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Cotto-Canelo sets off Jim Lampley’s weirdness detector

Fighters Network
20
Nov
Photo credit: Naoki Fukuda

Photo credit: Naoki Fukuda

 

Strange fight week, this one leading to the super-fight between Miguel Cotto, the aging but apparently rejuvenated Puerto Rican pugilist, and Mexican heartthrob/fighter Canelo Alvarez, a ten year pro because he started as a teen.

So much of the focus has been on matters other than the usual…

I’m still wrapping my brain around why the aura has been..weird.



I reached out to Jim Lampley, the Hall of Fame blow-by-blow man who will call the event on HBO Pay-Per-View.

Jim, it’s been…weird. Do you agree?

“That’s true,” he told me. “There’s been focus on the business side and the title belt thing. That was unusual…them fighting over that belt in a division they aren’t truly in; it’s distorting in itself. And then the aura of (IBF/WBA middleweight titleholder Gennady) Golovkin sort of hangs over the event, as well.”

If the Golovkin PPV buy number had been bigger, Lampley said, that aura would have loomed larger. “But that’s still an account that needs to be squared,” he stated.

The cerebral action-caller said this mishmash of narratives – I mean, there’s been plenty of focus on what Jay Z did not do to aid this promotion and chatter that he’s dropped the ball by not using his persona to boost the hype – is understandable in that neither Cotto nor Canelo has a pound-for-pound personality, if we’re talking traits to help sell fights.

“They are opaque, self-contained professionals. They are both about the business of fighting and you don’t see or get any of those extracurriculars, which lend themselves to be discussed.”

“Michael, 99 percent of the time, by now, I would have a firm opinion on what could likely happen…today (Thursday), I don’t have that opinion,” Lampley said. “I’m hoping when I sit down with them (Friday), I will find some clue to figure out who win this fight.”

 

Michael Woods’ weirdness detector used to go off like crazy but once he got used to editor Coyote Duran’s custom Twitter tags, the ringing in his ears never returned.

 

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