Safe Side Of The Ropes

By: Andrew Harrison

Aug 22 2010

Category: Uncategorized

5 Comments

As we trundle away from the season of shorts, flip flops and rained off barbecues, solace can be found for British fight fans in the recommencement of the domestic boxing schedule and this year it’ll be slightly different. In a pretty significant move, Sky have rejigged their weekend boxing programme, switching fight nights from Friday late to Saturday prime time. British boxing not only has a crack at gaining a wider audience share, it can also shoulder barge its way onto the sports pages of the Sunday broadsheets. Happy, happy days.

Here’s how September shapes up:

• Sep 4th:  Scotland’s Ricky Burns takes on Ring Magazine’s number two ranked super featherweight Roman “Rocky” Martinez at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. Burns, a prohibitive underdog, will be hoping to pick up and alphabet title if he can pull of a shock on this Frank Warren card, one which also features John Simpson and Stephen Smith vying for the Commonwealth featherweight title whilst Paul Appleby also starts.
• Sep 11th:  Nottingham’s Jason “Too Smooth” Booth has his own fairytale crack at an alphabet title the following week as he climbs in with Canadian hotshot Steve Molitor in Houghton-le-Spring. Booth is the domestic Renaissance man who has battled alcohol addiction to annex British and Commonwealth super bantamweight titles whilst Molitor will be full of confidence after his last visit to the North East, one which saw him thump out the Hartlepool firebrand Michael Hunter. This Maloney card will also feature Sunderland’s Tony Jeffries looking to make amends for his previous outing alongside British feather champ Martin Lindsay.
• Sep 18th:  Frank Warren goes extra large with a mammoth Birmingham card tagged “The Magnificent Seven”. Cream of the multiple mouth waterers on offer is Matthew Macklin’s long awaited middleweight grudge match with Darren Barker, however, there is so much more to behold. Nathan Cleverly steps up to world level against Ring mag’s number six rated light heavyweight Karo Murat whilst Michael Jennings and Kell Brook meet to settle domestic superiority at welterweight. Elsewhere, Derek Chisora and Sam Sexton meet to settle the argument over which one of them is the second best heavyweight in the land whilst Ryan Rhodes defends his European light middleweight title against Lukas Konecny. There are also appearances from Frankie Gavin, James DeGale and Don Broadhurst.
• Sep 25th:  Stalwart of “forgotten man” type articles, Manchester’s much maligned John Murray defends his European lightweight crown on a Matchroom card in Altrincham. Originally pegged for an indoor karting centre in Manchester (you couldn’t make this stuff up), Murray will now attempt to advance his career against Andriy Kudriavtsev in a suburban leisure centre on the outskirts of Manchester.

It’s a highly entertaining month’s worth of action, one I can’t wait to get cracking with after a rather drab summer of heel kicking and rumour mongering. It could be the most eventful British beat for many a long year, I for one don’t recall having as many potential world class fighters coming through the ranks to focus on.

Here are a few notes from events over the past week or two:

From time to time I stumble across Frank Warren’s column in Britain’s most popular tabloid (I’d like to stress that I don’t purchase the rag in question but my room mate likes to and he occasionally leaves it lying around in convenient locations). I’ve let my feelings be known about this vehicle before so won’t go over old ground again; I merely thought I’d dip into this week’s to poke a stick at it more than anything.

Warren seems chirpy about Jean Pascal’s win last weekend and quite content to hail him as “the man” at light heavyweight. I’ve never seen such praise lavished upon a non-Warren fighter which leads me to believe that he fancies Nathan Cleverly’s chances against the transplanted Canadian. Warren goes as far as stating that Pascal “could face stiff competition from Cleverly and Tony Bellew in the next 18 months”, thereby keeping up his habit of promoting his guys on the back of more successful fighters. Whilst Cleverly is ready to step up into world class, Bellew is still very much at the prospect stage, despite his Commonwealth title win over four fight novice (yep, you read that right) Atoli Moore.

Further perusal leads one to deduce that Warren doesn’t have a lot of love for Gary Shaw (then again who does for the hangdog human weeble?) as he lays the boot into Chad Dawson (and Shaw in the process), with the following little nugget: “Dawson’s gone the same way as Jeff Lacy – a hyped prospect beaten when he ventured on to foreign soil in a world title fight”. Ridiculous doesn’t even cover that remark, which proves that if nothing else, Warren’s utterings are essential reading for fans of mirth.

Talking of Pascal-Dawson (yep I’m really on the ball with my reporting, the week long lag to find online footage is a killer), I had the fight 116-113 at the time of the stoppage in a bout I found relatively simple to score. Pascal was able to pocket rounds pretty easily by outworking his American foe, the simplest of strategies which worked to a tee. Dawson has an abundance of gifts and I was more impressed by them than usual (when he had the good grace to offer ‘em up that is). His jab could be fantastic if he put some salt and pepper on it and his combinations are sweet, although, it appears that he needs to set his feet in order to fire off a burst, which of course Pascal exploited to perfection.

I was particularly perturbed by the post fight coverage, one which featured various outlets bemoaning what Dawson didn’t do (fight hard…work…stop Pascal) rather than praising what Pascal did. That sucks. I was especially pissed off at Gary Shaw who bleated on at the post fight presser about Canadian judging, deliberate headbutts and holding, all of which made me dislike him more than I already do. What a classless individual the man is, a trait which has filtered down to Dawson, who made every excuse in the book after the event whilst adding meaninglessly that he “wasn’t making any excuses”. If a fighter decides to acquit themselves as timidly as Dawson managed on away turf (and in the same way fellow Shaw fighter Andre Dirrell did against Carl Froch) then they really have nothing and no-one to blame but themselves. 

With a personality as dour as Dawson’s it’s little wonder the guy can’t draw curtains. Compare his response with Pascal’s after his stirring effort in defeat to Carl Froch in ’08, where he offered magnanimously: “I thought the fight was a little bit closer, but the best man won tonight”. Dawson can rebound but he’d be better served throwing away those lemons he’s sucking on and telling it how it is.

On to the heavyweights and if Tomasz Adamek’s struggle with Michael Grant last night proved one thing, it’s that both he and the Scarlet Pimpernel, David Haye should cut the crap and get straight in with a Klitschko. The natural size disadvantages the former cruiserweight pair face up at heavyweight means that they’ll have tough fights regardless of the quality of big men they face. Why knock chunks off their reputations in “learning bouts” whilst acquiring needless wear and tear? Wlad and Vitali should play with David and Tomasz and forget about the rest of this turgid division.

How odd is it to see former Lennox Lewis victims from WAY back throwing hands with the likes of Adamek and Vitali K? The scary thing is that Hasim Rahman, Evander Holyfield and David Tua are still lurking at the back of the cupboard. Look for Frank Bruno to return against Wlad next year, Haye to get it on with Henry Akinwande, Adamek to battle with Levi Billups and Vitali to put it all on the line against Ossie Ocasio. Sweeeeeeeet.

Incidentally, will the upcoming Klitschko- Shannon Briggs bout feature the most grey hair ever featured in a world heavyweight alphabet bout?

Whilst I’m sporting a quizzical look, which bright spark advised Chad Dawson to advertise condoms across his rump?

Moving on, and a pair of ageing legends head for an obscure bunch of British venues next month on the (apparently) lucrative after dinner circuit. Personal hero of mine, Tommy Hearns and former rival Roberto Duran are appearing up and down the country and I’m still struggling over whether to attend. On the one hand, when will you ever again see Hearns and Duran in Doncaster? On the other, events such as these subside the fighters in retirement (hooray for that) by charging suckers for a quick pic and a handshake. The fact I’m still considering becoming one of those suckers says everything about the greatness of Hearns and Duran.

Am I the only one who’s intrigued to see what happens in the James Toney-Randy Couture MMA fight next weekend? I think I know what will happen and I’m not so interested that I want to watch it but I’ll be keen to google the result next Sunday morning.

I began penning an article on fighters who have gained from fights they played no part in, a piece inspired by Devon Alexander’s struggle with Andriy Kotelnik which wound up boosting Amir Khan’s reputation. After picking four fights to start with I quickly realised all three of the dudes who’d been undervalued were Brits and, realising this made me look a tad jingoistic, parked it. Interesting though to note that Joe Calzaghe (panned against the Bernard Hopkins who went on to school Kelly Pavlik), Carl Froch (not given nearly enough credit for his win over the Pascal who whupped Dawson and the Andre Dirrell who outboxed Arthur Abraham) and the aforementioned Khan have been hard done to by the press in retrospect.

In closing, for those that missed it, here’s a link to a recent piece for The QueensberryRules.com.