Velasquez' win is impressive, but not historic

So our planet has a new Baddest Man, and raise your hand if you were surprised at how thoroughly Cain Velasquez beat up on Brock Lesnar Saturday.

On one level it's never a shock when an MMA fighter loses, no matter how dominant he has been. Each trip to the octagon is fraught with variables, any one of which can lead to defeat for a seemingly indestructible fighter. That's why undefeated records and extended winning streaks are so rare in the sport, and why you'll never see an MMA version of Rocky Marciano.

Still, Lesnar was a heavy betting favourite heading into the fight and had scrambled up from the canvas to dispatch heavyweight powerhouse Shane Carwin in July, so to see him crumble so quickly against Velasquez was a mild surprise.

And Velsquez' win was significant. He didn't escape with a win via desperation submission the way Frank Mir did in Lesnar's MMA debut in 2008. He withstood Lesnar's bullrushes, survived a pair of takedowns and thrashed the biggest heavyweight in the UFC and the biggest name in the sport.

That's a huge deal.

But it's not historic.

Yes, I know Velasquez' victory makes him the first fighter of Mexican descent to claim the UFC's heavyweight crown, but that accolade alone doesn't make him a pioneer.

It's not like Mexican-American fighters are new to the sport or to the UFC, but as Velasquez prepared for last week's title shot the UFC for the first time appealed to a Mexican-American audience as part of its pre-fight hype.

The campaign also crossed the United States' norther border, and if you listened much to the FAN last week you probably heard the UFC radio spot emphasizing that Velasquez had a chance to become the first Mexican in the history of "fighting" to win a heavyweight title.

I won't argue with that.

The ad's use of the word "fighting" is meant to broaden the discussion beyond MMA, and indeed boxing has never had a heavyweight champ of Mexican descent. Former WBA heavyweight ruler John Ruiz has Puerto Rican roots, while Chris Arreola has Mexican blood and a big right hand, but a steadily expanding waistline and a knockout loss in his lone title shot.

So that leaves Velasquez.

His win on Saturday was entertaining as it was unpredictable, but I'm not the only one who can't quite co-sign on the attempt to package Velasquez as a barrier-breaker.

That he is the first person of Mexican descent to claim win a heavyweight title is a point of fact, but there's difference between the first to achieve a feat and a true pioneer,

It's called context.

The context here is that MMA as we know it has never had an explicit or implied colour or culture line.

Boxing geeks like me know George "Little Chocolate" Dixon as the Halifax native who became the first black fighter (and first Canadian) to win a world boxing title when he snatched the featherweight crown from Johnny Murphy in 1890.

A broader range of sports fans knows Jack Johnson as the first black heavyweight champion in history.

He's also a litmus test for the significance of Velasquez' win Saturday night.

The man Johnson defeated, Tommy Burns, was the first Canadian ever to win the world heavyweight title. That feat makes Burns a legendary figure in Canadian sport but lacks the broader importance of Johnson's win because Burns only ever had to face the man across the ring. Johnson, meanwhile, had to overcome rigid racial barriers and circumvent social norms just for the chance to challenge for the belt. 

Crossing the heavyweight division's colour line made Johnson a pioneer while Burns was merely the first to achieve.

See the difference?

Now fast-forward a century and ask yourself (WITHOUT googling or otherwise researching) who was the first black fighter to win a UFC crown?

Who was the first latino?

Who was the first non-white or non-anglo period?

The correct answer is: 

Who cares?

Few people that I know, mainly because it's tough to celebrate breaking a barrier that never really existed. It's not like the UFC ever had rules against non-white fighters, or even a Major League Baseball-style "Gentleman's Agreement." 

Competition in the octagon has always been wide open.

This doesn't mean the UFC has never had to wrestle with racial issues.

Early in the buildup to the May 29 clash between Rashad Evans and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, commercials hyping the bout featured Jackson's promise to commit an act of "black-on-black violence" against Evans in the Octagon.

As if race-baiting is a selling point.

As if race-baiting is any less despicable when it's intra-racial.

And as if America's ongoing urban genocide is worth joking about, let alone marketing a fight around.

Justifiably, the UFC took some heat over the marketing tack they had taken and in turn narrowed the focus of the pre-fight trash talk they chose to highlight.

So yes, race pops up periodically in the UFC just as it does everywhere in (North) American life, but ethnicity has never defined or divided the sport the way it did boxing a century ago or baseball until 1947.

The UFC has only ever existed in an integrated age, with fighters of every ethnic background welcome to compete. And until UFC 12, when organizers wisely imposed weight classes, the UFC didn't even discriminate on the basis of a fighter's size. As long as officials thought you were qualified, anyone could fight anyone. Period.

This isn't to diminish Velasquez' achievement. Hats off to any man to flattens Brock Lesnar, and becoming the first heavyweight champ of Mexican descent is certainly noteworthy.

But a century after Jack Johnson it's just not historic.

 

Follow the Star's Morgan Campbell on Twitter

 

 

 

 

 

 

12 Rounds with Oscar De La Hoya

The Jean Pascal-Bernard Hopkins press tour arrived in Toronto this afternoon, and eventually the stories I filed from the news conference will appear online. Basically, they detail how Yvon Michel and Oscar De La Hoya plan to co-operate to bring big-time bouts to Toronto next year.

You'll remember from last week that Michel had hoped Toronto could host the Dec. 18 title clash between Pascal and Hopkins but couldn't overcome a triple-booked Air Canada Centre and a provincial commission that wasn't quite ready for such a big show so late in the year.

So Michel and De La Hoya are thinking 2011.

They're thinking HBO.

They're thinking Pay Per View.

We'll see.

 

(Yvon Michel on the left, Golden Boy right. This is what happens when taking pics with your Blackberry.)

But while we had De La Hoya here we managed to pull him away from the journalists and fans clamouring for his time, and even though he says he's finished in the ring he agreed to go 12 Rounds with Fighting Words.

Click below to hear the audio.

 

Download OSCAR12ROUNDS

Pascal-Hopkins comes to Toronto...sort of

The light-heavyweight title showdown between Montreal's Jean Pascal and future hall-of-famer Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins isn't coming to Toronto, but the trash talk will start here.

Oct. 19 the two fighters along with their promoters will hold a press conference in downtown Toronto (location still TBD), the first stop in multi-city press tour to hype their Dec. 18 title bout in Quebec City and a chance find answers to important pre-fight questions.

Like how sharp is Pascal's trash-talk game? 

We already know Hopkins is a master. In the buildup to his 2001 bout with Puerto Rican legend Felix "Tito" Trinidad, Hopkins threw the Puerto Rican flag at two separate news conferences...including one in San Juan. Can Pascal match that level of antagonism? Is it wise to even try?

And how will the Golden Boy like Toronto? 

As Hopkins' promoter, six-division world champ and crossover boxing star Oscar de la Hoya is tentatively scheduled to show up at the news conference, bringing his famous name and 100-watt smile, but hopefully leaving behind the outfit he wore in this 1997 fitness video.

  

Golden Boy cameos aside, there's good news for local fight fans.

Promoter Yvon Michel confirms the Pascal-Hopkins bout will be available on pay-per-view across Canada. 

I don't know what you guys did when Pascal took on Chad Dawson in August, but I bounced from bar to bar with the same result -- the fight's not on here, or anywhere else outside Quebec. Settled for Shoeless Joe's on Eglinton Ave. at Avenue Rd., where I watch west coast baseball, endured off-key karaoke and devoured a mountain of chicken wings while receiving round-by-round text message updates from friends watching on HBO in the U.S.

I guess that's somebody's idea of a successful fight night, but it's just not mine.

But Michel, who owns the Canadian PPV rights to the bout says he's already getting calls from sports bars nationwide about Pascal-Hopkins and so plans to make it available to as many Canadians as possible.

In fact, Michel originally intended to stage the entire card at the Air Canada Centre, just steps from where Tuesday's news conference will take place.

If you talk to enough boxing people you might have heard the rumour already -- that Michel and the ACC reached a deal to bring the show to Toronto but were undermined by the Ontario Athletic Commission. According to the rumour currently circulating, Athletic commissioner Ken Hayashi said no to the biggest title fight to (potentially) come to Toronto since Clyde Gray lost to Jose Napoles in 1973 because the Dec. 18 date conflicted with his vacation.

A juicy story for sure, and one that fits the popular idea that the commission isn't just incompetent and understaffed, but actually hates boxing...or MMA. 

Earlier this year we discussed how the provincial commission sometimes drops the ball in terms of matchmaking, in-ring safety and event planning, but to turn away this big of an event in favour of a vacation blurs the line between indifference and obstructionism and is a sexy enough scandal to land on the front page of the sports section.

If it's true.

But this story isn't.

Not quite, anyway.

Michel says he did in fact look into booking the ACC for Dec. 18 and learned that while the arena wasn't officially booked, organizers of another event had provisionally reserved the place for that night and were closing on a final booking. After informing ACC officials of his interest in the Dec. 18 date, Michel relayed his plans to athletic commissioner Ken Hayashi actually did Michel that he had planned a vacation for mid-December since no boxing events had been booked for that month.

So to that extent, the rumour is true enough.

But Michel says Hayashi quickly called him back and told him not to worry about vacation plans. If he wanted to host the fight in Ontario he could do it. With the ACC not quite free Michel considered the ScotiaBank Centre in Ottawa before finally deciding to stage the bout in Quebec City.

He insists, however, that the comission didn't interfere with his hopes to bring the fight to Toronto and that a major card at the ACC remains on his to-do list.

In the meantime, we'll have to settle for Tuesday's press conference and the verbal sparring that's sure to ensue.

 

Follow the Star's Morgan Campbell on Twitter.

 

Molitor signs with (yet) another manager...yawn

The lede can almost write itself:

IBF 122-pound champion Steve (The Canadian Kid) Molitor has signed a contract with (insert manager/promoter) -- namely, American Cameron Dunkin, who now has 60 days to find Molitor a promoter.

If you feel like you've heard that story before, it's because you have.

You heard it in June 2008, when New Jersey-based promoter Murad Muhammad lured Molitor away from Orion Sports Management with a promises of a fat contract even though Muhammad owed money to just about everybody in boxing. That deal collapsed quickly and by August Molitor was back at Casino Rama, fighting under Orion's banner.

You heard the story again this past July, when Molitor signed a managerial contract with Toronto-based Misho Jovicevic.

Who?

Exactly. 

It never was clear how Jovicevic would advance Molitor's career, given that he had only one other client (Canadian heavyweight champ Neven Pajkic) and given Molitor had a world title and an experienced promoter and no need for a manager to find fights for him.

And we may never find out now that Molitor has hired yet another manager.

Nevertheless Molitor's promoter, Allan Tremblay, insists that the star of his stable isn't jumping ship, and that Orion is on-side with Dunkin's plan to find Molitor a promoter in the U.S.

Why?

Molitor-Ndlovu III, that's why.

In July 2007 Molitor scored an emphatic ninth-round knockout over South Africa's Takalani Ndlovu at Rama, defending his IBF title for the first time and kicking off a run of 10 straight bouts at Casino Rama.

In March Molitor met Ndlovu again and decisioned him over 12 rounds to reclaim the vacant IBF crown.

After those two wins -- the first dramatic and the second exponentially less so -- few people have much interest in one more Molitor-Ndlovu showdown.

Not the boxing public, who would rather see Molitor tackle new challenges.

Not Casino Rama, who will host their second-straight Molitor-free card Oct. 30.

And not Tremblay, who wants to arrange at least one more big payday for the 30-year-old Molitor. The idea of another Ndlovu bout doesn't excite him.

"It's an exceptionally difficult promotional sell," Tremblay said. "I can't put that fight on here for a third time. It's not the Vazquez-Marquez trilogy."

But Ndlovu won't go away. In September he won yet another IBF title eliminator, putting him in line for yet another shot at Molitor's title. As much as Molitor and his team would rather move on, he has to face Ndlovu first or or be stripped of his IBF title.

And where does Dunkin fit in?

Because this fight is virtually unsellable in Canada, Molitor's team has two options:

FIght in Ndlovu's hometown or hope a U.S. promoter wants to stage the fight.

And because Molitor has little interest in fighting in South Africa, the U.S. option rockets to the top of his management team's list, and Dunkin's job is to locate a promoter who wants to stage Molitor-Ndlovu III.

Tough sell.

The promoter wouldn't just have to pay the fighters -- Molitor pocketed roughly $100,000 for his title defenses at Rama -- but they would have to pay Tremblay for the right to promote a Molitor fight. That's a lot of cash to drop on a bout between boxers who are virtually anonymous to U.S. viewers. And the fight doesn't figure to provide much action, further damaging either fighter's chance to win new fans and diminishing any promoter's desire to bankroll the fight.

Dunkin's job, essentially, is to sell this fight to a skeptical promoter who must in turn sell it to an indifferent boxing public.

Good luck.

 

Follow the Star's Morgan Campbell on Twitter