Boxing Perspective: Next?

Friday night at The Palace at Auburn Hills in suburban Detroit was an easy paycheck for undefeated light welterweight Leonardo Tyner. After bouncing a left hook off Victorio Abadia’s temple, followed by a combination that ended with Abadia impaled on a right hook body shot, Tyner, 19-0 (11), finished the job with an uppercut to the midsection. Abadia, 22-7 (8), folded like a shirt at the laundry.

The fight was supposed to be part of a co-main event with Vernon “Iceman” Paris taking on Mexico’s Roberto Valenzuela, but Paris had to pull out after injuring his hand in training. The Iceman is now slated to fight on the 22nd this month against an unnamed opponent to continue building steam for a televised fight sometime this year.

Vernon made a brief appearance in the ring before Tyner fought, but had disappeared by the time “The Pain Server” had given Abadia a taste of canvas.

Easy paychecks are increasingly coming with a bitter taste for Tyner, though. At thirty-two years of age he’s either at or near his prime and it’s a quick slide downhill for the average junior welterweight. “The Pain Server” has to be wondering how much time he has left to make his mark.

“The only way I’m not making progress is because the top guys won’t fight me right now,” The Pain Server said at the press conference at the Holiday Inn Express in Auburn Hills. “We had fights with Berto, the Petersen Brothers, Timothy Bradley, Juan Urango. They all pulled out. They asked for it then once we say come on, sign the contract, then they get a phone call and found out they shouldn’t fight me.”

With a potential showdown with the closest thing to a superstar hanging somewhen in the ether, what’s a guy to do?

Bernard Harris made an open call to both him and Vernon Paris and when you consider he’s fought names like Sharmba Mitchell, Joel Casamayor, Antonio Diaz, and Derrick Gainer at first he seems a viable candidate. That is until you realize he’s lost to all those fighters (and Chris Grays who was 6-14 on Friday’s undercard before winning by majority decision).

It may require some travel. So far, Tyner has only fought twice outside of his home state and he may need to go into the back yard of a Giuseppe Lauri, Norio Kimura, or Francisco Figueroa, I’d say Steve Forbes, but he’s tied up with De La Hoya in May. Lauri rarely fights outside of Italy, Kimura never fights away from Japan, but Figueroa fights all over the country, including twice in Detroit.

Fighting the Iceman may not get Tyner what he wants. Sure, locally he’d get notice, but on a national level neither fighter is held with any regard. Opponents probably skip over him just on record alone because they want a nobody who will lay down when he gets punched. But making a fight with a ranked fighter, even if the fighter is barely ranked would give him something other than a flawless record as cache in getting a legitimate shot at recognition.