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True, the fight itself kind of sucked. Renata Domsodi was a 40-year-old Hungarian road warrior who had possibly taken the gig just for the free airfare. After three rounds of running away, Renata managed to absorb an accidental head butt, then bleed and whine until they ruled it a no-contest. Maybe women’s boxing really is making progress if we’ve got crappy European opponents just like the men, but if Heather Hardy is supposed to be “the First Lady of Dibella Entertainment,” they should stop treating her like the intern.

I milled around for a while in the Barclay Center’s torus-shaped corridor drinking more gin and missing Luis Collazo’s quick knockout win. When I checked back in, Prichard Colon was in the ring wearing a copper chainmail skirt with Puerto Rican flag waistband, red hot pants, and a white jock strap. There was a word across the skirt’s crotch that might have been “TIME” and a white shape below it that looked like a polar bear from the 100-level. That’s all I remember about his fight, but I will absolutely pay to see this guy again.

After that was some boring Ukrainian, so I broke for Calexico loaded nachos (dayenu) before settling back down to watch Peter Quillin and Andy Lee’s tense, high firepower battle. 

This looked to be a blowout early for Quillan with knockdowns in the first and third, but Lee roared back, putting Kid Chocolate down in the seventh and closing well. It was ruled a split draw, which is always unsatisfying, but the whole night was kind of bittersweet. April is the cruelest month. 

In the other half of the Premier Boxing Champions broadcast on NBC, Lamont Peterson made Danny Garcia miss a whole lot, but he didn’t make him pay for real until after the eighth. The majority decision for Garcia was booed by the drunk guys behind me and, virtually, by Olympic gold medallist Claressa Shields, who tweeted that “Decisions like that hurt my heart.”

I was saving my heart for Tito Bracero. By the time he came on it was almost midnight and I had been in the Barclays Center for over seven hours. My date had gone home, as had almost everyone else, but the streets of Sunset Park must have been eerily quiet because Tito’s whole neighborhood was here. They wore Puerto Rican flags and shirts that said “Team Bracero,” and they yelled things in Spanglish at the few brave Dominicans who turned up for Felix Diaz.

I had been following Gabriel “Tito” Bracero for several months leading up to the fight. For a while it had looked as though Tito would get a shot at Danny Garcia, but Garcia moved up in weight and fought Rod Salka instead. 

Felix Diaz sounded dangerous to me. He was an undefeated southpaw, an Al Haymon guy who won a gold medal for the Dominican Republic at the Beijing Games. But everyone assured me he wasn’t as good as he was supposed to be.

Besides, Tito had won fights he wasn’t supposed to win before. He had boxed circles around Dmitri Salita. In his sole loss, he got up off the canvas to knock down Demarcus “Chop Chop” Corley.

“My son is not a gym fighter,” said his father Quiro. 

This is the highest praise he can give. Gym fighters wilt under pressure. If you are not a gym fighter, that means you have heart.

Tito stayed busy in the early rounds, as a man with only four knockouts in 24 fights must. Sunset Park screamed its approval as he spun Diaz, touching him with the jab, showing off his slick little tricks on the inside. 

“I want him to have fun in there,” said Quiro, who works the bilingual corner with Tito’s head trainer Tommy Gallagher. “I say ‘Be happy. I want you happy.’”

But at the end of the first, Diaz was the one who crouched low and swung his long arms side to side, clowning. My stomach sank. I sensed that the power in the ring had shifted, and it never went back. 

In the second and third rounds, Diaz started to open up with the left hand. Tito landed a good hook in the fourth, but he was having trouble finding his distance. The fifth was filled with holding, and the sixth was bad. 

Sunset Park watched their fighter backpedal now, a knee brace peeking out from below his trunks. Ever since Sergio Martinez vs. Miguel Cotto, the knee brace has seemed to me the kiss of death. 

Diaz stabbed and danced, stabbed and danced. When he caught Tito with that left at the end of the eighth, Tito fell straight backward. He looked graceful even as he fell. He always looks graceful. He fell again in the ninth, got up, and fought to the end.

“I’ve been to all Tito's fights,” said Orlando, who has women’s names tattooed on his hands and did not stop cheering for his friend, not even after the final bell. “I boxed a lot of years ago, but I gave it up to the streets. When Tito fights, it’s like I’m in the ring.”

His mother goes to all his fights, too. Tito calls her his road dog. She smuggled Chicken McNuggets into jail for him. She taught him the meaning of unconditional love.

Welterweight: Demian Maia def. Ryan LaFlare by Unanimous Decision (48-46, 48-46, 48-46) 55:00

Welterweight: Erick Silva def. Josh Koscheck by Submission (guillotine choke) at 14:21

Lightweight: Leonardo Santos def. Tony Martin by Submission (rear-naked choke) 22:29

Women's Bantamweight: Amanda Nunes def. Shayna Baszler by TKO (leg kick and punches) at 11:56

Lightweight: Gilbert Burns def. Alex Oliveira by Submission (armbar) at 34:14

Featherweight: Godofredo Castro def. Andre Fili by Submission (flying triangle choke)[11] 13:14

Preliminary Card (Fox Sports 2)

Lightweight: Francisco Trinaldo def. Akbarh Arreola by Unanimous Decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27) 35:00

Featherweight: Kevin Souza def. Katsunori Kikuno by KO (punch) at 11:31

Lightweight: Leandro Silva def. Drew Dober by Technical Submission (guillotine choke) at 22:45

Lightweight: Leonardo Mafra def. Cain Carrizosa by Unanimous Decision (30-26, 30-27, 30-27) at 35:00

Preliminary Card (UFC Fight Pass)

Lightweight: Christos Giagos def. Jorge de Oliveira by Submission (rear-naked choke) at 13:12

I typically don't gamble when covering fights, but yesterday I couldn’t lose. It was intoxicating. I sat there for hours, taking a break only for dinner, as again and again, the cards fell in my favor. Every call was right, almost every move the right one, even when ill-advised. I can only imagine what it must feel like to be Floyd Mayweather, all but unconquerable in your chosen craft.

Such is life for Mayweather: his supremacy is so absolute, he can do, say and demand things that no one else would, and end up coming out ahead nonetheless. "Money" Mayweather will get a piece everything sold this weekend with his name on it. A portion of every drink, T-shirt and Pay Per View buy will flow back into his pockets, to be spent on shoes, exotic cars, vacations for his sizable entourage, or at the sports book, as Mayweather is  fond of documenting on social media.

“I’m black so you know I’m picking Mayweather,” exclaimed a boisterous and portly man from Connecticut seated at the table directly behind me.

That was pretty much the sentiment throughout the MGM Grand, where I saw many boxers but few of the celebrities that normally pack Mayweather fights. I’m sure they will arrive tomorrow night, in time to be seen on the Pay Per View cameras and at the more exclusive after-parties, the ones not advertised on placards strewn across Las Vegas Blvd.  

Few seem excited for the fight itself. The small but dogged contingent of Argentinean fans managed to look and sound the part, with their chants and flag-waving. But even they didn’t seem too convinced of a result.

“Chino Maidana! Exclaimed an eccentric and elderly Argentine named Miguel seated to my left. “But he will have trouble I think.”

This rematch has been sold largely on the intrigue of the first fight, which saw Mayweather thoroughly out-worked by Maidana and cut for the first time in his storied career. It was one of Floyd’s closest fights in recent years, and rougher than the Grand Rapids man would prefer. It was also scored a draw by Michael Pernick, a judge with a history of scoring big title fights differently than his colleagues.

Still, as Sarah recounted poetically, Mayweather solved Maidana over the later rounds, and I saw nothing to suggest that a rematch wouldn’t be more of the same.

Yet here I am, like many fans, mostly because of what Mayweather has done in the past. He is unquestionably the top draw in boxing, and if a rematch with Maidana is the best of many less-than-scintillating options, then the fault is as much with the competition as with the champion.

Yes, Manny Pacquiao remains, but personally I don’t think the result would be much different if the dynamic Filipino were in the ring against Floyd, and I still haven’t given up hope that the fight will happen. Mayweather has promised us two more outings next year before he hangs up his gloves. Stopping Pacquiao in his coda would give him a chance to be rated alongside the true all-time greats.

Mayweather is the only boxer left that can command the world’s attention. I have serious doubt that another will ever rise to the same profile, at least here in the U.S. The sport’s decline is well documented, and another golden age of heavyweights doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. Boxing will always remain, but fewer and fewer will be paying attention.

Should he pull the upset tonight, Maidana has a chance to go down in history, while everyone still cares. That alone is reason to watch tonight.

What you do is boxing. But thanks for saying what you said, because it was adorable. Everything you say is adorable, even the vacuous soundbites written by your publicists. Keep learning English so you can say more things.

That first round with Geale lasted four minutes instead of the standard three, and nobody seems to know why. Did you do it, GGG? Is there a Hogwarts of boxing in Kazakhstan where they taught you to bend time? 

You dropped him once in the second but chose to chill. It would have been tacky to end it after two, since Geale had come all the way from Australia. You gave him time to bleed. When you came out for the third round, you wore a spot of his blood on your left pectoral like a boutonnière.

Thank you for finishing him the way you did, first taking the best counter he could throw and then countering that, as though to test the superiority of your own right cross. When Abel Sanchez only gave your performance a nine out of ten because you were looking too much for the knockout, maybe that was what he meant. Maybe there would have been a way to get your shot off without having to suffer, but thank you for suffering. 

Something happened in the pre-fight presser that I keep thinking about. Gary Shaw, the promoter of Daniel Geale and Bryant Jennings, said that we should ask Jennings about his childhood on the rough Philly streets. 

“I don’t think anyone has gotten that story,” Shaw said. 

When Jennings took the mic, however, he read us a Tweet he had just posted. I can’t find it; maybe they made him take it down. 

“People should know your capabilities but not your battles, because if you let them know your battles they will view you as incapable.”

Did you see Jennings win the split decision over Mike Perez on your undercard? Probably you were too busy doing secret Kazakh warm-ups. You didn’t miss much; middleweights work so much harder than heavyweights.

What Jennings said about battles made me think about your smile. Nobody has mined the gold of your past – those three deaths in Kazakhstan – the way they dug up the cancer of Geale’s mother and laid it shoddy on the table. Don’t let them do it. Not because it would instill doubt in your capabilities, but because you might need that gold some day.