Boxer Tavoris Cloud mom Passes out in the Boxing ring - 02-18-2012

After Boxer Tavoris Cloud defeats Gabriel Campillo with a controversial split decision his mom passed out in the ring.

It's not that the fight was totally one-sided for Campillo. Those two knockdowns in the 1st put Campillo in a big hole. But he recovered in the 2nd and won almost all the rest of the rounds, one of the bigger turnarounds you'll see in a boxing match. I gave Cloud three more of them -- the 4th, 6th and 12th -- but my scorecard of 114-112 for Campillo was among the more generous I could find. The fact is, even in rounds where Cloud landed some big punches, Campillo dominated him.

And he didn't just dominate him with pretty, soft counterpunches in volume that far surpassed Cloud's fewer, heavier shots. No, Campillo put an ass-whooping on Cloud. Cloud was bleeding out of his mouth and cuts around the eyes. Campillo was landing mean combinations that did serious damage. What's more, it was accompanied by as nifty a boxing exhibition as you'll see in forever. Cloud was completely baffled. The slow-handed and slow-footed Cloud isn't a sophisticated boxer himself, so the difference in skill and speed was even more pronounced.

Campillo can't catch a break -- he deserved that decision win over Beibut Shumenov in their rematch a couple years ago, one of the worst robberies of 2010. This one was just as bad, if not worse. Campillo did something remarkable Saturday. The official record will say he did not.

This is no knock on Cloud, mind you. A fighter like Campillo was always going to stand a chance of doing something like this to Cloud, outboxing and outquicking him thoroughly. Cloud never stopped coming, and his power and determination are going to make him a threat to even quicker and more skilled fighters, plus his style will always supply action.

And yeah, Campillo took the 12th round off when he shouldn't have. But even if he'd won it -- without seeing the 114-112 card for Cloud that was at least in the ballpark -- the best he could've done was a draw.

The state of Texas is on a multi-weak streak of actions that turn the stomach. First there was the drug testing debacle for the Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. fight. Friday on ESPN2, we heard about a Texas rule that allows a boxer to weigh 15 pounds more than he should, and even though Shawn Estrada exceeded even THAT rule and weighed 196 pounds for a super middleweight fight, the bout was allowed to go forward. And while boxing robberies happen in every state and every country, they rarely are as pronounced as the kind they manufacture in the Lone State State.

In the sports world, nothing can compete with boxing's highs. But then, nothing can compete with its lows, either.