ATLAS STILL CAN'T GET OUT OF DODGE CITY | TheSweetScience.com Boxing
ATLAS STILL CAN'T GET OUT OF DODGE CITY
By Charles Jay
The 77th Round
You know, there's nothing like a few quotable quotes --
"Don't taint my business. It's an honorable business. It's not a joke. It's noble. I hate people making a mockery of my business."
-- Teddy Atlas, as told to Hal Bock of Associated Press, for March 6, 2003 article, entitled "Atlas might be boxing's conscience"
"I love boxing, it's how I make my living. That's why I can't just quietly watch it be corrupted, over and over."
-- Teddy Atlas, as told to Phil Mushnick of the New York Post - February 7, 2003
"We need to eliminate the 'Dodge Cities' of boxing and chase out the 'gun-slingers' and create a town that can grow and flourish"
-- Teddy Atlas, in his written statement submitted to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, concerning the improvement of boxing, entered May 22, 2002
The following excerpt appeared on the CompuboxOnline website (http://www.compuboxonline.com/column/8_23.shtml) on August 23 of last year:
"As the opening bell sounded for the Rhosii Wells-Bernard Gray middleweight bout, ESPN2 COLOR COMMENTATOR TEDDY ATLAS OFFERED A LENGTHY APOLOGY TO VIEWERS AND A VERBAL INDICTMENT AGAINST THE FLORIDA BOXING COMMISSION FOR APPROVING WHAT HE FELT WAS A MAJOR MISMATCH. It took just a matter of minutes to prove that Atlas was absolutely correct in his assessment."
It was followed closely behind by this, written by Phil Mushnick of the New York Post, in an August 30, 2002 column with the headline "Classy Atlas Does Right Thing":
"Good-faith TV, as opposed to the other kind, is hard to find. Recent examples of both:
Good - ESPN2's "Friday Night Fights" ringside analyst, Teddy Atlas, last week prefaced the middleweight bout between highly regarded Rhoshii Wells and 39-year-old, short-notice pay-dayer Bernard Gray (last fight, 1997) with an apology.
ESPN (on behalf of promoter Don King), said Atlas, owed its viewers - and the sport - better than the slam-dunk mismatch they were about to witness. Minutes later, Wells won a second-round KO......."
And so it occurs to me that maybe we SHOULD talk a little about some things to apologize for.
Me first. A few years back, when I was involved with former WBA cruiserweight champ Robert Daniels, he went with his manager to Iowa to fight someone else, only to find himself, unbeknownst to me, in the ring with Stan Johnson, a veteran loser from Wisconsin who occasionally fought under different names, allegedly went in the tank every so often, and had dropped 17 of his previous 18 fights. Daniels KO'd him in the first round - a state of affairs that was certainly not unusual for Johnson, and the whole thing was embarrassing enough that I wished it could have been taken off Daniels' record, which didn't need to be padded like that.
That having been said, now it's Teddy Atlas' turn.
You know, sometimes it's the fights that ALMOST happen that get us the most outraged.
Let's go back to February 21 of this year, and the undercard of the WBC cruiserweight title fight between Wayne Braithwaite and Ravea Springs, a bout that was televised on ESPN2, live from Miccosukee Indian Gaming in Miami.
Atlas, in town for the broadcast, had managed to secure a spot on the card for his light heavyweight, Elvir Muriqi, who was 25-1 as a pro at the time.
His scheduled opponent, weighing in at 186-1/2 pounds the night before, was Delfino Marin, a veteran who had driven down from Winter Haven, Fla.
This fight card was taking place during a period of time when Atlas was making regular tirades against the Nevada State Athletic Commission, and in particular, Dr. Tony Alamo, who was in a position of conflict of interest as a member of the commission. Atlas made generous use of the material that sparked this controversy - which was contained in Rounds 21-23 of "Operation Cleanup 2" - and appropriated it as his own.
Because Atlas' presentation was less even-handed than my own, everyone in Nevada was properly peeved at him. And of course, if you have some dirty linen under those circumstances it's going to be exposed. To exacerbate things, people from the ESPN public relations department were shamelessly pushing Atlas as a "reformer", going so far as to try and bully boxing writers into penning stories to that effect. They had already succeeded with several poor schmucks in the New York area, who went along for the ride.
On the afternoon of Muriqi's scheduled fight, Marc Ratner, executive director of the Nevada commission, was on the phone with Russell Peltz, the "consultant" for ESPN's boxing telecasts. Ratner happened to mention in passing that Marin, the opponent for Muriqi, hadn't fought in about a year and hadn't won a fight in a while.
That was putting things mildly. In point of fact, the 36-year-old Marin had lost ten fights in a row, with no victories over nearly a ten-year period. He had won just one of his last EIGHTEEN fights, dating back to May of 1992, when he was stopped by Buddy McGirt. And Marin had won exactly THREE fights since April of 1989 - that's three wins in FOURTEEN years.
Marin, possessing a career record of 14-28, had scored his professional wins against opponents with a combined pro record of 24-106-2. I distinctly remember giving Marin his first amateur fight, and making a couple of his early pro fights. And I can personally tell you he's been "shot" for the last dozen years, at least. Marin's weight of 186-1/2 was rather excessive, considering he never had a win above the welterweight level.
This was the kind of fighter "boxing's conscience" decided to put in with a supposed "hot prospect" - a rated fighter with a 25-1 record.
Whether it was the intention or not, this crime against boxing, and a very possible ring tragedy, was ultimately avoided by way of Ratner's casual revelation to Peltz. What happened after that is rather cloudy, but apparently Peltz, or someone from ESPN, must have looked into the details of Marin's pitiful ring record. Peltz, who was also in Miami as part of his position with ESPN, let Atlas know that someone was on to him. The truth is that several people were on to him. I got a phone call from someone completely unconnected to the events, who had all the details, and I embarked on writing a story at that time - ready to publish it that day if the fight indeed happened.
As it turns out, Muriqi's fight was more or less "buried". It was off television - WAY off - and in fact may have been slated to be first on the card. Intended to be over and done with before anyone really noticed. Another quick "W" on the Kosovo Kid's record.
But as soon as he found out this wasn't going over so quietly, Atlas pulled Muriqi off the show, just a couple of hours before he was supposed to step into the ring. This had the effect of creating the embarrassing situation where, after the card had started, Marin was running all over the venue, looking to get paid. He was completely justified - after all, he had a signed contract for the fight.
Of course Atlas panicked. I like to think he remembered when I caught him red-handed before, when he was all set to put the heavyweight he was training, Michael Grant, in a fight with Thomas Williams, who had been indicted some eleven months earlier on a charge of fight-fixing - a case that's still pending. When word got around about Grant's opponent, the fight had to be made an exhibition (you can read all about it in Chapters 28-34 of "Operation Cleanup: A Blueprint for Boxing Reform").
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