AMERICAN AT LARGE:A FEW days after boxing's latest version of The Odd Couple– promoter Bob Arum and his new partner, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones – had firmed up plans for this year's mega fight, the March 13th Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey tussle at Cowboys Stadium, the travelling road show hit the Big Apple in style.
The boxer known as Pac-Man was escorted into Madison Square Garden's Wa-Mu Theatre that day two weeks ago by no fewer than five Debbies (as in Debbie Does Dallas), otherwise known as the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. As we pointed out at the time, with the Cowboys having been eliminated from the NFL play-offs the previous weekend and Tiger Woods locked up in rehab, it wasn't as if the cheerleaders had a lot to do that week.
The original plan had called for a four-Debbie visit to New York, but when Pacquiao-Clottey was announced in Dallas a day earlier it came to light that another Cowboy cheerleader shared Pacquiao’s Filipino ancestry. The last-minute addition to the travelling squad rushed home to pack an extra thong and was shortly on the plane to the Big Apple.
Two days ago the Bob and Jerry Show, replete with a full complement of five Debbies, turned up in Mexico City. Ostensibly the Mexican capital was included on the itinerary because it boasts more fans, per capita, of the NFL Vaqueros than any city outside Texas. Jerry Jones has modestly configured his new, state-of-the-art facility to accommodate 40,000 for next month’s fight, but should ticket sales approach that figure, trust us, Jerry will find room for the rest, since seating areas could be opened up to accommodate as many as 100,000.
So in addition to acknowledging the Mexican beer and the Tequila brand that have signed on as sponsors for Pacquiao-Clottey, Jones and Arum arrived in Ciudad de Mexico bearing further good news for the locals: three of the principals in the two featured supporting bouts on March 13th will be Mexican-born boxers.
The fourth will be Irish middleweight John Duddy, whose name was presumably presented to the locals as the 2010 version of the San Patrizio Brigade.
Duddy, who barely worked up a sweat in disposing of the hapless Juan Astorga two weeks ago at the Madison Square Garden Theatre, will be opposed by a Mexican named Michael Medina. Since Duddy’s record is 28-1 and Medina’s 22-1-2, the match-up might appear competitive on paper. Trust us, it isn’t.
The other bout slated for viewing on the Pacquiao-Clottey bill matches former lightweight champion Jose Luis Castillo against Guadalajara-born Alfonso Gomez. The 36-year-old Castlllo’s glory days may be somewhat behind him; today he is better known for failing to make weight in back-to-back fights against the late Diego Corrales, and for getting whacked out by Ricky Hatton in 2007.
The Fonz, who came to prominence with his role on The Contender, had his moment in the limelight in 2007 when he ended the career of the late Arturo Gatti in Atlantic City, but a year later he was soundly thrashed my Miguel Cotto in a WBA title fight.
Although they weren’t announced on Tuesday, it is also understood that two other fights on the bill may feature familiar names. One of these, if Arum and Jones are successful in strong-arming the Texas Boxing Commission in to lifting his suspension, could involve the disgraced former welterweight champion Antonio Margarito, who has been banned for the past year after being apprehended trying to sneak into the ring against Shane Mosley using gloves that had been reinforced with plaster of Paris.
Another will be the sixth professional outing of heavyweight George Foreman III. At 6ft 5in, the younger Foreman is even taller than his illustrious father. All of Big George’s sons are named George, and the fighting one answers to “Monk”. Only one of his five victims has even gotten to the second round, and there were just four minutes and 10 seconds of fighting in that one.
(Ironically, word that Monk would be added to the Cowboys Stadium card reached us as we were en route to meet up with his father and brother George IV, aka Bigwheel. Tonight, the former two-time heavyweight champion and I, along with University of Kansas Prof Robert Rodriguez, will appear at a university symposium on heavyweight boxing.)
Tuesday’s announcement in Mexico City was followed by another five-Debbie excursion yesterday, this one to Monterey in Nuevo Leon, which happens to be Medina’s hometown. Few of his countrymen, let alone his friends and neighbours, are apt to suppose for a moment that Medina is the featured attraction in his first pay-per-view appearance – a fight that will be of more interest to Irishmen than it will be to Mexicans.
In fact, Duddy adviser Craig Hamilton may have been more accurate than he meant to be when he said the Derry fighter’s opponent in Texas would be cut more or less from the same cloth as Astorga, the Kansas City-based Mexican stumblebum Duddy crushed in New York on January 23rd.
In general, most Mexican boxers are among the bravest in the world. Juan Astorga just didn’t happen to be one of them.
Suffice it to say there aren’t a lot of household names among Medina’s list of victims, and that includes Mexican households, since many of his bouts took place in his native country and in the absence of much scrutiny. In his favour, it might be noted that the lone blight on his record, a 2008 loss to Vanes Martirosyan at Buffalo Bill’s Arena in Primm, Nevada, is hardly a disgrace.
The Armenian-born, Freddie Roach-trained Martirosyan is a solid contender at light middleweight, and in 2004 represented the US in the Athens Games.
(Only 17 years of age when he competed in the US trials, he hadn’t expected to make the Olympic team, but then the favoured Andre Berto body-slammed Juan McPherson in their match and knocked both boxers out of the Olympics. Berto, now the WBC welterweight champion, was disqualified and wound up representing Haiti in Athens, while McPherson wound up in the hospital.)
In his last outing, Martirosyan beat former world champion Kassim Ouma in Las Vegas two weekends back. He also owns knockout wins over Billy Lyell and Charlie Howe, both of whom lasted the distance with Duddy.
In the course of a New York visit last year, Martirosyan recalled that the night he handed Medina his lone career defeat he was on his way out of the arena when he suddenly found himself surrounded by a small army of Mexicans. “Then I realised they were my fans,” he said. “Even though I was fighting a Mexican guy that night, they recognised me from television and they’d been cheering for me.”
So much for the guy who beat Medina. What about the guys Medina beat? Other than Martirosyan, Medina’s 24 opponents make Duddy’s list of victims look like the Murderer’s Row of Middleweights, and include just five boxers with winning records. Another is an indifferent 6-6-1, while the other 18 have lost more than they’ve won. Four of these have never won a professional fight, including Felipe Gonzalez, who was 0-1 when Medina knocked him out at the Autodromo de Go Karts in Cancun three years ago, but is now 0-8 and counting.
Put it this way, in the wake of last year’s loss to Lyell, Duddy heads for Texas next month rated 12th by the WBO and not rated at all by the other three sanctioning bodies, but should he add another scalp by handing Medina his second career lost, he will probably start moving right back up the ladder. How much the Irishman is getting for his night’s work remains unlearned, but if ever a matchmaker deserved to be rewarded, Top Rank’s Brad Goodman does for this one.
