(Welcome to another edition of Sound & Fury, the boxing column that blackens eyes and skips clich?s. This week TCS takes a look at Andre Ward and his ?starmaking? win over Arthur Abraham, proves that Shane Mosley?s performance against Manny Pacquiao was nothing short of amazing, assails the Keystone Kops atmosphere surrounding Paul Williams and HBO, shakes his head at the latest Andre Berto scamboogery, bemoans Bernard Hopkins? boorish behavior, and takes potshots at the hapless boxing press whenever possible.)
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The Super Six rose from its slumber last week like Imhotep (as played by Karloff), and Andre Ward advanced to the compromised finals by spanking Arthur Abraham from wire to wire, scoring a lopsided decision over 12. Ward will now face the winner of the Carl Froch-Glen Johnson bout scheduled for June 4 in Atlantic City.
Ward fought well on Saturday night but had an opponent in front of him who seemed to unravel like a ball of yarn with each succeeding fight in the tournament. Against Ward, Abraham looked like Kaspar Hauser released from his cell for the first time, but instead of being surreptitiously dropped off on the streets of Nuremberg, he somehow landed in a boxing ring in Carson, California. For Abraham, looking bad against footloose Andre Dirrell might have been expected, but being whitewashed by Carl Froch last year was a real indication of his limitations. Naturally, Ward did as he pleased against ?King Arthur,? who fought with more aggression during the early rounds than he is usually accustomed to and was gasping for air by the fourth round for his efforts. By then, Abraham was looking more than just a little jaded. Some of his flurries were outlandish, and his inability to combine his movements into coherent sequences allows competent boxers to play Ring Around The Rosie with him. And Ward did exactly that, but poor Abraham never appeared to be having any fun.
This ?Next American Superstar? talk about Ward, of course, is nonsense, and it is just the kind of dribble you can expect from a press crew that seems to spend most of its time submerged in a bathysphere, coming up for air occasionally to Tweet something execrable or to update imaginary ratings. With rare exceptions, a boxer cannot be a ?star? with a style as tactical as that of Ward. (Although HBO has created a special class of nouveau riche pseudo stars over the last few years. No one wants to buy tickets to see them fight and not many want to watch them on TV, but, hey, superstardom has changed over the years.) Ward, after all, nearly had his bout with Allan Green canceled due to lack of ticket sales, and fewer than 500,000 viewers tuned in to Showtime to watch that yawn-a-thon. To make matters worse, Ward promised Jim Gray that he would soon be incorporating some ?shuffling? and ?bolo? punches into his repertoire.
Still, for one night, Ward dropped the mauling, clinching, butting, elbows out style he used to such bitter success over his last three fights. When Ward elects to box, he has some real razzle dazzle. In addition, Ward is patient, versatile, and cagey. He has fast hands and the kind of ring smarts you expect from topnotch professional fighters but seldom see. A fighter who can shift tactics?and stances?as easily as Ward does is already light years ahead of most of the competition. Ward just needs to press a little more and go for a KO once in a while. Then maybe the superstar rigmarole can begin.
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The Andre Berto circus looks like it will continue its road show with barely a hitch despite the fact that Victor Ortiz convincingly drygulched him last month over 12 one-sided rounds. Lou DiBella is reportedly negotiating a step aside fee for Randall Bailey, the mandatory challenger for IBCC welterweight challenger Jan Zaveck, in order to get Berto another ?world championship.? Berto won his first title by ambushing a full-time policeman named Mickey Rodriguez in 2009. He never made a mandatory defense of this paper championship, and his proclivity for step aside fees is far more impressive than his resume. Selcuk Aydin, for example, received two payoffs from Team Berto. Some have speculated that Zaveck will not be a suitable opponent for HBO, but, really, who are these folks trying to kid? When your vaudeville act is underwritten by a large corporate network looking to promote something other than competition, then anything goes, and HBO has proven that over and over again.
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Bailey, by the way, is also represented by DiBella, and it is interesting to see ?Saint Lou? throw one of his fighters by the wayside in favor of another. Since Zaveck-Bailey is a ?No Sale? bout in America, DiBella would have to make do with playing booking agent again, sending Bailey off to Germany or Slovenia for a small fee, and not even bothering to be there at ringside (as was the case when Bailey fought Said Ouali in Belgium). In this case, however, DiBella would rather pay off Bailey and get his walking ATM?Berto?dispensing cash into his hands as soon as possible. For Bailey, getting paid for nothing would put him right up there with many other HBO fighters, but the truth is, at 36, Bailey has limited options and Zaveck is a fighter he can beat. In boxing, promises are about as useful as a crazy straw in a mudslide, and Bailey would be gambling a future he does not have just so DiBella can go out and buy more plastic halos for his collection.
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Despite all the criticism he has taken over the last two weeks, Shane Mosley ought to be given credit for accomplishing three extraordinary feats against Manny Pacquiao in their 12-round snoozer. First, he drew rare boos and catcalls to a Pacquiao bout; then he got cyber-idiots who picked him to win to start talking about a ?fix,? thereby revealing that hell is something Dante could never have imagined; and, finally, his performance was so weak that two judges at ringside apparently discounted the faux knock down he scored in the 10th round and gave Pacquiao the clean shutout.
(Of course, nothing is funnier than the mouth breathers who picked Mosley by KO and then cried ?Fix!? when the longshot lost. This is a higher form of stupidity and is doubly disturbing when you realize that these same cretins are always talking about how much ?insight? they have and lambasting other writers regularly. Having missed their chance to hitch a ride on the Hale-Bopp Comet, these deep thinkers instead turned to HTML and boxing to get their gibberish on.)
Mosley continued his strange momentum by blaming his loss on a blister. Not content with offering a poor performance and a lame excuse, Mosley decided to sabotage his reputation even further by Tweeting a phony internet article casting Pacquiao as a steroid user. In many ways, this slimy piece of libel is in keeping with the low standards of the boxing media, where even supposedly respectable sites and blogs avoid bylines and fabricate identities, but its dissemination was somewhat alarming. TCS came across this fake post on May 7 and never thought twice about it, but within a couple of days it seemed to be all over the place. Even Steve Carp of the Las Vegas Review-Journal gave it legitimacy by referring to it in credulous tones. For Mosley?an admitted user of PEDs?to pass it along was both ironic and dopey, and his standing as a good guy in boxing took a serious hit because of it. When the final bell rang to end his bout with Pacquiao, it was all he had left in boxing. He may not even have that anymore.
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How long is a running joke suppose to run? Well, if HBO is the punch line, then the gag can last for years and years. Its latest slapstick routine involves settling on an opponent for Paul Williams, the man formerly known as ?The Most Avoided Fighter in Boxing,? another idiotic meme spawned by the imagination-challenged ?P-4-P? crew known as the boxing press. Williams has passed on practically every able-bodied man in North America and Europe for his, ahem, comeback bout. When Nobuhiro Ishida of Japan was finally selected, canned laughter was heard from coast to coast. Not even HBO could not bring itself to pass that rubber check, so Ishida was bounced like a contestant on The Gong Show, and Erislandy Lara, a veteran of all of 16 pro fights was called in for heavy duty. Incredible, that a fighter last seen drooling on the canvas?with dueling wall eyes?can kick up so much fuss, but HBO seems more interested in pursuing obscure agendas than in working on a coherent scheme for its boxing program.
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For years, Bernard Hopkins, who faces Jean Pascal in Quebec tomorrow night, has been a world-class fighter without an ounce of class beyond the ring. His crude, ignorant, and racist diatribes are old hat by now, but they never fail to kick start cyber-hacks into a virtual tizzy. If his Cell Block shtick is meant to boost ratings and ticket sales, however, then he has failed miserably over the course of nearly 20 years of tortured syntax and general unpleasantness.
Despite all his ?ring death? talk, Hopkins last scored a stoppage in 2004, when he dropped Oscar De La Hoya, a former junior lightweight titleholder, for the full count with a body shot. Although Hopkins beat two of the biggest names in boxing over the last decade?De La Hoya and Felix Trinidad?he has never been able to attract a large following because of this disconnect: his nasty demeanor and crude boasts are nearly always undercut by a dull style. Who can forget the lulling waltzes?often marred by cheap shots and sloppy roughhousing?with Howard Eastman, Keith Holmes, Roy Jones Jr., and Syd Vanderpool? Or the night Hopkins refused to continue against Robert Allen after Hopkins had been pushed out of the ring by Mills Lane? Hopkins claimed an injury to his ankle, but should someone so quick to bring up morgues and executions be copping out of fights while writhing on the floor ringside? (It is worth noting that Allen was holding his own after three rounds that night.)
So many Hopkins fights have been so uneventful that his mediocre scrap with Pascal last December has been elevated to Dempsey-Firpo status. Perhaps this fight will be the most exciting thing to happen in Quebec since the October Crisis or since Dr. Crippen was chased across the Atlantic by Scotland Yard. At least Hopkins will pretend it will be. Enjoy the fight.
