Notes on Josh Warrington, 12-Round Fights, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

News arrived this morning (Feb. 12) that IBF world featherweight champion Josh Warrington had split from promoter Frank Warren and was rejoining his former promoter Eddie Hearn. The news came as a surprise as it was well-known that Warrington was angling for a unification fight with WBO title-holder Shakur Stevenson. In theory, that fight was easy to make as Frank Warren and Stevenson’s promoter Bob Arum currently have a very cozy relationship, an upshot of their shared investment in the Gypsy King, Tyson Fury.

Warren would have it that the parting was mutual. He said he was bummed when the IBF elevated fellow Yorkshireman Kid Galahad to Warrington’s mandatory. They fought this past June and although it was a very close fight – Warrington eaked out a split decision – it was not a fan-friendly fight, at least not to a neutral observer. Warren said he had zero interest in making the rematch.

That strikes us as disingenuous as champions routinely skirt their mandatory for a more lucrative assignment, even if it means relinquishing their belt. It’s a fair assumption that Warrington (pictured outside Elland Road Stadium, home to his beloved Leeds United soccer club) became disillusioned when the Stevenson fight fell out (Shakur has a date with Miguel Marriaga in New York on March 14).

The good news for fight fans is that a different unification fight is seemingly heading Warrington’s way and on paper it’s a better fight than Warrington-Stevenson. Hearn has a good working relationship with Golden Boy Promotions which promotes WBA featherweight title-holder Can Xu. Both Hearn’s company, Matchroom, and Golden Boy are affiliated with DAZN.

Stevenson would have been a big favorite over Warrington, an over-achiever, even if the fight were to be held in Leeds where Warrington has a large and fervent following. Warrington vs. Xu, by contrast, is a tricky fight on which to hang a betting line. Moreover, Can Xu is more high-octane than Shakur. Xu won his title in Houston with an upset of Puerto Rico’s Jesus M Rojas in a Fight of the Year candidate. (There’s a press conference in Leeds tomorrow; will it bring news of a Warrington-Xu fight?)

Fewer 12-Round Fights

On the recommendation of its medical committee, the World Boxing Council announced this week that it was reducing all WBC-affiliated title fights – save for the topmost (“world” and “silver”) – from 12 to 10 rounds. “The most important rule (change) in boxing history,” said WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman in a press release, “was to reduce world championship fights from 15 to 12 rounds. The change has saved lives and dignified the quality of life of all boxers after concluding their career inside the ring.”

For the record, the WBC was the first of the major sanctioning bodies to reduce world title fights from 15 to 12 rounds. The WBC announced the changeover on Dec. 10, 1982. The impetus was the fight the previous month that proved fatal for Duk Koo Kim who was stopped in the 14^th round by Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini. (Cynics would have it that the true impetus was that a 12-round fight, unlike a 15-round fight, could be fit into an hour block of television.)

The WBC rule took effect on Jan. 1, 1983. Not quite five years later, on Oct. 19, 1987, the WBA reduced title fights from 15 to 12 rounds. The IBF followed suit on June 9, 1988. (The WBO wasn’t yet born.)

The reduction didn’t sit well with the old guard. Moreover, both Bob Arum, the promoter of the Mancini-Kim fight, and Boom Boom Mancini himself were opposed to it. “This decision is a stupidity that converts boxing into a joke,” Arum was quoted as saying. Mancini faulted the WBC for giving in to the critics that called the sport barbaric.

Of course, with boxing being the Wild West of professional sports, 15-round fights did not completely disappear. On June 7, 1997, a fight in Ruidoso, New Mexico, between middleweights Eric Holland and Jose Alfredo Flores went to the scorecards after 15 rounds. The match was sanctioned by a fly-by-night organization called the World Boxing Board.

In his press release, Sulaiman asserted that studies indicated that a boxer is at greater risk if he moves too quickly into fights of longer duration. “It is necessary and imperative to graduate this process of maturity,” he said.

A more general understanding is that rapid weight loss leaves a boxer more vulnerable to a tragic outcome. Frank Lotierzo has noted that fatalities are rare in the heavyweight division where boxers are not required to make weight. The inference is that the WBC and the other organizations may have been better served if they had retained the 15-round limit for heavyweight title fights. This exception would have brought more glamour to the sport’s most glamorous division.

Food for thought.

St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

With Valentine’s Day approaching, this reporter was reminded of the most famous Valentine’s Day prizefight, the Feb. 14, 1951 battle between Jake LaMotta and Sugar Ray Robinson at Chicago’s landmark (but long gone) Chicago Stadium, the city’s premier indoor arena.

They had previously fought five times, Sugar Ray winning four despite LaMotta’s significant weight advantage, but yet another do-over was yet a compelling match-up. It differed from the others in that the others were non-title fights. But LaMotta now held the middleweight title, having wrested it from Marcel Cerdan, and Robinson, who then held the welterweight title, would be bidding to become a two-division belt-holder. Moreover, although Robinson held a 4-1 lead in their series, he had been hard-pressed to turn away Jake in their most recent encounter, a 12-round match at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. And the carrot, of course, was that Robinson, boasting an astonishing 121-1-2 record, hadn’t tasted defeat since LaMotta out-pointed him six years earlier.

Befitting his nickname, Bronx Bull, LaMotta attempted to constrict the ring into a phone booth. But Robinson, with his longer reach, was able to keep him at a distance and piled up points as the bout progressed. Finally, in the 13^th, he finished him. LaMotta was groggy and blood-stained when the referee halted the contest at the 2:04 mark.

With the fight being in Chicago, former stomping grounds of Al Capone, it was inevitable that reporters would allude to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in their fight stories. It was something of a massacre, true, but LaMotta, who maintained his distinction of having never been knocked down, left the ring with his dignity intact. The audience stood and applauded him as he made his way back to the dressing room and organist Al Melgard took that as his cue and launched into “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

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