 The Worldwide Boxing Magazine Site |
Got your free t-shirt yet? |
| articles from the magazine ... |
|
April 2002
Each month we bring you a selection of articles from the current and past issues of BOXING MONTHLY. To buy the magazine, see our subscription or back issues pages, or use our world distribution map to find a news-stand copy. Why not use our Interactive Forum to express your own boxing comments and opinions!
|
 |
WEIGHT OF EXPECTATION For once nobody argued with Paulie Ayala getting a decision. But the anticipated exciting rematch failed to materialise, perhaps due to there being a little too much flesh on Bones Adams since the last fight. GRAHAM HOUSTON reports from Las Vegas |
|
EVEN WHEN Adams had his best moments, Ayala was able to maintain clear control of the contest
- Get Big Pic For the first time in six fights going back two years there was no dissent
from the other side — or from anyone — after a Paulie Ayala points victory.
Nor should there have been, because the tough and tenacious southpaw from Fort
Worth, Texas, not only beat Clarence “Bones” Adams in their rematch at the
Mandalay Bay casino resort, Las Vegas on 23 February, he practically beat him
out of sight. When the two met last August in this same ring, Ayala’s split decision win
over Adams was much disputed. This time there was no room for doubt. Ayala,
defending his International Boxing Organisation super bantamweight (8st 10lbs,
or 122lbs) title, kept the pressure on the slicker Adams from bell to bell,
outworked him and outpunched him to win going away on the judges’ scorecards.
Patricia Jarman-Manning had it 117-111 while judges Duane Ford and Paul Smith
each saw it 118-110. Jarman-Manning had Adams winning rounds four to six inclusive, while Ford
(the judge who had Adams winning the first fight) and Smith saw Bones taking the
eighth and ninth. The scorecards give an accurate picture of the fight: Ayala dominated the
first four and the last three rounds while the middle part of the contest was
much more competitive. But even in those rounds where he was coming back a bit, the 27-year-old, Las
Vegas-based Adams could never take a firm grip on the proceedings. What Adams needed to do was to start unloading punches in combinations and
stop the ever-advancing Ayala dead in his tracks. But Ayala, 31, wasn’t going
to stand for that. He kept coming in, and he kept punching. At no point did Ayala appear to be
letting the fight slip away. Even when Adams landed two of his best punches, in
the eighth round, a right hand followed by a left hook that brought a roar from
the crowd of 4,813, Ayala merely looked annoyed with himself for getting hit
rather than being hurt. And so, after the two debatable wins over Johnny Tapia, the majority victory
over Dane Johnny Bredahl, what many thought a gift decision in his hometown over
Mexico’s Hugo Dianzo, and, of course, the first fight with Bones, Ayala
finally won one so convincingly that the verdict was a formality. But when asked afterwards how it felt, Ayala laughed and said: “The judges
say I won and I’m announced as the winner, that’s all that matters to me, it
doesn’t matter about what anyone else says.” It will now be onwards and upwards for the always crowd-pleasing Ayala, who
seems likely to challenge the winner of the postponed featherweight superfight
between Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales that has been rescheduled for 22
June. Ayala believes that he has nothing left to prove as a super bantam. Going up
4lbs in weight to meet Barrera or Morales would be a very tough proposition
indeed and Ayala would certainly be the underdog, but he said it doesn’t
matter to him which of the Mexican rivals he meets, just as long as the money is
right. He said: “I go in there overmatched as it is, I feel that these guys have
more talent than I do, bigger punchers, faster, whatever — a lot of experience
— and I just take my conditioning and my little experience that I have and
just try to be smart in the ring. And the good thing is that I’m able to
adapt, and that pulls me through fights, as it did this one.” The last fight with Adams turned out to be desperately close after Ayala had
wobbled Bones so badly in the second round that all three judges rewarded his
supremacy with a 10-8 score. Ayala feels that he perhaps concentrated too much
on landing heavy, precise shots that night after his big second round, in effect
getting away from what he does best, which is being busy and keeping up a
high-volume punch rate. He said: “I seen a lot of things that I had to do that I didn’t do in the
first fight. When I had him hurt in the second round I stopped throwing the
straight left, the double jabs, even working the body — and that was the
significant part this time, it [the body attack] slowed him down a lot. “The first fight, I waited and I was trying to counter him, which allowed
him to get off his punches. But this time I was getting off first more often
than not, and that kept him off his game of trying to counter. You get a punch
in your face or in your stomach, it’s hard to counter off that, especially if
it’s solid.” It is true that Adams was never allowed to get started, and after losing the
first four rounds on all three judges’ cards he was in an uphill struggle. But Bones did not show the same intensity as last time. He boxed well, and
some of his defensive moves were a delight to watch as he had Ayala missing. But
Adams seemed to be boxing as if anxious not to get into the same gruelling fight
as last time, to score points without having to pay too much of a price. And
there’s nothing wrong with that, except that it is almost impossible to beat
Ayala by being slick and slippery because even if you make him miss with two or
three punches there are two or three more coming right behind them. Also, while Adams ducked and dodged a lot of the blows aimed at his head it
was much more difficult to avoid the body blows that Ayala was digging in from
out of his southpaw stance. Adams admitted afterwards that his strategy was wrong. “I should have
fought like I did last time,” he said. “He outworked me and he fought a hell
of a fight.” He said Ayala’s body punching “didn’t bother me too much”, adding:
“Like I said, I was just in there boxing and everything, and he just
outhustled me. I should have did like I did last time and went in there punch
for punch and tried going toe-to-toe. “I tried to make him miss and then just counter, and what I was doing was
just hitting him and moving and moving and moving. Instead of throwing
combinations like I should have I was just throwing one punch. That’s where I
made the mistake.” It seemed to me, too, that Ayala’s conditioning was superior in that he
could fight at an unrelentingly consistent pace almost all through the fight
whereas Adams was effective only in spurts. There had been talk in boxing circles of Adams having gone up as high as 11st
6lbs (160lbs) in weight since the first fight, but Bones denied this. Yet it had
been obvious at the press conference to announce the fight formally on 4 January
that Adams was not exactly trim physically, something upon which Ayala commented
at the time. “I got pretty big — about 145 [lbs],” Adams said. “After the last
fight I guess I did take a little bit too much time off.” There’s one thing about Ayala that has always held him in good stead
against faster, flashier and harder-hitting fighters, and that is that he stays
in the gym and never gets too heavy between fights. His work ethic is second to
none and he is able to outwork the more naturally gifted boxers such as Tapia
and Adams. Adams said: “My legs and everything were in great shape and I believe I
trained hard.” But for Ayala, staying in shape is a year-round thing. Bones took his defeat well, and made no excuses. He can come back. As the
promoter, Bob Arum, said: “There are plenty of fights for Bones out there.
Very few guys give their all every fight the way he does.” But this was a
serious setback. While Ayala, who was guaranteed a purse of $650,000, will move to another
level financially against Barrera or Morales, Adams’s next fight will be for
substantially less than the $600,000 career-best payday he received this time. Adams was relatively unmarked compared to the first fight with Ayala, and a
small cut on the forehead suffered in a fourth-round clash of heads was quickly
closed by cornerman Miguel Diaz. But even though Ayala’s punches were not
doing damage they were building up such a commanding lead on points that by the
later rounds Adams needed to do something dramatic to win. But it almost looked,
by this stage, as if Adams had accepted defeat and was content to box his way
through to the finish rather than digging in his heels and blasting away. But
perhaps he was too physically spent to do that. The fight was fast-paced and certainly entertaining but lacked the riveting
rallies of the last fight. A reporter seated next to me, Carlos Arias of
southern California’s Orange County Register exclaimed: “What is Bones
doing?” as Adams in effect gave away the early rounds by moving without
punching. And in the middle rounds, when there were some fierce exchanges, Ayala always
seemed to relish it a bit more than Adams did. The chants of “Paulie, Paulie” from the pro-Ayala crowd were answered by
one of “Bones, Bones” from the Adams faction, but the momentum of the fight
was mostly going one way — Ayala’s way. In the sixth, a beautiful straight right from Adams was answered by a solid
left-hander from the southpaw. And that is what can be so discouraging for a
fighter in the ring with Ayala: You think you’ve gained an advantage and it’s
promptly taken away from you. There was a roar from Adams’s supporters when Ayala went stumbling into the
ropes in the seventh but it was a slip, not a punch. “He knew he hadn’t hurt
me, that’s why he didn’t come after me,” Ayala said afterwards. Still, after the ninth round Adams appeared to have fought himself into a
position where he might have a chance of winning if he let fly with everything
he had. Instead, he allowed Ayala to chase him and be the boss over the final
three rounds, as if discouraged that he had landed his best shots and his dogged
rival was still steaming straight ahead. At the end of the 11th Ayala raised a glove to the crowd as he headed back to
his corner. He knew, as did we all, that victory was just three minutes away. This was Ayala’s 34th win in 35 fights, his only loss coming by a technical
decision in Japan, and while he has halted only 12 opponents his quantity of
punches consistently overwhelms the other man’s often superior quality. He
gets the utmost out of his assets. This may not be enough against Morales or
Barrera, but Ayala’s years of solid work and self-sacrifice deserve to be
rewarded by the substantial purse he will receive. (Further coverage of this show, including Frontline Diary and undercard
report, appear in the April issue of Boxing Monthly) |
|
Also available to read from issue:
|
|
On sale on the last Thursday of every month Ensure you never miss a copy . . . buy your subscription or back issues here. |