Normally, I save these for just the big PPV cards or something similar, but I have nothing better to do right now, and for some reason there are still many things about this card on my mind.

Photo © Tom Gannam / AP

• 1. Spinks won the fight. Like almost all of his fights, this was one with a lot of close rounds. But Verno Phillips' gameplan was lacking anything that really was scoring points. I know judges in some cases will score for action if there's not a lot of it, and as always, the Cory Spinks main event had little. But Phillips' attempts to pick up the pace boiled down to lunging in and missing. Here and there he would hit a power shot, but Spinks appeared to be staggered just one time in the fight -- and Phillips was landing these things square, if maybe a hair off balance a lot of the time.

  Spinks, meanwhile, did his usual peppering and moving routine. He outlanded Phillips. And he wasn't AS inactive as usual; Cory actually chose to mix it up a few times at points where he normally wouldn't. I don't consider Spinks a "runner"; we've been over this numerous times, and we'll get more into it later, but people throw around "runner" like it's going out of style, which unfortunately, it isn't. I would class Spinks more as "non-combative."

• 2. All that said, do you know why Spinks was willing to take more risks than usual? It has nothing to do with being rusty, with firing Kevin Cunningham out of the blue a few weeks ago, or with a decision to give the fans more "entertainment" -- the fans, by the way, booed at various points, and at the final bell, in Spinks' hometown. No, it had everything to do with the fact that Verno Phillips was loading up on several shots, connecting on some of them, and it didn't bother Spinks. He had no fear of Phillips' power. This was a fight with two guys that don't punch hard and both have good chins.
• 3. As for the crowd in St. Louis... not good. Some reports suspect that this will be the final Spinks-headlined card at the Scottrade Center (formerly the Savvis Center) in St. Louis, which means Cory is moving even further down the chain, and that would've been true had he won as he deserved to. 8,874 were in the building, and that included thousands of papered seats, where patrons hadn't paid for their tickets because they're radio personalities or pals with Cory or Leon or Michael or Cory's kids' friends or whatever. When they saw something good, the crowd was hot. Good fight fans. But they weren't kind to Cory's bout. When your hometown turns on you, everyone has seen enough, no matter how good you are.

  If a promoter can't make coin off of you, it's tough to get fights. Throw in that he's a guy no one likes to fight because he makes you look bad, and Cory Spinks has gotten himself into a really bad situation.

• 4. Let's talk about "running." When people say Floyd Mayweather, Jr., runs, I tell them to go watch Derrick Gainer or Andre Dirrell fight, then come back with a new perspective. If anyone says Spinks runs, the main support bout last night showed you what running is. 33-year old Panamaniac Miguel Callist brought his track shoes for his bout with Devon Alexander. I'll admit, I thought we'd see some spirited action in this one. Alexander always comes to scrap, and Callist had a chance to knock off one of the sport's highly-touted youngsters, like Darrell Woods did last year to Samuel Miller, or like Miller's next loss, Brian Vera, did recently to Andy Lee.

  Instead, Callist ran, ran, and ran some more. He circled the ring God knows how many times in an effort to not fight Alexander, who thoroughly dominated the fight, helped in part thanks to Callist refusing to engage in a fight. Callist was also one of those obnoxious fighters -- like Dirrell -- who makes a grand show of running around like an idiot, with the dancing and shimmying and gesturing and face-making.

  Look, I'm all for defensive fighters and slicksters and counter-punchers. But that's not what Callist did last night, and that's not what Andre Dirrell does. I'm not asking everyone to come out there and be Arturo Gatti. I like Floyd Mayweather's style. I like Winky Wright's turtle shell defensive style. But watching a guy literally do laps around the ring makes me wonder why they're even out there. It's a nice cardio workout and bruises might really get you some tail at the truck stop if you explain your situation, but this isn't ballet. Fight, for God's sake.

• 5. I love undercard mismatch fights, and thankfully we got to see some on the webcast. Just those little six- and eight-rounders that where one guy is coming in to get some work done and the other guy is coming in to get his paycheck. My favorite of the night was between John "Action" Jackson, who came in 10-1 with 10 knockouts, and Leroy "Rootin' Tootin'" Newton, a native of Michigan City, Ind., my girlfriend's hometown and where I spent my Easter Sunday. Northwest Indiana has a fairly active boxing scene, though nothing terribly special, and it was almost alarming to watch Jackson immediately pounce on Newton and beat the crap out of him for 2:10 before the KO shot came. Even in defeat, the stylish Leroy "Rootin' Tootin'" Newton is now one of my favorite fighters.
• 6. Another fun one: Super middleweight prospect Marcus "Too Much" Johnson (yes, "Too Much" Johnson -- come on) delivered a crushing liver shot to Jose Medina to end that one in short order. It was a beautiful punch. After the fight, the awkward in-ring interviewer foolishly asked the incredibly green but promising Johnson if he was ready for a top ten contender. Even Don King seemed to think that was moronic.
• 7. I'm happy for Verno Phillips and all, but if I said I was looking forward to his first defense -- which I fear will be a rematch with Spinks -- I'd be lying.
• 8. Seriously, is there a more shallow division past the strawweights than the junior middleweights? Vernon Forrest is now the No. 1 guy in the pack without much in the way of questions.
• 9. King and Co. should be commended for the card, even though it wasn't one anyone was particularly looking forward to. They did a great job, the quality of the stream was excellent, the presentation was professional and top-notch all around (outside of Bob Sheridan's ridiculous and obvious bias toward Spinks), and you can't ask for much more than that out of a free broadcast. Kudos, Don.
• 10. To be honest, though, I could've cleaned my kitchen or something instead. King says we'll get more of these webcasts. Let's hope he puts on better fights next time, but putting on good, competitive fights is not exactly Don's forte anymore.

I said it once, I'll say it again. I never wanted to be put into this position, but...

Cory Spinks got robbed tonight, losing a split decision to 38-year old Verno Phillipson scores of 116-112, 115-113 and 113-115.

I had Spinks winning the fight, 116-112. It was a lot closer than veteran play-by-play man Bob Sheridan made it out to be, as Sheridan gave Verno only one or two rounds.

The difference appears to have been Phillips' random power shots, which landed here and there. While Spinks is no puncher, he did nothing different than he usually does. He boxed from a distance, landed punches when he could, and did his thing. It's never enjoyable, but it is what it is. By my view, he beat Verno Phillips tonight. Not a pleasant fight to watch, really. It was your run of the mill Spinks performance.

But I thought Spinks clearly won the fight. Phillips was effective only in spurts, and despite his claims that Spinks was hurt four or five times in the fight, Spinks never actually looked hurt except for one time in the ninth, and even then he quickly recovered.

He did what he always did. Tonight, despite being in his hometown, judges didn't think that was good enough. What can you do? Just hope there's no rematch.

In the main undercard bout, Devon Alexander destroyed Miguel Callist to win on unanimous decision, with scores of 120-105, 120-106, and 120-106. I scored it 120-105 for Alexander, who only knocked the dreadful Callist down one time, in the 12th round, but had dominated so thoroughly that I gave him a 10-7 round there and a 10-8 round in the seventh. Alexander looks like the real deal. He's not a big puncher, but he's aggressive and comes to fight, which makes him an odd protege for Cory Spinks.

The smaller undercard fights that the live webcast picked up were fun little filler bouts, my favorite of which was John "Action" Jackson knocking out Leroy "Rootin' Tootin'" Newton at 2:10 of the first round.

Don King said he'd like to do more webcasts in the future, and I hope he does. It's a great idea, the quality was outstanding, and overall the night went quite well despite one uncompetitive bore of a fight and one competitive bore of a fight.

Congratulations to Verno Phillips on unseating Spinks as the IBF junior middleweight champion. I don't think he won at all, but he's a good guy, and if any bad decision was going to happen, I'm fine with it being Verno over Spinks.

MAIN EVENT
For IBF Junior Middleweight Title
CORY SPINKS
IBF Champion
Ring Magazine No. 1 Ranked Junior Middleweight
(36-4, 11 KO, St. Louis, MO)
versus
VERNO PHILLIPS
Ring Magazine No. 9 Ranked Junior Middleweight
(41-10-1, 21 KO, Denver, CO, by way of Belize City, Belize)

Junior Welterweights
DEVON ALEXANDER
(14-0, 8 KO, St. Louis, MO)
versus
MIGUEL CALLIST
(24-6-1, 17 KO, Colon, Panama)

It's a showcase live on DonKingNetwork.TV tonight for two St. Louis southpaws at the Scottrade Center.

I'm going to TRY to watch this -- for one thing, it starts at 8PM ET, and I might not be home quite in time to catch all of the opening bout. Plus, you never know how well webcasts are going to work.

I want to see these fights, particularly the on-paper wretched Spinks-Phillips affair, because as I said before, to appreciate the great fights, you gotta see the bad ones. Also I'd just kind of like to support the idea of more cards live online. Don King has a great idea with this. Spinks is hard to sell to any TV network because of his style, but he's a legitimately good fighter and a major titleholder. Getting him the biggest possible audience is good work by King.

The horribly written press release was something else, though, as it described Chop-Chop Corley as on the downside of his career, while 33-year old Miguel Callist is apparently "on the rise." Callist can punch, but he's been knocked out in all six of his losses. It's good to see Alexander fighting again so quickly after his win over Corley in January, though.