A humbling

By Bart Barry-

Saturday the Chocolatito Era concluded when Nicaraguan Roman Gonzalez got narrowly and perhaps unfairly split-decisioned by Thailand’s Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek in a brutal 12-round affair. In the mainevent a different tradition of matching the world’s best middleweight against a fellow middleweight began, when Gennady “GGG” Golovkin decisioned Daniel Jacobs, and let us hope this new era endures fractionally long as the other one did.

Whosoever would be idiot enough to write something like this: “After the decade Chocolatito labored in obscurity it brings no joy to write a match of his does not belong on American television much less HBO PPV, but heavens to Murgatroyd, this one verily does not”?

Guilty, my friends, and decisively so.

Whether Sor Rungvisai deserved to become a champion Saturday he belonged in a ring with Chocolatito in a way no one before him has done and once there he made brutal combat – disrespectful, randyrough, unfair, despicable – till he was eligible for a title few gave him a chance at (even if no one publicly gave him less of a chance than this column’s agebadly effort).

It was inevitable: If a prizefighter moves upwards in weight as he moves upwards in age someday he gets beat by a man who is not good a prizefighter as he is but able to offset class with physicality by absorbing what punches smaller men cannot and damaging with less effort than smaller men can. Exactly that happened to Chocolatito, every bit Saturday his diminutive suffix -ito, who struck Sor Rungvisai with the same accurate shots he strikes everyone with and applied much of the same tactical originality he applies to every opponent’s head and body but the difference was Sor Rungvisai’s size and desire and apparent obliviousness of who was the man punching him. Whereas the mainevent saw a b-level middleweight will himself past an obvious consciousness about his opponent’s identity – and in so doing reveal quite a lot about the actual quality of the middleweight champion (and how about the postfight sparkle in Golovkin’s eyes when asked about a September return to a junior middleweight opponent!) – the comain saw a man who showed up for a world title fight against an anonymous smaller man and acted like it.

Wherever or however Sor Rungvisai hit Chocolatito in round 1 he dropped him true and it tolled Chocolatito’s psyche finding himself seated, a ref fingerflashing overhead. It portended still worse things for anyone who hoped to enjoy Chocolatito for more than another match or two, too: You don’t make a fight-of-the-year candidate with Sor Rungvisai and go on to enjoy a long pleasant stay in your new super flyweight division. Instead you cautiously win a wellpaying rematch then cash yourself out – making, as an aside, charismatic Carlos Cuadras Saturday’s biggest loser.

On a personal note the emotions went something like: Excitement (here we go) to surprise (Chocolatito’s on the blue mat) to shame (what did I write?) to sadness (Chocolatito looks so small) to elation (he’s spinning him gorgeously!) to indignation (that butt was intentional) to anger (he butted him again) to amusement (butting when in you’re in trouble is effective in its way, isn’t it?) to excitement (he’s spinning him again, yes!) to disappointment (the geometry’s wrong) to nervousness to sadness.

Whatever dudgeon happened in the moment and however much pain Chocolatito is in today and tomorrow and the rest of the week, fact remains Sor Rungvisai, as a large southpaw, sold accidental headbutts sufficiently to remain undisqualified while severely altering a championship match’s trajectory with his head. There was little if anything accidental about any but the first butt and it was apparent three ways: 1. The timing of the accidents, 2. Chocolatito’s evident disgust with the accidents, and 3. The asymmetry of their effect. When two fighters’ heads keep colliding whenever one fighter is hurt, and the other fighter is the only one buzzed and bleeding afresh after each collision, there’s no chance at the championship level anything accidental is happening.

There are ways to remedy these things and Chocolatito, who has gone below the belt plethoras of times in his career, did none of them, and one suspects he didn’t do them because he didn’t think them necessary. First time, shame on Sor Rungvisai; second time . . . expect Chocolatito to go low early and often in a rematch the Nicaraguan’ll take personally and more seriously than their first match – and expect the new champion to be looking refereewards in the rematch more than his challenger.

While the damage suffered in the comain was asymmetrical the card itself did conclude with a symmetric quality of sorts: Chocolatito nearing the end of a career marked by increasing weightclasses and challenges; GGG beginning what one hopes is a career of fighting men large enough to hurt him – and looking only a touch better than average in so doing. While ESPN scrambles to revise its bro-science feature on Golovkin’s otherworldly power (something about Daniel Jacobs’ episode with cancer making his chin exponents more resilient than it was before both cancer and Dmitry Pirog) and HBO manufactures demand enough for Canelo-GGG to put this uncomfortable Jacobs episode behind us all, aficionados can use what they saw Saturday to temper, once more, their opinions of undefeated records.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry