Round by Round – Boxing Notes

By Dave “Large” Lazerlere
The news of the week in the squared circle is an absence of news – still no definitive announcement from Golden Boy about who Oscar De La Hoya is fighting in May. We did, however, learn for certain this week that Floyd Mayweather Sr. is coming back to Oscar’s corner and that Roy Jones has been calling Oscar out to no avail. Why does neither of these things surprise me? On the Daddy Floyd count, the 24/7 storyline is already appearing before our eyes, and as for Roy, I say, oh word? You want a piece of that action? Get in line, dog. Everybody wants that money. Hell, I’d step in the ring tomorrow for Oscar money. I could make 154 for that kind of payday.
Everywhere I turned this week it was Andy Lee. Emanuel Steward has taken this Irishman (by way of London) under his wing, and recently went very public with his opinion that Lee could beat Kelly Pavlik right now. In that the kid is 23 and only recently has graduated to 10-round bouts, let me just say that I’m skeptical and leave it at that. Then again, Manny Steward has been very high on Lee for years now, has even been known to compare him to Sugar Ray Robinson. No doubt that’s some Kronk-styled hyperbole right there, but given Manny’s overall success rate, one has to take the man seriously at some level. The Worldwide Leader certainly did, running ahuge profile on Lee this week, which got me to wondering – what exactly are Lee’s people hawking right now that they’ve pulled him so much press all the sudden? Do they really want to get into the Pavlik conversation? Myself, I find it hard to believe he’ll be a 160 for long. Check out his frame in the video below – kid is a hat-rack with a right hand:

Pity Sugar Shane Mosley. The guy just gave the fight of a lifetime to an undefeated pound-for-pound bruiser and the next thing you know he’s back to the irrelevant circuit, evidently very close to signing a fight for May with Ricardo Mayorga. Your guess at the weight is as good as mine. The Matador evidently has told Don King that he can still make 147. Personally I don’t think there are that many cigarettes in the world.
Finally, I think all boxing fans were thrilled to hear about the announcement of a great light heavyweight card on Showtime in April featuring Bad Chad Dawson v. WBC champ Glen Johnson and Antonio Tarver v. IBF champ Clinton Woods. But that excitement was severely tempered by learning that the card was scheduled for April 12th, the same night as Cotto/Gomez and Cintron/Margarito on HBO. Sometimes it seems like all the boxing powers-that-be go out of their crookedly corrupt way to make life hard for fight fans. And yet we keep coming back no matter how hard they smack us, like Jake LaMotta on Valentine’s Day…↵