You Can’t Spell “Blame” Without “Lame”…RASKIN

Published

14 years ago

October 3, 2011

“The worst part is, I don’t even feel bad about the days that I hated Bartman … I know it’s irrational, but I think most of us can’t help it.”
—Michael Wilbon

The new ESPN Films documentary Catching Hell spins off of the case of Steve Bartman, the Chicago Cubs fan who interfered with a foul ball and indirectly sparked the 2003 Cubs’ playoff collapse, to examine the psychology behind scapegoating in sports. In an interview that was tangentially attached to the documentary, Chicago native Michael Wilbon captured the essence of the sports fan’s need to find a scapegoat with one word: “irrational.”

Everybody knows it wasn’t really Bartman’s fault that the Cubs didn’t go to the World Series, not with the team holding the same 3-0 lead after that play that it held beforehand. Everybody knows it wasn’t Bill Buckner’s fault that the Red Sox lost the 1986 World Series, not with the score already tied before he infamously let a ground ball roll past his glove. Rationally, we know there’s blame to be spread around. It was Bartman—along with Moises Alou and Alex Gonzalez and the pitchers who gave up the hits and the fans who let their sense of dread overcome them and spread to the players on the field. It was Buckner—along with Calvin Schiraldi and Bob Stanley and manager John McNamara. We see and understand all of this when we enter rational mode. But sports make that mode hard to locate sometimes. Sports make us irrational. And when we’re irrational, we need someone to blame for what’s gone wrong.

And that brings us to Oscar De La Hoya and Victor Ortiz, who drew the collective scorn of the fight fraternity last week with a teleconference that even LeBron James’ image consultants could have told them was a bad idea. Defeat in the highest-profile fight of Ortiz’s career made both the boxer and his mentor/promoter think and behave irrationally. They called a press conference so they could whine publicly and place the blame everywhere except on the fighter who (a) intentionally headbutted his opponent and (b) dropped his hands and looked away from that opponent while the fight was going on.

This isn’t to say Floyd Mayweather isn’t guilty of unsportsmanlike behavior; he most definitely is. It isn’t to say that Joe Cortez’s refereeing wasn’t flawed; as usual, it was. But the great majority of the blame for Ortiz getting knocked out in the fourth round falls on the shoulders of Ortiz. After he launched a blatant headbutt, he, to use a baseball cliché, took his eye off the ball. He backed away from his opponent with his hands down, got hit with a left hook, then somehow didn’t take the hint, kept his hands at his sides, and got knocked out with a right hand. In the immediate aftermath of the fight, he seemed to understand he’d made a mistake and insisted he would learn from it. A week later, he was able to find no fault in anything he’d done and insisted he deserves a rematch. Defeat has left him irrational. He needs someone to blame. He’s turned into Bob Stanley, forgetting about the wild pitch he threw to let the tying run in and remembering only Buckner’s error to allow the winning run to cross the plate.

The collapse-and-scapegoat phenomenon reared its head in baseball again in the aftermath of last Wednesday night, the final evening of the regular season. The Red Sox and Braves completed quite possibly the two most extraordinary September nosedives in the history of the game, and naturally, media members and fans of both teams have spent the last few days looking for someone to blame. The managers, Terry Francona and Fredi Gonzalez, both hit the hot seat immediately, with two-time World Series winner Francona gone two days after the season ended. In Red Sox Nation, some have pointed the finger at ESPN The Magazine for releasing “The Boston Issue” a few days before the end of the season, the latest “cover curse” to befall a player or team. In reality, both the Sox and the Braves had been depleted by injuries to the extent that neither had much chance of getting out of the first round of the postseason anyway. But that sort of rationalizing mostly took a backseat to the irrationalizing that devastating sports defeats breed: Fire the manager! Curse the magazine! Blame the Yankees!

In boxing, as with most individual sports, there isn’t as much room for scapegoating. It’s a one-on-one competition. Most of the time, the loser loses because he either made mistakes or wasn’t good enough to win in the first place. But for some reason, in 2011, excuse-making is at an all-time high in our sport.

It was all David Haye could do back on July 2 to wait for the 12th round to end before removing his shoe and showing the world his pinkie toe. There was no “I should have done more, I should have taken more chances.” Just “look at my toe, with 10 good toes I’d be the greatest of all-time.”

Three weeks later, Zab Judah got dropped by a barely legal bodyshot from Amir Khan, acted as if it was a low blow, and then blamed the referee after he’d been counted out. Never mind that Judah was getting dominated for all five rounds that the fight lasted or that Vic Drakulich made the correct ruling. Never mind that it looked from the outside like Judah could have gotten up but used the borderline punch as an excuse to quit. A month after the fight, Judah, apparently stuck in irrational mode, lodged a formal protest.

But De La Hoya and Ortiz are the leaders in the clubhouse in the 2011 pugilistic expostulation competition. On their conference call, Ortiz said the headbutt he launched was retaliation for elbows thrown by Mayweather. He said Mayweather’s punches were “like getting slapped by a girl,” which would be fine to allege if one of those slaps hadn’t knocked him out. De La Hoya went to town on Cortez, pointing all the fingers he could while proving just how out of sync he is with reality by also declaring that Cortez is usually “one of the best refs out there.”

I don’t believe professional poker player Daniel Negreanu is a boxing fan, so I don’t think this was directed at De La Hoya or Ortiz, but Negreanu tweeted last week, “I always have way more respect for people who just admit ‘It’s my fault I’m a idiot’ rather than look for creative ways to deflect blame.” It’s hard to find anyone who thinks Ortiz wouldn’t have been better off sticking with the smiling, aw-shucks, “I’ll learn from this” approach that he used on the night of the defeat.

But like most people with an emotional investment in a sport, Ortiz needed to place blame. It was an irrepressible urge. He turned Cortez into Buckner. He turned Mayweather into Bartman. He needed his scapegoats.

Maybe Ortiz sounded like a fool on the teleconference last week. But every sports fan should be able to understand why he felt compelled to go that route. We all do it. We all look for someone to blame. We all think the refs are out to get our favorite teams. We’re all irrational.

Oscar De La Hoya and Victor Ortiz simply made the mistake of using their access to a public platform to disseminate their irrational feelings in ways that most of us can’t. And now, quite deservedly, they’re catching hell for it.

Eric Raskin can be contacted at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com. You can follow him on Twitter @EricRaskin and listen to new episodes of his podcast, Ring Theory, at http://ringtheory.podbean.com.

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Eric Raskin

Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

Published

1 day ago

May 4, 2025

David A. Avila

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Japan’s Naoya “Monster” Inoue banged it out with Mexico’s Ramon Cardenas, survived an early knockdown and pounded out a stoppage win to retain the undisputed super bantamweight world championship on Sunday.

Japan and Mexico delivered for boxing fans again after American stars failed in back-to-back days.

“By watching tonight’s fight, everyone is well aware that I like to brawl,” Inoue said.

Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs), and Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs) and his wicked left hook, showed the world and 8,474 fans at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that prizefighting is about punching, not running.

After massive exposure for three days of fights that began in New York City, then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then to Nevada, it was the casino capital of the world that delivered what most boxing fans appreciate- pure unadulterated action fights.

Monster Inoue immediately went to work as soon as the opening bell rang with a consistent attack on Cardenas, who very few people knew anything about.

One thing promised by Cardenas’ trainer Joel Diaz was that his fighter “can crack.”

Cardenas proved his trainer’s words truthful when he caught Inoue after a short violent exchange with a short left hook and down went the Japanese champion on his back. The crowd was shocked to its toes.

“I was very surprised,” said Inoue about getting dropped. ““In the first round, I felt I had good distance. It got loose in the second round. From then on, I made sure to not take that punch again.”

Inoue had no trouble getting up, but he did have trouble avoiding some of Cardenas massive blows delivered with evil intentions. Though Inoue did not go down again, a look of total astonishment blanketed his face.

A real fight was happening.

Cardenas, who resembles actor Andy Garcia, was never overly aggressive but kept that left hook of his cocked and ready to launch whenever he saw the moment. There were many moments against the hyper-aggressive Inoue.

Both fighters pack power and both looked to find the right moment. But after Inoue was knocked down by the left hook counter, he discovered a way to eliminate that weapon from Cardenas. Still, the Texas-based fighter had a strong right too.

In the sixth round Inoue opened up with one of his lightning combinations responsible for 10 consecutive knockout wins. Cardenas backed against the ropes and Inoue blasted away with blow after blow. Then suddenly, Cardenas turned Inoue around and had him on the ropes as the Mexican fighter unloaded nasty combinations to the body and head. Fans roared their approval.

“I dreamed about fighting in front of thousands of people in Las Vegas,” said Cardenas. “So, I came to give everything.”

Inoue looked a little surprised and had a slight Mona Lisa grin across his face. In the seventh round, the Japanese four-division world champion seemed ready to attack again full force and launched into the round guns blazing. Cardenas tried to catch Inoue again with counter left hooks but Inoue’s combos rained like deadly hail. Four consecutive rights by Inoue blasted Cardenas almost through the ropes. The referee Tom Taylor ruled it a knockdown. Cardenas beat the count and survived the round.

In the eighth round Inoue looked eager to attack and at the bell launched across the ring and unloaded more blows on Cardenas. A barrage of 14 unanswered blows forced the referee to stop the fight at 45 seconds of round eight for a technical knockout win.

“I knew he was tough,” said Inoue. “Boxing is not that easy.”

Espinoza Wins

WBO featherweight titlist Rafael Espinosa (27-0, 23 KOs) uppercut his way to a knockout win over Edward Vazquez (17-3, 4 KOs) in the seventh round.

“I wanted to fight a game fighter to show what I am capable,” said Espinoza.

Espinosa used the leverage of his six-foot, one-inch height to slice uppercuts under the guard of Vazquez. And when the tall Mexican from Guadalajara targeted the body, it was then that the Texas fighter began to wilt. But he never surrendered.

Though he connected against Espinoza in every round, he was not able to slow down the taller fighter and that allowed the Mexican fighter to unleash a 10-punch barrage including four consecutive uppercuts. The referee stopped the fight at 1:47 of the seventh round.

It was Espinoza’s third title defense.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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Undercard Results and Recaps from the Inoue-Cardenas Show in Las Vegas

Published

2 days ago

May 4, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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The curtain was drawn on a busy boxing weekend tonight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas where the featured attraction was Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue appearing in his twenty-fifth world title fight.

The top two fights (Inoue vs. Roman Cardenas for the unified 122-pound crown and Rafael Espinoza vs. Edward Vazquez for the WBO world featherweight diadem) aired on the main ESPN platform with the preliminaries streaming on ESPN+.

The finale of the preliminaries was a 10-rounder between welterweights Rohan Polanco and Fabian Maidana. A 2020/21 Olympian for the Dominican Republic, Polanco was a solid favorite and showed why by pitching a shutout, punctuating his triumph by knocking Maidana to his knees late in the final round with a hard punch to the pit of the stomach.

Polanco improved to 16-0 (10). Argentina’s Maidana, the younger brother of former world title-holder Marcos Maidana, fell to 24-4 while maintaining his distinction of never being stopped.

Emiliano Vargas, a rising force in the 140-pound division with the potential to become a crossover star, advanced to 14-0 (12 KOs) with a second-round stoppage Juan Leon. Vargas, who turned 21 last month, is the son of former U.S. Olympian Fernando Vargas who had big money fights with the likes of Felix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya. Emiliano knocked Leon down hard twice in round two – both the result of right-left combinations — before Robert Hoyle waived it off.

A 28-year-old Spaniard, Leon was 11-2-1 heading in.

In his U.S. debut, 29-year-old Japanese southpaw Mikito Nakano (13-0, 12 KOs) turned in an Inoue-like performance with a fourth-round stoppage of Puerto Rico’s Pedro Medina. Nakano, a featherweight, had Medina on the canvas five times before referee Harvey Dock waived it off at the 1:58 mark of round four. The shell-shocked Medina (16-2) came into the contest riding a 15-fight winning streak.

Lynwood, California junior middleweight Art Barrera Jr, a 19-year-old protégé of Robert Garcia, scored a sixth-round stoppage of Chicago’s Juan Carlos Guerra. There were no knockdowns, but the bout had turned sharply in Barrera’s favor when referee Thomas Taylor intervened. The official time was 1:15 of round six.

Barrera improved to 9-0 (7 KOs). The spunky but outclassed Guerra, who upset Nico Ali Walsh in his previous outing, declined to 6-2-1.

In the lid-lifter, a 10-round featherweight affair, Muskegon Michigan’s Ra’eese Aleem improved to 22-1 (12) with a unanimous decision over LA’s hard-trying Rudy Garcia (13-2-1). The judges had it 99-01, 98-92, and 97-93.

Aleem, 34, was making his second start since June of 2023 when he lost a split decision in Australia to Sam Goodman with a date with Naoya Inoue hanging in the balance.

Check back shortly for David Avila’s recaps of the two world title fights.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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Canelo Alvarez Upends Dancing Machine William Scull in Saudi Arabia

Published

2 days ago

May 3, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who has acquired a new nickname – “The Face of Boxing” – is accustomed to fighting on Cinco De Mayo weekend, but this year was different. For the first time, Canelo was fighting outside the continent of North America and entering the ring at an awkward hour. His match with William Scull started at 6:30 on a Sunday morning in Riyadh.

In the opposite corner was 32-year-old William Scull, an undefeated (23-0) Cuban by way of Germany, whose performance was better suited to “Dancing With the Stars” than to a world title fight. Constantly bouncing from side to side but rarely letting his hands go, Scull frustrated Canelo who found it near-impossible to corner him, but one can’t win a fight solely on defense and the Mexican superstar was returned the rightful winner in a bout that was a fitting cap to a desultory two days of Saudi-promoted prizefighting. The scores were 115-113, 116-112, and 119-109. In winning, Canelo became a fully unified super middleweight champion twice over.

Terence Crawford was in attendance and HE Turki Alalshikh made it official: Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) and Canelo (63-2-2, 39 KOs) will meet in the Fight of the Century (Alalshikh’s words) on Sept. 12 in Las Vegas at the home of the city’s NFL team, the Raiders. For whatever it’s worth, each of Canelo’s last seven fights has gone the full 12 rounds.

Semi-wind-up

In a match between the WBC world cruiserweight title-holder and the WBC world cruiserweight “champion in recess” (don’t ask), the former, Badou Jack, brought some clarity to the diadem by winning a narrow decision over Noel Mikaelian. One of the judges had it a draw (114-114), but the others gave the fight to “Jack the Ripper” by 115-113 scores.

A devout Muslim who is now a full-time resident of Saudi Arabia, the Sweden-born Jack, a three-division title-holder, had the crowd in his corner. Now 41 years old, he advanced his record to 29-3-3 (17). It was the first pro loss for Mikaelian (27-1), a Florida-based Armenian who was subbing for Ryan Rozicki.

The distracted CompuBox operator credited Mikaelian with throwing 300 more punches but there was no controversy.

Tijuana’s Jaime Munguia, a former junior middleweight title-holder, avenged his shocking loss to Bruno Sarace with a unanimous 12-round decision in their rematch. This was Munguia’s first fight with Eddy Reynoso in his corner. The scores were 117-111 and 116-112 twice.

Surace’s one-punch knockout of Munguia in mid-December in Tijuana was the runaway pick for the 2024 Upset of the Year. Heading in, Munguia was 44-1 with his lone defeat coming at the hands of Canelo Alvarez. Munguia had won every round against Surace before the roof fell in on him.

Surace won a few rounds tonight, but Munguia was the busier fighter and landed the cleaner shots. It was the first pro loss for Surace (26-1-2) and ended his 23-fight winning streak. The Frenchman hails for Marseilles.

Heavyweights

In a 10-round heavyweight match fought at a glacial pace, Martin Bakole (21-2-1) and Efe Ajagba (20-1-1) fought to a draw. One of the judges favored Ajagba 96-94 but he was outvoted by his cohorts who each had it 95-95.

Bakole, a 7/2 favorite, came in at 299 pounds, 15 more than he carried in his signature win over Jared Anderson, and looked sluggish. He was never able to effectively close off the ring against the elusive Ajagba who fought off his back foot and failed to build on his early lead.

The fight between the Scotch-Congolese campaigner Bakole and his Nigerian-American foe was informally contested for the heavyweight championship of Africa. That “title” remains vacant.

In a 6-rounder, heavy-handed Cuban light heavyweight Brayon Leon, a stablemate of Canelo Alvarez, was extended the distance for the first time while advancing his record to 7-0 at the expense of Mexico’s Aaron Roche (11-4-1). Leon knocked Roche to the canvas in the fourth round with a right-left combination, but the Mexican stayed the course while eating a lot of hard punches.

Photo credit: Leigh Dawney / Queensberry Promotions

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