Fear Not the Fistic Scene on Halloween
By Cliff Rold
This Sunday, as ghosts and goblins take to the street, some in the guise of children seeking candy, others as ‘sexy nurses’ seeking shooters, an intriguing fight with serious implications in the Middleweight division will be taking place in the land down under.
In the same week that Australia’s Herald Sun reports a small group of fun loving folk are protesting to make Halloween an official holiday, Daniel Geale (23-1, 14 KO) and former Jr. Middleweight titlist Roman Karmazin (40-3-2, 26 KO) are planning a full day at the office. Let’s think of their clash as winner goes trick or treating.
After all, the man with his hand raised will be symbolically able to ring the doorbell as the IBF’s mandatory challenger for beltholder Sebastian Sylvester (33-3-1, 16 KO). Does the occurrence of Halloween portend anything special, a night more treat than trick, for fight fans?
Despite the attachment of blood and gore to the ambiance of October 31st, at least in the Western world, the chance for significant fistic action on the date has been hit or miss over the years. Sure, there have been club and televised shows, but the big stuff is typically isolated in recent decades.
Given the trend towards almost exclusive use of weekends for big fights, some of that is easily explained. U.S. fans are looking across the sea for a significant fight on this Halloween Sunday. With leap years throwing things off, Halloween Saturday’s just aren’t that common.
There was one recently though. Recent like last year and if 2010 can meet even half the standard of 2009, fans in Australia have a hell of a scrap on their hands. 2009 was headlined with an IBF Bantamweight title scrap between then-IBF titlist Joseph Agbeko and Yohnny Perez. Twelve rounds of fast paced, almost constant action, ended with Perez’s hand, and attention on the 118 lb. class, raised.
2009 was the first Halloween Saturday since 1998 and, well, let’s hope Geale-Karmazin doesn’t live down to that night. Making only his second appearance in the U.S., Featherweight star Naseem Hamed was matched with iron chinned Wayne McCullough for a fight that looked like a winner and wasn’t. The two just didn’t mix for a memorable affair and the night could be pointed to as the point where a Hamed backlash started to really kick into gear.
If 1998 was easy enough to forget, Halloween 1992 remains as fresh in the memory as yesterday for those who saw it live. Meldrick Taylor was a darling of the 1984 U.S. Olympic team, a 17-year old Gold Medalist who rose to prominence in the paid ranks with what might have been the fastest pair of hands in the last twenty years. A last second, controversial loss to Julio Cesar Chavez in 1990 built great sympathy and respect for Taylor. It didn’t do much for his long term fistic health.
Despite winning a Welterweight title, a string of shaky performances culminated in May 1992 with an ill-fated challenge of Jr. Middleweight king Terry Norris. Taylor-Norris was exciting while it lasted, but it lasted only four rounds. Norris won all of them and, returning to Welterweight, Taylor found something just as fearsome waiting.
Taylor wasn’t even the main event that night at the Earls Court Exhibition Hall in London.
He was there as support for another former 1984 Olympian, a fighter who wouldn’t find his Gold until four years later in the Super Heavyweight ranks. Lennox Lewis was the Canadian Olympian who had gone home to Britain, working hard to get the British fight fan to care. A century of losing in the biggest division, on the biggest stages, left the rest of the world suspect generally. Lewis had size, speed, and pop…but he was fighting out of Britain.
That couldn’t be a good thing.
Right?
History unfolded, as history does, to tell us otherwise but, that night, Lewis still had much to prove and across the ring was a man who had taken the best shots of Mike Tyson in two separate fights and lived to tell about it. Razor Ruddock was, in the eyes of some 1992 fight followers, the uncrowned champion while Evander Holyfield struggled with older men like Larry Holmes and George Foreman and Tyson cooled his heels in prison.
On an HBO telecast opened by the old “Cryptkeeper” host of the “Tales From the Crypt” anthology, Taylor would find his Waterloo as a champion, the tall and talented punching of Crisanto Espana brining his all too brief prime to a close in eight rounds. Taylor would fight for titles again, but no one would realistically ever hope for a glimpse of the talent he’d been again.
Lewis? Lewis proved that night to live up to an axiom HBO personality Larry Merchant has never kept far from lip or pen, proved that one should never overrate a fighter off a loss. Ruddock, despite his bravery, lost badly both times to Tyson. He lost worse to Lewis, dropped as if shot late in the first round and finished only seconds into round two.
Lewis’s career would have more ups than downs in the Hall of Fame decade ahead of him, but it all really got started on Halloween 1992.
Whether Geale and Karmazin combine to make a memorable fight or not this Sunday, they’ll share in a date that comes along once a year for everyone but a little less than that for serious fights.
Weekly Ledger
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Cliff’s Notes… Ray Austin-Odlanier Solis being a Heavyweight title fight eliminator is a sign of the apocalypse right? Solis might be a worthy challenger but Austin is hardly a gauge…Speaking of Heavyweights, Brock Lesnar got more interesting in defeat last weekend. UFC’s new terror lasted less than ten fights before getting trounced…A BoxingScene headline reads “Roy Jones Eyes Evander Holyfield” for a fight next year. It’s funny because both guys probably need to worry more about cataracts than fight contracts right about now…Could there be a funnier result than Audley Harrison upsetting David Haye? It’s doubtful to occur but, seriously, it would be a solid belly laugh.
Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel, the Yahoo Pound for Pound voting panel, and the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com