It was early in the morning on April 20, 1973, and whoever was ringing my doorbell wasn’t going to stop. I rolled out of bed, pulled on my jeans and staggered groggily down the stairs. Waiting for me was the forlorn figure of promoter J Russell Peltz.
“Rus, what’s the matter?”
“Bennie lost to Vinales last night.”
“Oh, jeez. Come on in.”
Bennie was Bennie Briscoe, Peltz’s top attraction, and Vinales was Luis Vinales, a slick journeyman with almost as many losses as wins on his record. The night before, they had fought in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in what was supposed to be Briscoe’s final tuneup before challenging Carlos Monzon for the middleweight championship. But when Vinales out-legged the poorly conditioned Briscoe to win a split decision, Peltz was devastated.
“I thought the world had come to an end,” he recalled more than 30 years later. “The title fight with Monzon was already signed. I felt like killing myself.”
Obviously Peltz didn’t kill himself. He’s now enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame, a position from which he views the Vinales-Briscoe fiasco from a far more philosophic vantage point. After all, Briscoe stopped Vinales in a rematch and fought Monzon that November, losing a 15-round decision.
But why had Peltz taken such a risk so close to the biggest fight of Briscoe’s career? Bennie certainly wasn’t rusty; he’d fought less than a month prior.
“I don’t know. Maybe I wanted him to have an out-of-town fight before going to Argentina,” said Peltz. “Back then, guys fought all the time. That was just what you did.”
[+] EnlargeManny Pacquiao and Chris Algieri Chris Farina/Top Rank From the moment Manny Pacquiao-Chris Algieri was announced, it was instantly branded a tune-up by what’s left of boxing’s cynical old guard. The sport has changed a lot since then, but even though most of today’s world-class boxers fight only two or three times a year, the tuneup is still very much a part of the sport. It’s not Vinales-Briscoe anymore — a presumed gimme at the Catholic Youth Center in a faded coalmining town. These days, tuneups are usually marketed as something else altogether. The time-honored tradition has been gussied up and presented as an event of great importance — and on rare occasions they turn out to be exactly that.
Nowadays, tuneups frequently have some sort of title attached to them and are televised by subscription giants HBO and Showtime. Moreover, a depressing number are turning up on pay-per-view.
When Saturday’s pay-per-view match between Manny Pacquiao and Chris Algieri was first announced, it was instantly branded a tuneup by what’s left of the cynical old guard. Moreover, many hard-core fans swore they wouldn’t buy it even if their feet were held to a fire.
Top Rank and HBO expected as much, and wisely went about selling Algieri to a mainstream audience, a strategy that just might work following a media blitz that emphasized Algieri’s good looks, wholesome lifestyle and master’s degree in healthcare science.
The hackneyed “real-life Rocky” appellation has also been trotted out for the umpteenth time, despite the fact Sylvester Stallone’s character didn’t enjoy a particularly wholesome lifestyle, was never renowned for his looks and sure as hell didn’t have a master’s degree
It’s not that Algieri can’t fight. He can, as his up-from-the-floor split-decision victory over Ruslan Provodnikov in June clearly proved. It’s just that besides Provodnikov, his thin 20-0 (8 KOs) record is bereft of word-class opposition. Even so, there has been a surge of pro-Algieri sentiment as the Pacquiao fight draws near.
Making The Rounds Max Kellerman joins Dan Rafael and Brian Campbell to preview Manny Pacquiao-Chris Algieri.
If his supporters are correct, Algieri will join a lengthy list of tune-up opportunists to have jolted the status quo and sent the sport spinning in directions that could hardly have been anticipated.
One of the most bizarre examples was journeyman Jesse Ferguson’s 10-round unanimous decision over Ray Mercer on Feb. 6, 1993, at Madison Square Garden. The loss cost Mercer a match with then-heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe, who knocked out Michael Dokes in the first round of the main event later that same evening.
But the fun was only just beginning.
Ferguson accused Mercer of unsuccessfully trying to persuade him to take a dive during a fourth-round clinch, when the A-side fighter allegedly said, “Man, I don’t got it tonight. I’ll give you $100,000 to go down.”
Mercer was eventually tried for bribery in New York State Supreme Court and acquitted when the prosecution failed to provide collaborating evidence to back up Ferguson’s allegation. Despite the verdict in his favor, Mercer never got a crack at Bowe, for which he was originally slated to earn $1.5 million.
Ferguson got the shot instead, suffered a second-round knockout and cashed the biggest paycheck of his career: $500,000.
The void in Mercer’s bank account after the Ferguson debacle was chump change compared to the sum Tommy Morrison blew when he fought supposed no-hoper Michael Bentt on Oct. 29, 1993, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Although Mercer had already knocked some of the gild off the lily by stopping him in 1991, Morrison had rebuilt it with 10 straight wins, including a decision over George Foreman to claim the WBO heavyweight trinket. He was scheduled for a big-money showdown with WBC titleholder Lennox Lewis, but rather than going directly to that fight, Morrison opted to defend against Bentt first.
[+] EnlargeTommy Morrison and Michael Bentt Mark Morrison/Getty Images Heavyweight Michael Bentt upset Tommy Morrison’s best-laid plans with a first-round knockout in 1993. The New York-based Englishman seemed a perfect target. He had impressive amateur credentials but hadn’t fought anybody approaching Morrison’s stature. In fact, Bentt’s 11 pro opponents had a combined record of 63-102-12. What could possibly go wrong?
As it turned out, everything.
Ninety-three seconds after the opening bell, it was all over. Bentt sent Morrison crashing to the canvas three times in rapid succession, a humiliating defeat that cost Tommy an immediate crack at Lewis and a multimillion-dollar payday, ranging anywhere from $4-10 million, depending on which source you believe.
Bentt suffered a non-life-threatening brain injury in his next bout, a knockout loss to Herbie Hide, after which he retired from the ring. But in yet another intriguing twist of fate, he went on to have a successful acting career, including the role of Sonny Liston in Will Smith’s “Ali” and Biggis in “State Property 2.” More recently, the ex-boxer played a jailhouse snitch in the Fox TV series “Sons of Anarchy.”
Morrison, who had made a splash playing Tommy Gunn in “Rocky V” prior to fighting Bentt, turned out to be strictly a one-trick thespian.
The ramifications of losing a tuneup are unpredictable. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt the loser anywhere near as much as it did Mercer and Morrison. When Carlos Baldomir upset Zab Judah on Jan. 7, 2006, it was assumed Judah’s mooted match against Floyd Mayweather Jr. had disappeared along with the WBC belt Baldomir annexed.
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Au contraire. Worried about Baldomir’s lack of box-office appeal, the suits huddled, purses were whittled down and Judah unsuccessfully challenged Mayweather three months later — a fight remembered more for a 10th-round, corner-clearing melee than anything else.
Regardless of the often far-ranging consequences, all tuneup fights have one thing in common: They are made in an effort to benefit the career of the favored fighter. It could be to shed rust, rebuild confidence or simply bank some relatively easy money while positioning the fighter for a more significant match looming on the horizon.
The Pacquiao-Algieri match came together partly as a result of the Algieri-Provodnikov upset, but largely because Pacquiao was running out of attractive opponents. The cold war that has pitted promoter against promoter and network against network in a self-destructive suicide dance only acerbated an old problem: Whenever a dominant fighter such as Pacquiao stays on top for a long time, the herd of viable challengers has been culled so often, it’s a wonder they’re not extinct.
There is also an element of self-preservation at work in a tuneup. Without a genuine marquee matchup and the huge financial reward associated with such, it’s best to take as little risk as possible until the next bonanza comes long.
Although you’re never quite sure whether to believe anything Bob Arum says, Pacquiao’s promoter has been sounding bullish on a Pacquiao-Mayweather match since arriving in Macau for Saturday’s festivities.
“I am now more optimistic that the fight is going to happen than I was three or four years ago,” said Arum. “I am talking to responsible people who are in touch with the Mayweather guys. All of these people have the ability to move it ahead and make it happen.”
[+] EnlargeRusian Provodnikov and Chris Algieri Ed Diller/Star Boxing Chris Algieri put himself into the conversation for a bout against Manny Pacquiao with a gritty upset of Ruslan Provodnikov in June. This kind of quote is most likely just a tease to increase interest and PPV sales for the Algieri fight. On the other hand, if there’s even a remote chance serious negotiations are taking place, Arum would be well served to protect the star of his promotional stable as much as possible. Enter Algieri.
A bout between the Huntington, New York, nice guy and many welterweight and junior welter contenders would be considered an appealing match. However, in the minds of many, the fact that Pacquiao is in the other corner automatically relegates the bout to tuneup status. Whether that is an accurate assessment or not depends on what transpires Saturday.
There are many reasons tuneups turn into upsets. Inadequate conditioning contributed to the defeats of Briscoe and Mercer, reckless aggression and a dubious chin led to Morrison’s downfall, while Judah seemed to trip over his ego and assume he could mail it in against Baldomir. It should also be noted that the underdogs’ willingness and fighting wherewithal were essential to their success. They sensed an opportunity and seized it.
It’s highly unlikely that Pacquiao will fall victim to any of the pitfalls that beset the losers in the tuneups gone wrong discussed here. And make no mistake about it, if an opportunity arises, Algieri is going to take it. Barring any unforeseen occurrence, the best fighter is going to win the fight, irrespective of what label you put on it.
But regardless of who comes out on top, I won’t have to worry about Arum or Joe DeGuardia, the promoter of Algieri, showing up at my front door the next morning.
