By Bart Barry-
Ukrainian prizefighter Vasyl Lomachenko and his promoter Top Rank accomplished something pretty extraordinary Saturday when Lomachenko stopped lightweight champion Jorge Linares with a liver shot in the 10th round of a primetime ESPN match at Madison Square Garden. They justified a mountainous pile of euphoric forecasting and premature acclaim so high as to appear unjustifiable. Top Rank did this by putting its star in a fight he could lose – scorecards were a split draw after nine rounds – and Lomachenko did this by riding the moment to a transcendent version of himself.
In one punch Lomachenko indicted most of our current era’s best fighters but especially what prizefighter The Ring currently ranks world’s best. That punch was one Lomachenko took, too, from the middle knuckle of Linares’ right fist square on his pretty nose. It was a punch only a larger champion might deliver a fighter of Lomachenko’s talent and craft. It showed, in one moment at midfight, how much margin-for-error disappears when a man’s courage and ambition command him fight progressively larger men. And it showed the Gennady Golovkin reign for the fraud it has been.
I leaped from my seat and cried at my elderly Mexican companion, “¡Ya, vamos a ver que realmente es (now we’re going to see what he really is)! ¡Ya, vamos a ver!” It was a moment both feral and euphoric – finally a favored, celebrated fighter (other than Roman Gonzalez) in a nationally televised fight intentionally challenging himself enough to be dropped. Finally!
Lomachenko rose too quickly, his pride damaged much as his balance, but got through the round abetted in part by Linares’ hesitation – for which Lomachenko deserved much credit as Linares’ previous vanquishers. Lomachenko fought from that moment forward like he was in a fight, not a danceoff or freestyle floor routine. He surpassed himself, too, he accomplished what he’d taken on faith to that point: If circumstances render my routine inadequate, I will respond creatively and it will be glorious. It was.
He finished Linares with boxing’s version of a southpaw encryption key: 2-2-3-1-6-1-6-3-1-4: cross, cross, hook, jab, left uppercut, jab, up-jab, left uppercut, hook, jab, left hook. What should Linares have done differently? Who the hell knows? None of that can be trained for because there’s no history of it. Lomachenko himself did not expect the combination; his left hook to Linares’ body (when the palm faces up, it’s not a cross, whatever latterday purists may tell you) was the first punch in a threestrike combo Lomachenko raced past Linares’ collapsing form. Lomachenko observed Linares on the canvas and pumped his fist with the realization he’d touched the button, inaccessible usually to a southpaw, and Linares couldn’t possibly be conditioned enough to recuperate from it in the 10th round. He wasn’t. Linares didn’t beat the count so much as get unwilted by referee Ricky Gonzalez’s helping him to his feet.
Lomachenko justified the anticipatory hype about him Saturday in a way few modern athletes do. What usually happens, instead, is television promoters, scripts written by boxing promoters, get themselves in front of each story by calling everything they see greatness – across the dial on Saturday Night Fights, a telecast missing only its Just for Men spots, the names Mike Tyson and Tommy Hearns were invoked in the same minute of a 122-pound comain – cynically certain audiences will forgive decades of hyperbole in the event some athlete actually becomes what telecommentators say every other athlete will be. For it is better to call 100 Danny Jacobses elite than call the next Muhammad Ali only above-average.
Which leads to a few recent thoughts about contemporary television commentary. Watching a series of highlights from Tiger Woods’ round 3 at The Players Championship after reading an interesting essay on metamodernism led me to reconsider the role of live sports commentary and entertain the possibility it is becoming more an expression of sincerity than cynicism. For the last two decades its formula has sounded like: You, dear viewer, wish to believe you are extraordinary and unique and consequently curate only what else is extraordinary and unique, and so allow us to tell you everything you watch on our network is extraordinary and unique. That 6-4-3 doubleplay you just saw? Only the seventh time since 2012 a second baseman of Lithuanian descent has assisted a Dominican-born shortstop in ending a scoreless inning on a Tuesday. Historic!
But now, as a generation of secondstring actors, ironists and models makes its historic way off the world’s stage, congratulating itself on historic journalism, television commentary is infiltrated by something professionally sincere. As in:
We are looking for someone to help promote the Tiger Woods brand by accepting applications from energetic public speakers who know how to cheer like drunks in the gallery do.
Why, I have a degree in communications and I love Tiger – I just didn’t think I could get paid for it. I’m in!
There’s no longer a pretense of objectivity, which is oddly refreshing. It’s a performance that requires energy more than skill. Saturday’s ESPN team rehashed the same story of Lomachenko’s dance classes for at least its 83rd public iteration but did so with a fanatic’s sincerity. As Lomachenko, a southpaw, endeavored to keep his front foot outside his orthodox opponent’s – something you learn in boxing just after jab-cross and before hook – the onus fell upon Timothy Bradley and Mark Kriegel to join this pedestrian thing to the legendmaking decision Lomachenko’s dad took to make his son’s footwork the best in all sport, and Bradley and Kriegel were not cowed by the challenge. Even while the fight was tied Bradley assured us Lomachenko was something never before seen while Kriegel reiterated father-son dynamics once more for whatever male viewers are neither fathers nor sons.
Then Lomachenko did something excellent, and it all felt pretty good.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
