IBR on The Cruelest Sport

Only seven months removed from a slugfest with Ruslan Provodnikov that left him slurring his speech for months, Tim Bradley entered the ring against Juan Manuel Marquez as something of a mystery. At his best, Bradley had the intelligence and athleticism to diffuse Marquez, but there was a chance that the actual Bradley, the one poised to face Marquez in Las Vegas last night, was only a shadow of himself. Would last night’s Bradley be able to dart safely in and out of range, or slip and roll with the punches of boxing’s foremost marksman? If not, how would this Bradley respond to the blows Marquez crashed into his skull? Bradley answered these questions and more in winning a split decision at the Thomas and Mack Center.

Read A Jury Disguised As An Audience: Timothy Bradley W12 Juan Manuel Marquez on The Cruelest Sport.

IBR on The Cruelest Sport

Boxing is a sport that adds years to lives without extending them, that both glosses over and emphasizes the fact that getting punched in the head is bad for you. Admittedly, the study of brain trauma is a new and underdeveloped field, and it is still unclear whether the majority of the cognitive deficits that are associated with blunt head blows result from the physical trauma itself, or the brain responding to this trauma. Those deficits, however, are undeniable—even obvious—in boxing. Boxing can chuck a man out of his prime like a bouncer, dumping him on the curb, where balance, coordination, cognition and speech get lost in the gathering crowd. This is what is happening when a fighter gets old before our eyes. This is the ugly side of growing old in a bloodsport—the side that counts in dog years, that places asterisks next to ages and question marks on futures.

Read FALLOUT: On Timothy Bradley and Manny Pacquiao on The Cruelest Sport.

IBR on The Cruelest Sport

After suffering consecutive losses to Floyd Mayweather, Jr., and Austin Trout, Cotto faced questions regarding how much he had left, and, perhaps more important, just how much he wanted to give. Trainer Pedro Diaz was given his walking papers, replaced by A-lister Freddie Roach, who, like Cotto, has watched his own heyday disappear in the rearview mirror. The marriage of the offensive-minded Roach and the shopworn Cotto has injected some life into the fighter’s twilight run. After Manny Pacquiao ran him through a wood-chipper in 2009, Cotto, Caguas, Puerto Rico, become increasingly reliant on his boxing skills to win fights, tempering the ferocity that typified his destructive craft with some cuter tricks. Was there a seance or two, maybe some dark hours with a Ouija board to go with the mitt work to help conjure up Cotto’s past as he prepared for Rodriguez? Whatever tactics Roach employed, they worked. Roach wanted Cotto to fight. Cotto fought, and Rodriguez suffered the consequences.

Rolling Thunder: Miguel Cotto TKO3 Delvin Rodriguez on The Cruelest Sport.