By Cliff Rold

Some things never change in boxing.  Stars get preferred treatment; knockout artists get first look; and those with boxing ability and awkward physical advantages get avoided, by those who can avoid them, for as long as possible.
 
5’11 Featherweights with 72 inch reaches?  Yeah, they can easily fall in the latter category.

Now 33, Panama’s Celestino Caballero (33-2, 23 KO) should know all about it.  He’s had the chance to win belts, the chance to face some good fighters, but to date the biggest stars at 122 and 126 lbs. have managed to find other opponents.  He never got a crack at Rafael Marquez or Israel Vasquez; couldn’t snare a unification showdown with Juan Manuel Lopez. 

Titles might aid in the increase of net worth, but without the big name opponents, there is no path to the big stage.  Without the big stage, net worth’s are capped.

Caballero is not on the big stage this weekend.  It’s merely a good stage rife with possibility.  Moving up four pounds from Jr. Featherweight, where he unified the WBA and IBF belts, the now presumably full-time Featherweight Caballero is one win away from what could be the biggest stage he’s ever had.

With a win over Daud Yordan (25-0, 19 KO), Caballero could be aimed at sensational Cuban defector Yuriorkis Gamboa (18-0, 15 KO) this summer .  Like this weekend, it would presumably be on HBO.  Unlike this weekend, it would presumably be the main event.

It’s not the same size stage a Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao plays on, but that stage exists only for a rare few.  For everyone else, the stakes at play in Caballero-Yordan are about as high as it gets.

Consider this: despite being rated as highly as the fringes of the pound-for-pound top ten by Ring Magazine, despite fourteen consecutive wins which include the mentioned unification, Caballero’s three biggest wins are as likely to have been unseen as seen by U.S. boxing fans.

Caballero became the first man to defeat Mexico’s Daniel Ponce De Leon in 2005…on HBO Latino’s now defunct Boxeo De Oro show.

His WBA 122 lb. title win, a three round walk through Thailand’s thrilling Somsak Sithchatchawal…no U.S. TV but it’s still out there on YouTube.

He has at least had some Showtime appearances since, the most notable the ShoBox main event which took Steve Molitor’s undefeated mark and IBF belt.  To get to the next level, he needs something like Gamboa; he needs not to stumble with Yordan.

It’s one of the sports more intriguing stories right now because time is probably not on his side.  Recent years have seen fighters like Winky Wright, Bernard Hopkins, and Shane Mosley post impressive wins well into their 30s.  The increased happening of older fighters with younger form doesn’t mean it’s become a norm.

33 isn’t too old in boxing, not even at the lower weight classes.  It’s getting close though.  If Caballero, at the end of 2010, is riding a sixteen or seventeen fight win streak rather than the current fourteen, close will be relegated to relative terms.

The fights alone won’t be enough.  Caballero also has a style problem when it comes to firing up the audience.  Against Molitor and Sithchatchawal, considering his dimensions and the concussive results, Caballero looked almost Tommy Hearn-like.  Anyone can anticipate more of that.

However, those are largely anomalous performances.  De Leon and other U.S. televised contests like Ricardo Castillo and Jorge Lacierva were long, fairly dull affairs.  Caballero boxed well but the aesthetic of a man who towers over his foes and boxes safely can be a turn off.

For more on this topic, visit your local library and see: Klitschko, W. 
 
Failure this weekend, or later in the year against a Gamboa who will arrive with the edge of knowing it is he who is being designed towards stardom, and the style issue will remain what it is now: a rationale for name fighters to add different names to theirs on the marquee.  It will be compounded by the fact that Caballero will have lost when it mattered most, when the next level of achievement was there to be had.

Success?  That’s a different story.  Caballero, at Featherweight, could find the opponent’s that prove him better than just the average titlist, a genuine heir to some of the best Panamanian fistic giants. 

It’s a stretch to say he’d ever, in a figurative sense, fit into the shoes of men like Roberto Duran, Ismael Laguna, or Ernesto Marcel.  It is not a stretch to say that there is enough talent around now, enough accomplishment to be had, that one day mentioning him as a bonus to the fraternity of the nation’s champions would be fair.

In a literal sense, Caballero could probably fit into the shoes of the man whom he most physically resembles.  Panama Al Brown was even more freakish in scale, also 5’11 but with an absurd 76’ inch reach and the ability to squeeze to 118 lbs. in the 1920s and 30s, a division where Brown rates with the best ever did it. 

Brown, as a measurement of success, is probably out of reach for Caballero to equal but he’s also a virtue and model to aspire to in the ring. 

These are the shadows which will hover over Caballero as he heads to the ring this weekend.  A professional since 1998, Caballero can’t start hoping to one day cast a shadow of his own without a win this Saturday. 

The big stage could be one fight away.

Weekly Ledger

But wait, there’s more…
 
Haye, Hopkins Report Cards: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=26639    
Ratings Update: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=26643    
Pound for Pound Changes: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=26696
Picks of the Week: https://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=26664

Cliff’s Notes…

Despite the attention here given to Caballero, Yordan’s chances against him cannot be discounted.  This is his ticket to any big stages as well.  The Indonesian battler isn’t likely to get a ton of chances on U.S. TV and this, his second, is critical.  

The first showed just enough to know Saturday’s undercard support for Andre Berto-Carlos Quintana just might be pick ‘em.  Matched with Robert Guerrero in March 2009, a clash of heads ended the fight in only two rounds of what looked to be building into one hell of a fight.  Something about Yordan might have made Guerrero comfortable letting the cut end the night.

Caballero will get a look at what that might have been.
 
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