The pinnacle in a fighter’s career, of course, is that moment before the bout when the referee stands between him and his opponent and lifts the arm of he who is getting paid more. Money trumps pride and glory.
Actually, pride and glory no longer belong in the same phrase. Glory is the consolation prize for those who don’t have money. Pride is the product of profit.
The referee, of course, doesn’t lift the arm of he who is getting paid more. But that doesn’t mean fighters don’t quibble and quarrel over contracts and cash as if victory at the bargaining table is as important as victory in the ring.
Manny Pacquiao threatened to pull out of his fights with Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton if he didn’t get more money. He got more money. Sugar Ray Robinson used to hold up promoters for bigger paychecks. He had the sway to get what he wanted.
Others think they have the weight to throw around at the bargaining table. They don’t. Their misguided power moves mean they crash out instead of cash out.
Juan Manuel Marquez could have signed for a title fight with 140-pound beltholder Amir Khan. But Marquez reportedly was upset by implications during the negotiations that Khan was the star and Marquez the stepping stone. Last week, he turned down the fight.
Nikolay Valuev has been in talks to challenge heavyweight titlist Vitali Klitschko. The first offer to Valuev was $1 million. Valuev, through his promoters, demanded $4 million. Klitschko’s promotional group responded with a $2 million guarantee. Then Valuev countered with a proposed 60-40 split in revenue. No deal has been made yet.
Marquez is coming off a loss. So, too, is Valuev. A win for each would change everything.
Marquez could take the insult of being perceived as a stepping stone, take the bout with Khan, win and then return to the driver’s seat as the star of the promotion. Valuev could take short money, take the bout with Klitschko, win, and then have more leverage when it comes to asking for more money in the future.
Pride and glory.
It’s logic even Zab Judah once understood.
Judah famously earned just $100,000 for his 2005 rematch with Cory Spinks in Spinks’ hometown, a fraction of what Spinks earned. Judah knocked Spinks out, won the welterweight championship and went on to bigger paydays.
It is maddening to hear of fighters haggling over money and choosing nothing over something. It is as maddening as a rookie football player holding out of training camp for a more lucrative contract than the millions he’s already being guaranteed. It is as maddening as multimillionaire baseball players, basketball players, football players and hockey players going on strike or getting locked out because they want a bigger piece of the pie.
Marquez infamously turned down a rematch with Manny Pacquiao and later wound up flying to Indonesia for $25,000 and a world title loss to Chris John. Either he should know better by now, or he should fire his manager/trainer, Nacho Beristain, for incompetent career guidance.
Money long delayed the rematch between Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones. Eight years ago, the fight would have been huge. Now, some 17 years after they first fought, they will meet as legendary fighters but boxers long past their primes. They will split the proceeds 50-50, unless one of them wins by knockout, in which case the split becomes 60-40 for the victor. Because of stubborn greed, however, there is less to split now than there once would have been.
Too many fights haven’t happened because the fighters made the negotiating process frustrating to the point of failure, more complicated than the basic tenets of gloved combat – two men facing each other for 12 rounds or less.
David Haye negotiated his way in 2009 out of fights with both Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko. He earned a heavyweight title by beating Nikolay Valuev but received little of the acclaim and less of a payday than he would have by defeating one of the brothers.
Winky Wright demanded purse parity for a rematch with Jermain Taylor after the two fought to a draw in 2006. He never got another shot at what was a very winnable middleweight championship.
And, of course, Floyd Mayweather Jr. demanded Manny Pacquiao undergo blood testing that no other professional boxer had ever been asked to do – and Pacquiao refused to acquiesce to such demands, even if doing so could have meant shutting up all who accused him of using performance enhancing drugs.
The best fighters and the biggest superstars already have millions upon millions of dollars. What difference does it make if they receive less than their opponent for a fight? They’re neither underpaid for their profession nor underappreciated for their accomplishments.
The rest sabotage themselves because of an over-inflated sense of self-worth. So much of success in boxing is based on having the right promoter and the right manager and being in the right place at the right time to get ranked, get fights, get attention and get featured by television networks that overpay the fighters, thereby bidding against themselves in the future because they have raised the boxers’ expectations.
Mixed martial artists competing in the UFC are underpaid when compared to the top boxers. But they know their market. Their market has control over them. Boxers know their market, too. They know they have control over it.
They know that they can turn down one sizable payday and another often will come. It is a gamble, however. Sometimes they can bluff at the bargaining table until their rival in negotiations folds. Sometimes, though, they have less of an edge than they think. They get knocked out of the action and kiss their cash goodbye.
The 10 Count
1. One critique of “The Ring” magazine’s championship belts has been that since “Ring” champions cannot be stripped of their titles, a fighters recognized as the champ could sit on his belt and never be forced to defend it.
The response from “The Ring” has been that should such a situation come up, the editorial staff could use the magazine and the voice that comes with its reputation to pressure said champion.
Manny Pacquiao captured “The Ring” 140-pound championship in May when he knocked out Ricky Hatton. He hasn’t defended it since, returning to welterweight in November to score a stoppage win over Miguel Cotto and remaining at 147 for the coming March 13 clash with Joshua Clottey.
This situation is being handled in an interesting manner:
“After the Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey welterweight fight was signed, THE RING contacted Team Pacquiao to ask if he would voluntarily relinquish the world junior welterweight championship he won by knocking out Ricky Hatton,” Nigel Collins, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, was quoted as saying on RingTV.com. “Pacquiao’s adviser, Michael Koncz, discussed the situation with Manny, who requested that he be allowed to keep THE RING 140-pound title until after the Clottey fight.
“THE RING granted that request, but informed Pacquiao that if his next fight after Clottey is not a defense of the junior welterweight title, THE RING will consider it tantamount to relinquishing the title. Pacquiao and Koncz agreed to these terms.”
…I like it. It’s not laissez-faire, but it’s fair.
2. Antonio Margarito will not be on the March 13 pay-per-view undercard to Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey, according to a press release listing the bouts.
Top Rank President Todd duBoef, contacted by ESPN.com scribe Dan Rafael, declined to comment on why Margarito is a no-go. One suspects Margarito was running into issues trying to get licensed in Texas, considering that his Nevada license was revoked last year after he was caught with tampered hand wraps prior to his bout with Shane Mosley.
That’s good news. As enjoyable and likeable a fighter as Margarito has been, he should not be allowed back in the ring again. Sadly, it is inevitable that an athletic commission will compromise principles in favor of profit. And if it isn’t a state athletic commission, it likely will be one in Mexico, where Margarito is from, and where rulings by an American commission need not be respected.
3. That leaves this as the announced Pacquiao-Clottey pay-per-view undercard:
Humberto Soto vs. David Diaz for a lightweight title belt. Jose Luis Castillo vs. Alfonso Gomez in a welterweight bout. John Duddy vs. Michael Medina in a middleweight clash.
It’s not quite Cotto-Pacquiao bad, but it’s definitely not good either.
Sadly, I’m part of the problem and not part of the solution. Though I had the willpower not to order Top Rank’s independent pay-per-view this past Saturday, I’ll order Pacquiao-Clottey.
Whatever happened to rewarding your loyal customers?
4. Boxers Behaving Badly: Evander Holyfield’s wife has filed a temporary protective order against the former heavyweight champion, claiming he allegedly struck her face, her back and the back of her head, according to RadarOnline.com and the Associated Press.
Candi Holyfield filed for the order Feb. 3, two days after the alleged incident, which she says involved him wanting her to prove she’d been donating money to their church. She also accused Holyfield of choking her in 2008 in front of their daughter and, in 2009, hitting and grabbing her in front of their kids.
Evander is 47. Candi is 30. They’ve been married since 2003 and have two children together. Evander reportedly has 11 children.
He has been banned from coming within 500 yards of her and their children. A court hearing has been scheduled for Feb. 18. No criminal charges have been filed.
Holyfield last fought in December 2008, dropping a majority decision to Nikolay Valuev. His record is 42-10-2 with 27 knockout victories.
5. Nothing inspires charity like violence.
6. Boxing Commissioners Behaving Badly update: Shane Crampton, a former tribal boxing commissioner in Michigan, has been sentenced to probation and fined nearly $2,100 for wire fraud. Crampton pleaded guilty last year, and in exchange prosecutors dropped a charge of extortion arising from his allegedly demanding money in exchange for getting fights booked at a local casino, according to The Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press.
Crampton, 39, had been accused of demanding $1,000 from Detroit-based promoters Clip Boxing Inc., saying the money could help get their fights hosted at the Little River Casino and Resort.
7. Tweet of the Week: “Does anyone else wonder why Floyd didn’t ask Marquez to do drug testing in their Vegas fight?” – @Gabriel_Montoya, the MaxBoxing.com writer of the same name.
My answer? Mayweather saw what Juan Manuel Marquez did with his own urine and was probably frightened at the possibilities of what he’d do with his own blood.
(Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/fightingwords2, and follow BoxingScene.com at twitter.com/boxingscene)
8. My suspicions have been confirmed: Edwin Valero’s crazy hair helped stop the flow of blood during his Feb. 6 fight with Antonio DeMarco after an inadvertent elbow from DeMarco in the second round tore a chunk of flesh from high on the right side of Valero’s forehead.
Confirmation came from Doug Fischer’s mailbag last week on RingTV.com. Here’s what Fischer had to say:
“I haven’t given Valero’s new trainer much in the way of props, but Mario Morales did something with Valero’s cut that I’ve never seen before. He basically pasted some of Edwin’s bangs into the gash with a glob of Vasoline, and [I] think that helped stem the flow of blood as the fight wore on.”
9. Coagulants of the late 20th century: Avitene and Thrombin. Coagulants of the early 21st century: Vaseline and hair.
This is progress?
10. Two questions, two answers:
Question: Does this put bald guys like Kelly Pavlik and Evander Holyfield at a competitive disadvantage?
Answer: Indeed.
Question: Will we see Paulie Malignaggi bring back his dreaded dreadlock hair extensions just in case he gets a bad cut?
Answer: Lord, I hope not…
