Zab Judah right back in the saddle again

The kneecappers down at union headquarters aren’t going to be too happy about this Zab Judah character. He’s breaking union rules, setting a bad example, making everyone in Local 123 look bad.

You can’t have freelancers like this Judah guy in the union. It just doesn’t look good. The rebels have to be weeded out, cut from the herd, black-balled if that’s what it takes.

They can’t be allowed to run free.

Fighting for a world title one month and then turning around and fighting a former world champion again the next month? The same guy boxing two big fights in five weeks? Whoa, wait a minute. This can’t happen. That’s too soon. The union won‘t allow it. It has to be stopped, outlawed, nipped in the bud. You allow this kind of rampant disregard for the unwritten rules, and pretty soon, fighters will be wanting to fight as many as five or six times a year. What happens then?

Of course, the fight game doesn’t have a union, but fortunately, it does have Zab Judah. And he’s fighting again, just 35 days after losing a tough decision to welterweight champ Cory Spinks.

Apparently, there were no long-term battle wounds in his close loss to Spinks on April 10.
Not a guy to sit around and pout, Judah is scheduled to fight veteran Rafael Pineda on Saturday on the undercard of the Antonio Tarver – Roy Jones Jr. fight at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

It happens once in awhile, guys deciding they want to climb right back into the saddle. Maybe you’ve seen it or heard about it. You’re minding your own business, catching an occasional ESPN fight or watching a match on HBO, when you suddenly notice the same guy fighting again. And he’s fighting under the same name he used last time. He’s not even trying to hide the fact that he’s the same guy.

So you turn to your wife.

“Say, didn’t we just see this guy fight six weeks ago on ESPN? What’s he doing fighting again so soon? Is that allowed? Isn’t there a mandatory rule that says if you’re a top contender or a world champion, you have to wait a minimum of six-months between fights, regardless of how the fight ends? Aren’t former and present heavyweight champs allowed to fight only once a year, preferably in June?”

Zab, who says he’s pretty happy settling in as a welterweight instead of struggling to make junior-welter, is fighting right away again because he says he wants to be different.
“Me having such a big fight with Spinks and then five weeks later jumping right back in there to do another fight, that’s something that a lot of fighters of my caliber don’t do,” he said on a recent conference call. “I just want to be different.”

That will do it.

“I want to dedicate this fight to all the Zab Judah fans out there,” he said. “I know that after the Spinks fight, they were a little bit upset, so I wanted to come here and give them something to hold them over for the summer.”

What a guy.

Now, where did those kneecappers go?