“Victor Ortiz showed a lot of heart in doing so, which a lot of people questioned if he had heart. He’s a big strong dude and he’s a lefty. People say Floyd has trouble with lefties, and he hits hard and again, he’s young. That’s a pretty interesting fight and Floyd is coming off of a 16-month layoff. Who else is out there doing that when they take time off; challenging a young hungry lion? He’s not fighting retreads, he’s fighting a young gun and I can’t wait for the 24/7’s. Obviously, love or hate Floyd, he’s always entertaining and it’s going to be interesting to watch,” stated world-class boxing and MMA trainer Ron Frazier as he shared his thoughts on Mayweather-Ortiz and a number of other recent fights, including Klitschko-Haye, Williams-Lara, Khan-Judah and much more. Check it out!
PC: As much as it pains me to bring it up, Haye/Klitschko was supposed to be the fight to make not only fans, but networks interested in the heavyweight division again. Obviously it did not do that. What were your thoughts on the fight and the division?
RF: It’s the same ol’ same ol’ in the heavyweight division. The Klitschkos are just so big that if you’re not an athletic 6’3″ to 6’4″ about 235-pound fighter, you really don’t stand a chance. I mean, I knew what David Haye was going to do. He talked his way into a great payday where he got $15 million and a 50/50 split with Wladimir, but he’s just not big enough to do any real damage. He would have had to take chances and use his speed and he didn’t want to do that because he didn’t want to get hit, and you saw that throughout the fight. He was scared to engage because he was worried about this guy, who outweighs him by about 40 pounds, and what was going to happen in return fire. It’s the same ol’ same ol’. If you look down the heavyweight charts, what do you have? You don’t have no young, up-and-coming heavyweight that you want to see. You don’t have anyone like Tyson that is creating a buzz by knocking people out in 30 seconds. You just got retreads and guys who are boring to watch fight.
PC: Paul Williams got a questionable decision to say the least. The judges were, in turn, suspended, but the decision wasn’t changed and I personally thought the suspension went hand in hand with the decision, so I felt that the decision should have been changed as well.
RF: Absolutely. Lara took a lot of punches in that fight and he gave out a lot of punches to Paul Williams, who I think is done; shop worn. His style and the way he fights, as far as moving up in weight and then moving back down, it’s taken a toll on him. And obviously the Sergio Martinez knockout took a toll on what I think was left of his career. And like you said, suspending the judges was all fine and dandy because you’re saying, “Hey, there was something amiss and this was a bad decision,” but why are you suspending them? Was it because the decision was bad or was there some improprieties going on? I think you have to be very careful to clarify that. Are you saying something went on where they were going to give Paul Williams the decision no matter what, or are they bad judges that need to be retrained? Those are separate issues if you’re going to do that. So now, these judges have a stain because you suspend them, but now you have to clarify for the boxing fans why did you suspend them. Was it something amiss, did a promoter do something, did some fight camp do something or do they lack training? I think there was no follow-up in that direction and that causes a problem because not only does Lara have a stain on his record, but now these judges have a stain and we don’t know why. Yeah, it was a bad decision, but there are a lot of bad decisions in boxing. You have to be very clear on why you’re doing it so at least these people…you can say, “Hey, they are honest people and they are trying to put forth their best effort; they just got it wrong.” I don’t want them to be tainted with something that they’re not supposed to be tainted with unless that evidence is there.
