Should Lacy Retire?

Photo © Wray Edwards – By Jim Dower: After watching Jeff Lacy (25-2, 17 KOs) battle hard to scrape out a 10-round majority decision last night against Otis Griffin, I think it’s high time that Lacy consider retirement as an option. Lacy looked flat horrible last night, fighting mostly with one good arm, getting hit a lot by Griffin, and clinching for all he was worth. Lacy looked like a fighter in his 40s rather than his early 30s by the way he was fighting out there against Griffin, a B-class opponent at best.

Lacy fought decent in the first couple of rounds, landing his right hands – his main weapon after having had shoulder surgery in 2006 on his left rotator cuff – but he did little after that. Lacy effectively made Griffin, who would have no doubt been wiped out in a few rounds by someone like Lucian Bute or Mikkel Kessler, look like a super star.

Griffin took the fight to Lacy after the first several rounds and dominated Lacy up until the final two rounds of the fight. Lacy came back a little, landing the harder shots but still getting pasted by Griffin at every turn and looking bad. In the end, Lacy got the majority decision, but it really could have easily had gone to Griffin.

Now, some people would say why should Lacy retire at this point in his 8-year pro career if he’s still winning most of his fights? The answer is easy. Lacy is winning because most of his fights in the past three years have come against less than top notch opposition.

Although Vitali Tsypko and Peter Manfredo Jr. are ranked in the top 15 in the super middleweight division, they’re clearly not in the class of Kessler, Andre Dirrell, Bute, Andre Ward, Carl Froch or Jermain Taylor. And those are the fighters that Lacy should be fighting – and beating – if he’s serious about wanting to continue with his boxing career.

I don’t know about you, but I think Lacy would be trounced even worse than he was by Taylor if he were to step in the ring with Bute, Dirrell, Ward, or Froch.

Some people point to Lacy’s 2006 defeat at the hands of Joe Calzaghe as being his downfall from the sport, and that it took away his confidence. I partly agree with this, because it is the beginning of Lacy’s troubles in the ring. However, an even bigger problem with Lacy I think is his shoulder injury that he suffered against Tyspko in 2006.

The injury was a full tear of Lacy’s left rotator cuff, an injury which pretty much shut down Lacy’s biggest weapon, his left hook. Before the injury, Lacy had deadly knockout power with his left hook and was able to dominate with that weapon alone.

Since the surgery to correct the problem, Lacy’s power hasn’t returned to his left shoulder area. There’s hope that his shoulder will someday regain the strength that it once had, but now after two years the shoulder still isn’t what it once was and I’m frankly doubtful that it ever will.

When baseball pitchers suffer this type of injury, more often than not it ends their career, because they’re never able to regain the strength and range of motion to throw like they previously did before the injury.

In some case like with baseball pitcher Tommy John, they’re able to comeback from the injury. But, they have to change their entire style of pitching after the injury. Before the injury, John was a strikeout pitcher who used his fastball to get batters out, but after suffering the rotator cuff injury, John was forced to adapt and become a junk ball pitcher because he never was able to regain the full strength in his shoulder.

Unfortunately for Lacy, he doesn’t have particularly fast hands or extraordinary boxing skills to fall back on and use in place of his once lethal left hook. He’s got a good right hand, but it was never close to being the same kind of weapon that his left hook was.

I suppose Lacy can stick around another couple of years and see if his left shoulder comes around, but I’m starting to think it probably won’t. In the meantime, if he’s going to be fighting at the level that he has in the past three years since suffering the injury, Lacy needs to consider retiring from boxing. He’s probably hoping stick around and get a title shot or two, but I see nothing good coming of that when and if it happens.

He hasn’t been knocked out yet, but once he takes on a fighter like Kessler or Bute, I don’t that he’s good enough to take the kind of punishment that they would dish out to him. Minus a knockout loss, Lacy would likely take a beating against either of them even worse than the one he took against Calzaghe. And that’s not a good thing for Lacy.