Bit of a lull in the fistic festivities this weekend as we get ourselves ready for the following weekend and the competing HBO (Pavlik v. Lockett) and Showtime (Forrest v. Mora, Quintana/Williams rematch) cards on June 7th.
But as I scanned the fight schedule for this week, I did notice that Danny Williams would be in action, stepping into the ring on Friday night with one Konstantin Airich in a bout in that ballyhooed fight capital of the world, Bilbao. I wonder if they’re fighting at the art museum.
For such a mediocre talent, Williams has quite a claim on heavyweight history in the new millennium, being both the last man to face the last true lineal heavyweight champ, Vitali Klitschko, and the next-to-last man to face the last true unified and undisputed heavyweight champ, Mike Tyson.
Of course, Vitali is returning to the ring, which will erase Williams’ privileged place in his record as his final victim. And Tyson, well, though there has been talk of Iron Mike stepping back into the ring (Holyfield III, Kimbo Slice), the recent press surrounding the man and the Tyson documentary that was a sensation in Cannes all point to a potential new reign for Mike as The Mellowest Man on the Planet.
Lest the return of the spotlight give Tyson any ideas, however, I submit his KO at the hands of Williams as our No Mas Knockout of the Week. This no doubt should have been his last fight, if indeed his last fight shouldn’t have happened years beforehand. In that I watched Tyson’s gradual decline over the years, when I saw this fight I wasn’t quite as startled as I might have been at the deterioration of everything that he had once been in the ring. Four years removed, though, with mostly the young, feral Kid Dynamite era in my mind’s eye, I’m more shocked than I was at the time at what became of the fighting Mike. This is much worse than Louis/Marciano, or Ali/Holmes, or Holmes/Tyson. At least those fading superstars got embarrassed by the best the ring could offer, legends in their own right. Mike, meanwhile, got embarrassed Danny Freakin Williams.
How much more terrible could Saturday have gone for Paulie the Not So Magic Man Malignaggi? The answer is none – none more terrible.
Although, I suppose he might have lost. He didn’t do that. If you missed it, Paulie managed to eke out a split decision over Lovemore N’Dou in Manchester on Saturday as the primary undercard to the big Ricky Hatton homecoming fight with Juan Lazcano. Malignaggi was on the card with the presumption that victories for both him and Hatton would result in the two fighters facing each other in their next bout.
Despite the fact that both presumed victors did indeed win their fights, one has to wonder if that Paulie/Hatton fight will come off now due to sheer indifference. After Hatton’s lackluster victory over Lazcano, I can’t think of a single reason to watch the (Often Gets) Hit Man fight again. As for Paulie, well, there is some interest there, if only to see if he can surpass the majestic stupidity of his performance on Saturday.
And let me say right here that I like Paulie. Actually, I kind of like him even more after this N’Dou debacle, because it was just so preposterous, so hilariously, painfully bizarre… ah lemme just tell the story.
So this was a big moment for the Magic Man, big stadium crowd in Man City’s football stadium, and a much bigger bout with Hatton lying in the balance. At last a stage to match the heroic vicissitudes of Paulie’s self-regard, and he was not in the mood disappoint in the way of a spectacle.
He came into the ring wearing a sort of kabuki mask, which was cool enough. Took about twenty minutes to get to the ring, which was whatever, typical.
When he finally made it to the ring, however, and took off the mask, Paulie revealed a head full of long, thin dreadlocks pulled back into a ponytail. Calling the fight for Versus, Wally Matthews, one of the few legitimate defenders of the old school left out there, immediately pointed out to the viewing audience that he had it on reliable information that these dreads were primarily hair-extensions.
The first bell rang, and the fun began. Malignaggi’s ponytail popped loose about twenty seconds into the round and suddenly it wasn’t ole Paulie from the block in there but Ozzy Ozbourne. The dreads couldn’t have been worse as a distraction, either. Paulie was completely blinded in there, and ended up eating a lot of shots while trying to brush his hair out of his eyes. Without question, the hair cost him the first round.
From there on the fight was all about the hair. They pulled it back and taped it in his corner and it kept springing free. In between rounds, one of his cornermen stood over him and frantically tried to snip off all the loose dreads before the next round began. As Wally Matthews put it, “Malignaggi must be the first boxer in history who needs a hairdresser in his corner.” Finally, somewhere around the eighth or ninth, the whole ponytail started swing up over Paulie head and onto his face, as in the picture up top there. What ensued from that was some of the most comic scenes I’ve ever witnessed in a boxing ring. It was Will Ferrell-movie material, pure theater of the absurd.
After that round, the jig was up. Paulie barber in the corner went to work and hacked off all the dreads before the next bell. I ask you people, has such a thing ever happened before in the history of the sweet science? An impromptu hair-cut in the corner in between rounds?
In the post-fight interviews, Malignaggi did not shy away from the ridiculousness of the whole thing, saying it was a complete disaster from start to finish. He didn’t quite acknowledge how much of a distraction it was in the ring, however, which was the amazing thing to me. He claims that he broke his oft-broken right hand once again in the sixth round, and I believe him. But he was off his game from the start of that fight, and the reason was on his head, and not in his gloves. The guy made about as big a fool of himself as could be imagined in front of, oh, 30,000 people, and what’s more, I can’t quite believe that the whole thing had Ricky Hatton thinking him to himself, “right then, that’s the bloke I need to be fighting next, that bloody idiot.”
Following this past weekend’s Boxing After Dark card on HBO, I’ve had a lot of conversations and email exchanges about the Cuban junior lightweight phenom Yuriorkis Gamboa, who won a unanimous decision over Yonkers-born Golden Gloves champ Darling Jimenez. Gamboa is a fiery and charismatic 130 in the ring who draws comparisons to Tyson, many comparisons to Meldrick Taylor, and the esteemed Unsilent even wrote me to compare Gamboa to a young Buddy McGirt.
Pick your poison on that score. There’s one thing that’s not up for debate about this kid, however, and that’s the fact that he inspires great interest and excitement in just about everyone who sees him, the type of excitement that no hype machine can generate, the type that only comes from the sheer impact of witnessing a remarkable talent in action. Twice now I’ve watched Gamboa fight and twice I’ve been overwhelmed by his bravado and hand speed and the seemingly impossible elasticity of his upper body (add Pernell to the list of superlative comparisons). Twice I’ve also seen him get unceremoniously dropped due to his carelessly daring style, knockdowns that have prompted the announcers to say in their knowing voices that while Gamboa’s preening pyrotechnics may have worked in the amateurs (he won a gold medal in Athens), he’ll have to learn to keep his hands up in the pros or he’ll be headed for queer street before he ever glimpses easy street.
Which is undoubtedly true. Darling Jimenez is a better fighter that people give him credit for, tough as tough can be with an impeccable amateur pedigree. But given the way that Gamboa dominated him in the early rounds of their fight, Jimenez probably shouldn’t have gone the distance and definitely shouldn’t have landed Gamboa on the canvas as he did in the fourth round (at about :55 seconds in the video below).
Even after he got dropped, however, Gamboa kept his hands slung low and dared Jimenez to hit him, a dare that Jimenez frequently obliged. You can call it youthful arrogance if you want, or stupidity even, but myself I can’t help but see it as a conscious choice borne of Gamboa’s idea of what constitutes success as a fighter. One has to imagine that it’s occurred to him before that keeping his hands up would be a much less risky proposition in there, but he nevertheless insists on leaving them down and dodging punches with his kinetic head-movement and effortless shoulder-rolling, dodging punches by centimeters that it seems he could evade by feet or block with ease if he so chose.
I’m reminded of a baseball game I once played in Cuba. I was down there with a large posse for the millennial new year’s celebration – I-Berg and Morty Bravo were with me and it was I-Berg actually who arranged for this game, the fantasy of which was that we Americanos would face off in a showdown with the local Cubanos for hemispheric sandlot supremacy.
As long as I live, I’ll never forget that day, never forget walking through the quiet streets of this bombed-out Cuban town with a huge group of Cubans toward the field with I-Berg, who was ever so slightly over-stimulated, yelling out to no one in particular in his impressive Spanglish that everybody should come out to watch a great baseball showdown between Cubans and Americans. These calls of his, I recall, brought many querulous faces to windows looking down at us as we passed with expressions that decidedly said, ‘those crazyass gringos are going to get whupped.”
We fared better than might have been expected, although the numbers were such that a strict U.S. vs. Cuba game was impossible. In a double-header, the Cuban-dominated side won a game as did the American-dominated side, which was very much in keeping with the spirit of the whole thing.
I could go on for a long time about the details of the games, my own individual heroics in particular. It’s a long-standing joke among I-berg, Morty and myself that as time passes our memories of our own greatness that day have grown to Ruthian proportions. I do vivdly remember at a crucial point in the second game ill-advisedly trying to stretch a double into a triple and getting called out at third in a play that got everybody riled up (and with complete objectivity, I want to tell you something – I was safe). When I came off the field, a Cuban spectator came up to me and said in broken English, “you are a true pelotera,” which I still count among the greatest things anyone has ever said to me anywhere about anything.
I bring up that anecdote first to celebrate myself (oh I did have a hell of an afternoon people) but also because it gets to the spirit of what I remember about that game and how it links in my mind to Gamboa’s fighting style. It was the fact that I tried to get to third, that it was a such a bad decision and that I went for it anyway and almost made it, that brought the cheers. That entire day I noticed that theme in the way the Cubans played the game and the way the fans cheered their players. The fact of success was not what brought the real accolades. There was a definite attitude of, “hey, anyone can hit a double man, anyone can catch a fly ball.” Doing it with style, with daring, doing it in a way that was surprising or ridiculous – this was what it meant to really play the game.
I remember a shtick that the outfielders would do that was a hell of a sight. A fly ball would get lofted and the outfielder in the nearest vicinity would wait to break for it and make a real show of this waiting, put his hand on his chin and feign a yawn, wait till the last possible moment and then break for the ball like a streak of lightning and try to catch it. This maneuver was a real fan favorite, whether he caught it or not.
Now this was a fun game on a fun day and absolutely nothing was at stake, no matter what I-berg or me or Morty Bravo might have been pretending in our minds. I don’t mean to imply in any way that based on this one experience I had many years ago that I think Cubans aren’t competitive, nor am I really drawing a “man we Americans are uptight and them Latinos sure know how to have fun” distinction. But there was an inarguable cultural difference from my own experience in the way I felt the game being approached that day that was striking to me. Like most of my peers, I imagine, I was intensely schooled in the environment of “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” from an early age, and taught that anything done for mere style’s sake on the field was “hot-dogging”, a cardinal sin against the holy spirit of the pursuit of victory.
The Cubans seemed to view every play as an opportunity to do something astonishing. There was a baseball for art’s sake feeling in the air that was contagious, and I’m reminded of that when I watch Gamboa fight. With every flurry, with every feint, he looks to be trying to do something memorable, almost impossible, and that pursuit often seems more interesting to him than anything else, certainly than merely winning in some workmanlike fashion. Yes, yes, as his competition stiffens, this is a pursuit that will become an increasingly dangerous game. But in the meantime, let me just understate the case tremendously and say that, man, it is something to see.
Yo yo yo, it’s on. The Mas is up here at Word Prizzle and ready to relaunch f’real in all of our Mas-ness. To all of our loyal readers out there, we hope you’ll check out the new site and let us know any bugs you find, because we’re still working out the kinks. But if this here post goes right up as I fully expect it to do, well, we are back in black. Expect us to be bringing it daily once again. Thanks for your patience – L
The rematch, fought at Chicago Stadium, was not nearly so epic. In fact, it didn’t make it out of the first round. Marciano put Walcott down with a one-two at about 2:10 of the first. Dazed but sentient, Walcott watched the ref give the count, seemingly ready to get back to the action. But he mistimed his rise to his feet and was still on the canvas at the count of ten. The ref waved it off and the thing was done. He protested, his handlers protested, but there wasn’t much to argue about. Watching the video below, you’ll see that although the ref did count at a mighty quick pace, Jersey Joe was most definitely still down at ten.
Walcott retired after the fight and remained retired, although he certainly didn’t fade from the limelight. He made an appearance in the great Bogart boxing film, The Harder They Fall, tried the pro wrestling hustle, and of course, he did an infamously bad job of reffing the Ali/Liston “phantom punch” fight in 1965. Later on, he became the sheriff of Camden and then the chairman of the New Jersey State Athletic Commission. He died in 1994.
In that we’ve been gone so long and so much has happened in our absence, I thought I’d start today by airing out my thoughts on a few major stories in our bread-and-butter pursuit here at the Mas, the sweet science.
Cotto v. Margo – The April 12th Cotto/Gomez, Margarito/Cintron card, despite featuring two non-competitive fights, proved to be a great night for boxing in that it set up the kind of Immovable Object v. Irresistible Force bout that, for all the big names floating around out there, was sorely lacking from the remainder of the 2008 schedule. I’m still a little worried that it won’t happen for some reason – nothing is signed yet as far as I know and no location has been agreed upon. But still, this bout is a fight fan’s dream. Obviously we have a lot of time to mull it over and so I won’t get into any deep prognostification right now, other than to say that I lean towards Cotto but with heavy reservations.
Oscar Spars in Front of 27,000 People – I was in the house for this one doing some reportage for The Sporting Blog (you can check those posts here and here and here). On the whole, I thought it was more competitive than expected, particularly early, where I had Stevie winning… I think I had it 3-2 Oscar after 5. Mostly it seemed like a soft outing for The Golden Boy, with some real deterioration of both speed and power on display. How much of it was rust it’s hard to say. I was talking to a journalist down on press row who said he’d had a long talk with Floyd Sr. the day before and that Daddy Floyd had told him that he’d hated the Forbes make from the beginning, that Oscar was setting himself up to need a big knockout to come out of the fight looking good and that Stevie was a very difficult guy to knock out or even hurt that much. And that was pretty much the story of the evening, a glorified sparring session in which Oscar decisively won rounds but did little else to impress. Was that a function of Forbes’ savvy? Maybe. But I couldn’t help feel like five years ago Oscar would have gotten him out of there no problem. I certainly saw nothing to make me think that he’ll fare any better in a rematch with Money May.
Execution – Did Calzaghe/Hopkins even happen? Doesn’t that fight almost seem like a mirage now? When I saw Bernard in the ring at the Oscar/Forbes fight, preening around as if he was running the show in an expensive-looking suit and an ill-advised peach shirt, I thought to myself, goddamn man holms is never going to retire. He looked like he might peel that Armani shit off at any moment and get to fighting with somebody just to get some himself some attention. And it’s a shame, because after that Calzaghe slap-and-tickle session, I really feel like I don’t want to watch another BHop fight. He’s tough to read, he makes you look bad, he never lets you hit him square, he fouls the crap out of you and the ref never knows it… all true. He’s a marvel, a walking boxing compendium of angles and maneuvers and sneakyass shit. But he doesn’t fight to win anymore – he just doesn’t have it in him. He was never a thrill-a-minute guy even in his prime, and now, well, now he’s excruciating to watch. I hope we’ve seen his last fight, but I sincerely doubt it. Something tells me that Tito Trinidad thing is going to happen whether we want it or not.
Money May Disappoints Money-Wise – Did you see this? Wrestlemania’s PPV numbers were down this year, a fact that is largely being attributed to Lil Floyd being not nearly the draw that McMahon and Co. thought he would be. Which I think is good news all around, to be honest. I’m all for the circus act, but some active encouragement to get back to basics seems in order for Cash Money right about now.
Well, first of all, I’m none too sure this is going to post right now. Things have been pretty mercurial lately. Those test posts went up days after I initially tried to get them up. But just in the off chance that this works like it’s supposed to today, let me get an update up here on the status of the Mas.
If you haven’t followed the conversations in the comments lately, basically what happened with the No Mas blog in the last few weeks is that Blogger stopped working for us. We’ve had little glitches with that in the past but this was a different thing entirely – this was wholesale nuclear war. We couldn’t post anything, comments weren’t updating on the main page, and we couldn’t republish in any way so we couldn’t get ourselves onto another blog client. Things didn’t start to clear up until recently, although as I pointed out even that has been hit-miss.
But we’re coming back strong, hopefully in the next two weeks. If Blogger lets me post regularly, I’ll start getting us back up to speed ASAP, but if not, we’ll have to wait until we are safely over at WordPress, at which point the No Mas guns will be blazing once again, just in time to get you a review of that new David Mamet MMA movie that looks so freakin awesomely bad.
To tide you over, here’s a recent piece of mine from over at The Sporting Blog about Iron Mike’s recent appearance on E60.
