Going back to a familiar and highly successful formula from a bygone era, HBO’s “Boxing After Dark” broadcast this Saturday features a pair of bouts from the lower weight classes featuring relatively unknown boxers fighting for bigger and better things down the road.
In recent years this once-classic series, which spawned off such stars as Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales and Arturo Gatti, had gone ‘green’, in essence becoming a recycling bin for HBO contracted fighters coming off losses.
This weekend’s card is what “Boxing After Dark” should be about.
From the ARCO Arena, home of the Sacramento Kings of the NBA, Jhonny Gonzalez defends his WBO bantamweight crown against the sturdy veteran Gerry Penalosa. Daniel Ponce de Leon puts his WBO junior featherweight belt on the line against the always-aggressive Rey Bautista.
In his last outing back in March, Penalosa – the senior citizen of this quartet at age 34 – was part of a decision so pungent and controversial against Ponce de Leon that you got the sense that disgraced NBA zebra Tim Donaghy was shaving points off the scorecards. Many ringside observers believed that the Filipino did more than enough to take the title.
“I was shocked because I thought I won the fight,” Penalosa said last week at the Wild Card Boxing Club. “Especially when I heard the judges’ scorecards, they were so one-sided. So I though, ‘Oh, I won this fight’. I really did.”
Instead he was once again the victim of a questionable scorecard on the road.
Watching the fight from Puerto Rico was his trainer Freddie Roach, who was in camp with Oscar De La Hoya.
“I felt bad because Gerry told me after the fight, he said, ‘Coach, if you were there I would’ve won’. And I thought he won the fight,” said the respected cornerman. “But I think he needed to be a little bit busier in the fight, though. I guess the judges liked the aggressiveness of Ponce coming forward. You never know what the judges are looking for at times. But I definitely thought [Gerry] won the fight.”
It seemed that Penalosa was the victim of today’s judging, which seems more predicated on quantity of punches rather than the quality of them. For much of the night, it was the naturally smaller Penalosa who came forward and landed the sharper, cleaner punches while DeLeon was in retreat, constantly flipping out an ineffective jab.
It seems the judges did not heed the words of John Wooden – they mistook activity for achievement.
Penalosa admits to being in a bit of a funk for about a week. “Then I took it as a challenge ‘Oh, maybe I need to do more’. So I hope this time it will not be in the hands of the judges.”
Once again, Penalosa is facing a bigger man. But one that is much rangier and taller with much more technical acumen. He could be dubbed “Rafael Marquez-Lite”, he has similar offensive tools (although not as devastating) but the same shaky chin.
“I think we’re stronger physically inside,” Roach says in sizing up Gonzalez. “I think from the outside that Gonzalez has got good leverage with a pretty good punch. I think he’s a little bit better puncher than Ponce is. I think that’s why we have to stay a little close to him and muscle him on the inside a little bit and use short angles with him.”
Penalosa, who believes that he is back to his optimum weight-class, says of his foe: “He’s good. He’s a tall fighter. But we have many plans for him.”
Golden Boy Promotions matchmaker Eric Gomez says this bout is a 50-50 proposition.
“It’s going to be a very, very even fight,” said Gomez. “You have Penalosa, who’s a crafty veteran, very tough, [and] can take a helluva punch; he’s never been down, against a younger, maybe stronger fighter who obviously is going to have to try to keep him away from him because Jhonny Gonzalez’s chin is questionable. It’s going to be real good.”
On the other side of the bill, DeLeon looks to bounce back from his poor showing from the aforementioned bout against Penalosa.
“I didn’t perform or give what I should’ve given,” he admitted, through advisor Joe Hernandez, last Friday afternoon while getting his hands wrapped. “I did not perform well.”
He admits to underestimating Penalosa.
“I thought he was going to be an easy fight, I was overconfident. I think I gained a lot of experience from that particular fight.”
And when you ask Hernandez what he thought of his fighter’s outing, he pulls no punches.
“Disgusting, is not saying enough,” he says bluntly. “I think the fight itself, we really underestimated one fighter and over-estimated our ability to perform better in that particular fight. We thought we were going to get better. Some of the things that we learned, we were going to execute, and we didn’t. But I thought it was one of those street fights between kids in elementary school.”
What has constantly frustrated Hernandez is that just when he feels his boxer has made some progress fundamentally in the gym, he eventually reverts to his unorthodox, and often ugly, styling in live action.
“It’s very frustrating, this is all we’ve been doing for the last four or five years,” says a chagrined Hernandez. “We’re out there, we’re learning and you can see the fighter performing better and better in the gym, as we are now, even for the Penalosa fight. I thought we were going to have a lot of improvement. I thought the execution would be there. I thought the balancing would be there.
“Yeah, it’s frustrating, but again, some fighters were born with natural God-given talent. Well, it just so happens we didn’t grab a piece of that God-given talent. So we have to make up for it with raw power and conditioning.”
Hernandez was adamant before their last fight that Penalosa wouldn’t last more than a few rounds. After that bout as he was fielding questions from the media his answers reminded you of that classic quip from John McKay, who after another hapless performance by his expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was asked about his team’s execution. He would state flatly “I’m all for it.”
“It’s not impressing anybody at this moment – the press, the media, the networks,” he says of his fighter’s outings, which are short on style points to say the least. “We’re not there yet. Now were going to have to do something drastic, a big change is going to have to come in. If we don’t see that, then of course we’re going to be frustrated. We’re going to continue being frustrated for the next few years.”
While he’s facing another Pinoy, he’s facing a fighter who’s at the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to styles and temperament. Penalosa is your classic southpaw cutie, who’s adept as using angles and counter-punching. “Boom Boom” Bautista is a tall right-hander who comes right at you and wings from his heels on every punch.
Neither guy should have a problem finding each other on Saturday night.
“Both guys can punch hard. A lot of people tell me that whoever lands first in this one, will win,” said Roach. “But the thing is, we have Rey using the jab a lot more and hopefully that’ll come to play in the fight.”
Bautista is the more versatile fighter it seems, but he’s also someone who is no stranger to the canvas. In DeLeon, he’s facing not only an awkward fighter, but one with heavy hands.
“You can’t go in there and expect something from this guy because I don’t think he knows what he’s going to do until he does it,” says Roach of DeLeon.
When DeLeon was asked his assessment of Bautista’s last outing against Sergio Medina (where he was floored), he would state, “He demonstrated he was the number one challenger. He beat an undefeated fighter. I learned a lot of good qualities that he had and a lot of weaknesses.”
And would one of the weaknesses be his chin?
“That could be one of them.”
THRILOGY
Mark it down, Israel Vasquez-Rafael Marquez III will take place next year.
“This is a real trilogy between two A-plus fighters that you can look forward to coming back on Showtime in either February or March of ’08,” said Gary Shaw, who promotes Marquez. “I learned my lesson from Castillo-Corrales about coming back too fast. Originally, I would’ve liked to have done it with Scott Woodworth and the Sycuans in December but I think now we’re going to wait ‘till February or March.”
As for where it may take place, “I just put in a call to the Staples Center about a half-hour ago,” Shaw would tell Maxboxing on Monday afternoon.
He’s also very interested in perhaps taking the rubbermatch back to where their first bout took place.
“I’m a big fan of the Home Depot Center,” Shaw said. “I like the outdoors and I think it’s made for a fight like this.”
Shaw was disappointed in the turnout of around 3,500 at the Dodge Arena in Hidalgo, Texas. He said he was given a few reasons for the rather tepid turnout.
“One, they said the economy. And two, which I never thought about, the borders are tighter than ever. So you had no Mexicanos coming from Reynosa. They couldn’t get there. Probably a year or two ago they were a lot freer to go back and forth.”
BLOWING BACK INTO THE WINDY CITY
After drawing nearly 10,000 fans to this past weekend for what turned out to be Erik Morales’ swan song versus David Diaz at the Allstate Arena near Chicago, Bob Arum says that he could be coming back.
“I don’t see why not. It was a good town and it did fairly well on the fight,” he would say on Monday afternoon from his offices in Las Vegas. “So yeah, I would think that we would consider going back to Chicago.”
Re-establishing big metropolitan cities is paramount to the game’s growth.
“It’s essential,” he says, adamantly, “you can not keep going into the casinos and expect to have support for boxing, because there are so many people in Chicago who told us that this was the first professional fight they had ever seen. I mean, you know how bad this is getting? When it comes to the casinos, it’s only the people that come to Vegas or people who are near Indian casinos, who see these fights.
“No sport can survive with that kind of situation.”
This promotion marked the end of an era for Top Rank as Morales would announce his retirement after losing a close decision to Diaz.
“He’s right up there with Marvelous Marvin Hagler and guys like that,” said Arum, when asked about his placement on the Top Rank hierarchy. “We love Erik. Everything has to end and I’m glad he’s sensible enough so that he’s calling this a career.”
NOT DONE – YET
The highly anticipated bout between Miguel Cotto and Shane Mosley is still not finalized.
“It’s being worked on,” Arum would say.
He would add later “Fighters have to realize that there’s just so much money that’s available.”
REPRIEVE
For those of you who missed Vasquez-Marquez II, which has to be the leader for ‘Fight of the Year’ so far, first of all, shame on you. You better have a good excuse for missing it. Secondly, you get a reprieve as Showtime will replay this insta-classic on Wednesday at 11 pm ET/PT. SHO Too, will replay the bout on Tuesday evening [tonight!] at 9 pm ET/PT.
And the fight will be on Showtime On Demand beginning on August 7th through September 3rd.
Now, unless you’re out of the country, there should be no excuses.
FINKEL BOWL PPD
With Jorge Barrios being pulled out of his fight against Juan Manuel Marquez on September 15th, Eric Gomez and manager Shelly Finkel have confirmed that Rocky Juarez will now step in and face Marquez as that night’s headliner.
Juarez, was to have faced IBF featherweight champion Robert Guerrero, another Finkel client, on that same pay-per-view card.
Finkel tells Maxboxing that ‘the Ghost’ will now face either Martin Honorio or Rogers Mtagwa.
As for the rumors that Marquez and his representatives turned down Joan Guzman, Gomez states clearly “It was never offered.”
