Boxing News, MMA, UFC, Manny Pacquiao, Mayweather
Boxing News, MMA, UFC, Manny Pacquiao, Mayweather
Hasim Rachman
It was announced early this week that the recent Hasim Rahman-James Toney heavyweight fight has been declared a no decision by the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC). Toney had been announced as the TKO winner after an accidental head butt in round three after considerable delay and discussion at the commission table.
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It was July 21 at the Montebello Police Athletic League gym, located just blocks from the city limits of East Los Angeles, where Oscar De La Hoya grew up. It was five days before Antonio Margarito would beat Miguel Cotto of Puerto Rico to a pulp on the way to an 11th-round technical knockout and another welterweight world title.
“Miguel fought a great fight, a perfect fight. Anyone else he slows down and takes out. This guy was like an express train that he couldn’t slow down and the express train ran over him. Cotto was hitting him with tremendous punches and they were having no affect at all. It’s as simple as that.”
LAS VEGAS — There were many reasons to cheer for Miguel Cotto — class, poise, intellect. You didn’t have to be Puerto Rican to admire him deeply as an athlete and prizefighter. But no matter how much you loved Cotto or the island whose fans he captivated, there was just something about Antonio Margarito. You couldn’t cheer against the guy.
You could pick against him, of course. Most of us did. We picked with our brains more than our hearts and outsmarted ourselves doing so. Live and learn.
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This Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Top Rank presents “The Battle,” the long anticipated matchup of Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito. In the opinion of many hardcore fans and experts this is the best possible welterweight bout out there, with or without Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the mix.
When Puerto Rican great Wilfredo Gomez moved up in weight to challenge Salvador Sanchez of Mexico for his featherweight world championship in 1981 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Gomez apparently took Sanchez lightly.
Last Wednesday night at the Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula, California, James Toney defeated Hasim Rahman by a TKO at the end of round three in a heavyweight bout televised by Fox’s “The Best Damn Sports Show Period.” Or did he?
Conventional wisdom promises Saturday’s fight will be a classic — a standard of welterweight wildness we use for decades to come. Two sluggers, one a Puerto Rican and the other a Mexican, about whose punches the first descriptive verb to come to mind is “pulverize.” The best fight we will have seen since Vazquez-Marquez III. The best fight we are going to see until Vazquez-Marquez IV.
Juan Manuel Marquez is one of the few today who can lose and still remain a consensus top 10 pound-for-pound fighter. He is that good.
A certain arrogance precedes every autobiography. Of the billions of lives that have happened, an autobiography asserts, mine deserves special attention. Oscar De La Hoya has fielded some accusations of arrogance in his day. But anyone who reads “American Son” with plans to dislike De La Hoya is going to be disappointed.
Tony “The Tiger” Thompson, 31-1 (19), finally gets his shot at the heavyweight title on Saturday, July 12, facing IBF/WBO/IBO champion Wladimir Klitschko, 50-3 (44). The fight will be held at the Color Line Arena in Klitschko country of Hamburg, Germany, and televised live on HBO at 4:30 p.m. ET, and 1:30 p.m. PT, with a replay at 10:00 p.m.
Mando Ramos lived la vida loca – the crazy life – during his days as a fighter. He died Sunday morning at the age of 59 at his home in San Pedro, Calif., leaving us wondering what might have been were he not a wild and crazy guy during a 10-year career that began three days after his 17th birthday and ended 17 days before his 27th.
The spirit of the mass is broken; the original excitement about losing or winning, through which danger was forgotten, is spent, and to the majority danger now appears no longer an appeal to their courage, but rather the endurance of a cruel punishment. — “On War”, Carl von Clausewitz
This Saturday night, July 5, there will be some additional holiday fireworks at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. Ricardo Torres and Kendall Holt will try to pick up where they left off last September 1 when their first fight ended, prematurely I believe, bringing on a tidal wave of controversy.
Ever since Chris Arreola beat the daylights out of Chazz Witherspoon on June 21 in Memphis, there has been a burning question in the mind of yours truly: When was the last time we saw a heavyweight stay as busy as Arreola?