By Bart Barry-
When Mexican Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fought countryman Alfredo Angulo in March, I attended a viewing party at the home of a Puerto Rican boxing trainer who, despite no rooting ethnic interest whatever, found his home filled by seven other Puerto Rican aficionados. Saturday, when Alvarez decisioned Cuban southpaw Erislandy Lara at MGM Grand, by a split decision that might have gone to either fighter fairly, I attended a viewing party at the home of that same boxing trainer, and this time we were two. Total.
Puerto Rico’s proximity to Cuba cannot explain such clairvoyance, alone, but might begin to tell why otherwise committed aficionados decided to mend fences with their spouses, Saturday, rather than give an hour of one evening to an Erislandy Lara match. Lara is indeed as near to unwatchable as a main-event fighter dare be, and if my friend’s house may act as an informal revenue predictor, Alvarez, though he may not have deserved Saturday’s decision, does deserve begrudging respect for enduring a fight with Lara for what inevitably will be a cut in pay.
It became once more apparent sometime in the early part of Saturday’s match Saul Alvarez is exactly what we believed he was during a reign of terror he began in 2010 on the oddly, albeit timelessly, named Queer Street, against Miguel Cotto’s resentful older brother, a thoroughbred’s gallop through pasty competition done at a canter, plodding as Alvarez occasionally was against foes unremarkable as Matthew Hatton and Ryan Rhodes. Three years ago Alvarez appeared a b-level fighter with a great marketing team and surprising poise. The marketing team has fallen-off a bit, after a hell of a run, but Alvarez is otherwise very much a b-level fighter with remarkable poise.
More than any quality that served him Saturday was Alvarez’s self-belief. Perhaps Erislandy Lara is not a puncher serious as other men Alvarez has faced, though he can’t be far behind, but Alvarez was unyielding in his self-belief, wandering wantonly at Lara’s fists regardless of their accuracy. Likely that was the fulcrum upon which the judges’ decision got leveraged: The fighters’ reactions to each other’s punches.
When Alvarez got pasted with a stiff left cross or impaled himself on Lara’s jab, he immediately shuffled his feet and sped forward like a kid trying to impress a prospective coach with hustle on his first day of tryouts. When Lara got kissed by so much as the soughing breeze caused by Alvarez’s right fist flying harmlessly overhead, he jogged the perimeter of the ring like Barry Bonds rounding second after dunking a ball in McCovey Cove. It was absurd the joy Lara brought himself by not getting hit, the way an avoided blow pacified him and revealed his curious fighting character, one to take no umbrage with another man’s attempt to decapitate him; were it not ostensibly a savage happening for which Americans paid $60-per-view, a full day’s wages in many cases, Saturday’s fight would have been a spectacle of Christian forgiveness to rival any Papal Mass.
Lara’s abundance of ruth and want of vengefulness, finally, was the reason most aficionados’ eyes were dry over Saturday’s conceivably unfair decision, and why Lara’s postfight corner comprised a full tally of those in the world who desire Alvarez-Lara 2. Spare us, Lord, please! the misery of ever again enduring a match like that one, and if that means somehow bestowing a fortune so vast upon Erislandy Lara he does not don boxing gloves once more, why, may Thy will be done!
Canelo Alvarez would be an asterisk in a better era, a picture of profitable precocity whose carrot coif would not have won him a match with the era’s best, Floyd Mayweather – though, of course, in a better era, Mayweather himself might struggle to be in the Top 5. And no, there isn’t a prizefighting era in which Erislandy Lara’s pacifism would have been welcomed.
In a different if not better era, a Soviet era in which Moscow paid Cuba sugar prices justifiable only if Fidel were an alchemist converting cane to nukes, Lara might have remained a career amateur in the Cuban system and found his lifestyle suitable enough not to defect, amassing four or five gold medals. Lara’s mastery of amateur tactics is unrivaled: In the last century of American sport, only golf’s Bobby Jones perhaps accomplished more as an amateur against professionals than Lara has.
Alvarez may be limited but he has more dimensions than Lara, a man with seemingly no transitional capacity, defense to offense. How different an outcome might Saturday have brought if Lara had seen his opponent’s misses as occasions for retribution, not revelry? Several times early in the fight, Lara stood under his feet, delivered a crisp 1-2 to Alvarez’s ever predictably placed head, and then, as Alvarez began his impress-the-coach shuffle, Lara launched a homerun trot for reasons even a defensive specialist like Pernell Whitaker would not have fathomed. In those instants, Alvarez, hands low, freckled neck freshly stiffened by clean shots, wanted no part whatever of more contact from Lara, who, had he followed with even a measuring jab after those 1-2s, might have taken the fight, 10 rounds to 2 at least, on two scorecards, while earning a draw from judge Levi Martinez, reliably scoring another match for the promoter’s favorite color, red corner or blue.
It’s what makes Mayweather a special prizefighter where Lara is a special amateur; Mayweather showed Alvarez a new rhythm each round, keeping the fearless if not perspicacious Mexican unbalanced throughout, preventing the very sort of belligerence Alvarez showed in the final five minutes of Saturday’s match, flying at Lara like a man confident no more than two punches would come in succession, punches he didn’t mind swallowing in behalf of what loyally loud countrymen dutifully filled MGM Grand.
That Alvarez made a choice for violence Lara did not is reason enough to see a close fight Canelo’s way, keeping him boxing’s third most-reliable draw in this soggy era. Erislandy Lara, meanwhile, can content himself with remaining one of the greatest amateurs of this era or any other.
Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com
