In this edition of ultra-quick “Quick Jabs,” we review matters relating to the Olympics, the superfight betwixt Miguel Cotto vs. Antonio Margarito, Wednesday night’s combat, the plans of Joe Calzaghe and Kelly Pavlik and, of course, fave prospect YURIORKIS GAMBOA!
So Cotto-Margarito — a fight anyone with even a passing interest in boxing ought to be super-psyched about — isn’t selling tickets briskly in Las Vegas, according to this article quoting a super-secret double-background source. Why the source is secret, I cannot know, so I’m going to say the whole premise on which I am about to expound comes with a caveat that the basic story may not be true. If true, here’s what I think it means: Top Rank, Cotto’s promoter, picked this fight to try to turn him into a national superstar instead of a regional New York/Atlantic City one, and they may have picked the wrong time and wrong way for something that might not be possible. One, despite my previous ridiculing of such assertions, maybe this economy is having an effect on boxing. Las Vegas is suffering in particular, and who has money to spend on boxing tickets that average out at more than $300? Two, I haven’t seen much promotional muscle put behind this one. Little advertising on television, no media tours, few press statements, and no promotional stunts like the one where Cotto cruised around on a bus in Manhattan prior to his welterweight (147 lbs.) bout with Zab Judah last year — at least that I’ve seen. Three, Cotto is going to always have a devoted fan base among Puerto Ricans and hardcore fight fans, but, admirable though his quiet businessman-like behavior is, he’s not some charismatic media star like Oscar De La Hoya, a flamboyant villain like Floyd Mayweather, or anything like any model of “superstar,” really. Building his fan base much beyond where it is may be difficult. Knocking off Margarito spectacularly would go a long way, then getting De La Hoya and beating him in his farewell fight would, too. De La Hoya, by the way, is paying close attention to the potential pay-per-view numbers on this one for contract purposes, according to Golden Boy — 400,000 buys, which now sounds like a reach (unless this is some insidious Top Rank plot to lower expectations), is what the De La Hoya team was projecting as reasonable to get Cotto top dollar…
Interestingly enough, the betting line on Cotto-Margarito has really moved to favor Cotto. I’ll be doing a lot of previewing and predicting and what-not next week, but this surprises me. One news release I received polled a bunch of boxing writers, and by my count, 47 out of the 60 or so picked Cotto to win — with three I counted not actually making a prediction. The opening betting line at MGM had Cotto a favorite at -170, but as of Tuesday, he’d climbed to -270…
A few friends alerted me to this article on chess boxing, identified by the Associated Press as a “new sport,” when in fact I’ve heard about chess boxing for years. However, if you’re not familiar with it — wrap your head around the idea of one round of chess, one round of boxing, until there’s a winner — it’s a good primer on a very interesting phenomenon, and the article’s well-written, so I pass it along to you…
Good news, ultimately, in the fact that Luis Yanez has been reinstated to the U.S. Olympic boxing team. I’m not convinced he deserves it, after all. Coach Dan Campbell doesn’t sound like a warm and fuzzy guy — no fewer than five of the nine team members have gone public with complaints about him, his training methods, his experience, all of it, and he definitely wasn’t very professional to publicly call Yanez “one of the biggest liars I’ve ever met.” On the other hand, Yanez, from the sound of things, pretty flagrantly violated the rules, and that deserves punishment. It’s good news that he’s back on the team from the “ultimately” level because he is one of the U.S.’s legit potential gold medalists, and hopefully, he and Campbell can work things out to win some for the good old U.S. of A…
It’s only kind of good news that Oscar Diaz appears to be coming off successful brain surgery after Wednesday night’s collapse, because it’d be better if he didn’t even have to have it and if he wasn’t currently in critical condition. The welterweight’s corner got warned by the referee that they needed to save their man from harm; I’m not sure why the ref didn’t just call it off himself. I have criticized early stoppages in this space before, but, generally, I think refs and boxers’ corners should be inclined more toward early stoppages than late ones when one fighter is taking a beating…
In other Wednesday night televised action (Delvin Rodriguez’ defeat of Diaz was on ESPN2), Fox Sports Net aired what was a joke of a fight even before the opening bell rang. Heavyweight James Toney in a rematch with Hasim Rahman? Come on — those guys are as over the hill as boxers get. You’d never guess beforehand that it would have ended in ignominy… wait, that was sarcasm, I guessed beforehand that it ended in ignominy. Rahman kinda sorta quit in a fight that was booed for a couple rounds and maybe should have could’ve been called a no contest because of a head butt but instead was scored TKO-3 for Toney. I love Toney — love him. He’s one of my favorite all-time fighters. Word is from some quadrants that he looked all right. But he slurs his words too much for my tastes these days. And after last weekend’s title fight, is anyone surprised that the heavyweight division was home to yet another unsavory, uninteresting debacle?…
YURIORKIS GAMBOA ALERT! My favorite prospect is back on TV Friday night, fighting on ESPN2 against Al Seeger, best known for taking a beating from then- 122-pound titlist Daniel Ponce De Leon a couple years back, instead of Jose Rojas. Apparently there was some kind of legal issue, but it’s not the only confusing aspect of Gamboa’s Friday night. One, I’d read that he was moving down to featherweight (126 lbs.) from junior lightweight (130 lbs.), but ESPN still has this fight listed at 130. That’s a long road to hoe for Seeger. Also confusing is that, after Gamboa struggled a little bit in his last outing with Darling Jimenez, trainer Orlando Cuellar was brought in as the new corner man — but now he’s out of the picture, too. Apparently Gamboa’s German-based promoter wanted Gamboa to team with Ismael Salas, who like Gamboa is also from Cuba, has trained the Thailand national amateur team and whose best pro work seems to have come with Australian light heavyweight (175 lbs.) Danny Green. Maybe I’m just being overprotective of a personal fave, but why is Salas the choice? Wasn’t one of the problems with Gamboa’s performance against Jimenez that his old amateur habits needed to be broken? Why bring in someone who’s best-known for working with amateurs? Oh well. Since I love me some Gamboa, and since it’s a low-risk fight, seemingly, I’ll just be watching for actual results instead of worrying about qualifications. If Gamboa keeps his hands up for most of the fight, I’ll be pleased…
Guess what! Joe Calzaghe is finally talking about meeting up with Kelly Pavlik. I’ve run through the import of this fight before many times — top-10 pound-for-pounders, etc. etc. — so I won’t do it again, but it’s nice that light heavyweight and super middleweight (168 lbs.) champ Joe Calzaghe, who had talked about retiring after fighting Roy Jones in September, is now taking seriously the idea of battling the middleweight (160) champ, Pavlik. Incidentally, Dan Rafael has an enlightening tale of Allan Green negotiating himself out of a fight with Pavlik; Green is very rapidly ruining his career. And there are reports floating around that Sergio Mora and Bernard Hopkins are both still in the running to fight Pavlik…
OK, so junior lightweight Francisco Lorenzo was probably faking a little when he pretended a glancing blow to the back of the head from Huberto Soto had left him concussed — I don’t have the doctor’s exam handy, so I don’t know. But does that really warrant a $2,000 fine from the WBC, if true? Considering he doesn’t even get the WBC interim title belt from a fight that was ruled a victory for him, I think this might be piling on a little much. And if there were fines given out every time was suspect of faking something in a boxing match, there’d be a lot more fines in this world — why does this one deserve a fine? Might it be that the WBC is based in Mexico, and Lorenzo hailed from the Dominican Republic? This fight was already an embarrassment to the sport, but the WBC is making it more of one…
There have been a couple savage articles attacking HBO’s excess of pay-per-views from top boxing writers of late, and both of which are worth reading because their savagery is justified. I just want to jump aboard this particular bandwagon. A thought: Two of the HBO pay-per-views are being undercut by desirable free fights scheduled to air on Showtime the same night. Usually, I consider the dual scheduling of fights just as much of a pox upon boxing as the pay-per-view plague, but here, I’m actually wondering whether it’s a good thing. If HBO takes a beating forcing people to fork over $50 each for Juan Manuel Marquez-Joel Casamayor (lightweight, 135 lbs.) and Shane Mosley-Ricardo Mayorga (welterweight) because there are equally or more appealing fights airing on Showtime with Nate Cambell-Joan Guzman (lightweight) and a doubleheader featuring heavyweights Vitali Klitschko and Sam Peter and light heavyweights Chad Dawson and Antonio Tarver, maybe HBO gets weened out of this bad habit of theirs. Another thought, too. I’m no Golden Boy partisan — I think the promoter has fueled this phenomenon in part. But why is it that Top Rank never takes a hit from writers for this phenomenon? I mean, does anyone think the Top Rank-promoted Manny Pacquiao-David Diaz (lightweight) should have been on pay-per-view? Or that Pacquiao’s fall fight against another non-star should be? Every promoter out there has been responsible for poor programming and/or programming that screws over the viewer…
As usual, the latest Secondsout.com piece by Tom Hauser deepens our understanding of the current thinking over at HBO. Read it here. Hauser is the king.
