WAY TOO EASY

I’ll say this for Kevin Kelley. He talked such a good fight, I started to believe he really might be able to put up at least a respectable showing against Marco Antonio Barrera. But then it came time to walk the walk, and what we saw was what we should have realised all along was going to happen: a faded 35-year-old getting outclassed and overwhelmed by one of the world’s leading fighters.

Barrera, 29, demonstrated once again what a complete, well-rounded professional fighter he is. Announced by Michael Buffer as “the reigning, defending, true featherweight champion of the world” (although he doesn’t hold a sanctioning organisation belt), Barrera lived up to those words by taking Kelley apart with ease in front of a crowd of 4,912 at the MGM Grand casino hotel in Las Vegas and a worldwide television viewing audience(pay-per-view in America, delayed next-day showing on BBC2 in Britain).

The superb fighting machine from Mexico City took his time and placed his punches with precision in a four-rounds public workout. For that’s really all it was. It was never a fight.

Kelley landed only 16 punches according to the CompuBox statistics. For the first half of the opening round he was in the fight simply because Barrera was taking a look at him. But as soon as Kelley tried to press the issue he got caught and dropped — and from punches that, from ringside, didn’t look terribly hard. One knew then and there that this would not be a long night.

The fact that Kelley lasted into the fourth round was simply because Barrera was in no hurry. Barrera knew, from the moment he dropped Kelley in that opening round (and probably a lot earlier), that this was going to be an easy night.

Every time Barrera hit Kelley he seemed to hurt him, down or up. And after two more knockdowns, in the fourth round, referee Robert Byrd had seen enough and waved the finish, after one minute, 32 seconds of the round.

Barrera looked good — he could hardly not look good against this inadequate challenger — and the large Mexican and Mexican-American contingent loved him. But he was facing a Kevin Kelley far removed from the fighter who had defeated Mexico’s Goyo Vargas in Reno more than nine years ago in one of the greatest featherweight fights I’ve ever seen.

This Kevin Kelley was just a shadow of a once classy and courageous southpaw sharpshooter. He talked afterwards of trying too hard to end it with one punch but in the ring his body language was that of a loser.

And, even allowing for Kelley’s advanced age and the tough bouts in which he has engaged in a long career, he seemed to go down very easily.

He had assured us that he had a great training camp, that the weight had come off without difficulty, that he was motivated and wouldn’t be blown away. In the TV commercials he had asserted boldly: “Barrera is mine!” But he showed nothing. He landed a few left-handers from out of his southpaw stance but these were of no concern to the younger man, nor did they occasion a change in Barrera’s expressionless countenance.

Kelley has been a good professional and he has provided some exciting nights. On this night, though, he had no legs, no chin, no speed. One could go on. I think that if Barrera had really gone all out, and taken it right to him, Kelley most likely wouldn’t have made it out of the first round.

But Barrera wanted everything to be perfect and precise, which included not giving Kelley the chance to hit him (well, not hit him very much, anyway).

The sad affair made Barrera look like a huge puncher. In fact, while Barrera can certainly hit hard he had been the full 12 rounds in three of his last four fights (the wins over Naseem Hamed, Erik Morales and Johnny Tapia) without scoring a single knockdown. The last fighter he had stopped, a fellow-Mexican, Enrique Sanchez, was moving up from super bantam but lasted six rounds — his corner pulled him out before the start of the seventh.

So it seemed reasonable to assume that Kelley would at least go, say, six rounds. The over/under odds at the MGM were 17-10 on (bet up to 2-1 on by fight time) that the fight would not go nine full rounds. As it turned out, the odds were wildly generous to the punters.

To me, it looked as if Kelley realised the moment he hit the floor in the first round that he was hopelessly overmatched. He fought without passion or commitment. Perhaps this was the night when his body and his brain, in unison, told him: “No more.” Kelley fought like the man who wasn’t there. His physical body was in the ring but there was no spark within. It occurred to me at ringside that we were watching the walking remnants of what was once a very good fighter.

To be brutal, he fought like a man who was simply waiting to get knocked out.
Barrera was wobbling him with punches that did not seem terribly potent. The sort of punches that Johnny Tapia — a ringsider at the MGM — was walking through in his defiant points beating last November.

A week earlier on television I had watched a 39-year-old Vince Phillips grit it out for 12 brave, bloody and punishingly one-sided rounds against Ricky Hatton, and before that marvelled at Wayne McCullough’s unyielding spirit when staying the 12 rounds with the younger, bigger, Scott Harrison. Kelley did not seem to take anything like the pounding that Cool Vince or McCullough endured, yet he was soon on the floor, and soon out of there. It was, after all his talk, all the assurances of being in great shape, a pathetic performance.

As for Barrera, he did what he had to do and did it well. The two counter punches, a right hand followed by a left hook, that dropped Kelley midway through the opening round were impeccably delivered. The body shots were landing with audible thuds. His jabs had Kelley’s right eye puffy.

It was almost like an exhibition. A double left hand in the third — a hook to the body followed by an uppercut through the middle — had Kelley’s legs dipping and I think that he thought about going down but changed his mind.

One sensed that once Barrera started to put serious pressure on Kelley the mismatch would soon be over, as it was in the fourth. Although the two knockdowns in this round came from right hands to the head, it was the body shots that did the real damage. When Kelley fell for the second time in the fourth it was a face-down sprawl and he looked towards his longtime trainer, Phil Borgia, with an expression that pleaded: “Rescue me.” But Kelley picked himself up at the count of eight with what seemed a weary reluctance. 

However, he made no attempt to fight back. Barrera needed to throw only a few more punches, with Kelley covering up on the ropes, to bring matters to a conclusion.

Barrera has now beaten two veteran ex-champs in succession in Tapia and Kelley, although one showed a lot more spirit than the other. It is time to see him in a real test again. A rubber match with Erik Morales is the truly big fight in the featherweight division, but the third Mexican star at this weight, Juan Manuel Marquez, or Derrick “Smoke” Gainer, who retained his title on the MGM Grand show, or, of course, Scott Harrison, would all be worthy opponents. 

Watching Barrera in the ring is always a special occasion, no matter who he meets, but it’s so much better when the other man is capable of making a contribution. 

For full coverage of this show, including Gainer-Leon and Frontline Diary, see May issue