After a much-needed vacation and some down time to recharge the batteries, I’m ready to keep taking swipes at boxing’s scum bags as well as the free swag-loving media swine who run interference for them. Many thanks to Tim Harrison who did a great job with the Monday Rant in my absence and took over some behind-the-scenes duties while I played the role of slacker.

Now, back to the grind.

As I’ve been saying for awhile now, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. is by no means the bumbling fool he was made out to be as recently as two or three fights ago.

A few “mean” bloggers and undercover mainstream guys who, each week, guiltily devour the Monday Rant under their covers with a flashlight, have “discovered” this as well.

Chavez has beaten three top 10 middleweights and, with his unanimous decision win over Marco Antonio Rubio last Saturday, he has now beaten a top 5 middleweight. Of course, this is hardly a golden age of 160 lb. talent. Most of the division’s top 10 is made up of failed title challengers and unproven prospects. Rubio, himself, despite a lofty #5 ranking, is really little more than a solid, lunch pail-carrying blue collar fringe fighter whose biggest fights were a stoppage win over an overrated, underdeveloped David Lemieux and a one-sided RTD loss to Kelly Pavlik.

Still, Chavez beat Rubio handily, and if we’re going to look at boxing like a real sport with real rankings, that means something. And it means that Jr., whether detractors like it or not, is a legitimate Top 3 middleweight (according to The Boxing Tribune’s Unbiased World Rankings).

On the flip side, though, Jr. may very well be the poster boy for boxing’s ills– a living, breathing embodiment of everything wrong with the modern fight scene.

Unlike some high-end prize fighters who work the system like a speed bag and feign honor and bravado when called on their short cuts, the boy king from Culiacan makes no pretense about respecting the conventions of the sport and, really, offers no excuses for what has been done in his name.

Everybody who follows the sport knows that the game has degenerated into something akin to a grade school being run by pedophiles. Chavez Jr. is just one of many who benefit from boxing’s rancid modus operandi.

With no credible central authority in the sport, the promoters, managers, and fighters pretty much call all the shots. Anything to the contrary is just for show.

Champions are conceived and created by management-types with suitably easy challengers being groomed by the sanctioning bodies, who, conveniently, also get their marching orders from the same money men.

Chavez, who served a seven month suspension for testing positive for a banned substance in a 2009 fight with Troy Rowland, even waved off the mandatory post-fight urine test and was backed-up by WBC President for Life, Jose Sulaiman, who allegedly shrugged his shoulders and said that the organization had simply forgotten the test.

(The pathetically inept Texas commission, which allowed Chavez to leave the arena without taking the piss test, will be a topic for another day.)

In no other case is it more obvious that the inmates are running the boxing asylum. Chavez and promoter, Top Rank, give the marching orders and the WBC does the stepping. The same could be said for Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather and quite a few others. But the difference between those fighters and Jr. is that they’ve earned the right to prima donna status after a long career of paying dues. Jr. is sitting in the driver’s seat because of name recognition and the subsequent curiosity factor.

Chavez has made a career out of fighting guys two or three divisions naturally smaller than him and there’s no indication that he’ll stop doing this any time soon, nor that he will ever be forced to do so by the WBC and Sulaiman, who seem intent upon keeping the boy king happy and secure.

I guess we can take solace in the fact that the 25-year-old, who enters the ring re-hydrated to the size of a cruiserweight, is performing his sleights of hand at a much higher level now, beating guys like Rubio and Duddy instead of hapless club fighters in Hermosillo or El Paso.

For those pulling against the second generation star, don’t hold your breath. Jr. is good enough to solidly beat just about anyone in the middleweight top 20 and connected enough to never have to fight the two or three guys with a chance of beating him.

This is the world that boxing anarchy has created.

Jr. may be among the most annoyingly smug of the fake champions, but he isn’t the first to take advantage of boxing’s lawlessness and he won’t be the last.

You can email Paul at paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com or catch him as he raffles off VHS copies of Diggstown in the first ever “Boxing Tribune Triviapalooza.” Paul is a full member of the Burger King Kids’ Club, a born iconoclast, and an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church.

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Isaac Chilemba (19-1-1, 9 KOs) took a big step in establishing himself at light heavyweight with a convincing ten-round decision win over Edison Miranda (35-7, 30 KOs) in Las Vegas on ESPN2′s Friday Night Fights series. In the co-feature, Rances Barthelemy (15-0, 11 KOs) did what he was supposed to do in disposing of feather-fisted junior lightweight Hylon Williams Jr. (15-1, 3 KOs) in an eight-round decision.

Many a Vegas tourist sets out to paint the town red during their time in the city. Isaac Chilemba managed to paint the ballroom of the Texas Station Casino red after an accidental clash of heads in the third round opened up a cut over Edison Miranda’s left eye that spat out more blood than the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It may have been just a flesh wound, but that cut was the turning point of the fight. For the first two rounds, Miranda was controlling distance, backing Chilemba up, and imposing his will and power on his opponent. Once the cut happened, as has happened in so many of Edison Miranda’s fights in the past, he lost control mentally, and within two rounds had lost control of the fight physically as well.

Referee Robert Byrd deserves a wag of the finger here; throughout the night he clearly subscribed to the Joe Cortez “look, I’m on TV, they must’ve tuned in to watch me” school of refereeing. He deducted both fighters a point in the fifth round for rabbit punching, then reverted to using warnings or turning a “see no evil” eye to repeated rabbit punches by Miranda against Chilemba in the later rounds. The perfect combination of overreaction and inconsistency could have seriously marred the fight had Isaac Chilemba not shown the guts and the poise to keep at his task in easily winning the last five rounds of the fight.

When the decision came down, the South African Chilemba took the fight by unanimous decision, 97-91, 96-92 (twice), with both Teddy Atlas and The Boxing Tribune also scoring it 96-92. Considering the only men to beat Miranda up to this point have been Arthur Abraham (twice), Lucian Bute, Kelly Pavlik, Andre Ward, and referee Vic Drakulich (in the Yordanis Despaigne fight on FNF last year), Chilemba is in pretty elite company and can use this fight as a stepping stone to a potential title shot if he fights and beats the right guys in his next couple of fights.

In the co-feature, fans got pretty much exactly what they could expect from one guy (Barthelemy) who has knocked out a motley array of tomato cans, hobos, and nobodies and another guy (Williams Jr.) who fought that same level of opposition and couldn’t even muster the modicum of power required to knock those guys out. Williams wasn’t strong enough to impose his will or get Barthelemy to respect him in any way; Barthelemy wasn’t strong enough to finish the job against perhaps the first guy he has ever fought who had a chin.

This fight was a complete mismatch. After the first couple of rounds, once Barthelemy realized he was in absolutely no danger of being seriously hurt, he clowned around, threw one punch southpaw, one punch orthodox, danced around, and showed no respect at all for his opponent. An argument could be made for Williams winning the third round with some decent body work, but when the final decision came down, the judges had it 80-72, 79-73 (twice), with Teddy Atlas scoring it 79-73 and the Tribune scoring it 80-72.

In a planned swing fight, Russian heavyweight prospect Magomed Abdusalamov (13-0, 13 KOs) fought a guy in Pedro Rodriguez (8-1, 6 KOs) who came in at 243 pounds and looked like he was going to head to a nearby hospital to give birth after the fight. Some journeyman heavyweights have pot bellies, but Rodriguez really did look pregnant in there. Abdusalamov fought dreadfully in the first round, allowing his much shorter opponent and his unborn child to bull-rush him and get some good shots in, but when the second round opened, the Russian realized he was the only one of the two combatants in fighting trim and closed the show at the 1:04 mark of the round. As wins over unbeaten opponents go, this one was not just scraping the bottom of the barrel; it was what you get if you lift up the barrel and go digging in the dirt underneath.

Next week, ESPN2 is in Uncasville, Connecticut, for a battle between familiar face Demetrius Andrade (15-0, 10 KOs) and three-time knockout victim Derek Ennis (23-3-1, 13 KOs) in the main event at junior middleweight, while unbeaten Raymond Serrano (17-0, 8 KOs), also a repeat offender on FNF, takes on Kenny Abril (11-4-1, 6 KOs) at welterweight. The Boxing Tribune will have a full preview and recap of that card next week. Friday Night Fights airs on ESPN2 and ESPN3.com next Friday, February 10^th, at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific time.

Fox Doucette covers Friday Night Fights for The Boxing Tribune. His weekly column, The Southpaw, appears on Thursdays. Fan mail, hate mail, and “ugh, not Demetrius Andrade again” can be sent to beatcap@gmail.com.

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This Saturday from Fraport Arena in Frankfurt, Germany, Steve Cunningham (24-3, 12 KOs) will once again try to regain what he believes is rightfully his.  Cunningham, an American Cruiserweight who is forced to fight in Germany because the American boxing public has very little interest in those just south of 200lbs, will again have to fight his opponent, promoter, judges, and anyone else that could get in the way when you fight in Germany.

On October 1, 2011 Cunningham took his IBF title to Germany for a defense against Cuban Yoan Pablo Hernandez (25-1, 13 KOs).  Hernandez lives in Germany and is trained by popular and influential German trainer Uli Wegner.  Cunningham was dropped and badly hurt in the opening round but managed to make it to his feet and survive.  After fighting through the clouds in round two, the superior boxer Cunningham, took over the fight.

Cunningham began landing with ease on the strong but less skilled Hernandez.  Then suddenly after the sixth round the fight was stopped due to two cuts on Hernandez from accidental head butts.  The cuts were barely bleeding and causing no problems to the challenger’s vision.  But the fight was stopped and despite the fact that the majority of those who saw the fight believe Cunningham easily swept the final four rounds, Hernandez was awarded a technical decision victory.

“It was a bunch of garbage.  They were waiting to see how the fight was gonna go.  They see I got knocked down in the first round so they figure he could beat me and they were wrong.  So they wanted to wait and see if he could beat me so as the rounds went by they see I was picking up steam and I was winning rounds and winning rounds.  Now the cuts were not going into his eye and weren’t bleeding at all.  It was a sham.”

Cunningham fought the result and was awarded when the IBF ordered an immediate rematch.  But once again he will have to cross the Atlantic and fight in hostile territory to regain the title.

Cunningham has been down this road before.  He was on the wrong end of a split decision that most felt he won in his first title opportunity in 2006 against Krzysztof Wlodarczyk.  The fight was in Wlodarczyk’s home country of Poland and the rematch was in Poland as well.  Despite having to go into his opponent’s backyard, Cunningham won the fight by majority decision to get his first title.  And again this weekend he will have to march into enemy territory if he wants to march out with a belt and redemption for last October.

“This has happened to me before.  I went to Poland and they robbed me of my undefeated, of my 0. We got the immediate rematch and went back over there and got the title.  This is gonna make me go and work even harder and I’ve got so much energy, rage, and anger and fight in me so I’m gonna channel that to my training and the fight.”

Cunningham knows this is serious for his career.  He is well aware of how difficult it will be to beat the strong Hernandez and overcome all the factors that go along with fighting in Germany.  The normally happy and smiling Cunningham seems to have an edge about this situation.  Instead of preparing for the fight at his regular home, Shuler’s Gym, where a large banner of Cunningham hangs from the walls he has been in seclusion in a solo training camp.

“It’s personal, I take this very personal, they stole something from me.  I feel I got robbed.  I feel somebody came into my house and stuck me up and took some of my belongings.  I know who did it so I gotta go get it.”

Cunningham is clearly on a mission to regain the title he believes was taken from him by factors outside of the ring.  While he does not believe he has to get a knockout, he does feel he can break Hernandez down and stop him to guarantee he goes home with the IBF title.  Either way Cunningham has stated he is ready for war to get redemption this weekend in Germany.

“This fight coming up here for Hernandez, we already coined it “It’s time for War”.  It’s like the scripture says, there is a time for love, there’s a time for peace, and there’s a time for war.  This is time for war.”

Also on the card Alexander Alekseev (22-2, 20 KOs) and Enad Licina (21-3, 11 KOs) square off for the vacant EBU (European) Cruiserweight title.  Alekseev brings some real power to the ring stopping twenty of his twenty two opponents he has defeated.  His most recent loss came to contender Denis Lebedev by second round KO in a WBO eliminator in 2010.  Alekseev has wins over former Contender show participant Max Alexander and most recently over Daniel Bruwer by eighth-round TKO.

Licina’s two losses have come to the two men that headline the same card.  He lost to Cunningham in early 2011 challenging Cunningham for the IBF title and lost to Hernandez in 2009.  Both losses were by unanimous decision.  Licina’s most noteworthy victory came in 2010 over former Contender show participant Felix Cora.  Licina’s last two opponents were young and untested providing him with some easier comeback wins after losing to Cunningham.

Notes

• Quotes from this article were taken from a previous interview from this writer with Steve Cunningham.  To read the entire extensive interview with Cunningham about the last fight and his career as a whole visit http://theboxingtribune.com/2011/10/steve-cunningham-gets-his-rematch-and-a-shot-at-vindication-its-time-for-war/

Question, comment, agree, disagree, or anything at all, send it to gboxing3@gmail.com

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At the press conference following his impressive fifth round TKO over Peter Manfredo Jr. last November, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., along with promoter Bob Arum, were peppered with a litany of questions surrounding who the fighter’s next opponent would be.

As is the case most often, promoter and fighter spoke of lining up huge names for the future.  Sergio Martinez, who (with an almost disinterested disposition) sat in the same room as they spoke, was mentioned as a candidate, along with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito.  When asked specifically whether or not he thought he was now ready for such a huge test, Chavez Jr. delivered a response consistent with the company line.

“I’m ready.”

Since that night, and perhaps even before, fight fans have eagerly anticipated the undefeated Mexican fighter’s step up in competition.  While Manfredo Jr. was a game competitor, the fact remains that he was simply outgunned that night by the naturally bigger, stronger and more skilled opponent.

And while the opponent Top Rank’s CEO Bob Arum lined up for Chavez Jr. isn’t quite on par with the list of names bandied around back in November, the rugged slugger Marco Antonio Rubio does provide another big step in right direction for the 26-year-old, undefeated WBC titlist.  Rubio is tough as nails and comes to fight, and he’s been in the ring with a level of competition his opponent has hasn’t come close to.

Let’s face it, lots of fight fans just don’t like Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., and it has nothing to do with what has actually gone on inside the ring.  It started when he began his career at age 17 headlining minor PPV cards based on name-value alone.

Being the son of a legendary champion is hard enough, but using your father’s notoriety to prop yourself up past where you belong in a sport where most guys have to fight and scrap their way onto undercards alone, just rubs people the wrong way.

But regardless of how he did it, he didn’t lose any of those fights, and he’s shown steady improvement along the way to boot.  While there’s certainly a vocal contingent of boxing fans out there rooting for him to fail, his consecutive fights headlining HBO cards is quite possibly evidence of–dare it be said–a burgeoning acceptance among the boxing community.

And for good reason.

Under the careful tutelage of world famous trainer Freddie Roach, Chavez Jr. seems to display newly polished skills with each and every effort.  In his last fight, the always ready-to-rumble fighter used a stiff jab and his lanky frame to set up the knockout.  He’ll need to do the same against Rubio.

Rubio, a fellow Mexican fighter, comes into this fight with a wealth of experience on his side bolstered by an impressive tally of recent successes.  He’s won ten consecutive fights, with nine of them coming by TKO, since his last loss way back in February of 2009 against the then-more-formidable Kelly Pavlik.

If you ask a boxing fan on the street who should win this fight, you’ll get a perhaps surprising number of votes for Rubio to pull the upset and to do it by knockout.  While a bit of that likely attributed to that vocal contingent that just wants Chavez Jr. to lose, it’s at least in some small part also because Marco Antonio Rubio is just a damn good fighter.

So for Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., this one is big.

A win against Rubio does several important things.  It validates what Team Chavez already believes about their fighter: that he’s a legitimate top level competitor headed towards the upper echelon of the sport.  It proves that maybe those headlining PPVs cards way back at the beginning of his career were more warranted than people believed at the time.  And it sets him on an inevitable collision course, barring any sort of promoter/sanctioning body shenanigans, with superstar champion Sergio Martinez for the real middleweight championship of the world.

And if he looks good enough in defeating Rubio, it could mean that a clash with Martinez would be a better fight than most people think.

Top Rank’s “Welcome to the Future” will feature a WBC middleweight title bout with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (44-0-1, 31KOs) facing Marco Antonio Rubio (53-5-1, 46KOs) on Saturday, February 4^th.  Co-headlining will be Nonito Donaire (27-1, 18KOs) vs. Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. (21-1-1, 18KOs) in the junior featherweight division.  The doubleheader will air on HBO World Championship Boxing at 9pm central.

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How fitting that your friendly neighborhood commentator gets to run this on Groundhog Day. Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, and Chris Elliott couldn’t come up with a better analogy for the week’s boxing news if they tried. You’ve got a fighter pulling out of a rematch against a guy he lost to, citing a mysterious injury. You’ve got a guy ducking a rematch with a guy he shouldn’t have beaten, citing “not mentally ready” (as close to an outright admission of fear as it gets). You’ve got a guy and his promoter playing the pay-per-click media for fools to duck the fight everyone wants to see. And you’ve got an allegedly undisputed champion refusing to fight the guy who can legitimately dispute that title. All you need is some hot oil to fry in and a Coke and you’ve got a meal fit for John Belushi.

First off, we have Andre Berto pulling out of his rematch with Victor Ortiz. There’s really nothing mysterious about Andre Berto’s injury from a strictly medical point of view. He tore the biceps muscle (fun fact: there is no such thing as a “bicep”, the word biceps is not plural and refers to a single muscle) in his left arm, which is rather important to have at full function in the sport of boxing (or indeed much of anything else in life).

The problem is what a torn biceps implies. Victor Conte has been working with Berto, and considering that in his first fight with Conte on his team the Haitian beat Jan Zaveck in the sort of truly brutal fashion not seen since the first Cotto-Margarito fight, one has to ask questions. Furthermore, loss of muscle resilience and a tendency toward muscle-related injuries (rather than joint-related such as torn ligaments or strained tendons) is a common side effect of steroid use seen especially in baseball during the so-called “Steroids Era.” Correlation may not prove causation, but it tends to gesture in causation’s direction and say “hey look, over there, you might want to pick up the rocks and see what’s under them.”

I’m not saying Andre Berto is on steroids. But I’m also not saying he’s not on them. Should this fight be re-made, if I were in Victor Ortiz’s camp, I’d be insisting on WADA-style testing as a condition of making that fight and watching very closely Berto’s reaction to a more stringent drug testing regime. Andre Berto put Victor Ortiz on the floor twice in their first fight. He also tasted the canvas twice himself in what was a legit candidate for Fight of the Year. Maybe, just maybe, Berto and Victor Conte believe that a little extra something, the flower petals in the Mighty Mouse cartoon as it were, could alter the result (and set up a potential big payday with Manny Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather in the fall, particularly in the latter’s case as he will be out of prison and looking for a fight).

Next there is Yordanis Despaigne. I covered this already in my Friday Night Fights preview, but it bears mentioning again; Despaigne beat Edison Miranda by disqualification on FNF last year thanks entirely to the efforts of inept referee Vic Drakulich, who painted himself into a corner by giving a premature point deduction for a low blow to Miranda at the end of the second round of that fight. Despaigne then put on a performance of referee manipulation worthy of a flopping soccer player or legendary NBA flopper Vlade Divac. By the fifth round the farce was complete, and if Despaigne weren’t painfully aware of just how dangerous a bloodlusted, revenge-minded Edison Miranda can be, someone in his camp sure was. Despaigne even said he wasn’t “mentally ready” to face Miranda again. Translation: “I’m a chump, I’m a chicken, I never want to be on television again lest I get exposed.” Despaigne needs a ring nickname, and I’m gonna call him Big Bird, because he’s big and yellow.

Filling out today’s undercard is Bob Arum and Manny Pacquiao, the former a master manipulator of the pay-per-click desperation brigade, the latter the Catchweight Champion of the World. Manny Pacquiao never met a fighter he didn’t want to sucker into fighting on favorable terms in order to protect his record, Bob Arum never met an honest newsman he liked, and the two of them combined have contrived a ludicrous “legacy” at any weight higher than junior lightweight.

Kudos to Floyd Mayweather for not only not submitting to the farcical “negotiations” offered by the Pacquiao camp but even one-upping his Filipino rival by not insisting on a catchweight when fighting for the junior middleweight title against Miguel Cotto. That’s an apples-to-apples comparison; Mayweather will be a 154-pound fighter fighting against a 154-pound fighter. Pacquiao was a 145-pound fighter insisting that his opponent dry out all the way to 150 (Go sweat out a two-liter bottle of soda’s worth of fluid if you think four pounds doesn’t matter. Then try to go 12 rounds with a professional boxer. Then shut your pie hole.).

In my pound-for-pound rankings, I’ve dropped Pacquiao all the way to #3 (behind Mayweather at #1 and Juan Manuel Marquez, who I rewarded for actually beating Pacquiao, no matter what the judges said, at #2) and have seriously considered dropping him as far as fifth purely by virtue of the fact that the other two guys I’d rank ahead of him (Andre Ward and Lucian Bute) don’t manipulate the sport to get what they want, they just step into the ring and deliver dominant performances. Manny Pacquiao has skated by for too long on his marketability, but if you look at what he’s actually done in the ring, he no longer looks like an all-time great, and his Kentucky Fried Promoter (and his own subservience to the same) is a lot of the reason why. Man up, Pac. You want us to think you’re better than that, prove it.

Speaking of Ward and Bute, yes, Andre Ward won the Showtime Super Six Plus A Slew Of Replacements World Boxing Classic. This made him the WBC, WBA, and Ring Magazine champion at 168 pounds, the “undisputed” champ…no mean feat because he has still yet to fight the guy who, lest we forget, was ranked #1 (the title was vacant) by Ring Magazine when the Super Six started. If you are the “undisputed champion”, and you don’t beat the best guy, does not that other guy have as much of a dispute on your title as any man alive?

With Pacquiao-Mayweather officially a pipe dream, Ward-Bute would be the most anticipated matchup in boxing…except Ward is afraid of Bute and rightfully so. Andre Ward is a defensive fighter who can be frustrated in the ring by a guy who relentlessly comes forward and applies pressure, pursuing a strategy of overwhelming the defense by sheer brute force. Bute is a 168-pound Romanian version of a guy like (if you think he’s a great) 1987 Mike Tyson or (if you want to underrate Le Tombeur) Micky Ward or Pawel Wolak. Styles make fights and Bute’s style would be a disaster for Ward’s style. Andre Ward can fight a lower-quality pressure fighter and beat him with defense, but when both guys are masters of their respective craft?

All of this would be perfectly OK but for Andre Ward’s smug attitude in offering excuses for not fighting Lucian Bute. Ward is instead calling out Mikkel Kessler and saying Bute should fight Carl Froch (which would be a great fight, but it reeks of passing the buck). Ward is claiming Bute is not a legitimate challenger because Bute has not fought elite super middleweights, leaving aside the greater question of who the hell Bute was supposed to fight considering all the elites were tied up by their Super Six engagements.

The net result is that a guy who wants to believe he is the undisputed champion is chickening out of the one fight that would settle that very question. Someone bust out the maple syrup and the waffles, because Andre Ward has earned his place on top of them as a main dish.

Injuries happen (especially when Victor Conte’s around). Getting exposed as a chump happens. Having a promoter who cares more about exploiting a fighter than securing the fighter’s legacy happens (and Bob Arum is far from the only one guilty of such a sin). Andre Ward, however, has no excuse. Showtime needs to throw its own muscle around and force that Ward-Bute fight. We need warriors…not poultry.

Fox Doucette covers Friday Night Fights for The Boxing Tribune. His weekly column, The Southpaw, appears on Thursdays. He thinks Bute would knock Ward out in five rounds. Fan mail, hate mail, and nominations for the Pullet Surprise (say it out loud) can be sent to beatcap@gmail.com.

It would be hard to deny either of these two men the “great fighter” label .  Mayweather (42-0-0, 26 KOs) of course has the undefeated record that speaks for itself.  Make no mistake either, despite what some of his more vocal detractors might insist, “Money” didn’t get where he is by picking on 42 tomato cans.  Among those victims are 16 men who have held some version of a world title and at least three sure-fire hall of famers.  Floyd has been among the elite pound-for-pound rankings for well over a decade without ever losing a fight, a feat that obviously puts him in rare company.

Cotto (37-2-0, 30 KOs) may not quite have the pedigree of a Floyd Mayweather, but he’s certainly a very accomplished prizefighter.  With championships in three separate weight classes and a 17-2 record in title fights, the Puerto Rican star will almost assuredly find himself in Canastota, New York giving a hall of fame acceptance speech once his career comes to an end.

Why then is this fight being met with a collective shrug of the shoulders from boxing fans and members of the media?

Well for starters, Mayweather fighting Cotto means that Mayweather isn’t fighting Manny Pacquiao.  The super-fight between boxing’s two biggest names has once again been put on the back burner due to failed negotiations, and the disappointment that goes along with that will leave boxing fans with a bitter taste in their mouths regardless of who the two rivals are matched up with instead.

Another issue is that as good as Cotto is, it is generally assumed that Mayweather is much, much better.  Like is always the case in any Mayweather fight, Floyd will be a strong favorite for good reason.  The fact that Cotto has been badly beaten twice since this fight was first discussed years ago certainly doesn’t help the perception that he doesn’t have much chance.

To play devil’s advocate though, there is some reason to think that this older version of Cotto could have as much chance to be competitive with Mayweather as he would have had in his “prime.”  Since losing twice Cotto has dedicated himself more to using his boxing skills and movement, and has avoided getting into the kind of wars that lead to him being so badly damaged in the past.

At the end of the day, though, that argument really is more about making a case that Cotto wouldn’t have had a chance in 2007 than saying he does have a chance now.  A younger Cotto likely would have been too aggressive, an open book for Mayweather’s counter punching, while the more experienced Cotto will probably try to stick and move more, leading to a slow death instead of a quick knockout.  While Mayweather likely would have dominated even an undefeated Cotto, that fight at the very least would have had more potential for action and the hype that always comes from seeing two unbeaten boxers face each other.

So why be excited about this fight?  Well there are a few decent reasons.  For starters, as mentioned above, these are two of the best fighters of this generation.  Anytime you have a chance to see two great boxers in the ring together it is a good idea to take it.  Secondly, the bout taking place at the 154 pound limit would seem to give Cotto some advantage.  He has fought at jr. middleweight three times now and looked very comfortable, while Mayweather’s only previous fight above 147 pounds was a relatively ordinary performance in a split-decision win over Oscar De La Hoya.  While it isn’t unreasonable to assume that Mayweather will be better adjusted to fighting at the higher weight on his second try, there are at least some question marks about how comfortable he will be.

Finally, the fight will be a major event.  Cotto is one of the few active fighters (outside of Mayweather and Pacquiao) that interests casual sports fans, which is certainly the main reason Floyd chose to fight him.  The fight will make a lot of money and get plenty of hype from the mainstream media, which is never a bad thing for the sport.

Considering that a month ago it looked like Floyd would be in jail this spring and not fighting at all, it is hard to get too upset about hearing he’s going to be sharing the ring with a fellow superstar in what will be a big event for the boxing world.  While it might not be wise to get expectations too high concerning the bout, it is at the very least better than nothing.

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On Saturday night Scott Quigg defends his British super-bantamweight title against Welshman Jamie Arthur at The Reebok Centre in Bolton, England.

Quigg has been groomed for stardom since turning pro back in 2007. Despite a short-lived 12 fight amateur career, the 23-year-old Mancunian has always looked the part–racing to a 23-fight unbeaten run in the paid ranks, with 16 inside distance wins. He shouldered the British title in his last fight four months ago when he dismantled former world title challenger Jason Booth, forcing the veteran to pull out after seven lop-sided rounds.

Quigg will be looking to reply to arch-nemesis Carl Frampton, who had a sound win last weekend, by looking good against the capable, but light-punching Arthur. Arthur had had a couple of tilts at a British title, one of them up at featherweight, but had been found wanting on both occasions. Despite being a professional for nearly 10 years, the Welshman has only managed 23 fights, and he’s lost five of those.

That said, Jamie has a reputation for durability, and he generally goes the distance.  He may be able to mess Quigg around for a few rounds and make matters difficult, but young Quigg has all the tools and could very well see Arthur off in the later rounds.

On the undercard, Britain’s Rendall Munroe will be looking to get himself into a fight with Quigg at some point in the future when he entertains Argentine journeyman Jose Saez. Munroe, 23-2, 9 KO’s, has been marking time since a gallant but futile assault on Toshiaki Nishioka’s WBC title back in 2010, when he traveled all the way to Tokyo only to be outworked by the champion over twelve rounds. Munroe has had a couple of meaningless wins since, but wants to step things up in the super-bantam division, which is pretty hot at the present time with the likes of Donaire, Rigondeaux and Nishioka dominating.

On face value Munroe should breeze through on Saturday night. Saez is a veteran at 36, and his record is sketchy–21-12, 11 KO’s. He’s boxed six draws too. He managed to win a WBC interim title of some sort in 2008 and shared a ring with former IBF champion Steve Molitor a year later, but he doesn’t travel well. He’s boxed four times outside his native Argentina and lost each time. Expect him to maintain this run on Saturday, although he’ll probably have enough Argentinian grit to take the light-punching Englishman the ten round distance.

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Veteran light heavyweight Edison Miranda (35-6, 30 KOs) is set to face off against South African fringe contender Isaac Chilemba (18-1-1, 9 KOs) in the featured bout of ESPN2′s weekly Friday Night Fights series this Friday, February 3^rd. In the co-feature, pitter-pat lightweight Hylon Williams Jr. (15-0, 3 KOs) gets a who’s-the-real-prospect contest, a “somebody’s O must go” battle, against Cuban Rances Barthelemy (14-0, 11 KOs).

This week’s main event comes as a bit of a disappointment, since Miranda was supposed to be in against Yordanis Despaigne (9-2, 4 KOs) in an effort to avenge a disqualification loss handed out by referee Vic “Count” Drakulich on FNF last summer. Drakulich’s officiating performance deprived fans of a great fight and essentially deprived Miranda of any kind of meaningful body attack after the quick-hook point deductions (with no prior warning) in the second and third rounds of that contest. It would have been a great fight for the fans, but Despaigne pulled out (some would say punked out) claiming he was “not mentally ready” for a fight with a guy he supposedly beat. Despaigne, of course, was last seen getting exposed as a non-entity in the pro ranks in his last fight, a six-round unanimous decision beatdown against Cornelius White (which on one judge’s card included a 10-8 round without a knockdown) on the undercard of the Andre Ward-Carl Froch Super Six final.

Instead of the rematch, Miranda gets a real threat in Chilemba, who currently occupies the #16 spot at light heavyweight in The Boxing Tribune’s rankings and gave Thomas Oosthuizen all he could handle in a 12-round draw for a minor version of the super middleweight title in 2010. Chilemba is best known to ESPN’s fanbase as a guy who won a close, and somewhat controversial, unanimous decision over then-unbeaten Maxim Vlasov in a fight where Vlasov twice put the South African on the floor in the eighth round. Chilemba is unbeaten in his last eleven fights and avenged his lone loss, which came against journeyman Willbeforce Shihepo by six-round decision in 2007.

Edison Miranda has never been in a boring fight in his life, and Isaac Chilemba has a very questionable chin and a still-unproven record (besides the Oosthuizen fight, Chilemba has never been in with a real title contender, while Miranda has been in with guys like Lucian Bute, Kelly Pavlik, Arthur Abraham, and Andre Ward–sure, he lost to all four of them, but he’s fought much better competition). This should be fun.

Meanwhile, the co-feature gives us one guy who couldn’t knock your columnist out (Williams) and another guy (Barthelemy) who should probably be kept out of the Italian food aisle in the supermarket for fear that he would mistake the tomato cans for his past opponents and start throwing punches. To say these guys are short on power is to say that New Orleans was “short on power” when Hurricane Katrina hit it. Williams couldn’t even knock out the hobos and in his lone TV appearance cured insomnia in an eight-round tilt with Marcos Herrera on FNF last April 29.

Rances Barthelemy’s list of opponents have between them so many losses that a trip to their respective Boxrec pages brings to mind the line from Shaun of the Dead, “you’ve got red on you.” His KO victims are the kind of guys who have been knocked out seven, eight times, and the guys who took him the distance? They’re the kinds of guys who have been knocked out seven, eight times. The takeaway here is that 14-0, 11 KOs may look like a power puncher, but Barthelemy is a Cuban amateur with all the technical finesse and “look at the opposition” that implies.

What this means in practical terms is that we will see a guy in Williams who prefers to box on the outside and not have his lack of power exposed against a guy in Barthelemy who has counter-punching in his blood and will not want to be a pressure fighter. Cover your eyes and remind yourself that the main event will be a cracker.

Friday Night Fights airs on ESPN2 and online at ESPN3.com at a special time; the fights are on at 10 PM Eastern/7 PM Pacific from the Texas Station Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Boxing Tribune’s own Fox Doucette will be providing live commentary and scoring at the ESPN Friday Night Fights Facebook page and will have a full recap of the night’s televised action right here at your authority on Your Boxing Authority.

Fox Doucette covers Friday Night Fights for The Boxing Tribune. His weekly column, The Southpaw, appears on Thursdays. Fan mail, hate mail, and offers to fight Hylon Williams Jr. and prove he could go the distance can be sent to beatcap@gmail.com. And so what about the 40-pound weight advantage?

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After stripping Martinez of his WBC title to make way for Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. last January, followed by nearly a year of excuses and broken promises to rectify the matter and mandate a Martinez-Chavez bout, Sulaiman defended himself against Martinez’s December remarks against Sulaiman and the WBC.

“One of the several feelings of sadness that kept me low for a few days was the reaction of a boxer, Sergio Martinez, who blasted the WBC and me with his uncontrollable mouth, when I had always thought of him as a gentleman, after WBC was the one and only that gave to him ALL the opportunities to become what he is,” Sulaiman would state.

Apparently Sulaiman would still classify Martinez “a gentleman” had he continued sitting on his hands (and paying the 3 percent sanctioning fee for the made-up “Diamond Belt”) while Top Rank deftly maneuvers Chavez away from Martinez and the WBC offers little more than empty platitudes and threats. Perhaps Sulaiman really was hurt by Martinez’s comments, but given the reputation that precedes him, it is more likely he is chaffed at the loss of the revenue stream provided by Martinez and the site fees paid to him by HBO.

Sulaiman would go on to chastise Chavez’s handlers for making veiled threats of further avoiding Martinez or other WBC mandatory challengers–all without Chavez’s “published support.” Sulaiman would go on to make his own empty allusion to the option of stripping Chavez in the event his handlers steer him away from the WBC’s mandates. Sulaiman ended his column hinting at a retirement consisting of ridding the sport of the evils that plague it.

And in an obvious “pot, meet kettle” moment, Sulaiman blasted Dr. Wu Ching-Kuo Wu, president of the International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA), over a recent rag-tag fight card staged in Foro Polanco, Mexico. Sulaiman does have a valid gripe with Wu, but when you consider Sulaiman’s body of work (not the glossy list of colorful euphemisms that he has e-mailed to me in response to my questions), it comes off as a pro-life extremist killing a doctor outside of an abortion clinic.

Consider the WBC’s appointment of Guadalupe Garcia, of Mexican descent and residence, as referee of next weekend’s Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.-Marco Antonio Rubio middleweight title fight, when you see Sulaiman criticize the heads of other boxing organizations. Rubio’s team certainly did when they sent a letter to the WBC requesting a reconsideration of their choice of referee. Rubio’s team believes that Rubio won’t get a fair shake up against the son of Mexican hero, Julio Cesar Chavez Sr.

Don’t be surprised if Sulaiman and his cohorts at the WBC agree with a switch in favor of referee/combat insurance agent, Laurence Cole, who is conveniently the son of the head of the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation–the state where Chavez-Rubio will be held. Cole, whose insurance outfit is one of the more obvious conflicts of interest in boxing (he provides insurance to the events he officiates, and as previously mentioned, under the commission run by his father), has been a preferred referee for WBC title fights staged in Texas and officiated Chavez’s last fight in Houston.

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Gym, tan…box?

If you’ve ever seen MTV’s “Jersey Shore”, you may have seen Nicole Polizzi, aka Snooki, fighting with her roommates, or with a drunken night club patron, or perhaps an unwelcome “grenade” that one of her male roommates brings home. Snooki won’t ever be confused with a pugilistic Picasso, but this past weekend she officially fist-pumped her way into boxing with the “Team Snooki Boxing: The Irish Invasion” event held at the Resorts Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The show featured the Hyland brothers: Patrick, Paul, and Eddie, as well as heavyweight fringe contender, Derric Rossy.

The pint-sized Snooki was on her best behavior for the event. She showed up at the hotel conservatively dressed with her equally pint-sized boyfriend, and she didn’t show her underwear once. Nevertheless, after perusing various message boards, Facebook, and Twitter, one can say that fan reception was mixed, to say the least. Her reputation as the spray-tanned, promiscuous, booze-swilling train wreck of MTV’s hit reality television show has some fans waving their arms in a fit of rage over the bad attention she potentially brings to the sport. Supporters of her venture into boxing promotions can say that her visibility, coupled with 4.25 million Twitter followers and 1.25 million Facebook fans brought some much-needed attention to the sport on a slow weekend. The fact that I was able to find a readily-available pay-per-view stream ($9.99 at BehindTheRing.com) to watch “Team Snooki Boxing” (although I did decline to shell out the $10), and was unable to find one for the IBF jr. middleweight title eliminator between Cory Spinks and Sechew Powell, speaks to how much attention the card received.

Snooki may not be able to name five active boxers, but if she can make a few bucks to lend her profitable name to a boxing promotion and help bring new fans to the sport, then it can’t be all that bad. And considering the rabid vermin currently running the sport, can Snooki really do that much damage?

You can contact Tim at timharrison65@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TheTimHarrison.

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Russian prospect Ruslan Provodnikov (21-1, 14 KOs) continued his climb through the ranks on ESPN2 Friday Night Fights, winning a minor WBO trinket at junior welterweight in a 6^th round KO of severely overmatched local journeyman David Torres (21-3-2, 13 KOs), who has only one win in his last six fights. In the co-feature, Ji-Hoon Kim (23-7, 18 KOs) surprisingly required all ten rounds to take a decision over Ghana’s Yakubu Amidu (20-3-1, 18 KOs).

The main event was a cat and mouse game. Provodnikov, who was cut in his last fight less than two months ago against DeMarcus “Chop Chop” Corley and clearly was not in his best shape, carried his much weaker opponent throughout the fight. Provodnikov dropped Torres in the first round and could easily have forced the stoppage, since referee Bobby Howard was looking in on Torres in exactly the sort of way one expects a referee to look in when he is deciding whether to end a slaughter. Provodnikov backed off the gas, apparently looking to go rounds in his first fight with new trainer Freddie Roach.

For rounds two through five, it was hardly a no-action fight; Provodnikov was throwing punches and Torres was throwing back. Had Torres simply pulled a Narvaez/Adjaho/Alfonso Lopez sort of survival act, Provodnikov did not seem interested in expending excess energy and indeed Torres could have gone the distance. Torres caught Provodnikov’s attention in the fourth round, which seemed to wake the Russian up, and a similar flurry in the sixth from the underdog brought to mind the maxim “shooting a bear with a varmint rifle will only make it angry.” Torres found himself acquainted with the canvas first from a thudding right hand and then from a flurry of punches with ten seconds to go in the round; the official time was 2:53 of the round when referee Howard stepped in, waved the fight off, and summoned medical attention.

For Ruslan Provodnikov this fight doesn’t really prove anything one way or the other; circumstances involving a television date and a slot in the WBO pecking order against an overmatched opponent seemed more important than giving a telling effort or making a statement. It could have ended in one; it turned into a glorified sparring session for six. What matters is that Provodnikov got his win, and we should probably not expect to see him fight again for a few months, possibly until this summer.

The co-feature was a cracker, full of great action and just a notch or two below Fight of the Year candidate status; on ESPN’s social media platforms there was some brief buzz to that effect before the fight settled down a bit after the fourth round. Lightweight fringe contender Ji-Hoon Kim showed all of his strengths and all of his weaknesses, and so did Yakubu Amidu; this was a fight that never looked, even in the late rounds, like it was going to go the full ten.

Early on, Amidu carried the action, counter-punching well, walking Kim into shots, finding the right range, and controlling the pace of the fight. Late, Kim’s strength was just too much for the African, as the Korean was able to bull rush Amidu, keep him on the back foot, and tee off with a barrage of punches. When the fight went to the scorecards, the judges gave a reasonable spread of scores, since the first and eighth rounds were probably toss-ups but the other eight rounds were very easy to score. Scores of 96-94, 97-93, and 98-92 all went for Ji-Hoon Kim, while Teddy Atlas had it 98-92 and The Boxing Tribune had it 97-93, also for the Korean.

The first swing fight of the year on FNF was a complete farce; 20-year-old cruiserweight novice Garret Simon (6-0-1, 5 KOs) got a chance to show his chops on national TV against who-are-you-trying-to-fool tomato can Marcus Dickerson (4-4-2, 2 KOs), who suffered his fourth career first-round knockout loss. Simon never hit Dickerson with a clean shot; a glancing blow sent Dickerson to the canvas and as Joe Tessitore put it, Dickerson “got up at about 10.2.” Teddy Atlas got the joke of the night saying, “if I were that referee, I’d drag the count out a little, go 6, 7, 8, 9………hey, you made it!…and let the fight continue.” Fifty-five seconds of rolling over like an obedient dog means no commission should ever let Marcus Dickerson fight again, and the Washington commission should seriously consider withholding Dickerson’s purse for his clear lack of willingness to do the job for which he signed up. Whatever they paid him, it’s a helluva nice hourly rate considering he was only in there for less than a minute.

Next week, Edison Miranda (35-6, 30 KOs) takes on Isaac Chilemba (18-1-1, 9 KOs) in a light heavyweight clash that looks on paper to be an excellent action fight; Chilemba replaces Yordanis Despaigne, depriving Miranda of a chance at revenge but probably sparing Despaigne’s health in the process. The co-feature involves Cuban prospect Rances Barthelemy (14-0, 11 KOs) taking on very light-punching Hylon Williams Jr. (15-0, 3 KOs) in a lightweight who’s-the-prospect battle. The Boxing Tribune will have a full preview to get you ready for that televised action followed by a recap on fight night. Stay tuned—we’re your authority on Your Boxing Authority.

Fox Doucette covers Friday Night Fights for The Boxing Tribune. His weekly column, The Southpaw, appears on Thursdays. Fan mail, hate mail, and a nice chunk of change for 55 seconds’ work can be sent to beatcap@gmail.com.

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