The ballots haven?t even gone out yet, but two of the year?s major boxing awards appear to be foregone conclusions. Manny Pacquiao, who capped a year in which he won three significant fights at three different weights with a one-sided evisceration of Oscar De La Hoya four weeks ago, looms the hands-down winner as 2008?s Fighter of the Year, while Dedham?s Freddie Roach is such an obvious choice to win his third Trainer of the Year Award that the only real question is whether the vote will be unanimous.
Pacquiao and Roach will be in New York to collect their hardware at the Boxing Writers Association of America dinner on April 27, and while the events of Dec. 6 represented their crowning achievement of the year just passed, Pacquiao-De La Hoya turned out to be such a mismatch that it won?t get much support for Fight of the Year. Rather, the balloting will come down the March war between Israel Vasquez and Rafael Marquez and the Dec. 11 Tomasz Adamek-Steve Cunningham fight in Newark, N.J. The latter battle saw Cunningham lose on a narrow split decision despite going down three times. Our choice would be the latter, but the fact that it was waged in relative obscurity (on Versus) and before a relatively small segment of the electorate may hurt its chances.
Less clear-cut will be the voting for Manager of the Year. Traditional roles have become increasingly blurred on today?s boxing landscape, with many top fighters self-managed as well as self-promoted. The 2007 winner, Cameron Dunkin, did an excellent job of managing in ?08, but his signature client, Kelly Pavlik, lost in his biggest fight, and there is no other truly standout candidate. If one accepts the proposition that Joe Calzaghe is truly self-managed, then he might deserve the honor for negotiating his way to big wins over Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr.
A giant controversy
The World Boxing Association has agreed to review the outcome of the Nikolai Valuev-Evander Holyfield heavyweight title fight in Zurich two weeks ago. The ringside judges determined Valuev the winner by majority decision (even though the three were in concordance on just four of the 12 rounds), and there were the predictable cries of ?robbery,? most of them from this side of the Atlantic.
Holyfield has cried ?wolf? so many times that it?s hard to take him seriously, but a number of respected American scribes have lined up foursquare behind the 46-year-old legend.
Most of the caterwauling has come from those who watched the $24.95 pay-per-view telecast, but those who covered the fight at ringside paint a somewhat different picture. You can throw out the opinions of the writers from Russia and Germany, but Ron Lewis of the Times of London, for instance, had no clear allegiance, but had Valuev winning the fight by five rounds. Phil Woolever, covering the fight for The Sweet Science, had it 115-113 for the Russian giant, as did Gareth Davies of the London Telegraph.
Mass. (boxing) exodus
In his new book ?The Regulation of Boxing,? Dr. Robert Rodriguez explains that under federal regulations, promoters in states lacking boxing commissions must now bring in commissions from neighboring states to oversee their shows, while others, such as Vermont, have boxing commissions but no boxing.
The Green Mountain state has staged just one professional card in the last dozen years, and none in the past six, but a neighboring state appears prepared to challenge that record of inactivity – this one.
Whether it?s the dwindling talent pool or, competition from casinos in neighboring states, or, as some promoters are claiming, excessive zeal on the part of the Massachusetts Boxing Commission, the number of pro cards staged in the Commonwealth dropped to single digits in each of the past two years, and at this moment not a single boxing show has been scheduled for the new year.
Contrast this to a decade and a half ago, when Massachusetts promoters staged 87 pro cards between 1994-96 – an average of well over two a month for that three year stretch. . . .
Nearly nine years after being knocked out by Arturo Gatti at Madison Square Garden, former WBA lightweight champion Joey Gamache is going to get his day in court. Three days before Christmas, New York Court of Claims judge Melvin Schweitzer issued a 26-page ruling that cleared the decks for the Lewiston, Maine, native?s civil suit charging the New York State Athletic Commission with negligence in its handling of the weigh-in and its aftermath. Although they were officially recorded at 140 and 140 pounds, respectively, HBO scales revealed that Gatti weighed 160 when he entered the ring in what proved to be the final fight of Gamache?s 55-4 career. Now 42, Gamache lives in New York when he?s not traveling the globe as Emanuel Steward?s assistant trainer.
Happy birthday, John ?The Quiet Man? Ruiz.
