HAHAHAHAHAHA….

Mike Komisarek is the worst defenseman in the league. That is all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjrtLe7uSiw&feature=player_embedded

Waaaaaat

Theo Fleury in training camp with Calgary. 41 years old, hasn’t played in the NHL in 6 years. I’d say it’s a courtesy invite, but is it really courteous to let him do this?

I Hate This League

The Coyotes suck, plan to continue doing so.

God I hate the NHL sometimes. Listen: Jim may be bald and silly, but he actually CARES ABOUT HOCKEY. He has a bizarre and strange plan to put a HOCKEY TEAM in a place where HOCKEY FANS like to spend money on watching PROFESSIONAL HOCKEY. I recognize this challenges the NHL’s traditional business plan and may force them to deal with the strange tribe of heathens known as “Canadians”, but it has the twin virtues of being a good idea and never having been tried before under the current commissioner. Maybe perchance it should be looked into. But no, wait, Jerry fuckin’ Reinsdorf, one of the most loathed owners on this continent, has made an offer of $64 million less to keep the team in a money losing location where ice is considered the work of the devil, so hold up! And the phone call goes out to Gary Bettman at his office inside of Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment headquarters- give us a quote, something we can use to deflate speculation that this choice was made to further your insane little megalomonomaniacal dream of placing hockey franchises in places where God did not intent hockey to be played.

“This had nothing whatsoever to do with the relocation issue,” Bettman said “All that was considered was the suitability of the applicants of the owners.”"

A message to Gary Bettman: listen, homunculus, no one on the planet earth is buying this horseshit. We know it’s personal between you and Balsillie. We know you hate Canada and everything about its culture and the way that culture continues to resist your insane attempts to turn the NHL into NBA Jr. We know you disappeared up the ass of the Maple Leafs over a decade ago and this is an attempt to protect their market, despite there being multiple teams in equal-sized or much smaller market regions for hockey (Islanders/Rangers/Devils, Ducks/Kings, etc.). We know your entire professional life is staked on breaking the union and trying to establish hockey in markets which have long since rendered an en masse “meh” as their response to the sport, because if that doesn’t work out your legacy will be idiotic overexpansion and the collapse of quality of play. We know you regret going through life looking and sounding like Peter Lorre’s disreputable uncle. We know what you did last summer. That’s why we boo your every public appearance, you creepy little gnome.

More than anything else, we know this: hockey has not and will not work in some locations, the same way the NFL means the square root of fuck-all in Europe, the NBA can’t get traction in Canada, America rarely if ever knows what’s happening in soccer, Mexico is only now learning about MMA, baseball is viewed as a weird American perversion outside of this hemisphere, etc. etc. and so on. That’s ok; no sport will appeal to all people and all cultures in all places and all times. But when a sport is like hockey and draws 90% of its talent either from Europe or from a country of only 33 million people and yet spends huge amounts of time either pissing off or pissing on those markets and fans in order to chase the dream of appealing to a region of another country which manifestly doesn’t give a honk about the game and never has, something has gone very wrong. It’s gone even wronger when the people in charge of that sport keep up the same plan for 18 FUCKING YEARS starting with the addition of San Jose in 1991, and fail mercilessly at it from the standpoint of everything except nominal franchise valuations. You could subtract 5 or more teams from the NHL tomorrow and do nothing but help the quality of play and the overall tenor of fan interest: Columbus, Nashville, Phoenix, Atlanta, Florida, and you can add to the list yourself. Instead what you’ve got now is a league where no one cares about half the teams, you need to buy the Center Ice package to have any idea what’s happening in the other conference, there’s half as many actual NHL-quality players as there should be or were 15 years ago per team, and the whole league is possessed by a sense of pointlessness and ennui as mediocre teams compile unreadable records in front of listless fanbases in half-empty buildings. Fuck.

I love this sport and I hate this fucking league and the smirking cretins who run it.

(I’m good for about one of these rants a year; may as well get it out of the way now before Gaborik and Captain Dickhead crush my spirit this season)

NHL Draft

I’m really not the guy to provide any analysis of this on the merits, so I won’t try- I will, however, say something about the TV presentation. And that something is, for however long these two leagues may exist, the NHL needs to never again hold their draft the day after the NBA holds theirs because the NHL looks like a total fucking clown show in comparison. Announcers who garble simple words or stumble over them, or else throw out inexplicable phrases (“I punched you in the pants a million times!!!”); ambling, rambling presentation which takes forever to get to the point; horrifically bad attempts from everyone involved to speak French; the commissioner coming out to an enormous chorus of boos from the most passionate hockey fans, a day after David Stern received cheers from the NBA’s most passionate; the apparent need for picks to be made from the stage by approximately 37 people from each franchise including in one case the owner’s child, each of whom must walk up in single file, and who must thank the host city for its hospitality and congratulate the Penguins; the terrible, terrible visual quality of the telecast and the ugly, half-decorated arena set-up; the tendency to focus on (sorry, it’s true) the ugliest fans they could find in the crowd. The whole experience makes the league look like a third rate organization, closer to arena football than any of the other big time sports in North America.

The worst part is, nearly all of these things are controllable and correctable. I mean, you can’t do much about the fact that your draftees all look like 12 year olds and are mostly visibly terrified by the process, and at this point Gary Bettman could cure cancer while juggling supermodels on stage and still get booed, but the basic telecast issues are easily fixable. The NBA and NFL have figured this out (the MLB draft is different for various reasons) and thus managed to build their draft into a television spectacle which creates media interest, builds stars out of the draftees, and generally is an easy positive PR bonus for the league and many of its teams every year- it’s even specially targeted to do so for the teams which suck the most and thus need the most help. The NHL draft still feels like it’s stuck in the 80’s somewhere, like an off-camera event targeted to whatever city they happen to hold it in and which someone accidentally pointed a camera at. There’s no urgency to move through the process, no strong focus on who the players are and what they bring to the table, the fans don’t give a shit unless they’re cheering the home team or booing Toronto or Bettman, and the quality of the announcers- probably the key part of one of these shows- is just abysmal. I’m actually sitting here missing Mark Jackson and (I’m serious) finding an all-new appreciation for how good Stuart Scott is in his role on the NBA’s show. Watching the TSN guys is like watching an NBA draft broadcast by nothing but Andy Katzes and Dick Vitales, all useless or commonplace observations pitched a half-tone beneath hysteria. They honestly come off as unlikeable and annoying human beings, which in all likelihood they’re really not. But on this show….

Oh and incidentally, Chris Pronger to the Flyers? Has any trade in the history of this league been more inevitable?

And since I’m mean, here’s a running list of terrible turns of phrase from tonight’s show. No clue who said what, they may as well all be the same guy. Quotes are approximate, and anything that’s not a word is due to one of the announce crew having incredible difficulties with language all night.

“Drah-ah-ah-ah-muh”

“I punched you in the pants a million times!!!”

“Not that it wouldn’t have meant more to the other two, but it meant more to John Tavares”

“Do we have a trade to talk about? I don’t believe so.”

“Here’s Brian Burke and Bob Gainey discussing the Vincent Lecavelier Rumors….”
(Burke) “The rumor is he’s going to you or the Islanders”
(Gainey) “Yup.”

“Colorado, I’m not trying to crush your party but this kid’s good.”

“Get your skates sharpened at Snarklseysparmpsing”

“You wanna talk about character?” (highlight of the player boarding someone head-first)

(An inane, rambling bilingual wharrgarble of a tribute to Luc Robitaille from the stage, which had nothing to do with the draft)

“Drumitalbullfinzhers”

About a Swedish draftee:
(Announcer 1) “He’s an elite, elite athlete”
(Announcer 2) “He didn’t play in the Swedish Elite League”

“Ekman-Larsson is the first European to go in the draft, we should make that point” (He was pick #5, another Swede went #2)

All of these were from the first five picks. No Buys.

Question

Did he tell them to keep their heads up on the ice?

Dare to Be Better Than You Are

This will hopefully be the only time we do this.

I’m writing a quick rebuttal to Sean’s response to my post, as I feel what I actually wrote was severely misrepresented.

- I have not said All Arsenal Supporters Are…anything. Doing so would be precisely opposed to the point I was trying to make, and in fact I went out of my way to name several blogs and their readers who I feel have acted well in this instance. The trouble is that they represent either lesser read blogs, or minority trends in the general current of fandom. Some, such as ANR, are more often brought up to be mocked and dismissed than for any other reason.

- My point about the mobbishness of Arsenal supporters draws on two facts.

1) The major Arsenal blogs are, with the exception of Le Grove, mostly interlinked; they are also in direct contact on and off with people who work for the club, as is clear in their writing. Thus, in some respect (especially when they begin to be quoted in the press as representative Arsenal fans) they represent the club and are held up by the club as an, possibly the, important aspect of the way in which the club and the fans meet. They garner this attention because they represent the largest organized factions of fans, and to a degree they represent those fans because of the attention they receive from the media and the club itself. It’s fair to say on that basis that, as noted above, while ALL fans cannot be grouped together in any way, the LARGEST ORGANIZED FACTIONS of fans are clearly identifiable. And yes, those people are the ones I’m largely speaking about- that, combined with things like the wildly variable crowd reactions in the stadium. Vox vulgaris, vox fanbase.

2) All of this is new with Arsenal fans. As I specifically stated in my post, it is NOT new for football fans; as I said, it’s more or less what I’d expect out of Madrid fans. What makes it new is the unhinged, violently emotional quality of it, plus the fact that it’s being lead by specific people who have great influence on the fanbase, and who derive that influence partly by being tacitly endorsed by the club itself. Those two factors were not in place, say, five years ago. Thus in my estimation there’s been a major swing just this year as fans have grown frustrated with the team and look to take out that anger on whatever target is handy, preferably an external one. Compare, for example, the treatment of Alexander Hleb and Jose Reyes (or Julio Baptista) when each of them left the club; neither did much of anything at Arsenal and left under a cloud in dubious circumstances, but only the former gets called a cunt, constantly, and abused in the most vicious and personal terms. That doesn’t mean these fans are about to be Roman ultras (a charge I never made); it does mean that I don’t know where they’re going to be this time next season- and neither, really, does anyone else. The mood of Arsenal fans, and probably how low some are willing to sink, ultimately will depend on results. The mindset, however, is increasingly coming to resemble the worst of football fans, and it’s very telling how both evaluation of and basic decency towards a player can now alter so radically based on which shirt he’s in. I’m hardly the only one to notice this: any blog you choose will have one or two people complaining about “the new fans” on it in the comments section; and whether the change is due to new fans or not, the recognition of a change having taken place is widespread.

- And the larger point about tribalism: it’s disrespectful and wrong to wholly identify tribalism with passion. It demeans someone who strives to achieve without the goad of hatred for another, who can give their best and care whole-heartedly without needing to see an enemy brought low in the process. Tribalism endorses the worst in human nature, the pathetic sad and disgraceful leftovers of evolution which fill us with hate and fear at things which are new or different. Playing with it and indulging it just a little is like having just a little heroin, except that the person you so endanger may not just be yourself. Worse than that, it doesn’t even work to diffuse anger or hatred safely; if anything it encourages those feelings, which is of no little moment to understanding the importance of this. If you hate someone today just a little because he’s got the wrong shirt on, just for a few hours…what will you be ready to hate tomorrow? What are you allowing yourself to become? Pitch invasions and riots aren’t the alternative- they’re where this road is leading, where it’s ended up so many times in the past. Better to encourage people to use the more honorable parts of their nature, to demonstrate the passion without hate of which humans are equally capable. For my part, I would be better than the most base of my instincts.

I have a personal stake in this. Sean and I will never see eye to eye on this issue and there’s many reasons for that, but one of the really key ones is that I’m not straight. I consider it a minor detail about myself, personally, but this is one of those situations where, along with having been raised in and around a political activist environment, it makes all the difference. This is not a theoretical discussion for me; the fear and the danger of being part of the wrong tribe in someone’s opinion is part of my life, and so the understanding of that part of human nature is a necessity. It took me probably 12 years from when I first realized I was at all attracted to men to admit it to anyone other than myself, and when I did it was because I’d simply hit a point of misery so profound that I didn’t care what anyone thought or what the consequences were anymore. I’ve only written the words down twice in public, of which this is the second occasion. In 4 years of college I mentioned it exactly once, which was coincidentally the same number of times I was insulted for my lack of religious beliefs by a professor whose class I was taking- different tribe, I suppose. Since then, only my family and a few close friends know of it; because of course, when I go out socially and hear the word “fag” thrown around 15 times in half an hour, it’s just easier to pretend and pass as part of someone else’s tribe. That does make me a coward, but it also makes me wise enough now to know what tribalism means in practice for those without custom or numbers to shield them.

There was one exception to my silence about sexuality: I had a good friend many years ago who I’d known forever, and to whom I mentioned it in passing once. I’ve not spoken to him in at least 8 years now. Perhaps I wasn’t part of his tribe anymore.

What is the alternative, then? When I tune in to watch a sporting event or go to an arena, I go to see skill, professionalism, technique, athleticism; people pulling together as a team and striving to achieve a goal as a unit, or else the greatness of the truly superior individual athlete who describes in the arc of a career the heights to which humanity may aspire. I want to find out what works in a sport, why, and what that tells us about human nature and the world beyond the arena walls and the roar of the crowd. I do not go in order to hate, say, New Jersey Devils fans and revel in the injury to Martin Brodeur, even though he and they are among the bitterest and most long-standing of local rivals. Personally I consider it a tragedy when arguably the greatest goaltender ever is out- both because greatness impaired is always a small tragedy, and because those occasions when the Rangers have beaten him when he was at his best are among my favorite sports memories (“Matteau! Matteau! Matteau!”) precisely because they beat the absolute best. I can’t hate the Devils (or Manchester United, or the Celtics, etc.)- I respect and admire them. If I didn’t, why would beating them mean anything? Compare this to the reaction to Phil Brown from some Arsenal fans: if they truly believe he’s as much of a rotten, low-account son of a bitch as they say he is, a liar and a cheat, why be so incensed about anything he says? What value could it have? But then the value to them is solipsistic, and lies in what it can be used for- it can be hated, and he can be a figure to focus all that rage on. A good two minutes’ worth you might say, if the mood struck you.

When I root for my team, I root because they represent the city of my birth, or my father’s birth in the case of Frankfurt, or because they’re my national team (or the German national team who I’ve adopted; and yes, your joke about the guy who likes men rooting for Mannschaft goes here), and because I want to see them do well and achieve. There may be opposing teams or groups of fans which I find distasteful (say, internet MMA fans), but it’s not because they’re different, or they have the wrong shirts on; it’s because, in my estimation, they merit it through ill conduct or general foolishness. If the quality of posts on Sherdog increased 100% tomorrow, I’d be happy to praise them- it’d be more good writing to read and an asset to the sport, and I derive no emotional satisfaction out of thinking they’re wrong and misguided. For the same reason, you’ll see me more than once have little good to say about a player for a team I support- Sean “Captain Dickhead” Avery’s a good example- if I feel they merit it for conduct, but also show little interest in obsessing about and reveling in the misfortunes of such players when they’ve moved on. I can’t recall having written anything in months about Zach Randolph, Jason Kidd, Stephon Marbury’s .304 FG%, etc. all of whom left teams I support under testy circumstances. Intellectual honesty, sportsmanship and respect for the self and others demand no less. Hate and schadenfreude leave me unmoved, not because I’m any better than average, but because I make a conscious effort to rise above the tribal instinct. What I do, so too may you, and be a better man for it.

In the end I’m not accusing Arsenal fans of being violent, or evil, or totalitarian, or anything on that line. I am saying that they’re coming to increasingly embrace tribalism, which is probably the most destructive of human instincts, and that to understand why it is so requires you to walk for a while in the shoes of those targeted by it. The whims and attitudes of a football fanbase may be the most petty of instances of this, but it still matters; and all the more so when there are other and better ways of being a fan- ways that, in some small measure, may ennoble the spirit instead of dragging it down into the muck. Football is the world’s game, touching the lives of billions of people on every continent. Better, then, that those with some influence and standing in the game try to make it an influence for good, rather than a license to be squalid. Imagine if that were the Arsenal Way.

Gary Bettman, Ladies and Gentlemen

Shorter Bettman: my players are work-shy liars who must be forced by edict to show up for the all-star game.

That’s advertising, baby.

Separated at Birth

Mats Sundin

~~~~~~~~~~~

Mats Sundin?

Friday Roundup- Weekend Fights, Avery, Wigan, Etc.

I seem to have come down with something loathsome, so this will be done bullet-point style. Probably more on Sunday after the fights.

- Arsenal vs. Wigan this weekend, with William Gallas out and Amr Zaki doubtful for Wigan. Zaki may end up being the key man for this one- he’s been splendiferous all season and yet another makeshift arsenal back four will have their hands full with him if he plays. Early “”it is understood”-style sources indicate Kolo may step into the side. That will be interesting to see, both if he does, and if he’s partnered by Silvestre or Djourou if so. My sense remains that he’s being marginalized and probably forced out of the club and the transfer rumors are a natural product of that, but these things are never settled until physicals are passed so a few good games here and there may prove a road back for him, especially if the Gallas out rumors are themselves true. I hope so. Either way, once again, it’s all flux at the back.

As for the rest of the game, Myles Palmer had a good article touching on a variety of things, the most currently germane of which is the bit about the one-dimensionality of the Arsenal attack. Wigan are an average side overall, but one in the top half of the table for goals allowed and generally an organized, professional outfit of the sort which has proven a challenge to the team before; given the issues in the Arsenal defense this is a game with real danger to it. You can pretty much assume Arsenal will control the majority of possession out of the gate and pressure hard throughout the first half, but the worry is that this could be one of those games where they can’t control or defend against a good counterattack and drop points on a 2-1, 1-1 scoreline. A goal in the first half may be crucial for Arsenal.

- So Ronaldo almost joined Arsenal in 2003. I imagine many fans will have the usual vituperative reaction to this, but let’s be serious: in a squad where room can be found for William Gallas and Eboue and Robin van Persie’s occasional viciousness and Denilson’s burgeoning diving prowess, he’d have been treasured and defended much as they are. Probably more so than he has been at United, given Arsene’s style. Stories like this have been out there for years of all the players Arsenal were in for early in their careers- Ronaldo, Robinho, Kaka, etc.- and were subsequently outbid on; all I take away from this one is that it’s a reminder that Arsene is a great talent evaluator but also more than a little pennywise and pound foolish in negotiations. I choose to hope that the introduction of Ivan Gazidis to help on that front will help solve the issue.

- Sean Avery ended up getting 6 games and counseling from the NHL. The tell here is the counseling aspect; it’s there entirely for PR purposes (does anyone really expect Captain Dickhead to have an epiphany on the couch?), which should tell you why he got suspended in the first place. The NHL right now is in danger, as always, of falling down the slippery slope towards boxingville in this country where the only time they attract serious public notice is when the media can tell the “another black eye for…” story, and Avery is always a good pretext for one of those. The NHL, thanks to Canada, will never get as far down that road as boxing but the league really doesn’t need this stuff cropping up while the economy tanks and several of Gary Bettman’s treasured mid-market southern American franchises begin feeling the pinch. The league also really can’t afford to alienate any of its fan demographics in the least, and my sense- wholly unsupported by statistical evidence, so take for what it’s worth- is that hockey relies on female fans more than, say, the NFL or NBA or MLB does.

That said, he absolutely should be suspended, and as a fan I applaud the Dallas Stars and their serious handling of this (if not the initial 4 year contract he got- wow, in retrospect, was that bonkers). Sports being what they are this is lost on many fans, but what Avery said was VILE. It was misogynist and based on the idea that women exist to be used and lose value when they have been, and in my book that’s every bit as bad as racism, for which there would be no question about a suspension. When you consider that Avery’s remarks were clearly prepared and said off the ice and not in the heat of competition, and that he lied to his own team about whether he was going to make them- this can’t be allowed to pass. It’s an open and shut case of bringing the game into disrepute. I won’t speculate on where Avery goes from here, other than that I think it’s a good bet he’ll be traded around the deadline to a team with a soft rep looking for a boost, but I will say that the NHL needs to stay on this guy. There’s always a tendency with a player in any sport who constantly breaks the rules or acts in an unsportsmanlike manner to eventually get tired of dealing with him and to prefer to ignore his issues rather than deal with the headache. The NHL needs to make it clear that either he gets his shit together, or he’s looking at 10+ games of unpaid pine time a year.

- Knicks and Nets both play tonight, against Atlanta and Minnesota respectively I’ll try and catch these two in between sneezes, as several of the matchups look intriguing. In particular, I’d like to see Kevin Love vs. Brook Lopez if they end up guarding each other, as well as get a first look this year at Atlanta.

- And finally, Saturday is THE BIGGEST FIGHT OF THE YEAR OH MY GOD DE LA HOYA VS. PACQUIAO!!!!!111 As much as I love these sorts of events, I am officially tired of the hype train on this one. Undercard is nothing much to speak of- mostly prospect showcases, by which I mean squash matches. Sergio Medina vs. Juanma Lopez could be mildly competitive although most people including me expect Juanma to vaporize him in relatively short order. Beyond that, well- this is a one fight card. But what a fight. I’ve been a big fan of this one since it was announced due to the various plotlines; it plays almost as a bizarro version of Couture-Lesnar, as here you also have a young, physically dominant fighter taking on an old warhorse who is legendary but has danced with retirement in recent times and has been inactive of late. The difference here is that the younger fighter is the one giving up the size, but is also far more established than Lesnar was; and De la Hoya, while still a strong competitor, hasn’t had the string of success of late which Couture had going into the Lesnar fight. So how does this one play out?

I’ll say up front that I expect Pacquiao to win, probably by decision, probably something like 117-112. The current public sense appears to be that De La Hoya is the favorite; the betting line as I type this is DLH -165. As near as I can understand it the thought behind a DLH victory is that he’s the larger man and the more powerful puncher and how can a fighter who started his career at 107 pounds compete with an opponent who once won a title at middleweight (160)? the bigger name and bigger star also always gets some extra money on him. And yet…well…Oscar may win this fight yet, but that’s really total hogwash. A list of facts:

*DLH started his own career at 135 pounds and is not exactly a natural middleweight cutting down.

*His “middleweight title” was a total robbery over the painfully average beltholder Felix Sturm, who would go on to achieve the commanding heights of futility in being knocked out by Javier Castillejo.

*The last meaningful KO of Oscar’s career came in 2002 against a half-shot Fernando Vargas; the only people he’s knocked out since then have been professional punching bag Ricardo Mayorga and 5,000 year old mummy Yory Boy Campas. It may just be possible that his power is overrated.

*People make much of Pacquiao starting off at Junior Flyweight (108); what gets noted less often is that he did so in 1995 when he was 16. He’s no more a “natural” 108 pounder than De la Hoya is a middleweight; in their maturity and primes Pacquiao is probably a natural 135 pounder and Oscar a welterweight, which is a difference, but not a chasm.

*This doesn’t get noted in isolation often, but since he burst on the worldwide scene with his destruction of Lehlo Ledwaba in 2001, Pacquiao has lost exactly once. It was to Erik Morales, a fighter he went 2-1 against, by close decision. Pacquiao, if he were hit by a meteor tomorrow, would be a first-ballot mortal lock hall of famer; I’m not sure how many people have really realized this. I think you can even make the argument, if you take into account the points in their careers in which each men fought their best opposition, that Pacquiao has had the better career. DLH has famously never beaten a HOFer who was in his prime at the time; Pacquiao has both Marco Antonio Barrera and Juan Manuel Marquez in that category.

What, really, does Oscar have going for him? 12 pounds or so of natural size and probably slightly better power as a result is all I can really come up with. He’s going to be brutally out-quicked; the best individual punch in the fight is probably Pacquiao’s straight left; Pacquiao is always in remarkable condition, while Oscar famously fades late; Oscar gives up 6 years of age; and it’s been a long time since Oscar fought a guy who really went for war and threw combinations at him and tried to HURT him. Steve Forbes was maybe the closest, but was brutally outclassed even as he managed to touch Oscar up and break a bone in his face; Mayweather was a jab-and-flee defensive fighter in their fight; Mayorga was a skill-less lunger who loaded up; Hopkins spent most of that fight timing him; Felix Sturm and Shane Mosley 4 and 5 years ago is maybe the best answer, but both of those guys fought measured boxing contests and didn’t have Pacquiao’s dynamism and pressure. I don’t think people realize how unusual a challenge this is for Oscar. In the end, I think speed kills; Oscar will win some early rounds as Manny adjusts to the size and the timing, and after that Oscar’s going to think three men are punching him. He’ll probably hurt Pacquiao late with something, but not be able to finish; in the end, he’ll accept another honorable defeat to go with the ones to Hopkins and Mayweather. Don’t underestimate Oscar’s willingness to accept a loss; he’s had more than Pacquiao, especially recently, and I’m not sure he’s willing anymore to go to the places he may have to to knock out a killer like Manny if he’s down on the cards late in the fight.

I expect, whatever happens, that it’ll be a good fight.