by David P. Greisman
The state’s minimal square mileage aside, if neither Rhode Island nor Providence were large enough for Peter Manfredo Jr. and Joey Spina to share, then confining the duo inside the squared circle at the Dunkin Donuts Center provided the only two ingredients needed in the recipe for combustion.
With each man calling Providence his home base, ring announcer Jeff Connor was forced to distinguish the pugilists by neighborhood, although the choice of whom the audience cheered for came down not to locale, but to loyalty and celebrity.
Manfredo, after all, represented the Ocean State on the first season of The Contender, his second-place finish and subsequent fame earning him large paydays and fans so faithful they braved a blizzard’s aftermath in order to see him knock out Scott Pemberton.
Joey Spina wanted the same for himself.
In what he later termed “a business decision,” Spina called out Manfredo in an interview prior to the former’s fight with Contender contestant Jesse Brinkley.
“Give me [Manfredo] after I beat Brinkley, we can sell out the [Dunkin Donuts] Civic Center,” Spina told an interviewer in April. “I want to go through all the contenders. They got a great shot because they were on TV and they received great contracts. I will fight all of them.”
It was about respect. Manfredo reportedly was offended by Spina’s ring introductions prior to his Nov. 2005 fight with Jose Spearman. As Spina walked to the ring, he was accompanied by a rap song with lines insulting “The Pride of Providence,” according to an article by scribe Michael Woods.
The war of words came back around four months later when Peter Manfredo Sr. – who had worked once with Jesse Brinkley – told an interviewer, “I don’t think Joey is anything at all; no one knows him outside of Johnston [Rhode Island]. Joey is undefeated, but who has he fought? He has received gifts in his last three fights, [and] in his last fight, the fans in his hometown booed the decision when they announced it.”
Spina responded with class, but he also showed the machismo of a man who has been insulted and will fight to regain his pride. In multiple subsequent interviews and press conferences, Spina complimented Manfredo and admitted that Manfredo bettered him in sparring sessions years ago, but he nonetheless vowed to knock him out at the card dubbed “Put Up or Shut Up.”
Unlike the abundance of trash talk in interviews and press releases that rarely amounts to anything beyond a waste of bandwidth and readers’ time, Spina succeeded in getting a bout with Manfredo and in getting under his opponent’s skin.
“[T]he talking’s over and now he’s going to fight,” Manfredo told the media assembled at the last press conference. “I never wanted to beat anyone like I want to beat this kid. Tonight, when he’s in bed and he’s thinking about the fight, it’s going to hit him right there, because he’s going to be scared. He’s in for a world of hurting. I’m going to have no mercy on him.”
Spina was the Ricardo Mayorga to Manfredo’s Oscar De La Hoya.
Just like in May, when the brash bomber’s invective ultimately backfired, Spina became puffed up by his words and his power, only to be deflated by a faster, better boxer whose skills translated into deceptive strength.
Straight right hands pounded Spina’s face before Manfredo could be caught by wide incoming hooks. A perfect right cross in the third round sent Spina down, his back on the ropes, and as Spina walked on his knees in an effort to hoist himself up on adjacent ropes, one was reminded of the pitiful image of Mike Tyson groping for his mouthpiece.
It was over.
“The kid wasn’t ready for me tonight,” Manfredo said at the post-fight press conference. “I don’t want to knock the kid; he just wasn’t on my level.”
“He made his money, but he took the beating of his life,” Manfredo said in the ring just after his hand was raised in victory, and the payday was something someone had suggested as a saving grace to Spina.
“Pride means a lot more,” Spina responded.
In a battle of pride and a battle for Providence, Manfredo put up – and Spina was shut up.
The 10 Count
1. Like clockwork, the cuckoos at the World Boxing Council chimed in with their take on the Diego Corrales-Joel Casamayor III weigh-in controversy:
“The World Boxing Council is very concerned with the latest example of a fighter not being able to make the official weight in a title fight,” WBC chief Jose Sulaiman wrote in a press release last week.
“If the promoters dedicate more time and effort to comply with the 30- and 7-day weigh-ins of fighters, it will result in a key of success. If the local boxing commission mandates the enforcement of the 30- and 7-day weigh-ins, it would also be a key to prevent fighters from not making the weight.
“We congratulate our new lightweight champion Joel Casamayor for his win against Diego Corrales, who very unfortunately did not make the official weight for this fight.
“Joel Casamayor presented the corresponding requirements on the corresponding dates. Diego Corrales did not comply with the 30-day weigh-in, and the WBC sent a representative, Rudy Tellez, to weigh him in only 10 days before the bout, where Diego was found to weigh 144 pounds.
“These happenings are a sign for all of us involved in boxing to look into what needs to be done to correct the problems.”
It’s expected, of course, that Sulaiman sent out this release following Corrales-Casamayor III instead of beforehand. But if Corrales did not comply with the 30-day weigh-in, why was this information not presented to the public? Couldn’t this problem have been prevented by always having a representative issue the pre-fight weigh-ins, as opposed to sending Rudy Tellez only after a lack of compliance? And why was Corrales weighed 10 days prior to the bout instead of seven? If Corrales was supposed to be at 142 one week prior to the fight, then his poundage being 144 at a 10-day interval seems within the requirements.
2. At least Goossen Tutor Promotions was good enough to do the WBC’s job, both in monitoring fighter weights and in notifying the public by issuing a press release concerning November’s pay-per-view between welterweight champion Carlos Baldomir and challenger Floyd Mayweather.
“Floyd Mayweather and Carlos Baldomir have completed the 30-day weigh-in requirement … and submitted the results to the WBC for confirmation,” the release said. “Yesterday, Goossen Tutor Promotions learned that both fighters are within the weight limit and have been officially cleared to fight.”
It would have been nice had the release listed actual weights. Thankfully, scribe Dan Rafael learned the details, writing, “Mayweather weighed 150 pounds on Oct. 3 and Baldomir was 161 pounds on Oct. 4.”
3. As Rafael noted, Baldomir and Mayweather were required to be under 162 pounds at the 30-day weigh-in, and under 154 pounds at the 7-day check. Mayweather, as usual, is near his fighting weight while Baldomir, as expected, has a good distance to go. Which begs the question, if the WBC’s requirements are supposed to be about health, isn’t allowing a fighter to drop as much as 15 pounds in 30 days and 7 pounds in 7 days permitting the dangers of dehydration?
To its credit, the WBC press release quoted earlier noted that “[t]he WBC will look into the percentages that are currently used to have a final determination during [January’s] WBC World Medical.” Nevertheless, this is a sanctioning body that is supposed to be promoting safety yet is only heard from sporadically concerning their own mandatory
4. On the undercard of Manfredo-Spina, super middleweight prospect Allan Green broke out of a boring, clinch-filled fight by stopping former Olympian Jerson Ravelo in the eighth and final round. Green, who rightly graded his performance a C, still occasionally finds himself unable to set the tone and style of the fight, as shown by his last two wins over Ravelo and Emmett Linton. Once Green improves his ring generalship, though, his speed and power deserve to be tested by a ranked supper middleweight.
5. One quick note to recent Contender contestant Cornelius Bundrage, spotted in the crowd during the ring introductions for Manfredo-Spina: When in public, chew with your mouth closed.
6. Manfredo-Spina and Green-Ravelo weren’t the only super middleweight fights spotlighted on Saturday, joining Joe Calzaghe-Sakio Bika and Mikkel Kessler-Markus Beyer in the ranks of boxing shown in America via tape delay. With the knowledge that Calzaghe-Bika and Kessler-Beyer were to be shown and recapped, respectively, on HBO later that night, ESPN play-by-play man Joe Tessitore should have reconsidered spoiling the results ahead of time for viewers who had tuned into ESPN2 in the short period of time prior to the airing of Calzaghe-Bika on another network. Despite this, Tessitore shouldn’t be chided on the same level that Jim Lampley heard it in March after ruining Showtime’s Calzaghe-Jeff Lacy result for some while working HBO’s Miguel Cotto-Gianluca Branco broadcast.
7. The aforementioned Calzaghe took a unanimous decision over Sakio Bika with a workmanlike effort far less aesthetically pleasing than the boxing clinic the Welshman put on Jeff Lacy seven months ago. With the victory, Calzaghe has now compiled 19 straight successful super middleweight title defenses, and, if the suits at HBO get what they seem to desire, his next appearance will be a megafight coming against a major superstar who, sadly, is not Mikkel Kessler.
8. Kessler, after all, merely sealed his status as the number two super middleweight on Saturday by knocking out Markus Beyer, unifying Beyer’s WBC belt with his own WBA title and setting the stage for a showdown against WBO and IBF titlist Calzaghe for recognition as the undisputed champion. Kessler packs tens of thousands into his fights in Denmark while Calzaghe does the same in the United Kingdom, meaning that millions will be made no matter who gets the hometown advantage. If HBO pushes for Calzaghe to face someone along the lines of Bernard Hopkins or Jermain Taylor, the premium cable outlet will have exhibited once more that their intent is to promote great fighters instead of promoting great fights.
9. Recently spotted Oscar De La Hoya’s cameo on one of Miller Lite’s “Men of the Square Table” commercials. Curious, I dropped by the commercial Web site and noticed two interesting tidbits: His bio includes two International Boxing Association trinkets under De La Hoya’s “eleven world boxing titles in six different weight classes,” and on the scroll bar of members, the Golden Boy is listed as “Mr. Hoya.”
10. Sticking with the Golden Boy and HBO, the latter still hasn’t listed the names of the opponents for Juan Manuel Marquez, Juan Lazcano and Daniel Ponce De Leon when doing on-air advertising for Golden Boy Promotions’ Oct. 21 pay-per-view show. Considering the low number of buys for last month’s Marco Antonio Barrera-Rocky Juarez rematch – a PPV that had three great bouts on it – it’ll be interesting to see how few customers purchase a card lacking both in star power and an emphasis on the most important thing: its matches.
