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Barrera and the ghost of Morales past
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The Neutral Corner by Jason Probst (May 19, 2006) Photo: HBO
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As the years add up, you realize your brain is like a hard drive. And when it's full, to add one file invariably means risking deleting another.
And nine years ago sure ain't yesterday. Memories of that era are hazy for me -- what with college and beer in $4 pitchers so big you could fit a grapefruit in the bottom. The internet was something a few dorky guys on campus were excited about, Slick Willie could still wag his finger and make you believe the media really was out to get him, and grunge music was gently sliding down and out of sight as a pop culture phenomenon, leaving us in the Pacific Northwest to return unfettered to dressing that way because it was functional, without wanting to go home and slit your wrists when you saw a $58 flannel for sale at Nordstrom's.
Good times.
Spotty times.
But I'm told they were a hoot.
What does stand out from 1996, though, was the debut of HBO's "Boxing After Dark," a bold experiment hinged on the beliefs that good matchmaking can make up for lack of big-name drawing power, merely on the merits of action fights. The first broadcast of Marco Antonio Barrera against Kennedy McKinney sailed so far over the bar, it may have been the greatest debut of any sports show ever, in terms of expectations surpassed. Facing Rocky Juarez Saturday night, you have to wonder if Barrera will experience some
déjà vu, now playing the role of the older fighter facing an up and comer.
Barrera's 12th round stoppage that night was brutal, punctuated by six knockdowns (five were of McKinney, usually getting splayed to the canvas only to get back up, often running on fumes). It was the kind of bout where you forget to eat the food you prepared, nervously checking and re-checking the VCR to make sure it's running. In the last 20 years, I've seen maybe 20 fights that matched it for sheer, sustained action, and few were on the skill level those two displayed. For while in one sense it was a marathon street fight with eye-popping brutality, it was also the finest exhibition of stamina, adherence to a game plan (Barrera's relentless body assault was numbing to watch, much less absorb) and rare will.
McKinney didn't get knocked out in the classical sense -- that is too curt a definition for a lengthy journey into the crucible -- but taken apart one piece at a time, and there were a hell of a lot of pieces that didn't come too easy. It was clearly the arrival of someone special, at the price of battering another world-class fighter who showed incredible heart in defeat.
That night, given Barrera's well-established reputation as a headstrong, classical Mexican brawler, you probably couldn't have gotten 10-1 that he'd be around now, at the championship level. He had all the genetic and environmental markers of an eventual burnout. The victory brought the 22-year-old Barrera's ledger to 40-0; for a featherweight that age to have so many fights is like a two-year old car with 50,000 miles. Unless something changes, it's going to get run into the junk heap pretty quick.
Barrera did. Reinventing himself as a boxer somewhere around 2000 -- after the first Morales fight, which he lost on a disputed decision -- he simultaneously purged all his bad habits while implementing a retinue of technical skills that had been largely underutilized. He jabbed and slipped, swirled and countered, operating on beautifully navigated margins that allowed him to take apart lesser pugilists while taking nary a scratch. Of course, Morales always meant a war, but his masterpiece -- a 12-round drubbing of 3-1 favorite Naseem Hamed -- was clearly the exit exam to prove his reinvention was no fluke. He has since operated on a parallel track to Morales, sometimes seeming a step ahead, sometimes a step behind, in the debate over their relative legacies.
Since their third epochal collision, two things were obvious. First, this duo would always make for such an intense contest that the scorecards would more likely than not evoke argument. Second, to put them together for a fourth time would seem criminal, gluttonous, and a waste of the precious few bullets both had left, bullets that could be better spent helping other fighters define their own place in the stratum.
The concept of a prizefight is to establish who the better man is, but with Barrera and Morales, they are forever entwined in a photo finish. And that's the way it should be. Their fistic half-lives seem to be dragging out forever, as first Barrera seemed to be finished by Manny Pacquiao, and now Morales appears to be a similar casualty, at least according to the common wisdom. What is not a difficult assumption is the premise that there is no small moral victory in outlasting the other guy in the high caste assignment
as a boxing Brahmin, while the other either retires or does the slow burn into opponent status. Surely, with an eternal flame of rivalry burning well into old age, it would give Barrera/Morales a boost of pride to know he outlasted the other guy, that his peak was just a little bit longer.
For if Barrera runs into trouble Saturday night -- and there is some belief that he will, though I am not firmly entrenched on that logic -- you wonder who he will see coming at him if he's staring through blood, getting hammered on the ropes, rising woozy from a knockdown. Juarez? Morales? Or himself that violent night nine years ago, when he upheld boxing's cruel standard that so often favors the younger man? Whatever he does, you can bet he will write a memorable chapter, win or lose.
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Originally Posted by Violent Demise
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