Griffin takes one more shot

Griffin takes one more shot

Mark E. Ortega

Freelance

March 8, 2013

It is interesting sometimes to think about how different a career could've gone if one thing went different.

If Zab Judah hadn't done the funky chicken against Kostya Tszyu in 2001, his career wouldn't have been taken off course by a suspension he earned for grabbing referee Jay Nady by the throat.

Prince Naseem Hamed probably wouldn't have opted for an early retirement if Marco Antonio Barrera hadn't handily embarrassed him just a few months later.

If Felix Trinidad had done what was expected and disassembled Bernard Hopkins towards the end of 2001, surely he wouldn't have taken a hiatus from the ring, giving away prime years of his career.

Though it is on a much slimmer scale, that moment in the career of Griffin came in April of 2009, when he was chosen as the comeback opponent for former 168 pound titlist Jeff Lacy, once thought of as one of America's brightest young future stars before Joe Calzaghe ruined him in their 2006 contest—that bout being Lacy's “what if things went different” moment.

Saturday night, Sacramento, Calif.-based light heavyweight Griffin (24-11-2, 10 KOs) takes on once-beaten Cornelius White (20-1, 16 KOs) of Houston, Texas at The Hangar in Costa Mesa, Calif. headlined by the HBO-Latino televised IBF 130-pound rematch between Juan Carlos Salgado and Argenis Mendez.

The fight won't be televised, but it could turn out to be the end of the road for the longtime contender Griffin, who has tangled with a pretty good crop of fighters from super middleweight all the way up to cruiserweight.

Through often traveling to his opponent's hometowns, Griffin has often found himself on the losing side of close decisions. The most heartbreaking of these came at the hands of Lacy in Tampa, Flo., where again Griffin would have the deck stacked against him as the road team.

Lacy was a co-promoter of the card, his first foray into that side of the sport. Griffin had put together perhaps his best training camp as a pro, training in high altitude at Lake Arrowhead, Calif. with then trainer John Tandy of the United Kingdom.

Lacy was hoping to use Griffin as a steppingstone to a profitable matchup with fellow Florida native Roy Jones Jr., something that was contractually guaranteed to the winner of the Lacy-Griffin fight according to Griffin.

“It was in the contract, we were fighting for the right to fight RJJ,” said Griffin on Thursday evening.

Griffin proved to be up to the task, as he outboxed and countered Lacy to death over ten pretty clear rounds. Unfortunately for Griffin, none of the three judges gave him the fight. Judges Alex Levin and Ged O'Connor had it 96-94 and 97-93, which were absolute jokes of scorecards. Judge Mike Ross had it a more acceptable 95-95, giving Lacy a majority decision.

“After the second, I beat that boy from pillar to post, his eyes were closed. But lately, that's the theme,” surmised Griffin.

“I can still hear John Tandy telling me at the bell of the 10^th round, three minutes and you're fighting Roy Jones Jr. on pay-per-view.”.

Lacy called out an in attendance Roy Jones Jr. in the ring after the fight while Griffin traveled back to California to lick his wounds.

Most unfortunate for Griffin was that the fight was not televised, meaning him and his team's claims of robbery fell on mostly deaf ears. Unless a fight takes place on television that can be seen widely, for the most part, it is as if the fight didn't happen.

Being a writer from Northern California, this writer was keen to find out how the Lacy-Griffin fight went and if it was indeed a robbery.

After inquiring about footage of the fight from Lacy's co-promoter, a week later a DVD arrived. After watching the bout closely, it was clear that Griffin was in fact robbed. At best, you could find three rounds to give to Lacy who was extremely slow and got countered by Griffin almost at will throughout the bout.

The full fight can now be found on YouTube in multiple clips, starting with this one, if you don't want to take my word for it.

For a fighter like Griffin to suffer a defeat like that, it can often derail a career completely. When you get robbed and it is shown on major television, usually a career can be resuscitated because there is video evidence of the thievery. Ask Erislandy Lara and Richard Abril, two fighters who have rebounded from two of the worst seen robberies in recent years in order to maintain themselves on the top level.

For Griffin, it is interesting to wonder where his career could've gone had he gotten the rightful decision over Lacy. How would he have fared against a fading Roy Jones Jr.?

“I feel like if I had gotten the Lacy decision, I would have gotten a title by now,” says Griffin.

“I beat Lacy, and at the age Roy was at, I would have been too much for him. The world would have seen their names on my resume and it would have opened a lot of doors.”

Griffin was fighting in order to put his name in the mix with the top guys. The Lacy loss set him back nearly two years. After running off four victories against modest opposition, highlighted by an eighth-round TKO of Byron Mitchell in May 2010, Griffin had climbed up the IBF rankings and landed an eliminator with Yusaf Mack for the right to face titlist Tavoris Cloud, who fights this weekend against Bernard Hopkins for that very same title.

An interest subplot to the Mack-Griffin eliminator was that the two had worked closely together in the past. The previously mentioned John Tandy trained the both of them simultaneously, and both were in camps together in the Lake Arrowhead high altitude. It was almost a real life version of the boxing comedy “Play It To The Bone”, where two sparring partners get the call to fight each other in an important bout and have to make the drive to Las Vegas together.

Mack and Griffin would take separate rides to Woodland Hills, Calif. in March of 2011 to meet. Mack would earn a twelve-round split decision over Griffin in a difficult to score fight, and in turn, a right to fight Tavoris Cloud on HBO.

For his next three fights, Griffin would go on the road. He was stopped in the 11^th against Karo Murat in Germany, split-decisioned by Shawn Hawk in Idaho despite having his opponent down, and decisioned in Dallas, Texas by unbeaten but unknown Cedrig Agnew.

Griffin would finally get his own homecoming, an easy TKO win over Adam Collins last August. It wouldn't be long before Griffin would get the call to go into enemy territory again, this time against well-regarded contender Will Rosinsky on a Broadway Boxing show last December in New York.

Most ringside accounts saw the bout as really close, or tougher than expected for Rosinsky, who was fighting in a weight division he really didn't belong. Still, for the fourth time in five losses, Griffin had acquitted himself well, but still didn't get the decision.

For Otis Griffin, who is 35 years old, it isn't about the money. He made boatloads in winning the Fox reality show The Next Great Champ. He was making the kind of money in four-rounders that many fighters don't see until they reach championship levels.

For fighters like Griffin who always feel as though they've been on the wrong side of an unjust decision, at some point it takes a toll.

“If they continue to rob me, I will bow out and manage,” said Griffin when predicting his future plans.

There are a good number of fighters out there who would trade places with Griffin in a heartbeat. Yes, he has yet to reach that spot on the ladder that would leave him totally content with how his career finished up. But there are fighters who reached the top who would probably trade it away for the kind of security Griffin has obtained. He's got money in the bank and still works a full-time job as a correctional counselo at a prison in Northern California.

For Griffin, Saturday could be the final opportunity to crack into the big time. His opponent Cornelius White has put together a decent string of victories after being starched in less than a round by Don George in February 2011. Wins have come at the hands of always tough journeyman Dhafir Smith, Cuban former amateur standout Yordanis Despaigne, and former title challenger Dmitry Sukhotsky.

A win for Griffin would largely wipe out his recent streak of losing five of his last six, and put him back in the rankings for some of the major alphabet organizations. But at 35, it is safe to say this is the last rebuild for the former reality TV star. Another loss could spell the end of title aspirations, and if he decided he wanted to continue to fight, the beginning of gatekeeper status.

“I was robbed in three of my last five outings. It's safe to say you're not going to outbox Otis Griffin or outwork him. So I have faith this will change on Saturday. At the same time, I'm so blessed with success and money in this sport, can I really be mad?”

Mark Ortega is the boxing columnist for the Martinez News-Gazette and is a member of the Boxing Writers Assoc. of America and the RING Ratings Advisory Panel. He can be reached via e-mail at markeortega@gmail.com as well as followed on Twitter @MarkEOrtega.