There’s Nothing Like a Great Fight to Rekindle Spark

The International Boxing Federation is proven in court to be corrupt.

Fighters die in the ring.

Fighters suffer brain damage.

Andrew Golota quits on Mike Tyson.

David Tua gives up against Lennox Lewis.

Oscar De La Hoya and Bob Arum have an ugly, public split.

Floyd Mayweather fires his trainer, who also happens to be his father.

Referee Tony Weeks lets a title fight turn into a wrestling farce.

And the cries get louder:

Ban boxing!

Another black eye for the sport.

I’ll never again pay to watch a fight.

Fernando Vargas courageously gets up off the canvas Dec. 2 at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Events Center after two first-round knockdowns by Felix Trinidad, finds the strength and heart to get back into the 154-pound championship fight, knocks Trinidad down in the fourth round and makes it into the 12th before finally losing on a TKO.

And a week later, the praise is still flowing:

What a fight!

What a sport!

I got my money’s worth and can’t wait until the next one.

More than any other sport, boxing lives and dies from event to event. If there’s a dull Super Bowl, a redundancy most seasons, nobody questions the future of pro football. The Boston Red Sox have gone more than 80 years without winning a World Series and nobody is demanding the team leave town.

But boxing has no such cushion. The sport is always one tragic injury, one scandal away from a call for extinction.

Thanks to Trinidad-Vargas, boxing people are again talking about excellence rather than extinction. And a week after the fight, there is still plenty to talk about.

HIGHS AND LOWS

Trinidad, validating his claim of being the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, again showed his deceiving power, his ring mastery, his surprising ability to bounce back from a knockdown and his impressive tendency to get stronger as a match goes on. Few fighters have been able to finish the way Trinidad does.

On the negative side, there were the low blows.

Can it be a coincidence that Trinidad resorted to a low blow in the fourth round when he needed time to recover after going down from a perfect left hook by Vargas?

Is it likely that a fighter with Trinidad’s skill and precision would throw three low blows inadvertently?

Isn’t it strange how those blows stopped when he was facing the threat of disqualification?

A fighter with Trinidad’s talent shouldn’t have to resort to dirty tactics.

If he continues to do so, his place among the sport’s all-time greats will be questioned.

No one can question Vargas’ courage. But Saturday’s defeat reinforced the argument of those who questioned why he was put in the ring with a fighter of Trinidad’s skill and experience after only 20 professional fights.

Would it have been different if Vargas, who turned 23 Thursday, had waited another year or two?

The answer should be forthcoming in another year or two when Vargas figures to fight Trinidad again.

THE OTHER WINNER

De La Hoya also looked good Dec. 2, even though he didn’t throw a punch, and hasn’t done so in nearly six months.

With De La Hoya on hiatus from boxing while he pursues a singing career, it has been easy to discount him as a factor.

But Vargas’ ineffectiveness against Trinidad stands in stark contrast to De La Hoya’s brilliant nine rounds against Trinidad in September 1999.

De La Hoya accomplished what no one else has. He outboxed Trinidad, frustrated him, bruised him and left him seemingly drained of options for the only time in his career.

It was only when De La Hoya backed off and danced away over the final three rounds--he says it was ill-advised strategy; others think it had more to do with stamina--that Trinidad rallied to win a majority decision.

On many scorecards, including this one, De La Hoya was still the winner by two points.

Of this there can be no argument: If his fight against Vargas reestablishes Trinidad’s greatness, it does the same for De La Hoya.

And it’s a strong argument against those who say De La Hoya would have little chance against Vargas.

THE REFEREE

Referee Jay Nady has taken some heat for not stopping the fight after Vargas went down twice in the 12th round, leaving him vulnerable to the final overhand right that sent him crashing down for the fifth time, a blow that finally caused Nady to stop the fight.

But Vargas had already shown the ability to get up four times, had shown the heart to continue regardless of what Trinidad threw at him, the fight was for a championship, and Nady might have been hesitant to be the one to end Vargas’ hopes.

NO. 9

Because there were three other rounds in which knockdowns occurred, the ninth got lost. But it was the most heated of all, with each fighter connecting on 32 punches, three minutes’ worthy of a “Rocky” movie.

QUICK JABS

Services for Eddie Marcus of Los Angeles, the 1937 Golden Gloves featherweight champion who died Dec. 2 at 85, will be held today at 2 p.m. at Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes. . . . Shane Mosley, World Boxing Council welterweight champion, probably will defend against Shannon Taylor on Feb. 24. Promoter Cedric Kushner was talking about putting that fight in the Great Western Forum, but the Harlem Globetrotters have that date locked up. Kushner and Mosley had originally said they wanted to stage the fight at New York’s Madison Square Garden, but Jack Mosley, Shane’s father-manager-trainer, wants a site closer to home for the Pomona fighter.