Column without end, part 2

By Bart Barry-

Editor’s note: Part 1 can be found here.

*

Every kid under the age of 25 on the Metro de Madrid has Sergio Martinez’s haircut, and while none is likely imitating Martinez so much as imitating Martinez’s influences, whoever they are, an hour on the Madrid metro – with aspiring supermodels, male and female, all practicing their vacuous look, that unique fixture of Homo sapiens, the ability to will oneself into a countenance that appears too stupid to formulate an emotion even – reminds any interested onlooker could have done many times worse than we did with Martinez. He may not be missed, but we should still be grateful we had him.

That brings us, somehow, to , a man who at 72 was admitted recently to an undisclosed hospital to be treated for pneumonia. No worries, says Ali’s spokesman – as apparently Ali’s malady was caught early, and besides, how serious can pneumonia be? For a man who has suffered Ali’s afflictions, pneumonia is quite serious indeed, and aficionados should expect Sunday’s rosey prognosis to worsen steadily in the days to come, and if not this time round than certainly in the next year or so.

This will not be pleasant. In the days or weeks or months to come, expect every man with a right hand he can raise and make in the shape of a fist to come forward, in as public a manner as possible, to tell us his affiliation with “The Champ.” The tributes will be universally embellished and self-important, a million or more tales subtitled “My Time with The Greatest,” without one telling us anything we do not already know about Ali. From this legacy-borrowing stampede, expect one knight to rise on rear legs and make a social-media scene about Ali’s marital infidelities, known and otherwise, and watch with awe as, just that quickly, the myriad of Twitter feminists, female and male, pivot from Cosby Watch to leave their lasting mark, finally, by undermining the world’s memory of an icon.

They’ll not leave a mark because they never really do; their audience’s collective attention span can be measured in minutes, not decades, and some new tragedy or travesty will have their anxiety redirected in a fortnight or less.

What will remain months and years and decades after the souvenir gatherers are gone is Ali’s legacy with us, the dwindling number of persons who care about prizefighting with any measurable frequency, and Ali’s legacy with us will begin with 7-2 (4 KOs), Ali’s record against prime versions of , , and . Unlike those who might tomorrow sue posterity for greatness when their careers soon conclude, Ali fought four great prizefighters an aggregate of nine times. He made real fights with other great men, yanking his legacy from the hypothetical realm in which today’s largest draw resides, with his empty blather about alphabetized sides and alphabetized titles, dotingly broadcasted via shameless interviews no one believes any longer.

In a different astonishing interview last week, the president of HBO Sports told The Ring he is “thrilled” with his network’s coverage of boxing in 2014. Evidently, it is difficult for him to imagine how his network could do better with our sport in 2015, and well it ought be: Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. versus Bryan Vera II in , a Boxing After Dark undercard match in nearly any other year, or a Latin Fury headliner, set a mark of viewership-enormity HBO managed not to surpass in nine subsequent months of trying. Incredibly, not even Gennady Golovkin’s record-breaking performance in Carson, Calif., the one where Golovkin devastated the fragile psyche of that guy who lost to Chavez Jr. in 2012, could unseat “Son of the Legend” from his brink-pink throne, or lift the cannabis wreath from his head.

While Chavez may not fight again for a while – a common benefit of signing with Al Haymon – HBO should hurry its cameras to Verona, NY, next month, as Vera, one half of HBO’s Broadcast of 2014, will be in action with Willie Monroe Jr., and anyone who doubts more “thrilling” things will be in store lacks the imagination to run HBO Sports.

It’s all spires now, friends, and some of them come with crossing bridges: “Son of the Legend” would be continuing his reign of terror over the division, entering the ring to giggles, proudly wearing round his bunching waist the WBC’s gaudy, cream-of-green strap at from 170 pounds to 200, today, were it not for Sergio Martinez, who did a favor to whatever seriousness remains about our sport when, in 2012, Martinez stood on his shot knee and fought Chavez off him. We now know Chavez would have whupped the broken Martinez in a rematch, and with a genuine ticketseller and viewerseducer like “Son of the Legend” in its stable, why, HBO might not have shown what noteworthy imagination it has employed discovering Gennady Golovkin.

However poorly the network now broadcasts boxing, it makes good documentaries, for the most part, and last week’s premiere of “Tapia” was not an exception to a record that is no longer quite exceptional as it was. The story of is familiar to all aficionados, of course, but “Tapia” is somewhat predictable even for those unfamiliar with his story; the documentary follows an arc one recognizes every step of the way, and the hero’s demise is preordained as his ascent. It is not a causal observation, though, to say the movie’s most intensely watchable parts comprise footage from Tapia’s championship career.

It is quite possible, in fact, the highlights from Tapia’s matches with Danny Romero and mark the highest- quality, competitive fighting seen on HBO in 2014 – with all due respect, of course, to Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. . . .

*

Editor’s note: For Part 3, click here.

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry