[Sorry, y’all — looks like I accidentally disabled comments on this one. Won’t happen again, now that I know what went wrong. Comment away now…]
Other topics in this edition of Quick Jabs, besides what’s in the headline: the value of trash talk versus sportsmanship; Ring magazine’s interesting new top-10 pound-for-pound man; an amusing (and functionally helpful) promotional stunt by Don King; plus the signing of the long-delayed Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton bout and more news about fights in the works.
Let’s start with the running storyline that we’ve been exploring this week: Whether welterweight (147 lbs.) Antonio Margarito illegally wrapped his hands over the weekend, or any other time. Sports Illustrated has an interview with the executive director of the Nevada commission, where Margarito fought and knocked out Miguel Cotto in July, and he’s saying, basically, that he’s 99.999% sure that Margarito’s hands were wrapped properly. “You can’t prove a negative,” Keith Kizer told SI.com. “But I’m as certain as I can be that Margarito did not do anything illegal against Cotto.” Read the piece for more details. One could raise questions about the commission’s self-interest being protected by such a declaration, but they wouldn’t get you anywhere unless you were playing investigative reporter and followed them until they were answered definitively. Thus, I think the wisest course is to set aside any doubts about Margarito’s actions in the Cotto bout before Saturday night’s incident, sans new evidence…
As for the California commission — I already mentioned this Ron Borges piece during discussion in the comments section of a previous post, but I think it’s a must-read. Will pointed out some flaws in its logic in places, but overall, I think it does the best job of scrutinizing the commission’s own sloppy and questionable behavior in the lead-in to the fight. And I’m off the Margarito hand wrap soapbox for the day…
Maybe I’m just enthused by this weekend’s card, but it does look like ESPN2′s Friday Night Fights is off to a great start so far in 2009. The alphabet title belt bout between Juan Urango and Herman Ngoudjo is a quality match-up featuring two top-10 junior welterweights (140 lbs.) that is a little bigger than the kind of bout we’re used to getting from ESPN2, which sometimes populates its schedule with prospects in soft or other kinds of not-quality match-ups. But Urango-Ngoudjo can’t be viewed just in isolation. The network is also looking to pick up the lightweight (135 lbs.) slugfest-to-be between Julio Diaz and Michael Katsidis, not quite finalized yet. It started off the year with another Yuriorkis Gamboa (featherweight, 126 lbs.) bout, and next weekend we’ll get another pretty good match-up in Chris Henry vs. fellow light heavyweight (175 lbs.) Yusaf Mack. That doesn’t even count some of the other pretty good matches on the slate, or a really good one that got away when Carlos Quintana had to pull out of his junior middleweight (154 lbs.) bout against Eromosele Albert…
It’s too bad trainer Howard Grant won’t be in the corner of Ngoudjo, but he’s justifiably suspended for shoving the ref after an incredibly sleazy long count following super middleweight (168 lbs.) Librado Andrade’s waning-seconds knockdown of Lucian Bute in October. I still don’t blame Grant for sticking up for his man, but I do think shoving refs should be illegal, nor do I think a suspension through March is excessive. Here’s hoping it doesn’t affect Ngoudjo, because as good a trainer as Grant is, he’s had some bad luck to say the least. Brother Otis will take over the training duties for the night…
No, not HORACE Grant. Howard Grant.
I don’t know if anyone’s seen the new Ring magazine top-10 pound-for-pound, but they did two things that I thought were a little wacky for a publication that is usually fairly conservative, and rightly conservative, in its p4p rankings. They dropped Margarito from the top 10, which I have no problem with, but they also rather arbitrarily removed Cotto. Was it because Cotto lost to Margarito, who lost to Shane Mosley, their new #6? If so, maybe they forgot that Cotto beat Mosley. The other decision is a little more surprising: They debuted junior featherweight (122 lbs.) Celestino Caballero at #10. I like Caballero a lot and see him as potential top 20, but top 10? Ring editor Nigel Collins explains it thusly: “Some may be surprised by Caballero’s inclusion, but a quick check of the records of other fighters under consideration – Paul Williams, Arthur Abraham, Chris John, Vic Darchinyan, Chad Dawson, Edwin Valero, and Roman Gonzalez – reveals that Celestino has more wins over top-notch opposition than any of the others on the short list.” But Celestino has two “top-notch” wins and a number of very good ones. Light heavyweight Chad Dawson, for starters, has three better “top-notch” wins, in my opinion (Tomasz Adamek, Glen Johnson, Antonio Tarver), and several other very good ones. Hell, I’m not crazy about Jermain Taylor, but his “top-notch opposition” obliterates Caballero’s. And I have no clue why junior lightweight (130 lbs.) Edwin Valero would be under consideration. He’s nowhere to be found in the “top-notch opposition” department. He’s beat a couple good guys, don’t get me wrong, but that’s a strange thing they’ve done over at Ring, and their reasoning is pretty strange, too…
On the other hand, I do want to second Ring’s William Dettloff complaint about the ref in the Margarito-Mosley bout trying to keep them from talking (presumably trash-talking) to one another mid-fight. This is a pet peeve of mine when refs interfere in that. What’s the harm in it? (Nothing.) Is it against the rules? (No.) Maybe it’s not so sportsmanlike, but to quote Dettloff, I wasn’t impressed that the ref wouldn’t “stand for any hurtful name-calling while they tried to dislodge one another’s brain stems.” I’m all for sportsmanship, but gimme a break. OK, maybe I’m not ALL for sportsmanship, because I rewatched the Andre Berto-Luis Collazo welterweight fight with a pal and I was again slightly offended that Berto, after knocking Collazo’s mouthpiece out, alerted the ref and gave him a chance to put it back in. That’s just taking gentlemanliness too far. First, he might have had Collazo a little hurt, and second, it’s not his job to protect Collazo’s teeth — it’s Collazo’s and the ref’s. Pausing like he did is the equivalent of an NBA player refusing to drive left on an opponent with an injured right leg. Press the advantage next time, yo…
Given the animosity between some fans of boxing and some fans of mixed martial arts, I don’t suppose I’m surprised to see the minor powder keg that’s exploded over Oscar De La Hoya’s appearance at an MMA event this weekend instead of Mosley-Margarito. There are a number of affiliated controversies, the first being HBO’s Larry Merchant saying that De La Hoya got a $5 million fee for appearing. Several outlets, including Yahoo and Sherdog, have done reporting that strongly suggests Merchant was in error, what with that amount exceeding the amount of the entire card’s payroll. Merchant’s flub is a little more annoying than Bob Papa’s the other week when he kept saying Berto was knocked down in the 1st round when he wasn’t. But even if De La Hoya was paid, his appearance wasn’t worth the money, because he was booed, according to this account. That said, I still think Oscar ought to be focusing on boxing. He can make MMA a side project if he wants, but I was angered to read that he has said he wants to convert some young boxers into
MMA fighters. I’m no MMA fan, although I don’t routinely slag it; where I might become hostile toward the sport is if it robbed my preferred sport of young talent. I’m sure it’s happened a little already, but there’s no way that De La Hoya should be assisting that process…
I’m also not often complimentary of Don King, but the news release I got from him today both amused me and pleased me: For the Feb. 14 card that’s being broadcast on HBO, they’re doing a buy one ticket, get the second ticket free deal. I love the tie-in to Valentine’s Day, and I love the fact that King, who just last year was trying to rake people over the coals for Roy Jones-Felix Trinidad (light heavyweight), is thinking of fans’ pocketbooks. And I double checked — it isn’t one of those two-for-one deals where they just charged double for each ticket, because it applies to tickets ranging from $200 to $25. There look to be some limitations, but unless there’s something exceptionally tricky going on here, it sounds like a good deal…
Media coverage of boxing of late has been on a qualitative and quantitative uptick, but it’s galling how much the sport, which can be so noble, is still treated as such a freak show so often. Sometimes it earns that treatment, but other times not. My boxing news tab on news.google.com has highlighted more links over the last couple days to a “rumored” Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield rubber match than it has practically anything else, even though neither heavyweight has much indicated they want to fight each other again. The other links that keep coming up relate to news about that Jose Canseco-Danny Bonaduce fight. Mainstream media types: A genuinely interesting fight happened last weekend, one that featured real boxers at the top of the game rather than old, retired or should-be-retired guys with names you recognize. And it even had a side of freak show! It’d be so very, very nice for that fight to have gotten attention that far surpassed Tyson-Holyfield III or Canseco-Bonaduce…
Let’s finish up with those fights in the works. First, as I mentioned, several news outlets have now reported that junior welterweight champion Hatton has signed the contract with Pacquiao, so both men are on board and the fight’s a go for May 2. Whew. At long last. And to those who think the contract haggling was free publicity for the fight, at least one of the men involved in the negotiations, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer, says he doesn’t think so: “The fighters have egos,” he said. “They have to have egos to do what they do. It became too public, which I think was a negative. But, hey, now it’s done and we can move on and actually start the promotion”…
Back to Mosley for a sec — if he can’t get Floyd Mayweather, Jr. or another big name, I was fascinated by the wisps of willingness reported by Joshua Clottey’s promoter, Bob Arum, to make Mosley-Clottey. Clottey isn’t a big name, nor does he bring much money to the table. But he’s a really excellent welterweight. That Mosley would induldge that fight at all is why when he shuffles from this mortal coil, his gravestone should read: “Shane Mosley: A Real Fighter.” To be sure, there’s a carrot in the idea of Mosley getting the winner of a Margarito-Cotto rematch if he beats Clottey, but it’s still badass of Mosley to be considering it under the circumstances….
Per a news release, cruiserweight (200 lbs.) champion Tomasz Adamek will fight Jonathan Banks on Shobox Feb. 27. Didn’t realize it was gonna be on TV until then…
Flyweight (112 lbs.) Nonito Donaire has yet another opponent for his March bout, although the date could change: Raul Martinez. Can’t tell yet if it’s an upgrade over the last dude he was supposed to fight, but Martinez is undefeated, and he’s defeated the only guy on his resume with whom I’m very familiar.
