Oh sweet lord these dog days of August for boxing are agonizing. Olympic boxing, which rarely appealed to me before because it’s like the worst Joe Calzaghe slapfest but with half the fun, once offered the promise of a resurgent U.S. team to tide pro boxing fans over while the big boys were on hiatus but… yeah, we’ve seen how that’s gone. The Oscar De La Hoya-Manny Pacquiao saga continues to wheeze along. And those are the highlights. Hey, at least I finally got around to reading Joyce Carol Oates’ “On Boxing.” I highly recommend it, although her excessive usage of colons, semi-colons and dashes puts mine to shame.
There are some tidbits worth touching on out there, so it’s time for the quick version of “Quick Jabs.”
The U.S. Olympic boxing team’s disastrous performance is already being called by some the worst in history. One medal’s coming our way, total. The finger-pointing started pretty quickly. Dan Campbell, the coach, said it was no coincidence that the least rebellious member of the team, Deontay Wilder, is the one bringing home a medal. Evander Holyfield said the drive for cash from managers of young American fighters leads them to neglect their amateur careers. But there’s plenty of blame to go around, from the fighters to Campbell himself. Campbell has regularly thrown his own boxers under the bus; not exactly the ideal person to be fostering teamwork or “congeniality,” his goal in bringing the team under one roof. Ron Borges has a pretty nasty — and on target — take down of the whole sordid equation. Selfish fighters + abrasive coach = recipe for failure. I had hoped talent would see the team through. No such luck…
That Joel Julio is something. The 154-pound power puncher had his opponent up and down like a Bozo bop bag in the recent Wednesday Night Fights finale, and said opponent had lasted the distance with a far larger puncher, one Edison Miranda. Despite his fan-friendly performance, guest commentator Nate Campbell was skeptical of Julio’s chances against a top junior middleweight, and while I think he’d be competitive with any of them, Julio clearly needs more work on his defense, and might struggle with a gifted boxer like, say, a Cory Spinks. At 23, there’s still no need to rush Julio…
I did miss a bout that turned into a what sounds like a debacle on WNF’s sister program on ESPN2, last week’s Friday Night Fights. Jack Kogod has the full breakdown, which isn’t terribly flattering to my home base here in D.C., and Dan Rafael has been calling it one of the worst robberies he’s ever seen…
I rarely have anything informative to say when a boxer passes away, and usually doubt any sincere condolences I offer will do much good. On the tragic gunning down of Ronnie Vargas, though, I can offer that I’d seen him fight in person once and he was indeed very, very promising. The talk of his potential was not glamorizing the deceased to make his story more compelling, a common affliction among reporters. Here’s what I wrote in February, in full (linked to by the Village Voice after Vargas died): “First up was Ronnie Vargas, a former New York Golden Gloves champ whoÄôs at 5-0 with 4 KOs. Make that 6-0, 4 KOs for the junior middleweight (154 lbs.). Vargas seemed pretty skilled Äî fast, hard to hit, lots of diversity in his attack Äî as you might expect for a former amateur champ, and Monyette Flowers, 4-8-1 coming in, gave him a pretty hittable target, fearlessly coming in even when he got caught with big shots. He nearly went down in the second on a big combination, but either heÄôs a tough sumbitch or Vargas doesnÄôt hit that hard. I think Vargas hit him pretty hard, so IÄôm giving this one to FlowersÄô chin. His mouthpiece flew out twice in the 4th. Vargas deservedly won all four rounds for a unanimous decision victory”…
In better news, welterweight (147 lbs.) Miguel Cotto looks, in a recent photo on Fightnews.com, like he’s healing up pretty well from that rather savage assault at the fists of Antonio Margarito last month. Wonder if his nose will always be all crooked now, though…
Let’s just get it out of the way: The proposed welterweight bout between Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao, per Fightnews.com, is mid-resurrection. It looks like it can’t be stopped. All it probably was going to take was a little give — a 67-33 revenue split, versus the 70-30 De La Hoya insisted upon and the 60-40 Pacquiao demanded — to satiate the egos. As unenthused as I am by this fight, worse things can happen. It will, per some of the discussion we’ve had in the comments sections of recent posts, probably attract a broader audience to the sport, and that’s hardly ever a bad thing…
Oh, and despite the pass I’ve been giving De La Hoya for wanting to fight a lightweight (135 lbs.) in Pacquiao or an underwhelming title-holder like Sergio Mora in his final bout, I must say he’s been more than a little disingenuous in all this ducking of Margarito. De La Hoya doesn’t want to fight a Mexican in his last bout — unless it’s Mora. De La Hoya is also suddenly very concerned about Paul Williams getting a rematch with Margarito — unless that’s just a smokescreen, because it’s not like he has any financial interest in Williams’ career. The part of this where I take issue with De La Hoya is that if he wants a more winnable bout than Margarito offers him in his final ring appearance, he should just say so. I don’t see anything wrong with that mentality because De La Hoya’s always taken on the best, so he’s earned some measure of flexibility here…
By contrast, anyone pretending like De La Hoya-Margarito is somehow “the” fight that has to happen is wrong. Sure, it’s OK. It’s also a guy in the prime of his career against a guy at the end of his. Margarito-Williams II, Margarito-Shane Mosley, Margarito-Josh Clottey II and even Margarito-Cotto II, in that order, are more important fights to me that involve Margarito. I do think Margarito-De La Hoya is an intriguing fight between two men in my pound-for-pound top 20, one De La Hoya could even win, but it has little impact on settling the field at welter, which is what I’d like to see Margarito try to do. By the way, De La Hoya might end up in a third fight with Mosley if Pacquiao falls through again, which I think is actually the best option of any for De La Hoya to go out, if not the best thing for Mosley’s division…
There have been noteworthy news releases crossing the Ring Report desk. For instance, I got one entitled “Don King Meets with Mayor in Chengdu, Holds Panda Bear.” And yet, no picture of Don King holding a panda bear was attached. Come on, that just screams for a photo. The Don King hair and the panda bear cuteness — it must be seen. (Serious goal of the release — to demonstrate that King is making ties in China, a market where boxing wasn’t so long ago completely forbidden but now is an enticing lure to any number of promoters.) Then, in a news release from Golden Boy Promotions about the trainers for four fighters on a Sept. 13 card, I learned that for his bout with lightweight Ring champ Joel Casamayor, Juan Manuel Marquez is secluding himself in a cabin, “free from interruption from the outside world (as well as plumbing).” That’s right — JMM is so focused, he’s, well, I’m glad they didn’t take a picture of that one. (Serious goal of the release — to spotlight the Sept. 13 card, somewhat controversially on pay-per-view, which I still intend to buy despite the fact that I don’t think it should be on pay-per-view)…
So, as indispensable as Boxingscene.com is as a website — despite the fact that a lot of the news there is just a summary of news elsewhere, it’s good one-stop shopping — I don’t think they could possibly load up that bitch with more mega-annoying web advertising. Flashing ads! Pop-ups! Text links in the articles! Voices offering me free iPods! And Doughouseboxing.com uses the only kind that Boxingscene.com doesn’t, the ad that you have to get through to even get to the article. Can something be done about this?…
Speaking of disingenuous reasons for ducking fights, BadLeftHook.com scores a 1st round TKO against light heavyweight (175 lbs.)/super middleweight (168 lbs.) champ Calzaghe for his wacky reasoning about why he won’t take on middleweight (160 lbs.) champ Kelly Pavlik…
Ricky Hatton-Amir Khan is apparently in the works for early 2009, and I’m all for it, despite odds-makers giving Hatton a significant edge. First off, it’s a huge bout in Great Britain, where boxing is flourishing. Secondly, it’ll show what Hatton, the 140-pound champ, has left, assuming he beats Paulie Malignaggi this fall, and will determine if Khan’s the real deal. Thirdly, it’ll keep Hatton occupied and away from Pacquiao, forcing the Pacman to consider fighting Marquez a third time to make his biggest paycheck. P.S., am I the only one who thinks Hatton being trained by Floyd Mayweather, Sr. isn’t as crazy as it sounds? Mayweather teaches defense, something Hatton needs to make a casual acquaintance with if he hopes to have a career that lasts more than a couple more fights…
Welterweight Oscar Diaz is still in critical condition, and in a coma, after his nationally televised collapse. This is depressing news to me, although the docs are optimistic..
Let’s end on a high note, after a number of rather dismal very quick Quick Jabs. Just the other day, I was pining (without saying so) for someone to pick up the super middleweight brawl-to-be between Lucian Bute and Librado Andrade. This little match-up for Bute’s belt is, I think, has dark horse Fight of the Year written all over it. And Showtime has saved the day, because it plans to air the Oct. 24 scorcher. Then, just a couple weeks ago, I was pining for crowd-pleasing junior middleweight James Kirkland to get back on TV. My wish, apparently, is boxing’s command, because he’s hitting ESPN2 on Sept. 5, against Ricardo Cortes, last seen getting plastered in one round by Alfredo Angulo. Oates would call this one a “ritualistic sacrifice” or some such.
