By Brent Matteo Alderson
Fight photographer Paul Hernandez compared it to Foreman-Lyle in 1976 while another beat writer made a reference to Bowe-Golota II, and Nigel Collins of The Ring said it was a “hell of a lot of fun to watch.” Plain and simple, the November 29th fight between Chris Arreola and Travis Walker was heavyweight armageddon, an exciting brawl with an ebon-flow and multiple knockdowns and deserves to be considered as a candidate for the fight of the year.
That being said, the bout wasn’t fought at the world-championship level. It wasn’t Bowe-Holyfield or even Lewis-Klitschko because Chris Arreola wasn’t in optimum condition and Travis Walker just isn’t an elite heavyweight. Walker does have an excellent offensive arsenal. He has a solid jab and a good right hand, but defensively he’s not fundamentally sound and his limited boxing experience (he didn’t start until his twenties) was exemplified by his lack of patience which spurned him on to punch himself out early when he threw more than one hundred punches in the first round.
Even with his flaws, Walker is without question one of the best fifteen heavyweights in the world and could probably beat an Oleg Maskaev or a Hasim Rahman. Plus he was even more dangerous in this fight because he was motivated by his role as an underdog and weighed in at a-cut 231 pounds, the lightest of his thirty bout career.
The extra- training didn’t change the final result and Chris Arreola won the fight with another dramatic knockout which further increased his marketability, but probably didn’t have a positive impact on the boxing fraternity’s perception of him as a potential threat to the Klitschko brothers. Nigel Collins, the editor and chief of Ring Magazine commented, “Arreola needs to get in better shape if he wants to be successful at a higher level. In terms of his prospects of winning the title, it doesn’t bold well for him that he was almost stopped in the first round and just stood there and took so many punches from a fighter like Travis Walker.”
That’s just it, the knockout victory doesn’t erase the fact that Arreola came in at 254 pounds and was thoroughly dominated until he turned it around with a couple of well placed punches and an impressive display of fortitude. Chris was in better shape than he had been for Israel Garcia in September and looked more solid, but his commitment and dedication still didn’t come close to Walker’s. And the added weight and lack of intensity in the training was clearly evident during the fight. It decreased the speed of his punches and hurt his overall mobility as he lumbered around the ring like Samuel Peter. As a result, the fight was more competitive than it should have been.
A win is a win and Arreola’s team is content with the victory and his head trainer, Henry Ramirez, acknowledges that the best Arreola didn’t show up on fight night, “To be honest Chris was probably only 60% or 70%. He wasn’t in great shape. He needs to be between 238 and 242. I’m not going to lie and people can ridicule, he wasn’t motivated for Walker. We tried and tried and we pushed, and he just wasn’t motivated.”
Ramirez was still satisfied with the victory for a number of reasons. First he feels as though Chris gained invaluable experience from the bout, “The good thing is he kept his composure, faced adversity and pulled himself out of it. It’s a growing process. I don’t think a fighter can get to the top level with out ever having been through a situation like that, having to pull his self out of what looked like dire straits, and he showed real composure in a situation he hadn’t been in before.”
Ramirez was also relieved that Chris was able to fulfill his contractual obligation and keep his undefeated record intact since approximately nine days before the fight he hurt his left elbow in training and had to stop working out for a few days. The fight had actually been in jeopardy. In fact on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, Ramirez informed BoxingScene.com of the predicament via a private phone call, “Chris hurt his arm and we haven’t been able to work out for a few days. We already saw a doctor, but we’re going to see an orthopedic surgeon in the morning and make a final decision. Right now it’s 50/50.”
Even though Chris showed some vulnerability, he still pulled through with another victory that runs his record to a sterling 26-0 (23KOs). And the Nightmare’s record isn’t the product of calculated-match-making and it hasn’t been padded like Alex Garcia’s and Lou Savarese’s records were in the nineties.
The Walker fight was the third time on HBO that he won a crossroads matchup against a fellow up and coming contender. And in each one of those fights, Arreola demonstrated that he can deal with a variety of styles because each opponent brought something different to the ring. In November of 2006 Chris beat a puncher in Damian “Bobo” Wills, then last May he beat a boxer in Chazz Witherspoon, and last Saturday he beat a boxer-puncher in Travis Walker. And all three of those guys were perceived as legitimate threats and had a combined record of 72-1-2. And Travis Walker was a big heavyweight with quality wins against 2004 U.S Olympian Jason Estrada and 2000 and 2004 Super-heavyweight alternate T.J. Wilson.
Thus with the victory Arreola clearly solidified his position as the best American heavyweight and established himself as one of the divisions top contenders. More importantly Arreola endured himself to the fans and emphatically affirmed his arrival as one of the game’s most entertaining fighters.
Collins commented that “Arreola is must see television, if you’re a boxing fan you better tune in when he fights,” and another internet scribe noted, “Arreola is like Arturo Gatti, he might not be the best, but he’s definitely the most exciting.”
At the post fight party, Kevin Barry, the former Olympian who defeated Holyfield in the 1984 Olympics by disqualification and has worked with David Tua throughout his career, commented that “Arreola just doubled his fan base with this victory!”
At the moment team Arreola doesn’t have any definite plans, but according to Ramirez he would “jump at a chance to fight for one of the major titles.” And it might just happen in the first part of 2009.
Juan Carlos Gomez and Chris Arreola are the top rated contenders in the WBC and at the moment it seems as though Vitali isn’t interested in fighting anyone except Lennox Lewis so there is a distinct possibility that Gomez and Arreola could fight for the vacant WBC title in the spring.
Recently on BoxingScene.com Samuel Peter said he would be interested in having his comeback fight against Arreola in the spring. So there are a lot of options out there for the young Mexican-American slugger, but at this point it seems like Arreola is eager for a challenge and wants a million dollar payday and a date with one of the world’s elite heavyweights. Bring on the big boys!
Notes:
Has anyone heard anything from Floyd Mayweather Jr.?
The card on Versus featuring Steve Cunningham is far superior to the Pay-Per-View undercard the other night.
Say what you will about Don King, at least he put on some good undercards. Do Jackson-McClellan, Castro-J.D. Jackson, Trinidad-Campas, Trinidad-Carr, Brown-Blocker, and Fenech-Nelson ring a bell? Even when he had a post-prison Mike Tyson and didn’t have to stack undercards with good fights, we still got to see pound for pound guys like Terry Norris and Trinidad in appearance fights. We saw hall of famers, some of the best fighters in the world. This past weekend we saw prospects and up and comers padding their records on an expensive pay-per-view event.
I was looking through one of my Ring Magazines from the 1950s and there was an article how the sport was dying. I guess some things never change.
I have an in-depth two-hour interview coming out with Juan Manuel Marquez in Ring Magazine that goes on sell late December. I feel bad for Marquez because I don’t think the Pac-man is going to want to fight him since he is going to have more lucrative offers against either Hatton or Mayweather and Marquez is 35 years old and can’t afford to wait another four years.
Check out the multi-media interview, (Click Here to View), with Arreola’s trainer Henry Ramirez that was incorporated into this interview right here on BoxingScene.com
I was hanging with John David Jackson and Juan Carlos Gomez’s advisor, the young Akbar Muhammad, and we had a heavyweight history challenge. We started with John L. Sullivan and took turns naming the next champion in the lineage along with a number of facts about each fighter. I got stuck when the titles split in three directions in the 1980’s. I knew Greg Page had beaten Gerrie Coetzee in a poorly officiated bout, but couldn’t remember who he had lost the WBA title to when John David Jackson, who was just hanging out, waiting to go to the airport with Akbar commented, “I’ll give you a hint, he was slick and he was from Cincinnati.” I immediately responded, “Tony Tubbs, he probably should have got that decision against Riddick Bowe!”
Anyway it's good to know that there’s at least one former fighter who knows his boxing history. I recently asked Juan Manuel Marquez who he thought the greatest fighters in Mexican history were and he said, “the Ruelas brothers, Genaro Hernandez, and let me see!”
Brent Matteo Alderson, a graduate of UCLA, has been part of the staff at BoxingScene.com since 2004. Alderson's published work has appeared in publications such as Ring Magazine, KO, World Boxing, Boxing 2008, and Latin Boxing Magazine. Alderson has also been featured on the ESPN Classic television program “Who’s Number One?” Please e-mail any comments to BoxingAficionado@aol.com
