Iron Mike among those getting glimpse of boxing’s future

By Ron Kantowski

Monday, July 20, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Besides the free bobblehead dolls and reasonably priced tickets, one of the attractions of minor league baseball is you get to watch the stars of tomorrow on their way up. As a small bonus, you get to watch a lot of guys who will wind up working for their fathers-in-law, too.

Planet Hollywood held the boxing equivalent of a minor league baseball game in one of its sprawling ballrooms on Friday night with the major differences being ESPN was there to televise and Mike Tyson was sitting at ringside. I suppose it’s possible that you could buy a ticket to a Pioneer League game and bump into a former superstar — especially if Pete Rose needs the money — but the chances of that happening are usually pretty slim.

The Planet Hollywood card was called the “Future of Boxing” and it featured four up-and-coming Cuban exiles and a Colombian export who supposedly already had arrived. Previously undefeated Breidis Prescott suffered a stunning split-decision loss to an unheralded Mexican named Miguel Vazquez in the 10-round main event Friday, but these things happen in boxing.

Guys like Guillermo Rigondeaux, on the other hand, don’t happen very often. So in a year or two I wonder if Mike Tyson will tell his pals, or at least all of those guys who kept pestering him for his autograph on Friday night, that he saw Guillermo Rigondeaux on his way up.

Rigondeaux won two gold medals and was 243-4 as an amateur before he, too, expressed displeasure with Fidel Castro’s rule, or at least his potential to reap fame and fortune while fighting under it. So he and Erislandy Lara, another Cuban amateur oozing with professional potential, made an ill-fated attempt to defect during the 2005 Pan-American Games in Brazil. Both were arrested for overstaying their visas and were sent home, where, of course, there was a certain amount of hell to pay.

So Rigondeaux left again. This time — some way, somehow — he made it to Miami. He wanted to call his wife to tell her he had made it, but the couple didn’t have a telephone. So he called a neighbor. Now you understand why he might have wanted to leave.

On Friday, Rigondeaux was in with a guy named Roberto Guillen, who was 4-2-3 but had never been stopped, which is what boxing people like to say about guys who are 4-2-3 when it applies. He has been stopped now. The imprint of Rigondeaux’s left uppercut is probably still outlined against Guillen’s rib cage. The knockout punch made roughly the same sound a sack of potatoes would if you threw it off a second-floor balcony onto asphalt.

Afterward, both Rigondeaux and promoter Luis DeCubas said he will need only a few additional fights — maybe six or seven — before he fights for one of the super bantamweight titles. It’s not often when a former amateur with single-digit professional fights is granted a title shot, but then, Rigondeaux, 28, doesn’t appear to be an ordinary former amateur.

That’s what I was thinking when he appeared at ringside during the main event and asked Tyson to pose for a picture.