WHEN A LOSS IS AS GOOD AS A WIN

by William Dettloff

The curious thing about Ike Quartey's fight against Winky Wright, which will air on HBO World Championship Boxing on December 2, is that, going strictly on etiquette, Quartey shouldn't be there. He lost his last fight, albeit controversially, to Vernon Forrest and the rule says, in general, that when you lose you go to the bottom of the ladder and work your way back up.

Ostensibly, one of the few laudable characteristics of the fight business - and of professional sports too, in general - is that it's mostly reward-driven. You win, you advance. You lose, you fall back. The charm is in the simplicity. Besides that, coming back from defeat is where all the redemptive stories in this game come from and where would we be without those?

We know, the fight industry is full of all sorts of shenanigans and politics that compel some guys up in the ratings and others down and many times it has nothing to do with what they accomplish or not in the ring. It's been like that forever and no amount of finger pointing or hand wringing will change it. It's the way it is.

Still, we can point easily and reassuringly to the number of times a fighter got a title shot or a big fight because he'd just won well over an opponent of good quality. You win you get the reward. We can point too in equal number to the times a fighter was on the brink of the very contest for which he'd been training his whole life and then lost the chance, even temporarily, because he ran into someone better than he.

And that seems to be as it should. We like it that way because it reinforces the fairly naïve belief that the good and superior, designations achievable through virtue and hard work, are always rewarded. And that those who are inferior, due to sloth or impure motive are punished (but retain the possibility of redemption). That's why we fret so much when a fighter receives a big fight that we feel he hasn't "earned," even if he wins it.

Quartey has been rewarded for his loss to Forrest with an even more important fight against Wright, who, you will recall, fought world middleweight champion Jermain Taylor to a standstill last June and is the Ring magazine's top middleweight contender. Forrest, meanwhile, is at this writing without a big fight - or any fight, so far as we know - on his horizon. It may seem backward but it isn't at all. There's plenty of precedent for it.

In 1993, it appeared the improbable comeback of former world heavyweight champion George Foreman had come to an end when he was implausibly outboxed and decisioned by Tommy Morrison in Las Vegas. Morrison employed an unlikely but impeccably executed punch-and-move strategy that exploited Foreman's immobility and led to a clear decision win.

The following year, when Michael Moorer was looking for an opponent against whom he could defend the title he'd just won from Evander Holyfield, he chose Foreman, who at that point hadn't fought in roughly a year-and-a-half, or since losing to Morrison. Foreman knew why.

"Fans would come out to see me fight against almost anyone, and particularly for the heavyweight championship," he wrote in his autobiography. "That translated to money in Moorer's pocket." Of course, Foreman capped off one of the great comebacks in the history of sport when he stopped Moorer in the 10th round.

More recently, world welterweight champion Zab Judah took a seemingly safe fight against Argentine journeyman Carlos Baldomir even though he had a very high-profile bout lined up against Floyd Mayweather. To everyone's great surprise, the rugged Baldomir outfought the more athletically inclined Judah over the distance and claimed the title.

It wasn't Baldomir who scored the big-money fight against Mayweather -- at least not right away. It was Judah, whom Mayweather summarily outpointed. Baldomir got his chance against Mayweather eventually, but in the meantime earned the largest purse of his career by beating Arturo Gatti. So it worked out for him.

If things went the way they we think they're supposed to, it would have been Zahir Raheem against Manny Pacquiao last January, or someone of equal stature. After all, Raheem whipped Erik Morales outright over 12 rounds in a fight that was supposed to tune up Morales for his rematch with Pacquiao, which was to be one of the biggest fights of the year.

"I beat a legend tonight," Raheem said afterward. "I've always believed in myself. I just needed an opportunity like this." He didn't get rewarded the way he was supposed to.

Morales kept his date with Pacquiao and got knocked out for his trouble. Raheem had to settle for a lower-profile fight against Acelino Freitas, was outpointed in a stinker and at this writing has not fought since.

The old-timers will tell you it wasn't like that in the golden days, that when a fighter won a big fight he was rewarded for it, and the opposite happened when he lost. Don't believe it. When Joe Louis and Max Schmeling met in their first fight, in 1936, the winner was supposed to get a shot at world champion Jimmy Braddock. That was to everyone's liking when they thought the winner would be Louis, the popular, undefeated power-puncher.

When it turned out to be Schmeling, who was considered over the hill, and whose reluctant ties to the Nazis made American power brokers uncomfortable, the shot at Braddock vanished. Braddock sat on the title for a year, giving Louis time to rebuild. After six wins Louis got his shot at Braddock and stopped him. He told the press shortly after, "I don't want to be called champ until I lick Max Schmeling," which he did the following year.

Jersey Joe Walcott had a long, up-and-down career and was on the upside when he met fellow contender Rex Layne in Madison Square Garden in New York in 1950. Walcott was a 4-1 favorite to beat Layne, but it didn't play out that way. Layne beat Walcott by unanimous decision but didn't get a shot at heavyweight champion Ezzard Charles - Walcott did, and promptly lost a 15-round decision.

Walcott got an immediate rematch against Charles, knocked him cold, decisioned him in their fourth and final meeting, and then was stopped by Rocky Marciano. Layne didn't get his shot at Charles until October 1951, after Charles had lost the title to Walcott. In the bigger picture it doesn't matter much - Charles destroyed Layne, as had Marciano before him. But by rights, Layne should have gotten the title shot before Walcott did.

Sometimes a guy loses a big fight and gets another because he knows he's on his way out and needs to either turn things around quick or cash out. Former WBA heavyweight champion Jimmy Ellis lost a decision to Joe Bugner in London in 1974. Bugner got a shot at Muhammad Ali as a result, and Ellis got Joe Frazier, who'd knocked him out five years prior. Frazier did it again and Ellis fought just once more before retiring.

One could reason that Quartey is one of the exceptions to this rule because of the controversial nature of his loss to Forrest. The HBO broadcast team, many of the fans in attendance, and the majority of ringside writers thought Quartey deserved the decision.

"I can't tell you what I'm going to do. I don't know," Quartey told HBO's Larry Merchant after the decision was announced. "You hear the crowd booing. They know who won the fight."

But a loss doesn't have to be controversial to result in the reward of a big fight. Other factors come into play: the ability of the defeated fighter to draw fans to the fight, either live or on the screen, the willingness of the champion (or top contender) to face a guys who's just lost, promotional alliances, personal bias, any number of things.

Either way, you can be sure that when Quartey heard the decision go against him, he had no idea he'd have another shot coming right around the corner. But that's the way it work sometimes. It seems backward, but remember - this is boxing. It doesn't have to make sense. It just has to make money. As long as it does that, everyone's happy.