By Bart Barry-
Hi new boxing fans! We’re excited to have you!
By “new” of course I mean “smart” and “knowledgeable” and even “surprisingly insightful”; hell, I’m almost half as sure you can teach me new things about our beloved sport as you are 🙂 You’ve seen everything Sylvester Stallone has worked on – every Rocky movie, The Contender, Canelo Alvarez beer commercials – and you already know everything about other sports, and although you’ve never put gloves on you’ve been in a couple shoving matches with bouncers and almost beat up a plethora of bros from other fraternities a decade or so ago. I’ll give you a wide berth because I know what’s good for me.
You’ve got a very strong take about what happened Saturday night or Sunday morning in Australia – and admittedly, late as the telecast ran, it verily transcended timezones – your hot take’s like a hybrid of Teddy Atlas and Stephen A. Smith, raging adlib or flowing shock, and you already know you’re right, and you probably are, but I’m going to take a shot at nuance here, nambypamby spineless milquetoast weakass nuance, roughly my 600th such weekly effort, then hand the mic back to you and everyone else who knows better, OK?
Australian welterweight Jeff “The Hornet” Horn decisioned Filipino Manny Pacquiao Saturday in Brisbane in an excellent match. What’s actually important about that sentence is what happens after the words “in”; the unfortunate souls straining at the oars of ESPN’s mothership have hundreds if not thousands of hours to fill between now and the next ESPN prizefight and thereby have the onerous job of dissecting events for microscopic departures from the network’s promotional script, microscopic happenings they can magnify with hyperbole till there are controversies everywhere, but really, truly, it isn’t your job to rebrand life’s anxieties into outrage about a sport.
Did you enjoy the fight? Of course you did. That’s enough then.
I know you think I’m missing the point. But I think you’re giving me the benefit of your inexperience. So I guess we’re even.
Here’s my point: The longer I’ve watched boxing the more I’ve learned not to care about any result that is not a knockout. Prizefighting is not about selling yourself to ringside judges or commentators; prizefighting is about hurting the man across from you unto unconsciousness or incapacity of some other sort. Did you see what Andre Ward did to that Russian guy a few weeks ago? Of course you didn’t. That’s OK, very few people did, apparently. But that was the essence of prizefighting: Ward hurt the other man till he was fatigued – and fatigue makes a coward of every man – struck him precisely till he was broken, and then continued to beat him savagely, even illegally, until the referee commanded him to stop.
That’s it. That’s what happened. Its summary took 43 words and about as many seconds to type. Imagine if I had to fill 24 hours with highlights and commentary about it, though? I’d deserve your pity, I would.
What happened in Australia on ESPN does not lend itself to such decisiveness because neither man’s consciousness got taken, neither man’s spirit got broken. That means neither guy won decisively or it doesn’t much matter if he did. You didn’t score Saturday’s match because you didn’t really know what you were watching – even at 38 years old Pacquiao moves way faster than Ivan Drago – and that set you at the mercy of the broadcaster’s cameras and replays and scorecard, and those, my new friends, are not disinterested entities. Not disinterested in the slightest. Television is an entertainment medium, and while live sports have always entertained a fraction of the populace for a fraction of its time, in order to justify shareholder expectations by selling exponentially more advertisement time broadcasters that are publicly traded decided a few decades ago scripting or at least framing outcomes was a better business practice than merely rolling the cameras and hoping.
Saturday’s script featured the legend Manny Pacquiao departing pay-per-view for the first time in forever – except in the fight’s host country of Australia, where the fight was broadcasted on pay-per-view, but never mind – to knock out a tough Aussie in front of a record crowd of rugby fans in Brisbane. The limited Jeff Horn would do his level best for 15 or 20 minutes then succumb to Pacquiao’s class and power.
We know this was the frame because ESPN analyst Teddy Atlas told us so before the opening bell. Pacquiao would tilt to his right, throw his left cross, and spearchisel The Hornet. This didn’t happen, no matter how often or passionately Atlas willed it from ringside (and yes, that was Teddy’s anger at being almost exactly wrong you saw him projecting on the judges’ decision, and that poor table, postfight). What Atlas’ prefight analysis omitted, and appropriately so, was that Pacquiao has ever set that punch by moving counterintuitively to his left, conceding outside lead-foot position, and thereby turning his bemused opponent into the left cross.
Pacquiao didn’t set Horn properly for the leftcross because Pacquiao lacked the legs for it. Is that because he’s 38, or because he was fighting in baking sunlight at 38, or because he was fighting in baking sunlight at 38 against a younger man who didn’t give him time and space enough to do it? Yes.
Horn fought Pacquiao. He didn’t box him – he forearmed him, shouldered him, wristed him, taped him, butted him, and bled all over him. Pacquiao has always thrilled at roughtrade and did Saturday, too – his lust for feral exchanges is why he’s beloved by aficionados – but the expected ratio of Pacquiao’s class to Horn’s resiliency was wrong. And so it goes.
If Pacquiao keeps fighting it will be for the same reason every great fighter keeps fighting long after he can ice the likes of a Jeff Horn: money. Pacquiao also thrills at combat – there was nothing feigned about his ringwalk elation; he’s been that way his entire career. Pacquiao will retire as a legendary attraction for his fights with Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto and Floyd Mayweather, yes, but there’s something you should know that ESPN won’t tell you: Pacquiao could have retired before all of that, nine years ago, and gone in the Hall of Fame, first ballot, for what he did to Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales and Juan Manuel Marquez, for what he did before you knew his name.
One last thing. Be happy for Jeff Horn. Or just be happy, anyway. Our ranks have too many sour prigs already.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
