by David P. Greisman
“No mas.”
Cuts will heal. Bruises will fade away. Criticism can last long after all physical wounds have disappeared.
Roberto Duran, with his 103 wins, championships in two weight classes and world titles in two other divisions, is a man enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame whose name still carries alongside it a decision, made nearly 30 years back, not to continue fighting after eight rounds of his rematch with Sugar Ray Leonard.
“Quitter.”
Nate Campbell left the ring Aug. 1 with the bitter aftertaste of defeat. He had been cut above his left eye by a head butt, and, even worse, was bleeding within his eye from that same clash of heads with Timothy Bradley. Campbell was half blind.
The referee had ruled his wounds the result of a punch. It was the wrong ruling. When a fight stops within four rounds due to an injury caused by an accidental head butt, the bout is ruled a “No decision.”
Instead, Campbell was handed a three-round technical-knockout loss he knew was unjust. Piled onto that were accusations that he quit, that he took the easy way out, accusations that are undeserving.
Campbell is fighting the referee’s ruling and the loss, appealing to the California State Athletic Commission. A hearing has been set for Aug. 24.
“And as far as those who say I quit?” Campbell tells BoxingScene. “Well there ain’t much I can do about that.
“I’ve always fought my hardest to try and entertain the fans, but people are going to believe what they want to believe,” Campbell said last week, five days removed from the Bradley fight. “You’ll always have those few idiots that think it’s perfectly fine for me to suffer a foul, potentially destroy my eyesight, and to cast that aside and go fight another nine rounds with one eye, taking more shots without getting medical attention.
“Real talk here: I’ll fight through cuts all day long and twice on Sunday. But this was different. And these same people who want to talk shit, well they are the first ones to write you off anyways, so I don’t much care what they think. Five years from now, if I were stumbling around with a white cane and a Seeing Eye dog, where would they be? I’ll tell you where: They’d still be on the Internet talking shit about someone else.”
They called Israel Vazquez a quitter, too, on March 4, 2007, a day after Vazquez had stayed in his corner after seven rounds in his first fight with Rafael Marquez. Vazquez had felt his broken nose left him at far too large a disadvantage. He chose to stay in his corner and fight another day.
Nobody called Vazquez a quitter five months later, when he stopped Marquez. Nobody called Vazquez a quitter another seven months after that, when he warred yet again with Marquez, going 12 grueling rounds and winning on the scorecards.
An unforgivable sin was suddenly an understandable decision.
Those who make Campbell a target of derision are the same who feel the result of the Bradley fight was a foregone conclusion.
They say Bradley had outclassed Campbell through three rounds. They say Bradley would have won down the stretch, that Campbell could see that and found an excuse to escape.
“That’s what kills me: People talk like I was getting beat up or something,” Campbell said. “Most writers I talk to gave Bradley the first, gave me the second, and of course Bradley the third because of what happened after the butt. But even if you give him all three, so what? It’s a 12-round fight! We still had nine more to go!
“Juan Diaz was ahead after three, and we know how that ended,” he said, referring to his March 2008 decision win that earned him three lightweight world titles. “Jermain [Taylor] was ahead of [ Carl] Froch after three – after 10, actually – and we know how that ended, too.”
Froch knocked Taylor out with 14 seconds remaining in the 12th round.
Julio Cesar Chavez stopped Meldrick Taylor with two seconds remaining in the 12th round.
Of what little we saw, Bradley was faster against Campbell, out-boxing him on the outside, making him miss and then getting inside where he could dig into Campbell’s body. Campbell wanted to be inside, but being there meant contending with head butts.
“Things were right about where I wanted them to be at the start of the third round,” Campbell said. “He was still backing up for the most part, and I was getting my body shots in here and there. He was starting to bite on the right hand real good, and the plan was to keep doing that and walk him into the left hook. I didn’t care about landing the right hand. I was just trying to get him to start moving to his right off my right hand and set up the left hook.”
The sweet science is so because it is beyond physical. Fighters at a disadvantage, be it in size or speed, power or skill, can compensate with strategy. George Foreman was 45, nearly 18 years older than Michael Moorer, losing through nine rounds when he set Moorer up for a 10th-round knockout.
A fight can change in the blink of an eye.
“He leaned in with his head, and bam,” Campbell said.
“I knew I was cut, but I knew there was something else wrong. I had a large spot in my left eye,” he said. “The spot in my eye got worse throughout the round, and after the bell rang to end the round, I looked up at the JumboTron and realized I couldn’t see at all out of the left eye anymore. I went to the corner and told John David [Jackson, his trainer] that I couldn’t see, and then sat on the stool. [The cutman] then got in to work the cut, but I wasn’t worried about the cut. I started thinking about detached retinas and stuff like that.
“Well [the cutman] was wiping the cut to work it, and I’m yelling at him to stop ‘cause I can’t see. He didn’t know I had an eye problem, and he was just concentrating on the cut. So I had to basically scream at him that I couldn’t see, that I had spots in my eye. Well the doc comes over and asks me if I can see, and I told him no. Then he asked again if I had spots in my eye. I said yes and he said, ‘We’re done.’ ”
That Campbell was so vocal about his eye is one reason some cite in their labeling of him as a quitter. They point at Campbell coming out to AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” the same song Arturo Gatti would use in his walk to the ring, a song Campbell used as tribute to the recently deceased fighter. They say Gatti never did what Campbell did.
That’s a lofty standard. How many have? How many do? How many will?
“After the doc said ‘We’re done,’ he walked away for a minute and then came back and looked at me again,” Campbell said. “He said, ‘You have blood behind the eye and need to go the hospital right now.’ I knew something was wrong, but him saying that, well, it reminds you of your mortality and everything.”
For some, it is not that you lose, but how. The preference is going out on your shield instead of on your stool. For some, it is not that you quit, but how. The preference is to stay quiet and let your corner do the quitting for you.
Nate Campbell has never been one to stay quiet. He is outspoken and outgoing, a go-to guy for good quotes who never holds back on what he thinks. To some, that makes him a critical darling. To others, that makes him deserving of getting his just deserts.
Campbell knows he won’t convince those people. He’d rather direct his energy to his appeal before the California State Athletic Commission. His cut is healing. His vision, returning. The thought of losing, though, still stings.
The 10 Count
1. A clarification: Last week I noted that Nate Campbell’s appeal to the California State Athletic Commission is “a formality intended for removing the blemish from Campbell’s ledger,” as the commission can change Campbell’s technical-knockout loss to a “No decision” but cannot mandate a rematch. That mandate would have to come from the World Boxing Organization, the sanctioning body whose belt Timothy Bradley holds and which Campbell was fighting for.
But Campbell was not Bradley's mandatory challenger; rather, Bradley made a voluntary defense by facing Campbell. His number-one challenger is Lamont Peterson, who holds the interim WBO 140-pound title.
Some think this makes it unlikely that the WBO will call for a Bradley-Campbell rematch.
The WBO could feel that a rematch is not only justified, but that it makes financial sense, too. But that could lead to the sort of litigation from Peterson that we saw with the World Boxing Council after Samuel Peter won two heavyweight eliminators for the right to face then-heavyweight titlist Oleg Maskaev, only to have returning “champion emeritus” Vitali Klitschko try to get Maskaev first.
2. Boxing Trainers Behaving Badly: Roger Mayweather, uncle and chief second to Floyd Mayweather Jr., was arrested last week after allegedly assaulting a female boxer he had previously trained, according to Michigan newspaper The Grand Rapids Press.
Mayweather, 48, a former 130-pound champion and 140-pound titlist, was charged with one felony count each of coercion and battery. Police say Mayweather entered a Las Vegas condominium he owned and ordered Melissa St. Vil, a 25-year-old with a 1-1-1 pro record, to get out immediately.
St. Vil lived there with another boxer, Cornelius Lock, a 30-year-old man who is 18-4-1 as a pro. St. Vil refused to leave, and the disagreement between St. Vil and Mayweather apparently then got physical. Police officers said they saw Mayweather choking St. Vil when they arrived at the scene. She was taken to a local hospital, treated and released.
Mayweather, who had a lamp broken over his head and had injuries to his head and face, was arrested. He is out on bail.
He spent six months in jail from 2006 to 2007, convicted on battery charges after an incident in which he punched the maternal grandmother of his infant son.
3. Who needs Flavor Flav, the Hogans or the Osbournes? For the producers of HBO’s “24/7” boxing documentary series, the Mayweathers must be the reality-show gift that keeps on giving…
What’s the over/under on number of minutes until this arrest is mentioned on the first episode of “Mayweather-Marquez 24/7“?
4. Vernon Forrest case update: Police have arrested two men in connection with the shooting death of Vernon Forrest – and they are still looking for a third, the man suspected of pulling the trigger, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Damario Ware, 20, and Jquante Crews, 25, were taken into custody separately last week. Each was charged with murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery and gun offenses.
Ware is allegedly the man who approached Forrest outside of an Atlanta convenience store, seeking to rob the former welterweight champion and junior-middleweight titlist as he was putting air in one of his tires. Crews is allegedly the driver of the getaway car.
Forrest, who had a gun on him, “shot at Ware and chased him, and was walking back to his car when he exchanged words with another man,” according to the report. “Forrest, realizing he had confronted the wrong person, turned away to leave. That is when he was shot in the back.”
5. Arturo Gatti case update: For those who believe that Brazilian authorities wrongly freed Arturo Gatti’s wife, 23-year-old Amanda Rodrigues, and incorrectly ruled Gatti’s death a suicide, here is more to fuel their line of thought:
Three weeks before Gatti died, his will was changed to leave everything to Rodrigues, according to the Canadian Press. And she was also the beneficiary of a $1 million life insurance policy.
Rodrigues is presumed innocent before proven guilty, and little justice can come from trying her in the press. But the continued reports on Gatti’s death, fueled by those who could never imagine the former 130- and 140-pound titlist killing himself, could build pressure on the Brazilian authorities to reopen the case.
6. Presented, for sake of contrast, two press releases from the World Boxing Council. Analysis and well-deserving mockery will follow.
First:
“Jose Sulaiman, president of the WBC, is announcing the institution of a new WBC green and gold belt to be called [the] WBC Diamond Championship, a honorary championship exclusively for fights between elite boxers.
“This new implementation has been voted in favor by the WBC Board of Governors based in an absolute unanimous voting, and will actively participate to keep boxing as great as ever with new and exciting formats for the fans.
“Boxing is changing; it has a heavy influence from television, and promoters are looking for highly interesting and passionate battles for the benefit of the boxing fans of the world.
“The WBC believes that this belt will play a very important role in modern boxing, as the fights between elite boxers called ‘catch weight’ fights, have not been a complete success, due to the fact that the advertising is only done for fans to know who is the best between two fighters and nothing is at stake.
“The WBC will propose that the promotion renders homage to the two greatest fighters of such division, as they will be showcased in the belt.
“This WBC Diamond Belt is being manufactured using the same design as the traditional belt but the materials will include 18 karat gold fusion, 598 diamonds, 196 emeralds, 6 rubies and 150 swarowsky semi-precious stones.”
7. Second:
“World Boxing Council President, Jose Sulaiman, informed that today, the documentation – from promoter Fernando Beltran – of boxer Marco Nazareth, who had the misfortune to pass away.
“The WBC immediately sent such documents to the American company with which it has its plan, in order to definitely assure the payment of approximately 315,000 pesos, which will be given to Marco Nazareth`s relatives, with the deepest sorrow over Nazareth`s passing away, and of course with the most heartfelt condolences sent by the World Boxing Council and its president, Jose Sulaiman.”
8. So…
Big catch-weight fights are being made, bouts in which two stars face each other at an agreed-upon weight limit, and the WBC feels that fans don’t care because there’s often “nothing at stake,” no world title to signify that a fighter is among the best in one of boxing’s established weight classes.
To compensate, the WBC has created a meaningless belt, an expensive bauble that is basically a wearable trophy. Or, rather, the WBC has created this meaningless belt to get compensation for itself, to find a reason for boxers in catch-weight fights to pay exorbitant sanctioning fees.
This new belt will have 18-karat gold, nearly 600 diamonds, nearly 200 emeralds, 6 rubies, and 150 semi-precious stones. And yet the WBC, however generous it is in giving 315,000 pesos in insurance money to the family of Marco Nazareth – who died last month from injuries sustained in a bout with Omar Chavez – is only giving 315,000 pesos to Nazareth’s family.
In review: gold, diamonds, emeralds, rubies and semi-precious stones for winners of catch-weight bouts, alive and already millionaires many times over. And approximately $24,312 to the family of a dead boxer with a 4-4 record.
9. Oh, and thank goodness the $24,312 comes “of course with the most heartfelt condolences of Jose Sulaiman,” the sanctioning body president with such a large ego that his name had to bookend a press release about Nazareth’s death.
Stay classy, WBC.
10. R.I.P. Budd Schulberg, 1914-2009.
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
