Trabajador Que Maravilla
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Más trabajador que maravilla Saturday continued the happiest development our sport has seen in years. Sergio “Maravilla” Martinez, a southpaw Argentine who prefers Spain but lives in California, is an accidental champion. A career 147- and 154- pounder who won the middleweight title in his first meaningful middleweight fight, Martinez makes a match with a larger man every time he defends his belts. He gets hit plenty and finishes each defense with a knockout. He is not running for office in the Philippines. He does not have charges pending against him in Nevada. Martinez is, rather, one boxing story every aficionado should feel a sense of ownership about. Saturday in Atlantic City, Martinez extended his record as undisputed middleweight champion to 3-0 (3 KOs) by putting in an effort more workmanlike than marvelous and finishing England’s Darren Barker at 1:29 of round 11 in a fight more competitive, and therefore more enjoyable, than predicted. American writers predicted a whitewash for Martinez because no one knew who Darren Barker was. European fighters often bring sparkling resumes like Barker’s 22-0 mark to American arenas then acquit themselves as well-intentioned frauds. Not so with Barker. Martinez was ahead in the fight at the time Barker crumpled but not by the margin American boxing writers expected. Why not? Here’s an idea. Sergio Martinez is not a natural middleweight. Every fight he makes at 160 pounds, then, features a man who hits him harder than he spent the first 13 years of his career being hit. Martinez relied on reflexes and elusiveness to acquire the middleweight crown from Kelly Pavlik, after consecutive fights with former welterweight champions Kermit Cintron and Paul Williams. That is worth noting. Pavlik and the man from whose head he lifted the middleweight crown, Jermain Taylor, both worked their ways through the middleweight ranks, preparing for and fighting the Darren Barkers of the world before getting on national television. Martinez, contrarily, is learning how to be a middleweight after becoming middleweight champion. It’s a joy to watch. There’s a spontaneity to Martinez fights that should be celebrated. He does things differently and often gets whacked for doing so. He stands before larger men, hands dangling at his hip pockets, and bobs his naked face at them, even as they shuffle to within a foot of him. He waits for them to throw then leaps out the way and counters them, or doesn’t. That’s part of the fun: An orthodox middleweight challenger like Barker – no mystery whatever to a Pavlik or Taylor – had good a chance as any of striking Martinez with meaningful punches. Before you go to the scorecards against that claim, confirming your own prefight bias the match would not be competitive, revisit what happened in round 4. Barker, that limited Brit with a fraction the champion’s athleticism and pizzazz, splattered Martinez’s nose all over Martinez’s gorgeous face. It was a fine manifestation of an old adage that says the right combination is unlimited for being thrown by a balanced man creating leverage at little expense. Barker was not busy enough, you say? Probably not. But until the start of round 6 – the first to show Martinez looking better than uncomfortable – Barker was making a decent case to his supporters that he was winning. No, nobody in America or watching HBO’s telecast imagined it, but if you watched the fight in the U.K., tuning in to see an undefeated prospect from London, Barker gave you plenty of reason to score two or three of the opening five rounds for him. Imagine that. Martinez’s punches started to tell after the fight’s midway point, and his theretofore ineffective aggressiveness acquired quite a bit of effect by round 10 when, adhering to a different teaching adage and finishing a combination with a jab, Martinez staggered Barker. A Martinez right hook to Barker’s guard in the next round proved forceful enough to make Barker tip over and decide against rising. It was an honest ending to an honest effort; Barker didn’t stand at 10 1/2 and pretend he wanted to continue. Barker’d had enough, and Martinez had another well-deserved knockout defense. Then the fretting began. “Whither this man without a country?” went the lament about Martinez’s lack of marketability. He lives in California but vacations in Spain, and half of Argentina could not pick him out of a fashion-show runway. Even if they could, Martinez’s ineffectual promoter tells us, there just aren’t enough Argentines in America! Well, that settles it, then: Keeping him in front of funereal Atlantic City audiences is the way to go. Never mind that the late Arturo Gatti’s Italo-Canadian roots did not foreshadow popularity in New Jersey. Forget that Lennox Lewis, an Englishman who fought on Team Canada and considered himself Jamaican, made a fortune fighting in America. Sidestep the fact there are 35 million other Spanish speakers in the United States. Go whole hog on the man-sans- homeland narrative, if you wish, but then answer this question: Why must Martinez fight here? Sergio Martinez holds the world middleweight title; take his show on the road. He surely would have drawn better in London against an undefeated Englishman than he drew at Boardwalk Hall. We learned Saturday that Martinez – as his own matchmaker – found Barker on Twitter. Martinez ought to fire his manager and promoter. He already trains himself, after all, and that has to be harder than scheduling a date with HBO. Stories rich as Sergio Martinez’s do not visit our sport often enough. We are fortunate to have him. But he is a small middleweight who nears his 37th birthday. His title defenses will soon combine with their 49 predecessor fights to wear him down. The more people who have a chance to enjoy him before then, the better for our sport. Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry photo By Claudia Bocanegra.