What can we say we learned from this?

• Pacquiao really is that good;
• Pacquiao clearly has no problem moving up to 140, and we shouldn’t question it if he moves up even to 147;
• Hatton’s previously unblemished record in the junior welterweight division may have been padded a bit by some questionable opponents across the pond;
• Maybe Freddie Roach has a point when he says that trainers are overrated, and that they do little to change the fundamentals of an established fighter.

There’s probably nothing there that we couldn’t have figured out without seeing Pacquiao take Ricky behind the woodshed, so where are we headed from here?

The bright side is that we’ve been blessed with the upcoming July return of Floyd Mayweather, Jr., as he returns to the ring against lightweight champion-turned junior welterweight Juan Manuel Marquez. This probably has just as much to do with Pretty Boy’s IRS troubles as his desire to reclaim the pound-for-pound throne, but I’ll take whatever gets him back in the ring. A victory, which most expect for the undefeated Mayweather, would make the next step obvious: a superfight to decide an undisputed pound-for-pound champion between Mayweather and Pacquiao.

And Mayweather-Marquez certainly won’t be anything to shake a stick at either. All I can say is an already exciting year of fights just got even better.

No, because this Saturday is the most anticipated fight in boxing, the superfight between Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton. So we should be celebrating this wonderful sport, not lamenting it, right? Right.

I’m going to now take the easy route to writing and post some of the oh-so-quotables that have risen from the fighters, trainers, and other lovers of the sweet science. Enjoy.

“If my fans think I can do everything I say I can do, then they’re crazier than I am.”
– Muhammad Ali

“If you screw things up in tennis, it’s 15-love. If you screw up in boxing, it’s your ass.”
– Randall “Tex” Cobb

“It’s a terrible situation when the best I can say for some of these judges is that they’re incompetent. Because the other alternative if they’re not incompetent is that they’re corrupt.”
– Teddy Atlas

And, who can talk about great quotes in boxing without talking about Mike Tyson? Here are some of the most precious gems to ever come out of Iron Mike’s mouth (special thanks to MichaelTyson.com):

“My main objective is to be professional but to kill him.”

“I want to rip out his heart and feed it to him. I want to kill people. I want to rip their stomachs out and eat their children.”

“I’m gonna make you my girlfriend.”

“When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books – that Tolstoy crap. People shouldn’t read that stuff. When we read those books, what purpose does it serve in this day and time?”

“It’s no doubt I am going to win this fight and I feel confident about winning this fight. I normally don’t do interviews with women unless I fornicate with them. So you shouldn’t talk anymore… Unless you want to, you know.”

“I’m on the Zoloft to keep from killing y’all.”

And perhaps the most famous of them all…

“Lennox Lewis, I’m coming for you man. My style is impetuous. My defense is impregnable, and I’m just ferocious. I want your heart. I want to eat his children. Praise be to Allah!”

With Wlad holding two of the major alphabet titles, and refusing to fight his brother, Vitali, who holds one more, there is some weight to the argument. But as you can see in my comments to the initial story, I feel that the Klitschkos are more of a symptom of the division’s woes than its actual problem. So what’s wrong with the heavyweights? What’s tarnished the luster off of what has in the past been a collection of the world’s most renowned and beloved athletes?

The Klitschko brothers: Scourges or Scapegoats?

In one way or another, I have in the past made it quite clear what I think about the division as it currently stands. However, the situation does merit more discussion than me making a few jokes about Hostess cupcakes. And with the heavyweight division still carrying the flag for the sport of boxing — the public at large still seems to view the slump in this division as the “canary in a coal mine” for the entire sport — I’ve decided to start a several-part series of articles to diagnose the state of the division… and, where possible, offer suggestions as to what, if anything, we could do to change this. I’ll say in advance, though, that I honestly doubt I will find much of the latter that is particularly constructive.

Dan’s thoughts on upcoming fights.

Enjoy. No, really. Do it. NOW.

Rocky went the distance with Apollo Creed when nobody, at times not even himself, believed it was possible. Josh Hamilton of the MLB’s Texas Rangers overcame drug addiction to shine as the record-setting star of the 2008 Home Run Derby. You could go on for days with these stories.

Your biggest opponent is yourself. It may be cliché, but it’s especially true of the Austin-based junior middleweight contender, Ann Wolfe protege, and rising superstar James “Mandingo Warrior” Kirkland. You may remember the video I posted of his most recent victory over Joel Julio. He’s an attack-first, stalking powerhouse, and with 22 victories of his 25-0 record coming by knockout, he’s one of the most crowd-pleasing brawlers in boxing.

He’s scheduled to fight Michael Walker on May 2 on the undercard of the upcoming Pacquiao-Hatton superfight in Las Vegas. But that next stepping stone in a seemingly bright future is now in danger of coming to a screeching halt, as Kirkland was recently arrested in Austin for breaking the terms of his probation by illegally possessing a loaded .40-caliber Glock handgun.

Is Kirkland, right, down for the count?

It would be expected that, even considering the gravity of such an offense, a superstar athlete should be able to overcome such legal issues and continue a promising career. The public relations battle would be more difficult than that in the courtroom. However, let’s spell out the full context of this arrest (thanks to the Austin-American Statesman and ESPN.com’s Dan Rafael):

• This violated the terms of probation that Kirkland was serving for a 2003 armed robbery charge; this already put the fighter’s career on hold for over 2 years
• Kirkland’s probation officer was in the process of revoking his probation because of another recent transgression in which he allegedly was illegally in possession of a .45-caliber Ruger pistol
• This most recent arrest wasn’t made by Austin police, but rather by agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.  No offense to the local police, but ATF involvement certainly means this won’t be any legal walk-in-the-park.

Yes, Kirkland is only 25 years old. Depending on whether he is convicted, and for how long he is sentenced to prison as a result, I honestly believe he could come back to a steady career as a successful journeyman fighter — hell, I’ll at least give him better odds than the NFL’s Michael Vick (did anyone else suddenly think he’d be a great candidate for Celebrity Boxing?). But while I won’t call this a complete career killer, it looks like this is very likely the end of Kirkland’s hopes at becoming a superstar in the sport.

It’s unfortunate. As I said, he was one of the most crowd-pleasing contenders in boxing. He fights with an aggression and personal disregard rarely seen by American fighters, and he could have been something for fans in the U.S. to rally around. But it looks like the strong-chinned, relentless fighter just delivered himself a thunderous knockout punch that even he can’t get up from.

UFC boss Dana White, loudmouthed asshole that he is, immediately issued a knee-jerk reaction after the conclusion of last night’s highly-hyped UFC 97, specifically stating his extreme displeasure (to put it far more mildly than White himself would) with the main event between purported pound-for-pound champion Anderson Silva and Thales Leites.

Now I didn’t get a chance to see the fights, but here’s my understanding of what happened — according to Yahoo! Sports. Silva won by unanimous decision after a 5-round fight in which he, the superior striker, was consistently frustrated by Leites’ attempts to fall back to the mat and bait him into making it a grappling contest. Silva wouldn’t bite, and instead forced Leites to get back up and keep fighting upright.

White apparently wasn’t happy with this:

“I can honestly tell you that I’ve never put on an event that I was embarrassed to be at until tonight,” White said. “I want to publicly apologize to all the fans.”

Furthermore:

“I apologize. I personally apologize for what happened tonight,” White said. “You guys know, this isn’t what the UFC was built on and this isn’t the way the fights usually go. Listen, any night you can have an off-night. When a guy is that talented and can literally end a fight whenever he wants to, wow.”

It’s not the first time that White has made his displeasure at a fight well-known, notably apologizing to the fans attending the Ken Shamrock – Tito Ortiz rematch that was very abruptly ended by the referee early in the fight. I’m not about to say that catering to your fans is wrong; of course I understand that the goal of sports executive should be first and foremost to provide an entertaining product for fans. However, White, and the sport of MMA as a whole, tends to take things a bit too far.

This was a stylistic mismatch — nothing more, nothing less. Demanding that a fighter, especially such a master of the sport as Silva, change his style in order to provide the kind of match that you feel will drive pay-per-view buys is a travesty. We all remember how well that worked when EliteXC tried that by offering bonus money to Set Petruzelli to avoid exploiting Kimbo Slice’s grappling deficiencies. Ironic that White himself called any such influencing “criminal.”

Yet that’s exactly what White is attempting here. Boxing has been dealing with the issue of stylistic mismatches for decades — most promoters actively take these into consideration when lining up fights. It’s a reality of the sport that sometimes a bout will lay an egg, that it won’t be a bloody, all-out war. It’s the nature of these things; fighters do what is necessary to win. And most of the time, true fans will understand and try to appreciate the technical expertise that is on display instead of screaming for blood. Look at boxing’s Floyd Mayweather, Jr. In all reality, he has a very displeasing style: high emphasis on defense and a lack of ideal knockout power. Yet people pay to see him fight in record numbers. It’s impressive and compelling to watch a man as elite as Pretty Boy do what he does best.

Yet the UFC, which as I previously mentioned has an inherent promotions and marketing advantage due to its centralized control of the sport, won’t rise to the task of thoroughly exploring style matching. Instead, it would rather flirt with blatant choreography than supporting its superstars and touting their abilities.

Buried in that wave of stupidity are some good points. First and foremost:

BOXING AND MMA ARE TWO DIFFERENT FORMS OF ENTERTAINMENT

Saying that Boxing and MMA are intimately connected and fated to scratch and claw over the same marking share just because they both involve people hitting each other is like saying baseball and football are the same because they both involve throwing a ball. Or like saying that anyone who watches NASCAR is a Formula 1 fan, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, DiBella quickly lost sight of that point once he started the name-calling (“It’s human cock-fighting” and “You’re not a boxing fan”), but the point stands nonetheless. Boxing is not competing with MMA for your dollar any more than with your local bar or movie theater.

Add to the fact that Joe Rogan made just as much of an ass of himself in his defense of the UFC. His veiled implications that he was more partial because he is also a boxing fan seemed to me a little odd when he refuted Brian Kenny’s statements by saying that boxing “is not aesthetically pleasing.” I’m a little curious why he claims to be a fan of something that isn’t fun to watch, but I digress.

The best observation made in this interview was actually by Kenny, when he pointed out that Boxing’s biggest challenge is that this “opponent” is dominated by one company with the advantage of being able to completely control its own marketing — Lou or Bob Arum or Oscar de la Hoya can promote their fighters, but it’s substantially more difficult to market the sport as a whole. And that’s where Rogan’s involvement, to me, seemed to be highlighted. He’s a UFC employee… I’m not saying his vested interest in a particular side of the debate is any less than DiBella’s, but Rogan’s paycheck depends on unwaveringly promoting the UFC and detracting from any competitor to its product.

Again, I digress. The point is that these are two different sports. Yes, Boxing needs to stop being complacent, and needs to realize that it can’t rely on its status and history to automatically attract the younger demographic. Yes, MMA is still the hottest and fastest growing event in all of sports. But last I checked, Mayweather-DLH was breaking PPV records despite UFC’s existence. Hatton-Pacquiao is still promising to be a great fight with great numbers despite a slumping economy. Really, they can both co-exist.

I bring all this up because recently former MMA champion Tim Sylvia signed up to box former Boxing champion Ray Mercer in a steel octagon cage. Boxing, in a cage, on a MMA card.

Mercer is 47 years old. Not to discount all older fighters, but if he was still athletically able to hack it he’d still be boxing. This fight has no more credibility than that laughingstock of a makeshift caged boxing match between Tommy Morrison and John Stover.

A good Boxer will be a good MMA-er in a boxing match under boxing rules. A good MMA-er will beat a good Boxer in a MMA match under MMA rules. Don’t give me crap about “who would actually win in a fight,” either. It’s not the MMA fighter. You know who wins in a real fight? The first asshole to pull a gun, or a knife, or any other weapon. That’s not what either of these sports is about.

Arreola vs. McCline, a.k.a. a free infomercial for Weight Watchers

Chris Arreola’s drubbing of Jameel “Big Time” McCline reminded me why I generally hate watching heavyweight fights. They’re uninspired, unentertaining and technically flawed on every level. When the lighter of the two fighters (Arreola in this case) comes in weighing 255, you’re just hoping that the Nevada Commission would’ve made an exception to allow corners to use oxygen tanks between rounds. These guys were sucking wind from the end of the first round, despite a complete absence of involved footwork or other movement beyond the occasional swinging clubs they call punches.

McCline came out of retirement on six weeks notice after having dropped his previous four bouts to some of the top talent (as best you can call it that) in the heavyweight division. “Big Mac” may have been a more suitable nickname for the journeyman as he came in at 275; the complete lack of stamina along with this showed. Within minutes he was on the defensive, with Arreola keeping him against the ropes for most of the duration of the fight until the 4th round KO. It was pretty obvious that McCline was there just for the paycheck as he stayed on one knee after this first knockdown and conceded the fight.

Tubby McFatkins on the left was actually 20 lbs. lighter than his opponent (McCline, right).

Altogether, it was an irrelevant checkmark on the unblemished record of Arreola, and I won’t be convinced that he’s a contender until he takes on more worthwhile — and at least vaguely well-conditioned — opponents.

Unfortunately, the glory days — hell, even the days of Lennox Lewis — of the heavyweight division are long forgotten. With the exception of the Klitschkos and cruiserweight-king-turned-heavyweight David Haye, this has become the weight class for light heavyweights and cruiserweights (or middleweights, in the case of James Toney) who can’t find the discipline to stay away from Twinkies and pizza.

Williams vs. Wright

Despite being a completely one-sided affair — I was more generous toward Wright than the ringside judges when I scored it 118-110 for Williams — this was actually pretty entertaining to watch, if only to remind yourself why Paul “The Punisher” Williams may have a very justifiable claim to being “Boxing’s most avoided man.” Let’s take a look at the physical tools that make The Punisher such a dangerous opponent:

• Towering 6’2″ height with a rangy frame that can accomodate fighting anywhere between 147 and 160 (a necessity when he’s trying to find worthwhile, and willing, opponents);
• 82″ wingspan, something essentially unheard of at these weight classes and only commonly seen from heavyweights;
• Stamina to allow him to comfortably throw over 100 punches every round, even at 160 lb., and sustain that output to throw over 1000 punches in a 12-round fight.
• If that isn’t enough for you, he’s also a southpaw.

Let’s add to that the things I learned while watching this fight:

• With that kind of punch output and a love of the jab, he’s very good at controlling distance in the ring.
• When his opponent does manage to work inside, Williams throws lightning fast, yet surprisingly powerful, body hooks and defense-splitting uppercuts with amazing efficiency.

So let’s recap: He’s taller than nearly anyone in his division, can outreach anyone, controls the ring, outpaces his opponents, generally has the speed advantage, and can brawl inside.  It’s no wonder that nobody wants to fight the guy — he’s the kind of worst-case matchup that fighters only run up against in their worst nightmares.

Williams, right, controlled the fight from the opening bell.

His only question mark as I can see it is his overall toughness.  Were he fighting anyone with more power than Winky Wright (though Wright did put together a great effort, and I mean that), I wonder whether Williams’ over-aggression and resulting lacking in defense might have made him take some shots that he wouldn’t have been able to recover from.  Until I see someone take advantage of that, though, I’m leaving any doubts in the back of my mind.

Unfortunately, I can’t imagine Williams-Wright will be the most exciting fight for anyone but the few of us who really love to watch great defense and technique — neither is all too inclined to take big risks, and both focus on great defense before crowd-pleasing flurries and big punches. However, especially considering this one isn’t on PPV, I’ll always recommend checking out a fight between two top contenders like these guys; there’s always the chance you’ll be in for a real gem. (Of course, there are exceptions. I should have known in advance that Mayweather – de la Hoya was going to be a waste of $55, but I digress.)

Also, we’re getting closer and closer to the upcoming May 2 superfight between pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao and Ricky “The Hitman” Hatton, the British superstar who’s undefeated at 140 and whose only career loss is to former pound-for-pound phenom Floyd Mayweather, Jr. This one should be worth the PPV cost — get some friends together and split the bill. It will feature two aggressive power-punchers at the top of their game.

Via ESPN.com, one of the best quotables and blatant digs I’ve seen in any sport in a long time, coming from Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach:

“I told Manny I would be very disappointed in him if he didn’t have Hatton stopped by the end of the third round. A lot of people ask me if I’m worried about Manny fighting Hatton since Hatton has never lost a fight at 140 pounds. As long as Floyd Mayweather [Sr.] is in Hatton’s corner I have absolutely no concerns. It’s not like his brother Roger is training him. Floyd training Hatton for this fight is our biggest advantage.”

So maybe Roach has a point.

That’s all for now, kiddies. Check back with me in the next couple days for a recap of Williams-Wright and anything else that catches my attention.

1. I’m paying for graduate school. Makes it difficult to shell out the cash for a fancy gym membership even if I wanted to.
2. I hate running for the sake of running. If it’s supplemental to a workout I actually enjoy, I’m all for it (generally in this case instead I’ll hit an elliptical, bike, reclined bike, rowing machine, etc.). It’s not a release, nor is it a way to recenter myself. My Xbox is cathartic; running is not.
3. No gyms in the Austin area that I’ve been able to find so far have boxing equipment — read: a functioning speed bag platform with multiple different bags — beyond a cheap heavy bag. Ann Wolfe Boxing & Fitness is not far from my apartment, but they were closed for weeks up until the Kirkland – Julio fight, and I haven’t managed to wander back and check the place out.

At a certain point, it all adds up to a bunch of excuses, but the case I’m trying to make is that I like boxing. Not running, or getting my swoll on, or any of that nonsense. Boxing, with a long cardio workout to warm myself up for that. Had me in the best shape of my life not long ago.

Now I’ve swelled up beyond the 147 that I used to happily find myself at, and given that my frame has filled out some, I’d be happy to just get myself back to middleweight and then from there gradually make it back down to 154. But I digress.

A friend many miles away from here posted the following clip on facebook, and he and I have started doing it (and subsequently have wanted to commit ritualistic seppuku). It’s from Mike Rowe, answering a mailbag question on an episode of Dirty Jobs. Pretty fantastic workout, and you can conveniently do it in a small enclosed space like the prison cell that is my bedroom. Ironic that I say prison cell… I’ll let the video speak for itself. Enjoy!