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Round 2:
I remember reading a few years ago about how Bob Arum's Top Rank offices in Las Vegas were raided by the FBI and there were rumors flying right now about fixed fights, etc. As I knew it would the investigation ended up going nowhere but I do have one single story kind of related to all of this.
Back around 1994 I was over in Boston for some pro fights when I saw a guy I knew from my amateur days. Back in the early 1980's he was a top flight amateur boxer, a national champion as a matter of fact. Now though he was past the age of forty and had, in fact, told me that he was, "retired going on three years now." So he is retired but he is fighting TONIGHT? He says, "Yeah, this is just to make some extra money." Then he asked me to work his corner that night and I jumped at the chance. When I was a young amateur I looked up to him as a guy that was one of the better U.S. amateurs, a guy I had seen in amateur magazines and at national tournaments. He was fighting a guy from Massachusetts that was being promoted by a local guy and was a year or more away from getting what would turn out to be a good fight on a major TV station. Anyway, in the first round my guy landed a jab and a right hand and the hometown guy was obviously dazed. That one punch was the highlight of the round and in the corner after the round I said, "OK, look... keep working the jab and look for another short right hand. It is THERE for you. You can stop this kid!"
He leaned in and whispered back to me, "I can't."
I said, "No, I'm serious!! You can set him up all day for it. You hurt him good with it already. Just set him with the jab and let the sneaky right hand go!"
Again, in a hushed voice but with a little more force, he said, "No... I CAN'T."
That's when I knew. I was so stunned, it was like all the air went out of me. I lost my desire for him to even win. I was thinking how this was such a small little club show and why would they even want to have this guy come all this way to throw this fight against the guy he was throwing it against. I mean, at this stage of his career, if this guy could even beat you on the up and up then you weren't worth having someone pay for it to happen otherwise.
I was like "Well, OK, man... do your thing. Keep your hands up." I gave him some water before he proceeded to go out and get "stopped" in the next round.
I never forgot how I felt when I realized what he was doing. I tried to understand why he was doing that. He was an older guy and maybe was in need of money and was doing the only thing he knew to survive. Maybe. Still, I hope I never find myself involved in anything like that again. If that was me in his place, even if I had agreed to throw the fight before hand... if I saw that I could hurt the guy like that? I am sure I would have changed my mind and went for the KO instead.
Note: September 2004- The "investigation" led exactly where everybody in the game expected it to. Nowhere. Now, in my twenty-three plus years of boxing that was the only time I ever saw anything like that happen. But I saw what I saw. I am sure it isn't the only time. However, I do not think things like that happen on the higher levels of boxing. Like sometimes you will hear someone say something totally ****** like "Tyson threw the Douglas fight because he was winning his fights so easily and they needed to keep interest in his fights" or that "Tyson was beating everyone and nobody was taking bets on his fights anymore so he had to lose." ******ity like that. Let me tell you something that I know for sure. And only someone that actually fought before could really relate to this. If you have ever been hit flush by a hard hitting guy wearing 10 ounce cleto-reyes gloves before then you know that there is no way a guy like Tyson, or anybody for that matter, is going to subject themselves to ten rounds of that kind of abuse only to throw the fight in the end. Tyson just let Douglas finish him at the end with those vicious shots? Just allowed Douglas to land those titanic punches that ultimately left him on the canvas, groggy and looking for his mouthpiece? No way, no how.
I remember reading a few years ago about how Bob Arum's Top Rank offices in Las Vegas were raided by the FBI and there were rumors flying right now about fixed fights, etc. As I knew it would the investigation ended up going nowhere but I do have one single story kind of related to all of this.
Back around 1994 I was over in Boston for some pro fights when I saw a guy I knew from my amateur days. Back in the early 1980's he was a top flight amateur boxer, a national champion as a matter of fact. Now though he was past the age of forty and had, in fact, told me that he was, "retired going on three years now." So he is retired but he is fighting TONIGHT? He says, "Yeah, this is just to make some extra money." Then he asked me to work his corner that night and I jumped at the chance. When I was a young amateur I looked up to him as a guy that was one of the better U.S. amateurs, a guy I had seen in amateur magazines and at national tournaments. He was fighting a guy from Massachusetts that was being promoted by a local guy and was a year or more away from getting what would turn out to be a good fight on a major TV station. Anyway, in the first round my guy landed a jab and a right hand and the hometown guy was obviously dazed. That one punch was the highlight of the round and in the corner after the round I said, "OK, look... keep working the jab and look for another short right hand. It is THERE for you. You can stop this kid!"
He leaned in and whispered back to me, "I can't."
I said, "No, I'm serious!! You can set him up all day for it. You hurt him good with it already. Just set him with the jab and let the sneaky right hand go!"
Again, in a hushed voice but with a little more force, he said, "No... I CAN'T."
That's when I knew. I was so stunned, it was like all the air went out of me. I lost my desire for him to even win. I was thinking how this was such a small little club show and why would they even want to have this guy come all this way to throw this fight against the guy he was throwing it against. I mean, at this stage of his career, if this guy could even beat you on the up and up then you weren't worth having someone pay for it to happen otherwise.
I was like "Well, OK, man... do your thing. Keep your hands up." I gave him some water before he proceeded to go out and get "stopped" in the next round.
I never forgot how I felt when I realized what he was doing. I tried to understand why he was doing that. He was an older guy and maybe was in need of money and was doing the only thing he knew to survive. Maybe. Still, I hope I never find myself involved in anything like that again. If that was me in his place, even if I had agreed to throw the fight before hand... if I saw that I could hurt the guy like that? I am sure I would have changed my mind and went for the KO instead.
Note: September 2004- The "investigation" led exactly where everybody in the game expected it to. Nowhere. Now, in my twenty-three plus years of boxing that was the only time I ever saw anything like that happen. But I saw what I saw. I am sure it isn't the only time. However, I do not think things like that happen on the higher levels of boxing. Like sometimes you will hear someone say something totally ****** like "Tyson threw the Douglas fight because he was winning his fights so easily and they needed to keep interest in his fights" or that "Tyson was beating everyone and nobody was taking bets on his fights anymore so he had to lose." ******ity like that. Let me tell you something that I know for sure. And only someone that actually fought before could really relate to this. If you have ever been hit flush by a hard hitting guy wearing 10 ounce cleto-reyes gloves before then you know that there is no way a guy like Tyson, or anybody for that matter, is going to subject themselves to ten rounds of that kind of abuse only to throw the fight in the end. Tyson just let Douglas finish him at the end with those vicious shots? Just allowed Douglas to land those titanic punches that ultimately left him on the canvas, groggy and looking for his mouthpiece? No way, no how.
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