Oscar Puts Brakes to Carr

Stuff happens in boxing, right?

Goyo Vargas, who is about to get the break of his life--a title fight against Floyd Mayweather on a leading cable network--instead gets married, disappears from his training camp, starts eating too much and suddenly is no longer a featherweight, not even a super featherweight.

At least that was the story going on around here last week, when Vargas, claiming he had flu, forfeited his chance to detach Mayweather from his World Boxing Council super featherweight championship belt Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

Most offended by the sudden turn of events was Lou DiBella, the senior vice-president of HBO Sports who had been promised two championship bouts on the card. Oscar De La Hoya defended his WBC welterweight title against Oba Carr in the main event.

“Shame on you,” DiBella said in a message intended for Vargas. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime. I hope you don’t get it again.”

But DiBella had no cause for concern.

Carmen was announced. Carmen would be sung.

The solution provided by promoter Bob Arum was to call Justin Juuko and offer him the opportunity of a lifetime. Arum’s next call was to Jose Sulaiman, WBC president, to ask that he sanction Mayweather vs. Juuko as a world championship fight.

Sulaiman approved, even though, as of late in the week, one of his top lieutenants couldn’t tell you off the top of his head where, or even if, Juuko was ranked.

As it turns out, he was ranked No. 14 by the WBC.

That leads to the question about what qualifications he has to fight for a WBC title other than the fact that he was in the right place at the right time. He is from Musaka, Uganda but lives in Las Vegas.

In fairness to Juuko, he is no joke-o. His record entering the bout was 33-2-1 and he was ranked as high as the No. 2 contender by the WBC before he was knocked out in the 11th round of his last fight by the equally anonymous Antonio Hernandez.

Against the considerably more celebrated Mayweather, perhaps the best young fighter in the sport, Juuko acquitted himself well. No, he did even better than that for someone who, until Wednesday, was preparing for a fight on Saturday, May 29, against James Crayton, not Saturday, May 22, against Floyd Mayweather.

That doesn’t mean Juuko ever laid a glove on the champion, but he did last into the ninth round before Mayweather floored him with three quick rights, and, for punctuation, a push. Juuko was standing at the eight-count, but referee Mitch Halpern wisely stopped the fight. No one needed to see more, not even Juuko.

“I was OK,” he said. “I was just a little tired. I didn’t have any stamina.

“I only had two days notice. I couldn’t turn down the fight. Really, I needed to train for about six weeks. I’ve trained for two.”

Arum was satisfied.

“The guy we had before would have lasted half as long,” he said of Vargas.

Asked about the controversy over whether Juuko should have been involved in a title fight, he said: “There is no controversy. People who say there is don’t know what they’re talking about.

“If you make a title fight with a fighter ranked 14th, then, sure, that shouldn’t happen. But, under the circumstances, with the problem we had, there shouldn’t be a complaint.”

But I have one.

There’s no complaint with Arum, looking for a quick fix, putting Juuko into the ring against Mayweather. Juuko no doubt was the best available option. Mayweather called him “really a pretty tough opponent” while acknowledging that it wasn’t much more than a workout for him. The crowd might have been a little bored with Mayweather’s dominance, but, considering other fights we’ve seen, it wasn’t cheated.

Why, though, did it have to be a title fight?

Not even Sulaiman could answer that, saying merely that, by sanctioning it, he was trying to make everybody happy?

I have nothing against happiness, although, in this case, I suspect there were other factors, a WBC sanctioning fee for one, involved.

But in a day when all of the alphabet organizations that control boxing are under scrutiny for their methods of determining rankings and champions, they should be extra careful about the title fights that they sanction.

Despite the recent controversy over the Lennox Lewis-Evander Holyfield decision, various grand jury investigations into the sport and the U.S. Senate’s sudden interest in reforming it, boxing is on a little roll.

It’s not every day you hear that, but, outside of the heavyweight division, there are some extremely attractive fighters, foremost among them De La Hoya, Mayweather, Felix Trinidad, Shane Mosley, Ike Quartey, Roy Jones Jr., Fernando Vargas and David Reid.

Arum’s Top Rank Inc. has perhaps the best two in De La Hoya and Mayweather and the promoter has been outspoken in declaring that he and his young fighters are going to usher in a new day in boxing.

I’m perhaps more optimistic than I have reason to be about their chances, but Arum shouldn’t have risked his credibility by putting Juuko into a title fight.

Juuko could be a contender. But not Saturday night.

*

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.