Protect Yourself at All Times

by Hauser, Thomas

  #17. Vitali Klitschko

  Vitali didn’t have the resume or talent of his brother. But if they fought, I’d pick Vitali. And his role as a serious player in Ukrainian politics adds to his stature.

  #18. James Corbett

  Corbett was one of the first successful scientific fighters of the gloved era. Give him credit for that. But he fought for seventeen years and had only eighteen fights. He beat an old drunk (John L. Sullivan) for the title, defended it once against an aging British middleweight (Charlie Mitchell), and lost it to another aging British middleweight (Bob Fitzsimmons).

  #19. Riddick Bowe

  Bowe was a super talent and a super waste. He had one great fight; the first fight against Evander Holyfield. Then he got lazy. Riddick had the potential to be much higher on this list but never got there. He was a disappointment. When you squander talent like that, you don’t deserve to be ranked high.

  #20. Bob Fitzsimmons

  Bob Fitzsimmons won championships in three weight divisions. But he was getting his ass kicked in the Corbett fight until he hit Corbett with a body shot.

  All of the fighters on this list were great. But Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis stand separate and apart from the rest.

  There’s a fight that’s bigger than boxing.

  Certain champions touch an entire generation.

  Put symbolism aside for a moment. Joe Louis was a better fighter than any fighter the world had seen before. He was the best ever up until his time.

  People remember how good Ali was when he was young. They’ve forgotten how good Louis was when he was young. Louis had everything. Power, speed, stamina, a textbook style. He lost one fight in the early years of his career, to a very good Max Schmeling (who Louis took lightly and didn’t train for properly). When they met again with the championship on the line, Louis knocked Schmeling out in the first round.

  That night changed the experience of being black in America. Jack Johnson might have been black America’s first black hero. When Louis (the symbol of American democracy) knocked out Schmeling (Adolph Hitler’s favorite fighter), Louis became white America’s first black hero. In 1951, at the end of Louis’s storied ring career, A. J. Liebling wrote, “Joe Louis looks like a champion and carries himself like a champion, and people will continue to call him champion as long as he lives.”

  Muhammad Ali had incredible physical gifts, skill, determination, and heart. He fought more great heavyweights than anyone and never ducked a challenge. And let’s not forget; Ali was past his prime when he beat Joe Frazier and George Foreman.

  Ali wasn’t always a good sportsman. Joe Frazier and Ernie Terrell can attest to that. But as David Halberstam noted, “He knew how to play the role of champion, inside and outside the ring. God, he knew how to play that role.”

  Like Louis, Ali changed what it meant to be black in America.

  Louis inspired America. Ali inspired the world.

  In the end, Ali’s edge over Louis in this poll was that many electors felt he was simply the better fighter.

  So . . . Are we talking about boxing’s greatest heavyweight fighter or boxing’s greatest heavyweight champion?

  As a symbol, Louis meant as much in his time as Ali did in his; maybe more.

  My own preference is to rank Ali number one and Louis 1A.

  Given Ali’s generosity of spirit, I don’t think he’d mind sharing the number-one spot . . . As long as he’s the one without the “A.”

  Canelo Alvarez vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr

  The making of most fights is dictated by economic considerations. Canelo Alvarez vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr was no different.

  Boxing is on the ropes in the United States. Self-inflicted wounds coupled with external forces have made it a niche sport. But there are places where the sweet science is healthy and has a fervent fan base.

  In England, ninety thousand fans gathered on April 29, 2017, to watch Anthony Joshua defend his heavyweight title against Wladimir Klitschko.

  Mexican boxing fans also exude a passion for the sport that transcends geographic boundaries. On May 6, 2017, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez of Guadalajara faced off against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr from Culiacan at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The son of an ice cream vendor fought “The Son of the Legend” in one of the most anticipated intramural matchups in Mexican boxing history.

  Alvarez was a child prodigy who fought professionally for the first time at age fifteen. He’s now twenty-six and a veteran of fifty-one fights with a 49–1–1 (34 KOs) record. The draw came in his fifth pro bout when he was fifteen years old. The other blemish on his record was a 2013 loss by decision to Floyd Mayweather, who befuddled Canelo over the course of twelve long rounds.

  The knock on Canelo, if there is one, is that he has beaten faded fighters (Shane Mosley and Miguel Cotto), smaller fighters (Liam Smith and Amir Khan), stylish boxers (Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout), and punchers (James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo). But he has yet to beat a complete fighter in his prime. That said, he’s a world-class fighter.

  Julio Cesar Chavez Sr was more than a world-class fighter. He’s widely regarded as Mexico’s greatest champion. His son, Julio Jr, entered the ring for the first time at age seventeen, armed with his father’s name and not much more.

  Junior is now thirty-one. Having begun boxing as a curiosity, he developed into a pretty good fighter, but has regressed to being a curiosity again (albeit a less interesting curiosity than before). At one point, he won a faux 160-pound world title, courtesy of the World Boxing Council (which arranged for him to fight Sebastian Zbik for a belt in 2011 and then defend it against Peter Manfredo Marco Rubio, and Andy Lee). That party came to an end on September 15, 2012, when legal maneuvering forced Chavez into the ring against Sergio Martinez.

  Martinez treated Chavez like a heavy bag and dominated him for 11½ rounds. The second half of round twelve was different. Writing soon after, I recounted the drama as follows:

  Chavez started slowly in round twelve, moving forward with his hands held high. His left eye was swollen shut. His right eye was ringed by abrasions and his lips were puffy. Martinez kept circling, jabbing. Twenty-eight seconds elapsed before Julio threw his first punch of the round, a tentative stay-away-from-me right hand. Ten seconds later, he offered a meaningless jab. Both punches missed. One minute into round twelve, Chavez had thrown three punches and landed none. Then with 1:28 left, Julio scored with a sharp left hook up top that hurt Sergio. Two more hooks landed flush. Suddenly, with 1:23 left in the fight, Martinez was on the canvas and in trouble. There was pandemonium in the arena. Martinez crawled to the ropes and lifted himself up at the count of six. Referee Tony Weeks beckoned Chavez in. Julio had seventy seconds to finish the job. Sergio, too dazed and weak to tie Chavez up and with his legs too unsteady to move out of danger, hurled punches back at his foe. With one minute left in the fight, Martinez tried to clinch and Julio dismissively threw him to the canvas. Sergio staggered to his feet. Weeks, appropriately, chose not to give him extra time to recover and ordered that the action resume immediately without wiping Sergio’s gloves. Fifty-two seconds remained. But now, Chavez too was exhausted. At the final bell, both fighters knew that Martinez had won.

  The last round of Martinez-Chavez saved Julio from being branded a fraud. But his reputation was soon in tatters.

  Trainer Freddie Roach complained that Chavez had refused to train properly for the Martinez fight. WBC president Jose Sulaiman alleged that Julio had a serious gambling problem that had resulted in millions of dollars lost at the gaming tables. Then the Nevada State Athletic Commission announced that, in a post-fight drug test, Chavez had tested positive for marijuana.

  Three years earlier, a Chavez victory over Troy Rowland had been changed to “no contest” because Julio tested positive for furosemide (a diuretic sometimes used as a masking agent). For that offense, the NSAC suspended Chavez for seven months and fined him $10,000. After the Martinez fight, the commission fined Julio $100,000.

  Chavez�
�s career foundered thereafter as he continued to slack off in training and struggled to make weight. The World Boxing Council jumped through so many hoops for him that it was suggested the sanctioning body establish a new weight division known as “Chavezweight.” The Chavezweight championship would be awarded for whatever weight Julio could make at the weigh-in, and the WBC would present Julio with a special championship belt emblazoned with medallions honoring Burger King and McDonald’s.

  In the fifty-eight months prior to facing Canelo, Chavez had only four wins (two over Brian Vera, and one each against Marcos Reyes and Dominik Britsch). He’d quit on his stool in a loss to Andrzej Fonfara. Putting matters in further perspective, Julio had fought only one round at an elite level (round twelve against Martinez) since beating Andy Lee in mid-2012.

  It’s hard being a professional fighter. Whatever his limitations—and there were many—Chavez did get in a boxing ring fifty-three times and had compiled a 50–2–1 (32 KOs) record. But he was dogged by the belief that he’s more sizzle than steak and, worse, by the accusation that he lacks heart.

  One gets the impression that Canelo fights because he likes to fight and the money is good. One gets the impression that Chavez fights because the money is good.

  After considerable negotiation, Canelo–Chavez was made for a contract weight of 164.5 pounds. That was 9.5 pounds more than Alvarez had previously weighed in for a fight and less than Chavez had weighed in five years. The penalty for missing weight would be $1,000,000 for each pound or fraction thereof that a fighter weighed in over 164.5.

  Chavez chose to train with Nacho Beristain. Once again, Canelo worked with Eddy and “Chepo” Reynoso.

  The promotion had a buzz from the start and showed that boxing’s sanctioning bodies are unnecessary at a certain level. Canelo–Chavez wasn’t for an alphabet-soup belt. It was for bragging rights in Mexico. Among intramural Mexican rivalries, only the three fights between Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera and, possibly, the four encounters between Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez, engendered passions of this magnitude.

  “Titles are very important to me,” Canelo said. “But this goes above any title. It’s for honor, for pride.”

  Tickets quickly sold out. Early pay-per-view numbers were encouraging. Canelo’s previous three bouts had made it clear that he needs a dance partner to engender massive pay-per-view buys. Taken chronologically, the opponents in those fights had been Miguel Cotto (nine hundred thousand buys), Amir Khan (five hundred thousand), and Liam Smith (three hundred thousand).

  Now Canelo had a marketable dance partner, albeit one he disrespected.

  “He was never a dignified representative for Mexico,” Canelo said of Chavez. “I can’t respect him because, for me personally, he hasn’t done anything. He has shamed his country with what he has done with his career. My fans know that I started from nothing, from the bottom up, from zero, and have worked my way up with a lot of sweat and sacrifices. He has his fans, as well. But I think a lot of his fans are more his father’s fans than his.”

  “I feel I’ve been over-criticized because I am Senior’s son,” Julio responded. “All the good I do, I feel it counts for half. And any of the bad is doubled.”

  In the days leading up to the fight, Alvarez seemed more confident and stronger at his core than Chavez. One got the sense that Canelo embraced the idea of his honor being tested before all of Mexico, while Chavez was a bit intimidated by it.

  The prevailing view was that Canelo would go to the body, break Chavez down, and take away his heart.

  But a case could be made for a Chavez victory.

  Canelo is faster than Chavez. He’s a better boxer. Everyone understood that Julio had been given this opportunity in large part because of his father’s name. But Chavez is bigger than Canelo. Much bigger. And because of the size differential between them, some knowledgeable observers thought Julio had a good chance to win.

  Canelo scoffed at that notion, saying, “I’ve been fighting professionally since I was fifteen years old, so I’ve been fighting bigger and stronger guys.”

  But not lately. As Chavez noted, “He won the title, and then it was pick anybody. He picked smaller guys, so he got used to being the bigger man. And now there’s me.”

  There was also an emotional factor to consider.

  The fight offered Chavez a chance for redemption. It was the equivalent of a life preserver being thrown to a drowning man. A victory over Canelo would wipe away every past failure on Julio’s ring ledger.

  “This fight has created a lot of passion in me, a lot of enthusiasm,” Chavez told the media. “That’s the difference in this. You’re going to see a different Julio that’s excited. I can lose to a lot of people. I cannot lose to Canelo.”

  Sean Gibbons has helped guide Chavez during his sojourn through boxing.

  “People talk about Julio’s past,” Gibbons said. “But that’s the past. For a long time, Julio wasn’t interested in boxing the way a fighter has to be if he’s going to be great or even very good. Then, for four years after he lost to Martinez, Julio hated boxing. But Julio is more into boxing for this fight than I’ve ever seen him.”

  Two days before the fight, Canelo was a 6-to-1 betting favorite. There were questions as to whether Chavez would make the 164.5 pound weight limit before rehydrating. And if he did, would he be dead at the weight? Then Canelo and Chavez each weighed in at 164 pounds. A half-pound under. By fight night, the odds had dropped to 4-to-1.

  But an elite fighter isn’t built in four months after long stretches of lethargy. It takes years of discipline, training, and hard work. Chavez simply wasn’t up to the task.

  It was hard to imagine Canelo–Chavez not being an entertaining, fan-friendly fight. But it wasn’t.

  Both men fought cautiously in round one, with Alvarez applying the greater pressure. Chavez could have forced exchanges but chose not to. In round two, Julio opened up a bit but seemed wary of Canelo’s punching power. By round three, they were clearly hunter and prey, with Canelo stalking and landing hurting blows. Blood began dribbling from Chavez’s nose. Whatever plan Julio might have had before the fight, he was now trying to outbox a man who was quicker, faster, and a better boxer.

  From that point on, Canelo beat Chavez down. He was relentless, methodical, patient, and professional en route to a 228-to-71 advantage in punches landed.

  In round five, Chavez’s left eye began to close, and one began to wonder whether his spirit or body would break first.

  In round six, Alvarez went to the ropes, as he would do several times during the fight, in the hope of drawing Chavez into a more vigorous exchange of punches. “But he wouldn’t do it,” Canelo said afterward. “I thought he was going to fight. He just wouldn’t throw punches.”

  There were times when Chavez accepted Canelo’s invitation to trade, but they were few and far between. Almost always, when Canelo fired back, Julio disengaged. He preferred to stay at as safe a distance as possible and never used his size in an effort to rough Canelo up on the inside.

  One wondered what might happen if Chavez were able to land a hard overhand right flush on the jaw. But Canelo was boxing too well to find out. And Julio was largely in survival mode.

  At the start of the proceedings, the 20,510 fans in attendance had been evenly divided. Whether Canelo won the Chavez fans over or Julio lost them is open to question. But there were fewer Chavez fans in the arena when the final bell sounded.

  All three judges scored the bout 120–108. It would have been hard to arrive at a different tally.

  “Canelo beat me,” Chavez acknowledged afterward. “He is very good, and he beat me. He’s fast and he’s consistent. The speed and the distance was the key.”

  Or as writer Tom Gerbasai noted, “The shoes were always going to be too big to fill. Maybe Julio Cesar Chavez Jr knew it from the start.”

  Meanwhile, Canelo’s next fight is scheduled for September 16, 2017, against Gennady Golovkin and is the most anticipated figh
t of the year. If Canelo beats Golovkin, it will elevate him to “Chavez-like” status in Mexico.

  Errol Spence Has Arrived

  When Errol Spence was asked about going to England to fight Kell Brook, he answered, “I don’t think of it as fighting in England or the United States. We’re fighting in a boxing ring that could be anywhere.”

  These are heady times for British boxing. Four weeks ago (on April 29, 2017), Anthony Joshua knocked out Wladimir Klitschko in front of ninety thousand screaming fans in London to solidify his hold on the heavyweight division. On May 27, 2017, the scene shifted to Sheffield, where twenty-seven thousand partisans gathered in a soccer stadium to watch another Brit—thirty-one-year-old local hero Kell Brook—defend his IBF 147-pound title against Errol Spence.

  Standard operating procedure in boxing today is for fighters to call out King Kong, Godzilla, and Darth Vader and then fight Pee Wee Herman, Mickey Mouse, and Donald Duck.

  Give Brook (36–1, 25 KOs) credit for going in tough. He won his IBF belt three years ago by decisioning Shawn Porter at the Stub Hub Center in California. Then, after three defenses against less-than-stellar opposition, he went up in weight and challenged unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin.

  Golovkin beat Brook down. The fight was stopped in the fifth round. But Kell had his moments and was incrementally ahead on the judges’ scorecards (39–37, 38–38, 38–38) when the end came.

  Spence (21–0, 18 KOs), age twenty-seven, posed another enormous challenge. Errol turned pro after losing a 16–11 decision to Andrey Zamkovoy of Russia in the third round of the 2012 Olympics. Now living in Texas, he entered the Brook fight with the look of a possible future pound-for-pound king. Yes, his opponents had been carefully chosen. They were either too old (forty-two-year-old Leonard Bundu), too slow (Alejandro Barrera), or lacking in power (Chris Algieri, 8 KOs in twenty-four fights). But the way Errol devastated them was impressive. He entered the Brook fight as a 2-to-1 betting favorite.