Oscar/Floyd - The Large Edition

From what I've gleaned in our Oscar/Floyd series this week, the smart money is on Floyd, and the dreamers are spinning Golden dreams. Looks like Oscar's good cop routine has done its work. He has always been a main attraction, but only in this recent trend - Mayorga and now Floyd - does he find himself in that made-for-Hollywood role of The Dignified Wise Elder and Family Man Slaying the Evil Bigmouth in the Cause of His Honor. For those of us who have followed this game a while, it's a little tough to swallow.

Then again, so too is Floyd a bitter pill. Somehow, though, I like him more than I like Oscar. The Golden Boy has his golden shtick down so pat that on 24-7 I felt like I was watching him playing himself in a bio-pic. About the only time in the whole series that you saw something genuine in him was when he was all giddy about being on Leno, and that tells the golden story right there. Starfucker of starfuckers.

Floyd - I think there is something truly wrong with this kid. Look at the people who have raised him and been his main confidantes - Daddy Floyd, and then Uncle Rog, the Wrinkly Black Mamba. After their supporting turns on 24-7, I'm telling you these two cats need to make the HBO jump over to Marlo's crew on The Wire, because they are straight-up gangsta. I do not mean that as a compliment. These are bad bad men, and they have fostered an irresponsible, childish, exuberant, emotional, needy, fragile, borderline schizophrenic man-boy in Lil Floyd who happens, like many a sociopath before him, to make for excellent television.

But I left out perhaps the most important qualifier in that list above - highly dangerous - which brings me to the matter at hand.

The speed, the speed... all you hear from the cigar-chompers and amateur handicappers lately is one dirge after another on the perils of Floyd's flamboyant speed. Oscar couldn't handle Sugar Shane four years ago, they say, so how on earth is he going to deal with Floyd now?

This Sugar Shane question is a difficult one to answer if you want to make a case for Oscar's chances, and I am going to have to sidestep it myself to make my own. I build my case for Oscar on the simple fact of the enormity of this bout, and my suspicion that Floyd will not content himself with another of his run-of-the-mill "I'm faster than you, I'm faster than the Concorde, so gimme that decision good night" brand of victory. 24-7 has brought this bout an unprecedented amount of coverage, and Floyd has filled those programs with one epic boast of his Achillean manhood after another. After all of that self-mythologizing on national TV, an in-and-out, shoeshine UD will be unconvincing to say the least, and I sense that for Floyd, unconvincing will be unacceptable.

And that's my case for Oscar in a nutshell. Which is not to say that he will win, only to say that he has a strong chance if Floyd fights as, say, Sugar Ray Leonard in the first Duran fight and not as Sugar Ray in the Marvelous fight. In one episode of 24-7 Freddie Roach talks about setting traps for Floyd. It's not hard at all to see how that might play out. Oscar will be able to eat a lot of Floyd's combinations before he goes down - that's not Chavez, or Vargas, or Tito-level shots he'll be taking in there. It's easy to imagine Oscar rope-a-doping a little, letting Floyd find his comfort zone and luring him into carelessness, a sense of "He can't hit me, he's too slow, I can do whatever I want, showtime..." and then, WHAM, left hook, and the playing field is leveled. Floyd has never set a single foot on queer street. One wonders how far he can walk the walk down that lonely avenue.

Is this scenario wishful thinking? Of course. I'm not a diehard fan of either of these guys, but I am literally dying with anticipation to see them get it on, and I want to see the unexpected, the spectacular. It's much too painful to think that all of this pomp and circumstance is going to end in an all-too-predictable coronation of the God-given glory of lightning-quick reflexes. And yet, I see clearly how it could go the other way, see it so clearly that... screw it... here goes: Oscar TKO10 Floyd. I have glimpsed the future people. Tomorrow's longshot comes in long after the Derby's been run.