Jose Luis Castillo's Secret Weapon

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By William Dettloff

Jose Luis Castillo has a secret weapon going into his world junior welterweight title fight Saturday night with Ricky Hatton. It’s not a fancy move he learned from Floyd Mayweather or a secret punch Julio Cesar Chavez taught him in all those sparring sessions years ago. It is not specially designed sunglasses built to shield his corneas from Hatton’s shockingly pale skin.

Castillo’s known about this weapon for as long as he’s been a fighter. Everyone else knows about it too. In fact, the fighters get reminded about it before every fight in one of the sillier of the fight game’s many silly rituals. Sometimes we get to watch while they’re reminded. It’s thrilling.

What’s this secret weapon? The rulebook.

You wouldn’t know it from all the neck-high groin protectors you see out there, but there is a rulebook and it states, fairly clearly, that excessive clinching and holding is a no-no. It’s not allowed. You can’t do it. If you do you get points deducted, or, even better, disqualified. That’s a good thing and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Yet, we see excessive holding all the time. We see it in four-round fights between novices and in world title fights between pound-for-pound guys. We see it every time Hatton goes against an upper-tier guy who can hurt him. It is his strategy, and it’s illegal (not to mention boring).

Hatton’s fights against Kostya Tszyu, Luis Collazo, and even Juan Urango, for cripes sake, turned into sordid clutchfests as soon as Hatton found out those guys could hurt him. And because he’s young and strong and good at getting his head under a guy’s chin and running him into the ropes while he’s wrapped up, he did well. The referees those nights—Dave Parris, John Zablocki, and Tony Weeks, respectively—looked the other way. They shouldn’t have.

Hatton can fight. He had the exuberance and hubris of youth propelling him. He might have won those fights anyway and he might beat Castillo just because he’s younger, faster, and stronger. Fewer advantages than that have won fights before.

But if I’m Castillo, I solicit the powerful machine that is Top Rank, his promoter, to lobby hard and long for a strict and true adherence to the rules as they pertain to holding and clinching. And he should hope that Jay Nady gets the call. Nady wouldn’t allow John Ruiz to clinch incessantly against Roy Jones and he tried to stop Oleg Maskaev from doing it in his second fight with Hasim Rahman, but was overruled, from all evidence, by Larry Merchant, of all people.

Castillo is a better fighter than Hatton is, technically. But he may have to rely on the rulebook to win this one.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:

If referees were as strict about enforcing rules around holding as they are the really silly ones, like those that prohibit talking in the ring and that require fighters touch gloves after the instructions, we’d all be a lot better off.

If James Toney and Danny Batchelder are any indication, steroids make you fat and clumsy, at least the ones that fighters take. The ballplayers must be getting all the good stuff.

A blood alcohol level three times above the legal limit, speeding on a crotch rocket with six kids counting on him. Tell me again why I should feel badly for Diego Corrales.

So both Larry Merchant and Tony Soprano survived … sort of. I guess. Right?

If while watching fights on ESPN2 you suddenly lose audio between rounds, don’t panic—it’s not David Chase preparing to blacken your screen. Boxing coordinating producer Matt Sandulli tells me the fights are on a five-second delay to “protect viewers from offensive language.” If a cornerman says something “inappropriate,” a button is hit that kills audio for as long as it’s necessary. Thank goodness Norm Stone isn’t around; we’d never hear a word between rounds.

Anyway, don’t you feel better knowing you’re protected? You could have been scarred for life by all that salty cornerman talk. Really, I don’t blame ESPN. Boxing was the only prime time programming on which you’d occasionally hear cursing on basic cable. But this is the environment we’re in: We’re scared of dirty words, of all things.

Speaking of words, regardless of what happens between now and the time he retires, words do not exist in the English language that would adequately capture the complete absurdity of calling Hasim Rahman a three-time world heavyweight champion.

That Rahman has found yet another new trainer and new “dedication” and then showed up for his waltz with Taurus Sykes at 261 pounds tells you all you need to know.

So Michael Grant is fighting again. Andrew Golota too. Anyone interested in a rematch? Nah, me neither.

Bill Dettloff can be contacted at

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Yeah, there's also a rule against trying to rig the scales because you can't make weight.

I remember Frank Bruno, when defending his WBC belt in 1996, getting a point deducted from holding onto Mike Tyson for dear life at every possible moment.

Refs in general should be more strict about holding, high protector cups, and hitting guys when they're down.