By Jake Donovan

That time of the year is rapidly approaching for Americans. Three more weeks before we as a nation elect our next President, even if far too many in the voting public aren’t particularly thrilled with the two leading candidates from which to choose.

With little in the way of a strong alternative, the reluctant choice will inevitably come down to Blue Donkey or Red Elephant once they enter the booth. Voters will keep campaign promises in mind in choosing one or the other, though not under the belief that either will deliver on even half of what was said on the road to Election Day, but based more so on intent.

It’s along those same lines that many in the boxing industry view the main event on tap this weekend, when Kelly Pavlik and Bernard Hopkins share a ring in Atlantic City, NJ (Saturday, HBO PPV, 9PM ET/6PM PT). It’s not quite the fight we asked for – it wasn’t even Team Pavlik’s first or second choice – but one on which the boxing public will ultimately settle.  And of course, it’s an event where both promise the performance of a lifetime in an evening well worth your $49.95 PPV investment.

One difference between the Presidential race and this weekend’s bout is the level of guess work involved in stressing over broken campaign promises.

The former is a matter of what they will eventually take off the table and how long it takes before the first promise is broken.

The latter eliminates the anticipation of a letdown; campaign promises have long ago been broken, which in fact has directly led to this very event being staged.

“Read my lips… no new taxes!”

George H.W. Bush belted out the aforementioned quote while on the campaign trail prior to being elected as our nation’s 41st President in 1988. It was a promise he tried his hardest to keep, but was forced to blink two years into his reign.

The boxing equivalent of a promise made, promise broken would be promoter Bob Arum’s unvarnished barnstorming during the years of feuding between his Top Rank Inc. outfit and Oscar de la Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions.

“No more God damn business fights” was what the legendary promoter repeatedly stated while insisting that the sport desperately needed to be brought back to the people. It was his reaction to the industry slowly becoming confined to casino atmosphere while those who considered themselves Arum’s peers were promoters only by job title, standing in line for casino and network handouts rather than actually promote an event themselves.

To his credit, nobody made a more concentrated effort than Arum to make good on that statement, especially in 2007. Between the likes of Manny Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto, Antonio Margarito, Kelly Pavlik and Erik Morales, only two of their eleven combined fights on the year took place in a casino town. Cities like New York, Chicago and San Antonio were reacquainted with the fight game, with crowds ranging from respectable to standing room only.

Alas, all promises are made to be broken.

Upon Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions’ kissing and making up midway through 2007, brought about a return to the way things have dreadfully become. The rematch between Manny Pacquiao and Marco Antonio Barrera was the first joint venture between the sport’s top two power brokers since the end of the Cold War, and their co-promotions have been casino-bound ever since.

The lone exception between then and now was Miguel Cotto’s narrow points win over Shane Mosley, which took place at Madison Square Garden last November. Cotto’s next two fights would be his only two of 2008 – both of which landed in casinos. The same can be said of every major Top Rank event this year, as well as their airing more pay-per-view events than any other promoter in 2008, airing at least one in every month but January, including six of the eight HBO has distributed to date.

Barring injuries or other forms of postponement, the year will end with Arum involved in seven of HBO’s 10 pay-per-views, all of which carry the same story line as any Top Rank card aired on HBO or Showtime in 2008 – landing in either Las Vegas or Atlantic City, no exceptions.

“We need change, change, change!”

A vote for John McCain is a vote for four more years of the same eight years of failures, or so Barack Obama’s camp has insisted ever since the respective Presidential nominees were officially selected earlier this year.

Prior to Kelly Pavlik’s title shot late last year, change was demanded at the top of the middleweight division. A changing of the guard came about last September, when Pavlik climbed off of the canvas to knock out Jermain Taylor in seven rounds to lay claim as the lineal middleweight champion.

Taylor’s approval rating was in the toilet, having steadily declined from the moment he won a controversial decision over Bernard Hopkins in July 2005, all the way through to his dreadfully boring split decision win over junior middleweight Cory Spinks last May.

The latter bout saw a co-feature that breathed new life into the middleweight divison. It was where Pavlik would finally receive the respect his career long deserved, dominating fierce punching Edison Miranda en route to a knockout win to emphatically stamped Pavlik’s claim as the top threat to the middleweight crown.

Though it was that very fight that proved Pavlik’s worth to the masses, it was a match that Pavlik’s promoter Bob Arum felt was highly unnecessary.

“My favorite middleweight champeen of all time, Marvelous Marvin Hagler would’ve never allowed a fight like this to happen,” Arum would insist during the pre-fight buildup, “because it would’ve denied him the satisfaction of beating both of them himself. But alas, these are the times we live in.”

He would say that before proclaiming that Kelly Pavlik had the potential to go down as the greatest middleweight of all time. He said it before the Miranda fight, and for damn sure sold that same story moments after his knocking out Taylor to win the middleweight crown. Whereas Taylor’s reign was littered with controversy and disinterest, Pavlik was the one to unite the masses, and bring back those fans the sport lost to Mixed Martial Arts and the likes. 

At long last, change was upon us. The middleweight division would return to its past glory, or so we were told.

One year in, and to say it’s been more of the same would actually be a compliment to Pavlik’s present reign. Saturday will be his third fight since winning the middleweight crown, though he boasts only a single title defense, a third-round knockout over sub-standard alphabet mandatory challenger Gary Lockett this past June in Atlantic City.

This weekend’s match will be Pavlik’s second at a catchweight. Contractual obligations forced the pride of Youngstown (OH) into an immediate rematch with Taylor at 166 lb. earlier this year. Pavlik won the 12-round affair, enjoying a late surge to take a unanimous decision win, though snapping a nine-fight knockout streak in the process.

Chances are, his present one-fight knockout streak ends Saturday night. Hopkins is rarely shaken in the ring, never mind ever on the verge of being stopped. The future first-ballot Hall of Famer boasts perhaps one of the best chins in boxing history, having only been down twice through 20 years and 55 fights as a pro.

Even less likely is Pavlik’s 2009 campaign taking his middleweight reign to new heights. Already in discussion is the prospect of a showdown with former super middleweight king, undefeated Joe Calzaghe. The Welsh southpaw has to take care of business against his own faded former boxing great next month when he faces Roy Jones at Madison Square Garden.

If that fight doesn’t take place, it’s either because negotiations will have once again fallen apart (this weekend was reserved for this very fight, only for the two fighters to instead head in different directions), or Pavlik will have been forced to honor a mandatory obligation.

He’ll know the opponent by the time he steps into the ring to face Hopkins, as Marco Antonio Rubio and Enrique meet on the PPV-televised undercard for the right to challenge for one of Pavlik’s alphabet belts.

Regardless of how it all shakes out, little to nothing changes in the way of his middleweight reign. A Calzaghe fight would take place either at 168 or 175, while beating either Rubio or Ornelas is only marginally better than, say knocking out Gary Lockett.

“He’s a straight-talking maverick who’s not afraid to ruffle feathers.”

My friends, John McCain is not your garden-variety Republican candidate. He’ll reach across the aisle, promoter bipartisanship, and isn’t afraid to stand up to members of his own party.

It’s highly unlikely that Bernard Hopkins ever runs for public office, but that won’t stop him from flapping his gums as much, if not more so, than any politician on the campaign trail.

There’s not enough column space to list all of the campaign promises Hopkins has broken through the years. Every fight he’s has and continues to accept beyond January 15, 2006 contributes to the untruth he told his dearly departed mother Shirley years ago, that he wouldn’t fight beyond the age of 40.

Like many fighters in the twilight who score a huge win, Hopkins insisted moments after his near-shutout of Antonio Tarver two years ago that it was without a doubt the final fight of his long, storied career.

Like many fighters in general, Hopkins decide there was still too much fight left in him. Mere months before his 44th birthday, The Executioner’s career lingers on.

The most infamous promise broken was one he still refuses to accept as reality – that he’d ever lose to a white boy, as he repeatedly said in the face of Joe Calzaghe well before their April ’08 battle even saw ink to paper.

The sound bite immediately became the storyline the moment the fight was made official. It appeared in just about every write-up prior to the fight, and many critics were quick to remind Hopkins of his words the moment the official verdict was announced.

In his defense, there was no shortage of ringside scribes or fans watching at HBO who believed that he in fact deserved the nod over Joe Calzaghe this past April in Las Vegas. Calzaghe, making his stateside debut, was dropped in the opening round and delivered perhaps his least inspiring performance in years in outlasting the crafty veteran.

That the fight was rough on the eyes falls in line with many of Hopkins’ encounters in recent years. It’s what we’ve come to accept, prior to and in retrospect. But it’s his amazing gift of self-salesmanship that still draws boxing fans to his fights, in attendance or watching at home.

No, he’s not nor never has been a blockbuster by any means. But how many fighters do you know that can not only lie to you, but do so while you know that they’re lying, yet still leave you compelled to see if there’s even a shred of validity to their claims.

And so it’s with every fight that the old pro claims will be a throwback performance, where he’ll drag it out of his opponent and give every fan in the house their full money’s worth.

And with every fight, he instead only throws a single punch every four or five seconds. In every fight, the number of clinches and fouls will replace any semblance of sustained action or highlight reel moments.

Yet despite his remarkable ability to make the best fighters look amateurish (his narrow loss against Calzaghe being just the latest in a long line of examples), there he was, last man standing when it came time for Team Pavlik to secure an opponent.

Original plans called for an optional title defense against a name to be determined in further building up anticipation for a future showdown with Calzaghe, only money and politics crossed off just about every name on the list.

Some opponents wanted a bigger purse. HBO dismissed several other names. Pavlik’s own unwillingness to take short money negated Arum’s initial plan of a hometown showcase headlining an independent pay-per-view.

And so it became Hopkins, ten pounds above the weight in which Pavlik is supposed to serve as the present and the future.

The last promise is in line with the evening’s theme, “Unstoppable.” It serves as dual reference – Pavlik entering as the undefeated king of middleweights, Hopkins having never been stopped in his long, illustrious career.

Pavlik’s handlers are promising a knockout, since “just” a win over 43-year old Hopkins isn’t enough to sell a fight. Hopkins promises to be the one to snatch that “0,” and that age ain’t nothing but a number, despite the obvious signs of declination in this the twilight of his career.

Obviously, one of them will leave the ring Saturday night having eventually broken another campaign promise.

Chances are, both will fall short of giving the people what they want… worse, in a choice nobody really wanted to make in the first place.

Jake Donovan is a voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Comments/questions can be submitted to JakeNDaBox@gmail.com.