Dettloff: That heavyweight Sultan Ibragimov was described as a former 'champion' reflects poorly on the sport.The rematch between Victor Ortiz and Andre Berto is being targeted for June 30.
Dettloff: We created this mess
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This was the question that came to mind when I saw an Associated Press article reporting the retirement of Sultan Ibragimov, whom the piece described as “the former heavyweight champion.” Sigh … For those of you who have forgotten, Ibragimov won the WBO title by decisioning Shannon Briggs, one of the most physically gifted and imposing-looking heavyweights of the last two decades, but also one of its most fragile. If Briggs were an Olympic gymnast, his floor routine would consist of a flawlessly executed cartwheel and a triple somersault followed by ninety seconds of labored breathing. You can call Briggs’ condition asthma. I call it anxiety-induced respiratory paralysis. So did Briggs’ one-time trainer, Teddy Atlas, more or less, when I spoke with him about Briggs some years ago. At any rate, Ibragimov, to his credit, outboxed the much bigger Briggs with a strategy not unlike that employed by NFL quarterbacks who are suddenly confronted with defensive ends so sizable their raging approaches eclipse the sun. It was good enough, and Ibragimov rode the win to big-money fights with Evander Holyfield and Wladimir Klitschko. In the former he used a strategy similar to the one that served him against Briggs, while in the latter he resembled more than anything a turtle who could not be convinced to poke his head outside the warm confines of his shell, no matter how inviting and vulnerable the target that lay just beyond. Then, apparently financially comfortable, he quit. “I always believed he was never going to fight again after the Klitschko fight, because he had enough money and he didn’t seem to have his heart in it,” Ibragimov’s promoter, Leon Margules of Seminole Warriors Boxing, told the AP. A question for another day is how those three fights could fix Ibragimov for life, when a couple dozen such affairs served only to bring Holyfield and others like him to the brink of homelessness. Whatever the case, proponents of the current multi-champion arrangement in today’s boxing business would point to Ibragimov as a perfect illustration of all that is right with the status quo. After all, he likely wouldn’t have gotten the big fights with Holyfield and Klitschko had he not possessed a title, even one sanctioned by an organization so riddled with corruption, incompetence or both that it is viewed by most as the least credible of all of the so-called major governing bodies. And that’s saying something. In that sense, the organizations are a boon to the working man, and what could be wrong with that? The fighters make money, as do their trainers, their managers, their various and sundry hangers on, and so forth. Let us not forget the employees and members of the governing bodies themselves, who raise families and do their part to keep the economy going without ever mussing their hair or getting a bloody nose. What would those people do without those jobs? For what else would they be qualified? The world already has enough lawyers, politicians, leg-breakers and book burners. And really, this is the way we want it. It must be or it wouldn’t be this way. Want proof? Our friends at ESPN, whose on-air personalities are the most derisive of any in the media toward the sanctioning bodies, and who support THE RING championship policy faithfully, bless their hearts, are nevertheless gleefully trumpeting their Aug. 28 card as featuring two “world title bouts.” The fights in question -- Juan Urango against Randall Bailey and Tavoris Cloud against Clinton Woods -- are quite attractive on their own and to the mind of any sensible follower are not rendered more so by the sanction of the IBF. (For the record, THE RING rates only Urango and Woods among the Top 10 in their respective divisions.) But you can’t blame ESPN. This is the system we’ve built, the mess we‘ve created. Maybe it means more money for the sport’s working class, as some claim. Or maybe there would be more money for everyone if the administration of the sport weren‘t so laughably corrupt, the honors that are supposed to be reserved for its best practitioners so diluted as to be almost worthless. This much is true: A “heavyweight champion” retired last week and because we’re pumping out “champions” these days like so much plastic gadgetry, no one cares. It doesn’t mean anything. It should. Not because Ibragimov was anything special, but because the men we call heavyweight champions are supposed to be. Some random observations from last week: Nate Campbell will be screaming long and loud about how he got shafted against Timothy Bradley on Saturday night, and he has a point; the Showtime cameras showed fairly conclusively that a head butt rather than a punch opened the cut that ended the fight in the third round. Here’s why I hope California sticks its head in the sand: Campbell couldn’t wait to tell everyone he couldn’t see. Why? Because Bradley was running him out of the ring and he knew that if the fight was called before the fourth round, it would be ruled a no-decision. If it had happened in the fifth or sixth round, Campbell would have shut his mouth and fought, which is his obligation as a professional fighter. Especially one who runs his mouth as much as Campbell does. Instead, he tried to take the easy way out, the same way Robert Guerrero did some months ago and the way lesser fighters have done in similar situations. I expected more from Campbell. Shame on him. … I used to write the TV page in THE RING, which included grading a fight’s entertainment value on a scale of A to F . Using that scale, I would have graded Devon Alexander’s win over Junior Witter about a “Q.” Witter is just awful to watch and I hope never to have the displeasure again. … I don’t think it’s inconceivable that Arturo Gatti wanted to kill himself, but how is it that the words “hanging” and “suspended” didn’t happen to appear anywhere in the reports concerning the cause of death until almost three weeks after the fact? … Several readers emailed complaints about my observation in last week’s column that, if nothing else, Vernon Forrest died like a man. I stand by it. It doesn’t mean it was smart. It means he acted like a fighter. Get it? … In my mind, the most interesting prospect of the weekend wasn’t Victor Cayo on Friday Night Fights, it was this 19-year-old Chris Avalos on ShoBox. Let’s keep an eye on this kid. … Antonio Tarver’s commentary on ShoBox wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Good for him. … This just in: According to authorities in Brazil, Abraham Lincoln committed suicide. Bill Dettloff can be reached at Dettloff@ptd.net |
