Thanks: 
Likes: 
Dislikes: 
Tommy Morrison to fight Feb 22 07
Duke’s Up?
By Bart Barry
Twenty-six of us in a Days Inn conference room. That was the turnout for last Thursday’s announcement by thirty-eight year old former WBO heavyweight champion Tommy “The Duke” Morrison that he is now HIV negative and ready to begin an eleven-years-in-the-making comeback. Tommy Morrison’s gathering included other prizefighters, Top Rank personnel, a handful of reporters, a few cameramen, and one person who was present in 1987 at George Foreman’s comeback debut.
His name is Bill Caplan. He is the only man who has ever legitimately called himself George Foreman’s publicist. Mr. Caplan’s memory of Foreman’s historical comeback and the lines that connect Foreman’s comeback to Tommy Morrison’s lent last Thursday’s event what credibility it had.
On 16 January 1993, Tommy Morrison and George Foreman shared a fight card in Reno, Nevada. They looked good together. Five months later, Morrison and Foreman battled for the vacant WBO heavyweight title. Tommy Morrison boxed surprisingly well, won the WBO title, and made George Foreman look slow enough that Heavyweight Champion Michael Moorer chose Foreman for his first title defense. In the tenth round of that fight, George Foreman knocked-out Moorer and completed the greatest comeback in professional sports’ history.
That was how Bill Caplan began last Thursday’s press conference. The length of George Foreman’s retirement, one fight to the next, was one week shy of a decade. The last time Tommy Morrison fought in a sanctioned bout was October of 1995, when he was knocked-out by Lennox Lewis. If Morrison returns to become the recognized Heavyweight Champion of the World, it will indeed be a greater comeback than even Foreman’s was.
Morrison’s comeback is also far less likely to succeed than Foreman’s was. Since 1995, Tommy Morrison has tested positive for Human Immunodeficiency Virus, lost much weight, completed a ''fourteen months, eight days, six hours, and forty-six minute'' residency in prison, gained most of his weight back in muscle, and declared his eleven-year status as a banned and infected prizefighter the result of a “false-positive” HIV test.
Last Thursday afternoon, Mr. Morrison walked from the back of the room, took a seat beside Juan Manuel Lopez, leaned into the microphone, and said, “Remember me?” Because he is still recognizable, and because there’s a bit of the unctuous salesman in every American heavyweight, the fifteen minutes that followed may make believers of some.
Asked to summarize his activities over the last eleven years, Mr. Morrison used his ah-shucks accent to say, “Gettin’ wise.” He then used a roaming narrative to explain his time in prison, his struggles with writing an autobiography, and his reasons for making a comeback now. The first reason was an unclear account of discrimination.
The second reason was damn clear. “Seeing James Toney wearing the heavyweight belt! Man, that about made me throw up. When I come back, that’s one guy whose mouth I’m going to shut. If I saw James Toney right now, I’d punch him in the face.”
Tommy Morrison also said he’d like to make the ubiquitous “difference” – why every celebrity returns. But the truth may be a little less abstract and a lot more quantifiable.
“I never made the type of money that I should have made. The people I was with, they weren’t gonna get money that I made outside the ring, so they didn’t do anything for me. I went through my career kinda half-assed. I have a new passion for the sport of boxing, again.”
That new passion, “again”, was ready to go on display last Friday night in Dodge Theatre. Then a left-wrist injury caused Mr. Morrison to request that the Arizona State Boxing Commission stop the processing of his license application. Predictably, this set off more rumors and suspicions about Morrison’s claims of being HIV negative and fit to return to prizefighting.
“It’s too bad the injury happened,” said Arizona State Boxing Commission’s John Montaño at a Friday weigh-in. “Because I would need to see him spar before I grant a license.”
John Montaño then tossed a pen in the air, by means of demonstration. “See how you picked that up and flinched? Those are the reflexes I’d have to see before I grant a license.”
This raised another difference between the case of George Foreman and that of Tommy Morrison. “Foreman was never knocked-out by punches in his first career,” said Mr. Montaño. “He was knocked-out by exhaustion.”
The same cannot be written of Tommy Morrison. Along with being stopped in his final sanctioned prizefight, Morrison also suffered a first-round knockout to Michael Bentt in 1993. Two years before that, Morrison was the victim of perhaps the most savage knockout in heavyweight history, when Ray Mercer took him to “Right Hand City.”
See that? Bill Caplan’s not the only one to draw historical lines between prizefighters. With his Phoenix comeback now spoiled, Tommy Morrison’s next, first comeback fight is tentatively scheduled for February 22 in West Virginia. The main event for that card will be Hasim Rahman versus none other than Ray Mercer.
Last Thursday night, though, Top Rank’s Lee Samuels confirmed just how tentative that date remains for Tommy Morrison. “He still doesn’t have a license. He needs to be licensed here in Arizona.”
Finally, there’s the question of Tommy Morrison’s physique. At his press conference, “The Duke” had the chest of a heavyweight and the lower body of a super-middleweight. When asked, Tommy Morrison said he currently weighs 225 pounds, with three-percent body fat. The second part was more believable than the first.
Challenged on this point, local promoter Peter McKinn said, “Morrison was 227 at his physical. I was there.”
Before anyone entirely dismisses Tommy Morrison’s quest to become a heavyweight champ again, though, there’s this question to answer: In 1987, how many people other than Bill Caplan believed George Foreman’s comeback was more than a farce?
 |
|
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by CutMeMicK
Bookmarks