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03/14/2004 Archived Entry: "Winky Wright Schools Sugar Shane and a Battered Mesi Stumbles to the Finish"
Winky Wright Schools Sugar Shane and a Battered Mesi Stumbles to the Finish Line
By Umar ben-Ivan Lee
I got my money's worth on my cable bill for the month of March. Honestly, even though I am a news and political junkie, I would gladly cancel my cable subscription if it were not for boxing and as broke as I am you can say that I have an economic investment in boxing returning to network television.
For the last few weeks boxing has delivered and March 13th has been the biggest day for boxing thus far this year. Going into the night I predicted that Vasilliy Jirov would defeat “Baby” Joe Mesi and Winky Wright would upset Shane Mosley. However, in the back of my mind, I was thinking that we could see two very boring fights and Jirov and Wright would outbox their better-known opponents and win ugly and boring decisions. Obviously that did not happen.
In the main event two of the nicest guys in the business in Mosley and Wright faced off. Going into the fight Mosley was a three to one Vegas favorite, but boxing insiders knew better. Emanuel Steward noted on the broadcast that he encouraged the Mosley camp to not take the fight and all should give credit to Mosley for taking the big challenge from the slick southpaw who had been avoided like the plague by all of the big names in the division. Having talked to Winky Wright on and off since his last fight I knew that he was determined to show the world what kind of a fighter he was and that he had the heart and skills of a true champion and would come prepared for battle.
Within seconds of the fight beginning it was obvious that Wright had brought his A-game and that Mosley had no real solutions to the style of Mosley. Winky showed to the world that he belongs in the rankings of the pound for pound best in the world as he systematically decimated Mosley with a combination of solid-lefts and right-hooks throughout the bout. Mosley, ever the game warrior, was trying to find Wright all night but never solved the puzzle.
The two warriors saved the best for last as they battled toe to toe in the final round in front of the cheering crowd at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Over the course of the fight Wright had won over the crowd who chanted “Winky”. On hand to cheer for Wright were baseball greats Barry Bonds and reportedly Gary Sheffield. The unanimous decision for Wright was scored; 117-111 twice and 116-112 once, on my scorecard I had it 118-110 for Wright.
In the crowd seated next to Don King was Puerto Rican star Felix Trinidad, who will be coming back to boxing after a two year lay-off. The Mosley camp had been in negotiation to fight Trinidad (after having originally planning to fight Ricardo Mayorga before he was exposed by Cory Spinks). It remains to be seen if the Wright camp and promoter Roy Jones, Jr. will make the fight with Trinidad. Wright had left open the possibility of fighting Mosley again, but that is unlikely, and voiced interest in fighting Oscar De La Hoya and Bernard Hopkins which is more conceivable.
The future for Mosley remains uncertain and he may have to reconsider his future in the sport after having had a dismal run in the Junior Middleweight Division outside of his close win over De La Hoya and his wins over dubious opponents. The loss will also open up questions as to whether his sluggish performance was due to his lack of performance enhancing steroids as he had been named, and forced to testify, in the federal steroid investigation that has rocked the sports world.
You can often be surprised a few times within a fight and this happened to me during the fight between “Baby” Joe Mesi, Buffalos third pro-sport franchise, and the decorated Russian-Kazakh amateur Vasilliy Jirov (for those who do not know Jirov is an ethnic Russian, whose family was part of millions of “White” Russians who were relocated by Soviet government programs to areas of the former USSR such as the Muslim-dominated Kazakhstan in order to modify the local cultures and reinforce Russian values) .
I expected to see the better schooled and educated Jirov to box Mesi and pick him apart and win a decision or stop a fatigued Mesi in the late rounds. After the first round, which was completely dominated by Jirov, I patted myself on the back and thought that things would go as I predicted. Then things changed; it was Mesi who dominated the action and won every round from the second to the eighth and had Jirov hurt on a few occasions.
Watching the fight in the ninth round I was saying that Mesi had earned my respect and that he must be considered a legit threat in the Heavyweight division. At about that point things changed for the worse for “Baby” Joe. Mesi was dropped in the ninth round with a right-hook to the back of the head which at first appeared to be a flash knockdown.
When the tenth round began it was all Jirov and he poured it on Mesi who appeared to be out on his feet for most of the tenth round and went down twice in the round. The fight ended with Mesi against the ropes and one wondered what would have happened if the fight had been twelve-rounds? It would have been hard to imagine a scenario where the battered Mesi could have survived two more rounds and at a minimum he would have dropped a decision.
Analyst Larry Merchant pointed out that “this wasn’t a streetfight but a boxing match and whoever won the most rounds will win the decision” and that is what happened with all three judges giving the decision to Mesi 94-93, which was the same way I scored the bout and the unofficial HBO scorecard of Harold Lederman had it.
On one hand I had to give it to Mesi for surviving the assault of the last round and a half; on the other hand I just watched him tire at the end again just as in the Monte Barrett fight and get roughed-up by a blown-up Cruiserweight fighting in his first Heavyweight bout. If the blows that repeatedly landed cleanly from Jirov would have been the left-hooks of Dominick Guinn or the blows of any of the top fighters in the division it is hard to imagine that Mesi wouldn’t have been stopped.
What can be said clearly is that Mesi left the fight not having answered the questions that were brought up by his performance against Monte Barrett last December. What the Mesi camp expected was to win over a West Coast fan-base and turn Mesi into a national attraction and not just a Northeastern White folk-hero. Not only did that not happen but the decision for Mesi was widely booed by the audience and their was obvious hurt and disappointment on the faces of Mesi and his entourage.
The stock of Jirov went up after the fight as this is the second time that he delivered action on an HBO show and put on a display of courage and endurance. If one puts Mesi in the top-ten then Jirov has to be right there after narrowly-losing to both Mesi and James Toney. It will be interesting to see who will want to fight Jirov and compare their performance against him with Mesi’s. Names that come to mind are Samuel Peter, the hard-hitting Nigerian, and Calvin Brock. I doubt that Guinn will want to fight another former Mesi opponent after he face Barrett on March 27th in an HBO Boxing after Dark show from Little Rock, Arkansas.
