FanShot

THE UGLY AMERICAN: Junior & Maravilla

15
Martinez is a star in America much in the same way George W. Bush once owned a "ranch." When Vicente Fox visited Bush in Crawford, Texas, in 2005, he was mystified to find that the Bush ranch had neither horses nor cattle nor hogs nor anything else resembling ranch paraphernalia. There was, however, a seemingly limitless supply of scrub brush for Bush to haul around in front of press corps cameras at every opportunity. Like something out of Baudrillard, reality never got in the way of simulacra on the Bush Ranch and the same can be said about boxing. Martinez is a talented fighter whose popularity does not equal his rabid critical acclaim. And this is why "Maravilla" has spent a year heckling Chavez and weeping—telenovela-style—over the WBC middleweight title Martinez willingly vacated in order to appease HBO. From The Cruelest Sport