Fighting Words” – Diaz-Katsidis: Better Late Than Never
by David P. Greisman
Whether your sport of choice takes place on a diamond or gridiron, hardwood, ice or pitch, before the first day of the season you will know what you’ll get long before you know what you truly have.
That is, schedules are set. The Red Sox and the Yankees will face each other 18 times. The Cowboys and the Redskins will do one apiece in Dallas and D.C. Whether the teams are any good that season matters not – they’ll play either way.
As for the best teams, they soon rise to the top of the standings. Anticipation builds. If they are as good as their records indicate, then they’ll meet each other in the postseason to decide which of the two is better.
That isn’t necessarily the case when it comes to action inside the ropes. Often you know what you have long before you know what you’re truly going to get.
Getting the best fighters to face each other can become the negotiating equivalent to pulling teeth. So many factors can stand in the way: mandatory opponents, rematch clauses, different promoters, network contracts, greed or boxers just plain not wanting to face a certain somebody else.
When one can earn six or seven figures no matter the opponent, there is little incentive to up the risk when the reward for not doing so is still a healthy sum. Why would Floyd Mayweather Jr. face Antonio Margarito for a title for $8 million when he could still rake in the big bucks with an easier outing, for the lineal welterweight championship, against Carlos Baldomir?
But it’s not just the best that are worth watching. The Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals had their first of two meetings last year in the second week of the season. Their 51-45 slugfest entertained, one of the more memorable moments in the year in football even though the Browns finished 10-6 and the Bengals were 7-9, both out of the playoffs.
The Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez trilogy was all the more phenomenal due to their being world-class boxers, but such status wasn’t a prerequisite. Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward were both known for their brawling and their ability to take punches, and sometimes it’s just the right mixture of ingredients that combines into classic combustion.
Such is the promise for this week’s headline bout on HBO’s “Boxing After Dark,” which features lightweights Juan Diaz and Michael Katsidis. About a year ago, Diaz was widely considered one of the best at 135, the owner of multiple title belts, a fighter who would come forward and wouldn’t stop until his opponent did. Katsidis, meanwhile, seemed in style and substance the logical heir apparent to Arturo Gatti’s “blood and guts warrior” label. He had taken part in a thrilling five-round war with Graham Earl and had followed up with a brutal victory over Czar Amonsot. That Katsidis was one of Diaz’s mandatory opponents made their eventual pairing a virtual guarantee.
They had to meet, right?
Wrong.
Diaz was expected to face Katsidis this past February. At a purse bid in November, Golden Boy Promotions had offered $1.5 million for the right to promote the bout. The minimum purse bid was $150,000. No other promoters were present. Don King, who promoted Diaz at the time, had traveled to Iraq the previous week to visit American troops over Thanksgiving and had not yet returned to the country. He hadn’t dispatched a representative, either.
Golden Boy Promotions didn’t need to pay 10 times the minimum. But in doing so, the company had made a preemptive power play for Diaz, whose contract with King was set to expire. It worked. Diaz signed with the company earlier this year.
But King’s contract with Diaz included a clause in which Diaz would not be allowed to fight without King’s permission under another promoter that had won a purse bid. That permission wasn’t coming.
Instead, Diaz faced Nate Campbell, losing in a split-decision that saw Campbell get inside and do to Diaz what Diaz had done to so many others – beat him down and erase any thoughts of victory. Campbell won the three titles that had previously belonged to Diaz, and in doing so he kept those belts with his promoter, Don King.
Katsidis would fight two weeks later, going against lineal lightweight champ Joel Casamayor. The two would wage a back-and-forth affair, but ultimately Casamayor caught Katsidis and ended his night.
Now both Diaz and Katsidis are coming off of losses. Each needs the win to remain a viable challenger in a crowded weight class. It is the kind of match-up that once made “Boxing After Dark” a lock when it came to action.
It is a fight in which you know what you have and you know what you’ll get. The expectations were fulfilled with Gatti-Ward, with Vazquez-Marquez and with Corrales-Castillo. Though there are no belts on the line, in no ways have the stakes been lessened.
Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito were supposed to meet a year before they actually did. Each held welterweight titles, and the winner was supposed to nominate a claimant to the throne Floyd Mayweather had abdicated. But Margarito opted for a bout with Paul Williams, losing his belt and perhaps his chances of being number one at 147.
Yet Margarito fought his way back into contention and won a belt, and by the time he and Cotto met this July, no one complained that their battle hadn’t come 12 months before. Still feeling the sting of the Williams loss, Margarito worked to ensure that he’d either not be behind on the scorecards – or that the scorecards wouldn’t matter. Cotto-Margarito perhaps ended up being better coming later instead of sooner.
Not every marquee match works under the formula by which it is better to be seen than not. The fantasy fight of Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson had been mentioned for years. But there were Tyson’s legal troubles, plus the conundrum of both men being locked into contracts with competing networks. When the match was finally made in 2002, Tyson was a shell of what he had once been, while Lewis was winding up his reign atop the heavyweight division. The marquee match became a hyped mismatch, a $50 drubbing, with Lewis dispatching of Tyson after eight rounds.
Boxers fight less than their predecessors. The number of sanctioning bodies means the best in each division are often the four holding the title belts, making their facing each other less likely. But the sport is still about machismo, about being stronger and better than anyone else. The taunt, “Any time, any place,” is no longer applicable in an era in which one must navigate the complications of arena availability, network dates and promotional obstacles.
But whenever a fight like Diaz-Katsidis does come – and it is nearly here – it is better that it came late as opposed to never.
The 10 Count
1. Not long after negotiations had hit a dead end, Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao have signed to face each other Dec. 6 in Las Vegas. Pacquiao will jump up two divisions from lightweight, where he’s had one fight, to welterweight, which De La Hoya hasn’t made since 2001.
Interestingly, De La Hoya has opened up as the betting favorite on the Bodog betting Web site.
Also of note, Pacquiao apparently told the Filipino press he would take two fights after the De La Hoya bout and then retire in 2009. De La Hoya, meanwhile, hinted on a conference call that what was expected to be his final appearance in the ring might not actually end up being so.
Floyd Mayweather Jr., meanwhile, is still retired.
2. John Ruiz lost in his rematch with Nicolay Valuev this past weekend, a unanimous decision that this scribe saw as slightly closer than the tallies turned in by two of the three judges. And though Ruiz came up short in his bid for a vacant heavyweight title, he should return home from Berlin morally victorious.
You see, Ruiz had challenged his naysayers prior to this bout, arguing that his style had changed, and betting reporters that Valuev would do more holding than the oft-mocked jab-and-grab specialist.
He was right.
Though there were a couple of rounds in which Ruiz initiated most of the clinching, the rest of the bout saw Valuev be the one doing the holding. Alas, that was one of the techniques that worked to the seven-footer’s advantage.
Ruiz needed to be at the perfect distance to score against Valuev. Too far, and Valuev peppered him with his jab. Too close, and Ruiz’s punches would get caught and smothered in a tangle of arms. Too often, Ruiz found himself either too far or too close, though he did have his moments.
Whenever Ruiz retires, he will do so as a former two-time heavyweight beltholder who fought all comers. But aesthetics shape memories. Even if his style remains changed, that’s not how he’ll be remembered. And Butterbean will still have two more ESPN special retrospectives than Ruiz.
3. This space has often been used to tease Teddy Atlas for his occasional monologues of metaphorical wisdom while he’s working as commentator for ESPN2’s boxing broadcasts.
Not this week.
Back from Beijing, where he worked as an analyst for the Olympic tournament, Teddy returned in good form to “Friday Night Fights,” going three for three in predicting how bouts would come to their respective ends.
Matt Remillard-Adauto Gonzalez
Teddy, before the fight: Gonzalez “took this on four days notice, and he’s lost four of his last five. His condition and mindset can’t be great. So, put steady pressure on him, and visit his body every round.”
Result: Remillard stopped Gonzalez in the fourth round with a left hook to the body.
Brian Macy-Shawn Kirk
Teddy, before the fight: “I look at Kirk. He looks like he has a soft body. If I’m Macy, I’m gonna go downstairs and test that basement a little bit.”
Result: Macy put Kirk down for the count with a left hook to the body.
Matt Godfrey-Emmanuel Nwodo
Teddy, in round three: Nwodo “is giving up his height, and he may pay a price for that, not staying tall,” and, “Godfrey’s being touched by those punches. The good news, his chin has held up. The chin of Nwodo that I don’t think is as good as Godfrey’s, that hasn’t been tested yet.”
Result: Godfrey threw a right hand in round four when Nwodo was ducking down, catching him high on his head, staggering him and leading to the eventual stoppage.
4. Boxers Behaving Badly, part one: In Scott Harrison’s professional boxing career, he fought 29 times, winning 25 times, losing twice and drawing twice.
Outside of the ring, it’s safe to say Harrison fought the law – and the law won.
That “Sonny Curtis and the Crickets” lyric aside, Harrison is back in legal trouble – and some wise television producer is pondering filming a whole season of “Cops” in Glasgow.
The troubled 31-year-old boxer was taken into custody last week after allegedly driving drunk for three miles in the Scottish city, according to the Sunday Mail. The newspaper report included this sad image: “Police arrested him after he staggered out [of a liquor store] and into his car with a bag of Stella Artois lager. The pathetic former world champ was so drunk that he could barely stand.”
Harrison will start out September with a court hearing. He was already expected to make an appearance this month for another case, a sentencing hearing for attacking his girlfriend and a police officer in May.
Harrison is also scheduled for trial this September to face allegations that he assaulted one man on a Glasgow street in January 2007 and threatened to kill another man in a bar in March 2007. Harrison pleaded not guilty to both charges.
Harrison’s hopes of returning to fighting legitimately took a backwards step in May after British officials chose not to license the former featherweight titlist to box.
Harrison lost his license after an eventful 2006 that included multiple legal problems and reported struggles with alcohol and depression. He was suspended after failing to get his weight below 133 pounds for a title defense late that year against Nicky Cook.
Since then, Harrison has donned handcuffs more often than boxing gloves. He’s faced allegations of drunken driving, of assaulting a police officer and another man and attempting to steal a car, and he was sentenced in April to 200 hours of community service for his recent conviction on charges of disturbing the peace and resisting arrest in an April 2006 incident outside of a bar in Glasgow. Harrison was acquitted in February on a related charge of assaulting a police officer.
Harrison last appeared in the ring in November 2005, when he outpointed Nedal Hussein.
5. Boxers Behaving Badly, part two: Retired Canadian middleweight Alex Hilton was arrested last week and charged with violating bail conditions after allegedly being found drunkenly yelling at people outside of a Montreal convenience store, according to radio station CJAD.
Police told the radio station that Hilton “offered no resistance and was taken to jail, where he promptly fell asleep in his cell.”
Hilton, 43, was previously out on bail and ordered to remain sober until late November for a case in which he was accused of attacking his former girlfriend. He was arrested in June and charged with two counts of assault and one count of breaking into the woman’s home. He was sentenced in 2007 to six years in jail after violating his probation in an incident in which he assaulted and threatened a police officer.
Hilton turned pro in 1982, leaving the sport permanently more than two decades later after a period in which he lost six straight fights, four of which ended early. His final record: 37 wins, 11 losses, and 23 wins by way of knockout.
6. Boxers Behaving Badly update: Fijian fighter Zulfikar Joy Ali has pleaded not guilty to a charge of drunken driving, according to a very thin report on FijiVillage.com.
Ali was arrested July 26. He has also been accused of acting “in a disorderly manner” at the police station. His case was adjourned until Oct. 14.
Ali, 29, has been boxing professionally since 1995, having racked up a record of 26-8-6 with one no contest and 22 knockouts in bouts from junior welterweight to super middleweight, according to BoxRec.com. The lone recognizable name is Crazy Kim, who knocked Ali out last year and was recently outpointed by Anthony Mundine.
Ali’s last bout was Aug. 19, a 10-round split-decision loss to Faimasasa Tavui, a fighter whose online record showing him as 1-1 must not be accurate. Ali has lost four of his last five outings.
7. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Scott Harrison, Alex Hilton and Zulfikar Joy Ali walk into a bar…
8. Boxing Promoter Behaving Badly update: Chris A. Webb, whose Straight Out Promotions put on the 2004 bout between Mike Tyson and Danny Williams, pleaded guilty in late August to federal tax charges not connected with boxing, according to Louisville, Ky., newspaper The Courier Journal.
Webb, 36, had been charged last year with one count of filing a false income tax return and two counts of failing to file a tax return. In court, he admitted to not filing in a timely manner in 2000 and 2001, when he owed $188,537 and $159,799 in taxes, respectively, on more than $1 million income from buying and selling various properties.
Webb must pay $100,000 toward his debt before his Dec. 8 sentencing hearing. Government attorneys will ask that Webb be sentenced to three years’ probation instead of the maximum two-year prison sentence.
9. Great quote, purportedly from top lightweight Nate Campbell, in camp for his Sept. 13 bout against Joan Guzman:
“I’m collecting all these ‘0’s’ and changing them to ‘Nates,’ ” Campbell was quoted as saying in a press release. “Kid Diamond is 26 and Nate. Juan Diaz is 33 and Nate. And on Sept. 13, Joan Guzman will be 28 and Nate. I fought too long and too hard to let anyone take these titles from me, especially Guzman. He just doesn’t know what he is in for.”
From his asking Juan Diaz after the referee’s instructions, “You ready for hell?” to the lines that have come from him in the months since in interviews and articles he’s penned, Campbell has become quite reliable at cutting promos. He was pretty darn good, too, filling in for Teddy Atlas for two weeks on ESPN2’s “Wednesday Night Fights.”
Better start looking over your shoulder, Lennox.
