San Jose boxing card showcases whirlwind 140-pounder Barnett, ex-champ Whitaker

Pernell Whitaker will be the featured ringside guest at next Thursday’s “Fight Night at the Tank” at San Jose’s HP Pavilion, the first card in that series since June. Don’t expect the former lightweight great to set the tone for the evening, but do expect him to set the tone for these examiner.com boxing reports.

Whitaker, also known as Sweet Pea, was a boxer’s boxer, a defensive artist, in a sport where there’s a greater public demand for knockout artists. A lot of Whitaker’s most beautiful exhibitions of the 1980s and ‘90s were booed, especially by the more casual type of fan who prefers watching heavyweights club one another.

You mayhem lovers should love Thursday’s main event, then, as it features junior welterweight (140-pound limit) whirlwind Ty Barnett (14-0, 10 knockouts), who has finished six of his opponents in the first round.  In his last outing, he demolished once-beaten Pavel Miranda in four rounds in June. Even the fact that Barnett’s opponent was the ever-dubious “TBA” until Jose Leonardo Cruz (12-3-2) filled that void Wednesday (Sept. 3) might not discourage knockout aficionados from attending.

My enthusiasm for Whitaker’s fancy boxing style didn’t wane as the 5-foot-5 left-hander moved from lightweight (135) to welterweight (147), and even junior middleweight (154), in the less auspicious half of his career. Moving up definitely diminished his reputation. A similar career arc hasn’t been great for Sugar Shane Mosley as his career is winding down. And Sugar Ray Robinson’s best-of-all-time status is based largely on his early welterweight days, not his subsequent ups and downs in the middleweight (160) division.

The object of boxing should be to hit without getting hit back, and to avoid losing by avoiding matches with those whose size is too much for you. But the box office seems to say otherwise, unfortunately.

On the wane: African-American superstars

With Floyd Mayweather saying he has retired, many versions of the sport’s mythical pound-for-pound rankings currently have no American black fighters. The Ring magazine has only one in its Top 10, No. 4 Bernard Hopkins, and he’s 43 years old and has lost three of his past five fights.

That doesn’t mean African-Americans don’t merit the Top Ten, but then, it isn’t a merit system. Unfortunately, boxing promotions are based on who will sell tickets, not who deserves to ascend. And black fighters have trouble standing out, not so much in the boxing universe as among themselves. Plenty of good ones go unnoticed by the public unless they’re biting someone’s ear off.

With Mayweather vacating the top spot, it has gone to Manny Pacquiao, a newly crowned lightweight champion moving up from super-featherweight. But Pacquiao is looking for a showdown against Oscar De La Hoya that would require moving up to welterweight, or even higher. Manny won’t be Number One for long in that case. Wait until you see how big Oscar looks up next to him.

BEST AND WORST:

Antonio Margarito’s epic upset of Miguel Cotto in July not only shook up the welterweight division even more than Mayweather’s retirement, but also it shook up a lot of basic assumptions about boxing. It was probably the best fight of 2008 (and was I ever wrong that it wasn’t a match-up worthy of pay-per-view). 

Margarito, a journeyman from Tijuana, absorbed even more punishment than he dished out, and he is neither a better boxer nor puncher than Cotto, but he took every shot in Cotto’s arsenal _ repeatedly _ and just kept on coming until he toppled the Puerto Rican. Margarito’s ability to take a punch ranks second only to his intestinal fortitude, but those attributes don’t traditionally rank one-two in a great fighter’s repertoire _ and I’m not convinced Margarito is great. 

The lamest bout recently: Former flyweight (112) champ Vic Darchinyan, one of the most impressive punchers at that weight ever, proved plenty powerful moving up to junior bantamweight (115) to challenge IBF champion Dimitri Kirilov. But it was a disappointingly one-sided fight, as Kirilov was totally intimidated and barely fought back before falling in 5.

The best on the horizon: Juan Manuel Marquez, coming off his valiant loss to Pacquiao last March, defends his super-featherweight title Sept. 13 against Cuban journeyman Joel Casamayor, who, at 37, is two years older than Marquez. A last-hurrah upset for Casamayor isn’t unthinkable, but it’s more likely Marquez will wear down the slick left-hander.

And the worst on the horizon might be that Fight Night at the Tank headliner. Cruz, a 2000 Olympian from Colombia, is hardly a bum, though at 32 he isn’t on the rise. He’ll try to befuddle Barnett and counter-punch him, but look for Barnett to be too strong for Cruz to ward off. Anyway, no matter how worthy of showcasing Barnett may be, it’s never a good sign when it doesn’t seem to matter who the other guy is in a main event.

 

Topics: Penell Whitaker , San Jose boxing , Fight Night