By Cliff Rold

Boxing is unhealthy, on its deathbed, irrelevant.

Etc.

It’s all been said before and it’s never quite true.  Last weekend, over 40,000 showed up to watch Manny Pacquiao play the prohibitive favorite.   A lively crowd showed up in the U.K. for a backyard brawl sensible money said David Haye would win easy. 

Manny won every round.  Haye knocked out Audley Harrison as soon as he opened up.  The paying masses, the butts in the seats, seemed pleased at the closing bell.

The three most storied divisions in boxing are Heavyweight, Middleweight, and Welterweight.  The old saying is something like, “As the Heavyweights go, so goes boxing.”  The reality is that strong fields (or at least strong matches) at Middle and Welter have always been able to weather weaker Heavyweight waters.

So, if all three divisions can offer a fight fans don’t just want, but need, to see, then rumors of the sports demise are exaggerated.

Again.

The exaggeration is dramatic when one considers that two of three divisions are no closer to delivering the fights fans need now then they were when 2010 opened.  The needs of the fans have not been satiated.  It could be argued that David Haye vs. Wladimir or Vitali Klitschko, and Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather, have grown even farther away from the ring, fueling the hunger even more.

Anyone seen the new “Walking Dead” TV show?  That’s the sort of hunger fight fans are feeling to see the only fights that matter at Heavyweight and Welterweight.

Middleweight is the exception. 

Borrowing from the Stones, Sergio Martinez (45-2-2, 24 KO) and Paul Williams (39-1, 27 KO) made sure fans got what they needed last December.  It was a Fight of the Year contender and, maybe, just maybe, the best Middleweight fight since the mid-1990s. 
After Martinez ended the title reign of Middleweight king Kelly Pavlik in April, a rematch with Williams became, immediately, both want and need.  It could be argued this rematch was easier to make than the other big fights to which it is compared.

Sure, these two aren’t quite the stars their brethren at Welter and Heavy are.  They need the money a bit more. 

Regardless, they signed on the dotted line and wondering who will win a real fight is ten thousand times better than wondering who will blink in contract negotiations. 
It helps to think if Martinez-Williams II is half as good as their first fight, it’s going to sneak in as a late entry for Fight of the Year once more.

It also helps to be pretty sure that a Martinez win makes him the first non-Manny or Money winner of the Fighter of the Year honors in five years.  Williams would have himself a case with the right kind of win.

So, in recap: 2009.

Williams and Martinez fight.  The fight rocks.  Both guys come off the floor in round one and beat the hell out of each other.  Martinez loses a split nod (fair) but some guy named Pierre Benoist turns in one of the worst scorecards of all time for Williams to invalidate the legitimacy of the decision (unfair).

2010?  We’ll find out this Saturday. 

2011?

Yes.  2011. 

Williams won’t want 2011.  His fists will have a lot to say on the issue. 

Still, if Martinez can tie the rivalry up at one apiece, 2011 looms large.  No matter the riches at stake, Haye-Klitscko, Haye-other Klitschko, or Pacquiao-Mayweather can’t be counted on. 

There was a time, earlier this year, when it sounded as if Martinez-Williams II would also be forced to wait.  It didn’t.

Paul Williams and Sergio Martinez proved fans could rely on them to fight.

Imagine that?  In boxing?

It’s not just how they stack up versus the rhetorical rivals above and below them. There is also the lack of intriguing three-fight rivalries at Middleweight in recent memory.

Bernard Hopkins fought Robert Allen three times, but that hardly counts.

One could take the memory road trip all the way back to James Toney-Mike McCallum to find a genuinely memorable trilogy of fights between top Middles…except their third fight happened years after the first two and a few divisions up the scale. 

Marvin Hagler had rivalries with Sugar Ray Seales and Willie Monroe before he was a champion.  Carlos Monzon had some great rivals, but none who could force him to a memorable third.  Not since Nino Benvenuti and Emile Griffith has a truly memorable Middleweight trilogy lined up with the crown.

As they look to continue building the fan following their talents deserve, Martinez and Williams have each other.  There was no title on the line last year; that is rectified this time.  It would still be there if Martinez sent this war of wills into a deciding frame.

There is no way to know yet what will unfold this weekend.  Living up the first encounter might be too much to ask.  Maybe Martinez, flush with confidence, takes his game to the next level and runs Williams out of the ring.

Maybe, as he did in avenging his lone loss to Carlos Quintana, Williams plants his feet, finds his inner destroyer, and emerges as the total ‘pound-for-pound’ package some have been waiting for.

It’s okay to root secretly against either of those scenarios.  It’s okay to root for both men to put each other through hell one more time, to put viewers on the edge of their seats one more time…

…and to leave enough room for discussion that, at the final bell, everyone agrees that

the two best Middleweights in the world need to do it one more time.

Weekly Ledger

But wait, there’s more…

Cliff’s Notes… The take from the Klitschko’s manager on why David Haye might be waiting on a Klitschko fight (i.e. exhausting previous contractual obligations to increase Haye’s piece of the pie) is actually pretty rational…That said, David Haye-Ruslan Chagaev?  Zzzzzz (though Chagaev is live there)…Say it ain’t so: Tomasz Adamek v. Roy Jones?  That’s just cruel.  But what if Roy’s prime matchmaking had been as audacious as this crazy old man version of the one time untouchable…Nonito Donaire-Wladimir Sidorenko in December is a solid match but is anything worth contributing to a Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. pay show?  That’s a tough sell…Danny Green beat a legitimate Cruiserweight.  That’s something.

Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel, the Yahoo Pound for Pound voting panel, and the Boxing Writers Association of America.  He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com