You can totally see her watching Guillermo Jones try the heavyweight division on for size on Nov. 5, can’t you? Wealth TV is going to host the Jones fight that night, so if you are one of the rich people who enjoy shows like “Wealth on the Water — Taking you on multi-million dollar mega yachts,” or “Etiquette 101 — Guidelines on the appropriate behavior for a variety of situations” (and we all know rich person Floyd Mayweather, Jr. could stand to watch that program), then get ready for boxing to invade your TV. What’s that you say? Only wealthy people can afford to go to boxing matches as it stands? You have cleverly undermined my premise, imaginary reader. And you’ve made a more poignant remark than I set out to.
All joking-but-not-joking aside, more boxing on TV is always a nice thing. Jones-Michael Marrone doesn’t sound like the kind of bout likely to generate ratings that could satisfy even a fledgling network or a bout that would generate much more enthusiasm for boxing in a new audience, but anytime the sport’s fans have options, I vote “yea.” Kudos to Don King for getting the fight some airplay, per the news release this week announcing the broadcast.
There’s a lot of money to be discussed in this edition of Quick Jabs, like some surprising purse bid developments, or the amount of cash over which Miguel Cotto allegedly dumped trainer Emanuel Steward, or how powerful Manny Pacquiao is because of all the money he makes. And more, naturally. Some of it only remotely money-related.
Quick Jabs
Light heavyweight champ Bernard Hopkins has a fight this weekend, so there are some tidbits surrounding him. Like the headline. On Ring Theory, B-Hop was actually lured into a discussion about his wife’s sex toys — no, really — and he was wildly funny about it. There’s a lot to be said for B-Hop’s candor, sometimes. There’s also a lot to be said for his case for Fighter of the Year if he knocks off Chad Dawson Saturday, which I failed to play up properly in my prediction post. I shouldn’t say “there’s a lot to be said for” it, because it doesn’t require much elaboration — it just should have gone said, is all. Lastly, a fight on the undercard involving a pro debut is getting more attention than anything else on the card combined. (Well, nearly all combined. The Time Warner “synergy” probably has something to do with Hopkins having been a top story on the CNN.com home page for much of Friday going into Saturday.) Dewey Bozella was exonerated not so long ago after spending 26 years in jail for murder, and he’s been the subject of features in some pretty big outlets, and said he got a call from President Obama, even. It’s a cool story, to be sure…
One can only infer that the foot the camp of welterweight Victor Ortiz has been dining on for weeks now is pretty tasty, because they’ve been feasting on the leftovers in their mouth for a really long time…
Let’s get into some money talk. Money money money MONEY. Let’s say a boxing manager got you $13.5 million for one fight. How long would you wait after his death to sue his estate for more money? For Michael Spinks, the answer is “less than four months.” I honestly have no idea whether it’s a legit complaint against Butch Lewis or not, but geez, wait for the corpse to get cold, hey, Michael? Or sue him when he’s alive?
Money money money MONEY. How’s this for two baffling purse bids? Part one: Just the other week, Goossen Tutor broke a handshake deal with Top Rank over a junior featherweight bout between Guillermo Rigondeaux and Rico Ramos. Ramos wanted more money. So they went to a purse bid. Yet Goossen Tutor didn’t offer anything. What gives? Top Rank also underbid by nearly half the original amount. Either Goossen Tutor and Rico Ramos and supposed mastermind Al Haymon are fucking idiots, or this is some ploy to get out of a difficult fight — in which case, it’s a fucking idiotic ploy, because if Ramos turns down the fight now because he didn’t get enough money, won’t it be pretty obvious that his own promoter didn’t think he was worth the cash, thereby, “ploy exposed?”…
Money money money MONEY. Baffling purse bid, part two: The next highest bid for Vyacheslav Senchenko-Brad Solomon’s welterweight title bout was $200,000. So why did an outfit called “Union Boxing Promotion” buy it up for 1 point 1 freaking million dollars? Holy Christ boxing is a weird netherworld where the kind of Ayn Rand-ian rational self interest exhibited by businesses is tossed right the hell out the window…
Money money money MONEY. The pound-for-pound king, Pacquiao, is now #24 on Bloomberg’s list of powerful athletes. It’s because he’s rich, basically….
Sick of this yet?: Money money money MONEY. Steward says his former junior middleweight pupil, Cotto, dumped him for someone who was $50,000 cheaper. If true — and it’s just one side of the story — this is the old boxing story of people being short-sighted rather than looking at the big picture. If Cotto loses to Antonio Margarito in December, his next paycheck is going to be significantly more than $50,000 lighter. He better hope he wins, or he’ll be second-guessed for the rest of his life about whether Steward would’ve gotten him the victory and kept up his marketability…
One last time: Money money money MONEY. There’s been a lot of back and forth between middleweight champion Sergio Martinez and Dmitry Pirog over how much money Martinez would get for fighting Pirog in Russia. The exact number hasn’t been released, but nobody’s disputing that it would be Martinez’ biggest payday, even without HBO money. Pirog’s people are also saying that Martinez has demanded $5 million an absolutely absurd figure that Martinez’ side hasn’t denied. Let’s say a Pirog fight would only get Martinez a little more than his previous career high, and wouldn’t guarantee him more HBO exposure, and would be a fight on Pirog’s home soil. The fact is, all of these signs point to Martinez’ team not really wanting the Pirog fight. I wish it didn’t seem that way, but if you want more than a career high payday and as much as $5 million for a fight like that, you aren’t interested…
There’s the Nevada opinion on the boxing return of (formerly) brain bleedy super middleweight Jermain Taylor, and the Dr. Margaret Goodman opinion on his return. Since Goodman hasn’t examined him, I’m more inclined to go with the “he can fight if he wants” view of Nevada based on his clean medical exams, even if Goodman is usually reliably and appropriately concerned about boxers’ health. Not that I want Taylor to return…
Light heavyweight Tavoris Cloud is just constantly calling out everyone, and I think most boxing fans would like to see him in fights with the people he’s calling out. But if his promoter, King, is (as reportedly is the case) demanding options on a fighter like Jean Pascal who can make plenty of money NOT fighting Cloud, the calling-out is all for naught…
Boxing has assuredly slipped in the public eye, and the declining television ratings — outside of ESPN2’s recent proclaimed surge — are at least some kind of indicator of that, I suspect. But this helpful list of statistics shows how badly ALL television ratings have declined in recent years, which certainly mitigates the implication of the declining televised boxing ratings. In isolation, the HBO numbers look bad. In context, they look like a lot of other television number trends…
David Haye does genuinely seem to have retired, however skeptical I am that it will last, because, well, he’s a boxer, and they don’t stay unretired for much of any reason (right, Jermain Taylor?). But based on appearance alone, let’s put Haye in context. At cruiserweight, he was terrific, becoming lineal champion and establishing himself as one of boxing’s biggest, most exciting punchers. At heavyweight, he also was often a big, exciting puncher, but the big, humorous talk he directed at the Klitschko brothers was maddening for years. Then, when he finally got in the ring with champ Wladimir, he disgraced himself with a lackluster showing and a bad excuse about his pinkie toe being injured. On the balance, Haye was a really good fighter, particularly at cruiserweight, and provided a lot of entertaining trash talk and fights. He just had a bad ending. If he’s gone, he should be remembered for more than just the flame-out that we all wish would have been either a knockout of Wlad or a gutsy defeat.
