A long time ago I tried to describe boxing as a sport far more complicated and mental than casual observers or critics of the manly art may believe. Jose Torres, the great articulate light heavyweight champion of the ’60s, a disciple of the trainer-philosopher-guru Cus D’Amato, was applying this rule to the explosive Felix Trinidad–Ricardo Mayorga brawl at Madison Square Garden a week ago Saturday night.
‘A champion’s fight doesn’t start in the ring. It begins here,’ Torres said, tapping his head. Meanwhile Trinidad was pounding the bombast out of Mayorga, knocking him down for the first time in the Nicaraguan wild man’s tempestuous career, and then again and again, until a fight that lived up to Don King’s most exuberant predictions was stopped at last, with the victorious Felix Trinidad on his way to new glories and the brutally battered Mayorga on his way to the hospital.
While Mayorga was throwing wild punches, landing occasionally, the mentally far superior Trinidad was fighting a thinking man’s fight, boxing with a clear plan in mind and executing it with precision. The punishment Mayorga absorbed was painful to behold. Near the end of the fifth round Trinidad was using Mayorga’s tough head for a punching bag, and empathetic ringsiders were getting a headache from the rat-a-tat-tat of Trinidad’s punches to Ricardo’s battered noggin.
In the pre-fight hype, the hard-talking, hard-drinking, hard-smoking, hard-punching wild man had been billed as Ricardo ‘El Matador’ Mayorga. But once the bell rang, and he charged furiously from his corner, almost at once he was transformed into El Toro. Indeed this fight reminded me of the many corridas I had seen in Mexico City, in the rare times when the bull was up to the challenge and would charge and charge again, under the relentless punishment of the sharp points of the banderillas and the steel of the picadors, before accepting the sword of the matador.
That’s exactly what the hopelessly brave Mayorga did, weakening for a moment and beginning to look discouraged, and then, when it seemed as if he must drop, suddenly reaching down for some hidden strength and charging again.
The hype for this fight had involved the memory of Hagler–Hearns, that unforgettable middleweight drama 20 years ago, and this was one time when hype and reality actually began to overlap. For the first round did remind me of the opening round of Marvin Hagler’s battle with Hitman Tommy Hearns, when Hearns put enormous pressure on the champion in the opening two minutes, cut him and hurt him, only to see the resilient Hagler turn the table so dramatically in the final sixty seconds that Tommy went back to his corner having faced a terrible reality against which he struggled until he finally caved in to Marvelous Marvin two rounds later. The first one hundred and eighty seconds of Trinidad–Mayorga was almost a replay of the earlier three-minute war, with Mayorga swarming as if to make Trinidad’s comeback from two and a half years of retirement a two-minute affair, and then Trinidad finally coming into the fight, finding his rhythm and beginning to administer a boxing lesson. The only difference is that Tommy Hearns was far superior to Mayorga, who was long on heart but short on skills. For all his swaggering braggadocio of the days leading up to the fight, Mayorga was revealed as nothing more than a supper-club fighter with a cement chin, a resolute fighting heart and the manly art of no defence.
The final coup de grâce came in the eighth round, when Trinidad dug a left hook to Mayorga’s liver – we used to call this ‘the Mexican liver punch’ – and the brave bull was finally ready for the meat house. In the old days body punching was often the clincher, but in the twenty-first century it has seemed a lost art. But with Bernard Hopkins knocking the air out of De La Hoya in the ninth a few weeks ago in Las Vegas, and now Trinidad digging to the body to stop the supposedly unstoppable Mayorga, we may be seeing the renaissance of the punch that brought immortality to the likes of Jake LaMotta and Marvin Hagler.
It was just that kind of a punch that brought the light heavyweight belt to Jose Torres when he took out the master boxer and champion Willie Pastrano in the Eighth Avenue Garden almost forty years ago. ‘When you get hit with that punch,’ Torres said to me after that fight, ‘you feel as if you’re dying. You can’t breathe.’ (Precisely what De La Hoya said right after his defeat.) ‘I could hear Pastrano make an awful sound – ugh! I felt sorry for him. But then I told myself, be objective. Be objective. That punch made you champion of the world.’
Felix Trinidad isn’t champion of the world again. That honour still belongs to Bernard Hopkins, now looking for his all-time record 20th defence of the title he won a dozen years ago. But now the drums start beating for a Hopkins–Trinidad rematch of the fight in which our reigning middleweight punched Trinidad into premature retirement.
But for Hopkins–Trinidad II we may have to hold our breath: Trinidad is in the clutches of the octopusian Don King. And the outspoken, hardheaded and independent Bernard Hopkins has sworn he will never bow to a Don King promotion. Let the machinations begin. It may be the only big-money fight for Hopkins, now that the arrogant old No. 1 pound-for-pound Roy Jones has been taken down a peg or three. Let’s hope it takes place before the undisputed middleweight king enters his fistic dotage. But in the aftemath of Hopkins’s destruction of the Golden Boy, I did find myself wondering (and hoping) that in the thirty-nine-year-old Hopkins we have the second coming of the ageing legend Archie Moore who successfully defended his light heavyweight title when he was forty-eight and fought a draw with Willie Pastrano when he was pushing fifty.
Live on, fight on, Bernard. And I’ll do my best to do the same. So I can cover Hopkins–Trinidad II. ‘La regrese! La regrese!’ (I’m back! I’m back!), Trinidad was shouting in his final sparring session before sending Mayorga to the hospital and then back to his rape trial in Nicaragua – and if convicted, permanent retirement.
What makes boxing the most dramatic of all sports is that it so often brings us to that one night in which one fighter achieves immortality and the loser retreats into the shadows of oblivion.
That was Trinidad–Mayorga. Adiós, Ricardo. Viva, Felix! And may the devious Lords of Boxing bring us Trinidad–Hopkins. With our heavyweights in total disarray, as vide the miserable bunch of heavyweight ‘champions’ being thrust on us in the Garden a month from now, let us count our blessings with the middleweights, the 160-pound division that best combines power and speed. Think Jack Dempsey (‘The Nonpareil’), Stanley Ketchel, Harry Greb, Mickey Walker, Jake LaMotta, Sugar Ray Robinson . . .
Onward!
[2004]
As I watched Winky Wright embarrass and dismantle the pride of Puerto Rico, Felix Trinidad, I found myself thinking of Daniel Mendoza, Mendoza the Jew, who came out of the ghetto of London’s Whitechapel to become champion of England in 1791. At one hundred and sixty pounds and only five foot seven, Mendoza was a natural middleweight, but he met and defeated twenty bigger men on his way to the heavyweight crown.
His surprising success against this array of big ’uns was due to a unique approach to the brutal sport of fights to a finish. Before Mendoza, the brawlers were accustomed to stand right in front of each other and bash away until one of them fell for good. Sometimes they even locked their feet together and traded punches until one of them failed to make it back to the scratch line in the allotted 30 seconds. Hence our slang expression, ‘He’s not up to scratch.’
How Mendoza compensated for his lack of size was to use his feet – the first use of footwork – and to develop a sophisticated defence that defused the power shots of the maulers who towered over him. There were cries from the Fancy and the toffs that the Jew was cheating, that he was refusing to stand and fight, that this type of subtle avoidance of punishment wasn’t exactly what the British prize ring had in mind. But the articulate Mendoza challenged the sporting bloods to find anything in the Broughton Rules that forbade the defensive tactics he was introducing.
Some two centuries later the sweet science of Mendoza has passed on to Winky Wright, the 2 to 1 underdog to Felix ‘Tito’ Trinidad, who was facing the hardest puncher he – or anyone else on the contemporary scene – had ever fought. In his forty-two victories over fifteen years, Tito had knocked out thirty-five, and the seven who survived included master boxers like Pernell Whitaker, Oscar De La Hoya and Bernard Hopkins. ‘I expect Wright to outbox Trinidad and win most of the early rounds, but as soon as Trinidad figures him out, he will be able to stop him,’ said one of our ‘experts’. ‘Wright has never faced someone with the power that Trinidad possesses . . . I’m picking Trinidad to stop Wright in ten.’
That was the conventional wisdom of a majority of the press section as the puncher and the boxer came to the ring. Steve Springer of the Los Angeles Times had it like this: ‘Winky has a great defensive style. But there is no defence against Trinidad unless your name is Bernard Hopkins. Body shots . . . will lower Wright’s arms and leave him defenceless. Trinidad by TKO . . .’ And Richard Hoffer of Sports Illustrated: ‘Tito over Winky, hard puncher will penetrate defensive maestro’s peekaboo mitts with surprising ease.’
As for this ringsider, yes, I had seen the Puerto Rican banger use Ricardo Mayorga for a punching bag in his first fight out of retirement, but Mayorga’s style was another example of the Manly Art of No Defence. Winky Wright was at the opposite end of the fistic spectrum. He was by far the smartest and trickiest of modern-day boxers. To make matters worse for Trinidad, Winky was a southpaw, which meant he was at you with a right jab, and it was the best in the business, accurate and punishing.
My dear friend Jose Torres, the light heavyweight champion of the ’60s, a fierce puncher who fought out of the peekaboo style that boxing guru Cus D’Amato taught him, had an apt metaphor for the puzzlement of facing southpaws. ‘It’s like, if you’re a good typist and you know all the keys without having to look, and all of a sudden you’re typing on a machine where all the letters have been switched around. What you used to do right is now all wrong. A sense of confusion is the worst thing a fighter can have in a fight. His confidence is drained. His game plan is out the window.’
That was my call too. I had seen Winky winning those fights with Bronco McKart and the clever Sugar Shane Mosley. It was the best jab I had seen since Larry Holmes’s. And if the left cross did not have knockout power, still it was crisp and effective. So let me make a confession. While I know it’s not quite kosher for boxing writers to bet on fights, lest that colour their judgement, I couldn’t resist a flyer on Winky. Those 2 to 1 odds were a siren call. Winky had the defence of a turtle, his head pulled in, the gloves kept protectively close and strategically placed, his reflexes at age 34 showing no signs of deterioration. He was in superb shape, and he was hungry. While the Trinidads and De La Hoyas were making their millions, he was getting old watching them from the outside in. Nobody wanted to fight a slick no-name southpaw who figured to beat them. Relegated to fighting in Europe for meagre purses, when he finally got a shot at top-rated Fernando Vargas, he knocked down the favourite son of Oxnard. Most writers thought he won the fight, but – what else is new? – the decision went where the money was.
After all those years in the ring, Winky was still the outsider, with a defensive style that didn’t sell tickets. He might have faded away, but when Sugar Shane Mosley gave him a second chance he seized the moment to take the 154-pound title. In the big time at last, after barnstorming in Europe for five years, he was in there with Trinidad: with fifteen years and fifty fights behind him, his first big money, four million smackers. Even though Don King’s boy was making more than twice that much, it was by far the biggest fight in Winky’s long, Sisyphean career.
I called it the fight between the Prince and the Pauper, and in the Mandalay Bay Arena there seemed to be some 14,000 fanatics from the Caribbean island commonwealth flashing their Puerto Rican flags and already beginning to chant their TITO . . . TITO . . . TITOS half an hour before their hero was to enter the ring.
When his young majesty finally appeared with the names of his four daughters on his resplendent robe, the roar shook the hall like thunder. The appearance of Winky, looking very fit at 160, elicited a prolonged chorus of boos. Las Vegas had become the capital of Puerto Rico, and Tito’s cheerleaders were already looking forward to his rematch with the perennial middleweight champion, Bernard Hopkins.
But from the opening bell, Winky’s snakelike jab was in Tito’s face. It seemed positively attached to the Puerto Rican icon’s noggin. It tormented him, kept him off balance, hurt and discouraged him. My ringside notes became a round-by-round repetition. ‘Winky jabs, jabs, jabs . . . and every so often sharp left hands. Tito fails to land a single punch as round ends. Tito goes back to his corner very discouraged.’ And his Island rooting section, 14,000 strong? After a few rounds of All Winky All the Time, they fell painfully silent, as if they were attending a funeral, which in a historically boxing sense this was. With an exhibition of scientific boxing that called back the great practitioners of the past, Winky Wright was writing ‘Adiós’ to Trinidad’s illustrious career. After the third round, you would not have known there was a Puerto Rican in the house. Only the extended Winky Wright family, who happened to be sitting alongside me with their friends, were cheering, ‘That’s the way, Winky! You got ’im, Winky! Keep poppin’ ’im, Winky.’
And that’s the way it went, right to the end of round 12. One judge gave Winky every round. Two others, a tad more charitable, gave Tito a single round. Winky had pitched a virtual shutout. The Compubox printout passed to the press at the end of the one-sided contest told the story. Winky had landed 185 jabs to Trinidad’s 15. Only one of every twenty Trinidad jabs had connected, for a miserable 5 per cent. And as for total punches thrown, Winky connected with two hundred and sixty-two, Tito with only fifty-eight, fewer than five in every three minutes, and most of those deflected.
All those experts predicting how Trinidad’s vaunted power would break through Wright’s vaunted defence were left not just with egg but a whole big omelette on their faces.
At the press conference, impressario Don King waxed eloquent, which is like saying that birds fly. Hiding his disappointment that his box office star had been badly dented if not destroyed, like a true Pagliacci he went on to extol the victor: ‘What you have seen tonight is the epitome of the sweet science. A virtuoso performance played on a Stradivarius violin. For 12 rounds a frustrated Tito was unable to penetrate Winky’s masterful defence. A masterpiece! Real boxing at its best. Tito was discombobulated. Winky Wright is the greatest fighter I have seen in years.’
‘So is this the end of Trinidad?’ one intrepid reporter asked. ‘Not at all,’ Don was back to pitching again. ‘Tito has a rematch clause in his contract, and I am sure Winky will honour it. Encore! Encore! Encore!’
An encore for what turned out to be a mismatch? Only Mr King – Mr Barnum and Mr Bailey combined – could try to sell that one. Even Winky got into the act, with dreams of sugar plums, like doubling his four million, dancing in his head: ‘I had a game plan and I executed it perfectly. I’ve had to keep proving myself over and over again, and I did it again tonight. He underestimated me. He has a great hook and I watched it through the fight [it was hitting Winky’s smartly placed gloves 99 per cent of the time]. I hit him some great shots. But next time I expect he’ll do better. He’ll know how to prepare for me.’
But a few days later Trinidad dashed Don King’s and Winky’s dreams of rematch millions. Winky’s demolition of him had sent him into permanent retirement. The pauper would be the new prince. Now, instead of Hopkins–Trinidad again, the stage is set for Hopkins–Winky Wright for the undisputed middleweight title. After Hopkins’s record 20 successful defences, Winky could prove the most troublesome opponent the champion ever faced. He’s almost as slick as the old Willie Pep. It could be one of those fascinatingly boring bouts where they out-think each other. Boring to fight fans looking for action, but not for insiders aware of the intricacies of our misunderstood sport. Take those sophisticated contests between the two heady veterans who succeeded Joe Louis, Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott. Their contrasting styles of defence simply neutralised each other, like two chess masters able to block every move of the other. Oh what those bogus, overweight ‘champions’ later in the century might have learned if they had been students rather than spongers of the game.
[2005]