Friday Q & A

The new Finito will be here soon!

The Finito Five 9/30/11

And you wonder how the WBC could strip a belt from someone the caliber of Sergio Martinez? Wonder no longer.

My top five thoughts about the boxing world for hump day:

1. You have to be wondering at this point what’s going through Juan Manuel Lopez’ featherweight brain (and I DON’T mean that as an insult, so be quiet, all of San Juan) when he says he wants a piece of Yuriorkis Gamboa. While I believe that Juanma is afraid of no man, he probably had to think about it twice in the face of the Cuban’s absolute destruction of Jorge Solis. Solis is no chump, and he could do nothing with Gamboa’s speed or power. You got the feeling that Solis knew what was coming, but could do zero to stop it. As great as Lopez is, Gamboa looks like he could even take Manny Pacquiao’s head off right now; the longer Top Rank takes to make this fight happen (anytime now, Arum), the more I feel like Juanma may get his first loss.

2. Jeeze, Jorge Solis sure doesn’t look anything like his 108-pound brother Ulises, does he? I always have to do a double take when one brother accompanies the other to the ring just to make sure I’m watching the right fight. Come to think of it, maybe they should have done something with their names like the boxing Simms brothers, Travis and Tarvis. How about Jorge and Gorje? Or maybe Ulises and Twolises? Just a thought.

3. How great was it to hear and see Nick Charles doing the Mikey Garcia-Matt Remillard fight on the Gamboa-Solis undercard? After reading that recent Sports Illustrated article, I didn’t think Charles was ever going to be healthy enough to do anything on TV again. But there he was on HBO, still fighting cancer with Arturo Gatti-like heart, giving all of us boxing fans an unexpected treat. As great as Nick has been for boxing (and sports in general), we sadly may not have him much longer. Big props to HBO and regular Boxing After Dark blow-by-blow man Bob Papa for letting us hear Slick Nick once again.

4. As much as Gamboa upped his stock Saturday, that’s how much fellow Cuban Erislandy Lara’s dropped the night before. What was with that stinkbomb against Carlos Molina on Friday Night Fights? Lara was coming off of four straight first-round knockouts, for heaven’s sake! I don’t know if Lara thought he’d just be able to smoke the capable Molina with one punch, but that’s sure as heck what it looked like he was trying to do. You barely saw a combination from him the first six rounds. In fact, Lara didn’t get serious until the last four rounds or so, and he was damn lucky to get a draw. Since Molina was easily the best opponent Lara’s faced, he better get serious and start listening to trainer Ronnie Shields, who he repeatedly ignored the entire fight. He’ll never beat any serious fighter at 154 looking like that.

5. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Just look at the above photo of WBC President Jose Sulaiman and WBC Executive Director Mauricio Sulaiman. If this doesn’t answer the question about how Julio Ceasar Chavez, Jr. got ranked #1 at middleweight, I don’t know what will.

One Knee Equals Two Rushed Judgements

While Odlanier Solis hit the deck against Vitali Klitschko, it was a freak knee injury that took him out. Although a couple of talking heads said the Cuban came into the fight with a bad knee, the only bad thing was Klitschko's uncharacteristic lack of sportsmanship when he barked at Solis for dogging it when the man had, in fact, torn his ACL.

As a sports fan having watched a variety of injuries in a variety of sports, I can tell you that one of the trickiest of them all is the good ‘ol ACL tear. Just in the NFL alone, I’ve seen Napoleon McCallum get spun 90 degrees on his knee until it practically exploded; I’ve also seen Arizona Cardinals kicker Bill Gramatica tear his ACL celebrating a field goal. The latter example just goes to show that no how good of an athlete you are (and with NFL kickers, I guess that’s debatable anyway), strange injuries can happen at just about any time.

That’s one reason why I just don’t buy all the talk about Odlanier Solis having some kind of significant prior knee injury going into his fight with Vitali Klitschko Saturday. No sooner had Solis legitimately torn up his knee at the end of the first round (which resulted in a loss for the Cuban, by the way), you had Lennox Lewis of the Epix broadcast team insinuating that Solis must have had a prior knee injury even though he had absolutely no inside knowledge to support such a claim. When a report came out Sunday that a Cologne Arena spokesman had backed up Lewis’ claims by saying they did know of a preexisting knee injury (which was later refuted by Solis’ promoter), it was then just generally assumed that Solis and his team had screwed the fans and the promoters by stepping into the ring that night as damaged goods. Even Dan Rafael of ESPN, who is usually smarter than this, suggested that there should be some kind of punishment for Team Solis.

Look, I’m not a doctor or a professional journalist, but if Solis had a knee injury so significant that he couldn’t last a round in the ring, how in the world did he get through sparring and his pre-fight physical? It’s not like this was some prelim bout in Haysticks, Kansas; there was a cavalcade of media present around both fighters leading up to a heavyweight championship fight. Solis probably had more people watching him work out for this fight than he’d had in all his previous fights as a pro combined. Not one of them noticed that he had a bad wheel? Seems at least one or two of them might have commented about a knee brace, a limp, something that hadn’t been there before. Also, from what I understand, the physical they put the fighters through is pretty exhaustive. Do you mean to tell me they can catch Ruslan Chagaev’s Hepatitis B in a prefight physical, but a damaged knee wouldn’t be detected? It seems like people are looking to find someone to blame for an incredibly disappointing fight rather than looking at it as just an unfortunate accident.

And let’s also not forget one of the bigger problems in boxing, which is that you’re only guaranteed a fight as long as you can make into the ring in the first place. If Solis was to cancel due to injury, Klitschko probably would just go ahead and fight Tomasz Adamek, and there would be nothing that mandated Solis would ever get another chance at the fight. Ask Derek Chisora what it’s like to have a Klitschko carrot dangled in front of someone, just to have it taken away. If Solis did have some kind of previous injury, what incentive would he have had to report it in the first place?

We all know how disappointing the night was for the fans and promoter, but let’s not forget that it was probably the most disappointing for Solis. Solis had a freak injury on the biggest night of his career that killed things before they ever got started. A bad situation doesn’t need to be made any worse by media types we look to for intelligent analysis (yes, even from Lennox) jumping to spurious conclusions.

Friday Q & A

Miguel Cotto did a lot of this against Ricardo Mayorga Saturday, and kept his poise when the Nicaraguan tried to goad Cotto into doing something stupid. Cotto wisely left the stupidity to Mayorga.

A take or two on some naggingly unanswered questions plaguing the boxing world:

Q: Assuming by now you’ve gotten off your duff and watched the Miguel Cotto-Ricardo Mayorga fight, did Cotto do enough to impress in not stopping Mayorga until the twelfth round?

A: Yes, I think so. It wasn’t the most impressive performance Cotto has ever had, but Mayorga is such a weird, awkward brawler that a lot of standard boxing technique goes out the window against him. The most impressive thing about Cotto was his discipline while the Nicaraguan was doing his usual crazy antics, most of which Mayorga does in lieu of actual effective boxing. If you remember, Shane Mosley needed the twelfth round before stopping Mayorga, too; if you haven’t fought Mayorga before, it usually takes several rounds to figure out what the hell he’s actually doing. Once that happens, most top level fighters can begin to do some damage in the later rounds, which is what happened Saturday.

Q: But it looked like Mayorga essentially quit from an elbow injury. Does that make this any kind of real knockout?

A: Look, Mayorga might have been complaining of the elbow, which was probably legitimately hurt, but it was Cotto that was taking the heart out of him. Jean Pascal dislocated his shoulder THREE TIMES against Adrian Diaconu and still finished the fight. So don’t tell me that Mayorga couldn’t have one-handed it for two minutes and finished the fight. It looked more to me that Mayorga had just had enough of Cotto’s pounding on him, especially after that wicked left hook.

Q: Who hurt himself more in a loss: Yuri Foreman to Pavel Wolak (TKO-6) or Lenny Zappavigna to Miguel Vazquez (UD-12)?

A: Foreman for sure. Lenny Z. is a young fighter who got in the ring against a boxing technician light years ahead of anyone he’s previously faced, and got taught a lesson. He was lucky to get a smelly victory against Fernando Angulo last year that he didn’t deserve, anyway; Zappavigna needs to improve, but is young enough at 23 to do so. Foreman, on the other hand, had been making inroads into major TV exposure with his fight at Yankee Stadium against Cotto last year; he needed this awful performance like a hole in the head. Foreman is a great story, but has less power than an electric can opener and a style that is not all that crowd-pleasing. When you have those things against you, especially at 30, you had better win. Letting a straight-ahead brawler like Wolak box circles around you means that HBO or Showtime won’t come calling again anytime soon.

Q: So with the Odlanier Solis-Vitali Kitschko fight on the Epix network, what do you think has the greater odds of happening: Solis winning or anyone actually getting the Epix network to watch it?

A: Probably Solis, but not by much. I get the huge DirecTV package at my house with a million channels, and Epix is one of the three channels they don’t carry. When you have a link at the bottom of your website that says, “What is Epix?”, you can’t bet not too many people actually know. It looks like they are available in the U.S. on Charter and Cox cable, plus Dish Network, but not the two biggies, Comcast cable and DirecTV. Hopefully, someone will have this available for download, because there won’t be a whole lot of us fans watching it live. I understand the Epix website will stream it for this fight, so that’s good news. However, if Epix continues to broadcast fights like they say they are, it will be a big inconvenience to many a fan.

Monday Night Quarterback

Even though the WBC decided to strip middleweight champion Sergio Martinez of his belt, that's apparently not going to stop "El Maravilla" from flaunting it, along with his Ring Magazine belt. Sergio, you better be careful - I'm sure a sanctioning fee will still somehow be charged by the green-belt bandits.

Some quick thoughts about the fistic weekend that was:

## Anyone else think that there’s no way Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao won’t be fighting Sergio Martinez anytime soon? He can say all he wants about fighting either guy next, but Martinez is more likely to sprout wings and fly before he sees himself in the ring with either man. His fantastic KO of the previously unbeaten Sergiy Dzinziruk has seen to that. Much like Nonito Donaire’s awesome starching of Fernando Montiel last month, “El Maravilla” showed that rare quality of making excellent fighters look like they don’t belong in the ring with him. Only the true greats of the sport are typically able to do that. Believe me, Dzinziruk will beat a lot of people and win more titles before he’s done, and he probably will not look this bad again for a long time. That fact that he did speaks to where Martinez is at right now. If Floyd or Manny fought him right now, I think they’d be in real trouble.

## While I haven’t watched the Miguel Cotto-Ricardo Mayorga fight (which I’m sure is filled with Mayorga talking junk and getting hit A LOT), I did see a clip of the post fight press conference, which may just have been more interesting. While no one should be really surprised that Bob Arum’s going to line his pockets by putting the Plaster Caster himself, Antonio Margarito, back in the ring with Cotto, he better be aware of just how this dynamic might play out. If you check out this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL1cQ-V8f at about the eight minute mark, you will see Cotto giving Margs a reception so frosty you’d have been able to keep your beer cold just by putting it in the space between the two. Cotto has obviously serious disdain for Margarito, beyond the usual trash talk between fighters jockeying for a fight. Cotto likely believes that he was beaten by a guy with loaded gloves, and probably wants not just to beat Margarito, but beat him up. Arum had better be prepared for a situation where Margarito, between the Pacquiao fight and the potential one against Cotto, might be finished after two brutal beatings.

## I’m sorry, but I’m just not going to get all that excited over Andy Lee’s thrilling, come-from-behind KO of Scot Craig McEwan on the opener of Martinez-Dzinziruk. Yeah, it was a great fight, but all I’ve been hearing about is how great a comeback it was, and how he saved his career, blah, blah, blah. The truth is, while McEwan is a solid fighter, he’s no top ten guy at middleweight, and he tagged Lee at will for about six rounds in that fight. All credit to Lee’s persistence, but does ANYONE see him beating Kelly Pavlik or Paul Williams, let alone Martinez, who is rumored to be his next opponent? Lee gets hit far too much, and the top guys in the division would take him apart. He’s been with Emanuel Steward too long to think that he’ll suddenly become a better defensive fighter at some point soon; if he was ever going to, Manny would have already got him there. All it looks like Lee has earned with his win is a chance to earn a nice payday while getting beaten down by Martinez.

Reinventing the Finito

Well, if you’ve noticed, it’s been a few months since anything appeared in this space. My apologies for that; I certainly hadn’t intended for the Finito to suddenly fade into the sunset after a year and a half a la David Reid! Truth is, I’ve always called this blog a labor of love; while the love is there, watching all the fights, putting together the research and getting all my thoughts together was very much the labor. I was always able to do that because my job was much like a nurse’s shift, and I’d have three or four days off at a time. Around the first part of October, I took an 8 to 5 job like most regular American folks. I figured I would have all the time in the world to continue my weekly ramblings, now that I wouldn’t be a night-working vampire anymore and be alive with the rest of the world. Alas, soon enough, I found that I almost never had any time during the week to WATCH the fights, let alone write anything about them. Most of the time in the past, one of my posts would take me one or more nights to put together. With my current job, I just don’t have that kind of time. Why didn’t you 8 to 5’ers tell me about any of this stuff?

So now that I’ve bored you with all the details of my life you could care less about (Finito Lopez would have found time to write, you might be thinking), here’s the point. Since the previous posts took as much time to put together as they did, why not just make more frequent, but shorter, posts? I still watch the fights and keep up with everything in the Sweet Science; instead of a two or three-page article, a short and sweet post might just do the trick. So from here on out, the Finito will continue, just in more frequent and smaller bursts. I have no idea how this will eventually flesh itself out, but why not give it a try?

For those of you that have read my crazy ramblings the last couple of years, I thank you. For those of you who would rather read the wit and wisdom of Floyd Mayweather than anything I might have to say, I have bad news. Here begins the relaunch of the Finito – I hope you’ll be along for the ride!

The Finito Q & A – September edition

Now that the Scorpions are the WBC's “honorary ambassadors for peace”, maybe we can finally figure out if all the band members collectively weigh as much as James Toney did for his MMA fight last month.

This pressing questions in the fight game, from Mora’s running to the Scorpions’ rocking:

Q: After all the negative press the fight has received, was Sergio Mora-Shane Mosley really that bad?

A: It depends on how you look at it. In terms of the fight itself, it was pretty terrible until about round ten when Mora finally decided he actually wanted to make a determined effort to win. The last three rounds did have some good action back and forth, so it wasn’t as bad as Manny Paquiao-Joshua Clottey, for instance. In that fight, Clottey didn’t show up for any round at all, and ran constantly just to make it to round twelve. With Mora, his feinting and clinching style was a definite game plan, he just had no offense to go with it. But all in all, it was a lot of Mosley trying to make the fight and Mora trying not to, so it was pretty hard on the eyes.

Q: If it was so one-sided, how did it end up a draw?

A: Because the judges (well, at least two of them) were absolutely awful. I have not yet seen anyone score this fight towards Mora more than 116-112 Mosley except for Kermit Bayless (115-113 Mora) and Lou Moret (114-114), and unfortunately, their scores counted. I had the fight scored 118-110, and there were only two other rounds I thought were close enough to possibly give to Mora. Other than that, there was no way you could give Mora any more than five rounds (4, 7 & 10-12), because he was not competitive in the others. This was not a fight with a lot of close rounds; Mosley clearly did enough to win and got shafted. HBO’s Jim Lampley called the decision atrocious, and he was right.

Q: With all that said, what does this mean for each fighter’s career at this point?

A: For Mosley, everyone will probably consider this fight a victory, if not on the scorecards. Sugar Shane clearly isn’t what he was ten years ago, but he still has world-class skills and a willingness to get in there and fight. For Mora, the thing he now has in common with Clottey is that he won’t see a big stage ever again. You would think with millions at stake if he had won the fight, the “Latin Snake” would have fought like his life depended on it; instead, he fought like his afternoon nap depended on it. Not only did he show up three pounds heavy at the weigh-in, he used none of his natural size and reach advantages to press the action during the bout. I’m not even sure he even threw a meaningful body shot until the second half of the fight. In the post-fight interview, Mora said he respected Mosley too much. Respect for your opponent should never get in the way of being a professional, and now Mora will have plenty of time to think about that on those Solo Boxeo and Friday Night Fights cards to which he’ll now be banished.

Q: Does this fight take any luster off of Floyd Mayweather’s victory over Shane?

A: It shouldn’t. Like I said before, Mosley has seen his best days, but he still fights at the top level and is a Hall-Of-Famer. The fight with Mora was one of those bad stylistic matchups, so you can’t kill Mosley too much for it; besides, Mosley did his best to bring the action and did win for all intents and purposes. Until someone dominates Mosley like that again, you have to consider Mayweather’s victory a significant one.

Q: Speaking of Mayweather, do you think he’s going to fight again now that three felony counts have been brought against him?

A: Apparently you didn’t read last week’s Finito Five. Floyd is not going to be mentioned here unless it’s for some actual in-ring action. Until that happens, I couldn’t care less if he ends up in jail or not.

Q: OK, then back to the PPV. Maybe the main event was terrible, but didn’t the undercard fights (all KO’s) take away some of the stench?

A: Yes! For all the bad the feature fight gave boxing fans, the three fights before it were absolutely thrilling. You’d have thought the French Revolution was in full swing the way the heads were rolling. Daniel Ponce De Leon showed that he’s becoming a real boxer in addition to his awesome power by wiping out fellow featherweight Antonio Escalante in three rounds (back to FNF with Mora, Antonio!). “Vicious” Victor Ortiz won the battle of the “Vicious” nickname by knocking down Vivian Harris four times on the way to a third-round knockout. Ortiz really looks like he’s getting some of that swagger back he lost against Marcos Maidana. And as for 154-pound Mexican redhead Saul Alvarez smoking iron-chinned Carlos Baldomir in round six, what more needs to be said? Baldomir is long in the tooth, sure, but he hasn’t hit the deck in more than ten years, and has certainly never taken a ten-count. With the buzz generated by those fights, fans were chanting Alvarez’ name while Mora was doing all his running during the main event. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before.

Q: The Top Rank Live card this last Saturday had two fights with world title implications, but the Jorge Arce-Lorenzo Parra jr. feather clash was only in round three by the supposed end of the show at midnight. Many a DVR owner must have been frustrated. What happened?

A: First off, it’s a live sporting event, so DVR users, get used to extending your recording times an hour (or start it an hour early if it happens to be on ESPN!). Secondly, this was just par for the course with Top Rank Live these days. While boxing fans are eternally grateful to Bob Arum for putting these shows on, the production often resembles cable-access programming. If you look at any ESPN or Telefutura show, there are absolutely no more than 22 scheduled rounds of boxing for any given show. Why? Because the fights themselves (barring knockouts, of course) take about 90 minutes, leaving 30 minutes for ring introductions, fight analysis, ads, et cetera. The card Saturday, between Omar Chavez and Humberto Soto’s fights before the main event, totaled a ridiculous 30 scheduled rounds, which would run at exactly two hours for just in-ring fight time. If Chavez hadn’t ended his fight in round four, the show would have lasted almost three hours. Not very good planning by the Top Rank folks.

Q: So the Arce-Parra fight was a draw then wasn’t a draw afterwards, so what did fans miss?

A: What was missed was a complete mishandling of scorecards, which again is indicative of just how messy some of the Top Rank Live shows are. It was bad enough that rounds three and ten didn’t come back from commercial break until a minute into their respective rounds; but when the fight was over, and seemingly in a rush to end the show, an obviously confused ring announcer Lupe’ Contreras just said the fight was a draw and the show ended. No scores, no explanation, nothing. After the fight was over, officials at the fight said the scorecards were added up incorrectly and Arce was the winner. A day or so later, the Culiacan Boxing & Wrestling Commission said the original draw would stand for now, and there’s to be a hearing. So in other words, no one knows who won right now. And given that Arce dominated the fight from pillar to post, I’m not really sure how there can be that much confusion with the result.

Q: Cruiserweight Enzo Maccarinelli got knocked out once again against Alexander Frenkel this last weekend. Why is he still being allowed to fight?

A: He shouldn’t be, at least not for a while. The British Boxing Board Of Control really needs to get on this before something really bad happens to Maccarinelli. Frenkel absolutely crushed him with a left that eventually ended up with doctors giving the Welshman oxygen on the canvas. This is the fourth time in eight fights that he’s been brutally knocked out, so much so it should give his team (Joe Calzaghe’s father, also named Enzo, is his trainer) some pause about putting him back in there. It’s one thing to have a run of getting stopped in fights, but it’s another when those knockouts end with you sleeping on the canvas. The only reason he’s allowed back in the ring every time speaks to how celebrated Maccarinelli was for years in Britian prior to his facing David Haye. Perhaps Maccarinelli should find another line of work before he starts sounding like Tommy Hearns or worse.

Q: Did you see the WBC gave rock band the Scorpions an honorary championship belt? The Scorpions?

A: Yes, I did see that. As if the WBC doesn’t do enough strange things already with their belts and rankings, now apparently Klaus Meine and friends are “honorary WBC ambassadors for peace”, which garners some sort of belt. What in the world the Scorps have to do with boxing (yes, I know they have played at Klitschko fights in the past) or what the WBC has to do with world unity seems is comparable to what Oscar De La Hoya has to do with Antarctic exploration. I suppose, though, when you have four champions in one division and have been known to rank dead fighters, giving rock bands their own belts is not such a stretch. I just hope this doesn't mean that if I ever need to replace my "Love At First Sting" CD, there isn't an extra sanctioning fee that goes along with it!