Articles...

READY FOR THE 'BIG TIME'

By Danny Serratelli, ringside

It was good to be back at the Theater in Madison Square Garden, the same room where just three months ago Vernon Forrest upset "Sugar" Shane Mosley and Arturo Gatti blew out Terron Millet. Although the Jameel McCline vs. Shannon Briggs card did not feature a main event that was as high profile as Forrest vs. Mosley, the card still featured many talented fighters, and gave the near sellout crowd a chance to see a couple of probable future world champions in action. The IBF featherweight championship bout rounded out this quality show.

The card started with Philadelphia's junior middleweight Anthony "The Messenger" Thompson getting Fausto Alvarez out of there at 1:10 of round 1, to improve his record to 2-0, 2 KOs. The second fight featured super middleweight Tito Mendoza with a 3rd round stoppage of Leroy Brooks. In the next fight Olympic standout Yuri Foreman decisioned Michael Dokes.

Then the crowd at the Garden was lucky to get a chance to see two 2000 Olympians, Jermain Taylor the United States bronze medalist in 2000, and Jerson Ravelo, a member of the 2000 Dominican Olympic team. Taylor was up first and although the crowd didn't seem into the fight, he gave a good showing taking his time with Joe Garcia who sported a record of 20-40-5, 13 KOs. Taylor took a while to get to the awkward Garcia, but ended the fight with a body shot at 2:16 of the 6th round.

Next up was Jerson Ravelo. The 24 year old Ravelo, who is a dual citizen of the Dominican Republic and the United States, came with a lot of fans from his hometown of Newark NJ. In his third fight at the Garden, he improved his record to 11-0 with 8 KOs when he dominated Aaron Norwood, who had an impressive record of 20-2-2, with 9 KOs coming into the bout. Ravelo out-landed Norwood, with a 74-7 edge in punches on his way to a TKO victory at 1:50 of the 3rd round.

As the main event drew closer the theater filled up and as usual there were a lot of familiar faces. Zab Judah, Fres Oquendo, Imamu Mayfield, Omar Sheika and Arthur Mercante Sr. were among the ringside observers. Chuck Zito from the HBO series "Oz," Bert Sugar and actress Kelly Rippa were some of the other familiar faces.

In the co-feature Johnny Tapia won a controversial majority decision over Manuel Medina to capture the IBF featherweight world championship. Although many ringside observers felt Medina clearly won the fight, Tapia also had many supporters. It was a difficult fight to score. Medina clearly threw many more punches than Tapia, however, Tapia appeared to land the harder blows.

Tapia’s energetic style and waiving to the crowd drew much more attention from the fans than the more methodical punches delivered by Medina. Tapia also closed the show picking up the tempo of the fight in the late rounds. Medina who to his credit seemed to frustrate Tapia for much of the fight, was upset with the decision. He rushed out of the ring and back to his dressing room when the decision was announced.

Finally came the McCline-Briggs fight. With both fighters being from New York, it was McCline who seemed to be the one with all the fan support. There were many loud fans chanting " Jameel" or "Big Time" throughout the fight. Briggs who showed up much heavier than he's ever been in his career, came out confident and looked like he took the 1st round, but appeared to have lost the rest of them.

The feeling ringside was that if Briggs didn't get McCline out early, McCline would take the fight. 'Big Time' kept his jab in Briggs' face for most of the fight and scored a clean knockdown in the 6th round. Briggs was heard talking for most of the fight, but McCline stayed quiet, kept his cool and let his fists do the talking in the ring.

McCline has come a long way since his one amateur fight and going 2-2-1, 2 KOs in his first five professional fights. Since then McCline has gone 25-0-2, 14 KOs, and appears to be ready to fight the best fighters the heavyweight division has to offer. Briggs, to his credit gave McCline a lot of praise after the fight saying, that McCline was the better man, and McCline outclassed him. Briggs also said he was glad to have fought him, because he feels that McCline is going to make some noise in the division.

The future of McCline as well as young Olympians Taylor and Ravelo looks bright, one would even venture to say that all three of them are on their way to the "Big Time."

4-27-2002