By Mitch Abramson
Collazo Considering Retirement?
If Brooklyn’s Luis Collazo doesn’t get the next crack at WBC welter champ, Andre Berto, Collazo might walk away from the sport, he said in a phone interview last week from his training camp in South Carolina.
Currently ranked No 1 in the WBC and No. 2 in the WBA, Collazo was supposed to be Berto’s first mandatory but Steve Forbes got the nod, and now Collazo has been relegated to a tune-up fight most likely Sept. 27 on the undercard of Mosley-Mayorga.
If Collazo doesn't fight Berto next, that could be it for him.
“I may just walk away,” Collazo said. “You wait around so long that it gets stressful. To be honest, the critics never gave me the respect I deserved, but I guess that’s how boxing is. I just want to get another opportunity to do what I do best to get that title back.”
When Berto won the title, he had six months to fight his mandatory, but in between he was able to successfully petition the WBC to fight Forbes, Collazo’s trainer and manager, Nirmal Lorick said.
“I’ve just been patient, staying in the gym,” said Collazo, who was in training camp with Paul Williams for his bout with Carlos Quintana. “Hopefully I get a nice tune-up next month and then I get ready for Berto. He’s young and talented, but right now I’m hungry and he has something that I want.”
There was talk of Collazo meeting Paul Williams earlier this year, but the rematch was made with Quintana, and Collazo, 27, was left without a substantial dance partner.
The WBA, Lorick said, has been promising Collazo that he’ll be a mandatory challenger for the past three years, but boxing politics and injuries have combined to delay those plans.
After he lost to Mosley in Feb. 2007, Collazo missed nearly a year with a dislocated thumb that required surgery.
“With boxing and promoters and TV, they don’t understand that these kids’ lives are involved,” Lorick said. “And if they don’t fight consistently, is it worth it for them to stay in boxing or should they just get a regular job and live their life? After the Mosley fight, he was wondering if this is the business he wants to be in. We don’t duck anyone, and we’re not scored to fight anyone. We’ve been calling out Margarito forever.”
Collazo last fought in January, winning a decision against Edvan Dos Santos Barros at Madison Square Garden.
“Before we fought to get experience,” Lorick said. “Now we fight to get paid so Lui s can be out of this business instead of waiting around until he’s 40.”
New Trainer for Zab Judah?
There will be a different face in Zab Judah’s corner, the next time he fights. Yes, we’ve heard this before, but according to Zab’s father, Yo’el Judah, the time is right for Zab to get a new trainer. The time is also right for Yo’el, who has trained Zab for his entire career, to form a promotional company and to start promoting Zab’s fights, and the drudgery of handling the promotional side of boxing will be too much to allow him to also train his son.
“I can’t do both,” Yo’el said from Las Vegas where his son now lives and where Yo’el now has a promoter’s license. “This is what he wants and this is what I want. Zab’s a veteran and as long as he’s doing his thing, he’ll be ok. He knows how to train. I’m just going to be too busy promoting to also be able to train him.”
The most prominent name mentioned to train Zab is Floyd Mayweather Sr., Yo’el said.
Of Zab’s last fight, which ended in a technical decision loss to Joshua Clottey Aug. 2, Yo el would say: “It was a bad decision, stopped because of the cuts. But we know the game. We let Bob Arum [promote Judah] with no options. As a promoter, he has Clottey off promoter and managerial options, and he has Zab on nothing. So, if we had won, we would have walked away from Arum with [no options].”
Yo’el also said that Arum has inquired about Zab fighting a rematch with Clottey, or possibly facing Antonio Margarito or Miguel Cotto down the road. Furthermore, Dan Goossen, Paul Williams’ promoter, called him Thursday about fighting Williams in November or December. Finally, Yo’el said that Lou DiBella called him about having Berto face Zab on Jan.19.
“Everyone wants to fight Zab,” Yo’el said. “We know that we’re very marketable, and we know that when Zab comes, he’s going to fight, win, lose, or draw. Zab is like an Arturo Gatti at this point. Sometimes, a lot of good can come from a loss.”
Jaidon Codrington in the ATL
The last time we saw Jaidon Codrington in the ring, he was trading haymakers with Sakio Bika in one of the most entertaining and savage fights in recent memory. After both fighters tasted the canvas in the first round and ensuing fireworks followed, Codrington, 24, was eventually knocked out in the eighth round last November, and it was hard not to think back to his shocking loss to Allan Green in 2005 when he was rendered unconscious and stopped just 18 seconds into the first round in a nationally televised bout.
Once a touted prospect, Codrington had now been brutally knocked out twice since turning pro in June 2004, and the whispers began that maybe he should retire and find something else to do.
He was rumored to be in Atlanta, living alone, attending school.
Everyone (or the New York fight community) seemed to be asking collectively, where was Jaidon?
“Just because you haven’t seen me doesn’t mean that the gym hasn’t seen me,” Codrington said in a cell phone interview. “I’m here in Atlanta, training, getting ready to get back in the ring. I had five fights that year. That’s a lot of fights. It was real important to take some time off. My body needed some rest, to get my head together. I had some personal issues- my father had just past away, so that was hard on me, too. This is the right time for me to be cranking it back up.”
Since his loss in the final of last year’s Contender to Bika, Codrington has relocated to Atlanta, GA and is training with Ricky Frazier, the same Ricky Frazier who was stopped in two rounds by Roy Jones- at the Hitsville Gym.
While Bika resurfaced in April with a first-round knockout of Gustavo Javier Kapusi, Codrington has been clearing out the cobwebs and biding his t ime for a return fight, which he expects to take place in a couple of months against an opponent to be named.
“I’m been training hard, and more than anything else, I’m a lot better than I used to be,” Codrington said. “I wasn’t ready to fight back then, but now I am. Now that I have the exposure I needed from the show, I want to come back better than I was last time.”
As for the rumors that he was done with boxing, Codrington conceded that there were times when he thought of finding a different career, “especially after the Green fight when maybe it was tough to believe in myself for a while and I lost my confidence.”
But he never contemp lated retiring after the Bika fight, just taking some time off. He was offered some fights overseas, but he thought it was best to rest his body and retool his style.
“I’m a lot smarter and stronger now,” Codrington said. “I plan on being a more defensive fighter, using more jabs defensively, and jabs offensively and more or less moving my head.”
Frazier and Codrington were sparring partners in New York, and Codrington was always enamored with his elusive, defensive style. He thought it would be a good idea to learn from Frazier.
“He’s the best fit for what I need to do at this point,” Codrington said.
He said he speaks to former chin checker Curtis Stevens every day, the two prattling on how different the pro game is from the amateurs, where the two excelled.
“It’s a lonely world in the pros,” Codrington. “The amateurs is more like a team sport. In the pros, it’s just you and that man you’re fighting and t he business aspect of it is crazier than you would ever think.”
Santana Still Fighting in Ring and Out
Spanish Harlem’s Edgar Santana, who was indicted for allegedly participating in a cocaine distribution ring and is out on bail, is scheduled to fight Oct. 22 in the main event of a Broadway Boxing show at B.B. King’s in Manhattan, pending approval from the New York State Athletic Commission.
“We need to call the commission to make sure there’s nothing wrong with his license,” said Santana’s manager, Ernesto Dallas. “He’s been indicted but he’s not guilty. I’m hoping that it’s not a problem. I assume that we’re going to be able to fight. He’s already licensed to fight in New York, and I can’t see them taking away his license.”
Santana was scheduled to fight in the main event on Aug. 6 at the Aviator Arena in Brooklyn against Ali Oubaali on ESPN2, but Dallas said he pulled Santana out of that match because he feared Santana wasn’t up to the task of fighting after the boxer had just spent six days in jail following his arrest on July 18.
Santana will fight against an opponent to be determined on the Lou DiBella promoted show, and is currently training at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn. A call to the commission was not immediately returned.
“I’m excited to get this opportunity and to get back in the ring,” Santana said. “Oct. 22 will be just perfect. I have goals that I want to accomplish for this year, like fighting for a world championship or fighting for a shot at the title. I feel that I’m very close.”
Santana was scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 15, but the hearing was adjourned until Sept. 15. His legal situation will not be a distraction to his preparation for the fight, he says.
“I’m able to block all the legal stuff out,” Santana said. “I let my lawyer deal with the legal stuff and I focus on the boxing.”
“Emotionally, Santana is ice,” Dallas said. “I went to pick him up from jail and we had dinner that night with his family. He was laughing and joking. The next day he was in the gym. We don’t talk about the case. We talk boxing.”
Closing remarks:
…Heavyweight Chazz Witherspoon, who was last seen getting pummeled in a gutsy effort against Chris Arreola in June, is fighting Nov. 15 on the undercard of Jermain Taylor and Jeff Lacy. He will face Adam “Swamp Monkey” Richards (21-1) who fights mostly in Mississippi. According to boxrec.com, in the area of interesting but meaningless information, Richards, 27, holds a Junior Olympic record with Mike Tyson for knocking out every opponent for two straight years while winning Junior Olympic heavyweight titles…
…Kermit “Killer” Cintron is scheduled to fight on the undercard of Taylor and Lacy on Nov. 15…Ronald Hearns is set to square off on Sept. 7 and if all goes well, he’ll come back in the late fall on Showtime…Carlos Quintana, who was demolished by Paul Williams in a single round in June is slated to fight in Puerto Rico sometime in October…
…Fast-rising middleweight Danny “Golden Child” Jacobs, who is already 8-0 with eight knockouts and has shown dazzling talent against middling opposition is slated to fight on Sept. 13 on the uncercard of Joel Casamayor and Juan Manuel Marquez…Will Rosinsky, a four-time Daily News Golden Gloves winner, is scheduled to fight on a Bob Duffy-promoted show at the Huntington Hilton in Long Island on Sept. 26 and sometime in October…
…Monte Barrett, ranked No. 9 by the WBO, is one of many heavyweights lining up to fight cruiserweight champ David “Hayemaker” Haye for a heavyweight bout on Nov. 15 in London…Curtis “Showtime” Stevens will probably have a stay busy fight later this month in Ohio…Bronx junior middle Andrey Tsurkan will face 13-0 Alfredo Angulo on Oct. 4 on HBO.
…One note about Ronney Vargas, the young, undefeated pro from the Bronx who was shot and killed last Saturday: On the first day of his wake, which attracted a crowd that snaked around the corner from the Ortiz funeral home, IBF junior welterweight champ Paul Malignaggi approached Vargas’ father, German, and gave him his championship belt. It was an intimate moment away from the swarm of people that saw both men break down in tears. The belt was placed in Vargas’ casket, which was flown back to Venezuela, Vargas’ birthplace, on Wednesday night. Malignaggi is fighting Ricky Hatton Nov. 22.