Southern California Notebook By Doug Fischer (Oct 2, 2008) Send this page to friend Give us your feedback Last week was one of the busiest periods of the year (so far) for the Southern California fight scene. In three days – Thursday, Friday and Saturday – five shows that ranged from off-TV club shows to casino cards on national Spanish-language channels to cable-televised world-class/championship boxing – took place in El Cajon, San Jacinto, Ontario, Cabazon and Carson. Your intrepid reporter made the drive to be ringside at the televised cards that took place in Cabazon (Friday’s Telefutura show from the Morongo Casino) and Carson (Saturday’s HBO-televised double-header from the Home Depot Center), and as a result found himself too tuckered out to make his usual gym rounds this week. Infant care and unseasonably hot weather Tuesday and Wednesday added to his decision to keep his sorry butt at home and make calls instead of on-site boxing club observations. Yes, yes, I know. I’m getting old and I’m getting lazy in my old age. I’m almost ready for a newspaper gig. Was that a low blow to newspaper sports writers who cover boxing? OK. I know of a few newspaper guys who work as hard, if not harder, than internet fight scribes. One such newsman is David Avila of The Press-Enterprise, a daily paper that covers the Inland Empire (Riverside and San Bernardino counties). Avila, who used to pen stories for MaxBoxing and currently moonlights over at TheSweetScience.com, has the work ethic of internet writers half his age with knowledge of growing up (more than 50 years) in and around the Southern California boxing scene. Avila, who somehow finds time to cover baseball and MMA, travels to all the major boxing cards in California and Nevada, but you can find him taking notes at So. Cali. gyms from the Coachella desert to La Habra in “the OC”. And it’s not just the big shots and high-profile shows that get Avila’s attention. He also covers the club, amateur and female fight scenes with the same detail and passion that he writes about the major professional side of the sport. David does it all, a lot more than I do, which why I respect his observations and opinions. He was ringside for the casino cards that took place in San Jacinto (Thursday’s Versus-televised card headlined by Paul Williams and Chris Arreola) and Cabazon (Friday’s Telefutura show headlined by the Vicente Escobedo-Dominic Salcido fight), as well as the big fight in Carson (HBO’s Shane Mosley-Ricardo Mayorga showdown). I phoned Avila yesterday to get his thoughts on Arreola, Salcido and Mosley. Despite Arreola’s pudgy physique, Avila, who has covered the Mexican-American heavyweight since his club fight days, was impressed with the manner in which the 25 year old handled New York’s Isreal Garcia. “Obviously Chris was overweight, that was the heaviest of his career, but he knows what he’s doing now,” Avila said. “You can’t let his physique fool you into thinking that he’s just a slugger because he’s more than that. “He has very good combinations. He delivers all of his punches with accuracy and the right leverage, especially the uppercuts. It looked like he landed every [uppercut] that he threw. The other guy didn’t know what to do with a fighter who had combinations like that, especially combinations as fast as that. He thought he could, but he couldn’t. “Arreola’s also very good at pacing himself now. It can be his first day in training and he can go eight rounds because of the way he paces himself. He’s actually a very smart fighter.” So how far can the undefeated (25-0, with 22 KOs) heavyweight go? All the way, it just depends on who he’s matched with, says Avila, whose cousins, brothers, father and grandfathers (on both sides of the family) all fought professionally. “I think David Tua is the next logical step,” he said. “Chris matches up with real well with David because Tua’s too short. That’s a perfect guy for him. The big giants, like the Klitschko brothers, I don’t know if he’s ready for those guys yet. Samuel Peter, he could be ready for him. James Toney is still dangerous. Toney was at the Thursday fights and he looked fit. I still believe that when Toney is on and in shape, he can beat any heavyweight out there, so I would steer clear of James. Lamon Brewster was also there, and he looked good. Arreola vs. Brewster – now that would be a great fight. “And the more I think about it, if they want to go for a title as soon as possible, then Sam Peter’s the man; I think Chris has got a good shot at him of all the title holders, I think that’s the weakest link for Chris; not because I think Peter is a bad fighter, I don’t, it’s just because of style.” I talked to Arreola’s trainer Henry Ramirez and the Riverside-based coach told me the names he’s heard for his heavyweight’s next opponent are Tua, Hasim Rahman, and Travis Walker. The November 29th date for the HBO-televised fight is set, and the venue that’s been discussed, the Citizen’s Bank Arena in Ontario, is almost locked down, according to Ramirez. “It’s a brand new arena, due to open in two weeks,” he said about the proposed venue. “It’s got 10,000 to 11,000 seats. Paul Williams will be in the co-featured bout. Thompson Boxing is planning on doing a show at the Double Tree [Hotel] the Friday before the Goossen Tutor card and Dan [Goossen] is working on making the Double Tree the host hotel for Chris’s fight. It’s going to be a fun Thanksgiving weekend for local fight fans.” It all sounds good, especially if Arreola winds up fighting Tua or Rahman, but “Freight Train” Walker? After beating a real undefeated young prospect in Chazz Witherspoon, what’s the point of beating up on another aging once-beaten heavyweight hopeful (as he has Garcia, Thomas Hayse, Zakeem Graham, and Damian Norris)? “I know,” said Ramirez, “Chris is pissed off about it. He says ‘I’ve been making statements against prospects; it’s time to step up to a veteran with a name’. The problem is, guys like Tua and Rahman want big money for a Boxing After Dark show. So it might be Walker. You know if we don’t fight him you’ll read on the internet that we’re running form him.” Whoever Arreola winds up fighting it is Ramirez’s mission to bring his young gun into the fight in top condition. “He’s already back in the gym,” Ramirez reports. “Chris knows people are looking at him now, and most are focusing on his weight. We’re going to do three and half weeks in Riverside and just focus on conditioning and then we’ll do four weeks in Big Bear where all of the sparring will take place.” Let’s switch attention from the undefeated heavyweight to previously unbeaten lightweight speedster Dominic Salcido, who was stopped in the sixth round by Vicente Escobedo last Friday. Avila has followed the 24-year-old Rialto resident’s career since he was an amateur. He thought the talented boxer did well until he tried to show off in front of his raucous fans. “Dominic was winning the fight, but he got too cocky,” said Avila. “He started pulling out his bag of tricks, doing the kind of things he did versus club fighters, unloading bolo punches and all that kind of showy stuff. You can’t really do that with a good fighter. And Escobedo is a good fighter. “Escobedo finally woke up out of that cloud he’s been in for the last few years. This might be the fight that gets Vicente’s career back on track.” And what of Shane Mosley, the future hall of famer we’ve both covered since before he won his first world title 11 years ago? Where is his career after his 11-and-a-half-round struggle and breath-taking final-minute KO of Ricardo Mayorga? “That was a close fight up until the knockout. I gave Mayorga five rounds going into the 12th round; he could have been winning, I could see that too,” said Avila. “I didn’t think it would be easy for Mosley. In fact, I didn’t even predict a winner going into it. I just predicted that it would be a hard fight. I knew that it would end by knockout; I didn’t know who would win but I knew the loser was getting knocked out.” Avila doesn’t view Mosley as a fading fighter because of the trouble he had with Mayorga (he simply gives the Nicaraguan veteran his due), but he hopes the Lynwood-born Pomona-raised fighter considers retirement. “People get confused with the way Mayorga fights,” Avila said. “He’s viewed as a pure slugger, but he’s pretty tricky. Everyone knows he’s going to throw that right hand, everyone sees it, but somehow he lands it. He’s so confusing the way he throws those punches. Shane was rattled. For the first three rounds Shane had that look like ‘Oh oh…’ he didn’t like what was going on. He wasn’t able to do much in certain rounds, and those rounds had to go to Mayorga. “I thought Mayorga fought a smart fight and a gutsy fight. He let it all hang out in the 12th round. He didn’t just try to survive. He went for it, and that’s why he got knocked out. I have to give him credit for that. “I think Shane is a great fighter, but I think he should hang ‘em up. He can only do so much against these guys who are bigger than he is. He’s still very good, but a fighter can only take so much, and when it’s too late, it’s too late. We never know when that point is, when a fighter sticks around too long and suffers for it. “I think of Bobby Chacon when I think of Shane. Bobby was just like him. He had boxing talent but he wanted to fight, and he would fight anybody, including these big monsters. Shane’s a great guy; nobody wants to see what happened with Chacon happen to Shane Mosley.” Avila will be at the Pechanga Casino in Temecula this Saturday to cover the Boxing After Dark card highlighted by Mexico’s rugged Alfred Angulo and Cuba’s ultra-talented Yuriorkis Gamboa. I’m doing the color commentary (alongside Rich Marotta and Genaro Hernandez) for a small pay-per-view show headlined by WBO 122-pound titlist Juan Manuel Lopez from Hato Ray, Puerto Rico this Saturday, so I’ll miss watching the HBO-televised card live (on TV or from ringside), but I told Avila that while I think the Angulo-Andrey Tsurkan and Sergio Martinez-Alex Bunema junior middleweight matchups should make for fun fights, I’m skeptical of the Cuban’s undefeated but largely untested opponent, Marcos Ramirez from Kansas City, Kansas. Maybe that’s just my Southern California bias talking. “I’m expecting a good fight between Gamboa and Ramirez,” said Avila. “Good fighters come out of Kansas – look at Victor Ortiz and Brandon Rios.” OK. Point taken (but Ortiz and Rios, an young undefeated all-action junior lightweight who is in the co-featured bout of tomorrow night’s Telefutura show from Colorado, have both been based in Oxnard since they were in their teens). 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