By Bart Barry-
Saturday at Nassau Coliseum, former home of the New York Islanders, Brooklyn “Miracle Man” Daniel Jacobs decisioned someone named Luis Arias on HBO. Jacobs won easily every round in a mainevent that left both men perfectly unscathed after 36 minutes of ostensible combat. I slept through it.
“Probably fatigue of one sort or another,” I told myself Sunday morning, “or perhaps the pernicious effects of age, but let’s show some professionalism here, kid!”
Then I sat down for the 10 a.m. rebroadcast and fell asleep again. Jacobs iced me in round 3 Saturday night and chloroformed me in round 7 of our rematch. There’s a devastating puncher for you.
Nothing wrong with Jacobs, really. He’s a very good fighter and a decent dude and well liked, most importantly, and’s learning to sell tickets with his new promoter, Eddie Hearn, who certainly does know how to do that – and for a discount on whatever of Jacobs’ purse Al Haymon still gets Hearn ought to offer a semester’s worth of lectures to whichever titular promoters Haymon’s PBC still employs and Golden Boy Promotions, too, who had first rights to Jacobs before the Dmitry Pirog incident and associated miracles (and they’re apparently linked; a novel pretext for Jacobs’ decimation by the Russian now gets unveiled with every fight: not only was Jacobs mourning his grandmother’s passing that weekend in Las Vegas but he also had cancer – though it wouldn’t be diagnosed for another 10 months and two prizefights; with Pirog safely retired there’s no end to a creative revisionism that could yet uncover a retroactive victory in Jacobs’ 2010 TKO-5 loss).
Let’s treat Hearn here for a spot, as certainly he’s the reason we got treated to Saturday’s fare and what Jacobs hagiographies HBO’s queuing for 2018. Hearn is now the most powerful promoter in boxing because Hearn owns promotional rights to the most powerful man in boxing, Anthony Joshua, the world’s undefeated, undisputed and charismatic world heavyweight champion. This year alone Hearn and Joshua have sold about as many tickets to two fights as PBC has sold since its inception. For many reasons, some merited and many not so merited, our beloved sport reliably goes where the heavyweight division directs it. That might read heretical to some youngish fans in emerging markets, assuming as they do little guys like Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather make the sport go, but it shouldn’t surprise any American who came of age during Mike Tyson’s reign or any European who just finished enduring the Brothers Klitschko’s domination.
Without Wlad and Vitali there is no such thing as K2 Promotions – which means we never meet Tom Loeffler, we probably know very little about Gennady Golovkin, and we sure as hell never take Abel Sanchez seriously. Unable to purse like Showtime these days HBO now endeavors to play a nifty game of promoter capture, seducing Hearn by showcasing (Jacobs’ word, not mine) whosoever Hearn signs to his new stateside label in the hopes Hearn will bring the most powerful man in boxing to HBO someday – though with the Justice Department meddling in the acquisition of HBO’s parent company last week one worries HBO will not be able to purse like Showtime for a while to come.
It’s good to see Jacobs benefit from all this corporation-to-promoter synergy. He has talent galore and he’s genuine in a way that shines through what inane hyperbole gets heaped on him. But all the squinting and barking of all the celebratory broadcasts of his career fail to make him truly special. Greatness is more than an accumulation of mediocrity, after all, and Jacobs’ professional record is a workable synonym for accumulated mediocrity. He blasted the pretender Kid Chocolate, sure, and showed GGG be overrated by any measure, too, but he also failed to do more than make Luis Arias a little nervous in 36 minutes of trying, and then there’s the aforementioned Pirog incident, isn’t there?
Nope, not letting it go, guys, sorry – I was ringside when it happened and stunned by its ferocity. It wasn’t just the exclamationmark ending, either, but the entire affair, bell to waveoff; it’s not the sort of thing that happened to a young Marvelous Marvin Hagler or Bernard Hopkins, and let this be a reminder that if we’re to suspend disbelief and entertain possibilities of Jacobs’ being a special middleweight we need remember there be aficionados old enough to know those guys, to remember them clearly, and hitch a ride on their standard each time we’re told to catch a new bandwagon.
Nobody wants to watch Jacobs go rounds with talkative nobodies like Arias, not on local access, not on free cable, and certainly not on a premium channel. Writing of which, with the exception of September’s wonderful SuperFly card, HBO’s broadcasts now feel stale, boring, behind the curve – same announcers saying the same things about the same graphics.
According to the network’s house scorekeeper Saturday’s showcase fighters won 22 of 23 rounds against their b-sides. That sort of mismatchmaking is tolerable, one supposes, if it’s three Hebrew Hammers – and yes, more of Cletus Seldin, please! – three times an unproven prospect thrashtossing a veteran, and even sort of tolerable if it’s three Big Babies – three times a cutiepie like Jarrell Miller threadbaring a giant – but not tolerable if it’s one time of Daniel Jacobs, a proven talent in his prime, practicing old combinations on a pillowfisted salesman like Arias.
It was personal, all the prefight trash Arias talked, we know, we know, which is one more mark against Jacobs: when he loses himself to beastmode and goes in on a little guy who’s pissed him off, allegedly, Jacobs punches badly if not Wilderly.
In the post-Money Era networks haven’t credibility enough to handpick athletes and storytell them to acclaim. Ten years ago we assumed a man was on HBO for good reason, even when he often wasn’t, and therefore due diligence commanded us get to know him, which is how we still recall silly facts like Andre Berto fought for Team Haiti in the Olympics. Those days ended with Mayweather-Pacquiao. We watched Jacobs fight Arias on Saturday because Jacobs acquitted himself surprisingly well against Golovkin in March, not because Jacobs survived cancer, and some of us, though no one writing this column, even may’ve watched yet another reheated retelling of Jacobs’ story in the last few weeks, but again, only because Jacobs made an entertaining fight in March.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
