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BY MICHAEL KATZ - When the rejuvenating evening at the fights was over, Oscar de la Hoya asked rhetorically, Is boxing dead? and happily answered, Not at all.
As Jorge Linares, the Japanese-based Venezuelan featherweight would understate his Stateside debut, A new star was born.
Or as Michael Katsidis, whose face looked as if it stopped a freight train, would note, I said I was going to bring new blood to the sport and I guess you got it.
And then Bernard Hopkins, in his second coming as a light-heavyweight, would prove that old blood, too, could play this young man's game, even if the not always strictly by the rules.
Hopkins, new body by Shilstone - Ponce de Leon should have been seeking the legendary conditioner, Mackie Shilstone, and not some watery myth - spilled some of Ronald Wright's blood, turning Winky into Blinky, and leaving the younger man (a stripling of 35) gasping down the homestretch.
Seated next to may at Mandalay Bay was Nigel Collins, who noted how Wright seemed to be weakening. At the same time, it was Hopkins inhaling the proverbial fountain, Between the eighth and ninth rounds, he could be seen on his stool, happily breathing in deeply of whatever magic elixir that apparently is bottled in Philadelphia. Wright won the eighth round on all three official scorecards; he did not win another.
What may be more remarkable is that Hopkins's powers of recuperation are reflective of the sport's. Only the week before, on a wide tapestry that included coast-to-coast welterweight contests, the game obviously lost one of its great attractions, especially to the blood-thirsty, with the demise of Arturo Gatti.
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As Jorge Linares, the Japanese-based Venezuelan featherweight would understate his Stateside debut, A new star was born.
Or as Michael Katsidis, whose face looked as if it stopped a freight train, would note, I said I was going to bring new blood to the sport and I guess you got it.
And then Bernard Hopkins, in his second coming as a light-heavyweight, would prove that old blood, too, could play this young man's game, even if the not always strictly by the rules.
Hopkins, new body by Shilstone - Ponce de Leon should have been seeking the legendary conditioner, Mackie Shilstone, and not some watery myth - spilled some of Ronald Wright's blood, turning Winky into Blinky, and leaving the younger man (a stripling of 35) gasping down the homestretch.
Seated next to may at Mandalay Bay was Nigel Collins, who noted how Wright seemed to be weakening. At the same time, it was Hopkins inhaling the proverbial fountain, Between the eighth and ninth rounds, he could be seen on his stool, happily breathing in deeply of whatever magic elixir that apparently is bottled in Philadelphia. Wright won the eighth round on all three official scorecards; he did not win another.
What may be more remarkable is that Hopkins's powers of recuperation are reflective of the sport's. Only the week before, on a wide tapestry that included coast-to-coast welterweight contests, the game obviously lost one of its great attractions, especially to the blood-thirsty, with the demise of Arturo Gatti.
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