Boxing: The Plight of the Action Fighter

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Consider the plight of the unapologetic action fighter. Members of the blood-and-guts club are cheered. They are celebrated. They make for compelling TV when the mileage on their boxing odometers is comparatively low and they are still capable of dishing out as much or more punishment than they receive. Those who can leaven their natural brawling style with elements of actual ring skill sometimes even have gained admittance into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

However, there is a downside to their fighting the way they do, and that is the awareness that their prime years likely will be fewer in number than those of counterparts who incorporate tight defense into their fight plans and are as adept at avoiding punches as they are at absorbing them and firing back.

Perhaps the most recent example of the heavy toll exacted on just such a fighter is Ruslan Provodnikov, the “Siberian Rocky.” He has developed a considerable following by engaging in the sort of give-and-take slugfests that had made can’t-miss attractions of, among others, predecessors Matthew Saad Muhammad and Arturo Gatti. Muhammad and Gatti -- both of whom, it should be noted, are enshrined in the IBHOF -- wore out in their early to mid-30s, and it now seems likely that Provodnikov is destined to never get a call from Canastota, New York, unless IBHOF Executive Director Ed Brophy is on the line to invite him to appear at a future induction weekend as a special guest instead of as a newly minted hall of famer.

Provodnikov’s face was again bruised and puffy at the conclusion of his 12-round junior welterweight bout with John Molina Jr. in the Showtime-televised main event on Saturday at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, New York. This time his best effort was not only not good enough to win but raised serious doubts that he ever can be anything close to the relentlessly exciting performer fans have come to expect.

“Today, the decision was the right one,” Provodnikov (25-5, 18 KOs) said after Molina (29-6, 23 KOs) was awarded a unanimous decision by respective margins of 117-111, 116-112 and 115-113. “Molina won the fight. He was better tonight. Everything was scored the way it should have been.”

Not that punch statistics are always the most accurate gauge of who is doing what inside the ropes, but Molina made the most of his height and reach advantages -- he is 4½ inches taller and has a five-inch edge in reach over Provodnikov -- to outland the favored former WBO super lightweight titlist 377 of 1,092 (33 percent) to 283 of 705 (40 percent). Provodnikov only occasionally made the fight at close quarters, where he does his most effective work.

“It wasn’t my night,” Provodnikov said with a resignation that suggested he has looked into the future and doesn’t like what he sees. “I don’t have the same hungriness as before. I’m not going to make excuses, but it was hard for me to find my groove tonight. I have to sit down and think of why that happened. I’m sorry if I disappointed [the on-site crowd and Showtime viewers].”

Even if Provodnikov is on a downhill slide he can’t reverse, he has nothing to apologize for. He was a participant in the Boxing Writers Association of America’s “Fight of the Year” in 2013 and 2015, albeit on the losing end of decisions in each instance, against Timothy Bradley Jr. and Lucas Matthysse, respectively. Still, he fought his heart out, as always, and in doing so earned the respect of fans and opponents alike.

“The way I fight is in my character and in my blood,” the Beryozovo, Russia, native said in 2014. “I think that everyone has his own style of fighting. You can’t change it even if you tried. My style is a part of me, and it always has been.”

That willingness, even eagerness, to stand and trade is so reminiscent of the disinclination of Gatti and Saad Muhammad to make anything more than minor alterations to their own constantly attacking styles. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. However, as is often the case, when a problem finally does arise, the repair manual is out of date or replacement parts are unavailable.

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Provodnikov, 32, in recent years has been the lead pony in Art Pelullo’s Banner Promotions stable, which seemingly always has had a foreign-born star temperamentally suited to bop ’til he dropped. Previously occupying that role were Brazil’s Acelino “Popo” Freitas and England’s Ricky Hatton, each of whom was a world champion and had a wide Gattiesque streak in their boxing makeup.

“My fans deserve the best and I give them the best,” said Gatti, who was 37 when he died under mysterious circumstances in 2009 in Brazil, where authorities concluded he had committed suicide. “I was told lots of time in the amateurs that I had more heart, guts and determination to win the tough ones. Anytime I need to bring that stuff out, it comes. I’ve heard people say I’m a throwback to the old days, to old-time fighters like [Rocky] Marciano and [Jake] LaMotta. You could beat them up, but you could never beat them down. If anyone wants to compare me to guys like that, I take it as a compliment. I think it’s great.”

Saad Muhammad was much the same way. The former WBC light heavyweight champ was 59 when he died in 2014 from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“Saad was Arturo Gatti before there was a Gatti, and he was like that against some of the best light heavyweights in the world,” former opponent Eddie Mustafa Muhammad said upon learning of his death. “People came to Saad’s fights expecting him to get beat up early, then come roaring back to stop his man. It was in the late rounds that Saad’s conditioning -- and heart -- kicked in and enabled him to prevail. He’d get nailed and stagger around the ring, then come back with a furious flurry. It happened over and over.”

Until, of course, it didn’t. Saad Muhammad was 18-13-1 in his final 32 bouts and 5-7-1 in his last 13, when he pressed on as a mere shadow of his former greatness.

“Toward the end, I started losing my power,” he said after he retired from boxing. “You can’t fight the way I did unless you got something to back it up. I couldn’t back it up any more.”

Neither could Gatti, who was beaten bloody in his last two bouts, losing inside the distance to Carlos Baldomir and Alfonso Gomez. It was a lower-weight version of the unsatisfactory conclusion to Mike Tyson’s career. The rusted “Iron Mike” fell to Danny Williams and Kevin “The Clones Colossus” McBride, neither of whom would have made it out of the third round against the prime version of the erstwhile “Baddest Man on the Planet.”

Provodnikov has now lost three of his last four outings, which would not be such a bad thing if he were still generating high-wattage electricity. However, the matchup with Molina, which had been billed as a potential “Fight of the Year” candidate, was a mild disappointment in that Molina and his crisp jab made the eventual outcome seem almost predestined. If Provodnikov has lost some of his zest for battle, it is at least possible he can search inside himself and rediscover that old drive. With that said, when boxing skills erode they’re difficult to refurbish, and Provodnikov seems a most unlikely prospect to reinvent himself as a slick-boxing technician.

If we never see the best of Provodnikov again, at least we got to see enough of him to clear some space in our memory banks for the little wrecking machine whose reckless disregard for his own safety was hot enough to melt a Siberian snowbank.

Bernard Fernandez, a five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement and was inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, as well as the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. The New Orleans-born sports writer has worked in the industry since 1969 and pens a weekly column on the Sweet Science for Sherdog.com.