by David P. Greisman
From the first trash-talk to the final head-to-head competition, boxing and politics are analogous in their occasional low blows, inevitable butting of heads and surprisingly dramatic victories. Never mind the temptation for corruption.
The theme in this year’s primary election season appears to be an unrest over the status quo and an increasing desire for change. This column won’t go there. Politics are for the sanctioning bodies and network executives, not for this humble scribe’s weekly dispatch on the Sweet Science.
There is, however, a constant search for boxing’s next superstars, the heirs apparent who will take over when their predecessors’ terms expire, whether those thrones are vacated willingly or by force. They will gain followings through a combination of ability and personality, part steak, part sizzle, all of which leaves fans salivating for a medium rare talent.
Last year brought the departure or downfall of several formerly powerful pugilists. But the revolution and evolution is far from complete. At least five divisions remain ready for power grabs, be it away from lame-duck leaders or in place of absent autocrats.
In each weight class, a single candidate for change has come to the forefront. He merely needs the opportunity, be it through championship by popular demand or, if necessary, by force, leaving the incumbent recumbent.
The Incumbents: Zsolt Erdei, lineal light heavyweight champion; Bernard Hopkins, “Ring Magazine” champion.
Your Candidate for Change: Chad Dawson.
Dawson was once a super middleweight prospect garnering moderate mainstream buzz. But in making the jump to light heavyweight, he has thrived largely due to his skills, but also because of demographics.
He is young. He is marketable. And, quite important in a sport often dictated by network money, he is American.
Those who long reigned at 175 pounds are now getting long in the tooth. The triumvirate of Glencoffe Johnson, Roy Jones Jr. and Antonio Tarver are a combined 116 years in age, and each passing month further removes them from the days in which their names were situated high atop marquees instead of low in the totem pole.
Bernard Hopkins, 42, still holds the “Ring Magazine” championship belt he won from Tarver in 2006, though he has only defended it once since, a decision win over former 154- and 160-pounder Winky Wright. Hopkins is currently in negotiations with super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe, likely leaving Dawson, for the moment, out of the picture.
The complicated nature of boxing means there is also a lineal light heavyweight champion, a boxer named Zsolt Erdei who has made nine straight successful title defenses but has yet to truly step up his level of competition.
Dawson, for all of his upside, is still a fair distance from the echelons of stardom once occupied by Hopkins, Jones and Tarver. The latter name has merited mentions of negotiations, but Dawson-Tarver has always been closer to rumor than reality.
As such, Dawson will take on Johnson this April, a bout that, should he win, will propel Dawson closer to controlling the light heavyweight division. Dawson has little say in Hopkins and Erdei treating him like a pesky third-party candidate, but his youth will allow him to wait them out until, if necessary, people finally regard him as the de facto dominant force.
The Incumbent: Joe Calzaghe, super middleweight champion.
Your Candidate for Change: Mikkel Kessler.
Yes, Kessler lost to Calzaghe, but what shame is there in being second-best when the victor is a transcendent talent? If patience will be a virtue for Chad Dawson, then determination will define the career of Mikkel Kessler. More than one politician has returned to run again.
Prior to the Calzaghe fight, Kessler blazed through the super middleweight ranks with results that left a strong mandate for Calzaghe to face someone who many considered as possibly his most difficult opponent to date. Kessler won’t get a rematch, though, not when Calzaghe is seeking to further his legacy with a challenge of light heavyweight champ Bernard Hopkins. But he can show that any previous praise wasn’t empty by tackling any and all who wish to claim the 168-pound throne.
There will be many who stand in Kessler’s way: Sakio Bika, Lucien Bute, Allan Green, Jeff Lacy, Edison Miranda, Kelly Pavlik and Jermain Taylor, to name more than a few. But boxing fans, like those who follow politics, love little more than a good comeback story.
The Incumbent: Floyd Mayweather Jr., welterweight champion.
Your Candidate for Change: Miguel Cotto.
Mayweather, apparently, has retired for the second time in two fights, with this sabbatical supposedly lasting, at the least, past 2008 and 2009. Cotto is the consensus candidate to challenge for the top spot in the 147-pound division, but he shouldn’t hold his proverbial breath.
Instead, Cotto should take advantage of his being left as the top welterweight draw, a legitimate ticket seller in both his native Puerto Rico and his adopted home arena of Madison Square Garden in New York City. There’s also the benefit of fighting in one of boxing’s deepest divisions.
Kermit Cintron. Joshua Clottey. Antonio Margarito. Paul Williams. All have cemented their positions. All will need a win over Cotto before they can claim the championship.
Cotto needs them, too, for at least as long as Mayweather remains retired and his former position remains vacated. Clottey and Margarito are legitimate top contenders, Cintron and Williams, beltholders who stand in the way of unification and lineal coronation.
There are other mega-fights available: a rematch with Shane Mosley, a spectacle with Oscar De La Hoya. And there’s nothing wrong with the occasional event – but should Cotto take on and take out all of the above and thereby take over, every one of his outings will be an event.
The Incumbent: Ricky Hatton, junior welterweight champion.
Your Candidate for Change: Junior Witter.
Ricky Hatton hasn’t exactly been dedicated to the 140-pound division in the years since he upset previous champion Kostya Tszyu. He defended his status once before making his first jump seven pounds north, but he retreated back to the junior welterweight division after struggling in a victory against Luis Collazo. Hatton fought twice there before rising once again, this time to take on welterweight champ Floyd Mayweather Jr.
In the meantime, Junior Witter ran up a streak of 21 consecutive victories and picked up a vacated belt, all in the comfortable confines of his native United Kingdom. But to American audiences, their main memory of Witter involved a less-than-scintillating performance in 2000 against Zab Judah.
Hatton, after getting knocked out by Mayweather, announced he would once again campaign at 140, though tempering that with speculation that retirement is probably around the corner. Witter, meanwhile, appears to be nearing his peak.
Having staged a successful invasion of America, Hatton will probably give his Mancunian faithful the chance to save them from overseas travel so they may instead flock to the local arena. A true event would have to involve a British compatriot –“the Hitter” would jump at the chance to make Hatton his hittee.
The Incumbent: Joel Casamayor, “Ring Magazine” lightweight champion.
Your Candidate for Change: Juan Diaz.
Casamayor’s claim to the championship leaves him as the lamest of lame ducks. His last fight was a controversial split decision victory over Jose Armando Santa Cruz, scores that were as unpalatable as they were unexpected.
It doesn’t matter.
Lineage follows a system, as broke as it may sometimes be. Popular votes don’t override the Electoral College, and obvious robberies can’t be overturned or written over in history.
Juan Diaz can render Casamayor unnecessary.
Casamayor’s putrid performance against Santa Cruz was either a product of age or ring rust. If it is the former, then his time atop the lightweight division is limited, leaving the possibility he will, sooner or later, be defeated or retired. And if Casamayor still has something left, then a showdown with Diaz switches from improbable to inevitable.
Diaz has captured three of the four major sanctioning body belts, disposing of upstarts who found themselves overmatched and veterans who underestimated his tenacity and ability. Even if mandatory challengers and sanctioning body politics leave him with fewer baubles and trinkets, as long as he remains victorious there will be little doubt that this “Baby Bull” is the man.
The 10 Count
1. First, unfortunately, the bad news: Former junior flyweight champion Yo-Sam Choi died last Wednesday after spending more than a week in a coma following a Dec. 25 victory over Heri Amol.
Choi was ahead on all three scorecards when Amol sent him to the canvas with five seconds remaining in the 12th round, according to reports from Seoul, South Korea. Choi rose to beat the count and win the bout via unanimous decision, but he soon collapsed and was taken to a local hospital, where he underwent brain surgery.
Choi was ultimately declared brain dead and taken off of life support. If there’s a little bit of light in such a dark time, it’s that the felled fighter’s organs will be donated to other patients in need.
Choi outpointed Saman Sorjaturong in 1999 to capture both a World Boxing Council belt and the lineal 108-pound championship. He would hold the distinction for nearly three years, compiling three successful defenses before losing in 2002 to Jorge Arce.
Choi was 33.
2. As with previous premature deaths, there is no natural transition, no easy way to move on to the next topic. Sadly, these tragedies will happen in a combat sport where the contestants take so many blows to the head, starting in the amateur ranks, continuing through sparring matches and on into professional prizefights. The best we can hope for is that athletic commissions will continue instituting requirements for medical testing that will reveal any existing conditions, that referees will err on the side of caution no matter the boxer’s warrior mentality, and that pugilists will know when to hang up the gloves so as to keep their faculties and their families intact.
3. Paulie Malignaggi retained his International Boxing Federation title with a 12-round unanimous decision win against 140-pound contender Herman Ngoudjo, the scorecards reading 117-111, 116-113 and 115-113.
Malignaggi has rebounded nicely since his June 2006 loss to Miguel Cotto, not only winning three straight bouts against Edner Cherry, Lovemore Ndou and Ngoudjo, but also doing so as a main-event fighter.
Malignaggi, in essence, raised his stock in defeat, showing against Cotto that there was guts and talent to back up the brash talk and flashy look. It also helped that most of the once-deep junior welterweight division had migrated seven pounds north, and those that were left holding belts weren’t from the United States.
One of those foreign fighters, Ricky Hatton, is returning from his latest foray to the 147-pound ranks. He’s also the lineal 140-pound champion and the biggest possible payday available to “the Magic Man.”
Malignaggi has lined his coffers by appearing on HBO and Showtime. Eventually, however, those networks will want to see a return on their investment. It’s either time for them to build toward a Hatton mega-fight, or for Malignaggi to step up against the other titlists and show that his claim to legitimacy isn’t based solely on nationality.
4. The man Malignaggi beat for the title, the aforementioned Lovemore Ndou, returned to the ring Saturday with a seventh-round knockout of Rafael Ortiz on the non-televised undercard to the Malignaggi-Ngoudjo main event.
Ortiz, a 14-11-2 journeyman and staple of shows in the Pacific Northwest, was but a tune-up for a hungry Ndou who saw his foe as a mere appetizer. The main course, of course, is Malignaggi, and Ndou is still gnashing his teeth over a referee he says cramped his style in their bout and an opponent who hasn’t come through on an alleged contractually mandated rematch.
Malignaggi’s win over Ndou was a near-shutout, with two of the three judges seeing the proceedings 120-106 while the third concurred, albeit with a 118-108 tally. Those scores don’t make it too likely that a network will buy a rematch. Malignaggi wouldn’t exactly be eager to end his string of major paydays, either. If Ndou’s claims of a rematch clause are true, then something or someone will have to give – and it could be Malignaggi’s promoter, with step-aside money.
5. Also fighting under Malignaggi-Ngoudjo was former light heavyweight champion Glencoffe Johnson, who stayed busy with an eighth-round stoppage of Hugo Pineda. Johnson just turned 39 last week, but he wasn’t going to show his age against a Pineda who saw his best days in the previous century and at much lower weight classes.
The two biggest names on Pineda’s résumé, after all, are former junior welterweight champion Kostya Tszyu and former welterweight king Felix Trinidad, both of whom stopped Pineda in title bouts in 1996 and 1999, respectively. After the Trinidad loss, Pineda took more than four years off from the Sweet Science, and he has only fought sporadically since his return, appearing once in 2003, twice in 2005 and once in 2006.
Johnson will be in much tougher come April 12, when he challenges current WBC 175-pound titlist Chad Dawson in a crossroads bout. Johnson needs the win for one final run at the top; as mentioned above, a victory for Dawson gives the young beltholder more leverage in negotiations with the various aging superstars in his division.
6. Allan Green continued his rebuilding process, scoring his third straight victory with a wide 10-round unanimous decision over Rubin Williams.
Green was once the next big thing at super middleweight, a prospect rumored to be in line for a shot at 168-pound champion Joe Calzaghe. That never came through, though, and Green continued to beat increasingly difficult opposition before finally landing an HBO slot opposite slugger Edison Miranda. But Green came out flat in the ring and short on the scorecards, his first and only loss to date.
Williams, meanwhile, hadn’t been in the ring since January of last year, when he fought to a draw with former middleweight and super middleweight contender Antwun Echols. He appeared briefly on the most recent season of “The Contender,” but was booted off in the first episode because he was out of shape. Williams has only lost thrice, to Green last week, to Jeff Lacy in 2005 and to Epifanio Mendoza in 2003. Yet in this sport, all it takes is one more for Williams to be consigned to the status of divisional measuring stick.
7. Speaking of “The Contender,” anyone else up for a rematch between Green and Jaidon Codrington?
8. On the undercard to Green-Williams, Zzzzzzzzzzahir Raheem put someone to sleep – and for once it wasn’t the fans.
Raheem drew the audience’s ire with two especially aesthetically displeasing performances, the first a split decision loss in 2006 to Acelino Freitas, the second a points victory last year against Cristobal Cruz. Few expected to see Raheem back on the airwaves, but there he was on last week’s episode of ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights.”
Raheem took advantage of it, disposing of Ricardo Dominguez with a single left hook less than halfway through the opening stanza. Dominguez, admittedly still conscious, stayed down for the count.
With showings like last week’s, we could see Raheem again soon – and actually look forward to it.
9. And to reward Raheem for his performance, I hereby announce that I’m cutting my etymological reprimand of the lightweight contender in half. From henceforth, he is… Zzzzzahir Raheem.
10. I’m David P. Greisman, and I approve this message.
David P. Greisman’s weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com
