4 Corners 05.07.08: De La Hoya/Forbes, Nate Campbell, More

Posted by Alan Berg on 05.07.2008

Witter tries to earn an American audience, Nate Campbell is making demands, De La Hoya-Forbes a cocktail of good and bad.

In this column I will go over the top story of the week, choose to call out someone in the sport, point out a positive or negative that happened in the sport, and finally the top five unnoticed things going on in the sport, known as the five-punch combo.

After All These Years Witter Still Wants Hatton

Junior Witter has seemed like the odd man out at 140 for months, maybe years. He has tried to coax Ricky Hatton into a fight in front of a rabid crowd of countrymen, but Hatton had Floyd Mayweather to chase. Now that Hatton has dropped back down to junior welterweight, the current Ring Magazine Junior Welterweight Champion knows it's a fight that has to happen.

Witter has waited for five years to get back onto United States television after an embarrassing performance against Zab Judah. On Saturday he gets his chance to make some American fans as he takes on undefeated Tim Bradley. With an impressive victory this weekend it would give Witter the perfect opportunity to call out the Hitman again. The forum after a fight on one of the big two boxing networks will give Witter the credibility he needs to make the fight a reality.

If Witter can show that he belongs at the top of the 140-pound weight class, we could finally be looking at Hatton-Witter in 2009. It's becoming too big of a fight in England for Ricky Hatton to merely brush it off. Hatton had his big payday and risky fight against Mayweather at 147 without facing Witter first. Now it's time for Ricky to prove he's not only the best fighter at 140 but also the best fighter in his own country.

Also on the card is rising prospect John Murray, the undefeated lightweight takes on another undefeated fighter in John Fewkes


Calling Nate Campbell Out

Nate Campbell recently told Fightnews.com that he wants to fight Juan Manuel Marquez sooner rather than later. According to Golden Boy Promotions, who handle Marquez, GBP want the fight in November, Campbell doesn't want to wait.

"See, all these cats sit around and only fight twice or three times a year, because their 'promoter' won't do anything without HBO or Showtime paying the freight," Campbell said. "I'm with Don King and One Punch. Now I leave the business stuff up to them, but I'm sure that if Golden Boy came with a reasonable number for Marquez, then Don could do this fight on PPV himself, and not sit around for seven months waiting on a damn date. Doesn't anybody actually promote fights anymore?"

While I understand Campbell's frustration, here's the problem. Number one, without the exposure on HBO when Campbell took various alphabet titles from Juan Diaz, no one would even want to see Campbell-Marquez. And while I applaud Campbell for wanting to fight, no one in their right mind would shell out 40 bucks to see Marquez-Campbell. He's just not a big enough name and Marquez needs a Manny Pacquiao, Marco Antonio Barrera or Erik Morales to do PPV.

Campbell just relax take your time, you're a player at lightweight and you have two new additions in Pac Man and JMM. Besides all of the lightweights should be gunning for the real lightweight titleholder, Ring Magazine champion Joel Casamayor.


A Recent Positive/Negative

The Oscar De La Hoya-Steve Forbes rumble last Saturday was a bit of a double-edged sword for boxing. On one hand it was a way to see De La Hoya back in the ring drawing attention to the sport and creating buzz about the upcoming rematch with Floyd Mayweather. That's the positive side; the negative is that if you're an educated boxing fan, this was nothing more than a charade of a fight. As one of my close friends put it, while referencing a comment about Emanuel Steward, it was a sparring session. Forbes tried but he was a legitimate lightweight fighting a welterweight, in other words we just watched an aggressive sparring match. Nothing I saw in this fight leads me to believe that the Golden Boy can beat Mayweather.


The Five-Punch Combo

5) Is it just me or did "the can't miss" prospect Joel Julio look ordinary against Ishe Smith on Wednesday Night Fights? I don't really believe that Julio will ever be the star some thought he would become.

4) News about the fight between Nikolai Valuev and Ruslan Chagaev being postponed. Yawn…..what? The only heavyweight fight that people care about is Wladimir Klitschko-Sam Peter 2. That's if people even care about the heavyweights.

3) Check out E:60 on ESPN this week as they talk to Mike Tyson. I wasn't really the biggest Tyson guy, just based on how he lived his life, but now I really root for Mike to get his life together. He brought so much excitement to the boxing world when he was younger and that's something only a few can do.

2) Props go out to the newly retired Chuck Giampa for standing by his decision in the Joe Calazaghe-Bernard Hopkins fight. Hopkins commented that Giampa retired three weeks to late referring to his 116-111 card in favor of the Pride of Wales. Hopkins did bring up a valid point saying that judges can age just like a fighter. Judging, unfortunately, is based on opinion, but I would like to see stricter punishments (suspensions) for cards that are completely 8-12 rounds different then other judges. No judge should be that far off the map.

1) I'm calling it right now; Miguel Cotto vs Antonio Margarito will be boxing's fight-of-the-year. No disrespect to the Israel Vasquez-Rafael Marquez fight, but I just feel something great brewing in this welterweight showdown.