Boxing Video of the Week

As a teaser for this Saturday’s showdown between middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik and former middleweight and light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins, here is the spectacular comeback against Jermaine Taylor that launched Kelly Pavlik into stardom last year, thus making this fight possible. Pavlik looked all but done in the second round under a furious barrage from Taylor, and indeed, I think many referees would have stopped the fight then. But he fought his way back into the match, and finished Taylor with a brutal assault in the seventh round. This clip, a little under five minutes, shows both Pavlik’s second-round escape and his spectacular seventh-round finish.

October 2008: The Pound-for-Pound Rankings

Boxing afficianados have to deal with a lot of downtime between fights. In the course of any one month, you might be able to watch two or three big fights, all of them on Friday or Saturday nights. To fill up the dead time, boxing junkies, like all good and reasonable people, like to make lists. Lists of the top American heavyweights in history. Lists of the top fighters in each division. Lists of the best fights of the year, the best rounds of the year, the best knockouts of the year, and the biggest upsets of the year.

The most important list by far, however, is the list of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world. This is a list that seeks to equalize all the weight divisions to see, essentially, who gets the most bang for his buck on a pound-for-pound basis. It’s the only way that you can compare a bantamweight to a cruiserweight while maintaing at least the foggiest semblence of intellectual honesty.

In the most recent issue of The Ring, boxing’s signature publication put out its latest list of the best pound-for-pound fightes in the world. It was:

1. Manny Pacquiao – Lightweight
2. Joe Calzaghe – Super Middleweight/Light Heavyweight
3. Juan Manuel Marquez – Junior Lightweight
4. Bernard Hopkins – Light Heavyweight
5. Israel Vazquez – Junior Featherweight
6. Antonio Margarito – Welterweight
7. Kelly Pavlik – Middleweight
8. Christian Mijares – Junior Bantamweight
9. Rafael Marquez – Junior Featherweight
10. Miguel Cotto – Welterweight

This list is fine as far as it goes, but it betrays one quality in particular that annoys me about such lists. It tends to look more at a fighter’s past accomplishments than his present potential. For instance, I defy anyone who has actually watched the 43-year-old Bernard Hopkins fight in the last year to say that he is still one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the world. Greatness in the ring is fleeting; we should aim with these lists to capture the best fighters according to their present abilities and skill levels, not their track records.

With that in mind, The Boxing Corner is debuting its monthly pound-for-pound rankings, which will post around the middle of each month. Here is my list for October:

1. Juan Manuel Marquez – Lightweight
2. Manny Pacquiao – Lightweight
3. Antonio Margarito – Welterweight
4. Kelly Pavlik – Middleweight
5. Chad Dawson – Light Heavyweight
6. Israel Vazquez – Junior Featherweight
7. Rafael Marquez – Junior Featherweight
8. Joe Calzaghe – Light Heavyweight
9. Miguel Cotto – Welterweight
10. Ivan Calderon – Junior Flyweight

Juan Manuel Marquez earns the top spot because, on my scorecards, he won both of his previous meetings with Manny Pacquaio, although the judges scored one a draw and the other a narrow victory for Pacquiao. Further, Marquez gave the more impressive showing in his first fight at lightweight, taking out linear champion Joel Casamayor with a knockout, whereas Pacquiao entered the division against lesser opponent David Diaz. If Pacquiao somehow beats Oscar De La Hoya in December, I may reconsider this ordering.

At this point Antonio Margarito appears to be the most feared fighter in the sport, after his demolition of the great Miguel Cotto in late July. He appears to be headed for a fight with Sugar Shane Mosley in January, after which he will probably rematch against Cotto sometime in the middle of next year. Kelly Pavlik, at #4, faces his biggest test this Saturday when he fights Bernard Hopkins at a catch-weight of 170 pounds. I will preview this fight on Friday, but I do expect the hard-punching, hard-working Pavlik to take this fight fairly easily, cementing his status as one of the top fighters in the sport. Chad Dawson (#5) has already been written about here; his big win over Antonio Tarver this weekend, coupled with an earlier victory (albeit disputed) over Glen Johnson pushes him into the top ranks. Vazquez (#6) and Rafael Marquez (#7) will always be joined at the hip in my mind after the three brutal wars they waged in 2007 and 2008. Everyone is now waiting for those two to heal up so they can beat the crap out of each other once more.

Joe Calzaghe (#8) is overrated. His win over Bernard Hopkins in the spring was not that impressive, and now he appears to be gliding out of the sport with a November match against another old fogey, Roy Jones, Jr. I feel kind of dirty even putting Calzaghe anywhere in this top ten. It befuddles me that some people actually think he is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world right now. Cotto (#9) may deserve to be even higher, despite his knockout loss to Margarito in July. That’s just a bad matchup for him on paper. His previous wins over Sugar Shane Mosley and Zab Judah place him in the top ranks of the sport. At #10, Ivan Calderon may be the best pure boxer in the world right now. He simply has no punching power whatsoever, but it’s still fun to watch other fighters try and fail to catch him with anything.

Fight Recap: Tarver v. Dawson

During the course of Chad Dawson’s surprisingly easy unanimous decision victory over Antonio Tarver tonight, a Showtime reporter asked the recently retired pound-for-pound king, Floyd Mayweather, Jr., who was attending the fight, for his thoughts. Mayweather declared that Dawson was the best fighter, pound-for-pound, in the sport. After watching his destruction of a determined-but-overmatched champion like Antonio Tarver, I can at least agree that such an honor will probably fall Dawson’s way in the future. In the meantime, I would have to regard him as the best light heavyweight in the world, which is itself no mean accomplishment given Dawson’s age (26), and the bevy of talent contained within the division.

I expected Dawson to win, but I did not expect him to look quite so impressive doing so. After all, in his last match the veteran Glen Johnson had given Dawson plenty of problems, enough to place Dawson as the loser on some of the cards (although not any of the ringside judges). Johnson’s constant aggression seemed to expose holes in Dawson’s defense, holes that I expected Antonio Tarver to exploit at some point during tonight’s match.

He never really did. As I expected, he did play the aggressor throughout the fight, constantly moving forward, trying to attack Dawson to the body and catch him with a straight left hand or uppercut. But he never really hit him flush the entire night, and his punches, when they did connect, seemed to lack power. Dawson, by constrast, fought beautifully, moving around the ring gracefully, throwing off crisp, dazzling five-punch combinations that Tarver occasionally blocked but never had any compelling answer for. What’s more, Dawson physically dominated Tarver, pushing him back many times throughout the fight with hard jabs to the face and ripping shots to the body. Tarver fought gamely, trying to push Dawson to the final bell (and being knocked down in the twelfth round for his efforts), but honestly, he never really had a chance. Dawson is now one of the true stars of the sport, and tonight was his coming out party.

Here’s my card. Most of the rounds that went to Tarver were rounds which Dawson seemed to take off.

Fight Recap: Klitschko v. Peter

Well, the Peter uprising that I hoped for certainly never materialized, as the taller, more skilled Vitali Klitschko pounded Peter into submission with a constant barrage of filthy right hands that bloodied the Nigerian’s face. Peter quit on his stool after eight rounds, for the second defeat of his career.

Heading into the bout, there were two main questions:

1. After four years of inactivity and at 37 years of age, what did Vitali Klitschko have left?

2. Coming off his impressive win over Oleg Maskaev, would Peter continue to show the improvements in technique and aggression that could have made this fight competitive for him?

Over eight rounds, it became clear that the answers were 1. quite a bit and 2. absolutely not. From the opening bell, Peter looked tentative and lethargic. Incredibly, he failed to work his way inside (the referree didn’t have to break the two fighters at all until the last round), didn’t use his jab to set up combinations, and kept himself, and most importantly, his face, right in the range of Klitschko’s long, powerful arms. If that’s all he was going to do, Peter should have thrown in the towel at the weigh-in. Under those conditions, he simply had absolutely no chance of winning, even if Klitschko had been a reduced, sloppy fighter.

But Klitschko wasn’t. Amazingly for a fighter who had not stepped into the ring for almost four years, Klitschko was supremely accurate with all his punches, and overall looked to be in excellent condition. He kept his back very straight, taking full advantage of his 6 foot, 7 1/2 inch frame. Every punch he threw was delivered with power and conviction. There is nothing to critique about his performance. But remember: Peter’s pathetic showing meant that he also was not hit with one significant punch the entire fight. A better opponent might have left us with a very different impression of his abilities at this stage in his career. Unfortunately for boxing, the dreadful heavyweight division only really has one fighter who is clearly better than Peter: Vitali’s younger brother Wladimir, and those two will never fight each other in the ring. In that sense, with Vitali Klitschko’s win tonight, the entire division has gone into something of a deep freeze, and will remain there until one of the two Klitschko brothers is defeated.

Fight Preview: Antonio Tarver v. Chad Dawson, Saturday October 11th, 9 pm (Showtime)

12 Rounds or Less at the Palms Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada, for the IBF and IBO Light Heavyweight Titles

Odds: Dawson -265, Tarver +225

Antonio Tarver: 27-4-0 with 19 knockouts.

Height: 6 feet, 2 inches

Weight (Last Fight): 173 and 3/4 pounds

Reach: 75 inches

Last Fight: Unanimous decision victory over Clinton Woods on April 12, 2008

Chad Dawson: 26-0-0 with 17 knockouts.

Height: 6 feet, 3 inches

Weight (Last Fight): 173 and 3/4 pounds

Reach: 76 1/2 inches

Last Fight: Unanimous decision victory over Glen Johnson on April 12, 2008

Analysis:

For my money, this is the premier fight in the light heavyweight division this year. Antonio Tarver is one of the division’s biggest stars, with a solid record that includes impressive wins over Roy Jones, Jr. and Glen Johnson. Due to turn 40 years old next month, he still looks and fights like a man several years younger than that. His opponent, Chad Dawson, is 13 years Tarver’s junior and one of the biggest rising stars in the entire sport. With his agility, hand speed, and power, Dawson is expected to dominate the light heavyweight division for years to come.

However, his last bout, a controversial decision over veteran Glen Johnson, raised serious questions about Dawson’s ability to handle pressure, as well as his tactical pedigree. Dominating the fight early, Dawson gradually lost ground to the wily Johnson, who was able to pressure the younger fighter and hurt him on several occasions. After watching that fight, Tarver declared that Dawson had been exposed. As usual, Tarver has been confident that he will win, while Dawson, normally reticent in the public eye, has left no doubt that he dislikes the brash Tarver.

Glen Johnson, who has fought both Tarver and Dawson, thinks that Tarver can win the fight if he stays busy and turns the bout into a slugfest. Whether Tarver will do that remains to be seen, as he usually prefers to fight from the outside and control his opponents with an effective jab. That will probably not work against Dawson, who has superior foot speed and can make the veteran Tarver look slow and plodding from the outside.

Prediction:

In this battle of southpaws, we think Dawson will come away with a close but relatively clear decision. Tarver will try to be the aggressor in the fight but will receive as much as he gives. When Tarver tires of taking the fight to Dawson, the latter will mostly outbox Tarver from the outside and hang on for the win. It should be a great fight.

Fight Preview: Vitali Klitschko v. Samuel Peter, Saturday October 11th, 9 pm (Showtime)

12 Rounds or Less at the World Arena, Berlin, Germany, for the WBC Heavyweight Title

Odds: Klitschko -210, Peter +175

Vitali Klitschko: 35-2-0, with 34 knockouts.

Height: 6 feet, 7 1/2 inches

Weight (last fight): 250 pounds

Reach: 80 inches

Last Fight: Eight Round TKO of Danny Williams on December 11, 2004

Samuel Peter: 30-1-0 with 23 knockouts.

Height: 6 feet, 1/2 inch

Weight (last fight): 250 3/4 pounds

Reach: 77 inches

Last Fight: Sixth Round TKO of Olag Maskaev on March 8, 2008

Analysis:

This is probably the most anticipated heavyweight fight of 2008, which says more about the moribund state of the division than it does about this bout. Vitali Klitschko, older brother to reigning heavyweight champ Wladimir Klitschko, was once one of the most dominating forces in the ring, before a series of injuries shelved him for the better part of four years. He comes back Saturday to take on the Nigerian-born Sam Peter, who is coming off an impressive KO victory over Maskaev but who was thoroughly dominated by Wladimir Klitschko in a unanimous decision defeat in September of 2005. (Peter did manage to knock down Klitschko three times during that bout, but otherwise looked overmatched and unimpressive.) Many ring analysts feel Peter has upped his game since the loss to Klitschko, although he has not faced the same quality of opponent in any of his previous six matches.

The obvious physical difference between these two fighters is their height, with the towering Klitschko coming in a full seven inches taller than Peter. That physical advantage will make it difficult for Peter to get inside and work effectively: expect Vitali to attempt to use his superior reach to keep Peter at a distance where he can wear down his opponent and eventually stop him.

The big wildcard here, however, is Klitschko’s inactivity. Out of the ring for four years, the now 37-year-old Ukrainian is nine years older than Peter and coming off the kind of layoff that normally produces a significant amount of ring rust. In his prime, however, Vitali Klitschko was a terror, knocking out just about all of his opponents and even giving Lennox Lewis everything he could handle before a bad cut forced Klitschko to retire.

Prediction:

The tale of the tape and the respective records of the two fighters give Klitschko the decisive advantage, which is why the bookies have tagged him as a solid favorite here. However, my gut instinct tells me that Klitschko’s age and inactivity will be telling, and that a focused Peter–hoping for another shot at Vitali’s brother Wladimir–will be able to take advantage of Klitschko’s rust to score the upset. Peter by seventh round TKO.

Revisiting Hagler-Leonard

Boxing writer Steve Marantz has just published a book, Sorcery at Caesar’s: Sugar Ray’s Marvelous Fight, that takes an in-depth look at one of the most controversial decisions in boxing history: Sugar Ray Leonard’s split decision victory over Marvin Hagler at Caesar’s Palace on April 5, 1987. The book has yet to arrive on my doorstep, but I thought that in advance of reading it, I would watch the fight again, rescoring the rounds. When this fight took place I was just a nine-year-old kid with a tandential interest in boxing, but I loved Sugar Ray Leonard. He was the quintessential American superstar-athlete, a smooth artist who had humiliated the Panamanian legend Roberto Duran and pounded Thomas Hearns into submission. By contrast, Marvin Hagler struck me as an inarticulate bully, a thug whose pit bull tenacity in the ring frightened me more than a little. I was elated when Leonard won the decision over Hagler, and enjoyed his victory as any partisan would.

The passing years, and a lot more familiarity with boxing, have changed my opinion considerably. Duran, Hearns, and Hagler are now three of my all-time favorite fighters, and Leonard strikes me as a clown–albeit an extremely talented one–who largely bullshitted his way to his most famous victories (particularly his victory over Duran in New Orleans and his “win” over Hagler). After losing to Duran in Montreal in their first meeting, when Leonard unwisely decided to try and trade with Roberto, Leonard largely spent the rest of his career dancing around the ring, winning decisions on style rather than substance. (His comeback knockout win over Hearns is an obvious exception in this respect.)

Watching Hagler-Leonard again only reinforced this impression. Rescoring the fight, I had it as a draw, with the only swing round being Round 3, which I almost scored even but decided to give to Leonard. If you score that round even or give it to Hagler, then Hagler wins the fight, as one of the three judges in Las Vegas had it. Another gave the fight narrowly, 115-113, for Leonard, a decision I don’t think can be easily justified upon closer scrutiny, although it is certainly within the bounds of possibility. Then there is the case of judge Jose Guerra, who, incredibly, scored the bout 118-110 for Leonard, meaning that he gave Hagler only two rounds. This is thoroughly impossible. Leonard clearly dominated the first two rounds, (maybe) narrowly won the third, and won the fourth. He clearly lost the fifth round, won the sixth, and lost rounds seven through ten. Most of these rounds were not close. Hagler would work his way in, push Leonard against the ropes, and land solid, heavy blows. Leonard would fight his way out with a flashy combination that looked good to the crowd but didn’t do any damage; indeed, Leonard did not once back Hagler up throughout the entire fight. With the bout even (on my card) heading into the eleventh round, Leonard managed a comeback by fighting effectively in flurries against an increasingly arm weary Hagler. The showboating Leonard, believing he had the fight in the bag (which I guess he did) then gave away the twelfth round by dancing around the ring like a buffoon, his hands raised in premature triumph.

So why does Hagler only get a draw on my card? Simply put, he couldn’t find Leonard for the first four rounds. He did not switch to the southpaw stance until the third round, which was a big tactical error, as Leonard’s habit of constantly moving to his right would have opened him up to Hagler’s left hand. I don’t know why Hagler began the bout fighting orthodox style; hopefully Marantz’s book will offer some insight into that error. Had he chosen the correct tactics from the beginning of the fight, he would have won the bout, even with the insane scoring of Jose Guerra.

Here’s my card:

Sergio Martinez: A Star Is Born?

Judging by the commentary on HBO’s Boxing After Dark this past weekend, you would think that Sergio Martinez’s eight-round battering of Alex Bunema had single-handedly launched Martinez into boxing’s stratosphere, making him one of the most dangerous pound-for-pound fighters in the ring. Jim Lampley, Max Kellerman, and Lennox Lewis all fawned over Martinez’s dazzling hand speed, movement, and ring generalship. Kellerman suggested that Martinez get into the ring with Antonio Margarito, to perhaps avenge the only blemish on his record, a 7th round TKO from eight years ago. Lampley argued that Martinez would be a terror at any weight class from 147 to 160 pounds, so impressive was his steamrolling of Bunema, Martinez’s most pedigreed opponent to date.

Certainly Martinez looked very impressive in his dominating win. And certainly, his victory deserves to land him bigger and better opportunities in whatever division he chooses to fight in the coming months. But please, let’s apply just a little skepticism to this bandwagon. Yes, Bunema was, on paper, a quality opponent. But the story of last night’s bout was not simply Martinez’s great performance; it was also Bunema’s horrible showing.

About halfway through the first round, Martinez abandoned any pretense of defensive posture and kept his hands around his waist. He maintained that posture for the rest of the fight, and yet, amazingly, Bunema managed to land only 31 punches. 31 punches in eight rounds. Less than 10 jabs. Not one meaningful punch in the entire fight, while Martinez just danced in front of him, begging to be tagged with a right hand. Martinez was able to do this because he quickly realized that Bunema was not sending anything back his way. So he showboated his way to a dominating victory.

What was wrong with Bunema? He had given a good account of himself in recent fights, with knockouts in each of his last five bouts. HBO commentators, even as Bunema was getting battered around the ring and throwing nothing back, talked up Bunema’s punching power as a potential equalizer in an otherwise lopsided fight. But last night, the power was not there. The poise was not there. The fighter was not there. As my wife noted from the opening bell, Bunema’s eyes looked glassy and bloodshot before he had taken any punishment. In his own corner he looked listless, drained. He simply wasn’t there. So what happened? Was he sick? Did he hurt himself making weight? No one knows. But until we know more about what was happening with Alex Bunema last night, we are not in any position to judge Sergio Martinez’s potential.

About This Blog

This blog can be accurately described as the truculent cousin of my other one, strategicfailure.blogspot.com, which I have used over the past year to write about politics, baseball, dreams, and, occasionally, boxing. In that context my interest in boxing never seemed to fit with everything else I was posting about, so I have decided to branch out and create a blog that is purely about boxing. Allow me to give a little background on myself: I am 31 years old, and a doctoral student in African history. (In fact, I am currently scheduled to spend a year in Africa doing research, beginning this coming January.) I have published two books and numerous articles, but most of them have been about my first love as a writer, baseball history. I still love baseball, but over the course of the past couple years, as my own political and academic interests have become a bit more eccentric, I have found that the sport’s constant, nauseating celebration of American patriotism and family values has impacted my ability to enjoy the sport. Increasingly, I have turned to boxing as a better alternative for facilitating my own view of the world. I love boxing because, for all its ridiculousness and corruption, it somehow comes across as more honest than baseball. It wears its own violence, its exploitation of the human body, its basic (by most standards) moral degeneracy, exceedingly well; indeed, it often manages to turn these “faults” into attributes worthy of celebration.

Those who dislike boxing often view the sport (a term I use advisedly…it is highly debatable whether boxing is a “sport” at all) as something cruel and grotesque, and for this reason, something to be condemned as appealing to the worst devils of human nature. There is much truth to this view, but from my own perspective as someone who is fascinated by violence and conflict as arenas for struggle and the articulation of masculine virtue, that is precisely the source of boxing’s greatness.

Over the past two years, boxing has also woven itself into the fabric of my own life more completely than any other kind of entertainment. My daughter, who has just turned five, loves watching fights with me, loves picking winners and looking at colorful photos of boxing legends. A poster of Muhammad Ali hangs over her bed. She says she wants to be a boxer when she grows up. In many ways, this blog will be as much about her as it will be about me.

My current plan for this space is to preview and recap fights that interest me, post videos that capture something unique about boxing, review books and articles related to boxing, and explore some of the general themes that make boxing the unique spectacle of violence and defeat, death and triumph, showmanship and determination, that it now is.

Of course, I imagine the format will change as I go along. I hope to tweak the minimalist design I’ve chosen here as time passes, and I hope to connect myself to the larger community of boxing blogs. If you happen by here and have your own blog on boxing, please introduce yourself.