Donald McRae reports how the upcoming welterweight clash between Oscar de la Hoya and Felix Trinidad could save boxing’s credibility
When the moment comes on Saturday September 18, at 9pm in the glittering darkness of Las Vegas, it will be easy to remember Sugar Ray Robinson, the greatest fighter there has ever been. The sultry desert air will suddenly burn with intensity as two unbeaten young welterweights, Oscar de la Hoya and Felix Trinidad, each take their lonely walk to the ring and start a potentially brutal and life-changing contest they are calling “the fight of the millennium”.
The backrow hysteria of De la Hoya’s army of girl fans from the barrios of east Los Angeles will be echoed by the whooping machismo of Trinidad’s hardcore followers from Puerto Rico. Ringside will be electric, with insanely-grinning delight linking Don King and Jack Nicholson to Kim Basinger and Bob Arum. Yet, despite everything, eight little words said more than 50 years ago by Robinson will still leave a chill as De la Hoya and Trinidad climb through the ropes.
Robinson was also once a scalding welterweight. He might have been bewitchingly unbeatable at the weight, winning all nine of his title fights before making the inevitable move up to middleweight, but Robinson understood the cold gravity of boxing. In his first welterweight defence, in 1947, Robinson knocked out Jimmy Doyle in the eighth round with one of his many withering combinations. Within hours, Doyle lay dead on a hospital bed.
At the inquest, Robinson was asked a strange question: “Did you intend to hurt the deceased?”
“That, sir,” Robinson said with polite clarity, “is what I’m paid to do.”
Amid the glitzy hoopla of Vegas and the richest fight boxing history has seen outside the heavyweights, that stark fact remains unchanged. For the compelling danger they bring to the ring, De la Hoya could earn up to $20-million from pay-per- view receipts, while Trinidad is guaranteed half that amount. Boasting 54 knock-outs between them, and a seemingly natural but ferocious willingness to hurt one another, De la Hoya and Trinidad share Robinson’s uncluttered view of boxing. Everything else, however, is clouded by contrast.
If besmirched by mafia control, boxing’s Robinson days were ultimately redeemed by their harsh simplicity. There were then only eight weight divisions and eight world champions. From Benny Lynch at flyweight to Joe Louis at heavyweight, they were all giants of men.
Today, with 17 divisions and dozens of self-appointed governing bodies, there are hundreds of anonymous “world champions” – each brandishing their own tawdry tin crown. With so many meaningless titles on offer, and so many fictional “top 10” ratings dreamed up by rival sanctioning committees, boxing has become an unparalleled study in chaos and immorality.
And so, beyond their risky attempts to punch each other into unconsciousness, De la Hoya and Trinidad carry boxing’s dying hope that it might regain some of its battered integrity. If the old game is too riddled with disease ever to revive the savage lustre it had with Robinson and Ali, and then with Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns, Saturday’s clash has the brightest sheen of a faded decade.
“You simply cannot underestimate the significance of this fight for a tarnished business,” argues Lou di Bella, vice-president of Home Box Office (HBO), the huge American cable television company which has become the driving force in this last desperate attempt to save boxing from itself.
Ironically, just as boxing’s reputation has hit its lowest point, so HBO has nurtured the most gifted collection of young American fighters in 15 years. It has poured millions into the burgeoning careers of the dazzling Floyd Mayweather, Shane Mosley, Fernando Vargas and David Reid, while still boosting its flagship fighters – De la Hoya, Roy Jones, Lennox Lewis and Naseem Hamed.
HBO has also tried to turn back the tide of sleaze by ignoring most of boxing’s myriad titles. It’s a hearteningly old- fashioned take on boxing – the idea that the quality of a fight depends on the competitive parity of the boxers rather than the name of the gaudy belt they flash at the end. Of course, HBO’s altruism is encouraged by the recent demand in the United States for “real” fights, after so many strutting mismatches and contrived championships.
“Boxing now performs as well as any other programming we put out,” Di Bella stresses, “so we can push ahead with more demanding fights. And, best of all, the boxers themselves are responding to this ambition to clean up boxing. De la Hoya could make another $10-million by fighting someone easy, but he wants to test himself against the most dangerous guy out there – and that means Trinidad.
“But it was still a complicated fight to arrange. De la Hoya is an Arum fighter, while Trinidad belongs to King. De la Hoya is the World Boxing Council champion, Trinidad holds the International Boxing Federation title. We’ve also had the rare situation that these are two boxers of almost equal ability. Yet De la Hoya’s star power dwarfs Trinidad. Coming up with the right mix of money took a while – we now just need this to match our enormous expectations.”
Although HBO performs small miracles in boxing’s trenches, it cannot afford another high-profile fiasco. Shameful embarrassment, as Di Bella winces, scuppered the first of their major showdowns in 1999. Di Bella had been instrumental in forcing through the Madison Square Garden encounter in March between Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis – a fight meant to produce an undisputed heavyweight champion and restore the world’s faith in boxing. It resulted instead in the most controversial draw in heavyweight history, forcing a federal investigation into boxing corruption.
“Although this business had been ill for years,” Di Bella says, “March 13 threatened to turn boxing into a terminal case. Saturday night is our chance for a last-ditch recovery.”
Yet Larry Merchant, the silvery analyst who instils eloquent gravitas into HBO’s coverage, suggests that “the Murphy’s Law of boxing dictates that the darkest demons always unfurl just as you expect the brightest light. I’ve been around this game too long not to know that it’s unusual when it doesn’t have two black eyes.
“But, having said that, the Lewis- Holyfield fight was particularly egregious and depressing. I can’t tell you how many people around America have stopped me to tell me their reaction to that fight. It’s always the same story. They were at a party or a bar or a restaurant. The fight was on and, at the end, when the result was announced, everyone just walked out in disgust.
“When the story is front-page news across America for days and we’re getting editorials in the New York Times, boxing is in deeper trouble than usual. It also explains why network television refuses to touch it any more. Boxing delivers fabulous ratings but sponsors won’t be associated with this gutter image.
“In a perverse way, the only positive thing to come out of that night was the fact that these terrible abortions take away any romantic notions about boxing. So the reputations of De la Hoya and Trinidad might seem pristine, but who knows how they’ll end up after Saturday night?”
De la Hoya calls himself the Golden Boy. Trinidad’s nickname is Tito. They are 26- year-old fighters at the peak of their powers, and yet these final few days of precarious but thrilling equality will be escalated by their differences as much as their similarities.
While they are the same weight and height, and separated in age by a mere 25 days, De la Hoya looks sturdy when set against the rangy Trinidad.
If De la Hoya has overcome a more illustrious band of rivals, Trinidad is the superior technician. De la Hoya may own the best left hand in the business but, by his own admission, his right is a pretty ornament of measurement rather than an attacking weapon.
Trinidad, by contrast, is a fluid thrower of explosive punches with either hand. But while Trinidad has stopped 30 of his 35 opponents, he has been dropped himself on numerous occasions – most shockingly against the British journeyman, Kevin Lueshing.
While the smiling and swooningly handsome De la Hoya has his million-dollar sponsorship deals with McDonalds and Puma, Trinidad remains closer to boxing’s Latino heartlands. De la Hoya slips into softly spoken Spanish as he celebrates his family’s Mexican heritage, but Trinidad has never bothered to learn English. He is more content to allow his wild entourage to scream about boxing, while De la Hoya talks ceaselessly of becoming an architect or an actor, a golfer or a singer.
And yet, until Saturday night, it will be hard to decide whether that narrow focus makes Trinidad a better fighter than the De la Hoya who yearns to transcend boxing. Even the most lucid experts are drooling over the delicious uncertainties.
“This fight keeps whirling around in my mind,” Merchant admits. “Usually I can pick a winner but with this one there are so many imponderables. Technically, Trinidad is almost perfect, but I’m still not sure if he has the other qualities to become a truly great fighter.
“Does he have that furious refusal to be defeated, that unquenchable willingness to go through the fires of an excruciating fight? De la Hoya has that, even if he sometimes looks awkward. I compare them to two armies. Trinidad is a guy who has all his tanks and weapons in a row, and he just advances because he has that much firepower. De la Hoya is a more tactical force. He will often retreat before unleashing his bombs. There might be rounds when De la Hoya plays a patient poker game, but there’s such emotion in both fighters that it has to end in high drama.”
Di Bella holds a more commercial view. “If De la Hoya and Trinidad pull out a big one,” he says, “then people will be encouraged to buy the pay-per-view for the Lewis-Holyfield rematch on November 13. If that also goes well, boxing’s back on its feet. So we’ve got an awful lot riding on this.”
But Di Bella underlines the limits of ringside hope. “There’s only so much we can do. I’ll give you a graphic example. In November we should have a unanimous heavyweight champion of the world, for the first time in years. But within days of that fight, the ratings organisations will be insisting the winner fights their bogus contenders – guys like Henry Akinwande, who was disqualified for refusing to throw a punch against Lewis, and John Ruiz, who was knocked out in 19 seconds on HBO. Inevitably, the heavyweight title will be split again.”
For Merchant, boxing has always been crooked at its core. “Look,” he sighs, “it would be wonderful if we cleaned up the welterweight division and had an undisputed king of the heavyweights. But I’ll be pleasantly surprised if both De la Hoya-Trinidad and Lewis-Holyfield come off without any stench emanating from either of them.
“When we talk about the image of the ring and whether it prospers or suffers, we have to remember that there is always sleaze and larceny in boxing. But on Saturday night in Vegas, as De la Hoya and Trinidad go to war, we’ll be thrilled to be there, deep down in the red-light district of sport.”