Steve Claggett did himself – and boxing – proud on Saturday
By Charles Jay
About a month ago, promoter Eddie Hearn, who runs a company called Matchroom Boxing and as such is one of the “big boys” in this business, was confronted with a question about the upcoming opponent for WBO junior welterweight champion Teofimo Lopez – a Canadian named Steve Claggett.
“I don’t want to be disrespectful to Steve Claggett, but it’s a f**king disgrace,” he said. “It’s a joke, absolute joke fight.”
That kind of gamesmanship goes on a lot in the boxing industry. Hearn is involved with Jack Catterall, who recently won a rematch with an underachieving junior welterweight named Josh Taylor. He would like to be able to arrange a championship fight between his man and Lopez, who previously beat Taylor and is contractually tied to Bob Arum and Top Rank (another “big boy”). But he’s not had success putting it together so far.
His hope, I guess, is that the Saudi Arabian interests that have been financing so much in the sport of late (making them the biggest boys of all) will come up with the cash to make that a reality.
On very few occasions in boxing will one party express happiness about another’s success, unless there’s something in it for them. In fact, there is an unusual amount of “schadenfreude.” In case you’re not familiar, that’s a German word that essentially refers to the pleasure that is taken from the failure and/or misery of others.
Back in the days when I would have a lot of conversations like this, a bunch of us would get on a call and somebody would mention that so-and-so had put on a show. Then somebody else would say “How many people?,” which of course means how many fans attended.
If it happens that the show was a bust, the others would derive some perverse satisfaction out of it. The operative principle here is that the less strength a would-be rival gathers, the bigger an overall piece of the pie is available for any given competitor.
And so you better believe that Eddie Hearn would have liked nothing better than for Claggett to fold like an accordion within the first couple of rounds in front of the ESPN cameras. You see, in his mind that would strengthen his position against the Top Rank people.
If you’ll allow us to cut right to the result, Claggett lost a shutout 12-round decision to Lopez; something that, if you’re just looking at it on a screen or a piece of paper, could mean any number of different things, for all you know.
But the 120-108 scores didn’t really tell the story. If you tuned in to the ESPN telecast on Saturday night, you saw that the performance of Claggett was anything but a f***ing disgrace.
In point of fact, it brought out some of the best qualities the sport has to offer.
I have been in or around the game of boxing for the better part of the last four decades. And so many times I have seen guys who were wishing, hoping and praying for years to get a title shot; then when the bell rang they forgot to bring their ammunition. They were afraid to let their hands go, or even worse yet, they were content to survive the distance.
Steve Claggett didn’t fall into those categories. He came into this fight with Teofimo Lopez and proceeded to bring everything he had, and even more.
One of those things was a game plan. Claggett knows that he is not an explosive puncher, and as ESPN’s color commentator, ex-champ Chris Algieri, astutely pointed out, he had to compensate for it with a high volume of activity.
Of course, as Mike Tyson used to say, “Everybody has a game plan until they get punched in the face.” And that much is true. But Claggett fights a certain way. It’s the only way he knows. So that game plan never got tossed out the window. He got into Lopez’s chest from the outset and banged away as much as he could. And it stayed like that for most of the 36 minutes the fight lasted.
In other words, he fought in such a manner as to give himself the best chance to win. And he wasn’t the slightest bit shy about throwing punches.
It stands to reason that when you’re fighting like that, and you are rather one-dimensional, any variation can prove dangerous. If you need to crowd your opponent, you had better not allow much distance, because you’ll find yourself out on the end of the other guy’s punches.
There were occasions when this happened with Claggett, and he got nailed by some sharp stuff from Lopez. But the rough-and-tumble Canadian proved to have a granite chin, so he just kept coming. And coming.
Lopez brought the talent. Claggett brought the grit. He came into the biggest fight of his career, on the biggest stage, and came in the best shape of his life so he could put forth the best effort.
And don’t let anyone tell you this wasn’t a credible win for Teofimo Lopez. He didn’t “cruise” to a victory against a non-combative opponent. He didn’t have the luxury of dictating the pace, and was put in the position where he had to fight three minutes of every round. He really hammered this one out, in workmanlike fashion.
In the words of one former Marine who was at ringside, who wished to remain anonymous because he was undercover for the Department of Homeland Security, Claggett displayed a “hard-nosed, tip-of-the-bayonet fighting style” not seen since the days of the Boer War.
And I’ve got news for you; I’ve seen Jack Catterall fight. He would have been a very uncomfortable fellow if he found himself in there with Lopez’s challenger on Saturday.
By rights, Eddie Hearn owes Steve Claggett an apology.
But unlike schadenfreude, that’s something you DON’T see too often in boxing.