ROY JONES: VISIONS OF YOUTH RESTORED
MAYWEATHER-DE LA HOYA II: THE WORLD SNORES
BOXING AS KILLER AND SAVIOR
FLOYD MAYWEATHER NAMED FIGHTER OF THE YEAR
16 PREDICTIONS FOR 2008
HOLIDAY MAILBAG
HOPKINS PLAYS THE RACE CARD
HATTON AND GREAT BRITAIN: PERFECT TOGETHER
THE SELLING OF MAYWEATHER-HATTON
VARGAS: A WELL-EARNED GOODBYE
MAYORGA PROVES BAD IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS
COTTO: TWO FIGHTERS IN ONE, BOTH SUPERB
PAVLIK REQUIRES 100 STITCHES FOR CUT HANDS
MIGUEL COTTO vs. SHANE MOSLEY: Analyzing Saturday’s Welterweight Showdown
IN PRAISE OF JOE
CALZAGHE-KESSLER: GIVING CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE
CASAMAYOR-DIAZ IS THE FIGHT AT LIGHTWEIGHT
HOLYFIELD NEVER NEEDED PROTECTING FROM HIMSELF
BARRERA & McCLINE: OPPORTUNITIES LOST
IN LOSING TITLE, TAYLOR WINS SOMETHING ELSE
AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM OUR EDITOR
JERMAIN TAYLOR’S IDENTITY CRISIS
IT COULDA BEEN A CONTENDA
RING ACQUIRED BY GOLDEN BOY ENTERPRISES SUBSIDIARY
WAITING ON PANCHITO’S LAST CHANCE
RICARDO TORRES & SECOND CHANCES
GOOD TIMES FOR BOXING AND THE RING
RICARDO MAYORGA: A VILLAIN FOR ALL SEASONS
TITO’S RETIREMENT NEVER HAD A CHANCE
THE FILIPINOS ARE COMING! THE FILIPINOS ARE COMING!
MORALES’ FUTURE WHERE IT SHOULD BE: IN HIS OWN HANDS
A LITTLE COMPETITION NEVER HURTS
HOPKINS STILL FINDING HIS HEROES
WILLIAMS: THAT HE HADN’T DIDN’T MEAN HE COULDN’T
KLITSCHKO-BREWSTER: A WIN FOR BOTH
SUMMERTIME MAILBAG

PREVIOUS RING UPDATE ARCHIVES

JANUARY-JUNE 2007

JULY-DECEMBER 2006

JANUARY-JUNE 2006

2005

ROY JONES: VISIONS OF YOUTH RESTORED (January 21, 2008)

By William Dettloff

Roy Jones was understandably giddy following his decision win over Felix Trinidad Saturday night. In his mind it signified a return to form, a measure of validation that his rapid fall from grace a couple of years ago really was caused not by age, but by the 30 pounds he lost when he went back down to light heavyweight after outpointing John Ruiz.

It’s always seemed a kooky excuse to me: He lost to Tarver in their rubber match almost three years after the win over Ruiz. In the same amount of time, Ricky Hatton has gained and lost probably the equivalent of four or five cruiserweights, and you don’t hear him crying.

Fighters will always make excuses, especially when the cause of their demise is old age. They all say they know the day will come when they can’t do it anymore, but they don’t believe it. Not really. We all know we’re going to die someday, but we don’t believe it. Not deep down. It’s the same thing.

We believe what we want to believe and disregard the rest, and Jones has chosen to disregard the factors that pointed to his victory as nearly a foregone conclusion: Trinidad is 35 years old, hadn’t fought since May 2005, and didn’t look too hot then, either. Plus, he was outsized.

Jones doesn’t see any of that. He just sees that he beat a star convincingly. Given the circumstances, it just doesn’t mean much. You can look good taking home the hottest girl in the club, but if you have to pay her for her time, you lose much of the credit. The same principle’s at play here.

But maybe we’re not giving Jones enough credit as a marketer. Maybe he knows his win Saturday night contained no evidence he’d do equally well against Bernard Hopkins or Joe Calzaghe or in another fight with Tarver. Maybe that’s not the point. Maybe the point is just to get the huge fight. Not to win it; just to get it. If that’s all he’s after, he may already have won.

I hope that’s not it. I hope Jones believes in his heart that he’s still got it. We all need our delusions, and things are never better than they are when we are fully in their grasp.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:

So Oscar De La Hoya is going to take a tuneup in May ahead of a likely rematch with Floyd Mayweather, put it on HBO instead of pay-per-view, and sell $10 and $20 tickets. And you thought HBO didn’t run commercials.

Seriously, the more De La Hoya fights the better it is for everybody, and that includes whoever gets to be his punching bag in May. Rumor is Felix Sturm is not on the short list. Or the long list. Or any list.

“Let’s go toe-to-toe.” Et tu, Arthur Mercante Jr.? Et tu?

There’s only one broadcaster in the business who could describe a fight as “cerebral but laudably violent” without sounding like a pompous jackass. That’s why Jim Lampley is still the best there is.

I’ll be damned: Good for Alex Bunema.

Every televised fight on the Jones-Trinidad card was for some phony-baloney title or another. Every one. What a pitiable state of affairs.

If Devon Alexander fought Anthony Peterson, it would sound exactly like any Friday night used to at Michael Vick’s house.

It would have been great fun if Mike Mollo were able to beat Andrew Golota, who strikes me more than ever as a man with few admirable qualities. Even so, their slugfest was a pretty entertaining heavyweight scrap.

You have to love how seriously our friends on Friday Night Fights take this business. Teddy Atlas and Joe Tessitore treated Kelvin Davis’ retirement announcement like Davis was Lyndon Johnson announcing he wouldn’t seek his party’s nomination. Good for them. By the way, Davis’ record in his last eight fights before he “broke his neck”: 3-4-1.

Note to Anthony Mora: If you’re going to fight again, please get fatter or tanner or both; no one wants to watch your internal organs swishing around while you get knocked out.

Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

MAYWEATHER-DE LA HOYA II: THE WORLD SNORES (January 14, 2008)

By William Dettloff

If you thought the fight game shot its load in 2007, you haven’t taken a look at the schedule lately for ’08. Lots of excellent matchups are either made already or said to be in the works.

The Kelly Pavlik-Jermain Taylor rematch is a mere month away. The rubber match between Israel Vasquez and Rafael Marquez comes right after. Two weeks later is Manny Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Marquez II. Chad Dawson against Glen Johnson is said to be done. Same with Juan Diaz-Nate Campbell. Maybe Joel Casamayor against Michael Katsidis, too.

Bernard Hopkins-Joe Calzaghe is close to being done, reportedly. Same with Antonio Tarver-Jeff Lacy. Also being worked on, it is rumored, is Floyd Mayweather-Oscar De La Hoya II.

That’s right. An ugly rumor made its way around the Internet late last week that De La Hoya is lobbying hard for a rematch to his loss last year to Mayweather in the richest fight in history—humbly billed “The World Awaits”—and that the two sides are hammering away at one another.

Here’s the question: Why?

I know: Mayweather and De La Hoya probably can each count 30 million reasons to get together again. But what does that matter to us?

Let’s face it: Their first meeting was better than, say, Hopkins’ win over Winky Wright, but not by much. It was taut and well boxed and competitive. But there was little drama. It was a reasonably good fight, but nothing very memorable. There wasn’t a moment until the last 20 seconds when either guy really opened up and took real risks.

And that’s the problem. Both guys are too wealthy and too successful to be desperate anymore, or even particularly hungry. Their lives are too good. They’ve got too much to lose.

I can’t blame them. If I had their money, I’d never risk getting off the couch. It’s a dangerous world out there. Why take chances?

But they still like the giant paychecks and the sycophants and the attention and everything else that goes with being superstar athletes, so they keep fighting—sort of. It’s boxing still, but not remotely the way they did it on the way up. If they’re honest, they’ll admit as much and, in fact, Mayweather did just that during HBO’s Mayweather/Hatton 24/7 series.

To make matter worse, their styles are such that they just won’t make any great moments together. Mayweather is a boxer through and through and De La Hoya is a born counterpuncher.

In my mind, it doesn’t even matter that Mayweather barely edged De La Hoya in the first one and that, had De La Hoya not inexplicably abandoned his jab late in the fight, he might have pulled off the upset. A decision victory would have been for De La Hoya a great accomplishment; it would not have made it a great fight.

There is one fighter with whose team Mayweather should be negotiating, and that’s Miguel Cotto. Any fight other than that is just showbiz, just confirmation that Mayweather’s no longer in love with the idea of being a great fighter, but with being a great businessman.

There are myriad options for De La Hoya if he’s still serious about being a fighter. Who wouldn’t like to see him against Vernon Forrest, or Cotto? How about Paul Williams, or Kermit Cintron, or even Shane Mosley again? And what if Felix Trinidad beats Roy Jones this weekend? De La Hoya-Trinidad II might sell a few pay-per-views, no?

Mayweather-De La Hoya II? It doesn’t break the top 20 of rematches I’d pay to see.

They did it already. It was enough.

Speaking of fights few care about, I don’t know anyone who is revved up for this weekend’s Jones-Trinidad fight. It might have been interesting in, say, 2001, after Trinidad nearly killed William Joppy, and Jones had a tougher time than expected against Eric Harding. Even then Jones would have been a heavy favorite. Maybe now his known vulnerabilities even things up a bit, but how much can Trinidad have left?

Either way, it’s hard to get excited about this one. Maybe if the old “Tito” somehow reappears and blows Jones out, it leads to the possibility of something bigger. I don’t see it. My guess is Jones by decision or late stoppage, which he’ll say, afterward, is proof that he’s back. We’ll know better.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:

You’ve got to give David Banks credit for making what was a quantum leap, going from Donny McCrary to Edison Miranda. He paid for it, but he took his shot. Good for him.

Speaking of the Miranda-Banks fight, kudos to referee Telis Assimenios for giving Banks a count even though the fighter was draped across the bottom rope, his upper body outside the ring. Too many referees see that and they panic and stop the fight immediately. If the fighter is conscious, he deserves a chance to get to his feet.

On the other hand, where the hell did Assimenios run off to after counting Banks out? There Banks was, finally on his feet and stumbling around, and Assimenios ran off-screen. What did he have to take care of that was more important than making sure Banks didn’t keel over again?

I imagine the animosity between Miranda and Jean Pascal is staged, but so what?

Who wants to bet Joe Tessitore is right now calling strangers at random to rave about Miranda’s knockout win?

I don’t care anymore about why Allan Green looks down while he’s fighting. I don’t think I ever cared, really.

So far Lennox Lewis is holding his own on Celebrity Apprentice. But there’s long way to go.

Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

BOXING AS KILLER AND SAVIOR (January 7, 2008)

By William Dettloff

In the perfect illustration of the dichotomy that is professional boxing, Paulie Malignaggi and The Brothers Peterson continued to save their lives in prize rings last week, just a few days after Yo-Sam Choi effectively died in one.

Technically, Choi, the one-time WBC junior flyweight titleholder, died in a hospital bed in South Korea after outpointing Heri Amol in Seoul. It’s a technicality; the brain injury that killed him occurred in a ring. Maybe it occurred gradually, in dozens of them over time, the uncounted blows weakening him to the point that something simply had to give.

Either way, if not for boxing he’d still be among us right now, breathing and living and doing the things we do as we each wait our turn. His death didn’t cause any significant regret here, in the United States, because Choi lived and did his work exclusively in Asia. For all the effect the news had here, he may as well have lived on Jupiter.

So there was none of the outrage or rueful headshaking or hand-wringing here that accompanies the death of an American prizefighter. Yet it is a reminder of the dark realities of this business and of its loathsome qualities. Any thinking person who has been associated with the fight game over any significant length of time has at some point been embarrassed by it, ashamed of it, guilty over it, wished it gone already, or wished themselves too tired of it anymore to care. Linger in its cold corridors for too long and you can’t help but get some of its dirt on you—or some of its blood.

Thoughtful observers addicted regretfully to its brutality should find comfort in the lives it has bettered. Malignaggi, by outpointing Herman Ngoudjo in an Atlantic City casino, distanced himself ever further from the nightmares of a tormented youth. Anthony and Lamont Peterson, in besting Jose Izquierdo and Antonio Mesquita, respectively, moved closer to refuting the demoralizing personal realities of poverty, abandonment, and hopelessness. Boxing did this for them. Nothing else.

It delivered too Jason Litzau and Bernard Hopkins and Kassim Ouma and Edison Miranda and thousands like them from the wretchedness of a broken world. It will deliver more too, so long as we’re willing to accommodate the price it exacts.

Some random observations from last week:

I’ve got nothing against Malignaggi, who seems a nice kid, but the punishment for mentioning him in the same sentence as Willie Pep should be a public flogging. I’m not sure he’s as good as prime Paul Spadafora.

Still, Malignaggi-Ngoudjo (which I scored 116-113 for Malignaggi off TV, if you’re wondering) proved that two guys who can’t hit could make a good fight.

Did it never occur to Allan Green that he would be doing Rubin Williams a favor by getting rid of him early, rather than letting him hang around for a 10-round beating?

Speaking of Green, his new book, The Colon: Giver Of All Life, hits bookstores in June.

John David Jackson and Gene Simmons have exactly the same hair-do.

If there is a harder-working host in all of sports broadcasting than Brian Kenny, I haven’t seen him. I think he actually worked up a sweat trying to make Sultan Ibragimov appear interesting.

If Oscar De La Hoya were born unattractive and without talent, he would be Ricardo Dominguez, who fell like a stone the first time Zahir Raheem touched him. It takes a special fighter to make Raheem look like Earnie Shavers.

Is it me or does every card featuring the Peterson brothers look exactly the same? Lamont wins a decision, and Anthony scores a mid-to-late-round knockout. Cripes, we get it already. Time to step up, guys.

It’s too early to say for sure, but Lennox Lewis’ participation on Donald Trump’s reality show, The Apprentice, might produce some monumentally awkward moments for cast members and viewers alike. Have your TiVo ready.

Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

FLOYD MAYWEATHER NAMED FIGHTER OF THE YEAR (December 31, 2007)

The Ring is pleased to announce that world welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather has been selected as Fighter of the Year for 2007. Mayweather fought twice in ’07, winning a 12-round decision over Oscar De La Hoya on May 5 in Las Vegas to capture the WBC super welterweight title, and knocking out Ricky Hatton in the 10th round on December 8 in defense of the world welterweight championship.

It is the second time Mayweather has won the honor, having also been The Ring’s 1998 Fighter of the Year. The award dates back to 1928, when heavyweight champion Gene Tunney was the first recipient.

Other Ring magazine awards for 2007:

Fight of the Year: Israel Vazquez KO 6 Rafael Marquez II

Round of the Year: Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez II, Round 3

Knockout of the Year: Nonito Donaire KO 5 Vic Darchinyan

Upset of the Year: Nonito Donaire KO 5 Vic Darchinyan

Comeback of the Year: Paul Malignaggi

Event of the Year: Floyd Mayweather-Oscar De La Hoya

Read all the details in the April 2008 issue of The Ring, on sale January 29.

16 PREDICTIONS FOR 2008 (December 27, 2007)

By William Dettloff

It’s that time again, friends, when I call upon all of my powers to look into the future and predict what we’ll see in the fight game in the coming year. Faithful readers will recall how accurate were the last two editions of this column. This one promises to be no less precise.

In response to charges that it has become too easy to get on the ballot, officials at the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York, will revamp the hall’s nomination procedures, resulting in the application of a much higher standard. Year 2009 nominees, announced in December ’08, will include Gavin MacLeod and Willie Aimes from the 1970s sitcoms, The Love Boat and Eight Is Enough, respectively, and the surviving members of The Flying Wallendas.

Edwin Valero, 23-0 (23), will continue to be denied a license to box in the United States. Marcus Rhode, 33-33-2 (28 losses by knockout), will be as busy as ever.

WBA heavyweight titleholder Ruslan Chagaev will sign a contract to meet the winner of the Wladimir Klitschko-Sultan Ibragimov fight, and then cancel because of an undisclosed illness. Two weeks later “The White Tyson” will defend the title in Hamburg with an impressive knockout of tough journeyman Marcus Rhode.

Juan Manuel Marquez will defeat Manny Pacquiao by unanimous decision.

Floyd Mayweather’s interest in participating in a mixed martial arts bout will wane dramatically when he discovers that his opponent is not just permitted to kick him in the mouth, but encouraged to.

Erik Morales will attempt a comeback. Marco Antonio Barrera will not.

For the betterment of boxing, the executive boards of the WBC, WBA, IBF, and WBO will agree that each body will start recognizing five world champions per division. The new world titles will be “future” champion, champion “in waiting,” champion “in recess,” “super” champion, and “super-duper champion.” There also will be three new weight classes: mini-super junior flyweight (112-114 pounds), medium heavy light junior middleweight (156-157), and junior cruiser mini-welterweight (141-141 3/8). A column will appear at maxboxing.com calling it “a great day for boxing.”

You will not see Tommy Morrison in a boxing ring. You’ll be fine with it.

Following HBO’s highly successful business model, Showtime will produce and air Collazo/Urkal 24/7. It will not be well received.

Two days before the Sam Peter-Oleg Maskaev WBC heavyweight title fight, Jose Sulamain will announce that the fight never was sanctioned as a title bout, but only as an elimination fight for the right to meet champion emeritus Michael Dokes. Peter’s promoter, Dino Duva, will accept the terms.

Fight of the Year: Miguel Cotto W 12 Antonio Margarito

Fringe heavyweight contender Jameel “Big Time” McCline will get in a fender bender in a suburban mall parking lot with a 1987 Toyota Corolla whose occupants are three pimply teenagers bedecked in Goth attire. McCline, convinced he is no match for such a gang, will speed away muttering, “I’m a beast. I’m a beast.”

Shane Mosley will fight a top-10 welterweight and win impressively.

Former heavyweight title challenger Michael Grant will embark on the 187th comeback of his career. It will not go well.

Ditto for Riddick Bowe.

After downing a couple of pints at his favorite pub, Ricky Hatton will jokingly tell a friend he’s signed to fight seven-foot heavyweight Nicolay Valuev in Moscow. The fight will sell out in 30 minutes.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:

Kudos to Teddy Atlas for telling viewers up-front on Friday Night Fights that ESPN “could have done a better job” putting together the card that was about to air. Atlas’ honesty is refreshing, isn’t it?

Roy Jones wouldn’t go to Germany to face Dariusz Michalczewski, but he’s willing to go to England to face Joe Calzaghe? Just how broke is he? How much can it cost to feed roosters?

Does Dominic Guinn’s loss to Robert Hawkins mean we don’t have to listen to Ronnie Shields scream himself horse in the corner anymore?

Hey if we threw Guinn, Michael Moore, and Shannon Briggs into a ring together, how many rounds would it be before someone threw a punch?

I have to admit, I wasn’t that interested in seeing Magic Man, the documentary about Paulie Malignaggi. That was until I read it won an award at the “Hoboken International Film Festival.” With an endorsement like that, who can resist?

Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

HOLIDAY MAILBAG (December 26, 2007)

By William Dettloff

With nothing much happening during the holiday season, this is as good a time as any to run a holiday mailbag. Faithful readers will remember we haven’t run one of these since the summer (the cleverly named “Summertime Mailbag”). This collection, then, represents the more interesting and provocative reader e-mail I’ve received since then. Happy reading.

Dettloff:
Yet again a blinkered Yank giving a ridiculous analysis to preview the Calzaghe fight. Your prediction just about sums you up. Joe won the fight comfortably, despite Kessler putting up a great show. You are a clown. How the hell do you get a job writing for Ring Magazine?
—Simon

Hi, Simon. You’re right, I was wrong, apparently, about Joe Calzaghe. I wrote some time ago that if he met Jermain Taylor, Bernard Hopkins, or Mikkel Kessler, I’d rescind what I’d written about him, and the fact he not only went through with the Kessler fight (a surprise in itself), but also won it in good form proved me wrong. I’m still somewhat mystified by the charisma many claim he has and to which even some journalists appear vulnerable. But he’s a heck of a super middleweight.

Dear Bill,
Is Edwin Valero the ugliest active boxer in the world right now? His hair makes him look like I am watching a 1970s fight, and it makes everything around him look like they are in that time period as well. Do you agree with this statement? It is just every photo that I have ever seen of him bothers me.
—Kevin

I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s noticed this, Kevin. In every picture of Valero I expect to see Dick Cavett or Fat Elvis seated behind him, or Charles Nelson Reilly. It’s pretty disturbing.

Mr. Dettloff,
Reading your articles never fails to amaze me. You are so biased. Mayweather is not strong enough and does not have the power to stay in the same ring as Hatton. As with every other occasion when you have given the British fighter no chance, you will be wrong. Hatton by TKO in round 10. Print that, (expletive).
—Philip, England

Hi, Philip. You got it. You’re welcome.

Hater:
Miguel Cotto will beat Floyd Mayweather? Why do you hate Mayweather so much? You sound jealous, man. Is it because he makes so much more money than you do?
—Jake

Hi, Jake. Actually I don’t hate Floyd. But if I did, that would be the reason.

Dear Bill,
Jose Luis Castillo didn’t come “very close at all” to beating Floyd Mayweather? You moron; Castillo beat Floyd without a doubt. Watch the fight again, loser, and stop kissing Mayweather’s butt.
—Frank

Hi, Frank. On my card Mayweather beat Castillo in their first fight (and also the second) because, although it’s not in-style to do it, I reward fighters for superlative defense. If Fighter A throws a hundred punches in a round and Fighter B throws none but makes Fighter A miss 80 of those shots with relaxed, skilled defense and ring generalship, Fighter B gets the round on my card. Any pug can wing a hundred punches in a round. It takes no real talent or skill. Look at Sam Soliman. But guys who can stand there in the pocket and make his man miss shot after shot—those guys are special and their talent should be rewarded. There’s a reason Willie Pep was one of the three or four greatest fighters ever.

Bill,
Hatton would have won easily with a different referee. Joe Cortez let Mayweather get away with all kind of fouls, using his elbows and forearms on the inside, and then deducting a point from Ricky for missing a punch to the back of the head! Mayweather didn’t beat Hatton, Cortez did!
—Lyle

Then Cortez has a hell of a left hook! Seriously, I agree Cortez did a terrible job. But Mayweather’s use of his elbows and forearms was designed to prevent Hatton from employing his own mauling, semi-legal tactics. And it worked. Mayweather was better both inside and outside, and Cortez had nothing to do with that.

Mr. Dettloff:
I attended the Mayweather-Hatton fight from England and when I first read your article “Hatton And Great Britain: Perfect Together,” I thought you were complimenting Hatton and his great fans. After reading it again the next day, I wasn’t so sure. When I read it a third time, it almost seemed insulting. What does that mean?
—Brian

Hi, Brian. It means you’re sobering up. Good for you!

Mr. Dettloff,
I read where you wrote that Edwin Valero and Joe Mesi and Evander Holyfield should be allowed to fight. Are you crazy? What if they got killed in the ring? What would you say then?
—Abner

I’d say they died doing something they loved to do and fought for the right to do, which is better than the way most of us will die: semiconscious, a bedpan shoved under us, whimpering. How would you rather go out?

Mr. Dettloff,
You have an unhealthy preoccupation with skin color.
—Rebecca

Hi, Rebecca. I’ve got unhealthy preoccupations I haven’t even gotten to yet. Keep reading.

Dude:
We get it. They don’t show the round-card girls anymore. Why are you so obsessed?

Dude:
See my answer to Rebecca.

Bill,
All this talk about British fighters having to come to America is complete crap. My view on this is simple: The champ and or the high-profile fighter dictate where the fight takes place. If the fight makes more money and/or gets more exposure in Europe, then that is where the fight should take place.
—John

John, the day may come when all the big fights are in Europe, but we’re not there yet. Nobody’s dragging Joe Calzaghe, Arthur Abraham, or Ricky Hatton to America to fight, but they’ve all recently said they want to fight in the U.S. because that’s where the big money is. Hey, are you sure you aren’t Frank Warren?

Dear Sir,
I recently read on some website where the writer said it’s good that boxing has so many champions in every weight class because the fighters and everyone can make more money that way. The writer seemed kind of dim, but if the fighters make more money, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
—Doug

If eventually you want to pay $299.99 for a pay-per-view show that features even the most ordinary fights, then yes, Doug, that’s all that matters. If you want to see the sport gain some semblance of respect and maybe even grow its fan base, you must accept the obvious: multiple “champions” in every weight class waters down the game to such a degree that it’s not even about finding the best fighter in a weight class anymore. And that’s not boxing. To say that the current system is good for the sport is absolutely asinine.

Dettloff:
We were all wondering if Golden Boy Promotions buying The Ring magazine would affect the magazine. Your article trying to defend the ugly racist remarks that came from Bernard Hopkins and trying to turn it around to make it look bad on Frank Warren is despicable. If I had it my way, Bernard Hopkins would be banned from boxing for the rest of his life, but I guess he is your boss now so you try and defend him. I wonder what you would be writing had it been the other way round.
—Dominic, A Disgusted Reader

Dominic: If you’re asking how I would feel if Calzaghe said, “I’d never lose to a black man,” I imagine I’d think, Well, that took some guts. See, I can disagree with a person’s opinion and still recognize his right to express it. I could even find the honesty of his saying it refreshing in this hypersensitive age of political correctness and phony-baloney, press-released apologies. Would I want him banned for life? Nah—not for being honest. And look at that—Joe’s not even my boss.

Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

HOPKINS PLAYS THE RACE CARD (December 17, 2007)

By William Dettloff

In case you missed it, Bernard Hopkins made some headlines in the days before Floyd Mayweather’s win over Ricky Hatton by reportedly telling future opponent Joe Calzaghe that he, Hopkins, would never permit himself to lose to a “white boy.”

“I will never let a white boy beat me. Never,” Hopkins reportedly said during what was ostensibly a chance meeting with Calzaghe in Las Vegas. “Call it whatever you want. I’ll never let a white boy beat me.”

This gave opportunity to Frank Warren, the most powerful promoter in Britain, to engage in some righteous indignation. “I’ve heard some disgusting trash talk in my 30 years in boxing, but that’s the lowest of the lows,” he told Setanta Sports, an international sports broadcaster based in Ireland.

“If Joe said ‘I’d never lose to a black man,’ which he would never dream of saying, he would be nicked by the race relations people, and rightly so,” Warren continued. “There’s no need for racial slurs, and to say those derogatory things is diabolical. He should know better and his comments show a lack of class.”

If that’s the worst thing Warren has heard in 30 years in this business, then he has spent all 30 of those years locked in an isolation booth. Either that or he was deaf for three decades and his ability to hear and understand words was mysteriously restored in the seconds before Hopkins and Calzaghe happened on one another in Vegas. Pro boxing, when the cameras and microphones are turned off, is possibly the least politically correct—or culturally sensitive, if you prefer—sport there is. And that does not, by the way, mean that it’s “racist.”

Warren is many things, but he is no dummy. I believe that while his response to Hopkins’ comment truly represents the way he feels, he also knows that bringing attention to the comment will stoke the fires, and that’s smart business. Everyone knows that throwing race into the build-up of an already intriguing and important matchup will send ticket sales for Hopkins-Calzaghe into the stratosphere—even if not a single soul confesses to buying a ticket because of it. (Indeed, race, in my view, was to some degree the elephant in the corner in the buildup of Mayweather-Hatton.)

Hopkins, meanwhile, is no slouch at promoting either. He knows too the power of throwing nationalism, ethnicity, or skin color into the promotion of a fight and has said as much in the past, particularly prior to his meeting with Felix Trinidad in 2001. He recognizes that those promotional tactics have been a part of the fight game for as long as the game has existed and that, in and of itself, merely rooting for someone who looks like you, as many fans do, is not necessarily an evil thing. For a long time the fight game thrived on that fundamental human tendency.

But Hopkins’ remarks were not driven merely by promotional interests. He is as old-school as they come and the sentiment he expressed was commonly shared and quietly stated in gyms, locker rooms, and corners from around the 1950s, when American blacks began to really dominate the sport, until very recently, when white Europeans started making the underestimation of “white boys” a dangerous proposition.

Race plays an important and mostly unstated role in boxing. If you don’t believe that, ask yourself why the Rocky movies did so well (and for that matter, why in Philadelphia there’s a statue of Rocky Balboa but not of Joe Frazier). You don’t hear about it much because it makes people uncomfortable. So it’s kept underground. But every once in a while something slips out. Remember Oscar De La Hoya’s revelation leading up to his match with Pernell Whitaker that the black fighters he fought couldn’t take it to the body?

There are (at least) two co-existent worlds: the one we see on prime time television and read in press releases and see in advertising and in the corporate world where everyone loves one another and is exactly the same and the slightest reference to cultural differences is cause for a lawsuit. And then there’s the real world, the one that exists in the routines of stand-up comics (good ones, anyway), and private conversations in living rooms and bars and gyms and streets and at dining room tables. It’s the honest one, and the one in which Bernard Hopkins lives.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:

I couldn’t help but wonder, after seeing that Edwin Valero won again by kayo Saturday night, if Valero realizes how lucky he is that U.S. boxing regulators have been so successful at protecting him from himself.

I couldn’t care less about baseball or its phony-baloney angst over steroids, but I do have a question: If steroid use is so dangerous, and so many major league ballplayers use them, why is there no shortage of major league ballplayers?

Who else wouldn’t mind trading lives with Mario Lopez—just for a week or two?

HBO’s segment reviewing the big fights of 2007 after the Mayweather-Hatton broadcast was good, but what the hell was Wladimir Klitschko’s kayo of Lamon Brewster doing in there?

I’m always astonished when members of the boxing media who one assumes have an interest in the health of the sport come out in favor of the chaos created by the sanctioning bodies and multiple “champions in every division.” The argument that boxing insiders say “off the record” that they prefer it because they can make more money is so transparent as to be laughable. Of course they do! They want to make their money and get out, and screw the sport and the fans. It’s that kind of shortsightedness that got us into this mess to begin with.

What proponents of the status quo fail to realize is everyone in the sport—including contenders—would make more money if the game’s administration weren’t the laughingstock of the sporting world. The reason the biggest fighters can make money now is the business has found a method to squeeze out of its comparatively dwindling number of patrons a higher premium. That method is called pay-per-view. And it might not even be necessary, from an economic standpoint, if the sport were still covered on the front page of The New York Times as opposed to, uh, almost nowhere in the mainstream press.

The idea that it doesn’t matter how many guys call themselves champions because the fans know whom the “real” champions are is so illogical, it defies a response. How meaningful is it to be the “champion” in a weight class when three or four or five other guys are walking around with the same claim? What does the word even mean then? It has no value. None. If everyone is a champion, then no one is. I wouldn’t have thought that would ever require explaining, but I imagine that even the most obvious truths can be hidden to those lacking the desire or intellectual curiosity to seek them out.

Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

HATTON AND GREAT BRITAIN: PERFECT TOGETHER (December 10, 2007)

By William Dettloff

In view of what transpired in Las Vegas on Saturday night, one can only with clear conviction conclude that the fiercest, most loyal, and most demonstrative fight fans on earth reside in Great Britain. It’s true those in attendance to watch Ricky Hatton challenge Floyd Mayweather displayed scandalously poor manners by booing and hissing the singing of the national anthem of the United States, while in comparison, nary a sound was heard during Tom Jones’ rendition of “God Save The Queen.” (Maybe it was because the American fans were outnumbered.) You can hardly blame them for that.

What really was telling was the crowd’s continued rooting and support of their man Hatton, in the form of song, even as he lay in a semiconscious state on the canvas in the 10th round, having been pole-axed by a Mayweather left hook.

It matters little that the song heard throughout the week and in the farthest reaches of the Nevada desert is, to the untrained ear, part nonsensical, part unintelligible, and mostly derivative. It takes a special brand of people to muster the kind of loyalty and devotion to a prizefighter that British fight fans in general and Hatton fans in particular have demonstrated passionately, in great number, and at great volume.

I can think of no American athlete—never mind a pug, for heaven’s sake—who is so beloved that his fans would travel to Great Britain by the planeload to watch him compete in a contest whose outcome, by way of rational thinking, is almost a foregone conclusion.

But this is nothing new for British fight fans. Long, passionate affairs with the likes of Henry Cooper and Frank Bruno, mystifying though they were to Americans, forever shamefully and stubbornly transfixed on winning, remain evidence of the country’s devotion to its gloved warriors, regardless of their level of achievement. It is an admirable land indeed whose people pride earnestness of will and love of country over the selfishness of an accomplishment-based mentality.

It is mostly for this reason that when a radio show host in Ireland asked me early in the week if Hatton had made a mistake in taking on Mayweather, if he would be better off staying in Britain, I replied along the lines of “certainly not.”

I knew then what I know now: Hatton was making the biggest payday of his career, probably the biggest one he’d ever make. He’d still be the world junior welterweight champion either way. And even after Mayweather beat him, his fans would not desert him. In fact, the defeat would endear him even further.

If you think Hatton was a champion of the people before, watch him now.

Some random thoughts from last week:

I have no objection to Floyd Mayweather retiring if he wishes (like he needs my blessing), but if he does not, he is obligated to fight Miguel Cotto.

Why does Mayweather insist on taking off the first half of a fight? Does it really take him five or six rounds to figure a guy out?

Edner Cherry’s shorts were pulled up so high against Wes Ferguson I couldn’t tell at first whether he was wearing boxing trunks or a ski mask.

Despite Larry Merchant’s well-intentioned insistence to the contrary, referee Kenny Bayless had no grounds whatever to penalize Eduardo Escobedo for his repeated “crouching” against Daniel Ponce De Leon. Fighters are allowed to crouch, even if doing so leads to some awkward wrangling. Moreover, if Ponce De Leon had the slightest idea how to land an uppercut, he’d have cured Escobedo of the habit in the fight’s first minutes.

You would have thought Billy Graham’s prefight plea to Joe Cortez for a fair application of the rules around clinching would have elicited a response from Cortez that detailed, oh, I don’t know, what the rules are around clinching—at least as he sees them. Instead, Cortez replied with hurried platitudes and then proceeded to break the fighters whenever they got within three feet of each other.

If the rumors were true about Peter Manfredo having strep throat going into his fight with Jeff Lacy, he should get strep more often. If his punches were just a little crispier (Emanuel Steward’s word, not mine), he might have pulled off the upset.

The final episode of HBO’s Mayweather/Hatton 24/7 was somewhat repetitive and you can’t really blame anyone for that—there’s only so much about two fighters we can learn, especially when one of them has already been covered in a prior series. But the final minute or so was brilliant. If upon its conclusion you weren’t either shadow boxing in your living room or making arrangements to watch the fight, I am worried about you.

Any of you still enamored of the WBO are hereby reminded that you are as a logical consequence in full agreement with the following statement: “Herbie Hide is a two-time heavyweight champion.”

I’m just here to help.

Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

THE SELLING OF MAYWEATHER-HATTON (December 3, 2007)

By William Dettloff

HBO’s Mayweather/Hatton 24/7 documentary has done a superb job of selling the fight. Which is to say it’s done a superb job of convincing viewers (see: potential pay-per-view buys) that Ricky Hatton stands a reasonable chance of winning. Between watching him hammer that gargantuan body ball that’s strapped to trainer Billy Graham’s torso, and listening to him, steely-eyed and resolute, predict dire things for Mayweather, you’d think the two are easily on the same plane.

On paper at least, they are not. It’s not close.

Long forgotten is the hellish time Hatton had with Luis Collazo in his only other bout against a top-ranked welterweight. In the wake of Hatton’s immense affability and popularity, most were more than willing at the time to forget that the decision could quite readily have gone the other way. Hatton did not; he dropped right back down to 140 pounds where he belonged.

Only that return to junior welter didn’t go as planned. Juan Urango’s bodyshots so discomfited Hatton that Graham had to nurse him through the early rounds with between-rounds counsel along the lines of, “All fighters have days like these and you are obligated to suck it up.” Suck it up Hatton did, even if over the last two rounds doing so required him to hold on to Urango like he held the tap to the last keg of Guinness in Manchester.

Mayweather has never been as close to losing to anyone as Hatton was those two nights, even against far better competition. It is commonly accepted that Jose Luis Castillo, when he was young and fresh, came closer than anyone has to beating Mayweather. And in my view, he didn’t come very close at all.

Still, Hatton has the right style to beat Mayweather. Generally, swarmers like Hatton do better against classical boxers than do other boxers or big punchers. Without a lot of trouble, one can envision Hatton’s whirlwind, mauling style wearing Mayweather down over the course of a long, grueling bout. Indeed, as I write this, the poll on this very site shows 34.1 percent of respondents picking Hatton by kayo.

I don’t see it. Mayweather wins this. Hard or easy, but he wins it. Too fast, too skilled, too good.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:

Graham: Enough with the crooked finger. We get it.

To listen to Steve Albert, you’d think Vernon Forrest’s left arm had been cut off in a threshing accident and re-attached. Here’s the question: If his injuries were so debilitating, how come we never heard about them until after he lost to Ricardo Mayorga? Why not when he was knocking hell out of Shane Mosley?

Speaking of Albert, what makes him so sure Antonio Tarver is a future Hall of Famer? Has he seen Tarver do something the rest of us don’t know about?

Nonito Donaire is a heck of a puncher for a guy who doesn’t weigh as much as one of Don King’s pinkie rings.

I hate to sound ungrateful, but what’s the point of showing round card girls who have so much clothing on they look like they’re going ice-fishing in Wisconsin after the fights and don’t want to be bothered changing?

I haven’t watched Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.’s win over Ray Sanchez yet, but the result didn’t surprise me; Junior can fight. It’s now time for him to step up and prove it against a better level of competition—namely Alfonso Gomez.

If when you look at the administration of our sport you shake your head and wonder how it got so bad, consider that it is teeming with people like Gary Shaw, who was quoted this way in advance of Tarver’s fight against Danny Santiago: “I am proud to know [IBO President] Ed Levine. He is a great man and one of the true gentlemen in the sport. I am proud to pay the sanctioning fee and put the belt on the winner on Saturday night. I know they [sic] will wear it proudly.”

Tarver, one of Shaw’s many fighters, is, of course, the IBO’s light heavyweight “champion.” Additional IBO champs include Fulgencio Zuniga, Atilla Kovacs, and other head-scratching choices. Shaw, Showtime, and the IBO have struck an alliance that I’ve written about before in this space and that is illustrative of how eager people are in this business to put their own self-interests ahead of the long-term health of the sport. All involved should be ashamed. You can be certain they are not.

Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

VARGAS: A WELL-EARNED GOODBYE (November 26, 2007)

By William Dettloff

At the bell that ended his struggle with Ricardo Mayorga, Fernando Vargas jogged to a corner and tried to jump up on the lower ropes so he could look out over the ringpost, extend his arms overhead, and soak in the crowd’s love one last time.

His legs, which had betrayed him all night, betrayed him once more, and he slipped off the ropes, ungracefully. A second try got him up, but the point was made, if it hadn’t been earlier.

We won’t see Vargas in a ring again. There wasn’t a public moment from the time the fight was announced until the end Saturday night that he looked anything but sad and tired. Even when he and Mayorga were giving theater during the press conferences, Vargas was heavy-lidded and slow. He went into this thing half-hearted, and when a man is driven by his heart the way Vargas always has been, that’s a bad proposition.

It was startling to be reminded during the fight that he is only 29 years old. You remember what it was like to be 29. You remember how you looked then. You see men and women every day who are that age and look it. They’re young. They’re looking forward to things. They’re hungry.

Vargas has the countenance and gait of an arthritic, 55-year-old factory worker with three kids getting ready for college and no way to pay for it. It is a happy circumstance that, according to reports, he is healthy financially and won’t ever have to take punches again for need of cash.

Some will reflect on Vargas’ career and his rapid, premature decline, and propose that he got old so quickly because he was rushed. You can make a case for it. He had an alphabet belt already in his 15th fight, and before his 24th birthday had met Winky Wright, Ike Quartey, and Felix Trinidad. But he was ready for those guys. How were you going to hold him back?

I believe, like many do, that Trinidad took a lot of the fight out of him. Jay Nady stopped it later than he should have and has been trying to make up for it ever since by stopping fights too soon. You can’t blame him. The Oscar De La Hoya fight didn’t help Vargas either, even if he was in it right until the end.

All this leads us to the idea that unlike so many of his brethren, Vargas means it when he says he’ll never fight again, and he’ll still mean it six months from now and a year from now and two years from now. And if he can keep meaning it until he’s too old to change his mind, well, that’s how permanent retirements are born.

The good news too is that Vargas will always have the memories of what he used to be, even if he got old too soon. And when he finally is old and feels like he hasn’t done enough, hasn’t lived enough, or accomplished what he might have, he can think back and remember that when he was a very young man, he was a hell of a prizefighter.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:

Shame on referee Raul Caiz Sr., owner of the straightest bangs in boxing, for being a wet blanket and admonishing Mayorga and Vargas anytime they talked too much smack. Was he afraid someone’s feelings would get hurt? That a ringside microphone might pick up a dirty word?

Kudos to Wladimir Klitschko and especially Sultan Ibragimov for being real fighters and coming to terms for a match, now scheduled for February in Madison Square Garden. Did Ruslan Chagaev or Nicolay Valuev go after Klitschko after winning an alphabet title? Do you think the winner of Sam Peter-Oleg Maskaev will? Forget it. Whether he wins or loses, give Ibragimov credit: He’s all fighter.

Of course Shane Mosley will fight again. He knew it by the time he got back to his dressing room.

Don King and George W. Bush making speeches on the same telecast: How much mangling can the English language take?

HBO’s Mayweather/Hatton 24/7 is every bit as entertaining as its predecessor. Speaking of which, who else thinks Uncle Roger would make a great host of America’s Funniest Home Videos, or The Price Is Right?

Even the Mayorga-Vargas telecast, which was decidedly low budget (they couldn’t even get Roy Jones a decent looking sweater), was bereft of round-card girls. Apparently, that’s become the industry standard, with ShoBox the lone exception. Note to suits: The NFL features cheerleaders in every televised game. Get a clue.

I don’t want to jeopardize my fight-prediction winning streak, which stands at, um, one, but hey, I’m a risk-taker: Paul Williams runs Kermit Cintron out of the ring.

I hope for his sake that Jesse Feliciano retires, learns to duck a punch every now and then, or has several layers of bubble-wrap around his brain. Otherwise, I see an assisted-living address in his relatively near future. No one should be that tough. It’s not healthy.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Alejandro Garcia, who couldn’t have looked less motivated during the eight or so minutes he lasted with Roman Karmazin.

So 43-year-old Virgil Hill, who lost over the weekend to Firat Arslan, whatever that is, has now dropped three of his last four and has no stated intention of retiring. Where’s the outrage?

Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

MAYORGA PROVES BAD IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS (November 19, 2007)

By William Dettloff

A few weeks ago, a pretty well-known promoter spent several minutes telling me how terrible Ricardo Mayorga is for business. He gave the usual reasons: He uses nasty names to refer to his opponents and sometimes their relatives—in Spanish, no less. He curses. He drinks beers and (gosh!) smokes cigarettes. He’s disrespectful. He’s wild.

According to this promoter, it’s guys like Mayorga that keep giant corporations from sponsoring and getting in bed with boxing. I wanted to tell him it’s always seemed to me that the promoters have reputations worse than their fighters do and rightly so, but I didn’t have a spare 14 hours to sit on the phone citing all my examples. I have stuff to do. So I let it go.

I remember hearing the same kind of thing when Hector Camacho (the original) was coming up. Not that he was the loose cannon that Mayorga is, but his style and presence, his sequined vanity, made some people uncomfortable. Thank goodness most of the old fight bosses from the good old days, you know, like Jim Norris and Blinky Palermo, were dead, huh? We’d be embarrassed otherwise.

Same with Naseem Hamed, who introduced the elaborate, drawn-out ring walk, an established practice in Europe, to American television viewers, many of who were simultaneously disgusted and panicked. “Now all the fighters are going to start acting like him,” one particularly gloomy friend predicted. Hey, if half the guys in the ring today were as entertaining as Hamed was at his best, we’d all be in better shape.

This isn’t particular to boxing, of course. Every sport has its fruitcakes and bad boys. Basketball had Dennis Rodman and baseball and football have their own nutjobs, or so I hear. These types always make a suit uncomfortable and there’s nothing a suit hates more than feeling uncomfortable. When he’s uncomfortable, he’s not sure where his money is. It’s okay to be all the things Mayorga is when there are no cameras or reporters around. But when there’s a private jet or a summer home in Spain at stake, you damn well better act respectable.

Mayorga is going to talk a lot of smack this week, tick off some stuffed-shirts, amuse a lot of others, and then, if history is any indication, he’s going to get into the ring with Fernando Vargas and fight his ass off. I don’t know if he’ll win; this is a tough one to call because you don’t know if Vargas has anything left. But it will be fun either way because Mayorga will have made it so. And fun is good business.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:

Joan Guzman had a much better time against Humberto Soto than I thought he would (from press row I had him winning 117-112) and would give Manny Pacquiao all he could handle, in my view. I don’t buy for a second Bob Arum’s assertion postfight that Guzman’s clowning over the last few rounds disqualified him from “the Pacquiao sweepstakes.” That’s subterfuge; what disqualifies him is his risk-to-reward ratio.

I wasted a good 20 minutes warming up my mighty muting thumb Thursday night in preparation for Fight Night On Versus, only to find capable veteran Barry Tompkins calling the action alongside Wally Matthews.

Speaking of Versus, unless you like watching middle-aged men giggle like schoolgirls after blasting unsuspecting waterfowl out of warm blue skies, it’s best not to tune in until you’re certain the boxing broadcast has started.

New Rule: No more using the words “Hasim Rahman” and “rededicated” in the same sentence. Agreed?

I don’t know why Larry Hazzard was fired, but you can be certain it wasn’t for having a dull wardrobe.

Unjust decision wins recently awarded to Demetrius Hopkins (over Steve Forbes) and Joel Casamayor (over Jose Armando Santa Cruz) have inspired commentary suggesting that if Don King fighters had gotten those decisions, there would be calls for a federal investigation. The implication is that Golden Boy Promotions is getting a pass where King would not.

At the risk of seeming the company shill, I am compelled to point out that at his peak King had a well-documented history of scandalous behavior that ranged from the merely unscrupulous (trying to get Buster Douglas’ knockout of Mike Tyson invalidated) to the criminal (stomping a man to death in the street). For a full accounting (up until 1995) of King’s known indiscretions, get a copy of the late Jack Newfield’s book Only in America: The Life And Crimes Of Don King. Any negative attention King gets is attention he earned. Golden Boy Promotions, so far at least, has done nothing to earn such attention.

Received a press release trumpeting the formation of the WAMMA (World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts), “the first sanctioning body for the sport.” According to the release, the body will “rank fighters, establish unified rules, ensure safety of fighters, (and) sanction world championship bouts.” Sound familiar, boxing fans?

Can the WCMMA (World Council of Mixed Martial Arts), WOMMA (World Organization of Mixed Martial Arts), WFMMA (World Federation of Mixed Martial Arts), and WPMMA (World Partnership of Mixed Martial Arts), each with its own champions and weight classes, be far behind? This is the way it starts, MMA fans. All it takes is one to get the ball rolling. Have fun.

Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

COTTO: TWO FIGHTERS IN ONE, BOTH SUPERB (November 12, 2007)

By William Dettloff

Most of us thought something was wrong with Miguel Cotto when he started backing up against Shane Mosley in the ninth round Saturday night. After all, he appeared to have won a majority of the early and middle rounds by doing what we’re used to seeing him do: applying heavy pressure behind thumping left jabs and an array of powerpunches.

He had to be hurt somehow; he must have broken a hand or gotten winded; or, as the HBO broadcast team suggested, suffered a cut inside his mouth that was bothering him. Maybe Mosley had rattled him. Whatever it was, it was bad; Emanuel Steward offered that he couldn’t see Cotto lasting the distance.

Cotto cleared it up after his unanimous decision win (I had him winning, 116-113) when he casually told Max Kellerman he decided to move and box to make the fight "easier." Maybe it was true. Maybe it wasn’t. But he took the 10th on my card and clearly won the 11th mostly by letting Mosley come to him and then countering with heavy, accurate punches.

Cotto’s reply to Kellerman revealed that he doesn’t see himself as the rest of us see him. He hasn’t forgotten, as the rest of us had, how he beat Mohamad Abdulaev, Randall Bailey, and Kelson Pinto, three strong, heavy-handed guys.
He didn’t go to war with them. He picked them apart nice and slow, and when they were ready to go—and not a moment before—he got rid of them.

Cotto doesn’t see himself as a straight-ahead mauler. He seems himself as a well-schooled, versatile boxer-puncher who, throughout his career, has shown he possesses the unusual ability to outbox punchers and outslug boxers. That’s how we should see him too.

In a little over three weeks, Floyd Mayweather, the world welterweight champion, will meet Ricky Hatton. A boxer against a puncher. If there is any justice, Cotto will get the winner. I say he beats either one of them and without much difficulty. Too good a puncher for Mayweather, too good a boxer for Hatton.

It’s a hard combination to beat.

Some miscellaneous thoughts from last week:

If there’s a less just decision the rest of the year than the one that made lightweight champ Joel Casamayor a winner over Jose Armando Santa Cruz, it’s going to be considerably harder to defend this business to your boxing-hating friends and family. Off TV, I had Santa Cruz winning by a very large margin. Casamayor can’t fight at all anymore, and to make matters worse, apparently has a glass elbow.

Santa Cruz’ trainer, Rudy Hernandez, I think set some kind of record for most F-Bombs dropped in a single 60-second rest period. He made Enzo Calzaghe sound like Tipper Gore. Kudos, Rudy.

Good for Kellerman for articulating to Steward the logic behind respecting championship lineage. And shame on Steward for defending the existence of multiple "champions" in every weight class.

Don’t feel too badly for Carlos Maussa over his first-round knockout loss to Victor Ortiz. He’s always got his acting career to fall back on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T24OyTvgB68.

Some random thoughts concerning The Contender finale:

Sakio Bika’s stoppage of Jaidon Codrington in a highly entertaining brawl completely justified having sat through what in my view was a mostly abysmal season.

Anyone else think Codrington should have fought off the ropes the whole way? He landed his best punches—including the left hook that dropped Bika in the first round—in that posture and could neither hold off Bika outside nor stay with him inside. But his faster hands gave him opportunities to land off the ropes when Bika opened up.

My apologies for spelling Pepe Correa's name wrong in last week’s column. By the way, Correa’s between-rounds instructions to Bika were typically nonsensical, but colorfully delivered. Good for him.

I know the stoppage made it a moot point, but why didn’t referee Dick Flaherty dock Bika a point or two for twice hitting Codrington while Codrington was on the deck in the first round?

The death of literary icon Norman Mailer represents not just the loss of another member of the important generation of post-World War II American fiction writers (the great Kurt Vonnegut died in April), but also of a longtime friend of the fight game. He frequently came across as a buffoon, maybe most recently in the Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings, which chronicled the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight in 1974. But Mailer took real risks—on the page and in life, and wrote well and passionately of our sport. We all are richer for having read him.

Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

PAVLIK REQUIRES 100 STITCHES FOR CUT HANDS (November 7, 2007)

By Joseph Santoliquito

World middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik will have to rearrange his plans this weekend—and the possible February 16, 2008 date for his rematch with Jermain Taylor.

The Ring has learned that Pavlik, who was scheduled to arrive in New York City Wednesday for this weekend’s Miguel Cotto-Shane Mosley showdown at Madison Square Garden, needed more than 100 stitches to repair an injury sustained Tuesday afternoon when Pavlik put his hands through a window while trying to repair it.

“Kelly is going to be okay,” assured Mike Pavlik, Kelly’s father. “He had an accident and suffered these little cuts all over his hands that needed at least 100 stitches. I don’t know how long it will take for Kelly to come back, but we had to change our plans to go to New York this weekend. Kelly’s hands are swollen, and he certainly won’t be able to shake anyone’s hand. The doctors also told him not to travel, especially on a plane, because the pressure could open the stitches. But he is okay.”

Pavlik, 32-0 (29), became world middleweight champion by knocking out Taylor, 27-1-1 (17), in the seventh round of a September 29 title bout at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.

MIGUEL COTTO vs. SHANE MOSLEY
Analyzing Saturday’s Welterweight Showdown (November 6, 2007)

We learned a lot about Miguel Cotto when he dismantled Zab Judah in 11 rounds in June. But we will learn even more when he meets Shane Mosley, Saturday night, in Madison Square Garden.

Cotto took a step up when he faced former welterweight champion Judah, but Mosley is on a higher level. Whereas Judah possessed blistering hand speed and good power, his staying power is dubious and psyche fragile.

Judah defiantly slugged with Cotto in a courageous effort, before finally succumbing. But Mosley has better physical attributes than Judah and much stronger resolve. Mosley won’t wilt under the strain of Cotto’s constant charges. He’ll fight back.

That’s what makes this fight so intriguing: Two highly motivated and talented fighters who won’t give an inch, testing each other’s determination and skill.

A victory over Mosley would be another giant step toward solidifying Cotto as Puerto Rico’s most beloved prizefighter, now that Felix Trinidad is in the twilight of his Hall of Fame career.

For Mosley, it’s a chance to prove once again the doubters wrong. He stopped Fernando Vargas twice in 2006, but that came with the caveat that Vargas was past his best. Prior to the pair of wins over “El Feroz,” Sugar Shane’s last signature victory came in September 2003, when he beat Oscar De La Hoya a second time—and that decision was disputed.

Stylistically Mosley-Cotto is a Fight of the Year candidate, which means plenty of fun for the fans and a SRO crowd at the Garden.

Record And World Rating

Miguel Cotto: Is 30-0 with 25 knockouts … Turned pro in February 2001 after distinguished amateur career that included representing Puerto Rico at the 2000 Olympics and winning the Puerto Rican National Amateur championship four years in a row … Had very successful run at 140 pounds before moving up to 147 … Captured WBA welterweight title in June ’06 and has successfully defended it three times … Is ranked first at welterweight by THE RING.

Shane Mosley: Is 44-4 with 37 knockouts and 1 no-contest … Tallied 240-10 amateur career … Alternate on 1992 Olympic team … Turned pro in February ’93 … Annexed IBF lightweight title in August ’97 … Won WBC welterweight title in June ’00 … Lost WBC belt in January ’02 following three successful defenses … Won World junior middle title in September ’03 … Lost World junior middleweight title in March ’04 … Is rated third at welterweight by THE RING.

Age And Physical Equipment

Miguel Cotto: Is 27 years old … Stands 5’8” with a 67-inch reach … Always in excellent condition … Has bruised in the past, but does not show great tendency to cut or swell … Liabilities are lack of hand and foot and questionable chin.

Shane Mosley: Is 36 years old … Stands 5’9” with a 72-inch reach … Has hand speed advantage over practically all opponents … Has been relatively injury free, except for periodic back spasms … Seldom cuts … Has fluctuated between 147 and 154 for the last two years, though always in shape to go 12 rounds … Solid chin.

Best Weapons

Miguel Cotto: Heavy-handed with a good assortment of punches, but thunderous left hook to body is signature blow … Calm demeanor is major asset; never panics when tagged with a good shot or dropped … Excellent combination puncher … Self-confidence a significant factor.

Shane Mosley: Explosive combination puncher … Tremendous bodypuncher … Power in both hands, but straight right could be slightly harder than left hook, especially when thrown to the head … Accurate jab … Power has decreased since moving up from 135 pounds, but better at 147 than 154.

Previous Fight

Miguel Cotto: Scored biggest victory of his career to date, stopping a plucky Judah in the 11th round before a sellout crowd at Madison Square Garden in June … Was penalized a point in the third round for punching low … Cotto’s constant body attack began wearing Judah down in the eighth … Judah took a knee at the end of the ninth round … Scored a second knockdown in the 11th with a three-punch combination … Referee Arthur Mercante Jr. stopped it at 0:49 of the round with Judah defenseless against the ropes.

Shane Mosley: Started well and finished even stronger against former WBA welterweight titleholder Luis Collazo in February, winning a unanimous decision … Collazo couldn’t hurt Mosley, though had one big round in the second when he ripped Mosley with straight left that sent him reeling backwards into the ropes … Mosley regained control of the fight in the third, returning four punches every time Collazo made contact … Mosley cemented the victory by scoring fight’s only knockdown in the 11th to win by tallies of 118-109 (twice) and 119-108.

Quality Of Opposition

Miguel Cotto: Has faced light hitters such as Gianluca Branco (KO 8), Paulie Malignaggi (W 12), Oktay Urkal (KO 11) … Survived slight scare against Judah and a bigger one against kayo artist Ricardo Torres (KO 7) … Blitzed Carlos Quintana (KO 5) … Fought hodgepodge of qualified boxers and punchers as rising contender, including Mohamed Abdulaev (KO 9), Demarcus Corley (KO 5), Kelson Pinto (KO 6), Randall Bailey (KO 6), and Carlos Maussa (KO 8).

Shane Mosley: Has fought who’s who of three divisions, which included pair of victories over Oscar De La Hoya (W 12, W 12), Fernando Vargas (KO 10, KO 6), plus wins at lightweight over John-John Molina (KO 8), Jesse James Leija (KO 9), Golden Johnson (KO 7), Philip Holiday (12), and John Brown (KO 8) … Suffered pair of defeats to Winky Wright (L 12, L 12) at junior middleweight, and Vernon Forrest (L 12, L 12) at welterweight.

Defense

Miguel Cotto: Displays solid defensive skills when in boxer mode, despite only average mobility … When in slugger mode, over-commits to punches and leaves himself open for counters … Slow hands leave him vulnerable to quicker fighters when both punch simultaneously … Intelligently clinches when hurt.

Shane Mosley: Uses bouncy legs to rapidly move out of opponent’s striking ability … Good upper-body movement … Busy offense has discouraged many foes from getting too brave … Also know how to create angles on the inside that allows him to punch without giving foe the same opportunity.

Style

Miguel Cotto: Can adjust strategically based on opponent, as when he turned southpaw style against Judah … Most often an aggressive, patient powerpuncher who stalks opponents and attacks the body … Will use his shoulders and elbows for inside positioning where he can muscle fighters who can’t match his strength … Excellent finisher.

Shane Mosley: Uses savvy movement and rapid-fire combination punching … Unrelenting finisher when he has foe in trouble … Style worked perfectly until Forrest devised counter approach by jabbing and clinching … Ability to adjust mid-fight … Can unload with equal effectiveness up close or at long range … Tends to be stronger than most foes down the stretch.

The Questions

Miguel Cotto: Can his chin hold up under Mosley’s offensive bursts? How will he deal with Mosley’s speed? What will he do if he gets behind on points early? Can he become the first to stop Sugar Shane?

Shane Mosley: Will he be able to take advantage of Cotto’s penchant for starting slowly? Can he endure Cotto’s body attack? Will he want to bang with Cotto or box him? Will his age finally show?

The Outcome

Cotto won’t be too wary of Mosley’s power early on, possibly paying a price by getting buzzed once or twice. But as the fight progresses, Cotto’s relentless pressure will gradually overcome Mosley’s competitive drive. The Puerto Rican powerpuncher will wear down Mosley and duplicate what he did against Judah, stopping Sugar Shane in the 11th.

IN PRAISE OF JOE (November 5, 2007)

By William Dettloff

The principle difference between Joe Calzaghe and Mikkel Kessler Saturday night could be seen during Kessler’s postfight interview with HBO’s Max Kellerman, and it had nothing to do with jabs, hooks, or bodyshots. Throughout the interview, Kessler smiled, praised Calzaghe, hoped to do better next time, and smiled some more.

I don’t trust the conviction of anyone who smiles after a big loss as much as Kessler did, and before you disagree, ask yourself if Calzaghe would have been smiling if he’d been the one outpointed in the biggest and most important fight of his career.

Calzaghe proved Saturday night that I don’t know him nearly as well as I’d hoped or believed, but I feel fairly safe, regardless, guessing, no, Calzaghe would not have been quite so at ease having lost the biggest and most important fight of his career. To the contrary, Calzaghe gives the impression he’d lick Bernard Hopkins’ shoes clean before he’d allow himself to lose a fight, particularly this one.

Calzaghe saw himself going in as the boss, he saw himself during the fight as the boss, and he articulated that stature convincingly, particularly over the latter half of the fight. Kessler had no choice but to accept their relationship on those terms. Calzaghe forced him to.

I’m not saying Kessler didn’t try hard or even that he didn’t try as hard as he believed he could. In truth, he fought a hell of a fight. But it was clear from about the fourth round on who was the boss. It was Calzaghe, the less powerful puncher, who moved forward. It was Calzaghe, at seven years older, who had such confidence in his conditioning that he ended up throwing better than a thousand punches by the end. And it was Calzaghe who initiated and ended the majority of exchanges.

Kessler had about every physical advantage, except perhaps handspeed, but Calzaghe’s intelligence, self-belief, and experience more than outweighed Kessler’s youth and power. When you walk through a young puncher’s best bombs without pause, as Calzaghe did for most of the night, you take the young puncher’s heart away. When you hit him with about every punch you want to, you make it so that he’s happy when it’s over. And when it is, he smiles.

Calzaghe smiled a lot too afterward. He had good reason.

* * *

Regular readers might recall that right after Shane Mosley beat Luis Collazo, I wrote in a column that Miguel Cotto would beat Mosley if they ever met. Regular readers might also know I haven’t picked a winner in a big fight since Kallie Knoetze was a prospect, which means there is every chance Mosley will box rings around Cotto when they get together at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night. Such a scenario is perfectly plausible. I’m still picking Cotto.

Many of us are still gaga that Mosley, a remarkably well-preserved 36, beat a guy in Collazo who was 10 years younger. Yes, that’s impressive. The flip side is Mosley had all those years of big-fight experience on Collazo, who came in having had fought one big fight, against Ricky Hatton, one mid-level one, against Jose Antonio Rivera, and a whole lot against guys you’ve never heard of (I don’t count one against a 112-year-old Miguel Angel Gonzalez as “big”).

Mosley will have a big-fight advantage on Cotto too, but it won’t be nearly as substantial as the one he carried into the ring against Collazo. Cotto has fought as many upper-tier guys as one can fight without fighting the elite, and he’ll use the experience gained from those fights to deal with Mosley’s speed and smarts. And, unlike Collazo, Cotto is unlikely to bend to Mosley’s will the way Collazo did down the stretch. Cotto has shown repeatedly that he is an exceptionally hard, strong-headed fighter. If Mosley beats him, he’s going to have to do it physically. I’m not convinced he can. We’ll see.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:

How did Kessler get so far without ever learning how to move his head—even a little?

I can’t imagine why Hopkins, at this point in his life, would want anything to do with Calzaghe. I’m the same age as Bernard and I get out of breath brushing my teeth.

Who else wants to move to Denmark?

I’m all for letting a big puncher hang in there on the chance he might get lucky, but I wouldn’t have complained if they’d stopped the Juan Manuel Marquez-Rocky Juarez fight anytime after, say, the eighth or ninth round. It’s been a very long time since Juarez has stretched any higher-level guy. And Marquez doesn’t get stretched.

Eddie Chambers is a nice little heavyweight who’s going to have a heck of a time holding off Alexander Povetkin. Or Chris Arreola for that matter. Still, it’s nice to see a heavyweight with quick hands and the confidence to sit in the pocket and pick off punches.

What in the hell has happened to Kassim Ouma?

A couple thoughts heading into the final week of The Contender:

The segment where the remaining fighters, the trainers, and Ray Leonard reminisced over the fighters who have left the show was about the corniest, sappiest, most contrived 10 minutes in all of “reality” TV. And that’s saying something. Can’t we get a little honesty? Just a little?

Is anyone else wondering still, almost a week later, how exactly Sakio Bika was supposed to back up Sam Soliman, as Pepe Correra instructed him, “in a circle.” Speaking of Correra, what’s the over/under on how long it takes Wayne Johnsen to change his phone number?

For all the bad fights the series produced this season, Jaidon Codrington-Bika is a very nice finale: Codrington’s punch against Bika’s chin. It’s a very solid matchup.

Hey, where can I get a pair of those Buddy McGirt shades?

Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

CALZAGHE-KESSLER: GIVING CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE (October 29, 2007)

By William Dettloff

If you give Joe Calzaghe credit for anything, and you should, you have to give him credit for making American fight fans care about the super middleweight division. His title defense against Mikkel Kessler this weekend is the one of the bigger and more interesting fights of the year and arguably the most anticipated super middleweight fight in the division’s 23-year history.

I know that to our friends in Europe, the super middleweights have been big business since the early-1990s, when Nigel Benn won the WBC title. Since then Europeans have dominated the class more or less and many of that continent’s bigger stars—Benn, Chris Eubank, Steve Collins, Calzaghe, Michael Watson, Robin Reid, et al—fought at 168.

In the United States, the 168-pound division mattered only when an American star was passing through on his way to bigger and better things, or when something cataclysmic occurred. We cared when Roy Jones and James Toney won titles there, and when Gerald McClellan and Benn beat one another nearly to death in London in ’95. Otherwise, it was largely a European thing, and that was fine with us. Thulane Malinga? Richie Woodhall? Markus Beyer? Who the hell cared?

Calzaghe has changed all that. It probably doesn’t matter if you believe, as I do, that the weight class is a superfluous, governing body contrivance invented for the sole purpose of generating sanctioning fees, an expansion team in an already crowded league. So what else is new? Nor does it matter if you believe, again as I do, that Calzaghe sure took his sweet time upping the ante after wasting most of his career talking about getting bigger fights but never actually pursuing them.

Calzaghe forced Frank Warren’s hand here, and for that I congratulate him. He didn’t have to fight Kessler; his fans were going to support him either way, and if some biased American writers got on him for the lack of big American names on his resume, he always could point to the Lacy fight. He could have ridden that win all the way into retirement. Good for him that he didn’t. Good for him, too, that at this writing at least, he’s not injured himself and forced a postponement. (Don’t act like you weren’t expecting it.)

All that said, I like Kessler to win. He’s a straight, sharp puncher, not at all the clubbing swinger Lacy is, he’s fought consistently better competition than Calzaghe has, and in my view is unlikely to freeze in front of the big crowd. And he’s young, seven years younger than the 35-year-old Calzaghe, who, at some point late in the fight, I think will start regretting not having pushed for the bigger fights when he was a younger man.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:

Nothing against Chris Byrd, but Alexander Povetkin’s stoppage win on Saturday is good for the game. Out with the old and in with the new and all that. By the way, if you’ve never seen Povetkin, picture mayonnaise in short pants and gloves. This guy is so white he makes Sultan Ibragimov look like Wesley Snipes.

Did Otis Tisdale owe John Ruiz money or something? For the first time in, well, maybe ever, Ruiz punched more than he clinched when he and Tisdale met a couple of weeks ago. See for yourself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6oU_QU4b30

In the Better Late Than Never category, I got several e-mails asking if I thought Raul Ciaz stopped the T.J. Wilson-Travis Walker fight too soon, or if he was justified stopping it when he did. My belated answer: Yes. At the moment he made the call, Ciaz seemed to be correct in stopping it, but after the fact, it did appear to be too soon.

It almost seems a waste for Showtime to make Al Bernstein and Steve Albert fly out to Arizona to call the Juan Manuel Marquez-Rocky Juarez fight live. They should be allowed to call it during the 1:00 a.m. (Eastern Time) re-airing, which is when the rest of us will be watching it.

Question: Why does Shane Mosley look so happy in every picture you see of him promoting his fight with Miguel Cotto? Answer: He’s out of the house.

In a matter of 67 seconds, Wayne Johnsen undid all the hard work Kelly Pavlik put into advancing the cause of balding, skinny, white fighters everywhere. Thanks, Wayne. Seriously, Johnsen’s first-round knockout loss to Jaidon Codrington was the most predictable outcome of any fight in Contender history. Where did they find these guys?

Speaking of Pavlik, the news that Jermain Taylor will seek an immediate rematch is great for John Duddy fans, who can go on a while longer deluding themselves that Duddy is a world-class fighter. The full 50 percent of me that’s Irish also would like to see Duddy do well. Unfortunately, that’s the same half that thinks Sam Adams is a food group and Pat Lawlor would’ve beaten prime Duran.

Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

CASAMAYOR-DIAZ IS THE FIGHT AT LIGHTWEIGHT (October 22, 2007)

By William Dettloff

In the week following his win over Julio Diaz, the talk around Juan Diaz has mostly involved who he’ll fight next. The names most frequently discussed: David Diaz, Michael Katsidis, and Manny Pacquiao. Note who’s absent: Joel Casamayor, who happens to be the champion in the division in which Juan Diaz campaigns.

Diaz is the talk of the lightweight division, and he should be. His win over Julio Diaz in particular and his evolution in general as a very sound fighter make him a highly noteworthy subject. Throw in his media-friendly attitude, his humility, and his exciting fighting style and you’ve got a young titleholder we all can look up to and enjoy.

The problem is he’s not the champion, Casamayor is. But no one is talking about Casamayor. They’re talking about Diaz. And if you’re Casamayor, that’s a problem—or it should be.

I know, these guys aren’t running for public office or anything and the champion isn’t crowned by popular vote, or by committee (most of the time). But any real fighter who is a world champion, as Casamayor is, should feel defensive when everyone is raving about a guy in the division and that guy isn’t him.

Casamayor, especially, is an ornery sort and a proud one, and certainly not shy about taking on good fighters; three fights with Diego Corrales and another with Jose Luis Castillo should tell you that. So it’s clear that his absence from Diaz’ possible opponents list isn’t because he’s afraid of Diaz.

At this writing, Casamayor is scheduled to face Jose Santa Cruz on the Miguel Cotto-Shane Mosley card in Madison Square Garden in November. Santa Cruz is a lanky nightmare for a lot of guys, but Casamayor should beat him. Once he does, he is obligated to make the division his again, if he can.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:

Teddy Atlas gave Ben Tackie a bit too much credit for essentially just walking into Alfonso Gomez’ punches during Gomez’ win Tuesday night on ESPN. We already knew Atlas wasn’t a company shill; he didn’t have to ignore the good work Gomez did to prove it.

Following my column last week about Evander Holyfield, Joe Mesi, and Edwin Valero, I received an e-mail from Dr. Margaret Goodman, the highly respected former Nevada State Athletic Commission Medical Advisory Board chairman and chief ringside physician.

Dr. Goodman wrote: “Evander Holyfield, Edwin Valero, and Joe Mesi represent a broad spectrum of boxers that should not be in the ring, let alone the gym. The ability to knock out their opponents or withstand a grueling 12 rounds is not reason enough to turn a blind eye. The once great Holyfield has become a glorified clubfighter, irrespective of his ability to generate media attention and ticket sales. But the fact that he is now a shadow of his former self proves the point he needs to stay out of harm’s way. Both Mesi and Valero have talent, and not withstanding their medical conditions, each might be at the peak of their career. However, they face potentially life-threatening injuries should they get hit the wrong way.”

I understand Dr. Goodman's position and appreciate her compassion, which is well chronicled. I also maintain that as a matter of principle we should err on the side of personal freedom when it’s a close call, recognizing that in a free society a competent adult has an inherent right to determine what is for him an acceptable level of risk. This is especially true in the case of Holyfield, whose great crime is that he’s not what he used to be. Who among us is?

Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.

HOLYFIELD NEVER NEEDED PROTECTING FROM HIMSELF (Oct