From marinated to overcooked: Lopez-Gamboa, Kirkland-Angulo, & Ortiz-Berto

From marinated to overcooked? Lopez-Gamboa, Kirkland-Angulo, & Ortiz-Berto

Mark E. Ortega

Leave-it-in-the-ring.com

April 18, 2011

In this midweek piece, Leave-it-in-the-ring's Mark Ortega discusses the overcooked bout between Juan Manuel Lopez and Yuriorkis Gamboa that fell to shambles following Lopez' shock loss to Orlando Salido this weekend, and why promoters should put their fighters in tough more often as was the case with Andre Berto and Victor Ortiz the same night, where the loser gained just as much in defeat as he had in winning his first 27 pro fights. As was the case with Tua-Ibeabuchi in '97, no career will be derailed from the great welterweight bout between Berto-Ortiz.

The month of April has already seen its fair share of upsets in big time bouts as well as the vanquishing of quite a few future paydays for many fighters on the losing end of them.

The unusual number of predetermined outcomes turned shocking finish this month has me re-exploring a question that I often find myself pondering. In a few of these cases, fighters were being built into something nobody could really gauge if the hype was reality.

In the case of James Kirkland, his demise was perhaps the most unbelievable. A few pointed to how sloppy he looked in his two comeback fights following an incarceration, especially one just a few weeks before his slated bout with Japanese former titlist Nobuhiro Ishida, against Colombian journeyman Jhon Berrio. The slow handed and footed Berrio found Kirkland way too many times, and even wobbled the bright prospect with a jab. The level of opponent was the end of it as Kirkland stopped him early, but the Ishida assignment was a different beast.

Ishida fought his first ten round bout in his fifth career appearance. He won his first regional title his sixth fight and had not fought anything less than a ten rounder since 2005. Eric Gomez deserves high praise for the excitement the Action Heroes card that this fight appeared on contained, but the matchmaking on this fight for a young star you are trying to rebuild was just not very good.

He lost to Rigoberto Alvarez, the less talented brother of emerging Mexican supserstar Saul Alvarez, who himself is in danger of seeing his career stalled after having won a contrived world title in his last bout against Matthew Hatton. More on that later.

Ishida also stood 6'2” and was a lefty. Height and a tricky stance are two of the worst things you can throw at a young guy still trying to find his timing. I and a few others thought that if Ishida could control the distance and win two of the early rounds, Kirkland could be in danger of losing a decision because this was only an eight round bout.

There is not a single soul in the MGM Grand Garden Arena April 9^th or likely not even one watching from home that thought Ishida was going to crush Kirkland inside of one round, dropping him three times before referee Joe Cortez smothered Kirkland on the ground despite him again trying to make it to his feet.

Ishida himself could not believe what shots put Kirkland down on his back, having lamented as much in an interview with Leave-it-in-the-ring.com in the days following the victory.

“I was surprised when I dropped him with not a hard punch,” said Ishida in the April 14^th interview.

Golden Boy Promotions went a long way to secure the marketability of Kirkland, whose career was derailed in 2009 for the illegal purchase of a firearm by a felon. Kirkland had just scored his most impressive win, a mid-rounds beatdown of former prospect Joel Julio in a headlining bout on HBO Boxing After Dark in San Jose, California.

The Golden Boy himself Oscar De La Hoya spoke at James' hearing in an effort to back up the kid's character to try and get a reduced sentence. Kirkland would end up out of the ring for almost two years.

Kirkland's fighting style never lent itself to the idea that his career was going to be a long one. Which is why it will always end up being a disappointment that a fight between Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo never took place at the height of their hype.

It was a fight that was often discussed, sometimes even by the casual fan. HBO had done a pretty good job building the two of them against handpicked opponents on their airwaves. What's better is they sold the bouts to the public on the basis they were usually part of three fight telecasts, which viewers tend to eat up.

Why they never tried to force the two together when neither one of them had an unbeatable style [but more likely an unbeatable will] is incredulous.

Promoters shouldn't always promote behind the demeanor that every loss is a bad loss. That simply is not true, but it is all dependent on what kind of fight it occurs in.

Just look at another loser in an upset, former WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto who fell to Victor Ortiz in a Fight of the Year style candidate just this past weekend.

Both fighters went into the bout with a lot of questions from the general public. Ortiz and his heart were questioned after it looked like he quit in a fight against Marcos Maidana, a fight in which he showed the ability to put his opponent down multiple times, having dropped the tough Argentinian thrice. Ortiz looked a lot more cautious than he had in his more aggressive lead-up fights to the Maidana clash.

Berto and his desire to be a great fighter were questioned in the days and weeks prior to the Ortiz fight. He had enjoyed perhaps the easiest run to a legitimate world title in recent history, having been matched against a series of fighters with questionable credentials, many of which looked like they belonged in a Street Fighter game.

He also looked vulnerable in fights against David Estrada, Cosme Rivera, and most obviously Luis Collazo. Berto engaged in a great fight with Luis Collazo, a fight many felt he lost. Berto looked beatable in that contest but he had the public behind him because his display of heart in the contest.

Berto's title run consisted mostly of defenses against smaller bodied opposition, like former 130-pound titlist Steve Forbes and 140-pound champion Juan Urango. Berto also reportedly got 1.1 million dollars for a title defense against Freddy Hernandez in a one round blowout. To put into perspective how big that purse is, he made more than twice what Nonito Donaire and Fernando Montiel made combined in their February bantamweight clash.

Berto was scoring purses like this despite not being a major ticket seller or a truly great fighter. In his defense against Carlos Quintana in his home state of Florida, Berto sold only slightly more than 900 tickets. His scheduled fight with Shane Mosley fell through when Berto's homeland of Haiti was hit badly by a natural disaster. Many people also felt the lack of tickets sold for the bout were a major reason that HBO and promoters tipped towards scrapping it.

Berto was down twice officially, a third was incorrectly ruled a slip in the opening round by referee Mike Ortega. Ortiz was down twice as well. Despite how vulnerable both men looked they emerged from the contest with a newly restored credibility. Ortiz answered his doubters about his heart and aggressiveness as he came right at Berto for twelve rounds despite being dropped harshly twice. Berto looked gassed from the early rounds and languished on the ropes for much of the bout but proved his heart in defeat.

In fact, Berto in defeat may have drawn in more fans than in the twenty seven prior victories he secured. There are many people out there that haven't been more interested in seeing him in the future than they are right now.

It would have been much worse for his career had his loss come against a lower tiered opponent that the fans were unfamiliar with.

Like Orlando Salido, who scored a shock stoppage of 31-0 Puerto Rican featherweight king Juan Manuel Lopez, who fell to his Mexican counterpart while fighting at home in Puerto Rico Saturday in their Showtime headlining bout. Lopez was 11-to-1 to make a successful defense of his WBO belt, despite Salido presenting some interesting strengths that would give Lopez trouble.

Lopez controlled the fight over the first three rounds but Salido began finding a clubbing right hand in the fourth, then dropped Lopez with a left right combination that hew as badly hurt from. Lopez fought off of solely his heart in the next two rounds before getting clubbed by some heavy artillery in the eighth and stopped on his feet by the referee.

It was a controversial ending but it will no doubt hurt the future marketability of Lopez and moreso a fight with fellow featherweight Yuriorkis Gamboa, a bout that the boxing public has been clamoring for since about five fights previous. Both fighters are handled by Top Rank, but the super powers seemed set in waiting until the two reached 130 pound to put them together.

Both Lopez and Gamboa have proven vulnerable in the past as well and it has been suggested that there was someone out there who could halt this fight from being as big as they envisioned. True that almost nobody thought it would be Orlando Salido, who had lost to Gamboa in a prior contest last year. It is also true that Lopez barely survived the last three rounds against journeyman Rogers Mtagwa.

A fight between Gamboa and Lopez no doubt would be big even now. But two months ago it would have earned the winner heavy pound-for-pound consideration and the loser would not lose much in defeat.

The past lends itself to this idealism. When David Tua lost a hard-fought contest against Ike Ibeabuchi in their 1997 fight, he didn't lose much in eyes of the public. It took him a few easy fights to get back in contention but he eventually found himself in a pay-per-view headlining title shot against Lennox Lewis in 2000. The fans also got a high action heavyweight bout out of it as Tua-Ibeabuchi is the all-time punch stat champion amongst heavyweights. If the promoters behind those two had tried to build the fight much longer, it would have never happened as Ibeabuchi went to prison not soon after on charges of rape.

The marination of these fights can sometimes lead to them being overcooked, as in the case of Lopez and Gamboa. Take a look at another more recent case in former Olympic teammates Jermain Taylor and Jeff Lacy. Taylor was the 160-pound king right at the time Lacy was at the height of his hype. It didn't make much sense to make that fight right then as they were still a weight class apart but once Joe Calzaghe ruined Lacy and Taylor had twice lossed to Pavlik, this fight became a crossroads clash when the two met in 2008.

Promoters should look to fights like this weekend's Ortiz-Berto bout as evidence that it is better for all parties involved to put two guys in together that are on a similar plane than constantly trying to hype the fighters into something that is more perception than reality. In the process, everyone seems to get a fun fight or few out of it.