Lockett deserves his shot at Pavlik by Terry Dooley Mar 20th 2008

A storm of criticism has hit Gary Lockett this week over his scheduled attempt at the world middleweight title held by champion Kelly Pavlik. Lockett, as number one WBO contender, will be given the dubious gift of travelling to the USA to fight the man known as ‘The Ghost', a fitting name for a fighter currently terrifying the rest of the middleweight division.  Lockett is not given a ghost of a chance in the bout either, that is fair enough as very few believe he can win the bout. Yet the outrage that has greeted his shot is the type of outrage one might feel upon renting a lovely cottage in an idyllic country spot, only to then find out that Fred and Rose West are the landlords, the local doctor is Harold Shipman, and the nearby nursery is run by the McCann's. (Terry - I've told you a million times, do not exaggerate! - Ed.) Why such consternation over the fact that Gary is being granted this opportunity? Is it an Internet system anomaly, like Keanu Reeves only more expressive, a faddish out-breaking of commentary on Lockett's merits that ring about as true as the online opinions of the Junior Witter ‘fans', fans who produce more typed talk on Ricky Hatton than the man they purport to support.  Lockett himself cannot be the root of the problem. Often coming across as one of the good guys in his interviews, Lockett's chance has not been accompanied by any delusional statements, for example: “If Pavlik goes twelve rounds with me he will have to retire from boxing because I will ruin him." Nor has Lockett leapt over more deserving British middleweights for his chance – John Duddy is arguably more deserving but it would be cruel to put the defenceless Duddy in with Pavlik at this moment in time. So, the problem does not lie with Lockett as a person. This leads us to look at his ring record to see if the problem lies there. Immediately we see why he might cop some stick prior to this fight.  Starting off as a light-middle Lockett's early record shows that he was fed the usual names in order to pad out his ledger, however, he also made sure that his early career was not the usual list of W6 with the odd RSF thrown in. Lockett knocked out (as in KO'd) quite a few guys and did it cleanly, no one is saying he was knocking over world beaters; however he was knocking out guys who generally give a fighter a workout over the scheduled distance. So far so good, and it is usually the case that this type of fighter either excels when stepping up in class, or is revealed as a lower level puncher, and nothing more.  Unfortunately the wheels fell off for Lockett before he even stepped-up in class. Few of us can forget the sight of Lockett engaging in a war with Yuri Tsarenko on the undercard of Joe Calzaghe-Charles Brewer in 2002. Fewer still, this writer included, can forget that Lockett was hit so often, and so cleanly, that his right eye was swollen to an extent seldom seen, or allowed, in a British ring.  Every time Lockett tried to punch his swelling would bounce up and down, every blow he took looked like the ‘eye poked with needles' Benn spoke about after his first fight with Eubank. In losing, on points, over 12-rounds, Lockett looked to be a fighter who was going to go nowhere. That eye problem seemed only to speed up this lack of forward movement. Looking back the Tsarenko disaster may have been the making of the man who is now going to step into the ring with Pavlik. Ernie Shavers once told me that, in every situation, I must search for the positives to be taken whilst dispensing with the negatives. No doubt Lockett was hurting after his first defeat yet he could take some small kernel of satisfaction from it, it proved that he was man enough to take punishment and come through the other side, defeated but not destroyed. Despite this optimistic reading the loss seemed to be the beginning of the end for Lockett. Despite flipping the script on Tsarenko in 2003, although only over 10-rounds, Lockett was now the forgotten man of British boxing. He could no longer make light-middleweight and his increase in weight took a few fights before stabilising into the middleweight division. Lockett's time at middleweight has seen him take on some solid British names, not the best in Britain, but lets face the truth, few British fighters fight other British fighters in contention bouts. Lockett ate what was on his place, and the vagaries of the WBO ranking system – throw bits of paper with names on them into the air, set fire to the offices, then get a native American (if there are any left alive) to decipher the smoke – has given Lockett this unlikeliest of chances. Now, our ambling journey through the record of Lockett was done with the intention of seeing just what he has done to deserve the scorn and bile, in some quarters, poured onto this opportunity. For the life of me I think the punishment does not fit the crime. Sure Lockett has had some questionable bouts, faced some middling opposition, yet he is the number one WBO contender and if his being given the opportunity to fight for the belt is such a cause for consternation then boxing's core values really have been subverted. Allow me to explain. Once upon a time in boxing the champion of each division would fight guys from the division who had beaten other guys from that division, they used to be called contenders and would invariably be lesser fighters than the champion, yet they would still deserve a shot at the champion. It is called freedom of trade, or something like that, freedom of pain, or to dispense pain, however, we digress. The point is that the fight between Pavlik and Lockett seems so at odds with everything we know in boxing because everything we know has been trampled over. Look at the career of the greatest middleweight of all time. Marvin Hagler fought some great names from lower weights – Duran, Hearns and Leonard spring to mind – but he also fought some of the meat and potato guys at 160lbs, guys who had been given a ranking and a shot, guys like the guy Marvin used to be, contenders.  Somewhere and somehow this method of going about things was subverted and it became customary for a new champion to take on fighters that are old, smaller, retired, or all three, with added rust in most cases. Novelty fights replaced title fights and titles themselves could be dispensed accordingly, it worked well at first, but it now leaves Manny Pacquiao as a four-weight world title holder who has only had 10 real (top three organisation) title fights, where do we rank him historically when the dust settles?  Kelly Pavlik forcing Tito Trinidad down to fight at a weight Tito never excelled in would be the norm in this situation, or a bout against Ricardo Mayorga – Ricardo is Kerrazy you know. Instead, Pavlik, the oddball, has decided to showcase himself by fighting a fighter who holds a middleweight ranking and, in that sense, deserves a title shot.  How old school is that, in fact it is so old school we, seemingly, forget that it is the way things are supposed to be so we could in fact call it old nu skool, or never went to school, for those who think that the notion is so old school it is plain crazy we could call it special (or is it ‘less educationally advanced but we are not judging you') school. In taking this fight Pavlik is showing that he takes the middleweight title seriously. His predecessor took on a succession of smaller men and, in the eyes of some, not me, I still think Jermain Taylor is great for boxing, killed the middleweight title; it took a fight between Taylor and Pavlik, both middles, to bring the title back to where it should be, at the top of the boxing tree, the greatest title/division in the sport. In receiving this opportunity Lockett is showing that boxing is still a sport in which the underdog can grab it all. It moves us, however briefly, away from the idea that we need to recycle the same fighters over and over. Lose a fight on the senior's tour and you get another fight, just like soap stars moving from show to show no matter how poor an actor they are, or have become. To recap there is nothing terribly wrong with Lockett getting this title shot. We need to move away from novelty bouts and back to a time when a champion stood astride a division. By all means denigrate the chances of Lockett, he is the underdog after all, but cut the guy some slack, a shot for a guy like Lockett is a shot in the arm for boxing and might bring back the days when fighters accommodated contenders rather than recycling semi-retired names.

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