 |
|
Summing up King's king card, and more By Max Kellerman Special to ESPN.com |
||||||||||
|
Lots to discuss after Saturday night. Don King's marathon pay-per-view card produced several results worth noting. One of the top three 140-pounders in the world led off with a devastating first-round knockout, as Zab Judah crushed Jamie Rangel with an overhand left. Then followed two upsets - John Ruiz' ugly win against Hassim Rahman, and Cory Spinks' pretty one against Ricardo Mayorga (in which the welterweight title changed hands). There was also a dominant performance by Bernard Hopkins, the reigning champ who brutally turned back his top challenger in his mugging of William Joppy. And while all this was going on, over on Showtime prospect-cum-contender Jeff Lacy knocked out top-20 type light heavy/super middle Donnell Wiggins in a tough fight, and Rickey Hatton joined the junior welterweight elite with an action packed slugfest against solid contender Ben Tackie. Considering the opponent, anything less than an electrifying win for Judah would have been perceived as a failure. So by avoiding failure, Judah should not be unduly lauded, but he does deserve credit for doing what he had to. Though he seems to lack a cohesive plan of attack, and has thrice been dropped in his career by single shots, Zab is slick, lightning fast, has real one-punch power. The winner of the Kostya Tszyu-Shambra Mitchell rematch in February will be faced with the scary prospect that Zab is their legit No. 1 contender. Judah is sort of the Thomas Hearns of the junior welterweight division. Like Hearns, Judah's chin has proven reachable and dentable, but also like Hearns, whether he winds up winning or losing the biggest fights of his career, his speed, power and boxing ability make it difficult to pick against Judah in hypothetical matchups against any of the top fighters in or around his division. Okay, on to Ruiz-Rahman. How great is Roy Jones Jr.? Sandwiched between Ruiz' wins against Evander Holyfield, Kirk Johnson and now Rahman, is Jones' total mastery of Ruiz. Ruiz's Holyfield and Johnson wins were controversial, but his win against Rahman was not. Despite Rahman's protestations to the contrary after the fight, Ruiz won going away. He hurt the former heavyweight champ (let us never forget, Rahman was the real heavyweight champion of the world a couple years ago) several times throughout the fight, not only with his sneaky straight right hand, but also with his surprising left hook. Ruiz has never been an entertaining fighter to watch, and it could be argued that with more stringent application of the rules, his technique of throwing one or two punches and then clinching could (and should) result in point deductions and even disqualification. Nevertheless, against most heavyweights, Ruiz gets it done. And by the way, you still don't want to ignore those silly "sanctioning bodies" and accept The Ring Magazine champions as the real champs? Maybe this will change your mind: By beating Rahman, Ruiz is now the "mandatory" contender for Roy Jones' spurious belt. In other words, if Roy doesn't give Ruiz - a fighter he dominated and humiliated and a fighter who he clearly demonstrated is not in his league - a rematch (a rematch, by the way, that absolutely no one wants to see) then Roy will be stripped of the belt and it will be retroactively awarded to Ruiz. It's an old Don King technique of monopolizing weight classes by ensuring that fighters he promotes are constantly in the running for sanctioning body belts. This technique - along with a disgusting, though thankfully abating tendency of television networks to air fights simply because there is some belt attached to it - results in fans being force-fed a diet of unwanted, frequently unwatchable fights. There is no point in Roy humiliating Ruiz again, and therefore the fight will not happen. The winner of sanctioning body belts are not champions. Sanctioning bodies are cancerous cells that have divided, multiplied in number, and systematically destroyed our sport from the inside out. The best chemotherapy for destroying these cells while leaving the healthy parts of our sport alone is to ignore them. Since there is no official central boxing authority, the media and major cable networks are the de-facto doctors in this metaphor and it is incumbent upon them - us - to ignore the sanctioning bodies. Shame on the media members - especially those involved in the Don King broadcast who shamelessly referred to the card as containing a "record eight title fights." The real champions - the Ring Magazine champs - who appeared on the card were:
There is no such thing as a "WB-whatever interim title." Such a title has no more legitimacy than, for instance, a WBU title - which none of the announcers who worked that card would have referred to as a world championship (though with some of those guys' standards, you can never be too sure). I had a conversation with Ed Schuyler of the AP several years ago. This was before I was completely ignoring the sanctioning bodies and before Ring Magazine's championship policy made those sanctioning bodies unnecessary. The conversation went something like this:
Okay, so maybe Ed did not actually say that last thing. What he really said was, "Don't take this stuff too seriously." Don King contacted me several months ago. He wanted me to work as one of the analysts for Saturday night's card. The conversation went something like this:
Don and I agreed that we would both look into whether my position as ESPN analyst would preclude me from participating. As it turned out it did - or at least I assume it did, because I never heard back from Don. In any event, based on my conversation with King, I have to assume that none of the media members who worked the card were coerced into referring to the "eight title fights," which means they did so of their own volition. Shame on them. They are part of the problem. And legitimizing the fake belts by bringing them up (and then not even dissing them!) on television makes no sense even in terms of promoting and selling a card. What would be wrong with telling the truth? Say something like: "The card features the powerpunching welterweight champ against Leon Spinks' son, an all-time great middleweight champ against his No. 1 contender, a former heavyweight champ (Rahman) against a guy who has a win against Evander Holyfield, and we start it all off with the electrifying top challenger in the junior welterweight division." The upshot is that a good card, with legit championship bouts, lost credibility with informed fight fans because of its inflated claim of title fights. It also simultaneously confused casual fans, who already find it too difficult to follow all the worthless belts. Why turn off hard-core fans and alienate potential new ones? How many fewer homes would have bought the show if the promotion and its media lackeys would have simply told it like it is? *** In the final fight of the night (I will get to Spinks' upset of Mayorga in a moment), Bernard Hopkins extended his middleweight title defense record to 16 by beating up William Joppy over 12 rounds. Yes, even though Hopkins was not the undisputed champ until late in 2001 (in the era before Ring Magazine titles), I count all of his defenses as legit. This is because the two fighters who held belts at 160 pounds during most of Bernard's pre-undisputed reign were Joppy and Keith Holmes. Hopkins sought fights with them both, but could not land them because he would not do business with Don King, who promoted both Joppy and Holmes. When Hopkins finally joined King's middleweight tournament, he beat up Holmes and knocked out Felix Trinidad, who had knocked out Joppy. And now Hopkins has beaten up Joppy, too. It is fair therefore to consider his entire title reign the real thing. And I will take this opportunity to once again slam one of those cancerous sanctioning bodies - but I will not legitimize them by mentioning their name. I will refer to them simply as the Wrong Bad Association. This sanctioning body determined that when Hopkins unified the middleweight title, he became something called their middleweight "super" champion (not to be confused with their super middleweight champion - who is someone else entirely). Anyway, they made Hopkins their "super" champ, so that they could declare their regular middleweight title vacant. This way they could extract an additional sanctioning fee from whoever won the vacant, regular middleweight title. That turned out to be Joppy, who just now lost to Hopkins. So Hopkins is once again their champion, in addition to their super champion. Now what? Do they strip him again? How many times does he need to win their belt before he gets to keep it? This organization never stops embarrassing itself. After Dan Rafael of USA Today made me aware of one particularly egregious set of heavyweight rankings this sanctioning body published, I exposed those clearly corrupt rankings on Friday Night Fights. My rant led to an emergency meeting of that sanctioning bodies' ratings committee, and a public apology from the son of the president of that sanctioning body. A message was left for me from the son (who I had met in the past and thought a decent person trying to make the best of a bad situation): he would fly anywhere in the world to meet with me. The Wrong Bad Association was in full damage control mode. My response? No way. Their rankings clearly demonstrated a pattern of corruption. I refused to meet with him. At this point there is nothing these sanctioning bodies can do to convince thinking boxing fans that they can be a part of a solution. A cancerous cell will not suddenly mutate back into a normal one. If you want to live - kill the cancer. *** Now, after going on the attack this entire article, a mea-culpa. Cory Spinks lifted the welterweight title from Ricardo Mayorga with a beautiful boxing display - even if it was a little light on the hitting and heavy on the making-Mayorga-missing. Steve Kim from maxboxing.com called me several days after the fight to take me - this generation's greatest defender of slick southpaws - to task for not picking the slick southpaw over the heavy-handed and sloppy brawler. He is of course, correct - I of all people should have known better. But having seen Spinks get a little sloppy late in several fights, I figured sometime before the final bell Mayorga would land one of his wild haymakers and hurt and finish Spinks. Mayorga fooled two of the ringside judges and many others watching the fight in the arena and at home on television that he was winning rounds that he was in fact losing. Just as he did against Vernon Forrest in their rematch, Mayorga would stalk (not a points-scoring maneuver), land roundhouse punches to the back of Spinks' head (which the rules state are not scoring blows, and in fact constitute an infraction of the rules), throw Spinks to the canvas (which is supposed to count for zero on the judges cards - and is also against the rules) and have wild haymakers blocked (which counts for a little, but not much). Meanwhile Spinks would flash an impressive defense (which is supposed to be scored in his favor by the judges, but really shouldn't be) and land clean, albeit mostly soft punches to Mayorga's face (which are scoring, if unimpressive blows). Were the fight properly scored, Spinks would have won nearly every round. As it was, he won a majority decision - but only because Mayorga had two points deducted for his roughhousing. Without the deductions Mayorga would have unfairly retained his title. *** Finally, over on Showtime, Rickey Hatton dominated Ben Tackie over the 12-round distance. It was a brutal fight, with Hatton's superior technique and energy making the difference in the majority of the rounds. Tackie has lost in recent fights to Kostya Tszyu and Shambra Mitchell, but before the Tszyu loss, he had beaten Teddy Reid and Ray Oliveira. In other words, the very top guys beat Tackie, but, as Al Bernstein pointed out during the telecast, Tackie beats the second tier. It therefore follows that, judging by his performance on Saturday night, Hatton must now be considered a top-tier 140-pounder. Shambra Mitchell is getting a rematch with Tszyu because of wins against Vince Phillips and Tackie. Hatton has now beaten both Phillips and Tackie by margins as wide as Mitchell's. Tszyu is the division's champ. After the Tszyu-Mitchell fight, Zab Judah will be the division's top contender. Arturo Gatti is the division's biggest star. And Rickey Hatton has now joined their ranks -- he is one of the world's top five 140-pounders.
Max Kellerman is a studio analyst for ESPN2's "Friday Night Fights" and the host of the show "Around The Horn." |
| |||||||||
