Rios vs Alvarado II: Soul-cleansing violence and the blood of boxing

There was a spot just behind the forward-leaning right glove of Mike Alvarado's guard that, in the earliest rounds of Saturday night's contest, may as well have had a bullseye painted on it.

His opponent, the heavy-fisted, iron-jawed Brandon Rios, aimed his left hook at that spot every time he was close enough, and one couldn't help but wince every time he torqued it around Alvarado's hand with brutal affect. He hurt Alvarado badly with a stiff jab in the second, and for a minute it looked like the fight might end earlier than it did the first time the two met in October of 2012, when Rios stopped him in the seventh.

"Mile High Mike," as the Denver-native Alvarado is called, would not be so easily dispatched, though. Smiling and grinning through the worst of Rios' barrage - whistling in the dark, some might say, but still - he came back in the later rounds, moving and boxing with the clean footwork that gave him his best (and maybe, only) chance at beating the fearsome puncher.

His movement confounded Rios, kept him off-balance, and wouldn't let him land anything more than a one or two-punch combo. No combinations meant few openings. Few openings meant that Rios' city-wall-shaking left hook stayed in its holster.

All the while, Alvarado strafed him with Diego Corrales-style looping right hands that whipped the Californian's head to-and-fro and dragged attention away from his own face, which was a swollen, bloody mess by the final bell.

One wound up with the interim WBO super-lightweight belt. Both went to the hospital. Neither had serious injuries. Everyone - and I mean everyone - won.

Too many times do boxing fans (casual or otherwise) walk away from a much-hyped fight with a sense of disappointment, a lackluster apathy that drains the energy from a sport built solely upon the electricity inherent to a good brawl. Too many times do we fork over too much money to watch men who care too little move too much and take too few chances. But once in a while, we're reminded why we love it. Saturday night was why we love it.

Welterweight champ Timothy Bradley put it succinctly afterwards when he called the affair a "bloody war" that saw "both fighters put their lives on the line."

It wasn't just hyperbole. When a man's face - inflated with blood and decorated with a scalpel cut over the left eye that looks like it's going to make the whole thing burst - looks like Mike Alvarado's did, and when you see Brandon Rios take flush shots that would lay low lesser men, have no doubt that there are indeed lives on the line.

It was all of the black beauty of this sport, rolled up into one night. And boxing, which so often likes to jam its own hand in the garbage disposal just because it feels so good when it stops, didn't fuck it up. No $70 pricetag, no anti-climactic ending, no shaking your head at 12 a.m. and wondering, "Why do I even watch?"

Fights like this are the lifeblood pumping through every vein of the sport. They lend inspiration to every amateur who spends his Friday night with his head tight against the side of a heavy bag instead of a bottle of whiskey, every kid shadowboxing in the mirror pretending he's Rocky. They create new boxing fans instead of disgusting the old ones, and build legends instead of destroying them.

Fights like this, as Roy Jones Jr. said, are what movies are made of. Fights like this blow MMA out of the water.

And we cannot forget that men like Brandon Rios and Mike Alvarado are the ones who make this sport what it is, even when "what it is" might not always seem clear. It's not Floyd Mayweather and his rap sheet or Manny Pacquaio and his swarms of hangers-on, not David Haye and his bluster or Wladimir Klitschko and his overwhelming ... prudence. It's the simple, brutal violence that cleanses the soul and reminds us just how brave some men are.

There will, inevitably, be a rubber match between these two; after 19 rounds of carnage, it's only right that it, of course, happen again. When it does, take a second to truly appreciate the lengths to which these men are going to in the name of sport and victory; not many will willingly hasten their own deaths by fighting with reckless abandon and declaring, "Fortune, it is you I follow!"

In reality, that's what these two are doing. And we the fans are lucky to be watching.

http://www.badlefthook.com/2013/4/1/4169610/rios-vs-alvarado-ii-soul-cleansing-violence-blood-boxing

Roy Jones's Last Chapter

Steve Janoski- It was with some trepidation that I read Vivek Wallace’s article, “Roy Jones: Closed Chapter, Open Book.” My fear was that somehow, through his last few fights, Jones is regaining his stature, at least amongst boxing writers, as a top player in the game. Upon reading the article, I saw these fears confirmed.

I have been a long time Roy Jones Jr. fan, and one need only watch one of the plethora of tributes on youtube to see why. In his prime, Roy was not only one of the greatest to step into the ring, he was also a showman worthy of P.T. Barnum’s stature.. Roy not only won the fights; he put on a spectacle that would leave fans with everlasting impressions that cemented his greatness- crushing Virgil Hills’ ribs with brutal right hand, making James Toney look like a fool for taunting him mid-fight, and pulling a page out of a cockfighting technique book in his stunning knockout of Glen Kelly. The man is to boxing what Dominique Wilkins was to basketball; a human highlight reel that not only triumphed, but made your jaw drop while doing it.

But those days are long since past. Since Jones’ knockout loss at the fists of Antonio Tarver, he has not recovered the strut and swagger that he once had. It has returned only in flashes, little pieces of excellence that Jones cannot quite draw together. He showed those pieces in his fight against Trinidad, in the first round of the Calzaghe fight, in his demolition of Lacy. But to say that the man is still a “top talent in the sport” is a vain attempt to resurrect a fighter whose body is not in the game anymore.

Wallace says that Roy is 5-1 in his last six fights. That’s true. But who were they against? Prince Badi Ajamu and Anthony Hanshaw were the first two. If anyone knows who they are, go out tonight and meet some girls, because you watch boxing too much.

The next was Tito Trinidad. Legend? Of course. Fading at age 35, fighting at 23 pounds above welterweight after taking three years off? Just a bit. Omar Sheika was another journeyman fighter, a guy whom Jones fought in the back of a convenience store somewhere in Florida in March. And follow that with “Left Hook” Lacy, whose meteoric fall is rivaled by few fighters in recent memory after his domination by Calzaghe. In other words- the worst college football team in the world will look invincible when playing at a high school level. This has been the story of the last few years.

And then, the one fighter I skipped over, Joe Calzaghe. I’m not a fan of Calzaghe because I find it hard to be a fan of anyone who hides in Europe and fights in a weight class like Super Middleweight, and only looks to fight the superstars the day after they get their AARP card in the mail. How good Calzaghe really is we’ll never know, but on that night in November last year, he was a damn sight better than Roy Jones.

Jones looked older than his age in that fight. There were few combinations, and none of the speed and ferocity that he has fought with in the past. Jones was an rusting hero leaning against the ropes, constantly trying to muster a counterattack against an overwhelming opponent who was tailor-made for him. Calzaghe had perfect angles, rapid fire punches, and even taunted Roy, getting inside his head and playing mind games with the man who so easily psyched out so many.

With under a minute left in the third round, Calzaghe was literally forehead to forehead with Jones, arms at his sides, firing off shots at will. Jones could do little more than move forward with his hands up, missing with the occasional hook while getting tagged with all sorts of shots. His legs, once so light and agile, were cinder blocks that could have left drag marks on the canvas. Perhaps the most heartbreaking part is that it really looked like Roy knew that this just wasn’t it, and with every punch that Calzaghe slipped and ducked, a piece of Roy’s heart fell apart.

And I feel for the guy. To have such talent, and to have it leave so quickly, is a horrific thing to deal with. I wonder how regular people would feel if the talent that they once had slid away from them, and there was little they could do to regain it. Roy is a mechanic who looks at a car and knows what he has to do, but isn’t strong enough to loosen the lug nuts. He is the writer who cannot remember the names of his characters, a comic who can no longer make people laugh.

After the Calzaghe fight, I was hoping he would retire. I wanted him to leave us with the highlight reels and the magnificence, and to not keep fighting on, hurting himself more every day. I don’t want to see such a character end up like Ali or Frazier or Hearns because he just didn’t know when to quit.

Roy Jones may very well defeat Danny Green. Although Green is younger, the Australian exhibits little head movement or defense, things which, even though Roy is older, are still needed to come away with a win against him. But if he gets a shot at another title, or even an equally aged but far different fighter in Hopkins, he will be shown once again that his glory days are not today.

The old adage is that boxers are the first to know, and the last ones to admit, when to quit. Roy Jones is not the exception. He must learn that this is, unfortunately, not Cinderella Man. Reflexes, once gone, don’t come back, and hand speed, once it fades, is gone for good; no training or trainer in the world can fix that.

Whatever the outcome, Roy will remain one of my favorite fighters. He will go down as one of the greatest of all time, and in his youth, I would have put my money on him to defeat any fighter in history. The grit and determination that he has showed in the last five years has also elevated him, regardless of record, because it has answered all questions about the amount of heart the man possesses. But should he fight on, he should remember his legions of fans that wish to see him healthy for the rest of his life. It’s a sad time when fighters realize that there is more to life than the fight itself. I myself wish Roy would see this…for his own good.

Article posted on 28.11.2009

http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=22069&more=1