Give Tijuana a chance because Mexico is vital to boxing

by Norm Frauenheim

A reasonable argument continues about whether to cross a border that, at least according to headlines and perhaps hyperbole, sounds like a battlefield. Bob Arum says that all is quiet on the Tijuana side of the southern front, despite news reports and State Department advisories that say otherwise.

Maybe, Arum is right. I hope he is. For one night, at least, maybe all the violence in Tijuana will be controlled with a Latin Fury card Saturday in a bullring close to the border and not far from streets bloodied by warring drug gangs.

Maybe, the gangsters will take a night off and watch somebody else fight. There is precedence for that. During Manny Pacquiao’s fights in Las Vegas, there have been reports that Filipino rebels suspend their insurgency long enough to watch their famed countryman, the Boxing Writers Association’s 2008 Fighter of the Year who also qualified for some peace-prize consideration.

Arum has been taking some heat from U.S. media for trying to quell fears about Tijuana during a conference a call a few weeks ago. He tried to separate the documented violence in Juarez from what has happened in Tijuana. Given the alarming statistics, that’s hard – no, impossible – to do. Throughout all of the criticism, however, it is hard not to admire Arum, whose loyalty is about as old school as it gets.

Arum is taking a chance with a Tijuana card featuring Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. against Argentina’s Luciano Cuello, just as surely as he took one in his angry defense of welterweight Antonio Margarito, who was suspended in the U.S. for one year and faces public condemnation for a lot longer in the wake of charges of altered hand wraps before his loss to Sugar Shane Mosley.

But there is an important thread of consistency in his decision to stand behind a fighter and a city. Both are Mexican. Without Mexico, it’s hard to imagine where Arum’s business would be, or if it would be much of a business, at all.

Over at least the last decade, Mexico has been Arum’s biggest, most reliable market. Without Mexico, Pacquiao wouldn’t be quite the phenomenon he is today. The Arum-promoted Pacquiao hates being called The Mexicutioner. Without Erik Morales, Marco Antonio Barrera and Juan Manuel Marquez, however, he just would be a good Filipino fighter.

Then, there is Floyd Mayweather Jr and Ricky Hatton, neither an Arum client. They wouldn’t be as rich with out those Mexican fans either. Both have acknowledged that with a tip of the symbolic sombrero – Mayweather in a Pancho Villa-like costume before beating De La Hoya and Hatton in appearances with Barrera, his compadre.

Mexico has created opportunities for them and avenues to new markets for Arum, who is in Tijuana this weekend like a vigilant shop-keeper. He’s minding the store, making sure not to anger his best customers.

Notes, quotes and oddservations

· Pacquiao as Fighter of the Year was a foregone conclusion at the very second De La Hoya lost to him last December. A further sign of Pacquiao’s widening stardom arrived in Time, which included him on a list of 202 candidates for being the world’s most influential. Pacquiao is among a handful of sports figures, including Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, golfer Tiger Woods, basketball’s Kobe Bryant, baseball’s Alex Rodriquez, cycling’s Lance Armstrong, race-car driver Danica Patrick and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Apparently, no newspaper publishers or editors had anything to do with the magazine’s list. They decided boxing was dead years ago and have since gone on to kill off their own business.

· It looks as if Phelps is slowly re-surfacing after weeks of controversy surrounding those photos of him poised over a bong. He is scheduled to appear with Muhammad Ali Saturday night in Phoenix at Ali’s annual fund-raiser in the fight against Parkinson’s.

· Just wondering: Will De La Hoya announce his retirement before Mayweather Jr. says he is coming back?

· OK, Tijuana is dangerous, but ringside isn’t always safe either. A Phoenix ringside photographer, Dale Hausner, could get the death penalty for his conviction on 80 criminal counts, including six murders. In a strange choice of words, a jury declared Hausner “eligible” for death. Huh? How does you gain eligibility for lethal injection? Anyway, I know Hausner, the so-called Serial Shooter. He always struck me as a harmless nerd. Once, I appeared on public-access television to talk boxing with him. He was the host. He gave me a small, bull-like stuffed animal that was supposed to be Mike Tyson, one of his heroes. Before his trial, I got a couple of calls from a Hausner attorney, who wanted me to testify in his behalf as a character witness. I never returned those calls.