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.