By David P. Greisman
The great thing about sports writing, and especially being a columnist, is the right to be opinionated, and this week’s edition of Fighting Words is full of attitude and opinion, from start to finish, concerning Mike Tyson, The Contender and the odds and ends that will make up this week’s The Ten Count segment.
Fading Into “Bolivion,” Invading Washington, D.C.
Rather than fading into “bolivion,” like he told an interviewer he would do just after being impaled by Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson has decided to embark on another comeback, making the count on his returns now exceed the record set by another man whose return brought him to D.C., Michael Jordan. At this rate, Tyson will have more comebacks than Cher has had farewell tours, and now that I think about it, it’s quite sad to realize that the Cosmetic Crooner has a deeper voice than Iron Mike.
It will be Tyson’s first fight in our Nation’s Capitol since knocking out an elderly beltway motorist in August 1998, but Mike Tyson will still pack crowds into the MCI Center in the District of Columbia to see him fight Kevin McBride on June 11. The reasoning behind the hype, ticket sales and attention is both obvious and maddening.
Just like British royalty or Paris Hilton’s American ho-yalty, Mike Tyson is now famous for being famous, a celebrity, an attraction and a sideshow. Nearly two decades removed from the days in which he ruled the heavyweight division, and ten years after his post-incarceration comeback at least seemed feasible, there is absolutely no chance that the squeaky squirt can regain a title.
Bankrupt and desperate to cover his debts, Tyson needs fights, especially the pay-per-view proceeds that come along with them. His last fight, last year against Danny Williams, ended with a fourth-round knockout loss and an injured knee, but the cash helped, especially as a good amount of people watched.
With Kevin McBride, Iron Mike is up against a much lowlier pugilist than the British Williams, but the caliber of opposition is of much less consequence than the spectrum of catastrophes that can ensue. Tyson could wallop the much-taller McBride in impressively destructive fashion, the preferred result to the cheering throngs, but the other possibilities are nearly as attractive or intriguing.
Tyson could lose to his limited foe, making his need to continue to fight and raise money more desperately dramatic. Like a certain blonde socialite’s absurdly air-headed attitude, sex tapes and inane reality show, segments of the viewing population enjoy rubbernecking as somebody famous but ultimately unworthy of attention publicly leads a train wreck of a life (Fittingly, Tyson promised that the June 11 fight would be a “train wreck”).
The announcement and subsequent press conference publicizing the June 11 fight was fodder for the press, with multiple television, radio and newspaper outlets writing more words on the sweet science than they had previously for all of the past sixteen months’ worth of major fights combined.
When fighters such as Manny Pacquiao, James Toney and Bernard Hopkins are largely ignored in Sports Illustated, Sportscenter and sports radio, the degeneration of boxing into a fringe sport is ultimately unsurprising. March had Pacquiao and Erik Morales, May has Winky Wright and Tito Trinidad and June brings Kostya Tszyu, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Arturo Gatti, but until Iron Mike fades into “bolivion,” all the general public will ever know of boxing is Tyson.
Oh, and for the idiots who tune into Tyson/McBride as opposed to the same night’s Miguel Cotto/Muhamad Abdulaev and Joel Casamayor/Kid Diamond bouts, they deserve to be relegated to the same harsh spot as the nitwits who prefer to watch Wladimir Klitschko and Eliseo Castillo get it on (instead of dropping a deserving thirty dollars on ESPN’s April 23 PPV show).
Hey Naysayers, The Contender is a Champion!
While some boxing writers have their right to opine on NBC’s “The Contender” sucking (whether or not that is true), for a few to ink that the reality series has tanked are showing why their journalistic noses are firmly planted in boxing, as they lack the knowledge or expertise to know what constitutes a victory or a failure in the entertainment industry.
Sure, the ratings on The Contender aren’t winning the time slot, nor has NBC yet decided to renew for another season, but to limit one’s expectations to those two elements would be to ignore the greater good, not necessarily for series producers Mark Burnett and Sylvester Stallone, but for the contestants.
Every week, millions more people watch the sixteen boxers than do the fight cards on ESPN2, HBO, Showtime or pay-per-view. When Manny Pacquiao’s fight with Erik Morales netted nearly four hundred thousand purchases, it was seen as a victory. For the relatively unknown pugilists vying for the Contender’s million-dollar grand prize, the exposure they’re earning is priceless.
The show’s not going to be cancelled or relegated to a side network, as the series has gone on long enough with moderate success. This isn’t FOX and Oscar De La Hoya’s “The Next Great Champ,” which disappeared from the airwaves once audiences realized the poor quality of the completely unheralded (and essentially anonymous) cast.
A good amount of viewers will watch each The Contender each week (last week it placed at ranking number 65 of the 140 Nielsen rated shows), and while boxing is still a long way from returning regularly to network television, the show has incited curiosity and attention, and helped give opportunities otherwise denied to men like Alfonso Gomez and Juan De La Rosa.
The Ten Count
1. WBA lightweight champ Juan Diaz has suffered a cut over his left eyelid while training to face Ebo Elder, and hence is now off of the April 23 April PPV. In that fight’s place will be a bout featuring prospect Raul Martinez, and the matches between Calvin Brock and Jameel McCline, Shane Mosley and David Estrada, and Kermit Cintron and Antonio Margarito make the event still worthwhile. Drop the thirty bucks and buy the show, as ESPN definitely deserves the reward for making good boxing cheap and accessible to the public.
2. Bantamweight Hozumi Hasegawa outpointed Veeraphol Sahaprom for the latter’s WBC belt on April 16 in Tokyo, ending an extensive string of title defenses that reached back to 1998, when Sahaprom won the championship with a sixth round KO of Joichiro Tatsuyoshi. On the same card, minimumweight Yutaka Niida retained with a unanimous decision over Jae Won Kim.
3. Nice to see Sports Illustrated devote some pages to boxing with Gary Smith’s piece on Emile Griffith, although it was unfortunate that so much attention was paid to the question of the former champ’s sexuality.
4. After being knocked out two fights in a row by Antonio Tarver and Glencoffe Johnson, Roy Jones Jr. is now reserving himself to feuds outside of the sport. RJ confronted rapper Fat Joe about his lyric, “Even Roy Jones was forced to lean back.” The line was completely true, and Jones should consider himself lucky that no hip-hop name is yet to pick on the former champion’s negligible rapping ability. Jones has also taken heat from Hulk Hogan over his raising chickens for cockfighting, the Hulkster commenting on behalf of the Humane Society of the United States. Jones responded with some lame remark about walking “in a man’s shoes before he judges him,” what that has to do with cockfighting remaining completely unknown.
5. Southern Disaster Report: Underachieving Dominick Guinn fights on ESPN2 on April 22 against Nigerian Friday Ahunanya, his first match since a terrible 2004. Last year, Guinn lost two ten-rounders to Monte Barrett and Sergei Lyakohovich, looking absolutely lethargic in the process. Sandwiched between was the lone win, a first round knockout of Phil (Not the NBA Zen-master) Jackson. One more defeat and the former heavyweight prospect should seek other employment, while a win will further his career for at least one more fight.
6. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. will attempt to prolong his undefeated streak against another nobody, also on April 22, when he meets Travis Hartman (5-0-1) in Hidalgo, Texas. The differences between the career paths of the 17-0 Chavez Jr. and fellow junior welterweight Miguel Cotto (23-0) are obviously astoundingly wide, but then again, kid Chavez is still only nineteen. Hopefully he’ll face stiffer competition soon, otherwise he might just find himself subject to the same dubious jibes as Hector Camacho Jr.
7. Pop Culture References Boxing, Part One: A few weeks ago, an episode of Jeopardy’s Ultimate Tournament of Champions included a category entitled “Felixes.” The (paraphrased) Answer: “He unified the welterweight titles in 1999.” Major props to the game show contestant who properly responded with, “Who is Trinidad?”
8. Pop Culture References Boxing, Part Two: Yes, Saturday Night Live has sucked for ages, but I at least partially perked up during a segment of “The Falconer,” on this past Saturday’s show, hosted by Tom Brady. During a cockfight between the Falcon and a rooster was a cameo by a comic portraying Don King. Considering the action, Roy Jones should’ve been there, too.
9. One minor boxing website has reported that Zab Judah and Oscar De La Hoya will fight on September 17. I don’t believe it is so yet, but as a hypothetical, I’d go out on a limb and predict Judah to rally late for a victory.
10. The Contender Update: Lots to talk about this week, especially with this episode containing the last first round bout before the quarterfinals begin. This time around, Joey Gilbert of Reno, NV, and Jimmy Lange of Great Falls, VA, the final two contestants to not yet fight, got it on for the final spot in the second round. Lange, an experienced fighter with a 24-1 (17) record, was seen as the major favorite over Gilbert, 8-0. Lange, though, was worried that his “walk through the park” would be anything but, quite the clairvoyant proclamation.
Gilbert took the first two rounds (out of a total five) with a cascade of power shots, but in the third round, his hamstring, which had been injured after going all out in the team challenges, went out again, leaving him dead in the water for Lange to pick off. Going into the fifth round, anyone viewing the edited rounds likely had their scorecards at two-two. In the fifth, though, Gilbert, adrenaline pumping after being motivated by his teammate Sergio Mora and Contender trainer Jeremy Williams, never said quit, got his second wind and won a unanimous decision. If only Vitali Klitschko would have done the same thing against Chris Byrd…
The fight over, the eight quarterfinal contestants were the West team’s Alfonso Gomez, Jesse Brinkley, Ishe Smith, Mora, Anthony Bonsante and Gilbert, and the East’s Peter Manfredo Jr. and Juan De La Rosa. De La Rosa, though, had three different injuries from the previous episode’s fight with Tarick Salmaci, and after meeting with the doctor, decided to quit from the tournament. While De La Rosa mentioned a medical suspension, the footage clearly showed that the decision was his, and a surprising one at that. The young fighter felt that it would be better to stay undefeated rather than risk himself in tougher matches while recovering from injuries, a misguided thought as the continued television exposure would be much more valuable.
I don’t care too much to write about the non-fighting elements of the show, although I know why they are there and appreciate them as a viewer, but after Gilbert won and De La Rosa quit, the remaining seven were flown out to Las Vegas and Caesar’s Palace, where the final fight (for a million dollars) will take place. Sylvester Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard mentioned that the seven would vote back in the final quarterfinalist, and quite interestingly, they noted that only five of the nine eliminated were medically eligible: Jonathan Reid, Ahmed Kaddour, Miguel Espino, Tarick Salmaci and Jimmy Lange, leaving out Jeff Fraza, De La Rosa and Najai Turpin.
But like Ryan Seacrest and his commercial breaks on American Idol, viewers were invited back next week with the cliffhanger as to whom will be brought back. It seems that four of the remaining seven had already met to make their decision, and this viewer is hoping that the fiery Kaddour returns so as to provide the show with its requisite villain.
Next episode will have two fights, and the preview appeared to show Alfonso Gomez being knocked down in the ring. I almost wish that NBC had refused to show that, just like I feel that Boxingtalk.net should have shown integrity and concern (as opposed to just wanting the scoop) by not revealing (done once, now they’re just hinting at) the identities of the two finalists.
Until Next Week…
Fighting Words, as always, runs on BoxingScene.com each and every Monday, but until then, feel free to send your filth and fury my way via email at boxingscene@hotmail.com. Just as sportswriters and columnists are entitled to their opinions being printed, I can pass the privilege along to you.