By Don Caputo

Jermain Taylor, Undisputed Middleweight Champion – With the unfortunate passing of Leavander Johnson, boxing has lost not only a world champion, but it lost a world class man. After I won my title in July, I came to New York to meet the media and I also had a parade back home in Arkansas. But there was just one thing missing, and it was my IBF championship belt, which was not going to be delivered in time for these events. Leavander graciously lent me his IBF belt, the belt he fought for so long and so hard to win, and he did so without a second thought. That was the type of man he was, the type that would give you the shirt off his back if you asked him for it. I’m going to miss Leavander, and he and his family will always be in my prayers. Rest in peace, Champ.

 

Boxing, the once noble art, is so sheathed in disease it has become almost hard to look at without feeling as though you’ve just scoffed down a three week old, slightly blackish looking slice of pizza. If that sounds a touch extravagant, it is probably because the repugnant taste left by the unnecessary and entirely avoidable death of one of the sports true warriors has not yet left my mouth.

 

Defending IBF Lightweight titleholder, Leavander Johnson, deserved better. A man of uncompromising bravery and breathtaking courage, there is no question in my mind that he should have been saved from himself long before this tragedy was allowed to befall.

 

In a commendable campaign to expose and perhaps one day emancipate the sport from the cancerous clutches of the various sanctioning bodies that control it, no-nonsense boxing writers Pedro Fernandez and Cliff Rold at RingTalk have spoken up vehemently against the International Boxing Federation for the role they played in Johnson’s death.

 

Its President, Marian Muhammad, may not have been the physical force responsible for the boxers fatal injuries say Fernandez and Rold, but nonetheless, his blood is still on her conscience.

 

You see, for all his heart and desire, Johnson was a fighter who had worn out his last legs years ago. In November 2003, some of us watched with one eye closed as journeyman Javier Jauregui gave the once highly touted prospect a frightful hammering over eleven, brutally one-sided rounds. His gritty refusal to capitulate, admirable though it was, couldn’t disguise what was all too obvious – he tank was running on empty.

 

If he had that little left back in 2003, then it would surely strike the average person as a minor miracle that neigh two years later he would be defending a newly acquired IBF title against a genuine world class operator like Jesus Chavez. Dig deeper though, and you’ll see that Johnson claimed the supposedly prestigious trinket by beating an obscure, and by all accounts exceptionally limited, European fighter named Stefan Zoff. Sound like anything resembling a legitimate world title fight to you?

 

Yeah…me neither.

 

The IBF somehow deemed that Johnson (who hadn’t beaten anyone worth mentioning since being so utterly shell shacked in the aforementioned Javier Jauregui bout) and the then 43-9 Zoff were the top two contenders in the Lightweight division, and swiftly matched them to duke it out for the title vacated by Julio Diaz. Apparently, it didn’t matter to them that neither was an elite level fighter.

 

Johnson won, of course, and he found himself sitting at the head table in one of the hottest divisions in boxing. A place he shouldn’t have been.

 

At a stage in his career when it was debatable whether or not he should have even been competing at all, he was defending a world championship practically offered to him on a platter against someone he categorically had no business sharing a ring with. The bottom line is, due to the IBF’s horribly flawed ranking system, Leavander Johnson was a train wreck waiting to happen.

 

It’s time we stopped looking the other way, and started to ask some frank questions.