By Cliff Rold

Children dream out loud when it comes to sports.  Whether they want to be a big leaguer, a baller, or a boxing champion, it’s always the same. 

They see the peaks. 

Knowing adults nod and smile knowingly while thinking, “It’s a one in a million shot kid.”

32-year old Welterweight Joshua Clottey (35-2, 30 KO) is playing a 3 in 1,658,937 shot this Saturday night in New York City.  The latter number represents the population of Clottey’s native Accra, Ghana.  It is a city whose waters and weathers need closer examination when looking for the secrets of finding world class fighters. 

Clottey’s opponent, Miguel Cotto (33-1, 27 KO), is not just one of the world’s best Welterweights.  He is also one of his boxing’s biggest stars.  Beating Cotto matters; win and Clottey may find a chance to sample the idolatry once heaped upon fellow Accrans Azumah Nelson and Ike Quartey.

It is inevitable under the circumstances.  It will be said or written, is being said and written, Clottey has a chance to ‘arrive’ this weekend.  In common use, arrival is the moment when a fighter crosses the line into the sport’s mainstream nerve center.  To say one can arrive is part of the effort to examine the drama of a pivotal battle.

Arrival is a concept flawed always by the short shrift it gives to the journey.  This may be Clottey’s biggest stage yet but he didn’t just all of a sudden get here.  As was the case a little less than a year ago against Antonio Margarito, Cotto is heading into an anticipated bout against a fighter who has floated just below the surface for years.

Controversy about the Margarito team’s attempts to load his gloves with Plaster of Paris, prior to his loss to Shane Mosley earlier this year, has cast a shadow over his 2008 win over Cotto.  Still, the similarities in storyline cannot be ignored.

Like Margarito, Clottey enters the bout in his 14th year as a professional.  He enters, as Margarito did, with his back to the wall.  He is not getting any younger and another chance like this will not come easily should he fail. 

The time it’s taken him to get a crack at the big time is an underlying reason to favor Cotto.  The stars should emerge faster than this right?

In Clottey’s case, in the case of more career’s than not, opportunity just doesn’t work that way.

While based today out of the Bronx, Clottey didn’t fight in the U.S. for the first time until 2003.  He arrived (there’s the word again) on these shores sporting a 24-1 record which meant little in a fight culture demanding name value.  The lone blemish on his record wouldn’t mean anything until years later and acted only as a boost after Clottey’s first big test came and went.

Posting a 6-0-1 mark in the States, Clottey secured a shot at Margarito for the WBO belt in December 2006.  If there was plaster present, the face of Clottey didn’t show it by night’s end.  He dropped a unanimous decision after building a commanding early lead, undone by the traditional means of being outgunned via consistent pressure. 

And yet the quality of his showing raised his stature.  Journeyman Carlos Baldomir had upset Zab Judah for the lineal Welterweight championship of the World earlier in 2006.  Even considering Baldomir’s loss to Mayweather one month prior to Margarito-Clottey, the overall results strengthened Clottey’s standing.  Suddenly, it mattered that Clottey had once dominated Baldomir on the cards before suffering a disqualification defeat in 1999.  The Ghanaian was finding acclaim where anonymity had lurked. 

He was the man who many felt, with a little luck the other way, could have had wins over two of the earned best in his class.

In five wins since the Margarito loss, Clottey has remained in the in-between.  Fight fans respect him; most of the rest of the world doesn’t know him.  He won what ultimately would be the final fight in the fiery career of the late Diego Corrales to start the latest streak and set up the Cotto fight with a strong decision win over former World champion Zab Judah last August for the IBF belt.

He’s given up the bauble to chase bigger game this weekend.  It’s a wise business move but also a confident one.  He may look like he’s just arriving to some but Clottey has earned the right to think he belongs.

The crowd will try to make him feel otherwise.  While he may base his career out of New York, Clottey is heading on to hostile ground.  The New York Puerto Rican Day festivities of the weekend have been and will be again milked to maximum profit around the presence of Cotto.  He is the latest favorite son, a matinee idol in the tradition if not on the scale of Felix Trinidad and Wilfredo Gomez.

Clottey can carry the ghosts of his own national heritage with him should he need the mental edge.  For some of Accra’s best, the Garden has been hallowed ground. 

In 1982, a then-unknown Nelson traveled across the Atlantic for the very first time.  He fell short in the fifteenth and final round of his 14th professional outing, ahead on one card and slightly behind on two others. 

It was an instant classic. 

His conqueror would tragically pass in a car accident after the bout.  Nelson would forever wonder if a little more seasoning could have meant victory against all-time great Featherweight champion Salvador Sanchez.  No matter, the lone Garden show of his career allowed him arrival even in defeat as Nelson built a Hall of Fame ledger from there.

Quartey also found a career pivot in the Garden.  Whispers of a beast began almost immediately after he stopped Crisanto Espana for the WBA Welterweight honors in 1994.  They were only whispers though in the U.S. before the age of the internet.  Bazooka, behind his terrorizing jab, worked his way into the U.S. conscious slowly.  He was seen as a highlight reel beneath the Pernell Whitaker-Julio Cesar Vasquez bout in 1995 and then was featured on the undercard of Whitaker-Wilfredo Rivera I in 1996.  A devastating knockout of Vince Phillips led Quartey to the next step.

It led him to his own Garden show.  Granted, it wasn’t the main hall.  Quartey settled for the Theatre next door. 

Close enough. 

Over twelve rounds, he outfought the highly regarded Oba Carr and remained an HBO regular for the rest of his career.  Even with long layoffs over the years, Carr was the test which opened the doors for Quartey to appear on HBO or HBO pay-per-view in eight of the remaining nine fights of his career.  For much of the world, Quartey cashed in on his arrival the night he faced and narrowly lost to Oscar De La Hoya in 1999. 

As he could attest, along with Clottey this weekend, the road traveled was the real test.

Clottey has survived the struggles the game provides for all but the rare few connected well from the opening gate.  Now he has won enough of the important fights to merit the big fight.  Since March 31, 1995, Joshua Clottey has been part of the vast and varied landscape of the sweet science. 

Many will know him for the first time this weekend.

Clottey will know he’s been there all along.  If he fights like he wants to stay, Saturday will exceed every expectation.

The Weekly Ledger

But wait, there’s more…

Cliff’s Notes…

I can understand anyone disappointed by the loss of Wladimir Klitschko-David Haye.  I can’t understand being negative about Ruslan Chagaev stepping in.  The last time two Heavyweights of such proven quality met on short notice, fans got Lennox Lewis-Vitali Klitschko...Paulie Malignaggi-Juan Diaz?  Sure, why not…Finally, finishing a series of shots out to Fresno’s Edison High School Baseball Tigers, congratulations to center fielder Marquise Cooper, a third round pick for the Florida Marlins in this week’s MLB draft while he was graduating, and to left fielder TJ McDonald, son of former 49ers great Tim McDonald, taken in the 30th round by the Toronto Blue Jays.  Get that paper kids.

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