Same old story for fighters and fans
Posted Feb. 1, 2010 at 08:45pm
By Eric Raskin
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When is a boxer really, truly retired? When he’s 6 feet underground. And even then, you tend to have your doubts.
Erik Morales had been out of the sport for about 2˝ years, halfway to eligibility for the International Boxing Hall of Fame, when the news broke on Jan. 24 that he’ll be returning to the ring in March. The natural reaction to this news from most fight fans was a slumping of the shoulders, followed by a heavy sigh. Another one who doesn’t know when enough is enough, we all thought. Then we saw the photos of Morales making his announcement at the press conference, not looking appreciably thinner than Roberto Duran does nowadays, and the reaction turned from sadness to all-out horror.
Morales is just the latest in a never-ending line of once-great fighters soldiering on against all logic. And at 33, he’s one of the younger ones. Evander Holyfield is 47 and has been in the headlines the past few weeks while his proposed fight with Frans Botha tries to find a home. Roy Jones got wiped out in 122 seconds in December by fringe contender Danny Green, but at 41 he’s fighting on. He faces Bernard Hopkins in April. Going beyond the scope of future Hall of Famers, Riddick Bowe is a badly damaged 42 and still talking about another comeback, 36-year-old Lamon Brewster took a beating from relative novice Robert Helenius in Germany last weekend and, two weekends ago, four-time title challenger John Brown, 41, ran his record in his last 12 bouts to 1-9-2 with an eight-round points loss.
Ready to slit your wrists yet?
If not, you’re a rare fight fan. For most of us, no matter how many times we see the same sad scene play out, no matter how many of our heroes put us through this, we never get used to it and we never grow immune to it.
You’ve already read a million articles exploring the reasons fighters don’t listen when retirement beckons. They fight on because they need the money, because they hunger for the spotlight, because they just don’t know who to be if they aren’t going to be professional boxers – or for some combination of those reasons.
What hasn’t been explored in article after article is why fans still let these predictable processions affect them. Everyone from Joe Louis to Muhammad Ali has disintegrated in front of our eyes and kept coming back from more; we’ve grown to expect that. So why can’t we grow to accept it?
“It’s a visceral reaction. I know I still get saddened when I see old, used-up fighters in the ring,” said veteran Philadelphia Daily News boxing writer and former Boxing Writers Association of America President Bernard Fernandez. “Here’s a parallel: You look at Elizabeth Taylor in Giant, and you say to yourself, ‘There has never been a more beautiful woman to walk the face of the earth.’ At some point, that physical beauty fades, and many years later you go into a movie and she’s playing an old lady. And damn if it doesn’t make me sad. To see a pushing-80-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, fat and old, yeah, that saddens me.
“And she’s not getting beaten up.”
Watching someone’s decline play out before our eyes, whether we’re talking about the decline of their beauty, the decline of their physical skills or the decline of their mental faculties, is depressing on numerous levels. Part of it is the way it reminds us of our own mortality and the fact that Father Time will win out against us eventually. It’s perfectly normal to transfer the sadness from another person’s fall onto oneself.
It’s also perfectly normal to care about the well-being of others, even people we don’t know personally. So not only do we feel depressed watching Holyfield struggle to do the things that once came so easily to him, but we also grow depressed watching him potentially do long-term damage to his health.
It’s instinctive to react in that manner. But for those who don’t merely observe the boxing industry but are actually a part of the business, it becomes essential to keep those instincts in check in order to do their jobs effectively.
“I don’t have an emotional reaction any longer, because if I did, I’d be sick all the time,” said promoter Lou DiBella, a 20-year veteran of the boxing business. “A man does what a man wants to do. Everybody is master of their own life. You have to detach yourself because Roy’s living Roy’s life and Evander’s living Evander’s life. That being said, do I think they’re putting themselves at risk of not having the health and well-being in the middle and later stages of their lives? Yes. Does that bother me a little bit? I mean, when you work with people a long time, you like them, you respect them, you want to see them OK. But you have to detach because you can’t live someone else’s life for them.
“To me, a lot of these fights go beyond just being not attractive. They go into the realm of dangerous. And by the way, I think I’m entitled to say that because I have put my money where my mouth is. I’m not coming at it as a hypocrite. I’m not trying to sell you a death match.”
DiBella is referencing his much-publicized recent split from former world middleweight champion Jermain Taylor, whom DiBella wanted to see retire following Taylor’s violent knockout loss to Arthur Abraham. DiBella promoted Taylor for nine years, but refuses to be involved in his career any longer.
When you have a relationship like that with a fighter, it’s nearly impossible not to be saddened by the news of his ill-advised comeback, so DiBella took a stand in the hope that he would never have to hear that news.
Fernandez had a reasonably close reporter-subject relationship with Philly-based two-division titleholder Meldrick Taylor, and the disastrous decline of the talented ex-Olympian shaped Fernandez’s willingness to give a fighter his two cents when the situation calls for it.
“To see Meldrick’s descent from the first Julio Cesar Chavez fight, it was a precipitous fall, and for him to have gone through his boxing fortune and be taking bouts for $2,000 in Alabama and Hawaii, it saddened me,” Fernandez said. “That was one of the reasons why, a couple years ago, when I saw Ivan Robinson, who’s another guy I like a lot, and he started to talk about, ‘I can still do it, I’m going to take this fight for $2,000 because then I can get another fight with (Arturo) Gatti,’ I spoke up. I told him, ‘Look, you’ve got a nice family, a nice home. You didn’t achieve all that you wanted to, but you have to understand when the time has passed. Look at Meldrick. You don’t want to wind up like that.’ And I think that Ivan has been the better for that. I mean, I think he might have taken one or two fights after that, but to this point I haven’t seen any obvious detrimental effects to his mental faculties.”
Whether we’ll be able to say the same for guys like Holyfield, Jones or Morales remains to be seen.
Among that crew, it’s most surprising to see Jones refusing to walk away from the fight game. In his prime, Jones, shaken by seeing his friend Gerald McClellan turned into a virtual vegetable in the ring, made as much money as he could facing as little risk as possible. He wasn’t padding his legacy, but he was padding his bank account without ever getting beaten up.
Now he’s in his 40s and damaging both his health and his legacy.
“Roy always told you he would retire before he ever put himself in danger,” DiBella said. “He said he would retire before his skills erode. Those words came out of his mouth.”
Shame on any of us who believed him. Rarely does a fighter quit this sport at the perfect time, and rarely does the first retirement take. Jones spent most of his career being so different from your typical fighter in so many ways. It turns out he wasn’t different from the typical fighter at all.
A lot of us spent Jones’ prime expecting to get a sick thrill from seeing him finally take a beating. But now that we’ve seen it over and over, there’s no thrill; there’s only the “sick” part.
This is what fighters do. They hang around too long. And this is what we, as fans, do. We let ourselves get depressed over it. Just like those old fighters, we see the punch coming, but we can’t seem to get out of the way of it.
RASKIN’S RANTS
• One more reason to be depressed about washed-up legends fighting on from DiBella: They often prevent other fighters who are in their prime but have less name value from getting opportunities. “They’re recognizable names in a sport that’s lacking them,” DiBella said of the Joneses and Holyfields. “Meanwhile, I can’t get a fight for Sergio Martinez on HBO unless he fights someone bigger than he is, and there should definitely be room at the inn for a fighter like Sergio Martinez. You can make a great fight, but in terms of selling tickets at a venue, the more recognizable names, even if they’re half-dead, are still attractive. That’s why people like (Hector) Camacho are still fighting. He’s a recognizable name, and a small casino will put up money for someone that they think can sell tickets, whereas if you put together a great fight but the names aren’t recognizable, they’re not interested.”
• And a final note on old guys who should be retired by now: Johnny Tapia is a weird exception to the rule in that you know his pain and the damage he does to himself are even greater when he isn’t fighting, so it isn’t so depressing hearing that he plans to box again. “I love it. I love the sport. It’s not about money, it’s not about fame,” Tapia told Showtime’s Steve Farhood last Saturday night. However, if there’s one reason to want Tapia to quit boxing, it’s this: He has a shot at getting into the Hall of Fame five years after his final fight, and the longer he waits, the less likely it becomes that he’ll be around to attend his induction.
• Last week’s column on the proposed super heavyweight division elicited more email than just about anything I’ve written for RingTV.com, and the most incredible thing was that every single email I received was in agreement with me that a super heavyweight division is a terrible idea. Usually, when people take the time to write in, it’s to disagree. The fact that nobody did that this time should give the alphabet gangs a sense of just how pathetic this idea of theirs is.
• Why is it that in the not-very-Hispanic Philadelphia suburb in which I live, we get Fox Sports Espanol but not Fox Sports Net?
• If for no other reason, be sure to tune into Friday Night Fights all season so you can catch your weekly updates on the consistency and texture of Peter Manfredo Sr.’s bowel movements. Honestly, I’m a little surprised Manfredo was the one to break the news about his own diarrhea. I would have thought my friend Dan Rafael would be all over that scoop.
• I’m not going to lie, I got a little choked up watching Nick Charles make his return to ShoBox on Friday night. Could there have been a more appropriate arena for this comeback than the “Tingley Coliseum”? Only if there’s a place somewhere known as “Warm-Fuzzy Stadium.” In any case, welcome back, Nick.
Eric Raskin can be reached at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
