by David P. Greisman
We apply the phrase “the Super Bowl of…” to three situations: an exorbitant event, the culmination of competition, or a combination of both.
There is little that can compare to the big fight feel – the buzz in the air, the hair standing up on your neck, the butterflies rolling in your stomach. You can’t miss it. You must see what happens, how it happens and when it happens.
Boxing needs more than one or two Super Bowls per year.
It needs those nights when the mainstream media take note, when the casual fans tune in, when a champion can be anointed or a superstar made in front of the largest possible audience.
Because unlike the big game in the major sports, the big fight in boxing isn’t the end. The culmination of competition isn’t the conclusion, with the winner starting all over again next season. A victorious boxer can build on momentum. He might defend a title belt. He will continue a storyline.
But that is the advantage that the major sports have: a natural storyline that progresses into the grandest of finales. The season establishes favorites and underdogs, feeds into pennant races and playoffs – and, ultimately, it peaks.
There will always be the two best teams going for a championship. Boxing is an individual sport. It isn’t always the two best fighters facing off in the ring. And even when they do face off, rarely was there a natural progression to deliver them there.
And so instead we often get the exorbitant event, the fights that are by default the biggest even though they are not the best that can be made.
Without Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr., we got Manny Pacquiao facing Joshua Clottey in a fight in which the stadium was as much of an attraction than the potential action.
We got Manny Pacquiao facing Antonio Margarito in a fight in which the talk was as much about plaster of Paris as it was about pugilism.
And we are getting Manny Pacquiao against Shane Mosley in a fight for which most of the boxing press is more interested in the commercial aspects – what network will be airing the pay-per-view and what station advertisements will be running on – than they are in the combatants.
Pacquiao has taken over for Oscar De La Hoya in the role as the face of boxing, a passing of the torch that happened when Pacquiao snuffed out the remainder of De La Hoya’s fighting flame. That happened, of course, on a night when the mainstream media took note and the casual fans tuned in.
Pacquiao’s fights are the Super Bowls, the biggest of bouts. There are other major matches made that receive less attention but are nonetheless important.
Last year brought Sergio Martinez’s stunning knockout of Paul Williams in their rematch, a win that finally earned Martinez the starring role he long deserved. The year brought bouts between Jean Pascal and Chad Dawson, between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Shane Mosley, and between the various “Super Six” super middleweights.
This year has already given us a fight between Timothy Bradley and Devon Alexander, a pairing that was long anticipated even though the action failed to match the suspense. Another big bout for the junior-welterweight division is expected to take place later this year, pitting Bradley against Amir Khan.
Of lesser note to fans but just as important to the sport are the bantamweight bouts: Fernando Montiel against Nonito Donaire on Feb. 19 and Joseph Agbeko v. Abner Mares on April 23.
And the “Super Six” semifinals are slated to get people back to talking about that tournament in May.
We had thought that 2010 would be a rebuilding year because of all the potential big fights that had yet to be consummated and did not look to be likely. Now it appears that 2011 could be the actual rebuilding year. Many of those fights have been made. Our wish list has had several entries crossed off.
We are still no closer to seeing Pacquiao face Mayweather, not with their egos and demands, and not with Mayweather’s legal woes. That fight, if made, would still be big, but it would not be as huge as it would’ve been in 2010 or could eventually be if given enough time to market.
We are still no closer to Wladmir Klitschko (or Vitali Klitschko) facing David Haye, not with Haye digging in his heels at the bargaining table, even though Haye signing for the fight and then winning it would give him lucrative leverage for the future that he can’t get without the Klitschkos.
We are still no closer to Juan Manuel Lopez meeting Yuriorkis Gamboa for featherweight supremacy. They fought on the same card in January 2010, and when fans began to demand immediate fireworks, their promoter, Bob Arum, argued in favor of a slow boil. Now it appears as if building that fight is no longer a priority, that Lopez-Gamboa has been put on the back burner.
We’re perpetually waiting.
In the meantime, while Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko wait for their big fights, they bring in large crowds in Germany for bouts against lesser opponents.
While Lucian Bute waits for the other top 168-pounders to finish with the “Super Six” tournament, he brings in large crowds in Montreal where they watch him dispose of lower-tier foes.
While Tomasz Adamek waits for a big fight (and he will get a Klitschko later this year), he brings thousands of people of Polish heritage into the Prudential Center in Newark to see him in trial runs against other big men.
There is value in them staying busy – it creates a storyline.
There is value in them building around local and regional fan bases – it creates customers who are buying into the storyline and becoming interested in following it to its conclusion.
This is how we can have more Super Bowls of boxing – not by waiting around in inactivity, waiting for the large license fee or the major title shot to make itself available.
It is okay to build toward a fight, to create a storyline that will make a fight bigger. But chapters need to be written, and the story must be brought to its climax in order to achieve its proper payoff.
The 10 Count
1. Can we please withhold the questioning of an injured athlete’s heart until – at the very least – he’s received a complete examination from a doctor?
And can we please stop questioning an athlete’s heart just because he’s not as much a warrior as someone else has shown himself to be?
Yes, Jay Cutler isn’t Brett Favre. But how many football players are?
And yes, Devon Alexander isn’t Arturo Gatti. But how many boxers are?
2. Remember how they called Israel Vazquez a quitter after his first fight with Rafael Marquez?
How many people call Vazquez a quitter now?
3. Remember when so many people insisted that Nate Campbell quit after being on the receiving end of a Timothy Bradley head butt?
And then Campbell was diagnosed with a slight vitreous hemorrhage – bleeding within his eye.
I think back to what Campbell told me five days after his fight with Bradley:
“I’ve always fought my hardest to try and entertain the fans, but people are going to believe what they want to believe. You’ll always have those few idiots that think it’s perfectly fine for me to suffer a foul, potentially destroy my eyesight, and to cast that aside and go fight another nine rounds with one eye, taking more shots without getting medical attention.
“I’ll fight through cuts all day long and twice on Sunday. But this was different. And these same people who want to talk shit, well they are the first ones to write you off anyways, so I don’t much care what they think. Five years from now, if I were stumbling around with a white cane and a Seeing Eye dog, where would they be? I’ll tell you where: They’d still be on the Internet talking shit about someone else.”
4. Speaking of Israel Vazquez… there’s this headline from BoxingScene.com this past Friday:
“Israel Vazquez Considers Ring Return in April or May”
Please, no…
Fortunately, this appears as if it won’t be happening, according to the Espinoza Boxing Club, which managed Vazquez.
Responding to a similar report on another website, Espinoza Boxing’s Twitter account said this: “Not true.”
5. Please, no (part two)… There’s this headline from Jan. 28 on ESPN.com:
“Fernando Vargas to make comeback”
Alas, this one is true. He’ll be facing Henry “Sugar Poo” Buchanan on April 16.
6. There are the fighters who just can’t let go of the sport, and so they come back. There are the fighters who need the money, and so they come back. There are the fighters who retire and don’t adjust to life outside of the ring.
And then there’s Juan Urango, who hasn’t been heard from since his March 2010 knockout loss to Devon Alexander.
“What happened to Urango?” someone asked Dan Rafael of ESPN.com this past Friday during his weekly online chat.
The answer, per Rafael: “Urango’s promoter told me, literally, he bought a pig farm in his country and has not heard from him in forever and can’t reach him.”
7. If you watch illegal, live streams of boxing matches online, you should be paying attention to the latest developments involving illegal streams of UFC pay-per-views and the United States government’s actions against many of the websites that carry streams of a countless variety of broadcasts.
Last week, the federal government seized the domains of a number of websites that carry such pirated broadcasts.
And, as I noted last week, the UFC’s parent company recently sued video streaming website Justin.tv for illegal online broadcasts of its pay-per-views, alleging that the website has continually failed to keep such piracy from happening.
More than 50,000 people tuned into more than 200 streams on the website to watch the UFC 121 pay-per-view in October featuring Brock Lesnar against Cain Velazquez, according to the lawsuit.
At least one major streaming website quickly popped back up under slightly modified domain names registered in the countries of Samoa and Montenegro. This is akin to online gambling websites registering in countries where such activity is legal.
The government seizures and the UFC’s lawsuit serve as warning shots, a sort of “We’re not going to let you get away with this.”
I imagine a lot more people went searching for a good sports bar to watch Saturday’s UFC pay-per-view. It will be interesting to see if any boxing promoters or broadcasters decide to take similar action to keep from losing money.
8. This week in manufactured boxing quotes? Super Bowl picks:
Miguel Cotto: “The Steel Curtain of Pittsburgh will drop and close the show on the Green Bay Packers. I’m going with the Iron City.”
Ricardo Mayorga: “I’m pulling for Green Bay. They fight hard like me. The Steelers will roll over like Cotto when I dropkick him in our super brawl on March 12.”
More believable but still not necessarily said by the source? These from Nonito Donaire (“Aaron Rodgers is a great quarterback. He throws very few interceptions. He will lead the Packers to victory.”) and Fernando Montiel (“I’m going with Green Bay. They’re peaking at the right time.”)
9. And now – a linguistic glance at the commentary of Teddy Atlas and Joe Tessitore in the ninth round of the bout between Brian Vera and Sergio Mora on ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights.”
We join the commentary about 35 seconds into the round (notations mine):
Atlas: “You know you don’t see a lot of fighters get a chance to do endorsements or commercials, but I have a good one for Vera.”
Tessitore: “What is it?”
Atlas: “Spot (1) remover. Because we’ve been talking about the spots (2) of Mora all night, and Vera has removed those spots (3) the old-fashioned way: just being busy, staying right on top of him, not allowing Mora to have those moments, to grant those spots (4).”
Tessitore: “Mora right on top of our broadcast spot (5). We have plenty of red spots (6) across all our materials with these two cuts over his eyes. A lot of his blood has been spraying ringside.”
Atlas: “Now there was a good example of why some of these rounds could be difficult to score. It depends on the way the judges are looking at them. Vera has been the busier guy throughout this round, but a moment ago he throwed [sic] a lot but Mora did a good job, like he did right there, of countering in-between one of those spots (7).
“I don’t know whether or not it’s enough, though. I don’t know if Mora is just doing too little in-between, if it’s enough spots (8). There was a good spot (9) again by Mora.”
[And, a little bit later…]
Teddy: “Again, Vera the busier guy, but Mora doing a good job of landing clean shots in spots (10).”
Joe: “And I’ll tell you in this round, Mora is also quite busy.”
Atlas: “I should say: Mora doing a good job of landing in spots (11).”
[And just before the round ended…]
Atlas: “And Mora really pushing the envelope this round, doing something he normally doesn’t do, which is lead with the pressure, not just look for spots (12) on the outside.”
10. It’s a shame that the commentary in the ninth round went in that direction, because otherwise on the night, Atlas’s work was largely, well… spot-on.
David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com.
Follow David on Twitter at twitter.com/fightingwords2 or on Facebook at facebook.com/fightingwordsboxing, or send questions and comments to fightingwords1@gmail.com
