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Friday's Buffalo Blast at the University at Buffalo's Alumni Arena felt a little like a New Year's Eve ball-drop.
The main event carried absolutely no suspense. And the wildly enthusiastic crowd didn't seem to mind at all.
The assemblage of 9,500 started buzzing half an hour before DeMario Crittenden of Niagara Falls entered the ring for the evening's first bout. The noise level continued to rise through the evening, reaching a crescendo when Joe Mesi made his entrance for his nationally televised main-event debut against Keith McKnight.
McKnight made his way to the ring before the hometown hero, with one of his seconds brandishing a sign made of some sort of brown wrapping paper with "Mesi ain't good enough" scribbled in Magic Marker. The same cornerman played to the gathering throughout the introductions, alternately waving his artistic masterpiece and feigning deafness during the incessant chants of "Baby Joe! Baby Joe!"
Of course, he wasn't the one getting punched in the face. His boss took care of that bit of business several hundred times over the ensuing 25 minutes.
To his credit, the evening's villain didn't call it a night the first time he got hit in the face, a la Derrick Banks in Mesi's last outing. Nor did McKnight enter the ring in desperate need of a brassiere, like Bert Cooper in July at the Niagara Falls Convention and Civic Center. And he didn't attempt to recreate the imitation of a statue perfected by Jorge Luis Gonzalez last April at the Convention Center.
The end result, though, proved the same as those three fights and almost every other bout featuring the unbeaten Tonawanda heavyweight -- Mesi by a knockout.
In return for staying largely upright until the sixth round, McKnight had the adjective "game" applied to him by everyone who spoke at the post-fight press conference -- promoter Sugar Ray Leonard, matchmaker Ron Katz and Mesi himself -- and the broadcast crew from ESPN2's "Friday Night Fights."
For the uninitiated, "game" is a boxing term meaning "Man, that guy gets punched a lot."
Not that McKnight is any stranger to backhanded compliments. Team Mesi repeatedly referred to the warehouse worker from Tennessee as "athletic" in the weeks leading up to the fight. While that may be true -- and McKnight forced Mesi to deal with more movement and angles than any other recent foe -- there's no sprinting or high-jumping required in boxing.
When it came to the sport's chief battle tool, the ability to throw a punch that has any effect on your opponent, McKnight showed up unarmed.
Or, at best, one-armed. The 6-foot-6 McKnight occasionally attempted to exploit his only edge with left jabs that sounded solid, but inflicted no visible damage (though Mesi did sustain a small cut, possibly from a bump of heads).
McKnight's occasional pats did nothing to stop, or even slow, Mesi's relentless onslaught. After admittedly trying too hard for a quick, one-punch knockout in the first round and realizing that McKnight posed no real threat to his consciousness, Mesi delivered a barrage of combinations to the head and body that had McKnight gasping for air by late in the second round.
That was the first time the end seemed near, when Mesi trapped McKnight on the ropes and sent him sagging into the ropes with a thunderous right hand. Referee Ken Zimmer stepped in, but only to stop the round, not the fight.
The beating intensified with each round.
Mesi dropped an off-balance McKnight with a jab in the fourth round and floored him with a devastating overhand right in the fifth.
Again showing his vaunted gameness, McKnight rose each time and was spared further punishment by the bell.
The sixth round started with more of the same, before referee Ken Zimmer stepped in again 1:07 into the frame, wisely and mercifully saving the stumbling McKnight. While Mesi hadn't landed any big punches immediately preceding the stoppage, McKnight didn't complain.
"He was finished," Zimmer said of McKnight. "He didn't have a chance."
Zimmer was referring to the fight's final moments.
The same evaluation could have been made at any time since the match was made last month.
Not that a great fight, or even a remotely competitive one, was the goal of Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing, which staged the extravaganza. The legendary boxer-turned-promoter wanted to showcase his newest protege on national television, making Mesi look good in the process.
ESPN2's revival of the "Friday Night Fights" franchise, a network stalwart in the 1950s, regularly features up-and-comers in lopsided bouts, and Mesi-McKnight was no exception.
And even if his opponent's skill set seems much better suited for his day job at a cold-storage facility, Mesi accomplished what was expected of him. He thoroughly dominated McKnight, pitching a shutout on all three judge's cards. He solved McKnight's awkward style quickly and landed punches at will with both hands.
And, most important from a business perspective, he filled Alumni Arena with 9,500 raucous fans willing to pay good money to see him deliver a beating.
Leonard and matchmaker Ron Katz were stunned by the crowd's size and decibel level. Both indicated Mesi's next fight will come this summer, possibly on the undercard of a title defense by light-heavyweight champion Roy Jones Jr., widely considered the sport's top pound-for-pound fighter.
But no one knows for sure if Mesi's emergent star will continue to grow if he keeps facing the likes of McKnight.
Pre-fight hype labeled McKnight as Mesi's "toughest opponent ever." Of course, it also said he held the widely-ignored World Boxing Federation's Intercontinental belt, a worthless adornment McKnight hadn't actually possessed in more than three years.
While McKnight showed a better chin than Banks, more interest in fighting than Gonzalez, and conditioning far superior to Cooper, he never once evoked the sense that he presented any threat whatsoever of besmirching Mesi's perfect ring record. For all his age, sordid drug history and flab, Cooper did land what Mesi called the hardest shot he's taken as a pro and carried a legitimate, if remote, puncher's chance throughout the fight.
Leonard, Katz and Mesi all talk about "stepping up." Boxing's history is littered with up-and-comers who advanced too quickly and got their brains rattled and confidence shattered.
But to sustain the phenomenon that filled Alumni Arena and restored boxing to a place of prominence in Western New York's sporting consciousness, Mesi's next opponent has to be somebody who can be called something more complimentary than just "game."
Before making his professional debut on the Mesi-McKnight undercard, Crittenden promised to put on a show.
Like Mesi, he delivered.
The 118-pounder, who trains at Casal's School of Fighting Arts, opened the evening with a four-round majority decision over Ray Morales of Toronto.
Crittenden entered the ring wearing a white, sleeveless T-shirt with "Niagara Falls" emblazoned on the front and played to the crowd from the moment he stepped through the ropes, beating his chest with his right glove to fire up the audience.
The seats were roughly two-thirds filled when the first bell rang. Morales opened up looking intent to quiet his flashier opponent, landing several strong right hands inside Crittenden's jab along with a pair of left hooks.
But Crittenden's superior speed and defensive skills manifested themselves in the second round, leaving Morales to primarily swing at air (though the Falls fighter did get tagged with a left hook while hitching up his sequined red trunks). Crittenden also countered well with his jab and landed some strong right leads.
While Morales looked tired by the end of the second, the transition from the three two-minute rounds required in the amateurs to four three-minute frames didn't seem to bother Crittenden. Several times when Morales did land a solid shot, Crittenden sagged into the ropes to draw his shorter foe in, then battered him with quick combinations.
The fourth round proved Crittenden's best, as he opened up on the fading Morales with both hands. While one judge, apparently put off by Crittenden's showboating, ruled the fight a 38-38 draw, the other two favored the debuting rookie by 39-38 and a surprising 40-36 shutout.
Shortly before Crittenden's bout, Tommy Huff stood near press row, shaking his head and cracking a half-smile.
"Look at this," said the Niagara Falls middleweight, gesturing to the buzzing, growing crowd. "Can you believe this?"
Until a day earlier, Huff expected to fight professionally for the third time on Friday. But the evening instead turned into a repetition of boxing's No. 1 lesson -- nothing is a sure thing until it happens.
The late scratch was the second Huff has endured in the past seven months. His last scheduled bout, on the undercard of the Oct. 12 Razor Ruddock-Egerton Marcus bout, also fell through on the eve of fight night.
Huff's scheduled opponent, Mike Englert of Rochester, pulled out of their scheduled four-rounder 10 days before the fight, and Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing matchmaker Ron Katz couldn't come up with an opponent with a suitable experience level to face Huff, who split his first two pro bouts last year at the Niagara Falls Convention Center.
Huff didn't learn until Thursday that he definitely wasn't fighting. He had to show up at Alumni Arena to collect his $375 payday -- half his scheduled take.
After finding Katz and getting his check, Huff stayed to cheer on Crittenden, his former teammate on the Niagara Falls High School wrestling team. Then he headed back to the Falls.
But unlike last fall's cancellation, which made Huff question his career choice, he said Friday's disappointment won't hamper his progress.
"I'm more focused and ready now," said Huff, who is next slated to fight on a June card promoted by Allan Tremblay's Orion Sports Management, possibly as part of a live undercard/televised main event show featuring the Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson heavyweight title fight.
On Thursday, he said he wouldn't sign again to fight on a bill promoted by Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing. But given the vagaries of the business of boxing, his position softened by Friday.
"You never want to say never in boxing," Huff said. "This kind of thing happens. I just wish it would quit happening to me."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 9 2002 |