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Friday, August 12, 2005
Taneo: Once pound-for-pound best gets pounded
By Paul J. Taneo
Free-for-all
IT’S NEVER easy fighting someone who had already beaten you.
Give Roy Jones Jr. all the credit in the world for signing his name on the dotted line for a rematch with Antonio Tarver. On May 2004, Tarver shocked just about everyone including himself by knocking out in 1:41 of the second round the previously unknockoutable Jones with a left-handed shot, just the seventh total he hit Jones with in the match.
For the feat, Tarver got to regain his WBC and IBO belts, while getting Jones’ WBA, IBA and NBA light-heavyweight belts.
Going at it once again with a former pound-for-pound best fighter in the world is always risky but Tarver has the psychological advantage, what with Jones’ last two fights both KO losses – to Tarver and Glenn Johnson in a span of just four months.
But if there’s anything you’d say of Jones, you can’t leave out his versatility: Starting at 153 pounds as a middleweight to 174 as a light-heavyweight and a brief side trip to the heavyweight ranks that spelled a dubious reign as WBA king after a unanimous win over the just-as-dubious WBA champion John Ruiz. Still, Jones won’t take over Sugar Ray Robinson as all-time best pound-for-pound.
There’s not much interest in Tarver-Jones 3. It’s not Ali-Frazier 3. Not by a wide margin.
Nevertheless, I’d love to see this headline: Jones by TKO over Tarver.
ANOTHER JUNIOR JUST AS FORMIDABLE. Mr. Manuel N. Oyson Jr. has been accused of many things – of being jaded, that he has stretched his sportswriting for too long and that his pervasive negativism goes against the grain of the raison d’être of sports column-writing, which is half entertainment. Only Goths drinking blood from a chalice would love multiple servings of Oyson’s Counterpunch.
But you can’t argue with the man, Maning, he does get results. At least, he gets reactions, as he tirelessly reminds us that his Inbox occasionally gets inundated.
In Thursday’s issue, Maning (allow this fellow columnist to address you in this manner, Mr. Oyson, for brevity) pointed out that Cebu-based fighter Z “The Dream” Gorres almost Valiumed the audience at the San Andres Civic and Sports Center in Malate, Manila two Mondays ago.
While dominating his bout with Thai Deeden Kengkarum, whom he beat with an overwhelming 100-88 on all three judges’ scorecards, Gorres, as Maning pointed out quoting veteran Manila sportswriter Recah Trinidad, failed to entertain the crowd.
Universally, a boxing audience is there half to see a fellow human legally assault another human with gloved fists short of homicide. The other half of the crowd’s intent is to see boxing skills – technique and violence in a martial mix called sports and, if you will, entertainment.
As Trinidad wrote, none were entertained, walking away before all the fights in the card were through.
I wasn’t there myself. Deskwork usually prevents us from going to live boxing bouts. But from our colleagues who traveled to the capital city, we haven’t heard any complaints as to what a bore the fight was. As inbred as the local sportswriting fraternity cum sorority is and as basically benign the relationship we have with our sources, it is expected that gripes are kept not spread.
It is infinitely easier for our Manila associates to put down Cebu boxers, managers or promoters.
WHAT IS GOOD AND BAD? So was Gorres really that good and bad against Kengkarum? He could have been. So why were the news reports in our local dailies unanimously in praise of Gorres as the judges’ scorecards were?
Gorres has been described in praise, er, press releases as “sensational” and his Thai foe as “hard hitting.” But as the results showed, Gorres was hardly sensational and Kengkarum was scarcely hard hitting.
Hype is shorter and easier to spell. But that is expected of pre-fight reports, or else, who would go out on a Sunday night to spend several hundreds or thousands of battered pesos on a fight that resembles an aggressive pairing on the dance floor?
Perhaps boxing managers and promoters and the boxers themselves should restrain from exaggerating the capabilities, and in some cases, the records of the pugilists.
Many journalists are fond of pounding us with the phrase “purity of the sport.”
After three decades of watching boxing – amateur and professional – bouts, I still have to see or feel this purity. With commercialism getting its grimy hands on boxing at all levels, it is too much to hope to perceive this purity.
Two strangers slugging it out on the street over a cross-eyed look is purity.
You can call one Dream, the other Nightmare. They don’t care. All they want is to hurt each other physically and hope the other fellow is hurt more. After that is done, they get to go home, wash up, sleep and hope Maning Oyson doesn’t write about them. Or me.
(pauljtaneo@yahoo.com.ph)
(August 12, 2005 issue)
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