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By Lyle Fitzsimmons - Don’t get me wrong, folks. I’m all for excitement.
When two guys meet in ring center, drop all pretense about a battle of skills and simply stand toe to toe with designs on bashing each other into submission, I get as into it as the next guy.
I appreciated Gatti and Ward. I was in awe of Corrales and Castillo. And I watched with admiration on Saturday night when Brandon Rios and Mike Alvarado woke up their predecessors’ brutal echoes.
I humbly concede that the amount of heart, soul and guts that it takes to engage in such a competition – win, lose or draw – goes far beyond the capacity of keyboard-bashing wannabes like me.
In fact, none of us with a shred of integrity would even try to imply otherwise.
But excitement is one thing. Excellence is quite another.
And as titillating as the 1,316 throws and 337 lands might have been to the thousands in attendance and millions tuning in, they weren’t close to proving either the Coloradan or Californian were at all capable of handling a qualified foe whose skills had evolved much past a caveman’s.
Lest anyone forget, the Rios who’s being so breathlessly celebrated today is the same guy whose acumen was in doubt only six months ago, when an opponent with a strategy beyond smash and grab did everything but win on two of the year’s most nose-curdling scorecards.
Heck, that was only Richard Abril – a 29-year-old Cuban with a middling resume – and the springtime odor in Las Vegas was so bad that even the fairness-challenged WBA allowed him to keep hold of an interim title belt in spite of a decision officially split in the direction of his opponent.
But now, after 20 minutes of lumpy mayhem against a 32-year-old with a career’s worth of mid-card victims, Rios has somehow been vaulted past the guy who schooled him and into the high-end element of legit multiple-division en****** like Juan Manuel Marquez and Manny Pacquiao. [Click Here To Read More]
When two guys meet in ring center, drop all pretense about a battle of skills and simply stand toe to toe with designs on bashing each other into submission, I get as into it as the next guy.
I appreciated Gatti and Ward. I was in awe of Corrales and Castillo. And I watched with admiration on Saturday night when Brandon Rios and Mike Alvarado woke up their predecessors’ brutal echoes.
I humbly concede that the amount of heart, soul and guts that it takes to engage in such a competition – win, lose or draw – goes far beyond the capacity of keyboard-bashing wannabes like me.
In fact, none of us with a shred of integrity would even try to imply otherwise.
But excitement is one thing. Excellence is quite another.
And as titillating as the 1,316 throws and 337 lands might have been to the thousands in attendance and millions tuning in, they weren’t close to proving either the Coloradan or Californian were at all capable of handling a qualified foe whose skills had evolved much past a caveman’s.
Lest anyone forget, the Rios who’s being so breathlessly celebrated today is the same guy whose acumen was in doubt only six months ago, when an opponent with a strategy beyond smash and grab did everything but win on two of the year’s most nose-curdling scorecards.
Heck, that was only Richard Abril – a 29-year-old Cuban with a middling resume – and the springtime odor in Las Vegas was so bad that even the fairness-challenged WBA allowed him to keep hold of an interim title belt in spite of a decision officially split in the direction of his opponent.
But now, after 20 minutes of lumpy mayhem against a 32-year-old with a career’s worth of mid-card victims, Rios has somehow been vaulted past the guy who schooled him and into the high-end element of legit multiple-division en****** like Juan Manuel Marquez and Manny Pacquiao. [Click Here To Read More]
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