Ivan Claderon: Looking Young (FULL REPORT)

Jerry Glick reporting: Once again Top Rank will bring boxing to New York’s Madison Square Garden on the eve of the Puerto Rican Day Parade. In recent years they headlined Miguel Cotto on this occasion, but this year 108 Champion Ivan Calderon will be in the main event for the first time on this exciting annual event.

The Champion talked to the New York boxing media very candidly at a Garden press conference on Wednesday, April 21st.

He may look like he’s only a teenager-he fights with the vitality of one too-but Ivan “Iron Boy” Calderon is a 35 year old WBO World Light-flyweight, 108 pound Champion about to make his sixth defense of the belt that he won back in 2007. He is seven years a champion, having won the 105 pound belt in 2003 before moving up. The unbeaten Calderon has amassed a brilliant 33-0-1 (6 KOs), record.

Come June 12th, he will be in the main event against challenger Jesus “Azul” Iribe, a tough veteran of two previous world title tries on the night before The New York City Puerto Rican Day Parade at Madison Square Garden.

Calderon knows that an opponent’s record can be deceiving. Iribe has a mediocre log consisting of seventeen wins against six losses and four draws. Iribe can punch for a little guy having stopped ten of those seventeen opponents who he beat.

Calderon has studied his opponent and will be ready. He watched him against ex-champ Brian Viloria and was impressed.

“I saw the video of him with Brian Viloria,” explained Calderon. “Brian Viloria was winning all the rounds, but in the last round Viloria got tired and he started coming up; if there was one more minute and he could have won the world championship.”

“He’s not a fighter who throws a lot,” observed the champion. “He doesn’t throw a lot of combinations. He holds too much and waits to land one or two punches.”

He is sure that his speed and southpaws stance will give him a big advantage over his foe.

“But I have to make sure I don’t run out of gas in twelve rounds.”

Looking at the youthful Calderon there is one thing that does betray his ring wars; he has a history of cutting. He may not remind folks of the British bleeder Henry Cooper, or the Bayonne Bleeder, Chuck Wepner, but Calderon has heavy scarring over his right eye and an accidental, but vicious head butt against Rodel Mayol in September of ’09, at the hairline, still hurts.

“It looks healed,” said Calderon pointing to a small raised area of skin near the hairline. “But inside it hurts a little bit. It could be healed completely, but it’s in an area that you will always get a head butt. People don’t understand that, but a head is harder than a punch. It’s going to keep on getting hit in the area that it is.”

He does not have a history of reopening old cuts, he said, but he is concerned that the one that caused the fight to be halted will be vulnerable to reopening.

“The doctor said that for it to be healed,” said Calderon. “It has to be at least a year. Hey got to get paid; if it opens again, we’ll just stitch it again.”

There is a good reason why he is so good at an advance age, “I turned pro at 27,” he explained. Late, but all those punches that would have landed had he turned professional at a more appropriate age, say at 20 are not a factor in his age as a fighter.

“I started boxing when I was 17, but I haven’t gotten a lot of punishment,” said the longest reigning current champion. “I started in Puerto Rico; I had ten (amateur) fights.”

He was born on the tropical island, but moved to the Bronx, NY at the age of four.

“I won the Golden Gloves here (NY) in 1995,” said Calderon. “And I lost in the Olympic trials in 1996.”

He had a total of 130 amateur fights and won 110, he said.

He decided at one point to stay in the amateur ranks because, he said that it was a better deal.

“They offered me $500 for a four rounder, but I believed if I had an Olympic background that I could do better deal.”

Nevertheless he attempted to turn pro a few times but didn’t until the right deal came along.

“I signed a pro fight and a hurricane came and I couldn’t fight. Then I was going to fight again, but the dude I was to fight, they got him in jail. So I went back to amateur and fought in the Pan American Games and started paying me $400 dollars a month, I said this is better than pro, so I stayed there. When I made the Olympic team they started giving me $1200 a month and I said I got no more to lose so I made my career in boxing. Top Rank came along and I signed for $10.000 and $1500 for four rounds.”

Not many people are aware that he had a illustrious career in the amateurs having beaten a younger by about four years, Miguel Cotto. He also faced another former champ Brian Viloria, and other name fighters as well.

He is now planning on moving up in weight because he is running out of opponents who he can make a good payday against.

“Against fighters with no name I can’t ask for a million dollars,” he lamented. He wants to fight Brian Viloria.

“Two Olympians, two people who fought in the amateurs,” said Calderon, adding that he is unable to get Viloria in the ring with him.

LIFE BEGINS AT THIRTY

Boxing is full of good and not so good stories. Recently a not so good one played out resulting in the two deaths. Lightweight Champion Edwin Valero confessed to murdering his wife then committed suicide in his jail cell after his arrest. Life had been difficult for him after he suffered a severe injury to his head in a motorcycle accident in 2001. Whether that had a connection to his behavior nine years later we can never know, but there is a story developing right now in boxing that may very well be as inspirational as the Valero story was tragic.

After living a checkered life in his home town of Poughkeepsie, NY, fraught with house arrest, a stint in jail, and numerous brushes with the police and school authorities, light-heavyweight Steven Badgley, now 30 years old, is about to give his passion a chance to be something more than only a dream, he is about to make his pro debut on the undercard of Calderon-Iribe in boxing’s Mecca, Madison Square Garden.

His older brother also had been in and out of trouble but finally began to make changes in his life when his joined the Marines. On one very fateful day, September 11th, 2001, Badgley decided that he too would join the service. He entered the army.

“My brother was on pretty much the same path as I was,” said Badgley. “And he joined the Marines. He passed away recently. He was 38 years old; he had six tours, and it happened between tours. He was a Master Sergeant and his liver failed. I saw him in the Marines and all of a sudden things started going good for him so I made it a goal to get in the army, get out of Poughkeepsie for a while and straighten up.”

Boxing has been a part of his life since he was a young.

“I started boxing when I was a kid,” he recalled. “There a boxing club, in Beacon and some of my distant relatives used to go there and I just wanted to be a tough guy and learn how to fight so I went to the boxing gym. I was on and off for years.”

The lure of the gym, the smells the sounds, the equipment, all served to bring him back into boxing.

He is an army armed helicopter pilot, stationed right now in Fort Drum, NY; he served in Iraq where he continued his interest in boxing and even opened a boxing gym there for his fellow soldiers.

He admits that along with his feeling of excitement at turning professional, he is a bit anxious, but very eager.

“If I didn’t go pro I would have regretted it,” said Badgley. After having a conversation with some boxing people he got an email offering him this opportunity. “How do you say no to that?”