GSP is rich; Dana White is wealthy

PARENTAL ADVISORY...EXPLICIT LANGUAGE ON THE CHRIS ROCK CLIP

Fighter payouts from UFC 129 are now public, and it doesn't take a Bill James-style statistical guru to figure out for all the physical and mental strain that go with preparing for these bouts, the payoff is paltry.

Naturally Georges St-Pierre tops the pay scale, banking $400,000 for his decision win over Jake Shields, while Lyoto Machida grossed $329,000 for his flying front kick knockout of Randy Couture, who himself earned $250,000.

Those three men consumed more than 53 percent of the UFC's total payroll, with less than $1 million spread between 21 other fighters.

St-Pierre might be the closest thing the UFC has to Manny Pacquiao -- a dominant fighter inside the ring and an endearing character outside of it, someone whose fame crosses borders and who demonstrates that the American sports mainstream can indeed embrace foreign stars. 

But at the bank, Rush can't touch the Pac Man.

St-Pierre's $200,000 guarantee is roughly one percent of what Pacqiao is promised for his showdown this Saturday with Shane Mosely, and UFC 129's entire payroll ($1.84 million) translates into about a round of work for boxing's pound-for-pound champ.

That's not an accident.

It's how the UFC is built -- top down, president Dana White as the face of the organization while the fighters are interchangeable pieces, even when they're famous. Some -- like St-Pierre and Anderson Silva -- gain fame, but none gains true independence.

Which is smart business, because it significantly limits the UFC's financial exposure and, most importantly, competition.

Guarantee headliners sums that rival Vernon Wells' salary and you risk losing money if for some reason the pay-per-view doesn't sell. A guarantee is a guarantee, after all.

Beyond that, if the UFC starts paying its stars Pacquiao money it risks blurring the boundary between the wealthy and the merely rich. It's important distinction, pointed out brilliantly by comedian Chris Rock, because when that border shifts so does the balance of power.

St-Pierre's not poor.

His $400,000 paycheques are bigger than he would earn fighting for any other promoter. He won't make that kind of cash fighting on the Score, and he wouldn't bank like that with Strikeforce, the former competitor the UFC bought earlier this year. 

But while his purses are big enough to keep St-Pierre at home they're still small enough to keep him from getting ideas.

You guys ever wonder why Oscar De La Hoya is always smiling?

It's because 10 years ago he figured out that the best way to make big, sustainable, money in boxing is to get paid when other people fight. So in 2001 he founded Golden Boy Promotions.

Because the boxers can get rich, but promoters are wealthy.

And you know how he made the leap between the two?

By being the sport's cash cow for a decade and a half, stacking eight-figure paydays until he could afford to go into business for himself. Before Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather surpassed him no boxer cashed bigger cheques than the Golden Boy, who had earned more than $150 million in the ring even before grossing $43 million more against Mayweather in 2007. 

By then, of course, he was six years into his career as fighter-promoter, the dual role ensuring that no matter the outcome the Golden Boy would always win at the bank. And after years of depending on people like Bob Arum and Don King, De La Hoya competes with them.

For fighters.

For clout.

For the pay-per-view airtime that sustains the sport.

Like De La Hoya decade ago, St-Pierre is the biggest name in his sport, and a recognizeable face that makes him not just a fighter but a business unto himself.

Which isn't to say that St-Pierre shares De La Hoya's long term ambition. He might not want to trade the stress of being a fighter for the headaches of employing a roster of them. Not now, not ever.

But this isn't about St-Pierre. Its about the top-down structure of the UFC that allows fighters like him to earn very good money, but never enough to acquire clout.

Not at $400,000 per win.

So even if he wanted to graduate from competing in the UFC to competing against them, the chances of him making it happen are slimmer than St-Pierre himself the morning of the weigh in.

Which is to say it won't happen.

And the UFC doesn't mind that at all.

 

Follow the Star's Morgan Campbell on twitter.

Hurry up and wait for UFC-Strikeforce crossover clashes

If you're looking for evidence of the UFC-ization of Strikeforce, head to YouTube.

Before the UFC took over the second-biggest promotional outfit in mixed martial arts, you knew that if you missed a Strikeforce card on a given Saturday night you could head to the world's largest video sharing website to see fairly high-quality replays of the night's biggest fights.

Not anymore.

If you logged post-fight looking for a video of Strikeforce welterweight champ Nick Diaz' dramatic knockout win over Paul Daley, Youtube wasn't going to give you much beyond a few archived previews and a grainy, filmed-off-of-TV replay of the fight's finish.

But if you have SuperChannel or were at the right sports bar you saw the expert grappler Diaz defeat the dangerous Daley on the striker's terms, surviving a knockdown and several other tense moments to pummell an exhausted Daley in the closing seconds of the first round.

The win was Diaz' 10th in a row and it solidified both his grip on Strikeforce's 170-title and his claim as one of the world's very best welterweights, regardless of what organization owns his contract. And since stopping Daley, Diaz has become the subject of speculation that he's the fighter most suited for a superfight with Georges St-Pierre (provided, of course, GSP handles Jake Shields in Toronto April 30).

Couple of big obstacles to that fight, though.

The first is skill.

Yes, Diaz is by far the most impressive welterweight on StrikeForce's roster, especially since Shields jumped to the UFC. And yes, a 10-fight unbeaten streak is difficult to string together in MMA, no matter your level of competition.

But we don't know how Diaz, who last fought in the UFC in 2006, is more qualified to take on St. Pierre than the UFC's current crop of welterweights. It's tough to picture him reeling off 10 straight wins when facing guys like Thiago Alves, Jon Fitch and Josh Koscheck, and tougher to picture him faring any better than those three did against GSP.

Secondly, and most importantly, there's red tape.

Earlier this winter UFC bought Strikeforce, whose president, Scott Coker, says with enthusiasm that interpromotional showdowns aren't just appealing but inevitable. But UFC boss Dana White still hasn't budged from his initial intention to run the two outfits as separate companies.

Which means MMA fans can brace for the same dilemma that has bedeviled boxing fans for a generation:

Disputed champs.

Multiple beltholders in the same weight class tantalyzingly close to squareing off to determine who really rules, but who in the end never do because promoters and sactioning bodies can't get on the same page.

Fans who need to satisfy themselves with debating dream matchups instead of seeing them.

That scenario's only fun to in that if you make a prediction on a fight that is never going to happen, you can never be proven wrong (Mayweather KO's Pacquiao in three!!!). And the idea of keeping Strikeforce stars out of the cage with UFC champs seems to contradict the strategy that helped the UFC rise to the top of the fight game in the first place. Because the UFC holds the contracts of just about every MMA fighter we care about, the UFC can make just about every fight fans want to see.

And theory, taking over Strikeforce should expand the UFC's list of potential pay-per-view headliners.

After all, who wouldn't wanto to see Strikeforce heavyweight champ Allistair Overeem throw down with Cain Velasquez?

Or watch Strikeforce 155-pound dynamo Gilbert Melendez tangle with any of the UFC's talented crop of lightweights.

Or see Herschel Walker take on Randy Couture in a Battle of the Aged.

Aside from Walker-Couture, the appetite among fans for those fights and many others exist.

But for the UFC, for the moment, the desire to make them happen doesn't.

 

Fans win, Pettis loses in Edgar-Maynard draw

So nobody won Saturday night's thoroughly entertaining UFC main event between lightweight champ Frankie Edgar and challenger Gray Maynard, but one guy loses:

Anthony Pettis.

At the last-ever WEC event on Dec. 16 Pettis dethroned 155-pound champ Ben Henderson, a win that was supposed to guarantee him a shot at the Edgar-Maynard winner once the UFC absorbs the WEC and all its weight classes. But the New Year's Night draw means a title shot for Pettis and his Matrix Kick will have to wait until the UFC settles the dispute Maynard and Edgar couldn't quite resolve in the Octagon.

For 25 minutes Edgar and Maynard traded strikes, takedowns and respect, and their entertaining main event put officials back in the spotlight by presenting the question that dogs anybody judges a fight anywhere:

Who do you favour -- the guy who wins more rounds or the guy who wins rounds by more?

Two weeks earlier the issue popped up in the boxing ring, when 45-year-old Bernard Hopkins battled back from a pair of early knockdowns to earn a draw against Montreal's Jean Pascal in a bout many people (including me) thought Hopkins won.

Saturday night judges stared down the same dilemma when Edgar weathered a first-round Maynard onslaught many spectators (including me) thought would do him in.

Midway through the first round Maynard, who decisioned Edgar in 2008, dropped the champ with a left hook and spent the rest of the round battering Edgar with his fists, bloodying his nose and keeping him  woozy until the final bell.

But when the second round started Edgar emerged from his corner refreshed, punctuating his comeback by nailing Maynard with a powerslam that would make Davey Boy Smith proud.

From there Edgar spent the remainder of the fight chipping away at Maynard, stopping the takedowns that made Maynard so successful in their first fight, whiplashing the challenger's head with crisp combinations and earning a split decision draw at the end of five rounds.

Post-fight shots of Edgar in the locker room showed him looking despondent, but this result didn't feel to me like a robbery.

It felt like a relief.

When we learned Hopkins and Pascal had drawn you felt a slight sense of injustice. Pascal's first knockdown, after all, came when he landed an illegal blow to the back of Hopkins' head and thus should have earned him a warning and not a reward. And Hopkins' body attack gutted Pascal, sapping the champion of all his early speed and forcing him into full retreat by round eight.

Hopkins won more rounds and won them convincingly yet could only salvage a draw. Given Pascal's massive early lead you can't say Hopkins was outright robbed, but he sure was jobbed and now will have to wait for a rematch that may never happen.

Edgar, meanwhile, appeared certain to lose by first-round TKO, and earned a moral victory by simply surviving until the second frame.

He spent the final four rounds of the fight gnawing away at Maynard's lead but in a five-round fight you weren't sure if he had time to overtake Maynard on the judges' cards.

One judge said Edgar did it, giving him a win by two points. A second judge scored it 48-46 Maynard, while the third sealed a split-decision draw by calling the bout even.

That third scorecard also all but ensures Edgar and Maynard will add a third chapter to a series in which the stakes and skill levels rise with each bout.

In that scenario fight fans can't help but win even if Pettis loses.

 

Follow the Star's Morgan Campbell on Twitter

UFC Winners blend martial arts and sweet science

Before we headed to Cineplex Queensway Cinema to watch UFC 124 my good friend Andre Batson -- former Argo and Eskimo and mid-90s saviour of York University's football program -- highlighted something interesting about welterweight contender Josh Koscheck.

In my preview to the fight I mentioned that Koscheck held tight to his peroxide blond locks even even though some of the hairstyle's most famous proponents abandoned it years ago. But Batson pointed out that while Koscheck's hair isn't back to its natural colour it's darker than the platinum blond to which we'd grown accustomed, and that he looked less like Sisquo and more like Titans CB and notorious NFL instigator Cortland Finnegan.

And when the bell rang for Koscheck's title shot he fared about as well against Georges St-Pierre as Finnegan did in his punch-up with Texans receiver Andre Johnson.

Which is to say he got manhandled.

Beyond a takedown late in the first round Koscheck mustered zero offence against St-Pierre and his game plan seemed to have been crafted by Kimbo Slice:

Wade straight in throwing wild right hands and pray one lands.

Meanwhile St-Pierre demonstrated why he belongs at or near the top of pound-for-pound lists, controlling nearly every minute of every round with his superior size, strength, quickness and boxing skill.

St-Pierre spent part of his training camp sparring with Montreal-based pro boxers like Sebastien Demers and working with famed boxing trainer Freddie Roach -- and it showed. While Koscheck arrived in Montreal promising to score a knockout win in front of St-Pierre's hometown crowd, the champ set the pace with a stinging left jab. 

With the most basic weapon in a pugilist's arsenal he blunted Koscheck's headlong rushes, raised an ugly welt over his right eye and set up the takedowns that underscored his dominance.

In jabbing his way to a lopsided decision St-Pierre didn't just prove that he's the world's best welterweight by a wide margin. He reminded us all of an important fact that's often lost in the "Boxing vs MMA" debate.

Boxing is a martial art too.

And a very effective one in the right situations.

Nobody debates whether jiu jitsu and wrestling skills are essential to an MMA fighter's arsenal -- naturally, since 80 percent of all MMA matchups go to the ground. 

And muay thai's importance is a given, mainly because elbows, knees and leg kicks hurt (bad), and because the clinch allows you to combine striking and grappling to inflict some serious damage.

Yet whenever a boxer transitions to MMA it's seen as a final referendum on which sport -- and by extension fighting art -- is superior, even though boxer vs. mixed martial artist matchups prove only what we already know. Somehow we see the two disciplines as mutually exclusive simply because the two industries are going toe-to-toe over the pay-per-view dollars of mainstream sports fans.

Fighters know better.

Does that mean a background in boxing is the best foundation on which to build a mixed martial arts career?

Nope.

Somebody as accomplished in jiu jitsu as James Toney is in boxing would have lasted longer than two minutes against Randy Couture and even with little specific mma training might have even forced "The Natural" to sweat. 

But can an advanced education in boxing enhance a mixed martial artist's skill set?

Ask Joe (Daddy) Stephenson, who lunged chin first at Mac Danzig on the St-Pierre/Koscheck undercard and paid a painful price.

 

 

Boxing folks call that shot a check hook, and it could have come straight from Floyd Mayweather's playbook.

 

Or ask Koscheck, who took a thorough beating Saturday night because he had zero answers for the punch you learn on the first day of boxing class.

The left jab.

Now let's get this straight. GSP is far from a master boxer.

When baseball people talk about how fast certain baseball players are I'm always pointing out most of them aren't really fast -- they're just baseball fast. No denying guys like Ichiro and Chone Figgins are light years faster than their baseball peers but in the broader world of fast guys they're on the left end of the bell curve.

Far left.

So GSP is to boxing skill what Jose Reyes is to sprinting. He'll destroy most of us and hold his own with journeyman pros (like the guy getting flattened here) but an experienced pugilist nullifies that jab and hurts him bad.

But in his world he doesn't need to be Bernard Hopkins. He simply needs to sharpen a skill -- boxing -- that many mixed martial artists neglect.

He did exactly that in training for UFC 124 and his performance Saturday night hit observers like a revelation but it shouldn't have. The UFC's welterweight champ simply understands something a lot of his competitors are learning the hard way.

Boxing may be the sweet science, but its also a hell of a martial art.

 

END NOTES

* As mentioned above, I caught Saturday's fights at a movie theatre. First time for me and thanks to the folks at Cineplex for making it happen. If you're the type who likes his fights with a lot of beer and hollering then cinema viewing isn't for you. I like O'Doul's as much as the next guy, but I also enjoyed actually hearing the commentary for once. The polite applause after each fight will jar you, (especially if you're used to war cries in the sports bar) but you adjust to decorum. Besides, everybody loves a huge screen and surround sound. Can't replicate that experience at home or in a bar. So was the UFC experience different without alcohol and a mountain of chicken wings. Of course. A little. But would I watch in a theatre again? No question.

* From the "Find a way to watch it" file: this past Saturday's boxing. Between the double header on HBO and the bantamweight tournament on Showtime/Superchannel, I can't recall a single Saturday so saturated with boxing action. So I picked wrong on the Amir Khan/Marcos Maidana fight. So what? As I told folks on twitter, each of those four fights was more exciting than anything that went down at UFC 124. Even if you say you don't like boxing, if you're reading this blog you like action. And if you like action find a way to watch those fights. And if you're still not entertained you better go check for a pulse.

 

Follow the Star's Morgan Campbell on Twitter.

 

 

 

 

Stallone belongs in the boxing Hall of Fame -- seriously

While I was out chasing Dana White and telling the world about the UFC's inevitable arrival in Toronto, the International Boxing Hall of Fame announced its Class of 2011.

And as HOF inductions always do, Tuesdays announcement provoked plenty of passionate discussion about who deserved the call, who didn't and why.

First, we can all agree that Julio Cesar Chavez deserved the nod.

Did he pound his share of cab drivers and plumbers during the 87-fight win streak that opened his career? 

Sure.

And shouldn't that 88th fight, a 12-round "draw" against Pernell "Sweet Pea" Whitaker, really have been JCC's first loss?

Of course.

But on the way to Whitaker, Chavez dominated stars between 130 and 140 pounds, steamrolling stylists, technicians and tough guys alike. Granted, he had to rally to reel in Meldrick Taylor in their March 1990 unification bout, securing a knockout with just two seconds remaining in the bout. But the point is he pulled it off, as a future HOF in his prime should, and he's one inductee that generated no arguments from anyone.

Mike Tyson, though, is another story.

Without even discussing his in-ring credentials Iron Mike's inclusion raises the question of whether a convicted rapist and two-time ear-biter deserves as spot in boxing's most hallowed place. And you could also argue -- correctly -- that though Tyson fought until 2005 he peaked in June 1988, or about two weeks after Michael Cera was born. And there's not much point in arguing that for the final decade of his career the former "Baddest Man on the Planet" devolved from champion to sideshow to freak show.

We all watched it happen.

Still, Tyson's 15-year slide into boxing "Bolivian" doesn't dim his incandescent early career.

From the time he turned pro until his 91-second demolition on Michael Spinks, Tyson displayed a mixture of power and speed never before seen among heavyweights, and rode a string of spectacular knockouts to the world title before he turned 21.

 

 

Tyson beat so many heavyweights so thoroughly in his career's first four years that for the next decade people barely noticed his slowly eroding skills.

But even a past-his-prime Tyson remained a celebrity during an era when boxing was fading from the mainstream because he did everything big. He won big, lost bigger and when he lost it, he lost it all the way.

So whether you like him as a human being (most of us probably wouldn't) or think he would never have beaten a prime Muhammad Ali (Ali makes him quit like Liston did....hypothetically), you have to remember that this isn't a hall of virtue. It's a hall of fame, and no fighter since Ali has brought more fame to the boxing game than Tyson did.

And since we're talking fame, can I ask every one of you to calm down over the induction of Sylvester Stallone as an "Observer"?

If the Hall had inducted Mr. T I'd see your point. 

 

But Stallone?

Check this list of guys already in the Hall as Observers and ask yourself what most of them have in common.

If you haven't figured it out I'll tell you.

Most of the guys on that list are there because they spent large parts of their careers telling stories about boxing.

Anybody here remember why Stallone became famous in the first place?

Exactly.

He told a compelling story about boxing, won an Oscar for it and used the film as the foundation of a film career that, incredibly, continues today.

No, Stallone isn't to screenwriting what W.C. Heinz was to prose (and if you've never read The Professional you need to....like yesterday), and yes the Rocky franchise grew more far-fetched with each successive film.

Tommy Morrison leaving the arena after a title defense to brawl with Rocky in a Philadelphia gutter?

Really?

Of course not.

But if you're over 30 years old and can't quote a single line from Rocky IV I've got questions about how you spent your youth. If you're flipping through channels and come across James Brown singing "Living in America" while Apollo Creed shimmies toward his fate at Drago's and don't drop the remote and watch the rest of the movie I question how you spend your idle time.

And if these scenes don't compel you to bang out a few pushups you just might have an artificial heart.

 

How much does climbing a mountain while wearing right jeans and a sheepskin coat have to do with actual boxing?

Not a damn thing.

But that whole inspiring sequence (I'm shadowboxing between sentences here) is part of a six-film franchise Stallone built around the sweet science.

That's about 5.5 more boxing features than most filmmakers produce, and in the world of "Observers" its more than enough to qualify him for Canastota.

 

Follow the Star's Morgan Campbell on Twitter.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Couture destroys Toney -- and doesn't prove a thing

So Randy Couture steamrolled James "Lights Out" Toney at UFC 118 Saturday night, proving once and for all that an aging but proficient mixed martial artist is better at mixed martial arts than a boxer who is 18 years and 77 pounds past his prime.

And that's about all Couture's highly anticipated but hardly unexpected win proves.

Actually no.

It also proves that Toney, who hounded Dana White for the final three months of 2009 before finally receiving his shot in the UFC, probably should have started out in Strikeforce because they probably would have let him debut against a creampuff more suited to his (non-existent) MMA skills. I mean, Herschel Walker is 1-0 as an MMA fighter thanks to Strikeforce and Greg Nagy.

Either way, I'm hardly the only guy who figured Couture would take down and overwhelm the 42-year-old Toney without much time or effort. It doesn't take a visionary to foresee a wrestling expert and MMA veteran choking out a guy who has never grappled before.

The result was about as predictable as a showdown between Toney's willpower and the buffet table.

And it was about as significant as it was competitive.

Yes, Saturday night marked the first time we saw a big-name boxer take on a top-flight mixed martial artist in a near no-holds-barred fight, but the bout was far from a final referendum on which group of athletes is superior.

I doubt such a thing exists.

As I told friends on Twitter Saturday night, Toney facing Couture in the octagon is like the Pittsburgh Pirates meeting teem Pakistan on the cricket pitch.

Like Toney the Pirates have a glorious and well-documented past. Thirty-one years ago the Pirates claimed a World Series, giving the city of Pittsburgh six major pro titles (two World Series and four Super Bowls) in the decade of the seventies.

But like Toney they watch that glory fade a little every day, and while they still remain in the major leagues their performance, payroll and paid attendance slide steadily toward minor league levels.

Couture, meanwhile is like Pakistani cricket: not the same force as in the glory days (there's no replacing Inzimam Ul Haq), but they're still a world power, and way too strong for any minnow to challenge.

So expecting Toney to put in nine months of MMA training and give Couture anything resembling a tough fight is like asking Andrew McCutchen and crew to fly to Islamabad and go wicket-for-wicket with team Pakistan.

Wouldn't happen, and we know it because we realize that for all the similarities between baseball and cricket there's still a vast difference between the two.

Somehow we forget that when trying to compare boxing and MMA but as Couture demolished Toney Saturday night we all received an emphatic reminder.

If we really wanted to prove MMA fighters were superior to boxers in all aspects we'd have to arrange a rematch between Toney and Couture under the Queensberry Rules.

Of course, it's been discussed and of course, Couture is vowing never to enter a boxing ring with Toney.

After Saturday's fight he told reporters that if the two men ever boxed “James would probably knock me out in the first round.”

I don't know.

First round knockouts were never Toney's style (and yes, I feel comfortable discussing Toney's boxing career in the past tense). More likely he would pick Couture apart early and beat him down in the middle rounds. Either way, if Toney and Couture had met in a ring Saturday night Couture might still be on his back with the referee counting over him.

But they met in an octagon, which proves that Couture has learned a hard lesson about the fight game that still eludes Toney:

Never take a fight unless you know you can win it.

 

Follow the Star's Morgan Campbell on Twitter

Local pro Lowther looks to shine under Friday night lights

Rising lightweight prospect Omri Lowther is a huge fan of ESPN's "Friday Night Fights," and week after week he'd come home after a week of training turn on the TV and dream.

Month after month he'd watch other up-and-comers compete on the show and measure himself against them.

And year after year he would swear to himself that he wouldn't let one more season of FNF pass without finding his own place on the show.

For the first four years of his pro career he toiled in tiny venues, mostly across the southeast U.S., building a 14-1 record. He had build in impressive set of skills -- witness his 2007 demolition of the outclassed Omar Ballard -- but aside from a Shobox fight taken on two days notice he still couldn't find the spotlight.

 

 

But Saturday night the spotlight will find the Mississauga resident.

In Montreal.

Not only will he make his ESPN debut but Lowther headline the show's season finale, taking on fast-handed Philadelphia lightweight Hank Lundy in the main event. Whether Lowther, a transplanted Atlanta native who now lives and trains in Mississauga, can withstand the glare of ESPN's Friday night lights hasn't been proven.

But it's not like Lowther has a choice.

At 26 he's still a little young for a crossroads bout, but old enough to realize Saturday's bout can either set him up for stardom or set him back indefinitely.

"I'm pretty hot on the market but one loss can change all of that," he says."People are wondering, 'how good is this kid?' so I'm right on the threshold of great things happening. It's not a crossroads fight, it's a crossover fight."

The path to Saturday's main even was hectic but surprisingly short.

When ESPN decided to hold its FNF season finale on a Saturday in boxing-mad Montreal, the network also booked undefeated middleweight phenom David Lemieux for the main event. But when an injury sidelined Lemieux ESPN reached out to Lowther, whom they had been watching develop, and matched him with Edner Cherry, a rugged veteran who reliably brings action fights to FNF.

But Tuesday night Cherry's management informed ESPN that the fighter couldn't leave the U.S. because his green card had lapsed.

Big problem.

The last minute collapse of the main event for the season finale of your flagship boxing show is bad enough, but the timing of Cherry's withdrawal made things even worse because Saturday will be one of the busiest fight nights on the boxing calendar.

In Puerto Rico WBA/WBO light-flyweight champ and master technician Ivan Calderon defends his belt against Mexico's Giovanni Segura.

That same night in Argentina, junior welterweight buzzsaw Marcos Maidana takes on resilient journeyman DeMarcus (Chop Chop) Corley -- who Floyd "Money" Mayweather claims is the hardest hitter he ever faced.

And in the broader fight world, former three-division world champ and Hall of Fame trash-talker James (Lights Out) Toney makes his mixed martial arts debut, facing Randy Couture at UFC 118 in Boston.

This glut of alternatives would have made the ESPN show easy for fight fans to forget if the network couldn't come up with a competitive main event.

Enter Lundy, a southpaw from Philly who nearly derailed the highly-rated John Molina before folding in the 11th round of their ESPN-televised bout in July.

A slick boxer with some pop (10 KO in 18 wins) Lundy is the stylistic antithesis of Cherry, a straight-ahead plugger.

Yet Lowther says that with the help of trainer Chris Johnson he'll have a game plan tailor-made to handle Lundy.

"They're two totally different fighters but I have a lot of experience and Chris is an awesome trainer so the adjustment was really simple," he says.

Truth is, Lowther is accustomed to abrupt changes in direction.

Three months ago he was in Atlanta watching his career stagnate, struggling to work training sessions around his full time job as a warehouse supervisor but not getting any fights.

A decade earlier Lowther and Johnson had trained in the same Atlanta gym, Lowther as a teenage amateur and Johnson as a fringe contender seeking one last big fight.

When a subdural hematoma forced Johnson to retire from fighting he turned to training, and guided Lowther two a pair of wins during their brief time together.

"He had to work my corner for a couple of fights, and for a couple of fights it was Magic," Lowther says.

When Johnson returned to Canada he kept in touch with Lowther, and when he grew sick of watching the fighter spin his wheels in Atlanta he invited Lowther to move to Canada and train at his Mississauga gym.

Lowther made the move in June and by July he had already collected his first pro win with Johnson, a 5th-round stoppage of Isaac Bejarano in Cancun, Mexico.

His second assignment figures to be much tougher.

Lundy is hungry for redemption after fumbling away a potentially huge win on network TV last month, but the stakes are just as high for Lowther.

Adam Harris, head of Hennessy Sports Canada, the company that promotes Lowther, says a win here could make him a factor in a 135-pound division that, with the return of former champ Juan Manuel Marquez, is suddenly one of the hottest in boxing.

"This fight is pivotal for him," Harris says. "If he comes through this in style the doors will open wide for him."

 

Follow the Star's Morgan Campbell on Twitter

Anderson Silva's Cocoon of Horror

Props to you if you saw this coming, because I sure didn't.

Yes, I understand that UFC middleweight contender Chael Sonnen was sent into the ring with champion Anderson Silva precisely because he was a different type of challenger, one who wouldn't indulge Silva's cheap imitation of Satchel Paige's showmanship, and one who -- unlike everybody since Forrest Griffin -- would actually force Silva to fight.

UFC president Dana White promised as much in the wake the five-round cure for insomnia that passed for Silva's April title defence against fellow Brazilian Demian Maia in April, and the prospect of an opponent who would force Silva to put his marvelous array of skills on full display sounded tantalyzing.

Problem was, we had heard it all before.

Travis Lutter and Dan Henderson were each supposed to provide that type of challenge, and each of them tapped out.

Griffin, a fearless brawler, was supposed to test Silva's chin and survival skills at 205 pounds, but the Spider splattered him in less than a round, flattening him for good with a perfectly placed left jab to the jaw.

So I don't know about you guys, but Sonnen didn't seem any different to me.

Sure, he manhandled past Silva victim Nate Marquardt over three rounds in February, but that result alone didn't put him in Silva's class. And the 10 losses be brought into Saturday's bout suggested there was more than one way to beat him.

As the bout approached and Sonnen's trash talk intensified he reminded me more and more of Peter McNeeley.

Remember him?

He's the guy Don King unearthed to serve as Mike Tyson's first post-incarceration opponent in August 1995, a world-class jaw jacker who promised to envelop the former heavyweight champ in "a cocoon of horror."

We all know how that turned out.

I knew Sonnen brought a lot more to the table than McNeeley did, but I didn't foresee a much different result. As I told folks on Twitter as the fighters walked to the ring, Sonnen seemed a lot like Griffin -- a fighter just brave enough to get hurt...badly.

Shows you what I know.

The day after Tyson Gay stunned the World's Fastest Man in Stockholm, Sonnen nearly did the same to the Usain Bolt of MMA. And even though he managed not to win the fight, in manhandling Silva for four and a half rounds he proved that the most dominant fighter of the past half decade is indeed human.

Who knew?

Sonnen did, apparently, and Saturday night he put Silva in more jeopardy than we had seen him endure in his first 11UFC bouts combined. He fought with a visceral anger rarely seen outside Tea Party rallies, repeatedly dumping the middleweight champ on his back, and winning round after round with his suffocating ground and pound.

Silva, we all know by now, survived and triumphed because true champions find ways to win even when losing looks like the only option.

Of course, when a megastar like Silva struggles, questions arise. When Bolt lost to Gay track insiders and casual fans alike posited that he dropped the race intentionally, hoping to stoke interest among a sports public bored by his dominance.

Silva's near-loss prompted similar speculation.

Did he give away the early rounds on purpose?

I've heard that theory and the rationale behind it -- that he was doing fans a favour, building drama by letting an overmatched opponent whale away on him knowing he could end the fight whenever he felt like it.

Not sure I buy it, though. This is a bloodsport, where a simple miscalculation -- say walking into a punch you don't see -- could cost you a title, and a grave mistake could put you on a stretcher.

Other folks think SIlva simply didn't prepare for this bout properly, and that he underestimated Sonnen the same way many fans and *ahem* experts did.

Perhaps, but I don't know if a fighter who so enjoys outclassing opponents would take an opponent as intense as Sonnen so lightly.

From my seat at Hooters it simply appeared as though Silva simply met a well trained, highly motivated opponent whose mauling, brawling style gave him problems.

Did complacency play a role?

It's very possible.

For four rounds Silva looked like a man fighting to defend a  title while Sonnen looked like a man fighting for his life.

Big difference.

We also can't forget that Silva's 35 years old. He's not ancient but certainly not in any athletes prime years, either. Since arriving in the UFC in 2006 no opponent could even make him sweat, but aside from steroid fueled baseball players who delayed the aging process indefinitely no athlete, no matter how gifted and skilled, spends more than three years at the absolute top of his game. They might still dominate but they still slide downhill after they peak.

So it's possible that after three untouchable years Silva has slowed down a bit.

But in the end  it didn't matter on Saturday night. Skill and savvy conquered raw aggression. Silva couldn't figure out how to stay off his back, so devised a way to win from there, splitting Sonnen's brow with elbow strikes and locking in an inescapable triangle choke when a tiring Sonnen left himself open to it.

The result was a last-minute submission win and the most dramatic win of Silva's UFC career.

Whether it was the most impressive depends on who you ask.

A lot of observers label Saturday night's win Silva's best because he proved, at last, that he could endure adversity and win emphatically.

Personally, I like to see how well an athlete performs when he's at his best, regardless of the margin of victory. I never downgraded Roy Jones Jr. for never having overcome adversity because the talent gap between him and his opponents wasn't his fault.

On the track I'd rather see Bolt run 9.58 and win by two metres than watch him gut out a 10-flat photo finish. Again, if the second-fastest man on the planet is (on most days) a full stride slower, that's not Bolt's problem.

So while Saturday night's win was the most riveting of Silva's career, give me his one-punch destruction of renowned tough guy Forrest Griffin as the strongest evidence of his greatness. 

I don't mean to detract from the drama of Saturday's win -- it stands alone as a signature victory for Silva and the sport, and is to mixed martial arts what Joe Louis' Hail Mary 13th round knockout over Billy Conn was to boxing.

But while a big win despite adversity certainly signals that a virtuoso like Silva also has a legend's heart, it also might signify that the rest of the world is closing the gap.

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