Letdown

I had high hopes for a revealing trio of fights last night on Boxing After Dark and I came away disappointed. None of the three bouts gave me what I wanted. In the opening fight, Norberto Bravo took one look at the horrifying specter of Andre Berto's jab and thought better of making an evening of it. Berto thrice knocked Bravo off his feet in the first round as if he were tumbling an old dog from his hind legs. Score one for the three-knockdown rule, I suppose. It saved Bravo a good brain-scrambling. This Berto, I'm telling you - they're going to have a tough time getting work for this kid. The Tyson comparison grows with every bout.

The biggest disappointment of the night was the second fight, Sechew Powell v. Ishe Smith. I hoped for an impressive outing from Sechew, but I think last night was a major setback for his plans. It looked as though he should have been able to dominate Smith, who spent large portions of every round posturing and fishing for the perfect counterpunch. Instead, Sechew was frequently off-balance and threw a lot of soft, purposeless punches. For all his talk of wanting to punish the mouthy Smith, he seemed all too enthused by his lackluster unanimous decision, one I'm not even sure he deserved, certainly not by the margins he was granted on the scorecards. It's tough to tell from just one fight, but even Buddy McGirt seemed exasperated with him last night, and I found myself questioning whether he has what it takes to go to the next level.

In the featured bout of the evening, Paulie Malignaggi put on a veritable clinic against Edner Cherry, and yet the affair was ultimately unsatisfying - one, because I expected Cherry to be a more substantial opponent, and two, because we saw that even at his best Malignaggi is a points-fighter, all fancy footwork and accurate jab and absolutely no potential for finality. It's a bind he's in, and one that I'm hard-pressed to imagine him escaping. The best thing about his night to me was his post-bout interview, where he was surprisingly humble and forthright for a guy with a blue mohwak. "I'm not ready for Ricky Hatton," he said, "I need to do a little more than I did tonight." A fair assessment, delivered with panache. He has something, that kid, a spark, something unique. And after the Cotto battle, we know he has heart to spare. I just don't know if he has the raw materials to be a major force in the ring.