Not since Jim Corbett went sixty-one three-minute rounds with Peter Jackson at the Olympic Club in San Francisco in 1891 have fight fans been asked to defy the arms of Morpheus as they were last Saturday night by Don King’s unprecedented eight championship fights in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall – a fistic marathon that began at five o’clock in the evening and went on until one o’clock the following morning. It was an eight-hour immersion in pugilistica at its very best – underdog Cory Spinks’s exhilarating defeat of Don King’s latest cash cow, the Nicaraguan terror, Ricardo Mayorga – and at its very worst, the twelve-round and seemingly interminable wrestling match with boxing gloves between two heavyweight sloths, John Ruiz and Hasim Rahman. Hailed by the WBA and Don King as the ‘Interim Heavyweight Championship’, the spectacle involved two Goliaths who sweated and strained, pulled and pushed through twelve of the dreariest rounds in heavyweight history. Fortunately the evening was saved by the underrated young Spinks and the Old Man River of the middleweights, the cantankerous 39-year-old Bernard Hopkins, winning his record 17th defence of his 160-pound title over the brave but outclassed WBA veteran William Joppy.
There was another notable contest involving our irrepressible promoter, Mr King. Just two days before King’s Saturday night mega-card, it was fought not in a ring but in a court of law in New York, where the world’s most famous promoter squared off against ‘Terrible’ Terry Norris, the nifty junior middleweight champion of the mid-’90s, now retired, somewhat brain-damaged and broke, not an unfamiliar condition for top fighters who stay too long and never learn how to protect themselves in the bigger ring of business management. Terry was suing for the $7.5 million he had earned but never saw. Known as Teflon Don for winning so many lawsuits his opponents thought were shoo-ins, King must have sensed he was in trouble when the jury sent out for a calculator and a magnifying glass. And a short time later came the decision: the unsinkable Mr King had to write a cheque for half the seven-five-mil on the spot, the remainder to be paid in monthly instalments.
‘Only in America!’ is Don’s trademark slogan, and you could say that again as he ducked out of the courtroom, right into his limo and on to Atlantic City where he was back in polysyllabic form, lording it over the press conference. There the usual taunting and self-promoting predictions between the fighters began with Hopkins, unbeatable for a decade and even knocking out Tito Trinidad, who still felt deprived of the respect and money he thought he deserved. Now he was dissing his opponent, WBA Champion William Joppy, promising to knock him cold. When Joppy tried to fight back, verbally, Hopkins offered to fatten Joppy’s purse by fifty thousand dollars if he was still on his feet at the final bell.
That was mild compared to the trash-talking Mayorga, the hottest name on the card, who had come out of nowhere to knock out two marquee welterweights, ‘Six-Head’ Lewis and Vernon Forrest. The new champion was a wild man in and out of the ring. He flaunted outrageous behaviour, not only brazenly drinking beer on the eve of a fight but showing up on the dance floor with a pretty girl on his arm at three o’clock in the morning. And in the ring after his hand was raised, nonchalantly lighting a cigarette. Nothing like this has been seen since the legendary bad boy of boxing, Harry Greb, the middleweight champ of the 1920s, who also trained on beer and broads but licked the best middleweights and light heavies of his day. At the press conference Mayorga, the street kid from the slums of Managua, insulted Corey Spinks’s dead mother, questioned his manhood and told him he was not only going to knock him out but probably kill him. For those who knew Spanish, Mayorga’s gutter talk was unprintable. Son of the unruly Leon of Ali fame, young Spinks – the IBF title holder but still virtually unknown – seemed unfazed by the verbal onslaught. Speaking very quietly, he said, ‘All that craziness and silliness won’t bother me. This isn’t a toughman contest. It’s the art of boxing, the ability to hit and not get hit in return. That’s the skill I have worked hard on.’
True to his word, the Spinks kid came out of his corner ‘gaily’, as my notes described it, borrowing the word from the eighteenth century’s Pierce Egan, the daddy of boxing writers. As cool and fearless as he had seemed at the press conference, Spinks met the caveman lunges of the surly Mayorga with textbook slipping of punches, confusing him with lateral movement and sharp counterpunching. By the end of round one we knew we were in for one of those classic contests between a scientific boxer and a primitive but hard-punching brute. The suspense built dramatically as Mayorga hit out with vicious, awkward punches from all angles. Spinks would slip them or gracefully slide away with great aplomb. All the pre-fight fanfare had focused on the ferocious Mayorga, with Spinks cast as just one more sacrificial Christian to be thrown to King’s lion. Apparently Cory hadn’t read the script, which had Mayorga’s moving on to meet Sugar Shane Mosley in King’s next major promotion. Spinks was to be just one very small bump on the road to the next Vegas super-fight on 13 March.
Frustrated by more boxing science than he had bargained for, Mayorga tried every dirty tactic he knew. Not since Fritzie Zivic half a century ago have I seen so many rabbit punches, holding and hitting, hitting on the break and after the bell at the end of a round.
At the end of the second round, the alert referee, Tony Orlando, warned Mayorga, but down and dirty seemed to be the only way he knew. He was teeing off with huge roundhouse blows, but nine out of ten hit nothing but air. Every time he missed, he was open to counters, and Spinks was scoring with straight lefts to Mayorga’s solid chin. For students of the art, it was lovely to watch.
The fifth round gave Mayorga his first real chance when he finally caught his slippery opponent with a solid right hand to the jaw. Spinks lost his poise for a moment, and Mayorga tried to follow up with fast but mostly off-target punches. It was his round, but he blew it when he threw another whopper after the bell, losing a point on the scorecards.
Round after round it was Spinks boxing nicely, Mayorga punching wildly. Every so often King’s new favourite would land a heavy right hand, but Spinks proved he had chin as well as skill. As the rounds dwindled down, Mayorga’s frustration grew. Billed as the Matador, he was much more like the bull goaded into charging at the air.
In the 11th Mayorga caught Spinks with another of those wild looping rights, and might have won the round but holding behind the neck while punching Spinks in the face cost him another penalty point. In the final round when Spinks went down, either from a wild punch or a wet spot on the canvas, the furious Mayorga thought he had a two-point round, but Orlando called it a slip, as he had two others in the early rounds.
There is a saying in boxing, ‘Always bet the house fighter,’ and when the fight goes to a decision, the cynical view is that judges will favour Mr King, who can do them a lot of favours in return. But no such luck for him this time. Winner and now undisputed welterweight champion of the world, on the radar screen at last, the 5 to 1 underdog Cory Spinks!
A world title fight is a ritual involving the press conference, the weigh-in, the fight itself, and the epilogue, the press conference. An hour after Bernard Hopkins had left poor William Joppy with a face his own mother would not recognise, ‘The Executioner’ was assuring the press that this was his last performance for Don King. ‘After this I’m a free man. I’m out on parole.’ From now on he would be his own promoter. After five years in the slammer and all those years being exploited by promoters, he was finally in control of his destiny. ‘I am the American dream.’
As for Don King’s darling, the ferocious Ricardo Mayorga was still snarling. ‘I know I won the fight. I had to fight him and the referee. I knocked him down three times. Next time I will stop his heart.’
The quiet and unscathed Cory Spinks simply smiled. Would he accept a rematch? ‘Yes, but in all fairness I deserve to take Mayorga’s place to meet Shane Mosley on 13 March.’ Easier said than done. Let the shenanigans begin! In the absence of a true commissioner of boxing to keep the sport honest, Don King won’t give up that easily on his crowd-pleasing Mayorga. Chances are, he’ll feed him some soft ones and then push Spinks into the rematch.
The 25-year-old Cory Spinks understands adversity. A few years ago his older brother Leon Jr was shot in the mean streets of St Louis where they were raised by a single mother. Then his best friend was lost to gang warfare in that tough town. And soon after, his mother died of a stroke at age 48. Maybe that’s why he’s so quiet and serious. I talked to him for a few minutes after the press conference. ‘If I have to fight Mayorga again, I will. I’ll outbox him again. But I don’t think it’s right. Tonight I earned the right to fight Mosley.’ He gave a little sigh, as if thinking of all the little wheels within wheels spinning in Don King’s head. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see.’
P.S. Hovering over the weekend like the Ghost of Christmas Past was the legendary, all-time great Roberto Duran, ex-lightweight, welterweight and junior middleweight champion of the world, still with that wicked glint in his eye. But like nearly all ex-champions, dead broke. A sad reminder that our boxers are the only professional athletes in the world without a pension. Fifty years ago I received an award from the University of Notre Dame for promoting this idea. In the year of Our Lord, 2003, I’m still waiting.
[2003]