There are times in boxing where you are just left shaking your head, and yesterday’s card at the Luzhniki Sports Complex in Moscow, Russia is one of those nights. The headline fight featured welterweight Ruslan Provodnikov facing off against veteran Jose Luis Castillo and earning a TKO in the 5th round. The entire card was filled with squash matches with the Russian fighters favored between (-2000) and (-7500). The matchmakers did a reasonable job of bringing in names, as at first glance fighters like Castillo and Juan Carlos Gomez have good resumes but both men were well past their primes.
In the case of Castillo, he is a big puncher as a Lightweight, and he is now on the north side of 40. After two rounds of pressure from Provodnikov, who was typically ruthless, he started to fade and by the 5th round he just looked old. In the case of Gomez, who faced Dmitry Kudryashov for a WBA International title at Cruiserweight, he too had a lot of career KO’s, but same thing, he was over 40 and considered well past his prime. That colossal encounter lasted all of :19 seconds.
As if the matchmaking and odds given for the fight were not enough of a farce, the promoters trotted our 62 year old actor Mickey Rourke, who won his bout by KO. Rourke did a few professional matches in the early 1990’s, but the common thinking was that many of those matches were not completely competitive. Boxrec lists his record from that era as (6-0-2). And now here he is, boxing again in Russia in what can only be seen as a black eye for boxing. I mean, good for him and everything, and he is in better shape than a lot of folks, but this does not mean that this was anything but a side show attraction.
The next time a card like this is announced in Russia, there may be good reason to consider laying out the juice, no matter how heavy. It cannot be quantified, but the trip to Russia can be very taxing. Everything can be difficult, and with a promotion that so blatantly does not care about boxing as pure competition and wants their guys to win at all cost, there will be more cards like this where the clean sweep by the home team is almost too predictable.
For the morbidly curious, here is some of the Mickey Rourke fight, which at the very least is not being listed as more than an exhibition:
