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« | Home | »

(Boxing) Hating the way the Nate Campbell situation played out

By Zach Arnold | February 15, 2009

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Nate Campbell has had quite a boxing career this decade. Between an infamous knockout by Robbie Peden on Fox Sports Net (Barry Tompkins and Max Kellerman were priceless in calling this action), criminal charges (that were later dropped) involving accusations of punching and choking a former girlfriend, to filing for bankruptcy in 2007 after a fight against Joan Guzman was canceled, Campbell has had a colorful past in the sport. When Guzman failed to make weight for his fight against Campbell, nobody got paid and Campbell was in financial trouble.

Which makes this past week’s actions from Nate Campbell amazingly dumb because he managed to top his prior behaviorial acts by failing to make weight in his first title defense of the WBA, WBO, and IBF Lightweight (135-pound) titles. Campbell, scheduled to face fighter Ali Funeka in Sunrise, Florida, ended up causing more headaches by winning a split decision over Funeka last night. What headaches you might ask? Because Campbell failed to make weight for the title defense, he was stripped of the belts. Therefore, only Funeka could win the title belts if he won the fight. Funeka found himself in a situation where if he lost the fight, neither he or Campbell would walk away with the belts. That’s exactly what happened. The titles are vacated.

Lousy.

Even worse, Campbell planned to move up to 140 pounds after the match and would have vacated the titles anyways.

Jake Donovan of Boxing Scene ripped into the Sunrise event: Poor promotion, officiating massacres St. Valentine’s Day.

By night’s end, the card billed “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” instead further accentuated everything that is wrong with the sport of boxing.

From revolving opponents, to fighters missing weight, to Florida officials struggling to prove that they’re up on the boxing rules, it was a night to forget at the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, Florida.

The Sunrise event was produced by Gary Shaw, Don King, and Lou DiBella.

Topics: Boxing, Media, Zach Arnold | 13 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

13 Responses to “(Boxing) Hating the way the Nate Campbell situation played out”

  1. liger05 says:

    I’m glad he got beat!!!

  2. Tomer Chen says:

    I do think it’s funny that (recently) fighters who’ve complained about their opponents not being able to make weight did the same thing themselves 1-2 fights later (such as Guzman-Campbell then Campbell-Funeka and Corrales-Castillo III then Corrales-Casamayor III). Perhaps fighters should just not complain about not being to make weight given the possibly they won’t as well?

  3. Mike says:

    The real crappy part is that I feel Campbell lost that fight, or at best earned a draw (as one judge saw it).

    He was clearly out-boxed nearly every round, and the 2 knockdowns he scored really didn’t make up that deficit in my opinion. But this is boxing, so the judges make no sense.

  4. Robert Poole says:

    Mike – MMA judges are just as bad. Judging is subjective so sometimes you are going to get totally different scorecards.

    Honestly I had it at 113-113. There weren’t any real rounds where I thought it would be hard to decide who won. The rounds Campbell won he was dominant in, the rounds Funeka won Campbell practically put up no defense.

    The bigger travesty is the draw between Martinez and Cintron. Martinez wasn’t exactly sharp and the fight was a dud but he should have won that fight.

    I think the Guzman fight was canceled in 2008 which led to the bankruptcy filing Zach. You can’t pin that on Campbell. He lost his house because Guzman wouldn’t even fight over the weight limit.

    You can ride him for missing weight on Friday and you can throw in shots about his domestic abuse allegations but the Guzman-bankruptcy situation is not his fault. He had just purchased a new house that was going to be paid off with that payday and Guzman’s disgraceful backing out of that fight hurt Campbell badly.

    Rp

  5. 45 Huddle says:

    MMA is much tougher to judge then boxing. With boxing, it is the number of punches and how hard those punches landed. Obviously there is more to it then that, but at the really most basic level, that is it.

    Even on the most basic levels in MMA, it is very tough to decide between punches, kicks, knees, takedown, submission attempts, and so on. Is the current 10 Point must system perfect? I’m not sure. But I am sure there is no perfect system for MMA, it is far harder to judge a close fight.

    With that said, I thought last nights event wasn’t very good.

    1. HBO is trying to rebuild boxing in 2009 and create future stars. It’s about 2 years too late. Those video packages Max Kellerman did were very good. Yet, it is very hard to build up new fighters when the older ones are basically ll retired. These guys should have been on the undercards of the guys like ODLH, Hopkins, and others. Instead, they are trying to build from scratch, and that is a very hard thing to do.

    2. Not one of the prospects were white. All were black or hispanic. While this is the Obama Generation, I think the fact that there isn’t even one white guy, will hurt the mainstream potential of boxing.

    3. Cintron is a headcase.

    4. Two bad decisions on the card. Events like that leave a very bad taste in my mouth and in the mouthes of other fans.

  6. brent says:

    the kermit cintron/sergio martinez sounded even like a worse decision. from what i read, martinez won at least 8-9 rounds and even scored a knockdown and the fight ended up in a majority draw.

  7. Chuck says:

    “I’m glad he got beat!!!”

    Are you talking about Campbell? He won via majority decision. The fact that Campbell weighed in over-weight didn’t make a damn difference because by the unofficial weigh-ins the night of the fight Funeka weighed more than Campbell by I think a pound and a half. And who cares that those titles are vacant? Those belts should be in the garbage, they don’t mean shit. There is already a true lightweight champion, and his name is Juan Manuel Marquez. He is the Ring Magazine champ. And I agree with Robert, the only travesty was the scoring of the Martinez-Cintron fight. Martinez pretty much should have won by seventh round KO or TKO, but that didn’t happen because the referee was confused of the bell ringing or something, so Martinez should have still won by decision. Ah well, I see a rematch in the future.

  8. Robert Poole says:

    Chuck’s right about the title belts. Campbell would have had to forfeit all those titles when he made the move up to 140 anyway so if he was going to lose them anyway I think it made the fight more intriguing with Funeka fighting for the belts. Especially since he came so close and had he defended the overhand right better he probably could have beaten Campbell.

    What I found interesting was how his workrate really wore Campbell out. That was the same argument people used for Juan Diaz as to how he could beat Campbell when Diaz lost the titles to him. Funeka boxed incredibly well. He used his size and stayed on the outside. He doubled and triple jabbed and threw combinations. When his corner asked him to dig to the body he did that as well. I haven’t seen many American fighters as polished as Funeka was last night.

    Rp

  9. Dave says:

    The reffing was hilarious, too. Cintron looked like absolute shit, but the reffing in that fight was just like, making me with Mazzagatti was around. Awful.

  10. Jim Allcorn says:

    45,

    1) Actually, every fighter on last night’s card has been on bigger name fighter’s undercards at various times over the past couple of years with the exception of Funeka.

    2) Wouldn’t Martinez qualify as “white” seeing as how he’s from Spain?
    I may be wrong on this, but I think spanish people are concidered european rather than hispanic.

    Besides, with SO many of todays top level fighters being from Europe, I don’t believe that boxing’s in any danger of there being a shortage of “white” stars any time soon.

    3) I couldn’t agree more.

    Ever since the second Margarito loss Cintron’s been fighting gunshy.

    4) Again, we’re on the same page my friend.

    One bad nod per card is pretty much par for the course with boxing. But, when you’ve got two questionable verdicts back to back on a rare HBO triple header, that stinks.

    Peace.

  11. RIS says:

    You can’t blame HBO for how the fights and judging ended up being, on paper Cintron-Martinez was the best match up but their styles did not mesh, that and Cintron has no heart.

    The original card with Mayorga vs Angullo was very good for a HBO Boxing After Dark show. Blame the fighters for pulling out/coming in over weight or stinking out the joint and the Florida commission for terrible judging and poor ref’s. I am sick of hearing boxing is in trouble bla bla bla after every card that dissapoints.

    The most important fact is that HBO is trying a lot harder this year to put out meaningful cards and stay off PPV. The segment introducing the new generation was great for the casual fans but it came off as a little low budget and cheesy.

  12. skwirrl says:

    Allcorn: I think you mean ever since his second loaded gloves battering at the hands of Margarito… Even though I know innocent until proven guilty and I won’t crush Margarito yet… Its more than likely its been going on for a while. Which would mean Cintron got beat down twice with loaded gloves.

  13. Jim Allcorn says:

    skwirrl,
    Oh, absolutely.

    I should’ve added that bit of commentary to my post, but didn’t in haste.

    I don’t care how many ACs, inspectors & such go on record as swearing that that business didn’t happen on THEIR watch, I’m not buying that what occured two weeks back in Margarito’s locker room was an isolated incident. No way.

    Of course, unless someone REALLY comes clean somewhere down the line, we’ll never know how long he’s been fighting with loaded gloves. But, I’d be willing to bet that it’s been going on for years.

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