| 27 October 2008
Your weekly Quick Jabs await, wherein I also seek your nominees for the most under-appreciated and neglected boxers in the sport. [Updated section: On Kelly Pavlik's health]
Weekend In Review
Wrapping up some business on the weekend's top travesty: Lucian Bute said he was happy to fight a rematch with Librado Andrade after the controversial ending to their super middleweight (168 lbs.) title fight Friday, but talks are already underway for him to fight Mads Larsen, a boxer who has fought basically no one since ending a four-year break from the sport in 2007. Not the guttiest move.
Fellow super middleweight titlist Mikkel Kessler said after knocking out hopeless Danilo Haussler Saturday that he wanted a "unification fight." But Kessler's team is throwing a hissy fit toward Bute because they wanted Larsen for themselves in an all-Denmark donnybrook. ESPN's Dan Rafael said that Kessler would surely be welcome back on HBO, but let's not forget that he pulled out of a fight with Showtime that totally screwed that network over, and besides, why would HBO broadcast Kessler-Larsen, or any of the mismatches Kessler keeps accidentally finding himself in while he's oh-so-interested in a unification match? Kessler's a serious talent, but he's not remotely interested in challenging himself.
From the "wasted talent" department of which Kessler is a high-ranking official: Chris John, the very gifted 126-pound titlist, recently fought one of his first real opponents in a long, long time, and he won decisively. I confess to knowing next to nothing about Hiroyuki Enoki, though, and would still like to see John go up against someone in the United States, like a Steve Luevano, Jorge Linares or Robert Guerrero, even if it means moving up in weight one class.
In a final bit of weekend wrap-up, Giacobbe Fragomeni won himself a cruiserweight (200 lbs.) title last week, and my pleasure in this derives in equal parts from A. Fragomeni's game effort against David Haye that now makes Haye look even better and B. that his name is "Fragomeni." Take any military-related term and combine with an ending that evokes pasta and comedy ensues. Shrapnelelli, anyone?
(Sean expertly covered the other major weekend bouts here.)
Hopkins-Pavlik Again, And Some Related Calzaghe-Jones Business
Let's go back a couple weekends to the 170-pound bout between Kelly Pavlik and Bernard Hopkins for a few items. First, Pavlik's team revealed he was sick in the lead-up to the fight, and that if he's sick in the lead-up to a fight ever again -- word is he was taking fluids intravenously only a few days before the fight -- he will call it off. It's a mitigating excuse, but no more. I'm convinced that the higher weight for middleweight (160 lbs.) champ Pavlik and the style match-up with the ultra-slick, well-schooled Hopkins still would have led to a Hopkins shellacking of Pavlik, sick or no.
[UPDATE: Thomas Hauser does his usual insider reporting duty and it demonstrates that Pavlik was indeed sick -- this isn't revisionist history. He got a penicillin shot four days before the fight, was on medication for bronchitis the day of and was coughing up phlegm while warming up in the locker room. Again, I still don't think he would have beaten Hopkins, but if anything, this shows the kind of guts Pavlik had to fight as hard as he did through the final bell. The piece has other wonderful, sad details, like (spoiler alert!) Pavlik breaking down in the locker room after losing, and Pavlik quipping to the doctor who asked asked him afterwards whether anything was bothering him, "Just my feelings." The best was this, near the end -- "Kelly took a deep breath. 'I've lost once,' he told his father. 'Hopkins is a legend and he's lost five times.' Father and son embraced. 'I don't care about the loss,' Mike said. 'All I care about is that you're all right.'" Well said by both men. This ends the updated portion of this column.]
I've seen Hopkins cited as an inspiration by a great many athletes following his win, boxers and non-boxers alike. The Washington Wizards' Caron Butler: "We haven't been whole in a long time, and at the same time, we've been pretty used to the naysayers," Butler told the Washington Post. "Our team represents Bernard Hopkins, his situation. Everybody said what he couldn't do and at 43, he put the beatdown on Pavlik." A British soccer player who just got out of jail cited Hopkins' own incarceration and subsequent redemption as inspiration, and one-time Hopkins foe Jermain Taylor, coming off a recent loss just like Hopkins was before fighting Pavlik, said it proved anyone can make a comeback. Unfortunately, one person citing Hopkins' success is DeMarcus Corley, the former 140-pound champ who's lost six straight as of the past week, who sees inspiration in Hopkins not giving up. Here's hoping other fighters in Corley's situation aren't similarly inspired.
The Pavlik-Hopkins stuff overlaps with a few items about the upcoming Joe Calzaghe-Roy Jones, Jr. light heavyweight (175 lbs.) bout. Maxboxing's Steve Kim reports that he hears Pavlik-Hopkins did less than 200,000 pay-per-view buys. HBO may have only been able to offer both fighters enough money under a pay-per-view deal, but it is decisions to put fights like Pavlik-Hopkins on pay-per-view that is really inhibiting the sport of boxing. I've never seen the numbers for the September lightweight (135 lbs.) fight between Juan Manuel Marquez-Joel Casamayor, but I bet those were in the tank, too. And with Calzaghe-Jones coming up the week of the election, how much attention, and how many pay-per-view buys, is that fight going to get? These are bad, bad programming decisions that are just ruinous to boxing's capacity for broader popularity in the United States. Bute-Andrade was on pay-per-view in Canada, but they were able to sell it in that case in part because in Canada, Germany and some other boxing hotbeds, fighters are regularly broadcast on free TV, seen by massive audiences.
Hopkins wants the winner of Calzaghe-Jones and no one else, but Calzaghe and Jones have both nixed the idea of a rematch with Hopkins. Jones has softened his position, but I really doubt he'll get the chance, anyway. If Jones does win, Hopkins-Jones II is suddenly a huge, huge fight. Also, I wouldn't be opposed to Hopkins-Jones II even if Jones loses, so long as he's competitive. The question is, if Calzaghe keeps fighting, is there any bigger opponent for him than Hopkins? Sure, their April fight sucked to high heaven, but if Hopkins fought more aggressively in a rematch like he did against Pavlik, it might be worth a second look.
U.K. promoter Frank Warren, in his "Frankly Speaking" column, insists that former promotional charge Calzaghe would have been better off fighting Pavlik than Jones. I completely agree, setting aside the hard feelings between Warren and Calzaghe. Not only would that have been a more meaningful fight for him, but I think it highly likely that Calzaghe would have defeated Pavlik, and he would've gotten more credit for that win than beating a shopworn Jones.
Quicker Quick Jabs
Seeing Steve Molitor interviewed on Showtime during the Bute-Andrade broadcast made me glad that the 122-pound talent is finally getting some U.S. attention when the channel broadcasts his November bout against Celestino Caballero. It's taken so long not only because Molitor's a hot product up north who makes nice bank up there, but also Molitor's promotional situation is messy to say the least, and he's largely to blame for it. But he's one of the most under-appreciated and neglected talents in the sport, whatever the reason. It prompted me to make up a little list of fighters who, for whatever reason, are suffering from one or more of the three following conditions: 1. Not getting the spotlight they deserve because they are both good AND exciting; 2. Not getting fights against top opponents; or 3. Not getting enough recognition within the sport. My top nominees include: Molitor; Paul Williams; Fernando Montiel; Nonito Donaire; Steve Cunningham; Joshua Clottey. Some of those fighters are getting a taste of what they deserve soon, or have recently tasted it, but it's still not enough, in my opinion. Anyone I'm missing?...
Alexander Povetkin, a talented heavyweight prospect who was scheduled to fight division boss Wladimir Klitschko in December far too prematurely, if you ask me, has injured his foot after tripping over a tree root and as such has had to pull out of the bout. Povetkin is a mandatory title challenger, but if I were him, I'd send a nice thank you note to the guilty tree root and get a bunch more seasoning before even dreaming about fighting Klitschko...
James Kirkland is untangling himself from his own promotional feud and should be on TV soon fighting Brian Vera at a catchweight between Kirkland's junior middleweight (154 lbs.) and Vera's middleweight. Vera's shown he can test an exciting, hard-punching prospect by acing Andy Lee earlier this year, and Kirkland fits the bill. Should be interesting...
I'm no mixed martial arts fan, but does it sound strange to hear WBC boss Jose Sulaiman proclaim the "safety" of boxing over MMA when Sulaiman went out of his way to give a title shot to Oscar Larios, a 126-pound fighter who is banned in the United States owing to a brain bleed he suffered in a fight?...
Floyd Mayweather, Sr. has delivered another trademark entertaining rant, this time against new trainee Ricky Hatton, the hard-drinking 140-pound champ who's got a tough November fight with Paulie Malignaggi. Mayweather's borderline insane, but the plus side of that is that sometimes he speaks the truth more bluntly than anyone else can or will. From the Daily Star, condensed: "I tell you something - Ricky could get whupped by a nobody because he is doing the wrong things with his body. He needs to stop drinking right now and forget about this sh*t because it is no good for him. He knows it is no good for him but he still does it. It is stupid to do all that training and then let himself go for two or three months. He doesn't value his career enough. If he did he wouldn't do it. I think Ricky can be a much, much better fighter if he starts doing the right things with his lifestyle and body. You can't get big like that and take your body down, then get big again and take your body down, then do it all again. It's no good and it catches up with you. I don't like boxers drinking and Ricky would be much better off without it. I don't like it. It ain't gonna do no fighter no good. I've spoken to him about it and I hope that he gets the message. I want him to leave the drink alone. I hope in some kind of way I have got into his head and that he is going to do the right things. If he does the right things he will get the right things."
(Sources: The Washington Post, TheSweetScience.com, ESPN.com, The Youngstown Vindicator, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, BoxingScene.com, Maxboxing.com, Reuters, The Daily Star, The London Daily Telegraph, SecondsOut.com)
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