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Round by Round: Weekly Boxing Notes

Apr 24, 2009, 5:00 PM UTC

Two Potential Fights I Don’t Understand
â†µA lot of rumors floating around out there in Fistiana these days about big bouts to come, with two in particular dominating the headlines. Neither of them makes a lot of sense to me. To wit ...â†µ

â†µFloyd Mayweather v. Juan Manuel Marquez
â†µThis fight has moved far enough beyond the territory of mere rumor to have a date appended to it -- July 18th. Recently, Money May’s daddy, Floyd Joy Mayweather Sr. (who spends about as much time talking to the press these days about his estranged son as he does his own charge, Ricky Hatton) confirmed the rumors of the Marquez bout and the discussed date, adding that the fight was going to be nothing but a tune-up for Lil Floyd. â†µ

â†µâ†µThat does seem to be the idea, a tune-up against the consensus champion at 135 pounds. Word is that the negotiations are hung up over weight, because Floyd wants to do the fight at 147 pounds and Marquez doesn’t want to go above 140, although recently his camp has budged to the 142-43 zone. â†µ

â†µâ†µThe weight is my main beef with the whole enterprise. Like his much more famous former dance partner, Manny Pacquiao, as of last May Marquez never had fought above 130. He has since fought twice at 135, and both times against legit 35’s who held big-time belts, leaving no question as to whether he can campaign as a lightweight. â†µ

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â†µBut in his victory over Juan Diaz in February (which stands right now as the Fight of the Year), Marquez looked small, and Diaz’s size advantage certainly played a role in the early course of a fight where Marquez found himself bullied around the ring a little bit. Juan Diaz is a big lightweight, but nevertheless, he’s a solid 35, and given what I saw that night my sense is that Marquez is in trouble if he faces a bona fide 140-pounder. Though he’s a hell of a ring technician, one of the smartest fighters in the game today, Marquez takes as good as he gets in there. Like all great Mexicans, he trades big shots with the best of them, and when the exchange rate finds him trading with much bigger dudes, I have the feeling that his celebrated ring smarts won’t buy him an answer. â†µ

â†µâ†µGoing north of 140 seems like a death wish to me for Dinamita, and going north of that weight to face a guy who probably would out-speed him (and possibly out-think him) at any weight just seems stupid. One could make an argument that Marquez is the number one pound-for-pound fighter in the sport right now. Though Pacquiao is the consensus owner of that title, there is a fringe element of sweet scientists who support Marquez’s right to wear the crown. Granted, a bout with Mayweather would be far and away the biggest payday of his career, and that reason alone has justified many a worse bout in the past. â†µ

â†µâ†µBut for a guy of Marquez’s skill, dignity and standing in the sport, it seems to me outrageous to ask him to jump three weight classes to fight Mayweather at 47. Because Floyd is not a huge welterweight and does not pack a tremendous punch (although Ricky Hatton might beg to differ on that point), people generally seem willing to overlook the size differential, in the spirit of, “ah what the hell, it’ll be exciting, they’re both big names.” â†µ

â†µâ†µWell, you know some other big names? Floyd Mayweather and Kelly Pavlik. Maybe they should fight. â†µ

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â†µBernard Hopkins v.
â†µFelix Trinidad â†µ

â†µâ†µThis one is really, really ... wack. â†µ

â†µâ†µI’m still angry at Tito, I must confess, in that I have him to thank for that Joe Calzaghe/Roy Jones debacle last fall. Tito actually made Roy look good in their fight in January of ’08, which made Jones seem like a viable make for Calzaghe and not the impostor that he is. â†µ

â†µâ†µUnfortunately, despite the fact that both men were mere shadows of the shadows of their former selves (I mean … Tito Trinidad at 170 pounds?), that Jones/Trinidad fight did pretty good PPV numbers, and seems to have justified Tito making another lackluster, flabby trip to the boxing bank to pick up his check. He reportedly made 15 milly for the Jones fight, and word is he’s asking for a re-up on that amount to fight Bernard. â†µ

â†µâ†µTito has been hunting a Hopkins rematch for years now, but apparently this time around it was BHop who initiated the talks, which leads one to believe that this thing actually might happen. The thing I don’t understand is, even if both men were still at their very best, what mandate is there for a Hopkins/Trinidad rematch? The first fight wasn’t any good. It was big, it made Hopkins a star, and it was a great New York event at the Garden in that eerie post-9/11 haze. But once the bell rang, Bernard beat all holy hell out of Tito. It was a complete mismatch, with Trinidad learning, just as Oscar De La Hoya would a few years later, that he was NOT a middleweight. â†µ

â†µâ†µNow, Trinidad is much more than a middleweight. He’s a whatever-weight. Basically, he’s just not a professional boxer anymore, so he goes into the ring at 170 looking soft, probably walks around at 185. He’s slow and has shoddy timing and little power. He’s a joke, but Roy Jones is such a joke himself that they made each other look respectable. â†µ

â†µâ†µMeanwhile, Bernard is still a professional boxer and then some. He just schooled Kelly Pavlik at 170 pounds and looked like a man half his age in doing it. He’s still fast, still elusive, still a pain in the ass to fight in just about every way. You want to see what Bernard will do to Tito, don’t look at the Roy Jones fight. Go back to Trinidad’s next-to-last fight against another celebrated pain in the ass, Winky Wright. Winky absolutely humiliated Tito, made him look like a guy who’d never put on a pair of gloves before. At this stage of the game, I actually think Bernard will embarrass him even worse than that. â†µ

â†µâ†µThe motivation is clear on both sides. Tito wants the money. Bernard wants another moment in the limelight and there’s nobody out there for him to fight, so he figures, well, at least a Trinidad rematch will get a lot of press and what’s more, there’s no chance whatsoever of him losing. â†µ

â†µâ†µFor that very reason, though, all the press the fight garners will be bad press, very bad, and I hope Bernard takes that into account before signing this deal. He got himself into the very good graces of the boxing world with that Pavlik win, and a lot of that capital would get thrown out the window if he wasted our time with a Trinidad farce. It hardly seems worth it for a guy who cares as much about his image as Hopkins does.â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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