Snips and Snipes

A fight with Manny Pacquiao is a just reward for Juan Manuel Marquez. In their two previous fights the first ended in a draw, after Marquez had climbed off the floor three times in the first round, and the second in the narrowest of split decisions, with the deciding vote given by one point to Pacquiao. All Marquez has to do is get past Colombian Likar Ramos and a $5 million purse is his.

If he fails to get past Ramos, then it will go down as one of the biggest banana skins in the history of boxing.

Pacquiao’s guaranteed purse for the Marquez fight is $20 million, the same as he got for the Shane Mosley fight. That will go higher due to his share of the TV revenue, as it is expected that the Pay-Per-View sales will surpass the surprisingly high 1.3 million buys achieved by the Pacquiao vs Mosley fight. Mosley also received a $5 million purse.

Marquez’s loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr by the margins of 13, 11 and 9 points back in 2009 has been pushed into the background by his successful title defences against Juan Diaz and Mike Katsidis. The fight is made at 144lbs, which would be a career heaviest for Marquez. It will not be a problem for Pacquiao as he weighed 144lbs when beating Miguel Cotto, 144 ½ lbs against Antonio Margarito and 145 against Mosley. If there is any comfort for Marquez it is that Pacquiao’s last three fights have all gone the distance, but it is small comfort.

There is no suggestion that Pacquiao himself is looking past Marquez, but it has been announced by Bob Arum that Pacquiao would agree to random drug testing as requested by Mayweather, but on the insistence is that it would not be carried out by The US Anti-Doping Agency, as they are not a 'neutral' body. Funny when you consider that Pacquiao has submitted himself to standard drug testing by Nevada and Texas, which are presumably neutral, but Bob Arum has it right - you can’t trust these Americans!

If Marquez is facing a potential banana skin in the shape of Ramos, let’s not even begin to contemplate the biggest banana skin of Mayweather getting beaten by Victor Ortiz. Floyd Jr will need the Pacquiao purse to defend all the law suits. It would be ironic if Mayweather won the fight and Pacquiao the law suit, and the damages came to more than Mayweather’s purse.

Due to family circumstances I missed the chance to comment in my column on the Wlad Klitschko vs David Haye fight. The problem for Haye now is that there is no way he can walk away from boxing with that as his legacy. He was a dominant cruiserweight champion, but wins at heavyweight over Nikolai Valuev, John Ruiz and Audley Harrison count for nothing with his peers or the public. Certainly a fight with the winner of the Derek Chisora vs Tyson Fury contest would be big in Britain (if you can sell Haye vs Harrison to the British public you can sell anything), but the winner could find himself on Wlad’s agenda, more so if it is Chisora than Fury, and there would be no incentive for them to fight Haye. There are fights out there with some of the Americans who have already flopped against the Klitschkos, or the winner of the Alex Povetkin vs Ruslan Chagaev for the WBA secondary title, but to be honest I don’t believe that Haye will ever recover the prestige he lost, as it would take either a win over Vitali or three or four good wins, and that could take two years to achieve.

With regard to the little toe, only Haye knows how much it affected him. To put it in context I was disappointed when American super-featherweight prospect Mickey Bey ruined his 100% record when he could only draw with Jose Hernandez in February, but then he fought from the third round with both hands fractured. Hernandez is not Klitschko, but broken toe v two fractured hands - take your pick.

There was good news, bad news then good news again.

The first good news was Ricky Hatton formally confirming his retirement. Ricky has nothing further to prove. He always gave 100% plus, won the IBF title beating a great champion in Kostya Tszyu who had been unbeaten for eight years, won a second version of the title, and in 47 fights lost only to Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao, the two best fighters in the world at the time he fought them. He was the first British fighter to be made Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year in the 78 years since its inception, and was awarded the MBE. It is difficult to think of any British fighter who inspired such a large following, and he can look back proudly on a great career. He is also serving boxing through his promotions and helping other young fighters get their chance. I congratulate him on a great career and wish him luck in his promotions.

The bad news was the death of George Kimball, one of the great sporting journalists. George covered almost 400 world title fights and received the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism. For myself I thank him for his wonderful book 'Four Kings - Leonard, Hagler, Hearns and Duran' one of the best books ever written about boxing.

The good news was one of those happy ending stories. Back in October last year in Toluca, Mexico, flyweight Pinon was kayoed in four rounds by world rated Oscar Blanquet. It was a devastating finish, and an unconscious Pinon was rushed by ambulance to the local hospital where he was operated on for the removal of a blood clot. There were fears for his life, but the speedy action taken to get him from the ring and on to the operating table were successful. Pinon is now back in the gym. He knows he will never box again, and has no memory of the fight, but other than that he is fully recovered and is now training a small stable of amateurs. A happy ending.

Still on Mexico, Humberto Soto has relinquished the WBC lightweight title to move up to light-welterweight. As Brit John Murray is rated No 2, his bout with Kevin Mitchell is really a final eliminator for John, even if it is not called that. If  Murray wins he should meet No 1 Antonio DeMarco for the vacant title. If Mitchell wins, then it is almost certain that No 3 Jorge Linares will move into the No 2 slot.

Soto deserves a great deal of credit as he turned pro as a bantamweight and has won WBC titles at super feather and lightweight.

Other Mexican notes have Saul Alvarez defending his WBC light-middle title against Alfonso Gomez on September 17 and fitting in another defence in December, but Gomez is a fighter you have to focus on, as he can upset anyone on his night.

On Friday in Baja California Enrique Quevedo won the vacant Mexican super-flyweight title. His nickname is 'twin' for the obvious reason that he has a twin. In May his twin brother Daniel won the vacant Mexican super-bantamweight title. As far as I know that is the first time that twin brothers have held Mexican titles simultaneously.

The WBC have been up to their tricks again. Their featherweight champion Jhonny Gonzalez is one of the hardest punchers in the business - 42 wins by KO/TKO out of 48 wins before the weekend. He moved to 43 wins by KO/TKO at the weekend with his demolishing of challenger Tomas Villa. This is Tomas Villa who was not in their top 40 in their June ratings, but in the latest ratings he is No 14-even though he has not fought for over a year. His last win was an eight round points victory over Salvador Sanchez II, and in the fight before that he was stopped in 67 seconds by Miguel Angel Garcia. To top it all he came in as a substitute at short notice. That is disgraceful from a body who like to adopt a “holier than thou” stance. My main concern is how would they-or boxing-have explained it away if Villa had been badly hurt. Have they forgotten Francisco Bejines ? On 12 August 1982 Bejines was stopped in five rounds by Edgar Roman. On September 1 1983, after almost a year of inactivity, they allowed him to fight Alberto Davila for the vacant WBC bantamweight title. Bejines was kayoed in the twelfth round and died in hospital three days later. Davila was not in the same class as Gonzalez as a puncher.

The have also told Nonito Donaire that he is supposed to defend his title each four months and having won the title in February he needs to make a defence soon, and, if he fails to defend after six months, then he could be stripped off the title. There are conflicting WBC precedents. Jean Pascal went over eight months without a defence (11 Dec 2009 to 14 August 2010), Tomasz Adamek went just short of one year (15 Oct 2005 to 7 October 2006), Kelly Pavlik went almost ten months (21 Feb 2009 to 19 December 2009), Andre Berto went almost eleven months (30 May 2009 to 10 April 2010), Manny Pacquiao went eight months (13 March 2010 to 13 Nov 2010), Pongsaklek went almost nine months (8 Oct 2010 to 1 July 2011) and Jose Antonio Aguirre went  nine months (2 Feb 2001 to 11 Nov 2001) and eleven months (11 Nov 2001 to 19 October 2002). To me the singling out of Donaire stinks of politics. It seems someone loaded the bullets for the WBC to fire.

You also have to watch what they do and not what they say. They discontinued their interim titles because they were causing too much confusion, and introduced Silver Belt titles, which no one understands. Now they have International Silver Belt tiles, which are not the Silver Belt titles, but a lesser Silver Belt title - are you still following this, or are you confused?

The WBA are just as bad. On July 14 in Morocco Souleymane M’baye will defend his interim WBA welterweight title against fellow Frenchman Ismael El Massoudi. It is not a bad fight, but M’baye has not fought since May 2010 and has had no pressure put on him (lucky for him he is not a WBC champion or he could have papered his wall with warnings by now), and El Massoudi was not in the top 15 in the last WBA ratings. Situation normal.

They have also done some juggling with Marco Avendano who fights Viacheslav Senchenk for their welterweight title on August 26. Since October 2009 he has had two fights, one against a guy with a 0-6 record and the other against a guy with a slightly better 0-5 record, which gets him into their top ten, but then he is Venezuelan.

When Amir Khan talks about possible opponents the name of Brunet Zamora never comes up. The 36-year-old Cuban-born Italian is rated No 2 light welterweight by the WBA. The No 1 position is vacant so in theory as the highest rated fighter Zamora should be in with a shout for a shot at Khan, certainly more so than Paul McCloskey, but it will not happen. Brunet is not a big name, so the WBA will just let him wither. So what value is there in bring the top rated fighter with the WBA? None.

You also have to wonder what happened to Russian Denis Shafikov. He drew with Zamora in October when Zamora was rated No 3. Shafikov has won another fight since then, and his reward for drawing with the WBA No 3 is...nothing, because he is not anywhere in their top 15. What a farce. If a result is inconvenient then you just ignore it.

The Lucien Bute vs Jean Paul Mendy fight is another illustration of what is wrong with boxing today. Mendy had the right to fight Bute as he had won an eliminator against Sakio Bika. However, when you look at it closely, you have a fighter who, after beating a third rate Brazilian in March 2010, then had a fight in July in which he was knocked down early in the first round, and his opponent was then disqualified for hitting him when he was on the canvas. As a result when Mendy fought Bute he had been inactive for over 11 months and in 16 months had had exactly 78 seconds of activity. That’s boxing as the sanctioning bodies run it.

The German Federation seems to have problems counting. When Khoren Gevor punched the referee after his losing challenge to Robert Stieglitz for the WBO super-middleweight title in April, he was handed a six month ban. It is now announced that he will fight again on July 15 i.e. just over three months. After a hard twelve rounds Gevor would probably not have intended to fight for three months, so effectively he has not been punished at all. What sort of signal does that send out? In Germany it’s ok to punch the referee, I guess.

Contrast this with the way that amateur boxing treated Romanian heavyweight Bogdan Dinu. He competed at the World Amateur Championships in 2007 but was reportedly caught shoplifting and banned for life. If he had hit a referee you feel they might have given him the electric chair.

Former boxers Christophe Tiozzo, Brahim Asloum and Manuel Medina are all involved in putting something back into the sport that has been kind to them. Tiozzo, a former WBA super middle champ, has his own foundation which is in the process of signing an agreement with a town in the Pyrenees to open an altitude training camp there. The non-profit foundation has already opened three other clubs around France and has one opening in Paris in September.  The clubs are not just about boxing they are also concerned with educational and youth development, including helping youngsters who come through the club system, to find jobs with partners of the Foundation. Asloum, a former WBA light flyweight champion, has a similar scheme which again is aimed at helping youth development. Medina, who had three spells as IBF feather champion, and also held the WBC and WBO featherweight titles (first winning and then losing the WBO title to Scott Harrison in 2003), has taken a more direct route and is now promoting fights in Tijuana.

Last week in Tunuyan, Argentina they had the formal opening of Nicolino Locche Plaza dedicated to the great former WBA light-welterweight champion. “El Intocable” lost only four of his 136 fights. Locche, a defensive wonder, had a spell where he was unbeaten in 55 fights, lost a decision, and was then undefeated in his next 54. Just one loss in 110 fights.

Some fights to watch for. A 'bombs away' between Yuriorkis Gamboa and Daniel Ponce DeLeon in Atlantic City on September 10. Jan Zaveck defending his IBF welterweight title against Andre Berto on September 3. Dmitri Sartison defending his WBA secondary super middle title against No 4 Stas Kashtanov on 26 August in Donetsk (by which time Sartison will have gone almost 13 months without a defence). Daniel Geale defending his IBF middle title against Ermosele Albert in Hobart August 31. Ray Narh vs Prawet Singwancha for the WBC International title in Macao.