Now hiring: Full time fighters
By Ian Keogh (Sep 20, 2006)
Take a minute and think back to the beginning of this year. Just over three months remain in 2006, a good year for boxing. Carlos Baldomir came out of nowhere and took the world welterweight title from an overconfident and unfocused Zab Judah, O'Neil Bell upset Jean Marc Mormeck and walked out of the theatre in Madison Square Garden the World Crusierweight champion. It was a night of upsets on Showtime, Bladomir has defended his title since, a stirring 9th round knockout over Arturo Gatti in July and is defending his welterweight title versus pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr. in November. But what about Bell? Stopping a very good fighter in Mormeck in a fight nearly no-one thought he'd win in the first month of a calendar year seems like a brilliant way to begin a year, right? So as October nears why haven't we seen Bell fight again? Before you think to judge Bell let's not forget that the super lightweight champion of the world Ricky Hatton has only fought once this year also, a controversial twelve round decision win over then WBA welterweight Luis Collazo in May. Why hasn't Hatton fought since? Why won't he fight again this year? But wait, these two aren't alone. Where is Acelino Freitas? Zahir Raheem? Jeff Lacy? Oscar De La Hoya? Antonio Tarver?

In 1951 a nearly 35-year-old Archie Moore fought 18 times, 18! These days a world championship level fighter MIGHT fight twice a year, some even three times, amazing stuff huh? Gone are the days of staying in shape between big fights by taking non-title or small venue fights, in their places are network dates, promoter or managerial issues. Fighters today are
afraid to take a small fight off TV because there isn't major money involved. When a young fighter begins his career, fights are fought every couple of months, keeping them sharp, learning on the job and focused, then it happens. The fighter wins a fight against a well-known fighter and ‘breaks out’ onto the world scene and then becomes lazy, disinterested in training and more concerned in making rap videos, movies or promoting. There was a time in the fight game where a world champion would take a few non-title fights because they knew the benefits of staying sharp, ring rust wasn't an option, you fought and you fought often. Take Roberto Duran: Manos de Piedra won the world lightweight title from Scotland's Ken Buchanan in June of 1972. Duran fought three more times that year and not one was a title fight. In 1973 he fought 8 times, only three were world title fights, he kept busy, stayed sharp so when a title fight did arrive he'd be ready. Today, this almost never happens. Alot of fighters blame there promoters, managers or say that there isn't a TV date available, now this may be true but can a fighter not fight, say, in their hometown in a small fight to keep busy? Does a fighter not pay a manager to manage him? Why aren't today’s fighters demanding more of their ‘team’?

Take a look at The Ring magazine’s top 10 fighters pound-for-pound today. Have any of them fought three times this year? Only #1 Floyd Mayweather Jr. and #3 Manny Pacquiao will have three fights in the record books by year’s end, barring injury or a cancellation of a fight. #4 ranked Jermain Taylor, the world middleweight champion, has fought once this year so far and is scheduled to fight again in December. #6 Marco Antonio Barrera has fought twice this year and has said that he won't fight again until March 2007, #2 ranked Winky Wright has fought once and is rumoured to be fighting again on December 2nd but don't hold your breath. #10 Joe Calzaghe has fought once and is fighting largely unknown Sakio Bika next month and almost certainly won't fight again in '06. That leaves us with four other ‘pound-for-pound’ fighters with only one fight this year. #5 Bernard Hopkins fought in June and then retired...we think. #7 Rafael Marquez, widely considered the world's premier bantamweight fought in August and is rumoured to fight in mid November, maybe. #8 Ricky Hatton fought in May as mentioned above and is not fighting again until next January because of reported TV dates, yawn. #9 ranked Jose Luis Castillo fought in February and then showed up way over the lightweight limit for his third fight with lightweight champion Diego Corrales and has been fined and suspended for the remainder of the year. These ten fighters are considered (by The Ring at least) the very best in the world today, yet only two of them will fight three times this year. Most of these fighters listed make an enormous amount of money when they fight, maybe that's the reason they don't bother fighting more often, maybe they really do have issue with promoters or managers, maybe HBO or Showtime don't have enough dates but is there nothing these fighters can do about that? Maybe they don't want to. They all might just be happy putting in a few months of work a year instead of chasing greatness. A damn shame.

Quick hits

- Don King announced this week that he's signed WBA lightweight champion Juan Diaz, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. King has been accused over and over in the past of not getting his fighters fights. Diaz might have made a mistake on this one.

- October 7th is shaping up to be a busy night of boxing in the U.S., with 4 world title fights and two competing networks. I'd watch Showtime.

- Has anyone seen Antonio Tarver lately? Seriously...does he still want to box?

- Be sure to visit the message boards here at DoghouseBoxing and enter the October prediction league in the boxing chat section for your chance to win bragging rights and a great prize.


Questions or comments,
e-mail
Ian at: ian_keogh@hotmail.com
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