GOOD
Ryan Garcia’s one-punch knockout of Francisco Fonseca only 1 minute, 20 seconds into their lightweight fight Friday doesn’t prove much because Fonseca is nothing special.
The excitement Garcia created with his second consecutive first-round stoppage is genuine, though. He’s blossoming into a potential star. That’s what happens when your results in the ring start to catch up to the hype.
Indeed, almost any fighter would love to be in Garcia’s position.
Of course, he still has a long way to go. Only 21, he still hasn’t faced a legitimate threat. Only a true test can give us an idea of how good Garcia truly is and can be.
It could come soon. Oscar De La Hoya, Garcia’s promoter, is eyeing a matchup between Garcia and former three-division titleholder Jorge Linares in July. If Garcia can win that fight – a big if, in my opinion – he will have made a strong statement.
I wonder whether Garcia’s handlers would live to regret the decision to fight the gifted Linares, who demonstrated in his fourth-round knockout of Carlos Morales on the Garcia-Fonseca card that he has more to give, but I would applaud the bold move.
Garcia, bubbling with confidence, definitely thinks big. He reeled off immediately after his stoppage of Fonseca a gauntlet of opponents he’d like to face in the near future – Linares, Luke Campbell, Gervonta Davis and Devin Haney.
That’s quite a gauntlet he’s laid out for himself. We’ll see how many of them – if any – he fights and how he performs once he does.
In the meantime, Garcia has our attention. That’s more than all but a few professional boxers can say.
BAD
The last-second stoppage of the Abel Ramos-Bryant Perrella fight on the Caleb Plant-Vincent Feigenbutz card Saturday in Nashville might’ve seemed cruel to Perrella, who was winning on all cards when he lost in an instant.
The fact is referee Jack Reiss was following the rules.
According to the Unified Rules of Boxing, under which that bout was fought, “A fighter cannot be saved by the bell in any round, including the final round.” That means, if I understand it correctly, an injured boxer must be in condition to fight even if the three minutes of the last round has expired.
Reiss judged that Perrella, who had gone down twice in the final seconds, was in no condition to continue and waved off the fight.
The frustration expressed by Perrella’s cornerman Michael Nowling in the ring immediately after the stoppage was understandable: “We won every round and they took it from us with 1 second left.”
The rules took it from Perrella, not “they.” And not Reiss. The referee, as trainer and TV analyst Joe Goossen said, isn’t a timekeeper. His job is to look after the welfare of the combatants in the ring with him and follow the rules.
That’s what Reiss did. Good stoppage.
WORSE
It seems to me that sanctioning bodies are supposed to have a champion and then rank the next 10 best contenders in each division.
The reality? The alphabet organizations rank their contenders based less on merit than on how much money they can make. The result of that is a matchup like Caleb Plant vs. Vincent Feigenbutz for Plant’s IBF super middleweight title.
Feigenbutz, ranked No. 1 by the IBF, is a strong, sturdy young man but he had no business in the ring with a fighter of Plant’s ability. The fact he was the mandatory challenger is yet another red flag that the system is a mess.
Plant’s title defense, which ended by 10th-round knockout, couldn’t even be described as a competitive fight. Feigenbutz, an eight-year pro, has rudimentary skills and courage but not the tools to give the titleholder a legitimate challenge. Aren’t title fights supposed to be competitive at least on paper?
Anyone watching that fight who didn’t feel sorry for the German in the latter rounds has no heart. And anyone not disgusted with the IBF has no sense.
Sadly, there is no solution is sight. Some sort of oversight body – ideally an international one – might help but that isn’t going to happen any time soon. I personally try to minimize the sanctioning bodies by mentioning them infrequently but that’s only a small gesture.
We’re stuck with the murky alphabet soup and mismatches like Plant-Feigenbutz. I just hope fans can see through their self-serving game.
Read more:
Ryan Garcia needs only 1:20 to knock out Francisco Fonseca
Abel Ramos shocks Bryant Perrella with controversial 10th-round stoppage
Caleb Plant stops Vincent Feigenbutz in 10th round of hometown debut