10 stories on BoxingScene are published under the Tim Smith byline.
Every story follows our editorial policy. To report a mistake, use our corrections form; for anything else, contact us.
George E. Kimball III, noted boxing writer and author, died at his Manhattan home on Wednesday night following a lengthy battle with esophageal cancer. Kimball was 67 years old. He was surrounded by his wife, Marge Marash M.D., and his two children, Darcy Maeve Kimball and George E. Kimball IV when he passed away.
By Tim Smith - The promoters of the match between former four-time heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield and Lou Savarese in El Paso on Saturday night have optimistically titled the match “The Road to the Championship.’’ It is that kind of optimism that kept Juan Ponce de Leon searching for the fountain of youth. At 44 years old, Holyfield’s search for another undisputed heavyweight championship is about as fruitless as Ponce de Leon’s quest. Fortunately for Holyfield he probably won’t get shot in the shoulder with a poison arrow and die like Ponce de Leon. But this is boxing, so you never know. Holyfield is almost three-years removed from his suspension from boxing by Ron Scott Stevens, the chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission. Stevens suspended Holyfield after his pathetic performance against Larry Donald at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 13, 2004. Holyfield was on the shelf for two years, even though he passed the medical exams by the N.Y.S.A.C. During that period of inactivity, Holyfield said he was able to heal from two shoulder surgeries that had made it nearly impossible for him to throw his jab.
LAS VEGAS – When he was just turning pro Luis Collazo used to watch Shane Mosley work his magic on television. Mosley had been a lightweight world champion and had moved up to welterweight, which is where Collazo began his career. “When I was a kid coming up I always watched Shane,’’ Collazo said. “I liked what he did in the sport. Me and my trainer always said, “I’d like to fight this guy one day.’’ Collazo’s “one day’’ has arrived. He will fight Mosley in a 12-round match for the World Boxing Council welterweight title at the Mandalay Bay Event Center on Saturday night on HBO. This is Collazo’s second opportunity to make a big name for himself in the sport. He lost a close decision to Ricky Hatton in a match that most people thought he should have won in Boston last June. Collazo’s southpaw style confounded Hatton and Collazo actually rocked Hatton in the 12th round. But the judge’s didn’t see it Collazo’s way. “I believed going into the fight I was the world champion,’’ said Collazo, who was indeed the World Boxing Association champ. “I outboxed him when I needed to. I pushed him back when I wanted to and I just controlled the whole fight. He was the favorite going into the fight. That’s the type of sport we’re in. So, I just have to keep going forward and make the best out of it.’’
LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas – The conventional wisdom in boxing says that a good big man always beats a good little man. But Kassim Ouma doesn’t want to hear anything about conventional wisdom. When it comes to his fight against undisputed middleweight champion Jermain Taylor (25-0-1, 17 KOs) at Alltel Arena in Little Rock on Saturday night the former 154-pound champion Ouma (25-2, 15 KOs) would like to apply another sports cliché: It’s not the size of the dog in the fight. It’s the size of the fight in the dog. “When Jermain Taylor says he is going to knock me out that (upsets me),’’ Ouma said after the final press conference in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in downtown yesterday. “When he says he’s going to knock me out he’d better step back. It’s not that easy to knock me out.’’ Ouma has never been knocked out, but he has been down and battered. Roman Karmazin hammered Ouma over 12 rounds before winning a unanimous decision and taking away Ouma’s International Boxing Federation junior middleweight title in 2005. “That wasn’t the Kassim Ouma we all know,’’ said Tom Moran, Ouma’s manager. “We shipped him off. We hope we never see him again. On Saturday night we’re going to see the best Kassim Ouma ever.’’ Ouma said that he typically walks around at 170 pounds and gets down to 154 when fighting as a junior middleweight. He said he was up to 177 pounds before going into training for nine weeks to prepare for Taylor. He said he weighed about 164 on Thursday afternoon. “Don’t be fooled by these clothes I have on,’’ Ouma said pointing to his baggy sweatsuit. “When I take these clothes off you’ll see.’’ Emanuel Steward, Taylor’s trainer, said they are not taking Ouma lightly. He said he was present at the Karmazin fight and believes it was just an off night. “I believe he had a cold before that fight,’’ Steward said. “He has a cute way of getting away from punches. He doesn’t get hit that easy.’’ Ouma said he is not worried about Taylor’s size or power. He said he sparred with middleweights and light heavyweights in anticipation of what Taylor can throw at him. Taylor, who won a bronze medal for the 2000 U.S. Olympic boxing team, has heavy hands. During the training for the Olympics, there was a machine that measured punching power at the facility at Colorado Springs. The two hardest punchers according to the machine were Taylor and super middleweight Jeff Lacy.
The mid-term congressional elections were last week and there were volatile changes in Washington D.C. as the Democrats took control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Those elections may be over, but there is still one referendum on the boxing ballot that has to be decided and that is whether Erik Morales can continue to be a force among upper echelon of boxers in the game today. This issue will be firmly in the hands of Manny Pacquiao, the incumbent force in the junior lightweight division. If Pacquiao (42-3-2, 32 KOs) successfully punches Morales’ ticket in Las Vegas on Saturday night (HBO Pay Per View), then the Mexican icon may be forced to hang ‘em up for good. Morales (48-4, 34 KOs) has lost three of his last four matches, including his last fight against Pacquaio that saw the Filipino dervish smashed Morales from ring post to ring post until referee Kenny Bayless called a halt to the beating after 10 rounds. Morales, just 30 years old, looked slow and plodding in that match 10 months ago. He had plenty of excuses why he looked worst against Pacquiao the second time around. He had dumped his father as his trainer and had changed location of his training camp. “I just made too many changes in my routine from my camp,’’ Morales said. “I should have just stayed with what I had. I think that’s the big difference.’’ Bob Arum, Morales promoter, thought that Morales might have hurt himself in that fight by losing too much weight improperly. He had a personal trainer from Velocity Sports Performance, an LA fitness training outfit, work with Morales to get him in shape for this fight. “Yes, working with Velocity has been a real good thing to do,’’ Morales said. “I think that we took a lot of time to get ready for this fight for the weight, to make the weight, and I feel real strong, and I think that’s going to be the key. Not only losing the weight but be real strong after it.’’
World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko is a deceptively big man. You see him from afar and he does not look so big or imposing. But the closer you get to him, the bigger the 6-6, 240-pound Klitschko gets. Calvin Brock is not a small man himself, going 6-2, 230 pounds. He does not see Klitschko as overly imposing. But he will get a closer look when the two meet in the center of the ring at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night (HBO at 10 p.m.). “His height is not a big deal,’’ Brock said on Tuesday following a brief noon time workout at Grand Central Station in Manhattan. “It’s all about skill, conditioning and timing. Believe me the height will not make a difference.’’ Brock is counting on his past experience against bigger, taller opponents. Most recently Brock scored a sixth round knockout of Zuri Lawrence (6-4) on Feb. 25. Before that Brock won a 10 round decision against 6-6, 265-pound Jameel McCline in 2005. Brock got up off the deck in the seventh round and still won the fight. It was a match that made Brock a serious contender. That was the only serious test that Brock has faced in his career. For the most part the road to his 29-0 record (with 22 KOs) has been smooth. On the other hand, Klitschko (46-2, 43 KOs) has had his share of ups and downs. He won his first heavyweight championship by winning a 12-round unanimous decision against Chris Byrd in 2000. He was able to put together five straight successful defenses over the course of three years before things went south. Klitschko was knockout in the second round by Corrie Sanders, a South African journeyman who was preparing to begin a pro golf career before meeting Klitschko for the title.
LAS VEGAS – If Floyd Mayweather, Jr. is the least bit nervous about his welterweight title match against World Boxing Council champion Carlos Baldomir at the Mandalay Bay on Saturday night, you couldn’t tell it yesterday. During a light-hearted give and take with a group of reporters at a lounge off the main lobby of the Mandalay Bay yesterday, Mayweather tipped his hat to Baldomir and then bought hats promoting the fight for all the reporters. “I respect him for getting this far,’’ Mayweather said of Baldomir. “But I don’t respect his fight game. If you want me to respect your fight game you have to make me respect it.’’ That is what Baldomir will be fighting for when he climbs into that ring against Mayweather on Saturday night. If he beats Mayweather he will earn the respect of not only Mayweather, who is universally recognized as the best Pound-for-Pound in the sport, but all the other boxing fans who have doubted his abilities. So far this year Baldomir has knocked off former champs Zab Judah and Arturo Gatti. He’s going for boxing’s version of a hat trick to finish off 2006. Baldomir is so confident in his abilities that he is predicting a knockout. He said this fight will be easier than the Judah fight because Judah was a southpaw and Mayweather is orthodox. “I wasn’t able to knock Judah out because he kept holding on the whole time,’’ Baldomir said. “But this guy he’s fast but I will be able to knock him out.’’ Baldomir has never faced a fighter as fast as Mayweather and that will be his biggest test. Diego Corrales, who fought Mayweather as a junior lightweight, was more viewed as more powerful than Mayweather. But Mayweather knocked Corrales down five times on the way to stopping him on a TKO.
LAS VEGAS – Marco Antonio Barrera did not put out a maximum effort in his first fight against Rocky Juarez, and he came away with a disputed decision. He felt bad and wanted another shot to prove that he was much better and that Juarez had no right to believe he was in Barrera’s league. Barrera didn’t expend much more effort in the rematch at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Saturday night. But this time he was more pleased with his 12-round unanimous decision, even though many in the crowd of 10,421 did not share his sentiment. As Barrera was on his way to retaining his World Boxing Council super featherweight title, boos rained down from the crowd at moments during the fight and some people even called Barrera a dog. “People came and paid their money and they came for entertainment,’’ Barrera said of the boo birds. “They can say what they want. But this is a sport where you are supposed to hit and not get hit.’’ Barrera (63-4, 42 KOs) had that down to a science as he outclassed and confounded Juarez, who didn’t appear to learn anything from the first match.
The most striking thing about Hasim Rahman, the World Boxing Council heavyweight champion, and Oleg Maskaev is how remarkably similar they are. Both are square jawed boxers, who aren’t afraid to brawl. Both are have scored stunning knockouts and have themselves been KO’ed in spectacular fashion. And both are two of the most inconsistent heavyweights on the scene today. That is why no one can say with any degree of accuracy just what will occur when Rahman and Maskaev meet in the ring at the Thomas and Mack Center on the campus of UNLV this Saturday night on HBO Pay Per View ($49.95).
Carlos Baldomir versus Arturo Gatti wouldn’t appear to be a great match on paper, but neither did Gatti-Ward. And that turned out to be World War III each of the three times that they stepped into the ring. Scott Woodward, vice president of Sycuan Promotions, Baldomir’s promoter, believes Baldomir will bring the fight to Gatti. “I see this as Micky Ward-Arturo Gatti IV,’’ Woodward said. “Our guy is going to stay in the middle of the ring. Is he (Gatti) faster than he was 10 years ago? Is he faster than Zab Judah? Is he faster than Mickey Rodriguez?’’ All of those questions will be answered at some point during the 12-rounds of the match between Baldomir and Gatti on Saturday night at Boardwalk Hall. Or as they’re about the rename the place – The House that Gatti Built. This will be Gatti’s eighth straight match there. He is 6-1. His only loss was a lopsided butt-whipping from Floyd Mayweather, Jr. last June 25.