Boxing News, MMA, UFC, Manny Pacquiao, Mayweather
Boxing News, MMA, UFC, Manny Pacquiao, Mayweather
A southpaw from Detroit. Trained by Roger Mayweather. On two days’ notice. Are you kidding me?
That was an appropriate reaction to have at first seeing Juanito Garcia’s “Solo Boxeo” opponent, Friday. The southpaw was Cornelius Lock. He was a seasoned, if at times reckless, puncher whose right hook was more than Manny Pacquiao’s. We’ll come back to that.
First of all, allow me to take this opportunity to thank everyone out there who have been so kind with their calls and emails during my recent sabbatical. I sincerely appreciate your kind thoughts.
The Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles had that boxing buzz going Monday. Reporters and photographers scurried through the door leading to the lobby, looking to make their way to the “Sugar” Shane Mosley-Zab Judah news conference.
If there’s a lamentable element to Muhammad Ali’s legacy, it is the epidemic of trash talking he introduced to American sports. Much of it isn’t Ali’s fault. He can’t be blamed for the legion of witling imitators that followed. But it remains an unfortunate fact that today’s promotion, coverage and perception of sports are all informed by trash talking.
It is something that never should have been allowed out of combat sports. The possibility of having one’s consciousness taken in a confrontation tempers one’s words beforehand. But if such taunting were ever going to be permitted a more general arena, it certainly shouldn’t have been allowed beyond contact sports.
Now, since contemporary trash talking began with boxing, our sport has a pretty good grasp on it. What it means, what it doesn’t mean, and most importantly, what it portends. And so, here’s a helpful way pre-fight performances predict the action to come.
The violence a prizefighter promises in the weeks before a fight is inversely proportional to the violence he’ll show an opponent in the ring. That is, the more violently a fighter acts at a press conference, the less violently he’ll act when it counts.
Examples come immediately to mind. But boxing has enough of an uphill climb without dwelling on its over-hyped disappointments, especially with another one three weeks away. Instead, let’s approach this maxim from the opposite direction. Let’s look at press-conference pacifists who are ringside terrors.
Two weeks ago, Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez made a fantastic scrap. There was much violence and blood. It came after months of respectful behavior. What little negativity Pacquiao or Marquez showed before the fight was self-directed. Pacquiao was disappointed he’d not done more to stop Marquez the first time. Marquez scolded himself for not taking Pacquiao seriously enough.
Two weeks before that, Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez completed the finest boxing trilogy in 30 years. Three fights filled with precise brutality. Three fights in which one man tried to deepen lacerations over the other man’s eyes, while the other man tried to decimate his opponent’s fighting spirit.
All preceded by courteous press conferences and gentlemanly comportment by guys who didn’t use the words “great” or “champion” without first saying “we.”
Sure, there are exceptions. Before their remarkably poor heavyweight fight, Wladimir Klitschko and Sultan Ibragimov said sundry kind things. And despite his buffoonish promotional shtick, Ricardo Mayorga usually goes after opponents.
As a general rule, though, most pre-fight death threats laughably come from defensive specialists.
Which brings us to the case of blossoming super featherweight prospect Juanito Garcia. He’s halfway to proving our inverse proportion true. In the sport of boxing – filled with likable and accessible figures – there are very few more likable or accessible than Garcia.
But if he’s beyond reproach outside the ring, there has been one nagging criticism of him in the ring. He’s not violent enough. He’s a technically proficient boxer who is undefeated in 14 fights, but he’s stopped only five opponents. To date, his ringside demeanor has reflected his pre-fight demeanor too well.
That could change Friday when Garcia makes a 10-round match with Jose Hernandez. It will be Garcia’s main-event debut on Telefutura’s invaluable “Solo Boxeo” program. It will also be a nationally televised platform for a Phoenix fighter whose career has moved quickly in 2008.
After decisioning Gamalier Rodriguez in January, Garcia was asked to join Manny Pacquiao’s training camp in Los Angeles. Garcia began as one of four or five sparring partners picked to approximate Juan Manuel Marquez’s style. By the last day of Pacquiao’s camp, though, Garcia was the only guy trainer Freddie Roach wanted Pacquiao to work with.
That an esteemed trainer like Roach found Garcia to be the closest thing in Southern California to a future hall of famer like Marquez is high praise indeed.
“Freddie was asking for more rounds from me,” Garcia said after camp ended. “The last day, I was the only one who was there. He finished off the sparring sessions with me.”
But that didn’t mean as much to Garcia as simply working with Pacquiao did.
“It feels like you’re a little kid, first,” Garcia said. “A guy that’s been through it and done it. I was in awe, really, the whole time.”
Who better than Pacquiao to teach a humble young prospect the value of inverse proportionality? Arguably no fighter plying the craft today is as decent with fighters outside the ring as he is cruel to them between the ropes. Popular as he is with the public, Pacquiao remains a fighter’s fighter.
“Manny has a heart of gold,” Garcia said after spending six weeks with him. “He really cares. He knows how it is to struggle. He’s really respectful to all fighters.”
He may also be the one to supply the final weapon in Garcia’s prizefighting arsenal. For a professional fighter, it’s OK to derive euphoria from an opponent’s suffering. There’s nothing wrong with exploiting another’s weakness in the most painful way possible. That’s the job.
Such a violent form of schadenfreude doesn’t impugn a prizefighter’s character. Garcia is a good person from a loving family. If years of amateur boxing and 14 prizefights haven’t changed that about him, showing a little more violence to his opponents, going forward, surely won’t.
But here’s something more to consider. Garcia simply may not be the type of fighter who’s built to look menacing in four-round fights. Not every champion is an ear-munching first-round knockout artist. Some fighters prefer the time and space afforded by 10 or 12 rounds.
Friday’s fight, Garcia’s first 10-rounder, might be just the right fit for the 21 year old.
“I want to impress the public,” Garcia said. “Show everyone what I learned in the camp.”
[Read more...]
It’s a crying shame that two recent fights that could compete for Fight of the Year are being tarnished by controversy when there really is none.
Every year around this time, there’s that tradition of gathering between friends or co-workers to compile and submit their supposedly perfect NCAA tourney brackets. The winning prize ranges from a few tens to a couple of hundreds for the casual ones, while there are several others who place their dollars with intent on benefitting from some serious profit. And I’m not shy to admit, I enjoy this annual tradition as much as I enjoy watching a prize fight or any other significant sporting event.
Every star fighter has a motivator, a compelling reason that they chose the fistic art as their profession. Some fighters are born into the sport. Their father, or their uncle, or someone early in their life took them to the gym with them, and passed on some of their ability through genetics. Some fighters may excel as an athlete in other sports and eventually find their way to boxing. Then there are some fighters who are just born to fight. They know it at an early age, they can fight. One such fighter is Daly City, California’s rising star, Karim “Hard Hitta” Mayfield.
For once, every pundit had it right about a world championship fight. We all predicted Pacquiao-Marquez II would be a battle between an aggressor throwing straight punches and a counterpuncher punishing his every mistake.
THURS-12PM-We ran into Freddie Roach today in the media room in the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. He was particularly upbeat about the preparation of his fighter, Manny Pacquiao, for his rematch with Juan Manuel Marquez on Saturday night.
It was good to see Ricky Hatton sign a promotional contract with Golden Boy Promotions. Oscar De La Hoya’s company is one of today’s biggest players. But it still hasn’t really developed a fighter from scratch to stardom.
It’s a rare occurrence to have five belts change hands on the same night, but that’s exactly what happened last Saturday on Showtime and HBO, broadcasting from London and Cancun respectively.
A couple of months ago I was in a Phoenix bar with two of Arizona’s best sportswriters. The subject turned to boxing. Manny Pacquiao’s name surfaced. I told the table I might be the only boxing writer who was ringside for both of Pacquiao’s 2007 fights and Juan Manuel Marquez’s November fight in Tucson.
“And the Pacquiao who fought in San Antonio and Las Vegas couldn’t beat that Marquez,” I said.
The veteran boxing writer beside me shrugged and said, “It won’t be the same Pacquiao.”
[Read more...]
30 year old “Merciless” Thomas Mashaba from Carletonville, South Africa, 20-1-4 (12), is finally making his U.S. debut this Friday night against veteran Cristobal Cruz, 35-11-1 (23), at the Fox Theater at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut. The fight will be telecast as the main event on the ESPN 2 “Friday Night Fights” series.
Manny Pacquiao beat the daylights out of Marco Antonio Barrera in November 2003, stopping him in the 11th round of a one-sided fight in San Antonio, Texas. Yet, just six months later – in May 2004 – Juan Manuel Marquez figured his fight with Pacquiao in Las Vegas was going to be a walk in the park.
It seems as if every time that Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez get into the ring together they somehow find a way to make it just a little more entertaining than the last time. And that’s saying something when you’re talking battles on a Fight of the Year level. And yes I realize that we’re only two months into the year but it’s difficult to imagine a better fight on the horizon this year.
CARSON, Calif. – The main event had been finished long enough for the ring to clear, writers to file their stories and a “walk-out” bout to begin. Cold as it was in the outdoor tennis stadium, the Home Depot Center’s warm press room was full.
Dressed in a bright green warm-up jacket, promoter Gary Shaw took the podium. Seated to his right were Rafael Marquez and his manager Jaime Quintana. Shaw began the post-fight banter in a somber tone, assuring the media that nothing he was about to say should detract from the trilogy just completed.
[Read more...]