Andre Ward seems to be making Mikkel Kessler rather unhappy here with his punches, something we're fairly sure Kessler missed when he complained about head butts and officiating afterward.This month’s bevy of burning fistic questions, from Ward’s massive upset to Manny’s mummy-like singing performance:
Q: So after the Andre Ward’s surprising upset of Mikkel Kessler, looks like you picked the first-round winners of the Super Six tournament correctly. Are you going to gloat now, smart guy?
A: To be fair, I didn’t predict everything correctly. I said Carl Froch would knock out Andre Dirrell, and there was about as much chance of a KO in that fight as there was of Yuriorkis Gamboa defecting back to Cuba. Still, it was nice to see Ward really come through better than even I had thought possible. What a performance! Taking apart Kessler, who many considered the tournament favorite, was unexpected to say the least. Those two might still be the best in the Super Six, so maybe Kessler gets another chance at Ward eventually. Still, you have to like Ward’s win as the most impressive of the tourney so far.
Q: What about Kessler’s assertions after the fight that Ward’s headbutting and referee Jack Reiss cost him the fight? Valid, or are you going to give us one of your analogies again?
A: Analogy time! Kessler saying that the butts and refereeing cost him the fight is like saying Carl Froch’s girlfriend is hot because of her great teeth; there is some truth there, but it’s pretty low on the list of factors. The main reason Ward won was because he pounded Kessler all over the ring; sure the head butts didn’t help matters, but that didn’t determine the fight. Kessler had a bad night, while Ward had an outstanding one, simple as that.
Q: So who’s the favorite going into the second round of the Super Six?
A: It has to be Ward. As excellent as Arthur Abraham’s win over Jermain Taylor was, Taylor looks close to done. Ward beat a better fighter right now, so you have to like his momentum. However, the points lead is still Abraham’s at 3 until someone passes or ties him.
Q: That must mean that you aren’t rating Froch’s win very highly. After more than a month, are you still holding on to the notion that Dirrell won?
A: Yes! It wasn’t a huge screwjob or anything like that, but after watching the fight numerous times, I still don’t know how Froch could have won any of the first six rounds. He did nothing. That means it could have been a draw at best for him from that point with no knockdowns. I’m not going to continue screaming to the rafters on this one, but neither will I give Froch a whole lot of credit for that performance. We need to see more of the Froch that beat Taylor from this point on.
Q: Did you hear that Top Rank head Bob Arum flipped ESPN’s Dan Rafael the bird at the Pacquiao-Cotto fight for his negative comments about the undercard? What was up with that?
A: Well, all boxing fans should have flipped Arum the bird for that lame undercard. It looks like Arum couldn’t take the fact that Rafael called him to the carpet on it, and because Arum acts like a jerk about half the time, you get incidents like these. Come on, Julio Ceasar Chavez, Jr.-Troy Rowland as the co-feature for one of the biggest fights of the year? Please. Look I love Rowland, who lives about 20 minutes from my house, but the guy was just barely back after a 3-plus year layoff. He didn’t deserve to be there, and Chavez sure as hell didn’t, either. When you’re paying one of your fighters less than $50 grand (Rowland, of course) to be on the lead-in fight to a major PPV headliner, then it shouldn’t be on the card. The fact that the most talked about fight on the undercard was the Matt Korobov bout, which wasn’t even televised, should tell you something about the strength of it.
Q: Did you see that Rodel Mayol had another head butt issue in his fight against Edgar Sosa? Is this a trend, or just another coincidence?
A: This looks like a real trend, one that referees should put a stop to right away. Mayol is not intentionally butting fighters, but he is far too reckless with his head. If I were Sosa, who clearly never recovered from the butt and was actually down on the canvas for more than a minute trying to recover, I’d launch a protest to try and get a rematch. Sosa lost his 108-pound title in the fight, as well. It’s one thing when a possible style matchup caused his two fights against Ivan Calderon to be stopped due to headbutts, but it’s another thing when it’s happening every fight.
Q: So what should have been done after the butt happened?
A: A no-contest should have been ruled, simple as that. I don’t know why referees are so afraid to do this when an unintentional foul is committed. This wasn’t the same situation as with the Kendall Holt-Ricardo Torres rematch; in that fight, everything happened inside a minute, with no time to evaluate Torres properly. In this case, however, Sosa being prone on the canvas and barely able to stand the entire rest of the first round should have clued referee Roberto Ramirez in. Ramirez actually ruled the butt intentional and deducted a point; he should have taken it a step further and stopped it altogether.
Q: How in the world did Dimitri Sartison get a 168-pound title from the WBA by beating Stjepan Bozic in Germany this weekend? I thought Ward won that title from Kessler that same day!
A: That’s because the WBA (and the rest of the alphabelt soup gangs) only cares about getting money from fighters, not who represents them as champion. They have a designation called “super champion” they give to some fighters when they unify belts with another organization. The fact that Kessler had no other belts going into the Ward fight didn’t matter, they just elevated him to “super champion” anyway. And because Sartison and Bozic were dumb enough to fall for it, they paid sanctioning fees to the WBA to fight for their “regular belt”. I hope Sartison carries that baby around with pride; because only his family will think that he’s the champ and Ward isn’t.
Q: Giovani Segura now has 18 KO’s out of his 22 wins, pretty good for a jr. flyweight. Given that he still seems to be sticking around with Antonio Margarito’s former trainer, Javier Capetillo, how far is he going to go?
A: Not far enough, and that’s unfortunate. The sky should be the limit for Segura, who has some real panache and a flair for the dramatic, but as long as he’s with Capetillo, he can only go so far. He absolutely crushed Sonny Boy Jaro with a left to the body in the first round of their fight Saturday, a punch most guys his size do not have. While I totally believe that his power is legitimate, having a guy who has been caught loading gloves training you is just not smart; it casts doubt on every knockout you have. Segura, who lives in California, can’t even fight there because of Capetillo’s ban; so unless it’s against someone willing to fight him in Mexico, it’s not going to happen. He’s a young guy that probably wants to be loyal to his trainer, but it’s not worth doing that at the expense of your career.
Q: After the Cotto fight, Pacquiao gave a concert, singing for the gathered crowd with half his head bandaged. Strangest thing you’ve ever seen in boxing?
A: No, not the strangest (fan man at Holyfield-Bowe still takes the cake for me), but it’s definitely up there. Listen, I know Pac-Man can sing and wanted to give a concert at Madison Square Garden soooo bad, but who thought this was a good idea? It either shows no respect for the fact that Cotto might have seriously hurt Manny (which he came damn close to doing), or at best, assumed that after a grueling fight, he could still give some kind of great performance. No offense, but if I go see Bruce Springsteen, I sure as hell don’t want to do it after he just ran the Boston Marathon! You must want to see Pacquiao sing pretty badly to take in his show under those circumstances. He still probably looked better than Cher, though…
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