37 stories on BoxingScene are published under the John Hively byline.
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By John Hively - Hopefully, the clash between Wladimir Klitschko and Sultan Ibragimov on February 23 will be the beginning of a series of unification fights to determine the real heavyweight champion. Today’s heavyweights are deep and talented, but Klitschko is the division’s hottest fighter and the likely favorite to win such a series.
By John Hively - Joe Calzaghe decisively defeated Mikkel Kessler on November 3 in Cardiff, and established himself as one of the greatest fighters of our generation. Now is the time to enhance his legacy by moving up in weight and fighting Bernard Hopkins for the world light heavyweight title. That’s the fight we should all want to see. Such a match would pit a crafty counter puncher against an aggressive, swarming, high-octane, speed demon with lots of ring savvy. Both have good punching power. They’d likely meet at ring center and throw leather all twelve rounds. Neither would fight off the ropes or clinch a whole lot. It’s true these fighters have little to prove at this stage of their careers; except, well, maybe just a teeny little bit more. Hopkins had physical advantages over the best opponents he defeated. He waited for Felix Trinidad, Oscar De La Hoya and Winky Wright to come up in weight to fight him, while Antonio Tarver had to shed forty pounds to defend his light heavyweight title against Bernard.
By John Hively - Make no mistake about, Jermain Taylor is a real champion, not a paper champ, not a titlist, and he’s not an old fashioned cheese champion.
By John Hively - Vitali Klitschko is scheduled to return to the ring on September 22nd against Jameel McCline. This is the battle comprised of unknown factors.
By John Hively - “We are told that the heavyweight crop which now stands out is as expert and as promising as the peach crop in Alaska. All along the line there is a moaning and a groaning, all because the critics have got it into their heads that the passing of Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis means the practical death of heavyweight boxing. To one who has seen them come and go this is really a dandy joke.” Legendary promoter Tex Rickard wrote those words in the November 1928 issue of Ring magazine, only the names he mentioned were Dempsey and Tunny. But the same thing he wrote then can be said of the current heavyweight class. The experts have it all wrong. Instead of the weakest crop of heavyweights in the history of the sport, the big boys of today are talented and they make up one of the deepest and most talented pool of heavyweights the sport of boxing has seen since the middle of the nineteen-seventies.
By John Hively - The best boxer in the world won a tight decision over a faded Oscar De La Hoya on Saturday, May 5th. So what? What if anything did it prove?
In early winter of 1935, former world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling boarded a luxury liner en route to New York from Europe to watch the undefeated power punching fistic sensation Joe Louis battle the veteran warhorse and longtime contender Paolino Uzcudun of Spain. The Spaniard was a real contender, not some stiff. He had never been stopped in sixty-nine fights, including three bouts against the heavy fisted Schmeling. Paolino held wins against some of the best punchers of his era including Max Baer, Harry Wills and Jack Renault.
By John Hively - Last Saturday night, WBO super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe disposed of reality star Peter Manfredo. Most fans thought the fight would not last the distance and it didn’t. The referee stopped the one-sided match during the third round, which was unfair to Manfredo since he didn’t appear to be hurt, and was avoiding some of the punches coming his way. On the other hand, he lost every second of the first two and a half rounds. The gap in skills was enormous, but Manfredo is a game kid, and he might have made it more competitive had the bout not been prematurely stopped. Many fighters start out slowly, lose lots of early rounds and still come back to win. Think about the Mike Weaver and John Tate fight in 1980. Weaver lost most of the early rounds. It was such a one-sided bout that I turned it off after ten heats. Why bother watching more of the same? Tate was way out in front. I stopped at a bar twenty minutes later and discovered that I had just missed one of the great comebacks of all time. Weaver stopped Tate late in the fifteenth round.
A few months ago, both Joe Calzaghe and Bernard Hopkins were talking about engaging in a high octane fight against each other. Such a conflict would have been Joe’s twentieth defense of his super middleweight title. Hopkins sounded as if he might be on a quasi-religious crusade when he declared that he did not want the Welshman to tie his record for title defenses. Bernard said that he would bravely step forward against the super-fast Calzaghe, protect his dubious non-existent record, and thrash the upstart Welshman (Joe Louis holds the record for championship defenses with twenty-five, which is significantly different and historically more important than alphabet title defenses). Alas, Hopkins turned tail and ran from what might have been a monumental night of fisticuffs, and he instead chose to engage in a likely slow waltz with lots of hugging against Winky Wright in July. Hopkins' coming battle with the naturally smaller Wright may be even more unappetizing to fight fans than the two excessively boring slow dances Hopkins engaged in with Jermain Taylor. What fight fans in their right minds want to watch Hopkins take on Wright in a bout in which each may be lucky to land five punches a round? And maybe not even throw that many. This isn’t intended to cast aspersions on the skills of these two worthy warriors. There isn’t even a tiny sliver of doubt that Hopkins and Wright are among the top ten pound-for-pound-pugilists of today, and that’s really amazing considering that Bernard is over forty years old and Winky is no longer a spring chicken. Nonetheless, these two great warriors should not do battle with other in spite of their achievements.
It would be a terrible disappointment to boxing fans if the June battle between Jose Luis Castillo and Ricky “the Hitman” Hatton was postponed to a later date. For boxing fans this fight should occur sooner than later if only because it has the potential to be an exciting slam bang match-up between two proven warriors, both of whom are capable of crafty boxing and hard punching.