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By Cliff Rold - In the moments leading up to the second Arturo Gatti-Mickey Ward fight, HBO went old school. They showed you the fighters in black and white, invoking the shadows of the 1950’s. This Saturday’s welterweight bout between Ring Magazine #3 Miguel Cotto (29-0, 24 KO) of Puerto Rico and former World welterweight champion Zab Judah (34-4, 25 KO, #5) of Brooklyn belong to even earlier technologies. To give fans the flavor of what Cotto-Judah is really all about, one would need to gather with their friends around the radio live and join them again a week later, dropping a dime in the till at their local movie theatre to see what they’d heard.
That’s how old-school this weekends affair is when you strip it to its roots. The setting, Madison Square Garden in New York City, has been the home of many fights like it. It’s an ethnic neighborhood fight on a grand scale. It’s BK versus Boricua and the fans, an expected 20,000 of them, will let the whole world know how much that means to them. The fact that it’s happening on the weekend of the Puerto Rican Day parade will only amplify that volume. This is the kind of match-up the old timers are talking about when names like Benny Leonard, Tony Canzoneri and Barney Ross slide off their tongues.
Those were the marquee names in the Garden’s grandest era. The people of the Irish, Italian and ***ish communities packing the rafters to see one of theirs stake his claim. Are the African-American and Puerto Rican communities going to be out in force, even in these politically correct times, to do the same this weekend? Absolutely and, from the look of things, we might all have a fight (if not the fighters) to live up to the old ghosts.
Of course, Cotto and Judah both have more at stake of course than community bragging rights could ever provide.
If the ghosts of old neighborhood battles are not enough, this weekend is also a classic of a more timeless quality. This is the ultimate crossroads fight. Judah, 29, has lost two of his last three and is more known for unfulfilled talent than his brief stay as king at 147 lbs. In the immediate wake of his February 2005 title-winning rematch victory over Cory Spinks, in Spinks home town of St. Louis no less, it was hard to believe Judah would be in this position less than two years later. [details]
That’s how old-school this weekends affair is when you strip it to its roots. The setting, Madison Square Garden in New York City, has been the home of many fights like it. It’s an ethnic neighborhood fight on a grand scale. It’s BK versus Boricua and the fans, an expected 20,000 of them, will let the whole world know how much that means to them. The fact that it’s happening on the weekend of the Puerto Rican Day parade will only amplify that volume. This is the kind of match-up the old timers are talking about when names like Benny Leonard, Tony Canzoneri and Barney Ross slide off their tongues.
Those were the marquee names in the Garden’s grandest era. The people of the Irish, Italian and ***ish communities packing the rafters to see one of theirs stake his claim. Are the African-American and Puerto Rican communities going to be out in force, even in these politically correct times, to do the same this weekend? Absolutely and, from the look of things, we might all have a fight (if not the fighters) to live up to the old ghosts.
Of course, Cotto and Judah both have more at stake of course than community bragging rights could ever provide.
If the ghosts of old neighborhood battles are not enough, this weekend is also a classic of a more timeless quality. This is the ultimate crossroads fight. Judah, 29, has lost two of his last three and is more known for unfulfilled talent than his brief stay as king at 147 lbs. In the immediate wake of his February 2005 title-winning rematch victory over Cory Spinks, in Spinks home town of St. Louis no less, it was hard to believe Judah would be in this position less than two years later. [details]
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