Boxing At Its Weirdest And Worst

I’ve been looking for the following video for the past few days. It is the highlights of a fight which occurred last Saturday night between Paul Williams and Kermit Cintron. This fight had one of the most bizarre endings of any sporting event I have ever witnessed, but I won’t explain it here. Just press play.

So there you have it, a fight ending after a boxer injures himself by falling out of the ring. Only in boxing would something like this happen. I can remember something similar happening once before, in a fight between Nigel Benn and Gerald McClellan in 1993 or so, but on that occasion Benn got up (with the help of ITV’s ringside reporter Gary Newbon), returned to the ring and indeed on the fight (in tragic circumstances).

This fight, thankfully, didn’t have anything like that impact on the health of either participant but nonetheless, it will hurt the reputation of the sport in a different but nonetheless profound way. Now, accidents happen. They cannot be avoided, despite the many steps taken to do just that. However one such step which was not taken by the organisers of Saturday’s event in California was the standard of the ring. The ropes were not properly tied together. Had this simple measure been applied, then there’s no way that Cintron would have hit the floor.

The big farce however is not the fact that Cintron plunged through the ropes, disappointing as that was, but what happened afterwards. The incident occurred in the fourth round of the fight, and had it occurred anywhere but California then the fight would have been declared a no contest. Indeed (though not shown in the above video) referee Lou Moret initially said that would be the resolution. However, for reasons unclear to this particular writer, this decision was changed and it was decided that the thirty-odd seconds seen above constituted a fourth round, and that the result of the fight would be decided by the ringside judges. Their scoring was farcical. One gave all four rounds to Williams while another also scored the fight 40-36, albeit in favour of Cintron. The other judge gave the fight to Williams in a score of 39-37, but even this seemed wrong. Cintron was denied the win through little fault of his own. TV viewers, writers and indeed those in attendance were given the most unsatisfactory of endings, one that leaves boxing tarnished when it’s really not what the sport needs.

I love boxing, more than any other sport in the world. However, there are occasions such as Saturday in which the sport does little to help itself. For a sport which needs to rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the general public, moments like this are unwanted. It should have been a fight which entertained and enthralled one and all. Instead, it’ll end up on ‘What happened next’ sections of TV quiz shows. On a night when it should have been at its best, boxing has again shot itself in the foot.

Eh...'Cum' Again?

A real quote from the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, spoken by a cross-country skier from Norway who, it seems, was a little self-critical following a poor leg in one of the relays yesterday.

Again, this IS real.

My name is Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset. I skied the second lap and I f----- up today. I think I have seen too much porn in the last 14 days. I have the room next to Petter Northhug and every day there is noise in there. So I think that is the reason I f----- up. By the way, Tiger Woods is a really good man.

Funny Sports Injuries, Warts And All

I won’t pretend that I’m a cricket expert. Or, for that matter, a big fan. I enjoyed Ireland’s odyssey in the 2007 World Cup, watched a little bit of the 2005 Ashes and I’m looking forward to Ireland’s entry in next month’s Twenty20 World Cup. That’s the sum of my cricket interest. But because of SKY News and BBC and the such, you do hear the headlines. I can tell you that Flintoff’s real name isn’t Freddie and even I know to steer clear of Kevin Pieterson. I’ve also heard of Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar.

For the uninitiated among you, Akhtar was at one stage the world’s most feared fast bowler and can still hurl the ball pretty well. He’s also a controversial fellow. In his time, he’s been convicted of ball tampering, been accused of drugs offences, been banned for abusing an opponent, been kicked off the Pakistan national side after rowing with his captain, hit a teammate with a bat, reportedly punched his coach, has been deported from England for visa problems and accused the Chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) of corruption. Yes, I use Wikipedia.

So I suppose it’s normal to presume that there are cricketing people who have an issue with Akhtar. That may have something to do with the unnecessary statement released this week by the PCB. They announced that Akhtar is out of the aforementioned Twenty20 World Cup because he ‘was suffering from Genital Viral Warts and Electrofulgration.’ Surely announcing that Akhtar had a skin ailment would have sufficed? Revenge, I guess.

It got me thinking about other embarrassing sports injuries that I’ve come across throughout my years following sport.

• Adam Eaton, Texas Rangers pitcher, once stabbed himself in the stomach while trying to remove that annoying security tape on a DVD with a paring knife.
• Sammy Sosa sneezed twice before Cubs' game, sending his back into spasms and putting himself out of the lineup.
• Danny Ainge (basketball) was once hurt after he was bitten during a game. He required two stitches after he was hurt while playing for the Celtics in a fight against an Atlanta Hawks player. Pretty unremarkable, until you realise the player in question was Tree Rollins, alowing the headline 'Tree Bites Man.'
• Baseball player Glenallen Hill once had a bad dream about spiders, so vivid that he woke up, crashed through a glass table and fell down a flight of stairs
• While with the Cardinals, Bill Grammatica once tore his ACL while celebrating a successful field goal.
• Former Braves pitcher John Smoltz once burned his chest while ironing a shirt. He was wearing it at the time.
• Arsenal's Perry Groves was on the bench. When his side scored, he jumped up to celebrate only to hit his head on the roof of the dugout. He knocked himself out cold.
• Robbie Keane once ruptured his knee cartilage after stretching to pick up his TV remote control.

Got any more funny/weird injuries? Feel free to add them in the comments section below.