Fun has been had by all the last couple weekends in boxing. Thanks are in order. Thanks, Top Rank, for giving us Nonito Donaire-Fernando Montiel then Brandon Rios-Miguel Acosta. Thanks, HBO, for investing in that pair of bantamweights to produce a KO of the Year candidate, and thanks, Showtime, for televising the Fight of the Year candidate between that pair of lightweights. Thanks to all four fighters for being brave enough to take on dangerous, difficult opponents, and thanks to them for the bravery they showed in the ring that produced such greatness.
This being a boxing site, we resume our usual bitching forthwith.
Weekend Afterthoughts
Our Alex McClintock captured the Rios-Acosta scrap quite well here, but I want to add what a serious impression Rios made on me. Through four or five rounds, it looked all the world like Rios was heading for a stoppage loss — the only question was, “when.” He said he got hurt by a body shot, and later it emerged that he injured (but, reportedly, didn’t break) his right hand. It is extremely rare to see fighters come back from conditions like that. What Donaire showed us the other week was special talent; what Rios showed us this weekend was special determination. Those kinds of “special” are impressive in their own ways, but both are what makes this sport so awe-inspiring at times…
Unfortunately, Rios might next be fighting an old, diminished Marco Antonio Barrera next. This makes a shameful Top Rank pairing to accompany Golden Boy’s shameful pairing of Erik Morales-Marcos Maidana, linked by the way Barrera and Morales’ names always go together and the whole “old guy in dangerous mismatch with one of the sport’s best young power punchers.” In reality, as friend of the site Hit Dog suggested in the comments section on Alex’ post, it’s Rios and Maidana who should be in a fight with one another, but naturally that won’t happen because Top Rank won’t work with Golden Boy. (By the way, some of the most delusional quotes in years are coming out of Morales’ mouth lately. My favorite is when he said Manny Pacquiao “knows I’m poison to him.” I suppose if the American Association of Poison Control Centers advised that encounters with poison would result in you repeatedly knocking down a mofo five times over the span of your last 12 minutes or so hanging out with him, we’d all be drinking up whatever jug of strychnine was nearby. Also, when’s the last time poison encountered an enemy, looked over at his dad and indicated that he was going to abort the poison mission? Whatever, Elvira)…
Elie Seckbach’s credentials as a journalist are very, very peccable. But after the way he scored Rios-Acosta as part of the Showtime press row scoring panel, I think there should be a full-fledged investigation. I’m not usually one to make allegations without evidence, but anyone who scored the fight even after four rounds when it was a clear shutout has to have been trying to kiss ass with the Rios camp to the degree that they would, say, remove a video of them making offensive remarks just because that’s what they asked him to do…
I’m not sure what was wrong with lightweight Antonio DeMarco this weekend, but he shouldn’t have let that no power/bad haircut/yet gritty Reyes Sanchez fella bull him to the ropes, and should have stretched him given how often he’d been knocked down and that he’d been stopped once by someone with less of a KO rep than DeMarco. Maybe he’s still regaining his confidence after the stoppage loss to Edwin Valero, I dunno. But he’s not fighting Humberto Soto next despite becoming mandatory challenger because they’re cousins. Brothers, I get. But cousins? C’mon…
Friday Night Fights led off with a very nice rumble between super middleweights Isaac Chilemba and Maxim Vlasov. Chilemba carried most of the action in competitive rounds throughout (although I missed the first two) but in the 8th Vlasov scored a pair of knockdowns. Chilemba rallied to hurt Vlasov in that round, though, which took it from “nice” to “very nice.” In the end, Chilemba got the close decision. Like Vlasov, he was a bit crude, but he was the sharper guy of the two. Both showed the kind of grit, though, that made me want to see them on FNF again. In the main event, featherweight Juan Carlos Burgos slaughtered Frankie Archuleta in two, which is no surprise given that he was a replacement who is prone to getting slaughtered…
Yet no program specializes in slaughters quite so well as Solo Boxeo, which has of late turned from “pretty bad” to “atrocious.” And everyone’s clued in on this fully. Dan Rafael had some unpleasant things to say here, in a column also wraps up some other weekend fights (save the card in Britain covered by our Andrew Harrison here, in a typically intelligent and entertaining writeup).
Quick Jabs, Media Critique Edition
The latest HBO pieces from Thomas Hauser are up, and I have my usual mixed feelings about them. The main thing I wondered was, “What’s the point?” We get it — various mostly anonymous people in boxing think Ross Greenburg and Kery Davis suck. But there were some new details in the second piece that, if true, are evidence that the cost of Timothy Bradley-Devon Alexander (important, worthwhile fight that HBO overpaid for, and which explains HBO’s peculiar insistence on Sergiy Dzinziruk as Sergio Martinez’ next opponent) combined with the multi-fight deal for Bernard Hopkins (just plain idiotic) have sucked up way, way too much money of this year’s HBO budget in a way that could hurt its offerings the rest of the year. It’s worth reading for that, but, to emphasize, “if true” is the important caveat…
The problem with journalists behaving more like religious zealots than truth tellers is that facts are made to fit into theories rather than facts being used to build theories. Case in point: A few weeks ago, Steve Kim argued that CBS carrying Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr.-Sebastian Zbik made sense because Chavez does big ratings. Then, when it appeared that HBO might try to pick up the fight, Kim — who doesn’t like anything HBO does — argued it was evidence that HBO’s brass should be fired. I well understand that HBO previously rejected Zbik as an opponent for Martinez, but to quote Kim, “here’s the thing/the thing is”: Either Chavez-Zbik is a fight a network should carry because it would get ratings, or it isn’t. (To me, it isn’t, although it doesn’t bother me terribly much if it’s bought cheap.) But you can’t argue that what’s good for HBO yesterday and CBS tomorrow isn’t good for HBO tomorrow. And I’m probably about to start ignoring the Kim line on such things, but I gotta point it out because his views are influential; and despite my taking issue with this, when Kim sets aside his biases, he’s still extremely good…
RingTV has really been overdoing the Golden Boy material; at one point last week, on two separate days, the blog was filled up with seven then six (of nine) items focused on Golden Boy fighters or shows, not counting other items like weekend previews that also mention Golden Boy shows. It would be different if somehow the only news of note was Golden Boy-related on those days, but it wasn’t. As someone who’s written for Ring magazine, I’m in a peculiar position criticizing this, although I haven’t written for the Ring website and things seem different to me at the mag than at the website, judging by their editorial content being unmarked by similar questionable items (plus they have separate leadership). But it’s a very worrisome trend. Golden Boy and Ring were supposed to be separate. Whatever the reason, the website has been very fishy of late. Restoring some balance to coverage would be a great idea if the people running that website don’t want to permanently besmirch the reputation of The Ring. (It’s a separate question whether the actual individual articles are biased, as opposed to the bias of volume of coverage; I think the site has done better in this regard, and has written critical things about Golden Boy fighters as recently as today, but this, too, is worth monitoring)…
Giddyup.
