Will Boxing Catch On To The Catch at Catchweights?
By Jake Donovan
Another catchweight match this weekend, another failed result.
When will boxing finally learn that there’s always a catch to catchweight bouts?
New school writers trying to pass themselves off as old-school often turn to “back in the day” for validation of a less than desirable matchup between fighters in separate weight classes.
What they fail to realize is, we’re not back in the day.
Once upon a time, top fighters jumped weight classes for the sake of staying busy, but also took the time to dominate the division in which they served as the man. Middleweights won tune-ups at light heavyweight, but almost always fell short when vying for the top prize. Ditto for light heavyweights dancing with the big boys; hanging with the rest but falling to the best.
Today’s version of catchweight bouts come with a different flavor. They’re no longer designed for the sport’s best to keep busy while awaiting bigger and better things to come. Instead, they’re glorified cash grabs, packaged as high-end pay-per-view cards, with the end result often proving little, if anything at all.
One lesson learned this weekend was one that should’ve long ago been realized: never count out Bernard Hopkins. He reminds us over and over that he’ll retire from the sport and not the other way around. Over and over again, we ignore him, insisting that he’s done, and that no matter what he tries, he doesn’t have enough tricks in the bag to fend off Generation Next.
It’s been mixed results in the past few years, but never to the point where he showed that he no longer belonged at or near the top. The win over Pavlik only puts him at .500 over his past six fights, but plenty will argue that three losses are at least one too many, some even going so far as to claim that his last true loss came 15 years ago against Roy Jones Jr.
That his opponents over that stretch were Jermain Taylor (twice), Antonio Tarver, Winky Wright, Joe Calzaghe and Kelly Pavlik, and we’re still having this conversation only adds to his Hall of Fame credentials, as well as his placement among the sport’s very best of all time.
And that’s before you factor in that all of those fights came after he turned forty.
But what’s key in this discussion is the word “add.” He was already Hall of Fame bound before he turned 40. What got him there was his dominance at middleweight, the division he fully unified in 2001 and for all intent and purposes dominated with an iron first for the better part of his ten years in possession of at least one alphabet title.
That same dominance is sorely lacking in just about every division. The moment a fighter “arrives,” everyone’s in a rush to make mythical matchups come true. It’s not enough that Manny Pacquiao beat Juan Manuel Marquez for his third lineal title earlier this year.
Right away, he moved up to lightweight, but that wasn’t even enough. Rather than stay put for a while, and attempt to help bring clarity to the division, he instead chases the fattest bag with a dollar sign on it, moving up another 12 pounds to take on the sport’s biggest cash cow, Oscar de la Hoya later this year.
Should Manny Pacquiao emerge victorious, he will be the first among those moving up in weight to do so in several high-profile catchweight bouts in recent years, most of which instead serve as reminders that two fighters moving up or down to meet at the same weight doesn’t automatically level the playing field.
De la Hoya’s welcome back party against Stevie Forbes this past May is just one of many examples. The fight was a far greater mismatch on paper and in reality than most others in recent years, playing out exactly as expected, and in the end proved ultimately pointless.
Winky Wright tried and failed against Bernard Hopkins last summer, though not necessarily proving that Hopkins is the better fighter today; sporting a pot belly shaped from Krispy Kreme was hardly indicative of Wright being at his most effective weight, yet he still managed to remain competitive ten pounds beyond his comfort zone.
On paper, Hopkins now owns a win over another future Hall of Famer; in reality, the bout did more harm than good, and was among the least watchable major fights in recent memory.
Roy Jones scored his first notable win in nearly five years when he beat on a pudgy Felix Trinidad at the start of the year. Trinidad came out of retirement and looked like he hadn’t even trained, lacking any upper body definition whatsoever.
Despite the physical mismatch, Jones still settled for a lopsided decision rather than truly pursuing a knockout. He scored two knockdowns, but reached a point where he’d rather have fun than let “RJ” out of his cage, playing to the crowd as he coasted to the finish line.
Both fighters promised better than the take-the-money-and-run business meeting that took place last May, but in the end offered a moderately entertaining, albeit one-sided, event.
One month later came the rematch between Kelly Pavlik and Jermain Taylor. Their first fight was for the middleweight crown, resulting in one of the best fights of 2007 and a dramatic ending that resulted in a changing of the guard atop the division.
The rematch came because it had to. Taylor had a rematch clause in his contract, and opted to exercise it. The only problem was, the contract stated the return go would have to take place at 166 lb, a condition insisted upon by Team Taylor, who at the time believed that 160 was a weight they’d no longer be able to make.
While the rematch proved to be entertaining, missing was the luster of the first fight, or the lack of anything other than bragging rights being at stake. Taylor fought better than was the case five months prior, and Pavlik showed (at the time anyway) that he could win by boxing when his power wouldn’t prevail.
But in the end, it was just another win for Pavlik. All he did was beat a fighter over which he already owned scoreboard, at a weight that would have no bearing on his reign as middleweight king.
Pavlik received such a reminder deep into the boxing lesson he was given by Hopkins last Saturday. Renowned cutman Miguel Diaz told Pavlik in so many words, “You won’t lose your title, you’re just losing the fight.”
So what we’re left with now is a middleweight champion in the prime of his career who didn’t just lose to a faded former champion 17 years his senior, but was utterly embarrassed. Not a dominant middleweight champion head and shoulders above the rest of his division, but one who has defended his title just once, against disgraced mandatory challenger Gary Lockett.
This fight came about because, as reminded over the weekend by Boxingscene.com Editor-In-Chief Rick Reeno, HBO wasn’t particularly interested in any other fight involving Pavlik. A list of three names was given, forcing Team Pavlik to settle on what they thought would be cannon fodder in today’s version of Hopkins.
Next up will most likely be a mandatory defense against Marco Antonio Rubio. Such a fight was already offered to and rejected by HBO, though Rubio strengthened his claim on Saturday after a hard-fought, well-earned split decision on the Hopkins-Pavlik undercard.
But HBO doesn’t own the industry, despite their repeated insistence otherwise.
Promoter Bob Arum went out of his way to introduce Rubio to those on hand at the Pavlik-Lockett post-fight press conference this past June. The intention was to hype up what he thought would be Pavlik’s next fight – “with or without HBO’s blessing.” The outspoken Hall of Fame promoter loves to remind anyone who listens that he has no problems staging his own shows when the networks (in today’s terms, HBO and Showtime) are less than cooperative.
It was in that same breath in which he insisted that should HBO not express interest in the fight, that he’d most likely stage an independent PPV show, somewhere in Pavlik’s home state of Ohio. Not quite Youngstown, but perhaps somewhere in Cleveland.
The only exception, he claimed, would be if a deal could be struck for Pavlik to face Joe Calzaghe. It was then that the agenda behind HBO’s staging Pavlik-Lockett was revealed. Lockett is trained by Enzo Calzaghe, who of course is the father to the former lineal super middleweight king and present top light heavyweight.
When a deal couldn’t be reached, Arum only looked in one direction. It was outside that same office where he claims today’s promoters (or “booking agents” as he refers to everyone not named King or Duva) stand outside with tin cup in tow where he awaited their next handout.
He got it – and so suffered another blue chipper in his stable.
One loss does not a career ruin, but it remains to be seen what 2009 has in store. Certainly, Pavlik can’t go from this fight straight to, say the winner of next month’s Calzaghe-Jones PPV main event. A defense against Rubio was supposed to be a long distance option, in case no other high profile fight could be made, but now pushes its way to the top of the list.
Sure, Pavlik could just as easily dump a title if it meant facing an Arthur Abraham or a Winky Wright, but that’s not going to happen on the heels of a virtual shutout loss, if ever at all.
Who knows what will follow a Rubio defense, assuming anywhere near the same luster follows his career. He could be sitting in that position right now, undefeated record still in tow, along with a lofty ranking among most pound for pound lists and at least one more defense into his middleweight reign while putting more distance between himself and the rest of the division.
Instead, he and his team gave into, reluctantly or otherwise, the allure of corporate funding, refusing to take a pay cut for the sake of getting an easy defense out of the way.
HBO’s offering last weekend was supposed to be an investment into the next big fight involving Kelly Pavlik and a parting gift for long and meritorious service to Bernard Hopkins.
In the end, everyone got blindsided by the catch that regularly comes with today’s version of catchweight bouts
