PHILADELPHIA – It was a simpler time, at least from a technology standpoint. There weren’t 100 channels of television available to cable subscribers, and very little cable for anyone to subscribe to in any case. There wasn’t even any ESPN, much less the Internet.
When Rico Carty became the first major league baseball player to be voted a starter in the All-Star Game as a fans’ write-in, in 1970, it was a signal that the information age as we now know it was beginning to dawn.
Flash forward 37 years and the revolution that began with fans scribbling in Carty’s name on their All-Star ballots is now complete. A 130-pound Filipino, Manny Pacquiao, has been voted Fighter of the Year for 2006 by the Boxing Writers Association of America and, even more surprisingly, the super bantamweight matchup of a Thai, Somsak Sithchatchawal, and an Iranian-born Frenchman, Mahyar Monshipour, in Levallois-Perret, France, is the Fight of the Year.
All winners will be acknowledged June 8 at the 82nd annual BWAA Awards Dinner at the Copacabana, in New York. Other honorees include Muhammad Ali (the Pat Putnam Award for Perseverance); HBO analyst and former Philadelphia Daily News sports editor Larry Merchant (long and meritorious service to boxing); Freddie Roach (Trainer of the Year); Top Rank publicists Lee Samuels and Ricardo Jiminez (Good Guy Award); and Showtime’s Steve Albert (Broadcaster of the Year).
The electrifying slugfest staged last March 18, in which Sithchatchawal lifted Monshipour’s WBA 122-pound title on a 10th-round stoppage, almost certainly would have gone unnoticed by most American media members and fight fans only a few short years ago. But ESPN.com’s influential Dan Rafael caught this closet classic on YouTube, and he launched a campaign to get the word out. Rafael wrote of its “raw, unvarnished, jaw-dropping brutality,” noting that it featured “more head-snapping uppercuts than in all six `Rocky’ movies put together.”
Others, such as Maxboxing.com’s Eric Raskin, took up the torch until almost every boxing writer with a computer – even technology-challenged geezers like me – checked it out and helped fan the flames.
“Even 2 or 3 years ago, Monshipour-Sithchatchawal wouldn’t have been nominated for Fight of the Year, much less win,” Raskin said. “It definitely shows that more and more people are making use of the technology that’s out there. With a tap of the fingertips everyone now can see for themselves what the buzz is all about.”
REPEATING YOURSELF:
The 10-round junior welterweight matchup of Mike Stewart (41-5-2, 23 KOs) and Enrique Colin (21-3-3, 19 KOs) ostensibly is the main event Friday night at the New Alhambra, but maybe even more intriguing is the six-round undercard bout that pits junior middleweights Jose “El Macho” Medina (13-8, 10 KOs), of North Philadelphia, and Jose “Stinger” Medina (10-7, 4 KOs), of Tilton, N.H.
I am boldly picking Jose Medina to win.
“It just seemed like a fun matchup to make,” said the card’s co-promoter, J Russell Peltz. “The manager of the New Hampshire Medina called me, looking for a fight for his Jose Medina. “I thought, `Hey, why not Medina vs. Medina? Something just clicked.”
Speaking of possibly mistaken identities, the New Hampshire Medina’s manager is David Gates, but he’s not the guy of the same name who was the lead singer for the 1970s soft-rock group Bread.
An interesting sidelight is that Christian Giudice, author of “Hands of Stone: The Life and Legend of Robert Duran,” will be in attendance to autograph copies of his well-researched, 384-page biography of the Panamanian legend.
Presumably, the taped music for the evening will be by Duran Duran.
SHORT SHOTS:
_Philadelphia heavyweight Robert Hawkins (21-7, 7 KOs) is no day at the beach for anyone, even at 36, and he proved it again by going the 10-round distance with New Zealand knockout artist David Tua (47-3-1, 40 KOs) Thursday at New York’s Roseland Ballroom. Scores were 96-94 (twice) and a dubiously one-sided 99-91 for Tua.
_Don’t sweat it if you failed to notice that Malik Scott (27-0, 10 KOs), the undefeated heavyweight from North Philadelphia, scored an eight-round, unanimous decision over Ramon Hayes (15-23-1, 10 KOs) Thursday in Lemoore, Calif. Yes, the 26-year-old Scott has an impressive record, but his low knockout percentage isn’t the only thing that has limited his appeal and visibility. How protected has Scott been to this point? Well, he’s never fought a scheduled 10-rounder, has never been paired against even a fringe contender and only three of his pro bouts have been in his hotbed-of-boxing hometown. It’s clearly time for Scott’s promotional company, Goossen Tutor, to move Scott up in class to determine once and for all if he has the ability to be a factor in the division.
_Condolences to the family of longtime boxing manager Bob Botto, who was 73 when he suffered a massive heart attack and passed away Feb. 15 at his home in Swedesboro, N.J. Playfully known as “Big Bob from the Mob,” Botto was on a first-name basis with Frank Sinatra and hosted many sports and entertainment figures at his restaurant. Most recently he handled North Philly super middleweight Omar Pittman (13-3-1, 8 KOs), who fought Dhafir Smith to a six-round draw on Jan. 11 at the New Alhambra.
_It seems as if it just had its Philadelphia premiere, but “Rocky Balboa” will be released on DVD March 20. i
