Paul Spadafora and Joe Mesi: Two Cities and a 'Baby' Indeed

By Steve Trellert

28.04 - Lightweight Champion Paul Spadafora and Heavyweight Joe Mesi currently occupy an enviable position lacking amongst the vast majority of today's fighters. Both have become local heroes in their respective communities of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York. This has garnered both fighters substantial market power to such an extent that even against marginal opposition, their hometown supporters come out in droves. Of course this situation provides both benefits and drawbacks. A clear benefit is a relatively full cash register as the support tends to be generally inelastic in demand, not in terms of price, but in terms of the quality of opposition. The major drawback tends to be something largely exclusive to these situations, where a kind of conflict of interest arises due to an inevitable dichotomy between the "cash cow" and the fighter's career progression.

Traditionally, fighters tend to get paid more as their level of career success increases. The bigger the victory, the greater the potential of an even larger payday in the future. To increase ones revenues, fighters generally must go on to fight stronger opposition that naturally entails the need to take a greater degree of risk of defeat. Like a financial investment, the greater the degree of risk, the greater the potential reward. In its most pure and idealistic form this is exactly how financial compensation within the sport of boxing should work. Now some may argue this is far from ideal, as fighters should be compensated for other factors such as the level of excitement they create both in and out of the ring. This rings true and in the cases of fighters such as Arturro Gatti and Mickey Ward it is also well deserved. So ideally fighters should be compensated for their ring accomplishments and if they provide a high level of entertainment. If this is true then boxing already has naturally built in incentives for fighters that directs them into choosing one (or both if possible) of these two paths, and this in turn benefits the boxing public as the fights they want to see come to fruition. But what of the two fighters that are the focus of this article? Clearly neither fighter is being paid primarily for their entertainment value in terms of the excitement they create in the ring, Gatti and Ward they are not.

For Paul Spadafora and Joe Mesi, the only real remaining incentive is career success and that has been distorted. Since both are already attaining substantial attendance figures, and their corresponding gate receipts dollars, there is little incentive for each fighter to risk defeat and the accompanying potential to burst their revenue bubbles. In fact it could be financial suicide as both fighters in some sense have already laid the golden egg, sure it is not a platinum egg like Oscar De La Hoya or Mike Tyson, but nobody is suggesting either of these fighters has that potential, and golden would be more than enough success for most. So is permanent ossification in store? The answer here is no, as the chickens always come home to roost. Inevitably the general public becomes wise to a fighter's procrastination and demand a more challenging opponent than Joe Blough. Of course inevitable can mean a long period of time before myth fades before reality.

The standard, and perhaps most financially wise approach for these fighters is to drag out and stall the advent of risk for as long as humanly possible until it becomes clear their fans have caught on to the game. This largely includes creating a myth of progression by taking on fighters with enhanced names that are already far past their peak and act as if these opponents are still in their prime. What separates Paul Spadafora and Joe Mesi is the fact that the former had every opportunity to continue to take advantage of his situation and did not, while the latter continues to exploit it to this day.

In terms of Paul Spadafora's career there is no myth of progression, but actuality. Many a boxing pundit regarded Angel Manfredy a legitimate threat and he was overcome. Now "Spaddy" faces an even more imposing opponent in the tough and rugged Leonard Dorin who currently holds a top five ranking according to Ring Magazine. It is true that Paul Spadafora may have been overprotected in the past, but nothing like 'Baby' Joe Mesi who retains that status and yet is two years older than Spadafora.

Unlike Spadafora, Joe Mesi's career resides within the "myth of progression". Now one must acknowledge that this is not completely true as he has graduated beyond the tomato can stage of victories to a higher level, but considering he is 25-0 and at age 29 just entering his prime years, his resume has been underwhelming to say the least. His resume reeks of the recent Mike Tyson agenda, sans the Lewis fight, of choosing the path of least resistance as his primary accolades are against fighters who are shadows of the shadow of their former self. His win over Bert Cooper was regarded as a major accomplishment but Bert was clearly spent with his loss column quickly catching up to his win column. David Izon seemed to qualify as an opponent as soon as HBO commentator Larry Merchant declared him "a shot fighter" in his previous fight. Leaving no doubt was the fact that David lost to another universally recognized spent force in Al "Ice" Cole soon after his predictably egregious performance against Mesi. Those in the know already knew Mesi's victory was barely above hollow. 'Baby Joe's' best victory came against semi-journeyman Talmadge Griffis who had likely won the Buffalo Sweepstakes by previously losing to Taurus "who" Sykes. Clearly the Mesi camp chooses fighters on weakness rather than strength and yet he has not been held to account for it and no homebound pressure has come to bear on him. Nevertheless somehow Joe Mesi is being regarded by some members of the press to be a 'top contender' even though he has never even arguably defeated a top-forty heavyweight to date. What we are witnessing here is a fighter maximizing his financial gain for the least possible risk. Is it intelligent? Most certainly, Is it rational? Yes. Is it right? No.

First of all Joe is shortchanging himself by not maximizing his potential. Each human being has to have pride in what he does and put forth the best effort he possibly can and clearly Joe is not doing this as his opposition list demonstrates. Is his management responsible? Perhaps, but fundamentally they are his employees and he must take responsibility. Secondly he is risking alienating his fan base, as inevitably they will catch on to the charade and stay home realizing that 'Baby Joe' is not the 'Real Deal'. Additionally, Joe's cautious route entails a lack of faith in his own fans in which he is implicitly suggesting the City of Buffalo would flee like rats off of a sinking ship and not support him if he lost a fight. Is he suggesting the people of Buffalo lack character or devotion and are simply 'fair weather friends'? If so, that would be insulting.

Although Paul Spadafora and Joe Mesi are fortunate to share a similar type of support, their reaction towards it of late has been quite a contrast. Paul Spadafora, despite being two years younger, has risen into the top five of his weight class and is taking on serious threats. Joe Mesi is choosing his opponents through their weaknesses and is implicitly refusing to advance his career despite the fact that he is entering his prime years as a fighter. Up to now he has taken little heat for this charade but now is the time for the people of Buffalo to ask more of their local boy than the path of least resistance. It is time for Joe Mesi to step up and give us more than a career of smoke and mirrors. If he fails to do so before the people of Buffalo catch on, it may be too late to eliminate the impending label of being a fraud.

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