Mi Casa, Su Casa

God does boxing need a heavyweight right now, a big guy with a big punch who can capture people's imagination. That's all I could think last night as I was watching that mind-blowing lineal lightweight title bout between Joel Casamyor and Michael Katsidis in which Casamayor triumphed in a back-and-forth battle with a stunning 10th-round stoppage. There have been three FOY-quality fights in the last three weeks - Vasquez/Marquez III, Pacquiao/Marquez II and now Casamayor/Katsidis. The sweet science is so chock-full of electrifying fights and marquee match-ups right now that it's hard for me to think of a better time to be a fight fan in recent memory. And yet the bitter taste of the Klitschko/Ibragimov debacle still lingers, and the fact of the matter is this - as the heavyweights go, so goes the sport in mainstream culture. Devoid of a heavyweight star, boxing remains condemned to the back of the sports pages, if it makes the sports pages at all, and depends on the ongoing Money May sideshow and the glorified exhibitions of a superstar past his prime to garner headlines. Well, so be it. Enough of my belly-aching. We die-hards are on a hell of a run right now and we should enjoy it while it lasts. On the matter of Casa/Katsidis, let me begin with a personal note and offer my sincere thanks to Andy Lee. I won myself a nice piece of change betting on Casamayor last night, and I placed my bet almost immediately after Lee got stopped on Friday Night Fights. I looked at the odds (Casamayor +185 at the time) and I thought about Andy Lee and then I thought about Katsidis, and I said to myself, "who the hell has Michael Katsidis ever beaten that he's almost a 2-1 favorite over a guy who twice beat Chico Corrales and took Castillo the distance in a war?" Yes, Casamayor is 36, and yes he looked very bad in his last fight and deserved to lose it on the scorecards, but still, didn't Nate Campbell recently show us what a determined and crafty old vet can to do to an over-eager up-and-comer if he sets his mind to it? So I laid down my money, and I felt very good about my wager. And then when Casa put Katsidis down twice in the first round, well, I felt like French kissing myself. Exactly, I thought. Another over-hyped white boy about to get exposed in front of a national television audience. Of course, it didn't turn out that way, not by a longshot. After getting dropped by two of Casamayor's pinpoint straight lefts in the first, Katsidis settled himself, made a few key adjustments (slip right against a lefty, Mike) and went to war. He lost a 10-7 round in the first, and then I had him losing both the second and third, but despite being swollen and bloodied and an all-around mess, he turned the tide in the fourth with relentless pressure and a damn-the-torpedoes brawling style. In the fifth, his swarming tactics seemed to be taking a heavy toll on Casamayor's 36-year-old legs, and then in the sixth Katsidis very nearly earned the stoppage after sending the crafty Cuban through the ropes in the middle of the round. At that point, Casa's craftiness was quite literally all he had to work with in there, but he used it to great advantage, clinching his way through a very dicey sixth and then getting on his bicycle to stabilize himself in the seventh. Katsidis might have been able to get him at that point if he'd had the wind, but he clearly had punched himself out with his sixth-round onslaught and a valuable opportunity was lost. With his legs back, Casamayor won both the eighth and ninth to my eyes, boxing with the elusive in-and-out precision of his prime. Come the tenth, it seemed like Katsidis felt his advantage slipping away from him, and in true warrior fashion he resolved to double his efforts and regain the momentum with another onslaught of pressure and output. That resolution, however, courageous though it was, cost him the biggest win of his life. Fools rush in where angels... don't lead with their heads. Lunging at Casa from the opening bell of the 10th with go-for-broke haymakers, Katsidis dove right into a mighty left hand and his brain promptly exited the building. He made it to his feet on auto-pilot and the ref wisely stepped in soon after that, with only Max Kellerman (more a one-man Michael Katsidis fan-club than an announcer last night) protesting the stoppage. You really can't ask much more from a fight - slick-boxing veteran and proud young brawler, a shifting narrative that saw both fighters get up off the canvas and seize back the momentum with a strategic adjustment, all topped off with a late-round full-throttle concussification that left absolutely no question about the outcome. It was an instant classic, and yet it says all there is to be said about the quality of the fights that took place this past month when I write that right now I probably have Casamayor/Katsidis third (or maybe tied for second, I have to think about this...) in the Fight of the Year sweepstakes. And people, Jesus, it's only March.