by David P. Greisman
Stature doesn’t necessarily equal status. Bigger doesn’t have to mean better.
The Tale of the Tape misleads, presenting with utmost importance that which can be easily measured, compared and contrasted. Age, reach, height and weight?
Disadvantages in any of those categories matter little when a fighter has hand speed, foot speed and the right strategy for using both.
David felled Goliath by being able to sling stones from out of harm’s way. In the squared circle, these smaller men are able to get in, throw combinations and get out, moving away before returning to the same formula again and again.
It has worked for Manny Pacquiao in his last five fights, as he has moved up in weight against slower opponents. It worked for Sergio Martinez against Kelly Pavlik. And it worked for Tomasz Adamek this past Saturday in the most noteworthy heavyweight win to date for the former light heavyweight titleholder and cruiserweight champion.
Pacquiao faced perceived deficits in size and power against David Diaz, Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton, Miguel Cotto and Joshua Clottey, all men who fought in weight classes higher than where Manny had long plied his trade. Only Cotto was able to do any damage to Pacquiao, but he too eventually fell victim once Pacquiao kicked into a higher gear. Clottey was the only one to survive the distance – survival seemingly being his intent.
Pacquiao landed 230 punches to Diaz’s 90, tripling the number of landed power shots, 180-59. He landed 224 punches to De La Hoya’s 83, nearly quadrupling the number of landed power shots, 195-51. He landed 73 punches to Hatton’s 18, quadrupling the number of landed power shots, 65-16.
Pacquiao landed 336 punches to Cotto’s 172, nearly tripling him up in power shots, 276-93. And he dominated Clottey the same way, landing 246 punches to Clottey’s 108, including 232 power punches, almost triple the 82 Clottey landed.
In each fight, Pacquiao’s foot movement carried him on approaches and strategic retreats, and his hand speed meant he overwhelmed his opponents with barrages, punches that they didn’t see coming and hence hurt more.
Martinez was a junior middleweight against a middleweight – on the day before the fight. Once the bell rang, Martinez was a 167-pound fighter against a 178-pound Pavlik who would be capable of knocking him out with a single shot.
But Pavlik had to be able to get to Martinez, and Martinez rarely gave him that chance, using lateral motion to make Pavlik reset again and again, and jumping in and out with sharp combinations.
Martinez out-landed Pavlik 230 to 164 on the night, landing twice as many power shots, 172-87. The difference was pronounced in the final four rounds, when Martinez landed twice as much as Pavlik (112-51) and more than four times as many power shots (98 to 21).
Adamek was a couple inches shorter and 33 pounds lighter than Arreola. Though both were once light heavyweights (Adamek as a pro, Arreola as an amateur), Arreola has the heavyweight heft and the power that comes along with it.
Adamek, as with Pacquiao and Martinez, moved plenty to keep Arreola coming but not necessarily punching, a drugged bull delivering himself into the path of piercing sword strikes.
Adamek out-landed Arreola 197 to 127, nearly doubling him up on power shots, 128-67.
All that’s well and good, except CompuBox statistics aren’t the tallies that matter most – when the fight goes the distance, that distinction belongs to the judges’ scorecards.
And so Adamek, for all his offensive outnumbering of Arreola, was in a close fight.
While Adamek needed to land cleanly and often to do damage and get credit, Arreola only needed to land to force Adamek to deal with a heavyweight punch. And the perceived difference in power meant the judges might give more credit to Arreola for one landed punch than they would give Adamek for two.
Adamek still triumphed, but there’s the rub – just as bigger fighters don’t always have the advantage due to their size and power, smaller fighters don’t always have the advantage due to their speed.
Though Joel Julio and Alfredo Angulo are the same height, and though both are junior middleweights, it was easy to see when they fought Saturday that Angulo was the bigger man in the ring.
Julio, usually a slugger himself, tried to go the boxing route, sending out flurries and then moving away. Nobody will ever confuse him with Pacquiao or Martinez. Julio does not have the skills or the ability to perfectly apply such a strategy.
And when a bigger fighter only has to land one shot to make a difference, that meant Julio was merely delaying what Martinez and Adamek were able to avoid. Angulo caught Julio in the 11th round with a well-timed counter right, knocking him down and forcing the fight to be stopped. It was similar to the battle of motion against pressure that we saw between Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito.
There are other exceptions, situations when smaller men move up to a division and face an opponent who is fighting at what is basically his natural weight. For Juan Manuel Marquez, welterweight was a burden on his frame that slowed him down. Floyd Mayweather Jr., meanwhile, is a natural welterweight who retained all of his preternatural speed.
But it wasn’t Mayweather’s size that won the fight. It was his foot speed and hand speed that accentuated his other, more easily measured advantages.
We are in an era when bigger seems to be better, when the 6-foot-7 Vitali Klitschko and the 6-foot-6 Wladimir Klitschko are dominating the heavyweight division. What helps them, though, is their ability to fight tall with their footwork, to move out of range with a simple well-placed and well-timed step or two.
Other heavyweights have stature but not status. Nikolay Valuev, a 7-footer, no longer has a heavyweight belt. Alexander Dimitrenko, a 6-foot-7 prospect, suffered his sole loss against 6-foot-1 Eddie Chambers, who in turn got knocked out by Wladimir Klitschko.
The saying goes that a good big man will always beat a good little man. The saying isn’t true. David can conquer Goliath. Height won’t necessarily bring a big man to the top. A little man can go a long way.
The 10 Count
1. Edwin Valero will be remembered as the Chris Benoit of boxing, a talented but troubled man whose accomplishments will always be secondary to the horrible acts he committed.
That is the way it should be. A man who kills his wife (and in Benoit’s case, his son, too) does not still get to leave behind a favorable legacy. The question, then, becomes whether each is deserving of being remembered for anything beyond the murders they committed and their subsequent suicides.
Benoit received a tribute episode of WWE’s “Monday Night Raw” the day after he, his wife and their son were found dead. WWE executives would argue that not all the information on the crime was available at the time.
To the best of my knowledge, Valero did not receive a ceremonial 10 count during either of Saturday’s major boxing cards. Nor should he have. It is an honor – honor being the key word – he did not deserve.
Benoit has largely been scrubbed from the official WWE history. Do we forget about Valero? Do we only speak of him in hushed tones? Or can we appreciate what he was in the ring while grimacing at the way his career and two lives came to an end?
2. A question of far less importance in the grand scheme of things: Where does Valero’s name go in my year-end column? Is placing him alongside the other deceased boxers from 2010 tarnishing the tribute to them?
3. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: The genius of the Super Six super middleweight tournament is its round-robin format, rather than having a traditional “One and Done” set-up in which a loss would send a fighter packing.
Could you imagine if Andre Dirrell never would’ve had a chance to make up for his loss to Carl Froch by out-boxing Arthur Abraham?
Can you imagine Abraham going to the back of the line in the 168-pound division, potentially for years, because of his disqualification loss to Dirrell?
Would we have gotten anything as entertaining as the scrap this past Saturday between Froch and Mikkel Kessler (who lost to Andre Ward in the first round of the tournament)?
Styles – and circumstances – make fights.
We will have a better idea of who in this group is the best by the time this tournament is over than we would’ve had there been a traditional tournament structure.
4. Still wondering why instant replay wasn’t used earlier this month to decide whether the cut Jason Litzau suffered against Rocky Juarez came from a clash of heads or from a punch? No? Has it really been that long since you erased all memories of the Bernard Hopkins-Roy Jones Jr. pay-per-view?
Either way, here’s the answer:
In Nevada, instant replay could only used when a fight is stopped immediately due to a wound, according to Keith Kizer, executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. The seventh round continued after Litzau suffered his injury.
As for why the fight was stopped when the cut was below Litzau’s eye? Well, it wasn’t the cut that did it:
“His pupil started going a different color,” Kizer told BoxingScene.com. “His eye started to kind of swell, and the white of the eye discolored.”
Kizer said video of the fight was inconclusive as for whether Litzau’s injuries came from a butt or a punch. The referee’s ruling was that it came from a clash of heads, and hence we had the technical decision.
5. Boxers Behaving Badly, part one: Cruiserweight fighter Nicholas Iannuzzi was arrested earlier this month after allegedly attacking his girlfriend, grabbing her neck, punching her and then putting a gun to her head, according to The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune.
“This is a hair trigger,” Iannuzzi allegedly told the woman, according to police. “I can blow your brains out, then kill myself.”
Iannuzzi, 33, has been charged with aggravated battery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, domestic battery by strangulation, and battery. He spent four days behind bars before being released on bail. The article didn’t list the date of Iannuzzi’s next court appearance.
Iannuzzi is 15-1 with nine knockouts. He last fought in March, winning a 10-round decision.
6. Boxers Behaving Badly, part two: Retired British boxer Christopher Pollock was one of eight men sentenced last week in connection with a drug ring, according to the Birmingham Mail. Pollock’s role in the amphetamines and marijuana ring was to store the drugs.
The 37-year-old was sentenced to three years in jail. His last fight was in 1998, a win that brought his record to 8-12-1 with three knockout wins.
7. Boxers Behaving Badly update: Retired cruiserweight Ken Paepae Seiuli has been sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty last week to a gruesome January 2009 attack in which he bit off his girlfriend’s lip – the second woman he had done that to, according to Australian newspaper the Herald Sun.
Seiuli, 48, had a wholly unsuccessful career under the name Ken Suavine. He was 3-13-1 with one knockout victory, and he last fought in 2003.
8. Why is it that when HBO does boxing on pay-per-view, it wants the main event to start no later than between 11 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time, yet the network was okay with starting Saturday’s “Boxing After Dark” broadcast at 11:15 p.m. and having the first round of Chris Arreola against Tomasz Adamek begin after midnight?
9. Chris Arreola will apparently never fight for the World Boxing Council’s heavyweight title ever again. Not because he suffered his second career defeat, dropping a majority decision to Tomasz Adamek. No, I come to this conclusion because of Arreola’s penchant for the F-bomb.
Remember last November, when the WBC suspended Arreola from it rankings and from fighting for its world title for six months, all because of the expletives he let fly following his September stoppage loss to Vitali Klitschko? Here’s what its pompous press release said:
“WBC President Jose Sulaiman clearly expressed his being upset […] when he stated that there is no way a boxer within the scope of the organization he leads can be let express himself [sic] in such a vulgar way without getting a penalty.”
Think the WBC will be consistent? Okay, okay, you can stop laughing now.
For the record, here are the highlights of Arreola’s fantastically amusing interview with Max Kellerman following the Adamek loss:
“All my Mexicanos, you guys got to give it up to Tomasz Adamek. He’s a great motherf**ker. A great fighter. You know, I came in here, I Baba Booey’d my f**king opportunity. I didn’t plan this motherf**ker beating my ass. But he did. He beat me. He beat me. He did what he wanted to do in the ring.”
About his hand injury:
“It started earlier, like in the fifth round, but I just kept going, kept going, not giving a f**k.”
About the punishment he took:
“He has a hard head. I felt those head butts, man. Look at me, I look like f**king Shrek right now.”
10. I didn’t catch the third episode of “24/7 Mayweather/Mosley” until Sunday morning, and it provided an unexpected contrast with the reairing of Adamek-Arreola that preceded it.
Arreola’s post-fight interview was uncensored. But all of Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s cursing was blanked out.
I don’t understand. Or, in other words: WTF?
David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com
