Sound & Fury: The Margarito-Panama Lewis Connection, Maidana Struggles, Segura Sizzles, GBP, As Usual, Fizzles

(Welcome to another edition of Sound & Fury, the boxing column that blackens eyes and skips clichés. This week TCS takes a look at the asterisk that belongs to Antonio Margarito-Panama Lewis comparisons, offers some creative advice–free of charge–to Golden Boy Promotions, and offers thoughts on recent fights involving Marcos Maidana and Giovanni Segura.)

Golden Boy Promotions offered up another splatter job for lucky Telefutura viewers on Friday when Rogelio Castaneda Jr. predictably got knocked out by Lucas Matthysse in one round. From now on the opponents for Solo Boxeo should be accompanied by “Taps” or “Pathétique” by Tchaikovsky whenever they enter the ring. And the fights should take place on a gallows, with the palooka, noose snugly set around his neck, placed on top of the trapdoor. When the opening bell rings, the trapdoor will spring open, the palooka will take a long drop, and the GBP fighter will have his hand raised immediately. Seriously, Fright Night Club and So-Low Boxeo should long ago have been deemed obscenity by the FCC. Anybody out there running around protesting or boycotting this immoral junk?

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Nice to see so much time and thought put into coverage of sideshows James Toney and Kimbo Slice over the weekend. We should all hope that the same effort will be put into reporting the next “Gathering of the Juggalos.”

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Screeds against Antonio Margarito continue unabated–some convincing to a degree, others merely displays of histrionics and grandstanding–and will likely go on until the last penny-click is earned. Many of these jeremiads invoke Panama Lewis, the prizefighting pariah, as a measuring stick for what should happen to Margarito. On the surface, that might seem like a sound argument—that Margarito is nearly as bad as Lewis is and Lewis has been banned from boxing permanently—but there is just one hitch. As noted here in the comments section last week in an exchange with Tim Starks of The Queensberry Rules, Panama Lewis was given his license back when he was released from prison in the early 1990s. And he was given his license by Greg Sirb, currently the vice-president of the Association of Boxing Commissions.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 10, 1991:

“A lot of people were against him,” said Greg Sirb, the executive director of the commission. “We studied this for 4 1/2 months. The main factor was when his parole board came in and recommended that he be allowed back in boxing. He committed a very, very nasty crime, and there’s no hiding behind the bush on that. But should that preclude him from working in his chosen profession? I don’t think so.”

When the Professional Boxing Safety Act was passed a few years later, Lewis was retroactively banned because he remained suspended in New York state.

From The Philadelphia Daily News, January 15, 1999:

“In addition to Pennsylvania, Lewis later was licensed to work in Florida, but his small gains toward full-fledged acceptance were wiped out by the Professional Boxing Safety Act. “I got my license in Philadelphia, then I had it revoked again,” said Lewis, who never has admitted wrongdoing. “They have a new law that says if you’re banned in one state, you’re banned in all. I don’t have any license.”

So those who hold Panama Lewis up as the gold standard in malevolence—as well they should—might want to include an asterisk next to his name whenever Margarito is compared to him. As a public service, The Cruelest Sport will allow any website too lazy to research its claims to cut and paste the following without attribution:

* Although the heinous Panama Lewis was suspended for life by New York, he was given a license in 1991 by the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission, whose executive director was—and remains—Greg Sirb. Mr. Sirb is currently the vice-president of the Association of Boxing Commissions. Lewis was suspended again, retroactively, when the Professional Boxing Safety Act passed in 1996. Still, at one point, Lewis was allowed to ply his trade by a state considered to have a strong commission.

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Showtime can never go an entire year without letting the premium cable equivalent of penis envy take hold of them. When this happens, they invariably try to undercut HBO by putting on worse fights than even Ross Greenburg would agree to air. Some of the names being thrown about for future appearances on Showtime include: Antonio Tarver, Kimbo Slice, and Tyson Fury. What an unholy mess…Showtime ought to know better, of course, but maybe it was influenced by the amount of “attention” Slice received when signing with Gary Shaw. As for Tarver, they are probably just doing their announcer a favor. And Tyson Fury is just another obnoxious “personality” for the forum board freaks to short-circuit their keyboards over (with drool).

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Marcos Maidana looked cruder than ever in scoring a tougher than expected 12-round unanimous decision over weathered DeMarcus Corley in Buenos Aires. Maidana won handily on the cards and scored a knockdown in the 7th round, but the bout was a sloppy foul fest, and a case can be made that Corley might have done enough to win. Maidana, who took his fair share of flush shots from a fighter who ought to have filled out a UPS application years ago, looked out of sorts throughout, and Corley won several exchanges on the inside. Maidana can hurt anyone he hits, no doubt about it, but his balance is poor, his defense is shoddy, and his punches arc wide enough to float a tugboat through them. He is also one of several ranked fighters out there who do not seem to know which foot to move first and in what direction. He will need to tighten up significantly to compete with the best of the junior welterweights.

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One good thing that might come out of the travails of Chad Dawson is the fact that now HBO can air their 20-minute profiles about Dawson with some compelling information for once. Watching Dawson play with his kids over and over is not exactly Cinéma vérité.

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Relentless Giovanni Segura battered Ivan Calderon into an 8th-round KO defeat. From the opening bell, Segura tore into Calderon, whipping right hooks and straight lefts with abandon, setting such a torrid pace that Calderon could not adapt his fluid boxing skills to the tempo. At times Calderon opted to mix it up with Segura and paid dearly for his machismo. At 35, Calderon had shown signs of slipping over his last few bouts, and Segura rarely let him be cute in the ring. Segura whipsawed hard bodyshots from bell to bell and by the time the 8th round began, Calderon was worn down to a nub. A fusillade of unanswered punches—including a withering bodyshot—dropped Calderon in a corner where he took the count of ten, battered and weary. As soon as the fight was over, Segura, who fought with the kind of urgency that ought to embarrass 90 percent of headliners, approached Calderon and embraced him. This is a kind of catharsis a boxer primed to do his best goes through after a firefight. No longer prey to an adrenaline rush spurred by desire and will, he comes crashing down to earth aware both of his accomplishment and of the man–his opponent–who served as a brave catalyst for his feverish ambitions.

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Read about the night former heavyweight champion “Madcap” Max Baer faced his double in the ring, tragic South African playboy Ben Foord.

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