FORREST-BALDOMIR -- A FIGHT TO WHO'S END?

When two 36-year-old former champions face-off in pursuit of another world title where they are headed is clear long before the final bell tolls.

by Ron Borges

The winner's career will be revived. He will live to fight again for the kind of money he's grown accustomed to. The loser, meanwhile, will be made irrelevant. Each may fight on but only one will do so with any real sense of purpose.

That grim reality is what hangs over the heads of ex-welterweight champions Vernon Forrest and Carlos Baldomir as they prepare to meet July 28 at the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, Wash. in what is a fight for more than the World Boxing Council super welterweight title. For each of them, this is a fight for survival on the most basic level and arguably the biggest fight of their lives because if they do not prevail there will be no more big fights, if there are any fights at all.

A title belt is only at stake because, to his credit, Floyd Mayweather, Jr. did not hold onto the one he won by a slim margin two months ago from Oscar De La Hoya when he knew he had no intention of defending it. Instead, Mayweather announced he would return to the 147-pound division and let Baldomir and Forrest battle over the bigger man's belt, saying part of his motivation was to payback Baldomir for having given him a shot at the welterweight championship a year ago. Yet whether there was a title at stake or not is almost irrelevant because the larger issue for both men is their fistic futures, or lack thereof.

At 36 they are young men but old fighters. Forrest has not fought since winning a disputed decision from another aging former 147-pound title holder, Ike Quartey, in his last outing a year ago, while Baldomir has not boxed since losing badly to Mayweather nine months ago. At their age, long layoffs are counter productive and defeat is totally unacceptable. In fact, they are fighting each other for the simplest of business reasons: they have no other option.

Baldomir had been little more than a journeyman with a side business selling feather dusters by the side of the road in Argentina - a trade that often interfered with regular training - before he stunned an ill-prepared Zab Judah 19 months ago to begin one of the most unexpected reigns as welterweight champion in the sport's long and often odd history.

When he came back six months later and destroyed Arturo Gatti in nine lopsided rounds that ended with Gatti flat on his back and battered into submission, Baldomir was suddenly, after 58 professional fights, an overnight sensation. That status lasted only four months however because he was then given the biggest payday of his career in exchange for taking a 12-round beating from Mayweather.

Considering the arc of his career, it was a fair exchange.

Even though Baldomir (43-10-6, 13 KO) did not win a round that night on two of the judges' scorecards, he did win points for bravery and for a relentless spirit that while pointless was admirable. It was almost like Baldomir used that night to remind the world how he had lasted so long in the cruelest of sports.

Through sheer glint of determination and stubbornness, he had persevered until he finally won a world title and he did not intend to give it up easily. Instead, he paid a high price before relinquishing it, one that left him noble in defeat, a fighter who could be brought back at least one more time because his effort could never be questioned.

Forrest, meanwhile, has followed a far different road to Tacoma. Only one man has defeated him in 15 years as a prize fighter and even that man needed a wildly lucky punch to do it the first time. Forrest's nemesis was the unorthodox, wild-eyed Ricardo Mayorga, who will soon face Fernando Vargas in a fight that is its own crossroads moment for both of them. But other than Mayorga, Forrest has emerged from 40 nights in the ring with 38 victories and 28 knockouts, a record that is admirable in the extreme except that it has too often been pock-marked by long layoffs due to various injuries.

After losing a majority decision to Mayorga four years ago in a rematch, Forrest did not box again for two years. Injuries and a banking of the fires that had once driven him combined to derail his career but since his return he has won three times, including a disputed victory over Quartey a year ago. That fight carried with it much the same anxiety as this one for it seemed the loser was unlikely to fight again while the winner would be in position to challenge for a world title. Yet in one of those odd circumstances that seem to perplex boxing's advocates, the opposite turned out to be the case. It was the 37-year-old Quartey who went on to lose a decision to Winky Wright four months later while Forrest lingered at home in Atlanta, waiting for chances that did not materialize to face a big name opponent for top dollar.

A year is a long time in a boxer's life but at 36 it can be an eternity. Skills unused at that age tend to rust over until they are slowed to the point of uselessness. Forrest denies this is the case with him, claiming his surgically repaired shoulder is sound and his training with Buddy McGirt is going so well he feels he has been reborn and is again the lethal boxer-puncher combination that twice tormented and trounced Shane Mosley in fights that lifted Forrest from obscurity to a moment in the sun five long years ago.

Baldomir had the same kind of brief moment near the top of his sport before Mayweather ended the Argentinean Cinderella Man's short ride but he does not have the illusion of three straight victories between that defeat and this fight, as his opponent does, to buoy him. Yet he knows in the end that does not matter because they are in the same situation. A desperate one.

Come July 28 they will face each other fully understanding that for the loser much more than a fight will be lost. Forrest recently acknowledged as much when he told one boxing website that he hadn't "boxed desperate" for a long time. Although he did not say this was now such a time, the implication was clear.

Baldomir has said little, as is his norm, but he would have no argument with Forrest's promoter, Gary Shaw, who said recently, "It's now or never for Vernon and Carlos and that's exactly how they're going to fight each other."

The problem for Baldomir is that Forrest will arrive in Tacoma with far more potent armaments and many more ways to win this fight than he has. Forrest's punching power is clearly superior to Baldomir, who was a light hitter at 147 so should be expected to be even less lethal in a higher weight division. The same is true of Forrest's boxing skills when compared to the more crude and plodding approach of Baldomir.

Forrest has long jab that can control the real estate inside the ring when he uses it properly and it is a weapon that could blunt the forward motion of a guy like Baldomir, who keeps walking straight in with little use of angles or agility as he does.

The former Olympian is also a dangerous puncher when he throws in combinations, as McGirt has been working hard to return him to doing, and he is facing an opponent who seems tailor made for him.

To be fair, the same was said before Baldomir upset Judah and, to a lesser extent, in the days before he met Gatti. Both were superior to him in talent, power and resume yet Baldomir wore them both down with his resolve and a simple but effective pressure style that eventually creates openings simply because of his sheer relentlessness.

Baldomir showed the same stoutness against Mayweather, who may have won every round but was never able to convince Baldomir to stop coming forward. How Forrest, at 36, reacts to that kind of an opponent pressuring him all night remains to be seen but if he forgets to box, as he did against Mayorga, and allows the fight to turn into a sloppy exchange of punches he may find himself facing a far more difficult opponent than he realizes.

The other question facing them both is one no one can answer until the fight begins to unfold, although both surely understand that the simple mathematics of the calendar are no longer in their favor. Baldomir has been fighting for 14 years, Forrest for 15. Both have paid a stiff price for their choice of occupation, as all fighters do, and each knows one night they will slip between the ropes and find themselves in a place where they no longer belong.

For the winner, that night will not be July 28 for he will leave the ring a champion once again and that alone is a saleable commodity regardless of how it comes about. It may not even be that way yet for the loser, but for him that will no longer matter because he will have lost more than a title fight. He will have lost a job he has spent a lifetime creating.