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By Stan Hochman
First appeared in Philadelphia
Daily News on June 18, 2009
MARCEL CERDAN against
Bernard Hopkins? Cerdan by a knockout! Cerdan against
Roy Jones Jr.? Same result, KO, Cerdan. Hopkins defending
his championship 20 times, bleagh, a giant among pygmies.
Jack Dempsey over Joe Louis because Louis
had problems with bob-and-weave fighters and Dempsey
was a swift, bob-and-weave guy with a punch. Dempsey
against the early Muhammad Ali, too, because he would
have cornered Ali on the ropes and "ripped his guts
out."
And, oh yeah, Ali could have beaten Wladimir
Klitschko blindfolded, no contest, name the round if
he could figure a number that rhymed with Klitschko.
Other than zero.
Send your letters and e-mails to Mike
Silver, who has written a lively book called "The Arc
of Boxing: The Rise and Decline of the Sweet Science."
"The golden age of boxing was the
1920s to the 1950s," Silver lectured recently. "Today,
we've got the age of gold. I didn't write this book
to fuel the debate, I wrote it to end the debate."
Whoa, before you write off Silver as
a cranky geezer living and loving the distant past,
you might want to read what he has to say about the
bleak state of boxing and how it got that way. For reinforcements,
he brings along current trainers like Emanuel Steward,
Ted Atlas and Freddie Roach.
"You need an eye to see what's
happening," Silver said. "You might watch a surgeon
and think he's doing the right thing. Another surgeon,
watching the same operation, would see everything that's
being done wrong.
"Floyd Mayweather against Oscar
De La Hoya. People talking about Mayweather like he's
the greatest fighter pound-for-pound. He is not a great
fighter. Every time De La Hoya threw a left jab, he
drove Mayweather back. He had no answer. De La Hoya
was five jabs away from winning the fight.
"Boxing is the emperor with no
clothes."
How did it get stark
naked and feeble? Silver is glad you asked. He sounds
like a guy doing an autopsy, not surgery.
"The alphabet groups killed it,"
he yelped. "Instead of eight divisions, eight champions,
you have 17 champions.
"The talented old-time trainers
retired or died and were not replaced. Instead of 10,000
professional fighters, you have 3,000 now. Guys get
to fight for a title after 12 fights. In the golden
age you were lucky to get a title fight after 50 or
60 fights."
He also blames scheming promoters like
Bob Arum and Don King, punch stats, writers who aren't
savvy enough to recognize mediocrity, and let's see,
has he left anyone out?
Let's give Silver a breather and hear
what Atlas says about Roy Jones Jr.: "Roy uses his reflexes
and his anticipation rather than technique. His technique
has a lot of holes in it."
And how about this grenade from Steward:
"Only a tiny percentage of today's contenders would
have gotten past the better four- and six-round fighters
of the 1930s, '40s and '50s. They would have been crushed
by the competition."
Silver anticipates your counterpunch
and ducks. "Sure, professional athletes are bigger,
stronger and faster," he snarled. "But you don't measure
a fighter with a stopwatch. There are no great fighters
today because they don't have the training they need;
they don't have the competition they need; and they
don't have the experience they need."
Silver saw his first fight in 1959. "Alex
Miteff vs. Wayne Bethea, Madison Square Garden," he
recalled. "A very dull fight, as I remember. But walking
into the Garden, seeing that ring, with the lights over
it, that's how an ancient Roman must have felt walking
into the Colosseum for the first time. It was magical."
Silver explored the magic, studied the
history, wrote articles about it. And now the book,
which Bernard Hopkins will hate.
"Take every great middleweight
from 1900 to the '60s," Silver argued. "Mickey Walker,
Stanley Ketchel, Marcel Cerdan, Jake La Motta, all great
fighters, some of them with the speed of lightweights
and the punch to knock out a heavyweight.
"And there's no way they could
have dominated a division and defended a title 20 times.
Hopkins did, but that does not make him better than
Walker, Ketchel, Cerdan, La Motta and Harry Greb. Don't
forget Harry Greb. The guys Hopkins fought are on a
primitive level." *
Send e-mail to stanrhoch@comcast.net
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