By Mitch Abramson
He admits that he doesn’t punch like Tyson, look like Tyson or act like Tyson.
He might not scare people, he acknowledges.
Dmitriy Salita is trying to explain why his career is stuck in a holding pattern, why he has yet to fight on HBO’s “Boxing After Dark” and why some observers don’t regard him as a serious contender.
He is trying to find the right words, remarks that won’t be offensive to anyone who might read this story. He laughs to himself and swallows hard on his words because sometimes the truth is both funny and vexing.
“Maybe I don’t project what people associate with a world class fighter,” Salita said. “I don’t know; it’s hard to explain. Maybe I don’t look like a fighter to them. I know I’m not the most intimidating person in the world. I’m not like Mike Tyson, you know? Maybe I’m different than what people expect.”
That is certainly true.
Salita is an anomaly in boxing: he is an Orthodox Jew who “keeps kosher, attends shul almost daily, refuses to fight on the Sabbath, wears a fringed garment, or tzitzit, and covers his head when he’s not beating people senseless,” New York Magazine wrote in a 2006 feature of him.
He has lots of fans who adore him, and they have every right to. He is unfailingly polite and thoughtful and courteous to his fans. When he fights, waves of noise ascend and crash from the spectators who cheer his every swing. But he also has a growing number of detractors who are unimpressed with his fights and feel that he might possibly be regressing as a fighter.
They point to his amateur career when he had a swagger that was borne from constantly being tested against more experienced fighters. Now, he admits to having trouble getting up for opponents that don’t scare him and don’t offer him much monetary incentive.
The critics point to his uneven performance against Ramon Montano in 2006 when he was floored twice in the first round and hauled himself up, battling back to what some considered a dubious eight-round draw.
What they don’t know, he says, is that he had to lose 17 pounds two weeks leading up to the fight and that he came into that match with the flu.
“Everyone kept telling me that it was going to be an easy fight,” he says. “I watched his pro debut and the way he fought was like day and night from that fight.”
He is currently 29-0 with 16 knockouts, a record that most fighters would kill to have, and still he feels misunderstood, underappreciated.
Where are the big fights? Where’s the demand to see him? Has the novelty worn off?
He has taken to calling out fighters, something he wouldn't normally do. Ricky Hatton, he says, is ripe for the taking.
“I see a lot of mistakes,” he says. “His defense is not good. He can be hit clean, and he’s not too active in the ring. I’ve been around world class fighters all my life and I feel I know my strengths and weaknesses and I know I have the ability to take Ricky Hatton. I want to fight him.”
The promoter Lou DiBella would like to match his fighter, Paul Malignaggi against Salita next year at KeySpan Park in Brooklyn. Salita is open to the idea, but he would like to win a world title first and then fight his buddy from Gleason’s Gym.
“Paulie and I are friends but we also understand that this is a business,” he says. “But first let me win a title.”
Whereas earlier in his career his Judaism and uniqueness and whiteness were a distinct advantage, now it seems that the uniqueness has worn off and that’s ok becau se now Salita wants to be known as a fighter.
He once met George and Laura Bush at the white house for Hanukah and has been featured in a documentary and countless print and magazine articles. All the publicity and wins in the ring were meant to build Salita up as a fighter. And it appeared to have worked when Salita was granted a title shot on Nov. 8 against Ukraine's Andreas Kotelnik, the W.B.A. champ at 140 pounds. Those plans were scuttled, however, when Kotelnik withdrew because of a rib injury he suffered in a title defense against Japan's Norio Kimura on Sept. 13.
Instead of fighting Kotelnik on the undercard of Roy Jones and Joe Calzaghe at Madison Square Garden, Salita, who had just signed a contract with Square Ring Promotions, fought a plucky veteran fighter named Derrick Campos, who proceeded to give Salita a run for his money. Salita, who was coming back from a long layoff, landed some heavy shots in the early going but realized by around the fourth round that he would have to box and win a decision. He was smart, but to some fans he was also overly cautious.
“He was tough,” Salita said. “I knocked his mouthpiece out of his mouth and he came right back at me . I knocked it out again, and he came right back. I expected a tough fight, and that’s what I got. Some people thought I got hit a lot in that fight but I didn't.”
He takes a deep breath and exhales.
He is still undefeated, he says, and the critics can’t take that away from him.
Mitch Abramson covers boxing for the New York Daily News, and BoxingScene.com.