Killing Time

Last Saturday Vitali Klitschko defended his heavyweight belt with an absurd first round stoppage of Odlanier Solis. It was ridiculous, a simultaneous punch and knee injury saw Solis toppling over like some stricken beast of the plains. A great or notable event? Of course not, but normally I would have taken some cruel enjoyment from the spectacle.

Two Saturdays ago Sergio Martinez stopped Sergei Dzinziruk and managed to retain his middleweight title. It was a stunning and beautiful performance. The defining punch – a short and sneaky straight left– was set up by a lowered hands/clowning moment. It was a machismo display of physical superiority and personal disdain that is my athletic ideal. It was lovely.

But I was left empty.

I’ve been trying to understand why. I watch all the fights, always. I am aware and I watch, but still, it’s somehow, so… preamble. I feel like it’s all preliminary.

That’s the thing about boxing, it’s not really supposed to be like that. Every fight is important, each moment a potential answer. It doesn’t require the highest levels as long as the participants are game and the deeply personal is there. The fighter’s insides are visible when it’s great, and a body doesn’t always need to be elite to be capable of communicating meaning and courage.

But something has been missing to me, that feeling of presence and life and importance in the ring. I think I know what it is.

Pacquiao-Mayweather.

I’m tired of it, too, but hear me out.

Have you ever had a thing so big in your life that nothing feels (and here I mean that engrossing fullness of a life in the present) without the resolution of that thing? I’m sure you have. Perhaps it was the fate of a loved one, the birth of a child, or the tangled pain of a relationship at loose ends; but you must know what I’m talking about?

I’m speaking of that huge mewling hole in the heart that makes every other relationship/event/activity that happens seem unimportant and pale in comparison to the big thing.

She is/was meant for me, you understand? It’s something one knows or feels and all the rest is distraction or palaver and filler in between the moment when I will realize my final destiny of being with or not being with her. A resolution is needed whether it be through actual physical flame and irrevocable end or final and complete commingling. But it’s that in-between that’s so deadly perilous.

Because everything else is less bright in the present. Every kiss is replacement, every joy a distraction from the real thing, the ultimate irreconcilable which casts a pall over a man’s life.

A soldier waiting to be recalled to war, an ill man seeking doctor's verdict, or a lover separated but not unfettered from his true belief. During that period even beauty and grace and joy itself are rendered tasteless and unfulfilling. Every meal a man might have is turned to dust and ash because the mouth is awaiting that one taste alone.

Entire religions and philosophies have been built around overcoming this irreconcilable, but I’ve never had the gift of distance. It gets to me, like an infection, and it’s a cruel thief of life.


And I’m afraid that’s what Mayweather/Pacquiao has become. That ultimate must happen/must resolve that renders everything else shadow and play.

Manny will fight Shane Mosley, and he will probably win. Perhaps after that he will fight Andre Berto, or Juan Manuel Marquez. These will be great battles, potentially rich victories, but they won’t be answers.

Sergio Martinez will continue his remarkable ascent. Amir Khan and Timothy Bradley will fight for a real title at junior welterweight.

But I’m afraid Mayweather/Pacquiao will always be there in the background, a presence and haunting that says to me, “Why yes, she is a very attractive and commendable lady you are kissing at the moment, she even smells of loveliness, but we all know that the great SHE is still out there. This - though pleasant - is just killing time.”

So unfair, so unhealthy, but even if you try to argue with the voices in your head they have the advantage of always having the last word. Floyd Mayweather’s refusal to fight, their inability to fight each other is inflecting everything else with a feeling of not the real.

And it’s one thing if we know it will never happen. The Klitschko brothers' fantasy meeting differs not only because they aren’t as compelling, but because we know the score and can look and move on.

But the great Mayweather/Pacquiao has no such qualifiers, all we have to keep it from us is politics, money, and the impossibility of compromise.

I’m going to try to be better and enjoy the meals and the kisses and all the intervening activities which are life, or in this case, is boxing as a sport. But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to quiet that part of my head that will know that the big unresolved still exists, the biggest unanswerable from which I must have resolution but don’t. It’s why cruelty and honesty are often blessings.

Because truth or blame isn’t the thing. Does anyone anymore really care about whether the excuse is money, steroids, or just a willful indifference to a cultural need? I don’t. Pacquiao is not fighting Mayweather – right now – and it throws everything else out of balance.

Because we’re waiting for not just a fight, but an answer, something to tell us where what we are watching fits on the big lists. It’s the one that needs to happen and doesn’t, and it’s turning everything else to gray.

I still expect the fight to happen. It might take place too late and provide an unsatisfying conclusion, but I still expect the two to meet. Money almost always speaks.

It’s just this intervening time that’s the victim. All the other heroes out there shadowed by the big thing. Time will heal it, or perhaps another compelling champion will rise, but I’ll remember this time in boxing as the missing years. When Pacquiao and Mayweather not only sabotaged one another, but the rest of the sport as well.

Pacquiao For Progress

Apologies for my extended absence and I hope to do better in the future but I couldn’t let this one go by without a word.

Anyone who has ever read my work will know where my sympathies extend regarding Pacquaio and Margarito. The two are basically the avatars – polarities – of my boxing worldview so I won’t pretend to offer much nuance or reasoned insight.

I want Pacquiao to give Marg’s a royal beating. Not in some moralistic sense, “the jolly Filipino damaging the cheating and surly Mexican,” though I won’t pretend there’s not some of that here.

No, Pacquiao to me has always represented physical inspiration – man as body-electric, that thin-wild-mercury.

I’ve perhaps been a little eager to overlook his obvious intelligence and refinement of craft; partially due to language issues and his outsized friendliness and good-nature but I make no apologies for that. He’s compelling to me because he’s so physical, joyous, and righteous in his movements. The loveliness and freedom and excitement that comes from seeing a human body so perfectly suited to its task.

In the same way it’s transfixing to watch a nature show featuring a bird of prey in descent, a leopard giving chase, or more apt in this context, a regal steed at the races – Secratariat powering down the tracks while onlookers weep in the stands; that’s what Pacquiao is to me. A human body honed and suited to its purpose. I can’t remark enough on what a rare and perfect thing that is, a true joy for us muddlers and tumblers lurching about in the muck; those of us for whom moments of completeness are so rare and profound in our own lives they are often only spoken of in a religious or drug-filtered context.

Pacquiao represents a fullness of being that is rare and special, which I call inspiration. A gift from the void that only the select have and is a blessing and joy to watch.

And Margarito? Well, he’s something of the opposite. I’ve always found him unwatchable and unsympathetic, a rebuke to the way I try to justify and enjoy and filter the callous blood lust of this sport. For people like me it’s important to build narrative filters and deeper subtexts to the sport so that it goes beyond blood and bone and moves into history and manhood and craft and the unstoppable forward march of progress.

And Margarito brings all of that into question. A crude slugger, slow, impenetrable. He lacks class not in the sense that he’s a poor kid from Mexico, (Erik Morales, another poor kid from the same streets Margarito emerged from is also one of my talisman of regal overcoming,) but in the sense that he is a move away from boxing as sweet science and towards the crudity of sheer force and muscle. He’s a step away from progress and refinement.

I’ve used the quote many times before, but A.J. Liebling’s take always seems apt to me when speaking of Margarito, “If the animal could beat even a fair fighter, it meant that two hundred and fifty years of painfully acquired experience had been lost to the human race; science was a washout and art a vanity.”

Science a washout and art a vanity. That’s what’s on the line here. Some see it as a moral contest between the loathsome Margarito and the virtuous Pacquiao, but something far deeper is at stake; the narrative history of the sport and progress. The sanctity of class and worth.

True, Margarito will be a full 15-20 lbs larger, but Pacquiao has now taken over the mantle of genius, the surpassing quality of incandescent ability over and above the utility of force. Margarito is trying to queer the game, to turn it around and backwards; Pacquiao is the clever defender of the library facing the torch-wielders.

Of course the moral overlay is heavy and I won’t ignore it. Margarito is a cheater and just generally unlikable and slimy. The vicious pleasure of his loss will be undeniable.

But it’s secondary. Though I greatly admire Evander Holyfield, his worldview wherein the right-cross of the righteous is superior to that of the wicked is deeply flawed.

My own – deeply flawed – worldview can perhaps be framed by the Obama/King Jr/ Parker quote that, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” (The disappointing midterm elections being – of course – a reminder of the cutbacks in the bend)

Only in my world, and in boxing, it bends towards class and beauty. Do you get it? Do you see what’s on the line. It’s much the same thing I felt when Manny fought Ricky Hatton, only with Margarito’s deeper textures of degradation and Pacquiao’s now inflated importance.

So, with the stakes being defined, am I nervous? Yes, a little. The customary pre-fight antics with a supposedly inferior Pacquiao training camp are unmoving to me, but the size difference is daunting. I can envision Pacquiao trapped against the ropes and damaged by a body shot, unable to appropriately respond and it fills me with dismay.

But I just can’t move beyond my respect for speed and skill. I mean, we’re talking about no less than the co-equal fastest fighter of his day against the slowest elite-level fighter in recent memory. That’s got to tell doesn’t it?

And more importantly I just keep feeling that bend towards justice, that bend towards the big happening. It doesn’t work the way it should, but Pacquiao is clearly meant for bigger things than to fall to a crude villain. Isn’t he? We need more answers than this will provide. Its important to boxing’s ragged march.

Of course that’s a construct, but it’s how I’m taking this one. I won’t hide that my lack of writing on boxing of late has been partially due to the fact that we’ve had a few dour months here. I haven’t liked it a bit and in lieu of real analysis sometimes I just think it’s important to filter ones hopes and pleasures as they come.

And so it is that I see my little Filipino muse standing victorious tonight, arms raised in joy at the surpassing pleasure of being a triumphant body, a genetic and evolutionary gift unsurpassed in his time and a step towards the inevitable victory of grace and science and art in the face of an otherwise directionless universe.

Pacquiao fighting!

Dawson Sleeps

“I fought my fight.” It’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it? Often it means controlling space and the speed of the action. It’s what a fighter wants. Mastery.

It seemed somehow different on Saturday when Chad Dawson used the phrase after he “fought his fight,” to his first career loss. Jean Pascal is a good fighter and it’s normally an unhelpful modern boxing phenomenon to overeact to one loss, but wasn’t there something fundamentally revealing about Chad Dawson – pound-for-pound contender – on Saturday night?

I joked earlier about Dawson’s non-personality, and I sometimes call him the first comatose titlist in boxing history, but didn’t it feel like that? That’s your title, Chad, don’t give it away.

I had the fight 106-103 Pascal when it was stopped on that gruesome cut. Pascal is a good fighter, though a bit of a spazz. He's not particularly fun to watch and I don't think he'll hang on to that championship long. Bernard Hopkins uses a similar move and lunge technique and it has gotten him far, but I don't think Pascal has the same type of evil intellect to keep it going too long.

Dawson had Pascal dinged at the end, but did you really feel he was going to stop him? I’m thinking here of Chavez chasing down Taylor, Israel Vazquez hammering at Rafael Marquez, or hell, even Librado Andrade flattening Lucian Bute…

Dawson doesn’t have that, or at least didn’t on Saturday night. Which is not to say that he can’t one day become everything he’s capable of, a tremendous champion with a long string of defenses. But it’s hard to imagine he’ll ever be a moving champion, it’s hard to imagine he’ll ever inspire passion. It's entirely explicable that he has zero fans.

Because he only wants to “fight his fight,” and sometimes you have to do more. You have to go where it’s uncomfortable and push. You think the other guy is head butting you? Fine, hit him low. You think the crowd is against you? Send a straight left right through the guys mandible and shut them up.

I say this not as a judgment of his character – because I know I have more Dawson in me than I do Erik Morales – I just think it’s the truth. It’s some of the same frustration I feel when watching Joshua Clottey fight. I feel a little frustrated, but more than that I just feel tired and uninspired.

Boxing is about pushing beyond the possible, Dawson hasn’t even pushed up against it.

Nostos, Or How I Came To Love The Blog

I’m back. And as I always say to the highway patrolman when he looks at me funny, “Get bent, honky!”

But really, you can check out my farewell post at The Rumble, here. The Sporting News is killing all of their blogging content and intends to become a waystation for discussions of RBIs and the dime defense. More power to them.

As for me, it’s time to get radical again. The Rumble was fun, but frankly I only get about one good idea a week, and most of them have to do with ways to bring down the mendacious system we live in. As L. Cohen always said, “They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within.” In some sense I consider this an early parole.

Inspired by some Freedarko friends I have some big ideas for the future; which I won’t expand on too much for fear of disappointing, given my family's somewhat loving nickname for me, “The laziest white boy in America. I’ve already talked with a couple outlets on doing some freelance stuff and you can also keep track of me on my newly acquired twitter. I’m so pithy I hurt my own brains.

But to start things off I thought I’d give a little preview of this weekend’s big fight, Chad Dawson-Jean Pascal. They made this sucker about six months ago, at which point I was incredibly excited, but I’m almost exhausted from the wait.

Almost, but not quite. I think it has some real potential. Dawson is an excellent fighter, well-deserving of his spot on the important lists, but let’s be real here… I might be “the laziest white boy in America,” but Chad Dawson is auditioning for the part of “the most boring black man on the continent.”

And I don’t mean only in the ring. He’s actually not a colossal stinker in there. Yeah, he’s a boxer first, but he’ll rumble when he has to. He simply has zero on the charisma meter, I’m talking nothing here… as in the first certifiably comatose champion in boxing history. So little interest he has garnered that he’s actually going on the road for this fight.

And that’s why he needs Pascal. Jean Pascal is just the sort of loose-limbed French speaking Montrealer (sic) that dreams are made of. He’s powerful and athletic, but reminds me of an MMA fighter, and I don’t mean that in a flattering way. He’s all flail and juke and lunge. The kind of guy who’s liable to head butt the referee by accident.

I have a feeling the styles will mix. I don’t see anyone at light heavyweight who can match Dawson’s science, so you need an opponent of a different sort. A martian using perhaps inferior - but nonetheless effective – technology is capable of disrupting a more mechanistically advanced society.

That’s Pascal’s shot. I think he’ll land some obnoxious wingers and Dawson will get hurt. Dawson has shown some fragility in the past, so he’ll be vulnerable, but… ultimately, I think he’ll make it to the end.

And if it goes the twelve I just can’t see Pascal winning. Dawson is too good. So despite some hairy moments I see Chad Dawson unifying the titles and becoming the Ring Magazine light heavyweight champion. He doesn’t have the personality to fill the prestigious role, but if you’re good enough, it makes up for all the rest.

Chad Dawson UD 116-111 Jean Pascal

After the After

As much as I found the experience of watching the Mayweather/Marquez fight on Saturday affecting, the only real drama was the post-fight interview. I’ve never understood why the interview in boxing is allowed to be much more confrontational than in any other sport - with notable curmudgeons Jim Gray and Larry Merchant being the preeminent practitioners – but it’s a generally accepted rule that things are allowed to get quite a bit saltier than just about anything else on television.

Still, I couldn’t help being a little sympathetic to Floyd Mayweather Jr. as he tried to accept his bow as the returning hero. I enjoyed the limited mayhem, but couldn’t help wondering what the reaction would have been if it had been Floyd who had pulled a Kanye on Mosley, instead of the way it went down. It’s one thing to agitate in the press-conference afterwards, it’s quite another to take a man’s hard earned shine after two years out of the spotlight.

I know Floyd is supposed to be the natural baddie, while Mosley is noble and righteous, but if the roles were reversed there would be such an overload of vitriol and message-board indignation sent Floyd’s way that the psychic rage would peel flesh from faces. No, I am not weeping for Floyd, it is what it is, but don’t anyone tell me that he is crazy when he talks about a double standard. Floyd has his faults, but he would not have done that to Mosley, and if he had you can be assured he would have taken his lashes.

Mosley has built up a reservoir of good will over the years by being a humble and decent man, but he and Bernard overstepped the moment no matter how much we may like them.

As for Kellerman’s performance, I’m a little hesitant to go after him too hard as I’m generally a fan. He seems to at least love the sport, something some of the other HBO boys don’t always make clear. However, as the instigator of the event he should have let the thing unfold to the natural conclusion. We are boxing fans, a little crazy is what we love about the sport.

I’ll say it gentle, but Max shrunk a bit, looking like a little boy who, late at night, wandered into the neighborhood his mother warned him about. If you know what I mean. That’s alright, I would have been nervous too, sandwiched between a hard crew of roughly twenty title belts between them. What I wished Kellerman would have realized, and Floyd rightly pointed out, is he talks too much and nobody really cares what he has to say. I know he worked all night on his intricate questions, but Floyd isn’t going to say what you want him to, so let the action unfold. Give the man his minute of commercials and self-love, he earned it.

It’s not Kellerman’s fault, particularly, I think the HBO guys often takes themselves a little too seriously. The fights the thing, and whether the gloves are still on or it’s the aftermath, nobody, ultimately, cares about the referees.

* Check out the latest piece I wrote for the Rumble about watching Floyd fight, I think it's good.

The Boys and the Band

I have some rather exciting news. Nomas is folding into another site with the sporting news called the rumble and it seems I am going to come along with them. I’m not entirely sure yet what the ramifications of this might be, but I think it means I’m probably going to be posting more frequent and slightly shorter pieces over there. It seems nomas will largely be a feeder site for the rumble. As for Boxiana we’re going to have to see. My hope is to do something of what Bethlehem Shoals has done over at Freedarko, where he keeps the longer, more challenging – and to my mind more interesting stuff – on Freedarko and the straighter stuff on the baseline.

Of course, there is only one Shoals, the high prince of sports blogging and a walking difference engine. I, on the other hand, am but flesh and not particularly toothsome flesh at that. I have tried to keep my promises at a minimum so as to focus the disappointment firmly within myself. As Leonard Cohen wrote in one of my favorite poems:

Out of the thousands

who are known,

or who want to be known

as poets,

maybe one or two

are genuine

and the rest are fakes,

hanging around the sacred

precincts

trying to look like the real thing.

Needless to say

I am one of the fakes,

and this is my story

The Rumble should be pretty fun. Large from nomas has put together a beautifully designed site and gotten quite a few talented writers to sign on. It’s a dual boxing/MMA site, which, to be perfectly honest, I’m not overly thrilled with. But, who knows, perhaps we can convert some of the fans of strenuous rubbing into followers of the science of bruising. (Joking, mostly.)

I haven’t been asked to temper my style, and I doubt I will really be able to even if asked. The first piece is already up today, a recap and meditation of Urango/Bailey and the romance of the body shot. There should be another one on Hatton up later today as well. I guess I’ll put a link up in the corner and also specifically point to particularly good pieces for the next few weeks at least. Still, it should be worth checking out daily as there will be a lot of news pieces and some fine writing. For Boxiana I hope to keep producing more edgy and overtly racial or otherwise longer pieces, but again, I'm not one for guarantees.

It should be exciting with a lot of new readers, whether my type of stuff is what they prefer; I guess we’ll see.

Rumble, young man. Rumble!

* * * *

Also wanted to add some quick thoughts on the debut of Mayweather/Marquez 24/7, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s great to have Floyd back on the program, the only truly interesting and engaging personality they have yet found. Roger and Floyd Sr, of course, are much welcomed as well.

My first thought on seeing the program was just how much Floyd’s upper body has grown. Having just rewatched Mayweather/Corrales the difference is striking. And, though I have not recently checked, it seemed to me he was notably larger than even the Hatton and De La Hoya fights. On one level this is obviously good, he will no longer be so clearly outsized against the real welters, Cotto/Mosley and the rest, when he eventually (hopefully) fights them, but I had been hoping that he might get back the more fluid combination punching style he displayed so beautifully in the lower weight classes. I thought perhaps his more cautious, pecking style owed more to dangers of larger opposition and an inherently cautious nature than any physical change.

But with this newly muscled body, impressive as it might be, I have doubts whether he is capable of throwing those multiple short and quick right hands that were so lovely to see. I don’t think it necessarily limits his effectiveness, but the grace and subtlety may have dissipated a little.

I know a lot of people were also skeptical of the slightly more mature and PG Floyd, thinking it a ploy to get back in the good graces of an irate public. I’m somewhat sympathetic to that viewpoint. It’s hard for a normal person to imagine just how much psychic toll it takes to be in the public eye, and even moreso when the larger part of that eye is squinting and narrowed with animus. It is a human impulse to try to correct that, it just take too much energy to be forever kicking against the pricks. Richard III might have said, “And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover. To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain.” But Floyd, though he has played the part exceptionally well, like most all of us sinners, sees himself as the hero of his own story and on some level must be trying to self-correct.

While that surely is a part, it is an ungenerous heart that leaves it at that. I reserve my true skepticism for politicians and the police. I think the larger piece is the natural progression of a man’s life. Floyd is 32 now, with a growing daughter, and very few are able to keep up the level of narcissism he so long maintained. I hope he keeps his sharper and more biting ring persona and racial edges, but outside the ring finds greater rewards. It’s an unhealthy heart that wishes demons on others.

As for Marquez, it was enjoyable to see the man in peacetime, but not particularly illuminating or otherwise engaging. It simply confirmed what I’ve long thought. Juan Manual Marquez intends to win this fight. He’s as earnest and serious a prizefighter as now exists, and he doesn’t particularly care if we don’t give him a chance, he’ll take a bone from a hungry dog and beat him over the head with it if that is what it takes. Marquez looked a bit more muscular, but what little work we saw him engaged in seemed sharp and focused. He’s a stone sniper, from a culture full of them, and he’s never going to stand down unless compelled to by force.

I had been a little fretful over the match up, not because I saw it as unworthy, but because I want the heat of a true superfight. I want something that will make people stand at attention, and this fight didn’t seem to be it. I think much of it stems from the overarching dislike of Mayweather, a perfemptory defense of giving him credit in the event of a win. He is the clear favorite, but I think he’s the clear favorite against them all.

It may not be the fight they all want to see, but it’s a fight I want to see, and the 24/7 reminded me of that. People always claim that boxing is dead, and I say that’s fine, as long as you don’t tell the modern greats not to show up in the ring I’m more than happy to let people claim as much.

They say this is not a superfight, and that’s fine too, because it is for me, and I can’t wait for the bell to ring.

Random Rules

I have a new piece up on nomas about Malignaggi/Diaz that you should check out. The fight was much more enjoyable than I expected and had the added bonus of the Malignaggi meltdown in the postfight and a memorable press conference afterwards.

In the piece I referenced recent interviews with both Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Bernard Hopkins, which absolutely must be read and listened to in full. I find Floyd’s interviews on Bossip particularly rewarding, as we get to hear him at a comfort level that he never gets reaches with the gatekeepers of white sports purity; Brian Kenny, Larry Merchant, and the rest.

It’s interesting that even when the athlete says something in this context that under more official circumstances would come off as petulant, paranoid, or racist, there seems in these interviews the natural patter of the pugilist at rest. It makes all the difference. Not that I find either Mayweather or especially Hopkins grating, but they are more charming when amongst friends, and I wonder whether it might take the edge off for those who consider Mayweather specifically the exemplar of a world gone wrong.

While I find Stephen A. Smith somewhat odious, he was often the one most able to get worthwhile material from his interview subjects, which is difficult given the restrictions placed on the athletes he normally worked with. Boxing, as I wrote in the piece for nomas, has many fewer restrictions, meaning the athlete needs much less rope to go much further. I hope the trend continues, for Floyd most of all I think there is a personal redemption in his less guarded moments that might allow him to retain his status as villain, but provide the depth to make it a lasting and meaningful role.