Boxing’s Biggest Losers: Pound-for-Pound

Waiting for my “Ring” magazine renewal to kick in, I have been stuck with the May 2009 issue proclaiming the “upcoming” Hatton-Pacquiao fight. I have read it cover to cover many times as I kill time during pre-fight pageantry – the two, three, even four national anthems sung before main events these days. I hear an Icelandic chorus – “Iceland’s thousand years,” they pipe. Worrying the tune might last that long, I try to save my sanity with a sampling from “Ring.” I do manage to find safety in numbers – its ratings. I discover something interesting.

For the period ending March 1, 2009, one division in boxing is full of losers. Except for the light heavyweights, middleweights and the junior flyweights, no top-ten has more losses. But that’s not all. If the exceptions, the fighters with the most and least losses in these divisions, are removed, no division has more losses. Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? Readers must think I’m talking about the heavyweights or cruiserweights. But I’m not; I’m talking about the pound-for-pound top-ten.

The pound-for-pound fighters have thirty losses. The light heavyweights, middleweights, and junior flyweights have more, with thirty-six, thirty-three, and forty-one respectively. But after taking away the fighters with the least and most losses (good bye number seven Ivan Calderon and number three Mr. Hopkins) the pound-per-pound has twenty-five losses. That leaves the light heavyweights with twenty-four (good bye number two ranked Chad Dawson and at number three Glen Johnson) and the middleweights with twenty-one (Goodbye undefeated number one contender Arthur Abraham and David Lopez’s twelve losses.). The junior flyweights have two fighters with eleven losses. Who should go? Number five ranked Juanito Rubillar or number eight Bert Batawang? Take your pick. I choose both, taking that division down to nineteen losses. An examination of these ranked fighters’ records leads to a boxing truism, something that I thought was just a cliché. To be a winner in boxing, to be a true champion, one also has to be a loser. Every top-ten pound-for-pound fighter, with the exception of Ivan Calderon, has at least one loss.

Why, then, are pound-for-pound fighters given such esteem if they are a bunch of losers? It’s because their losses are of a certain kind. They are close. Bernard Hopkins has five losses – his first fight, Roy Jones, Jermain Taylor twice, and Joe Calzaghe. The Jones and Calzaghe fights were both competitive and occurred at the right time: one came early in Hopkin’s career and the other, late in his career. The Taylor fights could’ve gone either way. At number five, Shane Mosley has five losses: two to Vernon Forrest, two to Winky Wright, and one to Miguel Cotto. The first four losses were competitive losses for Mosley but they were to probable Hall of Famers. The Cotto fight could’ve gone either way. Manny Pacquiao, “The Ring’s” top-fighter, lost to Eric Morales but came back to beat him twice. The second best fighter in the world, Juan Manuel Marquez, lost a close one to Pacquiao and maybe was robbed by Chris John in Indonesia. Vazquez, ranked fourth, lost to sixth-ranked Rafael Marquez in a terrific fight. Marquez lost to Vazquez twice in fights of the year. Hatton, ranked eighth, was knocked out by former pound-per-pound king Floyd Mayweather when the Brit moved up to welterweight – no shame for this junior welterweight champion. Ranked ninth, Celestino Caballero hasn’t lost since 2004. And tenth-ranked Vic Darchinyan came back from a knockout loss to Nonito Donaire. His comeback from that loss makes him pound per pound worthy. So, of the thirty pound-for-pound losses, I can, without referring to boxrec, account for at least nineteen of them – all “good” losses.

Divisions with fewer losses tell us a different story. If we look at the heavyweights, a division with only sixteen losses, the fewest among all the divisions, we see ten fighters untested against each other. Ranked first and second, the Klitschko brothers both have fought Samuel Peter, ranked seventh. Oleg Maskaev, ranked eighth, also fought Peter. Ruslan Chagaev and Nicolai Valuev, ranked third and fifth, have fought each other. At number six, Sultan Ibragimov lost to Wladimir Klitschko. But that’s it. No one else has fought each other. That accounts for five of their seventeen losses, not even a third of them. The heavyweights then are just ten Jupiters circling in their own orbit, not daring to collide for fear of upsetting their cosmos. That’s not good for fight fans.

On the other hand, there are the super middleweights, a division often called the best and the deepest in boxing. It has only thirteen losses. This number seems to go against my premise that to make a division great, you need losses. But if you examine this division closely it’s interesting. Many of the losses came when fighters took on others in the top-ten. The top contender, Mikkel Kessler, got his lone loss from former champ Joe Calzaghe; at number three, Librado Andrade got his two losses from Kessler and number two ranked Bute. At number four, Anthony Mundine has three losses and one was to Kessler; Bika, ranked seventh, got one of his three losses to champion Joe Calzaghe and another from Bute; at number ten, Denis Inkin got his one loss from number nine ranked Karoly Balzsay. That accounts for seven of the thirteen losses, over half. This is a division clearly trying to work out who’s the best and trying to get on that fast-track to loser-dom: the pound-for-pound list.

Muhammad Ali used to ask a rhetorical question about daring to be great. And what he meant was a boxer has to put everything at risk – his health, his title, and the chance to make the big money. In exchange, by taking on the best competition around, that fighter gains respect. When Ali came out of his three year exile, in his third fight he fought Joe Frazier, taking an enormous beating, almost being knocked out in the eleventh and fifteenth rounds, and losing a decision. But he was finally appreciated as a great fighter because even though he lost, he was game throughout the fight – soon after, Budd Schulberg entitled an Ali biography “Loser and Still Champion.” Ali arguably gained more from that loss than from any win.

And that’s how the pound-for- pound works. Everybody on that list, to a greater or lesser extent has dared to be great and has achieved or approached it – win or lose. That is something the heavyweights should keep in mind. But these days heavyweight champions and contenders both are manufactured by fighting retired ex-contenders and ex-champions and by the wishful thinking of a boxing media anxious for the next great American heavyweight.

With the end of Iceland’s national anthem, so to end my musings on the pound-for-pound top-ten. But the anthems continue. I hear the Mozambique national anthem play a perfect coda to my pound-for-pound thoughts: “they had dared to fight.”

With another I don’t know how many national anthems left before the main event, I re-read “Ring’s” cover story: Hatton vs. Pacquiao. I wonder who will win. As long as my subscription isn’t renewed in the next seven days, maxboxing readers can look forward to my Hatton-Pacquiao preview next week. Here’s a sneak peak: Floyd Sr. will find a son-substitute in Ricky Hatton, training him with such professionalism that the Brit will have the smartest, craftiest, most error-free performance of his boxing career. By daring to be great, Hatton will elevate himself to the top of the pound-for-pound list.

Source: http://www.maxboxing.com/Conway/Conway052409.asp