Big fight, no bright lights

The setting for Winky Wright's Saturday night fight doesn't compare to Vegas, but it's just as important.

By JOHN C. COTEY
Published December 9, 2005

UNCASVILLE, Conn. - Winky Wright sat on folding chair Thursday in the visiting locker room of the Mohegan Sun Arena, home of the WNBA's Connecticut Sun.

Not a single arena employee seemed to know there was a boxing news conference going on. Not a single fan showed up. Two media members were in attendance, one to take pictures.

In 10 minutes, it was over.

Welcome to Uncasville, the site of Saturday's middleweight scrap between Wright and Sam Soliman, which will be shown around 11:15 tonight on HBO.

For Wright, Thursday provided him a surreal moment, not all that unfamiliar for a guy who traveled a long and lonely road to get here, but certainly one he thought he had left behind seven months ago, when he dominated Felix Trinidad in Las Vegas in the biggest pay-per-view event of the year.

"When you do Vegas, and then you come to this, it's just two different stages," Wright said, chuckling at the contrast. "We used to do this. We had to do this before we got to Vegas and I guess we have to do it again."

Comparing Saturday night with Wright's last fight is like comparing Broadway to a school play. There are no bright lights, no big city, there will be no procession of famous people looking for their seats.

Instead of neon, you get nature.

The road into the Mohegan Sun Casino is lined with rows of pewter-colored trees that long ago shed their leaves for the winter. The rolling hills have a light coat of snow, with more to come before fight time.

Except for one disconcerting road sign - DO NOT STOP; CORRECTIONAL FACILITY AREA - it's a beautiful and relaxing countryside, making the casino hotel's soaring ice blue towers look out of place, as if they had just dropped in from the sky.

Inside there are no televisions blaring pre-fight hype, no big signs with Wright's face on it, and no buzz in the casino, like there was in Vegas. For Wright, who will pick up another million dollar payday for his efforts, it's a million miles away from the media tour, Reebok commercials and magazine spreads that Vegas provided.

And yet, there is no mistaking this will be the biggest fight of his career, not so much for what he could gain with a victory but what he will lose without one.

"To me, this is as big a fight in a lot of ways as Trinidad," promoter Gary Shaw said. "Because if he shows who Winky Wright is and shows the press that what they are writing is right, that he is the single best middleweight in the whole world ... then I believe Jermain Taylor is going to be forced to fight him. He's got a lot at stake here. Losing is not an option."

Wright is in Uncasville because the boxing landscape in the middleweight division has unkindly shifted since his victory in May.

Trinidad retired rather than challenging Wright again. Oscar De La Hoya decided to take the rest of the year off. And in July, Taylor beat Bernard Hopkins. Wright hoped to take on the winner, but the fight was so close a rematch was necessary.

That took the division's biggest names out of the picture, and left Wright to try to make a deal with 140-pounder Floyd Mayweather. When that failed, Shaw was left scrambling.

Since Wright was already the mandatory challenger to the Taylor-Hopkins winner last week in the WBC and WBA, his camp settled on trying for the No. 1 spot in the IBF to leave the champion no options.

Enter Soliman, who is 31-7 with 18 consecutive wins and a style his manager Stuart Duncan says will pose a problem for Wright. The Soliman camp is thrilled that Wright may face a letdown.

"Winky is very susceptible to being taken out of his game," Duncan said. "He's never seen anyone like Sam. The only thing close was J.C. Candelo (whom Wright beat easily in 2003). As for the Trinidad fight, Trinidad would cringe if he went back and looked at the video of that fight because he was a shadow of his former self."

Wright's career has been filled with plateaus, but it has taught him patience. His biggest fights always seem to prime him for the "next big fight" that doesn't immediately come. When he fought Fernando Vargas, he made a name for himself but had to wait four years for the Shane Mosely fight. He expected to follow Trinidad with his biggest payday, but that will have to wait too.

But unlike any other sport, there are no meaningless exhibition games or bye weeks in boxing. When you reach Wright's level, it is an unforgiving sport in which every fight is like a playoff game: win and you move forward, lose and ... well, Wright says perish the thought.

"That's what boxing is; one fight can change everything for me," Wright said. "This fight, though it's hard to get motivated, I got motivated. I came to fight. For me there ain't nothing bigger and better than Saturday night."

[Last modified December 9, 2005, 23:33:20]