There was a time when Ryan Rhodes might have made the robotic redhead Saul Alvarez look foolish in the ring, but that was eons ago. Incredibly, the former ?Spice Boy? has been toiling at this unforgiving sport since the days before ?Judge Judy? and ?Oh, Doctor Beeching,? grinding it out like a $1/$2 no-limit player on Full Tilt Poker.
Unlike Alvarez, who recently pummeled a limited Matthew Hatton for a vending machine world championship in a farcical matchup, Rhodes faced down a real professional in his first title fight: Otis Grant, who slid by the green 20-year-old via close decision way back in 1997. Then came the setbacks and disappointments and Rhodes found himself in boxing purgatory for nearly a decade.
Now, at age 34, Rhodes is in the running for a shot against Alvarez in June on HBO. Alvarez shows poise in the ring, throws neat combinations, and works the body well. At this point, however, he is a strange phenomenon indeed, reminiscent of the way the French idolize Jerry Lewis. Still, Rhodes would have to conjure up some very old ghosts to buck the odds, and if Gary Lockett can beat him, so can a score of other fighters. But no one goes through the boxing grinder for as long as Rhodes has without trying his best when the opportunity arises. He does not want to go back to where he is.
*****
Like a mad scientist overcome by the fumes emanating from a dozen roiling beakers simultaneously, Richard Schaefer, along with his soulless Igor, Eric Gomez, has thrown together the kind of toxic promotion Golden Boy Promotions excels at: one that threatens to erupt from the sheer toxicity of elements mixed together. Laughingly titled ?Action Heroes,? the latest HBO-backed Golden Boy co-production has forced the MGM Grand to offer lots of cut-rate discounts. But does that stop name journalists from pretending that this card is the start of some sort of quality trend in pay-per-view boxing?
And when does an expert disqualify himself from his expertise, anyway? Should anyone who claims that the ?Action Zeroes? card is anything but a smorgasbord of second-rate slop be taken seriously? Saying this card some sort of Fight Freak extravaganza is like having a chimp fling excrement at a blank canvas and calling it Abstract Expressionism.
James Kirkland faces a Japanese import, Nobuhiro Ishida, presumably because American no-hopers were busy on Saturday night. Ishida has as much chance to beat Kirkland as Antonio Inoki or the corpse of Mishima do. Paulie Malignaggi, not exactly the in-demand type these days and certainly no ?Action Hero,? faces Jose M. Cotto, a 5?5 1/2? welterweight who was once a WBC featherweight ?Youth? champion. The last time Cotto was any fun to watch was in 2007, when his trainer at the time, Evangelista Cotto, smacked him around between rounds in his lightweight title bid against Prawet Singwancha. Jose M. Cotto refused to return to his corner at one point, conceding defeat to his uncle.
In the only bout worth noting, Robert Guerrero and Michael Katsidis face off in a lightweight bout that actually has some significance. Katsidis is the kind of fighter aficionados dream about cloning. Of course, he is coming off of a brutal TKO loss to Juan Manuel Marquez, and for some, that might be grounds to pooh-pooh the bout. After all, these days anyone who is coming off of a loss is considered shot?especially if he happens to be fighting Manny Pacquiao.
And in the main event, a badly faded Erik Morales faces Argentine mauler Marcos Maidana. Morales has about as much chance of beating Maidana as Mosley has of beating Pacquiao. Yet one card should be boycotted?Pacquiao-Mosley?and the other is one that should be lauded. This is preposterous, even for the Raelian logic of boxing. Morales was crowbait years ago and now all you read about is what a swell card this former junior featherweight champion is headlining.
TCS sounded similar concerns before the glorious Shane Mosley-Sergio Mora P-P-V feast and these sentiments apply to ?Action Zeroes? as well:
Better to watch a footrace between organ grinders than suffer through that agony. No matter, the so-called hardcore boxing fan, the one who sits around watching ?Fight Night Club? with half-lidded eyes, will still buy it. Only in boxing does ?hardcore? equate to a lack of taste and discrimination. Usually an aficionado has high standards and deplores the dilution of his pursuit. A wine connoisseur, for example, is not interested in a bottle of Bartles & Jaymes; cigar enthusiasts presumably want nothing to do with White Owls; and art lovers never wax lyrical over crude doodles on restroom stalls. But boxing buffs seem almost hypnotized and will buy almost anything a press release commands them to.
*****
Meanwhile, Vivian Harris gets to continue the appalling So-Low Boxeo streak on Telefutura when he faces young Jessie Vargas over a presumptuous 10. Harris, who looked like he was suffering from delirium tremens when he engaged in a grotesque parody of a prizefight against Victor Ortiz last September, should probably be medically suspended. Instead, he typifies one of the strangest tactics of the strangest promotional firm to come along in years: Golden Boy Promotions routinely signs fighters to be in-house losers.
Most promoters book an opponent, get the win, and move along. GBP, on the other hand, tries to get as many losses as possible out of their designated losers, wringing a sad dishrag out ever last drop of grimy water possible. Make no mistake about it, Harris is walking blood money to GBP, a firm whose lip service to honesty and honor should be greeted with nothing but a sneer.
*****
Odlanier Solis made more news recently by denigrating Vitali Klitschko, the man who knocked him on his ass with a bitch slap last month, and pompously demanding a rematch. Twenty years ago, magazines and newspapers would not waste an ounce of ink on a woebegone figure like Solis, who has become a multi-millionaire with nary the semblance of an effort. The four-round prelim fighter works as hard as the HBO headliner (this is doubly true, no doubt, between the ropes) and often in less pleasant surroundings. Anyone who has been in a boxing gym more than once (well, there goes 90 percent of the blogoscenti) has seen the incredible torments fighters put themselves through.
These men also see their sterling dreams symbolically undercut by the rank atmosphere in which they often toil: the overwhelming heat in the summer, the dank smell of sweat and rot, the urinals and toilets overflowing in the locker rooms, the heavy-lidded old-timers playing dominoes in the corner. Boxing is a cruel and taxing pursuit for the least of fighters as well as for the best of them; that such a lazy, indifferent, pseudo-athlete like Solis should come out of it enriched is disturbing in a way that is difficult to explain.
*****
Despite the fact that Floyd Mayweather Jr. seems all but retired at this point, corporate blogs and penny-click machines continue to document his every move. One thing is certain: legal fees and IRS bills are almost always harbingers of comebacks and if you count variance?the gambling kind?Mayweather may be back in the ring sooner than some expect.
*****
Reading about Cedric Kushner and the $10,000 owed to Demetrice King is a cold reminder of how quickly you can lose your footing in this game without vision or the right connections. At one point, Cedric Kushner promoted undefeated Shane Mosley?more importantly, he promoted Mosley after Mosley had beaten Oscar De La Hoya?and the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Not only did Kushner have the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, he had a glib, colorful, American undisputed heavyweight champion of the world?Hasim Rahman.
But Kushner watched helplessly?like a gazelle watching its fawn being torn to shreds by a lion?as Don King snapped Rahman up and left him behind, sad-eyed and at a loss. Indeed, his plight suggested the caption of a painful New Yorker cartoon: all of his boxing hopes and dreams were crushed and served on a bun. After his brief flirtation with the Big Time, it was back to Heavyweight Explosion pay-per-views, third-rate cards in Delaware, and hitching a ride on the David Tua Express to Nowhere. Kushner simply did not have enough ?suction? or ?juice? to run with fast company, and, worst of all, he showed no ability to wrap HBO execs around his finger the way Gary Shaw, Al Haymon, and Richard Schaefer have done.
*****
The Peanut Gallery, given to choking on its own shells now and again, will no doubt raise a hue and cry about Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fighting on HBO against an opponent, Sebastian Zbik, who was once rejected as a foil for Sergio Martinez. Chavez Jr. is one of a handful of prizefighters who can actually make a living without receiving entitlement checks from HBO. Can the same be said about Chad Dawson, Andre Berto, and Tim Bradley? What would happen to them if HBO and Showtime suddenly pulled the plug on fighters without followings?
Without the backing of a premium network, Chavez Jr. has managed to draw crowds, ratings on Fox Sports, and pay-per-view buys. Contrast that to guys like Bradley (whose promoter used to buy up tickets at a small casino to ensure ?sellouts?), Dawson (whose two fights with Antonio Tarver drew fewer than 3,000 fans combined), and Berto (who once drew 986 3/4 paying spectators to a world title defense in his home state). To top it all off, Chavez Jr. is usually entertaining, and his bout with Zbik, a competent prizefighter, is probably a pick ?em affair. There will be a big crowd on hand at the Staples Center, both fighters are in their proper weight class, Chavez Jr. will draw more viewers than Chad Dawson hands down, and the fight, a 50-50 proposition, promises some solid action as well. No wonder some folks are against it.
*****
Hernan Marquez and Luis Concepcion clawed at each other viciously last week in Panama, with Marquez coming out on top via 11th round TKO when Concepcion could no longer continue because of an eye that was swollen shut. Both flyweights?Concepcion in particular?fought like men with something more than competition in mind. Concepcion seemed determined to walk through as much pain as possible in order to inflict his own punishment and got his wish as Marquez turned boxer to whip right hooks and straight lefts at him with impunity. Marquez, however, was lucky to make it through the first round when Concepcion tore out of his corner to bombard his foe into near-submission early. Marquez was floored and on the run when he dropped Concepcion as the round ended. The war was on and neither fighter wanted to yield their tenuous futures in boxing. What strange dreams these men pursue, when they pursue them with a nightmare fever.
