The Fighter picked up some Oscars but the main event is in trouble, plus Mike Tyson's latest rehabilitation
Hollywood has always loved boxing - but not enough this time for The Fighter to beat The King's Speech at the Oscars. Still, it picked up a couple of gongs, including one for Welsh actor Christian Bale, who beat Geoffrey Rush for best supporting actor in his role as Mickey Ward's wayward half-brother, Dicky Eklund. "Mate, you're the best," Bale shouted out to Eklund in the audience. "He's had a wonderful story and I can't want to see the next chapter ? If you want to be a champion, if you want to train with him, go and meet with him. Go and check him out. He deserves it."
Eklund was not bowled over in a rush of luvvies. There will not be another chapter. He has had his Hollywood moment and will be forgotten soon enough, like most fighters. Sure, the allure of the fight game is still there. It's just that it's in a shimmering, passing image on a screen. The real business is struggling - as the Seattle Times observes.
The message that goes out again to the people in charge of real boxing - give the fans what they want, real title fights between real opponents - will be ignored. And, if you want evidence, look at what is happening near Disneyland, that other palace of fantasy, on Saturday night.
Good luck to Matthew Hatton in his world title fight against red-headed young Mexican hotshot Saul "El Canelo" Alvarez in Anaheim, but this is a fight with the slimmest attachment to reality. Neither is remotely proven at light-middleweight and there is minimal buzz about the contest - which did not stop the WBC sanctioning the fight as for the 11-stone title vacated by Manny Pacquiao - because Alvarez has been ordained as a rising star by Golden Boy, who pretty much are running the business right now.
Boxing continues to write its own obituary - and Hatton, sadly, is just another bit player.
STEP UP, MR TYSON
For a while, Mike Tyson, his image carefully polished by Jim Jacobs, seemed too good to be true.
When he first roared into our consciousness, he strove for acceptance in the largely white sportsbiz establishment of the United States and beyond by softening his Brooklyn edges and speaking with sepulchral reverence about his sport's history and its giants.
It was Mr Dempsey, not Jack. And Mr Louis. Never Joe, certainly not standing alone from his surname. Iron Mike did a spot with the late Harry Carpenter, trawling through the BBC archives in awe of those who'd gone before him and sounding like a tutored student of pugilism (which, thanks to the obsessed Cus D'Amato, he was) instead of the murderously dangerous heavyweight he had become.
Now, at 44 and nearly six years after his last fight, his reputation shredded by his serial craziness, Tyson has found that which he always craved: acceptance on his own terms. Whatever his capacity to explode, he has survived, albeit in a spiritually mangled form.
And what more appropriate place for Tyson to expose his sensitivities again than the rich man's bible, the Wall Street Journal?
In a sensitive rendering of his current circumstances, the WSJ's Gordon Marino writes about an ex-fighter in dignified retreat from his demons.
Tyson talks about his pigeons (not for the first time). Here it is to plug his part in an upcoming American TV reality programme called Taking On Tyson, which starts in the US on 6 March.
He lives in Henderson, on the outskirts of Las Vegas, where he made most of his fortune, in what Marino describes as the "expansive but not extravagant... contemporary minimalist home", once owned by NBA star Jalen Rose.
So, he's not exactly landed in the gutter. And his mind seems to be raised up too. He speaks about how Napoleon bred pigeons called tumblers, how a nearby falcon had dive-bombed his brood recently and how friendship, loyalty and trust matter in the world of pigeon racing.
He would, no doubt, have been chuffed too, when he read the piece. In the newspaper's quaintly old-fashioned style, he was called Mr Tyson throughout.
FRANKLY SPEAKING...
Frank Warren knew a different Mike Tyson. He came up against the one on the loose, who threatened to throw him out of a hotel window. That surreal episode was 11 years ago, when the former world heavyweight champion came to the UK to fight Lou Savarese and ended up clocking the referee in the course of disposing of Mr Savarese in a round.
Warren has been a promoter for three decades. Whatever his strengths and weaknesses, he has hung in there, surviving an assassination attempt and all the other scars that come with working in the wildest jungle in sport.
Still punching, he is putting together shows now that provide probably more value than any on offer in boxing. Partly that is because he has a big stable to feed, from Olympic gold medalist James DeGale to former world amateur champion Frankie Gavin. Partly it is because Sky demand value for pay-per-view promotions in tough times. The piggy bank is not as full as it once was.
Warren's most recent signing, John Murray, is a favourite of mine, an old-style, all-round boxer who has mastered the fundamentals. He will not easily be beaten. We will see in the year or so ahead if he can add some sophistication to his one-paced skills.
Warren would love Murray to fight his former favourite, Kevin Mitchell, and has offered him money the East End wild boy considers an insult. Understandably for a working class fighter with no other obvious earning possibilities, the size of the cheque matters a lot to Mitchell.
As it does to Warren, who tells me: "We're still trying to put it together, but at the moment the money he is asking for is totally unrealistic. I read the stuff in Boxing News about the 22,000 people [he drew to Upton Park last year for his fight against Michael Katsidis]. He didn't draw 22,000 people. The bottom line is he forgets he got absolutely destroyed in three rounds. He's not living in the real world. The real world is what it is.
"And the guy who's in front of him is Murray. Mitchell wants to come back and it's a great route back for him, but I'm not in the pension business - especially when he said after that fight how he hadn't trained properly. He let himself down and let everybody down. So he's not in a position to start making unrealistic demands."
Mitchell is gambling heavily on beating Murray, for which he deserves credit. If he wins, will he have earned the right to haggle for a big purse again. If he loses, he will soon learn what his market value is.
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