follow it to a destination as scripted as any WWE event.

To use Trump’s language, it’s fake. Fixed. He likes it that way. He’s good at it, too. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be in the WWE Hall of Fame.

The trouble with Florida’s official declaration of the WWE as essential, however, is the potential opening it gives boxing and other sports. Top Rank’s Bob Arum told ESPN that he’s exploring ways to get ready for the day when the sport can resume.

“We would sanitize the Top Rank gym, limit the availability to those in the program and bring everybody into Vegas,’’ Arum said. “If the hotels aren’t open, rent them a facility to live in and get them ready when we do open up and we do the events with the testing and so forth, whether it’s in California, Nevada, Texas or Florida, any of those places.

“So, we’re working on all of that, but again, it’s a work in progress because we’re flying blind.”

But history already includes an ominous warning. Among the many parallels to the infamous Spanish Flu more than a century ago, there is a deadly chapter involving boxing, according to a story Thursday in The Guardian.

Bouts were suspended in October 1918 because of the pandemic. But they were allowed to resume that November. Eight boxers, two promoters and one gym owner died, according to The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/apr/16/what-ufc-can-learn-from-boxings-mistakes-during-the-spanish-flu-outbreak

History, like common sense, should be essential. But it’s another casualty.

Trump’s push to resume business as usual includes a 16-member advisory group. Vince McMahon is one, of course. So, too, are owners and officials from the NFL, major-league baseball, NBA, NHL, golf, tennis and soccer. Dana White, UFC chief and Trump friend, is part of the group, too. A week after ESPN and parent-company Disney said no to his plans for a UFC event on Native-American property in Central California, White still vows to stage mixed-martial arts on an island.

Notably missing from the panel is anybody from boxing, not even Don King, who partnered with Trump in promoting Mike Tyson. Trump doesn’t have too many friends in boxing these days. Arum rips him readily and often. According to Arum, Trump still owes him about $2.5 million for Evander Holyfield’s 1996 decision over George Foreman in a fight hosted by Trump’s failed Atlantic City casino.

But Trump apparently wants live sports back on his television screen. He said he’s tired of baseball reruns. That, apparently, has reignited interest in baseball moving to Phoenix for a season played at spring-training parks and the Diamondbacks home, Chase Field. Reportedly, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey is already talking with baseball officials. He can’t play essential golf all day, after all.

How exactly the baseball suggestion would work, however, is still anybody’s guess. Games would be played without fans in the seats. Players would be tested for the virus constantly. They would be quarantined in hotels between games. They would be quarantined in buses to and from games. In a sport with so many moving parts, it sounds like everything else during days when a major victory means you’ve found a few rolls of toilet paper on otherwise empty shelves.

Essentially impossible.

By Bart Barry–

It’s an exercise we did in a coaching workshop in Boston to help coaches listen more deeply and improvise more freely with clients.  An instructor provides an outlandish subject, and a group of four or five coaches then pass the idea round and round, following an order like this: When the person on your left stops talking, begin by saying “what I like about that is . . .” then build on it by saying “and another thing is . . .”  It creates new ideas naturally, iteratively, and lends them texture.

*

What I like about Norm’s
column Friday is . . . how it mixes Apocalypse Now, Joseph Conrad, the
Yavapai-Apache Nation and Tommy “The Duke” Morrison.

What I remember best about that event are two
things: The frighteningly labored way Morrison breathed in the caravan
immediately after his fight’s conclusion, and the reaction of my brother-in-law
years later when I recounted the contents of the Morrison doctor’s note.  This was 13 years ago, after Jesus “El
Martillo” Gonzales’ 2005 loss to Mexican toughman Jose Luis Zertuche decimated
promoter Top Rank’s interest in Phoenix – for history buffs, yes, it happened
on the card that saw Julio Cesar Chavez’s storied career come to an ignominious
end – and Valley of the Sun hosted a babbling brook of out-of-town promoters
who remembered how many tickets Michael Carbajal sold a generation before,
multiplied their ambitions by the number of names ending in ‘s’ or ‘z’ they could
count in a Phoenix phonebook, and imported everyone from Hector Camacho Jr. to
Tommy Morrison.

If memory serves Morrison was to return to action
in Phoenix itself a halfyear before, on the untelevised undercard of a ShoBox bill
that featured Juanma Lopez and Victor Ortiz, but bloodtesting irregularities instead
put Morrison ringside with a hastily affixed cast on one of his hands.  Before Morrison’s cage debut but after The
Arizona Republic story that got Norm temporarily banished from ringside there
was a letter from a doctor of some sort attesting to Morrison’s health, and
what made it absurd in the threadbare way boxing does absurdity was its opening
sentence about “Tommy ‘The Duke’ Morrison” – that a medical professional thought
to include a fighter’s nickname in an official document.  A couple years ago that detail put my
brother-in-law in stitches.

I have at least three iterations of Apocalypse
Now in a variety of formats and occasionally return to the Redux –
with its deleted scene on the French plantation – and ask myself if the movie
mightn’t be the one time in American history when a work of cinematic genius
was based on a work of literary genius.

And another idea is . . . the influence boxing had
on Marlon Brando, who showed up on Francis Ford Coppola’s 1976 set in the Philippines
many pounds overweight and selfconscious enough to disrupt much of the already disrupted
script.

Round about the time of Tommy Morrison’s
cage-fighting debut, coincidentally, I was a few thousand pages into a survey
of Brando biographies for reasons that escaped me then ably as they escape me
now.

Before Brando became the youngest actor to win Best
Actor for his portrayal of Terry “I Coulda Been a Contender” Malloy in On
the Waterfront, whose screenplay was written by IBHOF writer Budd Schulberg,
Brando had his too-perfect face rearranged backstage while touch-sparring with
a stagehand during his Broadway run of A Streetcar Named Desire.  Legend has it that broken and poorly reset
nose transformed Brando’s countenance from angelic to believably masculine, and
that transformation enabled him to become America’s greatest cinematic
performer.

Brando struggled with his weight like a
prizefighter.  He yoyoed between films
like Ricky Hatton between title defenses before eventually succumbing to Nature
and gaining hundreds of pounds.  The
blueprint for such a massive accumulation was always there – you can see it in
his shoulders and arms and hips in the cinematic adaptation of Streetcar.

Saturday I watched The Chase, a Brando
movie from 1966 that co-features Robert Redford, Jane Fonda and Robert Duvall,
and Brando, even then, was simply wider than his costars.  He was explosive, too, and everything he did
happened on a rhythm other than others’ consensus rhythm.  The movie is not particularly enjoyable but
intimately violent.

For the last however many years it has been fashionable
in some political circles to bemoan Hollywood violence, all those fake
explosions of fake robots and fake superheroes, but if you want believable and
sustained violence, check-out some movies from the 1960s.  Two-thirds of the way through The Chase
there is a scene at the sheriff’s office when some local drunks emboldened by
the movie’s rich guy decide to lock the sheriff, Brando, in a room and put in
work.  The scene has a lot of blood and sadism
and Brando’s trademark masochism, too, as Brando’s character, knocked
unconscious several times by fists and feet, keeps reviving and returning to
the fray and getting beaten ever more viciously by the same three guys.  Brando throws himself on and off a desk a few
times and appears to wince in genuine pain as he lands on the tile floor.

There are lessons about greatness in the Brando filmography
– particularly how awful even the greatest performers can be in many
performances (from 1960-1971 Brando starred in 14 movies that, cumulatively,
might make two watchable ones).  Failure
is forgivable, alas.  Especially in a
time such as this one.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

At first, Dana White said he was going to stage the UFC’s next event on an island. Then, there was news that he decided on Native-American land in Central California, instead.

Guess Rikers Island wasn’t available.

Turns out, nothing was.

White can bully reporters, but he couldn’t bully his bosses at ESPN and parent-company Disney to go forward with his plans for UFC 249 on April 18. They said no.

“The powers that be there asked me to stand down and not do this event,” White said Thursday in an interview with ESPN, which was contracted to televise the event.

It was a surprising move. ESPN is desperate for live content. White is nothing if not defiant and defiance defines the UFC, even more so than boxing.

White expressed it in a style both pugnacious and pigheaded throughout the last several days. The cage czar sounded as if he still believes that coronavirus is either a hoax or as harmless as the common cold.

A mounting death toll says something else.

Defiance isn’t a vaccine

Yet, the cage czar marched on, a man who behaved like an island, even though it didn’t look as if he had found one.

He was a character out of an old movie, Apocalypse Now, a film loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a novel with a title that sums up the times. White is a composite, two characters in one.

He looks like Marlon Brando’s version of Colonel Kurtz, an eccentric and deranged version of a Green Beret officer hidden in the jungle at the end of a Viet Nam river. He often behaves and sounds like Robert Duvall’s version of an Air Cavalry commander who blows away a Viet Nam village with his helicopter gunships, surfs to celebrate and then says:

“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.’’

Translation: The risk of a few more body bags is just the price of doing business. But the potential cost in terms of perception and public health was just too steep for the network.

White was trying to cross a line that not even boxing could. Boxing, never a role model, has done business with notorious dictators and regimes.

There was George Foreman-versus-Muhammad Ali in 1974 in then Zaire in a deal with despot Mobutu Sese Seko.

In 1975, there was the third Ali-Joe Frazier fight in Manila in a deal Don King negotiated with Ferdinand Marcos.

Last October, Eddie Hearn took the Anthony Joshua-Andy Ruiz Jr. rematch to Saudi Arabia in a deal arranged by a monarchy seeking to distract from its history of repression. The bout was called part of the Kingdom’s “sports wash” policy.

Nothing new about tyrants and thugs in boxing. They are a known risk. Caveat emptor. For now, however, coronavirus is a different kind of risk. A very different kind of tyranny. Only a fool messes around with Mother Nature. She never taps out.

But White, perhaps like his friend President Donald Trump, didn’t appear to have much respect for nature. Trump, an ex-boxing promoter and current promoter of controversial hydroxychloroquine, had been as serious about coronavirus as he has been about climate change.

Trump’s attitude appears to have to have been altered, perhaps by experts or scientific data or just the simple fact that his soul mate, British Premier Boris Johnson, spent a few days in intensive care.

But the stubborn White tried to move forward anyway, with a pay-per-view show on April 18 at the Tachi Palace Casino Resort near Fresno. White didn’t plan the move because Tribal land is somehow immune.

It’s not.

On the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona and western New Mexico, there were 384 infections, according to reports late Thursday. A reservation-wide curfew was ordered through Easter weekend, April 10-April 13.

The reason White wanted to move onto Native-American real estate is all about jurisdiction, jurisdiction, jurisdiction. It’s not subject to state law. There’s an ongoing ban of boxing and mixed-martial arts throughout California. But that doesn’t apply to Tribal land.

White’s attempted move to property outside traditional regulation isn’t new. It happened in June 2007. Tommy Morrison, a former heavyweight champion, made his MMA debut at the Yavapai-Apache Nation in a hillside arena on the east side of the freeway from Phoenix to Flagstaff, AZ.

Morrison was found to be HIV-positive in 1996. A decade later, however, he insisted he was HIV-free, even amid questions about the validity of the blood tests he underwent.

On Apache land, he was not subject to testing. Before the bout, Morrison’s former agent Randy Lang told me, then a sportswriter for The Arizona Republic, that Morrison had tested positive for HIV as late as January 2007.

But the bout went on anyway, including rule changes. Morrison was allowed to wear shoes. His opponent, John Stover, a Native American from South Dakota, was not allowed to strike with his knees or feet. Morrison won, breaking Stover’s nose within two minutes.

Morrison left the ring, still insisting he was HIV-free.

Nearly 69 months later – Sept. 1, 2013 – Morrison, 44, was dead, just weeks after Morrison’s mom told ESPN that her son had full-blown AIDS.

“He’s too far gone,” she said. “He’s in the end stages. That’s it.”

It’s a sad story. It’s an important one to remember. Important not to repeat, too. Not on Native-American land. Not on an island. Not here. Not anywhere.  And, above all, not now.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – Friday afternoon, 10 miles southeast
of here, restrictions got eased by local government and free COVID-19 testing
became much more accessible at Freeman Coliseum – which shares a lot with its larger,
more celebrated successor, AT&T Center, home of the Spurs.

If you’re thinking, Freeman Coliseum, why, where
have I read about that recently, here’s to hoping the answer is “Sporting Blood”
(Hamilcar Publications, $27.95), Carlos Acevedo’s new book of “Tales from the
Dark Side of Boxing” – in which Freeman Coliseum gets recalled more times than
I can recall seeing it in any book I’ve read.

That last clause works well about a lot of items
in Acevedo’s book, which is a clumsy way of imparting how damn original it
is.  Not gimmicky original, not look-at-me-I’m-writing
original; proper original.

I’m going to let things go where they might from
here, adopting a first-person style nearer what Thomas Hauser employs in
“Sporting Blood’s” foreword, eschewing what straight, third-person boundaries
Carlos sets for his art.  Hauser and I
came on Acevedo’s magnificent prose right about the same time in 2011.  I’m sure I found TheCruelestSport.com via a
Steve Kim tweet and knew within a paragraph how large Carlos’ talent was by the
only indicator I trust: Envy.

Once you’ve decided you’re a writer you’ve
unwittingly entered a competition with everyone you read henceforth, and
reading, the deep pleasures of which first made you think about writing,
changes and changes.  You imitate your favorite
writers, reading them more to write them better – like Ellison transcribing
Hemingway – and they become your influences, and then you read their influences,
and if all goes well you luck into Harold Bloom’s misprision.  Along the way you start reading the seams of
others’ writing, both in the way a couturier examines a dress and the way a
major leaguer knows to lay-off a breaking ball. 
You see the dozens of decisions every author makes on every page, and
how he executes them, and frankly it makes reading average writers a lot less
fun. 

But reading takes care of its own, and if you
enjoy it enough to do it enough, reading leads you to the best writers, and their
stitches are so tight, and they hide the ball so well in their windups, you
transcend your pettiness and enjoy them much more than you could if you weren’t
a writer.  I thought about this a goodish
bit by the midpoint of “Sporting Blood” – about just how much I was enjoying
the experience of being immersed in Carlos’ world, however unpleasant he tries
to make it.  (There is no flimflamming in
the book’s subtitle.  More about that in
a bit.)

Carlos writes in a masculine prose that is not
macho.  It knows what it is, has no
compulsion to explain itself, feels effortless, knows where it’s going, and doesn’t
compromise its style for others’ whims. 
Carlos himself is nearly unknowable in his writing and uncompromising.

Most of the authors to which Carlos Acevedo now will
be compared had either great editing or incredible access and usually
both.  They worked at newspapers or magazines
with full editorial staffs, sat a row or two from the canvas at every fight,
and got to follow their subjects from training camps into dressing rooms and
back to hotels.  Carlos has matched or
bettered them with a library card.  That
takes ambition, discipline and magic.

“In the years since his humiliating surrender to
Sugar Ray Leonard in the infamous ‘No Mas’ debacle, Roberto Durán, formerly the
most revered fighter in the world, had become little more than a pot-bellied
barfly whose roadwork consisted of chasing women.”

That’s from “Yesterday Will Make You Cry” – a
chapter about Davey Moore, not Roberto Duran, and it’s a good look at the craft
one finds throughout the book. 
“Pot-bellied barfly” is both rhythmic and evocative, and wonderful for
being unnecessary.  It’s writing for
those who love to read.  Here’s some
more:

“Although [Mike] Quarry never won a world title,
he was surely the undisputed parking lot champion of the San Joaquin
Valley.  More than one poor schlub found
himself, bridgework loosened, nose newly askew, laid out on some patch of
concrete in Bakersfield, courtesy of a left hook that had failed to stop some
of the best light heavyweights in the world but was more than enough for
paunchy nightcrawlers who trained exclusively on Combos, Alabama Slammers, and
Marlboros.”

That’s from “Lived Forward, Learned Backward” – a
chapter about the Quarry Curse.  The
second sentence just goes on and on, reveling in its stamina.  I was chuckling and shaking my head and
thinking what the hell is Carlos doing? even before the “punchy
nightcrawlers” showed up with their “Combos, Alabama Slammers, and Marlboros.”

This book is ever judgmental but never
unsympathetic.  It embraces the absurdity
of its subjects’ lives the way many of them lived to do.  And it’s joyful in its own immersion.  “Total Everything Now” is an exquisite
chapter, beginning with its title, about Mike Tyson’s 1988, peppered throughout
with mentions of Tyson’s notorious mother-in-law, Ruth Roper.  But not until the sixth allusion to Ruth (a
feeling of pity, distress, or grief), a gratuitous parenthetical about her
ubiquitousness on the chapter’s final page, do you realize Carlos has aptly and
humorously used her name for seasoning throughout.

He does something similarly free-indirect with
drugs in a chapter about Sonny Liston’s death, “Red Arrow”, named after “a
bebop trumpeter nicknamed ‘The Red Arrow.’” 
Suddenly a hitherto-sober book fills with amphetamines, morphine,
mushrooms, pot, LSD, horse, barbiturates, tranquilizers, reefer, coke, sniffing,
shooting, skag, joypopping, and chasing the dragon.

Which at last brings us zigging and zagging to a
theory about Acevedo’s choice of subject, “The Dark Side of Boxing”.  The best writers want to be read creatively,
and so here comes some creative reading:

In “Sporting Blood’s” final 10 pages one of
Acevedo’s numerous and rich similes includes William S. Burroughs and his cut-up
method (wherein Burroughs took linear stories, cut them to pieces, then
reassembled them in nonlinear ways).  Subsequently
I spent Saturday reading “Naked Lunch” – Burroughs’ 1959 tale of debauchery –
thinking about how Carlos tells his stories of Muhammad Ali (“A Ghost Orbiting
Forever”), Aaron Pryor (“Right on for the Darkness”), Johnny Tapia (“Under
Saturn”) and Tony Ayala Jr. (“The Lightning Within”).  If one set out to use a cut-up style to
describe actual prizefights, it mightn’t work; there are but eight punches in
the boxing cannon, after all, and championship matches generally progress in an
orderly if not predictable way.  But if
one wished to tell to-the-edge-of-panic tales of these men’s lives both before
and after prizefighting . . .

*

CARSON, Calif. – Before Chocolatito got stretched
by The Rat King, I flattened my left hand and set it at eye level then said to Sean
Nam, a talented young boxing writer from New York, “Here’s Carlos.”

Then I set my right hand at chest level and said,
“And here’s everyone else.”

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

There’s not much to do while trying to honor a stay-at-home order. There’s music. There’s yard-work. There’s listening to pundits and Trump’s lies and wondering if ear plugs would help. They’re probably not much protection from the virus, but maybe they’ll silence the misinformation and the idiocy.

Mostly, there’s just counting the cancellations. Wednesday, it was Wimbledon. Thursday, it was an extension of the California State Athletic Commission’s cancellation of boxing through the end of May.

None of it is a surprise anymore. It’s just another couple of depressing drumbeats in the funeral-like march of news about escalating deaths and a rising rate of infection. It’s beginning to sound as if everybody will be wearing masks before long. Nobody seems to know if they’ll stop the virus. But they will hide the frowns.

What’s next? Who knows? Nobody seems to know. As a sportswriter, you live a life measured by seasons and events. Opening Day, Opening Ceremonies, opening tip, opening bell. Now, they’re all gone, postponed once and then twice. After a while, you wonder what they’ll look like when and if the virus subsides.

It’ll be different. Best guess is that the days of big money — or to use today’s operative term – have been postponed for the foreseeable future. Who’s working? Disposable income? How about any income at all?

For boxing, that’s especially problematic. Who’s going to have money for streaming services, much less pay-per-view? Not many, at least not for a while. Meanwhile, there are the fighters themselves. If they don’t fight, they don’t get paid. Journeymen, boxing’s vital working class, will move on to something where there is a paycheck.      

“There’s always a fallout from this kind of stuff, you know, that changes the landscape of a business or the sport,” UK promoter Eddie Hearn told iFL TV this week.

Hearn is trying to foresee something positive. The shutdown, he believes or perhaps hopes, will force promoters and fighters to re-think how they do business. Above all, it’s an urgent reminder of just how vulnerable any opportunity is. Don’t waste it.

“I think how this will change is you’ll see fighters being moved into bigger fights quicker,’’ Hearn said. “I think that people will realize sometimes things aren’t guaranteed, nothing is given, and rather than having a warm-up fight or having this one first or this little one, I think people will be looking to have bigger fights.”

Maybe.

But they’ll have to be willing to fight for less, maybe a lot less, than the staggering purses before coronavirus. Post COVID-19, the world figures to be a very different place.

“It’s gonna be difficult,” Hearn said. “You know, when you come back – whether it’s June, whether it’s July – don’t just expect the whole world to go back to normal.’’

Best guess?

Expect a lot less.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – Frantic is the word for it.  I sat on the back porch Saturday morning and watched through the yards a wellbuilt neighbor in his late 50s or early 60s with a pickup truck or two, a surfeit of energy and no way to show industry.  He strode across his walkway, got in his pickup and moved it five feet.  Then he got out and went back in his house.  Five minutes later he was outside to move the truck again, more or less replacing it, then some lingering then back in the house.

Ten minutes later he was outside again, this time
pulling his pickup out the driveway to station it on the street.  Then to the cellphone.  Then a couple laps round the pickup and back
in the house.  Ten minutes later someone,
a coworker or familiar in a similar truck, arrived, and there was a blessed
excuse to drive somewhere, and off they went.

It hadn’t been four days since the mayor ordered
citizens to stay in their homes.  Nothing
herculean there.  Just stay home.  Unless you have an emergency, just stay in
your home and wait for this to blow over. 
Don’t be a vector.  Two-thirds of
us, to judge by traffic patterns, heeded his counsel.  But there’s always an anxious third that just
can’t help itself – folks who can no more stand their own company than a dog
can resist barking.

Someday, I imagined, stories written about this
time will make what inevitable sickness or death visit my neighbor like a
mountain of coincidences, mischief of the diabolus ex machina; had only he just
resisted that final urge to run to Wal-Mart to buy an extension cord, why, he’d
be with us today.  And those stories will
be wrong.

The energy such men are taught to show is a
consuming anxiety.  Thoreau’s “quiet
desperation” – a gnawing need to show they can provide.  Those who fancy themselves leaders are worst
in crises like this one.  They can
weather any storm and giddily sacrifice themselves for the smallest mission but
cannot sit still.  The one torture they
cannot withstand is their own company, the misery of being by themselves.  When they’re not leading often as not they
are drinking.  The alcohol makes them
ornery and gives their fidgety trip to the corner store a heroic sheen.

This is where hustle culture abandons us.  When there’s nothing to hustle for.  When the environment we self-optimized for
changes into something new and as yet unknowable and unpredictable.  Time to learn a new language! time to start a
new business! time to get up an hour earlier! 
For what? for what? for what?

And so on in a tightening spiral of dread.  And that’s before the imagination even gets
warmed up.

Now is a capital time for relaxation.  For doing nothing.  For showing complacency.  For catching-up on lost naps.  For reading whatever amuses you, regardless its
nutrients.  For doing whatever mindless
thing you fancy (for me it’s watching videos of men shaving with Merkur
slant-blade safety razors, silver-tipped badger-hair brushes and artisan soaps).  For conserving calories.

For many American men that’s a treasonous
suggestion, still.  But if you were
working really hard three weeks ago, is there any chance your working a touch
harder might’ve precluded your restaurant’s closure, your 401K’s ruin, your corporation’s
market cap being sawed in half?

An amateur boxer self-optimizes differently in
camp for three, two-minute rounds than a defending champion self-optimizes for
12, three-minute rounds, and both self-optimize differently than what
predecessors of theirs kept fighting till one could no longer toe the line.  How much different would their training camps
be, too, if some fights arbitrarily ended with a bell after 35 seconds and
others went the duration of cricket matches?

Even that analogy assumes a fight would be done
with gloves or at least combat of some sort and that there would be a
fight.  No such assumptions be
trustworthy now.  Supply and demand
aren’t supposed to crash together.  A
hundred men will make 100 different predictions for what the world’ll look like
a year from now, and one will be right, and we’ll hail him like an oracle (and
hale his 99 peers like witlings), but none of us knows.  None of us knows.

It’s good to be unafraid, as always, but not
cocksure.  If you are in an essential
trade like garbage-collection, by all means go to work and stay safe as
possible.  If you’re in an inessential
trade, though, like accounting or sales or data analytics, don’t convince
yourself otherwise; heed your mayor’s counsel and stay in your home and husband
your energy for whatever happens on the other side.  It’s going to be harder than you think.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry 

By Norm Frauenheim-

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — No Opening Day. No Opening Ceremony. No opening bell. I’m almost afraid to open the door. Any door.

It’s hard to know exactly what to do in a world that has suddenly gone dark, locked down and left without much of anything to do other than wait — pray — for the coronavirus pandemic to subside.

I’m bunkered down these days in Flagstaff, an Arizona mountain town a couple of hours north of Phoenix. The Grand Canyon’s south rim is about 60-miles away. It felt like a place to go, perhaps an escape from the daily onslaught of news about something often called COVID-19, suddenly an ominous acronym if there ever was one.

But there’s really no escape. The masks are here, a symbol of the fear that has gripped almost every community, big or small. I saw those masks on a trail, a popular two-mile loop between the snow-capped peaks that soar above Flagstaff’s historic downtown.

It’s a place to walk. It’s also a place to run, another trail that has long attracted Olympic medalists to train at altitude. They’re still here, running for perhaps the same reason I’m walking. We’re trying to get away from the bad news that is always there and always with no apparent end in sight.

Despite the natural beauty, I felt bad for them. Just a couple of weeks ago, they were running for a reason. They were running for a gold-medal finish. But, for now, that’s gone, pulled away by this week’s announcement that the Tokyo Olympics have been postponed until 2021. It’s the right thing to do. Really, it’s the only thing to do. It’s even what they wanted.

It’s what the USA Track and Field asked for in a statement Saturday, the day after USA Swimming asked for a postponement. Some of the world’s best swimmers also train here, indoors at a state-of-the-art Olympic-sized pool at Northern Arizona University. Take a Deep Breath, it says on wall at the pool. You’re at 7,000 feet.

But, truth is, the wind has been knocked out of them. The pool is closed. It looks as though Senator Rand Paul, a former competitive swimmer at Baylor, might have been the last person to get in a few laps. He was spotted in the Senate pool on the day he learned he had tested positive. Now, the Senator has got coronavirus to go along with ignorance. Maybe, the virus subsides in quarantine. But there’s no cure for the ignorance.

Sorry, for the angry aside. But there’s a void. Anger fills it these days. Paul is in the pool and the rest of us are swimming in lies from the White House. About a month and more than a thousand American deaths ago, we were told that the virus was under control. We were told that it would vanish like a miracle.

Bob Arum once told the media: “Yesterday I was lying, today I’m telling you the truth.’’    

The President, the Ex-Promoter-In-Chief, acts out that line, from day-to-day-to-damning day, in those press briefings. Too many of those – the lies, not the briefings – sent me out on to the trail like Forrest Gump. At least, I thought about Gump’s line:

“That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So, I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I’d just run across the great state of Alabama. And that’s what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I’d gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I’d gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going.’’

That’s kind of what those world-class runners are doing on that trail. They don’t know what else to do. Neither do I.

No telling when I’ll hear another opening bell. I thought it might be July 18. That’s when the third Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder was supposed to happen. But now that’s been shelved, Arum told ESPN. The Athletic reports that the new date is Oct. 3. Don’t be surprised if that date changes a few more times. It’s just hard to believe much of anything.

But there is that trail, a place high in the mountains and a place to keep right on going.

By Bart Barry

SAN ANTONIO – If writing this column in a time of
quarantine has advantages they are not immediately apparent.  This city has reacted quickly for a Southern
one, postponing Fiesta – our admittedly incongruous celebration, wherein a
majority-Latinx community celebrates the taking of Texas from Mexico by playing
in unfaltering rotation “Sweet Home Alabama” – which means at about half the
speed of a Northern city.  Looking out
the kitchen window is not much fun as the coffeeshop window, even whilst
sipping TexaCola
while Gramatik’s SB#2 saunters through AKG noise-cancelers.

There was a metered line at the entrance to the
supermarket this morning, after it closed four hours early yesterday, but it
wasn’t ominous as that; the stockers, too, were locked out all night and needed
extra space to shelve items.  The
metering was done by the time I left.  Here,
too, there has been a run on toilet paper because everybody is doing it so it
must be worth doing and one regains a sense of control when he stockpiles for
his family, especially bulky, soft items.

There’s raw generational conflict on social media,
and as a member of our smallest contemporary generation I find it more amusing
than enkindling – greeting each day with practiced pragmatism in lieu of ideological
braying.  The GenX philosophy: Referee
the fight, treaty with the winner.

Since there’s plenty of time for reading these
days and Press Box Publicity was kind enough to send a review copy of “Coach to
Coach: An Empowering Story About How to Be a Great Leader” by Martin Rooney
(Wiley, $23.00), let’s go there and see. 
Wherever it might wish itself shelved – “BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Motivational”
says the back flap – this book is a selfhelp work of fiction based on true
events, light and breezy, its 30,000 or so words stretched ambitiously across 182
hardcover pages.

It’s a sparse sort of football-themed remake of Eliyahu
Goldratt’s “The Goal” – that genrebending tale of production dynamics that save
a manufacturing floor and a marriage, 15 years before “Who Moved My Cheese?” reduced
American business literature to a coloring book.  “Coach to Coach” feels like a book a mentor
gives a young man starting-out in coaching after getting through college
without reading a full-length anything.  Maybe
it knows its audience too well.

It also feels like this hardcover is but the
opening gambit in a multimedia extravaganza, to be followed by a TED Talk,
corporate speaking engagements and the ubiquitous podcast.  Nothing in the book is wrong.  And nothing in the book is complex.  Promoters and participants in this genre
would have us believe they take mankind’s greatest mysteries and distill them
to their essence, roughly one mystery a week, like Gurudev channeling Sudharshan
Kriya after a decade in isolation.

Unlikely.  Their
selfhelp magic works in inverse proportion to a reader’s experience outside the
genre:

“Empathy is first about spending time thinking
about where someone is coming from.  Only
then can you help them get to where they want to go.  And the only way to ‘hear’ where someone
wants to go is to take the time to listen.”

That is an aphorism Martin Rooney’s coach, Brian
Knight, writes in his coaching notebook the night before his team’s “big home
game” about 4/5 of the way through his book. 
That it’s italicized says quite a bit.

A more sophisticated reader interested in improving
himself as a coach might be better served by Nunyo Demasio’s “Parcells: A
Football Life”.  About six times the
length of “Coach to Coach” Demasio’s exhaustive biography shows how successful
a man can be manipulating young men in football equipment while laying waste to
the lives of those who love him.

Ah hah, see that, “Coach to Coach” gets right to
the essence in a fraction of the time!

And whither the time you save not-reading long works
about complex characters?

Rooney’s story is driven by an “old coach” who
appears without exposition after Brian Knight’s linebacking corps underperforms,
and the old coach teaches with stories.  In
the spirit of that method, here’s a quick story about misplaced efficiency:

Mark kept a large dictionary on his desk in the
marketing department at one of the nation’s largest insurers.  One day, Billy came by and spotted the
dictionary.

“Hey bro,” Billy guffawed.  “What, haven’t you ever heard of Dictionary.com?”

“I have,” said Mark, a little annoyed by Billy’s
question.

“We’re the same age,” Billy said, knowing he and
Mark liked to flirt with Sarah, a project manager across the hall.  “Why are you wasting time looking things up
in a big old book?”

“Have a seat,” Mark said, offering Billy a
chair.  “There’s a secret I’m going to
tell you.”

“Think I’ll stand if it’s all the same,” said
Billy.  “But tell me the secret.”

“If you only go right to the words you know you
don’t know,” said Mark, “you never get a chance to see all the words you don’t
know you don’t know.”

“Wow!” said Billy, with deep admiration.  “I guess I never thought of it like that.”

“Happy to help,” said Mark.

“I’m going to go tell Sarah what a cool guy you
are,” said Billy, giving Mark a fist-bump.

*

The truth of selfhelp books is they succeed at
what they’re about, which is selling more selfhelp books.  It is rare such a book leaves you feeling
less than you did when you began reading it and rarer still you remember its lesson
a year later.  But they serve a purpose,
and those of us who read often and deeply probably oughtn’t scoff often and
deeply as we do at the genre.  You could
do much worse than spend this quarantine reading selfhelp books.  You could do better, too.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

In the dynamic and ever-evolving landscape of gaming, Plinko stands out as a testament to simplicity and excitement. Originating from the realm of popular game shows, Plinko captivates players with its straightforward yet unpredictable gameplay. Participants drop a disc from the top of a pegged board, watching with bated breath as it cascades down to the bottom, where various prize slots await. This game embodies the essence of chance and anticipation, offering an exhilarating experience that keeps players coming back for more.

Boxing: A Tale of Precision and Strategy

Boxing, much like Plinko, is a sport that hinges on the unexpected. It’s a complex dance of agility, strength, and tactical prowess, where fighters engage in a battle of wits and physicality. The sport’s rich history is filled with tales of triumph, defeat, and the relentless pursuit of excellence. Boxers train meticulously, honing their skills to land the perfect punch, much like the precision required to position a Plinko disc for the ultimate prize.

Merging Plinko and Boxing: An Innovative Intersection

The intersection of Plinko real money and boxing might seem unusual at first glance, but it represents a unique fusion of strategy, luck, and excitement. This innovative blend encourages players and sports enthusiasts alike to appreciate the nuances of both worlds. In Plinko, the strategy lies in choosing the initial position to drop the disc, paralleling the strategic decisions boxers make to outmaneuver their opponents. Both require a blend of skill, timing, and a bit of luck to achieve victory.

Training Like a Boxer to Master Plinko

To excel in Plinko, one can draw inspiration from the rigorous training regimen of a boxer. Boxers dedicate countless hours to perfecting their technique, strength, and endurance. Similarly, mastering Plinko involves understanding the board’s dynamics, recognizing patterns, and developing strategies to influence the disc’s descent. This approach, inspired by the discipline of boxing, can enhance a player’s ability to anticipate and react, maximizing their chances of success.

The Psychological Thrill: Plinko and Boxing

At the core of both Plinko and boxing is the psychological thrill that comes with the territory. The excitement of the drop, the suspense of the fight, and the exhilaration of winning resonate deeply with fans and participants of both disciplines. This shared thrill unites enthusiasts of the game and the sport, highlighting the universal appeal of competition, strategy, and the sheer joy of victory.

Embracing the unexpected and mastering the art of strategy are essential in both Plinko and boxing. This article has explored the fascinating synergy between a beloved game show staple and the noble sport of boxing, uncovering the layers of excitement, strategy, and psychological thrill inherent in both. As we navigate the intersection of these seemingly disparate worlds, we’re reminded of the universal allure of challenge and triumph.

For those intrigued by the fusion of gaming strategy and sports excellence, the journey into the combined realm of Plinko and boxing offers a unique perspective on competition, strategy, and success. Whether you’re dropping a disc or throwing a punch, the principles of precision, strategy, and anticipation stand as the cornerstone of victory.

By Norm Frauenheim-

March Madness has taken on a new meaning. More like Sadness.

There’s been a crazy whirlwind of postponements, then cancellations. College basketball fans were told to stay away and watch the NCCA Tournament on TV. Then, they were just told to forget about it.

There’s no fast break these days, unless you’re heading to quarantine or trying to buy a roll of toilet paper. Don’t get trampled. The projected numbers from coronavirus are multiplying at a scary rate. Neighbors, at least I think that’s who they are, are wearing surgical masks.

Wash hands, don’t shake them. Practice social distancing, which apparently is done in a lot of ways. At first, I thought I had been doing that all my life. Hey, I’m still single. But then I learned. Stay six feet away from the person in front of you. Stay at home. Actually, that’s getting to be easy. There’s nowhere else to go, not even out to dinner.

The wild, wild world of sports has just gone weird. Very weird. That’s just another way of saying life’s toy department is not immune. Maybe, it never has been. America boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Athletes were killed by terrorists at the 1972 Munich Games. Baseball players, basketball players and football players have all walked picket lines.

But this feels different. It’s dark. Empty. It’s no game and there’s really no way to know when one will be back, at least not one burdened by the fear surrounding virtually everything in the here-and-now.

There’s an idea that sports can go on without fans in the seats.

That’s what boxing had planned to do a week ago for the Shakur Stevenson-Miguel Marriaga fight, a featherweight title bout at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theatre in New York. Fans would have been banned. The Top Rank-promoted fight would have been seen only on ESPN. Essentially, it would have been a studio show.

For years, people have predicted that’s exactly where sports are headed anyway. Amid today’s prohibitive ticket prices, why not watch at home where a six-pack is about half-the-price of one beer?

The scary part is that I’m not sure anybody will be able to afford a beer, much less a ticket, after a virus that has suddenly crippled the way we do business. Streets, restaurants and bars today are as empty as those seats would have been for Stevenson-Marriaga.  

Top Rank eventually did what the NCAA did with the basketball tournament, an annual rite of spring. Actually, it didn’t have much choice. The New York State Athletic Commission pulled the plug hours after Top Rank had announced the show would go on, empty seats and all. Since then, the dominoes have been falling, one cancellation after another. Promoters are calling them postponements, but don’t ask them for a date.

They don’t know.

Nobody knows.

Coronavirus has a mind of its own.   

Besides, games in empty arenas would still mean sweating players, referees and everybody else needed to keep the lights on and the doors open.

Pandemic, fandemic. It doesn’t discriminate. Players, coaches and ball-boys are as vulnerable as anybody else, including cut men, bucket guys and the ex-promoter currently in the White House. Only the ball and gloves are immune. Basketball games and fight cards are just another way of spreading the virus.

Why risk it? Boxing is interesting because of its unshakable streak of defiance. But sparring with the coronavirus threat wouldn’t be defiant. Just dumb. Wait for another day. Big fights get postponed all the time by injuries sustained in training.

A move into the studio would have been a move to save the bottom line. But a game or a fight card without fans only sounds desperate. It’s a little bit like that old line about a tree in the forest. If it falls and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Does it matter? Says here, it doesn’t. It wouldn’t.

If sporting events without fans in the seats are an example of “social distancing,’’ then we’ve gone too far. People enter the arena to do some “social connecting.’’ Eliminate them and you eliminate the sport. Top Rank and the New York commission decided to fight on another day. There will be one. It was the right thing to do. The only thing.

By Bart Barry-

Initiative is the word for it.

It’s what Deontay Wilder had in the first match
and lacked in the second, the first 30 seconds said.  Tyson Fury wasn’t blarneying pure when he
promised an early knockout.  He fought
the opening halfminute like a man who read the tale of the tape and wondered
what the hell his timidity’d been about 14 months prior.

Fury stepped directly in Wilder’s space and
surprised both men when he did.  There’s
a primeval intelligence in us all, most carry it much deeper than prizefighters
do, and Fury found it and employed it, and Wilder got stunned by it.

A good argument exists for why this intelligence formed
and why we retain it: survival of the species. 
One thing a species isn’t supposed to have in this unpredictable and
oft-violent world is a capacity for selfextermination; perils enough abound
without a species’ predators making prey of their brothers.  This primeval intelligence, then, is about
sensing instantly in your gut who you can dominate and to whom you must submit,
to forgo mortal conflicts.

Men the size of Fury and Wilder are wholly
unaccustomed to submission’s unmistakable electricity.  If Wilder’d ever felt it before in his life
it was only accompanied by bonedeep fatigue (that undefeated coward-maker) and
never in the opening halfminute of a confrontation.

Yet there it was. 
Wilder’s eyes bulged and his mouth opened, and the signal bounced from tower
to tower.

Wilder: What?

Fury: Aye.

Wilder: Wait, what?

Fury: Aye.

Whatever made Wilder initially weak then multiplied
itself by itself.  The retreat, the
absorption of abuse, the sudden and desperate summoning of boxing skills he
never has had.  Wilder’s feet were below
a different body a full round before his right leg went frictionlessly from
underneath him like an iceskate.

Fury’s right fist in round 3, the devastating
conclusion of a 3-2 combo whose effect shocked Fury nearly much as Wilder, drove
upon Wilder’s left ear and made it seep blood like an ear should not.  Wilder went down like he’d been
hiptossed.  And Wilder winced from the
deep pain of taking a punch from a 270-pound man in a place he was unprepared
to be punched.  Imagine, next, finding
yourself on your chest, legs unreliable, the left side of your head shrieking
pain.  And not even a quarter of the way
through your scheduled ordeal.

Wilder was unlucky to escape round 3.  Had the round been a minute younger, probably
Kenny Bayless would have stopped it with Fury’s next charge, extending Wilder’s
career and wits.

By the time Wilder got dropped by a shoving body
punch a couple rounds later the only decent reaction to his plight was
sympathy.  I felt it while reviewing the
rematch.  Wilder rose with a body and
face that strove for one thing – dignity. 
There was no bravado left, not much predatory impulse, surely no wiles;
Deontay just wanted to be dignified about lifting himself off the bluemat. 

Oddly, maybe, I thought of Bernard Hopkins and
what he said before his match with a different man from the United Kingdom: “I
would never let a white boy beat me. I would never lose to a white boy.”

I’m ignorant to the origin of Hopkins’ sentiments,
for a variety of reasons including privilege, and there’s no telling if Deontay
related to those words then or later, but wherever and however Hopkins first
heard that sentiment chances aren’t bad Deontay’s heard similar.  As if the burden of making combat with a
fellow giant weren’t enough, right?

Which isn’t a bad segue to the costume issue.  It’s not farfetched as it sounded when Wilder
spoke on it.  An enormous error in
judgement, that getup.  The weight of it
isn’t so much the thing either.  It’s the
deprivation of air, the lunacy of covering one’s face during a massive surge of
adrenaline, and the LEDs.

Not so long ago I subjected myself to a
stroboscopic experience called PandoraStar, choosing right idiotically a
30-minute “Energy” experience, and let me impart: Flashing lights on the backs
of your eyelids scramble your brain.  How
do I mean?  I was five minutes in the
experience before finding my rightmind enough to sing the ABCs; I once made a
decent living in letters, that is, and for at least 300 seconds I couldn’t
remember any.

Is that what happened to Deontay?  Hell if I know, but he wasn’t right from the
opening bell. 

Deontay has three qualities as a prizefighter: Menace,
conditioning, power.  Deprived of his
conditioning – his mouth was open 10 seconds in – Deontay had little power to dispatch,
and his countenance the entire match was more reliably worried than fearsome.

This time round, too, when Deontay launched a
righthand and missed, he got hammered, not hugged.  In the 2018 match Fury seemed so relieved when
Wilder’s right missed he embraced the man as if from joy.  This time he punished him, roughhousing and choking
him in clinches, delighting at his weakness, toying with him, putting his
weight on him, dominating him – even fellating his bloody neck.

There’s no way Wilder prepared for those
experiences after the first match. 
Almost definitely Wilder’s camp got dedicated to closing escape routes
and visiting a concussion on Fury 18 minutes earlier at least.

Which brings us to the coming rubber match.  If Wilder is to have even a puncher’s chance
he needs to change Fury’s entire calculus in less than a minute, violently
unraveling their identities before either man has time to remember their order.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Deontay Wilder is a predictable target on sociopath media these days. Anybody, which means just about everybody, with a keyboard and an insult is piling on in the wake of his one-sided loss to Tyson Fury.

Everybody, that is, but Fury.

The fundamental goodness in Fury has been evident throughout interviews this week in the UK. Fury beat him up. Forced his corner to surrender in the seventh round. Within the ropes, he showed no mercy. Outside of them, he has shown empathy for a fellow fighter struggling to come to terms with his first defeat.

In part, perhaps, that’s because Fury has already been trashed by the virtual vigilantes, who have buried Wilder beneath their malice for blaming his loss on the collection of nuts, bolts and batteries that were part of his armored costume. The 40-pound get-up weakened him in his walk to the ring, Wilder said before video surfaced of him saying he trained while wearing a 45-pound weighted vest.

There’s been no bunker deep enough, no armored suit protective enough, to shield him from what has followed.

Fury has been there, a target of public shaming, during dark days of drinking, drugging, eating and agonizing in the aftermath of his 2015 upset of Wladimir Klitschko.

He was the heavyweight champ with heavyweight mental issues, an accident in the making and always in the headlines. He was stripped of his titles and stripped of his sanity. But he made it back, came back with a unique understanding of the kind of adversity now facing Wilder.

Fury came into the ring to Patsy Cline’s country classic, Crazy. Fury knows something about crazy.

“I can understand where he’s coming from,” Fury told ITV’s This Morning. “In every fighter’s mind, there’s got to be a reason why they’ve lost. It can never be a simple fact (of) I wasn’t good enough on the night and lost to the better guy. It’s always got to be: ‘The camp was wrong. It was the trainer’s fault. It was my suit, it was my toe.’

“With me, if I’m injured or whatever the problem is, it’s like, ‘OK, the performance wasn’t great. But I’m going to move on and crack on.’ ‘’

The question is whether Wilder will be able to move on. He’s already exercised a contract clause for a third fight, tentatively set for July 18 at Las Vegas MGM Grand, site of the last bout. With an interim fight, Wilder might be able to restore some confidence, which figures to be shaky after the beatdown he suffered on Feb. 22.

But business is business, and Fury promises to subject him to another business-like beating.

 “I beat him the first time,” said Fury, who fought Wilder to a controversial draw on Dec. 1, 2018 in their first meeting. “I beat him the second time. I’ll surely beat him the third time.’’

Hard to argue with that.

However, it’s also clear that Fury and Wilder like each other. Throughout all the trash-talking exchanges at news conferences before the rematch, there were moments when that was evident. You could see it in their eyes and their body language. After shoving each other at the final newser, there was a break. They smiled, an acknowledgement that those were friendly shoves.

Fury was also careful not to spark any racial controversy. Race has always been part of boxing. After all, it’s the sport the created The Great White Hope. Wilder dropped some racial hints. February was Black History Month. Wilder said he wanted to turn Fury into a Black History Month trivia question.

But Fury wouldn’t go there.

“This is not a racial war,’’ Fury said when asked about Wilder’s comment a couple of days before opening bell.

No, it was not.

Is not.

It simply was about two men who happen to like each other despite the war that awaited them.

And still awaits them.

“The one thing I will say about Deontay Wilder is he’s a very worthy opponent, and he’s a very dangerous opponent,” Fury said. “He has that eraser power of 43 knockouts, only the one defeat, and you can never write a guy off like that. It’s always one punch away from disaster with Deontay.

“Like he famously says, ‘They have to be correct for 36 minutes, I have to be correct for one second.’

“And that’s so true.”

Nice to hear something so genuinely true, too.Attachments area

By Bart Barry-

Editor’s note: Chocolatito City
was a five-part series written in the doldrums of 2016.

*

Saturday in Frisco, Texas, Nicaraguan Roman
“Chocolatito” Gonzalez defeated Birmingham’s Khalid Yafai by ninthround
knockout to snatch Yafai’s WBA super flyweight title surely as he snatched
Yafai’s consciousness with a gorgeous 1-2 that might’ve been a 3-2, aiming as
Chocolatito did for Yafai’s lead hand much as his head, then putting his cross,
the 2, square on Yafai’s open chin.  If
it was the last great fight legend tells us remains within every great fighter,
well, it was just that.

Evidently the reports of Chocolatito’s demise have
been greatly exaggerated – even by sources
esteemed as this one.  Perhaps it was
a misplaced desire to put a neat bookend on an era or to justify not-traveling
a comparatively small distance to see a legend win another title fight,
especially after traveling a lot farther to see him washed and folded in
Carson, Calif.

Whatever it was it didn’t work, and worse yet, it
caused a tempering of joy for what did work. 
While picking against Tyson Fury a couple weeks ago did nothing to detract
from the emotion of watching him denude Deontay “Wardrobe Malfunction” Wilder,
oddly writing disparagingly of Chocolatito’s comeback detracted from the
experience of his prevailing in Frisco.  As
an underdog.

Somewhere it already must be written or said a
reliable mark of greatness is winning a match as a betting underdog.  The bookmakers know what they’re doing
because all they’re doing is balancing a ledger, and selforganization of those
who suspect themselves experts enough to wager zealously on a prizefight dictates
their balanced ledger comprises wisdom. 
The chalk, as it’s known, is right far more often than boxing
experts.  And the chalk had Yafai a
slight favorite.

The usefulness of the chalk in evaluating
greatness is how infrequently the chalk gets fooled by prefight gimmickry;
where socialmedia posts cost a few seconds and seek to game imagined popularity
metrics a man who places a wager with a bookmaker has a financial incentive to
ignore what promotional noise the rest of us feed on.  Some of us bet $20 to enjoy a fight more,
surely, but those sorts of bets don’t move the chalk.

Let’s treat Big Drama Show for a moment, here, as
his case is proper illustrative.  During
his “historic” reign as middleweight champion, how often did Gennady Golovkin beat
men favored to beat him?

Well, never, because, duh, everyone in the world
was afraid of him so he had no choice but to fight little guys whom bookmakers
knew had no chance of beating him!

What might’ve happened had he plied his wares against
men who weighed 168 pounds rather than 148? 
The chalk would’ve reflected that, making Andre Ward, for instance, a
comfortable favorite and likely making both BJ Saunders and Callum Smith narrow
favorites, because the chalk knew Golovkin’s power wouldn’t travel, whatever
the HBO hype machine screamed at us. 
Thus, had Golovkin dared to be great and challenged a super middleweight
titlist during his prime and beaten someone oddsmakers favored over him, his
legacy would be different from what it will be, no matter the outcomes of his subsequent
matches with Canelo – whom historians will place 50 or so spots above him.

Did Chocolatito deserve to be an underdog
Saturday?  Yes.  He got stopped right brutally 2 1/2 years ago
by someone, Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, whom aficionados regard as excellent more
than unbeatable.  As Gallo Estrada showed
us a year ago, a prime Chocolatito should not be iced by any version of Sor
Rungvisai – hence the version of Chocolatito who did get stretched was not
prime.

If at age 32 Chocolatito is not quite ancient for a
former world minimumweight champion he is close, and he’s also matching
himself, at 115 pounds, with men who absorb punches multiples better than 105-pounders
do because, as we know, fighters gain weight on their chins more than their
fists.  Some of what happened Saturday, too,
was about styles.

Power punchers like Sor Rungvisai, who get foiled
often by defensive specialists, treat volume guys like Chocolatito much as a
threshing machine treats dry husks, while volume guys like Chocolatito tend to
overwhelm stylists like Yafai – which is why Sor Rungvisai’s decision to box
with a stylist like Estrada wasn’t wrongheaded as reported and neither was Yafai’s
decision to switch from cutiepie to enforcer when matched with a
volume-punching genius (whom he was never going to dissuade with defensive
precision).

Wait, but BK and Latin Snake told us a hundred
times each . . . Yes, yes, I know – Yafai is a former Olympian who foolishly abandoned
the strategy they scripted for him.  Well,
guess what, guys, if Gallo Estrada couldn’t foil Chocolatito with a jab,
there’s no chance in this iteration of the universe or the next Yafai could,
and to Yafai’s credit, he got that almost instantly and did what he calculated,
as a former Olympian, gave him the best chance.

Because it didn’t work doesn’t mean it was wrong; Chocolatito
in his prime, at, say, 108 pounds, cut guys like Yafai in half in five rounds;
seven pounds and seven years beyond his prime, it turns out, Chocolatito still
has enough to raze guys like Yafai in nine rounds.  Yafai might have boxed his way to a dull and
lopsided-decision loss to Chocolatito. 
Instead he made an entertaining gamble on his own size and
strength.  He lost his title but gave us
an unforgettable experience.

I’ll take more of that, please.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Mikey Garcia takes on Jessie Vargas in a welterweight showdown.  The action starts at 6 PM eastern with an undercard that features two world title bouts that will have WBC Flyweight champion Julio Cesar Martinez taking on Jay Harris; WBA Super Flyweight champ Kal Yafai takes on former champion Roman Gonzalez

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Round 1: Left hook from Vargas..Straight right..hook to body..quick hook…each land a jab

Round 2 Hard 1-2 from Vargas..Jab from Garcia..Hook from Vargas.Hook from Garcia..2 right to body from Vargas..

Round 3 Jab from Vargas..Jab from Garcia..Right from Vargas..1-2 from Garcia..Jab from Vargas..Jab from Garcia..Good right from Vargas

Round 4 Hard jab from Garcia..Counter left..Hook from Vargas..Hard left from Vargas..Hard right from Garcia..Jab to Body from Vargas..Right to body

Round 5 Right to body from Vargas..Jab to body,,,body and head…Blood from nose of Vargas..Hook from Garcia..Big right wobbles Vargas…RIGHT AND DOWN GOES VARGAS…Hard body shot from Garcia

Round 6 Uppercut from Garcia..Jab from Vargas..Good jab..

Round 7 Good right from Garcia..Hook from Vargas..Big right from Garcia..Big right wobbles Vargas again and in trouble on the ropes

Round 8 Right from Garcia…Left hook..2 jabs from Vargas..Right from Vargas

Round 9 Good Jab from Vargas..Chopping right from Garcia..

Round 10 Vargas lands a right to the jaw..Hard right from Garcia hurts Vargas..1-2 to the body..Body shot

Round 11 Right from Garcia

Round 12 Right from Vargas..Left wobbles Vargas..Vargas right eye swelled up..Right from Vargas

114-113, 116-111 twice for GARCIA

Round 1 Hook to body from Gonzalez..Body and Head

Round 2 Right from Gonzalez..Body and Head..Body..Body shot and uppercut..Body shot from Yafai

Round 3 Right from Yafai..Good hook to body from Gonzalez…right to head

Round 4 Good jab from Yafai..Right from Gonzalez..Good combination..3 punch combination

Round 5  Yafai lands a right to the body..Body shots..good action on inside..

Round 6 Gonzalez cut over right eye..Good uppercut from Gonzalez..Good body shot from Yafai..Right from Gonzalez..Good uppercut..Left hook..Bidy shot from Yafai

Round 7 Hard shot from Gonzalez..Gonzalez landing barrage..Yafai looking tired..Body from Gonzalez

Round 8 Uppercut from Gonzalez..Hook..Big combination..HUGE FLURRY AND DOWN GOES YAFAI

Round 9 BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES YAFAI…FIGHT OVER

Round 1:  Harris jabs..Good Jab..Hard shot and good uppercut from Martinez..Nice 1-2..Harris lands a good jab and right hand…Quick combination..Hook to the head from Martinez..Straight right and a barrage 

Round 2 Jab and Body shot from Harris…3 punch combination..Good right,,Martinez land a good right..1-2

Round 3 Good left from Martinez..Good left from Harris..Body shots from Martinez..Uppercut..Good right from Harris

Round 4 Hard body work from Martinez..Good body shots..Body and head..Right to body..Hard jab from Harris..Good hook to the body..Hook from Martinez..Blood around left eye of Harris..Good combination and right to head from Harris..jab and good right from Martinez.Good hook from Harris

Round 5 Hook from Harris…Hard body shots from Martinez..Body attack from Harris..Uppercut and body shot

Round 6 Harris doing well with body shots

Round 7 Hard power shots drives Harris back..3 punch combination from Harris..Hard jab drives Harris back..Good left..Good combination from Harris..Harris gets driven back from a jab..good body work from Martinez..Right from Harris..Right from Martinez…Harris snaps Martinez head back..Left hook and right

Round 8 Good combination from Martinez..Good right from Harris..Combination from Martinez..Good combination for Harris..Right from Martinez

Round 9  Hard right from Martinez..3 hard shots..Good back in forth..3 punch combo from Harris..Hook

Round 10 BODY SHOT AND DOWN GOES HARRIS..Right from Harris..good hook..Body shot.Body shot and hook to the head

Round 11 Hard right to body from Martinez..Good right to body

Round 12 2 body punches from Martinez…5 punch combination

Round 2 Right from Parker..Chopping right..Nice hook from Winter..Good right..Hook from Parker

Round 3 HARD RIGHT AND DOWN GOES WINTERS

Round 4 Double left hook from Parker…Hook from Winters..Parker cut under the right eye…Body shots from Parker

Round 5 Big right from Parker..hard right..RIPPING 3 PUNCH COMBINATION AND DOWN GOES WINTERS…FIGHT OVER

Round 1: Good left hook from Madrimov..Solid right..Counter right from Navarro..
Round 2 Good left hook hurts Navarro..Nice Combination..Right to the head..Navarro holding his eye
Round 3 Counter right from Madrimov..Nice Jab..
Round 4 Overhand right from Madrimov…Combination…Good jab..Hard Hook..Hard right
Round 5 Good right to the body
Round 6 Right hook snaps the head back of Navarro..Body shot..Head shot..Jabbing to the head..HARD BODY SHOT AND DOWN GOES NAVARRO..RIGHT AND DOWN GOES NAVARRO…FIGHT OVER

Round 1 Right from Pacheco
Round 2 hard right from Pacheco…3 more rights
Round 3  Pacheco continuing to land the right
Round 4 Straight right from Pacheco..Right to the face..Jab..
Round 5 Good right from Pacheco..Good hard right..3 punch combination
Round 6 Body shot from Riojas..Hard right staggers Riojas..2 more rights..Another right

By Norm Frauenheim-

Mikey Garcia has been called stubborn more than once. It’s a multi-edged adjective. There’s the good stubborn, as in the tenacious Garcia. There’s the bad stubborn, as in the obstinate Garcia.

Apply the good or the bad, it doesn’t make much difference. Garcia proceeds on his terms and always with his own idea of what he wants from an accomplished career that already includes titles at featherweight, junior-lightweight, lightweight and junior-welterweight.

That stubborn streak has taken him back to the city and the weight he was at a year ago in a disappointing loss to Errol Spence Jr. at AT&T Stadium, the Dallas Cowboys home field.

Garcia (39-1, 30 KOs) will be nearby in Frisco at The Ford Center against Jessie Vargas (29-2-2, 11 KOs) Saturday night on DAZN. He says he has something to prove, perhaps as much to himself as to his fans.

“I’m here to do one thing,’’ he said at a news conference this week. “I’m here to take over. I’m here to show that there’s a lot more to Mikey Garcia. I’m here to show all my skills, here to remind everyone that I can be a serious welterweight contender.’’

He last time we saw Garcia in the ring, he looked like a fighter who had moved too far up the scale. He looked sluggish. Out of sorts. It was forgettable and perhaps it could have been forgotten altogether by a fight at a lighter weight that would showcase, instead of suffocate, a disciplined skillset that had put Garcia among the top five in the pound-for-pound debate. The talk was that Garcia would be best-served back at 140 pounds, perhaps in a big-money bout against Manny Pacquiao.

But Garcia hasn’t forgotten the performance against Spence. Or the talk. Time is one way to forget. But Garcia wants to knock out the memory with a stoppage of the bigger Vargas. Vargas hasn’t fought in nearly a year since his stoppage of Humberto Soto last April in Los Angeles. But Garcia hasn’t exactly been busy either. He hasn’t fought since Spence dominated him in every way in scoring a unanimous decision on March 16.

Vargas’ superior size and world-class resume at 147 pounds are factors that could remind Garcia of what happened to him a year ago.

“He has everything, all of things that people say about what I shouldn’t be doing and fighters I shouldn’t be fighting,’’ Garcia said. “That motivates me.’’

Motivates him to be as stubborn as ever.

By Kyle Kinder–

Violence and boxing are inseparable.  For some fighters, the violence boxing demands is omnipresent.  It already exists inside their being when they enter the ropes and remains with them when they exit the ring.  It’s an unshakable part of their existence, and left unchecked, can land themselves or others in early graves.

In Slaughter in the Streets: When Boston Became Boxing’s Murder Capital, the third offering of Hamilcar Publication’s true-crime Hamilcar Noir series, author Don Stradley unearths an astonishingly long list of 20th century Boston boxers who failed to escape the city’s long shadow of violence, each ultimately dying unnatural, gruesome deaths. 

Written in sixteen brief, fast-paced chapters, Stradley highlights the tragic ends of different ex-Boston fighters in each, though murder is hardly reserved for the chapter’s main subjects. Readers begin in Prohibition-era Boston where a former South Boston flyweight-turned mob boss winds up face down in a pool of his own blood in an attorney’s office two days before Christmas, 1931.  Stradley chronologically bookends his work in the final chapter where he details the 1999 killing of a former amateur standout; an unlucky recipient of a round bullets pumped into his body in broad daylight.  

In between the Prohibition-era slayings and the murder near the close of the millennium, Stradley writes about the final moments of former fighters of all fistic skill levels — from regional titlists to career journeymen to amateurs.  And though these Massachusetts

men willingly partook in sanctioned violence, it was their shared fate, brought on by unsanctioned, criminal violence that binds their stories together in the pages Slaughter in the Streets.

For a few fighters, their deaths were simply a matter of wrong place, wrong time.  But most of

Stradley’s subjects were men who sought out a violent lifestyle, drawn to the bright lights and false promises of Boston’s underworld, but rarely ever amounted to anything more than wannabe gangsters — bodyguards, henchmen, and low-level criminals.

While there is no shortage of literature on boxing’s ties to organized crime, most stories focus on the Northeast’s other two big cities:  New York and Philadelphia. In Slaughter in the Streets, Stradley uses the murders of ex-pugilists to delve into Boston’s underbelly.  Readers first journey back to 1920’s Boston where they’re introduced to Southie’s ruthless “Gustin Gang” and their Italian rivals.  Eventually, they wind up in Whitey Bulger’s realm and learn of connections between the sweet science and his infamous Winter Hill Gang.

The brutal stories brought forth by Stradley in Slaughter In The Streets will appeal to a broad audience, including history buffs and New Englanders.  But if nowhere else, this book belongs in the hands of every boxing fan and true crime aficionado, for it’s sure to quench the primitive thirst for blood shared by both.

Slaughter in the Streets: When Boston Became Boxing’s Murder Capital

By Don Stradley

144 pages. Hamilcar Publications. $10.99.

Publication Date: February 25, 2020

Follow all the action as Deontay Wilder defends the WBC Heavyweight Title in a much anticipated rematch.  The action begins at 9 PM ET / 6 PM PT/2 AM in England with Charles Martin taking on Gerald Washington in a heavyweight bout; Emanuel Navarrete takes on Jeo Santisima for WBC Super Bantamweight bout and the action starts with Sebastian Fundora against Daniel Lewis.

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Round 1 Right from Fury..Right from Wilder..Good right from Fury.Jab…Left..Ripping jab..Fury outlanded Wilder 8-5

Round 2 Jab from Fury..another….Long right from Wilder..Jab to the body..Left from Fury..Right from Wilder..Right from Fury..Right from Wilder

Round 3 Jab and flush right from Fury..Right..Stiff jab..Good rightHUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES WILDER..Wilder is very hurt

Round 4 Guys tangle legs Wilder goes down..Body shot from Fury..Wilder looking spent already

Round 5 Huge right from Fury…LEFT TO BODY AND DOWN GOES WILDER..Wilder holding on..Big right from Fury..point deducted from fury for hitting on break

Round 6 Right from Fury..hard right to body..Clipping right..Straight right..Left from Wilder..Big left from Fury..left hook

Round 7 Left from Fury..Another big left..2 HUGE RIGHTS AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1 Left from Martin

Round 2 Left to Body from Martin

Round 3 

Round 4 Left to body from Martin..Straight left

Round 5 Right from Washington..Straight left from Martin..Lead left..Left to the head..Right from Washington..

Round 6  HUGE LEFT AND DOWN GOES WASHINGTON…FIGHT IS OVER

Round 1 Left to body by Navarrete

Round 2 Santisima lands a left to the body..3 punch combo from Navarrete..Jab

Round 3 Body shot from Navarrete..Another body shot

Round 4 Right from Santisima...Hard left

Round 5 Navarrete lands a series of rights..Left hook from Santisima….Hard right from Navarrete..he is starting to ramp up the attack..2 uppercuts and body shot

Round 6 Right from Navarrete..Body from santisima..Left hook from Navarrete..

Round 7 Left from Navarrete..

Round 8 Body shot from Santisima…Left and right from Navarrete..Jab..Santisima lands a body shot..

Round 9 Right from Navarrete…

Round 10 Combination on inside from Navarrete..Hard right to the head..

Round 11 Hard 11 punches UNANSWERED AND THE FIGHT IS TOPPED FOR NAVARRETE

Round 1 Right from Lewis..jab from Fundora..Right hook..Right to body..Uppercut from Lewis..

Round 2 Right from Lewis…Right to body from Fundora..Right from Lewis..Good right…Blood from nose from Fundora..Hard uppercut from Lewis..uppercut

Round 3 Uppercut from Fundora…Right..Right Hook..Right Hook..Right from Lewis..Lewis bleeding under the eyes

Round 4 Right from Lewis..Left from Fundora..Left…

Round 5 Right from Lewis

Round 6 Right from Lewis…Combination from Fundora..Right from Lewis…Left from Fundora..Straight left

Round 7 Body shot from Lewis

Round 8 Jab from Fundora

Round 9 2 lefts from Lewis…Left to body from Fundora..right to body…Straight left,..

Round 10 Straight left from Fundora.

By Norm Frauenheim-

LAS VEGAS – There been a lot of talk about what — who — awaits the Deontay Wilder-Tyson Fury winner of a long-anticipated heavyweight rematch Saturday at the MGM Grand.

The winner moves on to a bigger fight and a bigger challenge against Anthony Joshua, who holds most of the heavyweight belts. At least, that the presumptive plan.

But Fury promoter Bob Arum thinks the challenge is overrated.

Joshua is not among the elite, Arum said in a reference to Andy Ruiz Jr.’s stunning stoppage of Joshua on June 1 at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

“Any fighter that loses, not only loses, but gets knocked out by Andy Ruiz, who at best is a slightly above-average heavyweight, is not an elite fighter. Period,” Arum told a few reporters this week.

Arum also was not impressed with Joshua in a rematch victory over Ruiz on Dec. 7 in Saudi Arabia. Joshua decision was celebrated by fans and media, who called it vindication for the UK heavyweight.

“Secondly, when Andy Ruiz goes into the second fight obese – obese, not even really having trained – and Joshua doesn’t knock the guy out and destroy him, instead dances around for 12 rounds, he is not an elite fighter,” said Arum, who once promoted Ruiz.

Joshua scored a one-sided decision — winning 10 rounds on one scorecard and 11 rounds on each other two – with a cautious strategy.

Arum said Joshua fought scared.

“I think Joshua will fight all the rest of his fights in his career scared,” Arum said. “And you know what happens to scared fighters.”

If Fury wins and there’s no immediate rematch with Wilder, negotiations with Joshua promoter Eddie Hearn could get scary, too.

By Bart Barry-

“Playing to strengths delivers excellence; merely
fixing weaknesses does not.” – Paddy Upton, “The Barefoot Coach”

Saturday in Las Vegas, British heavyweight Tyson
“Gypsy King” Fury at long last rematches his 2018 championship draw with
American Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder. 
As the rematch will be a pay-per-view affair the next six days promise
an explosion of hyperbole to which this column will not contribute.

Because neither man is what one’d call “good” at
boxing.  In fact, to honor NBA All-Star
Weekend here’s an oldschool simile: Fury-Wilder 1 held all the aesthetic
delights of a threepoint shooting contest between Robert Parish and Mark Eaton.

Because he looks the part, probably we get
unfairly tough on Deontay here; while Fury fights very much like an obese gypsy
in recovery, Wilder does too, despite looking an Adonis dipped in espresso-gold.

As part of precolumn research that was not
exhaustive I partook of a video called “Deontay Wilder VS Tyson Fury
Highlight | The best Fight” – by virtue of its viewcount and pedigree the
video’s title appears unironical, and that is remarkable given how much
fighting it does not have in its 12 minutes. 
The video features someone’s honest effort to cross-stitch a
championship prizefight’s best 1/3, and there aren’t a dozen clean punches landed
the whole reel.

You’ve got Tyson doing his slap-n-jiggle thing, playfully
spanking Deontay’s cheek with his palm whilst his torso jiggles like it too was
playfully spanked, and you’ve got Deontay, decidedly less urgent, doing his
“Wilder and” Wilder thing, punctuating each quixotic tilt with a windmill
right.  It’s immensely entertaining in
its way, though, because of the men’s simple immensity.

I recall its being way more entertaining in
realtime, too, for the reason every heavyweight fight is suspenseful.  Knowing what didn’t happen after 36 minutes,
though, makes reviews tedious, in a way the rematch may prove.

It seems Fury outsmarted himself in this leadup as
well.  Much of his good scoring in the
first fight concerned universal doubts as to his mettle and durability.  He’d told us he was a miracle of regained
character and volition, and told us and told us, but knowing he’d be chased by
a giant lunatic for a halfhour or so few of us thought he’d pitch the perfect
game he needed.  Yet he almost did.  And every minute that went by with his
remaining upright favored him on every scorecard, official or otherwise; Fury
got a whole lot of credit for ring generalship and defense so long as Wilder’s
aggression remained ineffective and his punching stayed uncleanly.

But for this rematch Fury’s been running his mouth
about an early knockout.  He doesn’t plan
to do this – it’s too ridiculous of a prospect, even, to be a prefight chess
move – but in selling the fight in an unoriginal way Fury has changed
expectations.  You spend your
trainingcamp citing selfhelp literature and people mistake your every retreat
for strategy and in some cases courage, but you tell people you’re there to
snatch another man’s consciousness, and quickly, you’re getting a lot less
credit for not-punching.

Wilder, meanwhile, is a man of his word.  He’s there to bean you with a fastball, and
he don’t say otherwise.  What’s sometimes
lost in our promoter-induced squinting to see talent in Fury that absolutely is
not there (shrink him to 135 pounds, call Juan Manuel Marquez and administer
extreme unction) is what a specimen of conditioning Wilder is.

Until you’ve hurled yourself headlong at sea-level
air you don’t realize how tiring it can be. 
Wilder loads his life into half his punches, misses cleanly and then shoulders
the burden of stopping his right fist from sailing to the cheap seats.  Missing punches is physically fatiguing as it
is spiritually discouraging.  And yet.

Wilder had strength and selfbelief enough to knock
the dust off Fury 33 unsuccessful minutes after he started trying.  We spent an unfortunate amount of time
praising Fury for his lastround Lazarus, postfight, without commenting enough
on Wilder’s unexpected round-12 power; Wilder merely met expectations while
Fury exceeded them.

That quote at the top explains the success of Wilder’s career philosophy.  He began boxing too late in life to trifle with nuance.  The last American male to win an Olympic heavyweight medal, Wilder saw his marketing potential long, long before any of us imagined he’d be a unified titlist.  He saw the fear in other men’s eyes – including refs’ – when he went crazy, and he kept iterating his way to the most frightful competitor he could be.  That required an ability to cut a man’s lights with any punch he threw, no matter how early or late, and doing so requires great fitness.

Where an uncertain athlete might’ve found his way
to Wild Card or Kronk to learn footwork or head movement or conservation of
energy, by 2010, Wilder took only what he did best and committed to doing it
better.  If the holes in his style aren’t
any larger now than when he started, they are, surprisingly, no smaller.

But what, honestly, has any man done to exploit
these holes?  Fury got so flustered by
Wilder’s intensity he forgot to hook Wilder’s elbows on every clinch.  Be not fooled by Tyson’s opportune mugging
later; he was proper frightened for his first 10 minutes across from Deontay.  Which is proper absurd in its own right – nature
endowed Fury with a larger frame than even the top 1-percent of all men in
human history, but he sure doesn’t fight like it.

Saturday I’ll be cheering for one outcome as usual.  A knockout. 
Since Wilder is much likelier to bestow it, I’ll take him: KO-9.

*

Author’s note: This column will be on sabbatical
next week while its writer visits Mexico.

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Caleb Plant defends the IBF Super Middleweight title against mandatory challenger Vincent Feigenbutz.  The action begins at 8 PM ET with Austin Dulay taking on Diego Magdaleno.  Bryant Perrella takes on Abel Ramos

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Round 1 Plant lands a right to the body..Right to body..

Round 2 Right drives Feigenbutz back..Sharp Jab

Round 3 Right from Plant..Hard combination..Uppercut and hook..

Round 4 Body shot from Plant…Jab

Round 5 Combination from Plant..Uppercut

Round 6 Feigenbutz throws a barrage…Plant smiles at him..Jab to head and body from Plant..Plant outlanding Feigebutz 101-23

Round 7  Good body shot from Plant..Jab from Feigenbutz..Left to body from Plant..2 crisp jabs..

Round 8 Plant lands a left..Good hook from Feigenbutz..Uppercut from Plant

Round 9 Big right from Plant rocks Feigenbutz..3 punch combination..Hard right..Blood from Nose of Feigenbutz..Hard body shot from Plant..Another hard body shot

Round 10 Body shot from Plant..Good right..Feigenbutz taking a lot of punishment..Ripping body and head combo..Beautiful uppercut..Hrd 3 punch combination..Right from Feigenbutz..COMBINATION AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1 Left from Perrella…

Round 2 Blood from nose of Ramos..Body shots from Perrella

Round 3 Left from Perrella…Backing Ramos up

Round 4 Jab from Perrella..Left from Perrella hurts Ramos..Combination..

Round 5 Jab from Perrella…Right from Ramos..

Round 6 Combinations from Perrella..Jabs…

Round 7 Hook from Ramos…Good body shot..

Round 8 Ramos coming forward..uppercut from Perrella..Short shots inside..

Round 9 Perrella lands a left to the body..Good body shots…

Round 10 Good right from Ramos,..HUGE UPPERCUT AND DOWN GOES PERRELLA..BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES PERRELLA…THE FIGHT IS OVER

Round 1  Left from Dulay..Good combination from Magdaleno….Combination from Dulay..Hook from Magdaleno..

Round 2 Straight left from Dulay..Popping left..Good body shot from Magdaleno

Round 3 Good counter from Dulay..Good left..

Round 4 Jab from Magdaleono..Hard left from Dulay..Good combination from Magdaleno…

Round 5 Jab from Magdaleno…Dulay goes down from a low blow

Round 6 Good body shot from Magdaleno..Straight left…Combination..Uppercut from Dulay..Hard body from Magdaleno

Round 7 BODY SHOT AND DOWN GOES DULAY..Hard body shot…Dulay goes down from a low blow..MAGDALENO DEDUCTED A POINT…Body shot hurts Dulay..Hard left to the head…Body shot..Counter left

Round 8 Left from Magdaleno..

Round 9 Combination to body from Magdaleno..Another body shot..Another..Yet another..Good left from Dulay…Left

Round 10 Hard left from Magdaleno..Good 1-2..Body shot..Another body shot..Uppercut from Dulay..Hard body shot..

97-91 AND 96-92 TWICE FOR MAGDALENO