What a relief that Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather is over, and boxing has been saved from a dreadful fate.
It’s like the classic Steven Seagal ending. You don’t know exactly how a guy can take on so many challenges at once and knock them all into oblivion simultaneously, but Floyd-Oscar sure did it.
Anticipating this MacArthur-like return to the sport’s glory, I even kept a round by round account of the supernatural, talisman-like powers of The Golden/Pretty Boy merger while scoring the bout for Maxboxing readers.
Much akin to the phenomenon of the Hundredth Monkey – whereby a singular operative breakthrough metastasizes into a widespread consciousness – some highly positive things happened en route to the final bell that had nothing to do with the event, but instead were mere by-products of that whole “this fight will save boxing” theme so many lazy sportswriters injected into their pre-bout coverage. Even though most of them couldn’t tell Marlon Starling from Michael Stipe.
To their credit, few if any of the national boxing press did this, at least not among the newspapers fight beat types. To those that even advanced that as a viable premise – and you know who you are – it was merely an indicator of an outsider whose editor had assigned the boxing beat to cover The Big Fight In Vegas, before returning them to general assignment, football, curling, whatever. Rubes will be rubes.
Naturally, as your committed round-by-round scorer, I have assembled a list of all the wonderful things that happened as the bout went down, mostly outside the ring. My field notes on the event that hath resurrected our fine sport are submitted herein for your consumption:
Round 1 Floyd fights a perfect round, being at once invisible and sporadically offensive-minded, and staying a beat in front of Oscar, who mostly stalks and follows. It’s not much of a surprise, but the tension/anticipation level is buzzing, like the opening scene of a movie with muted dialogue and lots of sweeping, panoramic shots. It’ll pick up from here, you hope.
As the opening round kicks off, Jose Suliaman and the entire WBC board of directors disappear while Suliaman makes a beer run at the behest of Don King. King is neither at the fight nor in the mood for a brew, but just likes to see how fast Jose can move with his new replacement hip. Witnesses report a blue light coming down through the ceiling of the MGM Grand Garden Area vendor area before Jose and Co. vanish, with a dozen paper cups’ worth of Coors Light spilled on the floor.
Round 2 Oscar comes on, landing a few solid shots, mostly rights, while seemingly implementing his game plan to bully Floyd and make it a physical scrap. Mayweather’s response is to go defensive on the ropes, brilliantly blocking most of the shots Oscar tosses off in rapid-fire fashion, but it still looks good to the judges, and probably to the fans at home. In Wales, Joe Calzaghe finishes his fourth plate of bangers and mash at 4:30 a.m., having stayed up late to order the fight. He trudges into the bathroom and weighs himself – 14 stone, 6 lbs., or 188.
“If they’re going that crazy for this, imagine what they’d do to see me and Bernard ‘opkins,” Calzaghe says to his father, Enzo, as he settles back into the couch, his belly forming an impromptu placemat for a dessert-sized helping of Shepard’s pie.
Round 3 Another close round but The Pretty Boy probably takes it, landing a few stiff jabs while Oscar pursues. Mayweather still isn’t throwing combinations, but is doing enough to steal this one, it seems. Your humble Maxboxing round-by-round scorer resist the urge to cut-and-paste the action for this stanza from a premade template, written in a cynical mood during the bout’s buildup. “Like anybody would notice,” he mumbles to himself, envisioning the $54.95 charge that’ll be coming in a few weeks via cable bill, and wondering what that breaks down to on a dollar-per-gasp basis.
Back in Wales, Joe decides he’s done with making 168 pounds and dusting off substandard challengers, and will concede the necessary factors to make a bout with “The Executioner,” at light heavy or an appropriate catch weight, including glove sizes, location, overseas television rights, and protective cup size. Enzo excitedly dials Hopkins’ promoter to initiate negotiations, but, much to his disappointment, it goes straight to voicemail.
Round 4 Floyd continues to shimmy and move. Oscar chases, landing the occasional jab and/or right hand, while Mayweather counters with single shots before skittering out of range. A hard round to score, but Mayweather probably nipped due to his punches being a little easier to determine as connects, whereas Oscar’s blows and Floyd’s blocking motions seem a virtual photo finish every time.
In the Ukraine, an experimental form of plastic surgery is attempted by Dr. Sergey Bodiyovski – considered radical by modern standards and impermissible by the AMA — as Dr. B successful performs the first chin transplant between Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko.
Round 5 Another round for Floyd, as Oscar seems caught between styles, though his intermittent jab is working wonders when he throws it. Mayweather is back in a mini-groove, stopping, popping and dancing away and using every bit of the ring in a controlled fashion to limit exchanges to the 35-40 punch-per-round pace he’s used of late.
The crowd still seems willing to give the bout the benefit of the doubt and let it unfold into something enveloping, like an opera audience patiently sitting through a lengthy opening aria before getting to the meatier main musical score.
However, hardened boxing fans in the arena know exactly what is unfolding, and a subtle chorus of discontent is growing amongst their ranks, including a ringside Jack Nicholson, who’s seen enough bouts to know an ensuing snoozer may be in the works.
Nicholson, feeling no pain from a couple cocktails downed during the dreadful Rocky Juarez bout beforehand, makes his way within shouting distance to Mayweather’s corner to give some advice.
“Yo, Jack!” shouts Floyd. “What’s up? What you want?”
“I want you…to hold it….between your knees!” shouts Nicholson. His Jackness is hustled back to his seat by arena security staff while Roger Mayweather translates.
“Keep stickin’ like a chicken, babe,” explains Uncle Roger. “That’s what that’s about.” HBO’s Larry Merchant adroitly supplies context for viewers, citing Nicholson’s famous delivery of the line from “Five Easy Pieces,” but it is drowned out by a chorus of boos as the big screen shows a replay of Mayweather playing keep-away during the previous round.
Round 5
Another close round for Floyd as Oscar continues to walk and stalk, occasionally firing off a fast combo only to have Floyd stuff most of it despite the rapid assault. While Wladimir’s new chin settles in nicely, giving his face an elongated-if-regal look, Vitali’s body rejects his donor chin, causing Dr. Bodiyovski to hurriedly scan a database for a replacement while Vitali is kept in ice – literally.
Round 6 A painstaking round to score, as Oscar lands a few shots, while seemingly reluctant to commit and get into a higher gear. Mayweather isn’t exactly pulling ahead either, content to counter in spots while remaining hard to find. There’s nothing worse than scoring a bout a draw when you see it coming halfway through the fight, and your pithy round-by-round scorer imagines the raft of emails that will come should such a scenario ensue.
Despite this, with a 3-2 lead in rounds, Floyd just doesn’t do enough to take the round on this card, and De La Hoya knots it up, taking the stanza with several hooks to the body while tied up on the ropes. It’s more commitment to damage than anybody’s shown so far, and though it doesn’t seem to bother Floyd, it’s enough to take the duke.
After a harried cross-check of potential donors, Dr. Bodiyovski’s medical team realizes that Oleg Maskaev, ironically enough, is a close enough DNA match to supply Vitali with the goods. Team Klitschko has made a difficult choice, deciding to back Wladimir for a final run at the unified crown with a tough sacrifice as the cover charge. Given Vitali’s long layoff, Maskaev’s chin isn’t enough to return him to heavyweight glory, given his less-opposing offensive skills compared to his little brother’s. But it should stand up just enough to survive another parliamentary campaign for Vitali, a budding political figure in his native Ukraine.
Round 7 Mayweather jabs some (5) Oscar pursues, but no dice (7) This is a haiku (5)
Maskaev’s management, seeing the inevitable doom in facing WBC mandatory Sam Peter, sells the chin to Klitschko for two promotional options, four season passes to the Kiev Ice Capades, and a lifetime supply of back waxes for the hirsute Maskaev.
Round 8 See round 7.
Vitali undergoes another surgery and is deemed fit for political campaigning after a breaking-in period of several weeks, building up the chin’s resilience and getting it into shape. Wladimir, meanwhile, is deemed a complete transplant success, even going so far as to invite sparring partners to unload on him while preparing for Brewster, showing few effects from blows that are described as thunderous by ringside observers.
Round 9 A slow round through the first half as both trade a few meaningful shots. Floyd slips a half-dozen De La Hoya blows, smiles and skedaddles away. The crowd seems to be coming to their senses, like the mark in a five-card monte hustle. Oscar misses a wide hook near the end of the round that was so telegraphed it bears a Puerto Rico postmark, and Mayweather laughingly lets it sail by. An easy one to score for Floyd, no doubt.
Meanwhile, the renewed interest in the heavies is causing hell with the bookmakers. Odds on Klitschko and his new chin cause the Brewster-Wladimir link to skyrocket to 15-1 until a rumor circulates from the Brewster camp that he has exhumed Rocky Marciano and had a similar procedure, causing the line to plummet back down to a pick’em. Medical ethicists protest the procedures, citing it as a slippery slope toward all kinds of Frankenstinian experiments, but fans are excited now that Wladimir apparently has removed the big chink in his armor.
Round 10 Harold Lederman has it 87-84 for Floyd, while Merchant scores it 86-85 for The Pretty Boy. I’m with Merchant, and it’s comforting to know I’m close to both of them. When you have about ten seconds to spell-check, edit, cut, copy, paste, think and score a round before firing it off to the webmaster, it forces a kind of quick-rumbling cognitive deep-dive to assess the previous three minutes and make sense of the superior fighter. There’s no going back once you hit send.
Harold and I agree about 85 percent of the time, anyways, so as long as we’re not 2 or 3 points off this match will probably be reasonably scored. However, I still have nightmares about bouts like Jermain Taylor-Winky Wright, which was virtually impossible to assess because neither guy could dominate enough over thirty seconds, much less three minutes, to establish a clean-cut winner. It was a great match, but awful tough to do round by round on.
Thankfully, the action is much slower here, as Winky and Jermain probably landed more solid punches per minute than either of these guys in six. It’s like scoring an ice skating contest compared to a bronc-riding competition.
Dr. Bodiyovski, meanwhile, becomes an instantly sought-after commodity in boxing, and a long waiting list of potential clients emerges, resembling The Wizard of Oz for all the requests for bodily improvements.
Roy Jones, Jr. signs up for a new set of legs – requesting a Kenyan, where distance runners flourish – but pulls out at the last minute over a breakdown in negotiations over future purse percentages he’ll pay to the donor from his fresh wheels. In a fit of post-letdown fury, he takes his favorite basketball – a scale model of Antonio Tarver’s head – and dunks it several times in a row while HBO camera crews get some great footage of a comeback that, ultimately, fails to materialize.
Round 11 Oscar’s slipping behind and can’t seem to pull the trigger, nor find a constant groove. Floyd seems content to peck and jab and run his version of the four corners offense, with a flashy layup here and there before retreating to slickster mode. The crowd boos as Mayweather kills the clock, until Oscar connects on a solid right hand, eliciting a cheer from the fans. Mayweather might have been a little hurt by the shot, until you try and remember the last time De La Hoya really zonked anybody with a single right hand — probably on the same card where Joe Frazier turned the trick.
After Jones can’t get his new legs signed and delivered, Dr. B. continues to field requests from fighters for the radical new procedure, dubbed the “Klitschkotomy“ by netizens. Acelino Freitas is denied for a heart transplant — offering to procure and fly a baboon heart to Kiev — freeze-packed and preserved from a young buck captured in the wilds of the Brazilian jungle. The good Doctor, however, issues the following statement after his surprise rejection of a potentially high-profile client:
“I’m a surgeon, not a magician,” it reads.
Riots break out in Brazil for a couple hours, until everyone is distracted by all the hot women in bikinis. Brazil’s sports fans resume their twin obsessions with soccer and jiu-jitsu after a once-in-a-lifetime chance to produce a successor to Eder Jofre, and Freitas settles into a comfortable post-boxing career as affable host of the national version of “Dancing With The Stars” until he is KO’d on an all-celebrity showdown in the States in a run-in with Denny Terrio, though he is leading on the cards at the time of the stoppage.
Round 12 Another 170 seconds of ho-hum back and forth, until the ten-second warning, when both men unload on one another in a stunning display of fury that gives the crowd a nice jolt, however belated. The trade has all the shocking gravity of the plate of hot water your gram used to throw on you when you kept sleeping in during summer. Or maybe that was just in my family. But I digress.
With Floyd up 6-5 in rounds, I decide there’s no way I can give this stanza to Oscar, because that would make it a draw; since Floyd did exactly what he needed to do and Oscar only did some of what he should’ve, I opt to give the round, and the fight, to Mayweather.
But deep down, it’s really hard to care knowing the cable bill is going to break $300 this month and this fight hasn’t caused me to jolt the cute neighbor upstairs with an impromptu shout of joy. That’s kind of the litmus test, when I see her the next day, walking her little dog and looking scorching-sexy in those tiny shorts — she’s a dead ringer for Elizabeth Hurley, and divorcee, to boot — and she gives me a cutesy stare and says, “Boxing again?”
You could do worse for a neighbor, that’s for sure.
It’s kind of our running joke and 90 percent of what we we’ve said to each in nearly two years, and I’ve missed a chance to keep the gag going. Marvin Hagler would’ve never left me hanging like this. I never take the convo with her any further, as there’s always some guy upstairs in a cardigan who looks like he’s named Chip or Trevor or whatever, and I think he takes her golfing along with other equally WASPy pursuits. Some things are best left alone.
If Mayweather had stood and slugged, I’m sure she’d be downstairs right now at my place, listening to Muddy Waters, sucking down red wine, sliding across my wooden floors in socked feet and giving me the old eye while wearing my Slayer t-shirt.
If only.
Meanwhile, Wladimir’s transplant hasn’t just given him the solid chin of big brother Vitali. It’s also produced a massive source of CO2 absorption which, inexplicably but undeniably, is reducing worldwide levels of the gas, quickly mitigating the effects of global warming. Climatologists fly Wladimir to the North Pole and observe rapid, documented drops in CO2 levels as the chin is unveiled in all its glory.
HBO immediately signs Klitschko to a ten-fight contract extension rumored to be worth $200 million dollars, underwritten by massive sponsorship bucks from Greenpeace. Showtime counters by announcing a series of unification bouts in the straw, super middle and cruiserweight divisions, no more mandatories without phone-poll approval by fans, and all three of the Albert brothers against James Toney in a loser-leaves-boxing contest. Wlad’s chin is also becoming huge, having grown to six inches in length in a dramatic side effect of the procedure. Convinced that the Klitschkotomy represents a threat to the Democratic Platform for 2008, Al Gore intervenes, offering to act as Wladimir’s negotiator for the ensuing showdown with the Maskaev-Peter winner, as Brewster’s alleged Marcianotomy has been debunked by Pedro Fernandez. Gore figures he can influence the Klitschko-unification bout enough to damage the chin to the point where it will stop absorbing CO2, after being informed by party operatives that Earnie Shavers is unable to procure a license to fight for the title.
In an exclusive interview published at Boxingtalk.net, Gore explains he’s perfectly comfortable negotiating on behalf of Wladimir because he invented boxing. Later, the former veep claims he was misquoted.
Maskaev promoter Dennis Rappaport puts a positive spin on Chingate, citing that Maskaev, still recuperating from the removal of his chin and its subsequent donation to Vitali, will “only be harder to hit” in upcoming fights. But Maskaev’s days are clearly numbered now that he has to get by Peter, sans chin, while Wladimir, waiting in the wings, now has the durability to match his offensive dynamite against Brewster and whomever else they throw at him.
Post fight
The judges give Mayweather a split decision. De La Hoya is sanguine in defeat. Mayweather announces that he’s going to retire, now that he’s accomplished everything he wanted to accomplish.
On an equally meaningful note, Sierra Leone announces they are withdrawing their bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games.
The heavyweights have meaning again, the sport is back on an even keel, and the self-described “greatest fighter ever” (that’s Mayweather, in case you missed it) plans on saying he’ll actually call it quits with more competition between 140 and 154 pounds than you could shake a stick at.
Don’t you feel better now? Consider yourself saved.
