By almost any objective standard, Joe Mesi did not, repeat not, lose his first professional fight Saturday night at Madison Square Garden.
But boy, he sure looked that way afterwards.
His left eye seemingly swelling with each passing moment and every right hand from Monte Barrett, Mesi survived the first knockdown of his pro career to emerge with his closest win to date.
But a win it was, keeping the Tonawanda native unbeaten and headed toward a shot at a heavyweight title belt. In earning his 28th pro victory, Mesi answered some questions, while raising others and leaving a few for a later date.
The most important query and response came 15 seconds into the seventh round, when Mesi, at that point pitching a shutout and seemingly getting stronger, walked into a perfectly placed counter-left hook from Barrett.
Splat.
For the first time as a professional, Mesi had to look up from the canvas at a foe who had put him there not with a push or a trip, but a solid, powerful punch.
There was never any doubt about Mesi getting up. If anything, he rose too quickly without taking an extra second or two to collect himself. What he did once back on his feet was his biggest test.
Instead of taking one of the three routes favored by most hurt fighters -- running away, flailing aimlessly or holding on for dear life -- Mesi lasted through the seventh by mixing movement, spurts of aggression and the occasional well-timed clinch.
In other words, he'd handled it like a fighter who'd been there before, even though he never had. He'd come closest in the opening round of his bout against Busty Bert Cooper at the enormous concrete edifice formerly known as the Niagara Falls Convention and Civic Center, when he overcame a staggering left hook to regain control within 10 seconds.
Mesi never came particularly close to regaining the upper hand on Saturday until the final round. Then again, he didn't need to, thanks to his thorough dominance of the first six frames.
Despite scoring knockouts that lasted barely half a round each in his last two fights, both before huge partisan mobs at HSBC Arena, Mesi avoided the trap of trying too hard for an early knockdown.
Instead, he outhustled and outpunched Barrett in each of the first six rounds. While his foe almost exclusively went headhunting, Mesi steadily pounded away at Barrett's body, as well. Mesi fought a smart fight, taking the openings his opponent presented, as well as creating his own opportunities.
The biggest came in the fifth, when Mesi anticipated a jab and launched a vicious right that landed first, and flush on Barrett's jaw.
Despite absorbing the devastating shot, Barrett showed that he also knew how to handle himself with a cloudy head and unsteady legs.
He switched from an orthodox stance to a southpaw approach, forcing Mesi to adjust both the range on his punches and his own defenses. By simply putting his right foot forward, Barrett altered the chemistry not only of the round, but the fight. While Mesi dominated the rest of the fifth, Barrett's adjustment slowed his charge enough to ensure there would be a sixth.
After Mesi won that round, Barrett landed the fight-turning hook that came a couple rounds too late.
Despite the post-fight aesthetics of Mesi's eye, he earned a clear, if not overwhelming, victory. He showed he could recover when hurt and adjust to a different style in order to preserve a win, earning praise for his adaptability from two-time world champion George Foreman during the HBO broadcast.
A fighter's persona can be as important to his earning potential as his punches, and Mesi scored there, as well. He and his father and manager, Jack, were featured in a warm-and-fuzzy pre-fight segment that included a spectacular shot of the two at Prospect Point with a rainbow in the background.
After the fight, he spoke honestly and insightfully about the decision, saying that being extended and hurt would help him in the future.
The two judges who scored the fight for Mesi did so by counts of 95-93 and 94-93, while the least experienced of the trio scored it a 94-94 draw. The Niagara Falls Reporter favored Mesi 96-93. The fight -- one of the better heavyweight bouts of recent years, with or without a title at stake -- left plenty of points to ponder while the Mesis plot their next move.
A valid question, since Barrett is far from a knockout artist, stopping only 16 of his 30 previous opponents. That said, he's known for his durability and for coming on strong in the later rounds, which isn't a trait shared by most big punchers.
So while a slugger may have had more firepower to exploit the holes in Mesi's defenses in the last few rounds, he may not have endured the early onslaught to get into the seventh and beyond.
Watching Klitschko destroy Kirk Johnson in the main event, it's hard to imagine any heavyweight standing up to the Ukrainian native who looks, and sounds, like a mutated Dominik Hasek.
But appearances can be deceiving. Mesi, Barrett and just about any other heavyweight in the Top 30 would have put up more of a fight than Kirk Johnson. The native Nova Scotian looked like he spent more time having his hair braided than training for the fight, crashing to the Garden's historic canvas twice in less than two rounds.
Given the vast differences in height and reach, Mesi would have to fight a totally different bout to survive, much less thrive, against Klitschko, his brother Wladimir or any of the other "super-heavyweights."
In matches like those, Mesi would have to get inside, put his head on his taller foe's chest and chop away at the body, hoping to wear the bigger man down. The key would be negating power punches by staying inside their range, like a pitcher jamming a hitter in baseball.
It wasn't another spectacular knockout, but the fight showcased Mesi for nearly an hour in front of most of the boxing world. That certainly can't hurt.
For all the reasons mentioned above, the bout also showed that he's more than a product of hype knocking over a series of tomato cans, while leaving enough doubts to make his fight intriguing, and therefore highly marketable, whoever the opponent might be.
With the belts of several organizations in limbo and the real champion, Lennox Lewis, pondering his future, the heavyweight hierarchy remains in wild flux.
It doesn't figure to get much more stable next Saturday, when former WBA titlist John Ruiz fights Hasim Rahman for something called the WBA Interim Championship.
That belt, even more worthless than most of the hardware created by boxing's sanctioning bodies, sprang from Roy Jones Jr.'s indecision about defending the real WBA title.
In any event, Mesi is unlikely to get a shot at the winner of that fight or any other belt until next summer.
He figures to fight at least once in the meantime, possibly in early spring.
Given his escalation in the rankings -- he entered Saturday night rated fourth by the WBC and No. 9 by the WBA -- that fight will be more about keeping busy and earning a paycheck than making his bones.
But first, he should really have somebody look at that eye.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 9 2003 |