good talk

Last night Shane Mosley stopped Antonio Margarito in a one-sided contest at the Staples Center is L.A. This was a big upset as Margarito was anointed as one of the best fighters out there after stopping Miguel Cotto at the MGM in Las Vegas where I was in attendance last July 26. Mosley is actually sort of semi-washed up and I offer that the reason he was so successful was due to the huge number of flush on the face punches that Margarito absorbed from Cotto. I personally saw the hard-punching Cotto bang Margarito over a hundred times to the face seemingly with no effect, at that time (Cotto's Revenge?). Margarito has been a professional boxer since he was "15" and now he's "30," he has a lot of mileage on his body. About 10 years ago Tim Couch was the first player taken in the NFL Draft and by the Cleveland Browns but after 5 years of playing behind that bad offensive line his body was so torn down that the Browns cut him and he couldn't make any other team even as a third-string quarterback. About the same thing happened to David Carr more recently, he was the first player taken in the NFL Draft, by the Houston Texans and after 5 years his own body was so torn down that the Texans cut him although he did make another team as a back-up quarterback. The human body can take only so much abuse and then it's shot, that's you, me or anybody else. With the athletes I find it sad to see. From Mendoza, Argentina I took a Cama (luxury) bus for the 700 mile trip to Buenos Aires which I hadn't been to for 17 years. This took about 13 hours and they served us a good supper with wine and a good breakfast enroute (7 P.M. to 8 A.M.). And we even played tic tac toe for a bottle of fine wine, ha, ha, with everybody applauding the lucky winner ( I once played a chicken and got a draw, hey that's better than most did against this guy). They have a lot of fine buses in South America and for not much money. Once we got close to Buenos Aires due to the extremely bad traffic it took 2 hours just to get to the centrally located bus station. Once there I took a taxi to Florida Street, the main drag downtown, to a travel agency that I had read about that seemed good (Marshall Loeb who writes a business column in newspapers recently called Buenos Aires "the Paris of South America" and rightly so). This thing didn't open until 10 A.M., I think none of them do. Once there the nice gal sold me a package deal for 3 nights in Ushuaia with my plane leaving at 7 A.M. the next morning, it sounded good to me and it was good. In the meantime I wanted to go to a Tango dinner and show that night, there's many and as she said that she had been to them all I asked her which she had liked best and she said, "La Ventana." So I catted about until that evening as is my wont and saw the Cathedral which is San Martin's final resting place and other interesting stuff. I had agreed to be picked up at this 5 Star Hotel off of Florida Street at 7 P.M. and around 6 P.M. I was in one of their Men's Rooms and I was washing up and brushing my teeth, one of their employees came in and saw me and called the cops on me. Hey, they could tell that I was a foreign tourist and just making some ablutions so what's the big deal? Anyway I thought that I should get out of there, the cops were walking in as I was walking out. Good grief. So I walked down the street and came back around 7 P.M. and was picked up for the Tango Show. People, this is something that you should do in your lifetime, it was so fabulous. They took a picture with this young chick, a tango dancer, with her leg draped across me, ha, ha, I sent it to my brother in Cleveland. They had me sit down across from another guy who was by himself, we were to share this bottle of fine wine but he didn't drink so by the end of the evening I had finished it by myself. That steak dinner was so delicious and the waiters were so great, if you touched a napkin to your lips they'd instantly bring you another one. The Tango Show started at 10 P.M. and went until Midnight, those dancers were so talented and great, it was something to behold. The entire schmerz cost $70, it was a night I'll never forget. They dropped me off on Florida Street around l A.M. and it was totally deserted but perfectly safe, no miscreants prowling about or anything like that and I caught a taxi to their Domestic Airport .