By Jake Donovan
We’re back!
We’re not all the way back, but there is more than enough significant boxing action this weekend to announce our return from summer vacation.
Over course of the next 16 weekends, all but three will feature major fight cards accessible on American airwaves. Most of what you’ll find gracing your TV screen on a Saturday night will be indicative of the sport at its very best.
This weekend, however, is an instance of quantity over quality.
Not that it’s a bad thing. Think about it, how often is the first game of any season the best you will watch all year? How many season premieres truly open with a bang?
Every once in a while, you get that first episode with a surprise plot twist.
Otherwise, it’s almost always a prelude of great things to come.
Such is precisely what Showtime has in mind with Saturday’s split site doubleheader (10PM ET/PT), the only card of the night that doesn’t come at a premium to the home viewer.
October 17 marks the official kickoff for Showtime’s “Super Six” super middleweight round-robin tournament. Two of the three first-round matchups will air that night; the final bout of the opening round goes down November 21.
That’s if both Mikkel Kessler and Andre Ward survive this weekend’s showcases - which translates to expecting a head-on collision in two months.
Some will apply the Buster Douglas-Mike Tyson “anything can happen” logic, and create an argument that Gusmyr Perdomo (16-2, 10KO) and Shelby Pudwill (22-3-1, 9KO) both stand better than a zero percent chance of winning their respective fights against Kessler and Ward.
Everyone else will forgive America’s #1 Boxing Network for the dual site infomercial, since it does serve its purpose in more ways than just padding records for the A-side.
Saturday marks the first time in nearly 11 months that Kessler (41-1, 31KO) will be seen in a prizefight. Thanks to online instant access, most in the states will already know the result by the time they tune into the same day tape-delayed feed, which airs from Herning, Denmark.
The heavily tattooed Viking Warrior has spent most of 2009 fighting beyond the ropes with former promoter Mogens Palle. The dispute is no longer an issue at least on Kessler’s end, having since signed with Sauerland Event, based out of Germany.
Palle believes otherwise, and threatened to sue just about everyone involved in the Super Six tournament. A ruling in the Danish promoter’s favor would make for compelling drama, perhaps more so than Kessler’s mandatory challenger.
Perdomo is a Venezuelan super middleweight whose only selling point is that he’s never been stopped, which on the surface suggests that he could perhaps go some rounds.
There’s also the fact that none of his 18 career fights to date have come against anyone of note, yet he already owns two losses. A margin of two rounds separates his current record and the possibility of still being undefeated, having lost narrow decisions to former title challengers Mario Veit and Dimitri Sartison.
The flip side to that equation is that no contender worth his salt really has any business losing to either fighter to begin with.
Sartison was Kessler’s comeback opponent of choice after dropping a hard-fought, yet decisive battle against Joe Calzaghe for the lineal super middleweight championship two years ago. Kessler shook off early ring rust and broke down the Germany-based super middleweight before stopping him in the 12th and final round.
The feat netted him a vacant alphabet title, to which he has defended just once – a third round knockout of Danilo Haussler last October – before being put on ice for the rest of 2008 and most of this year.
An extended hiatus away from the ring is the one matter that downgraded Kessler – a former unified titlist – from runaway favorite to simply the leading candidate to serve as the last man standing in the Super Six tournament.
That he now gets a much-needed tune-up prior to his tentatively scheduled November 21 showdown with Ward could help push the odds heavily back in his favor. It also gives American audiences the chance to recall why he was so highly regarded prior to the Calzaghe showdown, his lone loss to date, with all of his 41 wins coming by a very wide margin.
All of the aforementioned weighed heavily on the mind of Team Ward, insisting from the very beginning that the night shouldn’t just be about Kessler’s return.
Sharing the stage is really the only reason why Ward appears this weekend. Certainly a tune-up isn’t in order – his bout with Pudwill marks his third of 2009, and his fourth in a span of 39 weeks, a rate of in-ring activity any notable fighter today would kill to enjoy.
That Ward is willing to remain so active should be celebrated, especially since it took a while for the 2004 Olympic Gold medalist to get his career in gear.
By today’s standards, he’s on par with most Olympians, who by five years in should already be regarded as a contender or better. But performing on even terms with his peers would be living below even the modest standards that come with an Olympic Gold medalist. The bar is raised even higher when you take into consideration that Ward is the lone active American fighter to claim Olympic gold.
Sadly, Ward had lived below such expectations for much of his young career. A hint at a career breakthrough was offered a year ago, when he beat on Jerson Ravelo, a member of the 2000 Dominican Olympic boxing squad, before forcing a stoppage in the eighth round of their Shobox-aired main event.
The idea was to move upward, but his career once again leveled off before taking on fringe middleweight and super middleweight contender Edison Miranda earlier this year. Ward offered a career-best performance in his first true homecoming, scoring a wide 12-round decision win in his Oakland hometown.
Naturally, the first question asked after the fight was, “Where does he go from here?” The options are plentiful at super middleweight, which lacks a true leader but whose Top 10 runs as deep as any other in the sport today.
Fortunately for Ward, there was no need to call out a single foe. The wheels were already set in motion to advance his career, as he joined Kessler, Carl Froch, Arthur Abraham, Jermain Taylor and former Olympic teammate Andre Dirrell in the groundbreaking round robin tournament set to begin next month.
By the first quarter of 2010, we’ll have a much clearer read on Ward’s career, as well as where he rates among past Olympic Gold medalists-turned pros. To judge him after the Kessler fight alone would be misleading – unless he wins, of course.
To judge either fighter after this weekend would also prove deceptive. It would also take away from what the bi-continental doubleheader represents – a welcome back introduction to what promises to be boxing’s best season yet.
Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of Boxingscene.com and an award-winning member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Contact Jake at JakeNDaBox@gmail.com .