Rusty Rubin, Managing Editor
www.ringsports.com

What fight are you looking ahead to after this weekend’s bout between Oscar and Shane?

I’ll tell you some that are scheduled and that I’d personally like to and intend to see, even if on TV. And some that aren’t signed, sealed and delivered, yet, but certainly should be.

The Joel Casamayor – Diego Corrales match figures to be a classic, boxer vs. puncher and, that’s one I’ll be watching.

Casamayor vs. Acelino Frietas should be a great rematch. Frietas won a very close decision the first time they faced off.

Marco Antonio Barrera vs. Manny Pacquaio is another one of those match-ups, and while a lot of people are writing Pacquaio off, I wont go that far, as he can really bang. But Barrera’s chin is solid. So was Vernon Forrest’s before Ricardo Mayorga nailed him.

De la Hoya vs. Bernard Hopkins, if it happens, would be a dandy, but knowing how much Hopkins enjoys easy fights for less money, I wouldn’t hold my breath here.

Lennox Lewis vs. Vitali Klitschko rematch should prove interesting. I’d like to see a Lewis in better condition take on Vitali, who didn’t show the power needed to knock out a sometimes weak-chinned champion.

Marco Antonio Barrera vs. Erik Morales again. These two guys are like Willie Pep and Sandy Saddler, these guys can fight and always create excitement when they take on each other.

Mosley vs. Mayorga figures to be a war matching speed vs. power. Forget that Mosley lost to Forrest twice, and Mayorga beat Forrest twice, remember that styles make fights.

Laila Ali vs. Lucia Rjyker. Ali would have the edge with height, weight and reach, but Rjyker can slug with the best of them and come out on top.

Roy Jones Jr. vs. Dariusz Michalewski, not because it’s a great fight, but to shut up the critics of Jones, who should easily beat Dariusz, anywhere they fight.***

December marks the start of our 15th year in business. Anyone interested in advertising in our year end issue, at very special rates, please contact me and I’ll forward the info to our business office.

Agree or disagree, I’d like to hear from you.

Glove2Glove:

Please say a prayer for the return to health of boxing promoter Moe Smith, who had a four by-pass surgery on Thursday. Moe has done much for our sport. Cards can be sent to Moe at: 2713 E. 1st St., Post Falls, ID. 82854. By the way I spoke to Moe late last week and he’s home and doing great. Can’t keep a good man down.

Please say prayers for former top-notch fighter Art Soto, who is having some severe health problems from Alzheimers and cancer.

Chas. Shandor, father in law of Ringsports.com writer Nick Constantine has been diagnosed with cancer and needs your prayers.

Your prayers have worked and Martin Sommers is no longer in hospice care, and in fact, is at home recovering. He and his family pass along their heartfelt thanks, and ask that your prayers continue.

Also down but not out with cancer is Kathy Cerola, sister of top referee Elmo Adolph, and my best friend and co-founder of Glove2Glove, Susiey Walker.
Needless to say we need prayers for the return to health of both former champs Greg Page and Gerald McClellan, both confined to wheelchairs.

Glove2Glove is a non-denomination group set up to aide those boxing folks and their relatives in need of prayers and cards. We accept no money and only contact our members when someone is in need. It’s free to join. Simply send us your e-mail address. And even if you’re not a member, feel free to contact us if you are aware of some boxing person in need.

Touching on politics briefly

(first a note of thanks to my friend in the UK, Salim Valli, who sent me the following message.

“I wanted to give you my support & commiseration on your tough day today (Sept. 11). Stay peaceful & patient. God’s justice will always answer.

From a Mulsim friend who does represent the majority of my people, despite what Mr. Marinez may feel or think.”

Salim Valli echos the words of the vast majority of hard working, God fearing Muslims throughout the world, and I thank him for this kind e-mail.)

Al Qaeda and the Tallyho’s are at it again, trying to frighten others, which is what terrorists do. They are down, but not out. And we have continued to give them time to regroup and possibly mount a future attack on American interests.

The second in command of Al Qaeda is an Egyptian physician, a man who is supposed to heal people, not kill them. Maybe he took the Hippocrties oath rather then the Hippocratic one. Physician heal thyself.

We are paying a lot of money to keep Iraq’s borders free from terrorist infiltration, but ignoring our own vulnerable borders. Do you sense anything wrong here?

Every September, we see a tape of Usama’s ugly face, and have to hear threats against us, it’s a ritual. But knowing we are vulnerable should keep us all on our toes.

We’ll how about another ritual, an annual hate Usama Day, in which we celebrate the defeat of the terrorists and the death of a killer. I only hope that we can start the celebration soon. But I really don’t think this celebration will be held in my lifetime, as at my age, just another birthday is cause to celebrate.

Boxing feedback:

A couple of people have asked why, in a recent column, do I write that I like and respect Evander Holyfield, but that I think he should retire. This is not contradictory. It’s because I like and respect the man that I feel he should retire. He has nothing to prove and only risks injury my continuing to fight, mainly on heart.***

My business manager and a few others suggested that in the future we separate our “experts picks” from our “readers picks”. A good suggestion that we will initiate with our next fight picks.

Agree or disagree, I’d like to hear from you.

Political feedback:

I’m really impressed with some of the feedback I get from boxing fans throughout the World. I don’t know why anyone would get the impression that boxing fans are less knowledgeable about what’s going on in the world around them. Here is a response from a person in the USA, which we received on the internet.

Hey, I agree with the essence of what you're saying BUT. Always that stinkin' 'but' huh?

How much did the reconstruction of Europe post-WWII cost Americans of that era? I understand the Marshal Plan cost no fewer than $15 billion American dollars... and this is in 1944 when the GNP was still counted in the hundreds of millions and the nation was just coming off the Great Depression. People didn't have 24 hour television in that day or they would recall clearly how after the fall of Hitler Allied troops still faced numerous, daily, deadly attacks by remnants of the Nazi regime far more well schooled than Islamic terrorist. They might recall how England didn't have power or running water, nor did Japan and how it took not 4 months to return normalcy to Europe and Japan, but an entire decade, financed almost entirely by US taxpayers with no help from the UN since that body didn't exist and even if they had still would have been relying primarily on US funds just as they do today. Remember that in that day it could have been fairly argued that the US had gotten itself in a mess with a dangerous band of fanatics and murderers who indeed had never attacked us and didn't pose any immediate threat to the US. It was after all the Japanese that attacked us, not the Nazis. Yet Americans bodies were coming home not in singles, or even dozens, but by the hundreds. But history has proven that you can't defeat these kinds of movements piece-meal. Islamic Fundamentalist Terror has to be defeated the same why the nexus of Japanese militarialist and Nazi fascist were defeated, in whole and altogether. Waiting for the French and the Russians to act now would be just as disastrous as waiting for the French to act when Hitler invaded Poland. The more we delayed action in the Middle East the more costly it was going to be in terms of both dollars and lives and we put it off for 12 full years. Had we marched to Baghdad in 1991 instead of putting it off 12 years in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died and the infrastructure became ever more degraded we wouldn't be in this position. The very same reasons that made it necessary to topple Hitler made it necessary to topple Saddam with basically the same coalition of allied nations that did the heavy lifting all those years ago, America, Australia and Britain. Hitler didn't have an A-bomb or any chemical weapons. Should we have waited 12 years for him to build one? And what about all those German Jews he was cooking and gassing? So what should Bush have done, left it to another President, another generation of young Americans? Should we have left Stalin to deal with Hitler because facing a war machine like Nazi Germany would have been too expensive? Had we not acted might we not all be concentration camp inmates.

I disagree with the assertion that Iraq was "singled out." Iraq was unique from N. Korea, Syria and Iran in that it was in violation of no fewer than 18 separate UN resolutions and world mandates approved even by her allies in the region such as Syria over a period of 12 years and coming as a result of losing a war. Iraq was unique in that she had already invaded a neighboring nation in Kuwait and Iran, had used the land of Saudi Arabia for troop movements, had launched numerous cruise missiles into Israel through foreign airspace, and had already used her stockpile of WMD to attack her own people. And Iraq was unique in that she was openly inciting terrorist attacks on Israel by using her stolen riches to fund terrorist there and indeed was even allowing terrorist to operate within her borders who we attacked and killed during the war. Sounds a lot like the activities of Nazi Germany to me. Americans should remember that Israel is the only legitimate democracy in all the Middle East and that many of those that die in these attacks are US citizens or dual US-Israeli citizens. Once our UN "allies" bolted on us there was no further diplomatic pressure that could be brought to bear against Iraq to force her compliance. The UN failed, as that body often fails and the cost has been hundreds of thousands of lives and deep uncertainty in world markets.

Containment didn't work. We saw after the fall of Saddam that he'd been hording world aid meant to feed and care for his people, selling it through third parties and using the money to enrich himself and his supporters. The President should remind Americans that these terrorist could blow up 70 people a day in Iraq for years and never come close to the 1 million Iraqis that Saddam murdered there or the hundreds of thousands of dead Iranians butchered due to his tyranny or the hundreds of dead and unaccounted for Kuwaitis or the thousands of dismembers Palestinians and Israelis that Saddam worked so hard to bring into conflict.

People seem to think the threat of Islamic Terrorism is less than that posed by German fanaticism and therefore they lose perspective on what's at stake. This nation committed her treasure and the lives of boys as young as 16 years to defeat that foul enemy, now there's the gnashing of teeth because of a single lost soldier a day in Iraq? People should remember turning on their televisions and hearing reports of American civilians and diplomats being shot outside their homes in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, proving that the terrorist and the infrastructure they live on was already robust and operating efficiently all over the Middle East including Iraq. This is the nation that stormed the beaches of Normandy France, the nation who sent her sons to fight and die in trenches all over Europe not for 4 months, but for 4 ,a nation whose children were butchered and cannibalized by the Japanese in the South Pacific campaign? Now, just a half century later we're blinking at collapsing a ruthless dictator in 3 weeks and killing those who come to his aid by any means possible in a war that could only be delayed but never avoided because 4 months later Iraq doesn't look like 1999 Poland and fewer than 300 US service-people have died for the cause? This is the cost of 12 years of procrastination borne of fear and carelessness.

On the tax cut. It's better, IMO in a time of economic uncertainty, to give the consumers in our consumer-driven economy more money to spend and allow the government to run deficits until the economy improves. Let Washington keep the money and spend it on our behalf, but that won't create a single job and it won't help a single American family keep their house for another month or even another day. Repeal the tax cuts in a knee-jerk, feels so good policy blunder that will see more Americans on the streets and more business struggling to recover because consumer spending will dry up. Furthermore it would seem to me that it would be best to cut federal taxes so that each state will have the ability to raise taxes as best suits that state's revenue needs without Americans having to suffer a double whammy of higher than needed federal taxes coupled with increasing state and local taxes. I bet Californians who got socked with that new auto tax were pleased to be able to offset it with a refund on their federal taxes and maybe come out near even instead of having to struggle to come up with more dollars to pay the new state tax. The newest argument I've heard about the tax cuts is, "George Bush should ask his rich friends that he gave all that money to - to give it back to help the children of poor people serving and dieing in Iraq..." and that kind of class rhetoric has a lot of appeal. But every class of Americans has served and sent their kids to serve in defense of this nation. Europeans and Canadians are taxed to the hilt, has it strengthened their economies? Has it made them able to answer the call of freedom in far away places? Has it made them more secure at home? The answer in each instance is no. They continue to make deeper and deeper cuts to their militaries while simultaneously increasing taxes on their citizens and it's a model that should never be attempted here. Look at the unemployment rate in Germany, it exceeds 10 percent, and they haven't gotten a tax cut in years.

The economy will recover. US troops will return home. But if this job is left unfinished or put off today because it's deemed too hard to stomach, too costly, and Howard Dean wants to wait until he gets the nod from Jacques Chirac before he does anything, then Americans will have sent a clear signal that we would rather have cadaver dogs sniffing for the incinerated remains of our spouses, parents, and children in the streets of America than to face our enemies where they plan, where they eat or kill them where they sleep. Just like retaliating only on those that directly attacked us at Pearl Harbor would have sent a signal to Hitler to finish his work far from US shores until he was too strong to ever be defeated by the US.

Perhaps it's time for the US to pull it's troops from places where they're serving only for the benefit of shaky allies and use them against OUR enemies.

Sorry so long...

Peace... Just-D, Colorado, via e-mail

Correspondence is always welcome and those who can express their points of view best, well be used…