the comeback trail: Cotto & Pavlik

One of the strange aspects of boxing is that fighters often work their way to a title belt without having tasted defeat. Sometimes undefeated fighters go beyond just winning a title and are declared champions of their division by the people and even the pundits. Whether the undefeated status is the result of genuine brilliance or of a careful and calculated climb up the ranks an undefeated champion is must pass a final test. The legacy star fighters leave behind to the fans often depends on how they react after their first genuine destruction. Despite having already faced giants and claimed championships, in a sense tonight is the beginning of the real test for two fighters; Miguel Cotto and Kelly Pavlik. Beyond their own legacies the attention to the sport of many boxing fans is on the line. I'm referring of course to those fuzzy pseudo-ethnic undertones that pervade boxing. Both of these young lions have the hopes of their tribe and city riding on another successful run inside the ring. Can their warrior's spirit rebound from annihilation and keep the torch of boxing fandom alive in their communities?




Puerto Rico's Miguel Cotto (32(26)-1) is the current darling of Boricua boxing fans. Predictably amongst the Dominican crowd there are as many haters as fans. I'm a fan. Last time out Cotto received a savage beating. After that we all had our doubts. Cotto is unquestionably a world class fighter, but does he have what it will take to become an undisputed champ? Well time reveals the truth and we learned what actually happened that night against Mexio's Antonio 'padded gloves' Margarito. Now Cotto must restart the campaign up the ladder to get a crack at the champion, Shane Mosley; a man he has already defeated right here in NYC. Tonight Cotto is back at the Garden against a ranked contender, Michael Jennings (34(16)-1) of the UK. The opponent may not be a top 10 name but to Cotto's credit in his last fifteen fights only one opponent was arguably not top ten when they fought! He has earned a showcase fight.



The show also features the comeback fight of popular middleweight champ Kelly Pavlik (34(30)-1). Pavlik is from working class Youngstown, OH and his skills and humble demeanor are earning him a following out in the heartland. He also was demolished recently when he moved up a weight class, however there is no shame in losing to one of our generation's P4P greats Bernard Hopkins. Tonight he is in against a tough customer, Mexican Marco Antonio Rubio (43(37)-4). Hopefully this guy is not another cheat like Margarito. Finally the card will also feature NYC-based Irish fighter John Duddy. I don't rate Duddy too highly, but I do approve of building up local stars slowly and steadily. He remains undefeated and with proper management, training, and experience he may prove me wrong and make it to the elite echelons.

Unfortunately I couldn't splurge on tickets for this one but I'll likely order it on PPV. And if MMA is your game SpikeTV is broadcasting the UFC event from London,UK. I love these doubleheader weekends!

el Jefe

It always happens with my job that the coldest week of the year coincides with the busiest time. The last fifteen days I spent tied to my desk, right through my nights and weekends. Dark, cold, lonely days writing TPS reports and cranking up the old RiskMaster3000. Despite all this I did manage, with some starts and stops, to plow through a title. Deprive me of sunlight, exercise, healthy meals and companionship, but don't keep me from my books! What kind of uncivilized brute would I be without them?



Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History by Richard Lee Turits

This book was an eye-opening history of the foundation of Generalissimo Trujillo's long-lasting power. For those unfamiliar it is hard to top Junot Diaz's description of Trujillo as an 'infamous fuckface ... one of the dictatingest dictators that ever dictated'. He was absolute master of the Dominican Republic between 1930-1961. There are some really wild stories out there about the excesses and atrocities carried out under his watch. Those lurid tales weren't what interested me though. I sought to know HOW and WHY Dominicans put up with the guy for thirty years. As with Fidel Castro that long a reign takes much more than troops and torture to maintain. Turits' book offered many lessons on statecraft, nation-building and Trujillo's role in their development in DR. The largest lesson from this book was that despite the cruel and twisted aspects of his story Trujillo was actually a highly effective head of state whose early policies did great good to the infant nation. His regime sped up and solidified economic processes that unshackled DR from being a marginal backwater. Principally this meant 'domesticating' our grandparents who were for the most part stubbornly nomadic ranchers and/or subsistence farmers gatherers. No leader of any stripe had succeeded in encouraging this sedentarization for centuries, despite many attempts. Trujillo also drew and enforced the Dominican national boundaries, both territorially and tragically in the sense of identity. He almost literally created the state apparatus of DR. Most shockingly to me he successfully redistributed land to the common man the way so many Lat-Am movements promised and failed to deliver. This last point is the one around which Foundations is centered. Clearly Trujillo acted out of greed and self-interest, but his cunning was in seeing where his interests aligned with those of our then often impoverished, landless grandparents.

Foundations is written in an academic, densely foot-noted style and doesn't have a thrilling narrative. Unless you bring your own curiosity as I did you won't find it as gripping as titles on Trujillo's dark side. Still all histories ultimately begin with the material and economic facts, the broad determinants as illustrated by documented particulars. Read this book to begin to understand the structural reasons why DR generated, accepted and even needed a Generalissimo Trujillo. Dominicanos you will be surprised to find that contrary to stereotypes around our history the Trujillo regime was not just a puppet government installed over a hapless banana republic by the US State Department. Alongside El Jefe, in this piece of history the unlikely co-protagonist was the Dominican campesino and not the big bad empire.

Visionaries

We all know what Plato said to us ugly beastmen about life in the caves: it's all good fun as long as you never point out to your fellows about the sun. By doing so you risk death by their furry hands; perhaps even rightfully deserved death, for after all staring into the light can blind one and here you are promoting such insanity! For this reason we have to be grateful for the daring visionaries amongst us. They risked staring into that light, and then also coming back down into the caves to share. They are able to see past the puppetmaster's shadows to the potential & bright paintings we could put on our cave wall.

In that spirit I thought I'd share this, found by way of ManhattanKids. In it Martin Luther King, Jr, a true visionary, loosely predicts yesterday's inauguration of President Obama. Could you have foreseen this even a decade ago? Would you have shared such a conviction publically? Sadly, as per Plato's allegory, neither MLK nor RFK were tolerated for long by us primitive cave-folk.

Introduction

To all who come through, welcome to my new digs! Or perhaps more appropriately my new cave as Blogger seems about as rudimentary and primitive as I intend to keep things on this blog. I'm a migrant from LJ and brought along a few filler posts from my long past there to give a taste. My goal here is to keep things simple and local: simple off the cuff observations about books, films, sports + local flavor from Washington Heights/Inwood, my hometown neighborhoods in uptown Manhattan NYC.

After my exit from LJ I was chiefly prompted to start this in reaction to various posts from other local bloggers expressing insights about changes in the Heights, and blogging perspectives on offer (or lack thereof) . As a WaHi lifer, 2nd gen Dominican-American, and soon to be uptown daddy I thought I'd throw my own perspectival grunts into the ring. Apologies ahead of time if they turn out coarse or smelly!

degenerate entertainment

At this stage the obituaries for American pro boxing are mandatory not just for the boxing pundits, but even us slobs in the stands. As a 'hardcore' fan I'm obliged to fill my annual quota so here goes.

A Saturday evening without televised fights seems strange after a recent spate of action. The last quarter of this year had plenty great shows for everybody, whether your tastes run to MMA or boxing. I heard rumors carried by the winds of a heavyweight championship being fought out in the hinterlands of Europe. Pacquiao v. DeLaHoya a few weeks back was circus enough for me to choose to skip ordering it, as it involved Evander Holyfield's shadow facing a shadowy Russian giant. Holyfield's shadow was apparently robbed in a terrible decision. I don't really think US boxing is dying but they are making it hard to be a paying fan. If I have to start pinching PPV pennies I'm promised a much bigger bang from stacked cards like this one. Still I'm slowly learning to stop storming around the apartment claiming 'that was it, I'll never order another one'. That tantrum is a fraud, as legit as that decision. HBO's veteran commentator Larry Merchant summed it up perfectly in a recent interview:

"For the hardcore fans you can't discourage 'em, we're all degenerates, and we'll come back no matter what."

Not sure who that reflects on worse; fight junkies like me who keep paying or the cable exec jerks serving up the overpriced boxing shows. Either way it entertains me so I have to mute my whining about it and just enjoy. In that cheerful spirit here is lovable old vodka breath Larry Merchant himself employing other 'strong-arm tactics' on the fans.

finance geekery

Watch the buffoon gallery of commentators from across the talking head "news" networks shut down Mr. Schiff's warnings of a looming financial crisis as though he were a conspiracy theorist. 2008 and he was totally right...take that Ben Stein!





BTW I share the best finance, econ, poli, and fightsport blog entries I come across online here for any of you who are geeks for that stuff.