 Pay per view party is this weekend, but guests may have already left
The Neutral Corner (Part Two) Jason Probst (October 8, 2005) Photo © German Villasenor
Back in college, when grunge ruled the day, and a fiver got you a gallon of gas and a pack of Camels, there was a comely young lass I hoped desperately to impress, if only we’d connect under the right circumstances.
Parties were the best way to combine weekend fun while making some seriously needed extra money, and what better way to connect all the loose ends of a wide and utterly bizarre collection of friends and associates? I had them all…hipsters, rednecks, degenerates, seditionists, punkers, poets, gun-loving Ayn Rand aficionados, the works. And plenty of interesting women showed up, for reasons I still can’t understand.
From a dingy two-story dive in Kamiaken Street, in Pullman, Washington, my housemates and I threw some all-timers, complete with bands in the basement (including members of what would later become the ultra-hip Silver Scooter) and good times in the two floors above. It was like a giant version of “Cheers” where everybody knew my name. On a good night I could make my month’s rent in profit and have beer left over to boot.
However, the targeted lass always showed up too early, when festivities were just getting underway. Invariably, she came when the party was in its pre-forming mode… stiff and contrived, still building inertia to the point where you can hear what people ten feet away are saying, and nothing had been broken yet (always the first indicator that a party, indeed, is at hand).
We’d make small talk and then she’d leave with a polite note preceding her egress, obviously bored and with something better to do…good-looking ladies do not suffer pained social engagements for too long….and like clockwork, a few minutes later, about 100 people would show up and a rager would take place that she’d never see. She always showed up too early. And it never worked out, perhaps for that or 1,009 other reasons, but she never saw me at party-host best, stuffing ones in my back pocket and looking like a cross between Sam Malone and a second-teir Bukowski imitator. Bummer, indeed. She never really saw the Full Probst.
To wit: Impressing people means it’s all about timing.
That’s the way I feel after Antonio Tarver-Roy Jones coming into Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo, the latter of which should have been this month’s only pay-per-view event.
Boxing, which operates like a rotating peep show to casual sports fans, seems to consistently elicit interest from friends and associates when a big name like Jones is involved. I’ve gotten half a dozen inquiries from my casual test audience since Saturday night, whom either ordered Jones-Tarver or figured they’d just save the fifty and get the recap from me – but they don’t seem too interested in my cement-bound promises that this week’s fight is the one they really should order.
They’ve left the party too early, folded too quick, and will probably return the next time for whatever draws them in – usually a heavyweight title fight, or a Tyson, Holyfield, Oscar or Roy dog and pony show. But they’ll miss the party, per se.
Usually, as a full-time proponent for boxing’s highest moments, when a Castillo-Corrales match offers a concussive ebb and flow, a can’t-miss prospect, you get about five seconds to snare a potential recruit with the prefight pitch; surely they will be hooked if only they could take in the compressed fury of these two, or Arturo Gatti-Micky Ward.
But when the reply consists of, “Yah, sure…but is Jones still the heavyweight champion?” one realizes there’s only so much of a back story you can give before they move on. None of those people, these casual sporting fans, will see this weekend’s battle; and if they ordered the dismal Tarver-Jones pay-per-view, it’ll be a while before boxing gets them to cough up $50, which would cover Castillo-Corrales and get you some Coronas and nachos, to boot.
They have left the party early because boxing stamped the wrong time on the invitation.
The pick? Lots of factors in this fight, but there’s one inviolable element that’s easy to overlook, swamped in the subplots of potential adjustments – neither guy will back down if faced with an aggressor. It’s the reason Castillo has been such a consistent foe facing tough opposition. And it’s why Corrales jumped on Castillo early.
It’s a lock for another great match. The only way I see Corrales using his height and woefully underemployed jab is if Castillo eschews a chest-to-chest punch out from the jump, which tactically might not be the Mexican’s best move.
Sending Corrales into a war early, trainer Joe Goossen took the gamble that Corrales would do enough damage early against the slow-starting Castillo that it’d stop his late-round charge. The wrinkle worked, by the slimmest of margins. I don’t see either guy changing much because both of them fought a tactically solid match. Neither overlooked the body. Both countered with intensity whenever the momentum seemed to be slipping away from them. Nobody took a break and lollygagged it. And it figures to be another war.
I like Corrales by decision, in a very tough match that not enough people will see thanks to last week’s Tarver-Jones debacle, which was billed as a PPV boxing match but really was a joke with a $50 punch line.
Showtime heavyweights serve ironically useful purpose
As if Tarver-Jones weren’t already a marginal PPV offering, Showtime offered a dose of counter programming Saturday. It’s as though the s**t sandwich was already ordered, but the customer asked for no mayo, to boot.
Chris Byrd decisioned DaVarryl Williamson while James Toney beat Dominick Guinn over the distance, doing what Toney does better than any heavyweight – fighting slick and working the margins like a master. When the PPV numbers come in on Jones-Tarver (over 400,000 – ed) , this certainly can’t help. On principle, I’m opposed to counter programming the same way I’m against car thieves…..except when they hit a guy who leaves his Benz blaring on the corner with music blasting too loud. Sometimes life is very fair.
The Corner is getting dreadfully bored of seeing Toney fight the same fight, and get the same textbook victory over guys who can’t make him adjust. And there’s absolutely no point in seeing him against Byrd, which would be the kind of fight that’d see their styles cancel each other out. Toney needs to face someone who will be coming to take his head off, and has the tools to do it – that’s either Klitschko brother. Or, how about Samuel Peter? Anybody else against him resembles a 1950s college football game…three punches and a cloud of dust.
It’s a shame to waste his mojo on anything less, and he does bring some color and cocksure attitude to the division which it can always use more of. His prefight trash talk is the kind of stuff networks pick up on.
As for Byrd-Williamson, it could be a key instrument in winning the War on Terror. Forget waterboarding, sleep deprivation, or being stripped naked. Watching that fight surely can be used to torment prisoners into confessing their darkest secrets.
“Ahmad, will you talk to us now?” The interrogator slips in a copy of Byrd-Williamson, as he did yesterday, before subjecting the suspect to a 24-hour stretch of it where the fight never ends, and the rounds are spliced together in an endless feedback loop.
The prisoner is bruised, bleeding and emaciated. He has survived months of irregular sleep and feeding in a windowless cell, but despite beatings and myriad techniques, he will not break. Byrd-Williamson plays on the television in the cell’s upper corner….the fighters begin another round of endless slap-and-tickle.
(Sobbing): “I will tell you everything!”
For Questions or Comments
E-Mail Jason Probst at jason@jasonprobst.com
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