Tough, tough lucked Collazo ready for
another opportunity
Mark E. Ortega
Leave-it-in-the-ring.com
March 21, 2011
Despite being only thirty years of age,
former welterweight champion Luis Collazo of Brooklyn, New York has
seen his share of big fight opportunities slip through his hands,
more often than not the cause being something out of his control.
Despite many questions left unanswered over the course of the 30-year
old fighter's nearly eleven year professional career, he has found a
way to move on and let the past be the past, focusing all of his
efforts on a better tomorrow where he hopes another opportunity to
showcase his talents at the upper tier will appear soon.
Collazo [30-4, 15 KOs], a fighter of
Puerto Rican descent who will enter the ring April 13th
against unheralded Franklin Gonzalez [13-8, 9 KOs] of the Dominican
Republic in Collazo's Brooklyn hometown, is the definition of a hard
luck fighter. Usually that label is assigned to those who weren't
quite able to find themselves at the right place at the right time in
order to earn a big fight or a championship belt. The tricky southpaw
has done both of those things. But the circumstances surrounding the
savvy veteran's ups and downs are part of what has made him such a
humble and thankful guy in a landscape that isn't quite chock full of
them.
In his first foray into the national
spotlight back in 2002, a young Collazo [14-0 at the time] suffered a
controversial third round stoppage defeat at the hands of fringe
contender Edwin Cassiani in a headlining bout of an early broadcast
of Showtime's ShoBox: The New Generation. The third round saw Collazo
tagged by a handful of seemingly brutal shots near the ropes that
snapped his head back and sent referee Jay Nady quickly in for the
stoppage despite Collazo having his hands up in protection at the
time. After the stoppage it was clear that Collazo's legs were okay
and he wasn't as bad off as the firepower would have indicated, but
the fight was already over.
“It is going to affect my career,”
a Collazo that was a week away from reaching his 21st
birthday said immediately after the bout. “This would have opened
doors for me. He lands two or three punches and the ref wants to stop
the fight.”
“This is boxing, not basketball,”
Collazo candidly exclaimed.
Now nearly ten years later, it's the
first part of that statement that finds Collazo in comfort these
days.
“It's part of boxing,” Collazo
would remark on the shady finish to that fight in a phone interview
earlier this week. “We tried to get the rematch, didn't dwell on it
and moved forward. Everything happens for a reason.”
It's an interesting take from a fighter
who has seen more than his fair share of unevenness. Collazo would
bounce back from that loss which may have actually aided him in
securing a world title fight three years later against Jose Antonio
Rivera for his WBA 147-pound strap. Desperate to find an opponent
after Thomas Damgaard pulled out with two weeks left, Collazo got the
call to jump in on short notice, possibly due to his supposed
shakiness.
Collazo would make the most of his
opportunity, taking the title from a champion in Rivera who had the
benefit of fighting in front of his hometown, not to mention a full
training camp. That April bout all but washed away the stigma that
had been attached to Collazo since losing to Cassiani three years
prior, making his 24th birthday a few weeks later one of
his sweeter ones.
“I'm always in the gym, I am a gym
rat,” said Collazo when discussing the Rivera win. “When they
called me for the fight, I said, 'Man, I can't turn that down.
[That's a] big opportunity, not many people get to fight for a world
title.' I was still young, I didn't have to take the fight but
opportunities like that don't come around too often.”
What ensued was a wildly entertaining
battle that saw Collazo befuddle Rivera with his movement and ring
generalship while also engaging the champion in a toe-to-toe battle
often enough to keep the crowd on their feet throughout. Collazo
built an early lead then had to stave off a late Rivera rally in
order to win the WBA title via unanimous decision. It was the kind of
win that would normally launch a fighter into the upper tier right
away and have the fans buzzing.
Except that unfortunately for Collazo,
April 2nd, 2005 was also the day of the NCAA's Final Four,
which prompted Showtime Sports to only air a one bout telecast,
choosing instead the cruiserweight unification bout between Jean Marc
Mormeck and Wayne Braithwaite instead.
This turned out to be a huge loss for
all but those in attendance and later those who were fortunate to
hunt down a copy of the fight through other means as it was one of
the more compelling bouts of 2005. Though not on the level of a
Corrales-Castillo, which would come one month later, it was a bout
that saw an underdog overcome against all odds, even when it times it
looked as though the challenger would be turned away.
“It was a great fight, and I wish
that fight was televised,” Collazo said in recalling his
championship win. “I thought that early in the fight I boxed him,
but I also banged it out with him. I felt I had to do that, to take
away the title from the champ.
“It's one of the best feelings in the
world [to win a world title]. You work so hard throughout your
career, through the amateurs...to make a dream come true is the best
feeling in the world.”
Collazo's welterweight title win would
not be seen stateside, and his first defense four months later
against Miguel Angel Gonzalez would be buried on the undercard of the
Hasim Rahman-Monte Barrett pay-per-view undercard, which was a card
that might as well have been forgotten when first announced. Count me
as one of the few who insisted on ordering it, but the few that did
saw Collazo deliver a dominating performance, stopping the more than
fifty fight veteran Gonzalez in eight rounds. Gonzalez had only been
stopped once before, at the hands of longtime 140-pound champ Kostya
Tszyu.
The Gonzalez masterpiece was Collazo's
official coming out party and would earn him a big money fight with a
then pound-for-pound entrant Ricky Hatton [40-0 at the time] in the
Manchester fighter's first bout outside the confines of his home base
in the United Kingdom.
Though he got off to a rough start
[Collazo was dropped in the opening round], Collazo bounced back and
outboxed Hatton for large stretches and even engaged the reigning
140-pound champion in a slugfest on occasion. The twelfth round saw
Collazo really put it on Hatton with a sense of urgency in an attempt
to score another upset. This time, Collazo wound up on the wrong side
of a close decision, losing unanimously to Hatton and never getting a
chance to reclaim his belt in a return bout.
“I thought I outboxed him and was
stronger,” Collazo said immediately following the loss. “I
thought the guy had to do more than that to take someone's title.”
Collazo's current outlook on that
fight? “It's part of boxing.”
Collazo's performance would earn him
another shot at the big time, a February 2007 headlining HBO bout
against future Hall of Famer Shane Mosley. In that fight, Collazo
suffered an injury to his left hand in round three, tearing ligaments
and fracturing his thumb. It would be the only time in the meat of
Collazo's career that he would suffer a clear defeat. Today's Collazo
doesn't seem too shaken by it
.
“It's part of boxing,” Collazo
lamented. “You got your ups and downs, you just gotta stay
dedicated no matter what happens. You could get hurt, the other
fighter could get hurt, you just have to be mentally ready.”
Then of course, his most recent
opportunity against an undefeated and ripe for the taking Andre Berto
two years ago in a headlining HBO bout. Despite two wins against
opponents with a combined record of 24-9-1, Collazo was seemingly
handpicked by Berto's management team headed by Al Haymon.
“I think they thought it was an easy
fight,” Collazo explained. “I ain't no walk in the park. When you
fight me, you're gonna have a fight.”
Collazo gave the fans another exciting
fight, one that made Berto actually watchable for once. Collazo lost
another close decision, with Bill Clancy's 116-111 scorecard being
the joke. It was a fight that as certainly as any, demanded a
rematch. But negotiations would not go swimmingly, and Collazo would
once again be left out in the cold.
“He didn't want to take the fight,
they tried to lowball me a bit,” said Collazo. “Let him move on
with his career, I've moved on with mine.”
Collazo did have an interesting take on
what Berto has done since then.
“He hasn't fought anyone since me,
he's been fighting 140-pounders. That's why he is staying at the
level he is at now, why he isn't stepping up to the plate.”
After not being granted an immediate
rematch, Collazo looked to get another shot the old-fasioned way, by
winning an eliminator against Turkey's Selcuk Aydin. But that fight
would never come off and now Collazo is looking to fight at junior
middleweight, a weight he says has come easy.
Yet Collazo isn't ruling out a return
to 147 if the fight is right.
“I can make 147 no problem, as long
as I get four to five weeks.”
At 154, there could are a plethora of
names out there for Collazo to look forward to. Who knows, maybe he
will find himself picking up the phone a few weeks out to step in
much the way he did against Rivera.
“I will be ready for any call, even
on two days notice,” claimed Collazo. “I would love to fight
Miguel Cotto, a fight I always wanted that never happened. It would
be a good fight not only for the Puerto Rican and Latin fans but for
boxing fans as well.”
A fight with Cotto could make sense for
Madison Square Garden, a place where Cotto does big numbers and is
also close to Collazo's upbringing.
It will be interesting to see if
Collazo can get another opportunity to prove his merit, first having
to get by a gatekeeper level opponent on the April 13th
card promoted by Wilson Naranjo Universal Boxing NY and Salita
Promotions. Collazo has done what he needs to do against B-level
opposition every time since suffering his first loss. Similarly, he
has done what he needs to do against the upper echelon but has just
ended up on the wrong side of things.
At thirty-years old, Luis Collazo is
definitely still dangerous. It would be interesting to see him in
with a Saul Alvarez, Cotto, Kermit Cintron, the names are endless.
Either way, he's a tough out. It's all just a matter of hoping he can
get up to the plate.
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