By Cliff Rold
In bars all over America, college hoops fans are packed wall to wall talking about the madness. After another night of barely controlled violence, Boxing fans everywhere can shake their heads in pity. We know just what hoops fans are missing out on.
Boxing is where the true March Madness is happening in 2008.
I don’t care what Butler almost did or West Virginia did do to Duke. There isn’t one damn thing on a basketball court that could ever, would ever, reach into the primal nature of man the way that Israel Vasquez-Rafael Marquez III, Nate Campbell-Juan Diaz, Manny Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Marquez II, Brian Vera-Andy Lee, or Joel Casamayor-Michael Katisidis have in the last four weeks.
With Boxing’s Heavyweight division doing everything it can to suck the air out of the sport, every other division is rising to the occasion on what feels like a daily basis. This time through, it was the World Lightweight champion Casamayor (36-3-1, 22 KO) dropping, getting dropped by, and finally stopping Katsidis (23-1, 20 KO) in what may be the finest win of his almost twelve-year career.
No, the inexperienced and untested Katsidis is not the best fighter Casamayor has ever faced or defeated but in terms of the story of his professional tenure, this will probably be the win he is remembered by. Casamayor has always been known for the close fight; win or lose, it’s always been by a smidge either way whether it was against Diego Corrales, Jose Luis Castillo or Acelino Freitas.
There had been no signature win.
He entered this bout, aged 36 to Katsidis’s 27, with questions about his legitimacy as a champion and his place as a world-class fighter. Casamayor earned those questions. He won his claim to the title in a ho-hum fight, defeating a then-reigning Diego Corrales in 2006 who failed to make weight; never a quality start to a title reign. That was followed by a long layoff and then a disastrous outing last November against the unheralded Jose Armando Santa Cruz which he lost on all but two judges cards.
For now at least, the questions can cease. He owes Santa Cruz a rematch, and former Casamayor foe Nate Campbell has earned a rematch with Casamayor as well. Failure to meet one of those two obligations will rightly fire the echo chamber up in due time. For this moment though, all can applaud Casamayor for turning in a true champion’s performance and picking up the sort of signature win that could make the difference when his time comes for Canastota consideration. This was Casamayor’s Jake Lamotta-Laurent Dauthille, his Archie Moore-Yvon Durrelle.
When Katsidis dropped him and forced him out of the ring in the sixth round, after rising from two knockdowns himself in the first, it appeared that the torch was within his grasp. Casamayor took it back over the following three rounds and snuffed the flame of youth with the left hook that rocketed Katsidis to the mat in the tenth.
Come to think of it, reading about this fight will be more exciting than reading about the ‘ballers’ too.
After nights like those Boxing fans have witnessed, and vicariously experienced, over the last few weeks, the sports shunning by mainstream media becomes even more apalling. It must be asked: is there any testosterone left in America’s premiere sports rooms? Boxing can be blamed for many of its ills, but sports fans are barely given an option when you consider that so many aren’t even getting the news.
Bill Simmons of ESPN wrote a piece after the now-legendary Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo I in 2005 about how Boxing’s current product quality was almost a well-kept secret. It’s time the rest of the world got in on the secret because the last few weeks, and the phenomenal calendar of 2007, have been much more the rule than the exception over the course of this decade.
Don’t take this as a slight hoops fan.
You’re entitled to your enjoyment.
And it’s not your fault if you just don’t know any better. Your boys and our men both sweat it out in pursuit of victory.
It’s just that ours bleed too.
Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel and the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com