Two more black eyes — and a brain injury — for boxing

By Ron Kantowski

Thursday, July 17, 2008 | 4:15 p.m.

NOW:

Another great night for boxing, eh?

In Temecula, Calif. -- which I heard was going to host Ali-Frazier III until the big money came in from the Philippines -- James Toney fought Hasim Rahman Wednesday night after George Chuvalo and Ron Lyle apparently withdrew, citing training injuries. Toney was awarded the victory when he tripped over his ample belly, sending his cane flying across the ring where it hit Rahman in the face and opened a cut over his left eye.

"I'm the best heavyweight fighter in the world," Toney said afterward, which only confirmed that he, too, watched Wladimir Klitschko fight in Germany last Saturday.

In San Antonio, in a nationally televised bout on ESPN2, Delvin Rodriguez stopped Oscar Diaz between the 10th and 11th rounds of a vicious slugfest.

Afterward, Rodriguez didn't say he was the best welterweight in the world. Diaz didn't say anything. He couldn't. He was lying unconscious in a hospital after undergoing brain surgery.

“My understanding is they had to remove on the left side a part of his cranium to get the swelling down,” said one of the promoters.

Losing part of your cranium is never good. Not even in boxing.

----- Bruce Snyder, who guided Arizona State to a Rose Bowl victory before joining John Robinson's staff at UNLV, is batting cancer in Arizona. Like Robinson, Snyder, 68, was one of those rare big-time coaches who always made you feel welcome -- even if you were a sports writer. He told friends he will check into a Tucson hospital to fight the disease.

----- After he hit what seemed like a dozen straight shots from beyond the 3-point arc, I saw Petteri Koponen, who is trying to earn a sport with the Portland Trail Blazers at this year's Vegas Summer League, crack what appeared to be a smile. But because he's from Finland, it is entirely possible what I saw, to paraphrase The Undisputed Truth, was just a frown turned upside down. Anyway, a couple of girls draped in the Finnish flag seemed to be enjoying the evening more than most. They were sporting frowns turned upside down, too.

THEN:

Because I wasn't invited to Madonna's place and don't like to fish I don't really have an All-Star Break story. So you'll have to settle for this.

The best thing about going to a small four-year college is they have these courses called "directed studies," where you and a guy with patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket would meet and discuss some topic that your or he or both found interesting. You'd meet in his office once a week and then he would give you a grade, usually a B-minus. (Although coeds, I would come to discover, were usually scored higher.)

Anyway, I had this English professor named Larry Kappel, who was from Buffalo or maybe it was Queens, because he was a big Mets fan and, as I recall, bore a passing resemblance to Lee Mazzilli, the Mets' star in those days. We agreed to call my course "Baseball in Literature." The first week, we met in his office and discussed something written by Roger Angell; the second week, it might have been Thomas Boswell; the third week ... well, it might have been the lyrics of Terry "Talkin' Baseball" Cashman, because I really don't remember the third week.

But I do recall the fourth week. Instead of meeting at his office, he told me to meet him at the Buffalo, the most popular/only bar in downtown Silver City, N.M. When I showed up, he was setting up a Strat-o-Matic baseball game, which I had mentioned playing in my spare time, and we rolled an entire three-game series that required multiple pitchers of ice cold Coors beer.

That was the last time we discussed Willie, Mickey and The Duke. We spent every Friday until the fall semester playing Strat-o-Matic.

A couple of weeks later, I received my grade in the mail.

It was a B-minus.