The Number One Contender: Landing the Knockout Punch (a Guest Column by Paul Haberman, Esq.)

Boxing might be one of the hardest sports to pick winners in. Compelling arguments can be made in favor of a given boxer only for him to show up an entirely different man and get blown out on fight night. One punch can change the course of a match. As a result, the boxing cognoscenti are among the worst handicappers in sport.

A recent example of the above statement came at the expense of Oscar De La Hoya in his fight against Manny Pacquiao. Pacquiao, who was coming up two weight classes to face De La Hoya, came in as a 7 to 1 underdog. For many, the inquiry began and ended with the idea that De La Hoya was the naturally big man and, because of that, Pacquiao would be unable to cope with De La Hoya’s bigger punch and superior physical gifts. Ignored in this analysis was the fact that Pacquiao was the younger man, has uncanny conditioning and work rate, and is generally regarded as the number one pound for pound fighter in world. In short, if he was able to avoid flush shots from elder, more battle worn De La Hoya, he had almost all of the advantages. Again, because much of that was ignored, many were shocked when Pacquiao dominated De La Hoya en route to a one-sided eighth round TKO win.

So how do you go about picking the winners in such an unpredictable sport? While there is no exact science to it, here are some useful items to think about when picking a winner in a given boxing match or picking your boxers for a fantasy league:

(1) Remember Their Entire Career. Many people that picked De La Hoya to defeat Pacquiao remembered the De La Hoya of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the man who expertly followed a game plan, always came ready to fight, and had possibly the best and most accurate jab in boxing south of Lennox Lewis. Forgotten in the analysis was the De La Hoya who took more shots than he needed to against Steve Forbes in his fight prior to Pacquiao, or the one that barely edged out the game, but ordinary, Felix Sturm in his first fight at middleweight. Similar short-term memory loss was exhibited by those who chose Roy Jones, Jr. over Joe Calzaghe. Would a vintage Jones have knocked out Calzaghe following the first round knockdown? Without a doubt. But the post-Tarver/Johnson one? Come on now. Selective memory loss as to recent performances is a surefire way to pick the wrong man in a battle involving a top shelf veteran.

(2) How the Boxers Have Done Against Common Opponents. Some would regard this as the single best indicator of how one boxer would do against another. But then there was Kelly Pavlik vs. Jermain Taylor, Jermain Taylor vs. Bernard Hopkins, and Bernard Hopkins vs. Kelly Pavlik. The moral of the story: Common opponents may be a good starting point, but certainly should not be the end of the inquiry.

(3) Go Behind the Numbers. In a simpler time early in my boxing viewing life, I picked the then-undefeated Larry Donald against the once-defeated ex-heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe in a bet with a high school friend. My thinking was: Donald was undefeated, Bowe was not. The result? Bowe, by far the more experienced boxer whose only loss came to a peak Evander Holyfield, ran Donald out of the ring in route to an easy decision win. The lesson here: The 0 alone is rarely indicative of who the winner will be. Look beyond the win-loss-draw ledger, and see who they actually fought and what can be gleaned from those victories. Ask yourself where the record was built, as different parts of the world lend themselves to harder or softer competition. Most of his fights took place in the Midwestern United States? Good chance he’s got a record built on soft opposition. Most of his fights took place in Germany? The boxer may be right where he needs to be in advance of his world title shot. Ask yourself about the boxer’s amateur background, and what it indicates about the boxer’s potential as a professional. A 10-0 boxer from New York with an 135-10 amateur record that includes several national championships is likely more battle ready than a 30-0 boxer with 5 amateur fights from the sticks.

(4) See What the Record Says About the Boxer’s Weaknesses. Mike Tyson’s record indicated that he had trouble with taller boxers, as many of them tended to last longer into their fights with him or even last the distance. Lennox Lewis sustained his two losses to boxers whose heights allowed them to throw punches straight towards Lewis’ chin. Tyson, however, had less problems (save Evander Holyfield and Danny Williams) with average sized heavyweights and Lewis dominated significantly smaller power punchers like Tyson, David Tua, Tommy Morrison, and Phil Jackson, who all had to punch up to his chin. Many boxers’ records are not as easy to study as theirs, but if you see such patterns, take notes when picking your winners. How does he do against boxers known to be movers? Lefties? Counterpunchers?

(5) The Corners. The right trainer can turn a mediocre boxer into a fringe contender or even world champion. But the inquiry does not end there. Some boxers plainly listen to their corner more than others. Lennox Lewis, Floyd Mayweather, Jr., Joe Calzaghe, and Pernell Whitaker, for example, followed game plans better than anyone else I have seen in the sport. On the flip side, watch a clip of any one of “Prince” Naseem Hamed’s fights, and you will note that he barely appears to be paying attention to his trainer between any given round. A well-regarded trainer is not always reliable either, however. Buddy McGirt and Nacho Beristain, for example, are noted as two of the best trainers in the sport, but have had their share of awful outcomes in the past two years.

(6) Location of the Fight. This variable may be irrelevant if the home town fighter can’t take a punch to begin with, but if he’s a boxer that is good enough to look respectable against the opponent brought in to face him, there are plenty of examples in boxing where “home cooking” has purportedly served the local favorite very well in pushing him over the top. This is not a smart thing to end your inquiry with, but definitely an intangible to consider in an equally matched fight on one of the boxers’ home turfs.

(7) The Boxer’s Management. Unless the boxer is at the top of the sport, this may have very little probative value. There’s a bumper crop of managers in the sport. But perhaps if a particular manager has a lot of boxers, or a good track record, a study can be undertaken as to whether that manager has given his boxers the proper fights to develop, has matched them too softly to be taken seriously when they get a world ranking, or if he has used them more as journeymen and gap filler and has thus left them with a spotty record and questionable credentials and self-belief.

(8) Inside Information. Such information can often be very determinative, but the average fan probably has no access to such information. Items that may fall under this section include reports from their training camp or gym on how a boxer has been looking in sparring or conditioning drills and how easy he has been cutting weight in advance of their fight.

While this list is by no means exhaustive, your ability to factor in each of this issues will allow you to go into a bet on any given boxing match or fantasy boxing league draft with an educated response as to why you picked the boxers that you picked.

Paul Stuart Haberman, Esq. is an attorney at the New York law firm of Heidell, Pittoni, Murphy & Bach, L.L.P. He is also a New York State licensed boxing manager and the Chairman of the Sports Law Committee of the New York County Lawyers Association. ©

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