POST-FIGHT ANALYSIS: RON BORGES

by Ron Borges

One guy didn't want t fight and the other guy seemed glad of it. That certainly appeared to be the sad truth of undefeated heavyweight prospect Calvin Brock's somnambulant 12-round victory over Timor Ibragimov Saturday night at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Brock is, for the moment at least, America's heavyweight hope but the way he fought Ibragimov made him a fitting symbol for the state of the heavyweight division. With three of the four world titles belonging to products of Eastern Europe and the fourth possibly headed in that direction when World Boxing Council champion Hasim Rahman faces Oleg Maskaev Aug. 12 on HBO, Brock was seen by some as the one shining lantern on the heavyweight horizon in the United States but off his performance against Ibragimov he appeared a flickering candle at best.

To be fair, it was Ibragimov who clearly had no interest in fighting, a fact he made so obvious that the crowd at Caesars Palace's outdoor arena booed at several points throughout the fight. Yet Brock seemed nearly as disinclined to press Ibragimov, contenting himself with winning what he claimed he'd warned promoter Carl Moretti was likely coming their way when the match was made.

"I told Carl this could be a stinker,'' Brock (29-0, 22 KO) said after hearing he'd won by margins as diverse as 119-109, 117-111 and 15-113."You can name any puncher in boxing history and you'll see they were never able to knock out someone whose only goal was to survive.''

That's true enough but so is the fact you can't knock someone out if you seldom throw punches yourself. Simply because your opponent is throwing even fewer at you than you are at him is no excuse for signing an armistice agreement in mid-fight, as Brock did. There's no debating that Ibragimov was fighting with his personal safely uppermost in his mind but Brock wasn't doing much more after Ibragimov apparently accidentally struck Brock on top of his head at some point early in the fight. Although it went all but unnoticed by the crowd and apparently by Ibragimov as well, the punch did catch Brock's attention.

He admitted after the fight that punch hurt him enough that he felt Ibragimov's power and didn't want to feel it again. Since Ibragimov was electing to follow a strategy of minimal aggression most of the night any way, Brock needn't have worried.

"I felt it when he hit me on top of my head," Brock said. "I didn't want to feel it on my chin. I was winning the rounds but that don't matter if you get knocked out.''

Brock has a point but that's hardly the kind of sentiment a gladiator like Spartacus would have voiced. It was a boringly effective enough approach for him to escape the ring uninjured and still undefeated but what he couldn't escape from was the enmity of a crowd disappointed in both fighters and happy to let them know it, both with their voices and finally with their early exit.

Ibragimov (21-1-1, 13 KO) landed an average of fewer than five punches per round (59 total, according to CompuBox statistics) so the likelihood Brock was going to feel anything on his chin but the occasional light breeze that wafted through the sultry outdoor arena at Caesars was slim. Yet Brock was cautious much of the nght. Ibragimov was something far less appealing than cautious, a fact even he conceded, pointing out after the fact that he'd done too little to give himself a legitimate chance to win.

Had Ibragimov been as aggressive as his trainer, ring veteran Miguel Diaz, he might have fared better because Brock has seldom shown a willingness to do much more than the minimum necessary to survive on many nights himself and this was one of them. Knowing Brock's languorous approach at times, Diaz pleaded openly all night with Ibragimov, sometimes with more enthusiasm for combat than either fighter mustered, to attack his opponent with gusto. It was to no avail. The former Uzbekistani heavyweight simply refused to listen to Diaz or, more importantly, to throw in Brock's general direction.

"I needed to throw more punches,'' Ibragimov later conceded in what was the very definition of gross understatement.

Actually Ibragimov threw two more punches than Brock according to CompuBox but few were thrown with bad intentions. Few were trhwon, in fact, with even argumentative intentions. yet his larger problem was that he landed barely half as many of his flailings as Brock did.

In the end, win or lose, neither did much to enhance their station among the fallow crop of heavyweight hopefuls presently plying their trade in boxing but Brock may get a shot at the International Boxing Federation title held by Wladimir Klitschko although he frankly seems ill-prepared to capitalize on it off of Saturday's performance and might be wise to decline it for the moment to continue learning his trade.

As for Ibragimov, it's back to the shadows for him unless and until he realizes you can't win a fight if you don't want to fight.

One guy at Caesars who desperately did want to fight though was Carols Quintana, who derailed what had to this point been a high-speed train known as Joel Julio in the semi-main event.

Only 21, Julio had posted an impressive string of knockouts along the way to 27 consecutive wins but after dropping Quintana (23-0, 18 KO) in the first round of an elimination fight to find a junior welterweight challenger for the Ricky Hatton-Oktay Urkal victor he did little thereafter but absorb a slick boxing lesson from the sly lefthander.

Altough Quintana was dropped in the opening round it was not in the concussive way Julio (27-1, 24 KO) had made a habit of in the past and later claimed he slipped. Whatever happened, it looked for a brief moment as if the hot prospect from Colombia would scald yet another opponent on his way to a title shot at 140 pounds. But Quintana erased any such thoughts by rising quickly with vigor and a firm belief that he could batt, baffle and beat Joel Julio, which he did for most of the rest of the evening.

"I felt like I had total control from the first round,'' Quintana said. "It was a rough, tough fight but I wasn't (ever) hurt.''

Neither was Julio, at least not by Quintana. After the fight he claimed to have injured his hand in the third round, citing it as a possible explanation for the sudden disappearance of his punching power.

Injured or not, Julio often seemed confused by Quintana's southpaw stance and his clearly superior ring savvy, two things for which he had no answer whether his hands were healthy or hurting.

Whether this was because Julio is another over-hyped young fighter who has been knocking out lesser opponents to build his record or is merely someone who needs more time to mature and develop will be determined by young Julio himself but there remains reasons for optimism as long as his handlers do not cower from the taste of one defeat and refuse to put him into competitive matches in the future like this one that allow him to learn from his mistakes.

For Brock, the story is different. He's at an age (31) where he is what he is. Whether that's enough to make him a true heavyweight title contender, even in the present weak field, seems doubtful to be honest. Although he remained unbeaten, Brock too often has fought like a man willing only to take minimal risks to assure a safety first victory.

That trend continued even against Tigor Ibragimov, an opponent who was more interested in fighting off his trainer's suggestions than fighting with Calvin Brock.