AMERICA AT LARGE:After seven years and 30 professional fights, Derryman John Duddy will share top billing with Julio Chavez Jnr on the 'Latin Fury 15' bill in San Antonio, writes GEORGE KIMBALL
MORE THAN a year has elapsed since John Duddy last boxed in a main event (and come to think of it, that one didn’t work out too well) but when promoter Bob Arum trotted out the dramatis personae in Los Angeles on Tuesday to formally announce his June 26th “Latin Fury 15” card at the Alamodome in San Antonio, he revealed the 12-round battle between the Derry middleweight and Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr would be the headline act.
After seven years and 30 professional fights Duddy isn’t easily starstruck, but he couldn’t help but be flattered by getting top billing on a show in which his supporting acts will include Mexican legend Marco Antonio Barrera and at least two other former world champions.
On the other hand, if he paused for even a moment to consider the circumstances, Duddy probably realised the promoter, who is also Chavez’ promoter, isn’t bringing him to San Antonio to beat a Mexican fighter in front of 20,000 Mexican fight fans.
(That figure represents Arum’s probably optimistic projection. Chavez’ father put 63,000 people in the Alamodome for his 1993 draw with Pernell Whitaker, but just three years ago a Top Rank show headlined by Manny Pacquiao drew 14,000. The latter number is a more realistic expectation for Latin Fury 15.)
Even his detractors concede Duddy’s remarkable drawing power, particularly among the Irish diaspora, is among his greatest assets, but the number of tickets his presence will sell at the Alamodome promises to be insignificant.
San Antonio is nearly 60 per cent Hispanic, most of those Mexican-Americans, and is but a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the Mexican border. The city’s Hibernian heritage, on the other hand, is pretty much limited to the 13 native-born Irishmen who perished in the Gringo cause at the siege of the Alamo in 1836.
At least on paper, Duddy-Chavez promises to be what boxing people describe as a 50-50- fight – one of those rare contests in which each man has such a legitimate chance of beating the other that any prediction should be regarded as pure speculation.
Duddy’s vulnerability was evident in his loss to Billy Lyell a year ago, but Chavez’ roster of prior opponents has been even more carefully selected. The reputation of both is, at this point, considered so fragile that a loser will in all likelihood be effectively finished as a player on the world stage.
There will be a championship belt at stake, albeit a pretty silly one. The World Boxing Council has put its newly-created “Silver” belt up for grabs by the Duddy-Chavez winner.
In announcing yet another level of championships (and a new source of contribution to its revenue stream through resultant sanctioning fees) last month, WBC president Jose Sulaiman described the Silver Championship as a more credible alternative to the deplorable practice of awarding “interim” championships.
Does this mean a fight against new middleweight champion Sergio Martinez might be in the offing for the new Silver champion? Guess again, Grasshopper. But Arum did say the winner would be line to face Sebastian Zbik, the German-based middleweight who holds the WBC’s “interim” title.
Tuesday’s announcement was made in LA, a curious choice of venues (the Los Angeles Times didn’t even bother to cover it) apart from the fact that it was chosen mainly for the convenience of Chavez’ new trainer, Freddie Roach, who has so many clients training for important fights at his Wild Card Gym in Hollywood that it was in the end easier to fly Duddy, Chavez, and Arum in than it would have been to pry Freddie loose for a day.
Given he is already overcommitted, why would Roach add to his client list a boxer like Chavez, a career underachiever who has been described, probably not unfairly, as both “spoiled” and “lazy”?
The simple answer is Roach didn’t pick Chavez; Chavez picked him.
Having paid a visit to the Wild Card two months ago and watched Roach’s work as he prepared Pacquiao for his Dallas fight against Joshua Clottey, Chavez seemed astonished by the furious work-rate witnessed.
“It actually scared me,” said Chavez, who had previously been trained by two of his uncles back in Culiacan. “I knew it was what I needed.”
That the bout will be contested for a middleweight title of any description required some shoe-horning by the WBC, since Chavez has only had one fight as a full-fledged 160-pounder, and after that one (a decision over Troy Rowland on last November’s Pacquiao-Miguel Cotto card) his post-fight drug test came back positive for Furosemide. Chavez, in fact, was just five months into a seven-month suspension when this week’s announcement was made.
Chavez has fought incrementally above the 154-lb light middleweight limit on two other occasions: He weighed 156 for both of his 2008 bouts against Matt Vanda. (Chavez struggled, particularly in the first of those, a split-decision win, against Vanda, who Duddy fairly dominated at Madison Square Garden last year.)
Duddy, who will be facing his fourth consecutive Mexican opponent, is under few illusions when it comes to the task now at hand.
“I’ve had some tough fights and been asked a lot of questions, and I think I’ve answered most of them,” said the Irishman.
“We’ll see if Chavez can answer the questions I put forth on June 26th. Once the bell rings it’s going to be just me and him. I have all respect for Freddie Roach, but Freddie can’t get in the ring and help him that night.”
