Another year of busted jaws and broken promises is about to begin. It’ll go the distance, one round for every month in 2006. A few possibilities:
Round 1: Manny Pacquiao will be more comfortable and perhaps more powerful in a brand of gloves he couldn’t wear last March, but Erik Morales will still be the bigger man on Jan. 21 in a dramatic 130-pound rematch that figures to end with Morales winning all over again.
Round 2: Pound-for-pound, one of the biggest controversies in 2005 again tips the scales on Feb. 4 with a third Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo bout for a lightweight title between fighters who will be welterweights at opening bell. advertisement
Round 3: Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Zab Judah trash-talk their way into an agreement for an intriguing showdown for Judah’s welterweight titles.
Round 4: Antonio Margarito says he wants to fight the Judah-Mayweather winner, but the winner would rather talk about Kostya Tszyu, or anybody who either looks to be retired or years beyond his prime.
Round 5: James Toney says ad nauseam that he is the world’s best heavyweight. Easy for him to say. Easy for almost anybody, even boxer wannabe Ron Artest, to say. It’s not much of a world anymore. If there are any good heavyweights still in the universe, they must have moved to another planet.
Round 6: Jorge Arce and Brian Viloria, two of the world’s best little guys since junior-flyweight rivals Michael Carbajal and Humberto Gonzalez, meet in a Fight of the Year contender.
Round 7: Oscar De La Hoya spends more time promoting than training and struggles to beat Ricardo Mayorga in May, but the victory is enough to lure Felix Trinidad into one more big-money bout in a nostalgic rematch of their 1999 battle.
Round 8: Middleweight champ Jermain Taylor is willing to face Winky Wright, but Taylor promoter Lou DiBella looks at Wright’s skill and looks for ways to delay until 2007.
Round 9: Mayweather and Wright argue about who is the world’s best, regardless of weight. Before the year is over, they get another argument from super-middleweight Jeff Lacy, who is expected to score a few more convincing points on March 4 against Joe Calzaghe.
Round 10: Light-heavyweight Antonio Tarver continues to say he will fight Mike Tyson, but winds up fighting only Sylvester Stallone with a movie role in Rocky VI.
Round 11: Box-office numbers for Rocky VI are bigger than pay-per-view sales on Feb. 25 for Fernando Vargas and Shane Mosley, both of whom look about as old as Stallone.
Round 12: Tyson doesn’t show up in a Brazil courtroom to face charges in March that he assaulted a cameraman. He also doesn’t make a comeback.
Weight debate John Monta?o, longtime chief of the Arizona State Boxing Commission, expects to be on a national committee that will study whether weigh-ins should be rescheduled for the day of fights. Monta?o argues it should continue to be the day before, because head trauma is always a danger.
Fighters can replenish liquids that might protect the brain from punches if they are weighed the day before opening bell, says Monta?o, who might be a lone voice on the committee. Even Arizona ringside physician Dr. Robin Macdougall says fighters should be weighed on the day of the bout.
Greg Sirb, president of the Association of Boxing Commissions, also believes the traditional weigh-in should be rescheduled. Sirb has a background in wrestling. Amateur wrestlers are weighed on the day of their match.
Wrestling isn’t boxing, says Monta?o, who argues that wrestlers aren’t subjected to repeated blows to the head.
For the birds Wright said he spoke to Tyson in New York about taking a job in his promotional company. According to the St. Petersburg Times, Wright said Tyson wanted to be a talent scout, although it wasn’t clear whether he would be looking for pigeons or punchers.
