At last, we have a boxing season to look forward to in 2010.
There was no question that things were looking mighty bleak for the sport as we entered the new calendar year. This goes way beyond defending against the cries of “Boxing is dead”; the fact of the matter is, it’s been damn depressing to read the latest boxing headlines.
A worldwide disaster killed one big fight, while the biggest fight that can be made instead turned into an industry-wide disaster.
Both HBO and Showtime showed up limp dick when it came time to unveil their respective first quarter schedules. A sudden fear of competing with the Winter Olympics resulted in gaping holes between fights at the top level.
Even worse, both disappear from the sport for the next month following this weekend, only to return on the same night in March (and hardly by coincidence).
But as bad as it’s been through the first month and change of 2010, things changed for the better on Wednesday. One day after Punxsutawney Phil broke the bad news of six more weeks of winter, there was plenty of good news to go around in the boxing world, for a change.
The biggest nugget obviously comes in the form of Floyd Mayweather Jr. signing on the dotted line for his long awaited showdown with “Sugar” Shane Mosley, who signed on for the fight earlier last week.
A matchup that’s been ten years in the making, the two will now officially meet on May 1 in a bout that will determine welterweight supremacy – and some will argue, pound-for-pound supremacy as well.
That Mayweather finally came around and signed the contract is the best news Mosley has heard in over a year. It’s been a series of unfortunate events for the Californian ever since his career-resurrecting nine-round beatdown of Antonio Margarito last January.
Momentum was squandered due to a period of poor decision-making, only for his year to end with not one, but two HBO-televised dates snatched from him in December. A make-up call in the form of an alphabet unification match with undefeated Andre Berto would also fall through, leaving Mosley with a year’s worth of ring rust and nothing to show for it.
Given Mosley’s situation, it was only natural for Richard Schaefer – CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, with whom Mosley is a business partner – for vent the way he did after dancing as hard as he could to piece together a Mayweather-Mosley showdown, only to have no official deal in place just days before he planned to kick off the publicity tour.
Schaefer’s out-of-character actions earlier this week was ironically quite telling in the entire negotiating of this fight. It’s been widely speculated that a fight with Mosley on May 1 wasn’t what Mayweather necessarily wanted, but that he was actually bullied into taking the fight.
From the moment negotiations for the proposed superfight with Manny Pacquiao epically collapsed, a list of Plan B options for both fighters was kicked around. The Pacquiao side wasted no time in finding a replacement, with Top Rank keeping it in house as they tapped the shoulder of Joshua Clottey, whom they’ve promoted since 2006.
The list of names on the Mayweather side weren’t anywhere nearly as enticing. Worse, they weren’t among the world’s best welterweights, or even welterweights at all (unless it’s to be believed that a fight with Kermit Cintron was being considered, even if never formally offered).
It was clear that the list of acceptable opponents for Mayweather in the court of public approval didn’t run very deep. Nor was he afforded much wiggle room the moment Schaefer went on record to state that Mayweather would fight Mosley and every other available welterweight to prove to the world he wasn’t the coward his detractors portrayed him to be.
Call it a hand well played on the part of Schaefer, who has quickly developed a reputation for securing the big fights and previously unexplored streams of revenue, enabling Golden Boy Promotions to introduce the sport to a much wider audience.
Thanks to the good news handed down on Wednesday, Mayweather-Mosley will now play to perhaps the widest audience the sport has seen in three years.
But the good fortunes weren’t limited to the absolute top level or even confined to the U.S.
On the other side of the Atlantic, a deal was struck to allow the next round of the Showtime Super Six World Boxing Classic to proceed as planned.
There had been some bickering over where to stage the all-Europe matchup between Carl Froch and Mikkel Kessler. The terms of the contract for when the bout was first put together at the tournament’s inception merely called for it to take place “in Europe.”
Froch, an undefeated titlist from Nottingham, UK, knew that a trip to Denmark was in order. It mattered little that he’s coming off of a win over Andre Dirrell in their Stage 1 match last October, while Kessler attempts to move on from the worst performance of his career in a poor showing and second career loss against Andre Ward one month later.
What matters in the end, is the almighty dollar.
It was for that reason that Froch knew he would have to concede hometown advantage for this fight. There was simply more money to be made in Denmark than in his backyard.
Just how much he was willing to concede was a sticking point in finding a home for this fight, which is scheduled for April 17.
Froch had no problem traveling to Denmark, but hoped for the fight to take place in Copenhagen. So it was met with great disappointment – not to mention a lot of resistance – when Sauerland Event announced the fight would instead be staged in Herning.
It’s roughly 2? hours by car to Herning from the nation’s capital of Copenhagen. That was the part that didn’t set well with Froch, who expressed concern for the large number of family and friends who planned to trek from jolly old England to support him in his next fight.
There’s no question that it’s an easier sell to have people fly from one city to another, than it is to ask them to take the flight and then drive another 2? hours once they land.
But in the end, the site fee and potential for a larger crowd was all of the proof Froch needed to realize that the venue in Herning was the best fit for this fight. It was then with great delight that he and his team announced on Wednesday that nothing else stood in the way of his April 17 showdown with Kessler.
Nothing else now stands in the way for undefeated junior middleweight titlist Sergiy Dzinziruk to proceed with a career that has been on hold for more than a year.
A Ukrainian southpaw based out of Hamburg, Germany, Dzinziruk (36-0, 22KO) celebrated his four-year anniversary as a titlist. Unfortunately, the legal issues surrounding his contractual status with former promoter Universum overshadowed such festivities.
Emphasis on former, which on Wednesday he could officially say after breaking free from the Germany-based outfit and signing a co-promotional pact with stateside companies Banner Promotions and Gary Shaw Productions.
It wasn’t the first time Dzinziruk claimed to be free from his now former handlers, although previous mentions were met with immediate rebuttal as well as legal action.
The entire process took a toll on his career, which has remained on the shelf since soundly outpointing fringe contender Joel Julio in November 2008.
Rumors of a fight with Paul Williams repeatedly circulated in 2009, but lack of general interest from stateside networks and his inability to make a clean (read: legal) break from Universum killed such plans.
What awaits Dzinziruk is immediately unknown, other than Shaw’s plans to stage his stateside debut sometime in the spring. But for now, the Ukrainian can take comfort in the notion that his next fight will take place in a boxing ring and not in a courtroom.
All told, it was a day for plenty of good news to go around in the boxing world – a Happy hump Day, indeed.
