Fighting Irish
Written by Jason Keidel, Thursday January 21 2010
Wrapped in a green turtleneck and tweed jacket, Bob Arum kicked off Top Rank’s pre-fight press conference for Saturday’s championship fight between featherweights Juan Manuel Lopez and Steven Luevano at Madison Square Garden.
Luevano (37-1-1, 15 KO) is defending his WBO crown, looking to hand Lopez (27-0, 24 KO) his first professional loss.
A second championship fight precedes the main event, another featherweight bout, pitting Yuriorkis Gamboa (16-0, 14 KO) against Rogers Mtagwa (26-13-2, 18 KO). Gamboa is defending his WBA title.
Press conferences are, well, boring. Anyone who has covered one will confirm this, unless Mike Tyson decides to test his culinary skill on Lennox Lewis’s leg.
After Arum and a conga line of talking heads praised each other for whatever they do, three of the four fighters spoke at the podium (Gamboa was still in Miami). Each fighter (except Luevano) needed a translator to convey their scripted platitudes, thanking HBO and Arum for everything short of saving the planet.
With so many belts and names, and so little mainstream coverage, the fight could well be billed, “Clash of the Consonants.” All four boxers are talented, but in a perfect promotional world, the two champions (Lopez & Gamboa) will win and then unify the title as two featherweights with heavyweight cache.
Though this reporter came to see another fighter.
Notre Dame be damned, John Duddy is New York’s authentic fighting Irishman. After migrating to America in 2003, Duddy has been adopted by Madison Square Garden, which will surely be packed with a phalanx of rabid (if not imbibed) Irish supporters.
Young, white, and handsome may not be the normal elixir it would have been in the Gerry Cooney days, as there can be no “White Hope” for what some see as a hopeless sport.
But Duddy (27-1, 17 KO), a middleweight, counters the cynics with a stiff jab, heavy right hand, and no fear of blood. Leading with his chin as often as his gloves, he is the first to admit that he takes too many punches. His style and persona, however, remind us of that time when boxing was great and, most importantly, when it was fun.
Duddy faces Juan Astorga (14-3, 9 KO) in an 8-round undercard bout, with Irish eyes presumably smiling.
Tags:
Leave a comment
Not So Fast! To publish your comment, you have to login
Not Registered? Register now as it only take 20 seconds!
Click here to browse
0 comments