by David P. Greisman (photo by Richie Maldonado)
It was a fight in which one man put it all together. It was a fight in which the other man fell apart.
Boxing, after all, is the ultimate sport of dichotomies, a one-on-one showdown between boxers and punchers, between prospects and veterans, between champions and challengers. Saturday night in Mashantucket, Conn., brought a main event with a young, undefeated lightweight titlist named Juan Diaz and an experienced fellow beltholder in Acelino Freitas. Their collision was a story with plot twists and a somewhat surprising finale. The conclusion was conclusive.
For Diaz, it was a bright night, a breakout performance for a future star. For Freitas, it was a dark day, the breaking of a man on whom the book of history will soon close.
Diaz entered the bout as a promising prodigy, a fighter who turned professional at 16 and captured his first title at 20. But his five defenses largely came against a lower tier of opposition, and the Freitas fight was to be a major step up in competition.
Freitas, meanwhile, arrived as a two-division titlist in serious need of a standout performance. He had two ghosts haunting him – a 2004 loss to Diego Corrales in which he quit mid-fight, and last year’s aesthetically displeasing split decision win over Zahir Raheem.
Freitas amended the latter from the opening bell, throwing nearly twice as many punches in the first round as he had 12 months prior and winning the stanza with good footwork, clean combinations and counters. His bodywork showed wisdom, an attempt to slow down the punching machine that is Diaz and an attack on a midsection that included love handles.
Diaz, however, continued to press, working behind a stiff jab and pressing Freitas against the ropes. If Freitas was to play the matador, then “The Baby Bull” would do his best to give him the horns.
Diaz eventually gored Freitas in the fifth, a one-two driving Freitas’ head backward and leaving the Brazilian holding on literally and figuratively for the remaining two minutes. But Diaz punched himself out, perhaps squandering a crucial moment and allowing Freitas to regain his composure.
Indeed, Diaz took his foot off the gas in the sixth, a round that this scribe scored for Freitas. Alas, it was Freitas’ last gasp.
While Freitas was busy pushing down his trunks – for air, HBO color commentator Lennox Lewis informed us – Diaz had found his second wind. Freitas was tired. Diaz was tireless.
Freitas’ corner exhorted their charge between rounds: “Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about it.” Freitas had quit in the Corrales fight, and whether or not that decision was logical, his trainers didn’t want the idea to surface again.
Unfortunately for them, Diaz drove the idea through Freitas’ head, beginning with a sweeping left hook that sent Freitas backpedaling to the ropes. Freitas pushed Diaz off, but Diaz came right back, undeterred. With 21 seconds remaining, Diaz scored with a left uppercut that wobbled Freitas, shaking his knees as well as his resolve.
Once again, Freitas’ corner went into motivational mode. “The fight is not over. The fight is not over,” they said. “Listen to me: the fight starts now.”
The fight ended then.
Whether it was Freitas who quit or his trainer who stopped the fight, it was Freitas who was left a broken man. Diaz had rumbled. Freitas had crumbled.
Yet the crumbling came less in Freitas’ corner retirement than in his inability to stick to the proper strategy, a failure brought about by those two aforementioned ghosts. Freitas felt stung by those who criticized his decision to quit against Corrales, and he sought to prove that he had both heart and testicular fortitude. He also wanted to entertain, to prove himself a marketable commodity after last year’s dud against Raheem.
Freitas gave into the criticism, trading when he should have stuck to boxing and trying to show his warrior side when survival may have been a better plan. He stood up for himself, and it led to him going out on his stool.
The 10 Count
1. Cruiserweight contender David Haye paid a visit over the weekend to boxing’s marquee division, stopping heavyweight Tomasz Bonin within two minutes of their Friday fight.
Bonin, whose career high point had been a 2004 technical knockout loss to Audley Harrison, somehow turned his otherwise misleading 37-1 record into a ranking within a sanctioning body’s top 15.
Haye did a good job burying Bonin, flooring him thrice and forcing the referee to call a halt to the bout. But Haye’s stay at heavyweight will be brief, as he is the mandatory challenger to cruiserweight champion Jean-Marc Mormeck.
Haye faces a dilemma: He can attempt to drop 17 pounds from his frame for a chance to star in a division that is known for its exciting fights but is relatively unknown to the public, or he can choose to compete in a weight class without weight limits, where the risk of bigger men comes with the reward of bigger paychecks.
2. Never in the history of word association did one expect “Felix Sturm” to be followed by the phrase “three-time middleweight titlist.”
Nevertheless, Sturm recaptured the World Boxing Association’s 160-pound belt on Saturday, outpointing Javier Castillejo in a rematch of their July 2006 bout.
That latter match saw Castillejo score a surprising stoppage over his younger opponent. Castillejo went on to lose by technical knockout to Mariano Carrera, but that result was overturned after Carrera tested positive for the banned substance Clenbuterol in his post-fight drug test.
With division champion Jermain Taylor and contenders Edison Miranda and Kelly Pavlik otherwise occupied, Sturm should set his sights on returning International Boxing Federation beltholder Arthur Abraham.
Abraham, who has spent time off recovering from a broken jaw, is scheduled to defend in late May against Sebastian Demers. Should he win, Abraham could seek to unify his belt with Sturm’s in what would be a megafight pitting Germany’s two middleweight attractions against each other.
3. Meanwhile in Colombia, Ricardo Torres retained his junior welterweight belt with a wide unanimous decision over perennial contender Arturo Morua.
Torres burst onto the scene with his 2005 loss to Miguel Cotto, an entertaining war that saw both men trade bombs and hit the canvas until Cotto dug down and stopped his fiery foe. Although Torres lost in that title try, he gained Cotto’s vacated World Boxing Organization belt in November by taking a split decision over Mike Arnaoutis.
Torres must next face Kendall Holt, who outpointed the aforementioned Arnaoutis earlier in this month for the mandatory challenger position. Torres-Holt, on paper, looks like an excellent pairing of heavy hands against fast fists, though the only given is that it can’t be any worse than Holt-Arnaoutis was.
4. WBO minimumweight titlist Ivan Calderon fought on the same card as Torres-Morua, with the undefeated “Iron Boy” taking a close split decision victory against Ronald Barrera.
Calderon has languished for years as an underappreciated technician who has only seen occasional moments in the spotlight, be they shows on Spanish-language networks or a bout on the undercard of 2005’s Gatti-Mayweather pay-per-view. He has, in essence, suffered by being the best fighter in an oft-ignored weight class.
If, as expected, Calderon finally jumps north to the junior flyweight division, he will find himself facing new challenges and the prospect of slightly more airtime. Paychecks and popularity shouldn’t necessarily be predicated on size – but with three extra pounds, Calderon may finally get a little bit more of both.
5. Sticking with 108-pound fighters, a quick amendment to something I wrote in this space two weeks ago. I noted that, per mandate of the World Boxing Council, Edgar Sosa’s next title defense would be against Omar Nino. Nino, however, is currently listed as being unavailable, and as such, Sosa’s next opponent will be Luis Lazarte.
6. The District of Columbia is not a fight town. Prior to the Mike Tyson-Kevin McBride circus of June 2005, the biggest recent bout in the Nation’s Capital was 1993’s clash between Roy Jones and Bernard Hopkins. The city hit its nadir in the past two years, with only six cards taking place. This year’s first was last week’s Friday Night Fights, and unfortunately a national audience was able to see what is either the local commission’s inexperience – or its incompetence.
During the main event between lightweights Mike Anchondo and Darling Jimenez, the timekeeper ended the second round with exactly one minute remaining. ESPN2 blow-by-blow announcer Joe Tessitore reportedly confronted the timekeeper, who told Tessitore that it was, in fact, a three-minute round.
Then, of course, there was the ringside physician who, during the walkout bout between Earl Cole and William Wilson, decided that the best place to check on a cut fighter is, well, at ringside and not the ring apron. And in that same bout, referee Kenny Chevalier had the corner of said cut fighter wipe away blood in the middle of the round.
7. Jimenez scored a fantastic one-punch knockout over Anchondo, by the way. For my sake, Jimenez’ next match should be against a Filipino fighter with the last name of Lorona, and the first-names-only marquee should read “Darling-Baby.”
8. The non-televised undercard of Diaz-Freitas included a bout between 130-pound prospect Agnaldo Nunes and former junior lightweight contender Carlos Navarro.
Navarro last graced the small screen in a June 2005 episode of ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights, a bizarre main event featuring the older brother of onetime 115-pound standout Jose Navarro against Bobby Pacquiao, younger brother to superstar sibling Manny. The fight ended, amazingly, with Carlos Navarro taking a knee and counting to 10 with referee Jon Schorle.
Nunes eked out a majority decision over Navarro on Saturday, but the real story is that Navarro didn’t stand next to the ring announcer and read the judges’ tallies.
9. Dancing with the Stars Update: For the second straight week, Laili Ali and partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy received high scores and high praise from the dancing competition’s three judges.
Their rumba and cha-cha-cha each earned 28 points, giving the pair momentum and sending them safely into the show’s seventh week.
Ali, by the way, has now far surpassed the brief stint that Evander Holyfield had in the series’ first season.
10. TIME Magazine has an article about Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. ESPN The Magazine has Mayweather on its cover. After this article goes to press, De La Hoya will have appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”
It’d be great for the sport – if only all of this attention wasn’t the exception to the rule.
David P. Greisman may be reached at dgreisman@aol.com