By Cliff Rold
I guess I’m not a kid anymore.
I say I guess because I still feel like one sometimes and want to be one the rest of the time. I’m getting married this year, talking about buying a house, talking about Tre (my already chosen nickname for whenever Clifford Lee Rold III rolls around). It’s a lot of fun when it’s not intimidating.
Watching Erik Morales overcome all objections, including my own (and boy how wrong I was), to give David Diaz hell on earth last weekend, I remember that at least boxing will always bring out the awe in me. The fact that I got to watch it at the Caesar’s Sports book in Las Vegas, at my bachelor party, with the best group of friends a lifetime could collect even gave me a momentary reprieve from all this grown-folk stuff.
Still, there’s not enough shots or slots to change the facts. This week, I’m thirty years old.
Not thirty the way my Dad and Grandfather were, with three kids and a mortgage or the way my great-grandfather was with five kids and a farm. Still, thirty is thirty and I wouldn’t be a writer if that didn’t cause some reflection. In a boxing column, that means reflecting on the sport during the years I’ve been alive for it.
I don’t remember what happened in August of 1977 in this great sport. I was a little busy in the birth canal at the beginning of the month and slept most of the rest of it. There’s lots I do remember though. I remember 1981 and the fact that the special transmitter my family bought to watch Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns didn’t work. I remember because I said a cuss word and got a mouthful of soap that night.
I remember asking my Dad to keep it down when Larry Holmes was fighting Michael Spinks the first time because I was trying to watch cartoons.
And I remember Tyson.
Everything started with Tyson.
Mike Tyson’s knockout of Trevor Berbick in 1986 is the fight that hooked me. I saw Tyson’s hook send the late Berbick to the floor three times and that was it. I drove home with my Dad from watching that fight asking him “Is that guy the best ever?” after only seeing one fight. At that age, I couldn’t imagine that anyone in history had ever been greater than Tyson looked to me that night.
Like a rose, and sometimes an onion, boxing had only begun to expose its multiple layers to me. My mom started buying me encyclopedias and histories of the sport; my grandparents started taping Superbouts on ESPN so I could catch up and, well, it’s still a lot like that. Ask my fiancée how many hours a week of boxing she watches. It’s pretty funny.
Of course there was also my away time; only a couple years really, in college, where I watched boxing sparingly. What can I say…nature called and so did my affection for breasts and the women who wear them. I eventually learned balance and how to throw great fight parties so I could have my pie and eat it too.
As long as I can remember, I’ve been around fight fans and as long as I could be a fan I’ve been one too. For God’s sake, I’m intending to begin my honeymoon in Cardiff, Wales for the best fight in boxing circa 2007: Joe Calzaghe-Mikkel Kessler for the World Super Middleweight crown.
So now I get to the meandering purpose of this column. With thirty years officially logged, I offer up my picks for the ten greatest fighters and ten greatest fights of my lifetime. Admittedly, this is biased as hell, but what fight lovers lists aren’t? And it’s my birthday so for at least one day I can’t be wrong.
Fights:
10) James Toney-Mike McCallum I: This was the fight where I truly began to love the sweet science as a science. It was better than the bout that won Fight of the Year in 1991 (Robert Quiroga-Akeem Anifowoshe) even if both are forgotten just a little bit more every day. In the final round, Toney came close to dropping McCallum and seemed to lock up the win only to hear the worst words in boxing: Draw.
9) Michael Carbajal-Chiquita Gonzalez I: This 1994 Fight of the Year is a sentimental favorite of mine. I watched it next door at the Lucio’s, the house where I learned to love Mexican fighters and fights and where I saw two Mexicans steal the breath of the blind. Carbajal got off the deck twice to stop Gonzalez in the seventh round with some of the most violent hooking anyone could ever ask for.
8) Sugar Ray Leonard-Tommy Hearns I: I’ve seen it so many times since that it almost washes out the taste of that soap. Leonard’s first bout with Duran was probably a better fight, but this one has meanings that I’d need another column to explain. Suffice to say this one is here for Russ.
7) Aaron Pryor-Alexis Arguello: 14 rounds of hell in 1982. Ring Magazine’s Fight of the Decade for the 1980’s. The fight my Dad measures all great fights by.
6) Mike Tyson-Buster Douglas: The biggest upset of all-time, maybe in any sport. It might not have been as a great a fight as so many others, but it’s Tyson-Douglas. Period. I never saw boxing the same way again after February 1990.
5) Matthew Saad Muhammad-Yaqui Lopez: I was probably still potty training when these two threw down in 1980, but I’ve seen it a dozen times over the years and still my mouth drops. Lopez had him. He really did. But then it seems it always looked like someone had Saad. Muhammad’s late rounds comeback is a time capsule moment of courage.
4) Mickey Ward-Arturo Gatti I: Some say this was a glorified club fight. I prefer club fight covered in glory. Round nine will never really end for anyone that saw it because anyone who hears that bell will always know: it’s THEIR round.
3) Marco Antonio Barrera-Erik Morales III: Some readers may scratch their head. After all their first was their best right? Wrong. This was the one, the 2004 Fight of the Year. Folks wondered if Barrera still had anything left and it turned out he had greatness in a way no one expected. Marco beat the early lead, Morales worked his way back in and came up just short in a war I had the joy of watching on a plasma screen television at the home of current Chicago Bears safety Ricky Manning. That’s right, I get to name drop today too.
2) Marvin Hagler-Tommy Hearns: Arguably the greatest opening round in history was the prelude to less than nine minutes of total action. What action it was. That night in 1985, two middleweights took their place with Zale and Graziano in the pantheon of middleweight blood baths. Hagler’s third round win would be the climax of an extraordinary career. The rest was just encore.
1) Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo: Round ten. Forever and ever…round ten.
Fighters:
10) Floyd Mayweather: It’s still irksome that he squandered in some respects his likely best physical years (2003-2005). That’s a contemporary question. Historically, Mayweather is in the argument as the greatest ever at 130 lbs. and the only fighter in history to capture the lineal crown at 130 and 147. He’s also only the eighth fighter in history to capture three legitimate titles in three weight classes (including his reign at 135).
9) Larry Holmes: I have more of his fights in my collection than any other fighter. Why? Holmes was a winner and the kind of winner who expressed with his body just how bad he wanted it. The double axe-handle he hit Ernie Shavers with in their rematch is just amazing. He was the one true heavyweight champion of the world from 1980-1985 and one of the greatest in that class ever.
8) Salvador Sanchez: The James Dean of boxing, and gone far too soon, Sanchez is the fighter Roy Jones has picked out as his favorite. I can watch Sanchez fights all day and sometimes do. The greatest featherweight of the last thirty years may have caved himself an even greater legacy with that most precious of commodities: more time.
7) Julio Cesar Chavez: El Gran Campeon Mexicano. Sure, he got some breaks but one could argue that the shortening of fights to twelve rounds gave a few others some breaks as well. Meldrick Taylor couldn’t have handled two seconds of a thirteenth round. The greatest Mexican fighter of all-time says so much.
6) Roy Jones: He should have been so much more or maybe those who say so are just being selfish. He was great enough.
5) Evander Holyfield: He’s still going at age 44 but ignore the shadow in the ring. Pay attention to the shadow he casts. I’ll always be grateful for the months worth of beer money Holyfield won for me against Tyson in 1996. I’ll also always be grateful as a fan for what he left in the ring. Holyfield was arguably the greatest, and most consistent, elite-level action fighter in heavyweight history. Dokes, Stewart, Foreman, Cooper, Bowe, Mercer, Tyson…immortality.
4) Marvin Hagler: He’s on the top five of most middleweight greats lists for a reason. Hagler is remarkable not just for the big wins but for the indomitable spirit that carried him through to those fights. It takes toughness and professionalism to keep going when it seems like the big break, and big dollar, will always be a step away.
3) Pernell Whitaker: Everyone doesn’t love him but only a fool fails to admire what Sweet Pea got done. He’s right there with Duran, Leonard, Gans and Williams on any list of the great fighters ever at 135. Add to that a near four-year reign as the lineal, true welterweight champion of the world, a mastering of Chavez regardless of the Drawn scorecards and wins like Nelson and Vasquez and Whitaker was the standard for boxing greatness in the 1990s.
2) Sugar Ray Leonard: With Mayweather, the only other legitimate three division champion on the list (at 147, 54 and 60). Leonard achieved greatness even with years off a time due to injury and flat out too much money. Most fighters don’t have a group of wins like Wilfred Benitez, Roberto Duran, Ayub Kalule and Hearns in a career. He did it in two years and added Hagler, fairly, off a near three year layoff.
1)Roberto Duran: Think of this…Duran won the lightweight title five years before I was born and still managed to get his defining work done in my lifetime. That’s a bad ass fighter. DeJesus III, Palomino, Leonard…the fighter he was from 1977-1981, in addition to the high moments like Cuevas, Hagler and Barkley that he picked up later, make Duran an easy pick for the best fighter of my lifetime.
My apologies of course to the fighters who I didn’t list here. I probably would in a different mood. Fighters like Bernard Hopkins, Michael Spinks, Felix Trinidad, Manny Pacquiao, Wilfredo Gomez, Ricardo Lopez…and on and on. I’ll probably wax nostalgic again a decade from now and find some of them on a list somewhere.
For now, it’s enough to be thirty and moving forward after I stand still to polish a drink or two in the present. See ya’ in seven.
P.S. Hell yes Israel Vasquez-Rafael Marquez II is the 2007 Fight of the Year. If anything beats that out, the “Dear God” factor of an amazing year will move beyond the land of existing adjectives.
Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel and the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com
