Years ago, as the first boxing editor of Sports Illustrated, I confessed it: I’m a sucker for the heavyweight championship of the world. No sports event in the world can compare with it, I contended. It’s more than a fight between, ideally, the two best heavyweights in the world, competing in the most prestigious division of what used to be eight and has now metastasised to triple that traditional amount. At its best, it’s a celebration, a ceremony, a profound rite. When the world champion meets his natural challenger, be it Dempsey–Tunney, Louis–Schmeling, Louis–Conn, Marciano–Charles, when the mercury-footed Ali faces the brave bull Joe Frazier or the thunder puncher George Foreman, these classic battles take on epic proportions. Indeed, one is reminded that the progenitor of our current boxing writers – be it Dave Anderson of the New York Times or Hugh McIlvanney of London’s Sunday Times – is Homer himself, who described in poetic blow by blow, the stirring victory of Epeus over Euryalus in their ancient championship go.
There’s magic in the moment when the lights go out in the great arena, with millions watching all over the world as the announcer reaches for the mike and pronounces those incantatory words, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, for the heavyweight championship of the woooorld!!!’ How many times have I flown across the country, or the ocean, not to be absent from that spectacle! New York for Louis–Conn, Louis–Schmeling II and Ali–Frazier I; Zaire for Ali–Foreman. For the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world? How could any self-respecting fan of the sweet science stay at home?
Raised in that tradition, following our champions for three score years and ten, imagine my reaction to picking up the daily paper and seeing an ad not for one heavyweight championship fight but two! And the audacity, selling ‘Two for the price of one!’ What’s this? Our precious heavyweight championship being pitched like a bargain-basement sale? As if two heavyweight champions side by side were better than one! Forgive all these exclamation marks. But this subject seems to invite them. It’s as if two presidents were better than one, two chiefs of staff, two film directors, two writers of the same novel, two managers of a major sports team.
In this case the two-for-one deal on heavyweight title belts involved John Ruiz, the Puerto Rican octopus who (God help us!) wears the WBA version, and his challenger, Fres Oquendo, another oversized, undertalented Puerto Rican. The other part of the bargain involved light-hitting Chris Byrd, the IBF heavyweight champion of the world, facing Andrew Golota, better known as the South Pole for his propensity for saving his best punches for the area south of the belt line. Golota had earned his shot at Byrd’s title by fouling out to Riddick Bowe back in the twentieth century, quitting to Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson, and then scoring recent dubious victories over two sacrificial lambs. Only Don King could explain how this discredited Polish disaster waiting to happen could qualify for a title shot.
Don has revised Barnum’s famous teaser, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’ In our speeded up twenty-first century, the prison-library-intellectual Professor King would tell you there’s a sucker born every 30 seconds, and prove it with every PPV triumph. Anybody who’s got the brass to bring the octopusian John Ruiz back for still another soporific display of his ‘championship’ prowess deserves our respect, at least for chutzpah above and beyond the call of promotional overreaching. Instead of being anointed with a belt, Mr Ruiz should be arrested for impersonating a professional heavyweight fighter. Don’s waving his little Puerto Rican flag for him reminds us that he also touted Peter McNeeley, another of Mike Tyson’s one-round wonders, as ‘that great warrior from Boston’.
The Ruiz–Oquendo fight in Madison Square Garden could be the worst heavyweight title fight ever fought anywhere. Ruiz grabbed, held, hugged and mugged. As the boos of the 15,000 suffering fans crescendoed, one exasperated (and apparently embottled) fan rose from way up in the bleachers and bellowed, ‘This is the worst fight I ever seen!’ He received a standing ovation. It was without doubt the most exciting moment of the long evening.
Finally, in the 11th round, Ruiz actually threw a few punches that landed, and maybe Oquendo was so surprised he dropped his hands as if in distress. The referee promptly stepped in and stopped the fight, not to save Ruiz’s dance partner from further punishment so much as to save the paying customers from further punishment. This could be the first heavyweight title fight ever stopped on account of boredom. The referee simply decided he couldn’t stand another second of it and raised Ruiz’s hand. The World Boxing Association (from which I confess I accepted its Living Legend of Boxing Award) should be ashamed of itself, if all the boxing commissions hadn’t long ago surrendered any sense of shame.
At least the second half of Don King’s two-for-one title bout bargain was an improvement. Chris Byrd, the slippery, small-heavyweight defending his IBF belt went the distance in a close fight with the renovated and supposedly reformed Polish bruiser Andrew Golota, who restricted himself to only a few low blows and a couple of punches after the bell, his way of observing the Marquess of Queensberry rules. Among the surprises in the bout was Byrd’s allowing himself to be hit by the usually wild Golota, choosing to stand and trade punches with his bigger and stronger opponent rather than employ the evasive, defensive style that has brought him to the top while not pleasing many fans. ‘Look at me, I look like a fighter!’ he exulted over his bruises, as if they had earned him a medal in his brutal trade. Whether he had fought a stupid fight or one calculated to win over doubting fans, only the highly intelligent and personable IBF champ knows. His 115 to 113 victory seemed a fair call, even if Golota galumphed out of the ring angry about a decision he thought he deserved. In any case, to everyone’s surprise, Byrd’s back in the heavyweight picture, such as it is.
Last Saturday the heavyweight express – or is it a slow freight? – moved on to Los Angeles, the adopted home town of the fighting Klitschko brothers, Vitali and Wladimir, a pair of giant Ukrainian PhDs. Wladimir was reduced to cornerman for his brother now, having been humiliated by the journeyman underdog Lamon ‘Relentless’ Brewster by way of knockout a few weeks earlier, thereby surrendering his WBO heavyweight belt – one of those four belts now up for grabs. Any moment now, Don King will be offering four heavyweight title fights, all in one night. Four for the price of one, made to order for that sucker born every thirty seconds.
In the most recent heavyweight contest, Vitali, the harder puncher but less fluid of the Klitschkos, was in there with old Corrie Sanders, the South African game farmer who had starched his crystal-chinned brother a year ago. Corrie, at least ten pounds over his best fighting weight, looked as if he had been training at his favourite pub. ‘For me, either way, whatever happens, I can now say I’ve had a nice career,’ Sanders said, not after but before the fight, as if he were already preparing his own post-mortem. In spite of that defeatist approach, he fought the first round as if he really thought he could win, catching his larger foe with big, roundhouse punches that actually staggered Klitschko and drove him across the ring.
Vitali regrouped in the second round, boxing from that stiff, stand-up British and Russian stance, reminding us of Bombardier Wells, the celebrated, horizontal British heavyweight of the 1920s. He was putting his jabs in Sanders’s face and finding the range with right hands. Not that that was too difficult to do, with Sanders fighting flat-footed and with a barroom defence.
Still Sanders kept trying, with more guts than stamina. In a rousing exchange in the third, Klitschko was tagged – but his chin was proving more durable than Wlad’s, and the South African’s tank was running low. In the good old days he would have been just a tough four-round fighter, and that’s what he looked like in the fifth, with the PhD from Kiev backing him up with combinations.
It was really all over, and through the ensuing rounds what was most notable was Sanders’s ability to absorb so many punches without going down. Also notable was Sanders every so often throwing a looping punch out of exhaustion and still driving Klitschko into the ropes.
By round eight the only question was how many straight right hands Sanders could take and still keep lurching forward. The referee answered that by stopping the fight with Corrie still on his feet, a proud but bloody mess, and Vitali winning the WBC title that Lennox Lewis gave up when he announced his retirement.
Lewis was in the audience, as he had been the week before in New York when he had walked out on Ruiz. ‘Let the next era begin,’ the old king had proclaimed. So where does that leave us? Gone at least for the moment is my old heavyweight mystique. Now it’s more of a heavyweight mess. Vitali Klitschko looked like the best of a sorry bunch. He was durable but robotic, with a pretty good jab and a pretty good right hand. Everything just pretty good. Mechanical, and too easy to hit, he’d barely qualify for Joe Louis’s celebrated Bum of the Month tour. And now he’s decided he’d rather run for mayor of Kiev. Who else? Chris Byrd is clever, but he can’t punch. Good field, no hit. Mike Tyson? After surrendering to journeyman Kevin McBride, it’s the final nail in the coffin where rests Tyson’s tragic career. Roy Jones, flattened twice by light heavyweight rivals, is ready to be retired to his chicken fighters. No wonder pure, used-up Evander hangs around. And another Old Man River, the ring-savvy but ageing and overgrown James Toney, who may still be the best of this depleted lot.
Oh where have all the heavyweights gone? Where are Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and Larry Holmes now that we need them? Maybe George Foreman should tear himself away from his multimillion-dollar grill business, Meineke mufflers and new clothing line and teach these bargain-basement ‘champions’ a lesson in what it takes to be truly the heavyweight champion of the world.
[2006]