Pumpkins and PPVs, vampires and vamping: The Canelo-Mbilli running diary

As I’ve always said, when Saul “Canelo” Alvarez headlines an all-day pay-per-view on Halloween in a war zone in Saudi Arabia, you have to write a running diary about it. Even when there’s a non-zero chance that running diary will end abruptly with the description: “Feed goes out. Doesn’t come back on. Maybe going ahead with this fight card was a bad idea.”

Well, good news: That didn’t happen.

(I guess I should have written “spoiler alert” first, for those who were unsure whether missiles flew in the vicinity of The Venue in Riyadh on Saturday.)

The fight card began on time at 10:00 a.m. ET, and it ended not so on time some nine hours later. Nothing was canceled or interrupted by violence of the non-pugilistic variety. And all of my usual guests — International Boxing Hall of Famer Nigel Collins, New Jersey Boxing Hall of Famer Bill Dettloff and International Boxing Hall of Fame Induction Weekend volunteer David Kushin — were able to attend.

So here goes with the return of the BoxingScene PPV running diary, for the Halloween day “Mexico vs. the World” Canelo-Christian Mbilli card, where for every treat (a couple of rounds of boxing action) we got a trick (endless studio blather):

10:19 a.m.: My guests aren’t planning to arrive until about 1 p.m. (the PPV portion of the card is scheduled for 1:45), but I intend to watch from the moment DAZN goes on the air — a mark I miss by about 19 minutes because I have to run out to the grocery store to pick up tomato pie (basically cold pizza without cheese) and assorted snacks. So I TOTALLY missed the first two rounds of Brayan Leon vs. Hector Aguirre because I TOTALLY would never have DAZN streaming on my phone and the phone positioned on my dashboard as I drive home from the food store, because that would be dangerous and I am an adult who makes smart decisions. Anyway, Leon-Aguirre, an eight-rounder between unbeaten super middleweights, is in round 3 when I plop my rear on the couch.

10:27: Broadcaster Sergio Mora questions his own choice of the word “sanctuary” and says he was also considering “refuge,” and blow-by-blow man Todd Grisham tells him he made the right choice. Wait a minute, are you telling me it’s possible to have a friendly conversation about Sergio’s vocabulary rather than insulting him when he tries to use an SAT word? Hmm. Weird.