Heads Of Cinder Block, WWE-Style Taunts And Triangles Versus Rights

With two of my top 10 fights of the second half of 2007 coming up this weekend -- Miguel Cotto-Shane Mosley, my #1, and Jean-Marc Mormeck-David Haye, my #9 -- topics that might be worth a lot of words most weeks get short shrift today.

I'm still without a title for these collections of tiny little thoughts that so many other boxing writers seem to have titles for, despite commenter Jimpanzee's fine efforts ("Jabs in the Dark" is alluring, but I dunno, I'm just not sold).

So for now, until I decide on the matter, I'm just going to make up a new title every time I do one of these. So here, without further ado, please enjoy my E. Honda's Hundred Hand Slaps:

• Tonight's "The Contender" season finale, and my figurative money's on Sakio Bika to beat Jaidon Codrington by decision. Codrington's had the weakest draw of anybody on the whole show, and while he's looked sensational knocking out his two opponents, Bika's a whole 'nother animal. He's very experienced, very difficult to fight, and he won't hit the deck easily since his head is made of cinder block. Literally. Bika by decision.
  
• Edison Miranda last week did the comeback thing at super middleweight (168 lbs.) and won by knockout, setting him up for some potentially interesting fights. I don't know if this was some kind of staged, WWE-style promotion, but fellow super middleweight contender Jean Pascal was at ringside taunting Miranda, a fact that did not escape a news release from Miranda's camp. This would be a battle between two men wildly swinging punches and insults, if you're into that kind of thing, and I am.
• It's worth pointing out that Miranda, Pascal, the boys of "The Contender" and this past Saturday's mega-fight between Joe Calzaghe and Mikkel Kessler all involve the super middleweight division. And there are plenty of other good fighters and potentially interesting matchups at 168, especially if the best middleweights (160 lbs.), Jermain Taylor and Kelly Pavlik, move up in weight soon. It's not a unique observation to say that super middleweight is one of the hottest weight classes in the sport right now. I think, though, it's still far behind welterweight (147 lbs). If you take a snapshot now, with Calzaghe in it, super middleweight's probably second best, but Calzaghe's about to move up to light heavyweight (175 lbs). But then what? I'll be "weighing" in (get it?) on this topic soon in this space, I expect.
  
• I don't follow Olympic boxing, I'm ashamed to say, but the patriot in me is pleased to see the United States back in gold at the World Boxing Championships.
  
• This month may ruin me, what with all the close, interesting fights ahead, but prediction-wise I'm still sitting pretty. I'm 3 for 4 since my last tally, putting me at 1 for 5 in July -- an embarrassment I've discussed here -- and 9 for 10 since. The only miscall was Evander Holyfield beating Sultan Ibragimov. I was wrong about methods once, when Juan Diaz didn't win by decision but by knockout over Julio Diaz.
  
• Speaking of heavyweights, a subject for which I can barely contain my disdain, I must give credit to Vitali Klitschko and Ibragimov finally making a unification fight happen. Or, at least, they're very close to making it happen. Between this, the heavyweight tournament I've scoffed at here and here, and the fact that it looks like Nicolay Valuev and Sergei Lyakhovich are about to sign to fight on the dotted line, it looks like the division is at least trying to make interesting fights. That's good because, loathe though I am to admit it, for much of the general public the heavyweight division is the only one that exists, and if it's generating buzz there's at least the chance of a trickle down effect. Now if only any of them except Klitschko could fight much.
• Seven Punch Combo favorite Kassim Ouma's problems are probably deeper than any of us can ever understand, since he was forced into war as a child soldier. And I'm sure his recent legal problems, and his ring rust, hindered him this weekend in a fight he lost against a journeyman who should have been an easy opponent. No one can fix some of those hindrances easily, but one thing that might make a tiny difference is if he moved down from junior middleweight (154 lbs.) to welterweight (147 lbs). He's just way too diminutive to hurt anyone at either junior middleweight or middleweight, and yet he keeps fighting in those divisions.
• Kudos to Rocky Juarez for recognizing his own problem after losing to Juan Manuel Marquez. In an interview with BoxingTalk, he said: "The person beating me is myself." Even Juarez at his best may never have scored a victory against the crafty Marquez, but at least Juarez knows he doesn't throw enough punches -- now he just needs to do something about it.

For today's picture, it was a toss-up between Pascal's triangle and a Miranda rights placard.

Can't Get Much Better Than The Best Fighting The Best

It sounds so obvious, doesn't it?: The two best boxers in a weight class ought to fight each other. Maybe, in the old days, it wasn't celebrated, because it was expected, demanded, regularly consummated. It's rarer today. It's happening this weekend, in fact, in the middleweight division (160 lbs.) once prowled by everyone from Sugar Ray Robinson to Marvin Hagler. And that, to me, is cause for rejoicing. It doesn't matter whether anyone outside boxing fandom knows who the two best guys are anymore. The names matter less than the circumstances. When the best of the best meet, you're wise to watch.

Saturday night's match between the man everyone considers the real middleweight champion, Jermain Taylor, and the man everyone considers to be the best challenger, Kelly Pavlik, is your chance. It is viewed as the unofficial beginning of one a tremendous fall and winter season for the sport that will push 2007 over the edge as the best year for boxing in perhaps a decade. Both Taylor and Pavlik are undefeated. Both are young, hungry fighters. You need to know that, per one of boxing's oldest maxims, "styles make fights," that their contrasting skills and methods offer the potential for a very intriguing bout. But what else do you need to know about them?

Taylor is the gifted Olympian, the athletic specimen whose humble demeanor has cloaked the inner, tough country boy from Arkansas. Too soon in his career, in 2005 after just barely 20 pro fights, he was thrown to the division's all-time longest-reigning champ, Bernard Hopkins. In what was thought to be one of the savvy vet's last bouts, Taylor was intended to pose just enough of a threat to be credible but too green to threaten perhaps the sport's most cerebral warrior. What everyone underestimated was Taylor's heart. He chased Hopkins all over the place, barely winning over the judges by the end of a fight in which even Taylor, despite his grit and energy, was surprised to emerge victorious. In the rematch, his victory was less disputed, but at best, just a hair's breadth separated him from Hopkins. Hopkins makes everyone he fights look horrid and clumsy, because Hopkins doesn't get hit much, and little is as aesthetically displeasing to a boxing fan as one guy ducking and dodging while the other guy swings hopelessly for 12 rounds. So what did the new champ do? Taylor went right on to the next defensive maestro, and maybe the only guy who makes his opponents look worse than Hopkins: Winky Wright, considered then about the second best fighter in the sport, in any weight class. About the only thing you can hit on Wright is his forearms, because he is a deft punch-blocker who has historically employed the minimum amount of offense required to win each round. They fought to a draw, but it is here, in this fight, where Taylor's star began to plummet, even though the fight was one of the best of the year. No longer was Taylor pumping out what HBO commentator Jim Lampley called his "shotgun jab." He spent a lot of time backing up -- a curiously bad habit for the combatant thought to be bigger and faster and therefore with the apparent offensive edge. And this was all happening even with Emmanuel Steward, arguably the best trainer in the business, trying to hone his rough edges. Those edges only got rougher when he failed to knock out, or even dominate, two fighters moving up from 154 lbs. to challenge him. Forget that both southpaw challengers -- 1,000-punch-per-fight-busybody Kassim Ouma and defensive specialist Cory Spinks of the famous fighting Spinks family -- posed difficult style problems. Taylor has nearly erased entirely in the minds of boxing fans his hard-won victories, moral and otherwise. Parades in Arkansas have given way to Taylor getting ragged on in his home state. And that's why he needs to beat Kelly Pavlik.

Pavlik isn't a mystery, not like Hopkins and Wright, much less Ouma and Spinks. Pavlik comes straight at his man, dropping bombs prolifically. No one around today has Pavlik's combination of power and volume. His nickname may be "The Ghost," but he largely dispenses with defense because he knows that hardly anyone can stand up to his arsenal and it's worth the risk of getting hit if he can improve his chances of dishing his out. Only three of his 31 victims have survived to the final bell, and his knockouts are frequently of a Halloween-like quality. At 25, he is four years younger than Taylor, but has stayed busier. At the same time Taylor was fighting a living legend, though, Pavlik was just beginning to fight anyone but cannon fodder in 2005. His opponent was the sturdy Fulgencio Zuniga, who knocked Pavlik down in the first round. Pavlik got back up and knocked out Zuniga in the ninth. There were valuable lessons about overcoming adversity against a credible opponent, but Zuniga's no Hopkins. A couple more fights against lower-caliber but worthy competition passed before Pavlik took on his first truly serious challenge, against Edison Miranda, hailed by many as the hardest-hitting man in boxing. In a scintillating brawl, Pavlik never showed a moment of fear, opting instead to amp up his punch count for every crunching blow Miranda landed. To the surprise of HBO's boxing commentators, who had been heavily hyping Miranda -- but not to me, and not to a great many hardcore fans -- it was Pavlik who left Miranda crumpled in a heap on the end of a sensational power explosion. And it was Pavlik who answered any lingering questions about his ability to take a punch, and about his own grit. He's just as likable, by the way, as Taylor, hailing from the friendly Midwest.

It must be said that there is a chance that this fight won't live up to the hype. Some fights are can't-miss because the two combatants have a history of throwing caution to the wind and deciding either to win by knockout or lose by knockout. Only one of the men here -- Pavlik -- has demonstrated such a history. That's not to say Taylor's a coward; he is precisely the opposite. Agreeing to fight Pavlik took serious cojones. But some, including myself, think Taylor will choose his spots, preferring to win a decision with a jab-and-grab strategy rather than mount a direct assault on a slower opponent who in his last fight took the best punches a big puncher had to offer. That's especially likely considering Taylor hasn't knocked anyone out, not even littler guys, since before he fought Hopkins. So why would Taylor think he would be the one to crack Pavlik's sterling jaw? That could lead to an entertaining chess match, but it could lead to a boring stalemate. I also think the fight could be a blowout in Pavlik's favor, and even if that outcome would be more exciting than a boring chess stalemate, closely-contested battles make for better viewing than one-sided affairs.

Still, this fight a can't-miss instead for all the reasons I mentioned above. Two young, undefeated fighters. A potentially intriguing style clash. The best fighting the best. For me, that's plenty.

(And there's always the stellar undercard fight, to be covered in this space soon, pitting ESPN's 2006 prospect of the year, Andre Berto, against David Estrada, a very dangerous gatekeeper Berto would have to beat before he can challenge for a title...)

MY PREDICTION: Pavlik by KO, around the 9th. I don't see how Taylor suddenly corrects his quizzical technical deficiencies in time for Pavlik not to exploit them. Backing up with your hands down, defenseless, as Taylor has done in three consecutive fights even with his trainer Steward screaming at him between rounds to cease and desist, is a recipe for getting clocked by Pavlik. Ouma, another volume puncher like Pavlik, landed fewer blows against Taylor than he had against others, but he still landed plenty. Ouma hardly knocked anyone out is his more natural junior middleweight division. Hopkins hadn't knocked out a real middleweight for two years prior to his battles with Taylor, and yet Hopkins had Taylor on the verge of a knockdown several times. If Pavlik lands the same blows Ouma or Hopkins did, it's only a matter of time before Taylor hits the deck for a long count.
CONFIDENCE: 75%. If Taylor's never fought anyone as powerful as Pavlik, neither has Pavlik fought anyone with hands this fast. Should Taylor dodge most of Pavlik's punches, and land enough quick ones between Pavlik's to once again please the judges, he can walk away with the decision. When I predicted a blowout for Pavlik, however, the betting public had Taylor and Pavlik neck and neck. Now, the smart money's increasingly on Pavlik.
MY ALLEGIANCE: Pavlik. I like Taylor's personality, and before he fought Wright, I liked how he performed in the ring. Nowadays, he's maddening. Still, I won't be rooting against him. I will instead be cheering for Pavlik, about as crowd-pleasing a fighter as there is in the sport. And isn't it that, more than anything, that boxing needs more of right now?




















I'm usually too cynical to post official promotional material, but I'm enthused about this one. Also the poster is sooooo cool. And I'm going to stop now before my Cynicism Card is revoked.

Dresses, Egomania, Ripoffs And Knuckleheads

Upon my return from a work trip, I find boxing still in its late summer doldrums prior to its outstanding fights just around the corner. And so, random thoughts...

• A brief bit of bragging: The Ring's William Dettloff, a writer whose work I admire, recently penned an item on Ricardo Mayorga as boxing's ultimate villain. That would be the same topic of a blog entry by yours truly not so very long ago. I can't claim that Dettloff saw my piece, but if I was ahead of such a tremendous fight scribe by that much, maybe I'm getting the hang of this thing. I still recommend his piece, because it makes many different points than mine, all of them thoughtful.
  
• A brief bit of self-deprecation to compensate: I struck out on yet another fight prediction, picking Kendall Holt to defeat Ricardo Torres. But it seems what I underestimated was not Holt, but Torres' home-court advantage in Colombia. The 11th round stoppage by the referee, which I'd read about but only just now viewed, was very questionable. Holt was ahead on two of the three scorecards when Torres dropped him. Holt was undoubtedly hurt, but was on his feet, was trying to hold, and was even throwing a punch when the referee stepped in to call it off and give the win to Torres. Things had become extremely chaotic after Torres knocked down Holt, with fans showering the ring in beer, and Holt, slipping on his feet, may have looked more hurt than he was because of it -- not to mention that it's up to the referee to make sure the mat is not dangerous to the fighters. There better be a rematch of what looks and sounded like a solid rumble up to that point, and it better not be in Colombia. Let me know what you think of the stoppage, captured here.
  
• There's something very disturbing and simultaneously crafty about the bet between Sugar Ray Leonard and Oscar De La Hoya that will result in one or both of them playing ring card girl in the final fight of next weekend. The gist is that two fighters from Leonard's "Contender" TV show will take on two fighters from De Le Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions. If Contender fighters go 2-0, De La Hoya ascends to ring card girl duties for the headlining fight between Juan Manuel Marquez and Rocky Juarez, and Leonard will do the same if Golden Boy fighters go 2-0. In the event of a tie, both will do the ring card girl thing. I wonder what happens in the event of draws or no contests, but I do not wonder what either man looks like in a bikini or dress or whatever. According to USA Today, this has generated interest in what was otherwise a decent but not must-buy pay-per-view event. I can't for the life of me imagine why, although the main event and the scrap pitting Sergio Mora against Kassim Ouma could both be nice. But as I've said before in the aforementioned blog entry on Mayorga's antics, I don't much care what generates interest in boxing, so long as interest is generated, and therefore I commend both men for putting their masculinity on the line for their sport. And maybe if Leonard wins the bet, Mayorga finally gets to see De La Hoya in that "Golden Girl" dress he taunted him with last year.
• I find myself torn over the strange impulse I have to watch Zab Judah fight a nobody tonight in the final Friday Night Fights of the season on ESPN. I'd previously only watched Judah in hopes that someone would hit him so hard he'd do that funny dance he does when he gets clocked but good. That's because Judah is one of my least favorite kind of athletes, the gifted knucklehead. Now that he's on a three-fight losing streak, I should have no interest in him whatsoever, but Judah's got to be the most marketable guy in boxing on a three-fight losing streak. He finally showed some guts in his grueling loss to Miguel Cotto this year. And at his best, he's always been a captivating talent. Plus, Cotto and Shane Mosley are going to be in the studio to hype their superfight on Nov. 10. On the other hand, IFC is airing all the new chapters of R. Kelly's "Trapped In A Closet" at around the time Judah will be paving the way to another big welterweight (147 lbs.) fight. Or it'll be around the time he's getting clocked and looking silly as he flops around like a fish out of water, something you can't discount happening when Judah's in against a nobody.

And then, Judah did what has since become best known as the chicken dance, to be viewed here, although I have compared it to both a fish and funny puppet flopping around, and others have called it the rubberman dance.

The Blowout That I Seem Alone In Expecting

Far be it from me to criticize the two best fighters in a division from meeting up, which is exactly what is happening in late September when Jermain Taylor, the acknowledged middleweight (160 lbs.) king, is scheduled to rumble with Kelly Pavlik, the acknowledged top contender. That this match is happening is a tribute to boxing as it should be; it's a tribute to Taylor for taking on a guy who's very, very dangerous; and it's one of the marquee fights that is making this fall and winter full to the brim of important match-ups.

But I am alone, from what I can tell, in expecting this to be a mismatch.

Pavlik has always looked fearsome to me, but he looked downright nasty in his last fight, a knockout of heavily-hyped power puncher Edison Miranda. In Pavlik's first bout against a fellow major contender, Miranda got demolished. But Pavlik would pose style challenges for nearly anyone. He stalks people down, throwing volleys of hard, pinpoint blows along the way. Once he smothers them into a corner or against the ropes, he unloads every punch in his arsenal, especially those unholy straight rights, and, increasingly, jarring uppercuts. The result is that almost every one of his opponents goes to sleep, sometimes frighteningly. If anyone was going to dent Pavlik's chin and return the favor, it would have been Miranda. Instead, Pavlik proved he could take anything Miranda dished out, particularly because of Pavlik's punch volume. The strategy was to keep Miranda backing up under Pavlik's offensive onslaught, thus dulling his legendary power as he struggled to plant his feet for maximum destructiveness (Miranda's power is not an illusion -- Arthur Abraham's badly-broken jaw being one testament to Edison's mean punches).

So what case can one make for Taylor beating Pavlik? Certainly, his own power does not figure to be a factor. Taylor failed to knock out Cory Spinks in his last fight, quite an unimpressive feat since Spinks has been knocked out or nearly knocked out in two lower divisions (147 lbs. and 154 lbs.). He couldn't knock out Kassim Ouma, either, and Ouma was accustomed to a lower weight as well. Spinks is an evasive, slippery boxer, so maybe the failed knockout there can be written off. But while Ouma's a tough customer, Taylor hit him with a fusillade of punches, none of which seemed to cause the smaller man much trouble, so the combination of what happened versus Spinks and Ouma makes Taylor's power questionable. Can you make a case for Taylor's own boxing skill? Perhaps, but that is more dubious by the day. No upper-caliber fighter around has appeared to regress as much as Taylor has. He gets by on athleticism and heart more than his once piston-like jab, which has evaporated into thin air. For the last two years he has, quizzically, fought while backing up against nearly everyone, a bad recipe against someone like Pavlik, who showed that he can capitalize on that quite well. Taylor bested Pavlik when they were amateurs, but Pavlik's boxing skills have gotten sharper with every fight, and besides, winning in the amateurs wearing headgear and heavy gloves is a wholly different thing than winning in the pros; just ask Mohamad Abdulaev, who conquered Miguel Cotto in the Olympics only to get the stuffing knocked out of him in the pros by a harder-hitting, improved Cotto.

I think there are two indisputable advantages one could put in the Taylor column. First, Taylor is faster than Pavlik. I'm not sure by how much, but it might be enough to allow Taylor to hit-and-run his way to a favorable decision. On the other hand, the best neutralizer for speed is volume. Throwing a lot of punches is key to slowing down a faster opponent, and if nothing else, Pavlik has demonstrated he will throw a lot of punches every single time he steps between the ropes. Second, Taylor has fought far superior competition and has found a way to dig out a victory or draw every time. Pavlik has fought a few decent "gatekeeper" fighters where he proved his mettle, but only his win against Miranda counts as a serious, quality W. Taylor, by contrast, kept his unbeaten record intact against a pair of all-time greats in Bernard Hopkins and Winky Wright in fights he could have easily lost but in which he summoned all his willpower to survive. Spinks and Ouma may be smaller and Taylor's performances versus them were unwatchably bad, but they are two very good fighters. And yet, Pavlik has demonstrated his own savvy and guts, putting together a smart game plan against Miranda and proving he would walk through any danger to win.

All of this doesn't even take into account my sense that Taylor has a decent chin, but not a world-class one. He almost hit the canvass a few times versus Hopkins, not as dangerous a puncher at the advanced age at which he fought Taylor as is Pavlik now, a young, power-puncher in his prime.

I want nothing more from Pavlik-Miranda than an action-packed, competitive and definitive showdown between the two top middleweights in the world. But I suspect very strongly that we will instead get the first two -- action-packed, definitive -- in lieu of the last -- competitive.













Kelly Pavlik, at left, no relation to my friend, Jim; Edison Miranda, at right, no relation to one's rights.

Praise Be Low Expectations

HBO this weekend re-aired the light heavyweight title fight between ancient, savvy, mostly-boring veterans Bernard Hopkins and Winky Wright, pairing it with a junior middleweight bout pitting aging, damaged Vernon Forrest against slow-footed, light-hitting Carlos Baldomir. Both exceeded my exceptionally low expectations, although Forrest-Baldomir was legitimately exciting and Hopkins-Wright was better than horrible, maybe even better than mediocre.

HOPKINS-WRIGHT

I contend that Hopkins won the fight, albeit not by much, using guile, excellent foot movement for a 42-year-old, size, harder punching and a head butt. Wright landed more punches in most of the rounds, but mostly his patented jab. When one guy hits harder than the other guy, and the other guy mostly jabs, my feeling is that the jabber better land a ton more jabs than the power puncher lands power punches. Granted, Wright's jab is a nastier jab than most -- whereas most boxers use the jab to establish distance, throw an opponent off-rhythm or set up another punch, it is Winky's main weapon. It's just that Hopkins landed plenty of big shots, enough to overcome what Wright was dishing out.

This might have been a significantly better fight if not for Hopkins' excessive clinching, unpunished by the referee. Again, no one should ever be surprised that Hopkins, an ex-con who prides himself in the skills he learned surviving on the street, would win ugly by breaking the rules. Hopkins tied up Wright after every series of punches he landed, making it difficult for Winky to establish his jab quite as well, a tactic Hopkins enhanced with tricky footwork. That said, it certainly would have moved from better-than-mediocre all the way to good had Hopkins opted to fight straight up. He probably still would have won, making the dynamic all the more lamentable.

Next for the winner: Having conquered the light heavyweight division (169-175 lbs.), Hopkins is now looking to take on the king of a lower weight class, super middleweight (161-168 lbs.) champ Joe Calzaghe. I don't know who I would pick to win that fight. Whenever I have sided against Hopkins, he has won. Whenever I have sided against Great Britain's Calzaghe, he has won. Calzaghe is faster and more powerful than Wright and throws awkward-angled combinations in bunches, but Hopkins has an answer for most everyone. The catch is that Calzaghe first has to get by Mikkel Kessler, a Dane of tremendous skill, in what could be a fight of the year candidate. That means Hopkins will be waiting a while and the fight's buzz could fizzle if Calzaghe is defeated. That would leave Hopkins with few options, since match-ups with some younger bulls like Chad Dawson would not capture enough public attention for Hopkins at this stage in his career. Kudos to him, though, if he's willing to take such fights.
Next for the loser: Wright wants De La Hoya, but who doesn't? And De La Hoya wants little part of a fighter who has a tendency to make his opponent look bad, win or lose. Wright's style is so difficult that you don't get to land many punches against him and he can really embarrass you with his jab. I don't see many big-name options for Wright left, so the choice seems between retirement or bouts with second-tier veterans like the below-mentioned Vernon Forrest or a dangerous younger fighter like Kelly Pavlik.

FORREST-BALDOMIR

This, clearly, was the Vernon Forrest who upset Shane Mosley a few years ago, the one who stung Sugar with a rangy jab and hard, fast combinations as he danced and managed his distance perfectly on the way to becoming Ring magazine's fighter of the year. It was not the Vernon Forrest who last year slung an injured arm at Ike Quartey in such a manner as to somehow convince the judges he won their fight, although the lusty boos at the decision betrayed their error. I prefer the first version of Vernon Forrest, a.k.a. the new version of Vernon Forrest, the one who fought brilliantly on his way to an in-reality convincing victory over the hard-nosed and hard-headed Carlos Baldomir.

Baldomir's noggin must be made of adamantium. He took one knockout punch after another and never stopped coming after the man delivering them. I figure he won three or four rounds on sheer willpower. He might have knocked out Forrest in the ninth round, but for Forrest's seemingly intentional low blow to bail himself out, the only tarnish on what was a rousing slugfest between two courageous combatants.

Next for the winner: Dominion over the barren wasteland that is the junior middleweight division (148-154 lbs.) or a risky move up to the more target-rich middleweight ranks (155-160 lbs.). The biggest name at junior middleweight is Cory Spinks, a draw in his hometown of St. Louis but not much anywhere else, owing to his feathery fists and concentration on defense. I wouldn't mind seeing them fight, I suppose, if only because they're probably the two best in their division and a St. Louis fight would give Forrest a shot at making some cash. A better style matchup -- one that I think would be a cracking good scrap -- would be with Kassim Ouma, once the diminutive non-stop puncher realizes he shouldn't be fighting at middleweight and returns to his more natural division. Forrest wants to avenge his two losses to Ricardo Mayorga, but the Mayorga who beat Forrest has since been ravaged by Felix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya and is clearly worse for the wear, so I'm not sure what that would prove.
Next for the loser: Retirement, it looks like, according to Baldomir himself. Sure, he could get a few more good fights and maybe even win a title at junior middleweight. I would watch him again, gladly. But there's not anyone he could make much money fighting in the division besides Forrest, and he's accomplished plenty in the last year and a half. He knocked off Zab Judah in 2006's upset of the year, becoming the recognized welterweight (141-147 lbs.) champion, not some random belt-holder. He then upset boxing folk hero Arturo Gatti. Despite getting blown out completely, he earned the respect of Floyd Mayweather, Jr. in their bout, not an easy thing to earn from a guy who is contemptuous of pretty much everyone he battles. And he just pushed a rejuvenated Forrest to the brink of defeat in a nice action fight. Baldomir went from mop salesman in the streets of Argentina to millionaire and national icon in Argentina. Who could ask for more?