In the wake of Saturday?s unification bout between WBC/WBC middleweight champion Saul ?Canelo? Alvarez and IBF middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs at the Staples Center in L.A, the finger-pointing has begun.
We had two elite fighters at the top of their game and the better man won and the judges didn?t blow it, which was reason in itself to celebrate. But no one was celebrating. Some criticized the lack of action. Others mourned boxing?s abdication to showbiz. The standards that define memorable performances are loosely defined and sometimes found wanting, but loose standards had nothing to do with it.
Saturday?s fight was a dud, unbefitting both men and the sport they represent. It lacked urgency. It fell flat. It was inconsequential. Neither Canelo nor Jacobs has been hungry for quite some time and they fought accordingly. While affording them all the respect boxers of their caliber deserve, they fought as if winning or losing, if not a foregone colcusion, hardly mattered in the global entertainment media conglomerate scheme of things.
It felt less like a fight than a business arrangement, less like the gladiatorial games in Ancient Rome than ?Let?s put on a boxing show and no one will get hurt and no one will know and everyone will go home happy.? But no one went home happy. Not numb enough to be impressed, the disappointed swore, ?Never again!?
But there?s a spectacle just down the road.
We can praise noncommittal fighters and pretend it?s enough. Maybe the prize in prizefights is all that matters. A fighter?s life may be ?nasty, brutish and short,? both in and/or out the ring, but it looked like there was enough at stake worth fighting for. Belts were in the offing. Futures hung in the balance. A lot was up for grabs.
Or so we thought.
It wasn?t a fight to remember. It was a fight to forget. Demetrius Andrade has the WBO belt, the only middleweight belt of any consequence not already in Canelo?s possession. But with Canelo in his prime, honed and hammered into a classy fighting machine, he?ll do to ?Boo Boo? what he does to anyone standing in his way; and it will be fun to watch.
But the third fight with Gennady Golovkin is what people want to see. He was ringside in L.A., and when he appeared in close-up on the jumbo screens encircling the ring, the crowd showered the former champion with hostility. Wearing dark shades, a poker face, a deadpan expression, he resembled a Kazakh Killer in a James Bond film. He?s no longer the ?The Good Guy,? the gosh-golly, gee-wiz, smiley-faced boxer repeating ?big drama show, big drama show? in fractured English. That?s ancient history. Golovkin has changed. He?s gone over to the dark side. He?s The Bad Guy now, the strong, silent type, a supervillain from a hackneyed wrestling script. Without moving a muscle or saying word, the sphinx with a riddle glanced at the champ; he looked like Huckleberry Finn on steroids. Then the fight started.
Golovkin watched with dismay. ?Frankly I was expecting much more,? he said after 12 desultory rounds. ?It was just really like a sparring match. It was a little boring because they are both high level boxers and they should give more to the boxing fans.?
It?s easy to criticize from a ringside seat, especially dressed an antihero, but there was much to fault.
?I didn?t see any emotions,? said Golovkin. ?I didn?t see anything special. It was just a good sparring match.?
I used those exact same words myself. No better words described it.
