Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Boxing: The Gift That Keeps On Giving


There are down times in boxing, periods when there are no big fights for several week, periods such as the time between Dec. 18 (when Jean Pascal and Bernard Hopkins fought to a draw) and Jan. 29 (when Devon Alexander and Timothy Bradley meet in a battle for junior-welterweight supremacy).

There is no offseason, however, no need to force the news with talk of hot stove leagues or draft picks or scouting combines. There is always a recent run of fights to review. There is always an upcoming fight to preview. There are fighters to feature, issues to discuss.

Tim Smith of the New York Daily News was one of many taking aim at the May 2011 fight between Manny Pacquiao and Shane Mosley:

[T]he news of Mosley being the next Pacquiao opponent isn't surprising or disappointing. Actually it makes perfect business sense - low risk, big reward.

It is merely par for the course with how Arum promotes Pacquiao, but if you want to blame someone for Pacquiao fighting Mosley, blame Pacquiao because ultimately he's the one who decides who he wants to fight. All Arum does is outline the financial particulars and negotiates the contracts with the various parties involved with staging the fight.

Thomas Gerbasi of BoxingScene.com had a feature on Wladimir Klitschko's rise to heavyweight prominence and his continued heavyweight dominance:

In the ring, Klitschko has matured into a machine that doesn’t have to worry about his supposed glass jaw because no one has even gotten close enough to touch it. He has developed a predictable “jab, jab, right hand, occasional left hook” gameplan into boxing’s version of the old Green Bay Packers sweep – you know it’s coming but you still can’t stop it. And for a fighter with a glass jaw, he hasn’t hit the deck since Peter put him down three times in their first bout (still won by Klitschko via decision) in 2005. That’s 83 rounds worth of heavyweight fighting without suffering a knockdown. Few can claim that these days.

And few in today’s heavyweight division can claim to have a legitimate shot at dethroning him.

Carlo Rotella, meanwhile, wrote for The Washington Post in memoriam about another big man: Manute Bol, the former basketball player and humanitarian who also had a connection to the sweet science, fighting on Celebrity Boxing in a fight, against William "The Refrigerator" Perry, that was neither sweet nor overly scientific.

The crowd grew restless because it wasn't seeing the flailing that makes incompetent fighters fun to watch, and the referee warned both men that neither would get paid unless they fought harder. Bol, who had agreed to appear on the show only if the name and address of one of his Sudan-aiding charities appeared on the screen, threw a few more punches and took an easy victory by decision.

Perry's feeble blows had not touched Bol, and, somehow, neither had the awfulness of the show. Just by carrying himself as he always had, holding some part of himself aloof from the lucrative childishness and triviality around him, he had managed to pass through "Celebrity Boxing" without humiliation. Another problem solved by standing tall.

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