OnThEGRiND BOXiNG

Thursday May 28th, 2009
by Suge Green

This Saturday the WBA Heavyweight Championship will be unified. When I say unified I don’t mean that the WBA Champion will risk his belt against a title holder who holds gold issued by a rival organization. No. Saturday the two WBA Heavyweight Champs will do battle against one another. That’s right, there are two heavyweights sharing a title who are not named Klitschko. In defense of Valuev and Chagaev though, at least they don’t appear to be as happy about it as the smiling siblings.

Some with the WBA I hear, have the nerve to suggest that this event to take place in Helsinki, Finland, will crown an Undisputed WBA Heavyweight Champion. I disagree with that statement about as strongly as one can, and in fact I can’t remember the last time that the WBA Championship wasn’t disputed.

The WBA Heavyweight Championship has been a bad joke since 2001. It has never recovered from the Holyfield-Ruiz trilogy, and in fact has only sunk deeper into the pit of irrelevance. In the 3rd and final installment of Holyfield Ruiz which took place in December, 2001, The Quiet Man who was at the time the champion, did nothing but cheat and hold his way to a draw, thus retaining the championship…though all with a memory know he rightfully should have lost that match. For the next several years, up until 2005, Ruiz’ legacy and that of the WBA Title were one in the same.

After the Holyfield sham, he defended against Kirk Johnson in one of heavyweight boxing’s worst fights. Ruiz won by DQ, however neither Ruiz or Johnson did much fighting, and John managed to use his trademark holding, and his secret weapon tactic of faking low blows (which he made famous in Ruiz-Holyfield II) in the bout.

Following this second “defense” of his precious WBA strap, John went on to be completely embarrassed by Roy Jones Jr. Somewhat ironic in consideration of the personality Ruiz manufactured in the build up to the fight with the intent of embarrassing Jones, and referring to him as a prostitute, to his would be pimp. In addition to Ruiz’ previous history making feat of becoming the 1st Latino Heavyweight Champion of the World, in losing to Jones he joined Gentleman Jim Corbett as the only Heavyweight Champs to lose their Title to a former Middleweight Champion.

Jones of course, didn’t meet the deadline to defend his new championship, giving the WBA justification to create an Interim Championship. John Ruiz seemingly always in the right place at the right time, was about to be recrowned in a round about way, as the WBA found reason to determine the new champion by having (the just lost to a light heavyweight) Ruiz face a Hasim Rahman who was coming off of 2 losses and a draw. 6 years later I still can’t pretend that there was a good reason for determining who the new champion should be by placing those two in a boxing ring. Surely at that particular point in time a case could have been made for any top contenders other than those two. Efforts were made supposedly, and the best the WBA could do was pit Rahman against Ruiz for an interim Title. No matter, Ruiz was one 12 round decision away from being reunited with what for a while seemed like his trophy, the WBA Heavyweight Championship. When Roy Jones Jr. officially vacated his championship and returned to the world below 200lbs., Ruiz’ Interim Title became the regular WBA Title.

John Ruiz next defended his “championship” against Fres Oquendo in another boxing match that goes down in terms of excitement as rivaling watching paint dry. Not much to see here, other than Ruiz’ trademark cheating huggy bear style, and that the stoppage was controversial and early, since Oquendo did not appear to be hurt. One more thing about this one, how many Heavyweight Title fights have included a moment where the ref has to tell the fighters that punches are supposed to be exchanged in a boxing match ? Another distinction of John Ruiz’ career and WBA Heavyweight Title Fights.

After this lacklustre defense, Ruiz defended his belt against Andrew Golota and put on a performance that would make the “Foul Pole” blush. More of the same cheating and holding occurred here of course, and Ruiz found himself the happy recipient of a close decision that most did not have him winning. Good ol’ WBA officials.

Next The Quiet Man faced another former middleweight in James “Lights Out” Toney. James thoroughly outboxed Ruiz to a UD, scoring a controversial KD in the 7th round. The dominance of Toney in the bout led to an immediate retirement announcement from John Ruiz. However, Toney who only had 6 weeks to prepare for the fight, was found to have tested positive for a banned substance post fight, that he claimed he was given due to an injury. In a couple of weeks time Riuz was out of retirement, and the belt was back around his waist.

Little did he realize that his time was running out, and that the WBA had a new chosen one waiting in the wings, the central casting reject called…Nicolay Valuev.

Keep your browser locked right here for the follow up, “The WBA Loves You Boxing Fan…Nikolay Valuev