It started with Cassius Marcellus Clay and now it’s come full circle to Muhammad Ali.

About seven years ago, I went to an auction at Sotheby’s and saw a photograph by Flip Schulke of Muhammad Ali,then Cassius Clay,in the Miami years before the first Liston fight. It was the only boxing photo in a large lot of photographs that had nothing to do with sport, so of course it immediately caught my eye. This was before Corbis and Getty had put their archives online and therefore before I had spent countless hours looking at old pictures of Ali. I had never seen images from that moment before. Clay was skinny and young, unmarked by the battles to come and full of the electricity of knowing how good you are before you’ve had a chance to prove it. In the photo, taken in Angelo Dundee’s 5th Street Gym in Miami, Clay’s side-stretching, hands behind his head as he leans left, eyes tracking the camera. He’s wearing a t-shirt that says Cassius Clay,in a Coca-Colaish font where a script C with a long tail stands in for the first letter of Cassius and Clay. Confronted by such beauty, I could only think one thing: I need that mother——- t-shirt.
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posted by Shoefly

I can’t help it, I kind of like Paulie Malignaggi. When I first started watching him he was enjoyable as a cartoon heel, a fun guy to root against. His fast-talking, guido, frost-tipped, metrosexual act made him eminently loathable. His fighting style is unattractive; a retreating, jabbing, clowning, and spoiling mush that can be borderline painful. He seemed a mockery of the slick African-American fighting tradition mixed with the righteous indignation and attitude I most prefer.

But he took his two beatings , from Cotto and Hatton , like a man and I started to warm a little. And Saturday’s fight against Juan Diaz was one to remember.

Now, first, let me say the cries of robbery seem a little overstated to me. I didn’t keep score, but I had the general feeling the fight was a pick’em with enough close rounds that it wouldn’t be a tragedy either way. Of course, I also knew who the HBO kept boy was and, as such, had no doubt that Diaz would be the winner.

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(Gentleman, we’ve got the august Shoefly on the prognog piece this week, and yes, the contest is on. Call the round, call the cards, call it call it call it and win a Mas shirt of your choice. But remember… be specific, be very specific. -L)

posted by Shoefly

There’s losing, there’s losing by knockout, and then there’s losing by beating. The type of grueling, pounding, and unmanning hurt they don’t tell you about when you first walk into the gym; the sort of hiding a proud kid who always got his way could never imagine. I’m thinking here of a fight like Calzhage/Lacy. A man enters the ring as a champion and exits a bruise on legs.

I generally think the modern obsession with a fighter being damaged and faded following a loss is unhelpful and inaccurate, but when a boxer receives the deep hurt it’s impossible not to look for signs of a changed man.

And that’s what Saturday’s Diaz/Malignaggi fight is really about; how much of Juan Diaz is left? Did the great Juan Manual Marquez knock something essential loose when he ripped two-dozen of the most lovely uppercuts you’re likely to see into the younger man? It was a terrific fight, one of those classic encounters that are so familiar across the course of boxing history; the young lion vs. the old champ, the reckless pressure fighter vs. the counterpunching genius.

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posted by Large

Dudes, again I refer you to my piece at The Sporting Blog, which touches on a subject near and dear to our hearts, the two gigantic, rival promotions of the fall.

To which I will add that this annoying situation where I am generally writing my pieces over at TSB and then linking to them here is going to be resolved soon once and for all, and I think to everyone’s satisfaction. More on that very soon…

Mayweather/Marquez vs. Pacquiao/Cotto Could Be the Fight of 2009
“If Floyd really wants to take a sure path towards making this fight enormous, and if he wants to immediately supersede any other news that surrounds him or his camp or the fight as it is posited right now, he has it in his power to do so… All he has to do, with his inimitable gusto, is insult the honor of Mexican boxers, Mexican people, and Mexico itself. Then, oh man … then all hell would break loose.”

posted by Large

Gents, I bring you my recent pieces from The Sporting Blog concerning Roy Jones’ performance against Jeff Lacy (in which I pay undue attention to an aging Phillies’ pitcher of note) and also last night’s highly disappointing news that the Pavlik/Williams fight has been postponed and consequently may never happen.

Roy Jones: The Pedro Martinez of Boxing?
He was embarrassed by Calzaghe, but Calzaghe was a truly great fighter still at the peak of his powers. I couldn’t help but wonder on Saturday while I was watching Roy take Lacy apart how he would fare in Showtime’s super middleweight tournament. Of course, Roy hasn’t fought at 68 in over ten years, and it’s unlikely that he’d be inclined to go back to that weight now. But if he did … could he compete in that tournament? Could he eke out wins over the likes of Jermain and Andre Dirrell and Carl Froch?

Kelly Pavlik vs. Paul Williams Postponed, Possibly Cancelled
What’s left now is to see whether the two promoters can come to some agreement on a make-up date, which is quite a dicey proposition in the ever delicate world of boxing negotiations. There always was something about this fight that seemed too good to be true , two big, exciting fighters in their primes taking a huge risk in agreeing to face each other in a matchup that, although hotly anticipated by boxing diehards, doesn’t even have the crossover juice to warrant big-time pay-per-view money.

posted by Large

Guys, below I bring you my Roger Mayweather piece from over at The Sporting Blog. Due to the blatant hotness of the woman, there’s a lot of speculation out there about whether the relationship between Rog and “Guard Your Grill” St. Vil (and allow me to add… that is one seriously hot nickname) was, dah, beyond professional. I guess we’ll be hearing about that soon enough.

To sum up, my take is that this incident hurts Floyd the promoter much more than it hurts Floyd the boxer. In my opinion, Floyd needs a compelling 24/7 to get this fight up on the marquee of people’s minds, and when one of the major characters of the ongoing miniseries of his life is out there choking women out and making them spit blood, well, it definitely makes the Evil Empire of the Mayweathers seem almost too evil for prime time. It’s hard to laugh about what a rollicking crazyass character ole Uncle Rog is when you dwell on that shit too much. 24/7 had done a nice job of putting the grandmother abuse in the rear-view mirror, but this thing brings it all back home. Darkness visible, innit?

What do you dudes think? Does this incident have any lasting impact on the Mayweather/Marquez promotion or does it blow over? Or does it (I shudder to write this) maybe even help the promotion?

The Roger Mayweather Incident (The Sporting Blog)
“…you have to wonder if this recent storyline with Uncle Rog isn’t too gruesome for even HBO to want to face head on. The 24/7 series has been built on celebrating the antics of the Mayweathers, but this, choking a woman and making her spit blood, is nothing to celebrate, to put it mildly. The situation at the very least will remove Roger from the light of the cameras, and even more, may cast a pall over the coverage of the whole Mayweather training camp.”

posted by Large

This trend whereby boxing loses some of its most beloved fighters, another one seemingly every week, to early, violent death, is really getting disturbing. The latest victim is Vernon Forrest, dead at the age of 38, killed last night during an attempted carjacking while he was filling the tires of his Jaguar in Atlanta. Two punks carrying pistols tried to boost Vernon’s car, but evidently he pulled his own piece on them and chased them down the street. Gunshots were exchanged and he took one in the head. The punks both escaped.

Forrest wasn’t an icon of boxing at the level of Gatti or Arguello, but he was known to be one of the sport’s best citizens, tireless when it came to charity work for kids and the mentally challenged.

Though he had a long and successful career in which he competed in the Olympics and won three world titles in two different weight classes, Vernon nevertheless always will be remembered as something of a hard luck story. A favorite to win a gold medal in Barcelona, he got a dose of food poisoning before his first-round bout and lost unceremoniously. Later, on the cusp of mega-stardom after his two signature victories over Shane Mosley in 2002, he was stopped in the third round by Ricardo Mayorga in only the first fight of a brand-new multi-fight deal with HBO. By the time of the rematch, Forrest already was struggling with the left shoulder and elbow problems that would force him to have multiple surgeries and stay out of the ring for two years during his prime. After Mayorga beat him a second time, the surgeries began, and his all-too-brief stint on the A-list was over.

He fought well when he returned to the ring, beat Ike Quartey in an exciting fight in August of 2006 and then won the WBC junior middleweight belt from Carlos Baldomir in 2007, a title he lost and then won back from Sergio Mora last year.

Inactive since that second Mora fight in September of ‘08, there had been some talk of him matching up with Sergio Martinez, which would have been an entertaining fight for sure. But now he’s dead, a victim of some random thuggery and his own instinct to fight back. R.I.P. Vernon and God bless. As for the rest of you fighters out there, for Pete’s sake, be safe and watch your back, because some very nasty vibe is loose in the atmosphere lately and it seems to have the best of the boxing world in its crosshairs.

posted by Large

A late reminder that I’ll be making my inaugural appearance on the Pound 4 Pound radio show tonight, an hour-long show that airs at 7 p.m. EST on Sirius/XM 98. Other than my esteemed self, the guests are Chris Arreola, Steve Cunningham and Stephane Larouche, who plays left wing for the Canadiens. No, wait… he’s Lucien Bute’s trainer.

I understand the topics that I’ll be addressing will be the Showtime Super Six tourney, the Pac/Cotto extravaganza, David Haye’s continuing ridiculousness and some other recent news today concerning Tomasz Adamek and Amir Khan. They’re also encouraging call-ins tonight, so do holla if you have the itch at 1-888-942-7326. I include below some links to recent pieces of mine from The Sporting Blog and my latest HBO article.

Pacquiao vs. Cotto: Questions Will Be Answered (HBO.com)
“Over the next four months, this match-up is certain to provoke a firestorm of debate among devoted followers of the sweet science. Both men are accomplished stars who inspire great passion in their fan base, and yet they have unanswered questions hanging over them at the moment,questions that will be settled once and for all when they fight in November.”

David Haye Is Ducking the Klitschkos (The Sporting Blog)
“I have no doubts that the Klitsckos were working him over big-time at the negotiating table, but them’s the ropes in this hustle, Hayeburger. You essentially have done nothing in your heavyweight career yet but talk a big game and wear cool t-shirts. You’re a former cruiserweight champ with a stoppage loss to Carl Thompson on your record. The most impressive scalp on your belt is a past-his-prime Jean-Marc Mormeck, who wasn’t all that impressive even when he was in his prime. No matter how much you blab, son, when your resume is that bloody thin, you’re going to have to settle for table-scraps if you want to sit at the king’s table, or even the king’s brother’s table.”

Pacquiao vs. Cotto: Big Fight, Good Fight (The Sporting Blog)
“Bob Arum’s Top Rank Promotions officially announced yesterday that the Manny Pacquiao vs. Miguel Cotto fight, scheduled for November 14 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, is a done deal at a catch-weight of 145 pounds. In what has been a strange, transitional year for the sweet science, this is likely to prove the only true super-fight of 2009 in terms of both the legitimacy of the match-up and the interest it generates.”

Kelly Pavlik: A Man Without a Plan (The Sporting Blog)
“Pavlik and his handlers now have themselves a serious problem. A boxing Machiavelli like Bob Arum has to be thinking to himself at this point, “Maybe, just maybe, Kelly Pavlik isn’t that good.” After all, he doesn’t really have any A-list scalps on his belt. He beat Jermain Taylor twice (who, of course, beat Hopkins twice in highly disputed decisions) but there is no one in the fight world left standing who will tell you that Jermain is or ever was a great boxer. A-plus potential, but Jermain probably maxed out at B-plus performance.”

posted by Large

I’ve been trying to get up here with a report on Khan/Kotelnik all day, but various nuisances have kept me otherwise engaged. And then, well, then the other shoe falls and suddenly a Khan/Kotelnik recap seems about as pressing as a soft summer rain (though it was a pretty enjoyable fight on the whole – I’ll try and get a short piece up here with my thoughts either today or tomorrow).

So look, brothers of the Mas, if you don’t know, now you know – the shit is on like Donkey Kong. So many arguments, so many comments, so much dissension to be enjoyed in the ranks. I’m going to do a feature on this very topic for HBO this week, and when I’m done I’ll link it here and then I’ll be available to start moderating the madness. Until then, Brad, Ricky, and the rest of you maniacs… play nice.

posted by Large

When you’re pushing forty and you’ve chosen the sober path for yourself, when you have a wife at home and a rambunctious nine-month-old who makes it such that you rarely (dah… never) are to be found awake past eleven o’clock at night, and when you’re avidly working on the first paunch of your life and your hairline’s way down on the scorecards in its battle with Father Time and you smell of a good two hours of accumulated adrenaline sweat, and when because of all of these things and more you feel decidedly out of place amongst the emaciated and vapid vampires of Tinseltown after dark… when you are like this, people, it is VERY hard to know where to turn when you find yourself all amped and aimless after a fucking ferocious fight in L.A. lights a candle up your ass the size of a forest fire.

Me, I’ve chosen this cafe (and when there is a DJ in the corner playing an endless thrumming ode to digital technology, can an establishment actually be called a “cafe?”) in the lobby of my unfortunate hotel, The Standard, to try and wrestle with my feelings. For now I resort to prose – maybe later I will shift to rhyme. Maybe I’ll take the mic in this joint and drop knowledge. “I got so much trouble on my mind, refuse to lose…” I doubt I would even scratch the surface of my surroundings. Around me are gathered some of the most expensive-jeans-be-wearing motherfuckers I’ve ever seen in my life. The people who party away their lives in these ultra-fashionable hotels… they are a race unto themselves.

Another race altogether, nearer to my heart needless to say, are the men who choose to make their monthly nut with their fists and their faces, and oh did we see a prime example of their work tonight. My mind still reels, my heart still beats a little too eagerly for me to sit still. This incessant godawful house music has nothing on the beat of my heart right now.

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