rokko
09-11-2010, 07:17 PM
dan rafael weekly random thoughts ...
• Many boxing fans have never heard of Luis Barragan, but inside the business he is well known and significant. He has served an important role since joining HBO in 2004 as the right-hand man to HBO Sports senior vice president Kery Davis: overseeing "Boxing After Dark."
The 38-year-old lawyer from San Diego had one of the cushiest jobs in the business, but he surprised everyone by taking a leave of absence from the network this week.
That sort of thing in corporate America isn't all that unusual. But Barragan's reason is.
He joined the U.S. Army as an enlisted man and left Wednesday for basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia.
I heard the news earlier on Tuesday and was, of course, surprised. I called HBO to see if what I had heard was legit, and it was. Then a little before midnight, when I was still in my office doing some late-night work, the phone rang. The number that came up on the caller ID was the main number from HBO. Late-night calls are normal in my house, but not from HBO's offices. It was Barragan, who had been making the rounds telling people in the industry all day.
Barragan and I have known each other since he started at HBO and have had a good relationship, save for a couple of bumps here and there. I appreciated the call.
Barragan, who isn't married and doesn't have children, wasn't looking for publicity. On the contrary. He always has been a pretty private (no pun intended) guy, although I told him I would probably write something.
He told me he had wanted to join the military since he was in high school and finally acted on it. He enlisted for a two-year stint and said his tour likely will take him to the front lines in Afghanistan.
It was a huge surprise, and to be honest, I don't quite understand it -- nor did any of the other people in the business I have spoken to about it in the past 24 hours. But the only person whose opinion really matters is Barragan's.
Understanding the decision or not, I sure respect it. Serving in the military is an honorable thing to do. He's giving up a six-figure salary, a great gig and comfort by putting himself in harm's way in service to his country.
We chatted for a bit, and before we hung up I wished him good luck and told him to stay safe and keep his head down.
• Remember how windbag WBC president Jose Sulaiman suspended Cristobal Arreola for dropping a few f-bombs (which were not aimed at anyone) into his HBO interview following his loss to Vitali Klitschko last year? Wonder what the ol' president for life will do about Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s curse-filled, racist diatribe aimed at Manny Pacquiao?
• No deal yet, but ESPN and Canadian promoter InterBox are working on a deal to bring Lucian Bute's super middleweight title defense against Jesse Brinkley on Oct. 15 to ESPN3.com with a network replay. Cross your fingers.
• Good news: Kevin Cunningham, the manager and trainer of junior welterweight titlist Devon Alexander, dropped me an e-mail to tell me that their side had agreed to terms with their promoter, Don King, for a Jan. 29 unification fight with Tim Bradley. "Team Alexander is now waiting to receive a bout agreement," Cunningham wrote. Now all we need is for Bradley and promoter Gary Shaw to finish their agreement and the fight is on.
• If the fights that now appear likely -- Amir Khan against Marcos Maidana on Dec. 11 and Alexander-Bradley -- actually take place, we will have gotten the de facto semifinals of an unofficial junior welterweight tournament. But if those fights do take place, will the winners meet? That's the bigger question.
• HBO's Larry Merchant wanted me to pass this along to all the Fight Freaks: He does not use Twitter and the person posting under his name is a fraud.
• Lou DiBella has been promoting club shows in New York for years. They are televised around the country on various regional sports networks on his "Broadway Boxing" series. In recent shows, he has beefed up the production value and added an excellent segment called "Sound off with Lou DiBella." Is there anything more entertaining than listening to DiBella spend a couple of minutes going off on a particular topic?
• I really enjoyed the latest installment of Showtime's outstanding "Fight Camp 360," although I wish the new episode covered a bit more of the behind-the-scenes business stuff with the promoters. How can you put together an entire episode with no Shaw and so little of Dan Goossen and DiBella?
• Robert Guerrero is supposed to fight on Golden Boy's Nov. 6 "Boxing After Dark" undercard on HBO. I've heard that Nate Campbell is one of the opponents being discussed. Are they serious?
• As far as the Jean Pascal-Bernard Hopkins fight goes, I know there are a lot of folks disappointed to see it get made. I understand. But one thing I won't do is count out Hopkins. We'd all be fools to think he can't win it.
• Now that James Toney has choked against Randy Couture in what was an utter disgrace of a UFC "fight," what should Toney do next: a) fight a bear; b) match race with a horse; c) try out for the WWE; or d) rematch with Roy Jones Jr.?
• The Giovani Segura-Ivan Calderon fight was terrific and I think it's a legitimate fight of the year candidate in what has been a down year. The fight reminded me of a poor man's version of Antonio Margarito-Miguel Cotto. Segura was like a runaway freight train that eventually ran Calderon over.
• Happy birthday to famed trainer Angelo Dundee, who turned 89 recently. Dundee is, without question, one of my all-time favorite people in boxing. And happy 45th birthday to Lennox Lewis. The former heavyweight champ's legacy grows with each passing day.
• DVD pick of the week: One of my favorite fighters is Erik Morales, the former three-division champ and Mexican star. Fight in and fight out, you knew what you would get from him: a no-frills guy who saved his drama for inside the ring, not outside it. Every fight was action-packed. He ended a 2½-year retirement in March (no surprise) and will fight again Saturday against Willie Limond on pay-per-view. I'm buying it. But I wanted to see Morales at his best, so I went back to Sept. 6, 1997, when he faced Daniel Zaragoza, another great Mexican warrior, in El Paso, Texas. Morales, who had turned 21 a few days earlier, had slim leads on two scorecards and trailed on the third going into the 11th round, when he finally put Zaragoza away to end the pitched battle and win a junior featherweight title. It was Morales' first world championship and also turned out to be the final fight of Zaragoza's Hall of Fame career.
• Many boxing fans have never heard of Luis Barragan, but inside the business he is well known and significant. He has served an important role since joining HBO in 2004 as the right-hand man to HBO Sports senior vice president Kery Davis: overseeing "Boxing After Dark."
The 38-year-old lawyer from San Diego had one of the cushiest jobs in the business, but he surprised everyone by taking a leave of absence from the network this week.
That sort of thing in corporate America isn't all that unusual. But Barragan's reason is.
He joined the U.S. Army as an enlisted man and left Wednesday for basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia.
I heard the news earlier on Tuesday and was, of course, surprised. I called HBO to see if what I had heard was legit, and it was. Then a little before midnight, when I was still in my office doing some late-night work, the phone rang. The number that came up on the caller ID was the main number from HBO. Late-night calls are normal in my house, but not from HBO's offices. It was Barragan, who had been making the rounds telling people in the industry all day.
Barragan and I have known each other since he started at HBO and have had a good relationship, save for a couple of bumps here and there. I appreciated the call.
Barragan, who isn't married and doesn't have children, wasn't looking for publicity. On the contrary. He always has been a pretty private (no pun intended) guy, although I told him I would probably write something.
He told me he had wanted to join the military since he was in high school and finally acted on it. He enlisted for a two-year stint and said his tour likely will take him to the front lines in Afghanistan.
It was a huge surprise, and to be honest, I don't quite understand it -- nor did any of the other people in the business I have spoken to about it in the past 24 hours. But the only person whose opinion really matters is Barragan's.
Understanding the decision or not, I sure respect it. Serving in the military is an honorable thing to do. He's giving up a six-figure salary, a great gig and comfort by putting himself in harm's way in service to his country.
We chatted for a bit, and before we hung up I wished him good luck and told him to stay safe and keep his head down.
• Remember how windbag WBC president Jose Sulaiman suspended Cristobal Arreola for dropping a few f-bombs (which were not aimed at anyone) into his HBO interview following his loss to Vitali Klitschko last year? Wonder what the ol' president for life will do about Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s curse-filled, racist diatribe aimed at Manny Pacquiao?
• No deal yet, but ESPN and Canadian promoter InterBox are working on a deal to bring Lucian Bute's super middleweight title defense against Jesse Brinkley on Oct. 15 to ESPN3.com with a network replay. Cross your fingers.
• Good news: Kevin Cunningham, the manager and trainer of junior welterweight titlist Devon Alexander, dropped me an e-mail to tell me that their side had agreed to terms with their promoter, Don King, for a Jan. 29 unification fight with Tim Bradley. "Team Alexander is now waiting to receive a bout agreement," Cunningham wrote. Now all we need is for Bradley and promoter Gary Shaw to finish their agreement and the fight is on.
• If the fights that now appear likely -- Amir Khan against Marcos Maidana on Dec. 11 and Alexander-Bradley -- actually take place, we will have gotten the de facto semifinals of an unofficial junior welterweight tournament. But if those fights do take place, will the winners meet? That's the bigger question.
• HBO's Larry Merchant wanted me to pass this along to all the Fight Freaks: He does not use Twitter and the person posting under his name is a fraud.
• Lou DiBella has been promoting club shows in New York for years. They are televised around the country on various regional sports networks on his "Broadway Boxing" series. In recent shows, he has beefed up the production value and added an excellent segment called "Sound off with Lou DiBella." Is there anything more entertaining than listening to DiBella spend a couple of minutes going off on a particular topic?
• I really enjoyed the latest installment of Showtime's outstanding "Fight Camp 360," although I wish the new episode covered a bit more of the behind-the-scenes business stuff with the promoters. How can you put together an entire episode with no Shaw and so little of Dan Goossen and DiBella?
• Robert Guerrero is supposed to fight on Golden Boy's Nov. 6 "Boxing After Dark" undercard on HBO. I've heard that Nate Campbell is one of the opponents being discussed. Are they serious?
• As far as the Jean Pascal-Bernard Hopkins fight goes, I know there are a lot of folks disappointed to see it get made. I understand. But one thing I won't do is count out Hopkins. We'd all be fools to think he can't win it.
• Now that James Toney has choked against Randy Couture in what was an utter disgrace of a UFC "fight," what should Toney do next: a) fight a bear; b) match race with a horse; c) try out for the WWE; or d) rematch with Roy Jones Jr.?
• The Giovani Segura-Ivan Calderon fight was terrific and I think it's a legitimate fight of the year candidate in what has been a down year. The fight reminded me of a poor man's version of Antonio Margarito-Miguel Cotto. Segura was like a runaway freight train that eventually ran Calderon over.
• Happy birthday to famed trainer Angelo Dundee, who turned 89 recently. Dundee is, without question, one of my all-time favorite people in boxing. And happy 45th birthday to Lennox Lewis. The former heavyweight champ's legacy grows with each passing day.
• DVD pick of the week: One of my favorite fighters is Erik Morales, the former three-division champ and Mexican star. Fight in and fight out, you knew what you would get from him: a no-frills guy who saved his drama for inside the ring, not outside it. Every fight was action-packed. He ended a 2½-year retirement in March (no surprise) and will fight again Saturday against Willie Limond on pay-per-view. I'm buying it. But I wanted to see Morales at his best, so I went back to Sept. 6, 1997, when he faced Daniel Zaragoza, another great Mexican warrior, in El Paso, Texas. Morales, who had turned 21 a few days earlier, had slim leads on two scorecards and trailed on the third going into the 11th round, when he finally put Zaragoza away to end the pitched battle and win a junior featherweight title. It was Morales' first world championship and also turned out to be the final fight of Zaragoza's Hall of Fame career.