By Jake Donovan
It was a rumor for a while, and then confirmed on Monday to Boxingscene.com’s Editor-In-Chief Rick Reeno that all systems are go for Golden Boy Promotions’ lightweight tournament.
The eight-man elimination bracket begins April 4, with HBO to serve as the distributor for the four-fight pay-per-view event. It has yet to be confirmed whether the entire tournament will go the premium route, or if winner’s bracket match ups prove to be enticing enough to garner network interest.
Confirmed entries and proposed matchups for the moment are: Michael Katsidis-Jesus Chavez; Jorge Barrios-Carlos “Famoso” Hernandez; and Antonio Pituala-Edwin Valero.
Golden Boy is also trying to work former lineal champion Joel Casamayor into the mix, provided that they can find a suitable opponent.
Ideally, the last man standing will be in line for the division’s lineal crown. Golden Boy and HBO will obviously sell this as a plan to declare once and for all boxing’s true lightweight king.
On its own, the card isn’t bad, even if not necessarily PPV-worthy. It’s no fault of Golden Boy that they go that route, as the event was pitched to several networks, all of whom passed on picking up the tab for at leas the opening round match ups.
However, there’s a glaring problem with proposing a year-long tournament to crown a king, even aside from the list of retreads once you get past the Valero-Pitalua matchup; February already provides a much clearer – and far more enticing – path to the top.
There are two major lightweight bouts airing in the month that honors lovers, old Presidents and Black history. One directly involves Golden Boy Promotions, as two of their fighters (Juan Manuel Marquez and Juan Diaz) collide at months end, with Marquez’ lineal title at stake.
The other fight comes this weekend, when Nate Campbell makes the first defense of his multiple lightweight belts against dangerous mandatory challenger, Ali Funeka of South Africa. It will be his first bout in over eleven months, when he won the belts with a career-best performance against previously unbeaten Juan Diaz.
Matching up the winners of the aforementioned bouts against one another answers any questions related to the lightweight division. The same formula held true last year, when Campbell beat Diaz two weeks before then-lineal champion Joel Casmayor rallied from behind to stop then-unbeaten Michael Katsidis.
The same could be said for the year prior, when the confusion truly began. Juan Diaz was on the belt-collecting trail, claiming the scalps of Acelino Freitas and Julio Diaz. Meanwhile, Casamayor spent most of 2007 on the sidelines, passing on fights while in search of a new promoter. He landed with Golden Boy, but looked horrible in taking a controversial split decision over Jose Armando Santa Cruz.
Along with the questionable outcome, the fight was also notable in that it was the first of several lineal lightweight title fights in which both champion and challenger were represented by Golden Boy Promotions – Casamayor-Katsidis, Marquez-Casamayor and now Marquez-Diaz.
Is it any wonder why Campbell (32-5-1, 25KO), a year after all but throwing Golden Boy under the bus via an open letter to the media, is now considering signing with them? That he’s not yet a member of their stable has everything to do with why he’s yet to receive his shot.
The same could be said of Diaz last year, who deserved one far more while a multi-belted undefeated fighter than he does now. It’s not to say that he’s not worthy of a title shot today; even with the loss to Campbell, the Houston-based student-athlete is still one of the world’s best lightweights.
But there’s no valid argument for his receiving a shot before Campbell, his lone conqueror.
The only exception would be if Campbell loses this weekend, in which case we begin the case for Ali Funeka (30-1-2, 25KO). The rangy South African earned the right to be here by scoring a fourth round knockout of 1996 US Olympic boxer Zahir Raheem last year.
Of course, like all other lightweight matters these days, the win doesn’t come without an asterisk. The knockout blow- a beauty of a right hand – came after the bell, as did the left hook that set it up. A protest was filed, but few bothered to rally behind Raheem’s cause, in part because Funeka had already sent him to the canvas earlier in the bout and remained in control throughout the brief affair.
Barring an emergency investigation, Funeka’s win will hold up long enough to remain Campbell’s challenger this weekend. It was also enough to earn the South African beanpole (6’0” and having never weighed more than 135 lb. for a prize fight) a top ten lightweight ranking in several major publications, including #8 by Boxingscene.com.
Campbell presently resides at #2 in those same rankings, with only lineal champ Marquez and pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao placed higher.
Of the names being floated in the Golden Boy lightweight tournament, only two can be found in any respectable rankings – Joel Casamayor and Antonio Pitalua.
Michael Katsidis somehow remains in the Golden Boy-owned Ring magazine Top Ten, despite having never in his career defeated a legitimate contender or champion.
Jorge Barrios is 1-2 in his last three fights, all of which came at super featherweight, and doesn’t own a single win at lightweight against an opponent with a pulse.
Jesus Chavez once held lightweight hardware, picking up a belt in his ill-fated bout with Leavander Johnson in 2005. Recovering from his death as well as rehabbing an assortment of injuries has slowed his career to a crawl, as evidenced in his injury-induced 3rd round stoppage loss to Julio Diaz two years ago. Rehab wins on the now-defunct Telefutura circuit helped shed some ring rust, but didn’t exactly bolster his standing among the world’s best lightweights.
Carlos “Famoso” Hernandez was chased into retirement in 2006 following a shocking loss to fellow retread Kevin Kelley. The move was a wise one, as Hernandez went as far as he would in the sport – capturing a junior lightweight belt earlier in the decade, and scoring a nice nest egg for his 2004 unification match with Erik Morales.
But like most fighters who try to walk away cold-turkey, Hernandez decided there was some fight left in the old dog. Hence, the comeback last August, in which he managed to go life and death with journeyman Hector Allatore.
Of the four, there are few respectable lightweight credentials to speak of in recent years. Yet there stands a chance that one of the four could possibly receive a shot at the Marquez-Diaz winner before Nate Campbell.
The equivalent would be #1 ranked college basketball team Connecticut ignoring the results of the NCAA tournament and instead holding out for the winner of the NIT games.
One complaint many a fan has about boxing in comparison to other sports is its lack of a playoff system. Golden Boy and HBO are now experimenting with such a format, but at a time when all they have to do is match #1 with #2 and once and forever end the long-running lightweight debate.
NEVER A GOOD TIME FOR A SCANDAL, BUT…
The bad news for boxing is that for those paying attention, cries of “Another black eye for the sport” are bound to follow in the wake of the California State Athletic Commission’s investigation of the Antonio Margarito hand wrap scandal.
The good news is, it’s quite possible that very few are actually paying attention.
If ever there were a time where you want to believe the chants from the less informed that boxing is a dying sport, now would be it.
While the industry tunes in for the aftermath of the illegal wraps discovered in Margarito’s one-sided knockout loss to Shane Mosley last month, the rest of the sports world remains focused on baseball’s latest steroid scandal. This one involves the biggest fish in their pond, with news leaking out over the weekend of Alex Rodriguez taking performance-enhancing drugs during his stay with the Texas Rangers earlier this decade.
Regardless of what comes out of the CSAC investigation (for the moment, Margarito and trainer Javier Capetillo having their licenses revoked and banned from fighting in the US), at least boxing fans can take solace in that the “A” in A-Fraud doesn’t stand for Antonio.
More important, any water cooler talk among casual fans regarding that fight still centers around Shane’s brilliant performance, the irony being that Mosley is presently involved in a steroid investigation of his own.
Just don’t tell the rest of the sports world.
GIVE US MORE WEEKENDS LIKE THE LAST ONE
From the moment this weekend’s card was first announced, you’d be hard-pressed to find a boxing fan that wasn’t excited about HBO’s tripleheader.
That, of course, was well before it was known that: a venue for the show wouldn’t be found until less than a month before the card; one-half of the evening’s main event – Ricardo Mayorga – would once again go the extortion route, this time pricing himself off of the show; and that not one, but two very replacements would be required to keep undefeated junior middleweight prospect Alfredo Angulo in the ring and on the telecast.
The concept of a tripleheader always sounds great on paper, but is a fine balancing act with the potential to crumble the moment an issue arises in any of the bouts.
Sometimes, a better way of conducting business is to throw it all against the wall and see what sticks. Case in point, last weekend’s lineup, which featured boxing telecasts on six separate networks spanning two days.
The weekend began with a solid show on ESPN2, which saw Yusef Mack resurrect his career with a well-earned split decision over Chris Henry in their light heavyweight crossroads bout. The real attraction of the evening, though, was Fernando Guerrero, who packed the house in his hometown of Salisbury, MD. The partisan crowd was given a scare, then a thrill as Guerrero recovered from a third round knockdown to rally back hard and eventually outlast Gabriel Rosado.
Showtime offered two telecasts – unbeaten prospects Andre Ward and John Molina posting wins on Shobox last Friday, and Vic Darchinyan continuing his remarkable junior bantamweight run, battering Jorge Arce over eleven rounds.
Azteca America presented its first live telecast of 2009, one that saw Jesus Soto Karass remain on the bubble of welterweight contention, rallying behind two knockdowns and a late surge to outpoint Carson Jones. The telecast opened with unbeaten Miguel Angel Garcia, who scored a fifth round knockout of Lucian Gonzalez.
Integrated Sports continues to find ways to bring notable overseas action to our living rooms, this time picking up the feed for Ruslan Chagaev’s aborted heavyweight fight with Carl Drumond. A better offering was found in the televised co-feature, as Andreas Kotelnik barely outlasted Marcos Maidana in their junior welterweight alphabet title fight.
Argentinean-based network TyC offers boxing almost every Saturday evening. There are two problems with their programs, though: the network is available on DirecTV, but on few other cable/satellite providers in the states, and; their telecasts are usually loaded with mismatched club fights.
A greater effort was made last weekend, as the network aired live a flyweight alphabet title fight between undefeated long-reigning titlist Omar Narvaez and American challenger Rayonta Whitfield. It was a rare flyweight title fight where both sides were unbeaten, though it only made the fight competitive on paper.
Whitfield danced as hard as he could, but fell behind and never recovered, ultimately saved by way of referee intervention in the 10th round of what was celebrated as a record-breaking defense for Narvaez. It was his 15th defense of the belt he won in 2002, one more than the 14 defenses of the legendary and far more legitimate former middleweight king Carlos Monzon.
The Friday night was a bit cluttered – each of the three telecasts staggered one hour apart from the other, which made for an overlapping nightmare for those who depend on TiVo to maximize their televised intake. But all told, staging six telecasts over two days is still better than saving up for one show – especially if that show has been falling apart at the seams the moment it was put together.
Jake Donovan is a voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Comments/questions can be submitted to JakeNDaBox@gmail.com .
