Friday, October 07, 2005
Another 86 years?
I've been a little busy this week and haven't had much of a chance to post as much as I would like, I'm at work right now and don't have access to much in the way of stats and actual information, but I just wanted to let you know I'm still here. I also wanted to let you know about something very significant just happened in the ALDS. The Red Sox just got swept by the Chicago White Sox. I know, I know, it's a shock but they were hanging on by a thread for most of the season, and you Red Sox fans, probably should have seen this coming. I'm not sure how many weeks the Red Sox were in first place this season - I will have that info shortly - but I'm guessing it was somewhere around all but 4 weeks. In the words of one of my most fanatical Red Sox fan friends *sigh*. Be back soon.
Monday, October 03, 2005
The Weekend That Was
This was a great weekend for sports. You had the baseball season winding down and some of the races not being decided until the last few games of the season. It doesn’t get any better than that. Then there was the NFL. My team – The Washington Redskins – is now 3-0. Nice! For the fight fans out there, you had a tremendous PPV with Antonio Tarver v. Roy Jones Jr. as the main event, (more on that in a moment) and three very good under card bouts featuring heavyweights Vinnie Maddalone v. Brian Minto, rising undefeated Middleweight and Olympic gold medallist Andre Ward v. Brian LaPlante and a lightweight bout featuring Almazabek ‘Kid Diamond’ Raiymkulov v. Nate Campbell. And then on Sunday there was the NASCAR Nextel cup series race at Talladega Superspeedway. The weekend was a virtual Smorgasbord for the sports fanatics of the world.
Today, I’m just going to stick with Boxing. It’s one of my favorite sports and one of my favorite fighters was involved. Brian Minto is a good heavyweight prospect with good boxing skills and heavy hands. He was in the ring against a big strong guy that could take a punch. However, his chin was too strong for his own good. Minto cut him in the first round and dominated him throughout the fight until the 7th round when he unloaded 15 unanswered left hooks. Minto had to motion for the ref to step in and stop it.
The lightweight bout was another blowout. Nate Campbell was a last minute substitute that was supposed to be a walk in the park for Raiymkulov. Campbell had other ideas. Campbell had his way with Raiymkulov until the 10th round when he refused to continue.
Andre Ward was in there against a 37-year-old journeyman who really had no business in the same ring and Ward; and apparently he knew it. It seemed to me that LaPlante saw the speed and felt the power of Ward early on and decided that he was going to take the earliest exit possible, take the money and run. Just one man’s opinion but that’s what it looked like to me.
The main event featured one of my favorite boxers to watch and in my opinion, one of the greatest fighters ever to lace up the gloves, Roy Jones Jr. v. Antonio ‘Magic Man’ Tarver. I’ve been following Roy Jones’ career since he got robbed of the Gold Medal in the 1988 Olympic games. He had clearly beaten the Korean fighter; Si-Hun Park and everyone in the arena, including his opponent knew it. The Korean Judges gave it to Park in one of the most ridiculous decisions ever to be handed out by boxing judges.
He has had a brilliant career highlighted by titles in four weight classes and a unified light-heavyweight crown from 1999-2002 when he gave it up to fight John Ruiz for the heavyweight title. Which he won going away. I maintain that prior to the fight with Ruiz, for which he put on about 20 lbs of muscle, Tarver would have had little, if any chance against Roy Jones Jr. Furthermore, I would argue that taking off the 20 pounds of muscle in the six weeks between the time the fight was signed and the date of the fight took so much out of him that he was never again to be the fighter that dominated the 90s and the early 2000s. Tarver gave him a good fight in their first meeting, which Roy Jones won. I scored the fight a draw, but cannot find any fault with anyone that scored the fight for Tarver. The second meeting had no such ambiguity. Tarver caught Jones with a lucky punch and knocked him out in the second round. That brings us to Saturday night.
Since Jones is one of my favorite fighters, it pained me to watch and pains me to write this. He fought like he was scared to get hit and danced around and showboated like that was going to score points with the judges and his fans in lieu of knocking Tarver senseless. When Jones did mix it up with Tarver and engage him, his speed and power was too much for him and it showed that all he had to do was be a little less cautious and he could have won the fight. I say could have because the Jones of ten years ago never would have gotten hit with any where near the number of punches that he got hit with on Saturday. Jones is 36 years old and the superior reflexes that served him so well throughout his career are gone. Jones is a victim of his own greatness. He was always so quick and powerful that he never needed to develop basic boxing skill that he could have fallen back on when he was really in a tough fight. Once his physical gifts had diminished, whether that was naturally from age, or the rigors he put his body through by dropping so much weight as quickly as he did, he had nothing else to rely on. The last one to realize that sad fact is usually the fighter himself. I hope that he realizes it before it’s too late.
Today, I’m just going to stick with Boxing. It’s one of my favorite sports and one of my favorite fighters was involved. Brian Minto is a good heavyweight prospect with good boxing skills and heavy hands. He was in the ring against a big strong guy that could take a punch. However, his chin was too strong for his own good. Minto cut him in the first round and dominated him throughout the fight until the 7th round when he unloaded 15 unanswered left hooks. Minto had to motion for the ref to step in and stop it.
The lightweight bout was another blowout. Nate Campbell was a last minute substitute that was supposed to be a walk in the park for Raiymkulov. Campbell had other ideas. Campbell had his way with Raiymkulov until the 10th round when he refused to continue.
Andre Ward was in there against a 37-year-old journeyman who really had no business in the same ring and Ward; and apparently he knew it. It seemed to me that LaPlante saw the speed and felt the power of Ward early on and decided that he was going to take the earliest exit possible, take the money and run. Just one man’s opinion but that’s what it looked like to me.
The main event featured one of my favorite boxers to watch and in my opinion, one of the greatest fighters ever to lace up the gloves, Roy Jones Jr. v. Antonio ‘Magic Man’ Tarver. I’ve been following Roy Jones’ career since he got robbed of the Gold Medal in the 1988 Olympic games. He had clearly beaten the Korean fighter; Si-Hun Park and everyone in the arena, including his opponent knew it. The Korean Judges gave it to Park in one of the most ridiculous decisions ever to be handed out by boxing judges.
He has had a brilliant career highlighted by titles in four weight classes and a unified light-heavyweight crown from 1999-2002 when he gave it up to fight John Ruiz for the heavyweight title. Which he won going away. I maintain that prior to the fight with Ruiz, for which he put on about 20 lbs of muscle, Tarver would have had little, if any chance against Roy Jones Jr. Furthermore, I would argue that taking off the 20 pounds of muscle in the six weeks between the time the fight was signed and the date of the fight took so much out of him that he was never again to be the fighter that dominated the 90s and the early 2000s. Tarver gave him a good fight in their first meeting, which Roy Jones won. I scored the fight a draw, but cannot find any fault with anyone that scored the fight for Tarver. The second meeting had no such ambiguity. Tarver caught Jones with a lucky punch and knocked him out in the second round. That brings us to Saturday night.
Since Jones is one of my favorite fighters, it pained me to watch and pains me to write this. He fought like he was scared to get hit and danced around and showboated like that was going to score points with the judges and his fans in lieu of knocking Tarver senseless. When Jones did mix it up with Tarver and engage him, his speed and power was too much for him and it showed that all he had to do was be a little less cautious and he could have won the fight. I say could have because the Jones of ten years ago never would have gotten hit with any where near the number of punches that he got hit with on Saturday. Jones is 36 years old and the superior reflexes that served him so well throughout his career are gone. Jones is a victim of his own greatness. He was always so quick and powerful that he never needed to develop basic boxing skill that he could have fallen back on when he was really in a tough fight. Once his physical gifts had diminished, whether that was naturally from age, or the rigors he put his body through by dropping so much weight as quickly as he did, he had nothing else to rely on. The last one to realize that sad fact is usually the fighter himself. I hope that he realizes it before it’s too late.
Introducing The Knock Out Sports blog!
Hello there bloggers. My friends and I have decided to bring you our takes on all manner of sports and the state of sports in general. We decided to do this because when we're watching a game, we almost always say exactly what the announcers say before they say it and often verbatim. Now one could take that to mean that we are that much smarter and quicker on the uptake than most announcers, not that that is hard to do, or that we have just watched so many sports broadcasts over the years that we have heard it all before. I choose to believe the former, but we will post our takes on a variety of subjects and you can make up your own mind as to whether or not we are the geniuses we believe ourselves to be. Feel free to comment with your own takes and see if we can get some spirited discussion going. There will be another post regarding this past weekend in sports shortly.
