When Audley Harrison made his ring walk to face David Haye last Saturday night, he brought to mind the image of another terrified heavyweight Brit on his way down the boxing equivalent of The Green Mile?Frank Bruno, dismantled by Mike Tyson in 1996. That night, Bruno appeared to be looking for a pew, not a boxing ring, and the thrashing Tyson gave him justified the sign of the cross Bruno made repeatedly while trembling down the aisle. But at least Bruno, who had been previously wrecked by Tyson in 1989, knew what he was in for.
Harrison, derided for years by a British press corps at least the equal to BoxingScheme forums in viciousness, is not, as some have claimed, the most frightened heavyweight ever to enter the ring. In 1935 Kingfish Levinsky had to be dragged, knock-kneed, from his dressing room to face Joe Louis. After roughly two and a half minutes of being battered senseless, Levinsky begged the referee to halt the slaughter. Later, Levinsky would utter one of the most memorable malapropisms ever put forth by a tremulous prizefighter: ?I must have been in some sort of transom,? he said.
For Harrison, who survived a troubled youth?including a stint in prison?and earned a degree from Brunel University, he has found an obstacle that wit, intelligence, and pop psychology could never surmount. For nearly a decade, boxing, the most obstinate sport, simply would not bend to his will.
*****
Mike Jones reportedly struggled to boil down to 147 pounds before his fight with Jesus Soto Karass, but for a prizefighter to be exhausted after only two rounds, under most circumstances, is both inexplicable and inexcusable. Not even Shannon Briggs tires that easily. Jones was a little more than lucky to walk away with a debatable decision. More than any other sport, luck is manufactured in boxing, usually outside the ring.
Soto Karass was last seen in New York City dropping a near-shutout decision to Yuri Foreman in a bout where Soto Karass appeared to be wearing trunks made out of terrycloth and that were at least two sizes too small. They were also institutional green. This outing showed Soto Karass to be tough but limited and not the type of fighter who should be playing Torquemada to Jones, another media creation without accomplishments to back up the hoopla. After all, Soto Karass struggled against Alfonso Gomez last November and barely got by limited Chris Smith the year before.
*****
Golden Boy Promotions continues its wretched, wretched ways on Telefutura. Last week Omar Figueroa and Arturo Quintero fought to an entertaining draw, true. But surely it was a surprise to all involved, since Quintero had not been in the ring in well over four years. Over four years! The week before, Jose M. Cotto got to blast out a late substitute, Chris Henry, in a fight that might wind up on the Human Rights Watch website. (God forbid a promoter would have the brains to give an undercard slot to a potential substitute to avoid bouts that are as competitive as a stoning staged by the Taliban.) Henry, now 24-20, suffered the 12th knockout loss of his career.
Ironically, Henry is actually no worse than many of the stumblebums GBP selects as fodder for its low-level shows. Recent examples of snuff programming include Pablo Sarmiento?out of the ring for six years but main event stuff for Golden Boy?and woebegotten Mauricio Pastrana, both drawn and quartered within a round by their respective executioners.
This atrocious level of matchmaking contradicts the regular GBP line of boasting. Whenever Richard Schaefer, for example, brags abut delivering sponsors, he inevitably fails to mention that the sponsors underwrite his cards in lieu of significant licensing fees from Fox Sports and Telefutura. Fright Night Club and So-Low Boxeo are basically infomercials, since the fee from the networks is negligible. If GBP is so successful luring sponsors, wheeling and dealing, and opening up corporate checkbooks, then how come none of this translates into better fights? Fright Night Club has been ?renewed? for another season, which means sadists around the world can celebrate.
*****
All the hullabaloo about the return of Zab Judah has been puzzling, to say the least. The last time Judah caught the attention of The Cruelest Sport, for example, was over a year ago:
His days as a topnotch fighter are over and proof of this is not in his defeats, but, paradoxically, in his victories. In his prime, a focused Judah knew what to do with tomato cans: blast them out in a hurry. He knew there was no point in risking a cut or tempting fate against opponents who had little more than chance going for them. Wayne Martell, Jaime Rangel, and Cosme Rivera did not belong in the same ring with Judah and he proved it with quick demolition jobs of all three. Now, however, lesser pugs are going the distance with Judah: Ryan Davis, Edwin Vazquez, and Ernest Johnson have all heard the final bell against him in recent starts. Fighters who can no longer knock over the ten-pins placed in front of them are often looking at a future filled with gutterballs. Judah wants a chance to roll one last strike before closing time.
Against Lucas Matthysse, Judah was lucky to get away with one, eking out a split decision over a fighter who gives the word ?rudimentary? a whole new meaning. Dropped in the 10th, Judah spent the last three rounds of the fight playing the role of Hackey Sack. Judah is 33 years-old, is susceptible to cuts, and has taken brutal beatings throughout his career, most notably at the hands of Miguel Cotto and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. He has been stopped twice. Somehow, however, he has avoided the ?shot? label in a way that Antonio Margarito did not. Go figure. Even his name value seems at its nadir. A recent article in Newsday details some of the dilemmas Main Events will face in trying to move Judah now that Golden Boy Promotions owns the junior welterweight division. HBO appears to want to match (make) Judah against Victor Ortiz. Now why would they want to do that?
*****
The Manny Pacquiao-Antonio Margarito bout was as competitive as a shellacking can get. Despite complaints of it being a mismatch going in, Pacquiao emerged from the fight looking like a man who had fallen headfirst down a ravine overgrown with brambles and thickets. His ribs also took a bruising. In addition, Margarito fought the late rounds with a handicap?a damaged right eye fit to count fingers, perhaps, but not so hot to swap punches. Those who want to discredit Margarito in order to diminish Pacquiao?the new Penny-Click strategy, apparently?only need to look at photos of Pacquiao at the post-fight press conference.
*****
No one needs Hercalitus to know that character is fate in boxing, and Allan Green, who was flattened by Glen Johnson not long ago, underlined why his career has spiraled into nothingness by filing a protest with the Nevada State Athletic Commission challenging his KO loss. Perhaps his adviser, Greg Leon, much too smart for this kind of bushwa move, is trying to figure out a way to get some sort of concession out of Showtime. In boxing, concession is usually spelled with a $. If Team Green can make Showtime nervous about yet another possible stumbling block to the Super Six, they might be able to make some sort of settlement. Otherwise, the move is senseless, since Green stands little chance of winning his protest, and his name will be a punchline for even longer than it deserves to be.
*****
For every Manny Pacquiao or Rafael Marquez or James Kirkland, fighters who are conscious of their bloody art as performance and deliver the best show they can as often as possible, there are a dozen Wladimir Klitschkos, Andre Dirrells, and Zahir Raheems, fighters who can squeeze gravel out of lemons. It may be some sort of achievement to beat Ricardo Cordoba (although Cordoba did not exactly resemble Wilfredo Gomez in the ring) after only a handful of fights, but the same can be said of winning the International Pancake Race. Rigondeaux approached the last eight rounds of his in vitro junior featherweight title bout seemingly with only one intent: to draw as many boos and catcalls as possible. Runners and stinkout artists are the ultimate coolers. No sooner does a negative fighter appear in the ring than conversations cease, eyelids begin to weigh as much as water soaked rugs, and pulses slow to the shallowest levels possible before death sets in. Not even Joe Tessitore, treasurer of the Guillermo Rigondeaux Fan Club, could get worked up over that performance.
