Celestino Caballero's case
In the boxing world, being great isn’t always good. Take the case of Celestino Caballero: In April, Caballero made his pro debut as a featherweight (126 pounds), having come up from the junior featherweight division (122 pounds).
In a bout with then undefeated Daud Yordan, it took just two rounds to score a devastating short uppercut and floor the discouraged prospect.
Ten more rounds of the same, and Caballero was awarded the easy decision. But he always got something he didn’t ask for.
Since then, Caballero has yet to find someone willing to fight him in the featherweight division. That could change soon, with boxingscene.com reporting that his team is in talks with Ricardo Cordoba, whom he lost to in 2004. A rematch would be a shot at beating the guy who beat him, but it wouldn’t necessarily catapult him to where he feels he should be in the division.
Caballero is the definition of manifest talent in the featherweight division, clearly one of the top dogs to anybody with eyes, and yet he’s being blacklisted as a fighter to avoid because of his prodigious talents.
Consider that, since his loss to Cordoba in 2004, he’s faced sixteen quality opponents and has yet to see the losing end of a boxing match.
When asked recently why he’s so obviously being avoided, Caballero said that in part it was political. The obvious talent in his division, guys like Juan Manuel Lopez, Yuriorkis Gamboa and Rafael Marquez, are widely thought to be avoiding him.
“Promoters know I will beat them [their fighters]. They don’t want to lose their gold mine," he said.
A bout between WBO featherweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez and Rafael Lopez was recently put on hold due to the latter injuring his hand. Many would rather see Caballero and Lopez fighting for the title. Instead, while Lopez sits at No.2 in the Ring Magazine’s official Featherweight ratings, Caballero is conspicuously absent from the top-ten list altogether.
“Great champions are willing to fight great champions. I should not be victimized by the politics of boxing or the cowardice of other fighters,” Caballero said.
After Caballero’s defeat of Yordan, it was reported that HBO preferred a Gamboa-Caballero bout over others. However, Bob Arum reportedly dropped the proposal outright and claimed that Caballero, promoted by Lou Dibella, had ‘outpriced’ his fighter, even before serious negotiations had begun.
“We never priced ourselves out of a Gamboa fight,” DiBella said. “In fact, in our preliminary discussions I asked for the same amount of money that I’m hearing Arum is offering to other fighters. There is a big difference between Celestino Caballero, a pound for pound fighter, and Elio Rojas.”
Cabarello’s case typifies a promotional move in boxing today. In order to safeguard their financial investments, their fighters, promoters can always legitimize copping out of a fight by explaining the situation as the other camp ‘overpricing themselves’.
The unfortunate reality is that saying two guys can’t get into the ring because of money is a lot easier than one camp saying they're scared of fighting, because they don’t want to lose what they have going for them. The problem is the guy that gets avoided and is dealt the injustice here is Caballero, who asks: “Why should I have problems feeding my family because I’m too good?”
What’s worse is that it isn’t just Caballero who suffers from the promotional stranglehold that is so part and parcel of boxing today. It’s many fighters. And because many are bent on making their own players ‘the best’, there’s so much padding happening, it’s not even completely possible to rate a fighter on his record. Troubling days for the boxing world.
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