Boxing Rostrum

Last night’s fight spoke for itself, so I’m not going to get into it except to applaud the brilliance of Shane Mosley who, incredibly, has never been more impressive, and to wonder at the toughness of Antonio Margarito. That Margarito gave way in the end was no disgrace. Through the first seven rounds he stood up to a huge number of flush right hand bombs, the likes of which would have dropped any other welterweight in the world, bar none, and left lots of them spark out.

When Tony went down at the end of the eighth the fight was effectively over, wasn't it. Margarito was a battered, exhausted man coming out for round nine and, as Mosley moved in to finish it, the night’s only sour note was a tardy intervention by referee Raul Caiz. Pinned on the ropes with nothing left, Margarito definitely should have been spared four last brutal head shots but Caiz allowed those to land, only coming between the fighters as the beaten man was falling to the floor. Could have been a tragic delay.

If Shane Mosley duplicates his performance from the Mayorga fight when he faces Antonio Margarito tonight, it’s hard to see him coming up with a victory. Shane may have done the late spectacular against Ricardo but the way he boxed was unimpressive and even though the verdict would have gone his way without the kayo, the scoring was not indicative of what had transpired through the first eleven rounds. Not in my view, anyway. And that scoring gave no inkling as to how Mosley had struggled to find any rhythm, apart from round six alone when he opened up and kept it flowing.

Margarito, of course, is a more straightforward proposition than Ricardo Mayorga. Shane hasn’t got anything unorthodox in front of him this time. Tony fights one way, and that’s it. Okay, he does it well, but there won’t be any surprises for Mosley to deal with tonight, and that should be the key to the fight’s first half.

Shane will surely out-box the Mexican early on, much as Cotto had done, but in between the slipping and sliding I expect Mosley to plant his feet more than Miguel did and fire full blooded combos in bursts of four or five at a time. If, at 37, he still has the capacity, that is.

Paul Williams had the size and reach to rake Margarito from range and did exactly that through the opening rounds of their fight. It was a beating that didn’t just build Williams a big lead but also drained enough out of Tony so that, when he made his inevitable surge from mid way, Margarito didn’t have the usual destructiveness in his punches. He won some rounds of course, but not emphatically, and in the twelfth it was Williams who turned in the more lively finish to clinch a deserved nod.

Tall Paul stands four inches higher than Mosley and is ten years younger. Shane can’t do what Williams did, in the way that he did it, but I expect his thinking will be similar. As Bernard Hopkins did against Pavlik, I see Mosley wanting to show Margarito some aggressiveness and power at the start, then using his boxing skills and speed to move the action around the ring, looking for the right moments to stop and repeat the dose. Frequently.

Can Mosley do it. From his own fight with Cotto you’d say no, wouldn’t you. Shane tried to fight Miguel, and he tried to box him, and came up short in both areas. And Cotto went on to be mercilessly ground down by Margarito. Looks clear cut from that, especially as Shane and Miguel are similar in many ways.

There are a couple of differences, though. Mosley is a rugged guy. More sturdy than Cotto. Apart from those moments with Vernon Forrest, he’s rarely looked vulnerable, never shown anything but a good chin. And Mosley won’t be intimidated by Margarito’s size advantage. Shane has been in with bigger men than Tony and never looked in serious trouble, including his second fight with Winky Wright where the watertight southpaw only squeezed through by majority in a light middleweight defence.

Shane Mosley lacked smoothness against Mayorga last time out. That’s for sure. His co-ordination wasn’t there. He looked depressed between rounds from the half way point, like a man who knew what to do but couldn’t make it happen. If that was the real Shane Mosley, as he now is, Margarito will be too much for him. But could it just be he was thrown off by Mayorga’s erratic, unpredictable methods, and couldn’t get untracked because of it, and will tonight show us something like the Shane Mosley of old.

I think Tony is going in there expecting Mosley to fall apart the same way Cotto did, in a very similar kind of fight. I expect a similar action pattern too. But this fight won’t necessarily evolve like Margarito v Cotto.

If Shane Mosley can produce the right mix of pretty boxing and heavy artillery, and get enough power shots home in those early rounds, particularly to the body, he could make the second half of the contest, when I expect he’ll be defending a points lead, less demanding for himself than it’s otherwise certain to be.

Margarito won’t be deterred, whatever’s going on, and will keep bringing the heat but, for all the miles on his clock, Shane can pull an upset here. He has the tools to beat this man. And he knows the formula. Boxing remains the name of the game, so I’m taking Mosley, one last time, to demonstrate why that is.

One time fighter Gypsy John Fury, who had a dozen professional bouts between 1987 and 1995, says his son Tyson is going to be the heavyweight champion of the world. Tyson Fury, the subject of that boast, agrees with his dad. So that’s sorted then. Yeah, right.

When we all stop laughing, though, there is a bit of promise in this six feet nine inch 20 year old who had just his second pro fight on Saturday night - even though he’s about as far away from the finished article as you can get.

A third round stoppage of kilt wearing German trier Marcel ‘The Highlander’ Zeller won’t cause any tremors amongst the division’s hierarchy but caught my eye enough to give the big boy a mention here, and if his dedication and willingness to learn are up to scratch he could well make an impact on the barren British scene inside the next eighteen months.

Guys standing six-nine tall, weighing 253, don’t have fast hands – not the ones I’ve seen anyway – but young Fury delivers punches quick and straight. And he already knows how to mix in hooks and uppercuts when the situation calls for variety. Most refreshing of all, Tyson Fury comes to fight. That’s a pretty good starting package for an absolute novice pro.

Fury won’t be 21 till June, by which time we’ll know a bit more about him because it seems they’re going to keep him busy in the meantime, or try to. Tyson has promised to show us rapid improvement in those months ahead and, if he can deliver on that promise while still a baby in heavyweight terms, we could be talking about somebody very useful indeed.

I’m hearing that Amir Khan will box Marco Antonio Barrera on March 14, in London, Manchester, or Cardiff. Hardly fits in with the rehabilitation blueprint which had seen Amir return from that Breidis Prescott disaster against gutsy but by no means top class Oisin Fagan. To go straight from there to a fight with Barrera is a big surprise to me.

Barrera, who will be 35 on Saturday, is past his prime and only now expanding, along with his waistline, into the lightweight division. Come the night, he’ll be conceding much in years and natural size. While into the twilight zone career wise, though, Barrera is still hugely competent and has to be considered dangerous. At best, it’s a calculated gamble by Frank Warren. It’s also an intriguing match for the fans.

In accepting this fight now, Warren obviously feels the timing is right, if not perfect. The great little Mexican has seen better days but is not yet on a conspicuously downward spiral, so a win for Khan would raise the Brit’s stock and, perhaps crucially, go a long way to helping Amir’s mind erase the Prescott trauma.

Can Khan win this fight? I think yes. But we’re going to find out how well he’s learned his defensive duties from Freddie Roach and whether he’s now emotionally disciplined enough to take that learning into the ring and implement it, something he didn’t do under previous one-fight coach Jorge Rubio.

I don’t expect Marco will be in any hurry. He’s proved himself a versatile boxer as well as a great one and could, I guess, come out aggressively and look to test Khan’s supposedly regained confidence straight away, but setting traps is more likely to be his game.

Naseem Hamed found out all about that the hard way, didn’t he. Hamed was a wicked puncher who became a genuine champ by cleaning out the featherweight division of his time, even if most of the guys he went through to grab that status were old stagers. That was no fault of the Prince. You can only beat the competition that’s there, and he did it in style. When Hamed came to box a ‘live’ guy in Barrera, though, things were altogether different.

Hamed was accustomed to laying people out and expected to do the same to Marco, but at the same time he could see that Barrera wasn’t like most of the others he’d faced. Acknowledging Barrera to be a boxer in his prime, like himself, Hamed declared that “This fight will define me.” He was right. It did.

Treated like a bit part player, Barrera was kept waiting in the ring for ages before Hamed decided to join him. Finally getting around to it, Prince Naseem descended to the fighting pit from on high, on a celestial cable car of sorts, a circular contraption with a crossbar for a seat. I’ll never forget how Hamed held up proceedings so as to make that grand entrance. And I’ll never forget how a cool but clearly irritated Marco Antonio Barrera made him pay for his arrogance.

Barrera grabbed ring centre and instantly established the jab, made Naseem come on to him, and drilled the sad Prince with expert combinations just about every time Hamed lunged and missed and fell off balance, which was often. You couldn’t call it easy until the fight was over because Hamed always carried a threat with that singular power of his, but the bout was very one sided. Naseem was technically outclassed and wobbled on several occasions through the contest. Thrashed is the word.

Bitterness even crept in during the last round, and, by the book, Barrera could and maybe should have been disqualified. Fight won, and point proven, Marco iced the cake by marching Hamed, full nelson style, into a corner where he slammed Naseem face first into the turnbuckle. From the camera behind that corner Hamed’s head looked like that of a tortoise, poking out of its shell, with a look of trepidation at what was about to occur. It was a shocker. I mean, veteran British ref Mickey Vann always tells both boxers “No naughties with the head” at the end of his pre-fight instructions, but Mickey's referring to what the guys shouldn’t be doing with their own heads, not the other geezer’s.

Anyway, we won’t be seeing that version of Barrera come March. That’s no more than a memory now. But he will arrive with a great fighter’s savvy. He’ll have a plan too. And he’s definitely coming to win.

So, is this a defining fight for Amir Khan? Depends on the result. If Khan loses, but in a close fight, he will still have a future. Even now, you’ve got to be a damn good fighter to get the better of Barrera, so for Amir to fail narrowly wouldn’t be a disgrace by any means. A bad defeat, though, would be tough to explain away, wouldn’t it. Then again, a Khan victory, especially a convincing one, would make him a bona fide contender.

Darchinyan v Arce, Mosley-Margarito, and Marquez-Diaz are three action-guaranteed collisions I can’t wait to see. Barrera against Khan doesn’t carry the same sort of blood and thunder assurances but I’m looking forward to it just as much, if in a different way. It’s such a fascinating prospect. It really is.

That image of David Haye holding Wladimir Klitschko’s severed head seemed to rile brother Vitali more than it did Wladimir himself. It’s clear that Vitali really craves the opportunity to shut Haye’s mouth, a development I’m sure would suit Wladimir just fine despite the Brit’s controversial stunt being aimed directly at him, not his elder sibling. Doesn’t now seem it’s going to work out that way, though.

Vitali has the match with Gomez to contend with. After that, assuming he survives the Cuban, the WBC has him mandated to share a ring with Oleg Maskaev. Nobody knows why, apart from the WBC itself of course, but that’s how it is. If he sticks to those arrangements, the Doc will be tied up for some time, too long for an impatient Haye who wants championship action tomorrow or sooner.

Should Ironfist decide to ignore that schedule and ditch WBC recognition as champ there would be no way back for him with a body that would surely view it as an act of betrayal, having allowed him a straight crack at their title after four years out. And a championship return via the WBA would likely get blocked too. Nikolay Valuev himself might take the match but I don’t expect the people pulling his strings would be at all keen on risking their hairy meal ticket in a defence against the Ukranian.

Vitali has expressed great pride in being heavyweight champ jointly with his brother, so I don’t envisage his relinquishing that status on impulse, just to destroy David Haye, no matter how much he’d love to, when he probably believes Wladimir can do the job equally well.

Whether Wladimir himself harbours the same confidence, I don’t know. With preliminary chat over a Wladimir Klitschko v Chris Arreola fight rumoured to have come to nothing, though, we could be about to find out. It looks like Arreola will get to box for the title, and on American soil, but not till later in the year.

What does that leave? A Steelhammer and a Hayemaker. Bring it on.

Two weeks from now, down in Mississippi, New York prospect Joe Greene gets the chance to show whether he’s mature enough and good enough to shine on the big stage. Well, biggish stage anyway.

Greene boxes Sergio Martinez of Argentina for the WBC interim light middleweight title, a dubious honour Martinez won by battering Alex Bunema last October even though Vernon Forrest had taken back the legitimate WBC crown from previous conqueror Sergio Mora just a month before.

Fact is, Martinez is champion of nothing as yet. But he could be on the verge now that opportunity has finally come his way too at rising 34.

Apart from the Bunema fight Martinez is unknown in the States. Because of that, and Martinez’ age, there’s the danger of Greene’s camp underestimating the Argentinian and maybe treating him as a mere stepping stone to the big title. That would be a mistake.

Martinez has served his time in the game, developed into a sturdy, skilled and awkward boxer who’s comfortable in the ring and fully accustomed to winning fights. And while he’s not explosive he is the sort of solid puncher who chips away and grinds ‘em down.

Sergio’s only defeat in 46 starts came nine years ago when he was stopped in seven rounds by Antonio Margarito in Las Vegas in what was chief support to the first Morales v Barrera classic. It was Martinez’ very first fight outside his homeland. For the next two years he went back to boxing exclusively in Argentina, back also to winning ways, learning and getting better all the time.

Then, in April 2002 Martinez turned up in Spain, winning an eight rounder at Barcelona, and he’s never boxed in Argentina since. This is no cotton wool wrapped homeboy. He’ll box anywhere, against anyone, given the chance. And the route he’s had to take has given him real self belief.

It’s a long time now since Martinez got chewed up by Margarito. He’s put that experience and the in between years to good use and had already become a damn good fighter when I saw him beat able Brit, Richard Williams, in 2003. Williams, a promising type with big ambitions of his own, was outclassed by the visitor and took a drubbing in losing widely on points. Martinez then knocked out Adrian Stone in Bristol prior to granting Williams a rematch.

The claim was that Williams hadn’t been himself, hadn’t gone with the right plan, hadn’t done himself justice the first time. Well, no excuses the second time. Martinez produced a display of razor sharp boxing that had Williams, who never stopped trying, badly thrashed by the time it was called off in the ninth.

Opportunities should have come Sergio’s way following that performance. But they didn’t. The man got studiously avoided on the strength of it. Simple as that. Hence his long drawn out journey to the bright lights.

Martinez has already had six fights in the States, not that it’s brought him much notice until now. In April 2007 his first north American appearance since Margarito saw him box Saul Roman at Houston in what was billed as a WBC light middleweight eliminator and, as a result of finishing Roman with a body shot in round four, he might have expected to leap from there straight into the big time. Not so. All Martinez got as reward was a run of four low key matches, and even his high frustration threshold must have been nudging its limit by the time he suddenly received the call to box Bunema.

To say he made the most of that chance is an understatement. Bunema had come from behind to brutally destroy top notch Russian, Roman Karmazin, in January at the Garden, but anybody figuring Martinez would play it safe and back pedal against the heavy handed African got it badly wrong.

Sergio boxed his man alright, but beat him up at the same time with a demonstration of fast, aggressive punching that Alex Bunema couldn’t begin to handle.

Martinez may be a bit long in the tooth to be just embarking on world championship business but he’s learned the game the hard way, and learned it well. Never mind the lack of hype. He’s a class act.

Joe Greene has yet to taste defeat, is eleven years younger, and has undeniable potential, but the New Yorker will still have to go to a different level from what he’s shown us so far if he's to get the better of Martinez.