Allan Green's trainer John David Jackson can lift his fighter high in the air after a win, but Green's Super Six no-show against Andre Ward and subsequent excuses of overtraining will make it harder for Jackson to lift Green and the bus Green threw him under.A couple of thoughts about current goings-on in the Sweet Science:
It been about ten days since Andre Ward’s pasting of the apparently overhyped Allan Green, and I’m still amazed at just how uncompetitive that fight was. Yes, Green has been roundly criticized in this space before about running his mouth too much, telling all who would listen that Ward’s a chump and that the Super Six organizers had the intelligence of a snail for lacking the foresight to put Green in the tournament in the first place. Still, given that Green’s only loss was to dangerous (if limited in the boxing department) Edison Miranda when Green was truly sick during the fight, you had to figure all the talk was backing something up. It’s one thing to be dominated by a fighter the class of Ward (Mikkel Kessler was, and no one’s throwing him on the scrap heap, to my knowledge), but it was Green’s utter inability to do any sort of damage to the Oakland native that now has people asking some hard questions.
It’s also didn’t help that the excuse train was already leaving the station by the time the fight was over. Green told Showtime’s Jim Gray that his poor performance was likely due to his overtraining (the fight had been postponed due to a Ward knee injury) since late last year and coming in light at 166. Now I don’t know about you, but doesn’t that sound a little bit like he’s throwing his trainer John David Jackson under the bus? Jackson is a former world titleist and first-class trainer, so one would think he would know if his fighter was getting spent and dial it back a little in the weeks leading up to the fight. If you’ve trained for this fight three times essentially, which is what Green claims, why would you need the same strenuous camp? Hasn’t most everything been covered at that point?
Also, does this mean that Green is nothing but a knock out artist with little else, a la Randall Bailey? Bailey has howitzers in both fists, but he never has achieved greatness simply because he can’t win without landing the big punch. It still remains to be seen whether this is Green’s fate, but he certainly looked like a rank amateur when faced with the versatility of Ward’s attack. No adjustments were made, and all Green did was get more and more frustrated (and less competitive) as the fight wore on. Comparatively, Kessler did make adjustments during his bout with Ward, but the Dane was just unable to pull the trigger and execute his game plan. Green looked like he hadn’t even brought the gun with him.
What does this mean for the Super Six going forward? If this is all Green is capable of doing, you have to believe that Kessler is licking his chops and liking his chances of getting to the semifinals. If you’re Andre Dirrell, Carl Froch, or Arthur Abraham, you have to be thinking that with Kessler and Ward in, one of the three is going to be left out. It’s just too bad that the Super Six became the Super Five because of Jermain Taylor and Allan Green. Maybe boxing fans will get lucky and Green will find the juice to be competitive. If not, Green risks being downgraded from main-event status permanently.
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There maybe be no fighter who has taken more shots at Julio Caesar Chavez, Jr. than the media, including this space right here. To this point, JC Superstar’s oldest kid has treated us to a bunch of PPV megafights against the likes of Jason LeHoullier, Matt Vanda (twice!) and Jose Celaya, all of which had most boxing fans interested in the real fighters on his undercards than any of “main events” that Chavez was in. Throw that in with his sleep-inducing fight against Troy Rowland on the Pacquiao-Cotto undercard, where the most exciting thing about it was Jr. testing positive for a banned diuretic and getting a seven-month suspension, and there hasn’t been any real compelling reason to see one of his fights. As a matter of fact, he’s been more of a Butterbean-type attraction than a real fighter climbing the rankings.
So when uber-trainer Freddie Roach proclaimed that he’d seen a lot in the kid after deciding to train him some weeks back, it was with met with more than a little skepticism by boxing fans and media alike. But give the kid (and Freddie) credit, he actually resembled a decent fighter last Saturday against Irish John Duddy, as Jr. busted him up pretty good en route to a unanimous decision. Chavez actually sported an effective jab, one he employed nearly the whole fight and he looked to be in real shape for the first time anyone can remember. This performance was not joke-worthy, but rather an actual display of boxing and punching that produced a fun and exciting fight for once. This might be the one of the few times in his career that Chavez displayed some things that would make anyone want to see more of him.
Now does this mean that Jr.’s arrived? Not really, because while Duddy was a credible opponent, he’s looking more and more like a B-level fighter, and hasn’t met a punch that he couldn’t get hit with. Still, this is a step in the right direction, and with some more tutelage from Roach, you could conceivably step Chavez up into a fight with someone in the top 15 at middleweight to see how he would do. Even if Chavez is not the level of a Paul Williams or Sergio Martinez, seeing him fight credible fights against credible opponents is a breath of fresh air.
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