by David P. Greisman
Boxing didn’t need Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather to save it. Boxing didn’t need to worry about heavyweight unification, mainstream attention or mixed martial arts as competition.
All it needed was a year like 2007.
The wars between Rafael Marquez and Israel Vazquez. The ascent of young stars, be it in America with Miguel Cotto, Chad Dawson, Kelly Pavlik and Juan Diaz, or in foreign markets with Lucien Bute and Koki Kameda. Golden Boy and Top Rank ending their promotional war. And, most importantly, the best facing the best.
Juan Manuel Marquez got his long-awaited shot at Marco Antonio Barrera. Jermain Taylor stepped into the ring with his consensus top challenger, Kelly Pavlik. Joe Calzaghe unified the super middleweight championship against Mikkel Kessler. Miguel Cotto will go at it with Shane Mosley on Saturday, and Floyd Mayweather-Ricky Hatton follows four weeks later.
Despite the sanctioning bodies and their politics, throughout the bad decisions and the cementing of boxing as a niche sport, the Sweet Science has always come down to two men lacing up gloves and throwing punches.
Taylor-Pavlik was 20 minutes of electricity, from Taylor scoring an early knockdown to Pavlik rising from the canvas and rallying to score a come-from-behind victory. They will meet again come February in one of the most anticipated rematches since Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo 2.
Calzaghe-Kessler brought a massive 50,150 people to Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. They roared, and Calzaghe reacted, throwing 1,010 punches over 12 rounds, boxing in a high gear with energy that carried through into his post-fight interview. One thing stood out in Calzaghe’s conversation with HBO analyst Max Kellerman: his desire to step up seven pounds and challenge the man holding the “Ring Magazine” championship belt.
Bernard Hopkins. Current claimant to the light heavyweight throne. As middleweight champion, he compiled 20 consecutive title defenses.
Calzaghe, the super middleweight champ, has 21.
Calzaghe’s reign began 10 years ago when he captured the World Boxing Organization’s 168-pound title with a unanimous decision over Chris Eubank. Calzaghe defended that title 17 times before unifying it with the International Boxing Federation belt held by Jeff Lacy. The IBF belt would eventually be stripped away, but the performance that won it stuck around as Calzaghe’s defining moment.
Until Saturday.
Mikkel Kessler didn’t just hold the titles bestowed upon him by the World Boxing Association and World Boxing Council – he held a mandate as the one man deserving to challenge Calzaghe for super middleweight supremacy. All bets were on Kessler to give Calzaghe his stiffest test yet.
Calzaghe took Kessler’s raise and showed him his full house, aces high.
Next year should pair together two kings with 92 wins between them. Two first-ballot Hall of Famers, and only one can win. Joe Calzaghe. Bernard Hopkins. Both have defied age, defied their naysayers and defeated nearly all comers.
Similar praise could be directed toward Juan Manuel Marquez and Manny Pacquiao. No, neither has racked up streaks of title defenses in the fashions of Calzaghe and Hopkins, but one glance at their ledgers reveals a clear argument for their placement in the mythical pound-for-pound list.
Marquez has fought 52 times, losing on just three occasions. Once was his pro debut, a first-round disqualification. Once was last year against Chris John, one of the worst decisions ever handed down in a title fight. Marquez had been a constant presence in the featherweight division, a skilled boxer-puncher who was blatantly ignored by Marco Antonio Barrera, Prince Naseem Hamed and Erik Morales. Marquez chugged along, though, and his consistency finally led him into a March bout with Barrera, the victory making him one of the top names among the junior lightweights.
The other big star at 130 is Manny Pacquiao, whose run over the last eight years has left many from junior featherweight to junior lightweight sinking in his wake. Pacquiao’s greatest moments came against the Mexican triumvirate of Barrera, Marquez and Morales, against whom the Filipino Firebomber won four, lost one and drew one. The defeat came in his first bout against Morales and would be avenged twice over. The draw with Marquez? That’s more of a sticking point.
Pacquiao dominated the first round, sending Marquez crashing down not once, not twice, but three times. Marquez’s nose was gushing, but he pulled himself together and adjusted well over the remaining 11 rounds, using subtle head movements to dodge Pacquiao’s left hand and counterpunching back with right hooks and uppercuts.
It was a fantastic fight that the judges’ scorecards would somewhat overshadow. One pair of eyes had it 115-110 Pacquiao. Another saw things 115-110 Marquez. The third, deciding view had a 113-113 tally, leaving the result a draw. That judge, Burt Clements, had scored the opening round 10-7. With the three knockdowns, a coinciding 10-6 score would have given Pacquiao the slight edge and the win.
Negotiations for a rematch fell through. Now, the fight is overdue.
Juan Manuel Marquez versus Manny Pacquiao. Joe Calzaghe against Bernard Hopkins. The best facing the best made ’07 heaven. The trend continuing should make ’08 great.
The 10 Count
1. Mikkel Kessler, who sounded rather gracious in defeat Saturday, should raise his head high and consider himself the second-best super middleweight in a division that, unfortunately for him, contained a transcendent Joe Calzaghe.
Kessler’s course of action from here could take one of two paths. Calzaghe has probably made his last appearance at 168 pounds, especially because light heavyweight provides seven pounds of leeway and a potential super-fight with Bernard Hopkins. Kessler could follow Calzaghe to 175 in order to wait out the winner, but the guaranteed opportunities remain where the Dane already is.
If Calzaghe does indeed make the jump to light heavyweight, his three unified belts will become vacant. Kessler, who no longer holds the highest recognition from any sanctioning body, would probably be ranked in a position whereby he would immediately be back in the title picture. Basketball teams not situated in Chicago were able to win championships once Michael Jordan retired. There should be no stigma in being the best in a division that is no longer home to its undisputed champion.
2. Similarly, Rocky Juarez need not spend too much time back at the drawing board after his unanimous decision loss Saturday to Juan Manuel Marquez.
Juarez’s four losses have all gone the distance, decisions dropped to Marquez, Marco Antonio Barrera (twice) and a Humberto Soto who was an underrated late replacement. Against Marquez, Juarez fought through a bad gash that was caused by a clash of heads in the first heat and that continued to spew crimson over the remaining rounds. Marquez, already exceptionally skilled, capitalized on the cut and peppered Juarez with numerous jabs and combinations.
Juarez’s ability to fight at either featherweight or junior lightweight allows him the opportunity to challenge once again for a world title. Juarez must learn how to get out of cruise control and put punches together; only then will the constant contender fulfill his potential.
3. One prospective foe is Robert Guerrero, the man Juarez would’ve faced had he not stepped in against Marquez after Marquez’s original opponent Jorge Barrios underwent surgery for retinal tears in both eyes. Guerrero fought Saturday on the televised undercard of Marquez-Juarez, knocking out featherweight contender Martin Honorio less than one minute into the first round. Guerrero used a jab and left cross to send Honorio to the canvas, and though Honorio rose at the count of eight, his legs sent him stumbling across the ring. Referee Tony Weeks wisely waved things off.
Guerrero, who went forward with the Honorio fight despite his wife’s recent leukemia diagnosis, retained his IBF featherweight belt, one of four major titles in a division that also includes Chris John, Jorge Linares and Steven Luevano. Guerrero’s ideal destination, of course, is a showdown with Manny Pacquiao that, if it comes, is far further in the future than “The Ghost” would like. But battles with his fellow 126-pound titlists could allow Guerrero to create his own star without cashing in on the Pacquiao sweepstakes.
4. Eddie Chambers’ surprisingly close split-decision win Friday over Calvin Brock will send the Philadelphia fighter toward a 2008 collision with fellow undefeated heavyweight prospect Alexander Povetkin for the right to challenge IBF titlist Wladimir Klitschko.
Chambers, whose last two victories have come against Brock and Dominick Guinn, has fast hands and a preternatural sense of calm when in the ring against bigger, taller, stronger foes. But while Chambers raised his stock by beating Brock, he showed neither the head movement nor the pop necessary when facing the formidable firepower and sheer size of Klitschko.
5. Brock, meanwhile, came up on the wrong end of a crossroads bout, suffering the second defeat of his career.
Two years ago, Brock was a promising prospect coming into his prime with impressive wins against Clifford Etienne and Jameel McCline. A fantastic knockout of Zuri Lawrence aside, he has done little since then to distinguish himself as a truly talented challenger.
Losing to Klitschko, as Brock did a year ago, is nothing to be ashamed of. In the ring, though, he looks clunky, for lack of a better word, like he’s permanently stuck in sparring mode, never kicking into a higher gear in order to control the action and make his mark on the man standing in front of him.
6. Boxers Behaving Badly: Three Romanian fighters who had traveled to Chicago to compete in the International Amateur Boxing Association’s world championships were allegedly caught attempting to steal merchandise from a Nordstrom department store in the Windy City, according to the Associated Press.
The fighters – Bogdan Dinu, 21, Ronald Gavril, 21, and Gabriel Julian Stan, 20 – have been ordered home from the tournament and banned for life from amateur boxing.
7. Edison Miranda launched the super-middleweight phase of his life last week with a fifth-round stoppage of 168-pound measuring stick Henry Porras. With the win, Miranda has taken the first step toward what can still be a fruitful career, despite his 2006 points loss to Arthur Abraham and his May 2007 technical knockout defeat at the hands of Kelly Pavlik.
Although Joe Calzaghe seems destined for light heavyweight and a mega-fight against Bernard Hopkins, the super middleweight division remains stocked with potential foes for Miranda, be it the triumphant champion of this year’s season of “The Contender”; a rebounding Mikkel Kessler; a rising Jermain Taylor, following his February rematch with Pavlik; Librado Andrade, Lucien Bute or Allan Green. Miranda should be back on the air soon, his fan-friendly style ready-made for an old-school “Boxing After Dark” slugfest.
8. Kassim Ouma dropped a shocking split decision Friday to junior middleweight Saul Roman, two of the three judges’ tallies reading in favor of the 27-4 journeyman from Mexico.
Ouma had last fought 11 months ago, a unanimous decision loss to then-middleweight champion Jermain Taylor. Ouma had been scheduled to face “Contender” first-season champion Sergio Mora on the Sept. 15 Marquez-Juarez pay-per-view undercard until Marquez got injured and the card was postponed.
Mora went on to struggle to a draw with Elvin Ayala in a keep-busy bout last month, leaving Ouma looking for an opponent. Roman, who was coming off of two consecutive knockout losses, seemed ripe for the picking.
Not so.
Ouma suddenly finds himself nearing the back of the line as a fighter who, when victorious, brought plenty of risk and little reward to the table. Ouma’s two straight defeats mean he must rebuild, fighting often and performing well enough to remind those in the title picture that he was once a touted 154-pound beltholder.
9. Takefumi Sakata retained his WBA title Sunday by holding upstart challenger Denkaosan Kaovichit to a draw.
Prior to this year, Sakata had only come up short in his biggest bouts, losing two majority decisions to then-beltholder Lorenzo Parra and a split decision to Roberto Vazquez. This year, however, Sakata has come up big, stopping Parra in three and outpointing Vazquez over 12.
Sakata hit the floor in his opening stanza with the 40-1 Thai Kaovichit, but he battled back and left all three judges in disagreement: the scores were 113-113, 114-112 Sakata and 115-112 Kaovichit.
Sakata’s 2007 run through the 112-pound division is comparable only to that of Daisuke Naito, who unseated longtime champion Pongsaklek Wonjongkam and then outpointed undefeated prospect Daiki Kameda. His 2008 should be full of opportunity, be it a clash with Naito, a unification bout against Nonito Donaire or matches against other opponents in and around one of boxing’s better weight classes.
10. “The Contender” update: This week’s finale of “The Contender” will pit Jaidon Codrington against Sakio Bika, who outpointed Sam Soliman in the penultimate episode of this third season of Mark Burnett’s boxing reality series.
With his eight-round victory, Bika avenged a 2002 majority decision loss to Soliman. He and Codrington will fight a scheduled 10 rounds Tuesday for $750,000 and the right to be named “Contender” champion. Soliman and Wayne Johnsen will battle it out on the undercard for third place.
Other supporting bouts, according to one Web site’s schedule, include Max Alexander against Brian Vera, Miguel Hernandez versus Donny McCrary, and a rematch between David Banks and Paul Smith.
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