Your weekly random thoughts. …
• I was thinking of pulling out of this blog because I have a sore hand from so much typing. But in light of all the fight postponements and cacellations this summer, I thought I'd just suck it up for the Fight Freaks.
It's been a rough few weeks in boxing with so many fights getting called off or delayed, mainly because of injuries. I've never seen a spate quite like it in almost a decade on the beat.
The biggest bummer, of course, was Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s rib injury, which spoiled his July 18 return against Juan Manuel Marquez and left a gaping hole in the summer schedule: not to mention the postponement of another four episodes of HBO's terrific "24/7." The fight is off until at least Sept. 19.
The other summer bummer was a back injury to David Haye, who bailed on his June 20 heavyweight championship fight with Wladimir Klitschko on three weeks' notice. The conspiracy theorists among us don't buy Haye's injury. They believe he pulled out because Setanta, the subscription television network in England that he had a contract with and the only source of his purse for the fight, was teetering on bankruptcy, and Haye was worried he wouldn't get paid. Sure enough, the network failed this week. Whatever the real reason Haye pulled out, he didn't fight and that was a downer.
Three weeks earlier was the Nikolai Valuev-Ruslan Chagaev heavyweight title-fight debacle that forced the bout to be called off on 24 hours notice. Fortunately, Klitschko and Chagaev, both in need of a dance partner, found each other. But fight fans still lost a good one.
There were other bummers as well. Andreas Kotelnik's infected tooth forced his junior welterweight title defense against Amir Khan to be delayed three weeks (from June 27 to July 18). Saturday's Top Rank "Latin Fury 9" pay-per-view card lost its top two fights when the Kelly Pavlik-Sergio Mora middleweight title fight went down the tubes (either because of a Pavlik staph infection or a contract dispute with Top Rank, depending on who you believe) and the co-feature of bantamweight titlist Fernando Montiel and Eric Morel was called off because of a Montiel hand injury.
Then, a few days ago came the news that featherweight titlist Chris John was suffering from a blood disorder, which forced him out of a rematch with Rocky Juarez on Saturday, reducing the HBO card to a single fight.
All of that, and it's still only June.
• I was a bit disappointed that Juarez, not his manager, trainer, promoter or HBO, turned down the opportunity to fight Saturday against willing late substitute Mario Santiago, after John bowed out. According to Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer, Juarez elected to sit out the high-profile card because he didn't want to fight a southpaw on short notice. That's Juarez's prerogative, but it's a poor excuse, especially when you consider that Santiago would have entered the ring having not fought for one day shy of a calendar year and surely would have been a bit rusty. With TV dates in short supply for the rest of 2009, I don't see a slot left in which Juarez can fight, certainly not on HBO, whom you can be sure isn't too thrilled with him right now. He has disappointed too many times in big spots, and convincing HBO to do the John rematch in the first place was a bit of a reach. Juarez's cautious approach to Santiago is much like his approach has always been in the ring: playing it a bit too safe and a bit too passive to get over the hump, going 0-4-1 in world-title bouts.
• OK, so maybe Klitschko's flawless destruction of Chagaev wasn't overly exciting, even if it was ruthlessly effective. Hey, at least it was a lot better than Klitschko's fight with Sultan Ibragimov.
• I'm not sure what the future holds for cruiserweight contender B.J. Flores in the ring, but I thought he did a very solid job as the analyst for ESPN Classic's coverage of Klitschko-Chagaev.
• Our buddies over at the World Boxing Association are at it again. As if one "champion in recess" weren't enough -- Chagaev holds that joke title, even after being smashed to bits by Klitschko -- the WBA boys have quietly elevated interim junior flyweight titlist Giovani Segura to full titleholder and demoted Brahim Asloum to recess status. The madness will never end because, apparently, you can never have enough champions in recess.
• We all owe the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport a huge debt. Sanity prevailed when it sided with Vitali Klitschko over the WBC and Oleg Maskaev in binding arbitration, and refused to order Klitschko to make a worthless mandatory defense against the wholly undeserving Maskaev. Instead, Klitschko is free to take an optional defense. That means we'll likely get to see him fight Cris Arreola or Haye. I don't give either much of a shot against Klitschko, but at least neither fight is a retread. Either fight would be more interesting than seeing Klitschko face Maskaev.
• I have an idea that I think might help Shane Mosley land the fight with Manny Pacquiao he so desperately wants. Instead of allowing Oscar De La Hoya, Mosley's promotional partner and biggest advocate, to build a case with the media, why doesn't De La Hoya just fill up another briefcase full of cash and give it to Pacquiao to get him to sign? It worked once before, didn't it?
• I kinda miss Fernando Vargas.
• I really enjoyed last week's Jean Pascal-Adrian Diaconu fight and love the fact that Versus picked it up to broadcast to the American TV audience. I hope Versus does more fights like that. It could fill a real void. Pascal has been in some exciting fights in the past couple of years. If Chad Dawson defeats Glen Johnson in their fall rematch, I'd be very interested to see Dawson against Pascal in a unification fight.
• Paging Sakio Bika. …
• When Top Rank's Bob Arum told me the other day that he wants to eventually match Yuriorkis Gamboa, his latest signing, with Juan Manuel Lopez, it made me happy.
• Here's something you don't see too often: I think the undercard fight on the July 10 "Friday Night Fights," which features a match between light heavyweight contenders Shaun George and Chris Henry, is better than the main event of cruiserweight sMatt Godfrey and Shawn Hawk.
• Junior flyweight titlist Edgar Sosa is on a terrific run. His fifth-round, body-shot knockout of Carlos Melo last week was a thing of beauty. Sosa is the epitome of a late bloomer. I'd like to see him in a unification fight with Ivan Calderon.
• I wish Showtime was televising the Steve Cunningham-Wayne Braithwaite cruiserweight eliminator that's on the undercard of its July 11 show.
• How's this for a blast from the past? Former light heavyweight contender David Telesco is making a comeback July 16.
• DVD pick of the week: We all know about the famous great fights of the past decade. Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo might be the best fight of all time. We also saw epic trilogy of Arturo Gatti-Micky Ward, Marco Antonio Barrera-Erik Morales and Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez. I've watched all of those fights over and over, and I was in the mood for a lesser-known but still-sensational slugfest that I hadn't viewed in awhile. So into the archive I went for the first battle between South Korea's Injin Chi and England's Michael Brodie, who met in Manchester, England, on Oct. 18, 2003. They waged a thrilling, grueling and bloody battle for a vacant featherweight title in which neither man would take a backward step. In the end, it was rulled a majority draw, with two judges having it 113-113 and the third having it 114-112 for Chi. Six months later, they met again in the same ring and Chi got his title, stopping Brodie in the seventh round of a fight that had a more definitive result but not nearly the memorable action of the first encounter.
Dan Rafael
