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for all you uninformed people about clottey's injuries in the marg fight read this b4 you look any more foolish with speculation! ffs.
LAS VEGAS – Vinny Scolpino walked slowly into an Atlantic City, N.J., hospital room to check on welterweight Antonio Margarito.
Margarito, now the toast of boxing but on Dec. 2, 2006, a tough if unappreciated champion, had won a harder than expected unanimous decision earlier in the night over Scolpino’s client, Joshua Clottey.
Scolpino said he had to do a double take when he took a look at Margarito.
“His head, it was like this,” Scolpino said, holding his hands well outside his ears. “It was swollen so badly. It was huge. I can’t even imagine how thick his skull must be, because he takes all those punches and doesn’t stop coming forward.”
And it was at that moment, as he looked at Margarito nursing his head wounds, that Scolpino realized what he had in Clottey. This, he realized at the moment, was a fighter who could win a title if he ever got another shot.
Clottey broke a knuckle on each hand in that fight and said that after the fifth round each punch he landed, and even those he blocked, caused him excruciating pain. They hurt when he was sitting on his stool, let alone when he had to fight a guy that promoter Bob Arum calls a “beast” and a “freight train.”
Clottey plans to be the beast himself when he meets ex-world champion Zab Judah on Saturday at The Pearl at the Palms for the IBF welterweight belt Margarito surrendered. A native of Accra, Ghana, who grew up idolizing ex-welterweight champion Ike Quartey, Clottey has a record of 34-2 but has been fighting since he was 6.
He was a part of the Ga tribe in Ghana and lived in a region called Bokum where everyone but the toddlers was expected to fight.
The future pugilist was only about 6 or 7 and playing soccer when he saw a kid on the opposite team who had been renowned for his toughness and had been training in boxing. Clottey pointed at him and said he wanted to fight him.
“He beat me up, very badly, very rough,” Clottey said. “He had been learning to fight. I had never fought. I ran home and I got sick and I vomited. I didn’t quit. I knew I couldn’t quit. I had to prove to everyone, the young and the old, that I was tough, too.”
So Clottey learned to fight and eventually faced his one-time nemesis a second time. The results were slightly different.
“Same way, but the other way,” Clottey said.
Translation: It was a bad pummeling, but this time, Clottey was on the delivering end of it instead of the receiving end.
And he has been delivering beatings for much of the rest of his life. His only losses were by disqualification in 1999 to ex-linear welterweight champion Carlos Baldomir and to Margarito in 2006.
The loss to Baldomir came as a result of a series of head butts that Clottey insists were unintentional but unavoidable given the style of the fighters. He broke the bones on his hands in the Margarito fight – a bout he was doing very well in early – but has run the table otherwise.
“No one has ever really beaten me,” Clottey said, “and Zab Judah isn’t going to be the first.” Judah has, as usual, talked a good game and gone to the novel level of bringing in Steve Fitch, better known as the one-time Mike Tyson sidekick “Crocodile.” Fitch screams and shouts and warns of impending doom whenever there are two additional ears in his zip code.
Clottey, though, is decidedly unimpressed. After the life he lived in Ghana, he said the last thing that will impact him is a loudmouth who’s not even involved in the fight shouting at him. “Zab can talk all he wants, but I know one thing, nothing any of us say will matter when it’s just me and him,” Clottey said. “Then it will be time for Zab to pay
LAS VEGAS – Vinny Scolpino walked slowly into an Atlantic City, N.J., hospital room to check on welterweight Antonio Margarito.
Margarito, now the toast of boxing but on Dec. 2, 2006, a tough if unappreciated champion, had won a harder than expected unanimous decision earlier in the night over Scolpino’s client, Joshua Clottey.
Scolpino said he had to do a double take when he took a look at Margarito.
“His head, it was like this,” Scolpino said, holding his hands well outside his ears. “It was swollen so badly. It was huge. I can’t even imagine how thick his skull must be, because he takes all those punches and doesn’t stop coming forward.”
And it was at that moment, as he looked at Margarito nursing his head wounds, that Scolpino realized what he had in Clottey. This, he realized at the moment, was a fighter who could win a title if he ever got another shot.
Clottey broke a knuckle on each hand in that fight and said that after the fifth round each punch he landed, and even those he blocked, caused him excruciating pain. They hurt when he was sitting on his stool, let alone when he had to fight a guy that promoter Bob Arum calls a “beast” and a “freight train.”
Clottey plans to be the beast himself when he meets ex-world champion Zab Judah on Saturday at The Pearl at the Palms for the IBF welterweight belt Margarito surrendered. A native of Accra, Ghana, who grew up idolizing ex-welterweight champion Ike Quartey, Clottey has a record of 34-2 but has been fighting since he was 6.
He was a part of the Ga tribe in Ghana and lived in a region called Bokum where everyone but the toddlers was expected to fight.
The future pugilist was only about 6 or 7 and playing soccer when he saw a kid on the opposite team who had been renowned for his toughness and had been training in boxing. Clottey pointed at him and said he wanted to fight him.
“He beat me up, very badly, very rough,” Clottey said. “He had been learning to fight. I had never fought. I ran home and I got sick and I vomited. I didn’t quit. I knew I couldn’t quit. I had to prove to everyone, the young and the old, that I was tough, too.”
So Clottey learned to fight and eventually faced his one-time nemesis a second time. The results were slightly different.
“Same way, but the other way,” Clottey said.
Translation: It was a bad pummeling, but this time, Clottey was on the delivering end of it instead of the receiving end.
And he has been delivering beatings for much of the rest of his life. His only losses were by disqualification in 1999 to ex-linear welterweight champion Carlos Baldomir and to Margarito in 2006.
The loss to Baldomir came as a result of a series of head butts that Clottey insists were unintentional but unavoidable given the style of the fighters. He broke the bones on his hands in the Margarito fight – a bout he was doing very well in early – but has run the table otherwise.
“No one has ever really beaten me,” Clottey said, “and Zab Judah isn’t going to be the first.” Judah has, as usual, talked a good game and gone to the novel level of bringing in Steve Fitch, better known as the one-time Mike Tyson sidekick “Crocodile.” Fitch screams and shouts and warns of impending doom whenever there are two additional ears in his zip code.
Clottey, though, is decidedly unimpressed. After the life he lived in Ghana, he said the last thing that will impact him is a loudmouth who’s not even involved in the fight shouting at him. “Zab can talk all he wants, but I know one thing, nothing any of us say will matter when it’s just me and him,” Clottey said. “Then it will be time for Zab to pay
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