Ernest Johnson is stepping up in class and moving up in weight. He is fighting on short notice and against a former champion. He will make his television debut tonight at the risk of being typecast as a tomato can.
“I know the deck is stacked against me,” the Chula Vista fighter said yesterday. “I know I'm being brought in to lose. I'm being brought in to make Zab (Judah) look like Superman.”
The price you pay for opportunity in boxing is that your big break is rarely an even break. When Ernest Johnson climbs into the ring tonight at Madison Square Garden, in the welterweight preliminary on the Roy Jones Jr.-Joe Calzaghe HBO pay-per-view card, he will do so as a 10-1 underdog and with the clear understanding that he is the “opponent” and not the attraction.
Less than three years removed from being the consensus champion of the welterweight division, Zab Judah retains a big enough name to be able to dictate the rules of engagement for tonight's bout.
More than six months removed from his last fight, Johnson has enough need of a payday and a stage to consent to Judah's stipulations.
Thus the Brooklyn-born Judah will be fighting in front of a New York crowd at a higher weight limit (144 pounds) than Ernest Johnson has ever fought.
With barely two weeks to prepare after on-again, off-again negotiations, Johnson will be fighting with a problem shoulder following an abbreviated training camp, his New York workouts almost comically constrained because they have been conducted in a fitness center with no punching bags.
If the deck were stacked any higher, it could double as a diving platform.
“I'd rather it be an even playing field,” Johnson said. “Hopefully after this, after getting exposure and recognition and people (knowing) what I went through, maybe I can get a fair shake next time around. I'd like to fight at my own weight.”
He is not resigned, exactly, but he is realistic. Though he owns a career record of 18-2-1, and answers to the nickname “Too Slick,” Ernest Johnson betrays none of the false bravado common to his bloody craft. The former Chula Vista High wrestler has spent much of his professional career on boxing's periphery, collecting small purses and courting obscurity. Boxrec.com ranks him No. 142 among the world's active light welterweights, stature suggestive of a one-way ticket to Palookaville.
To raise his profile at the age of 29, Johnson has recognized a need for risk-taking. His risks, he thinks, will be at least partially mitigated tonight by the difficulty of his circumstances. When you fight a former champion on his terms and on his turf, the only square deal you can depend on is the ring itself.
“In order to be the best, you have to beat the best,” said Johnson's manager, Jackie Kallen. “If a fighter wants to do something in his career, you have to knock off some really tough guys to get there.
“Some guys like to play it safe, but if you keep on fighting people at your own level, it's never going to change.”
Kallen, whose own improbable story inspired the Meg Ryan movie “Against The Ropes,” says Johnson wins “just by being there.” Should he lose with distinction – and he has yet to last 10 rounds and win – Johnson could be in line for a promotional contract with Roy Jones Jr. If he should happen to upset Judah, Johnson might move to the head of that line.
“I've got to be first and just take the fight to him,” Johnson said. “I'm fast, but I think he might be a little faster, and he's more experienced. If I sit back and try to outbox him, I'm a sitting duck. He's gonna pick me apart.”
Yet as much as promoters scheme to arrange matches for a desired result, it's difficult to stack the deck so carefully as to eliminate the lucky punch or the listless favorite. Ernest Johnson is leery of the loose talk that Judah may not be taking the fight seriously, but he won't be able to rule out that possibility until the two start trading punches.
Johnson won't forecast his own future until he has finished grading the sternest test of his career.
“If I do well, I'm going to continue,” he said. “If he blows me out of there, I need to re-evaluate. . . . One thing I do hate is that it's the first time that a national audience gets to see me and I won't be at my best physical condition.”
By his own reckoning, Johnson has not been at his physical peak since 2004, when he suffered a partial tear of his rotator cuff and the only two losses of his career.
Rather than submit to surgery at the time, he laid off for 26 months after the second of those defeats. Yet the healing process remains incomplete after prolonged physical therapy.
“I haven't really changed my style, but I'm more aggressive now,” Johnson said. “I just can't throw as many punches as I would like to. And I keep my hands down more because of my shoulder.”
Though the deck would seem stacked against him, Ernest Johnson will play the hand he's been dealt. Boxers know better than to expect equity.
Tim Sullivan: (619) 293-1033; tim.sullivan@uniontrib.com
