The great use of unnecessary hyperbole of all-time

Over the course of 12 rounds of intense action between Miguel Cotto and Shane Mosley at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, HBO’s Jim Lampley dropped words such as “tremendous,” “magnificent,” and “great” to describe the fight. At the conclusion of the evening, he went so far as to wonder just how high on the list of greatest fights ever without a knockdown this one ranked.

Off the top of my head, I’d say it ranked 1,138th all-time.

I’m sorry, but this wasn’t a fight worthy of any kind of “all-time great” discussion. I’m not trying to be negative here; in my opinion, Cotto-Mosley was a very good boxing match. Cotto produced a good performance in victory, and Mosley did likewise in defeat.

Unfortunately, nothing’s ever allowed to be just “good” anymore, or even “very good.” Everything has to have a superlative attached to it. Everything must be either a “10” or a “1,” because anything in between is boring.

What’s wrong with being “very good”? Nothing … except “great” has oomph to it, and “very good” is decidedly oomph-less. So in the rush to call this bout a “10” (since it was certainly closer to that than it was to a “1”), no lines were drawn between this and Castillo-Corrales, no distinctions were made between what Cotto did against Mosley and what Joe Calzaghe did against Mikkel Kessler a week earlier. Sadly, sports journalism has largely devolved into a contest not to make the smartest observation, but to make the observation doused with the most hyperbole. What irritates me is that Cotto-Mosley didn’t need that. The viewers didn’t need to be sold on the fight they’d just paid $50 for. They enjoyed the classy pugilistic display, and they knew they got their money’s worth. Is it a crime to leave it at that?

While several of the Maxboxing boys were on the scene at MSG, I watched the fight on TV, and believe me, I know that there is often a huge difference between the entertainment value of being there live and watching digitally transmitted fighter facsimiles dance across a screen in someone’s living room.

I know it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of thousands of Puerto Rican fans cheering on their hero – I’m one of those people who thought Felix Trinidad-Ricardo Mayorga was a Fight of the Year contender in ‘04 until I got home, watched the tape, and realized it was nothing more than a one-sided beatdown with a great opening round. So it certainly isn’t my intent to shred Lampley for going overboard, or to shred the deadline writers who thought they saw something special.

Hell, five days earlier Brian Kenny somehow called Sakio Bika-Jaidon Codrington the best fight he’d ever seen, and quite a few writers and fans instantly forgot about Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez in declaring Bika-Codrington the Fight of the Year. Overhyping what’s freshest in your mind, getting swept up in the live experience – these are natural, human responses. But let’s take a step back and be clear: Cotto-Mosley was not a great fight. It was very good, very close, and enhanced perhaps by the fact that it was very much less of a disappointment than the undercard that preceded it.

I scored the fight 114-114 (exactly the same in each round as the live Maxboxing round-by-round posted by Lee Groves), but the round I had the hardest time making up my mind about was the second, a stanza I awarded with almost no conviction to Sugar Shane. Give that one to Cotto, and I have it 115-113, the same as two of the judges. So I have absolutely no problem whatsoever recognizing Cotto as the winner and as the better fighter at this moment in time. But I was underwhelmed by the way he won. As Max Kellerman accurately observed (and I thought Max had a very good night overall, even if he’s trying a little too hard at times to channel Larry Merchant), Cotto didn’t really impose his will on Mosley. In rounds five and six, it seemed he was beginning to … but then Mosley got up on his toes and won the seventh, and in the ninth and 10th, Cotto inexplicably backed off and let Mosley back into the fight. The Puerto Rican appeared to me to flat-out give away the 12th round, a sure way to leave me underwhelmed even if you have the fight won comfortably (which Cotto certainly didn’t on my card).

Cotto jabbed very well. He boxed nicely. He counterpunched effectively in spots. He applied just enough pressure to make Mosley uncomfortable, and mixed in just enough movement to keep the future Hall of Famer guessing. Sometimes, that’s just how you win. Not every victory can be as dramatic as what Cotto did against Zab Judah or Ricardo Torres or as emphatic as what he did against Carlos Quintana. From Sugar Ray Robinson to Michael Jordan to Joe Montana, every great athlete has had days where they just did enough to win and didn’t come out looking like the number-one guy in their sport’s history.

But however you spin it, Cotto defeated Shane Friggin’ Mosley. That’s no easy feat, and I’d be insane not to give the guy credit. But this wasn’t a statement victory. This wasn’t Miguel Cotto’s coming-out party. This wasn’t the passing of the torch from the fading legend to the legend-in-the-making.

This was just a very good pugilistic contest between two evenly matched, championship-level fighters. That was good enough for me. Too bad “good enough” is a forbidden phrase in sports journalism nowadays.

EMPTYING MY CLUTTERED MIND …