Protect Yourself at All Times

by Hauser, Thomas

  Miguel was never the same fighter again. He was badly beaten by Manny Pacquiao and outslicked by Floyd Mayweather and Austin Trout. As Paulie Malignaggi (who Miguel brutalized in 2006) later observed, “There’s always a point in a fighter’s career when he starts to lose the ferocity. Every fighter loses that ferocity little by little. You either make too much money or you get a little older and start to not have as much desire.”

  That seemed to be Cotto’s fate. Then Miguel claimed the WBC middleweight title by stopping a physically compromised Sergio Martinez and followed with an impressive fourth-round knockout of Daniel Geale. A loss by decision to a younger, stronger Canelo Alvarez and a decision victory over Yoshihiro Kamegai for a vacant 154-pound WBO belt brought his career to Sadam Ali.

  Cotto was at his best when he fought at 140 or 147 pounds, weights at which he was able to impose his size and physical strength on opponents.

  Meanwhile, Ali was following a less glamourous path. The twenty-nine-year-old former United States Olympian had been unable to rise to the top as a pro. The biggest win on his pro ledger was a 2014 stoppage of Luis Carlos Abregu that looks less impressive today in light of the fact that Abregu has had only one fight since then and lost it by knockout to a 10-and-8 journeyman opponent.

  Last year, Ali stepped up in class to fight Jessie Vargas for the vacant WBO welterweight title and was stopped in the ninth round. Cotto–Ali would be Sadam’s first fight at a contract weight of 154 pounds. The contest was for the WBO 154-pound title, but the belt was largely irrelevant to the pre-fight promotion.

  The storyline was simple: “This is Miguel Cotto’s last fight.”

  Ali, an 8-to-1 underdog, had been chosen as the opponent on the assumption that he lacked the essentials to pose a serious threat. It would be better to see Cotto go out on a win against a lesser fighter than to leave boxing in the manner of so many great champions who lost badly in the final fight of their ring career.

  Sadam himself acknowledged during a November 15, 2017, teleconference call that it was “a little scary” to be fighting “a legend who I grew up watching.”

  Cotto–Ali was Miguel’s tenth fight at Madison Square Garden. Ticket sales were hurt by an attractive slate of televised college football conference championship games the same night. More significantly, the core of Miguel’s fan base in New York is the city’s Puerto Rican community. And many would-be ticket buyers in that demographic were sending whatever discretionary income they had to relatives on the island who were hard hit by Hurricane Maria.

  Still, a better-than-expected walk-up sale, coupled with promotional giveaways, lifted fight night attendance to 12,391.

  Cotto had weighed in for the bout at 151.6 pounds, his lowest weight since fighting Manny Pacquiao in 2009. Ali weighed in at 153, his highest weight ever.

  Once the bell for round one sounds, there’s no room for sentiment in a boxing ring.

  In the early going, Ali’s hand speed and elusive footwork gave Cotto trouble. Sadam had come to win and was getting off first, while Miguel moved methodically forward but was unable to land effectively.

  Cotto was also having difficulty getting out of the way of punches, which happens to fighters when they get old. A sharp right to the ear followed by a right to the temple wobbled Miguel in round two.

  Then Cotto began using his jab effectively and landing hooks to the body. By round six, Ali was tiring. There was swelling around Sadam’s right eye. And Miguel’s bodywork was taking a toll.

  One moment can change everything in boxing.

  Early in the second half of the fight, most likely in round seven or eight, Cotto tore a tendon in his left biceps.

  As Bart Barry wrote long ago, “There’s the pain of torn flesh or cramped muscles or wheezing breathlessness. And then there’s injury. Injury is a non-negotiable signal sent to the central nervous system. One doesn’t make his living in athletics without knowing the difference.”

  The torn tendon was an injury. It caused acute pain and rendered Cotto unable to effectively jab or hook. After eight rounds, Miguel was leading on two of the judges’ scorecards and was even on the third. But he was now a one-armed fighter.

  Ali continued to fight a disciplined fight, following the formula of getting off first and not waiting for a receipt. As Sadam’s confidence grew, he fought more aggressively and won the last four rounds on each of the judges’ scorecards.

  Referee Charlie Fitch did a good job of overseeing the bout. And the judges got it right: 116–112, 115–113, 115–113 in Ali’s favor.

  Sadam might have been a “safe” opponent. But Father Time isn’t.

  It wasn’t supposed to end this way. But boxing is rarely about happy endings.

  Cotto was in obvious pain in his dressing room after the fight.

  New York State Athletic Commission chief medical officer Dr. Nitin Sethi and Dr. Kevin Wright (an orthopedic surgeon) examined Miguel’s left arm and confirmed that he’d suffered a torn tendon in his left biceps. Worse, the tendon had been torn away from the bone. At their suggestion, Miguel agreed to visit the emergency room at Weill Cornell Medicine that night to see if urgent care was needed to stabilize his condition before the surgery that would follow.

  It was hard to separate the injury from the outcome of the fight.

  “Sadam caught Miguel with a good right hand in the second round,” Roach acknowledged. “He was more explosive than I thought he’d be. But Miguel’s jab was working well, and he was doing good body work with the hook until he tore his biceps. He came back to the corner with a look on his face like he was in pain. I asked what was wrong, and he told me his arm was killing him. I’ve see that injury before. It takes your power away. And it hurts like hell.”

  Meanwhile, Cotto was philosophical about the night’s events.

  “This was the last chapter of my book on boxing,” he said. “Now I have another book to write that will be more about my family.”

  Bryan Perez was asked if Miguel would miss boxing now that his career as an active fighter is over.

  “I don’t think so,” Bryan answered. “For a while now, boxing has been a job as much as a passion for Miguel. It’s his work. And it’s hard work.”

  Andreas Hale recently summed up Cotto’s sojourn through boxing with the thought, “Cotto may not have a pristine record like Floyd Mayweather or have rumbled through weight classes like Manny Pacquiao. But he never backed down from an opponent no matter their age, size, or strength. You’ll be hard-pressed to find another fighter who faced peak-level opposition like Cotto did. He never waited for the ‘right time’ to take on an opponent because anytime was the right time. Take a look at his resume for proof. If you wanted to fight Miguel Cotto, Miguel Cotto wanted to fight you. He has given fight fans everything he had and then some.”

  Cotto’s legacy as a fighter is that of a warrior who carried himself with dignity and grace in and out of the ring. His motto was simple: “I do my best every time I fight.”

  One can argue that there’s nothing noble about one man trying to render another man unconscious by inflicting concussive blows to the brain. But Miguel Cotto has ennobled boxing.

  Fight Notes

  The year 2017 was a challenging one for boxing. Some fights passed the test; others didn’t.

  The first weekend of note for boxing fans in 2017 saw a Showtime doubleheader featuring Badou Jack vs. James DeGale and Jose Pedraza vs. Gervonta Davis at Barclays Center on January 14.

  The card was a hard sell. None of the featured fighters has a significant fan base in New York. The momentum that promoter Lou DiBella established at Barclays the previous year with Keith Thurman vs. Shawn Porter and Carl Frampton vs. Leo Santa Cruz was lost when the New York State Legislature and state athletic commission partnered to impose an irrational insurance requirement that temporarily shut boxing down in New York. And the New England Patriots were playing the Houston Texans in an NFL playoff game televised by CBS opposite the Showtime telecast.

  DiBel
la handled most of the nuts-and-bolts promotional work. But Floyd Mayweather (who promotes Jack and Davis) put considerable time and effort into the promotion. Their efforts were rewarded when 10,128 fans showed up at Barclays Center on fight night.

  Pedraza–Davis was the first of the two co-featured fights.

  Pedraza (22–0, 12 KOs) entered the ring as Puerto Rico’s only reigning world champion, having won the IBF 130-belt in 2015 with a twelve-round decision over Andrey Klimov.

  The twenty-two-year-old Davis (16–0, 15 KOs) was recognized as having enormous potential but had been softly matched to get him to his title shot. That raised the question of whether he’d experienced enough of a learning curve to pass the test.

  Pedraza was a slight betting favorite.

  From round one on—abetted by fast hands, notable power, and the ability to land punches from all angles—Davis evinced an impressive commitment to violence. He went to the body effectively and, over time, raised ugly welts under both of Pedraza’s eyes. There were moments when Gervonta bent the rules. But on those occasions, referee Ricky Gonzalez was reasonably effective in reigning him in.

  Pedraza fought gamely. When Davis appeared to take the early part of round five off, Jose attacked and it looked momentarily as though the tide might be turning. Then Gervonta resumed his assault. A straight left to the body in round six hurt Pedraza badly. A crushing right hook up top ended matters in round seven.

  Pedraza isn’t Superman. In his first title defense, he struggled to a split decision verdict over a shopworn Edner Cherry. But he’s a reasonably good professional fighter, and Davis overwhelmed him with a dominant performance.

  In some respects, Gervonta’s skill set is reminiscent of a young Adrien Broner. When Broner was rising in prominence, he looked great against lesser opponents. But as his career progressed, Adrien showed a tendency to look for a way out when things got tough.

  Davis looked so good on Saturday night that Badou Jack and James DeGale had a hard act to follow. But follow it they did with a twelve-round bout that evolved into an exciting war of attrition.

  Johannes Gabriel Badou Nyberg was born in Sweden, moved to Las Vegas, changed his name to Badou Jack, and has been fighting professionally since 2009. His record before fighting DeGale stood at 20 wins, 1 loss, and 2 draws with 12 knockouts and 1 KO by. The big win on his resume was a 2015 split-decision verdict over George Groves that brought him the WBC 168-pound title. He retained his belt in 2016 with a majority draw against a faded Lucian Bute (who has won only two of his most recent six fights).

  England’s James DeGale (23–1, 14 KOs) won a gold medal in the middleweight division at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, claimed the IBF 168-pound belt in 2015 with a unanimous decision over Andre Dirrell, and had successfully defended his title twice. He was a 5-to-2 betting favorite over Jack.

  DeGale started strong on Saturday night and was the busier fighter in the early going, scoring a knockdown in round one with a straight left hand up top. But Jack fought aggressively and had DeGale in retreat for most of the bout. James flurried effectively at times but didn’t let his hands go often enough. And when he landed, he often failed to follow up

  At the end of round five, Jack accidentally decked referee Arthur Mercante with a left hook that landed high on Mercante’s cheek. Arthur beat the count. In the following stanza, Jack hurt DeGale with a well-placed body shot and took control of the fight. But DeGale fought back in the late rounds when both men were tired and both men dug deep. Then, in round twelve, Jack dropped DeGale with a solid right hand. James was hurt. He’d already suffered a perforated eardrum and a dental bridge had been knocked out of his mouth in round eight (which necessitated a visit to the dentist one day after the fight). But he finished on his feet.

  This observer scored the bout 114–112 in Jack’s favor. The judges saw things a bit differently. Glenn Feldman gave the nod to DeGale 114–112. Steve Weisfeld and Julie Lederman scored the bout even at 113–113, leading to a majority draw that allowed each man to keep his title.

  In touting his network’s Jack–DeGale / Pedraza–Davis doubleheader, Stephen Espinoza (executive vice president and general manager of Showtime Sports) rightly declared, “These fights aren’t mismatches. They aren’t tune-up fights.”

  The same couldn’t be said about PBC’s fights on Spike the previous night. Friday the 13th of January saw a PBC doubleheader that featured two 50-to-1 mismatches.

  In the opening bout, Anthony Dirrell, who wore a WBC 168-pound belt for eight months before losing it two years ago to Badou Jack, took on Norbert Nemesapati.

  Nemesapati lost two fights within the span of eighteen days last summer. Thereafter, he supposedly rehabilitated himself to the point of qualifying as a sacrificial lamb for Dirrell by winning three fights in a row. His opponents in those three fights had a composite ring record of four wins in eighty-three outings.

  That’s not a typographical error.

  In the main event, WBA 154-pound champion Erislandy Lara was matched against a badly faded and hopelessly outclassed Yuri Foreman.

  There wasn’t one second in Dirrell–Nemesapati or Lara–Foreman when the outcome was in doubt. Nemesapati’s corner wisely stopped their man’s bout after six rounds. Lara disposed of Foreman with a left uppercut in round four. The only good thing about Lara–Foreman is that it was short, so Yuri was spared a bad beating.

  It’s inherent in the nature of boxing that some fighters will get beaten up. We saw that at Barclays Center the following night, when three fighters (James DeGale, Jose Pedraza, and Ievgen Khytrov) were taken to a hospital emergency room afterward as a precautionary measure. But when fights are showcased on national television, they should be competitive sporting events, not predictably one-sided beatings.

  Lara–Foreman and Dirrell–Nemesapati aren’t what PBC was supposed to be about.

  On February 10, 2017, Bounce TV televised a Premier Boxing champions triple-header. Robert Easter impressively dismantled an overmatched Luis Cruz, and Terrell Gausha looked lethargic in outpointing Luis Hernandez. But the story of the night was the WBA super-bantamweight title fight between Rau’shee Warren and Zhanat Zhakiyanov.

  Warren was a heavy favorite. And the odds widened exponentially when he knocked Zhakiyanov down twice in the first round. In round three, the momentum shifted. Zhakiyanov appeared to drop Warren with a pair of right hands, but referee Gary Rosato ruled that Rau’shee’s trip to the canvas was caused by a push. Thereafter, Zhakiyanov forced the pace. Warren, bleeding from the nose, had his moments but spent a great deal of time avoiding conflict rather than engaging in it.

  The fight was contested at the Huntington Center in Toledo, Ohio. Warren was the house fighter in every sense. He’s a favorite of PBC impresario Al Haymon. He’s a three-time United States Olympian. And he’s from Ohio. It seemed like a foregone conclusion that Rau’shee would get the judges’ nod. Zhakiyanov is from Kazakhstan.

  Then came the decision: Larry Hazzard Jr, 115–111 for Warren . . . John Stewart, 115–111 for Zhakiyanov . . . Ryan Kennedy, 116–110 for Zhakiyanov.

  The wide discrepancy in the scoring was similar to the gap that existed in 2016 when Warren lost a split decision to Juan Carlos Payano. On that occasion, two judges scored the fight 113–111 for Payano while the third judge had it 115–109 for Warren.

  Kudos for the honest scoring that boxing fans saw in Warren’s fights.

  Good judging was the takeaway from the February 10, 2017, PBC card in Toledo. Bad refereeing was the takeaway from the February 18 card featuring PBC fighters in Cincinnati Ohio.

  Showtime televised the featured bouts. In the opener, Marcus Browne and Thomas Williams squared off in a light-heavyweight contest. Sixty-eight seconds into round two, Browne scored a flash knockdown, dropping Williams with a stiff jab. Then, with Williams defenseless and clearly on the canvas, Browne whacked him with a vicious left to the side of the head.

  This isn’t the first time that Browne has punched an opponent who was on
the canvas. He also did it in his most recent fight before this one, an April 16, 2016, outing against Radivoje Kalajdzic at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. In that bout, midway through round one, Kalajdzic visited the canvas on what was clearly a slip. And Browne hit Kalajdzic with a jolting straight left when Kalajdzic was down. Instead of warning Browne for his transgression and deducting one or more points, referee Tony Chiarantano mistakenly called the incident a knockdown and ignored the foul.

  Referee Ken Miliner was no better in overseeing Browne–Williams. Williams was badly hurt by the illegal blow. Browne should have been disqualified for a flagrant foul. Instead, Miliner counted Williams out. Then a light went on in the referee’s head, and he deducted a point from Browne while allowing Williams five minutes to recover. But that missed the point.

  Williams was in no condition to continue after being knocked woozy by an illegal punch. He staggered and seemed a bit disoriented when he rose. He was not allowed to sit, nor was he examined by a doctor during the recovery period. He was knocked down twice more and counted out in the sixth round.

  To repeat: Browne should have been disqualified for a flagrant foul.

  Miliner also evinced an embarrassing lack of familiarity with the rules of boxing. Just before the action in Browne–Williams resumed, the referee was overheard on a Showtime microphone saying several times that the fight would pick up with the start of the third round rather than continuing the interrupted second stanza.

  In the main event, Adrien Broner took on Adrian Granados. The contract weight was 142 pounds. But Broner had trouble making weight and Granados was advised—take it or leave it—that the new contract weight was 147 pounds.