Omar Figueroa's victory over Ricky Burns tops thrilling PBC on CBS card
HIDALGO, Teaxs - A wise old boxing sage once said that the three minutes of a round in the ring can be the longest, or the shortest, of your life. In the court of public opinion, perception can be just as unpredictable.
Was it really just a week ago that the mainstream masses were wondering how boxing could possibly recover from the black eye it suffered thanks to the snoozefest between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao?
If that was a dark mark for the sport, Saturday afternoon provided a ray of sunshine, a bright and sweltering one just steps from the Mexican border, as a pair of thrilling slugfests on free-to-air television meant that "boxing" and "value" could once again be mentioned in the same breath.
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The Premier Boxing Champions series has put a premium on entertainment from the moment it opened in March and victories here for local favorite Omar Figueroa and British bantamweight Jamie McDonnell were no exception.
Figueroa has the kind of go-for-broke, all-action style that the viewing audience, and by extension series architect Al Haymon, craves. His unanimous points decision over Scotland's Ricky Burns appeared relatively comfortable on the scorecards (117-109, 116-110, 116-110) thanks to a pair of point deductions, but both fighters ensured there was no shortage of heavy-hitting drama.
Compared to seven days earlier, it was mightily heartening. The State Farm Arena is not the MGM Grand, and in the unlikely event that there were any celebrities snuggled among the regular patrons, they kept a low profile rather than preening on the big screen.
But the arena was packed with noisy, passionate, invested fans, who paid a reasonable price to see a fine show and voted with their applause and their vocal chords.
They saw McDonnell retain his WBA bantamweight belt with a decision over previously undefeated Tomoki Kameda (114-113 on all three cards), before getting firmly behind hometown hero Figueroa.
It has been a long time since boxing had a concept that is not about bleeding every last public penny, but instead prioritizes seeing a crowd departing with a smile on its collective face and a hunger to return.
"I am never going to pay for another Mayweather pay per view again," said fan Soraya Gonzalez, a local secretary who said she spent less than $100 to bring her family of four to Hidalgo. "I remember boxing from when I was a kid. It was fun and it was good value. It was about the bravery of the men and the action of the battle. I felt like I was a kid again tonight."
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Are Figueroa, McDonnell, the still-promising Kameda or the veteran Burns as technically proficient as Mayweather and Pacquiao? Absolutely not. But neither are any of the four the type to let paint dry. Heck, they barely let it get out of the can.
But they were all fighting for something; their future, their reputation, or in the case of Burns - financially crippled by a court case with a former promoter - his livelihood. Not for an extra Bugatti or 20.
"You've got to leave it all out there," Burns said.
Figueroa, making his debut at 140 lbs, missed weight on Friday, but the bout went ahead nevertheless. That was a careless misstep, but his popularity will only grow due to his fearlessness - the very trait that Haymon's series is trying to build itself on, and must continue to do so.