The cut below Mike Alvarado’s left eye was gaping. Frantic between-rounds work on it in his corner helped … until the next punch. His face was swollen. Leveling with him, his cornermen told him he needed a knockout to win.
Alvarado couldn’t pull that off Saturday night.
He eventually lost a unanimous decision to the iconic Juan Manuel Marquez, 40, in the welterweight elimination fight at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif., falling to 34-3 as a pro.
But the former Colorado high school wrestling champion won in this sense: As we watched the HBO telecast, Alvarado preserved his viability as a “gladiator” — a distinction of honor and marketability that doesn’t require greatness, but a combination of heart, relentlessness and, yes, some skill.
PHOTOS: Boxer Mike Alvarado vs. Juan Manuel Marquez
Gladiator? Use that word in any other sport, and it should induce winces. In boxing, where it still feels as if the building should be full of smoke and the highlights should be shown in black and white or even sepia tones, and as if you should have blood spatters on your shirt if you were within 20 rows of the ring, it still seems appropriate.
That’s what Alvarado, 33, has proved himself to be, most recently in his split of his two fights with Brandon Rios, plus his losses to Ruslan Provodnikov in Broomfield and to Marquez. The loss to Rios was on a TKO and against Provodnikov, Alvarado didn’t answer the bell for the 11th round in relinquishing his WBO lightweight title.
The showing at “home” raised a few doubts, including about Alvarado’s zeal in prefight training and his willingness to take strategic direction. Yet it was a highly entertaining, action-filled bout, and not only because of his Russian opponent’s full-bore, one-gear style.
At least in its late rounds, the Saturday night fight at the refurbished Forum showed that Alvarado still is that gladiator.
Forget for a second the alphabet soup of sanctioning bodies and the myriad weight classes, creating the impression that boxing’s motto might as well be: EVERY WINNER GETS A BELT!
Wherever he fits into that mess, he’s still an attraction.
As he even managed to knock down Marquez in the ninth round, then fought through those final rounds, the HBO position — as advanced on the air by Jim Lampley and Roy Jones Jr. — became that Alvarado had reproved his mettle.
My only quibble was that Alvarado didn’t seem to be desperately seeking that knockout in the final rounds as much as he was determined to prove his courage to keep fighting.
The endorsement from the broadcasters is significant because HBO and Bob Arum’s Top Rank have to sell their fights, tying together both regular HBO telecasts and HBO pay-per-view cards.
For Alvarado, future paychecks (or at least the size of them) largely depended on the cable network being able to still credibly build him up as a pretty good fighter who can be part of great fights.
It would be sad if Alvarado becomes even more the “opponent” than the star, counted on to be the bloodied combatant in the other corner, the willing participant in brutal, compelling fights you can’t stop watching … as long as they last.
I’ve written about Alvarado as far back as 2008, when he was undefeated and the clock was running on his attempt to break through to big-money fights. He went through personal-life tribulations, and I again profiled him after his jail stay in Adams County and 90-day stint in the Colorado Corrections Alternative Program at the Buena Vista Corrections Complex in 2009.
I’m rooting for him to stay off the canvas.
Terry Frei: tfrei@ denverpost.com
