2013 is upon us, but we still have one more thing to say about 2012, similar to this wrap-up from last year. In the meantime, let's gather up the confetti of boxing news that has greeted us in the New Year. First, we'll do a few Quick Jabs on broader news items, featuring doctors diagnosing boxers' ailments off TV, or drunken taco hut brawls where boxers were eating after the ball dropped.
Then, we'll come right back with a blog post on fights in the works, AKA Round And Round.
Quick Jabs
Let's get the obvious jokes out of the way: "Fish taco." "Drinks like a fish." Now that that's done, let's talk about junior middleweight Austin Trout getting arrested on "suspicion" of public intoxication stemming from a Taco Cabana brawl at 2:30 a.m. As it happens, his promoter said he was released uncharged and was only trying to break up someone else fighting. Here's the funny thing: Had Trout actually been in a post-party, drunken brawl at some taco joint, judging by the jokes and encouragement on Twitter right after the news broke, it would have made him MORE popular, not less. Boxing fans are a weird lot. Sometimes I like them for being so weird. Sometimes I don't. Boxing fans liking Trout for allegedly getting into a drunken brawl at a taco dispensary in turn makes me like boxing fans more…
Gabriel Rosado also has made himself more popular by getting himself into something dangerous, which shouldn't come as a surprise because Rosado has revived his career by fighting in a high-risk style. For his upcoming bout with hard-hitting middleweight Gennady Golovkin, Rosado has decided against a catchweight that his promoter had set up for him. I get it: A lot of fans don't like catchweights. And there's something admirable about a junior middleweight going up to middleweight to fight a guy who could punch out most super middleweights with relative ease. On the other hand, I fear the worst for how this will turn out for Rosado, a fighter I like a good deal. There's a line boxers skirt all the time between caution and fear, between recklessness and wisdom. I admire the bravery of Rosado here, and it maybe it's worth it in regards to fan admiration received, but meet-in-the-middle catchweights are defensible in circumstances like this, to me, and for all of Rosado's "I want to be like the old champions," well, the old champions sometimes fought at catchweights, too…
Some doctor watched television when Manny Pacquiao was on and divined signs of Parkisons disease. No one else has divined such things; no one else that I know of has even noticed any of the stuttering or tremors that this doctor "noticed." This guy is also president of some doctor's association in the Philippines. A reasonable person might extrapolate from this extremely small data set that the Private Hospitals Association in the Philippines is loaded up with quacks…
Middleweight Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. might switch trainers from Freddie Roach to Robert Garcia or Nacho Beristain. Makes sense. Roach did help improve Chavez, in my opinion, but he couldn't convince Chavez to train as hard as he should've and Roach isn't a strict disciplinarian of the variety Junior apparently needs to get himself in peak fighting form. Maybe someone else will be a better fit…
The Hall of Fame inducted a new class fairly recently, and I didn't comment on it much because I'd already made it known what I thought of the idea of Arturo Gatti getting in, which happened, and which I supported somewhat. It isn't just that he was popular, which he undoubtedly was; it was that he was popular to a degree and in a way that was unmatched for his era. He's meant more to boxing than just whether he sold some tickets. But, look, the fact that the standards for Hall voters are open to interpretation means that reasonable people can look at who he actually beat and reject him, and it's totally valid. Anyway, kudos to the rest of the class, too..
The Indian amateur boxing program, which had been making real gains in recent Olympics, is now a total mess. It's a shame. I like to see the sport develop in parts of the world where it's not been as popular, and I worry that this will be a setback for a generation of boxers who might otherwise be coming out of one of my favorite countries (I visited some years back and it was a pretty major life experience)…
Golden Boy Promotions has signed British Olympian Anthony Ogogo, acting on their plans to get involved in British boxing. A lot of the Brit promoters are doing just fine — Eddie Hearn of Matchroom in particular — but they'd be wise not to underestimate GBP. With its ambition (some might say it's of the overweening variety) and commitment to the long-term, the company keeps succeeding where it's expected to fail.
