The Other Fights of the Weekend (August 1-2)

I’m a huge boxing fan. Let this serve as my introduction. I post here some, but not as much as I lurk and read. When I say I am a huge boxing fan, I mean it. I love modern boxing. There are entire communities here that have rallied around specific fighters, nationalities, or ethnicities, but I don’t care about any of that. I just love boxing as a whole. For the record though, I am white, I am American, and I live way upstate in New York by the Canadian border. Perhaps I have biases that I do not know so I share those bits of information. Anyway, the communities seem blind to the boxing world as a whole. They love Floyd, Margarito, Mexicans, blacks, etc, and of course everyone loves the big HBO fight, but what about the rest of the world? HBO broadcasts twice a month if we’re lucky, Showtime as well. ESPN is great, giving us eight cards a month in a summer, but a lot of that gets lost in the hoopla. Maybe we get a Fox Sports card, maybe we download a Sky Sports card, maybe we get a Versus card... Oh there is a lot to watch, but there is always so much beyond that as well. This is going to be sort of a results column, but not a traditional one. I am not going to discuss the Margarito fight. I am not going to discuss Josh Clottey v Zab Judah. These fights are gone over until there is nothing left to say. I’m going to pick out the little fights of the weekend of interest, give you the results, and tell you why I at least care about them. I hope you enjoy. • The first fight of note this week that comes to mind is Montell Griffin’s loss in Kazakhstan. I myself was even surprised to find this one pop up. Twelve years ago, back in 1996, Griffin scored a huge win over James Toney at 176. He played this win into a shot at P4P king and supposedly unbeatable Roy Jones Jr. Surprising most, he fought on even terms with Roy, giving him his first stern test over the first half of the scheduled fight. However, in the 7th, Montell was badly hurt, dropped to a knee by a punishing Jones attack. While Griffin was on that knee, Jones failed to stop swinging and knocked Montell Griffin out cold. Roy was DQ’d, suffering the first loss of his career. Despite the paper win, it seemed Montell Griffin was never the same again after that shot. Roy blew him out in one round in the rematch and he went on to lose against every B+ level and up opponent he fought for the next ten years. He’d always bounce back with wins against lower tier fighters though to get these shots. His last signifcant chance was a little over a year ago against Glenn Johnson. He was stopped in the 11th. It seemed like Griffin was heading for one of his rebuild against low tier opponents tours in order to get another chance at the top when he easily outpointed unknown Corey Cummings in June, but this ended when he went to Kazakhstan this past weekend. Against hometown fighter Beibut Shumenov, Montell Griffin failed to win any of the 12 rounds according to all three judges. The real problem is that this was Shumenov’s sixth pro fight. I have no way to know if this was some extreme home town cooking or not, but if not then the 38 year old Griffin may really want to consider moving on from the sport. • Anyone remember Oscar Larios? The man has had an exciting trilogy with Israel Vasquez which includes a dominant, stoppage win in the second fight and has gone the distance with Manny Pacquiao well above his natural weight but never quite gets the recognition he deserves. Perhaps the most praise he has ever received in some perverse way is the praise that hot prospect Jorge Linares received for stopping him in 10 on an HBO PPV undercard. Since that stoppage loss to the prodigy Linares, Larios has bounced back with three straight wins, including a seventh round stoppage this weekend against unheralded Marlon Aguilar. • Speaking of Manny Pacquiao, his brother Bobby scored an eighth round stoppage against a fighter from Thailand by the name of Decho Bankluaygym to improve to 28-14-3. Bobby is better than his record, but he is a C+ fighter at best and definitely not anything like his brother. His two best wins came against faded Kevin Kelley and Carlos Hernandez in 06. • Here’s one for a chuckle. Sometimes you see young fighters with impressive records real early. I found one by the name of Edward Ochoa, a welterweight from Indiana who has now started his career 5-0 with all wins by stoppage with a first round KO this week. Why is that funny? He has yet to fight someone who has registered a win. I’ve heard of being matched soft, especially early, but come on! Two of his opponents were making their pro debuts and the other three were a combined 0-12-2! • Anthony Peterson got his 28th win on the undercard of Clottey/Judah. When are he and his brother going to step up? • 22 year old Joseph Judah, brother of Zab and Daniel Judah, won his 4th pro fight on the same undercard to improve to 4-0. He has yet to score a KO. • Keeping it all in the same old boxing families, on the very same card the younger son of the great Mexican legend Julio Caesar Chavez, Omar, fought and scored a 1st round KO to improve to 11-0-1 with 9 wins coming by knock out. Despite the semi-glossy record and power that Omar has shown, this is only his third win against a fighter who has also registered a pro win. One of those fights, against then 3-1 Marco Nazareth, he didn’t deserve the decision either in my eyes. Omar for this fight was coming off a draw against an 0-10-2 fighter as well. Yes, you read that right. 0-10-2. This is essentially the 18 year old’s amateur career so it will not be fair to really judge him for another five or so years, if even then, but early returns show him not to be a prodigy at the very least. • On the untelevised undercard of the re-rise of Vic Darchinyan, before even Dirrell’s fight, David Banks of Season 3 Contender fame scored a six round decision against 34-6 Kenny Ellis, a man who holds wins over Fernando Zuniga and Darrel Woods. This was Banks first fight back after his crushing KO of the year at the fists of Edison Miranda that left him draped unconscious over the bottom rope. In my estimation Banks has some legitimate skill, but his greatly hampered by non-existent power and who knows what effect the Miranda KO may leave on him. • Sebastian Demers, a former Arthur Abraham title challenger and KO victim, was surprisingly upset by power punching Dionisio Miranda in his home town of Montreal by split decision in the good main event of ESPN’s Friday card. • Walid Smichet, former near John Duddy conqueror, won an eight round decision on the same card. • Contender season 1 participant Anthony Bonsante was blown out as expected, though perhaps in even more dominant fashion than thought, against Montreal prospect (with a great name may I add) Adonis Stevenson who improved to 12-0 with 9 stoppages. • Finally, also on the same Montreal card, Montreal’s own David Lemieux polished his glossy record to 10-0 with every win coming by knock out with a first round stoppage on the show. However, as impressive as starting a career with ten straight knock outs looks, it is important to keep in mind that his combined opponents records thus far is 50-67-5. • You have to sort of pity Jhonny Gonzales. The 26 year old could be a star. He did very well against Israel Vasquez before being stopped in the 10th with the lead in 06 and in 07 was outpointing Gerry Penalosa before being stopped on one body shot. He has all the tools you could ask for. He didn’t need many of them in his first round blow out of overmatched 16-6-2 Levi Brea though. This marks his fifth straight win, four by KO, since the Penalosa body shot. • In the upset of the weekend super flyweight Cuban prospect Yan Barthelemy suffered a surprise six round decision loss to 6-4 Ernie Marquez. Barthelemy was a 2004 Olympic gold medalist and defected from Cuba with two other gold medalists from the Cuban team in the 04, heavyweight prospect Odlanier Solis and superstar best prospect in the sport, lightweight Yuriokis Gamboa. While Barthelemy was considered the weakest prospect of the three, mostly due to his complete lack of punching power, a loss this early in his career against this level of competition comes as a massive surprise nonetheless. Barthelemy was deducted a point for holding in the final round. Had he not, he would have been spared a loss by majority draw.He falls to 6-1. • Season 1 contender Ishe Smith scored a decision win against Pavel Wolak to hand him his first loss. Thanks for reading.