We return again to the eternal optimism of boxing fans and the short-sighted money grubbing of the suits in the glass towers with tonight's Miguel Cotto vs Zab Judah PPV, an exciting, potentially explosive crossroads fight that should be creating new boxing fans on free TV but is instead soaking the faithful to the tune of $55 behind the PPV firewall.
It's an interesting fight because there are legitimate questions about Cotto, who is being hyped as the heir to Tito Trinidad's mantle as the paragon of Puerto Rican boxing. Never mind that all they have in common is ethnicity.
Trinidad was an electric personality who fed off the crowd, and who fed them in return. Cotto is an excellent fighter, but seems to trudge po-faced through his business inside & outside the ring, a pugilistic Buster Keaton who just sucked on a lemon.
Whether grudgingly answering questions at a press conference, stalking an opponent inside the ropes, or staggering around the ring like a drunk grabbing at a quarter on the barroom floor after a hard shot, he maintains the same deadpan expression of mild concern, framed by the ruthlessly waxed eyebrows of a drag queen.
Zab is Zab, the kind of fighter who eternally breaks the hearts of boxing fans and is eternally forgiven his trespasses in light of his obvious, overflowing physical talent.
Zab has two things in abundance that you can't teach- power and speed. And he has one flaw that you can't repair, a certain flaw in his demonstrations of fortitude, desire & concentration, collectively known as 'heart' in the patois of the sport.
Peak Zab can give anybody fits for the first half of a fight, witness his showdown with Floyd Mayweather Jr, which I scored 4-2 Zab after 6. But he can fall apart in the second half of a fight & lose to anyone. His collapse against Carlos Baldomir, a journeyman with little going for him except a concrete chin and the willpower to ignore the evidence of the first 6 rounds and keep striving for victory, is still hard to fathom.
The combination of a quick-handed puncher (even one with the baggage & mental problems of Zab) and a fellow who's been badly hurt by journeymen & light hitters (even one as relentless & powerful as Cotto) is intoxicating.
I'm pulling for Zab in this one.
Because the headcase from Brooklyn beating one of the network's handpicked attractions would cause HBO Corporate to collectively shit their thousand dollar Armani slacks.
And because I'm a boxing fan, and we never stop dreaming of talented washouts finally putting it together when their backs are up against that final, bullet-scarred wall.
(For more, check out this excellent overview from my buddy Cliff, who's a filthy Republican but does know his boxing).
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