MESI SIMPLY CAN’T FIGHT ANYMORE
WINKY IS AS WINKY DOES
BERNARD HOPKINS: NOTHING BUT BETTER
CASTILLO’S LONG WEIGHT OVER; MOVE ON
TARVER-HOPKINS: SUPERFIGHT OR SNOREFEST?
THE RING CHAMPIONSHIP POLICY GAINS MOMENTUM
FOR NEW BOXING AFTER DARK, NEWS NOT ALL BAD
HAS BARRERA ENTERED HIS TWILIGHT?
RICKY: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
OSCAR PROVES (AGAIN) THAT HE BELONGS
RAHEEM ROBBED AND I DON’T CARE
FREITAS RETURNS TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
BYRD FINDS RING NO PLACE FOR SELF-DECEPTION
TRAINERS GONE WILD
BYRD-KLITSCHKO: DAVID vs. GOLIATH, PART II
THE REAL REASON FLOYD MAYWEATHER KEEPS WINNING
FLOYD MAYWEATHER VS. ZAB JUDAH: IS “PRETTY BOY” LOOKING AHEAD?
LIAKHOVICH WIN ALL ABOUT FOLLOWING THE PLAN
KING & ARUM VS. HBO
HEAVYWEIGHTS GOING NOWHERE
CALZAGHE-LACY REVISITED
CALZAGHE THE REAL THING; WHO KNEW?
LET ’EM FIGHT
MARGARITO GETS HIS DATE
THE RING RESPONDS
WHEN BROADCASTERS ATTACK
CASTILLO COASTS AND I-B-MAD REDUX
THREE-TIME … WHAT? I-B-MAD AT THE MEDIA!
PACQUIAO-MORALES II: THE GREAT REWARD
HOPKINS-JONES II: NEVER TOO LATE FOR ME
OUR MESSAGE TO CHAMPS: KEEP YOUR MONEY!
PREVIEW & ANALYSIS: MORALES VS. PACQUIAO II
BELL, JUDAH & WHAT GOES ON INSIDE
2005 RING UPDATE ARCHIVES
JULY-DECEMBER 2006 RING UPDATE ARCHIVES
2007 RING UPDATE ARCHIVES
MESI SIMPLY CAN’T FIGHT ANYMORE (June 26, 2006)
By Nigel Collins
Judging by his two comeback performances, Joe Mesi’s biggest problems might not be getting licensed in a major boxing state or another brain bleed. The main dilemma currently facing the undefeated but damaged heavyweight is that he can’t fight anymore.
Mesi readily admits that he’s not the fighter he used to be, but claims he’s gradually working his way back against bottom-of-the barrel opposition, shedding excess weight and sharpening his rusty reflexes. It sounds good until the opening bell rings, then the truth is laid bare for all to see: Mesi isn’t just rusty and overweight—he’s a shot fighter.
Just in case you’re not convinced, a quick check on his two comeback opponents should tell you all you need to know: Ronald Bellamy, whom Mesi fought in Puerto Rico on April 1 (how appropriate was that date?) was 41 years old and had lost three in a row going in. One of those losses was a third-round kayo defeat to Timor Ibragimov, the same light-punching defensive specialist who stunk out the joint losing a decision to Calvin Brock last Saturday. The best Mesi could do against the hog-fat Bellamy was struggle to a sloppy eight-round decision.
Team Mesi dug even deeper into the barrel for Joe’s next opponent and came up with Stephane Tessier for last Friday’s ESPN2-televised bout in Montreal. Tessier, a one-day sub, came in sporting a 3-7 (1) record that included five consecutive defeats. Granted, Mesi won all six rounds, but he looked horrible doing it, getting tagged with ponderous punches and never coming close to stopping his woefully out-of-shape foe.
Of course, none of this should be unexpected. Mesi has suffered brain damage; a slowing of the reflexes is to be expected for cripe’s sake.
I see three possible outcomes of Mesi’s ill-advised comeback: 1) another brain injury; 2) a loss to the first semi-qualified opponent he faces; 3) a change of heart in which Mesi sees the futility of what he trying to do and gets out while he can. Of course, numbers one and two could both happen in the same fight, so I’m rooting hard for number three.
Undoubtedly, the best way to save Mesi from himself would be for right-minded television networks to refuse to broadcast his fights or for fans to boycott them. There was a fair amount of booing from the fans in Montreal, and it wasn’t because they didn’t think Mesi should be fighting. It was because he looked like crap against a guy who couldn’t fight a lick. But don’t hold your breath for common sense to prevail. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that somebody will knock him out with a bodyshot.
Further reflections on a disappointing boxing weekend:
Canadian (via Haiti) junior middleweight Joachin Alcine looked solid outpointing respectable and game Alberto Mamani in the Montreal headliner and is a good addition to the highly competitive 154-pound mix. But super middleweight prospect Jean Pascal, who decisioned Darnell Boone, looked like another of those fighters who has fallen in love with his natural ability and has never really learned his craft. Message to Pascal: Try to be more like Bernard Hopkins, and less like Roy Jones. It will pay dividends in the long run.
My condolences to those who had their hearts broken when Carlos Quintana handed highly touted Joel Julio a boxing lesson on HBO’s Boxing After Dark. Julio might not be the wunderkind all those easy knockouts against easy opposition fooled you into believing he was, but the kid showed me something by never giving up. Julio was still winging bombs down the stretch, which means he’s got character. And that will get you further in this game than a passel of cheap knockouts.
The less said about the Brock and Ibragimov clinchfest the better. I guess not all of those boxers from the former Soviet Union cut their teeth watching Ivan Drago.
Finally, you’re getting a rant from me this week because our regular Web columnist, William Dettloff, is on a well-earned vacation. But never fear; Bill will be back next week.
WINKY IS AS WINKY DOES (June 19, 2006)
By William Dettloff
You almost can’t blame Winky Wright for thinking he had his fight against Jermain Taylor wrapped up going into the final couple of rounds on Saturday night. After all, he’d been pretty successful at doing what he does: putting up his gloves and blocking punches. He’d been doing it all night. He did it right up until the final bell.
The problem was blocking punches doesn’t get you points. Landing punches does—hard punches, especially. That’s what Taylor was doing, more or less, while Wright was wearing the earmuffs, and that’s why Wright didn’t walk out of the ring as the new middleweight champion.
Every generation has its great defensive fighters. Ours has been Wright, who was so incensed about the draw decision that he bolted from the ring so fast after the result was announced that you’d have thought it was on fire. Then, after telling Larry Merchant he wasn’t interested in a rematch, he boycotted the postfight press conference. Still blocking shots.
It wasn’t like Wright didn’t get any good business done. He did. Most of it came whenever Taylor inexplicably backed into a corner and permitted him to open up. Why Taylor did it repeatedly is anyone’s guess. He said afterward it was to lure Wright in so he could counter him, but after it didn’t work the first, oh, 14 or 15 times, why did he continue? Especially with Emanuel Steward telling him between rounds to stay the hell off the ropes?
At any rate, you could see throughout the middle rounds that Wright was deluding himself when after yet another round of blocking most of Taylor’s shots but doing nothing great himself offensively, he walked back to his corner with his hands raised high overhead.
It occurred to me after about the third or fourth consecutive round of this that he thought he was winning because he was blocking about 70 percent of Taylor’s punches. Winky: If 30 percent of Taylor’s shots get in, and they’re hard, and you land about nine punches and they’re, well, not so hard, who do you think the judges will think won that round?
That’s not the way fighters think. A fighter always thinks that if he’s successful doing what he does best, he wins. If a slugger chases a boxer all night, he thinks he won even if he never lands anything that big, because he was coming forward. If a great jabber jabs the bejesus out of a guy but doesn’t do anything else and loses a decision, he feels robbed because he outjabbed the other guy. And when a defensive genius is good at making the other guy miss—Taylor connected at just a 23 percent rate, according to CompuBox—he thinks he won. You can’t blame him, I guess. But sometimes he’s going to be wrong.
I know, the stats said Wright landed about 60 more punches than did Taylor. Big deal. I’d rather get hit with 60 clean shots by Wright than by 60 blocked or half-blocked shots by Taylor, many of which were hard enough to drive Wright’s own gloves against his head, which is almost as good as a landed punch, in my book. Still, it was Wright’s fight to lose over the last couple of rounds. He didn’t win it because he did what had gotten him there in the first place, and to him that should have been good enough. This time it wasn’t.
Random observations:
I didn’t see any evidence that Emanuel Steward has improved Taylor. He still has terrible balance, he still keeps his hands too low, and for cripes’ sake, why can’t he throw a straight right hand without looking like he’s going to fall over? He wins almost entirely on desire and athleticism. But, then, he’s the undefeated world middleweight champion and I get winded busting open a bag of Cheetos, so what do I know?
Eureka! Lennox Lewis finally offered the kind of insight we knew was in him all along when he said during the fifth round that when Taylor is in the corner he should keep his hands up because in that position he doesn’t have any room to back up. It sounds obvious, but is exactly the kind of expert analysis we expect a fighter to provide. Good for you, Lennox. Keep it up.
Kudos to HBO for not editing out Dan Birmingham’s colorful language in the prefight segment. This is how people talk—in real life and especially in the fight game. If you want to hear fake, sanitized language, watch Everyone Loves Raymond.
When Jeff Lacy lost to Joe Calzaghe last April, I faulted Birmingham for blaming Lacy for the loss, which, in my view, was completely beyond Lacy’s control. I wouldn’t blame Birmingham a lick for blaming Wright for this result, as he told his fighter after the 11th to fight hard, after which Wright went out and frittered away the 12th as if he had the fight won.
There hasn’t been a fighter I can think of since Michael Spinks who is as honest and forthright about his shortcomings as is Taylor. What a likable kid he is.
How out of place did Lou DiBella look at The Kronk?
As he watched from outside the ropes all the attention being paid Taylor at Kronk, you could almost see Thomas Hearns thinking: Let me in there with him. I’ll whip his ass.
Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
BERNARD HOPKINS: NOTHING BUT BETTER (June 12, 2006)
By William Dettloff
I believed Antonio Tarver when he said before losing to Bernard Hopkins Saturday night that taking off the weight he put on to play the heavyweight champion in Sylvester Stallone’s latest Rocky epic would not affect his performance. I still believe it.
I believe him too now when he says he just felt flat and that sometimes you wake up in the morning and it’s not your day. It’s true. Happens all the time to fighters. Know what usually brings on that “flat” feeling? Being in the ring with a better fighter. That does it every time. That was Tarver’s problem Saturday night: He was in with a better fighter.
Hopkins has always been a better fighter than Tarver. Stronger mentally. Tougher. Smarter. Not that Tarver isn’t tough or smart. He’s both. But over the course of 20 title defenses and damned near a lifetime as the world middleweight champion, Hopkins proved that he exists on a different plane from most of his contemporaries. Tarver wasn’t in his league. Few are.
The belief that Tarver would win because he was bigger was hooey all along, as it almost always is when the odds go against a guy who’s moving up in weight. Know when a good big man beats a good little man? When the big man is the better fighter, or when every other little thing is equal, which is rarely the case. The size difference became moot anyway when Hopkins beefed up under the supervision of Mackie Shilstone, whose phone now may never stop ringing.
History was on Hopkins’ side too. As I wrote in a preview of the fight in a recent issue of Boxing 2006, The Ring’s sister magazine, there are many examples of older, smarter middleweight titleholders moving up and toppling younger, seemingly fresher light heavyweight belt holders. They simply were better fighters. Nothing else mattered.
Make no mistake, though, the last time anyone did what Hopkins did here was when Dick Tiger, the two-time former world middleweight champion, outsmarted Jose Torres for the world light heavyweight title in December 1966. No splintered titles. No picking the easiest of the three or four. Hopkins did it the way it’s supposed to be done, and, like him or not, he’s one of the great middleweights in the history of our sport. Period.
At roughly the same time that Hopkins was adding Tarver to his Hall of Fame resume in Atlantic City, Miguel Cotto was adding some new dimensions to Paulie Malignaggi’s face in New York. It was hard to envision a win for Malignaggi going into this, but give the kid credit: He took a long, hard beating and never submitted. He’s a tough kid.
That the Madison Square Garden card drew 14,369 and the Atlantic City show around 10,200 on the same night is yet more proof that no organized business is so needlessly obsessed with its health than is professional boxing. It’s the hypochondriac of the sporting world.
Some random observations on the weekend’s festivities:
Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about Kevin Kelley getting knocked out by Bobby Pacquiao on the Cotto-Malignaggi card is that it may compel some softhearted TV exec to give Kelley a full-time job behind a microphone. Attention all TV execs: The capacity to speak quickly, at great length, and in great detail about any nonsense at all does not correlate to exceptional broadcasting skills.
Aside from the fact George Foreman forgot how to pronounce Malignaggi’s name about halfway through the main event, I thought he, Tim Ryan, and Wally Matthews did a very solid job during the Top Rank telecast. The reason, in large measure, is they were so relaxed. Pay attention, Kellerman, Lewis, and Charles.
Matthews is probably the best of the recent crop of newspaper guys-turned-occasional broadcasters (I don’t include Larry Merchant, who’s been broadcasting so long, a whole generation of fans doesn’t know what a good writer he was). He’s much better than Jon Saraceno, Ron Borges, and Tim Smith. His lone problem is that pissy, annoyed look he’s always wearing. It screams “gas pains.” Wally: Smile a little. It won’t kill you.
Is Ryan the Dick Clark of fight broadcasting or what? Sure he looks a little like Paul Mazursky these days, but he sounded so close to the way he did 20 years ago, I half expected to see Troy Dorsey, in full mullet mode, striding into the ring to face Kelley.
I think Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. may turn out to be a hell of a fighter, even if whenever I see him fight it makes me melancholy for the days when his old man was doing business.
Before he takes another step up, John Duddy’s got to learn how to slip a right hand.
It looked to me like Tommy Zbikowski can fight a little. I know his opponent was nothing great, but the kid is athletic, he knows what he’s doing, and clearly can punch. I hope we see him again. Screw Notre Dame. There, I said it.
Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
CASTILLO’S LONG WEIGHT OVER; MOVE ON (June 5, 2006)
By William Dettloff
Quick, somebody call a cop. Better yet, the FBI. Or the CIA. Or the NSA. Call somebody, for cripes’ sake. I don’t care who.
Maybe we can prove Jose Luis Castillo is a terrorist. Or a serial killer. Yeah, that’s it. Maybe he’s got a backyard full of bodies down there in Mexicali. You never know, right? Hey, they didn’t find Jimmy Hoffa’s rotted bones in that farmhouse a couple of weeks back, did they? I’ll bet they’re down there in Castillo’s yard. That bastard. And hey, where was Castillo when the Twin Towers fell?
Jose Luis Castillo didn’t make weight. That’s all. He didn’t kill anybody. He didn’t physically harm another person. He didn’t steal anything. He didn’t deflower your daughter or kick your dog or forget to wash his hands after going to the bathroom. He didn’t double dip.
He didn’t make weight. It’s a bummer. I wanted to see the fight as much as anyone. I wanted to see which guy would be better the third time. I missed out. We all did. Know what? I’ll get over it.
You can’t say he didn’t try. Did you see the weigh-in? The guy looked like he’d just been liberated from Auschwitz. Skin and bones. What was he supposed to do, cut off an arm? Isn’t this business dangerous enough without guys starving and dehydrating themselves almost to death beforehand? Why are guys who walk around at middleweight fighting at 135 pounds anyway? What’s the point? Was it that important that this fight be made at 135? Why?
I’m not saying Castillo is blameless. I don’t know what his thought process was when he signed the contract or who was telling him to do it at 135. I don’t know when he knew he wasn’t going to make it, if he knew at all. I think he must have. But I’m reasonably sure he wasn’t sneaking Fig Newtons in training camp.
He doesn’t deserve to have his license revoked or to be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he doesn’t deserve soft-chinned media suits calling him out for his “stupidity” and “negligence.” Castillo’s been a pro fighter for 16 of his 32 years. Is it possible he’s just not a lightweight anymore? That allowed?
You’ll forgive me if I don’t get all choked up about the money Bob Arum and Gary Shaw allegedly lost when Diego Corrales chose not to go ahead with the fight. (Remember, it was Corrales’ choice. I’m not saying he should have fought. I’m reminding you that he had the choice.) Arum’s indignation at having been “lied to” would be hilarious if it weren’t so contrived. (Come on, you don’t need me to give you the quote, do you?) Arum and Shaw can buy and sell Castillo and guys like him 20 times. So boo-hoo.
I’m not in Castillo’s head, but my bet is that he honestly tried to make 135 pounds, but that he promised himself he wouldn’t kill himself to do it this time, that he wouldn’t get into a ring with a puncher like Corrales all depleted. And if he didn’t make it, well then, he didn’t make it, he would just have to accept the consequences. Well, he didn’t make it. That’s all. Nothing more. It’s not a crime.
Let them fight at 140. It’s where they should have been all along.
* * *
Some random observations from the last week:
Dr. James Jen-Kin, my favorite referee in the business, had a bit of an off-night officiating Mario Santiago’s win over Lenny DeVictoria in the ShoBox opener Friday night, harassing Santiago for low blows that didn’t really appear low. He made up for it with a perfectly timed stoppage that the crowd didn’t like, but DeVictoria wasn’t getting paid enough to take a long, hard beating. It was a good stop.
Want to know why Jen-Kin is my favorite referee? Every egomaniac with a bow tie and black pants these days has to have some kind of a dopey gimmick or slogan because he thinks he’s going to cash in like Mills Lane did and get a TV show out of it. Not Jen-Kin. The good doctor sends fighters back to their corners with these simple words, delivered in a soft, dignified tone: “Gentlemen, obey my commands. Let’s go.” There’s beauty in brevity.
Also, Jen-Kin doesn’t make the fight about him. He doesn’t want to be a star. There are no histrionics, no overwrought drama, no posturing. No trademark slogan, no playing to the camera. Just a pro going about his business. How refreshing.
Reason number 319 to love ShoBox: The producers spend an awful lot of time lingering on round-card girls.
Note to Chad Dawson: It’s good to be young, isn’t it? Enjoy it while it lasts.
One more thing about Castillo-Corrales: Anyone else find it amusing that Shaw, who is one breakfast burrito away from qualifying as a continent, is screaming about someone else weighing too much?
Who else gets the sense that if not for boxing, Vic Darchinyan would make his money stuffing human body parts into a wood chipper?
I’m shocked—shocked!—that Joe Calzaghe has withdrawn from a proposed bout with Glen Johnson. We should have known. Smart move, though. Johnson beats him. Styles.
TARVER-HOPKINS: SUPERFIGHT OR SNOREFEST? (June 5, 2006)
By Don Stradley
It’s a good and rare thing when marquee fighters meet, especially when The Ring’s light heavyweight championship is at stake, but the Antonio Tarver-Bernard Hopkins bout scheduled for June 10 in Atlantic City isn’t the automatic headline-grabber Golden Boy Promotions is hoping for. It pits a man we’ve gradually lost interest in (Hopkins) against a man we’re still not ready to invest in (Tarver). It’s also doubtful that a pair of careful counterpunchers, ages 41 and 37, will turn into crowd-pleasers by June 10. Still, while these two might stink the place out, there's also a possibility that they will give us a good fight. Here’s why.
Hopkins wants to retire, and we believe the artful codger when he says this is his final fight. Hopkins, who has promised “a legendary performance,” has an eye on history. He’s been yakking for months about Sugar Ray Robinson’s failure to win the light heavyweight crown from Joey Maxim 50 years ago, but here’s a newsflash: Hopkins could beat Tarver, Bob Foster, and Joey Maxim, and he still wouldn’t be in Robinson’s class. But at least he sounds motivated. Good for him. Maybe he’ll actually throw some punches before the sixth round.
As for Tarver, he spat venom during a recent HBO feature, outraged that Hopkins’ image was on the left side of the screen. Who knew Tarver went to marketing school? Tarver has vowed to knock Hopkins out within five rounds and backed it up with a $250,000 bet. He hasn’t sounded this aggravated since before his second fight with Roy Jones.
Regarding punching power, southpaw Tarver packs more pop. Both men are spurt fighters, and as far as ring generalship, conditioning, chin, and experience, it’s fairly even. The weight Tarver gained for his role in the latest Rocky movie shouldn’t be a factor—a loss to the older, naturally smaller Hopkins would damage his reputation, so he’s not about to blow it on the scale.
Tarver’s size advantage may not even matter because he’s not a bullying fighter. In a way, Hopkins has a chance to win the same way Michael Spinks had a chance to beat the much larger Larry Holmes 20 years ago. Tarver, like Holmes, relies on skill rather than brute strength to win fights. Hopkins, who has hinted that he plans to beat Tarver on the inside, might be able to offset Tarver’s rhythm with his own quirky moves. Adding to the Spinks’ analogy, Spinks' nutrition guru, Mackie Shilstone, was hired to help middleweight Hopkins come up to 175.
Tarver has two things to worry about: Sometimes he fades in the late rounds, and he has a tendency to under-perform. If Tarver isn’t any busier than he was in the rubber match with Jones, Hopkins might steal this one. But pick the pick here, despite the knockout talk, is Tarver by decision.
THE RING CHAMPIONSHIP POLICY GAINS MOMENTUM (May 31, 2006)
By William Dettloff
For the first time since the inception of The Ring’s championship policy, four Ring magazine championships will be on the line in less than three weeks.
None of the matches came about because The Ring threatened to strip the champion, if he didn’t fight a particular challenger, which is frequently the way the various alphabet organizations force fights to take place.
Instead, the matches were made because they make good career-sense for the fighters and they have value in today’s market, which is exactly the way boxing, or any other business for that matter, is supposed to work. This is the polar opposite of the sort of counterproductive situation where a titleholder capitulates to his alphabet master and fights a so-called “mandatory” (and frequently undeserving) challenger in a mismatch that virtually nobody wants to see.
Several of the champions involved in the upcoming bouts have been stripped of alphabet belts for refusing to follow the organizations’ dictates. The Ring applauds these fighters for not giving in to what amounts to a thinly veiled form of extortion. Ring champions are safe in the knowledge that we have a strict no-strip policy and that the bedrock of our championship policy is that titles are won and lost in the ring.
It’s also important to know that The Ring, unlike the alphabet organizations, will not charge a single penny in sanctioning fees. We have no direct financial interest in Ring magazine championship bouts. Our motive is to restore integrity to championship boxing, not line our coffers by demanding a piece of fighters’ purses.
The flurry of genuine world championship action starts Saturday, June 3, when Diego Corrales defends The Ring lightweight title against Jose Luis Castillo at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas on Showtime.
The following Saturday, June 10, will see both The Ring light heavyweight and junior featherweight championship at stake when reigning 175-pound champion Antonio Tarver risks the title against Bernard Hopkins, and 122-pound champion Israel Vazquez meets challenger Ivan Hernandez. Both bouts will be televised by HBO Pay-Per-View, from the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.
On the third Saturday of the month, June 17, the focus shifts to Memphis, Tennessee, where The Ring middleweight champion Jermain Taylor defends against number-one rated contender Winky Wright at the FedEx Forum on HBO.
The momentum continues in July when two more Ring magazine champions will be in action. Super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe will make his first start since winning the vacant Ring 168-pound belt on March 4. The bout will be held at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, and will be televised by HBO. Calzaghe’s opponent has not yet been set, but it’s looking more and more like it will be former light heavyweight champion Glen Johnson. Then, on July 22, Carlos Baldomir will risk the welterweight championship against Arturo Gatti, July 8, in Atlantic City on HBO.
Current events clearly show that The Ring’s championship policy is gaining momentum. Moreover, the stellar lineup of championship fights about to take place reinforces how well our hands-off policy fosters outstanding matches. We do it by recognizing a world champion’s right to give the paying public what it wants. We believe that’s the road to the box-office success boxing needs to prosper, a road The Ring is trying to help build, one true champion at a time.
FOR NEW BOXING AFTER DARK, NEWS NOT ALL BAD (May 30, 2006)
By William Dettloff
There’s both good and bad news to be gleaned from the performance Saturday night of HBO’s new Boxing After Dark broadcast team. First the bad: They were better than they were during the first broadcast—when Lennox Lewis gave the impression he’d been shot with a tranquilizer dart—but not better enough. It was still painful at times. The good: It’s early. They’re young. They can do better. All they have to do is relax.
We’re all so used to the regular HBO team of Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant, and, depending on the era, either George Foreman, Roy Jones, or Emanuel Steward, that we forget you’re not born knowing how to do this stuff. Merchant and Lampley are the best in the business, and, not coincidentally, they’ve been doing it for a good long while. If they’re not perfectly relaxed out there by now, they sure give a good impression of it.
Fran Charles, Max Kellerman and Lewis have the acumen and knowledge, but seem so bound up with anxiety that they have a hard time letting it show. My guess is they’re feeling the pressure of being on the big stage. That’s all. That can be overcome—with experience, and with the right circumstance.
For example, there came a moment later in the broadcast when the camera (finally!) stopped to ogle a drop-dead gorgeous and nearly nude round-card girl and all three guys exchanged goofy, predictable, sexist banter. It was fun. Laid back. I half expected to hear, "Dude, she is way hot." For the first time as a team on the air, they all exhaled for a few seconds. The exchange was natural—easy. Then the next round started and you could almost feel them tense up again.
I think they’re getting bad advice too. Someone’s been coaching Kellerman and Lewis to ask one another questions during the broadcast. Big mistake. It should be Max asking questions of Lennox, never the other way around. Lewis is the "expert" of the three. That’s why he was hired: to give viewers the perspective of one who has been in the ring.
Don’t misunderstand, Kellerman is a very bright, articulate guy with a solid understanding of the nuances of the ring for a guy who’s never been in there, and when he’s at home watching the fights with his friends, he’s the expert. But in this particular configuration, he’s the media guy who’s knowledgeable about fighting. Lewis is the former world-class fighter. There’s a difference. It’s fine if they disagree, and a lot of the time Max will be right when they do. That’s not the point.
You never heard Foreman or Jones ask Merchant a question about something happening in the ring. Emanuel Steward would hang himself at ringside with his microphone cord first. A guy who’s been in the ring for a long time at a very high level should not ask a guy who talks about what goes on in a ring questions about what’s going on in the ring. It’s backward. It goes against the natural order of things.
The second reason Lewis shouldn’t be asking Max questions is that when he does, you get gems like the one he asked during the Paul Williams-Walter Matthysse fight: "Max, do you think that when Matthysse gets tired, that’s when he’s the most dangerous?" Huh? Kellerman’s answer was understandably disjointed. Guys: Let’s remember who’s who: Max is the interested observer. Lennox is the expert analyst; he’s not paid to be a great talker or to ask questions. He answers questions. And Charles is the relay guy. Places, people, places!
But these are process issues that can be easily overcome with coaching and experience. I get the sense that before too long this new team will be just fine.
Some miscellaneous observations on the card:
I’m with Kellerman regarding Williams’ performance. He’s far from perfect, but he’s big, strong, he can whack, and he never stops throwing punches. What’s not to like?
Thank goodness HBO is still using Ray Torres as the between-rounds Spanish interpreter. I have Spanish-speaking friends (okay, one) who tell me Torres’ interpretation is nearly always wrong. Who cares? I just wonder if he speaks in that same hilarious hyper-urgent voice when he’s not on the air. "Hey, what do you know about that—it’s raining outside!" Or, "You’ve convinced me, I’ll have the surf and turf!"
I had Jhonny Gonzalez beating Fernando Montiel by a couple of points. Gonzalez is nothing great, but he’s a big, rough bantamweight.
Note to the BAD producers: When there are roughly 11 people in the stands, and three of them are beer vendors, you may want to reconsider giving TV viewers the panoramic view every eight seconds. It makes us feel, oh, I don’t know … stupid for watching.
If you didn’t catch HBO’s Countdown to Tarver-Hopkins (note the order there, Antonio) right after the Gonzalez-Montiel fight, make sure you catch one of the replays, if for no other reason than to see the continuing metamorphosis of Buddy McGirt. The former junior welterweight and welterweight titleholder is now almost a dead-on replica of a living, breathing Buddha statue. A Buddha statue who smokes a pipe. It’s fascinating.
Speaking of metamorphoses, after seeing Bernard Hopkins in black leotards and baggy white T-shirt hopping around with Mackie Shilstone like a Richard Simmons devotee, I’ll never look at "The Executioner" the same way again. Old school, indeed.
HAS BARRERA ENTERED HIS TWILIGHT? (May 22, 2006)
By William Dettloff
One of my myriad pet peeves involves fight media and fans who rush to call a fighter used up or damaged goods as soon as he loses a fight, or even when he doesn’t look in top form. That said, I got the sense late in Marco Antonio Barrera’s hard-fought decision win over Rocky Juarez on Saturday night that Barrera is starting to pay a little now for all the tough fights on nights past.
Usually I reserve the damaged goods alibi as a last resort. There are many things that can cause a fighter to look less than stellar on a given night, and most of them do not involve his age or the wear and tear on his body. Remember, 60 years ago, a guy wasn’t even considered a real pro until he had 60 or 70 fights, and out of that number you know there had to be some rough ones. This notion that many fighters get burned out or ruined very quickly is a decidedly modern one.
Still, very tough fights stay with fighters a long while, and compounded over time, their effects slow down even lions like Barrera, who has had more than his share. After appearing to have things well in hand against Juarez over the first half of the fight, he simply wore down over the second half and looked on several occasions as though he were a punch or two away from being stopped.
Juarez is a dynamite puncher and fought a good, tight fight, but I didn’t see anything remarkable in his performance. I saw the brilliance we expect from Barrera, but only in spots and primarily in the form of that wonderful left jab. He bit down and pulled through and won it because that’s what the great ones do, but it will likely be soon that his grit and resolve won’t be enough.
It wasn’t enough for rival Erik Morales against Zahir Raheem or against Manny Pacquiao in their rematch. It probably won’t be enough against Pacquiao in their rubber match, either. Morales left too much of it in the rings he shared with Barrera. It may be finally that Barrera has left too much behind now too.
* * *
Miscellaneous Observations:
Who else thinks that by about the ninth round, Barrera was wishing he’d stayed in law school? He did exactly the right thing, I think, when he turned down Juan Diaz for this date and should stay away from a rematch with Pacquiao too.
Credit Larry Merchant with the line of the broadcast. After Jim Lampley told viewers that at the fighter meeting Jorge Barrios serenaded Merchant with a song about a frog, sung in Spanish, Merchant replied, “I Simon Cowell-ed him for his trouble.”
Speaking of Barrios, that’s the kind of bodyshot that ends fights. And the way Janos Nagy reacted is how a fighter reacts when stricken with a fight-ending blow to the body.
Hey what’s with referee Raul Caiz Sr. telling fighters to “take a deep breath” every time he breaks them out of a clinch? I don’t have anything against it; it’s just a curious thing for a ref to say over and over.
Emanuel Steward has forgotten more than I will ever know about the fight game and is the best trainer of his generation—maybe of several generations. He’s a giant in his field and if he gets Jermain Taylor past Winky Wright, I’ll concede I was dead wrong when I wrote in a recent issue of RING that he’s past his prime. But, Emanuel: I saw. I have seen. We saw. We have seen.
Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
RICKY: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (May 15, 2006)
By William Dettloff
Ricky Hatton didn’t know how good he had it with Frank Warren running the show. There he was, over in Manchester all that time playing to adoring, sold-out crowds against useful but largely unremarkable European fighters and the occasional, mostly harmless, American retread.
Life was good then. Maybe even rock-star good. The money rolled in, none of the 140-pounders Hatton faced was as strong as he, and he was peaking. When he outlasted the great Kostya Tszyu to win the world junior welterweight title, and then disposed of the freakishly awkward Carlos Maussa, there seemed no end to his promise. What a difference six months and one fight have made.
On Saturday night, Hatton fought a full division above his best weight. He struggled mightily against Luis Collazo, a good, slick Brooklyn prizefighter. He didn’t get the benefit of a tuneup to help get him adjusted to 147, and he didn’t get an easy alphabet titlist just so he could say he has a belt (it’s not like there aren’t a couple dozen out there). Not a huge puncher at 140, his punches seemed mere annoyances at 147.
The gate, a purported 7,915, was comprised largely of Brits who made the long trip from Manchester to Boston. They don’t show up, and it’s 11 drunk Americans at ringside hoping to catch an errant tooth. And half of them are fight press. Not exactly a sold-out MEN Arena.
Welcome to the jungle.
Give Hatton credit. It was he who pushed Warren all along to get him better opposition. It was he who demanded the fight with Tszyu. It is he who says he’s not interested in easy fights, just the best fighters out there. It is he, apparently, who chose to move to welterweight, at least temporarily, because, as he told HBO’s Larry Merchant after squeaking by Collazo, "That’s where all the big fights are." It is he who might have been better off on some level staying with Warren.
Of course, I applaud the way Hatton is doing things. He wants to make his mark (and his money, and what’s wrong with that?). He wants to prove himself. He wants to be remembered some day as a courageous and proud prizefighter. That’s good. That’s what we want our heroes to want.
Hatton could have played it for a good long while, the way Sven Ottke did: fight at home every couple of months against mostly poor competition, make a handsome living, and then disappear on his terms. And if the hard-boiled rabble don’t like it, who the hell cares? It’s not their brains getting scrambled. It’s hard to argue with that thinking.
But Hatton’s not that kind of guy. Even with the bruises and lumps he got against Collazo that had him looking more than ever like Alfred E. Neuman, even after Collazo came very close to putting him on his bum in the 12th round, Hatton gave no indication that he regrets the decision he made to be a real fighter. (He even offered Collazo a rematch.) Let’s hope it was the right decision for him.
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I was never enamored of Floyd Patterson as a fighter. You can probably guess the reasons. Patterson, who died last week at age 71, was maybe the most protected heavyweight champion ever, and even then he got bounced around a lot. When Kenny Keene-look-alike Pete Rademacher decks you, in his pro debut no less, you know there’s not a long championship reign ahead without some very careful maneuvering.
But after the debacles against Sonny Liston, Patterson fought a lot of higher-quality guys: Jimmy Ellis, Jerry Quarry, Oscar Bonavena, George Chuvalo, and, of course, Muhammad Ali. He won some and lost some but was always willing to get in there and perform as well as he could, even if he was outgunned. That speaks volumes about his character, as did his soft-spoken humility and his willingness to be forthcoming in the press about his fears and self-doubts. (A.J. Liebling, who from all indications loved Patterson, crafted some of his best work around Floyd’s pathos.)
Clearly, it’s noteworthy in the context of prizefighting that Patterson was the first boxer ever to regain the heavyweight title and for a long while was the youngest fighter to have won it. As important was the courage and class he showed both in the ring and as a public figure. Patterson was a very good heavyweight, probably a mediocre champion, and so far as any of us can tell, a decent, principled man. That’s a pretty good legacy to have left behind.
Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net
OSCAR PROVES (AGAIN) THAT HE BELONGS (May 8, 2006)
By William Dettloff
Most of us had a minor, singular doubt about Oscar De La Hoya going into his fight Saturday night with Ricardo Mayorga. We didn’t know if he was still a fighter. The loss to Bernard Hopkins, the 20 months off, the promoting. And all that damned money. How could anyone that rich still have it in him to fight?
Hasn’t it always been this way with De La Hoya? We’ve always wondered if he was enough fighter. We wondered when he came out of the Olympics. We wondered when he started winning alphabet titles. We wondered when he started cutting pop records and when a lot of close decisions started going his way.
We wondered about De La Hoya when it frequently appeared that he targeted the safer titleholders in the divisions he skipped through. We wondered when he threw away those last rounds against Felix Trinidad.
Shame on us. Like him or not, De La Hoya has proved over and over again that he is a fighter. You can argue his quality as a fighter one way or another, but not his authenticity. He’s answered that question numerous times: in the last round against Ike Quartey; against Fernando Vargas in what everyone forgets was a very close, back-and-forth fight; against Felix Sturm, when, on the worst night of his career, he dug his toes into the canvas and threw punches because it was all he could do. Pretenders don’t do that.
The Hopkins fight? I’m among those who believe he felt the pressure, said to hell with it, and found a soft spot when Hopkins landed a harmless left to the body. But I can’t prove it and even if I could, it was a lot to ask of a guy who turned pro at 130 pounds.
De La Hoya never looked more like a fighter than he did on Saturday night. And not just because he took apart Mayorga piece-by-piece. A lot of guys can do that (though not Vernon Forrest, maddeningly). It was the fun he had doing it. It was the smile on his face afterward.
It was the way De La Hoya took his time—and don’t think it was because he wanted to carry Mayorga solely to punish him for his rudeness. If he carried him at all, it was because when you’re having that much fun, you don’t rush to get it over. You take your time. You savor it.
Yes, De La Hoya had fun in there. I’d be willing to bet he had more fun beating down Mayorga than he has promoting guys, cashing eight-figure checks, or anything else you can name. It’s why all that talk about him possibly retiring, even if he won, was hogwash.
Fighters almost never go out on a win. If they do, it’s a close, hard win that should have been easy. They have to be convinced, usually with several hard beatings, that they can’t do it anymore. De La Hoya’s no different. He’s a fighter. I’m hoping we don’t forget it again.
Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
RAHEEM ROBBED AND I DON’T CARE (May 1, 2006)
By William Dettloff
Zahir Raheem probably got robbed a little on Saturday night. I don’t know anyone besides judges Steve Weisfeld and Glenn Feldman who scored it for Freitas. For what it’s worth, I had Raheem winning by two points, but I wasn’t at all upset by the decision—even though I thought it was unjust. You see, I spent most of the fight battling the urge to throw my television against the wall. And I mostly blame Raheem.
Raheem likes to clinch—a lot. His grabbing and grappling throughout this fight was so excessive and so deliberate I thought I was watching a John Ruiz fight. Steve Smoger is a fine official, but one who might be overly concerned with making sure he doesn’t offend anyone. It’s the only reason I can fathom he never took any points away or even warned anyone, so far as I recall. As a result, it was a terrible, monotonous borefest, and it was largely Raheem’s fault.
Yes, I know Freitas clinched some too. He grabbed Raheem so hard at one point that Raheem threw him to the floor to break his grip. But overall, it was Raheem who was initiating clinches, especially late in the fight.
Raheem wanted to punch and not get hit. Can’t blame him for that. But constant clinching is an ugly way to accomplish that. When he wasn’t clinching, he was ducking so close to the floor, I thought he’d dropped a contact lens. Still, I thought he did just enough to win. But because I’ll never get back that 48 minutes I spent wishing I’d go spontaneously blind, I don’t particularly care.
It’s not the first time I’ve watched a fighter lose who deserved to win and felt rather like he had it coming. Who didn’t feel that way after Felix Trinidad decisioned Oscar De La Hoya? Anyone who watched that fight with his eyes open knew De La Hoya won the first eight rounds. He made Trinidad look like an amateur. Hell, I thought De La Hoya even won the rounds in which he simply ran around the ring. But after some initial outrage at the decision, I felt like, well, he should have closed the deal. He chose not to. That’s a hell of a risk to take when you can’t see what’s on the scorecards. So to hell with him.
Remember the second Ricardo Mayorga-Vernon Forrest fight? Forrest landed the harder, cleaner punches throughout. If anyone was ever hurt, it was Mayorga. But Forrest spent the first six rounds so skittish, so anxious over getting tagged and hurt again, that he couldn’t keep his legs under him and flopped all over the ring. He couldn’t get far enough away from Mayorga. He got it together later on, but by then it was too late. He’d blown it already and you couldn’t blame anyone for giving it to Mayorga, even though Forrest probably deserved it.
Raheem’s a nice guy, and a nice little fighter too, but I suspect he’ll have a hard time reaching again the heights he did last September when he decisioned Erik Morales. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, against the odds, he’ll get another big fight and pull off another upset. I only know this: I won’t be watching if it happens. I don’t think I could last another 12 rounds, and televisions aren’t cheap.
Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
FREITAS RETURNS TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME (April 25, 2006)
By Don Stradley
When Acelino “Popo” Freitas enters Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut, on April 29 to face Zahir Raheem, he’s entering the same venue where American fans watched him surrender to Diego Corrales in 2004. It should be a bittersweet return to America for Brazil’s favorite son, especially since American beat writers were so quick to write him off after the Corrales fight. Granted, he hasn’t done much to restore our faith since then, staying in Brazil to notch wins over Fernando Saucedo (W10) and Fabian Salazar (KO1). Hopefully, he has licked the wounds laid on him by Corrales, and is ready to resume his career. In Raheem, he has a serious opponent who will give him a full night’s work.
Freitas, 37-1 (32), can still punch hard enough to stop Raheem, but the crafty Raheem, 27-1 (16), isn’t going to leave his chin out there to be hit. And while Freitas has power, he sometimes sacrifices it in favor of a jitterbugging defensive style that is not so pleasing to watch. But at his best, Freitas is an explosive fighter who can be very entertaining. It’s not impossible to imagine Freitas winning in the same sloppy but effective manner in which he outhustled Joel Casamayor in 2002. That’s probably good for boxing—Freitas does have some charisma and his Brazilian supporters usually make for some good TV, even if he’s not a big mover at the American box office. Raheem, while skillful, has nothing about him that screams “mass appeal.”
Raheem, a member of the 1996 U.S. Olympic team, made headlines last year by upsetting Erik Morales via decision on HBO. When Morales lost his next fight via knockout to Manny Pacquiao, some of the luster of Raheem’s victory was rubbed away. But regardless of how burned out Morales may be at this point, Raheem is a good boxer with fast hands.
Fighting Freitas for a vacant minor lightweight belt may not be what Raheem had in mind when he beat Morales, but winning is all important to Raheem. If Raheem loses, good luck to him finding another high-profile opponent. No manager would put his fighter in with the “Z-Man”—he’s too slick. If he loses to Freitas, he’ll spend the next four years being ducked, ala Winky Wright. He may find out what Frankie Randall learned when he beat Julio Cesar Chavez many years ago: Just because you’ve beaten a superstar doesn’t mean you become a superstar.
The fight will also mark the debut of the new HBO Boxing After Dark announcing team, Fran Charles, Max Kellerman, and Lennox Lewis. They’ll have plenty of questions to grapple with: Can Freitas deal with Raheem’s funky style? Can Raheem maintain the momentum started by his win over Morales? Can Freitas shake off the stigma of “quitter” after his unfortunate bowing-out against Corrales? It’s not the Fight of the Century, but hardcore fans will have plenty to think about during this one. My pick: Freitas by decision.
BYRD FINDS RING NO PLACE FOR SELF-DECEPTION (April 24, 2006)
By William Dettloff
I don’t know about you, but for me, Wladimir Klitschko’s win over Chris Byrd on Saturday got a little hard to watch by about the fourth round. If Byrd were a different kind of guy, who you knew was used to taking punches from big guys and could do it, it would have been different. But Byrd’s exactly the opposite. He’s made a nice career out of not getting hit, mostly out of necessity.
We’ve always known Byrd’s just not built to take shots from these big, hard-hitting heavyweights. He knew it too. He could get away with it against Andrew Golota and Jameel McCline because they’re not huge punchers. Klitschko is. So when those right hands started landing consistently and really hurting Byrd, I found myself cringing—a lot. It looked like the class bully beating on the class spelling bee winner.
The beating underlined one of life’s depressing truths: We can all only be what we are. We can want to be more this and less that, we can convince ourselves that through sheer force of will and determination we can remake ourselves as we want, but it’s a fallacy, a leftover from the myriad fairy tales we’re taught as kids. It serves a useful purpose when we’re young, I guess. It gets us going in the right direction.
But by the time we’re adults, we are what we are, and Chris Byrd was never going to be Joe Frazier. Listening to him before the fight talk about how he was going to rough-up Klitschko and walk him down, I found it hard to envision, even if I thought it would be more competitive than it turned out. Byrd is closer to Jimmy Young than he is to Frazier.
It was even worse in application. Watching Byrd try to bob and weave into Klitschko, like Frazier might have, was as sad as watching Frazier in his second fight with George Foreman, trying to dance and move from the outside, his hands at his sides like Muhammad Ali. It didn’t work for Joe that night, and it didn’t work for Byrd in Germany.
To his credit, Byrd admitted afterward to HBO’s Larry Merchant that his belief that he could fight Klitschko that way was “knuckle-headed.” But really, what choice did he have? Klitschko, for all his faults, is very solid mechanically and was not going to run into Byrd winging hooks and overhand rights, which is what Byrd needs guys to do if he’s going to be successful.
Fighters must dance with the one who brung them, as the saying goes, as we all must. Most of the time it’ll work out. Sometimes it won’t. It’s the times that it doesn’t that hurt.
Some random observations on the fight:
• The best line of the broadcast came from Merchant, who, in reply to Byrd’s wife shrieking commands to Byrd from ringside, observed, “Byrd’s family is very brave.” He wasn’t kidding. Did anyone else catch what the lovely Ms. Byrd was hollering as her beloved was getting his head handed to him? I can’t be positive, but it sounded like, “You’ve got to fight smart—you’re fighting stupid!” Hey, thanks for the support, babe.
• This was proof once again that the surest way to know a fighter is going to lose is when he says before the fight that he’s happier than he’s been in a long time, never felt better, and finally is out from under Don King. Next time you hear it, bet it all on the other guy. Apparently, getting manipulated and screwed over by King makes these guys better fighters.
• Guess this undermines Byrd’s claims that last time the two fought, Klitschko had a foreign substance on his gloves that caused Byrd’s eyes to swell shut early in the fight, something that had never happened to him before. This time Byrd’s right eye started swelling in the second round. What’s Klitschko got on those gloves, lighter fluid?
• Klitschko looked nothing like the guy who had an anxiety attack every time Sam Peter got within driving distance of him. But I wouldn’t take that as a sure sign that he’s gotten his confidence back. He knew Byrd couldn’t hurt him. It’s the same reason Golota didn’t suffer his usual breakdown when he fought Byrd. How will we know if Klitschko really has his confidence back? Put him on an elevator with Corrie Sanders. If he doesn’t wet his pants, he’s making progress.
• Want to see Byrd look good again? Put him in with Peter. He’ll look like a 210-pound Pernell Whitaker. It’s all about styles.
Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net
TRAINERS GONE WILD (April 17, 2006)
By William Dettloff
Maybe it’s me, but the $200,000 fine and one-year suspension Las Vegas slapped on Roger Mayweather for Mayweather’s role in the brawl (I refuse anymore for a period of six months to use the word “melee”) that broke out during his nephew’s win over Zab Judah seems a bit excessive. That’s pretty harsh. I’ll bet it’s more than what Roger took home back in the day for getting pancaked by Rocky Lockridge. Or Freddie Pendleton. Or Rafael Pineda. Or Ray Lovato. Or Julio Cesar Chavez.
Don’t get me wrong. Roger Mayweather was a good fighter. Good puncher too. Some say he had no chin, and that’s just not true. He absolutely had a chin. And if you could hit with a right, chances were you could put him to sleep.
Anyway, I bet if the trainer formerly known as “The Black Mamba” knew when he jumped through the ropes it was going to cost him 200K, he would have made sure he got his money’s worth and planted a straight right on someone’s kisser (where’s Lou Duva when you need him?), rather than going for the chokehold on Zab. Where did he think he was, anyway, The Octagon?
Besides that, it’s not like Roger jumped into the ring waving around a pick ax or a flame-thrower. He went in there to protect his guy and really didn’t get physical until Yoel Judah leaped in too and started throwing punches. I suppose that soon we’ll hear that the Judahs are being fined too, and/or suspended. That is, unless Don King’s impassioned speech before the Nevada State Athletic Commission last week convinces them to go easy on Team Judah. Let’s hope not. Yoel may sound like Bernie Mac after 1,700 cups of Starbucks high-octane Java, but he’s not nearly as likable or entertaining (and really, who is?) and shouldn’t escape punishment.
Speaking of punishment, how is it that former John Ruiz cornerman Norm Stone never got a fine as big as the one slapped on Mayweather? He was ready to start throwing punches during the referee’s prefight instructions. Really, he should have been fined most heavily the time he showed up in Ruiz’ corner with his head shaved bald. It was ugly. I wanted to gouge out my eyes by the third round, and for once during a Ruiz fight, it wasn’t because of all the clinches.
If the commissions really want to make some money by fining parties that contribute to a negative perception of the sport, they should start with the IBF—for allowing Judah to retain their version of the welterweight title despite his loss to Carlos Baldomir.
Come to think of it, that may be the way to get rid of these so-called organizations: Have every state commission fine them whenever they sanction an obvious mismatch, call someone an “interim” or “super” champion—or rate a dead guy. Fine them all the way into Chapter 11. Bankrupt them. Oh, wait, that’s right. It’s been done. It doesn’t work.
Really, I’m surprised more trainers don’t lose it and get into fights during actual, sanctioned matches. Remember, most of these guys are former fighters themselves, and I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for them to tell their guy over and over in the corner what he has to do to win, only to be ignored round after round after round. Go through that long enough and it could change you forever. For instance, I heard that before Michael Moorer’s fight against Vaughn Bean, Teddy Atlas, one of the game’s great friends and Moorer’s head trainer, actually smiled. Once.
This is a rough business. It will get to you.
Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
BYRD-KLITSCHKO: DAVID vs. GOLIATH, PART II
(April 17, 2006)
By By Don Stradley
When HBO announced that Chris Byrd would defend the IBF title against Wladimir Klitschko on April 22, we didn’t throw open our windows to tell the neighbors. But in Mannheim, Germany, where the fight will take place, the 14,000-seat SAP Arena was sold out after only 48 hours. Apparently, Klitschko’s ongoing tale of redemption has some people interested. And maybe it should. During this forlorn heavyweight era, Klitschko has as good a chance as any to become the division’s focal point.
The interest in this fight for American fight fans has to do with how far Byrd and Klitschko have slipped since their meeting in 2000, when Klitschko dropped Byrd twice on his way to an easy points victory. Since then, Klitschko has been kayoed twice, and in his last bout, a decision over Sam Peter, he was decked three times and spent most of the fight hanging on to Peter like a man clinging to a rock cliff. It wasn’t a great performance, but it was better than Byrd’s last bout, a dull decision win over DaVarryl Williamson. Byrd didn’t help his cause by kvetching about Don King after the fight; he looked like a disgruntled Wal-Mart employee, not a heavyweight titlist.
Avenging the earlier loss is probably less important to Byrd than simply keeping his career alive. There’s just no interest in a soft-punching, smallish heavyweight like Byrd. Does he have a chance? He might give the skittish Ukrainian some rough moments, but Klitschko should have enough left to beat Byrd. He’s done it before, and that should add a vital element to Klitschko’s fight plan: confidence. The addition of Emanuel Steward to his corner should be helpful too, although at times there seems to be a communication breakdown between Klitschko and his new trainer.
Klitschko said recently of Byrd, “I defeated him in Cologne, Germany, in 2000. Since then Byrd has improved and boxed top boxers like [Evander] Holyfield and [Andrew] Golota. Byrd matured and is not comparable with the man of five years before. He is very awkward to box.”
Byrd agrees that he has changed. “My mindset the first time we fought was, I’m fighting this big guy! I was more timid and trying to use more finesse. My whole thing now is I like fighting big guys. It’s like an addiction.”
But addictions can be harmful. Also, Byrd is 35; Klitschko is 30. As Larry Merchant has often said, younger, bigger, and stronger usually wins. Merchant could add that a Klitschko fighting in Germany usually wins too.
THE REAL REASON FLOYD MAYWEATHER KEEPS WINNING
(April 10, 2006)
By William Dettloff
Floyd Mayweather’s victory over Zab Judah on Saturday night in Las Vegas wasn’t unexpected, but the reasons behind the win are worth exploring. Mayweather didn’t win because he was faster than Judah, or stronger than him, or because his skills were better, necessarily. Indeed, Judah did quite well for himself over the first five rounds, shaking Mayweather with a left in the first and then scoring what looked like a flash knockdown in the second, though he wasn’t credited for it.
By the third, Mayweather looked more concerned than I can recall ever having seen him, I surmised because for the first time in his pro career he was facing a guy whose hands were as fast as his, and who was quick enough to counter him. Something had to have changed over the second half of the fight, something dramatic enough for Mayweather to take over and dominate the way he did on the way to winning a unanimous decision. He didn’t get faster all of the sudden, or stronger.
What changed? Judah couldn’t sustain his drive. Mayweather did. It’s a cliche, I know, but Mayweather wanted it more. He always wants it more. That’s what makes him so dangerous. With all his skills, with all the natural speed and the pedigree and everything else Mayweather has going for him, he’s also got a single-mindedness that you’ll see only in the most successful people, regardless of vocation. It’s not something you can fake.
Everyone knows that Judah, regardless of his myriad physical gifts, suffers mid-fight meltdowns and tends to come apart over the distance. (His ninth-round stoppage of Cory Spinks was the lone occasion where he was able to keep it together in a big fight.) The difference here was not just Judah being Judah, but Mayweather being Mayweather.
You get the sense Mayweather would rather remove his own spleen with a butter knife than lose a prizefight. To say that he’s driven is an understatement. It’s become abundantly clear, almost since the time he turned pro, that being known as the best fighter in the world is all that matters to him. He’s deadly serious about this business, and a man that serious about what he does for a living is rare indeed and will be very hard to unseat for a long time. Forget everything else he can do. That his reputation as an elite fighter is so closely tied to his very identity makes him the dangerous man he is.
* * *
Some random thoughts on the card:
•Anybody buying Judah’s assertion that the low blow he hit Mayweather with in the 10th was accidental? Please. I’ve seen appendectomies that were less deliberate.
•Lennox Lewis didn’t do badly at all as HBO’s guest announcer. Not as zany as George Foreman, as self-congratulating as Roy Jones, or as repetitive as Emanuel Steward, Lewis was typically understated, and despite a reliance on platitudes, came off pretty well. We do want to ask him about Juan Diaz’ “speed muscles,” however.
•That more than 15,000 fans showed up at the Thomas & Mack Center proved that Bob Arum and Don King were right: It didn’t matter that Judah lost to Carlos Baldomir, just as it didn’t matter that Erik Morales lost to Zahir Raheem before his rematch with Manny Pacquiao. Put together a good, interesting fight and the fans will show.
•Who was less intelligible in the corner—Roger Mayweather or Yoel Judah? And where was Ray Torres when we really needed him?
•Isn’t it fun when unsanctioned brawls break out during boxing matches? The image of an enraged Roger Mayweather trying to choke Judah during the 10th-round melee, which is what Judah claimed afterward but I couldn’t see from the tape, is almost too hilarious to bear.
Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
FLOYD MAYWEATHER VS. ZAB JUDAH: IS “PRETTY BOY” LOOKING AHEAD?
(April 4, 2006)
By Don Stradley
When Zab Judah lost the world welterweight championship to Carlos Baldomir last January, it looked like his dream match with Floyd Mayweather was in jeopardy. According to Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler, there was no reason for the fight to happen, since Judah was no longer the champion. But when Baldomir skipped paying his IBF sanctioning fees, the tin title stayed with Judah. Since HBO had a date to fill, and Mayweather has an embarrassing hunger for alphabet belts, a fight was resurrected.
“He is the best in the East and I am the best in the West,” Mayweather said. “Now we are going to see who the best of the best really is.” That sounds good, although we don’t expect Mayweather to be troubled by Judah any more than he was by DeMarcus Corley. But just as Judah, 28, was looking past Baldomir to fight Mayweather, there’s talk that Mayweather, 29, might be looking past Judah to fight Oscar De La Hoya next winter. But if you think that will affect the outcome, you probably believe Marvin Hagler really has a lucrative film career in Italy.
It’s hard to imagine a fight between Mayweather, 35-0 (24), and Judah, 34-3 (25), being any different than the impromptu sparring session they had last year when Mayweather allegedly dominated the action. The only fighter who could beat Mayweather is someone so strong and fearless that he walks through Mayweather’s offense and punches through his defense, the way a young Roberto Duran might have done. But Judah isn’t the guy. Baldomir staggered Judah more than once, and the Argentine had nothing in his gloves but applesauce.
Southpaw Judah’s best weapon is his straight left, which can play havoc on journeymen, but when things don’t go his way, he tends to showboat and waste rounds. Granted, he’ll be more focused for Mayweather than he was for Baldomir (which has been Bob Arum and Mayweather’s way of selling this showdown), but that will only buy him a few rounds before Mayweather bops him on his unreliable chin. Still, Judah is putting on a good show of confidence.
“I have waited my whole life for a fight like this,” said Judah. “This will be an extravaganza.”
HBO certainly hopes so. This fight should give the network another chance to gauge Mayweather’s value as a pay-per-view attraction. The HBO Web site amusingly bills Mayweather as “Boxing’s biggest superstar,” which is wishful thinking on their part.
The good news for promoters Arum and Don King is that advance ticket sales for Judah-Mayweather were impressive. Those at the Thomas and Mack Center on April 8 will see a reasonably entertaining fight, with Judah going down swinging by the 10th.
LIAKHOVICH WIN ALL ABOUT FOLLOWING THE PLAN (April 3, 2006)
By Bill Dettloff
Fighters are fond of saying they make the trainer, not the other way around. You have to agree to some extent. The trainer can only show the fighter what to do; he can’t do it for him. It’s up to the fighter to put into effect the strategy the trainer lays out. That’s not always easy. There are things working against him: his opponent, self-doubt, ego, mistrust. A lot goes on in a corner.
Sometimes a trainer is just wrong about a strategy. Sometimes the talent gap is so big that strategy is irrelevant. Coming up with the right plan is what the trainer gets paid for. There are exceptions, but most of the time the guy who wins is the guy who is best able to follow the plan.
After the fourth round of Sergei Liakhovich’s exciting upset win over Lamon Brewster Saturday night, Buddy McGirt, whom Brewster recently hired to replace Jesse Reid, told Brewster: “Stop throwing to the head. Forget the head. Throw hooks to the body. Stop going for the head.”
Brewster nodded to indicate that he’d heard and understood, then went out in the fifth round and threw punch after punch at Liakhovich’s head. It was a thrilling round. Brewster connected with some thundering shots early, punched himself out, and Liakhovich took over late in the round.
It wasn’t until the seventh that Brewster put into practice what McGirt told him about going to Liakhovich’s body. And what happened? He scored the fight’s only knockdown. Then, in the eighth, and indeed for the rest of the fight, he forgot it again.
In the other corner, Kenny Weldon was having his own problems with Liakhovich, who preferred to brawl instead of box from range, as was the plan. In every round, Weldon told him the same thing, but Liakhovich remained stubborn. Finally, after the eighth, Weldon told him: “If you think you are going to beat this guy by standing in front of him, you’re wrong. Stay outside and jab him. You’ll bust him up.” Somehow it got through that time.
Liakhovich finally got on board, staying outside, jabbing Brewster silly and pounding his flank with that right hand. The result? He dominated the last four rounds and won a clear decision. You couldn’t ask for a better illustration of one fighter’s discipline and trust in his corner directly resulting in his beating a fighter who probably is more talented but couldn’t will himself to follow the plan.
Brewster is a nice guy, by all accounts, and a hell of a puncher when he throws. What he lacks—and this isn’t news—is either self-discipline or self-confidence. Or both. Advice to all fighters: If you’re not going to listen to your trainer, have your girlfriend or the guy from the carwash work your corner. The result will be about the same, and they’ll probably do it a lot cheaper.
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Call me crazy, but I’m still giving Zab Judah a decent shot against Floyd Mayweather on April 8, even after Zab was a no-show at a recent press conference. Sometimes, guys like Judah, who have serious self-confidence issues, forget themselves in the heat of a big fight and come through big. It didn’t happen against Carlos Baldomir, because Judah expected to walk through him.
That’s not what he expects against Mayweather. He expects to get his head handed to him, and a fighter who thinks that way sometimes figures he has nothing to lose and ends up being very dangerous. Judah has the physical tools to make it very difficult for Mayweather. The question involves his emotional state during the fight. If he can get past his anxiety, he could surprise a lot of people.
Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
KING & ARUM VS. HBO (March 27, 2006)
By Bill Dettloff
One of the wiser things I’ve heard or read any fight promoter say was articulated by Lou DiBella not long ago and reported by a Web site whose identity I have since forgotten and to whom I thus apologize in advance for not crediting properly.
DiBella, one of the game’s great quote-machines and not coincidentally one its great hotheads too, said, and I paraphrase: The big difference between pro boxing and other, more mainstream sports is that the power brokers in other sports recognize that in terms of market share, the competition is not other teams, but other sports. In boxing, the promoters all compete with one another rather than with their real competition.
How true. And how sad.
This truism never was more evident than it was when Bob Arum and Don King, who are co-promoting the upcoming Floyd Mayweather-Zab Judah fight, took to the podium on the afternoon before the Hasim Rahman-James Toney fight and proceeded to blast HBO—on whose very network that night’s fight, their fight—was being shown.
It is ironic that Arum and King, two natural enemies for several decades now, have found common ground in their hatred for anything that might threaten their multimillion-dollar businesses. And that together they should spawn a column on boxing’s power brokers not working together. But that’s not the point. Their enmity toward HBO—and rival promoter Golden Boy Promotions—is illustrative of much of what is wrong with the business of boxing.
Let’s start with HBO. (Full disclosure: A few years ago I wrote a weekly column for HBO’s boxing Web site and remain a regular contributor.) I agree with the general consensus of the fight media that HBO’s boxing programming suffered after DiBella left. And that they’ve erred by signing “stars” to long-term contracts, and also that they’ve pushed too many fights over to their pay-per-view business.
I agree too that HBO’s practices have prevented some attractive fights from being made, and that their habit of scheduling fights on the same date that another fight has been scheduled on a competing network (Bernard Hopkins-Antonio Tarver running on the same night as Miguel Cotto-Paulie Malignaggi is a perfect example) doesn’t help anybody. But I shudder when I consider where boxing might be without HBO.
When network television abandoned boxing outright 25 years ago, HBO stepped in and ran with it. They weren’t embarrassed by it. They didn’t need to care what sponsors thought. They didn’t apologize for it. They treated boxing like royalty. They still do. Who else does that? (And don’t say Showtime, because even if they’ve gained ground, they don’t do it like HBO does).
HBO still treats the fight game like it’s one of the three or four major sports in America. It’s still important. Big fights mean something there. Think of the biggest fights you’ve seen over the last 20 years. Practically all of them were on HBO. And they were treated right. It meant something for a fighter to fight on HBO. It still does. And it’s still the best place to watch a fight.
Are they perfect? Hell, no. But King and Arum denigrating them, presumably because of the relationship they are developing with Golden Boy Promotions, is the height of hypocrisy. King’s offenses against the sport are too long to list, and you know them all by now anyway. And it was just a few years ago that Arum confessed to paying off an IBF official to get business done that would help his bottom line. Compare that with HBO, whose broadcast team, for example, refuses to give credibility to the current alphabet titlist morass, a system that Arum and King, over the last couple of decades, helped in no small way to create.
HBO, for all its foibles, continues to try to elevate the game, while Arum, King, and the like have succeeded, in many respects, in diminishing it. A little competition never hurt anybody. But we’re all on the same team. Or should be.
Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
HEAVYWEIGHTS GOING NOWHERE (March 20, 2006)
By Bill Dettloff
It’s undeniable that Saturday night’s draw between Hasim Rahman and James Toney got us not one inch closer to identifying the heavyweight world champion—something that, in this business, is, well, a nice thing to have.
Neither Rahman nor Toney was very good; Rahman was busier and stronger and good at moving his hands around a lot in this or that direction, but not much more. Toney was occasionally brilliant, often languid, and strangely prone to stumbling backward when missing haymaker right hands—and even more oddly, when landing them.
As was correctly and repeatedly observed throughout the HBO telecast, so much of this fight was about moving the division forward, and, it is implied, the sport itself along with it. That’s what all contests are supposed to do, really. That’s why they set them up and why we watch them. To see who goes forward and who drops out. To find out who is at the top of the heap and who can’t cut it. It’s all about positioning and moving toward resolution. That’s what we’re forever chasing: the final act. We want to know who is The Man. That’s why we show up.
Here’s the rub: On those occasions during the sport’s history when the division has moved forward like we think we want it to and we found that dominant, alpha-male heavyweight champion—Dempsey, Louis, Holmes to some degree, Tyson, probably Lennox Lewis—we complained because there was no one around who could give the champ a fight. It got boring.
Think back to when Tyson was at his peak and fight fans complained they couldn’t stand to put on a heavyweight title fight anymore because it was over in 40 seconds. “Where’s all the competition?” they cried. Moreover, we always want someone to beat him. Didn’t matter if he was a villain like Tyson or a lukewarm hero like Lewis. When a heavyweight champ is dominant, the only fun comes in wondering when someone will cut him down to size and how. We rush a guy to the top of the mountain just for the pleasure of watching him get knocked off.
Right now there is no dominant heavyweight. It happens. And all the guys who are vying to be that guy are at about the same level. That doesn’t mean they’re bums. It doesn’t mean they can’t fight. It means they’re all about as good as one another. They’re all good and they’re all flawed. They can’t all be Alpha males. They can only be what they are. That’s what they’re doing.
You can’t read an article anymore that doesn’t talk about how bad the heavyweight division is. Recently, a guy wrote today’s top contenders wouldn’t stand a chance against the bunch that was routinely ridiculed throughout the 1980s—Greg Page, Tony Tubbs, Pinklon Thomas, et al. The same group Tyson rescued us from. That’s absurd. The only thing that makes today’s group look bad is there’s no dominant guy among them. That’s not a crime.
So what do we do about this quandary? Nothing, really. Except one thing: stop looking for the resolution. Forget about moving things forward. Stop complaining. Let it go, that need to have everything settled. Enjoy these heavyweight fights for what they are—fights between pretty evenly matched big guys. Some will be good, some bad, like everything else. But for now, forget about finding The Man. He’ll show up sooner or later. He always does. There will be plenty of time to complain then.
Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
CALZAGHE-LACY REVISITED (March 13, 2006)
By Bill Dettloff
There was so much going on in Joe Calzaghe’s win over Jeff Lacy last weekend, including its after-effects, that I simply couldn’t cover it all in one column. So if you can stomach one more piece on it …
If anything shocked me more than how easily Calzaghe took Lacy apart, it’s this idea, proffered by several fight writers in the days that followed, that Lacy might never be the same, that the beating he took was so terrific he might be ruined. Where did this come from? The guy hasn’t even cashed his check yet and we’re speculating he might be through?
This wasn’t the kind of fight that ruins a young, strong guy like Lacy. This wasn’t Thomas Hearns blowing out Pipino Cuevas or Julio Cesar Chavez breaking bones in Meldrick Taylor’s head or Felix Trinidad almost decapitating Fernando Vargas. It wasn’t even Edwin Rosario turning Hector Camacho into a runner. It was a guy in Calzaghe who was faster, smarter, and better on his feet out-maneuvering and outfighting a young puncher who couldn’t figure out how to deal with his style. That’s all.
Lacy didn’t get thrashed the way guys do when they get ruined. He wasn’t repeatedly (or, in my mind, even convincingly) floored, was never on the verge of being knocked out, and didn’t appear appreciably damaged at the end. Why is that? Because Calzaghe isn’t that kind of puncher. This will send our friends in Europe into a tizzy, I know, but it’s true: Calzaghe, as scouted by Lacy’s camp, is a bit of a slapper. It’s not a knock on him; it’s an observation. The guy slaps a little. It’s okay. He still wins. But guys who slap don’t ruin guys. Punchers do. Calzaghe didn’t ruin Lacy. He just beat him up.
Kudos must go to Lacy’s trainer, Dan Birmingham, for not stopping the fight despite pressure from others in Lacy’s camp—and critics afterward—to do so. Hey, guys, this is prizefighting. It gets rough. Guys get smacked around. Sometimes they swell up and bleed, but when you have a puncher like Lacy in there and he’s not taking the kind of pounding that stays with him forever—and he wasn’t—you don’t stop it. You keep turning him loose and hope he gets lucky.
Hell, if Hector Roca, or, later, Buddy McGirt, stopped every fight in which Arturo Gatti was getting his head handed to him before he pulled out the win, Gatti would be mopping floors in Jersey City somewhere right now. Plus, Lacy never gave even the slightest hint that he was ready to quit or wanted Birmingham to do it for him. Birmingham let him be a fighter. Good for him.
That said, I also was disappointed in Birmingham. And not because his between-rounds counsel to Lacy consisted of essentially repeating the same lame, rudimentary instruction over and over, in tones that grew angrier as the fight went on. You can’t blame him for that. Trainers have it tough on nights when their guy is in there with a better fighter and getting outclassed, because when the gap between the fighters is too big, as it was here, there’s nothing they can do or say in the corner to change it. He can’t just wipe the fighter down, rinse off his mouthpiece, and send him back out. He must say something and it has to seem meaningful. It can’t be something like, “Hey, I didn’t know a nose could bend like yours is bent right now. That’s cool.” So Birmingham did what he was supposed to do.
What disappointed me was his assertion after the fight that Lacy lost because he wouldn’t follow instructions. Dan’s been in the game a long time. He knew as clearly as the rest of us did about midway through that unless Lacy got lucky or Calzaghe was suddenly overcome by Legionnaires Disease or something, Lacy was not going to win. He was in there with a better fighter who was in a groove and there wasn’t a damn the thing anyone could do about it.
That’s the way it works sometimes, and the belief that if you just will yourself to make this or that small adjustment—jab more or go to the body—everything will just turn around, is, in cases like this, wishful thinking. Lacy couldn’t do the things he had to, the things Birmingham was telling him to do because he couldn’t. Calzaghe didn’t give him time to.
Lacy couldn’t do what he needed to do because Calzaghe was doing what he needed to do. Birmingham chose to blame his fighter rather than simply admitting Calzaghe was the better man that night. That’s disappointing.
Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net
CALZAGHE THE REAL THING; WHO KNEW? (March 6, 2006)
By Bill Dettloff
Like much of the American boxing media, I felt a little foolish almost from the start of Joe Calzaghe’s shockingly one-sided win over Jeff Lacy in Manchester, England, on Saturday night. I even went into it thinking Lacy might be a little overrated and still I couldn’t convince myself to go with Calzaghe, and not only because Lacy was the younger, stronger, more active, and seemingly hungrier guy. It also was because Calzaghe had the stink of fraud on him.
You know what I mean. Maybe you blokes over in Europe knew all along that Calzaghe was the real thing. Maybe you’ve seen him from the beginning and knew that he was inconsistent, that he could look great one night and awful the next, but that deep down he is a solid, serious prizefighter. Here’s what the rest of us saw: a guy who for a long time shared the top spot at 168 with Sven Ottke and may have been the best of a poor division—a division curiously dominated for the last decade by Europeans—who didn’t want any part of a top American fighter. Just like Ottke.
We saw a guy who every year or so talked about fighting Roy Jones or Bernard Hopkins or Antonio Tarver, and almost before we could begin to think about how such a fight would turn out, we’d read that talks mysteriously “broke down,” or had never even occurred. The next month we’d hear he was facing Mario Veit or Tocker Pudwill or Mger Mkrtchian, whatever the hell that is. It got ridiculous.
I’d get interested whenever Calzaghe beat a recognizable American fighter such as Omar Sheika or Charles Brewer. Then the talk would come of a big fight in the States and then dissipate, and he’d face another European that no one over here had seen fight, heard of, or cared much about. The last time I got interested was when he got off the deck to stop Byron Mitchell, a worn but useful American puncher. It was exciting, dramatic. And Calzaghe looked sharp. The talks started again about Jones, Hopkins, or Tarver. Then nothing. I gave up. It was clear that either Calzaghe or Frank Warren, his promoter, wanted to stay at home, face mediocre opposition, and ride a big pile of Euros into a sweet golden sunset, just as Ottke had.
I should point out that I have nothing against anyone who wants to do that. Hell, I’d like to do it. But don’t tell us you want this or that guy in a superfight and you want to be an all-time great and then go and fight Veit—again. After a while, we don’t believe you. How can you blame us?
Alas, it turns out Warren just might be eligible for Manager of the Decade Award, if there was such a thing. Under his stewardship, both Calzaghe and Ricky Hatton became wealthy and exceptionally popular across the Atlantic. It was Warren who, maddeningly, refused to give in to pressure from the press and from the fighters themselves, apparently, to up the level of the competition and go after bigger fights sooner. He stayed on course, packing houses in Manchester and counting receipts until he, and only he it appears, thought the time was right for the big fight: Hatton against Kostya Tszyu, Calzaghe against Lacy. He nailed it. And so did Calzaghe. Bloody good show, guys.
* * *
HBO’s Saturday night rebroadcast of the Shane Mosley-Fernando Vargas fight gave me an opportunity to revisit my stance that the fight was inappropriately stopped. I’d like to report that I was wrong, that seeing it again illustrated the correctness of Joe Cortez’ call, but I can’t. To the contrary, it seemed even worse the second time around. I thought Vargas clearly won the ninth round, an opinion supported by the punch stats and shared by HBO’s Emanuel Steward (but not by the judges, interestingly). And Vargas’ eye was about as bad in the ninth as it was in the 10th. Mosley wasn’t doing anything great in the 10th when Cortez called it. It makes no difference to me who won the fight. What do I care? I just like to know that when a fight is stopped, it’s stopped for the right reason. That one wasn’t.
Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
LET ’EM FIGHT (February 27, 2006)
By Bill Dettloff
I may be the only person on the planet who agreed with Fernando Vargas on Saturday night that his fight with Shane Mosley didn’t need to be stopped on account of Vargas’ swollen left eye. None of the press seemed to have a problem with it. The HBO broadcast team certainly didn’t. Even the crowd, which seemed decidedly in Vargas’ corner, didn’t protest too loudly when Joe Cortez stepped in at 1:42 of the 10th, after Mosley landed a couple of rights smack on Vargas’ rapidly burgeoning hematoma.
Me? I had a problem with it. Maybe it’s got something to do with my picking Vargas to win in this space last week. I doubt it, though. It’s got more to do, I think, with my discomfort with our growing need—even in boxing now, of all things—to rid ourselves as quickly as possible of anything that is disturbing or unpleasant or disquieting to look at, even if no real danger is present.
First things first: I’m no doctor. If not for my affection for the fight game and this tender Irish skin, I wouldn’t know a hematoma from a melanoma. But I’ve never heard of any medical reason offered for stopping a fight because of a hematoma other than that the injured fighter can’t see punches coming from the affected side—not, importantly, that the eye is in greater danger of being damaged. It’s not like when the tissue is cut above and below—like Vitali Klitschko’s was against Lennox Lewis—and the eyeball itself seems a threat to drop out altogether, as unlikely as that would be. It’s
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