By David P. Greisman
Photo © Bryan Crowe/FightWireImages.com
The ingredients were all there: Ricardo Mayorga and Fernando Vargas didn’t like each other, not after the trash talk and the press conference brawl, not with the Plexiglas partitions and the knockout promises. It was all the usual pomp and circumstance taken to the extreme.
That they were fighting for pride was largely because there was little else to fight for. Win or lose, this was to be Vargas’s final time in the ring. He had battled with the scales, battled with injuries and battled with many of the best fighters of his generation. He had a wife and children to spend time with, investments to look after. Mayorga was the fall guy looking to make one last climb into contention. The former welterweight champion had since become an upper-tier designated opponent, boxing’s equivalent of the Washington Generals for when a Felix Trinidad or an Oscar De La Hoya needed to look good. Mayorga wanted a return to legitimacy. Vargas wanted to retire with a blaze of glory.
Neither necessarily got what they desired. No one got knocked out, though Vargas was sent to the canvas twice. Both men fought with passion, but the bout went the distance. And while Mayorga took a majority decision, his victory was the product of plump and circumstance.
In the time since his July 2006 loss to Shane Mosley, Vargas had reportedly ballooned to 264 pounds; for Mayorga, he tipped the scales at 164 pounds, which alone was an impressive feat. But years of making weight had taken so much out of him. Losing 100 pounds – and then adding on enough that by fight night he carried more paunch than punch – wasn’t going to help.
Vargas appeared slow and off balance. Mayorga scored an early knockdown in the opening moments of the first round, capitalizing on Vargas’s heavy legs. Mayorga had faster hands and was able to throw more combinations, while Vargas took several rounds to switch from old form to, well, old form.
And yet they entertained.
Vargas had entered the ring confident that his superior skill, smarts and size would prove too much for the cruder, wilder, smaller Mayorga. But Mayorga took the early lead, and Vargas would have to fight from behind. In a sport that often looks at its bouts as episodic programming leading up to the next match, Mayorga and Vargas produced enough drama for a satisfactory stand-alone story.
Vargas was the faded hero forced to rely on instinct to make up for diminished ability. Mayorga, of course, was the villain, a bully seeking to assert control, selfishly unwilling to cede the spotlight to the popular protagonist. Vargas would dig deep and rally back, but the momentum would switch again in the 11th, when Mayorga again sent his foe crashing down. There would be no overly saccharine happy ending. David Mendoza’s 113-113 scorecard would be the closest Vargas came to winning; Max DeLuca’s tally read 115-111, while Glenn Trowbridge saw things 114-112, both in favor of Mayorga.
Mayorga’s victory over Vargas showed him to be the fresher of the two, but it failed to be the launching point that he desired. Vargas at 164 pounds and the tail end of his career was unfortunately similar to the sort of upper-tier designated opponent Mayorga had played in the past. Mayorga wants to crash the welterweight revival, cashing in on Miguel Cotto and Floyd Mayweather. Mayorga needed a diuretic just to make 154 against De La Hoya.
And yet there’s catharsis.
When humbled in the past, Mayorga would apologize to his opponents for his insults and commend them for their efforts. Though he had defeated Vargas, Mayorga did not gloat. Rather, he raised Vargas’s arm in the air, recognizing the warrior who had once so truly embodied the “El Feroz” nickname.
Vargas had gone rounds before he had gone round. He had captured a junior middleweight title by 21, and then took out Yori Boy Campas, Raul Marquez, Winky Wright and Ike Quartey before taking on Felix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya. He had earned a loyal fan base that would come out to support him in spite of his coming up short in his biggest fights and despite his coming off of two straight losses to Shane Mosley. Forget the plump and circumstance. Forget the pomp and circumstance. Vargas’s bout with Mayorga was no mere ceremony; it was a goodbye for the kind of fighter deserving of one.
The 10 Count
1. On the televised undercard, Kermit Cintron survived an unexpectedly tough challenge from underrated journeyman Jesse Feliciano, suffering an injury that could delay his upcoming unification bout with fellow welterweight beltholder Paul Williams.
Cintron, who scored a 10th-round stoppage over Feliciano, was making a voluntary defense of his International Boxing Federation title against a 13th-ranked contender as a way to keep busy between his July demolition of Walter Matthysse and February’s expected fight with Williams.
Feliciano, despite his 15-5-3 record, wouldn’t go down easy.
As a junior welterweight, Feliciano was fodder for rising prospects. Between 2004 and 2005, he lost via stoppage to Muhammad Abdullaev and Mike Arnaoutis, by decision to Oscar Diaz and by knockout to Demetrius Hopkins. But since stepping up into the welterweight range, Feliciano has outpointed Vince Phillips, fought to a draw with Alfonso Gomez and stunned Delvin Rodriguez.
Against Cintron, Feliciano was willing to take an inhuman amount of punishment for the chance to peck away at the taller, stronger man. And it worked: Feliciano’s pressure broke through and left Cintron in a far more difficult struggle than he had likely anticipated. Cintron finally scored a stoppage when several heavy shots rained down on Feliciano, who then left himself open for more.
Afterward, Cintron complained of pain in his right hand. The injury, no matter the extent, adds a variable to what could have been seen as an important experiment. It’s slightly more difficult now to say that Feliciano provided a blueprint for fellow volume punchers Williams and Antonio Margarito, though the possibility remains.
2. Opening the pay-per-view show was a crossroads bout between former junior middleweight titlists Roman Karmazin and Alejandro Garcia.
Karmazin was making only his second appearance since July 2006, when he lost his IBF belt to Cory Spinks. Garcia’s inactivity dated back further, with his last outing being an entertaining May 2006 title loss to Jose Antonio Rivera. That bout, which saw Garcia drop a decision and get dropped five times, was probably the sign for him to hang up his gloves.
Fortunately, Garcia didn’t take too much punishment at the hands of Karmazin. In the first round, Karmazin scored a knockdown on a left hook to the body. Two stanzas later, Karmazin would respond to a Garcia jab with a display of his hand speed, throwing a left to the body, a right upstairs, another left to the mid-section and another right up top. Garcia went to the canvas, and the referee’s count went to 10.
3. Lineal light heavyweight champion Zsolt Erdei racked up his ninth straight successful title defense Saturday, winning a split decision over unheralded 13th-ranked challenger Tito Mendoza.
Mendoza, a 36-7 fighter out of Panama, somehow qualified as an applicable contender despite a ledger that stands out only because of consecutive decision losses between 2004 and 2005 to super middleweights Syd Vanderpool and Librado Andrade and cruiserweight Luis Pineda, and an eight-round points win a few months ago over former middleweight titlist Keith Holmes.
Erdei hasn’t exactly stood out himself among the claimants to the 175-pound throne. Since winning the lineal championship in January 2004 with a unanimous decision over Julio Cesar Gonzalez, he has faced the “What’s-what of what the?” in Hugo Hernan Garay (twice), Alejandro Lakatos, Mehdi Sahnoune, Paul Murdoch, Thomas Ulrich, Danny Santiago, George Blades and Mendoza.
The lineal championship runs from Dariusz Michalczewski through Gonzalez to Erdei, but most attention follows the line that traveled from Roy Jones Jr. to Antonio Tarver to Glencoffe Johnson back to Tarver and ultimately to Bernard Hopkins, the current “Ring Magazine” champ. Not that Hopkins has done much of late either to affirm his position.
Meanwhile, Chad Dawson remains the World Boxing Council beltholder and the one light heavyweight many would like to see take a shot at the top. And yet his sights seem set, for some reason, on a collision with Tarver.
4. The aforementioned Dariusz Michalczewski has announced his return to boxing, facing off next year against another retiree, Graciano Rocchigiani, in what will be the biggest overseas sideshow pairing since Henry Maske returned from a 10-year sabbatical to gain long-desired revenge over fellow old man Virgil Hill.
Michalczewski-Rocchigiani, which will pit together combatants with a combined age of 84, will take place May 24 at a catch-weight of 185 pounds, according to BoxingScene.com European correspondent Per Ake Persson. The duo has faced off twice before, with Michalczewski winning via disqualification in 1996 and by stoppage four years later.
Neither has been active in quite some time. Michalczewski first stepped away from the ring after his first professional loss, a 2003 split decision that went, along with the lineal light heavyweight championship, to Julio Cesar Gonzalez. Michalczewski came back in February 2005 but retired following a sixth-round stoppage loss to then-light-heavyweight-beltholder Fabrice Tiozzo.
Rocchigiani hasn’t fought since May 2003, when he dropped a decision to Thomas Ulrich. Rocchigiani’s latest battles have been with the legal system: he recently endured a prison stint for a drunk driving conviction from May 2005.
5. On the same card as Erdei-Mendoza, cruiserweight Firat Arslan captured the “regular” World Boxing Association title with a unanimous decision over former light heavyweight champ Virgil Hill.
Boxing should be simple: Take two guys, give them gloves, a ring and numerous three-minute rounds, and let them go at it. Confusion, however, is the norm in the sport.
Arslan was the WBA interim titlist, a distinction necessitated when Hill was on the shelf for 14 months and then returned for a non-title bout against Henry Maske. Hill, though, was the WBA “regular” titlist, a trinket created by the sanctioning body for whenever another titlist had unified his belt. These days, that person is David Haye, whose WBA and WBC belts mean much less than Haye’s status as lineal cruiserweight champion.
6. A clarification: Two weeks ago I noted that middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik got hurt while cleaning and repairing windows in his Youngstown, Ohio, home, suffering cuts on his arms and hands that required 108 stitches to close.
That, apparently, wasn’t wholly true.
Pavlik only needed 14 stitches, which have since been removed, according to a recent press release that creates quite a discrepancy between this information and that provided to reporters by reliable sources. Nevertheless, Pavlik has been cleared to train for his February rematch with Jermain Taylor, which will take place at a catch-weight of 166 pounds.
7. This past September saw injuries and medical issues postpone bouts between Fernando Vargas and Ricardo Mayorga, Juan Manuel Marquez and Rocky Juarez, Vitali Klitschko and Jameel McCline, and Chad Dawson and Adrian Diaconu, with October’s Oleg Maskaev-Samuel Peter clash getting delayed as well. At the time, boxing-starved fans were probably praying that the Sept. 29 meeting between Taylor and Pavlik would go on without a hitch.
Fortunately, it did, but seeing that Pavlik had already suffered one minor injury prior to his rematch with Taylor, one imagines that Pavlik wasn’t the one cutting turkey this Thanksgiving.
8. Boxers Behaving Badly update: Mike Tyson served 24 hours in prison last week, fulfilling the sentence handed down after the former heavyweight champion pleaded guilty to a felony charge of cocaine possession and a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence, according to the Associated Press.
As a result of Tyson’s September plea, prosecutors had dropped a felony drug paraphernalia possession charge and a second misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence. Prosecutors had recommended Tyson do a year in prison due to his past criminal record.
Tyson was arrested in late December in Scottsdale, Ariz., after his car nearly struck a sheriff’s vehicle. Tyson, who was leaving a nightclub, failed field sobriety tests, and he was charged with felony possession of cocaine after police said they found bags of the drug in his back pocket and in a pack of cigarettes in his car.
Tyson’s time at the open-air Arizona “Tent City” prison saw him sequestered from the prison population. He reportedly ate sloppy joes, read the mob book “American Gangster” and, as with the other inmates, donned pink underwear underneath black-and-white-striped prison clothes.
9. What were the odds? A story involving boxing and pink underwear, and it had nothing to do with DeMarcus “Chop Chop” Corley.
10. And sloppy joes? Whatever happened to Tyson eating Lennox Lewis’s children?
David P. Greisman’s weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com