An All Over The Map Win And Fighting The Battle Of Who's Got Anything Left

A short holiday week means I'm going to say everything I have to now just in case I don't get a chance later; see below for my thoughts on Joan Guzman-Humberto Soto, the upcoming crane-your-neck-at-the-car-crash brawl between Fernando Vargas and Ricardo Mayorga, and more.

Still absent a permanent name for my random musings, I dub today's post Shoe-Shinings (see comment #4817 here for a definition):

• Wrap-up: The reviews of Joan Guzman for his win over Humberto Soto in a highly anticipated 130 pound showdown are all over the map. Put me in the "mostly displeased" category. Round 2 was awesome, and there were some other great exchanges at times, but my guess is that Guzman at some point just decided he was more likely to win if he switched from slugger mode to hit and run mode. There were rounds where Guzman did some beautiful hit and run work -- where he was aggressive, took risks, but still looked mainly to score points then get out of harm's way. There were other rounds, alas, where he embodied the negative connotations of stick and move -- where he barely touched Soto and then plain old ran away. If Guzman hoped to get a big-money fight with Manny Pacquiao by merely scoring a victory, he failed. Pacquiao's promoter, Bob Arum, said
  nobody would want to see Guzman fight Pacquaio after the way he barely fought Soto late in the bout. It's too bad, because Guzman has unearthly natural athletic ability and clearly can stand and trade with big punchers if he so chooses. He clearly can be an entertaining fighter, as he was to about half the people who watched him Saturday night and as he was to me for about half of Saturday night. Now, in addition to being avoided because he is dangerous, he stands the risk of being avoided because he's polarizing. I think if he keeps fighting and beating good opponents, he deserves a big money fight no matter how much he bores the viewers. But he would've gotten it a lot faster, and would have had me calling for it this morning, if he had ended that fight with an exclamation point instead of a series of semi-colons. Overall, the fight wasn't what anyone hoped, but it was a good, solid battle, and as for Soto, despite some mistakes, I wouldn't mind seeing him again at all. The question, though, of "who's next" for both Soto and Guzman is just as murky and complex as it was beforehand. And, while I'm at it, here's my view on the dispute over the wide scoring margin issued by the judges: I had it eight rounds to four for Guzman.
• Preview: This Friday's clash between faded star Fernando Vargas and faded super-villain
  Ricardo Mayorga is probably going to break the record for "most entertaining hype doled out before two severely diminished fighters find out who's the most shot." First there was the highlight reel brawl at a news conference, prompting some wags to quip that based on his victory in Vargas-Mayorga I, they like Vargas in the sequel. Then there is the mountain of trash talk these two have heaped up, with Mayorga, the master, probably getting the better of Vargas, who's fared pretty well, really. "He's got a face only a gorilla mother could love" is a decent line for Vargas, but it doesn't compare to Mayorga's numerous "fat pig" jabs. This fight is at 166 lbs., higher than either have ever gone, largely because Vargas has struggled making weight at 154 lbs., 160 lbs., even 162 lbs., the original contracted weight. Egads. I'm leaning toward a Mayorga win, since his savage knockout losses haven't seemed as frequent or debilitating as Vargas', but Vargas has shown more in his recent losses than Mayorga did versus Oscar De La Hoya. My call is Vargas by late round knockout, since I have my doubts either man will carry much power up to weights that high. My confidence is low. My allegiance is to neither man dying in the ring.
• More Wrap-up: I liked the looks of bantamweight (118 lbs.) prospect Abner Mares in his very competitive and action-packed bout against unknown David Damian Marchiano. Marchiano lost decisively on the scorecards, but he gave a very talented young fighter all he could handle and more. Good show by both men.... If former heavyweight champ Hasim Rahman can't handle feather-fisted Zuri Lawrence, who has suffered back to back nasty KO losses, with ease, then he's far more diminished than even I had guessed, and I didn't have much faith in Rahman to begin with.... Jesus! That Jesus Soto Karass welterweight (147 lbs.) fight against Juan Buenida featured so much heavy fire it was like an early John Woo movie. I only caught a few rounds because I didn't know it was even on, but Soto Karass landed the CompuBox record for most punches landed, I learned, and I wasn't surprised. I now see why this Karass has a little bit of a following.
• Random: Why in the world anyone would want to see Pacquiao, a 130-pounder who is stretching the limits of how high he can move up in weight as it is now, go up to 147 lbs. to fight Oscar De La Hoya is beyond me, but Arum's apparently really trying to make it happen... Allan Green is way, way, way, way too big a step up for super middleweight (168 lbs.) prospect Andre Ward, if that really is the discussion. Really, I want Ward to step up his competition, but let's not get ridiculous. The talk of fighting Edison Miranda made more sense. On the other hand, I really like the idea of welterweight prospect Victor Ortiz taking on junior welterweight (140 lbs.) titlist Ricardo Torres. One guy, Torres, is more of a veteran and can punch really, really hard, and Ortiz, the other guy, is younger and a more all around fighter. I think it'd be a fun one to see and a good test for both... What I don't care to see is a rematch between Joel Casamayor and Jose Armando Santa Cruz. No matter what the blind judges saw in their first meeting, I know and anyone else who can see knows Santa Cruz won an incredibly boring affair, not one I'd care to like to revisit and that I doubt anyone would pay to watch. Here's hoping some kind of justice can come Santa Cruz' way somehow... I already love HBO's Mayweather/Hatton 24/7 documentary series. The more I see of Ricky Hatton's personality, the more I like him. The more I see of Floyd Mayweather's personality, the less I like him. If Mayweather stinks out the joint in a boring decision victory again in their Dec. 8 fight, I'm officially no longer a fan.

What's With All Those Freaking Belts, Anyway? The Case Of The Sanctioning Organizations And Diaz V. Ring Magazine And Casamayor

A quick primer for the uninitiated, before the court gets to the case of Casamayor v. Diaz et al:

"Alphabet soup" is delicious, save when it comes to boxing. One of the sport's most debilitating diseases is the advent of an almost endless number of title belts in each weight division awarded by the likes of the sanctioning organizations named things like "WBA" and "WBC." The end result of this alphabet soup is that there are often four "champions" per weight class, not to mention the various befuddling "super champion" and "champion in recess" titles that these sanctioning organizations award. The cynical among us suspect that a great many of these bizarre designations are intended only to squeeze sanctioning fees out of the boxers who fight for them, and that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to unfathomable alphabet soup politics. For instance, terrible, undeserving fighters often end up becoming the "mandatory" challenger for a belt-holder, something that arouses suspicion of incompetence or worse, and sometimes belt-holders are stripped of their titles for what seem to be no reason whatsoever.

Into the confusing breach of the IBF, WBO et al championship belts came Ring Magazine in 2002, with the invention of something like a people-powered champ. It was, and remains, a highly commendable effort. The Ring Magazine started awarding belts in each of the weight divisions to people who were in essence the "linear" champs, a policy that meant the only way to get the belt was to beat the man who had the belt. In the event someone abandons it by retiring or changing weight classes, the belt becomes vacant. When there are vacancies, the top two fighters usually have to fight one another to become Ring champion.

If you follow boxing closely, you know all this already. If you don't, the Ring belts are probably sounding like a grand idea right about now, since one of the reasons boxing turns a lot of people off is that it's too hard to understand who the "real" champ is and who's a phony.

But for the last few weeks, ever since lightweight (135 lbs.) Juan Diaz defeated Julio Diaz to obtain three of the four available alphabet soup belts, a long-simmering debate in the boxing world over the Ring belt has picked up a little extra fire. And when the Ring's lightweight champ, Joel Casamayor, ended a 13-month layoff and looked terrible against a borderline top-10 lightweight named Jose Armando Santa Cruz Saturday -- then to make matters worse, when the judges awarded him a decision victory that people like myself consider the worst they've ever seen -- the fire built to an inferno. Critics of the magazine's belt policy have pounced. Everyone who knows boxing knows Juan Diaz is the best, most accomplished fighter at lightweight. He's beaten more high-caliber fighters in recent years. After Saturday's stinkfest by Casamayor, which, had he not won, would have placed a guy who's a borderline top-10 fighter in Santa Cruz as the "real" champ of the division, no one doubts that Diaz would stomp Casamayor. (Unless, of course, the same good fortune that lifted him to a decision victory of Santa Cruz again raised a historic wind beneath Casamayor's wings.) So how, they ask, can Casamayor be the "real" champ?

No matter how vociferously the Ring's defenders are maintaining that Casamayor's the real champ, what we have on our hands here is a mighty big loophole. (A caveat: I've always been better at identifying problems than fixing them. That's not a cop-out, I promise. I'm going to give it a try.)

There is, as HBO broadcaster Emmanuel Steward laid it out, a case to be made for the sanctioning organization belts. When no one's the mandatory challenger, the champ can strut around in his belt and take on chumps and still pretend he's a real champion. Without a system for establishing a mandatory challenger, really amazing fighters who pose horrific style match-ups or the promise of inflicting tremendous pain with little potential reward -- say, a southpaw who has a reputation for boringly but efficiently grinding his opponents into pulp -- will spend their entire careers being avoided.

It is my opinion that the Ring system is a better reflection in most cases of the "real" champ than some random sanctioning organization. But one can see the potential for abuse in both directions: the WBC's ability to strip belt-holders willy-nilly and force its champs into fights against undeserving contenders leads to all kinds of unfairness; and Ring's rejection of that practice permits its champions to be champions in perpetuity, regardless of whether they take on anyone who can fight a lick.

So how about this as a compromise? Ring already rates the top 10 fighters in each division. Why not give the Ring champ some kind of very loose mandate to fight a #1 contender within, say, two years from the last time he fought a #1 contender? That's not too crazy, is it? And, of course, create an exception for injury or other unintentional delay. I realize it's not that far away from what the sanctioning organizations do, but it's not so close, either. Look, if you can't make a fight with a #1 contender in two years, you're either an insufferable jerk who's impossible to negotiate with (like Casamayor) or you're a coward who doesn't want to risk losing the title. Either way, you don't deserve it after two years of avoiding the next best fighter in your division.

Because right now, I look at Casamayor, and I don't see a champion. Once, sure, in his younger days. Maybe even before the Santa Cruz debacle. But if he hasn't fought Juan Diaz or whoever Ring's #1 contender is by seven months from now, I sure as hell won't see him as a champion then. And if Diaz doesn't want to fight Casamayor anymore after he looked terrible against Santa Cruz and had spent the last year badmouthing Diaz, well, Casamayor dug that hole, didn't he? The remedy for that affliction is for Casamayor to get back into the ring for cheap and beat somebody who's dangerous convincingly and entertainingly, and then, maybe, Diaz would want win the Ring belt fair and square because he might make a little money doing it. If Casamayor can't muster that? After Saturday, I'd rather see Juan Diaz fight, say, the Ring's #2 ranked lightweight David Diaz for the vacant Ring belt anyway. The winner of that fight is a champion I can endorse without question.

And yet, loopholes beget loopholes. Under this idea, maybe after a difficult fighter becomes Ring champion -- our aforementioned boring-but-scary southpaw -- nobody wants to fight the Ring champ, and we're back to square one, and even worse, the whole Ring belt is completely devalued.

The only solution I can think of for that one is, and here's where things get circular: Make the Ring belt so unquestionably THE belt by stripping the policy of loopholes that it's the only belt boxing writers and broadcasters even bother to mention. Because right now, it's difficult to shame reasonable people into touting Casamayor as the "real" champion.

(I'm torn on whether to keep one of the sanctioning organizations around, just in case Ring Magazine gets chippy and decides to take payoffs for its rankings again. Ring's only done it once, while the sanctioning organizations have a longer history of it, but then, none of the sanctioning organizations are officially owned by a boxing promoter. I'll defer judgment on this idea for now.)

An alternative proposal is just to not give a toss about any of these belts anyway and just hope the best end up fighting the best in a way that gives fans what they deserve so that everyone can see with their own eyes who's the top dog, and the rest of 'em can scrap it out for our affection and hard-earned dollar. This happens every now and then -- who cared that there was no belt on the line when Arturo Gatti and Mickey Ward gave us one of the all time best boxing trilogies? -- but I don't want to get too utopian on anyone.










In other belt-related matters, I'm pretty sure I have an uncle who would've worn this belt buckle.

A Decision Worse Than Making The Matrix Sequels, A Pair Of Uninformative Blowouts And A Dicey Career Move Off An Impressive Victory

I wrote this Sunday, but I thought we all might let the Miguel Cotto-Shane Mosley thriller soak in for a day and a half or so before I turned my attention to other things. Particularly, there was some talk before Saturday night that the Cotto-Mosley fight card was the best of the year, top to bottom, so I want to give my take on the other match-ups, then visit the other major fight of the night.

So here, in my ongoing roving-named series of quick thoughts, find my Turbo Punches:

• The Joel Casamayor win over Jose Armando Santa Cruz featured by far the worst decision by three judges I've ever seen with my own eyes in real time. I scored it 119-107 for Santa Cruz, and most everyone who scored it on press row had it about the same. That's 11 rounds to 1 against Casamayor, folks, with Casamayor losing an extra point for the 1st round knockdown. Were I feeling generous toward Casamayor -- and given what a jackass he is, I wasn't -- I could have, at most, give him another couple rounds. How two judges saw it as even a narrow victory astounds me, and how one judge saw it as only a narrow win for Santa Cruz is only slightly less astounding. Casamayor did nothing. Nothing. Since when do you get points for running away from someone? His punches, when he bothered to throw them, lacked steam. He was rusty from a 13-month layoff, and, maybe, just plain old at 36. The only thing Casamayor did of note was avoid getting clobbered when he accidentally got caught between the ropes at one point and dodged Santa Cruz's punches Matrix-style by bending halfway over. Plus, Santa Cruz was the aggressor throughout and landed plenty of hard shots against a Casamayor who usually is a defensive maestro. It's shameful that Santa Cruz, a nice, strange little fighter who is always entertaining despite being limited, has a loss on his record because of this decision. This decision is far worse, for me, than the Almazbek "Kid Diamond" Raiymkulov-Miguel Huerta decision this year, because, as Bad Left Hook correctly noted, at least Kid Diamond fought in that one, even though I and everyone else in the world thought he lost. I didn't see the Steve Forbes/Demetrius Hopkins fight this year that everyone thought was a solid Forbes victory that Hopkins somehow won on the scorecards. Hopkins and Casamayor are both Golden Boy-promoted fighters who got gift decisions on Golden Boy-promoted cards (as did, I hear tell, Golden Boy-promoted Daniel Ponce De Leon against Gerry Penalosa this year). I refuse to make allegations where I don't have evidence, and it'd be about the stupidest thing in the world for Golden Boy to be involved in any kind of judicial tampering, but if I were Golden Boy brass, I'd be taking a good hard look at myself about how it is that two of my pay-per-view cards featured three of the consensus three worst decision victories of the year. (Bad Left Hook's got an interesting theory on how the Casamayor decision debacle happened. I recommend checking it out, even though I don't endorse it myself.)
• Speaking of Casamayor: There was a lot of good, frisky debate before the fight, during the broadcast and afterwards in some of boxing's chattering class about whether Casamayor deserves to be called the "true champion" of the lightweight (135 lbs.) division. He holds the Ring Magazine belt, which you earn by beating the man who beat the man who beat the man etc., Ring's commendable attempt to slice through the multi-belt/sanctioning organization morass. I have some thoughts on this, but not the time to give them this second, so I'll be delving into this later in the week.
  
• Former welterweight (147 lbs.) champ Antonio Margarito did, truly, look sensational blowing out Golden Johnson in one round. Those were, truly, some of the best left uppercuts you'll see a right-hander land, and one of the most eye-popping power-punching combinations you're likely to witness. Margarito did, truly, start fast, learning his lesson from the Paul Williams defeat earlier this year where he dug himself about a six round hole on the scorecards just by getting outworked. But let's put this in context. We're talking about Golden Johnson here. Sure, he was a promising lightweight up until about 1998. But he got this fight by upsetting Oscar Diaz last year, who, so far as I can tell, was a prospect whose best win was over freaking Jesse Feliciano in 2005. Jesse Feliciano? Johnson before that had gotten his ass handed to him in three rounds by Vivian Harris in 2001, and has a few other not-so-impressive losses on his record to journeymen like Cosme Rivera, albeit some tough journeymen. One of boxing's best cliches is that "styles make fights." I really think Margarito would cream the shorter and vulnerable Cotto, I do, and Margarito is a good, good fighter. But the fleet-footed Mosley or Floyd Mayweather, Jr. would very likely pick Margarito apart, even with Margarito's height advantage. Nothing I saw in this win over Johnson changed my mind in any way about Margarito, other than to think that maybe if he got a rematch with Williams he wouldn't fight so poorly to start.
• Likewise, Victor Ortiz' first round blowout of Carlos Maussa proved very little, mainly because Maussa looked so terrible. I didn't think that knockout punch was all that convincing, but Maussa responded to it very poorly. He's clearly a spent bullet, having been in some tough fights over the years, including an extended beatdown, albeit one in which Maussa was competitive, at the hands of Ricky Hatton in 2005. Maussa was, in theory, a good step-up fight for a hot young prospect on the verge of becoming a contender in the vicinity of the junior welterweight (140 lbs.)/welterweight divisions. It didn't work out being that way in reality, through no fault of Ortiz' own.
  
• Switching gears to action across the ocean... David Haye's knockout of Jean-Marc Mormeck in France Saturday did prove quite a lot. This is a win over the legitimate champion of the division that proves Haye isn't just a boxing specimen; he's a real fighter. He showed some heart along the way by battling back from a 4th round knockdown and some other hairy moments. Now, he says, he's on his way to heavyweight. But if he's getting wobbled and/or dropped by the likes of Mormeck, and, before him, some dude named Giacobbe Fragomeni, and other naturally smaller men at the cruiserweight limit of 200 lbs., what's Haye gonna do when he gets hit by someone who's tipping the scales at around 260? He said before that he'd only gotten knocked out by Carl Thompson because he struggled so mightily with his weight that his stamina suffered. But before this fight with Mormeck, Haye claimed he'd worked the weight off more studiously, and therefore wouldn't have any stamina problems. What's his excuse for getting decked by Mormeck, then? I'd like to request that Haye stay at cruiserweight. There are some nice money fights for him there, such as a matchup with fellow countryman Enzo Maccarinelli. If he proves during his reign that he truly can take a punch from a 200-pounder, maybe I won't be so skeptical. I think Haye has a heavyweight punch and the kind of speed that could make him an interesting heavyweight contender, but I think those two factors could make him the cruiserweight king for a long time to come, if he devotes himself to his craft.

May the judges of the Casayamor-Santa Cruz fight be forever confined to this restaurant. "Fine eats" or no, it'd get old after a while. Plus, there's the humiliation factor.

Score For Charismatic, Fun Boxers On The Verge Of Stardom Who Double As College Students

JUAN DIAZ-JULIO DIAZ

It wasn't the ultra-competitive fight I expected, but then it wasn't exactly unenjoyable, either. Juan Diaz' dominant performance Saturday night, which forced Julio Diaz' corner to throw in the towel in the ninth round, is mainly the reason it fell short in the competition department, and Juan also was the reason behind its enjoyability. This Juan Diaz -- he's really something, isn't he? I could watch him all day. His style might rightly be called "tornado-like," but he took it to near-literal levels when, as my friend Dave noted, he punched a complete circle around Julio at one point. Juan hit him a bunch, stepped to his left, then repeated until he'd come all the way around Julio. Juan's close proximity dulled Julio's power, because he just couldn't get the extension on his punches the way he needed. Juan's style -- reminiscent of this scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm -- is going to keep him from getting KO'd except for by all but the best power-punchers, guys who can knock a man out from an extremely short distance. We saw Kelly Pavlik do this to Edison Miranda, too. If a fighter can walk through the firestorm of a big puncher, it may be the best way, short of some fancy footwork, to defuse a bomb-thrower.

Julio may have fought the wrong fight by staying on the inside with Juan, but then, as Larry Merchant noted, he may not have had any choice. When Julio kept his distance a little, he did all right; that tactic put the fight in that rare category of "one-sided fight that's kind of competive." Only problem is, Juan would clobber Julio with eight punches in a row if Julio dared to hit him with three. MaxBoxing.com's Doug Fischer said Julio had the look of an overtrained or spent fighter. My eye's not good enough to tell. But Juan's punch volume, his head movement on the way in, his smart jab and his other attributes probably did as much to overwhelm Julio as anything else.

All in all, Juan Diaz impressed me more than Julio disappointed. Sure, Juan's a little chubby-looking. Sure, he doesn't hit all that hard. But what's it matter that he looks chubby if he can throw punches from morning to night? What's it matter if he doesn't hit that hard, if everyone he fights these days says, "I'm done, I quit. I don't want to fight this guy anymore tonight. It's too much of a pain in the ass?" Plus, I can't get enough of the college student storyline. Plus, he's likable as all get-out. After he won, he said, "I feel like King Kong!" How charming is that (even though it accidentally implies impending doom)? Young Diaz can be a breakout star under the right conditions. Make 'em happen, Don King.

Next for the winner: The three consensus options for Juan -- only 24 years old -- are fellow lightweight (135 lbs.) belt-holder David Diaz; lightweight Ring Magazine champ Joel Casamayor; and 130-pound sensation Manny Pacquiao. Pacquiao would mean the most money, so naturally that's who Juan was calling out Saturday after his win. But if I'm Pacquiao, I stay far away from Juan. Pacquiao's boxing skills have improved dramatically, but I don't think he has the slickness needed to outbox Juan, nor do I think he will carry enough of his power with the extra five pounds of weight he'd need to knock him clean out. Plus, I want Pacquiao to fight Juan Manuel Marquez. Casamayor, one of the most underrated fighters of our time, just might have the slickness necessary to outbox Juan, and we could settle all this business about whether Casamayor, as the so-called "linear" champ, or Juan, as the champ holding the most belts, is the best. I like this fight most, but Casamayor sounds like a bitch to negotiate with, so David Diaz is a good backup fight, assuming he doesn't end up in the ring with Pacquiao. Not much on the map, but a fight that would virtually guarantee non-stop excitement, is Juan vs. fellow all-action fighter Michael Katsidis. I'd take that one, too. Happily.
Next for the loser: Julio's already come back from three demoralizing losses, so I don't see why he can't come back from this one. I think he's going to have to take the route of all beaten champs -- get back in line, beat some contenders, look good doing it and before long he's up for another belt. Julio's likable, too, so I wish him the best.

















"The Baby Bull" may not be that intimidating a nickname for Juan Diaz, as the image of the child above makes clear. Nor does a reasonable description of Juan as "pudgy-looking college student" sound all that scary. But scatter, yon boxers. Juan will make your Saturday evening seriously unpleasant.

Prospective Unfortunate Side Effects Of A Loaded Late-Year Fight Schedule

This weekend and next, two potentially nice scraps will go untelevised, and it's likely because HBO and Showtime have tapped their budgets and filled their available dates. Strange as it sounds for a sport that was left for dead when I began following it, this fall and winter's bounty of quality match-ups is so overflowing that what would have been decent mid-level attractions a year ago suddenly can't find a home on the small screen. In an entertaining interview at BoxingTalk.com, Paulie Malignaggi -- the crowd-pleasingest boxer you'll ever see who has the punching power of a little girl, what with his strange penchant for making action fights -- speculates that the loaded schedule is the main thing keeping him off TV this fall. One has to imagine other quality fights are on hold for the same reason. It's a shame of a by-product, if so, but certainly falls under the category of "good problems to have."

Both the neglected fights of which I speak are in Paulie's junior welterweight division, at 140 lbs. Two years ago, it looked like boxing's glamour division, but a number of fighters outgrew it and moved up to full-fledged welterweights at 147 lbs. But with these two fights, plus Paulie's presence and the chance that a number of vets of lower weights like Joel Casamayor are thinking about switching to 140, there's some nice new blood here, and they're all fighting each other. Some of them, I confess, I've barely gotten glimpses of. First up, this weekend, is Ricardo Torres versus Kendall Holt. I've only seen Torres in his eye-poppingly good brawl against Miguel Cotto two years ago, when one or the other of them was down in nearly every round before Cotto pulled out the win. Torres has all kinds of power, but looks shaky in the departments of technique and whiskers. I've watched Holt in a couple showcase-type bouts, when he was in against OK competition, but showcase he did, demonstrating speed, footwork and enough pop to make him eminently watchable. I like Holt here by mid to late round TKO. Next weekend, Junior Witter takes on Vivian Harris, and I have no prediction here. I like and have seen my fair share of Harris' ring game, even if he is inconsistent. He's got good skills and very good power for a 140-pounder. I've never seen Witter, not once, but word is he's a tough an out as there is in boxing. It's too bad I won't see him in this clash of two of the division's consensus best.

Pound For Pound

The United States Congress kept me from viewing Saturday night's clash between Rafael Marquez and Israel Vasquez, and wouldn't you know it -- it turned out to be the NEW consensus fight of the year. It's re-airing Tuesday night on Showtime, so I thought I'd preoccupy myself with something else...

You'll notice I don't have a "pound for pound" list, a prerequisite for any and all boxing publications and websites that want to give you their take on who the best fighters are regardless of weight class, from the strawweights (105 lbs.!) to some of the gigantic heavyweights (300 lbs.!). I opted against this for several reasons. First off, admittedly, it's difficult to judge. Should one just imagine all the fighters shrunk or grown to one size -- say, 160 lbs. -- and evaluate who would win? That's hardly the best way, it seems to me, because certain world-class fighters may be vulnerable to certain styles. He may beat almost every other fighter around, but lose to a second-tier fighter who just presents a bad match-up. Sure, the best fighters overcome that, but it shouldn't be the only standard. What about quality of wins? This is very important, obviously. But what if a good fighter loses a decision that most everyone thinks he won? That, too, suggests compilers of pound-for-pound lists should only consider it as a factor. All this and more is why I instead have a list of my favorite fighters -- to me, that's more interesting anyway. Which boxers do I like to watch, regardless of whether they win or lose?

That said, I've finally summoned the cojones to prepare my own list, using factors such as wins, whether X fighter would beat all the others weight being equal and a few more. I think the top three on my list are actually very clearly the three best. The remainder are people who are great fighters but their records are mixed for some reason, because of recent losses or some other neutralizer I'll describe in each individual case.

Feel free to tell me how wrong I am, of course.

TOP 10 POUND FOR POUND

1. Floyd Mayweather, Jr. (welterweight, 147) I think Floyd defeats every fighter on this list, size being even, by virtue of his physical gifts, ring intelligence and underrated willpower. His career is riddled with wins against likely hall-of-famers, and although he has taken a press beating lately for making boring fights or not fighting the best fighters available every time he steps between the ropes, he staved off a challenge from the #2 person on my list by defeating the much bigger Oscar De La Hoya in a weight class about two too high, junior middleweight (154 lbs.). Oscar's not as good as the general public probably assumes he is, but he is a top 20 fighter and even in losses against the best has comported himself well. There may be guys who could trouble Floyd with size or a difficult style, but not many.
   
2. Manny Pacquiao. (junior lightweight, 130) Manny has deployed his whirling dervish offense against several fighters who, at the time, were considered among the best pound-for-pound. It's paid off for him. He only lost once in the sequence, to all-time Mexican great Erik Morales, but avenged that one with two knockouts against a guy in Morales who'd never in his career suffered even a clean knockdown. In something of a pattern, he also mauled all-time great Mexican Marco Antonio Barrera like he never had been before, and flattened another all-time great Mexican in Juan Manuel Marquez three times in the first round en route to a draw. With ever-improving boxing skills to match his power and energy, Pacquiao beats most everyone on this list, but his quality of wins is through the roof.
3. Bernard Hopkins. (light heavweight, 175) Yes, he's old as hell. Yes, he bores me to tears. But he simply finds a way to win, no matter if his opponent is an undersized superstar like Tito Trinidad or a bigger man like Antonio Tarver, the previous light heavyweight king. His last win was against a man rated higher at the time on most pound for pound lists, Winky Wright. Think hard before you decide he couldn't beat the younger, faster, perhaps stronger Joe Calzaghe. The crafty Hopkins simply out-thinks everyone he fights.
4. Juan Manuel Marquez. (junior lightweight, 130) After years of questions about his willingness to get hit and what he would do if he finally got clocked, he got hit convincingly and frequently in his amazing showdown with Pacquiao in 2004. He proved he had heart by coming back from three knockdowns to score a draw. His only blip since is a questionable loss to Chris John, versus a major win over Marco Antonio Barrera. I'm pretty sure he'd lose to Pacquiao in a rematch, but that's about the worst you can say about him.
   
5. Joe Calzaghe. (super middleweight, 168) His flawless win over mega-puncher Jeff Lacy proved that his streak of title defenses, now at 21, was no fluke. That said, he fights too often to the level of his competition, performing poorly against borderline fighters yet still pulling out the win. And I think Calzaghe's next opponent, the skilled Dane Mikkel Kessler, stands a strong chance of ending his streak.
6. Winky Wright. (middleweight, 160) Set aside his recent close loss to Bernard Hopkins, because he was fighting at too high a compromise weight (170). Look instead at the quality wins and the fact that his style would make him nigh-impossible to beat whether he was a natural heavyweight or natural minimumweight. Yet it's clear he's getting old.
7. Shane Mosley. (welterweight, 147) Sugar, too, is getting old, but he's looked refreshed after his rough stretch of four combined losses against Winky Wright and Vernon Forrest, and was fantastic in a return to a more favorable weight class, welterweight. His past accomplishments, and his willingness to take all comers, pushes him higher on this list than he is on similar pound-for-pound compilations.
8. Ricky Hatton. (junior welterweight, 140) Ricky's performances of late have been rocky, but you can't say much bad about his signature victory against all-time great junior welterweight Kostya Tsyzu. And you can't really say much bad about the fact that he's found a way to win every fight he's been in, ugly or not, against reigning champions or game contenders of every style and ability level.
9. Miguel Cotto. (welterweight, 147) Eventually, I think Cotto stands a chance to overtake a lot of people on this list, even if he loses to Mosley later this year. The only thing holding him back is that he does not yet own that victory over a truly great fighter, but like he does in the ring, Cotto will just keep stalking and stalking and stalking...
10. Rafael Marquez. (junior featherweight, 122) Before this weekend, I would have had him as high as fourth. This may be too steep a drop, but it's hard for me to list him as a better fighter than his recent conqueror, Israel Vasquez, when they have split a pair of fights and Vazquez has an ever-growing legacy of his own that doesn't compare too badly. My eyes tell me nonetheless that Marquez is still a better fighter than Vazquez -- although I reserve the right to change my mind after Tuesday's re-airing of their second clash.

KNOCKING ON THE DOOR
There are only a few other fighters I would consider for top-10 status, but you can make a case for all of the below squeezing some of the guys above out. In no particular order:

• Jermain Taylor. He beat Hopkins twice and drew with Wright, yet there are some people who think he lost all three. He beat Cory Spinks, but some say he didn't win that either, all the more embarrassing because Spinks was clearly fighting at too high a weight. But at a certain point, don't you give a guy credit for fighting tough and somehow dragging out the win, even if it's questionable? To break through: Beat fearsome Kelly Pavlik convincingly in the fall.
• Israel Vasquez. He just beat Marquez, cleaned out his division before he did that and along the way soundly beat up Jhonny Gonzalez, a threat from just south of his weight class. I'd throw him in the top ten except he looks vulnerable in every fight, albeit in that good, exciting way, the kind that produces drama, not in Jermain Taylor's awkward, frustrating way. To break through: Take the best two out of three against Marquez in the inevitable rematch.
• Mikkel Kessler. He looked amazing blowing out Markus Beyer and overrated but tough contender Librado Andrade. To break through: Ending Calzaghe's streak would make a strong case for these two switching places.
• Joel Casamayor. There are people who think Casamayor, a dirty-fighting Cuban, has won every fight no matter what his record says, and the case is not without merit. His list of victims, even without that hypothetical, is impressive. His nastiness probably biases some contenders against him for exercises such as these. To break through: Topple a young bulldog or two like Juan Diaz.
• Marco Antonio Barerra. His resume is unbelievable. He's slowed, though, with age. Defeating up-and-coming Rocky Juarez despite that showed he had more left, and some think he actually won his last fight, against Juan Manuel Marquez. To break through: This fall, avenge his loss to Pacquiao, which would be all the more eye-popping because of how unlikely it sounds.
  

Glass Joe from the Nintendo game Mike Tyson's Punch-Out is noticeably absent from my list of the pound-for-pound best. (from smackdownmyrmid.com)