“Fighting Words” – 2006: The Year That Boxing Needs

By David P. Greisman

Another year is winding down, and as the retail season prepares for the perennial frenzy of holiday shopping, the sweet science slows to a near-crawl, with only a sprinkling of noteworthy matches scheduled before the ball drops.

The year started magnificently, with such a gathering of great fights that it appeared our collective cup would runneth over, but the remaining months proved that any celebration was premature. The champagne bubbles fizzled, and as usual, we wound up with a sour taste in our mouths.

Mixed metaphors aside – and they are plentiful in this week’s prose – 2005 will soon be retiring as a bitter old man, and a certain pessimistic columnist would assume that the same fate should beleaguer baby 2006.

With Vitali Klitschko’s retirement and Hasim Rahman’s subsequent inheritance of the Ukrainian’s title belt, all appearances are that promoter Don King has control of the heavyweight division. The hopeful, and perhaps the blind, figure that King will schedule a unification tournament so as to clear up the confusion, crowning an undisputed champion and ceasing the usual trash talking and mis-mandatories.

High hopes, yes, but to paraphrase a public figure without instigating unnecessary political commentary, 2005 was the year that boxing had. 2006 will be the year that boxing needs.

Boxing desperately needs for this malady to be cured, for the doldrums to be overcome by powerful, sustained periods of progress and satisfaction. Therefore, the proper prescription is to reward fans and observers – some of whom have shown astounding patience – with the fights they desire.

The doctor’s orders, of course, include the aforementioned heavyweight tournament, but the remainder of the laundry list contains a wealth of potential occurrences that would prove essential, highly fulfilling and wholly therapeutic.

Not surprisingly, the essence of fans’ demands is unification in a majority of the weight classes, meetings of beltholders that have been abstained from or prevented due to politics, laziness and poor risk-reward ratios. The late Notorious B.I.G. rapped about “Mo Money Mo Problems,” of bruising too much, losing too much. Unfortunately, a majority of name fighters seem to prefer neither bruising nor losing, opting for more money with no problems.

The only current unified champions are Jean-Marc Mormeck, Jermain Taylor, Zab Judah, Diego Corrales and Marco Antonio Barrera, and the holdings of these five still do not account for the whole of their respective divisions.

Mormeck added the WBC cruiserweight title to his WBA when he outpointed Wayne Braithwaite in April, and although he’s been inactive since, his next scheduled bout will be in January, against IBF beltholder O’Neil Bell.

This summer, Taylor seemingly took the entire middleweight division away from Bernard Hopkins with a controversial decision, collecting the belts of all four sanctioning bodies and Ring Magazine. The prizes, though, are accompanied with costly fees, and Taylor promptly dropped the IBF trinket.

Judah owns three-quarters of the welterweights, but like everyone else out there seems less than enthusiastic about the prospect of being owned by Antonio Margarito.

Corrales earned his belts as an extra bonus for facing and beating the best lightweights, an attitude that ensures that, should his rubber match with Jose Luis Castillo be delayed, the other titlists will receive phone calls, and in turn, the audiences would receive televised treats.

Barrera has rarely cared for trinkets, and after connecting his WBC title with Robbie Peden’s IBF junior lightweight belt, he has scheduled a promising lightweight battle with Jesus Chavez.

Aside from January’s Mormeck-Bell, other bouts are slated to settle the scores: November’s meeting between junior welterweights Ricky Hatton and Carlos Maussa, and December’s rubber match pitting Oscar Larios against fellow junior featherweight Israel Vazquez.

More is needed, though.  Judah and Margarito must meet, and both pugilists could use the payday. Tournaments at light heavyweight and junior middleweight would build monarchs out of mediocrity. The delayed bout between 168-lb. titlists Joe Calzaghe and Jeff Lacy would settle many arguments in bars and on the internet, as would another outing between a Brit and an American with Hatton and Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Never mind that Juan Manuel Marquez was the consensus featherweight top dog before the WBA and IBF got greedy.

And the Marquez ordeal, in turn, raises the valid argument that with the dubious actions of the sanctioning bodies, such fervor over unification enables organizations that generally tend to disable our sanity.

Yet just like we blush in embarrassment whenever a friend casually asks whom the heavyweight champion is, unifying titles can clarify, replacing the separation that signifies much of what is wrong with the sport.

High hopes, yes, but to once more paraphrase a public figure without instigating unnecessary political commentary, it is preferable to be a uniter, and not a divider.

The 10 Count

1.  Yes, I am cognizant of a major problem with the idea of unification, in that the sanctioning bodies often require mandatory defenses that are less than palatable to everyone involved except the challengers. When Antonio Tarver and Glencoffe Johnson gave up their light heavyweight belts in order to face each other, as opposed to respective mandatories Paul Briggs and Rico Hoye, they were correctly opting for the best available opponents, the most worthy event. The rationale behind, say, the WBC refusing to rank the WBA’s champion, is yet to be explained to me, but it is definite that the impossible ideal of sanctioning bodies working together is a necessary solution.

2.  Boxing also needs for 2006 to provide a successful second season of The Contender, for the contestants to be valid prospects and for the show to be produced well enough to draw new viewers to our niche sport. The show’s move from NBC to ESPN may mean less casual watchers, with devoted boxing fans comprising the majority of the audience, but good television creates good word of mouth, one more thing that the sweet science desperately requires.

3.  With Showtime having let go of Jay Larkin, the network must continue the policy of selling fights and not fighters that the boxing chief recently instituted, an idea that resulted in some of the year’s best broadcasts. Under Larkin’s guidance, Showtime took two less followed weight classes – the cruiserweights and super middleweights – and made interesting and entertaining matches. It says plenty that Showtime has been spotlighting Jean-Marc Mormeck and Jeff Lacy, while HBO gives valuable airtime to showcasing Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Andre Ward.

4.  Speaking of Ward, HBO fanned big time by reportedly turning down Bob Arum’s offer for placing, on their Nov. 19 Floyd Mayweather-Sharmba Mitchell show, one of the two canceled title fights from the Vitali Klitschko-Hasim Rahman pay-per-view. Instead of bouts with champions Antonio Margarito facing Manuel Gomez, or Martin Castillo defending against Alexander Munoz, viewers will see Andre Ward against another ham-and-egger. While it is understandable that HBO is seeking to market the only American gold medalist from the 2004 Olympic boxing team, it is perplexing as to why Margarito-Gomez and Castillo-Munoz were good enough for PPV but not for “regular” airtime.

5.  One week, Mike Tyson is singing “Monster Mash” on Jimmy Kimmel. The next, he is facing legal trouble in South America. Sure looks like that missionary work is going superbly.

6.  After reading a Russian news agency’s interview with Vitali Klitschko, I hope that his comment that Lennox Lewis “is the only competitor who matters to me” was the product of poor translation. While it seems plain and clear that Klitschko’s injuries provided a sensible reason for retirement, his obsession with Lewis as all that matters makes it more difficult to defend insinuations that the Ukrainian was ducking Hasim Rahman.

7.  Rahman’s new number-one mandatory? Oleg Maskaev. Nice to see that for the former, beating Monte Barrett gets you the WBC title, while for the latter, outpointing Sinan Samil Sam is just cause for a title shot. But it’s okay, because Danny Williams only had to stop an injured, aged Mike Tyson in order to face Vitali Klitschko, and Kevin McBride only needed to stay standing (and for Tyson to remain seated) to be rumored once as a possible foe for John Ruiz.

8.  Laila Ali is the new Mike Piazza.

9.  As annoyed as I have been with the trend of boxers issuing press releases to talk trash, I was encouraged by the words of Calvin Brock and Ray Austin.  On another boxing site, Austin called out Brock in respectful terms, to which Brock responded, accepting the challenge in complimentary fashion. It is rare that talk proves to be anything but cheap, and Brock still has David Bostice and possibly David Tua on the horizon, but a willingness to stay active and face other hungry competitors is a valuable trait. I’ve spoken highly of Brock in the past, and am curious to see where his future is headed.

10.  While Fighting Words is primarily a boxing column, this scribe has made repeated references to professional wrestling in the past. As such, I would like to send my thoughts and prayers to the family of Eddie Guerrero, a WWE performer who was found dead in his hotel room this weekend. No matter the differences between what goes on in wrestling and boxing rings, athletes in both areas work hard to achieve high goals, and to entertain fans in the process. Rest in peace, Eddie.