Snips and Snipes

It was very much a good news-bad news-good news weekend for Tim Bradley. The first bit of good news is that the little Californian now holds both the WBO and WBC versions of the light welterweight title so has some additional bargaining power. The downside is that the fight with Devon Alexander was a disappointing fight and did little to enhance the reputation of either fighter. Attendance at the huge Superdome was said to only be about 6,000 and it was rumoured that HBO have no intention of taking up their option to stage a return match, so presumably the PPV sales did no meet expectations.

The other bit of good news is that in about three months Bradley’s promotional contract runs out and, if the chooses to do so, he can become a free agent. That leaves him open to negotiate a deal with any other promotional group and hopefully get a nice signing on bonus. It is ironic that Tim is again the WBC champion having relinquished the title and kept just the WBO title when given a choice before. Don’t expect a warm welcome from José, Tim, giving up a WBC title for a WBO title puts you about 100 places below Judas in Jose’s eyes.

Of course the real bonus for Bradley, or any other light welterweight, would be a fight against Amir Khan. The young Brit is rightly the darling of the airwaves right now thanks to his stirring battle against Marcos Maidana. The fight itself did well on financial returns, and after that performance interest can only go up. Junior Witter is being mentioned as the man who could be in the other corner when Khan fights in Manchester April 16. It is difficult to know what credence to put on this, but if it is a serious possibility then Witter has a dilemma. He has not fight since retiring after eight rounds against Devon Alexander in August 2009, but has a scheduled match against Canadian-based Romanian Victor Puiu (Lupo) in Ontario on February 19. Anything can happen in a fight and, with an 18-1-2 record, the 32-year-old Puiu is no patsy. A loss or an injury or even an uninspiring performance would cost Witter a huge pay day and a golden chance to get back to the top. However, if he decides not to go through with the Puiu match, then he will be going into the Khan fight with almost two years of rust to shake off. Of course if he does not have the Puiu fight, or even if he does, he is not currently rated by the WBA, so could not fight for the title. It would need yet another WBA sanction fee shuffle to find him in the ratings - what position would you like us to rate him Mr Khan?

The WBA are not the only ones who are adept at the ratings shuffle. The IBF are pretty good at shifty footwork. Their welterweight champion Jan Zaveck will defend his title in Ljubljana on February 18 against that well known fighter Paul Delgado. Never heard of him? Well neither had the IBF, but that won’t stop him appearing in their next ratings - what position would you like us to rate him Mr Zaveck? To be fair the 34-year-old from Georgia has fought Paul Malignaggi twice, Dmitriy Salita, Demetrius Hopkins, Said Ouali, Ionut Dan Ion and Vitaliy Demyanenko. Of course he lost to them all; inside the distance to Hopkins, Salita and Ion. However, in his only fight in the last six months beat one Chris Gray, another 34-year-old with a 13-12 record. This remarkable achievement will so impress the IBF, retrospectively, that they will feel compelled to throw out of their ratings some poor unsuspecting quality fighter and replace him with Mr Delgado. Even now I can hear the IBF ratings committee doing the sanctioning fee shuffle and whistling “Georgia on my Mind”.

The WBC eliminator between Ali Chebah and Ajose Olusegun will now take place on March 11 in Algeria. What a contrast between the two fighters. The 31-year-old Olusegun has been a pro for almost ten years and throughout that time found it hard to get fights against top opposition until winning the Commonwealth title gave him a springboard. He has come up the hard way. Both Olusegun and Chebah turned professional in 2001 with Olusegun having won all of his 28 fights and Chebah’s record being 35-1, with the young Frenchman’s loss being at altitude in Mexico, but with their impressive figures that is where the similarity ends. Olusegun has found it hard to get fights and after a couple of fights in Nigeria, has only fought in Britain. Chebah turned pro at 16, and has been in demand ever since, fighting in Luxembourg, Cameroon, Algeria, Belgium, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Canada and Mexico. Usually if a guy is on the road that much it is as a victim, an ITL fighter (imported to lose), but because of the profile of Chebah he has been put in against opposition who have themselves been chosen to lose. He has reached No 3 in the WBC ratings without ever fighting a rated fighter. None of that makes the result predictable, but one of them will become the mandatory challenger to Tim Bradley.

Chebah illustrates the attitude different countries take to young boxers. Chebah was a wanderer in his early days because he was under 18 and at that age not allowed to fight as a professional in France. Many Mexicans turn pro at 14 or 15. Saul Alvarez, who fights Matthew Hatton on March 5 turned pro at 15 and was fighting ten round bouts at the age of 16.

A current example from the Philippines is Jason Pagara who is 18 and has already had 26 fights. If his recorded birth date is correct then he turned pro just before his 14th birthday and was fighting ten round fights at the age of 15 and twelve round fights at the age of 16. That would horrify the administrators in some countries, but I guess it is a case of - if he is good enough he is old enough.

Last week saw a bout out in Papeete, French Polynesia. There is boxing that goes on in the Pacific Island areas. Places such as Vanuatu, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa etc. will stage a few shows each year featuring local heroes, and they generate quite a bit of interest in the Islands. For a while there was also a promoter in Papua New Guinea developing some local fighters. However, in all of these cases, it is not sustainable because if the fighter has real talent then he heads for Australia or New Zealand to continue his career, or in the case of islands with a tie to France, he heads for Paris. It did strike me with the case of the fighters from Papua New Guinea it gives a whole new meaning to a fighter being classed as a head hunter as opposed to a body puncher.

The conversion from amateur to southpaw seems to come easier to some boxers than others. Fighters such as Amir Khan, Oscar De La Hoya, Omar Narvaez, and Floyd Mayweather Jr etc. can make the transition and win world titles. Other never make it. The classic case is Jason Estrada. Last week Estrada was stopped by Franklin Lawrence taking his record as a pro to 16-4. In the amateurs Estrada was almost unbeatable. After failing to make the US team for the 2000 Olympics as a heavyweight he went on to be US amateur champion at super heavyweight three years in a row, won the gold medal at the Pan American Games, beating Cuban Miguel Lopez, and breezed through the US Trials for the 2004 . He went to the Athens Games as the favourite to win the super heavyweight gold medal, but that’s when it started to go wrong. He lost in the quarter finals to Lopez in such a lacklustre showing that he was not one of those bombarded with offers to turn pro. Despite this his credentials were outstanding, as he had beaten every top US amateur super heavyweight, most of them more than once. However, right from the start it was obvious he was not going to make it. Losses to Tomasz Adamek and Alex Povetkin could be explained away, but Lawrence is not in that class, and at 30 Estrada’s career is petering out. There are no sure things in boxing.

On the subject of sanctioning bodies I always find it strange that a promoter will gladly pay multiple sanctioning fees for minor titles when one would be enough. Last week Canadian Bermane Stiverne beat Kertson Maxwell and won the vacant WBC International, WBC USNBC and WBA Fedelatin titles (a Canadian fighting for a Latin title?). That is three lots of sanctioning fees. I am sure that Stiverne would rather have had the money in his pocket than have three meaningless titles. Let’s face it; three meaningless titles are still meaningless, so next time go for the money Bermane.

For those who read my weekly round up of results I would like to explain that to me there is no such thing as a “no contest”. If two fighters get in the ring, shake hands, and clash heads after 30 seconds, and the fight is stopped, then there was a “contest”, even if it only lasted 30 seconds. To me these are “no decisions” as a contest did take place, but for some reason or another, no decision was rendered. That’s how I read it.

You may also note that occasionally I do not quote the records of boxers. Usually this is because I am not sure that the available record is accurate. This is particularly so with boxers from Ghana. With the other countries in Africa such as South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda etc. either the local Board, or the local newspapers, religiously report the fights and make records available. This is not so with Ghana. Sometimes you can find reports of parts of the shows, but the big problem is the boxing league out there where the results are never publicised and therefore can never be checked. There can even be errors and discrepancies in the official records and it is up to each local Board to make this sort of information available. It makes people very nervous when they do not know if a record of a fighter they are thinking of putting on a show is accurate.

Fernando Vargas has announced that he will return to the ring on April 16 in a super middleweight bout against Henry “Sugar Pooh” Buchanan. “El Feroz” retired at the end of 2007 after consecutive losses to Shane Mosley, twice, and Ricardo Mayorga. Vargas was IBF light middleweight champion and made six defences of the title. He also briefly held the WBA version of the title. His other losses were to Oscar De La Hoya and Felix Trinidad, so he only lost to the best. Now 33, and up at super middleweight it will be tough for Vargas so it will be interesting to see how he fares.

As Vargas comes back, journeyman Emanuel Augustus announces his retirement. Augustus has a journeyman's record, 38-34-6, but he was more than just a journeyman. He often showed real talent and sprang some upsets, a sure way to lose your membership of the ITL club. His record reads like a who’s who of the light and light welterweight divisions. He fought Ivan Robinson, Diosbelis Hurtado, Stephen Smith, Allan Vester, Antonio Diaz, John John Molina, Floyd Mayweather Jr, Mickey Ward, Leonard Dorin, Kelson Pinto, David Diaz, Herman Ngoudjo and many more. Yes, he lost to those, but he beat David Toledo, Louie Leija, kayoed Jon Thaxton, beat Terrell Finger, Fred Ladd, Alex Trujillo, Ray Oliveira and Carlos Vilches and drew with Soren Sondergaard and Leavander Johnson. He fought in the USA, Denmark, Britain, Russia and Australia. In all of those fights he was imported to lose, but showed what he could do when he put his mind to it.

There is no doubt that Sergio Martinez was upset when the WBC took away his title and gave him the meaningless honour of being Champion Emeritus. There are two possible explanations as to why the WBC should choose to strip the man they named as “Fighter of the Year” for 2010, and make no mistake about it, Martinez himself said he considered that he had been stripped of the title. The first possible reason was that Sergio defied them, and chose to fight WBO light middleweight champion Sergiy Dzindziruk rather than the WBC interim champion Sebastian Zbik. The WBC have designated the fight against Dzinziruk a Diamond belt title fight (that is their way of saying that a fight that has nothing to do with them, has something to do with them) so rather than admit they had stripped him they stuck him with a title that is no title. You can’t defend the Champion Emeritus title!

The other possible reason is that the WBC's “darling boy” Julio Cesar Chavez Jr , ranked at No 1 without fighting anyone worthy of a top 20 place, would have stood no chance against Martinez, so they shifted the Argentinian to one side. A shabby treatment of a boxer who has fought so long to get to a point where he saw himself as continuing the legacy of the great Carlos Monzon.

Active fighters can sometimes get publicity simply for the level of activity, such as having a dozen fights in a year or two in a month. However, we tend to overlook how busy officials can be. Take the case of the excellent Belgian referee and judge Daniel Van de Wiele. Although a “star class” referee, Daniel still has to officiate at amateur shows in Belgium as well. Daniel has officiated at over 500 title fights, many of them world title fights, has worked 924 shows and up to the end of 2010 had officiated either as a referee or a judge at over 5000 fights in his 30 years in boxing. Keep up the good work Daniel, you must be doing something right to get that many assignments. Boxing certainly needs all the good officials it can get.

The management of Vic Darchinyan were said to have been told by the WBC that they will order a rematch between Darchinyan and Abner Mares, who outpointed Darchinyan in the semi-finals of the bantamweight tournament in December. Darchinyan’s management had claimed that poor officiating had brought about the loss and they were going to get justice. The only problem with this is that Mares is not the WBC champion. When he beat Darchinyan Mares won the WBC Silver Belt. If he wins over Joseph Agbeko in the final he will collect the IBF belt, and in typical bit of IBF stupidity they do not even rate Armenian/Australian in their top 15. That means that Mares can hand back the WBC silver belt, as he will be a “world” champion, and any decision the WBC make on ordering a return fight, will be worthless to the Darchinyan camp.