Some "Contender," Some Promotional Tactics, Some Favorites And Some Not

Busy 60+ hour work week for me, sleepy week for boxing. Please find below a series of exceedingly quick, random thoughts (and, apologies -- not much background for the uninitiated to follow along, unless you click the links):

• So much for making Kelly Pavlik the Thomas Hearns to your Sugar Ray Leonard, Sergio Mora. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy, huh?
• Keeping on the "Contender" tip -- I can't blame Alfonso Gomez for having a rough time with Ben Tackie. He gives everyone a rough time.
• Welcome back to the win column, Vic Darchinyan. I know it's philosophically inconsistent to dig Darchinyan but not Mora, but weird hard-punching Armenian assholes amuse me.
• It's looking more and more like we're going to get Juan Manuel Marquez-Manny Pacquiao II at 130 lbs. There's hardly a fight I could want to see more.
• On the down side, how in the world it is a good thing for boxing to schedule Pacquiao's next fight on HBO the same night as Israel Vasquez-Rafael Marquez III? Super-lame.
  
• First Miguel Cotto, then Antonio Margarito, now Pavlik -- throwing out a pitch at a baseball game is a nice, new boxing promotion fad.
• That whole "Dancing With The Stars" gig worked out as well for Floyd Mayweather as it could; he gets publicity but gets kicked off in time to focus pretty well on Ricky Hatton.
• Once more into the "Contender" world -- I'd like to see Peter Manfredo and Jeff Lacy get it on. I like Lacy in that one, but I like it even better for his profile.
• Comcast blows, so I wasn't able to catch the replay through the static, but I'm glad Dmitri Kirilov won a title last weekend. I thought he did against Luis Perez, but the judges didn't.

Mona Shaw is my new hero. I totally agree.

Once I Was Blind, Now I Can See

There'll be ample boxing to talk about this week -- Marco Antonio Barrera ending his remarkable career, another must-see fight or two coming up Saturday, how the hell Jameel McCline gave Samuel Peter so much trouble when it took harder-hitting Vladimir Klitschko 12 rounds to hit "The Nigerian Nightmare" with a punch that had him reeling -- but there's something much more unimportant I want to address. I'm skipping over the more meaningful topics in part because I won't see the Barrera-Manny Pacquiao fight until next weekend, assuming they'll replay the $50 main event for free on HBO, and because I didn't catch but a few rounds of Peter-McCline despite my best intentions. The other reason is because I'm feeling like less of an idiot these days about the topic at hand, and I want to express my relief about it: Predictions.

Unless you're Las Vegas or a professional gambler, boxing predictions are more art than science. Ultimately, they matter very little. At most, one's prediction accuracy says a tiny amount about what one knows about the sport. But they're part of the fun of being a fight fan, at least for me.

And when I started up this blog, my prediction accuracy started in the gutter, then rolled around in it for a while. I went 1 for 5 in July, my first month online. That's Alex Rodriguez-in-October-level stuff. My confidence in my understanding of boxing was in shambles. Before I started the blog, when I made predictions in my head, my accuracy was damn good. But had I, like the aforementioned Yankee who kills it in the regular season but vaporizes in the playoffs, choked when it really mattered?

As it turns out, nowadays I'm more like a Yankee more famous for his fall performances, Mr. October himself, Reggie Jackson. Since August 1, I've gone 6 for 6. Sometimes, I haven't been right about the exact nature of the victory. Take this weekend, when Peter had to gut out a decision against a three-time also-ran in the form of McCline, rather than knocking him out in the middle rounds as I haughtily scoffed that he would. Other times I've been pretty proud that my going against conventional wisdom ended up being such a dashing move. That would be like this weekend again, when, as I predicted, Barrera reportedly made a better showing than in his 2003 battering from the fists of Pacquiao, even though age and career arc both looked to solidly favor a Pac-Man blowout of the Baby-Faced Assassin. But ultimately, I'd rather be wrong about the reason my pick won, as I have sometimes since August, than right about the reason my pick might lose, as I was pretty consistently before then.

Of course, now that I've brought this to the fore, the fates will observe my hubris and make me pay. Anticipating this, I've got a plan to head them off at the pass. I'm going to predict the exact opposite of what I think will happen for the next few weeks, no matter how crazy I look. Trust me, 13-loss, Federico Catubay will KO Vic Darchinyan in one round! It's going to be a fun October, for a lot of reasons.

Regards,
The "Real" Mr. October















This punk's got nothing on me.