Spinks gets nod in welter of debate

Boxing Atlantic City extravaganzaMichael Buffer doesn't do undercards. The undisputed champion of ring announcers, whose signature "Let's Get Ready to Rumble!" call has made his one of the most recognisable voices on the planet, also owns the marketing rights to a popular video game of the same name, which has turned him into a millionaire as well.

A promoter who wants Buffer for his fight show these days is thus obliged to engage two ring announcers: The Great Man to rumble his way through the important fights and a lesser voice to introduce the participants in the four, six, and eight-round preliminary bouts.

The issue of a fight card with no undercard had never arisen before. Thus is was that by the wee hours of yesterday morning, the bedraggled Buffer's tuxedo hung limply about him and his voice betrayed the edges of hoarseness, having worked its way through all eight world title bouts on Don King's mammoth "Back-to-Back-to-Back" extravaganza at Atlantic City's Boardwalk hall.

Five of the contests went the 12-round distance, two produced significant upsets, and what was by most accounts the best fight of the evening took place at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, before just a few hundred of the nearly 13,000 spectators who would eventually materialise in the cavernous old building.

In the putative main event, undisputed world middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins punished William Joppy for 36 minutes without ever knocking him down to record his 17th consecutive defence of the 160lb title. Joppy's lone consolation was the fact that by still standing at the end of 12 rounds, he collected a $50,000 side bet Hopkins had tendered at odds of 1 to 2 that he would win inside the distance.

The 50 grand his bet cost Hopkins paled in comparison to what Ricardo Mayorga's upset loss to IBF belt-holder Cory Spinks cost the Nicaraguan WBA/WBC champion. Mayorga, who went into the fight a front runner for Fighter of the Year honours, had already signed a seven-figure contract to challenge for Shane Mosely's light-middleweight titles next spring. The arrangement was contingent on his beating Spinks, a lightly regarded claimant.

It might not have been an upset of the magnitude of those staged by his father, Leon, over Muhammad Ali in 1978, or by his uncle, Michael Spinks, over Larry Holmes eight years later, but young Spinks, a 4 to 1 underdog, confused Mayorga with a southpaw stance and a surprisingly aggressive posture and pulled out a majority decision.

Spinks's cause was abetted by referee Tony Orlando, who not only deducted two points from Mayorga (one for landing a punch after the bell ending the fifth and another for holding and hitting behind the head in the 11th), but declined to rule a knockdown had occurred each of the five times Spinks hit the canvas.

"There were at least two and probably three knockdowns they didn't count," complained Mayorga, who was deprived of the opportunity to celebrate with his customary cigarette-and-beer mid-ring regimen. "The referee was not on my side." Neither, for that matter, was John Keane, the English judge who scored the fight for Spinks by a whopping 117-110 margin (two other judges returned more reasonable cards, one 114-112 in Spinks's favour, the other 114-114).

When both participants describe a fight as "ugly" you can take it to the bank it was. The busiest man in the battle for the WBA "interim" heavyweight title wasn't John Ruiz or Hasim Rahman, but referee Randy Neumann, the old heavyweight who spent 12 rounds attempting to pry the plodding former champions apart. Ruiz was adjudged the winner but will not fully ascend to his new championship unless Roy Jones jr, who dethroned him for the WBA title last March, fails to defend against Ruiz within 120 days or abdicates sooner.

Zab Judah's WBO junior welterweight title defence against Colombian Jaime Rangel proved the briefest encounter of the evening. Less than a minute into the fight the southpaw champion caught Rangel flush with a straight left. Referee Frank Cappuccino completed his count at 1:12 of the round, and probably could have counted 10 more.

Travis Simms shocked previously unbeaten Alex "Terra" Garcia to win the WBA junior middleweight title. Simms flattened Garcia with a roundhouse left. Garcia (22-1) was counted out at 1:41 of the fifth round.

IBF junior bantamweight champion Luis Perez once again prevailed in a lively rematch with Venezuelan Felix Machado, while Guyanan Wayne Braithwaite knocked out his Panamanian challenger, Luis Pineda, midway through the first round.

Meanwhile, the smallest men on the card had battled for 12 rounds without producing a winner, as three judges split three ways to render the Rosendo Alvarez-Victor Burgos light flyweight unification bout a draw. Alvarez keeps his WBA title, while Burgos retains the IBF version. Michael Buffer could hardly have known it as he announced that decision at 5:45 in the afternoon, but we'd already seen the best fight of the night.