Stephen Ormond always wanted to be a world champion – from the age of six when he became entranced by the magic of the sport – but he craved something simpler and easier to understand.
As the Dubliner put it with direct simplicity in a 2013 documentary on his life, Remember My Name: “Respect. From the boxing world. To be known as a great fighter. I used to think it was the belts, to be classed as a legitimate world champion. Obviously. Definite. Number one. But respect. People would say: ‘He was good for it.’ And people would see me. [He’s] put the work in the gym, and show it in the ring. And someone would say to me kid at school: ‘Your father’s a great boxer.’ It’s pride and respect.’”
In Belfast 28 on Saturday night there was no shortage of pride but there was precious little respect for Ormond’s boxing skills. In what has been widely derided as another dreadful call by the ringside judges, Ormond lost for the fifth time in 29 bouts since turning professional nine years ago.
Two of the three scores went in favour of his younger, unbeaten Belfast opponent, Paul Hyland, who now owns a trinket called the IBF East/West Europe lightweight title. It means little in itself but could be parlayed into something bigger. Hyland, who knocked the 34-year-old Ormond down in the third round but had to repel a sustained fightback for the rest of the evening, was gracious enough to say later, “I knew it was close going into the last round.”
However, the greater pain is written in the official scores: Valerie Dorsett, of North Carolina, saw it for Hyland, 117-110; her compatriot, Pasquale Procopio, gave it to Ormond by a reasonable 115-113; and the often controversial British official, Howard Foster, swayed it in the local’s favour, 114-113.
That was the crushing blow. Fighters should not expect home advantage but they do reckon on a fair shake. Foster’s was not an outrageous call. However, while he is respected among his peers, he has been involved in a few of these decisions over the years. It is almost inevitable when a system as unruly as that employed to determine a points winner remains in place.
What was more worrying was the seven-point margin Dorsett conjured up. Even allowing for the knockdown, it is ludicrous.
She was one of the two judges who so incensed Amir Khan by awarding his wild and weird “Cat In The Hat” fight to Lamont Peterson when they fought in the American’s home city, Washington, in 2011.
Khan lost his WBA and IBF world lightweight belts and a lot of career momentum. Quite apart from the ringside shenanigans of the mysterious IBF “official”, Mustafa Ameen, lurking close to the judges during the fight, Peterson later tested positive for testosterone and was banned for a derisory 12 months.
Nothing happened to Ameen. Peterson – a likeable street kid who slept rough in the streets of the capital with his brother when young – promised Khan a rematch but instead resumed his career elsewhere. On 13 January he will challenge Kell Brook’s recent conqueror, Errol Spence Jr, for his IBF welterweight title. Khan talks still of a comeback after a shoulder operation, having been knocked out in Las Vegas last year by Saul Alvarez.
That is how boxing works. It is a merry-go-round of injustice and hard knocks. Stephen Ormond, who calls himself The Rock, does not need reminding of that. Valerie Dorsett does, though.
Hollywood and Tyson’s pal
The name James Toback rang a few bells when he was named at the weekend as another film industry sex pest – allegations he denies, claiming diabetes has drained him of the requisite energy for the past 22 years. He was mentioned as the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of the 1991 mobster film, Bugsy, as well as the director of The Private Life of a Modern Woman, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last month.
There were few mentions, however, of another of his celebrated works, the eponymous documentary of his long-time friend, Mike Tyson. The fighter, whose sexual predatory landed him in prison for rape, spoke with disarming candour for Toback.
It revealed much about subject and creator, an excellent film honeyed by Toback’s silky skills to the point where Tyson is seen reciting Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad Of Reading Gaol, with the sun setting into the calm sea beyond. If only his life were so peaceful.
When I spoke to Toback in London before the film’s British release in 2009 there was no hint that he would be accused of sharing Tyson’s hunting instincts. He was an unlikely confederate of Tyson’s, the Brooklyn-raised wild child who terrorised his sport and plenty of innocents beyond the ropes, as well. But they shared a passion for boxing – and danger.
Toback grew up in the luxurious Majestic Hotel in Manhattan, the son of a stockbroker and political activist, and counted among his neighbours a mix of bohemian liberals, political heavyweights and gangsters. Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano hung out there, as did Bobby Kennedy, Blinky Palermo, Frankie Carbo’s pal, Sonny Liston and Sammy Davis Jr.
Toback went to Harvard, where he boxed briefly and badly as a welterweight, learned to write at Colombia and drifted, inevitably, towards Hollywood.
The New York Times said of Toback, “He is capable of dropping names that leave a dent in the floor.” His friend, Warren Beatty, said: “Let me put it this way: Jimmy is not boring.”
The way Toback told it that day in 2009, he moved comfortably in celebrity circles.
In his memoir of the footballer and film star, Jim Brown, with whom the young writer hung out in a Hollywood apartment, Toback wrote: “Jim is making his rounds … Jane Fonda is there, and Sharon Tate … I drift into an old friend, a delicate girl of angled, Nordic beauty … and embark with her on an orgy … Jim joins.”
And now, after chronicling the human frailties of the most vulnerable heavyweight of them all, Toback is in a fight of his own – a tough one, it seems.