The new year is hardly putting its best foot forward when it starts out with heavyweights. The slow-moving hippos will never be mistaken for Fred Astaire or Willie Pep. But 2007 did not wait until Samuel Peter and James Toney could take their robes off for at least what figures to be a significant encounter of the second kind between – help us, two of the best big guys around. The sounds of corks were still popping and there was poor Mike Tyson, facing prison time again, after being nailed in Scottsdale for DUI and possession of cocaine. 

Tyson said he has a bad habit and needs help. So does the division he left behind a decade and a half ago. You can’t wrap up all the heavyweights and stick them in rehab. Maybe a bunch of them, including not only Toney but Peter from their appearances last September, could use stays on a fat farm. I know, I should talk.

There is no necessity to explain why James has long been one of my favorites. All the world loves a fat man, especially one who almost personified the boxing text book as taught by the great Bill Miller. All those sly defensive stances, chin tucked in hard-to-reach places, the best roll-and-counter this side of New York’s Carnegie Delicatessen, so what if he ate too much at Fred’s Deli in Los Angeles. Like me, he spent part of his youth working in the family bakery.

But with the division in worse shape than me, it is unfortunately time to get off the Toney meat wagon. Maybe he’ll be in better shape thanks to working with the Tae Bo master, Billy Blanks. And maybe Peter, the 6-foot-1 Nigerian Nightmare who weighed an ugly 257 pounds when getting a decision over Toney will also be a candidate for work at Chippendales. The real reason to switch allegiance is the general outline of the aging division, which can be summed up thusly: Toney is 38, Peter is 26. Ergo, there is less of an upside with the fighter who bills himself as “Lights Out,” meaning, I suppose, “heavy is in.”

I picked Toney last time and, like the majority of so-called “experts,” thought he did enough to win what was billed as the fight to determine the next mandatory challenger for the WBClowns title. We’ve seen worse decisions and this one certainly did not warrant Jose Sulaiman and his gang of dunces to order a Mulligan.

Peter, thus at least delayed from a title shot against the eminently beatable Oleg Maskaev, acquiesced rather timidly. Maybe Don King, who shares in Toney with Dan Goossen, would rather work in the future with Dino Duva, his partner in Peter. Maybe when King bought 50 percent interest in Duva’s promotional company, also purchased half of Duva’s balls.

But the Showtime main event at least matches two of the three best of the current crop of heavyweights. 

And the years go round and round.

Yes, yes, we all know: American heavyweights are playing in the NFL and NBA and the former Soviet bloc produces an assembly line of robotic Ivan Dragos. Salvation rests in Africa and other third-world precincts. Jamaica, where is your next Lennox Lewis?

In the meantime, we are left with the realization that boxing’s ability to survive remains with its lighter classes. The heavyweights are in disarray. The leader of the pack, unquestionably, must be Wladimir Klitschko, a rather flawed soul who at least has beaten some of the so-called “best” of breed, including the afore-mentioned Mr. Peter. But Klitschko the younger – Vitali, did not LOOK as fluid, but there were solid reasons both the Soviet amateur coaches and German promoters designated him as the brother most likely to succeed – was knocked down three times by the novice Peter and while he finished far stronger, anyone who faded as badly as he did against the likes of Ross Purritty, Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewster, must be held with more than a measure of reservation.

Wladimir did twice rout Chris Byrd, who is Toney’s only rival as a pure boxer (and, with his old foot speed, his superior). There is no doubting the Ukrainian’s great firepower, quick hands and offensive skills. Emanuel Steward has also done a remarkable job in guiding him through the shoals of insecurity, overcoming a natural distrust of his last line of defense, the chin.

I’d put Toney at No. 2 because I thought he beat Peter. I don’t think it’ll happen again. Peter should be approaching his peak and should be able to win this one to move up from No. 3. Now try and pick a No. 4. I have settled on Nikolay Valuev, the 7-footer who may or may not have beaten John Ruiz to gain his specious belt (anything given out by the WBAboons should be held at a safe distance from the nose). Ruiz has never impressed anyone with his eptitude, but he is probably less inept than some of the other current title-holders.

Valuev, I suspect, will be a tall order to defeat. His height makes it difficult to reach his chin without a stepladder. That chin might be his best feature. I wouldn’t want to watch him prove it, but he could be superior to such as Maskaev and Shannon Briggs. In fact, there are few heavyweights at this point who threaten our knowledge of human evolution. The guys are bigger stronger, but so far short of being better that is can only be assumed we are not improving the breed.

And the years go round in dizzying array.

There simply are not enough competent fighters to fill a top ten among the heavyweights in 2007. The horizon does not appear any brighter. But if we have to name ten – and we do, we do, we must, we must, to quote “Blazing Saddles” – we can claim temporary loss of our counting skill. There are no Nos. 5 or 6, for example, just a whole bunch of possible No. 10’s. So, in some kind of haphazard order, we offer the following: Oleg Maskaev, because he beat Hasim Rahman who once beat Lennox Lewis and should have beaten James Toney; Rahman, because he did get an official draw with Toney; Calvin Brock, because he put up a decent struggle against Wladimir; Chris Byrd, even though he’s 35 and the legs go first; Shannon Briggs, because he beat Sergei Liahkovich (I think), who beat Lamon Brewster (I believe), and Dandy Dan Rafael (forget Liahkovich, Ibragimovs and other Russkies), who edges out Bernard Hopkins, Roy Jones Jr. and the guy who just beat Ruiz, Ruslan Chagaev.

Now, if you don’t think this is an unhealthy collection, let’s go back, it gets sicker when you realize that so-called dry periods in the past look like floods in comparison to today’s desert. In the Eighties, in those few moments after Larry Holmes and before Mike Tyson, when Don King had his “Lost Generation” of heavyweights, it was natural to bemoan the state of the heavyweights. We didn’t know how flush we were. I would put the majority of Tim Witherspoon, Greg Page, Tony Tucker, Michael Dokes, James Douglas (on a good night), Pinklon Thomas, Tony Tubbs and maybe even Mike Weaver above Klitschko if they were around today. Certainly, those denizens of the deep would rank above Toney and Peter. And who do you like, Toney, Chris Byrd or Michael Spinks?
 
It wasn’t a golden age of heavyweights – like the Seventies, with Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Holmes (who showed up late that decade), Ken Norton, Jerry Quarry and Earnie Shavers. The Nineties, which began with Tyson getting knocked out by Buster Douglas and subsequently jailed for a rape conviction, did not have to mourn his passing, not with the emergence of Lennox Lewis, Riddick Bowe and Evander Holyfield. Hasim Rahman or Razor Ruddock? Oliver McCall or Shannon Briggs? Ray Mercer or Sergei Liahkovich?

Look at the Sixties. Three consecutive Olympics produced Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman. I don’t care how big Wladimir Klitschko or Nicky Valuev are – I still think Sonny Liston would have intimidated them before knocking them out.

You’d have to go back to the Fifties, when T.S. Eliot was covering boxing for the Police Gazette (okay, I made that up), inventing the Wasteland, to find scrawnier fare as when Floyd Patterson and Ingemar Johannssen exchanged the title once a year for three years. That followed the post-Joe Louis crowd, when Rocky Marciano had no one to beat up but older and smaller guys like Jersey Joe Walcott, Ezzard Charles and Archie Moore.

Yes, it’s bad, especially when Toney weighs in at 234 pounds, one more than he hit for his first meeting with Peter, though reports from Florida say the former middleweight champion looks much fitter. Peter, meanwhile, has trimmed eight pounds from his September maidenform to come in at 249 pounds.

The years go round, but the circle sometimes gets broken.

Negativity? Cynicism? You bet, but the future is a lot less bleaker than the heavyweights would have us believe. For example, it now appears that beneath the at-long-last Marco Antonio Barrera-Juan Manuel Marquez confrontation on, of course, St. Patrick’s Day, another great Irish match has been made – Israel Vazquez against Rafael Marquez. Oh, brother, now that’s a double-header.

PENTHOUSE, OUTHOUSE: A fire in the attic chased us into temporary quarters, but we shall pitch our tent wherever we can. Thus, this week, we have the….

HALFWAY HOUSE: The prosecutor, saying “I don’t take any pleasure out of doing this,” wants Mike Tyson back in prison for the nonviolent crime of holding three bags of cocaine. “He has run out of second chances, at least in my book,” said the Maricopa County (Phoenix) D.A., Andrew Thomas. This was not a case of rape or road rage, though Tyson exhibited more danger than his last appearances in a boxing ring by driving under the influence and almost cracking into a police vehicle. The prosecutor says Tyson’s record demands that he eschew putting the admitted coke addict into a rehab center, but into prison (Mike faces up to 7 _ years).

The saddest part of this is that Tyson, 40 and facing heavy financial burdens, may actually prefer the discipline of prison. Among the general pop, he doesn’t have to face the derisions and the mean-hearted laughter at his fall. He said he needs help. I’m not sure prison is where he’ll find it, but then, I’m not sure he’s looking for it, either.

M

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