by David P. Greisman
There is no such thing in boxing as a fight with two winners. The same can be said for the results of games, matches and competitions in nearly every other athletic pursuit. Even a draw is not as meaningful and is far less palatable. There is a reason the adage for a tie compares the feeling it instills as akin to kissing your sister.
While boxing can’t have two literal winners, it is possible for both men to be elevated by a result. More often that not, though, a bout ends with one fighter heading toward better things while the other suffers a setback.
And so we come into this week looking toward two meaningful fights on the series debut of “Premiere Boxing Champions,” the brainchild of powerful boxing adviser Al Haymon that will be airing on multiple networks, beginning with NBC. The main event pits welterweights Robert Guerrero and Keith Thurman against each other, while the co-feature has Adrien Broner going in against John Molina in a junior welterweight fight.
Guerrero’s lone loss since 2006 came against Floyd Mayweather, the best boxer in the sport, bringing his record to 32-2-1 with 18 KOs and 2 no contests. He still needs to top Thurman to show that he belongs among the next tier of welterweights.
He arrived at 147 in 2012, making a big jump up after years as a featherweight, a brief time at 130, a quick run at 135 and a one-fight dalliance slightly below the junior welterweight division’s 140-pound limit. When he and his team members called out Mayweather, people scoffed and wondered why he deserved it. They also questioned whether he even could compete at welterweight.
His campaign began with a decision win over fringe contender Selcuk Aydin. What truly helped his cause, however, was his war with Andre Berto in November 2012, with Guerrero trading shots, taking punishment, and sending out a volume attack that earned him a gritty victory and won him hard-earned respect.
That led to the Mayweather bout in 2013. Mayweather won easily, and Guerrero later sought to extricate himself from Golden Boy Promotions (something that has since happened once Haymon and his fighters stopped working with that company). Guerrero wouldn’t return to the ring for more than 13 months after the Mayweather bout, going to battle once again and outpointing Yoshihiro Kamegai in an entertaining brawl.
It was another enjoyable performance for Guerrero, but it also raised concerns about his limitations, about the blows he was receiving and whether he could withstand them against a better caliber of opponent.
And with a younger generation of welterweights coming up, plus a class of junior welterweight titleholders soon to move up in weight, Guerrero needs to keep from being overtaken and forgotten.
That begins with Saturday’s bout against Thurman, who at 26 is five and a half years younger than Guerrero. Thurman is a career welterweight who has fought several times above the 147-pound limit. He is undefeated at 24-0-1, a rising prospect who has grabbed attention with his willingness to throw down with his foes, and who has kept reporters rapt with his charismatic interviews.
It was barely two-and-a-half years ago that reporters complained that Thurman didn’t even belong on their TVs, that he was a limited fighter who was getting an undercard spot on HBO underneath an Adrien Broner fight because he, like Broner, was represented by Haymon.
He soon blew through former titleholder Carlos Quintana, outpointed another former titleholder in Jan Zaveck, stopped Diego Chaves in an enjoyable tilt, and weathered a storm from Jesus Soto Karass before taking over for a technical knockout victory at the end of 2013.
Last year seemed like a holding pattern. Thurman made easy work of the faded former lightweight Julio Diaz, then out-boxed Leonard Bundu in a fashion that was not only such a dramatic departure from Thurman’s usual style, but was downright dreary to watch.
Thurman likes to claim that he is the most-avoided welterweight out there, even though several of the 147-pounders are also advised by Haymon, whose team decides when the boxers fight, where they fight and against whom. Still, if Thurman is going to be treated as a true contender — and not just someone whose callout of Mayweather long ago was laughed off — then he must impress against Guerrero.
Broner spent 2014 rebuilding from his first official pro loss, an embarrassing humbling at the hands of Marcos Maidana. Before then, Broner had grown into a star as he jumped from division to division, capturing world titles at 130, 135 and 147, all while using his mouth and various antics to garner headlines and raise eyebrows. He had triumphed in shallow divisions at junior lightweight and lightweight, never facing many of the other top fighters, and he had won his belt at welterweight by split decision over the lowest-ranked of all the titleholders, Paulie Malignaggi.
His team wisely moved Broner back down to 140 last year, a division more suited to Broner’s body and one that may allow him to demonstrate more of the speed that had been his hallmark before.
Broner tested the waters with a decision win over Carlos Molina last May and then triumphed over Emanuel Taylor last September, a victory that brought him to 29-1 with 22 KOs and 1 no contest.
Three of the four titles at 140 belong to Haymon fighters: Danny Garcia, the division’s true champion, has a pair of them while Lamont Peterson has the third. Garcia and Peterson will fight each other on April 11.
It’s not certain whether Broner would end up facing Garcia if Garcia wins. Given that Garcia’s been fighting in catch-weight bouts above the 140-pound limit, he very well could be heading up to welterweight in earnest soon, vacating the titles and allowing Broner to contend for one of them. As for Peterson, he and Broner have a long friendship, one that might not wholly preclude a collision but would still be seen as an obstacle for having them face off. Peterson, too, could opt for 147 were he to unify three titles at 140.
First, Broner must get by John Molina. If he doesn’t, then all of this is moot, and he will be seen as someone who hyped himself as a potential heir to Floyd Mayweather’s empire, only to fall far short.
Molina has never tasted the stardom that Broner has. And he is very close to being written off as a boxing archetype: a warrior whose sizable heart can’t completely make up for his limited skills.
He hasn’t been without his moments of glory, given his come-from-behind stoppages of Henry Lundy on ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights” in 2010 and Mickey Bey in 2013.
He’s also come up on the losing end multiple times: a 44-second technical knockout loss to Antonio DeMarco in 2012, a majority decision loss to Andrey Klimov in 2013, and a stoppage loss to Lucas Matthysse last year, followed months later by a decision loss to Humberto Soto that dropped him to 27-5 with 22 KOs.
Matthysse-Molina was a delight to watch, with Molina hurting Matthysse and knocking him down in a pair of rounds. Matthysse was able to recover and batter Molina until the referee ended things in the 11th round.
The Soto loss hurt his career more; Molina did not look very good. A loss to Broner would keep him on the B-side, and deservingly so, until he again triumphed over another prospect or gave another titleholder a more difficult outing than expected. That’s if Molina still has the ability to do so.
We’ll find out this Saturday. Yes, it is indeed possible for both men in a bout to be elevated by a result. More often that not, though, a fight ends with one fighter heading toward better things while the other suffers a setback.
These four fighters will come to a crossroads. Each bout will end with its two combatants headed in separate directions.
The 10 Count
1. As important it is for boxing that Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao excites the casual and the curious, one fight is not the most important thing for the sport.
Rather, it’s important that there is good product that can be provided in the future for those drawn in by this event.
And it’s also incredibly important that “Premiere Boxing Champions” succeeds as the first regularly scheduled program in some time that seeks to reach beyond boxing’s niche audience in the United States.
That’s because PBC’s success would helpfully help build audiences for broadcasts on other networks and by other promoters.
Here’s hoping that the regular group of boxing fans tune in this Saturday, that they invite friends over to join them, that the mainstream marketing efforts add on to that television audience, and that the doubleheader produces good fights and/or virtuoso performances that keep customers tuned in and send them off happy and hungry for more.
2. NBC Sports Network did air a documentary/marketing broadcast last week called “Corner to Corner” in advance of the March 7 card, with one re-airing scheduled for this Wednesday, then two airings apiece on Friday and Saturday.
I wasn’t able to catch the live broadcast last week, and the video was nowhere to be found on the PBC website, which is unfortunate given the limited viewership that NBC Sports Network has been reported as pulling in. It’d be nice for there to be inline video and/or embeddable videos that could be shared on other websites and on social media.
I was able to find an illicitly uploaded version. The show was enjoyable and provided well-fashioned features of all four headliners, beginning with quick introductions as to a little of what they have done in the ring, then moving on to focus on the fighters as people. These were good personality pieces that went beyond the ring and to, say, Robert Guerrero’s property and the chickens and other animals he raises there.
We saw the fighters interact with their trainers, all of whom got plenty of screen time, and we watched the boxers with their families.
I don’t know how many people watched or will watch, but it’s good if even a fraction of the viewers who don’t regularly watch boxing will have now been convinced to tune in this Saturday.
3. Meanwhile, my big takeaway from HBO’s “Road to Kovalev-Pascal” is that I can’t have been the only person watching who was screaming for Sergey Kovalev and his wife to put their newborn baby in a car seat while Kovalev was driving them to his training session.
Instead, Kovalev’s wife held their son in her arms in the back seat, all while sitting next to a car seat base that had no carrier in it. They were driving in the dark and rain on the mountain roads of Big Bear Lake. And as one person tweeted, when they got to the gym the baby carrier was latched into their stroller...
4. Yes, these are the kinds of things I notice. And yes, I’m seeking professional help about this.
Still, that was the most nervous Sergey Kovalev has made me since the evening Kovalev vs. Bernard Hopkins was announced — and Kovalev proceeded to get put down on the canvas in the first round against Blake Caparello.
5. The April 18 fight between Lucas Matthysse and Ruslan Provodnikov will take place at the Turning Stone Casino, located in the Upstate New York town of Verona.
I tend to go overboard on combining boxing and Shakespeare — I am the same writer who once penned a column comparing Don King to King Lear. Nevertheless, there’s a truly fitting title for Matthysse-Provodnikov, given their styles and the bout’s location:
“Two Not-So-Gentle Men of Verona.”
6. Boxers Behaving Badly, part one: Former cruiserweight contender Bash Ali was arrested last month after allegedly threatening to bomb a bank that had refused to give him money to put on a boxing match, according to Nigeria’s Premium Times. Ali is claiming that he was arrested because he was going to reveal that the bank demanded cash as a bribe. He has a court date scheduled for Wednesday, March 4.
Ali has long sought to go into the Guinness Book of World Records by becoming the oldest person to be in a world title fight, though the belts he’d be contending for wouldn’t truly be considered world titles. That might also explain why a fighter who BoxRec lists as just having turned 59 years old is referenced in the Premium Times article, likely erroneously, as being “in his seventies.”
“This ambition is not new,” wrote Ikeddy Isiguzo for Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper back in 2011. “When I first heard about it 15 years ago, there were suspicions that Bash had worked his age to reflect the world record status.”
Ali is listed having turned pro in 1978. He lost in three tries for cruiserweight world titles: dropping decisions to Carlos De Leon in 1984, Bobby Czyz in 1991 and Ralf Rocchigiani in 1996. He last fought in 2004, scoring a technical knockout of longtime professional opponent Tony Booth, who at that point was 44-78-8. The win moved Ali’s listed record to 66-14 with 46 KOs.
7. Boxers Behaving Badly, part two: Xavier “Pee Wee” Cortez — whose brief career largely took place at junior middleweight — is facing two murder charges. One is for allegedly beating and killing an 18-month-old girl back at the beginning of 2011. The other is for allegedly strangling and killing the girl’s mother less than nine months after the child had died, according to the Hawaii Tribune-Herald.
The 39-year-old is scheduled to finally stand trial this May.
Cortez fought from 1995 to 1998, going 3-3 with 2 KOs.
8. Boxers Behaving Badly update: Former junior welterweight/welterweight Eamonn Magee has been sentenced to four months in jail for grabbing a woman by her hair, dragging her to the ground, and kicking and striking her, according to The Irish Times. He was found guilty in January and recently had his sentencing hearing, but he remains out on bail while he appeals the verdict.
The incident happened at an apartment in July. Magee “had left a bar with [the victim] and her boyfriend to go back to a mutual friend's flat,” according to a prior report in The Belfast Telegraph. Magee claimed the woman assaulted him first, but the judge said he didn’t believe the 43-year-old former fighter.
Magee has a history of violence against women. Last year he was sentenced to four months in jail, only to have that sentence suspended, after being convicted of assault for kicking his ex-wife. The judge in that case also dismissed a charge of theft; Magee had been accused of taking some cash and a key to his ex-wife’s house. Another past case saw him sentenced to a year for grabbing a woman by her hair and attempting to throw her down a set of stairs, the Telegraph reported at the time.
Magee, 42, left the sport in 2007 with a record of 27-6 (18 KOs). He lost a decision to Ricky Hatton in 2002.
9. This past weekend’s boxing action brought us a junior welterweight named and nicknamed Cletus “The Hebrew Hammer” Seldin and, moving elsewhere on the religious spectrum, a heavyweight named Christian Hammer.
Dad Greisman noted this to me, showing his brilliance. And then, in case you ever wonder where I get my sense of humor from, he pronounced this weekend “Hammer Time.”
(Seldin stopped Johnny Garcia in five rounds on ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights” while Christian Hammer was stopped after eight rounds with Tyson Fury.)
Independent of and prior to this familial conversation, Alex McClintock of The Queensberry Rules tweeted that junior-welterweight prospect Julian “Hammer Hands” Rodriguez was also to be in action this past weekend. Indeed, Rodriguez needed less than two minutes for his technical knockout of Raul Tovar.
Still, if this were truly to be “Hammer Time,” we’d need to include female middleweight Christina Hammer; Kevin Mitchell, the lightweight whose nicknames include “The Hammer”; and Milorad Zizic, who fights March 13 and who has a nickname of “Hammer Hands.”
And then we’ll invite former pro wrestlers Greg “The Hammer” Valentine and Van Hammer to join all of the above for a showing of Adam Carolla’s boxing movie, “The Hammer.”
We’ll exclude frustrating heavyweight Tor Hamer.
10. It’s fitting that boxing has so many Hammers, given that this is a sport where fighters are bound to get nailed — and screwed…
“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide . Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com
