If there’s a better way to turn 54 – while staying both married and out of jail – I can’t think of it.
So even though my birthday morning flight from Las Vegas to Miami was filled with people whose direction-following skills would rate badly among 10-year-olds – the fact that I spent my birthday eve at T-Mobile Arena covering the day’s biggest sporting event wasn’t too bad.
And given that Jon Jones’ 124-second blitzkrieg of Cyril Gane atop UFC 285 was reminiscent of the way Mike Tyson’s old-school pay-per-views used to end, it got me thinking of common threads.
Though octagonal czar Dana White poured cold water on the idea that his new heavyweight champion could one day face the man whose title he inherited, the prospect of Jones and Ngannou in a cage together is about as tantalizing a prospect as exists on today’s combat landscape.
My semi-educated guess is that they’ll figure a way to get it done, Dana or no Dana.
There’s simply too much cash available for them not to.
But if they don’t, it’s not like it would be the first time a sought-after event didn’t pan out.
No one who reads this site with any regularity needs to be reminded of Errol Spence Jr. and Terence Crawford’s frustrating inability to nail down an acceptable deal, or of the near decade it took for Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao to finally realize it made too much sense to not compromise.
Still, some never get done. Whether because of botched negotiations, poor timing, upsets, weight changes or what have you, there’s a laundry list of great fights between guys who were in or near the same weight class at the same time, but never found themselves in opposing corners.
I discussed a few of them with my long-time boxing guru, Randy Gordon, as I prepared to board Sunday’s voyage with my Miami-bound recalcitrants. And I felt particularly moved to jot them down as I simultaneously gazed out the window across the vast southwestern horizon and “accidentally” drove my knees into the lower back of a particularly self-involved Row 2 resident in front of me.
Ahhh… birthdays.
Anyway, here are a few of those 30,000-foot thoughts, through the magic of Spirit’s onboard Wi-fi.
Alexis Arguello vs. Roberto Duran: It never fails. And I mean never.
Whenever discussions of this nature come up, this is the first fight that leaps to my mind.
Both the Nicaraguan stylist and the Panamanian dervish are among the greatest fighters of my generation. They’re deserving Hall of Fame members and were engaged – with different opponents – in some of the most memorable fights of my lifetime.
But they never fought one another, in spite of close competitive proximity.
Duran was a champion at 135 pounds throughout the 1970s as Arguello reigned at 126 and 130, and Arguello’s rise to win a belt at lightweight came on the one-year anniversary of Duran’s climb to welterweight to defeat Ray Leonard in the first and best of their trilogy – The Brawl in Montreal.
Had it occurred, it would have been a fascinating matchup perhaps along the lines of what Arguello ultimately faced with Aaron Pryor. An uber-aggressive – though in Duran’s case, more nuanced – opponent against whom Arguello would have to work for nearly every minute of every round. Arguello didn’t have the advantages in hand and foot speed that Leonard had but decided not to utilize in Montreal, so he’d have had to rely much more on sharp counters than flurries and movement.
I’d have leaned toward a prime Duran. But I wouldn’t have bet the house on it.
Ray Leonard vs. Aaron Pryor: Hey, weren’t we just talking about these guys?
Indeed, though Sugar Ray and the Hawk did manage to fight the would-be participants in the initial never-was get-together five times, they never engaged one another in what would have been a wonderful matchup of contrasting styles.
Pryor was a menace at lightweight – imagine if he’d have fought Duran – before moving up and taking over at 140 when he couldn’t get a big fight at 135. He cleaned out the division from Cervantes to Arguello and always had an itch to scratch when it came to Leonard, who turned pro on TV for thousands while Pryor had to take gigs as a sparring partner just to make ends meet.
They had a memorable exchange during a press conference when the agitated junior welterweight king called out “Mr. Leonard” for a dream match, but it never got past the trash-talk stage as Leonard took other big fights and then stepped away with an injury and Pryor’s post-Arguello mojo fizzled.
Ironically, it may have gone down somewhat similar to the fantastical Arguello-Duran match.
But the guess on this one is that Leonard would have used his movement and would have been just a tad too sharp. If he hit Pryor with the knockdown shots that Cervantes and Akio Kameda landed, it’s much less likely that Pryor would have bounced off the floor and scored a quick KO.
Riddick Bowe vs. Lennox Lewis: OK, I know I’m in the minority here.
But if you can judge a heavyweight champion on just one fight or one moment in time – as people frequently do when remembering Mike Tyson’s blowouts and forgetting his 2-3 record with two KO losses against fellow Hall of Famers – I believe Riddick Bowe is among history’s all-time big men.
He was tall. He was long. He could move. He could punch. And the incarnation of the fighter that beat Evander Holyfield and defended against Michael Dokes and Jesse Ferguson over six months from November 1992 to May 1993 would have held his own with any heavyweight.
And yes, that means he’d have swatted Tyson from pillar to post like Buster Douglas.
Lennox Lewis, though, might have been a different story.
As long and tall as Bowe was, Lewis was taller and longer. And though it’s true that Lewis was flattened by the likes of Oliver McCall and Hasim Rahman, it’s no less true that he beat both men in rematches – providing him the rare claim that he defeated every man he ever stepped in the ring with.
A prime version of both Lewis and Bowe may have produced as compelling a fight or series of fights as the division ever saw, but Team Bowe opted for other things and trashed its WBC title belt rather than making the fight when Lewis was the mandatory challenger.
A move driven by fear? No. But looking back, it probably wasn’t Rock Newman’s best decision.
Mike Tyson vs. Tim Witherspoon: OK, we’re going off the board here. Kind like contestants could do with categories like “Fast Forward Spelling” on the old Joker’s Wild game show.
Precisely no one else sitting on my plane – or anywhere else for that matter – ever lamented the fact that Tyson, a Hall of Famer with a laundry list of train-wreck knockouts, never fought Witherspoon, who went .500 in six title fights including a first-round loss to a fighter (the one and only James “Bonecrusher” Smith) whom he’d all but shut out over 12 rounds just a year-and-a-half earlier.
But I’m really hung up on that whole “one moment in time” thing.
I still fondly recall the gutty battle that Witherspoon, a novice by comparison with only 15 pro fights, gave a then 42-0 Larry Holmes across 15 compelling rounds on an NBC primetime show in 1983.
I was 14. And I decided that night that Witherspoon would always be among my favorites.
I was in the audience when he flattened James Broad two years later in Buffalo and I was thrilled in early and mid-1986 when he beat Tony Tubbs and Frank Bruno in consecutive fights to win and defend the WBA heavyweight crown. A duel with Tyson, who became a champion that November seemed imminent, and I was convinced that Terrible Tim would soon be the first man to vanquish Iron Mike.
Instead, the Bonecrusher fiasco happened three weekends later. And my fight never did.
Would he have beaten Tyson? Who knows? And I won’t even argue if someone suggests it unlikely.
But I’m fairly certain it would have been cool while it lasted. At least more than 91 seconds.
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This week’s title-fight schedule:
No title fights scheduled.
Last week’s picks: None
2023 picks record: 6-2 (75.0 percent)
Overall picks record: 1,256-410 (75.4 percent)
NOTE: Fights previewed are only those involving a sanctioning body’s full-fledged title-holder – no interim, diamond, silver, etc. Fights for WBA “world championships” are only included if no “super champion” exists in the weight class.
Lyle Fitzsimmons has covered professional boxing since 1995 and written a weekly column for Boxing Scene since 2008. He is a full voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Reach him at fitzbitz@msn.com or follow him on Twitter – @fitzbitz.