By Cliff Rold
Photo © Chris Cozzone/FightWireImages
I almost titled this piece “short end of the stick because they’re short” but decided that wouldn’t be fair. It would point out things that are no fault of two fighters who this weekend may combine for a classic. Looking around the last few weeks at the fights getting all the bulk of the attention, one might have assumed boxing was on hiatus until September. I assure you it is not.
Not if you have access to Dish Network anyways.
No, rather than a hiatus boxing provides this Saturday night one of the best matches it can offer in any weight division: Hugo Cazares versus Ivan Calderon. Yet even those who consider themselves hardcore fans can be forgiven if they didn’t realize it was so soon or even that it was. After all, the fighters in the ring will weigh 216 lbs.
Combined.
That shouldn’t be an issue of course but being honest I know that, for too many fans, it probably is. If that’s the case, those fans are likely to miss one hell of a fight, an example of boxing done right.
If you, and yes I’m talking right to you invisible reader, have ever lamented or heard it said that the best don’t fight the best in boxing anymore, this is your fight. Hell, this is your year. 2007 has produced a steady flow of fights, from 112 to 200 lbs., that have featured prime elite fighters in every weight class against each other…with more of the same on tap from now to Dick Clark’s Rocking’ New Years 2008.
Calderon challenging Cazares for the World junior flyweight championship is a fight in that vein. It’s a fight as good as any that can be made in the sport. Once the gloves are donned and the clang of the opening bell echoes throughout the 13,000 seat Coliseo Ruben Rodriguez in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, it will have a chance to be better.
Allow me introduce the unfamiliar masses to the combatants.
The ostensible star of the show is Calderon (28-0, 6 KO), a 5’0 foot tall master of his craft who at age 32 has his greatest challenge in front of him. Hailing from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, Ring Magazine’s #1 contender to the long vacant World title at 105 lbs. was a teammate of burgeoning 147 lb. superstar Miguel Cotto in the 2000 Olympics and has had every bit the exceptional professional career. The lack of equal accolade is a direct corollary to the forty pounds between them.
To his credit, Calderon ascended to the upper tier of his class much faster than Cotto rose in his. He captured the WBO belt at strawweight (105 lbs.) in only his 16th professional bout and has retained that position through four years and 12 title defenses. With only six stoppage wins on his ledger, Calderon did it fighting bullets with bee bees. Like a fistic Ralphie Parker, he’s never shot his eye out.
Instead, Calderon has used his feet, his skill, his speed and his heart to outfight some very good fighters you may not have heard of. You should have, would have in fact, but for the scales. Former alphabelt titlists Daniel Reyes, Alex Sanchez, Roberto Leyva, Issac Bustos were all quality wins, legitimate world class fare that could on any given day have knocked off a lesser man. Calderon didn’t fit that description. To the contrary, he might be the best fighter in his class since the 90s heyday of hall-of-famer Ricardo Lopez.
The much taller, 5’6, Cazares (25-3, 19 KO) has traveled a path of obscurity outside the ring even as he has colored himself with glory inside of it. The 29 year old from Sinaloa, Mexico has been a pro since 1997 and hasn’t lost since 1999. Over the last near seven years, Cazares has been Puerto Rican kryptonite, having defeated their native sons Alex Sanchez and Nelson Dieppa on their home turf. He mastered the skilled Dieppa twice, the second time in September 2006 by tenth round stoppage for the Ring Magazine World title, and the WBO belt, at 108 lbs.
Ring’s was and is a fair measure of recognition in this case. The only other man with a claim to the top of the class, Mexico’s Ulises Solis (25-1, 19 KO, Ring #1 contender, IBF titlist), suffered his lone loss to Dieppa in 2004 for the very same alphabelt that Cazares holds today. This is in sharp contrast to the last time Ring recognized a champion at 108 lbs., when the lineal claim of then-champion Jorge Arce was overlooked for Rosendo Alvarez.
That makes this weekend not only a bout between the two best fighters from these neighboring weight classes, but also a legitimate World title bout. Does this all guarantee a great fight?
That can never be guaranteed. Great fights require chemistry between combatants but rarely resemble the complicated work of a chemist. It’s in the art of the matchmaking, and matchmaking is all about combining fighters of styles that compliment each other, bringing out the best in each other and bringing a crowd to its feet. Given the number of fights that bore, that fail to raise the pulse, thinking the art of matchmaking more complicated than it is can be forgiven.
No fight is truly great until it’s off paper and in the ring, but the strong possibility here is hard to ignore. Calderon and Cazares are a classic style coupling: the pure boxer versus the skilled puncher.
Against those not at his level, Calderon has been the sort of dominant that could bring back memories of Sven Ottke’s prime; against Leyva and in his April 2007 bout with Ronald Barrera, Calderon has shown that he is willing to fight when the heat is highest.
Cazares will bring more heat than anyone Calderon has faced so far. His bout with Dieppa last year was a fine measure of violence, the type of which Calderon has avoided in large part. Dieppa himself a fine boxer, Cazares showed that he can muscle skill.
So you’ve been introduced along with the requisite hyperbole describing what might be. Now the big question: if you have Dish Network, or know someone who does, is this show worth $39.95? That’s the price tag you’re up against after all.
This might be, probably is, the best fight at 108 lbs. going in since Michael Carbajal-Chiquita Gonzalez in 1993. That alone should be enough to merit a yes, but neither the champion Cazares nor the challenger Calderon carries the esteem of Carbajal. Part of laying down hard-earned cash to see a hard-boiled scrap is familiarity with the fighters, an emotional investment in the story that unfolds in its final act in blood.
However, real fight fans that have access to this fight are lucky whether they have that investment or not. They have the choice available to them. If you’re one of the lucky ones, I’m here to ask, outright, that you tune in. I have no fiduciary interest in the bout but I do have an interest in great boxing. The more profitable it is, in any weight class, for the best to fight the best, the more the competitive momentum of the sport can continue to grow.
More than that, these are two guys who are at the peak of their game and their divisions, laying it on the line against each other in a weight class where the money is so sparse that this literally risks their livelihood. Guys like Oscar De La Hoya, Roy Jones, and Felix Trinidad can take risks, lose multiple times in a row, and still have another serious payday. When little guys risk and lose, the already small paydays get even smaller, sometimes shortening careers before their time. That’s the type of risk anyone who loves boxing should want to see regardless of the size of the warriors in the ring.
It’s the type of fight anyone who even in passing thinks about ordering name brand lesser fare like Fernando Vargas-Ricardo Mayorga or Roy Jones-Felix Trinidad should be forced to watch.
Hugo Cazares-Ivan Calderon for the World junior flyweight championship is a great fight. Where will you be Saturday night?
Weight: There is one buyer beware caveat. At a pre-fight screening weigh-in last week, Cazares weighed 121 lbs., some 13 pounds over with only six days to get down to weight. It might be cause for concern or it might not. When champion of the class, Jorge Arce used to blow up after weigh-ins sometimes all the way past 120 lbs., meaning he was probably close to that not long before the fight. Pay close attention to the weigh-in news Friday. A drained Cazares could wind up chasing Calderon rather than fighting him and that’s not so much fun. There is also the danger that we are looking at a dangerous, Arturo Gatti-Joey Gamache-like situation. I don’t expect that because of the class of fighter Calderon is, but the situation can’t be ignored.
For more on this, you can read Tuesday’s excellent offering from BoxingScene’s own Jake Donovan at: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=10002
Finish reading me first though.
Solis: If these boys were a little bigger, I’d have little doubt that the winner would be on a collision course with Ulises Solis so I must say again: Please, pretty please, with Monica Belluci on top, get the winner of this bout into the ring with Solis on one of the big pay-per-view undercards towards the end of the year. Whether it’s Calderon-Solis (Puerto Rico v. Mexico Chapter whatever) or Cazares-Solis (an all Mexican showdown and those have a funny way of working out), it’s a can’t miss and probably affordable enhancement to any show. It could even be a show stealer.
More Little Guys: This is a regular geek-gasm for me as a follower of the boxing’s mini-mites as it was announced that newly crowned lineal World flyweight (112 lbs) champion Daisuke Naito (31-2-2, 20 KO) will make his first defense against 18-year old Daiki Kameda (10-0, 7 KO) in an all Japanese showdown at the Ariake Coliseum in Tokyo on October 11. Given their records and gaps in ring time garnered, this appears to be a mis-match on paper but looks can be…well, you know the drill.
Kameda is the younger brother of one of the game’s brightest international stars, the charismatic Koki Kameda (16-0, 11 KO). Koki famously pulled in 50 and then 30 million viewers on Japanese television for his two bouts last year with Juan Landaeta last year. I would expect a similar, if slightly smaller audience for this world title affair. Daiki has talent and pop, enough o make this fight interesting and entertaining even if the conventional wisdom, that this is too much too soon, is probably right. A win though, and the world of boxing has another fresh new face to follow. And does this mean Koki is aiming for WBA titlist Takefumi Sakata (31-4-1, 15 KO)?
As to Naito, Ring currently only rates him second, a mistake in my opinion. I offered the following e-mail to Ring a couple of weeks ago as a member of their ratings advisory panel after they moved Nonito Donaire to the top spot of their ratings:
I know I'm chiming in late, but I think you good fellows should rethink Donaire at 1. Naito beat a lineal champion tracing back on a straight, unbroken line to Miguel Canto. While I realize that you don't do retro, the 1 spot in the ratings should never make it harder to line up proper lineage with your belt. That is what this (Ring’s title policy) is about right? Restoring lineage to titles?
Abraham: The best middleweight the U.S. market isn’t seeing won again last weekend, and by the sound of things it was another thriller. The all-Armenian showdown last Saturday in Germany between Arthur Abraham (24-0, 19 KO, #2, IBF title) and Khoren Gevor (27-3, 15 KO), which Abraham won by 11th round stoppage, may only have been a prelude to better things.
Abraham and his team are now talking about traveling to the land of opportunity and home to the rest of the top of his division. With wins over tough contenders like Howard Eastman, Kingsley Ikeke, Kofi Jantuah and Edison Miranda, Abraham is clearly ready to find out how good he is. The question will be who he can find out against.
It all comes down to who wins the September 29 showdown between World middleweight champ Jermain Taylor (27-0-1, 17 KO) of Arkansas and Ohio’s Kelly Pavlik (31-0, 28 KO). If Taylor wins he’s already said, and it should be believed, that he’s out of the division. That would leave Abraham and Winky Wright as the top two contenders for the true middleweight crown in a fight that might, might not be, a quality viewing experience. At the least, it would make the vacancy on the throne short.
The best case scenario, for Abraham and all of our eyes, would be a Pavlik win and a Team Pavlik willingness to face an equally willing Abraham. That would be one hell of a fight and a sure fire way to keep the middleweights hot.
Cliff’s Notes…
Even with a great fight Saturday, it’s still a reasonably slow week so no real notes save one: 72 days until boxing’s best offering of the year a.k.a. Joe Calzaghe-Mikkel Kessler for the World Super Middleweight crown. Tell a friend. Tell 10 friends...
…Oh, wait, there is one note. Partially on the televised advice of one Larry Merchant, I checked out the movie “La Vie En Rose,” largely a biography of French singer Edith Piaf and partly the story of her affair with former World middleweight champ Marcel Cerdan. It’s the best bio-movie I’ve ever seen not named Raging Bull and that’s ironic since Jake LaMotta beat Cerdan for his crown. I have never seen an audience as moved by a single film, and single acting performance, as the crowd last Friday night. You owe it to yourself to see this movie.
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
