THE POWER OF THE KO

August 9, 2006 - by Ron Borges

Carl Moretti knows what he'd be doing if he was in Hasim Rahman's locker room Saturday night before the WBC heavyweight champion goes out to face Oleg Maskaev at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. He'd be turning off HBO's television monitor, that's what he'd be doing.

"You know they're going to show the knockout before the fight,'' the president of Main Events promotional company said of Maskaev's devastating 1999 knockout of Rahman when both were rising prospects. "We had that situation with Fernando (Vargas). After the Trinidad fight you knew they'd show those knockdowns before his fights. Why does he need to see that 10 minutes before a fight? It's got to lay some groundwork for putting doubt in your mind. So I'd shut off the monitor.''

Perhaps that is the greatest threat to both Rahman and Maskaev. Not the power of their opponent but rather the power of their own minds. For Rahman, the need is to erase from his memory the night Maskaev not only knocked him out but knocked him out of the ring and into the lap of HBO broadcaster Jim Lampley. For many long minutes Rahman lay on the concrete floor that night, unconscious, as Maskaev lorded it over him in the ring above him.

For Maskaev the situation is much the same although not as personal.

He has been stopped five times in his career, stopped whenever he stepped into the upper echelons of the heavyweight division. How does a 37-year-old fighter who has beaten no significant opponent during a 10-fight comeback from the last of those knockouts react then when the lights come up and across from him stands a man who once laid Lennox Lewis low?

That is the intrigue of this fight and this night. Who will win the psychological war brewing in the final days, building in the final hours, culminating in the final nerve-wracking minutes before the first bell sounds? No one can know the answer but veteran trainer and broadcaster Teddy Atlas believes it is by far the most significant factor in the fight.

"It's the thing the fight hinges on,'' the trainer of two-time heavyweight champion Michael Moorer said this week. "Not too long ago Maskaev could not sustain a punch any more. He looked shot. Obviously there are physical and mental reasons for that. He got knocked out by Kirk Johnson and he went on an avalanche downhill. He was not assertive any more. He seemed psychologically and physically fragile. He'd done a 180 from the confident guy who knocked out Rahman. He'd become the antithesis of that.

"If you were doing a thesis on the psychology of boxing you'd start with this fight as a case study. Maskaev was a guy who appeared sturdy in every way and then it was all taken away from him. Did he lose it physically so fast or was it all attached to his state of mind? If Maskaev's slide was psychological then this is the perfect final experiment. Rahman is just what the doctor ordered. If you're going to win the title you'd have to do it against a guy you've already knocked out when you were in your most dominate stage. That's what Maskaev has in front of him. So now Rahman has to deal with the consequences of that night. What better confidence builder could you have for Maskaev?

"You tell him this whole journey coming back led him to this place where he triumphed before. Maskaev has been stopped five times but not by this guy. The last memory he has of this guy is knocking him out of the ring. Rahman has to deal with those demons of doubt that creep in and never go away.

"They aren't there all the time so he can talk and act a certain way but as the fight gets closer you know they're speaking to him. So this fight all comes down to how much of Maskaev's decline was psychological or was their physical damage too and will the psychological damage done to Rahman by Maskaev be too much for him to take Maskaev to the dark place he doesn't want to go?

"Rahman is fine physically. I'm not sure about Maskaev (physically). But can Hasim use what he needs to use appropriately to capitalize on that physical advantage because of his own demons he'll be carrying into that ring.''

About a month and a half ago in Las Vegas, Maskaev and Rahman sat only a few feet apart in a private dining room at Spago, eating dinner and chatting with friends and media members about their upcoming showdown.

During the course of that night, Rahman tried to downplay the knockout but Maskaev's promoter, Dennis Rappaport, would have none of it.

"He thinks of that every night,'' Rappaport said of Rahman. "When we had one of the press conferences Rock said 'I know Oleg can knock me out. He doesn't know I can knock him out.' It's on his mind.''

Rahman's words and actions that night seemed to unwittingly support that later in the evening when he tried just a little too hard to convince the public that he had underestimated Maskaev, who had been a replacement for a replacement, the first time they met in a fight that was originally supposed to pit Rahman against Kirk Johnson. Rahman contended that once he learned who his opponent would be he took him so lightly he lost focus, went home for his daughter's birthday party and never returned to training.

"I didn't expect a hard fight and I paid for that,'' Rahman said. "I saw him get stopped by Oliver McCall. I saw him get stopped by David Tua. If I'd never seen those fights maybe I'd have taken him serious. I thought it was a one or two round fight tops for me. I trained accordingly and he gave me the worst loss of my career. No doubt. It will be avenged Aug. 12.

"The reason why I don't really give that (KO) much credibility is because of the condition I was in. If I was in better condition and he hit me with that right hand and it had the same effect then I'd be giving him all the props in the world. Maybe, you know, then it wouldn't be so easy for me to want to get right back in there (with Maskaev) because I'd be like 'Well, what else can I do?' But I really didn't do anything and fought the guy. It don't make me (feel) embarassed. It is what it is. I went on and became two-time heavyweight champion so obviously it didn't have no lingering effect on me mentally. I got in with much bigger punchers and much better fighters (after and won).''

Had things ended there it might have been a convincing argument but Rahman then went on a street corner tirade directed at Maskaev that sounded like a pre-teen whistling past the graveyard on a dark and stormy night.

The more he talked, the more Maskaev smiled menacingly at the champion.

"This is the truth right here and you can't handle the truth,'' Rahman said as he doubled up his right hand and looked at a sneering Maskaev two feet away from him. "You can talk to all the hypnotists and sports psychologists you want. They playing with your mind, Oleg. Stop acting like you really confident! You're brainwashed. I don't like to see them do this to you.''

At that point, Maskaev snarled, "You got it all wrong, bro'' as he stared a hole through the champion. Rahman didn't say another word. He sat down. That mental byplay will surely be the most fascinating aspect of a fight that could result in the heavyweight title being split four ways between four former residents of Soviet bloc countries by Sunday morning: WBA champion Nicolay Valuev (Russia), who KOd Owen Beck last weekend in three rounds to retain the title he won from John Ruiz in December; Wladimir Klitschko (Ukraine), who won the IBF title from Chris Byrd in lopsided fashion; and Sergei Lyakhovich (Belarus), who stopped WBO champion Lamon Brewster in an upset.

But for that to happen Maskaev (32-5, 25 KO) must first rid himself of his own demons, ones put there by those five knockout losses at various stages of his career from McCall, Tua, Johnson, Lance Whitaker and the Corey Sanders who didn't win the WBO title and didn't knock Klitschko down about 100 times. The other Corey Sanders. The one who can't punch like Hasim Rahman.

Hall of Fame trainer Emanuel Steward considered the track records of the two of them and concluded that for all the doubt Maskaev's knockout of Rahman might have created in themind of the champion, it is the former member of the Red Army boxing team who has the most psychological baggage to carry Saturday night. It is baggage, when cmbined with his age and the level of competition he's faced, he believes will prove daunting to Maskaev at some point Saturday night.

"Based on the things I saw in the gym last year, Maskaev may be a little more gunshy,'' Steward said. "Even though it was a devastating knockout Rahman suffered he's the type of guy who goes into automatic denial. It's part of his makeup same way it's part of James Toney's makeup.

It's not that way with Maskaev.

"If I was training Rahman I'd be very realistic and honest with him. I'd tell him he was an inexperienced kid at the time. He had no amateur experience. He was doing his amateur apprenticeship fighting this type guy in the pros and he got caught with a punch he didn't see because he lost focus. That usually happens in the amateurs to a young kid but Rock didn't have any amateur experience. It was a one-punch knockout. It wasn't like Maskaev was beating him up all night. If you give up one home run that doesn't mean you're not a great pitcher.''

Steward believes Rahman knows he has fought far better opposition than Maskaev throughout his career and has fared better against it, twice winning the heavyweight title while Maskaev's career cratered not long after knocking Rahman out. To his way of thinking that is its own demon for Maskaev and a way to balance the psychic scales for Rahman as the fight approaches.

"The roads both guys took since that fight are so vastly different,'' Steward claimed. "Rahman has much more confidence now. He's accomplished so much more than Maskaev. He can look at that night and realize it was just thunder and lightning came down and hit a young kid with no experience at all. So I wouldn't worry about the psychological part of it for Rock. I'd be worried about Maskaev in the sense he's been KO'd a number of times by lesser guys. There's a big difference being knocked out by Lennox Lewis (as Rahman has been) and knocked out by Corey Sanders. I think Maskaev is the one who will be scarred (psychologically) going into the fight.''

That is the mystery of this match. Will either man carry with him ghosts he cannot face? Will both? Which one can most readily erase the memory of concussive nights that ended in darkness enveloping his mind? Who can know the answer to that until the bell tolls for both of them?

"I don't know,'' Maskaev said when asked what effect his knockout of Rahman might have on the champion. "I didn't read his mind yet. Whatever is on his mind is going to be on his mind, right? I'll worry about my mind and my mind is okay. Mine is fine.''

Rahman's however, is another story according to Maskaev's manager, Fred Kesch.

"I believe and I've been told that hasim Rahman wakes up every night in a cold sweat recalling that punch that Oleg threw at him,'' Kesch said.

"When he enters the ring, that's all that's going to be on his mind.''

The only man who can know the truth of that is Rahman (41-5-2, 33 KO) himself and he keeps insisting over and over that "I totally underestiamted the guy. I suffered some embarassment but he suffered more than I did after that fight. He came back a couple of fights later and got knocked out of the ring himself. He's been knocked out by guys I knocked out in the gym on a regular basisSo my confidecen is up if i look at it from that point of view. i don't know where his confidence is....but Maskaev is not a better fighter than me. He went on and fought lesser competition and I fared better against the better competition.

"The reason I don't really give that much credibility to it is because of the condition I was in that night. if I was in better condition and he hit me with that right hand and it had the same effect then I'd be giving him all the props in the world. Maybe, you know, it wouldn't be so easy for me to want to get right back in there because I'd be like, well, what else can I do? But I really didn't do anything (to prepare himself) and fought this guy. It is what it is. It happened in 1999 and I went on to become two-time heavyweight champion so obviously there wasn't no lingering effect on me mentally.''

Not in other fights perhaps but this is more than just another fight for Hasim Rahman. It's a return to a bad memory, a return match with a guy who the last time he saw him left him with blurry vision and a pounding headache. So the question is not whether that defeat has effected him psychologically in the past. It's how will it effect him Saturday night when he sees the same man in front of him.

"It comes down to the last dog that bit you,'' Atlas said. "It doesn't matter what other dogs did. This dog bit you. That's what it comes down to. He was knocked out by this guy. He was knocked out of the ring by this guy. You have to deal with that. If this was tennis right now I'd say Maskaev is holding serve. I don't know if there'll be anything physical left behind that serve when he hits it. I don't know if it will come 100 mph or he'll miss the ball entirely but right now I know he's holding serve psychologically. If Rahman can hit that serve back the other guy might fall apart because physically Rahman is the better guy physically. But psychologically? We'll see.''