In an effort to describe why Gennady Golovkin was cheated on Saturday night, ESPN boxing analyst and cartoon wise guy Teddy Atlas deployed his favourite nautical metaphor – the ocean and the log.
"When I go out there and I look in the Atlantic Ocean, the ocean moves the log around. The ocean is the champion. The ocean was Golovkin. But not in boxing. Boxing doesn't honour the things that should be honoured."
Should they be honouring the ocean or the log? Or is it both? It's a little confusing.
If you're an infrequent visitor to the sport, boxing was not making much sense either on Saturday evening.
Expectations were stratospheric for Golovkin's middleweight-title bout against Canelo Alvarez in Las Vegas. Like every other big fight going back many years, this was the card that would redeem the sport and give it back its glamour.
Invariably, those sorts of events are spectacular busts. It may have something to do with the hype – who wants to lose a fight they know everyone's watching? And with that in mind, caution is called for.
But Alvarez and Golovkin are cut differently. They've both been at this since early childhood. Fear – of injury, of embarrassment – has been trained out of them.
For 12 tremendous rounds, the pair went straight at each other in a match that had many small, perfect moments.
In the fourth round, each man opened his guard and allowed the other to punch him square, then smiled and shook his head – not good enough.
In the 11th, they gently pressed their foreheads together, like sweethearts, and swung at each other from point-blank range.
As the final bell rang, both were still taking big, looping shots. There was no clutching, wrestling or backpedalling. It was an hour of stand-and-strike.
Two weeks ago, you paid a hundred bucks to watch the circus between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor. This time, your money got you inside a gladiator school. The difference in quality was by orders of magnitude.
Golovkin and Alvarez embraced immediately after it ended. Although they do not share a language, they talked to each other like that for a very long time.
You understood how they felt. It was the sort of fight you did not want to end. You were still enjoying that warm, connubial glow when the judges showed up with a metaphoric air horn.
CompuBox stats aside, let's agree that boxing is a feel sport. Two reasonable people can watch the same fight and feel differently about how it ended.
I thought Golovkin won, although not by much. As Atlas said, he controlled the flow of the fight. He threw and landed more, and was more often the aggressor.
One judge called it narrowly for Golovkin (115-113). One called it even (114-114). And one had Alvarez winning all but two rounds (118-110). It ended in a draw.
The spread in official opinion was so baffling that for a long while, no one in the crowd booed. They just stood there, stunned.
For Golovkin, this is terrible déjà vu. He's claimed that before a gold-medal match at the 2004 Olympics, he was told he would lose to his Russian opponent for political reasons. Then he did.
"He won, the Russian. Not really win, but he won," Golovkin said, years later. "It's okay. This is my experience. This is part of my life. I understand how it works."
If that was ever true, it no longer is.
Immediately after Saturday's bout, Golovkin was buoyant – "Congratulations to all my friends in Mexico!" He was already talking up the rematch.
By the time the news conference was held, Golovkin had had time to think and was feeling less magnanimous.
"This is terrible for sport, for boxing," Golovkin said.
For the first time, you could see Golovkin's lack of English bothering him. He wanted to be more articulately enraged on this subject, but also careful.
The knee-jerk reaction from the boxing community was a subtle and well-reasoned, "FIX! FIX! FIX!"
"Corruption in boxing," Atlas said.
"Here we go again," Lennox Lewis said.
"Did they bring those judges over from Australia?" said (whomever tweets on behalf of) Manny Pacquiao. (Pacquiao recently learned the hard way why it's unwise to go the distance with a Brisbane-born fighter in a bout held in Brisbane).
You get why Golovkin's put out, within limits.
He thinks he had it. He probably did – although it is arguable.
But if Golovkin wanted to be sure, he should've put Alvarez on the mat. Once you hand the decision over to the judges, you're trusting to good fortune. There is nothing in life more foolish than complaining about luck.
Alhough he didn't win, there is also no way in which Golovkin lost on Saturday night.
He keeps his belts, he has apparently more than quadrupled his net worth and he comes out of this both a hero and a martyr. I'd call it a victory on aggregate.
Everyone else is upset as well, with far less cause.
Was this a fix? Yes, probably, in that sneaky way fixes are done in real life – without anyone having to say anything to anyone else.
It was in boxing's interest that both Alvarez and Golovkin come out of Saturday night with their reputations intact. If they had to pick one survivor, it would be Alvarez – the more saleable, much younger man.
The best-case scenario was a great fight followed by a rematch. One outcome – a draw – would be the most likely to guarantee that.
Boxing isn't a charitable endeavour. It's a struggling business. Some will call Saturday's result a cheat. I would instead call it a rational decision made with certain market realities in mind.
For those who are still pulling at their hair, think of it this way – you had the privilege of watching a great fight. Maybe even a classic. Both fighters got rich and grew their profiles exponentially.
The result allows us to do it all over again. And that's a bad thing because …?
Cathal Kelly