Articles of 2005

Memo to Don King: Welcome Back to Worcester

Published

20 years ago

March 13, 2005

Don King Productions held a press conference today at the DCU Center in Worcester to officially announce its April 2 show, headlined by World Boxing Council champion Wayne “Big Truck” Braithwaite against World Boxing Association champion Jean-Marc Mormeck in a cruiserweight world title unification, featuring local star and WBA welterweight champion Jose Antonio Rivera, of Worcester, in his first world title defense against undefeated No. 1 mandatory contender Thomas “Lionheart” Damgaard.

Worcester, Massachusetts might not make anybody’s Top 100 list of the nation’s top fight towns, but during a six-week stretch in the early 1980s it was temporarily the epicenter of the boxing world, with Marvin Hagler’s middleweight title defense against England’s Tony Sibson sandwiched between a pair of Top Rank Boxing ESPN cards all taking place at the brand-new arena then known as The Centrum.

A year later the same venue would host Ray Leonard’s abortive comeback fight against Kevin Howard, but in the last two decades big-time boxing has given the building a wide berth. King’s April 2 title fight doubleheader will mark the first visit since for big-time boxing to return what is now called the DCU Center.

After winning the undisputed middleweight title by stopping Alan Minter in London in 1980, Marvelous Marvin’s first two defenses had taken place at the Boston Garden, but exorbitant rents and rising labor costs at the old Causeway Street arena had sent Hagler’s promoter Bob Arum and his Boston point man, Signor Rip Valenti, in search of greener pastures, and the management at Worcester’s new civic center was only too happy to oblige.

A week before the Hagler-Sibson fight, Rip and Arum tried to tease the HBO show by staging an ESPN card in the same building. The main event matched Hagler’s brother Robbie Sims against the Scottish veteran Murray Sutherland, while the co-feature was a New England middleweight title bout-cum-Boston turf war between South Boston’s Danny Long and the late Mark Mainero of East Boston.

Sims was a promising middleweight who often doubled as a Hagler sparring partner, meaning that when Marvin was ready to fight, Robbie usually was, too. Arum and Valenti were anxious to move Sims, but Goody Petronelli had a policy against putting him on Hagler’s undercards because he didn’t want Marvin’s focus disturbed by worrying about his kid brother, so the prospect of putting him on national television a week earlier appeared to offer the best of both worlds.

A week or two before the ESPN card Rip hosted a press luncheon in Worcester. The promoter had other business to attend to afterward, and asked if I could ferry a couple of the fighters back to Boston with me. Sutherland, Long and I drove back on the Massachusetts Turnpike, with the ancient Capri I was driving clunking along until it finally heaved and sputtered to a halt.

Fortunately Sutherland (who would later gain prominence both as a super-middleweight champion and as the trainer for Eric “Butterbean” Esch) apparently had some training as a mechanic back in Glasgow. Throwing the hood up, he managed to breathe life back into the engine, and we made it back to the city. I dropped Danny off at the gym and Murray at the airport.

On Feb. 4, 1983, Sutherland and Sims fought to a draw in their fight, while Long scored the first of what would be back-to-back wins over Mainero. A year or two later I ran into Murray Sutherland and informed him that the Capri had finally died.

“Good” he said.

Although he had fought exclusively across the water, Sibson wasn’t a total stranger to the Hagler camp. An hour or two before Hagler won the title by stopping Alan Minter at Wembley back in 1980, Sibson had knocked out a highly-regarded American middleweight, Bobby Coolidge, on the undercard. He had KO’d Minter himself in a subsequent European title defense, and in 1982 had outpointed Dwight Davidson in a WBC eliminator that made him the mandatory challenger.

“We were actually responsible for Sibson fighting Hagler,” recalled Don King matchmaker Bobby Goodman. “Davidson was our middleweight. He’d already beaten Curtis Parker and Wilford Scypion before we sent him to England to fight Sibson. I guess he didn’t like hitting white guys.”

A wonderfully engaging young lad from Leicester, Sibson had even traveled to San Remo to watch Hagler’s October 1982 defense against Fulgencio Obelmejias, and we’d spent some time with him there. Like many big left-hookers, Sibson was a lefthander who boxed out of an orthodox stance. (Hagler, by contrast, was right-handed in everything save boxing.)

Hagler’s modus operandi as he prepared for a fight involved persuading himself that he bore genuine animosity toward his opponent. Since Sibson was a nice kid without an enemy in the world, this was more difficult than usual, but Marvin somehow managed to temporarily convince himself that he actually hated Tony.

Naturally, Juan Domingo Roldan was on the show as well. The Argentine had worked his way up to a mandatory position with the WBA. Arum wasn’t sure he could sell a Hagler-Roldan fight, so he kept putting him on Marvin’s cards in the hope that either somebody would get rid or him or, alternatively, if the boxing public saw enough of him he might eventually become a semi-draw. The Worcester show was the second of four straight Hagler undercards on which Roldan appeared: A hard-hitting if somewhat clumsy middleweight, he beat Reggie Ford underneath Hagler-Obelmejias II in San Remo, Wilbur Henderson as a supporting act in Worcester, and Teddy Mann on the Hagler-Scypion card in Providence. After he knocked out Frank “The Animal” Fletcher on the Hagler-Roberto Duran card at Caesars Palace, Hagler didn’t have much choice. He stopped Roldan in 10 at the Riviera the following spring, but not before “El Martillo” became the first and only man credited with knocking Marvelous Marvin off his feet.

On Friday, Feb. 11, 1983, Hagler made short work of Sibson, administering a brutal, one-sided beating on the way to a sixth-round KO. Once we filed our stories and headed back to the hotel, we discovered that nearly two feet of snow had fallen while the card was in progress. Although it was only a few hundred yards to what was then the Worcester Marriott, we might as well have been in Antarctica. I had to lead the way through the white-out for the late Newsday boxing scribe Bob Waters, lugging his teleram and mine — telerams being the ancient precursors of portable computers, cumbersome, oversized devices roughly the size of a Volkswagen.

When we reached the hotel it looked like the last days of Saigon. Hundreds of homeless fight fans trapped by the snowstorm were wandering through the lobby and hallways, and worse, the bar had just closed when Waters and I stumbled in, looking like the Abominable Snowman and his somewhat larger and slightly more abominable brother. We ran across a couple of former world champions, Tony DeMarco and Vito Antoufermo, sitting on the floor propped up against the wall, and invited them back to the room for a drink.

Vito, who had taken a job as a representative for a liquor distributor, remembered that he had a case of beer in the trunk of his car. An intrepid outdoorsman was dispatched to fetch it, and soon the party was underway. It lasted until the booze was gone, at which point most of the guests nodded off right where they were.

By the following morning it was apparent that nobody was getting out of Worcester to drive anywhere, so we extended our stay for another night. Kevin Finnegan, the former Commonwealth middleweight champion who had fought both Sibson and Hagler, and I set off on an excursion through the snow, managed to find an open liquor store, and returned with provisions to resume the party. By Sunday night the roads had sufficiently cleared to make the drive to Boston. Finnegan and another esteemed British boxer who’d come over for the fight, Maurice Hope, drove back with us. They were ostensibly headed to the airport, but we wound up in the Black Rose, an Irish saloon just off Quincy Market. The band introduced Finnegan and Hope to the crowd and invited them up onto the stage for a singsong. They eventually did get back to London, but it was about a week late.

A month later Rip staged another Top Rank ESPN card at the Centrum. In March of that year Robbie fought Tony Chiaverini in the main event. A useful middleweight who’d been a legitimate contender in his day, Tony was only 29 but already nearing the end of the road. He’d already lost to Bennie Briscoe, Sugar Ray Leonard, Wilfred Benetiz, and even Mike Baker by the time he fought Sims. Robbie knocked him out in five that night, and Chiaverini never fought again.

A year would elapse before the Centrum hosted another big fight, Leonard’s “comeback” bout against Kevin Howard. Ray had spent a lot of time around New England during his retirement, since his retina had been repaired at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and it was a Mass General doctor who cleared him to box again.

There was nothing accidental about the venue. Leonard and his lawyer Mike Trainer were plainly calling out Hagler, and figured that they might expedite the process by fighting a southpaw in Marvin’s own back yard.

The day we arrived in Worcester a few days before the fight, we ran into Leonard and Trainer. A few days earlier my baby daughter, who is now a 21-year-old woman but was then just a few months old, had been a spectator at her first newspaper softball game. Somebody had lofted a soft foul ball over the backstop and into the seats, and Darcy had taken it right in the face. X-rays revealed no permanent damage, but she was sporting her first black eye. Ray immediately took her into his arms, looked into her face, and cooed “I had one of those once.”

A concomitant event had resulted in a squeeze on hotel rooms in Worcester that week. We’d managed to get into the Marriott, but most of the press was quartered in some dreadful bare-bones motel so devoid of amenities that scribes had to walk several blocks just to get a cup of coffee, and even further for a drink.

The one thing that did work in the hostelry was the fire alarm. Two nights before the fight the scribes were rousted from their best for a 4 am fire drill, which forced them to evacuate their rooms and assemble, in various stages of dishevelment, on the street outside.

No one knew for sure whether there actually was a fire or not, but Colin Hart of the London Sun accurately observed “I can tell you this much: It didn’t start in the kitchen.”

Howard hadn’t been the first choice for the opponent’s role. Trainer initially wanted Sean Mannion, a Boston-based Irishman, to be the stalking horse for Hagler, but insisted that any opponent be free of promotional entanglements. Mannion qualified, since his promotional contract with Top Rank had expired with his last fight, but before negotiations could be concluded, Mannion’s cash-strapped manager Jimmy Connelly slipped the Galway Gouger off to New York and consummated an extension with Top Rank matchmaker Teddy Brenner. Mannion got a quick $10,000 signing bonus, and in the process eliminated himself from a $75,000 payday. Trainer settled on Howard, who had a decent 20-4-1 record but, like Mannion, wasn’t much of a banger.

Midway through the fight, however, Howard caught Leonard with a punch and knocked him right on his backside. More embarrassed than hurt, Leonard got back up and by the ninth was on the verge of knocking out Howard when referee Dick Flaherty stopped it. Hagler was at the fight, and was in attendance at the press conference afterward when Leonard announced that he was retiring again. Marvin looked like he was ready to punch holes in the walls.

Hagler-Leonard would have to wait three more years. And the Centrum, now the DCU Center, would have to wait 21 years for its next world title bout. There have been fight cards in the building since, but in the smaller Exhibition Hall, not in the Main Arena, and ten years ago Don King put on a pair of title fights (Julian Jackson-Augusto Cardamone and Orlin Norris-Adolpho Washington) at the venerable Worcester Auditorium.

King’s principal purpose for putting that card in Worcester was that, with Mike Tyson’s release from prison growing imminent, he was trying to prime the pump for a Tyson-Peter McNeeley fight, but he wasn’t taking many chances. McNeeley fought and disposed of the immortal Danny Wofford in a round that night, in a fight so awful that Showtime refused to put it on the telecast. For other reasons best known to themselves, the network has decided against airing the Rivera-Damgaard co-main event, and will confine its telecast to the cruiserweight bout – a wrong-headed decision, if you ask me. Nobody knows how many asses will be in the seats on April 2, but we do know this much: Jose Rivera will have been the guy responsible for putting them there.

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George Kimball

Articles of 2005

In Boxing News: Floyd Mayweather An All-Time Great, Valuev & More

Published

19 years ago

December 31, 2005

Chris Gielty

A Shot of Boxing on the Last Day of the Year

The Guardian reports that talks have already taken place between Nicolay Valuev‘s co-promoters – Don King and Wilfried Sauerland – and Danny Williams‘ promoter Frank Warren for Nicolay Valuev to face Danny Williams. I’d suggest Danny Williams needs to worry about Matt Skelton (who Williams is reportedly scheduled to fight in February) before he entertains notions of facing the Beast From The East.

The Mirror in the UK looks forward to a big year in boxing for 2006. The Mirror considers what the future might bring for Joe Calzaghe, Amir Khan and Ricky Hatton, among others.

The Parksville Qualicum News has an interesting column on the travails of former Canadian Super Middleweight title holder Mark Woolnough. Woolnough’s career turned controversial – as widely reported in the Canadian press – at the beginning of this year when Woolnough and four other men were charged with manslaughter and assault after a fight outside a Parksville nightclub. The case returns to court next month. It’s an interesting read, as Woolnough is still looking to the future with hope.

Our own Marc Lichtenfeld provides plenty of food for thought with his Top Ten Wish List for boxing in the New Year. There’s plenty of good stuff here, but what really jumped out for me is Lichtenfeld’s opinion that a win over Zab Judah could have Floyd Mayweather knocking on the door of all-time great status. Seems to me this might be jumping the gun a little. Or is Marc right? Will it soon be time to call Floyd Mayweather Jr. an all-time great?

(More Boxing News Links at TheSweetScience.com)

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Articles of 2005

ShoBox Friday Night Fights

Published

19 years ago

December 31, 2005

Editor

Hot bantamweight prospect Raul “The Cobra” Martinez heads back to Chicago next Friday night as he is featured in the co-main event of SHOBOX “THE NEW GENERATION,” an action packed evening of professional boxing presented by Dominic Pesoli’s 8 Count Productions,’ HOME OF THE BEST IN CHICAGO BOXING, Kathy Duva’s Main Events Inc., along with Miller Lite and TCF Bank.

The two-time national amateur champion sporting a perfect 12-0 record with 9 knockouts, six of which have come in the first round, will take on Colombian Andres “Andy Boy” Ledesma, 13-1 (8 KOs) in a scheduled eight round bout.

Speaking after a training session at his home gym in Georgetown, Texas, Martinez said, “I’m truly looking forward to returning to Chicago. The fans were terrific in September, they were very supportive from the start of the fight,” an internationally televised first round knockout of Miguel Martinez on September 16th at the Aragon Ballroom.

Regarding his upcoming fight with Ledesma, “The Cobra” said, “I haven’t seen him fight, although I understand he’s fought at higher weights and will be naturally bigger than me. I’ve had great training for this fight and feel very confident. I really haven’t left the gym in months, just taking off Sunday’s and even then I get my running in. My thinking is that fights are won in the gym and complete preparation is the key.”

When asked about his being mentioned by Dan Rafael, ESPN’s boxing writer as one of the top prospect’s in the boxing world the 23-year-old San Antonio native said, ‘It’s a great compliment, but I still have much work to do. I want to be a champion for Main Events like Fernando Vargas and Arturo Gatti. But like Fernando said while he was in town, ‘be patient, work hard and your time will come.’”

Finishing the conversation, Martinez said, “I’m looking forward to starting out this year with a bang. I might have a couple less fights than the seven I had in 2005, but I’m looking to stepping up the competition, move up to ten-rounders and climb in the rankings.”

Headlining the evening is a ten-round welterweight showdown between boxing’s hottest prospect, unbeaten Joel Julio of Monteria, Columbia, and Ugandan native Roberto “The Doctor” Kamya. Julio, turning 21 years old the day before the fight, is 25-0 with 22 knockouts, twelve of which have come in the first two rounds. Kamya, now fighting out of West Palm Beach, Florida is 15-5 with four knockouts.

Tickets, starting at $30, are on sale in advance by calling 312-226-5800. Cicero Stadium is located at 1909 S. Laramie, at the corner of 19th and Laramie, just ten minutes south of the Eisenhower Expressway and ten minutes north of the Stevenson Expressway. Doors for this evening will open at 6pm with the first bell at 7pm.

The full bout lineup for the evening is:

Joel Julio vs. Roberto Kamya, ten rounds, welterweights

Raul Martinez vs. Andres Ledesma, eight rounds, bantamweights

Miguel Hernandez vs. Butch Hajicek, eight rounds, middleweights

David Pareja vs. Derek Andrews, eight rounds, light heavyweights

Mike Gonzales vs. Tony Kinney, four rounds, lightweights

Omar Reyes vs. Luis Navarro, five rounds, featherweights

Reynaldo Reyes vs. Ricardo Swift, four rounds, middleweights

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Articles of 2005

Pick ‘Em: Plenty of Big Upcoming Fights in ’06

Published

19 years ago

December 31, 2005

Phil Woolever

Here’s the early call on many top matches scheduled for the first half of 2006: Happy New Year!

As the new calendar dawns, there are already a considerable amount of premium bouts on the horizon. Things don’t look to be bogged down by undetermined championships next year. In many cases the scheduled face-offs involve the best fighters in the division, or at least close enough for general bragging rights. If anybody else with proper qualifications signs up to force the issue, all the better.

It can be argued that some pairings could have taken place within a more optimal timeframe, or that some headliners carry distracting baggage, but there are certainly enough heavy hitters on deck. That nobody can deny.

It doesn’t matter whether one considers the proverbial glass half empty or half full; there’s still the same amount of juice in the vessel. It’s nice to know that even with a high number of cancellations, there will still be plenty of important contenders on tap.

With elite fighters in weight divisions from top to bottom on the agenda, it’s an equivalent to what fans in more mainstream sports expect in a consistent championship format.

Baseball fans can almost always count on a World Series. Some hoops fanatics say too much attention to playoffs distracts unmotivated NBA teams during their regular season. In college, they project Sweet Sixteens. Football fans know there’s always a Super Bowl ahead to raise advertising dollars and test the USA’s halftime morals.

So too, there is method in boxing’s current madness.

The midnight crystal ball hasn’t even been unveiled in Times Square and there are already a number of potential thrillers scheduled. Most feature contrasting personalities that almost guarantee going along for the ride will be worthwhile. Any subsequent drops will probably be cheered.

Don King jumps right out of the auld lang gate with a January 7^th Showtime card featuring Zab Judah against Carlos Baldomir and Jean-Marc Mormeck in a cruiserweight unification against O’Neil Bell.

It will be the upset of the year, bar none, if Baldomir can tip the applecart before Judah gets to his scheduled super-showdown with Floyd Mayweather Jr. Meanwhile, Mormeck is emerging and should keep on rolling against Bell, who can expose him if he’s not for real.

The proverbial Big Bang starts with a January 21st rematch of one of the finest fights of ‘05, when Erik Morales goes against Manny Pacquaio for the second time on HBO pay per view. The fact that Morales was upset by Zahir Raheem after beating Pacquaio was no real loss in box-office luster. Artful Raheem will get a spot on the undercard and hope his patience is rewarded.

Everyone figures Morales and Pacquaio will pick up where they left off. Like the first time, the rematch is a pick’em contest. Management distractions and glove restrictions cited as Pacquaio’s previous problems won’t matter this time. The two are very evenly matched and their styles will make for another whapathon. It could come down to corners, where Freddie Roach gets the edge since Morales will have a new trainer for the first time since replacing his father after the Raheem lesson.

February features four of the game’s most enduring attractions, in a pair of crucial matchups.

First up, Showtime presents the Jose Luis Castillo – Diego Corrales tiebreaker from El Paso on Feb 4^th. This is another pick ‘em pair, barring any sideshow. In boxing that disclaimer may be a stretch, since the sideshow is part of the act and the charm.

As far as action inside the strands goes, every round these guys have fought has been great. There’s no reason to think that pattern won’t continue. Regarding the result, Castillo keeps the pressure on as he did in the second fight, but he’ll walk into trouble from a more reserved Corrales. We still don’t know which coin to flip.

February also holds a better late than never affair between two perennial favorites as Shane Mosley collides with Fernando Vargas on the 25^th.This fight could lead to a winning ticket in the Golden Boy sweepstakes for a fall bonanza against Oscar De La Hoya.

Vargas has been in tougher recently, based on comparable strength of opposition stats, but he’s seen little action. What weight they enter the ring at may have a lot to do with the result. If Vargas has to struggle at the scale, Mosley might have the battle in the bag after round nine.

It’s hard to imagine Mosley getting stopped early, but Vargas doesn’t have to hurt him, he just has to knock him down three times. With natural size, he may be able to do just that, but Mosley would have to box uncharacteristically flat.

Unless Mosley decides to heed the crowd, the most likely scenario is that Shane plays it safe, picks a few shots, and stays away enough to capture a comfortable, dull decision. An unbowed Vargas maintains his fan base but not his bettors.

March both comes in and goes out as a lion.

On March 4^th Joe Calzaghe welcomes Jeff Lacy to Manchester UK for what may be the biggest blowout of the headlining bunch. Calzaghe gets the chance to prove his considerable home-based reputation once and for all, but if Lacy creams him as we expect, that glossy record will be severely tarnished.

All Calzaghe has to do is make a respectable stand, but that’s no small task against the rising Lacy. A motivated Calzaghe, songs of England ringing in his ears, could pull a big surprise if he can exploit Lacy’s relatively limited technical development, but that’s a longshot indeed.

It looks like Lacy can get by on power alone. He could soon emerge as a pound-for-pound leader. Old Joe’s hometown advantage will last about two left hooks.

March 11^th has the Ides of history to beware for at least one old lion, with farewell (we’ll see) fireworks featuring Roy Jones Jr. against Bernard Hopkins. Less than two years ago they were considered untouchable all time greats. Now between them they’ve lost five in a row.

This goodbye fight is contracted at light heavyweight, for what seems like an oldies night. Hopkins is the senior at age 41 to Jones’s 37, but Roy seems more the grandpa figure, last seen hanging on against Antonio Tarver. Youth, as it were here, will prevail.

This bout was signed quickly as each principal, usually sticklers for favorable contract clauses, agreed to parity in a demonstration of businessman first and fighter second. They may both expect easy marks. How much the boys have left by the time they get down to business remains to be seen. The history books will show this as a climactic career bout between Hall of Famers.

At 175 pounds, Hopkins may be in for rude awakening. Jones may have been more thoroughly outfought recently, but he was rumbling with bigger, tougher men than Jermain Taylor or Howard Eastman. Respectable as he is, Taylor still falls short of the level of Tarver, at least for now. The difference is still fifteen pounds less pop.

It will be quite a feat if Hopkins can stay in the fight, even at Jones’s advanced age. Our stars point to Jones winning in overwhelming fashion.

On March 18^th, James Toney meets Hasim Rahman in another pairing of seasoned war-horses.

Toney and Rahman already had their introductions, when they brawled in Mexico during a WBC gathering to bestow Rahman’s new belt. Between formalities, Toney got married, which could bring up the old questions about carnal training.

Let’s hope when they meet in the ring, they restore some of the fire missing from the heavyweights in ‘05. Toney might have an edge in recent form, but Rahman shows fine tuning he previously lacked. The winner might get newly “crowned’ Nicolai Valuev, an easy payday outside Germany.

Rahman could be the heavyweight that finally makes Toney look like a blown up middleweight. But anything less than a top effort will probably lead to embarrassing night for the Rock and give Toney solid claim to being the true heavyweight champ.

This might not be the most artful fight of the new season, but it could well be the most grueling, and the closest. He who’s faced the better big boys gets the nod. Advantage Rahman.

March 25 features Marco Antonio Barrera, probably the strongest overall claimant to 130 pound honors. The likely opponent is said to be always tough Jesus Chavez.

Chavez seemed rejuvenated when he met Leavander Johnson, but Johnson’s tragic death may have taken some of the steam out of thoughtful Chavez, said to have received Johnson’s family blessing to continue in Leavander’s name. That could mean a lot of inspiration. Either way, if he does meet Chavez, who hung tough with one arm against Erik Morales, Barrera won’t get any slack. The Fates say Chavez, whose wife recently served in Iraq, is a live, live underdog.

Another clash to be King of the Hill finds Floyd Mayweather Jr, arguably the game’s finest practitioner, bumping heads with Zab Judah, one of very few boxers who rivals Mayweather in speed, skills, and brashness.

Their hoedown, scheduled for April 8^th, is one of the top pound-for-pound pairings in recent years. Judah will need a career best performance to have a chance of victory. That’s not to say he can’t pull it off, but currently Mayweather is in a different galaxy in terms of punching power. Slow-motion replays may be the only way to follow the flying fists once these two whirlwinds unload.

Mayweather should be around a 4-1 favorite. Judah is good enough to make taking the odds an attractive proposition, since that’s probably as good of odds as one is likely to see on Floyd for a while. Mayweather will stop Judah in his tracks.

The first half of next year is set to conclude with the star power of Oscar De La Hoya, probably against noteworthy foil Ricardo Mayorga on May 6. There could be some snags before a contract is finalized, but if it comes off count on Mayorga for promotional sound bite nastiness. One of the questions is whether or not he’ll be able to get under Oscar’s skin, and it might actually be entertaining to see the classy, model perfect De La Hoya show he’s human and freak out against the Nicaraguan maniac.

Mayorga may have burnt his best bridges already. De La Hoya has not only the boxing skill to negate Mayorga’s offense, but enough power to end it early. If Mayorga rushes in and causes a cut, De La Hoya might get ruffled enough to duck into defense and Mayorga could get a decision that goes to the cards after six rounds or so. It will be wild for as long as it lasts.

Pro boxing, like many sports, had its share of problems during 2005, but there were also many positives. Most notably, as usual, was superior and inspiring action inside the strands. Unless there’s a mass freeze-up at the top, early 2006 figures to see decisive interaction among many well-known fighters.

If even fifty per cent of the aforementioned pairings come to fruition, it’s a strong likelihood the upcoming year has at least one very positive half. Arturo Gatti, Miguel Cotto, Antonio Margarito, Brian Viloria, and Shannon Briggs, to name a few, are also on deck. No matter how you chose to look at or measure mass qualities, there’s still just as much good to be seen.

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