RAHMAN RETAINS TITLE, WINS BY MAJORITY DRAW

March 19, 2006 - by Ron Borges

Hasim Rahman retained his portion of the heavyweight championship Saturday night the same way he got it - without winning a fight.

The quest for a savior in the heavyweight division will continue for some time now because while a promoter like Bob Arum can call a fight the most significant heavyweight match in 30 years it is only the fighters that can make it so and Rahman and his challenger, the rotund former middleweight champion James Toney, failed to deliver on that promise. What they did instead was fight to a majority draw when two of the three judges couldn't decide who won, which meant that once again heavyweight boxing lost.

FIGHTERS	Rahman	Toney
TOTAL PUNCHES
Thrown	933	633
Connected	279	263
%	30%	42%
JABS
Thrown	379	193
Connected	120	48
%	32%	25%
POWER PUNCHES
Thrown	554	440
Connected	159	215
%	29%	49%
JUDGES SCORECARDS
Thomas Kaczmarek	114	114
John Steart	117	111
Nobuako Uratani	114	114

All the sport can do now is move on to April 1, when World Boxing Organization titleholder Lamon Brewster defends his 1/4th of the in reality vacant title against someone named Sergei Lyakhovich. Do not feel badly if you've never heard of Lyakhovich. In fact, don't even feel badly if you haven't heard of Lamon Brewster either. We're not talking Louis-Schmeling here.

Brewster can punch and once proved it by knocking cold Wladimir Klitschko, who will make his own effort to sort things out in the division that has no champion on April 22 in Germany when he steps into the ring to face International Boxing Federation titleholder Chris Byrd, a man he's already beaten up once. That evening, Klitschko will try to make his own claim as savior of boxing's little big men and if he could somehow look spectacular and Brewster does the same one could at least look forward to a possible showdown between the two to create at least a AAA heavyweight champion, which would be better than what boxing has now...which is a void.

None of this accounts, for World Boxing Association champion Nikolai Valuev, the 7-foot Russian to whom former champion John Ruiz agreed to rent the title by accepting $1.75 million to fight him in Germany, a place where Ruiz had no chance of winning a decision even if he knocked Valuev out...which of course he didn't do.

So, after much bombast about this being Rahman's opportunity to put a new face on the heavyweight division, he failed in his mission and we all suffer for it. He didn't lose but he didn't win either and now must accept a mandatory defense against Oleg Maskaev, who deserves a shot at the heavyweight title about as much as Oleg Cassini. Still he's going to get it because he once knocked Rahman not only out but out of the ring. The fact that it was seven years ago and has been followed by little to recommend Maskaev as a challenger was not lost on Toney, who kept insisting he beat Rahman but didn't seem to care all that much one way or the other since he knows the division needs him more than he needs a new belt.

"What can you do if a man doesn't want to fight,'' Toney said. One assumes he meant Rahman but since he spent much of the night lying on the ropes and clinching to conserve what energy was left in his tired and pudgy legs, maybe not. He did land the more effective and powerful blows and his accuracy rate was 42 per cent according to CompuBox calculations but since the evening was spent at close quarters he should have been accurate. He didn't have to look far to find Rahman, who crowded and leaned on him most of the evening when he would have been better served to keep some distance between them and drill Toney's head with jabs until he could land a big right hand behind it.

"We're fighters,'' Rahman reasoned. "We don't always do what our coaches tell us. We don't always do what's best for us.''

Or for heavyweight boxing, he could have added.

Toney landed some stinging uppercuts and wild overhand rights and Rahman was busier on the inside than usual but although he cut Rahman's left eyelid and bloodied his mouth he never hurt the WBC champion and Rahman put even less of a dent into his challenger. Toney came out the same way he went in - fat but otherwise unimpaired.

"If he comes in at 220 it's a much better fight,'' Rahman (44-5-2) said of his 5-foot-9, 237 pound opponent. "I don't think he as 100 per cent.''

Those remarks came right after the majority draw that allowed Rahman to retain a title that was at first handed to him without a fight when Vitali Klitschko retired after a string of injuries caused him to postpone a mandatory defense against Rahman several times. He must have been disabused of that notion in the locker room before he got to the post-fight perss conference however because by then he was claiming that "just because a guy's fat doesn't mean he isn't in shape.'' True but it's a hint.

In the end, neither man did anything to clear up the long-muddled picture of the division but retired former champion Lennox Lewis did make one point that seemed accurate as he walked out of Boardwalk Hall with a disgusted grin on his face.

"The longer they keep doing this, the better I look,'' he said and no one in his right mind could argue with him. Another year of this and they'll start spelling his name L-O-U-I-S. Lewis was the last of the undisputed heavyweight champions, by which one means the holder of the championship in the fan's eyes. Today, despite the fact four men wear championship belts, the title is vacant. Hasim Rahman or James Toney was supposed to do something about that Saturday night before 8,427 people but all they managed to do was make them boo lustily during the last two rounds as the action grinded to a sweaty halt.

The most one can say for either is that at 33 and 37 respectively perhaps Rahman and Toney did their best, which of course is the problem too. Ever the businessman, Rahman pointed out that he was happy with the draw however because "I got the hardware. I can do what I want.'' Even that statement was a mirage however.

As bombastic Dennis Rappaport, manager of Maskaev, pointed out after the fight that isn't quite true. Fans couldn't care less about a Rahman-Maskaev fight nor should they but Rahman must because if he doesn't he'd be stripped of the only thing he has to advertise himself - the WBA title he's yet to actually win in a fight.

Toney countered that not only had he done enough to win, which it seemed to some he had, but also that Maskaev had done nothing to deserve a title shot. He even suggested Rappaport had "bought'' the rating Maskaev now held, which caused Rappaport to get into an angry exchange of words until Toney suggested he might come down and slap Rappaport silly. End of conversation but not end of the argument for Maskaev.

"I'm not going to get my ass sued by Dennis Rappaport,'' said Arum, who promised the mandatory would be Rahman's next fight. "I got lawyers charging me just for sitting at this press conference.''

They didn't need any lawyers Saturday night at Boardwalk but they could have used some law enforcement officers because it's criminal what those two guys, as well as the rest of the men trying to lay claim to the heavyweight championship, have done to the division. No one really cares anymore about heavyweights because they have become nothing more than a heavy burden on the sport. They drag it down every time any of them defends one of these titles rather than lift it up.

It is other, smaller men like Manny Pacquiao, Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales, Jermain Taylor, Ricky Hatton, the irrepressible Arturo Gatti, Winky Wright, Joe Calzaghe and the best fighter in the world today, Floyd Mayweather, Jr., who are the sport's standard bearers. As for Hasim Rahman and James Toney, they are what they are, two guys who couldn't find a way to win a fight that seemed to be a metaphor for the state of the heavyweight division today.