By Jim Cawkwell
Influential promoter Lou DiBella waited alongside Paul Malignaggi, the fighter yearning for that brief window of opportunity to open in which his fragile fists would finally allow him to show his class. That time is now; though not because Malignaggi earned his shot, but rather that it’s now or never before those brittle hands fail to survive another fight and the years of frustration overwhelm him into early retirement. It appears that DiBella is cashing the kid in.
Enduring a brief professional career full of disruptions kept Malignaggi from facing anyone resembling the capacity of his opponent this Saturday. But Miguel Cotto has shown his own frailties, and while Malignaggi seemed like a safe alternative while Cotto took respite, their fight has gained a competitive edge due to an infamous epidemic sweeping through boxing and ravaging all in its path.
Making weight has become a torturous process for many fighters and a constant contradiction to a simple theory: Fighters should aim to compete at weights which they can make healthily and perform at their optimum capacity. For a variety of reasons, this sensible logic is rarely followed.
“Never give your opponent an advantage he does not already have”- An adage fundamental in the philosophy of all fighters. And yet advantages are surrendered and stolen in boxing every week through the weight-making process.
Cotto has struggled to make 140-pounds for some time, but the recent photographic and video evidence of him looking alarmingly drained means that he now faces not only Malignaggi, but also a race against time for his body to re-hydrate and be ready to fight strong.
Fortunately, Cotto’s body did not plateau before he was able to reach his contract weight target and he took to the scales weighing 138-and-a-quarter-pounds; one-and-three-quarter-pounds under the light welterweight limit. Brooklyn’s Malignaggi weighed exactly the same. Nevertheless, the Puerto Rican, as per his routine, will enter the ring at least fifteen pounds or heavier than he did today, while Malignaggi will fight having gained perhaps only an additional five-to-seven pounds.
During the weigh-in, Cotto’s facial features appeared angular and his cheekbones looked sharp and exaggerated in contrast to Malignaggi’s fuller, smoother visage. Making their final pose for the cameras, their physiques, while not drastic opposites, differed subtly. Malignaggi’s chest and back looked full and pronounced while Cotto’s upper body and torso appeared stretched and strained that much closer to the bone.
Depending on whether or not his body can recover from the damage he has inflicted upon it to make weight, Cotto faces one of two possible scenarios: He may be rejuvenated enough to enjoy a significant strength advantage, or enter the ring so depleted that he is unable to fully assert himself. Either way, what you will see in him is not a realistic representation of what he is capable of as a light welterweight.
There is no honor for the bigger man imposing himself on the smaller man, just as there is no honor in one fighter beating up a weakened version of his opponent.
Former super featherweight and lightweight champion Joey Gamache suffered four career stoppages. The last one came against Arturo Gatti in 2000. Gatti weighed in at 140-pounds, but was said to have entered the ring a full twenty-pounds heavier. Gamache was not beaten in the second round as much as he was almost decapitated. His career ended that night. Gatti went on to try his hand at 147-pounds. Bludgeoned in five by Oscar de la Hoya, Gatti duly slunk back down to 140. What goes around, indeed.
The Gatti-Gamache fight illustrates how a fighter can manipulate his participation at an unnatural weight for him into an advantage. It’s a somewhat sinister practice, overlooked in Gatti’s case because he managed to weigh in at the mandated limit. Unethical? Perhaps. Unfair? Definitely. Not all fighters exert such tactics, but it has been done and continues on as a dangerous and unchallenged element brought forth into the already perilous environment of the boxing ring.
If not a malicious practice, then what are some of the other reasons that an increasing number of fighters are facing the odyssey to make weight before fighting the next day effectively two weight classes or more above their actual division?
Indiscipline is often the culprit. Current pound-for-pound champion Floyd Mayweather and former undisputed middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins are two examples of professionals that never lose control of their weight when not in camp, and always make their mandated weight limits with ease. However, it is of course understandable that after weeks or even months of intense sacrifice in training camp, coupled with either the euphoria of victory or deflation in defeat, a fighter might let loose for a while.
Ricky Hatton is a perfect example of this. In England, there is a drinking culture in which the weekend rolls around and an inhuman consumption of alcohol is very much the done thing. Hatton has the taste for a jar or two, but having the metabolism of a highly trained athlete makes his a greater resistance level to alcohol; therefore, a greater alcohol quantity consumed leads to increased weight gain.
Hatton also insists on a full English breakfast on the morning of every fight. The full English consists of bacon, eggs, sausage, tomatoes, beans, mushrooms, black pudding and bread. The only thing not served after being fried in bacon fat is the cup of tea. It’s a taste sensation, but a word to the wise: You might have breasts by the time you’ve finished it.
Like his predecessor Kostya Tszyu, whose own culinary weakness was a Russian delicacy of pork fat treated with assorted spices, Hatton routinely faces the mammoth task of carving himself out of his downtime weight of 180-190-pounds right back down to his fighting weight of 140. Only Hatton’s youth allows him to do so, but some older fighters aren’t so fortunate.
The current vilification of Jose Luis Castillo throughout the boxing industry is ongoing despite the fact that his recent history was full of strong indications that it was impossible for him to make the lightweight limit of 135-pounds. Castillo did not make weight healthily for his first fight with Diego Corrales, did not make weight at all for the rematch, and weighed three pounds over the lightweight limit in fighting Rolando Reyes in February. At thirty-two, with years of forcing his body to make this unnatural weight behind him, Castillo’s body finally rejected his demands of it.
Undeniably, Castillo, knowing he was off-target with his weight at least a week if not more before the fight should have swallowed his pride and informed those investors in the fight that are now seeking to ensure his financial ruin that a compromise would have to be negotiated to allow the fight to proceed. If not, then those people around Castillo such as his trainer Tiburcio Garcia and manager Fernando Beltran that have weathered years of training camps with him, could surely tell from his body during camp that he could not make the weight.
How ironic, though, that the week after Top Rank’s Bob Arum expressed his disdain for Castillo’s failure so openly, Arum had Cotto weigh in for his fight with Malignaggi four hours earlier than scheduled. Cotto needed as much time as possible to allow him to recover from his struggle to make weight. If he did not and another high-profile world title fight involving a Top Rank fighter were jeopardized or cancelled within a week, Arum himself might have had to answer to some of the same persecution as Castillo.
Is Cotto, as was Castillo, being forced to make the lightweight limit simply because there is a championship at stake? Of the magnificence of what Castillo and Corrales combined to create, how much hinged on the fact that their two collisions were title fights? If Cotto were not a champion, could the industry deny his claim as one of the premier fighters in the world?
Why did Arum stand next to a weight-deteriorated Erik Morales in the wake of his tenth round annihilation at the hands of Manny Pacquiao, in full knowledge that Morales should not have to suffer to make 130-pounds, and then insist that Morales would have to do just that for a third fight with Pacquiao?
When former featherweight champion Paul Ingle came to New York in April 2000 to defend his championship against Junior Jones, the weigh-in was proposed for the same day of the fight. It was an unusual practice that denied the fighters a realistic timeframe to regenerate themselves in time for the fight. Why were Ingle’s protests hushed?
In his next fight against Mbulelo Botile, Ingle confided in manager Frank Maloney that he was concerned about his weight. Ingle conceded to the rationale that he should defend the championship he had earned. Ingle was never in the fight with Botile and took a hellish battering for eleven agonizing rounds before being stopped in the twelfth. Ingle was then carried out of the ring on a stretcher before receiving emergency surgery to remove a blood clot on his brain, then a tracheotomy to aid his impaired breathing. In the subsequent years, Ingle also had to overcome memory loss and a speech impediment inflicted on him from his injuries.
In a grueling fight, a boxer will experience a drastic loss of bodily fluids, and in particular, his brain will become vulnerable because it is not being sustained in its normal, healthy state, and is all the while receiving punishing blows. It is a recipe for brain damage, or even death. Those risks are evident for every fighter, but exaggerated tenfold for a fighter forced to drain himself into an extreme and unnatural state.
Aside from the boxer/pseudo-businessmen in the sport that seek the empowerment to control each and every aspect of their journey, the majority of fighters have little control over the direction of their careers. For the most part, they just want to know who they’re fighting, when, and for how much. Few fighters are truly indispensable. The majority of them know that if they are told to make a certain weight or fight a certain opponent and do not comply, all a discontented promoter need do is draw a line through the fighter’s name instead of under it.
It is those promoters, managers and team members that must act responsibly and make prudent career decisions on their fighter’s behalf. By doing so, they assure the preservation of the fighter’s health and their own earning potential while decreasing the likelihood that a Castillo-Corrales III controversy arises to further damage a sport in constant defense of its negative stigma.
Just as a trainer must save his fighter from himself when he is out of his depth in the ring, so must a fighter be saved if that possibility arises long before a punch is thrown.
Contact Jim Cawkwell at