by David P. Greisman
The longer a boxer fights on, the longer the odds against him can become.
Time is not an ally. Age slows the body. Experience corrodes it further. A boxer who no longer can perform as he once could will be more likely to lose. If a fighter loses with increasingly regularity — and if those defeats come against less than impressive opposition — then the losses he’s suffered can outweigh his wins.
Steve “USS” Cunningham is 39. He is 4-3-1 as a heavyweight. He is small in a division ruled by far bigger men. He is getting older, further endangering the speed and reflexes he’d need to beat those bigger men. Every defeat for a fighter in Cunningham’s position can be devastating. It can mean he’ll be passed by while others get opportunities first. It can mean he’ll be paid less while working to get back to where he was before.
It’s why he was outspoken and heartbroken after a split decision loss in his rematch with Tomasz Adamek in late 2012, feeling as if he’d been robbed on the scorecards and therefore robbed of the spoils of victory.
“It saddens me, man. It saddens me because, like I said before, I’m not a superstar,” Cunningham said back then, speaking barely an hour after watching Adamek’s arm get raised into the air. “I’m a two-time champ. I’m a former two-time world champ, and yet unlike other former champs, like, let’s say, a Bernard Hopkins. He can lose to a Jermain Taylor, fight for a million some odd dollars, and then go back and fight [Antonio] Tarver for a million after a loss. I can’t do that. I haven’t fought for that much money, accumulated, in my career. So my next pay is going to be low, of course. I need these wins, you know what I mean? I need these wins.”
He at least got another opportunity, against heavyweight prospect Tyson Fury in early 2013. Cunningham scored an early knockdown, but Fury ended things in the seventh round with a technical knockout. Cunningham and his team complained that it was the result of illegal tactics, to no avail. He had to start over. He had to rebound against Manuel Quezada, outpointing an opponent who had lost three straight. He had to come off the canvas twice to win a tough battle with the undefeated but limited Amir Mansour. He had to get up from another knockdown before finishing off the undefeated but unheralded Natu Visinia.
He did all of that to get in position for a fight with Vyacheslav Glazkov that would land the winner an eventual shot at the heavyweight title. He did all of that, only to lose a decision to Glazkov in another fight Cunningham felt he deserved to win.
“When will the fans get tired of all these bad decisions?” Cunningham said in a statement emailed to media members afterward. “Right now, I should be a mandatory challenger to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world but because of these terrible judges, I have to ponder my next move.”
He soon parted with promoter Main Events, which was not interested in renewing his contract. He then signed with Al Haymon, the powerful boxing adviser and de facto promoter who’s been bringing scores of fighters into his stable, featuring many of them on his new “Premier Boxing Champions” series of boxing broadcasts airing on numerous networks.
The belief was that Cunningham was intended to be fodder for Haymon’s more promising heavies. Instead, Cunningham’s first PBC fight was against Antonio Tarver, a 46-year-old out-of-shape and largely inactive former light heavyweight champion and fringe cruiserweight contender. Theirs was perhaps a double elimination bout of sorts. The loser would be seen as lacking a future at heavyweight. The winner could maybe go on to be the B-side to someone with more upside.
Cunningham vs. Tarver was on Aug. 14. The fight ended as a draw. Every defeat for a fighter in Cunningham’s position can be devastating. This wasn’t a loss, but it was nonetheless disappointing, particularly given Tarver’s age and shape. There comes a time when the losses a fighter has suffered can outweigh his wins, when a career that is taking on water gets that one additional hole which brings it past its tipping point.
“USS” Cunningham doesn’t yet feel sunk, though, especially given that he felt he won. He wasn’t quite buoyant, but an otherwise annoyed fighter still saw hope on the horizon.
In an extended conversation with BoxingScene.com last week less than 72 hours after the Tarver fight, Cunningham was at times at odds with himself.
He said he felt good about his performance, but that he had re-watched the bout and noticed things he could’ve done differently.
He railed against the judges’ scoring and what he felt was biased commentary, but said later that it no longer did him any good to cry “robbery” when a decision didn’t go his way.
He said he wanted to gain more weight for his next fight in order to increase his power, then mentioned potentially dropping back down to cruiserweight — and then said he would prefer to remain at heavyweight and that additional pounds on his frame wouldn’t guarantee he’d have additional power.
He said his experience and work with trainer Naazim Richardson means he’s able to do things in the ring at 39 that he couldn’t do when younger. Despite that, he said he has a personal goal of not fighting past the age of 41 or 42.
All of this is natural. When pain is raw, the heart can make the mind move in overdrive, shifting between wanting to change course and stubbornly staying set in one’s ways.
“I thought the scoring was bogus,” Cunningham said. “How can you give a fighter a round who’s not trying to engage, who’s trying to be a counterpuncher, and who throws less than 20 punches per round? How can you give that fighter a round when you have the other opponent engaging, throwing triple the amount of punches, landing a better amount of punches? I think Tarver won, at best, three rounds. I believe that I should’ve won the fight, flat out. I looked at the fight. I saw where it could’ve been looked at as close, but a close victory for ‘USS’ Cunningham.”
CompuBox’s unofficial statistics had Tarver landing 141 shots out of 450 thrown (an average of 12 landed per round for every 30 thrown), including 115 of 241 with his power punches (an average of about 10 landed per round for every 20 thrown).
Cunningham didn’t triple Tarver’s output. He was 154 of 678 in total shots, meaning he landed about one punch more per round than Tarver did and threw 19 more per round. In terms of power punches, Cunningham landed 101 (about one less per round than Tarver) and threw 325 (seven more per round than Tarver).
“He dodged. He’s a journeyman now. That’s what journeyman do,” Cunningham said of Tarver. “They run in the ring. They utilize defense. And they don’t commit to offense. They don’t want to commit and possibly get stopped. They don’t want to do anything to jeopardize their next payday. They don’t want to look that bad. He doesn’t want to go for it. It’s all the attributes of a journeyman: smart, clever and tricky. He’s wise because he’s a veteran. He’s a decorated veteran. But at this time. he’s there just to get a check and to bamboozle the judges with a couple punches here and there.”
Tarver of course would say otherwise — and he did, taking to Facebook with a brief video less than 24 hours after the Cunningham fight, emphasizing how his defense worked and set up the hard counter shots he landed.
“This the day after the fight, man. I don’t have a mark on me,” Tarver said. “And that’s the bottom line. I took the guy to school. I showed him what boxing was all about. I hit all the power punches. I hurt him two or three times. He didn’t touch me with nothing. He moving his hands, hitting nothing. Have you ever seen a fighter at that level miss so many times? The guy missed everything he threw. Everything he wanted to land, he didn’t land. I dictated the pace and I won all of the championship rounds. 9, 10, 11, 12. That’s how you close as a champion.”
Cunningham admitted he could’ve worked more at times in the fight, that there were moments he could’ve chosen not to back off and instead taken more of Tarver’s counters in the process.
“But from what I did or what was done, there’s no way I should’ve lost that fight or that it should’ve been a draw,” Cunningham said. “With that being said, I wouldn’t say as much that it was a robbery, but I feel like I should’ve won. I’m sick of crying, I’m sick of screaming robbery. I am totally over that. It happens so much. I’m very tired of it, and it’s not preparing me for a fight at all. It’s actually making me madder and madder and madder to work harder and harder and harder. But I am sick of it.”
He doesn’t expect a rematch with Tarver. He wonders, perhaps facetiously, whether there are secret meetings about “screwing” Cunningham and keeping smaller heavyweights like him from advancing in the division.
Perhaps more weight will get him more success — or at least more credit, he said.
“I want to do something different. I am going to turn it on more and work on getting my weight up more in-between these fights. Hopefully next camp I’ll be a solid 210, 212. I’ve thought about going back down to cruiserweight. I’ve got to talk to my team. I want to stay heavyweight. This is where I’m at. I’m not going to concede to what these judges or anyone is doing. I want to press forward.
“That [extra weight] will possibly give me a little more girth, a little more weight, a little extra snap on my power. I was 210 when I knocked Fury down, so I think I’m going to try to go for that and stay there. We’ll see. Maybe that’s the little edge that I need. I caught Tarver with a few good flush right hands. Only he could tell you how bad they hurt. I was 203 or 204 for this fight. I feel [like if] I added a little more muscle, he would’ve been on the ground.”
Later, though, came this: “Really, weight doesn’t necessarily mean more power in the punches, but it’s just getting belief from other people, like, ‘Wow, he’s a heavyweight now.’ ”
Cunningham said he’d moved up to heavyweight for bigger challenges, and refused to move back down because he felt he’d already been the best at cruiserweight. He said American cruiserweights are now able to earn more money than before now that Haymon has featured the 200-pound division, which Cunningham thinks he could easily make.
His narrative over recent years has also included the story of his daughter Kennedy, who was born with heart defects, underwent numerous medical procedures and finally had a heart transplant last year at 8 years old. But the reason he’s continued fighting, never mind fighting at heavyweight, hasn’t been for money for Kennedy’s bills, Cunningham said. Those are largely covered by the state.
And besides, he said, “This is the first heavyweight fight where I got paid good money [he received $250,000 for the Tarver bout]. I never made over $100,000 fighting as a heavyweight for any of those heavyweight fights I had before this. They tell guys ‘Steve Cunningham just wants to stay at heavyweight for the check. I fought Amir Mansour for $50,000.’ ”
That’s not the only difference with Haymon, he said.
“We’re so used to being in the position where if you lose the fight or if it’s anything else but a win, then your money goes down, everything goes down and you start from the bottom. That’s how it’s been with us with all the other people that we’ve dealt with in boxing,” Cunningham said.
“We were very distraught about the draw. I was distraught about the draw just because I don’t want to do anything but win, period. Al called my wife and said, ‘Listen, this isn’t a step backwards. At worst, it’s a step to the side. We’re going to keep pressing forward. The fans still want to see Steve. Steve’s still an exciting fighter. We’re going to move forward. We’re going to get you another big fight.’ ”
He can’t have that sinking feeling when there’s likely a return fight in November or December, when he’s being told that there’s likely no worse than a sideways step — another good payday and another opportunity to prove himself.
But these are all just words, the answers of a man who passionately believes he’s better than the judges have credited him with being, who thinks he can still compete at a high level against opponents who can be much heavier or much younger or who may sometimes be both.
Those words are opinion, a manner of motivating himself to continue on despite the disappointment. Numbers are otherwise grounded in reality. Steve Cunningham needs the numbers to be in his favor at the end of a fight. He needs to add more victories to his record.
It is his perception that keeps him from feeling sunk, but it must be his performance that keeps him afloat.
The 10 Count will return soon.
“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