When he sat down with Mike Tyson after the Washington press conference announcing his fight against Kevin McBride last month, ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap mentioned that he’d just returned from Reykjavik, Iceland, where he’d interviewed “another former world champion from Brooklyn.”
Tyson wracked his brain, but couldn’t imagine who Schaap could be talking about.
“Bobby Fischer,” Schaap finally told him.
“Bobby Fischer?” Tyson said, a look of apparent horror spreading over his tattooed face. “Man, that guy is crazy!” . .
Freddie Roach was in James Toney’s corner for last night’s World Boxing Association title fight against Chelsea’s John Ruiz, but the Dedham-born trainer will be sitting out the summer’s other big bout involving a Massachusetts-based heavyweight.
Roach trained Tyson for his last two fights (against Clifford Etienne and Danny Williams), but won’t be with Iron Mike when he fights McBride June 11 at Washington’s MCI Center.
“Jeff Fenech’s training him right now,” said Roach, conceding that he had joined a long line of former Tyson trainers.
Last week, Tyson told ESPN.com that he had engaged the Australian Fenech because Roach was busy with Toney, and because “I don’t got no money to pay him,” but that the split had been amicable.
“That’s not true,” said Roach. “Mike always paid me. But he never talked to me.” . . .
Roach’s other principal client, Filipino featherweight Manny Pacquiao, filed suit in a New York federal court last week, charging that promoter Murad Muhammad had consipired with his Philippines business managers to loot his purses, leaving him with hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid American taxes. The suit was filed by attorney Judd Burstein, while Pacquiao, having dumped Muhammad’s M&M Sports, is now represented by Los Angeles attorney Nick Khan, who also happens to be Roach’s (and Toney’s) lawyer.
“They’ve been stealing so much money off of Manny it just wasn’t right, and we’re going to finally get out of the contract,” said Roach. “Manny’s going to get his just due and what he deserves. He came to me and asked me for help, so I helped him put it together.” Pacquiao, said Roach, “might fight in September, and hopefully then there will be a December rematch with (Erik) Morales.” . . .
Another former Roach pupil, unbeaten Irish featherweight Bernard Dunne, who spent most of his career under the promotional aegis of now-defunct Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing, fights for the second time in Ireland on May 14, when he meets Ukrainian Yuri Vorinin at the National Stadium in Dublin.
Welsh passes
Jack Welsh, who spent the past quarter-century covering Las Vegas boxing for a host of publications (including The Ring, Gaming Today, and the London-based Boxing Monthly) passed away last weekend. A Runyonesque character from the days when the fight scribes were also two-fisted drinkers, Welsh’s exploits were legendary. On at least one assignment to Vegas for the old Philadelphia Journal, he spent the entire week on a legless bender, with the result that his copy had to be composed and filed by a rotating shift of colleagues.
After one such transmission his editor phoned Welsh with a question about one of “his” stories, which Welsh, of course, had neither written nor read.
“Well, ah, yes,” he said pleasantly into the telephone. “I should have known that you’d recognize the style of the world’s greatest sportswriter.”
Welsh covered last Friday night’s ESPN pay-per-view card at Caesars Palace, returned to his apartment, turned on his television, and died peacefully in his sleep sometime over the weekend.
His memorial service will be held Tuesday afternoon at the Mandalay Bay. Nevada referee Richard Steele, who is also an ordained minister, will officiate.
District of Colombia
New England Ringside Promotions is apparently determined to become the NER Cartel, threatening to corner the market on Colombian boxers in the New England area.
The fledgling promotional outfit, which made its maiden voyage with a February show at the Lowell Auditorium, inked four more South Americans last week, including Colombians Newton Villareal (23-3), the WBO’s No. 5 welterweight); lightweight Jefferson Rodriguez (19-6); and Ilido Julio (32-6-1), a junior bantamweight; along with Ecuadorian junior middleweight and former Olympian Luis Hernandez (12-2). . . .
Showtime visits Foxwoods Friday night, with four unbeaten middleweights sorting things out in the two featured bouts: New Yorker Sechew Powell (15-0) vs. Cornelius Bundrage (21-0) and transplanted Israeli Yuri Foreman (17-0) against Kevin Cagle (16-0). Phone 800-200-2822 for information. . . .
Golden Boy Promotions, in the meantime, has canceled its scheduled May 14 Mohegan Sun card. . . .
A pair of eminently watchable Las Vegas fight cards are on tap the next two weekends. Saturday night Showtime has the Jose Luis Castillo-Diego Corrales lightweight title unification bout from the Mandalay Bay, while May 14 HBO stages a pay-per-view match at MGM Grand between Felix Trinidad and Winky Wright with a co-feature pitting Zab Judah against Cosme Rivera. The network plans to prime the pump for the latter that week with rebroadcasts of Trinidad’s comeback fight against Ricardo Mayorga and Wright’s first fight against Shane Mosley on HBO2. . . .
The off-again, on-again July 16 middleweight title fight between undisputed champion Bernard Hopkins and undefeated Jermain Taylor is on again. An indemnification clause protecting HBO and promoter Lou DiBella from being sucked into a pending lawsuit his former promoter, Don King, filed against his present one, Golden Boy Productions, removed the final obstacle to the pay-per-view bout. . . .
Madison Square Garden hosts a Top Rank card June 11, when Miguel Cotto defends his WBO junior welterweight crown against Muhammad Abdulliev, with Joel Casamayor-Almazbek Raiymkulov underneath. . . .
Happy birthday, Kevin Rooney.
