Mediocrity in Manchester

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By William Dettloff

Many saw last weekend’s doubleheader from Manchester as rather a downer. You can’t blame them. First, Paulie Malignaggi’s persistently uncooperative hair extensions provided the only highlights during an otherwise tedious, desultory decision win over Lovemore Ndou.

It wasn’t entirely Malignaggi’s fault. Well, the hair was, yes, but not the fight. Ndou fought wholly without passion. Malignaggi, who injured his right hand in the sixth, didn’t throw a straight right to the head over the fight’s entire second half. Ndou essentially had a one-handed guy in front of him who looked like a cheap Cher impersonator and still couldn’t will himself forward.

In Ndou’s defense, it took the crack Versus announcing team of Nick Charles and Wally Matthews, who spent much of the broadcast talking over one another, until the 12th round to figure out that Malignaggi had hurt his hand. And that only after Charles heard him say it in his corner.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Ricky Hatton in the main event proved himself entirely incapable of getting out of the way of a left hook. And the hooks in this case were thrown not by Floyd Mayweather, but by a simultaneously rusty and worn down Juan Lazcano, who maybe once was good but isn’t anymore and still had Hatton almost out on his feet in the 10th round.

You could sense, even from your recliner, that the 55,000-plus on hand to see Hatton’s comeback wanted to go wild for their man. But even they could see, through blood-shot eyes and reeling livers, that he was a sucker for Lazcano’s left-hand counters, and that twice—once in the eighth, and then in the 10th—Lazcano had him pretty seriously hurt.

The whole point of the card, of course, was to get everyone excited about the possibility of a Hatton-Malignaggi match down the road. And after that, according to Hatton and other rumors, Mayweather-Hatton II. Which is exactly why I saw the show's mediocrity as something of a gift from the heavens.

It is bad enough that instead of Mayweather-Cotto or Mayweather-Margarito or Mayweather-any-top-five welterweight, we’re getting Mayweather-De La Hoya II. The possibility of Mayweather-Hatton II is enough to send a lifelong boxing fan scrambling over to the realm of armbars and figure-four leglocks.

If the card last Saturday had featured a pair of exciting, back-and-forth struggles in which Malignaggi and Hatton prevailed, or if we had dominant, impressive wins by the favorites, the wheels would already be turning. And once they start they’re very hard to stop.

But we got neither of those. So, for now, maybe the wheels don’t start turning. And if all it takes to keep them from turning is a wasted afternoon and the lives of some stubborn hair extensions, well, I say that’s a small price to pay.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:

I never thought I’d see the day when I longed for the unbearable ringside commentary of Chris Schenkel and Keith Jackson. That day came last Saturday.

On a related note: Where have you gone Alex Wallau and Dan Dierdorf?

When will managers learn not to put their young prospects in with these unknown punchers from Colombia?

If Kostya Tszyu doesn’t come back after seeing the show Malignaggi and Hatton put on, he never will. Good for him.

Hank Lundy’s decision win over Steve Almaraz on Friday Night Fights was one of the worst decisions of the year so far that you’ve already forgotten about.

Every time Dino Duva thinks about getting Sam Peter a tuneup in advance of his fight with Vitali Klitschko, he should remember how close Peter came to getting knocked out by Jameel McCline.
According to Kevin Iole’s column at yahoo.com, Chris Byrd is not retired after all and may decide to get knocked out again. Rumors are that if he comes back, it’ll be as a junior lightweight.

In the same column, Mrs. Byrd, who announced right after Byrd’s loss to Shaun George that if he fights again it would be without her support, spoke at length about how little money Byrd made for the George fight and that they have two mortgages. Oh, boo-hoo. Who doesn't these days?

Bill can be contacted at:

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