Alexander Povetkin and Bruce Seldon met in the ring at the South Philly Arena on July 28. Teddy Atlas, who trains Povetkin, says that the meeting was a “glorified sparring session” and that efforts were made “to replicate the atmosphere of a real fight even though it was just a training session.”

The facts are as follows.

Earlier this year, Povetkin was the designated mandatory challenger for Wladimir Klitschko’s IBF heavyweight crown. The two sides could not agree on contract terms. Klitschko’s promotional company won rights to the bout with a purse bid of $8,313,000. Twenty-five percent of that amount was to go to Team Povetkin. Then Alexander pulled out of the fight.

On July 22, Atlas told ESPN.com, "I think he [Povetkin] deserves the chance to develop. I'm in the middle of training this kid, which is obviously an important time in his life for the future of his career. My job is to do the best job I can for the fighter and to make sure he’s the best he can be when he's in a situation to fight. I’m not controlled or dictated by anything other than that. I was never really for the fight right now. Let me have more time with him. I decided the most important thing was to do what was the best for the fighter. My opinion was, more time would be good."

Six days later, Povetkin entered the ring to face Seldon. The event, scheduled for 8 p.m., was closed to the public. Between 70 and 100 invited guests were in attendance.

The event was set up to simulate a regulation fight.

Conversations with multiple sources who were in attendance confirm that Povetkin and Seldon wore 10-ounce gloves.

There was no headgear.

The referee was Luis Rivera.

The judges were Russell Peltz, Adam Berlin, and Don Steinberg.

The ring announcer was Larry Tournambe.

The timekeeper was Fred Blumstein.

Rivera, Peltz, Berlin, Steinberg, Tournambe, and Blumstein were paid for their services. So was Don Elbaum.

Elbaum did the nuts-and-bolts work of putting everything together. He negotiated with Seldon’s management team and the venue and arranged for an ambulance to be on site.

Bruce Seldon was paid $10,000 for his participation in the event. He brought his own corner men with him from Atlantic City.

Teddy Atlas served as Povetkin’s chief second. Joey Intrieri was Povetkin’s cutman.

The money to pay for the event came from Povetkin’s management team. Refreshments (such as pizza and hot dogs) were sold. There was no beer.

The event was scheduled for 10 rounds. Seldon won the first round on each judge’s scorecard but suffered a cut above one of his eyes. The second round could have gone either way, but all of the judges scored it for Povetkin. Round three belonged to Povetkin. In round four, Povetkin knocked Seldon down three times. There was no three-knockdown rule, but Seldon was badly hurt and bleeding from the mouth after the third knockdown. At that point, referee Luis Rivera stopped the event.

A Fight Fax report states that Seldon, 43, has been on suspension since Aug.13, 2009, because of a failed drug test administered in conjunction with a ninth-round knockout loss to Fres Oquendo in Illinois on July 24, 2009.

Povetkin engaged in at least one similar “sparring session” with Robert Daniels at the Front Street Gym in Philadelphia on Oct. 17, 2009. That encounter was also stopped short of its scheduled duration by referee Luis Rivera.

Greg Sirb is the capable executive director of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission. As a general rule, Sirb is outgoing and informative when talking with reporters. That wasn’t the case when he talked last week with Lem Satterfield of fanhouse.com. Satterfield recounts the following exchange:

Sirb: We checked into it and we classified it as a glorified sparring session.

Satterfield: Can you give me any details?

Sirb: Nope.

Satterfield: Was there any headgear used?

Sirb: Glorified sparring session, part of a training program.

Satterfield: But the guy got knocked out, didn't he?

Sirb: Glorified sparring session, part of the training program.

Satterfield: Was Teddy Atlas there?

Sirb: Yep.

Satterfield: Was he working Povetkin's corner?

Sirb: He was at the event.

Satterfield: There's no sanctions or anything like that?

Sirb: Part of a training program.

Speaking with this writer on Monday (Aug. 23), Sirb said, “This is a big to-do about nothing. Things like this happen every day in gyms in Philly. If it’s part of a regimented training session, there’s no problem. This is silly. I’m not going to discuss it anymore.”

However, the Povetkin-Seldon encounter appears to have been different from a “gym war.” In a sparring session, if a fighter is hurt, his adversary backs off. In this “sparring session,” when Seldon was hurt, Povetkin hurt him some more.

Fights are regulated by the state for several reasons. The most important of these is to safeguard the health and safety of fighters. That involves ensuring that (1) the participants are sufficiently skilled and in appropriate condition to participate, and (2) the combat is overseen by qualified licensed personnel.

The state is responsible for making these determinations. Not any individual trainer, manager or promoter. Atlas and Elbaum are good boxing people. They can regulate a fight far more capably than most state athletic commissions. But there are a lot of bozos in boxing with a towel over their shoulder and a pencil in their hand. A state can’t have one set of rules for Atlas and Elbaum and a different set of rules for someone else who wants to arrange a “glorified sparring session.”

Where should a state athletic commission draw the line? Suppose the Povetkin-Seldon encounter had taken place at a black-tie event with spectators paying $200 each for a gourmet dinner? Suppose there were six “glorified sparring sessions” at the event instead of one? Suppose one of the participants suffered a brain bleed or lost an eye?

I don’t have a problem with fighters sparring without headgear and with small gloves. It’s fine with me if fighters go hard in sparring. And I’ll accept the premise that, from Povetkin’s point of view, this was a training exercise. But no matter how the Povetkin-Seldon encounter is styled, it appears to have been a fight.

Was it?

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, most likely it’s a duck.


Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book (a novel entitled Waiting for Carver Boyd) was published earlier this year by JR Books. Hauser says that Waiting for Carver Boyd is “the best pure boxing writing I’ve ever done.”

The summer months have been typically slow for boxing but the sport gains some much-needed momentum at the beginning of the fall season with a number of RING-rated fighters inaction, including two of the magazine’s champions.

Junior flyweight champ Ivan Calderon and heavyweight champ Wladimir Klitschko are set to defend their RING titles in the next three weeks.

Calderon (34-0-1, 6 knockouts) puts his 108-pound title on the line against Giovani Segura in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico on Saturday.

Klitschko (53-3, 48 KOs) is scheduled to defend his heavyweight title against familiar foe Samuel Peter in Frankfurt, Germany on September 11. Klitschko, who has made one defense of the vacant RING title he won by beating Ruslan Chagaev last June, got up from three knockdowns to outpoint Peter (34-3, 27 KOs) in September of 2005.

Four of the many RING-rated contenders in action in the next three weeks will face each other.

The magazine’s No. 1-rated junior lightweight Mzonke Fana takes on fellow South African veteran Cassius Baloyi, the No. 4-rated contender, for a vacant 130-pound belt in Johannesburg on September 1. Fana (29-4, 12 KOs) dropped a majority decision to Baloyi (37-4-1, 19 KOs) in April of 2008.

THE RING’s No. 3-rated featherweight Orlando Salido will face the No. 6-rated contender Yuriorkis Gamboa in Las Vegas on September 11. Mexico’s hardnosed Salido (34-10-2, 22 KOs) won one of the four “major” belts from Cristobal Cruz in May and Cuba’s ultra-talented Gamboa (18-0, 15 KOs) also holds an alphabet strap so their fight is a partial title unification bout.

This Saturday’s junior flyweight showdown between Calderon and Segura is also a unification bout. Calderon, who has made six defenses of THE RING title, also holds one of the alphabet belts, as does Segura (24-1-1, 20 KOs), the magazine’s No. 1-rated junior flyweight who is delighted to be fighting for universal championship recognition.

“This fight is very special to Giovani,” Segura’s manager Richard Mota told RingTV.com. “He knows that if he beats Calderon he will no longer be a titleholder, he’ll be a real champion, and that’s something he’s dreamt about for many years.”

The Calderon-Segura fight, which will be available in the U.S. on a small pay-per-view card, is an intriguing bout between a pure boxer and pure puncher. The historic Puerto Rico vs. Mexico rivalry should add intensity to the 108-pound showdown and making it the perfect fight to kick start the fall’s boxing lineup.


RING RATINGS UPDATE

The previous week did not produce much movement in THE RING’s ratings. The only change of ranking occurred in the cruiserweight division, where Germany based beltholder Marco Huck (No. 3 last week) traded places with Krzystof Wloadarczyk (No. 2 last week) on the basis of his impressive fifth-round knockout of Matt Godfrey (No. 10 last week) and greater activity this year.

Godfrey exited the ratings and was replaced at No. 10 by Pawel Kolodziej.

Fernando Montiel is among those who could win Fight of the Year honors in a year with no obvious candidates. Photo / Chris Cozzone-FightWireImages


As far back as the middle of May, I used this column space to lament the lack of a Fight of the Year candidate in 2010. Three months later, nothing has changed on that front. And an additional year-end awards conundrum has emerged: We don’t have a single worthy Fighter of the Year contender either.

Generally, by the end of summer, the Fighter of the Year race has taken shape. In years past, the superstars would have all engaged in a couple of significant fights by now and had one or two more planned before the end of the year. Whoever was in position to win a major bout between September and December would have an excellent shot at the award.

But 2010 has been a down year for the sport, as everyone in the boxing world has acknowledged. And a major reason for that is that boxing’s elite aren’t interested in fighting more than twice a year. If anything, they’re interested in fighting fewer than two times a year. You can blame HBO for overpaying unproven fighters or you can blame the boxers for being unrealistic about their worth, but the bottom line is that almost all of the game’s biggest names have been frustratingly inactive this year.

Remember when Oscar De La Hoya fought five times in 1997 to secure Fighter of the Year honors from THE RING’s sister magazine, KO? Those days are long gone. Now, two appearances is plenty to capture the award, as long as they’re both major fights.

Unfortunately, it’s a struggle to name many boxers who are positioned to end 2010 with two meaningful victories.

Over the past four years, two fighters have monopolized the Fighter of the Year award: Manny Pacquiao (’06, ’08, and ’09) and Floyd Mayweather (’07). Neither is a candidate this year. Pacquiao’s opposition – Joshua Clottey and probably Antonio Margarito – simply isn’t up to snuff. Mayweather’s competition – Shane Mosley – was just fine, but there wasn’t enough of it; the Mosley victory was, and will remain, his only fight this year.

Traditionally, if all else fails, you can look to the top heavyweights for Fighter of the Year consideration. A heavyweight has won THE RING’s award 32 times in 81 years. Not this year. Through no fault of his own, Vitali Klitschko’s competition (Albert Sosnowski and soon Shannon Briggs) will have been abysmal. Brother Wladimir’s opponents will have been more respectable, but still, it’s impossible to claim FOTY honors beating Eddie Chambers and Sam Peter. The busiest of the top heavyweights has been Tomasz Adamek, who might end up fighting four times by year’s end, but he didn’t exactly dazzle against Jason Estrada or Michael Grant.

Sometimes you can get a sense of who the Fighter of the Year might be by looking at who’s been named Fighter of the Month in THE RING. Here’s the list so far: Takashi Uchiyama, Edwin Valero, Devon Alexander, Pongsaklek Wonjongkam, Mayweather, Miguel Cotto, and Juan Manuel Lopez.

Don’t count on Valero winning any posthumous awards. Alexander took himself out of the running with his lackluster performance against Andreas Kotelnik last time out. Mayweather went one and done. Cotto might have an outside shot at Comeback of the Year, but fights against Yuri Foreman and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (assuming it gets signed) don’t make you the Fighter of the Year. Uchiyama and Pongsaklek each scored one meaningful victory but have followed up with marking-time fights against non-contenders.

The only one on the list worth considering is Lopez, who destroyed Steven Luevano, bombed out Bernabe Concepcion and will take on Rafael Marquez on a rescheduled date sometime this fall. Unfortunately, Lopez was supposed to destroy Luevano, he was supposed to bomb out Concepcion and he’ll be a solid favorite to beat Marquez. “JuanMa” is having a fine year, but ultimately, he’s just doing what’s expected of him. If he beats Marquez, he’s a default pick for FOTY if absolutely nobody else turns out to be worthy. More likely, he’s in the “Honorable Mention” category.

To find our Fighter of the Year for 2010, we might have to dig a little deeper than usual and take an extra close look at some of the smaller fighters to whom even the hardcore fans don’t always pay much attention. There’s the aforementioned Pongsaklek, who could have an outside shot if he signed for and impressively won a major fight at the tail end of the year. Whoever wins the Ivan Calderon-Giovanni Segura fight this Saturday in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, would instantly earn consideration, although it would represent the only significant victory of the year for either boxer.

But the little guy with the best chance is probably bantamweight beltholder Fernando Montiel, who is having a legitimately excellent year and is in discussions for one more major outing. Montiel has been busy, with three fights in the first seven months of the year. He’s been spectacular, with knockouts in the first, third and fourth rounds. Opponents Ciso Morales and Rafael Concepcion (a late sub for Eric Morel) weren’t much, but Hozumi Hasegawa, the longest reigning titlist in the sport at the time, certainly qualifies as a meaningful victim. There’s currently talk of a Montiel-Nonito Donaire fight in the fall. If it happens and Montiel wins, he’d become the FOTY frontrunner.

But Montiel isn’t the only fighter out there who can take the pole position by signing for and winning one important fight this fall. If there’s one man who controls his own destiny in the Fighter of the Year competition, it’s middleweight champion Sergio Martinez. The one thing that’s beyond Martinez’s control is getting Paul Williams to sign on the dotted line. After all, he couldn’t get Alfredo Angulo to accept a career-high payday to face him (which would have given Angulo three HBO appearances in 2010 and a shot at Fighter of the Year himself). But assuming Martinez-Williams does happen (HBO is reportedly eying a Nov. 20 date), the FOTY competition could become very straight forward.

If Martinez defeats Williams, that gives him two highly meaningful victories in 2010, over Kelly Pavlik to claim the legitimate 160-pound title and over Williams, whom many regard as a top five pound-for-pounder. That’s a classic modern Fighter of the Year campaign, not unlike Pacquiao beating Ricky Hatton and Cotto in ’09 or Mayweather defeating Hatton and De La Hoya in ’07. Should it play out in that manner, it will truly feel as if 2010 belonged to Sergio Martinez, which is how we want it to be when it comes time to select the Fighter of the Year.

What if that fight doesn’t happen, or if Williams wins? Then it’s wide open. It could be Montiel. It could be Andre Dirrell if he upsets Andre Ward. It could be Peter if he shocks Wladimir Klitschko. It could be JuanMa Lopez if nobody else does anything of note.

As of this moment, nobody stands out, which is symptomatic of a year in which the biggest fights aren’t being made and the best fighters can’t be bothered with fighting more frequently than once every six months. It’s been a disappointing year for boxing. Let’s hope somebody takes advantage of that and reaches out and grabs the Fighter of the Year award, so we don’t have to give it to anyone by default.

RASKIN’S RANTS

• Something tells me Antonio Margarito won’t face any questions about his sparring license from the Texas Commission. Dickie Cole’s line of questioning will probably go more like this: “Is it OK if my son referees your big fight against Manny Pacquiao? Yes? OK, then here’s your license.”

• Is it time to start putting Jackie Nava on the list of boxing’s best body punchers, pound-for-pound and gender-for-gender?

• Circle Wed., Sept. 8 on your calendars. That’s the date when either the RingTV.com editors cop out and skip the letter “X,” or late-’80s/early-’90s journeyman junior flyweight Alfredo Xeque gets the lead spot on the front page of the web site. I’m hoping for the latter; it’ll be worth it just for the line: “Sugar’s ranking: No. 1,457,312.”

• In case you missed it last week, don’t forget to check out the latest episode of Ring Theory, featuring the wit and wisdom of special guest Nigel Collins. Where else can you hear mediocre Harold Lederman impressions, updates on the state of breast augmentation in Montreal, and speculation about Bob Arum’s wife having sex with the pool boy?


Eric Raskin can be reached at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com. You can read his articles each month in THE RING magazine and follow him on Twitter @EricRaskin.

TUCSON – Boxing returned and Arizona’s immigration fight continued Friday with a card that included two Mexicans who said WBC President Jose Sulaiman threatened to suspend them for fighting in the state.

Lightweight Genaro Trazancos of Mexico City and featherweight Adolfo Landeros of Hidalgo said they were told a few days before Friday’s opening bell that they faced a WBC suspension for defying a warning issued in late April by Sulaiman, who in a prepared statement said he would not authorize Mexicans to fight in Arizona after the state legislature passed SB 1070.

“That’s it, I guess,’’ Trazancos said through an interpreter after he lost to Filipino prospect Mercito Gesta at Casino Del Sol in a seventh-round stoppage televised by TeleFutura. “I guess, I’m suspended.

“Believe me, I strongly support Mexican migrants. They have to work for a living. So do I.’’

Trazancos, a 35-year-old veteran of 36 fights (23-12-1, 13 knockouts) said he did not know whether the threatened suspension would keep him off any card in Mexico or just those sanctioned by the WBC, a Mexico City-based organization.

“But it is Mexico, so you never know,’’ he said.
Neither Trazancos nor Landeros had any second thoughts about fighting in Tucson on the first card televised in the state since April 23, when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the legislation, which opponents say encourages racial profiling.

“I already had signed to fight here,’’ Landeros (24-15-1, 9 KOs) a featherweight from Hidalgo, said through an interpreter after he was upset in a loss by unanimous decision to Noe Lopez, a late stand-in for injured prospect Michael Franco. “I was obligated. If I had not fought here, I don’t know when I would be able to fight in the United States, for a U.S. promoter, again.
“The pay in Mexico isn’t that good anyway. Besides, this is how I make my living. I have to work.’’

Lopez, who is from Nogales on the Mexican side of the border about 75 miles south of Tucson, said he was not contacted by the WBC before he agreed Friday morning to fight on the Don Chargin-promoted card. Lopez said he was only aware of Sulaiman’s warning from reports on the internet. Even if he had been threatened with a WBC suspension, he said he would have fought in Tucson.
“I’m not worried about it,’’ Lopez said, also through an interpreter. “This is what I do. It’s how I support myself and my family.’’

Neither Sulaiman nor anybody on his WBC staff in Mexico City responded to e-mails seeking a response to the warning he issued to Mexicans planning to fight in Arizona. Trazancos said he learned second hand of Sulaiman’s threatened suspension.

“People around me told me about it,’’ Trazancos said.
Landeros said he found about it by reading a story in his hometown newspaper.

“Then, I tried to call Sulaiman,’’ Landeros said. “I left a message. But I haven’t heard from him.’’

Chargin said he heard about the threat after he arrived in Tucson a few days before the card.

“Silly,’’ said Chargin, who plans to return to Casino De Sol with a promotion on either Sept. 24 or Oct 1. “So what are these kids supposed to do? Quit earning a living?’’
Chargin said he was told that Sulaiman threatened to suspend Trazancos and Landeros for five years.

“We called the fighters when we heard about this and both said: ‘Hey we’re coming. They don’t put any food on our table,’” Chargin said.

The threatened suspension comes in the wake of a federal judge, Susan Bolton, issuing an injunction on July 28 that delays implementation of the bill’s key elements, which mandates Arizona police ask for documentation from anybody stopped for reasonable suspicion. The Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco will review the legislation and is expected to issue a ruling on its constitutionality.
On the day the injunction was issued, the controversy, as it relates to boxing, was fueled by comments from Oscar De La Hoya during a news conference in Las Vegas before Juan Manuel Marquez’s victory on July 31 over Juan Diaz, a Mexican-American who criticized the law in a guest editorial for the Houston Chronicle, his hometown newspaper.

De La Hoya said there was “racism’’ in the Arizona law. Sergio Mora echoed De La Hoya’s comments a few days later in Las Vegas during a news conference for his Sept. 18 fight with Shane Mosley at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. Without being asked, Mora said there was “latent racism’’ in the legislation.

“It’s ignorant,’’ Mora said.

The controversy, which includes demonstrations against the Diamondbacks at road games and an ongoing attempt to force major league baseball to pull the 2011 All-Star Game out of Phoenix, already has had an impact on boxing in Arizona, once a lively market and home to Hall of Fame junior-flyweight Michael Carbajal.

A Top Rank card featuring junior-welterweight prospect Jose Benavidez, a Phoenix native, was pulled out of the state. Benavidez, who has been living in Los Angeles and training with Freddie Roach at the Wild Card Gym, was scheduled to make his hometown debut on July 17 at Wild Horse Pass Casino in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb.
Top Rank’s Bob Arum said concern from a sponsor and Mexican television network about the controversy forced him to move the card.

Arum said he was told by Tecate, a Mexican beer, and TV Azteca, that they didn’t want the card in Arizona because of SB 1070.

“As a company that promotes boxing, we’re apolitical,’’ Arum said after the cancellation in late May. “But I was informed by Tecate at TV Azteca that they just don’t want us to originate anything from Arizona at this time.’’
Tecate was the primary sponsor for the TeleFutura show Friday in Tucson. The company declined to comment. A spokesperson said it was company policy not to comment on “any political or legislative topics.’’

Benavidez, disappointed in July, is eager to make his hometown debut. He has heard from friends.

“They’ve called and told me how much they want to see me fight at home,’’ said Benavidez (7-0), who has been at home training for the last several days at Central Boxing just a few blocks from streets where anti-SB 1070 activists have demonstrated in front of the state capitol. “Either way, I’m pretty sure people would come to see me. But it’s just not a good thing with everything going on in Arizona right now.

“It’s just something I would feel right about. I just think it’s wrong. I’m sure of that.’’

Since the July 17 card was canceled, Benavidez and his dad, Jose Sr., expressed their opposition to the law. At a victory over Ronnie Peterson in Chicago on May 29, Benavidez and his dad wore T-shirts that included SB 1070 covered by a circle and a slash. The same symbol of opposition has shown up on shirts and trunks of Mexican and Mexican-American boxers everywhere.

Abner Mares, a bantamweight from Los Angeles, wore it on the back of a T-shirt before his majority draw on May 22 with Yonnhy Perez at Staples Center. It was on the trunks of at least one Mexican-American making a debut last month on a small Phoenix card featuring former Arizona amateurs in the initial stages of their pro careers.

Chargin said he plans to continue promoting in Tucson because he said he has always been welcome at Casino Del Sol, which is on land owned and governed by the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. The tribe has its own commission with rules that mirror those followed by the Arizona State Boxing Commission.

The state’s regulatory agency has agreements with other tribes to oversee boxing, including Desert Diamond south of Tucson, where De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions staged a series of cards for a few years. Last summer, Golden Boy had trouble getting license for fighters from countries other than U.S. A work visa instead of tourist visa was required.

Prospect Erislandy Lara, a Cuban, could not get a work visa in time for a scheduled fight last August at Desert Diamond. Since, then, Dennis O’Connell, the Arizona commission’s new executive director, said fighters only have to prove “legal presence,’’ meaning they can again get licensed with a tourist visa, which is easier and cheaper to acquire than a work permit.

But controversy over SB 1070 has complicated the chances at resurrecting the Arizona market, which in its heyday included Salvador Sanchez, Alexis Arguello and a young De La Hoya. Casino De Sol’s officials are hopeful that the property’s relative independence from state governance and perhaps controversy could play a role in bringing back a business that has been mostly dormant for at least a year.

“We’d be more than willing to talk to the WBC,’’ said Wendell Long, CEO for Casino Del Sol. “We’re on sovereign land. We’re a safe haven.’’

It’s a sure bet that none of the 11,000 or so fans crammed into the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., on Saturday night were there to see Lenin Arroyo, a club fighter from Costa Rica now living in Miami.

Arroyo, or “Volcano,” as it read across the front of his waistband, was hired by the event’s promoters more or less to become the ninth pro fighter to lose to Sadam Ali, the prodigiously talented welterweight who in 2008 became the first “Arab-American” to represent the United States at the Olympic box-offs. This is very important to people who follow such things.

Arroyo entered the ring wearing powder-blue trunks with fringes on the sides. The fringes looked worn down and a little faded, which would seem to defeat the whole point of fringes. Across the back of his white T-shirt there was an advertisement for a factory or some such: “We don’t use machines. We build them.”

Across the back of his waistband read the name, “Celeste.” He told me later Celeste is his daughter. She’s 9 years old and lives in Costa Rica.

Ali’s shirt was an over-sized, multi-colored construct of some expensive-looking material that could only have been fashioned by a talented and exclusive tailor. In another setting you might call it a cape. Across the back: “World Kid Ali.”

Ali was the fourth consecutive undefeated fighter Arroyo faced. He’d lost to Mike Jones, James De la Rosa and Mike Alvarado (combined record: 62-0) over the last year. He lasted the distance with Jones and De la Rosa; Alvarado stopped him in two.

Against this backdrop Arroyo did his job against Ali, taking a knee in the fifth round and rising just after referee Steve Smoger’s count reached its conclusion. Ten seconds earlier Ali had landed a perfect left hook to Arroyo’s liver and not even volcanoes can withstand so precisely landed a blow.

A few moments before the end, an overly talkative man connected somehow to the promotion and seated next to me said to someone -- possibly me, but as a matter of self-preservation I had ceased paying close attention long before -- that Arroyo “is like a Gatti. He even looks a little like Gatti.”

This gentlemen spent much of the evening sharing mostly preposterous observations punctuated with “there‘s no doubt about it.” He openly rooted for and cheered on Tomasz Adamek in the main event, trampling on the most-sacred press row commandment. Through much of the fight he called Adamek “Adam.” After a while, he realized his error and switched to “Tommy.”

Nevertheless, I mentally ceded his point about Arroyo and the late Arturo Gatti. Though light years more talented and successful, Gatti at his most desperate moments did the only thing he could to lessen the talent gap between him and his opponent: put his head down, charge in and hope for the best. You never got the sense it embarrassed him, or that he wished he could do more. He just did it.

Arroyo didn’t do even this as well as Gatti, and what’s more has no big punch on which to pin his meager hopes, as Gatti did. But he had the same kind of fearless resignation about him as he charged into Ali, winging overhand rights and left hooks that had roughly the same chance of landing as they would have if had I been throwing them from my position roughly 20 feet from the ring.

Arroyo (20-13-1 with four knockouts) kept at it all the same, never looking discouraged, egging Ali on, taking flush on the jaw and face every kind of punch there is to take. A long right staggered him in the first and it never got better, especially when he turned southpaw for a moment in the fourth round and was quickly blasted for his effort.

The crowd, clearly on Ali’s side, chanted, “Ali! Ali!” One can safely guess that none of them had been born yet when that chant first became fashionable.

Ali enjoyed it nonetheless, grinning at Arroyo’s creeping ineptitude while bombarding him at will. Arroyo, for his earnestness, could land nothing.

Later he acknowledged Ali is “class A” fighter and much better than Jones, whom he called “lazy.” His face was a lumpy connection of angry red bumps, as if he’d been attacked by an entire colony of Africanized bees.

He added, “These guys are too big for me. I have to be a real lightweight. I can’t get a big fight at 135, so I have to fight bigger and bigger guys.”

Arroyo’s trainer, Richard Acosta, chimed in. “He should be fighting at 135 or 140 but he can’t get fights in those weight classes. He doesn’t have a big promoter so he has to fight these guys.”

“Fighting these guys is more money,” Arroyo said. “They don’t want fight someone with a good record so they fight me.”

Arroyo said that when he is not fighting he is a personal trainer in Miami, and that he plans on just two more fights before he quits the game.

“Just two more fights and that’s it. I’m 30 years old now, so I don’t want to get problems with the head later on. I’ve been fighting for 10 years. I don’t want to get stupid,” he said.

“Just one or two more fights and that’s it.”

He knows as we all do that there never are enough tough guys willing to charge into a bigger fighter and slug away, especially if he’s firing mostly blanks.

You can always find guys to fall down. They’re all over the place. The ones who go down fighting are harder to find. Arroyo goes down fighting. That will keep his phone ringing for as long as he cares to keep picking it up.

Some random observations from last week:

For my money the most entertaining fight on the Adamek-Michael Grant card was Joel Julio’s hard-fought distance win over Philadelphia’s tough, well-schooled Jamaal Davis, who is far better than his 12-7 (6 knockouts) record suggests. …

Outside Poland, there’s not a better place for Adamek to fight than The Prudential Center in Newark. Remember how it was with Gatti and Boardwalk Hall? That’s how it is. Adamek shouldn’t fight anywhere else. …

Look for a in-depth feature on Grant and his fall from “heir apparent” to heavyweight nonentity in an upcoming issue of THE RING. …

Prediction: Many fight writers will correctly report that Grant’s size advantage was of little use to him against the quicker, more agile Adamek. Those same writers, next time they handicap a fight, will out of habit pick the bigger guy. …

Yeah. Why not Pacquiao-Marquez III?. …

Count on Texas giving Antonio Margarito a license to box. They have very low standards. For example, I heard they gave a really important job to a guy named “Dickie.” …

Between Grant and Chad Dawson losing, Eddie Mustafa Muhammad is having a bad stretch. Thank goodness for Zab Judah. Wait. Is it possible to use those five words together in a sentence like that? …

Did you hear? The WBC wants Andre Berto to fight your garbage man’s niece’s prom date or they’re going to strip him. Keep paying those sanctioning fees, guys. How’s that working our for you? …

If you’re in the business of housing dementia patients, employing home-duty nurses or selling foods that have been creamed, put into little jars and sold by the gross, then maybe the comeback of 36-year-old Vassiliy Jirov is good news. To the rest of us, not so much. …

So Macro Huck rolled over Matt Godfrey. Great. More proof that if there’s anything more useless than a cruiserweight, it’s an American cruiserweight. …

I thought my eyes were deceiving me when I read that former Contender contestant Jimmy Lange won a fight. Then I saw it was against 12-40-2 (4 KOs) Mike McFail, possibly the most appropriately named fighter in the entire history of prizefighting. …

Hey did you hear? BJ Flores is a free agent! Here’s a list of all the promoters clamoring to sign him:


Bill Dettloff, THE RING magazine’s Senior Writer, is the co-author, along with Joe Frazier, of “Box Like the Pros.” He is currently working on a biography of Ezzard Charles. Bill can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net