Berto stops Quintana in eight, Caballero dominates

Let me be clear: Yordan’s corner should have considered stopping the bout, maybe. It was pretty obvious their guy was not going to win, that he was in over his head a bit, and that try as he may, he was not going to win this fight. Of course, Yordan’s corner — if HBO’s Indonesian translator is to be taken seriously, which is a case of debate I’m sure — also seemed in way over their heads.

But Merchant making a big show of, “I went up to a commission guy and I sez to him, ‘Hey, buddy, I’m the conscience of boxing, and I want you to stop this MASSACRE,’ but he just smiled and walked away.” Well, what was he going to tell you? “That’s great, Larry, but I disagree.” What’s the point? Merchant and Lampley appointed themselves the sensationalistic, melodramatic Winston Churchills of the sport with this fight, as if nobody else was going to stand up and do what needed to be done. A fight which they were were “describing,” if you want to call it that, in a manner that the fight did not really call for.

This was simply another example of what they do often: they settle on a narrative that they want to tell the audience, and they don’t deviate from it unless something amazing happens, like the guy losing the fight scores a knockdown or something of the like. But this time, they felt it necessary to bring up Leavander Johnson (which Lampley has done on more than one occasion now) and then go on some tangent about The Great Larry Hazzard: Super Commissioner, who would never allow such an awful beating to take place. Those were the days!

Emanuel Steward was the only one of the three who seemed like he was truly watching the fight, and the only one who wasn’t going into hysterics. Like Steward, I saw Yordan as a fighter tonight who was doing everything he could do, to the best of his ability, but he wasn’t good enough.

Sure, again, a better corner might well step in, and I don’t think anyone would argue that after 8, 9 rounds, a corner stoppage mightn’t have been in order. Yordan was not going to win this fight. But instead of, “The corner should really consider stepping in here,” they went ballistic, as if they’d been saving up a “Let’s All Be Safe Out There, Guys” script for an occasion, and since Lampley has only worked twice this year, he was itching to get it out as soon as he saw something even slightly resembling a grotesque beatdown.

As jrok pointed out, the Estrada-Lora fight from earlier in the night on ESPN2 was much more of a damage-inflicting shellacking. Yordan never looked hurt, never looked out of it, never looked like he wasn’t trying to find a way into the fight. Juan Manuel Marquez took a bigger beating against Floyd Mayweather Jr., but at no point in that fight did Lampley or anyone else demand a commission representative stop the fight to save the fighter from himself. Why not? What was different about that fight? The only thing, really, is that Yordan took a lot of punishment to the body. But is it crazy to think Caballero’s body punching isn’t quite as brutal as it might have sounded? Yordan certainly didn’t crumble under the attack, but to hear Lampley in particular describe the body blows, you’d think they had Rocky Marciano wailing on a side of elk in there.

Again, yes, the fight could have been stopped. But the HBO commentary team has become a parody of themselves at this point. Lampley and Merchant decided the fight itself wasn’t enough for them, so they made it about themselves, with Merchant ambling about the building in seek of Florida AC higher-ups to tell what’s what, and Lampley allowing himself to run wild with a non-story that he had himself created in large part. Yordan lost the fight, plain as day, and did not come close to winning it. He was dominated. But he was not “massacred.” He was not beaten senseless. The referee didn’t see a time to stop it, yet the referee did see a good reason to stop the main event. Different referees, I know, and Telis Assimenios has in the past let a fight go too long (Angulo-Rivera). That’s a fair point. But Assimenios is a competent referee who knows when enough is enough, and he never seemed like he had a real thought about stopping the fight. Without this commentary, would anyone really think this was a situation where a commission person should step in as the last line of defense? There was a fighter, his corner team, a referee and a ringside physician that did not see a reason to stop the fight. The commission didn’t see a reason to stop the fight.

Like anyone who’s watched a fair amount of boxing, I’ve called for fights to be stopped. I remember Teddy Atlas on ESPN2 losing his mind screaming for the Nate Campbell-Ricky Quiles fight to be stopped and I felt the same way. I remember Andrey Tsurkan taking a nasty thrashing from Alfredo Angulo, and Lampley screaming into his microphone, “GO DOWN!” as Tsurkan refused to hit the canvas. I felt that one, too. The Angulo-Rivera fight springs to mind as one that should have been stopped. Clottey-Corrales would have almost definitely been stopped if it weren’t Chico Corrales in there. Mayweather-Corrales, Mayweather-Gatti, Oscar-Gatti, Pacquiao-Diaz — those are all examples of fights where I think this sort of reaction would fit. There have been plenty of fights that we’ve done live coverage of on this site where I’ve said, “This fight should be stopped immediately.” This was not one.