You’re angry, angrier than you have been since March. Feed that rage a touch, then, before endeavoring to diffuse it. A catharsis might be in the offing.
When the receipts from the “Too Big for One Country” event get tallied – both at the box office and your local cable provider – there’s going to be a calculation made about what happened Saturday: Not enough people saw Brandon Rios get outclassed by an unknown Cuban to boycott Rios’ next fight. “Brandon Rios MD-12 Richard Abril” is the line that went in the books. Bring on Cowboys Stadium in July.
Outrageous! Yes, yes, but first, Saturday’s main event – Juan Manuel Marquez UD-12 Serhiy Fedchenko in Mexico City – and its good reminder: It was arranged that Marquez be the main event even before Rios missed weight for a second consecutive fight and lost nine rounds to Abril, because Marquez was the card’s draw because Marquez is exceptional. As he nears his 39th birthday he is still, if we’re being knowledgeable and truthful, among the last men in the world whom you should confront or show vulnerability to.
It is indecent, however, to laud Marquez for what he does at his advanced age – Bernard Hopkins in a lower weight class, fighting three minutes of every round, clinching no one – without making an observation about his physique. It is transformed. Or half of it is. Marquez, helpfully, has left his lower body at 126 pounds while making his upper body, delts and traps specifically, into something a 170-pound man would proudly wear on any beach. It is impossible that this has been done by an adult Homo sapiens nearing the end of his fourth decade, with just a little more attention to diet and some hours in the gym. Juan Manuel Marquez now ingests chemicals he did not previously ingest, and they enhance his performance.
Are they banned substances or “PEDs”? No, evidently they are not. Today’s arbitrary restrictions and their arbitrary tests applied by arbitrarily lionized experts detect nothing. It’s a little reminiscent of what President Barack Obama said about passing the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act a few years ago: Turns out most of the actions that brought the world to the precipice of financial insolvency on Sept. 18, 2008 were legal.
What is written above applies equally to Sergio Martinez, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, to pick the only three men in the world who might currently be better at prizefighting than Marquez. All are performing better in their 30s than they did in their 20s. And none of us is gullible as he pretends to be.
Stay your rage, though. Save it for the day somebody’s scorned personal trainer publishes a tell-all book. And don’t give us that lame “But by then I’ll be tired-out from being outraged so many times before!” line, either. Nobody believes that, not after this, the year of outrage.
Saturday, the new worst decision in history favored the favored fighter, again. Richard Abril decisioned Brandon Rios on every scorecard that did not count (including mine) while never, not for one moment, trying to render his opponent unconscious – once the object of prizefighting. Will we never see the day some manager or trainer or fighter tells himself and others: “The judges are every bad thing people say, and so I’ll be damned if I trust my career to their discernment”?
Rios remains what he is, which is three parts aggressiveness and self-promotion for every one part talent. Against Abril, he did not get his aggressiveness on the side of the ledger that reads Effective more than a handful of times. He did something, too, that betrays a misunderstanding of the physics of punching: He repeatedly set his head behind his opponent’s left shoulder and threw a left hook. This was not the seeing-eye overhand right that no-hopers throw in gyms across the fruited plain. It was much worse. You doubt it? The next time you’re in a gym, set your left ear against the heavybag and throw a left hook, and then ask yourself how an undefeated professional could turn such a contortionist’s trick so many times in a half hour.
Marquez-Rios in Cowboys Stadium in July has not been canceled yet, though, has it? Promoter Bob Arum loves a challenge. This will be two. First, sell the Rios mess to Jerry Jones, and second, sell it to the public.
Count me out! I’m at the end of my tether! I’ve had it!
Arum doesn’t believe you, and frankly, experience says he shouldn’t. But before all is lost, before the contracts get signed in the next month or so, why not be imaginative?
Keep the summer date and the colossal venue, but instead of Marquez-Rios, let’s have Juan Manuel Marquez versus Erik Morales, with Brandon Rios in the co-main against Mike Alvarado. It’s doubtful Morales is under some long-term obligation to his current promoter that can’t be circumnavigated. The people under Bob Arum still love Morales, and he likes them right back. Marquez would be favored, sure, but the fight would be compelling, as neither Mexican would be disrespectful or ignorant enough to employ physical force alone. If you’re trying to attract Mexicans, can you think of two better names? And for the aficionados among us, there’s still Rios-Alvarado, a fight that has less chance of missing than Cotto-Margarito did in 2008.
There. From outrage, an outrageously good idea.
Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com.
