By Michael Katz
It is the best of times, the worst of times and the Dickens I say. This is more than a tale of two cities. It is an epic of three coasts, all on the 218th anniversary of the French Revolution, Charlie's bloody inspiration.
There are three welterweight bouts on the tube, two from the Atlantic, the other from the Pacific, but if you've got a touch of masochism, you can instead spring for $30 and buy the delusional Roy Jones Jr. from the Gulf Coast.
That's boxing. There is always a rotten apple - and to think, before he hit Montell Griffin while he was down, until I finally accepted that fighting poultry was just as bad as fighting dogs, I used to call Jones “the conscience of boxing” - to put the motley in Motts. But let's not dwell too long on Mr. Jones, although there's a good shot that Anthony Hanshaw will upset the rotten-apple cart and put Roy and us, out of misery.
Yes, it's good to be a boxing fan this Bastille Day and while I'd prefer to be dancing in the streets at the Place Contrascarpe in Paris, I'll happily plant myself in front of the TV, just as I did last weekend (yes, Wladimir was impressive, until you think about the opposition) - hell, just as I do most days I can tear myself away from the Web.
On July 14th,, I'll be concentrating not on Hanshaw's attempt to prevent a Jones-Felilx Trinidad battle of the Juniors, but on what looks like a solid card for $30 less. HBO will be taking on His Royness with wall-to-wall welterweights, including what could be a farewell to Arturo Gatti, but probably won't, as part of the Atlantic City doubleheader. With Floyd Mayweather Jr. considering taking on Ricky Hatton, and with Miguel Cotto and Sugar Shane Mosley hoping an opponent emerges this weekend, it is obvious that the 147-pound division is the class of boxing.
Even its club fights, irrelevant perhaps in the bigger picture, can be fun to watch. Gatti's opponent, Alfonso Gomez, has certain advantages in the nominal main event from the Boardwalk. He is bigger, stronger and younger, and if he were not on Gatti's surf and turf, he might have a chance with the judges. This is a very significant fight. Not pertaining to the welterweight division, but Main Events needs this victory to it can trot out the faded Thunder for another payday, next maybe against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., though Julio Sr. may be more appropriate.
The real main event of the night, why the HBO “A” Team with Jim Lampley will be in California, pits tough Antonio Margarito, the long-reigning WBO title-holder, against undefeated, and, yes, virtually untested, Paul Williams, a 6-foot-1 (or 2, depending on who's holding the tape) left-hander of speed, power and an apparently resilient chin.
In other words, the winner of this fight is boxing. If it's Margarito, the tough but flawed Tijuana Tornado would go directly to a fall pay-per-view show at Madison Square Garden against Miguel Cotto. This is at least a 50-50 chance, though last time I looked Williams was surprisingly a very slight favorite. Margarito has a claque among the Webbed feet, who perhaps give him too much credit for his blowout of the frightened Kermit Cintron a couple of years ago, But Williams, it can be argued, like Cintron - has not shown that he can step up.
If he can, if he can resemble a left-handed welterweight version of Thomas Hearns and land his straight and swift punches on the wide-swinging Margarito, the division will have to make room for another star. If is a big word in boxing. Margarito is nobody's pushover and is finally on the brink of stardom himself. It is a terrific matchup.
We might get a hint of the outcome in the HBO opener at Atlantic City. There, Cintron will defend one of the 147-pound titles against Walter Matthysse in a matchup of once-beaten sluggers of questionable resistances. Matthysse, an Argentine who has fought only twice in this country, once scoring a first-round knockout, has a 26-1 record with 25 knockouts. His lone loss was by tenth-round stoppage to Paul Williams.
Cintron, the Puerto Rican from Reading, Pa., is 27-1 with 25 knockouts. His lone loss was by fifth-round stoppage to Margarito. Thus, if Matthysse can upset the 5-1 favorite here, maybe Williams has already stepped up in class and we just don't know it. On the other hand, if Cintron, like Wladimir Klitschko the product of a makeover by the master Detroit psychologist, Emanuel Steward, does the expected, not only will Williams's resume be reduced, but Margarito's will be raised.
Or would you rather be a fish?
Yes, curiosity not only kills the Katz, it can make him poorer. Yet part of me does want to see Jones-Hanshaw (and where there's Roy, there's usually Smoke - Derrick Gainer is of course on the undercard) from Biloxi, which after Katrina now gets Murad Muhammad.
The curiosity is not so much in the 38-year-old Jones, who has beaten only Prince Badi Ajamu in the last three and a half years - and that a year ago - but Hanshaw. He's 29 with a 21-0-1 record as a pro, the draw coming in January against a 34-year-old Frenchman, Jean-Paul Mendy, who while never having beaten anyone of distinction, at least had the good taste of being undefeated.
Hanshaw, though, did have a distinguished amateur career, including some tussles - one, losing in the Olympic Trials - with Jermain Taylor, the current middleweight champion. He once was trained by one of my favorites, Mark Breland, but now lists John Russell of Buster Douglas fame and Floyd Mayweather Sr. as his handlers. Floyd Sr., who says a lot of outrageous things, says Hanshaw will kayo Jones in six. That may not be so outrageous, given Roy's knockout losses to Antonio Tarver and Glenn Johnson.
If he wins, though, Jones will probably get a decent payday against the always comebacking Felix Trinidad Jr.
But let's concentrate on the good, not the bad or the ugly. Jones won't get in the way of the real action, which may now be at 168 pounds where the world is still waiting for Joe Calzaghe and Mikkel Kessler to make it official and where Jermain Taylor is likely to go after he gets through with Kelly Pavlik, or vice versa. Taylor, so far, is proving that Emanuel Steward is still human.
TROPHIES OF A HEAD-HUNTER: Back in my salad days, when I was a copy editor on the New York Times sports desk, they'd hand us sheets of one-paragraph fillers, supplied by the Associated Press, that could be used in early editions to plug holes back in the hot-type era. We'd edit stuff like, “The moon is 280,000 miles from the Earth, according to the Associated Press,” slap a headline on it and smoke another cigarette. My favorite was “A bowling pin is ten inches high,” to which one of my stellar colleagues (Jack Cherwin if you really must know) applied “A Bowling Pin Is 10 Inches High.” It kind of told the \whole story, don't you think? By the way, this was the same Jack Cherwin, who upon a “live” short about a postmen's golf tournament being rained out in New Jersey, came up with the classic headline “Appointed Round Stayed” and remember where you first read this. Anyhow, using “Aux Barricades!” as the titular introduction to this malarkey was my feeble history lesson - that's what the French have been yelling at every civil uprising since 1789, and this is stuff you can't find on any other boxing Web site.
GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS: Dr. Steelhammer showed another surge of improvement under the magic touch of Emanuel Steward, but as calm and confident as Wladimir Klitschko fought last weekend in maintaining his No. 1 status among heavyweight title-holders, the kudos must be tempered by the distinct lack of opposition he received from the shell of Lamon Brewster. The good doctor may think he erased the debacle of 39 months previous when, after dominating the first four rounds, he strangely collapsed and was knocked out in the fifth by the ordinary American.
Brewster, remember, was not a good enough boxer to beat Charles Shufford and his power has to be considered highly over-rated when he couldn't stop Clifford Etienne - in fact, lost to the fragile and troubled ex-con. He was facing Klitschko after more than a year off from his previous loss, to Sergei Liahkovich, and two operations for a detached retina. He called himself “Relentless,” but in switching trainers from Jesse Reid to Buddy McGirt because he apparently wanted to duck a few punches, he hardly lived up to his name, fighting passively and totally ineffectively. McGirt, saying “Hey man, don't be fool, live to fight another day,” stopped it after six one-sided rounds. It may not be wise for the 34-year-old Brewster to spend another day in a ring, unless he wants to referee.
Klitschko, who refuted a story that he fought with a broken left hand after the opening round (even if it was just bruised, he showed no reticence in continually pumping it into Brewster's increasingly swollen face), seems to now understand that his boxing skills are more than enough to dominate this division. Maybe he doesn't have the greatest chin in the world - but who out there is going to be able to hit it when he hides behind that jab and the hooks and straight rights that are set up by old No. 1. In a sense, Wladimir has kind of boxed himself into a corner. It doesn't look as if he has anyone attractive to fight.
He would like a “unification” fight with one of the other so-called champions. However, two of them - southpaws Sultan Ibragimov and Ruslan Chaegev - have an Oct. 13 date to meet each other in Moscow. The fourth, Oleg Maskaev, is down for an Oct. 6 match with Samuel Peter - the clear No. 2 of the division, but someone Wladimir has already beaten - and the winner must then fight the comebacking Vitali Klitschko if Big Brother takes care of Jameel McCline on Sept. 22.
Dandy Dan Rafael, the man who invented boxing only yesterday, offered a list of four names better kept under Bert Sugar's hat: Evander Holyfield, Nikolai Valuev, Sergei Liahkovich and Hasim Rahman. The first and last of these were, respectively, banned in the state of New York and should be (anyone who thinks the Rock is anything more than a grain of sand after watching his pathetic reflexes against Taurus Sykes should become matchmaker for Roy Jones' chickens). The middle two are recent heavyweight champions of whom there is no interest. Holyfield, of course, is the biggest name of the lot, but if he's on Rafael's list, then where are Riddick Bowe, Foul Pole Golota, Tommy Morrison and Joe Mesi?
Instead, I offer some humble advice to the good doctor's brain trust: do what Larry Holmes was so good at - facing young contenders before their time, guys like Tim Witherspoon, David Bey and, yes, even Gerry Cooney, who did not have the real gritty experience to face such a talented champion.
While waiting for a crack at the Ibragimov-Chagaev winner, who probably will have a bunch of silly “mandatories” lined up, Wlad the Impaler of Jabs could have an attractive alternative to the jetsam listed above. He is Alexander Povetkin, the 2004 Olympic champion who just shut out Larry Donald and whose people called out the Klitschko clan. That might get HBO or Showtime to contribute some coin to go to Moscow, where there a ruble or two could be added. And, Mr. Finkel, remember that the Povetkin people were originally going to face Monte Barrett in their big step up in class - the same Barrett who was knocked out in the second round by Tyson lookalike Cliff Couser. Rafael thinks Povetkin might be something. He's probably confusing him with Potemkin, the great Eisenstein silent film with the classic scene of the baby carriage going down the steps and I know you didn't read that on any other Web site.
PENTHOUSE: Nonito Donaire, who came out of nowhere - okay, the Philippines and a California suburb - to French-kiss Vic Darchinyan right (actually, left hook in the knockout of the year) in the nose and knock out the big-talking, wide-swinging erstwhile flyweight champion in Bridgeport, CT. Donaire, in avenging his brother Glenn's loss to the Armenia-born Australian, moved down from superfly. “I was surprised he was so small,” he said. “He made himself so open.”
It was a spectacular Don King show, not so much for the quality, which wasn't bad, but for the string of upsets. It makes one feel good that these results aren't pre-determined. So hoist a tankard to such as Couser and especially to Joachin Alcine, who had been called “a decent amateur at best” by Travis Simms, before coming on to beat the clutching undefeated junior middleweight title-holder by surprisingly large margins on the official cards (Tom Kaczmarek, who may be trying to increase sales of his book on how to judge by infuriating viewers enough for them to sent him copies, had Alcine ahead by an improbable seven points). Simms, who seemed to go from 36 to 46 in about the fourth round, at least said Alcine “won the fight fair and square.”
OUTHOUSE: Vitali Klitschko couldn't drop it. His kid brother showed great improvement in his second performance against Lamon Brewster, but Big Brother had to dredge up those ludicrous accusations after the first meeting when the K-clan claimed they were poisoned by something in the water or Vaseline or Tabasco sauce. Vitali said the rematch “proved that three years ago he lost to Brewster due to an outside influence.” By the way, the victory doesn't “erase” Wladimir's first-fight collapse. That will always be in the back of the mind of opponent, one of whom may actually be able to mount a counter-attack. Then we'll see how much iron there is in Dr. Steelhammer. I suspect enough for this generation, and that includes Samuel Peter. Since Peter knocked down Wlad three times, I think Klitschko has shown more improvement than the powerful Nigerian. Peter is the legit favorite, but he is no sure thing against Maskev in New York.
COMING TO FIGHT: That's the curious title for the Bernard Hopkins-Winky Wright encounter in Vegas on July 21. Winky, on the horn the other day with Dandy Dan and his Web-footed friends, told me personally he did not think the title was an “insult” to the guys who will get paid handsomely for what most expect to be a match more tactical than thrilling. The two aged veterans are among the game's elite, though I suspect the 42-year-olld Hopkins has slipped quite a bit. His “comeback” victory a year ago against Antonio Tarver was not flattered by Tarver's dull imitation of a shot fighter last month against Elvir Muriqi. The longtime middleweight stalwart has been fighting fewer and fewer seconds each round in order to conserve energy. I think Wright, and his “turtle shell” defense as Hopkins calls it, should win this one with a better work ethic. Still, put two elite fighters in the ring at the same time and I think there's always a good chance of seeing something special.
Wright said this was a one-time only appearance as a light-heavy. He got a concession from Hopkins that the weight limit would be 170 pounds. “I'm a middleweight or junior middleweight,” said Ronald.
Hopkins says he's beaten maybe 20 left-handers in his career. “That's cool,” said Wright. I bet 40-50 right-handers.” He said he was no Tarver, either. John David Jackson worked in the ring with Hopkins before that fight, showing Bernard how to fight Tarver.
“Tarver ain't me. He depends on his left hand,” said Wright. He disputed the notion that just because he doesn't knock out guys he can't' punch.
“I can hit,” he said, “otherwise they'd walk through me. I've got a great defense and I'm a smart boxer.”
No wonder Oscar de la Hoya, as promoter of “Coming to Fight” on the phone line, demurred from ever giving Wright a chance.
COZY CORNER: The sad news is that Cozy Stern passed away last Thursday in her San Diego home and the sadder news is that the Boxing Writers Association hasn't already honored her with an award named for her. Hell, most of those flunkies probably don't know who the lady was, but for the 15 or so years she worked for Murray and Bobby Goodman in New York before they closed shop, Cozy Stern ran the Boxing Writers' annual dinner from soup to nuts to programs.
If she had been a member, the pompous prigs who have run that once fun organization into something as stultifying as a Bernard Fernandez question, would have kicked her out. But this isn't about them. This is about a grand lady who was born in Red Bank, NJ (okay, nobody's perfect) 75 years ago, moved to New Rochelle, NY, spent time in places from Alaska to Florida before settling in San Diego about 18 years ago to be near four of her five daughters. Dana Stern, the eldest, lives in Las Vegas, where she works now handling the entertainment at the Golden Nugget, said “Mom wanted four boys, so the other four girls who came after me were her attempt for that.”
At the end, Cozy couldn't go outside without taking a tank of oxygen along. But anywhere she went, she was a breath of fresh air. Even in the cut-throat world of boxing, Cozy lived up to her name. She was warm and comforting and one of the guys. Her last night, she spent sipping wine with members of the family. She died the way she lived - exemplarily.
There were no services, as per Cozy's wishes. “Just have a drink for me,” is what she told the kids, Dana said.
