By Bart Barry-

Saturday in a junior welterweight title-unification
match broadcast by the aficionado’s network, DAZN, California’s Jose Ramirez stopped
Texan Maurice Hooker midway through a wonderfully compelling fight that ended with
extraordinary abruptness.  Eighteen-and-a-half
minutes in, the men looked equally formidable. 
Eighteen seconds later, Hooker lay collapsed on the whiteropes, a blueshirt
his only protection from Ramirez’s ferocity.

Both men distinguished themselves by daring to
ratify their once-vacant titles. 
Promoters and their matchmakers are too good to be believed, and so the
winner of a vacant title is not credible till he’s fought a fellow titlist.  We now know Ramirez is the real thing.  And we know Hooker is the real thing, too,
though slightly less of that thing than Ramirez.

If neither man was allowed comfort before the
other, a minutely tally’d’ve found Ramirez acting as discomfitter, not
Hooker.  There was the promise of Hooker’s
substantial rightcross to keep Ramirez sober at every charge, a source of
instant anxiety for Ramirez to be sure, but it was a tool Ramirez solved and
dulled in the fight’s opening quarter.  Ramirez
did this with timing and footwork, somethings he doubtlessly learned before joining
trainer Robert Garcia’s stable.

If you have an amateur pedigree – which means
you’ve involuntarily boxed through your youth against every style and ethnicity
– before you pilgrim to Oxnard, Garcia takes your skillful foundation, puts it
in smaller gloves and commands you attack. 
If you haven’t a skillful foundation, Garcia nevertheless puts you in
smaller gloves and commands you attack. 
As we saw in his younger brother’s spring whitewashing contra Errol
Spence, Coach Robert carries no plans B to ringside in his spitbucket; any exam
question whose answer is not “more aggression” gets left blank for later – a generation
later.

Fortunately for Fresno aficionados Jose Ramirez,
an Olympian, brought skills galore to Oxnard when he arrived a year ago.  That meant Garcia’s plan A, more aggression,
was exactly matched to Saturday’s moment. 
It wasn’t necessarily that an Olympian like Ramirez couldn’t stay
outside and win a boxing match with Hooker, that was about a 40/60 proposition,
it was that there was no reason to try it. 
Hooker’s every advantage disintegrated once Ramirez was within his arms’
length of Hooker.  And Ramirez’s
advantages multiplied proportionate to every inch nearer after that.  Hooker knew this, Ramirez knew this.

Hooker outsmarted himself, though, figuring in round
5 he might do a little sabbatical on the ropes and let Ramirez get tired of
punching.  That was the lapse that cost
Hooker his title.  What happened in a
couple seconds in round 6, Hooker’s straightback headpulling that set his chin
on a tee for Ramirez’s left fist and the legs’ jellying and Ramirez’s swift
adaptation and Hooker’s utter defenselessness, all that, came of Hooker’s vanished
judgement the round before.

There are ways to discourage and fatigue volume
punchers like Ramirez, but none of them permits him to put knuckles on
you.  Knuckling you puts that breed of
man in his most comfortable place.  He’s
no longer burning calories at fractionally the rate you think he is, especially
if you’re a rangy puncher accustomed to throwing on your preferred timetable.

Ali rope-a-doped Foreman, remember, not Frazier.  You rope-a-dope a slugger, and he
autodiscourages by failing to harm you the way experience told him he
would.  You rope-a-dope a boxer, and he
retreats to the opposite ropes, and y’all feint at one another till the ref
starts deducting points.  But you
rope-a-dope a volume puncher, and you leave in an ambulance.

Too soon?

Let’s have a treatment of our beloved sport’s
deadly past week, then.  We are expected
to examine our collective conscience at times like these, I know, perform
public acts of expiation, and especially if we write for daily periodicals
whose pacifistic editors tsk-tsk our ways.

Good news, there.  In 2019 none of us writes for daily periodicals.

That means much of last week’s atonement was
habitual more than sincere.  We know this
because it all reduced to a massive shrug from the moral lowground, or else
niggling about pet safety issues – like tiptoeing a matchstick bridge across a
firepit licking.

Here’s an easier calculus for you, the aficionado:
Do you watch fights hoping to see a brainbleed or death?

No, you don’t. 
Then that’s that.  You’re not
obligated to justify yourself further. 
Those who would ban our sport are unserious; if they coulda, they
woulda.  Those who wish to make
prizefighting safer verily miss the point – our sport survives by dint of its
peril; safe prizefighting is oxymoronic. 

Some primal, though enduring (and thus still not vestigial),
human trait requires public acts of violence. 
In this sense the ban-boxing brigade recalls a Chris Rock joke about
needing bullies, because a couple decades of banning bullying in our schools meant
that when an actual bully showed up in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, no
one knew what to do.

Jose Ramirez would know what to do, and for that
matter so would Maurice Hooker, and if watching them punch one another doesn’t
quite tell us what to do it at least reminds us occasions for punching one
another still exist, however many millennia since our ancestors emigrated from their
caves.  There is real violence within
most of us, and it thrills the spirit. 
That isn’t a solution for prizefighters’ deaths and damages or even a
prescription for a solution.  It is an
amoral report of where and what we are – an act of acceptance, not contrition.

*

Editor’s note: This column will be on summer vacation
next week.

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Fraueheim-

Boxing has been called life in a shot glass. From tragedy to triumph, it’s all there all at once, 180-proof. It tests your limits, takes you for a dizzy ride and sometimes leaves you in the gutter.

This week is one of those times.

Two deaths – first Russian junior-welterweight Maksim Dadashev Tuesday from injuries sustained in a fight Friday in Maryland and then Argentine junior-welter Hugo Santillan Thursday after a bout Saturday in Buenos Aires — just days after celebrating a dramatic display of skill, guts, resilience and class in Manny Pacquiao’s split-decision over Keith Thurman leaves a hangover full of troublesome questions. Doubts about why we watch.

I had other plans for this week’s column. There was the 40-year-old Pacquiao and a legacy that continues to make history. There was Errol Spence Jr. and his hopes to maybe fight Pacquiao and his determination to one day face Terence Crawford.

But none of that seemed to matter after the deaths of young fighters known by few of us. Dadashev was 28. Santillan was 23. They were young guys who labored on undercards for small purses and in front of empty seats.

Nobody much cares about them as fighters. But we care about them in death, because, I think, of what it says about us. If the unknowns can die, the great ones can, too. There’s no immortality on either side of the ropes.

In that ever-present danger, there’s drama.

A dilemma, too, and it’s inescapable.

They give – make that gave – it all in game compelling because of what it takes to conquer the fear. Fighters accept that risk. Fans are there to see how they deal with it. Unlike just about any other sport in this universe, there’s no ambivalence about what we’re watching and perhaps why some watch and some won’t.

In another lifetime, I used to cover auto racing, mostly NASCAR in Daytona. Drivers died. I always believed many of the more than 100,000 fans jammed into the Speedway were there just because any race was always a blown tire away from a massive accident.

Death would happen. That was always a danger and, in fact, part of the tension that drew those fans to the track. But it was also a byproduct.

The drivers weren’t there to disable each other.

But boxers are.

There wouldn’t be boxing if not for each fighter’s intent to disable the other. That’s the difference and it’s a dramatic one. It is as honest as it stark, a reason why many people just won’t watch. Boxing’s abolitionists figure to repeat their demand that the sport be outlawed in the wake of this week’s deaths. I can’t argue with them. I can’t agree with them, either. That’s part of the aforementioned dilemma.

Much, perhaps too much, about boxing offends the reasonable people concerned about the long-term damage done to the boxers who do survive. I understand. But I also understand that young men will always fight in the ring or on the street. Unregulated or regulated, they’ll fight with intent and no doubt about the danger.

Over the years, I have learned to sit at ringside for every fight on every undercard, no matter how big the main event. I didn’t know Dadashev. I didn’t know Santillan. But I have watched fighters like them for years and my admiration for their courage has grown during the many rounds before Pacquiao, or Floyd Mayweather, or Canelo Alvarez or Gennady Golovkin.

I’m there because of what might happen, what did happen to Dadashev and Santillan. I’ll be there, at ringside, all over again and I’ll pray I won’t have to write about another ring death. But that’s hoping against hope. Life in boxing’s shot glass means death, too.

BALTIMORE – July 25, 2019 – Two-time super featherweight champion and Baltimore native Gervonta “Tank” Davis went face to face with mandatory challenger Ricardo Núñez Thursday at the final press conference before Davis defends his WBA title in his hometown this Saturday from Royal Farms Arena in an event presented by Premier Boxing Champions.

Also in attendance Thursday and competing in SHOWTIME CHAMPIONSHIP BOXING action Saturday beginning at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT were former world champions Yuriorkis Gamboa and Roman “Rocky” Martinez, who compete in a 10-round lightweight showdown, plus rising contender Ladarius “Memphis” Miller and former champion Jezreel Corrales, who also compete in a 10-round lightweight affair.

Tickets for the event, which is promoted by Mayweather Promotions and TGB Promotions in association with GTD Promotions, can be purchased at Ticketmaster.com and at the Royal Farms Box Office Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. ET to 5 p.m. ET.

Davis vs. Núñez is the first world championship in Baltimore in nearly 50 years and Davis will become the first champion from Baltimore to defend his title at home in nearly 80 years. Davis has been fully embraced by his hometown leading up to his championship defense, including a ceremony at City Hall on Wednesday where Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young presented him the the Key to the City.

Here is what the press conference participants had to say Thursday from the Baltimore Convention Center:

GERVONTA DAVIS

“Coming back to Baltimore and bringing this big event to the city means a lot. I’m training with my brothers that I grew up with and I’m around family and friends. It’s exciting.

“The main reason why I wanted to come back home was because of people getting killed in this city. I want to be seen as one of the people who can bring the city together on a positive note. I fought in LA, London and New York, so it was about time for me to come home.

“Camp has been great. I can’t wait to put on a show Saturday night. I appreciate Núñez for taking this fight. This undercard has great fights and possible future opponents for me. I’m just soaking it all in right now.

“July 27 we’re going to put on a great show, me and Núñez. We both have big knockout power and may the best man win. I hope he’s ready, because I was born ready.

“I had a hard camp, so I don’t think it’s going to go past five rounds. I’m in a good space in my career and I’m excited to get in the ring.

“He’s a confident fighter with a lot of knockouts. We’re taking him seriously. It’s going to be a great night. He’s coming to take my spot. He’s coming up into my house, so I’ll be ready.

“People are going to see that I’m serious on Saturday. The rest of the division and everyone calling me out better be ready too. It’s all business on Saturday.

“It feels amazing to have this support from my city. I’m working my way up to being a big star and it’s unbelievable. I’m anxious and excited to get in the ring. I don’t want to rush the moment, because I should enjoy it. I’m soaking it all in.

“I know I’m facing a good fighter who can crack. I’m not taking him lightly at all. Mentally and physically I’m all-in. I have the whole city on my back and I have to come in there and show up on Saturday.

“I believe that Núñez is excited to be a part of this. He’s not scared and he’s enjoying the moment like I am. Hopefully he’s at his best Saturday night, but he won’t know how good I am until he gets in the ring. Right now it’s a game to him, but we’ll see Saturday night.”

RICARDO NÚÑEZ

“This is my first time in the United States and Baltimore is a beautiful city. I’m excited to bring a great fight to these fans. It’s my first time fighting for a world title and I’m happy to take advantage of it.

“I’ve had a strict diet and strong training camp. We’re going to give the fans a great party on Saturday night and it’s going to be a great fight.

“I have a high knockout percentage and I know that I can knock Gervonta Davis out. When we get in the ring, we will see who’s the best. He’s the champion, but I’m here to take the victory. I’m here to win.

“Losses make you stronger. The loss I had made me more focused on the sport. I’ve worked harder in my training camp since then.

“We’re a few days out from the fight and I’m ready to knock him out and win the title. Anything can happen in the ring, so I hope he’s ready. The world is going to know who I am after this fight.

“I’m very confident about this fight. It’s going to be a great fight but I will get the victory. I’ve been in the gym working harder than I ever have. I can’t speak for him, but I hope he’s worked hard too.

“My style is to wait to see how my opponent fights and then adjust from there. No matter what, I’m a hard puncher.

“Saturday night it’s going to be a big spectacle. My entire country is going to be watching. I think we are going to see a knockout, not sure in what round, but we may get one.

“Hardship led me to boxing. When my first daughter was born I was unemployed, I worked construction to make ends meet. I found boxing soon after and here I am.

“We’ve watched tape on Davis. We have studied him, broken his style down and we have a solid game plan. He’s not going to see me coming.

“My idol in boxing is my fellow Panamanian Roberto Duran and I want to do be able to do the things he has for our country. I’m here to make a great name for myself and my country.”

YURIORKIS GAMBOA

“This is a wonderful fight and a wonderful opportunity for me. We’re ready and Team Gamboa has made great efforts to prepare for this fight. I’m ready to get this victory on Saturday night.

“My focus is completely on Martinez. After this fight, we’re definitely looking to fight Gervonta Davis next. We’re going to be prepared for that fight too and we’ll be ready to come out with a victory there too.

“The difference with this fight has been the excellent preparation. In my previous fights I was not able to prepare with the proper time frame that I usually get for a fight. For this fight I have had excellent preparation.

“I think he brings a lot of experience to the table but so do I. I think it is going to be a very good fight because we’re two boxers with great experience. On Saturday, we’re going to find out who is the best.

“I am not in the prediction business but I have prepared and I am going to give my best on Saturday.”

ROMAN MARTINEZ

“I’ve had a very good camp for this fight. I’ve been working hard since my last fight. I’m facing a good fighter in Gamboa, but I have everything I need to take the victory back to Puerto Rico.

“I know that Gamboa is a well-rounded fighter with a lot of experience. But I have a lot of experience as well and that’s going to help me get this victory.

“I’ve kept getting stronger and kept in good shape since my loss. I think all of that work will show itself in the ring on Saturday.

“We’ve sparred with people who move and have similar styles to Gamboa’s. I think that’s going to help me expose some of the defensive flaws that my opponent has.”

LADARIUS MILLER

“I had a great camp. I’m prepared to fight a former world champion and a warrior. Jezreel is a tough competitor. He’s done something that I’m trying to do, which is become a world champion. He’s a great stepping stone for my career.

“On July 27 I’m ready to showcase my skills and talent. I’m here for a reason. I come from a rough background but I’m here now. Whatever it takes to come out victorious on July 27, I’m ready.

“I feel like I have the power to stop Corrales. His chin has been suspect his whole career. He’s gone down in a few fights. I respect him because he’s a true champion, but I feel like his chin is suspect. I want to go out there and test it out.

“I know that Corrales is here trying to make his presence felt. What he’s done, doesn’t mean anything to me. I know what I’m capable of. This is nothing new to me. He’s going to be in for a rude awakening Saturday night.”

JEZREEL CORRALES

“I want to thank everyone who made this opportunity possible. This was a great training camp and I worked hard to perform at my best on this stage.

“We’re here to fight and I’m well prepared to take the victory home on Saturday night. My power and my preparation is going to be the difference in this fight.

“I have everything that I need to beat Miller on Saturday. He’s never faced anyone like me. My experience and the strength will be like nothing he’s ever seen.

“In the ring, anything is possible. When you have heart and go into the ring, you can make anything happen. I’m more than ready to leave it in the ring on Saturday.”

LEONARD ELLERBE, CEO of Mayweather Promotions

“Thank you for everyone coming out. Baltimore is a city that has raised world champions and the city continues to prosper with this very special homecoming this Saturday night featuring Baltimore’s own, Gervonta ‘Tank; Davis taking on Ricardo Núñez.

“This is more than two fighters going head to head in the ring. This is an inspiration to Gervonta’s hometown, and his fans and peers coming behind him, that anything is possible, even when the odds are against you.

“This is an event where we all get to witness what a historic and iconic city Baltimore is, and one that hasn’t seen a world title defense from one of their own in almost 80 years. It is a homecoming for our two-time world champion Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis and Mayweather Promotions is really looking forward to promoting our first boxing event here in this city that has birthed a star with a fight of this magnitude.

“We’re rolling out the red carpet at Royal Farms Arena, and ladies and gentlemen, I promise you from top to bottom that this will be a very very entertaining and exciting card.”

STEPHEN ESPINOZA, President Sports and Event Programming, Showtime Networks Inc.

“Let me start off by asking a basic question. Why are we here? We’ve got a really strong three card fight, that’s obvious. We’ve got a little of everything. We have an Olympic Gold Medalist, we have three former world champions, we’ve got six quality fighters in the lighter weight divisions and we’ve got great match-ups.

“In Ladarius Miller vs. Jezreel Corrales we have an up-and-coming contender against a former 130-pound champion. The co-feature battle is between two former 130-pound champions. Cuban Gold Medalist Yuriorkis Gamboa is long known as one of the most exciting fighters in boxing, and he’s up against three-time champion Roman Martinez.

“The two fighters in our main event have a combined record of 44 fights and 39 KOs and I know they’re both looking to make Saturday a short night. This is the first time ever for SHOWTIME in Baltimore. This is the first Baltimore world title fight since 1970. Gervonta is the first Baltimore native to defend in his hometown in almost 80 years. But how did we get here? It’s really due to two men: Calvin Ford and Gervonta Davis.

“Coach Calvin is reserved and quiet. He certainly doesn’t talk about himself a lot. I am glad to see that he is getting the recognition that he deserves, not just as a boxing trainer, but as a trainer of young men, because that is what is at the heart of what Calvin Ford does at his gym. It’s not about building world champions in boxing, it’s about building world champions in life. This is a little taste of the spotlight for coach Calvin and I’m happy to see him get it because he does 99.99 percent of his work outside of the spotlight with no one watching and no one giving credit.

“The other reason we’re here is because of Gervonta Davis. The story about Gervonta starts for me in 2014 when Leonard and Floyd Mayweather first brought him to my attention. Obviously Gervonta and Calvin had been working together well before that and as long as I’ve known ‘Tank’, he’s talked about coming home to fight in Baltimore. But what’s really impressive about that is that this is not just about fighting at home, it’s not just about doing it for fans, it’s not just an ego thing. This is about giving back to his community because the reality is, this is not just a fight.

“This is an entire event that will produce massive financial benefits for Baltimore. We are all here because of these two men’s’ desire to be here. If ‘Tank’ hadn’t insisted to do this, then none of us are here and the community is not reaping any of the financial benefits that come along with this.”

# # #

ABOUT DAVIS VS. NÚÑEZ

Davis vs. Núñez will see two-time super featherweight champion and Baltimore native Gervonta “Tank” Davis become the first fighter from Baltimore in almost 80 years to make a homecoming title defense when he defends his WBA title against mandatory challenger Ricardo “Científico” Núñez live on SHOWTIME Saturday, July 27 from Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore in an event presented by Premier Boxing Champions

SHOWTIME CHAMPIONSHIP BOXING begins at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT and will feature former world champions Yuriorkis Gamboa and Roman “Rocky” Martínez battling in a 10-round lightweight attraction while lightweight contender Ladarius “Memphis” Miller meets former world champion Jezreel “El Invisible” Corrales in a 10-round showdown.

For more information visit www.sho.com/sports, follow on Twitter @Gervontaa, @ShowtimeBoxing, @SHOSports, @MayweatherPromo, @TGBPromotions, @PremierBoxing and @Swanson_Comm or become a fan on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/SHOSports and www.facebook.com/MayweatherPromotions.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday on Fox PPV in a match for the PBC’s
emeritus welterweight championship at MGM Grand undefeated titlist Keith “One
Time” Thurman got dropped and fairly decisioned by a 40-year-old Filipino
senator, Manny Pacquiao, who struggled to call Thurman even “a good fighter” immediately
afterwards.  Not the always gracious
Pacquiao’s fault, that.  Different era,
different priorities, different metrics.

No sooner does one imagine things going
differently in Thurman’s career were he with different management than he
recognizes different management overlooked him, didn’t it?  If manager Al Haymon plucked fruit from the
Olympic tree – some wellseeded like Errol, most misshapen like Rau’Shee and Terrell
– he discovered Thurman differently, howsoever he did it, which is to write
Haymon outbid the likes of Top Rank and affiliates, almost certainly because
they didn’t bid at all. 

Why is this relevant?  Because at the time Thurman turned pro
(nearly 12 years ago) most every great fighter a young aficionado today can
name got developed by Top Rank, starting with “Pretty Boy” Floyd Mayweather,
the patron saint, emphasis on patron, of today’s PBC stable. 

Whither this rehashing?  It crossed my mind muchly during Saturday’s
match, as it certainly crossed Coach Freddie’s mind and “Money” Mayweather’s
mind, too, at ringside.  Accustomed to
what large-pursed, pillow-gloved, athletic-contest exhibitions PBC bubblewraps
its champions in, Thurman hadn’t an inkling what suffering must traditionally
be endured for a man to call himself champion. 
He knows about it now, though.

Over and again one marveled at how alien a figure
Pacquiao cut on the sanitized island called Premier Boxing Champions.  Like an aged tiger parachuted in the middle
of a clover sheep farm populated only by sheep and clover, Pacquiao, red of
tooth and claw, fists wrapped in Mexican horsehair, not foam, thrilled at
violence as his profession’s only point – not an ancillary unpleasantness to be
got through while doing fitnessy things for large paychecks.

Three times the absurdity of it all manifested on
Thurman’s face: When Pacquiao knocked him asswards, when Pacquiao mashed his
nose through his face, when Pacquiao touched him properly on the button.  First was the look of disbelief then the look
of disgusted betrayal then the look of offended fright.  Thurman collected a righthand and dropped
like he’d been tripped then he spit the yucky taste of his own blood at his
corner en route to his stool then he wheeled away, gumshield in glove, selling a
Pacquiao bodyshot like the foulest of things. 
The last was the caketaker; it was the act of a man unable to imagine in
his 30th prizefight such pain might be delivered by a legal blow.

And all this from a version of Pacquiao five years
past its expiration date, a version of Pacquiao unable or unwilling to contest
more than 45 seconds of a round, a version of Pacquiao much more an ideal of
selfdefense than a predator.

There was Thurman, chastened completely by getting
bluematted in round 1, tentatively pawing and countering through much of the
match, while Fox’s contracted narrative-maker tabulated hundreds of “power
punches”, knowing there was a needle he must thread: Hit Pacquiao enough to
score points but not so much as to make him mad.

Then in your mind flashed Juan Manuel Marquez,
sucking his own noseblood through an open mouth and goading, prodding, goading,
goading, prodding, goading Pacquiao till he lured him, after 125 minutes and 58
seconds of misery and conflict and fear, in the master’s trap to end his era in
ecstasy.  How even do you word such a
contrast between the sinewy savage Pacquaio faced Dec. 8, 2012, and the fatted sheep
he’s seen in 2019?  They are not sportsmen
of the same species, surely. 

O, be not so hard on gentleman Keith; after all,
he comported himself nobly in defeat and gives generous interviews and he’s
telegenic and loves his wife.  Fair
points, yes.  If you are going to lose
there are more ignoble ways of doing it, as Adrien Broner reminds us annually.

O, to hell with that.  This is bloodsport, this is men making their
livings hurting other men. 

Pacquiao just reset the hands on the clock of
PBC’s fraud.  Don’t let Pacquiao’s
reluctance to face Errol Spence blind you. 
Spence is an outlier – PBC doesn’t know what to do with him either.  Thurman was PBC’s champion, Thurman won the
PBC welterweight Super Bowl in 2017, two months before PBC even knew what it
had in Spence, Thurman was the coddled prodigy, Thurman represented PBC’s
post-Mayweather future.  And that future just
spent round 10 with his white tail in the air, skittering away from a
40-year-old.

Because decisioning Thurman this late in the day
marks only about the 27th best moment of Pacquaio’s career, Saturday was not
about Pacquiao.  Saturday was a
fullthroated indictment of the P in PBC.

Be glad “The Truth” was ringside to see it, too,
for the future of our beloved sport.  Now
Spence knows, as Mayweather knew, the PBC on FoxTime belt is a participation
trophy, the glassencased product of a minorleague affiliate, a way to bamboozle
venture capitalists and network programmers. 
Spence now knows if he doesn’t make his manager make a match with
Terence Crawford while both men are still prime Spence’s championship lineage
will run through “One Time” and “Swift”, not “Sugar” or “Sugar”, and a
halfdecade from now some young bodysnatcher will properly coin him “The Fiction”
like Spence properly coined another man “Sometimes”.

Bart
Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

LAS VEGAS – There were three legends and one who wants to be one. They were there to talk about a legend and one who promises to be one.

Manny Pacquiao, already a longtime legend, and Keith Thurman, the man seeking to make his own, are at a compelling crossroads. It’s young lion versus old. It’s legacy versus wannabe. Pacquiao-Thurman Saturday night at the MGM Grand and on Fox pay-per-view television is loaded with all of the elements for a potential classic.

It’s anybody’s guess whether all of those pieces fall together into picture of anticipated drama or simply fall apart. There are lots of questions. Can Pacquaio’s 40-year-old body hold together against a younger and bigger Thurman? Can the 30-year-old Thurman battle through the injuries that have put his once-promising career on hold? Only the moment after an opening bell can provide those answers.

For now, however, there are platy of opinions about a welterweight bout that looms as the biggest fight of the summer, especially in the wake of Wednesday’s announcement that reigning middleweight Canelo Alvarez will postpone his planned Sept. 14 bout because of futile search for a suitable opponent.

For now, at least, there is a good fight that sets up further possibilities at 147 pounds. The PBC path leads to a welterweight unification bout, probably early next year against the Pacquiao-Thurman winner and the Errol Spence Jr.-Shawn Porter winner on Sept. 28 at Staples Center in Los Angeles.

In part, that’s why Porter was there Thursday, part of round-table at the Grand Garden Arena alongside former middleweight champion Winky Wring, and ex Pacquiao foes Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales.

For the record, Porter was one of three who figures he’ll be facing Pacquiao. No reason to ask whether he thinks he’ll beat Spence. He wouldn’t have agreed to the fight if he didn’t think so.

“Pacquiao by decision,’’ said Porter, the World Boxing Council champion who did offer a disclaimer, saying that Thurman’s confidence and power could force the Filipino Senator into retirement.

Morales and Barrera agree with Porter. Barrera picks Pacquiao to win a decision. Morales says the Filipino wins, by knockout or decision. Both faced Pacquiao when he was near or at his prime. Morales fought him three times, winning the first and losing the next two.

“When I beat him, I was at my technical best and that’s what Thurman will have to be if he hopes to have a chance,’’ Morales said.

Pacquiao went 2-0 against Barrera — an 11^th-round knockout in 2003 and a unanimous decision in 2007.

“Psychologically, it’s tough to fight Pacquiao, because he keeps that pressure on you,’’ Barrera said.

Only Wright picked Thurman. But that was no surprise. Wright was a mentor a to young Thurman in gyms around the Tampa Bay area, where both grew up. Thurman was there, then a 16-year-old amateur, when Wright stunned Felix Trinidad, scoring a unanimous decision over the heavily-favored Puerto Rican on May 14, 2005, also the MGM Grand.

“Bobble-head night,’’ Thurman said of a bout he remembered for the way Wright’s deadly-accurate jab made Trinidad’s head bounce around as though his head were attached to his body by a spring.

Wright admires Pacquiao. But, he says, not even legends can beat the clock.

‘’Only Father Time is undefeated,’’ he said. “Over the many years and fights, it might take away just a split second from his speed. But that might be enough. How fast is this Manny as opposed to the Manny we knew in the day?’’

By Bart Barry-

Saturday on Fox Sports pay-per-view Keith “One Time” Thurman defends his WBA “Super World” welterweight title against Filipino legend Manny Pacquiao in a Las Vegas match with world’s-third-best-welterweight ramifications. That is, whoever wins Saturday will almost certainly deserve a higher ranking than whoever next loses to Errol Spence or Terence Crawford.

When last we saw Pacquiao he was paddlepurpling About Billions Broner en route to a dull pay-extra-to-view decisioning of boxing’s clown pauper, a man whose schtick in the ring and otherwise has gone wanting since. Pacquiao has that effect when he’s right. He delights, sells tickets, makes lots of money and wins easily without employing any of the brandbuilding antics his PBC stablemates require. If he hasn’t made quite Floyd Mayweather’s career earnings he’s come exponents closer than his stablemates, without having to reinvent himself nearly so often. There has been no one like him since his debut in 1995, and that phrase may hold-up still in the year 2050.

Pacquiao went to PBC because promoter Top Rank ran out of highpaying b-fighters to feed him; if Pacquiao didn’t blame his former promoter for the decision that befell him Down Under two years ago, he didn’t forgive the outfit either. He forewent what desperate warnings Bob Arum surely imparted and handicapped properly the other side of the dial: Yes, PBC on FoxTime has Errol Spence to swerve someday but not till I’ve touched that crew for tens of millions of dollars in peril-less sparrings.

By all accounts Pacquiao is way smarter than the berry-appy mascot he plays in prefight previews and postfight pressers; if he didn’t tell PBC to start heavypursing him with Broner it’s simply because he didn’t have to – his new promoter was benighted enough to think Broner might have him. Time to ringup Thurman next, and after that, win or lose or draw, do a cashout dance with Spence, who’s likely to get softened harder by the tactically limited but physically expressive Shawn Porter than Mikey Garcia’d’ve done him in 100 rounds.

All of this assumes Thurman hasn’t the punch or malice to end Pacquiao’s career Saturday. Five years ago, assumptions might’ve been different. Thurman looked to have skills and temperament enough to bend the next era his way. Boy, was that a long time ago.

Six years in the past Thurman looked awesome in San Antonio, twice, and whetted aficionados’ imaginations. Then he effectively took 2014 off. Then he couldn’t ice little Robert Guerrero at the beginning of 2015, which was a problem. Four months later Thurman collected the WBA’s welterweight belt by giving Luis Collazo his seventh career L, and that was that. He squeaked past Shawn Porter in 2016, squeaked past Danny Garcia in 2017, honeymooned and ashrammed in 2018, and squeaked past little Josesito (Little Jose) Lopez in January. It has been a primesquandering historic for One Time.

But now Thurman takes dead aim at an eighth L on Pacquiao’s resume, a feat for which he’ll garner little praise from aficionados but lots of hyperbole from PBC propogandists and a fat check to cash.

“It’s called prizefighting, dummy” – as Money Mayweather once told Shane Mosley. Thurman gets that in a way generations of prizefighters before him did not. Get the cash and get out, posterity be damned. As a fellow man, few among us could blame him. As customers, of course, we’re entitled to an alternative view: If Thurman wants to make his living nonviolently, he can open a yoga studio, something more befitting his recent mien.

But he’d better not plan to play boxing with Pacquiao. Probably Manny will play boxing back with him, doing something that complements the 60-seconds-per-round workrate Pacquiao has perfected since Juan Manuel Marquez showed him absolute darkness interrupted by a single warm light, but maybe not. Pacquiao knew no exertion was worth extra for icing Broner – if Pacquiao even knew who Broner was before their match. But Thurman is PBC’s welterweight champion emeritus, and snatching Thurman’s 0 should mark at least the 30th-greatest accomplishment of Pacquaio’s career, even if it doesn’t crack his Top 25.

Would stretching Pacquiao 6 1/2 years after Marquez did it mark the highlight of Thurman’s career? Yup. Thurman has never shared a ring with anyone whose greatness is the square root of Pacquaio’s.

More than halfway in his 41st year, Pacquiao hasn’t the reflexes he had while racing through prime Mexican legends 14 or 15 years ago, but he recognizes patterns better than he did back then for having seen so many of them so craftily presented. Stylistically, Thurman is bargain-basement-basic beside Erik Morales or Miguel Cotto, much less the aforementioned Mosley, Mayweather or Marquez. Worse yet, Thurman ain’t that much younger than Pacquiao, and if his reflexes haven’t atrophied with age they’ve certainly rusted with inactivity.

Thurman hasn’t the derringdo to make war on Pacquiao, we know, but he has the tools to keepaway his way to a sympathetic decision, and that’s what he’s best suited to do. Thurman probably has pop enough to put Pacquiao in easymoney mode, the way Mayweather did, but Pacquiao won’t believe that till he feels it, which means Thurman may have to fight Pacquiao off him at some point, a point likely to represent the match’s only entertaining half-round – at the midway point of its fifth or sixth. After that, expect drama and suspense to leak gradually from the ring, punctuated by a forget-me-not flurry in the final 30 seconds of the 12th round.

A week from today, we’ll read Pacquiao has nothing left to prove and ought retire and Thurman has so much left to prove and ought use this narrow victory to springboard his way in a ring with Spence or Bud Crawford. Next year, we’ll read about Pacquiao negotiating a farewell war with Spence or Bud Crawford while Thurman demands a rematch with Lopez or Garcia.

This Saturday, anyway, I’ll take Thurman, MD-12, in a close, dull match one Vegas judge has already scored 117-111 for One Time.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Keith Thurman has lots to say, more than enough for Manny Pacquiao to pick and choose whatever he might need for just the right amount of motivation before their welterweight fight July 20 at Las Vegas MGM Grand.

“Never been more focused,’’ Pacquiao said Wednesday during a media workout at the Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles and again on Thursday during a conference call.

Never more grateful, either.

Pacquiao has heard it all over nearly two decades at the top of a very noisy game. At this point, the Filipino Senator, boxing’s humble elder, knows what to use and what to discard. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It just matters if it works. Enter Thurman, who is providing a whole menu of rhetorical options.

Want outrage? Thurman can do that. In the early news conferences, he promised to “crucify” Pacquiao, a deeply religious man.

Want cocky? Thurman can do that, too. Throughout subsequent media days and conference calls, he said he had the most complete resume in the welterweight division. Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr. are the consensus best at 147 pounds, but they don’t’have the bully pulpit this week or next.

For now, that stage belongs to Thurman, a many-sided personality who is doing his job. Big fights are about salesmanship, and Thurman is delivering it fearlessly and relentlessly. That’s a dangerous combination. But it is endlessly fascinating from a fighter who has also called himself an entrepreneur. He understands risk and roles. He has taken on both in a difficult challenge of Pacquiao, who has always played the good guy.

That’s Pacquiao’s natural role, his only role. Guess here, Thurman knows that and has filled the only role left to him. He knew he was the bad guy the day he signed for the fight. The black hat fits him well. But does it define him? I don’t think so.

“I bring entertainment,’’ Thurman said this week in a conference call. “If I win, I bring entertainment. If I lose, I bring entertainment.’’

If that stretch of canvas between the ropes is theater, Thurman might be the most versatile actor of them all. There’s a fair question as to whether he has as many punches as he has sides to his personality. But his bold salesmanship is bound to attract an audience full of Pacquiao fans who want to see him silenced and another crowd wondering whether he can in fact back it up. For now, it’s a pick-em fight

After it is all over, however, it would be no surprise to see two fighters more alike than different. Many-sided often means inherent contradictions, and there were plenty of those on display in Thurman throughout the build-up for the Fox pay-per-view fight. Thurman practices yoga. There is a spiritual side to him, just like Pacquiao.

There’s a practical side to him.

I asked him last week if he envisioned fighting at 40. He’s 30; Pacquiao is 40.

“Hell, no,” he said. “At 35, I’ll pick up a book and maybe go to college.

“At least now, I can afford a college education.’’

Oh yeah, he’s funny, too.

Mostly, however, there are repeated reasons to believe he really admires Pacquiao, despite all of that over-the-top trash talk. Thurman watched Pacquiao beat Adrien Broner at the MGM Grand in January, his first fight after he turned 40 in December. Thurman had a fight a week later against Josesito Lopez, whom he beat in a so-so performance on Jan 26 in Brooklyn.

But Pacquiao inspired him.

“I went out for a run at 1 a.m. the week before my own fight because of what Manny did,’’ Thurman said. “I was inspired by what I saw in him, by what he wants to do now at 40.’’  

Now, Thurman is in a role to stop who, what inspired him.

By Kyle Kinder-

On Saturday night at the Armory in Minneapolis, Bryant “Goodfella” Perrella (16-2, 13KO) looks to inch closer to a title shot when he squares off against Domonique Dolton (22-2-1, 13KO) in a ten round clash between two welterweight contenders.

Perrella, a 30 year-old southpaw from Fort Myers, FL, last fought in February when he scored a lopsided unanimous decision over veteran Colombian slugger Breidis Prescott (31-17, 22KO).   But what may have looked to spectators like an easy night’s work for Perrella, was in reality, anything but. “I actually hurt my left hand in the second round so I had to take some steam off the left and use it kind of more as a popping shot, more of a scoring blow,” said the 6’1” Perrella.  “Basically I just stuck to my right hand, moved to my right laterally, and kept using my jab to dominate.”

The Prescott bout came six months after Perrella dropped a majority decision to former WBA World Welterweight title holder Luis Collazo (39-7, 20KO) on Collazo’s home turf in New York.  It was the second career defeat for Perrella, the other coming via stoppage two years prior against former welterweight title challenger Yordenis Ugas (23-4, 11KO). While losses are never part of any fighter’s script, Perrella was intent on extracting the positives from those experiences. 

“You know, that’s kind of how it goes,” he said.  “When you’re striving for something you’re going to have setbacks…or I just call them learning lessons.  It’s brought me to a whole other level as a fighter and a person…it’s made me a tougher individual and better in all aspects.”

Perrella bounced back from both defeats with impressive victories.  

And in a year when boxers with blemished records have snatched titles from previously unbeaten fighters (Tony Harrison, Andrew Cancio, Julian Williams, Andy Ruiz), fighters like Perrella have taken notice.  “It’s motivating to see other guys doing it [fighters with losses capturing titles],” Perrella said. “It gives me more belief in myself that I can do it and will do it as well. You know, that’s what boxing’s all about…it’s a lot more than just the “O”.”

With regards to Saturday’s contest against Detroit’s Dolton, which will be broadcast on FS1 prior to the night’s main event which will feature welterweights Jamal James (25-1, 12KO) and Antonio “Tony” DeMarco (33-7-1, 24KO), Perrella is well aware that his career trajectory will be greatly influenced by the outcome of this fight. He also knows he’s facing a fighter who needs a win as much as he does. 

“Dolton’s been around the block, he’s a known name,” said Perrella.  “I’ve watched some film on him, but not too much. I’m not trying to get caught up in what he may try to do.  I’m just going to go in and do my own thing. But I’ve got a good general idea of the way he fights and the way he’s going to try and go about things.”  

With the stakes as high as ever, Perrella and head trainer Michael Nowling have been working non-stop at Fort Myers’ Syndicate Boxing Club.  

“Camp has been amazing, I feel great,” Perrella said.  “I’ve been working like an animal, so I’m ready to go…I’m just training around the clock like a well oiled machine and I’m ready to go put this car on the raceway.” 

With a cautious eye on the future, he added, “Obviously, after this fight, and I can’t look past Domonique Dolton in any way, but I can see myself being in contention at the very least, if not fighting for a title fight by the end of next year.” 

And with the PBC flush with welterweight titleists under their promotional banner, that’s certainly a possibility.  

By Bart Barry-

Editor’s note: For part 17, please click here

SAN ANTONIO – This city’s McNay Art Museum, which
has figured heavily (for an art museum) in this ostensibly-about-boxing column,
since 2010, recently opened an exhibition, Andy Warhol: Portraits, that appears
to have no tie-in whatever to our beloved sport.  I revisited the exhibition a few hours before
writing this, unable to imagine a suitable subject, and sat so long at a lobby
table afterwards a friendly security guard came over to tell me I looked tired.  Let that temper what you expect of this.

Nearly a decade ago The McNay had a different
Warhol exhibition that opened round about the time “Son of the Legend” Julio
Cesar Chavez Jr. put the wood to “Irish” John Duddy in Alamodome, in what would
be Duddy’s final prizefight.  The editor
of a boxing magazine asked me to pitch him a unique idea for a story –
“anything out of the ordinary” – and I complied with an idea about this Warhol
exhibition, a visual dissection of Warhol’s fascination with celebrity and its
effect, being open in the same city at the same time as boxing’s greatest beneficiary
of celebrity.  The pitch went nowhere, a
destination shared by the story I wrote instead for the magazine, and I made a
column of the idea.

(Actually, a quick search through the archives
reveals barely half of what’s above is accurate; “Andy Warhol: Fame and
Misfortune” opened in February 2012, not June 2010, and since by then Chavez
Jr. had beaten Duddy and Sebastian Zbik and Peter Manfredo, perhaps a story
attributing the whole of Chavez’s fortune to name recognition wasn’t the crackerjack
idea memory recalls.)

Out of the parenthetical but influenced by it: Memory
is many parts imagination, something confirmed by most adult accounts of childhood
that begin “I see myself . . .” as if that’s what children do when, say, riding
a bike – look at themselves, instead of their front tire or whatever terrain it
touches.

If Warhol never directly addressed memory’s inaccuracy,
and perhaps he did somewhere, prolific as he was, he understood part of the
appeal of his portraits to their subjects lay in a capacity for overwriting
memories.  Warhol was a favorite
portraitist of aging celebrities because his minimalist approach to depicting
facial skin removed wrinkles and most blemishes (except for his Dolly Parton
portraits, which are better than the Marilyn Monroe portraits precisely because
Parton’s face had more imperfections). 
Warhol very much made art for life to imitate and prophesied our
contemporary socialmedia obsession in any of his dozens of commentaries about
Americans and fame.

Floyd Mayweather would look good in a Warhol
portrait, methinks.  I happened on a Fox
Sports promotional movie about Manny Pacquiao last week by accident and tried
to see Mayweather through his fans and commentators’ eyes, being removed as we
are now from the relevance of Mayweather’s schtick.  What I looked for was elegance; what little I
recall of his victory over Pacquiao was Pacquaio’s unwillingness to throw
punches and subsequent inability to strike Mayweather, our defensive wizard.  But what I saw instead of elegance was skittishness.  Not during or after Mayweather got hit but
when the prospect of his getting hit happened: Confident-to-flinching-to-confident-to-flinchyflinching.  It was not elegant.

Of course this was a movie to sell us Pacquiao’s
upcoming tilt with Keith Thurman, and it behooves nobody at Fox to concede
Pacquiao is diminished from the man who got whitewashed by Mayweather, a man
who was fractionally potent as the one who dashed through Barrera and Morales
and Marquez.  Still.  In hyperdefinition, Mayweather’s
squinchyfaced pullback looks nigh bitchy.

Warhol would remove that.  If Warhol was not quite enamored of money as
Mayweather claims to be, he was doubly enamored of money’s effect, and Mayweather’s
selfstyled fixation on money might’ve enchanted Warhol with a question like: If
a man who is by no means the world’s best at making money allowed the last 1/3
of his career to be consumed by making money, a man who was the world’s best at
his actual craft, does that make money omnipotent or the man cynical?

This is why I looked tired in the lobby.  A different range of thoughts happened on the
short, slow drive from The McNay to The Pearl, where this column got wrote: Is
the racing line elegant? is the racing line what Henri Matisse was after? is
Matisse better than Warhol, for eliminating pathways to imitation, or is Warhol
better, for spawning generations of imitators? how much should even a column
such as this be dedicated to a concept, the racing line, you understand at best
partially?

The racing line is a way automobiles may go
fastest round curves.  It’s not the
shortest distance, as that would be the inside line, and it’s not a good way to
go at a constant speed.  Rather, it’s
effectively the straightest way to go round a halfcircle – start wide, cut the
apex, end wide – and by being the straightest line it is the route that allows
the earliest moment of maximum acceleration. 
If you regularly take the racing line against fellow motorists on your
local freeway you will pass most of them so long as you do not use cruise
control (which renders the racing line counterproductive).

The racing line is almost elegant the way Warhol
is almost elegant.  Neither the racing
line nor Warhol is elegant as a Matisse line; the racing line and Warhol do
something worth doing more quickly than other approaches.  The racing line kept through a full circuit
is nearer Matisse than Warhol came; Warhol was the racing line through a single
curve, maybe two.  The Matisse line,
though, is the racing line taken through an unknown circuit drawn but a moment
before.

Tire, tiring, tired.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as it happens as Jon Jones defends the UFC Light Heavyweight title against Thiago Santos.  Also Amanda Nunes defends the Bantamweight title against former champion Holly Holm. Jorge Masvidal takes on Ben Askren in a welterweight showdown.  Former middleweight champion Luke Rockhold makes his light heavyweight debut against Jan Blachowicz

THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY. NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED

Round 1: Santos lands a kicks that stumbles Jones..Leg Kick by Jones..Inside leg kick from Santos..Leg Kick..Leg Kick..Leg Kick..Left hand from Santos..

Round 2 Santos lands a kick but hurts his foot and lands a punch..Jab from Jones..Body kick from Santos..Big kick from Jones drops Santos..Left to body from Santos..Head Kick..

Round 3 Good leg kick from Jones…3 shots from Santos..Hard kick drops Santos..Big Knee..Knee to the body..Leg kick..Good leg kick from Santos..Santos is cut on hairline..Good kick from Jones…Kick to the body..Leg kick from Santos..another..

Round 4 Left from Santos..Leg kick from Jones…Leg kick..Inside leg kick from Santos..Body shot from Jones..Santos left leg is hurt but he keeps on fighting..

Round 5 Body kick from Santos..Right hand..Inside leg kick..2 hard kicks and a right hand…Body kick..Body kick from Jones..Left from Santos..

48-47 SANTOS; 48-47 JONES; 48-47 JONES

Round 1: Holm lands a left..Inside leg kick from Nunes..Knees to the body..Take down by Nunes but Hold gets right back up..Side kick from Holm..Front kick from Nunes..Right hand..Body kick..HUGE KICK TO THE HEAD THAT SENT HOLM DOWN…2 PUNCHES…FIGHT OVER

Round 1 MASVIDAL LANDS A FLYING KNEE AND KNOCKS OUT ASKREN…2 PUNCHES ON THE GROUND AND THE FIGHT IS OVER IN 5 SECONDS…THE FASTEST KNOCKOUT IN UFC HISTORY

Round 1: Rockhold lands a front kick and left hand..Rockhold trying to get a front choke..Elbow from Blachowicz..Hard Elbow..Left hand….Left kick from Rockhold..Blachowicz lands 2 leg kicks..Nice right..Blachowicz lands a big kick to back of head at the bell…

Round 2 Rockhold gets drilled with a right..Kick from Blochowicz…BIG LEFT AND DOWN GOES ROCKHOLD…HE IS HURT …2 MORE SHOTS ON THE GROUND AND THE FIGHT IS OVER

Round 1: Sanchez tries to take Chiesa down; Chiesa reverses..Tries for an Armbar..Take down for Chiesa..Chiesa lands some punches from the back..Chiesa has a triangle choke; Sanchez gets out of it..Chiesa lands elbows from the back…Sanchez slips out..

Round 2 Hard uppercut from Chiesa..Elbows on the ground..Body Triangle…Hard punches with on the Ground And Pound..Sanchez gets out of a choke..Spinning take down by Chiesa

Round 3 Chiesa gets Sanchez down..Elbow from Sanchez..Chiesa on Sanchez back

30-26 ON ALL CARDS FOR CHIESA

Round 1: Allen jabbing..Nice kick..Allen landing sharp punches…Straight left..Elbow from Melendez..Uppercut and body shot from Allen..Straight left

Round 2 Head kick from Allen..Big combination..1-2…Leg Kick..Combinations..Sharp combination..Straight left/Uppercut..Check hook..Body Kick..Straight left to the body.Melendez lands a right..

Round 3 Allen lands a left to the head..Allen takes Melendez down..Good left from Melndez..Leg kick from Allen..Nice straight left..Left from Melendez..Right..Leg kick from Allen..High kick..Good Kick

Round 2 Great Head kick from Hernandez..Vera lands a hard kick that puts Hernandez on the ground…VERA HAS HERNANDEZ BACK…REAR NAKED CHOKE AND HERNANDEZ TAPS

Round 1:  Left hook from Gadelha..Counter..Inside leg kick..Left head kick..Nice right..Good exchange..Markos swelling around left eye..Good right from Markos

Round 2 Head kick by Gadelha,,Combination from Markos..Nice Jab…Gadelha lands a left..Knee From Markos..Nice right..Kick from Gadelha..Right uppercut from Markos

Round 3  Uppercut and left from Gadelha..Nice Leg kick from Markos..Counter from Gadelha..Good right

30-27 on ALL CARDS FOR GADELHA

Round 1  HUGE RIGHT HAND BY YADONT LANDS PERFECTLY ONLY THE CHIN AND PEREZ IS BRUTALLY KNOCKED OUT at 2:04

Round 1: Hard standing ground and pound by Shahbazyan..Shabazyan all over MARSHMAN –REAR NAKED CHOKE AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED AT 1:!2

Round 1: Nice elbow by Naurdiev,,,Nice kick..Rencountre on top of Naurdiev..

Round 2 Rencountre has Naurdiev’s back..Rencountre is landing ground and pound from the back

Round 3 Rencountre keeping Naurdiev on his back 

29-27, 29-28, 30-27 for Rencountre

Round 1: Avila lands 2 high knees..Left hand from Kianzad..High knee From Avila..Elbow lands..Left..Kianzad lands a right..Left hand..Good right hand..Uppercut by Avila drives Pianzad back

Round 2 Avila lands an elbow over the top..Good leg kick from Kianzad..Take down..Right hand..Good right from Avila…Avila is cut over the right eye…Hard right hurts Kianzad..Good combination..Good front Kick..Avila gets the back on the ground.

Round 3 Avila lands a knee to the body…Hard right knocks Kianzad down..Ground and pound..Avila gets Kianzad’s back..Kianzad bleeding from around her right eye

30–27, 30-26 twice for Avila

By Norm Frauenheim-

It’s a fight hard to pick, mostly because Manny Pacquiao and Keith Thurman are welterweights fighting to recreate themselves or perhaps re-discover who they were.

The guy who wins the identity crisis wins the fight. That’s one theory, anyway.

Sixteen days before opening bell at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand, there’s only one familiar trait. Pacquiao’s likability is unchanged, un-eroded by time and controversy. His popularity has been evident ever since the Filipino Senator arrived back in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago for his final stretch of training at the Wild Card Gym.

Social media is full of photos of Pacquiao doing his roadwork on LA streets. Crowds of runners follow him in scenes straight out of Forrest Gump. At a couple of levels, Pacquiao is little bit like the Gump character. The Senator has done it all in an unlikely rise from crushing poverty to international celebrity. But like the Gump film, there’s also that line about a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.

That sums it up for just about every 40-year-old fighter. Pacquiao is beyond his prime, yet still has muscle memory that can recapture legendary moments. For one night at least, he could be the younger guy. Then again, he could be just another old guy trying to extend his career with one more paycheck. The reviews for Pacquiao’s last two outings have been good.  Power was there in a stoppage of Lucas Matthysse in 2018. Speed was there in a decision over Adrien Broner in January.

But Matthysse was shot, a hollowed-out version of the feared puncher he had been. Broner was there to outrage, insult and entertain. He did all of that and more. He did everything, however, but fight. His punch output barely registered on the CompuBox meter.

Neither Matthysse nor Broner provided enough opposition to really get a fair look at what kind of fighter Pacquiao really is at 40. Maybe, it won’t matter against Thurman, who is called One Time yet has looked Past Time over his last few bouts. Perhaps, injuries and inactivity help explain his forgettable performance against Josesito Lopez.  Or, perhaps, he is exactly the fighter he has appeared to be.

 That said, he is 10 years younger than Pacquiao. He should be at his prime and he promises to be there – or back there – against a middle-aged fighter whose name is still as current as ever. There’s a better chance that the younger man can recapture his edge more readily than the older man. Thurman is still young enough to be the welterweight he has always been projected to be.

For Pacquiao, it’s not that easy. A lot of it just depends on what his aging body feels like when he wakes up on July 20, fight day.

Guess here, the odds will remain even until opening bell. Pacquiao might be a slight favorite, simply because of his enduring popularity. Those guys running behind him in those roadwork photos will bet on him too.

 Meanwhile, don’t be surprised if Thurman attempts to do what a forgotten name did to Pacquiao in Australia a couple of years ago. Remember Jeff Horn? Horn roughed up Pacquiao in a punishing fight in Brisbane in July 2017. Horn won a controversial decision before hometown fans. In Vegas, it is fair to say the scoring would have gone the other way in a decision for Pacquiao, a longtime Vegas favorite.For now, however, Horn’s performance provides a tactical blueprint for Thurman, who like the Aussie can use his strong upper body to tie up, slow down and perhaps beat Pacquiao. It all depends on who shows up.  

By Bart Barry-

There were recent fights aplenty with which a
grateful boxing writer might fashion a column, and this writer should be
grateful as any, writing weekly columns, as he did, through yesteryear’s summer
famines.  But important as it is to write
well about great fights and the courage that makes them so is how difficult it
is to write well about poor fights and the mismatchmaking that makes them so.

One of the Brothers Charlo iced a two-sentence-Wikipedia
opponent a couple Sundays ago, the other Brother Charlo decisioned a
multi-sentence-Wikipedia opponent Saturday, and Demetrius Andrade kept his
resume spotless by keeping away from a featherfisted Pole.  Surely 80 minutes of prizefighting affords
material enough for 1,000 words of opinion. 
Or surely not.

I plead ignorance from the top.  I don’t know enough about either Charlo to
tell one from the other.  Both fought in the
last calendar week, both were defending a title of some sort because the
Brothers Charlo are PBC veterans enough to be titlists, though I can’t say
which Charlo beat whomever to attain whichever title or if either Charlo has
changed weightclasses anytime recently or really was defending a title
(Editor’s note: Actually, never mind).

Full disclosure: The closest I ever followed a
Charlo fight was when one of them sparred writer Kelsey McCarson for charity.

I expected the Brothers Charlo to be fighting on
Fox these days – didn’t they both do so a while back? – but I couldn’t find either
of them on my local Fox affiliate, and I haven’t had Showtime since December.  I watched their joint postfight
pressconference Saturday night on YouTube and came away feeling like I’d missed
not a thing since losing interest in them many years ago during a Houston
undercard or two.

The usual: Everybody respects us, nobody respects
us, the world is going to respect us; we’ve done so much, we’re just getting
started, wait till you see what’s next; nobody knows us, everybody recognizes
us, the people who know us best don’t know us at all; lions only, lions Only,
Lions Only!  If this were an effort to be
mysterious or conflicted or even controversial it would mean something more
than all it actually means, which is the standard and tired marketing fare of
being all things to all people, this time with a scowl of some sort.  One of the Brothers Charlo implied he
might’ve sold so many more tickets if he’d put himself in a larger venue, which
seemed an odd swipe to take at himself or his promotional partner, the other
Brother Charlo, sitting next to him and apparently in charge of booking.

What everyone realizes by now is the Brothers
Charlo and many of their PBC brethren are hamstrung by management.  They can dominate whomever PBC’s network of
matchmakers conjures up and wear whatever belts complicit sanctioners cobble
together, but they’ll not unify anything or attain universal recognition.

They wear the PBC on ShowFox belt, while an ESPN
champion makes war on his network’s nonentities, and a DAZN champ has a modicum
more respect, or much more respect, for having beaten a known opponent – read:
an opponent whose name you knew before the ESPN or ShowFox pressrelease – sometime
and somewhere in the last two years.

This shouldn’t be read, or at least not precisely,
as an indictment of PBC champions.  Most
of their safetyfirst exhibition title defenses happen before unenthusiastic
crowds and overly enthusiastic television crews, perhaps, but at least they’re
getting paid way more than fairmarket value for their efforts.  DAZN champions, meanwhile, are getting
overpaid, too, but with the very real chance they may be upset, through poor
fortune or tournament whimsy.  ESPN
champions get paid about the least and contend with the anxiety of a mercurial
boss and ingenious matchmaker; keep Bob happy and Bruce’ll get you opponents
that make you better, but make Bob unhappy and Bruce’ll get you beat by
Christmas.

Which all adds up to what?  About half a column, according to the count
in the bottomleft corner of this screen.

Then let’s dive shallowly into Demetrius “Boo Boo”
Andrade, the nearest DAZN has to a Brother Charlo of its own (unless you count
Danny Jacobs, whom you probably shouldn’t count because, after all, Jacobs has
tested himself by narrowly losing to his division’s two best men).

So much potential, that Boo Boo!

Literary critic James Wood once wrote, and I could
swear I once quoted but Google does not confirm, that potential is only potent
so long as it goes unused.  Nobody muses today
about Roberto Duran’s potential as a lightweight or Floyd Mayweather’s
potential as a pay-per-view attraction.  Potential
is what we assign teenage prospects, not 31-year-old middleweight titlists.

Andrade gets this. 
If you were to ask him about his potential this morning, probably he
would take it as the insult it intends and tell you how many tickets he just
sold in Rhode Island of all places.  He
should add but wouldn’t: “It’s 20-percent more tickets than Charlo sold in his
hometown the same night, and Charlo’s hometown is 12 times the size of mine.”

The reason he should add that is the reason he
won’t: Charlo, not Canelo, is whom Andrade should target as his breakthrough
opponent.  Who would win that match?  Nobody knows. 
There are potential-fetishists on either side of the debate.

The proper broadcaster for the match, however, be doubtless
– “ShoBox: The New Generation”.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Bart Barry-

Friday on a Golden Boy Promotions card that DAZN broadcast from Indio, Calif., super featherweight titlist Andrew “El Chango (The Monkey)” Cancio snipped and slipped the stiches from Puerto Rican Alberto Machado in a rematch of their February upset, shortly after Mexican light flyweight Elwin “La Pulga (The Flea)” Soto attritioned Puerto Rican titlist Angel Acosta early in their 12th round.

What Soto did, and Cancio did again, returned meaning
to what was meant by “Mexican Style” before a Mexican-trained Kazakh and his
promotional apparatus borrowed the term for HBO interviews.  Inherent in the term is an underdog status or,
at very least, an evenly matched contest in which a question of mettle must be
answered.

Fighters who employ Mexican Style generally lack
their opponents’ reach or handspeed or power; Mexican prizefighters do not wish
to get struck in the face any more than any other type of prizefighter does but
find themselves at physical disadvantages, realize getting struck they must,
and repeatedly, to prevail, and choose to continue under disadvantageous terms
until the last remaining variable is will.

Here’s what Mexican Style is not: Brutalizing a
20-to-1 underdog recruited from a lower weightclass and so hopelessly outgunned
you can dominate him without risking your own consciousness even a little.  Now that fighters who employ Mexican Style ply
their crafts on the same network as the fighter who uses a Mexican Style hashtag,
it behooves aficionados to continue our reevaluation of all things late-HBO.

In both matches Friday the Mexican Style fighters
had fewer tools than their opponents, both of whom happened to be Puerto Rican
– a detail more ethnic-rivalry coincidental than otherwise.  Setting aside the controversy that properly
accrued round comain referee Thomas Taylor’s premature stoppage – a surprisingly
favorable outcome for Soto, given how much time Taylor bought Acosta with round
3 warnings – the man with fewer tools in the kit all night was Soto. 

Acosta had reach and size advantages, yes, but
also technical advantages and a dandy uppercut boxing’s lexicon suggests be
just the thing to dissuade an over-the-lead-knee grinder like Soto.  The Flea, then, spent most of a half-hour
getting peppered coarsely by a man who knew how.  Yet Soto didn’t relent.  That relentlessness in the face of
unfavorable happenings is a hell of a lot more Mexican Style than making highlightreel
corner stoppages on feckless featherfists who cut quickly. 

Cancio, too, had the same obvious physical and technical
disadvantages in his rematch with Machado as he did in their first tilt.  The result of Cancio’s first fight, though,
the largest upset of 2019 until Andy Ruiz took Manhattan, emboldened Cancio to
reduce his rematch to a matter of willfulness even sooner than he did their
first time.  Machado wanted absolutely
none of it.  The better boxer with the
better pedigree and the better resume, Machado explained away to himself his
first loss like a matter of fitness; he’d nearly missed weight, starved himself
the day before the weighin, faded early and learned his lesson.

But the lesson Cancio gave was one he didn’t
learn.  Boxing circles round Cancio,
having the requisite fitness to hit him and not be hit by him, never was going
to suffice for Machado.  He needed to
hurt Cancio till The Monkey went physically unable to punch back.

“I’m so much better than this guy” – that’s the
trap into which Mexican Style has lured many a flashy prospect or titlist.  Cancio had Machado deep winded after six
minutes.  A deep winded man hasn’t much
left but will, and Cancio thrilled at such a contest 30 minutes early.  He took his time and lined-up the button shot
then watched Machado crumple, rise to a knee and prep for his facesaving 10 1/2-count.

Again, until the world met Andy Ruiz some weeks
ago, Cancio was boxing’s feel-best story of 2019.  Nothing about Ruiz’s ascent diminishes
Cancio’s (or Elwin Soto’s).  Cancio is a
proper workingclass prizefighter, a man you can decision far more easily than beat.

But while we’ve got Mexican Style in mind and
words to spare, let’s return to Andy Ruiz for a spot.  What he did to Anthony Joshua was Mexican
Style not for its toolbox disadvantage but for its colossal physical
disadvantages.  Joshua was much bigger
and much stronger and hit much harder but knew little of relentlessness.  When the time came for teethmarking the
gumshield Joshua made his escape.

Joshua surely awoke that Sunday morning with an
abiding sense of absurdity like what haunted Machado the day after his first
loss to Cancio.  Joshua, with many times Machado’s
sycophantic entourage, invariably learns as you read this the same sort of
wrong lessons Machado gained.

From Joshua’s hangerson we hear about prefight
concussions and the like, which, while quite possibly true, do nothing to
prepare Joshua for what relentlessness Ruiz will show him in their rematch.  Ruiz now knows Joshua’s a flowerchinned wilter
and the directest route to the mettle question should be Ruiz’s line.  If both men hit the canvas in rematch round
1, Ruiz knows, he’ll defend his title in half the time it took him to acquire
it.

But do you expect anyone is telling Joshua this?  Not when there’s a fortune to be made in
excuse-making: “Lucky punch, champ, he caught you cold, we know that wasn’t the
real AJ, can’t trust New York food, don’t know what the ref was thinking, we
know the truth, you wanted to continue – everybody knows that!”

Expect Ruiz to Mexican Style his way through
Joshua in their rematch the way Cancio just did Machado.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Reviews continue, days after Tyson Fury sang his way to a second-round stoppage over an unknown German in what was more of a Vegas lounge act than a fight.

It was fun. It was boxing’s version of junk food. But I’m not sure what to make of it, other than to say that Fury could be a very good Elvis impersonator if his day job as a heavyweight doesn’t work out.

Above all, it was an introduction, and a successful one in terms of what Fury hopes to accomplish next year.

Put it this way:

Fury is already winning the rematch.

For all that it mattered, Fury could have been fighting Tom Schwarz or Sergeant Schultz. The whole point to the song-and-dance last Saturday at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand was the long-anticipated rematch with Deontay Wilder, projected for some time in 2020’s first quarter.

Psychologically and politically, the rematch has been underway for a while. A lot still has to happen – and not happen – before an opening bell.

Wilder has to beat Luis Ortiz in a rematch tentatively scheduled for September.

Fury has to beat whomever he faces on either Sept. 21 or October 5. Please-please, don’t it let be Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller, who comes off a WBA-mandated suspension on Sept. 19. A positive-PED test got Miller bounced from the Anthony Joshua fight, allowing stand-in Andy Ruiz Jr. to spring an all-time upset on June 1. More on Miller later, hopefully much later.

In the here-and-now, only two heavyweight fights matter: Wilder-Fury and Ruiz-Joshua, both rematches. Most of the current talk is about Wilder-Fury. The attention – and money – invested in Fury is astonishing. ESPN did a two-hour special on Fury before last Saturday fight on ESPN+. Two hours of prime time for fewer than two rounds, or fewer than six minutes of one-sided boxing.

But the media and promotional investment – reported to be $100 million – gives Fury an early edge in the projected sequel, especially if it is in Vegas. Top Rank already is promoting Fury as though he is a Vegas fighter.

It’s a smart and subtle move. The rematch feels like a Vegas fight and you know what they say about Vegas: The House always wins. Imagine if Fury’s had already gained a public foothold in Vegas and the first Wilder-Fury bout had been at the MGM Grand instead of Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Wilder-Fury I remains controversial. It was a draw. Fury out-boxed Wilder for at least eight rounds, but Wilder scored two huge knockdowns in the final rounds, including one in the 12th that saw Fury climb off the canvas like a man climbing out of a coffin.

Judges are supposed to be objective. Some more than others. But they are all human, meaning they are influenced by what they hear and see. Had it been in Vegas and those judges had witnessed a Fury they already knew in his amazing display of resilience in the 12th, the guess here is that scorecards would have been Fury in a narrow decision instead of a draw.

There is every reason to think the rematch will play out in much the same way the first bout did. Fury’s reach, clever versatility and footwork are the same. Wilder’s fight-ending power is the same. It’s still close, very close.

But, for now, Wilder is winning all of the preliminary rounds.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at Arena Riga in Latvia in a pair of
prizefights broadcasted by DAZN the World Boxing Super Series arrived at its
cruiserweight-finals pairing violently. 
Two evenly matched matches ended in competitors’ unconsciousness, with a
Cuban clipping an American’s circuits and a Latvian doing somethings awful to a
Pole.

First, Mairis Briedis’ mainevent manhandling of Krzysztof
Glowacki: In an officiating context what transpired was shoddy-cum-catastrophic
and ought result in a pension for Robert Byrd. 
In a prizefighting capacity, though, it was handsome sporting and
something others might try.

We’ve all seen the preamble hundreds of times:
Fighter A overthrows the right cross, and disbalances himself, while Fighter B
ducks the punch and arrives 90-degrees right of square when he resurfaces;
Fighter A protects his brainstem with his right glove, elbow out, while both
men wait for the ref to untangle them. 
Nearly never does Fighter B wing a left hook at the back of Fighter A’s
head.  But in round 2 Glowacki thought it
a capital idea.

Then Briedis showed us promptly why no one does
this by driving his raised right elbow directly through Glowacki’s unguarded
jaw.  Glowacki received the shot, realized
what’d happened and went full soccer-player. 
This, more than the infractions that preceded it, offended Robert Byrd’s
sensibilities, and he slapped Glowacki on the back and demanded he rise to play
audience to Byrd’s deducting a point from the Briedis tally, without anybody,
including Byrd and Glowacki, realizing how ruined Glowacki was.

A charitable read of what followed is the Latvian
crowd’s zealous disapproval of Byrd’s ruling jarred Byrd such that he was unable
to hear the round’s closing bell.  A
realistic read is that Byrd is too old to be refereeing a scrap between
200-pound, non-English speakers, and Briedis’ scorn for Queensberry’s marquess reduced
Byrd to a doddering elder.

Whatever it was, after Briedis dropped Glowacki on
the blackmat a second time, this time with punches, and Glowacki rose, the
round ended and the Latvian bell began to tinkle, insistently if euphoniously, and
Briedis and Glowacki continued to make war while Byrd went to that tranquil,
nostalgic place grandads do after disabling their hearing aids.  The timekeepers stood and waved frantically,
to no avail.  Fact is, had Briedis not
dropped Glowacki at 3:11, causing Byrd to glance the timekeepers’ way for a
10-count, round 2 might still be happening as you read this.  Briefly returned to lucidity, Byrd
acknowledged the round’s end like an NFL ref stopping the playclock, which
sundry folks, including the Glowacki corner – by then approaching its 30th
second on the apron – understood to be Byrd’s waving-off the fight.

In all of Latvia, only Robert Byrd knew what the
hell Robert Byrd was doing.

Both fighters stood in their corners awaiting a
ruling, and not resting, while the 60-second respite ticked by and Byrd pantomimed
his inability to hear the very bell he successfully heard close round 1.  Glowacki’s chief second ran all the way
across the canvas and pantomimed for Byrd a threeminute duration on his
wristwatch.  Byrd scolded the man then
turned and scolded the timekeeper for not ringing loudly enough a bell everyone
else heard.  Glowacki did not receive
time enough to recuperate from Briedis’ elbow (which, quite probably, Byrd
missed altogether and only thought to penalize via inference) and did not
receive time enough to recuperate from his first legal knockdown.

And recovered Glowacki wasn’t when round 3 began
and Briedis made quick work of his remaining consciousness.  Odds are fair Briedis would’ve won one way or
another had all things happened fairly, and frankly a well-leveraged elbow may
be just the remedy for a well-leveraged rabbit punch; legal or not it’s exactly
what the word “fight” conjures in innocent minds.

But the Byrds must be helped into retirement (yes,
Robert’s wife, Adalaide, and yes, that Adalaide Byrd, was an official
scorekeeper for Saturday’s mainevent). 
Over and again, beginning with the prefight instructions, Robert Byrd
played the role of a senior American who comes upon a foreigner and thinks if
he just yells English at him, rather than speaking it, the foreigner will
understand.  Byrd explained to the
fighters, who’ve been hearing “break” their whole fighting lives, that Byrd
wouldn’t wrestle with them and expected an immediate cessation when he called
“stop” – which of course didn’t happen. 
Then Byrd got his branded-for-TV tagline in, and the fight began.  Then the fight turned into one, between two
large men who knew how, becoming no place for a 74-year-old, something one
assumes the WBSS, if not the Nevada Athletic Commission, will remember henceforth.

Before all that, in the comain and fellow
semifinal, Cuban Yuniel Dorticos drycleaned TMT’s Andrew “Beast” Tabiti with a
round-10 right hand that was gorgeous. 
There was something aesthetically piquant about DAZN’s closeup of Tabiti’s
goldtoothed-vampire gumshield as Tabiti’s involuntary breaths went round it
while his Money Team hangerson sheepishly footdragged to his aid.  They were there for the victory party, not
the cleanup, and hadn’t an inkling what to do while their man spent two minutes
rigid.

What now will follow is another excellent WBSS cruiserweight
final that complements its bantamweight and super lightweight finals.  There’s lots more to be written about the
natural power of selforganizing entities, but for now let us marvel once again at
how much better the tournament format serves our interests, as aficionados, than
what promoter-driven swill generally befalls us.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

LAS VEGAS – Show Tyson Fury an empty stage and it won’t stay empty for long. He’ll fill it, all 6-foot-9 of him and a charisma for which there is no tape. No tale, either. But that intangible charisma is there, big enough to fill a stage and a room.

Fury did both Friday for his bout Saturday against German challenger Tom Schwarz for the lineal heavyweight title in an ESPN+ televised fight at the MGM Grand.

He took the stage for a weigh-in re-done for ESPN cameras at a prime-time hour. The real weigh-in – one regulated by the Nevada Commission – had already happened in the morning. The weights were documented and filed by the time Fury stepped onto the scale for what was a little bit like lip-synch.

But the show must go on. So, too, must a showman.

Fury was there for, fulfilling his promise to entertain in first fight in a new deal with ESPN and Top Rank.  A small crowd roared. Fury waved one finger at Schwarz. Maybe, it was his way of saying the fight would last one round. Or that one punch would finish Schwarz. Or that Schwarz didn’t have one chance. Fury is a prohibitive favorite. In the UK, Schwarz is a 12-1 longshot.

Oh yeah, Fury (27-0-1, 19 KOs) was 263 pounds, six-and-a-half pounds heavier than he was for his last fight in a controversial draw with Deontay Wilder in December in Los Angeles. Schwarz (24-0, 16 KOs) was at 245.5 pounds.   

By Norm Frauenheim-

LAS VEGAS – He is named for a fighter who these days is remembered for some wisdom about how vulnerable a plan can be.

Everybody has one, Mike Tyson said, until he gets hit. Tyson left it open-ended, leaving an implicit suggestion that there was only chaos after one punch lays waste to any plan, no matter how carefully plotted and practiced.

But Tyson Fury, whose dad named him for Mike more for the heavyweight chaos he caused than the wisdom he left, survived the hit without a planned victory, yet with a new plan already as rich as perhaps it will be far-reaching. It came about, maybe because of Fury’s resiliency or instinctive creativity.

He was born to fight.

Born to promote, too.

Fury has done more of the latter than the former in the wake of an astonishing moment last December when he awakened from a lightning bolt of a shot from Deontay Wilder. One moment Fury was face down on a stretch of canvas at Los Angeles Staples Center. A moment later, he was upright, a fighter resurrected and soon a man with a plan that for a few perilous seconds looked as if he were finished.

If you subscribe to his namesake, the new plan is as vulnerable as the old one was. But that’s why Fury (27-0-1, 19 KOs) is about to re-enter the ring Saturday night (ESPN+) against a German challenger, Tom Schwarz (24-0, 16 KOs) at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. 

“I believe the fight with Wilder only helped my profile here in the United States, and here we are again, only a few days away from the biggest fight of my life,” said Fury, whose comeback in the ring marked a longer, more compelling battle with depression, including thoughts of suicide. “I talk about mental health a lot because it’s very important to me. Only 18 months ago, I was in a very, very dark place. I just wanted to prove to people that there is a way back. You can come back from anything. Nothing is impossible, and if you’d seen me a time ago when I was very heavy and very unwell.’’

Fury is back for his first bout since the Wilder drama in an opening step to introduce the UK heavyweight to the American market. He signed rich deal with ESPN and Top Rank’s Bob Arum, who sees some of the same charisma in he saw in Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.

Fury, Arum says, “is a guy people can relate to. He has the ability to capture pubic imagination.’’

Sure enough, Fury has been busy working on exactly that is appearances throughout the last couple of weeks. He showed up early at a news conference Wednesday, presumably just to schmooze. He was shirtless under a wildly-colored sports coat. It was reminiscent of Foreman in the comeback stage of his career. Foreman would show up in hotel lobbies and press rooms, sometimes with a cheeseburger in one hand, always a smile and never speechless. He was impossible to dislike.

So, too.is Fury, nicknamed The Gypsy King for his bare-knuckled heritage as a son of the Irish Travellers. They crisscrossed the UK, a travelling circus. In other words, Fury gets it. He grew up in the family business, which – first and foremost – means show biz.

“Did we entertain you?’’ Fury said in his first words to reporters at the Staples press room after he got up off the canvas like a guy getting out of a coffin last December.

Fury got his answer, chorus-like, from a room full of sportswriters who joined him in singing Bye-Bye, Miss American Pie. It was fun. It was a bite of Foreman’s cheeseburger. And it screamed for an encore, although the sequel is not exactly what had been immediately expected. A Fury-Wilder rematch has been postponed until at least early next year. Wilder said before Andy Ruiz Jr’s upset of Anthony Joshua a couple of weeks ago in New York that a deal was in place.

That poses an inherent risk. Ruiz’ stunner over Joshua at Madison Square Garden is proof of that. Nobody gives Schwarz much of a chance. He is fighting in the United States for the first time. But nobody gave Ruiz a chance either. Again, remember Mike Tyson’s caveat about plans They can come crashing down with one big punch, especially from a heavyweight. In part, that’s what makes the division makes the division so thoroughly unpredictable and dramatic. But it is also the very thing that makes it so risky.

Ruiz’ victory took the Joshua-Wilder showdown off the table, at least for now. Arum called that one “unlikely” in a conference call this week. For now, at least, the Wilder-Fury rematch is the biggest heavyweight fight out there. First, however, Fury has to elude an unforeseen punch from a mostly-unknown German and then Wilder has to avoid the same from the skilled and powerful Luis Ortiz in a September rematch.

Lots of plans. Lots of punches, too.  

By Bart Barry-

Editor’s note: In what has become an annual
tradition, Bart Barry ran out of ideas for his column.  So we suggested he interview his favorite
subject about his favorite subject, and he acquiesced.  He even used the verb “to acquiesce” in his
reply to our request!

BB: I was watching an interview with Bo Burnham a
couple days ago –

BB: We’ve come a long way from reading interviews
with Richard Ford, haven’t we?

BB: – and he talks about a couple things that
resonated.  One was about feeling
nostalgia for events that’ve yet to happen, and the other is the artist
treating subjects he’s struggling with rather than things he already knows.

BB: Let me guess – that led to thinking how we
might do this with column-writing?

BB: For a few minutes, it did.  Then we came back, yet again, to Harold
Bloom’s old idea about reading in pursuit of a mind more original than your own,
which is a cry for authority.  Satisfying
someone else’s pursuit of authority can hardly begin by not-knowing things.

BB: I inferred from Burnham an unspoken assumption
his learning process is accelerated enough th’t watching him learn a subject can
be entertaining.

BB: I like that. 
Cognition of any adult sort, too, must begin with knowing lots of things.  While nobody wishes to watch a 5,000-hour movie
of a newborn’s journey to his first successful steps, it might indeed amuse to
watch a person who learns quickly use his existing knowledge to learn something
new.

BB: Quite a roundabout way of conceding you don’t
want to write about Gennady (sic) Golovkin.

BB: I added the suffix in there for you.  He’s changed the spelling of his first name.

BB: Part of the first-loss rehabilitation kit.

BB: New trainer, new network, new name, new
weightclass, lots of new tats.

BB:  He
didn’t go full-Cotto, did he?

BB: (Laughing) He really didn’t.  Maybe half-Cotto.

BB: Good riddance to Abel at least.

BB: Abel was part of the packaging.  But HBO was all the packaging.  That’s why I avoided the subject.  I knew it would spin into another acidic
postmortem on the Heart and Soul of Boxing.

BB: Do you feel unheard on this subject?

BB: That’s well-put.  Few things, if anything, look more craven
online than some goofball leading his generic thoughts with “like I’ve been
saying all along” – as if there weren’t a way to verify this if anyone cared to
do.

BB: Is that what’s going on here with GGG?

BB: Could be. 
But it’s late.  The postmortem to
be performed would go something like: Almost everything I believed about
Golovkin’s greatness got told to me by HBO, but during the same time HBO told
me how great Golovkin was HBO steered its storied franchise into a sandbar and
sank, so maybe I should review everything I believed about Golovkin’s greatness
. . .

BB: You say it’s too late for that because nobody
thinks he’s that gullible.

BB: The most anyone might concede is that HBO
introduced him to Golovkin, but he did all the appraising on his own.

BB: And that’s what few evangelists would yet
admit it was a ruse.

BB: Sergio Mora put it succinctly Saturday night: Golovkin
made his legend by annihilating B- and C-level fighters.

BB: That ruse relied, in part, on there being no
available A fighters.

BB: Nobody will fight him!  Nobody will fight him!

BB: Better yet was waiting till Canelo went 12
rounds with him to decide Canelo must be an A-level fighter because he went 12
rounds with him.

BB: A career 154-pounder went 24 rounds with the
most fearsome middleweight since Hagler. 
Who cares about the judging; that argument is sleight-of-hand.  The GGG ruse collapsed when Canelo stood tall
for 72 minutes in front of Golovkin.

BB: Yet we watched Saturday’s sacrifice.

BB: After what Andy Ruiz did, you sort of have to
for a while, no?

BB: Our sport thrives on misanthropy.  No sooner had Ruiz done something perfectly
unexpected but some pundits criticize him and the defenders pile-on.

BB: “Like I’ve been saying all along . . .”

BB: No disinterested party in his right mind
thought Ruiz would win.  So just enjoy
it.  Just laugh at it.  Laugh at anyone who feigns expertise for the
next month or so.  Be happy for
Ruiz.  Be happy for the way the spectacle
razed expertise.  For heaven’s sake,
though, don’t decide now’s a good time to reiterate your own expertise.

BB:  Whither
the state of the craft, our craft?

BB: “Dilettante” – that’s the word.  It’s the perfect word.  And it disarms, too.  No more aesthetic judgements.  The dilettante is not entitled to them.

BB: Are we reading more or less?

BB: Oh much less.

BB: Whither awards?

BB: Thrilled for Kelsey.

BB: The best thing about all these new broadcast platforms
is how little you must think about what you’re going to write, week-to-week.  The defiance of not-writing has dissolved
with that, no?

BB: It has. 
You enjoy watching boxing.  You
enjoy writing.  Howsoever long it has
been –

BB: Fourteen years and change.

BB: – there is no longer any sense of anxiety
about it.  Volunteer Sunday mornings at
the bus station, go home and change into something absurd, drive too fast to
the coffeeshop at The Pearl –

BB: Taking the racing line.

BB: – taking the racing line, yes, and write till
the place closes.  See what happens.  Let the conversations and songs going on
round you flavor whatever comes out.

BB: Do you ever look back?

BB: Not at any of this.  I looked back recently at some of the short
fiction from 2003.

BB: How was it?

BB: Precise. 
It was all rewritten three times. 
That’s the simple mechanics of it.

BB: Want to talk about the publication of that online?

BB: Nope.  It’s
now feasible to publish 100,000 words anonymously.  Fun, too.

BB: Who’s your favorite fighter?

BB: Has to be Usyk.

BB: Not Inoue?

BB: Not yet. 
I’m more likely to miss Usyk’s next fight, though – hell, I’m more
likely to miss my next breath – than Inoue’s.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

The name is little bit different. The corner is a lot different. Whether the differences add up to a reinvented fighter are about to be tested, first Saturday at New York’s Madison Square Garden in what looks to be a rehearsal for a third fight in a trilogy that could define a middleweight legacy still known for the GGG signature.

Let’s start with the name. Call him Gennadiy. That’s no typo. There’s an i between the d and y because there always has been, said Golovkin (38-1-1, 34 KOs), the former Gennady who fights Steve Rolls (19-0, 10 KOs) in his first bout (DAZN 9 p.m. ET) since a majority-decision loss to Canelo Alvarez in a rematch last September.

Go ahead and try to connect the dots on why he added the single vowel now and not before the controversial draw and then loss in his rivalry with Canelo. You still wind up with a speculative puzzle. But the guess here is that Golovkin wants to start anew by righting all the wrongs.

First, the name. Then, a third fight with Canelo that he believes will forever prove he should have been judged the winner in each of the first two. Just a matter of correcting the record. For Golovkin, however, that task is accented with some urgency.

He’s 37, which is somewhere between prime time and retirement on a fighter’s career clock. He hits the reset button by — in effect — re-introducing himself with a first name altered with an appropriate I, as if to say:

“I have changed.’’

Maybe, he has.

If so, a key to those changes will come about because of a new corner, Johnathon Banks instead of Abel Sanchez. There was nothing pretty about the split with Sanchez, the longtime GGG trainer who was angry at what he said was an insulting offer after Golovkin signed with DAZN for a reported $100 million. GGG’s lowball might have been his way of moving on. Sanchez’ pride would get in the way of a renewed deal. And it did.

It was painful. But it was boxing. And it was business. In retrospect, it simply looks like a GGG step toward change. It’s clear he’s back in the ring for one reason: A third fight with Canelo.

“One of the reason Gennadiy chose The Zone (DAZN) was that it was the clearest path to a third fight,’’ GGG promoter Tom Loeffler said at news conference introducing Banks on the afternoon before Canelo, DAZN’s marquee client, scored a unanimous decision over Daniel Jacobs on May 4 at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena.

Golovkin sat at the T-Mobile ringside that night and witnessed a dominant Canelo victory over Jacobs that was full of lessons about why change was necessary. Go ahead and argue about the judging in each of their first two fights. Against Jacobs, however, it was clear that Canelo is on a roll. From fight-to-fight, he is getting better by increments. At 28, Canelo is entering his prime. At 37, Golovkin is leaving his

There were signs of stagnancy in his two fights against Canelo. He landed big shots, especially in the first fight. In the second fight, however, Canelo’s newfound upper-body moment was a key to eluding much of GGG’s power. There was an ominous sign in the CompuBox stats. GGG landed only eight body shots in the first fight. He landed only six in the rematch. Over 24 rounds, he’ averaging less than one body punch a round.

If Canelo’s momentum continues at its steamrolling rate and GGG stays at a career plateau, the third fight could be all Canelo. Hence, the GGG changes.

“He’s a big puncher, which in my opinion is why he needs to throw more of them,’’ Banks, a former cruiserweight campion and an Emanuel Steward student, said at the May news conference.

More punches, a lot more, would be the punctuation – dotting the i in Gennadiy – for what might be the most significant change of all.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at Madison Square Garden in a fight
broadcast by DAZN, statuesque world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua and misshapen
challenger Andy Ruiz made quite possibly the funniest spectacle in our beloved sport’s
history.  If you weren’t laughing or at
least smiling you missed one of life’s unique opportunities, and if you were
among others who weren’t laughing with you, why, you must improve your
associations immediately.

Chubby Andy Ruiz, brought in on short notice for a
ritual humiliation with the baddest man on the planet, razed Joshua a fourtime,
made him a passive round-7 quitter, and humiliated the whole of boxing’s heavyweight
institution.

The moment was ecstatic.  As ringside commentators and scribes readied
their solemnest tones to impart the historic import of what just happened, the
DAZN replays, hyper-definition hyper-slo-mo showed the challenger’s back,
jiggling pornographically, as he put the finishing touches on AJ.  It was a form of visual comedy whose
authenticity someday may be matched but cannot be topped.  It was a sight so wondrous a child couldn’t
miss its absurdity and any right-thinking adult had to enjoy it a hundred times
more for its rarity.

Joshua, to his credit, laughed through the entire
episode; perhaps the absurdity enchanted him, too, or perhaps he was knocked
silly or perhaps longsuffering aficionados called for comeuppance in a single
voice and for once the universe heeded us. 
It was not a joke on Joshua so much as his enablers.  The selfaggrandizing fleshpeddlers and
circusbarkers, the celebrity tourists and their publicists, the vlog buffs and
podcast critics and every dweeb with a calculator app and pay-per-view
prediction, the lot of them, didn’t know enough to laugh – didn’t realize the
moment called for joyful selflessness, for losing oneself not in Ruiz’s triumph
but in our sport’s absurdest moment.

“Honest to God, he’s going to lose to Ruiz.”

“AJ’s going to get caught with a lucky punch?”

“Nope.”

“He’s going to separate his shoulder or sprain his
ankle?”

“Not even close.”

“He’s going to get robbed by Yank judging?”

“Colder.”

“I give up.”

“Fully able to continue, after getting spanked and
sparked by an obese lad over whom he towers, Joshua’s going to spit his
mouthpiece, retreat to a corner and refuse to defend his four titles one second
longer.”

Part of the ecstasy of the moment was its impossible
unpredictability.  Even if a wiseacre or
innocent among us bothered to pick Ruiz on a lark, not even he might’ve
predicted Saturday’s final instants: Joshua’s taking a knee, enduring another
count, rising robotically, retreating to a corner, refusing to toe the line,
telling the referee he wanted to toe the line, reclining further in his corner,
refusing to toe the line, telling the referee he wanted to toe the line,
watching the referee wave hands in front of him, feigning a momentary disgust, resigning
himself, reclining once more.

Joshua’s hardest fight was with disbelief much as Andy
Ruiz.  Told his entire career what a
business he was, how many livelihoods he sustained throughout the kingdom, how
groundbreaking be his brand, AJ waited patiently for some institutional
intervention; his majesty requested a sabbatical in round 7, and only the
grandest act of ingratitude might deny it. 
Then it happened – his request got declined.  As you read this, whether on the day it is
published or 10 years later, Joshua still can’t believe his request for recovery
time got rejected.

Do you have any idea who I am?

It’s funnier still to know, as we all now do, his
request for sabbatical, if granted, wouldn’t have changed anything but the
official time of stoppage.  Joshua was
beaten in round 3, not even a halfminute after dropping Ruiz with a dandy
hook.  Ruiz rose, confused, while
something like the word “inevitable” went through every bystander’s mind at
once.  It was, then, time to train our
eyes on Joshua, the better to observe how quickly he took Ruiz’s consciousness,
compare it in real time with our recollection of what Deontay Wilder did a few
weeks back, and birth a fully formed conclusion on who would win the
hypothetical match between them.

And then in the middle of the sacrifice Saturday’s
scapegoat nipped its highpriest.  Just a
nip, truly, a balance shot but nothing a baddest man on the planet should register.  Then the entire artifice came down in a laughable
heap, rose, then came down again and again. 
We can leave the serious analysis to anyone who still takes any
heavyweight seriously but drop a breadcrumb as we skitter away laughing: Ruiz
nearly broke Joshua in half with a midrounds right cross to his midsection that
dropped the champion’s left guard surely as fatigue dropped the champion’s full
self, and that tells you the wisdom of Joshua’s wanting an immediate rematch.

How damnably fragile be these giants!  Ten punches in his finishing move Joshua was
suffocating, heaving his gorgeous pecks and regal delts, pleading Manhattan
thicken its air.  What the hell kind of
professional fighter finds himself drowning 10 punches in to a fight’s ninth
minute?

It added to the moment’s high mirth, though, it
did.  The fatman’s shimmying pursuit, the
giant’s ridiculous retreat, the most important arena in the history of
important arenas gone muted, the imperial palace reduced to what red sauce and
orange cheese cover an enchilada plate.

The spectacle was relentless fantastic.  The champion tagged and toothless, his mouth
alternating between airsucking ovals and get-this! smirks, the champion’s
boundless selfassurance swapped in a realtime identity crisis (how about that
ridiculous bouncing-n-boxing thing in round 6), and all for our entertainment.  Sport can be no more entertaining than
Saturday’s main event.  If you’re new to
boxing be grateful you’ll have a standard of comparison the rest of your days,
and if you’re old to boxing be grateful you lived long enough to witness the
funniest moment of the modern era.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Anthony Joshua defends the IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight titles against Andy Ruiz. Before that, beginning at 5:30 PM ET/10 :30 PM UK Time, 5 fights including world title bouts with Callum Smith defending his Super Middleweight belts against Hassan N’Dam and Katie Taylor and Define Persoon for the undisputed Lightweight Title

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED. THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1: Right from Ruiz..Joshua lands a jab..Hard Jab

Round 2 Ruiz lands a good right..Right from Joshua…Left Hook..

Round 3 HARD LEFT AND DOWN GOES RUIZ…BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES JOSHUA..Hard left by Ruiz…Joshua is hurt..2 BIG RIGHTS AND JOSHUA IS DOWN AGAIN

Round 4  Ruiz lands a right..Hard right from Joshua..

Round 5 Right from Ruiz..Hard jab from Joshua..Right from Ruiz

Round 6 Hard right from Ruiz..Good hook to the body..Hook from Ruiz,,Overhand righ from Ruiz..Right

Round 7 HUGE COMBINATION AND DOWN GOES JOSHUA…COUNTER RIGHT AND DOWN GOES JOSHUA…THE FIGHT IS OVER

Round 1 Good jab from Smith..HARD LEFT AND DOWN GOES N’DAM..

Round 2 LEFT HOOK AND DOWN GOES N’DAM..Good jab from N’Dam

Round 3 Right from N’Dam..Body shot..Right hurts N’Dam..HUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES N’DAM…HE GETS UP AND IS WOBBLY..FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 4: Taylor beleeding on Hair line

Round 5 Good left from Persoon..Persoon cut over left eye

Round 6 Left hook from Taylor

Round 7 Good right from Persoon

Round 8 Right from Person..Left hook..Right

Round 9 Good hook from Taylor..

Round 10 Right counter from Taylor..Right from Persoon..Combination..Right from Taylor

95-95; 96-94 twice FOR TAYLOR

Taylor landed 103-410  Persoon was 116-586

Round 1 Slapping left hook from Kelly..Uppercut

Round 2 Good Jab from Robinson..Left from Kelly..Good right hook from Robinson…Upercut

Round 3 Good body shot from Robinson

Round 4 Body shot from Robinson

Round 5 Right from Robinson..Good action on the inside..Good body shot from Kelly..Straight right

Round 6 Robinson landing good body shots..Good right hook from Kelly..Right from Robinson..Robinson cut over the right eye

Round 7 Good body shot of Robinson..Kelly cut on the left eye..Left from Robinson..Good body shot from Kelly..Right..Left from Robinson..

Round 9 Good right from Kelly..Right..Jab..

Round 10 Left from Robinson..Flurry from Kelly..Straight right..Good body shot from Robinson..Kelly cut around the right eye…Right from Kelly..Uppercut from Robinson..

96-95 for Kelly; 95-95 on 2 cards…DRAW

Round 1:  Buatsi lands a right

Round 2  Left to the chin by Buatsi..Right…Hard body shot

Round 3 Nice left hook by Buatsi..Overhand right..

Round 4 RIGHT HAND AND PERIBAN TAKES A KNEE..Hard right…Big Right from Buatsi..3 BIG RIGHTS AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1: 2 body shots from Coyle

Round 2 Big right hurts Algieri…Left hook..Good Body shot..Uppercut..Algieri lands a left to the body and a jab…

Round 3  Right from Algieri..Body shots..Good body shot

Round 4 Hard combination to body and hurts Coyle…COMBINATION AND DOWN GOES COYLE…

Round 5 Right to head from Algieri…Good right from Coyle..Counter from Algieri..Good counter from Algieri..Body shot from Coyle..

Round 6 Double left hook from Coyle..Jab..Good counter right from Algieri..Left from Coyle..Algieri’s right eye is swollen and he is cut under the left eye.

Round 7 Algieri lands a body shot..Good Jab..Combination drives Coyle to the ropes..Nice Right..Left Hook from Coyle…..COYLE’S CORNER STOPS THE FIGHT AFTER THE ROUND

By Norm Frauenheim-

The heavyweights, bigger than life in fact and fiction, are hard to judge. That’s another way of saying nothing much at all has changed in a division still dormant. It’s been that way for maybe a decade, or perhaps long enough to declare it dead instead of dormant, a kinder yet still deadly diagnosis.

There are always reasons to think it is about to stage some sort of resurrection. There was Anthony Joshua’s stoppage of Wladimir Klitschko in 2017. There was the controversy and compelling drama ofDeontay Wilder’s draw with Tyson Fury in December.

Each was terrific, yet neither bout looks to represent the milestone marking when the old flagship resurfaced with its past glory eventually restored. Battleships just stay on the bottom and rust away.

Yet, the attempt at restoration continues. At least, it does with Joshua’s American debut Saturday night (DAZN 8:30 p.m. ET) against Andy Ruiz Jr. in a place that defines the heavyweight’s golden age. Mention Madison Square Garden and you think of Ali-Frazier. First names not necessary. Ali-Frazier is a universal metaphor for what rivalries do. A sport without one is crickets.

Too bad the heavyweights haven’t had one for at least the aforementioned decade. For a while, you could just blame it on an absence of good heavyweights in the post Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield-Lennox Lewis era. Cycles are like the tides. They come. They go. This time around, however, an incoming opportunity at rebuilding the division is being squandered.

There was momentum, first with Joshua’s stunner over the dominant Klitschko in London and then the Fury-Wilder draw in Los Angeles. Maybe, some of that momentum can be recaptured with Joshua’s debut in an arena with a name synonymous with the one rivalry to which all rivalries are compared.

 Ali-Frazier is the historical standard.

But boxing fans aren’t asking for history. Just Wilder-versus-Joshua. Or a Fury-Wilder rematch. At this point, one of the two would do. Do just fine.

But, no, now we’re talking about Wilder-Joshua sometime next year. Wasn’t next year what we were talking about last year? Like I said, the heavyweights never change.

“It’s embarrassing,’’ Joshua promoter Eddie Hearn said while talking to the media in New York this week amid the pre-fight hype for the UK heavyweight’s U.S. debut against Ruiz.

Hearn was specifically addressing Wilder’s announcement this week that he had agreed to a rematch with Luis Ortiz in September. Hearn’s hope had been to secure a deal for the Joshua-Wilder showdown later this year.

He foresaw November, a Holiday date to celebrate a heavyweight rebound.

“The main man is Joshua,’’ Hearn told the BBC. “But the fight the world wants to see is Wilder. Unfortunately, he is not giving the public what they want. He is not even talking about that fight.

“Which is frustrating.’’

Check and check.

Embarrassing and frustrating.

That’s not a combo good for fans, promoters, networks or the fighters in a hopelessly balkanized business. In Wilder’s case, it’s also not much of a surprise. Since the Fury draw, he has been talking, talking and talking. He’s also thrown one massive right hand, knocking out Dominic Breazeale with one righteous shot.

For all of the criticism of all he doesn’t do, his right hand is a thing of beauty. It’s a silencer, too. His crazy rant about wanting to add “a body” to his record was virtually silenced by a home-run shot to Breazeale’s chin.

Wilder’s right is a punch to behold. Fear, too, especially if you are Joshua. Remember, Klitschko knocked down Joshua with a right hand. If that right had been thrown by Wilder, Joshua might not have gotten up.

Also, Wilder might have become a better fighter, thanks to 12-rounds against the skilled and resilient Fury. Wilder threw that right against Breazeale with more focused resolve than he has in perhaps any prior bout. We’ll learn more about that in a rematch with Ortiz.

However, Ortiz also is real threat to what Hearn had hoped would finally happen later this year. Ortiz is clever enough to unravel a promoter’s best-laid plans with a skillset versatile enough to win a decision over Wilder. Wilder only escaped a scorecard loss in their first one because of that right hand. It landed late. But it landed.

Meanwhile, Joshua (22-0,21 KOs) has to produce a performance against Ruiz (32-1, 21 KOs) that validates his claim on being the face of the heavyweight division. There was no argument in the immediate aftermath of his victory over Klitschko. But subsequent victories over Carlos Takam, Joseph Parker and AlexanderPovetkin left doubts, questions about whether Joshua had left the best of himself in the ring againstKlitschko, who is rumored to be thinking about a comeback

Joshua can deliver a convincing knockout of those doubts against Ruiz, who took the bout when a positivePED test forced Jerrell Miller out of the bout and into disgrace.

Still, Ruiz is exactly the kind of fighter who can make the winner look very bad. He’s chubby. He’s short. Next to the chiseled Joshua, Ruiz looks like a sagging mattress. But looks are deceiving. Ruiz’ hands are as fast as any in the business. If he were dealing cards, he could make a King look like a deuce. In the ring, he could make a Joshua look like a Joker.

That’s the scenario that Joshua and Hearn need to avoid. They need a quick KO. So, too, does the heavyweight division that has been dormant and done for too long. 

By Bart Barry-

Tomorrow, “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” (Riverhead Books) by David Epstein, author of “The Sports Gene”, will become available to the public.  There is but one mention of a boxer in the book, Vasyl Lomachenko, and this happens on page 8.  Because the subject is an interesting one, though, and because its publisher was kind enough to send me a review copy despite my disclosing both this site’s specialized subject matter and my own tiny readership, what follows is a criticism made in good faith.

The longer this book went on, and the deeper I
found myself in it, the less I enjoyed it. 
Not because of some unsettling truth, some grave misreading of myself or
my life’s choices held up to a mirror’s objective gaze; it was because the book
became increasingly repetitive and predictable.

All the usual suspects gather: Tolstoy, Einstein,
van Gogh, Darwin, Edison, Kasparov, Michelangelo, jazz, NASA, U.S. Armed Forces,
biomimicry-driven animal metaphors (foxes, frogs, birds, hedgehogs, darkhorses),
and lots and lots of PhDs.  Little of the
material written about any of these subjects is new or originally interpreted,
which makes their appearances unfortunate – since much of the rest of the book,
parts that don’t detail academic acclaim or retroactively certified greatness, are
quite enjoyable.

“Range’s” most enjoyable character is Frances
Hesselbein, centenarian and accidental CEO, who doesn’t prove the book’s
central theme, which is to be contrary, so much as give the book something
delightful.  Her primary gift, one
assumes, lies in her adaptability, which may make her a generalist or an
oscillating specialist or a fox or a hedgehog, depending where one finds her in
her history and chooses to place her in his thesis.  She is not a tidy package because she is a mammal,
and few such creatures are tidy packages.

But a celebration of mammalian adaptability is
well-trod already (M. Mitchell Waldrop knocked the subject out of the park 27
years ago with “Complexity”), and so a celebration of anti-specialists, people
who aren’t raised to be automaton prodigies like Tiger Woods, composes a highly
anticipated subject in 2019.  Woods
features prominently in the book’s opening, in a well-crafted, turn-the-clichés-around
sort of commentary that actually, and quite surprisingly, suffers in no way
from his unexpected Masters victory a few months ago – a happening that looked
nigh impossible during the time Epstein wrote “Range”.

Woods, of course, is the prototypical,
10,000-hours-to-mastery mold into which a million vicariously thrilled American
fathers have poured their offsprings’ childhoods since 1997 or so.

But watch how that might itself be turned round:

Eldrick had
an overbearing father.  The boy was
forced to play golf all the time because he had a gift, one his father told
business partners would change the world. 
Eldrick succeeded at a shockingly young age.  His course was set.  He would be the world’s greatest golfer and
the world’s richest golfer, the specialist’s specialist.  But after puberty Eldrick realized he had
another calling.  He spent nearly as many
hours practicing seduction techniques as chipping techniques.  He loved to uncover women like he uncovered
his driver (a tiger head sewn by his mother). 
One day the generalist that he loved to be clashed with the specialist the
world expected him to be.  Sponsors fled,
surgeries followed, he lost hundreds of millions of dollars in a divorce
settlement.  But he continued doggedly on
his generalist quest to prove a balding nerd raised at a country club could be
every bit as promiscuous as an NBA power forward or rock musician.  Some successes and many humiliations later, one
quiet spring afternoon in Georgia, Eldrick “Tiger” Woods became only the second
professional golfer ever to win 15 career majors.

*

The money Americans pay self-help authors creates
a gravity nonfiction authors of all stripes now find irresistible.  Subsequently, there’s something a touch too
glib in most American writing.  Every
character finds his life compressed into Forrest Gump’s.  Epstein appears aware of this and often resists
it.  But gravity remains:

“As a final flourish, with just a few hours of
work, a colleague helped (Gunpei Yokoi) program a clock into the display.  LCD screens were already in wristwatches, and
they figured it would give adults an excuse to buy their ‘Game & Watch’,”
Epstein writes about a generalist Nintendo employee.  Just four sentences later, Epstein completes
the epic thusly: “‘Game & Watch’ remained in production eleven years and
sold 43.4 million units.”

In a 100,000-word book, this is about the same as the
Gumpian invention of the smiley-face t-shirt. 

Ah, but this book is supposed to be t-shaped, rogue,
to make manifest its point about sampling numerous disciplines, represented
here as anecdotes, en route to serendipitous, interdisciplinary breakthroughs!

Well, OK. 
But let’s go all the way with our reconsideration of everything and ask
this entirely relevant question: Why bind all of this in a book when there are
more appropriate media available?

It’s because, in an inversion of its inversion,
this book wants the academy’s approval very much.  This thought happened somewhere in the middle
of an Epstein anecdote: “‘Outsider artists’ are the self-taught jazz masters of
visual art, and the originality of their work can be stunning.  In 2018, the National Gallery of Art featured
a full exhibition dedicated to self-taught artists; art history programs at
Stanford, Duke, Yale, and the Art Institute of Chicago now offer seminars in
outsider art.”

The academy approves, see!

But how very mediocre of it, and how perfectly
backwards.

The intended audience for this book, hyper-educated
professionals who fancy themselves rebellious, should be surprised exceptional
things happen for generations without once appearing in textbooks.  Nobody else will be, though, and certainly
nobody who reads often about our beloved sport.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Fraunheim-

He’s been Pac-Man and Congressman. Honorific titles and belted ones are all part of his resume. He been called just about everything, including a few that are four-letters long. Hey, nobody wins them all, and Senator Manny Pacquiao hasn’t. He has heard it all, and some would say done it all.

But an eight-time champion in boxing’s various weight classes and a two-time Filipino office-holder is not finished. His comeback continues July 20 against Keith Thurman. Maybe, we shouldn’t be surprised. Pacquiao’s evident generosity and his day job as a Filipino politician seemingly needs an inexhaustible revenue stream. That means boxing. It’s what he has known for just about as long as he’s been alive.

It fed him when he was a starving teenager fighting for a few pesos on Filipino streets. Then, it made him rich enough to run for office. For a couple of years, he was one of the highest-earning athletes in the world.

Of course, he is back for more and he’ll be there for as long as his dangerous craft produces the kind of money he couldn’t get anywhere else. But here’s reason to fear the second part of that equation.  The bigger the bucks, the bigger danger.

By all accounts, Pacquiao will collect a $20-million guarantee against Thurman in a PBC bout at Las Vegas MGM Grand. That’s more than enough money to convince Pacquiao to seek some more if he beats Thurman. Will he? Maybe. Can he? Definitely. At last check, Pacquiao is a slight underdog to Thurman, who is about a decade younger than the 40-year-old Filipino.

But odds for this welterweight fight are hard to judge, despite Thurman’s bold words.  He has promised to end Pacquiao’s career in much the same way that the Filipino finished Oscar De La Hoya’s long run in a 2008 stunner. Actually, Thurman has done more than promise. He’s gone biblical.

“I know he likes to quote Bible verses,’’ Thurman said to his elder this week during promotional stops in New York and Los Angeles. “So, I’ll let you know:

“He’s getting crucified.’’

Maybe, but don’t bet on it, not after Thurman’s uninspiring performance in winning a majority decision over Josesito Lopez January 26 in his first bout in nearly two years. Maybe, it was just inertia, the so-called rust from extended inactivity.  Still, the bout left question about whether the welterweight called One Time was beyond prime time because of injuries.

To be fair, it’s also hard to judge Pacquiao. He beat Adrien Broner in his last outing January 19. But Broner didn’t throw many more punches than a ring post. He posed and postured. In terms of aggression and willingness to fight, Pacquiao looked good. But Broner offered nothing. It was an exhibition of a Pacquiao still mobile and quick. But it wasn’t a fight.

It’s hard to say what might happen if the “One Time” Thurman shows up. He might connect with Pacquiao’s jaw the way Juan Manuel Marquez did in that stunning 2012 KO.  If so, he might be doing Pacquiao a favor. For now, there’s no sign that Pacquiao will ever get a rematch with a guy closer to his age. Pacquiao keeps mentioning Floyd Mayweather Jr., who beat him in the much-hyped revenue record-setter in 2015.

But Mayweather has not said or done anything that indicates he’s interested. Like him or not, Mayweather is still the smartest guy in the room.   

Without the Mayweather possibility, a Pacquiao victory puts him in line for Errol Spence Jr., the PBC star who scored a dominant decision over pound-for-pound contender Mikey Garcia in March. Spence might not be the world’s most skilled welterweight. From this perspective, the most varied skillset at 147 pounds still rests in Terence Crawford’s dangerous hands. But that’s a different argument for a different day.

There’s no debate about size and power. Spence has more of that than anybody in the division, more than enough to really hurt Pacquiao. It’s not worth the risk, no matter how big the reward. 

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in Scotland the World Boxing Super Series held the final semifinals matches in its bantamweight and super lightweight divisions, and they went even better than hoped. Hometown southpaw Josh “Tartan Tornado” Taylor defanged Russian Ivan “The Beast” Baranchyk, and Japan’s “Monster” Naoya Inoue proved exactly that against Puerto Rican Emmanuel Rodriguez. The fighters’ aggregate record Saturday morning was 69-0 (52 KOs).

This wonderful DAZN combination of excellent performances in authentic prizefights, the rare fusion of excellence and authenticity, is something WBSS, in only its second season, has given us more of than any of its rivals. Not peers, mind you – rivals. Peers would be doing their best to do what WBSS does, which is provide incentive enough to our beloved sport’s abundance of shortsighted agents to make them please both current consumers and would-be consumers (most of whom self-identify as former consumers).

To wit: across the digital spectrum Saturday a former giant in the prizefighting space – forget not, Showtime, when it was lean and innovative a decade ago, gave us the Super Six – appealed to the worst of its remaining viewership by promoting a mismatch with an a-side’s homicidal musings. Likely there’ll be more here about what Deontay Wilder did, in a few weeks, after Anthony Joshua fights, because unless those guys are fighting one another or Tyson Fury, neither of them nor their exploits merits more than half a column anymore.

It’s much easier to be cavalier about boxing’s flagship division the week after a Naoya Inoue fight, isn’t it? He is the very essence of what pound-for-pound was intended to measure when the concept got launched during Sugar Ray Robinson’s era. If you were able to make Inoue and Wilder and Joshua and Fury the same size and fight them in a round tournament the question is not whether Inoue would emerge as winner or even if Inoue would win every match by knockout but whether any of today’s best heavyweights could make it out the first minute with him. The gulf in craft, leverage and reflex is that great.

To attract casual fans, I know, we’re supposed to pretend this is not so, we’re supposed to squint to see something great about today’s heavyweights besides their mass, but it simply cannot be done during WBSS season, when prime world titlists fight one another, one after the other, showing each other respect before and after their confrontations while subjecting one another to relentless violence between the ropes. It makes farcical inauthentic much of the rest of the year’s fare.

Inoue is the world’s best prizefighter right now. Better than Bud, better than Hi-Tech, better than The Truth, better than Canelo. He is making highlight-reel showcase opponents out of world titlists in matches expected by experts to be competitive. I can’t name his promoter, I don’t know his training techniques, I don’t know if he was an Olympian, and if he’s a heartthrob in his native land I don’t know about that either. I don’t know, in other words, any of the flummery publicists pass our ways when it’s time to grow the brand and risking more than words is out of the question.

Here’s what happened Saturday in WBSS’s bantamweight semifinal: Emmanuel Rodriguez, a larger man making the third defense of a title he won on the road, went directly at Inoue the way a champion does when he thinks his challenger is a hypejob. He moved Inoue back, too, and chastened him with a few counters, and the first round was excellent and competitive, exactly as an aficionado, as distinct from a branding fanatic, should wish every round of every fight be. The second round was going competitively, too, until Rodriguez turned a touch too brazenly on a left hook and got spuncycled on the next. After that things got real academic real quick. Inoue went bodysnatching, not headhunting, as a man does when he wants his opponent’s submission more than he wants a YouTube clip, and Rodriguez collapsed for being caved-in.

It was decisive and quick, not sloppy or preordained. It was another chance to be euphoric at the spectacle of boxing done beautifully.

And it wasn’t even Saturday’s main. That came after a moment of mutual admiration between Inoue and his WBSS-finals opponent, Nonito Donaire, now enjoying a career resurrection complete as it is completely unexpected. Donaire’s winding transition from promoter-creation brat to international ambassador concluded prettily with his sincere congratulations to Inoue, a moment of affection and elegance enough to make you proud of your commitment to our sport, enough to make you wonder, however briefly, if Donaire, once considered a prodigy too, mightn’t have a last hook in him, a sink-all-coffins-to-one counter that he starts with Inoue’s a millisecond earlier and a millimeter shorter and makes all Japan inhale sharply.

It’s a farfetched scenario, indeed, though not farfetched as Donaire’s simple presence in the finals; “dear Lord, give me just one chance to throw the hook” – so went Nonito’s prayer at tournament’s start, and now he will have it. A more answerable prayer will have Josh Taylor who, after blackmatting Ivan Baranchyk a twotime in a prizefight proper brutal, looks forward to Regis Prograis in the finals.

There’s no reason to hold the decisive match on neutral ground, Super Six’s largest mistake; return to Glasgow and let Prograis try and stretch the Scotsman in his home gym, knowing if he lets European judges score one of their own he’ll have read to him by a kilted ring announcer three cards prefilled at Friday’s weighin. Same goes for Inoue-Donaire for that matter; let Nonito choose the venue – Inoue’s supporters have the means and willingness to travel wherever their man plies his craft.

O but the WBSS is so much better than everything else.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Deontay Wilder has more words than punches.

At last check, the words are rocking the social-media landscape. Wilder has been all over the place this week with talk that has been either condemned by those who hear death threats or dismissed by those who hear just another boxer with a cliched promise to kill an opponent.

Maybe, it has all been more grist for a media mill with an ever-escalating lust for the sensational.

Or, maybe, it’s just stupid.

Or, in perhaps a more cynical take,
it’s just another heated step up in an effort to hype a hard-to-sell fight. In a sport with an orderly business plan, Saturday would have been a rematch of Wilder’s compelling – and controversial — draw with Tyson Fury. Instead, we get Wilder versus Dominic Breazeale. In boxing, that’s called business as usual.

Still, some of what Wilder has said is hard to ignore.

Example:

“This is the only sport where you can kill a man and get paid for it at the same time. It’s legal, so why not use my right to do so?

“His life is on the line for this fight and I do mean his life. I’m still trying to get me a body on my record.”

A boxing license is not a license to kill. Death in the ring happens, sometimes by match-making so horrible as to be criminal and sometimes by licensing of fighters who should never have been cleared medically.

It is life-and-death drama. The fighters understand those stakes. So, too, do fans, who watch to witness their courage and to see them employ feet and hands in a marvelous balance of skill in the face of adversity. They fight to win and get paid. But there is no right to kill, no matter how often that one four-letter word is used and over-used.

Wilder is under huge criticism for what he said, especially from UK fans and retired fighters (Lennox Lewis, Frank Bruno) who thought judges robbed Fury of a decision and the World Boxing Council’s heavyweight title at Los Angeles’ Staples Center last December.

Boxing has pretty much heard it all, of course. Mike Tyson used to talk crazy throughout his days in what he called “the hurt business.’’ After a 1986 victory over Jesse Ferguson, Tyson said he wanted to drive Ferguson’s “(nose) bone up into his brain.” But Tyson didn’t say – never said — he wanted to “put a body on his record.’’

From this corner, it’s hard to explain what Wilder (40-0-1, 39 KOs) did say. Perhaps, that’s because I’m a Wilder fan. I like the guy. His right hand is his only dimension, yet it’s a dimension nobody has been able to counter, much less elude. Guess here, it will land all over again, finishing Breazeale (20-1, 18 KOs) in an early stoppage at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center (Showtime 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT). Increasingly, however, Wilder’s rants from the bully pulpit are baffling.

He gets on a roll, seemingly losing control in an undisciplined torrent of disconnected thoughts and words, sometimes funny and often angry. In a conference call about 10 days ago, Wilder said:

“People are simple-minded. My mindset is different. My mindset is so big that a spaceship can fit in it.’’

That, too, was baffling, perhaps cringe-worthy., But it was harmless, unlike this week’s controversial comment, which is enough to wonder whether that Wilder mindset is just an empty hangar.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in the comain of an ESPN broadcast from Tucson, Mexican super bantamweight Emanuel Navarrete successfully defended his WBO world title by stopping former WBO super bantamweight titlist Isaac Dogboe in a pretty savage way. Both men were the same men only moreso in their rematch.

There’s something more disquieting about a volume-puncher’s demise, more decisive, something fated like a log being fed in a woodchipper. He rarely has much more than a plan A1 or A2; if plan A was shift-right-throw-left, plan A1 is shift-left-throw-right or jab-jab-hook instead of jab-hook; his primary attack, which is his defense, too, is reliant near entirely on an assertion of will, on a career-defining assumption he can continue longer than his more-talented peers. And the peers are near always more talented because who that had reflexes enough would get hit often as the volume-puncher, and who that had power enough would require such volume? Because the volume-puncher needs hundreds of repetitions to turn his trick he relies, too, on a signature rhythm, and woe betide the volume-puncher whose rhythm gets solved by an opponent.

Since Joe Frazier’s sainted name got invoked in a proper context during Saturday’s broadcast, his case is one worth visiting. He’d not a prayer against George Foreman because volume-punchers haven’t a prayer against true sluggers, and Foreman truly was one. Frazier’d much better than a prayer against Muhammad Ali, a boxer for most intents and purposes, because Frazier’s hit-you-everywhere-at-all-times attack offended Ali’s sensibilities much as his chin. Then came the 14th round of their third fight, their 41st round together (15+12+14 because their 1974 rematch was a 12-round affair for less than the real title), and Ali solved Frazier’s rhythm and movement. And heavyweight prizefighting’s greatest trilogy folded into a vicious target practice trainer Eddie Futch mercifully stopped with a singularly elegant gesture.

No fighter more needs protection from himself than a volume-puncher, as champion-cum-broadcaster Timothy Bradley should and did know. Beneath commentator Joe Tessitore’s hysteria and Andre Ward’s cerebral detachment a close listener heard Bradley’s empathetic fury with how poorly Dogboe’s corner protected its charge and son. Bradley knew well as anyone in the city of Tucson how hopeless was Dogboe’s strategy and how helpless Dogboe was to relent. Bradley, beaten semiconscious for at least half a fight by Ruslan Provodnikov and caught hung over his front knee more than a few times by Manny Pacquiao, registered early and often Dogboe’s masochistic pleas for an uppercut from Navarrete.

Whatever Bradley said, here’s what he silently willed from ringside: Isaac, before you make one more forward step, take your right glove, set it palm-down, and lodge it between your chin and throat, damn it! Dogboe didn’t have this standard maneuver in his quiver because his father proved more conditioning-coach prophet than boxing trainer, and because Dogboe’s title run was too entangled with his father’s proselytizing and NeHo chanting to permit Dogboe seek wisdom elsewhere.

However universal be certain elements of our beloved sport – like: catch the uppercut with an open palm set under your chin – there are others that might should bring pause from a Western pundit like: What in the Sam Hill do I know about the father-son dynamic shared by Ghanaian émigrés to London? And before anyone takes to his hind legs to bray about universal truths, he should ask how many supposedly universal expressions of a father’s love permit a world-title run in prizefighting.

Which leaves us where exactly? It leaves us wondering if Dogboe’s dad should be exiled for malpractice as at least a third of Saturday’s broadcast team insisted, or if perhaps Saturday’s fight got stopped at the right moment.

(Here’s a confession that addresses conviction: I googled “Dogboe hospitalized” immediately after writing that sentence, to ensure it wasn’t already an empirically dumb thought.)

However long looked the odds of a Dogboe comeback eight rounds through Saturday’s comain, they were shorter still than the odds of a 5-foot-2 man from Ghana making $100,000 for 35 minutes of work as a professional athlete in Arizona.

Time and again we return to the ‘t’ in each of life’s algorithms; if you start observation’s stopwatch at the opening bell of a rematch with Emanuel Navarrete, the Mexican who outclassed your son but five months ago, Paul Dogboe looks a sadistic ignoramus for allowing his son enter Saturday’s championship rounds, but what if you start that same stopwatch on his son’s birthday in 1994? If nothing else, you weigh the catalog of theretofore-unbelievable things your son did to bring himself to his rematch for a super bantamweight world title 24 years later. And under that weight, probably, you honor initially his petition to continue fighting.

Let none of the weight of those words diminish in any way Navarrete’s accomplishment. Twice he entered a title fight as its b-side and twice he prevailed, and the second time more prevalently than the first. That makes him the right kind of titlist, and that makes him increasingly unique among his peers. Navarrete did not doubt even momentarily his place in a ring across from Dogboe, wherever his promoter or his promoter’s broadcast partner’s interests lay.

Navarrete was the much larger man and better boxer, and he acted like it, broken right hand or otherwise. He knew Dogboe’s need to make a vacuum of the ring that suffocated any initiative but his own, and he snatched the initiative from Dogboe and did not relinquish it. Brutal as the fight was for Dogboe, it was not gentle on Navarrete, though you’d hardly have guessed it by watching the Mexican.

Aficionados got afforded a tiny peek under Navarrete’s professionalism and decency the moment he dropped Dogboe on the canvas in round 12. Navarrete’s glance at his unmanned foe was conclusive to the edge of contemptuous. Such a glance should delight aficionados about Navarrete’s prospects as champion.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Jarrett Hurd defends the IBF/WBA Junior Middleweights titles against Julian Williams.  The action kicks off at 8 PM ET / 5 PM PT with Matt Korobov meeting Immanuwel Aleem followed by Mario Barrios taking Juan Jose Velasco

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1: Jab from Williams…Hard jab

Round 2 Left inside from Hurd…Left from Williams… Hard right…Hard right…LEFT AND DOWN GOES HURD..Hard flurry on the ropes..

Round 3 Hard left from Williams..Right..Hard uppercut from Hurd..Big left from Williams..Big right from Hurd..Double right

Round 4  Body shot from Hurd..Counter uppercut from Williams..Right uppercut…left..Right and good body shot..

Round 5 Uppercut from Williams..left and right to the head..Right from Hurd..Uppercut..Blood from the lip of Hurd..Big combination

Round 6 Hurd coming out fast…Its a war..Williams swelling under the left eye..Flurry from Hurd..combination from Williams..Big uppercut…uppercut..

Round 7  Jabbing from Williams..Good right..Counter from Hurd..

Round 8 Hard combination from Williams..Hard body shot..Beautiful combination..Body shot from Williams..Hurd cut badly around the right eye

Round 9 Huge uppercut from Williams…Big left..

Round 10 Great body shot from Williams..Big left hook…

Round 11 Hurd lands a right to the head..right to the body..Right and left….Uppercut from Williams..3 punch combination..Left hook from Williams

Round 12 Williams landing some uppercuts…Left hook..uppercut..Hard lands 2 body shots and a right hand..Body shot from Williams..

116-111, 115-112 twice FOR JULIAN WILLIAMS

Round 1 Body shots from Barrios…

Round 2 BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES VELASCO….HE DOESN’T GET UP AND THE FIGHT IS OVER

Round 1 Left from Korobov..

Round 2  Korobov working the body…left

Round 3 Good body shot from Korobov..Counter from Korobov..Counter left hook from Aleem..Right from Korobov

Round 4 Korobov drops Aleem with a left but ruled it came behind the head..Korobov lands a right to the body..left

Round 5 Right hook from Korobov

Round 6 Hard left hurts and cuts Aleem..Hard right..Left

Round 7 1-2 from Korobov..

Round 8 Good left from Korobov (Uppercut)

Round 9 Good left hook from Aleem

Round 10  Body shots from Korobov..Good right from Aleem and another

96-94 ALEEM AND 95-95 TWICE…MAJORITY DRAW

By Norm Frauenheim-

TUCSON – Miguel Berchelt has heard all of the talk. It has him fighting pound-for-pound contender Vasiliy Lomachenko one day. It has him in showdown with Tevin Farmer. There’s speculation of junior-lightweight unification bout. Berchelt’s name is everywhere, a sure sign of an emerging star.

First, however, there’s some immediate business on his agenda.

“Francisco Vargas,” Berchelt said Friday after the formal weigh-in for a an ESPN-televised rematch Saturday at Tucson Arena of his 11th-round stoppage of Vargas in January 2017. “Have to win this one for anything else to matter. Vargas is a good Mexican fighter. It will be another great, great fight between to warriors. I don’t know how it will go. But whatever way it goes, I will be the winner.”

Berchelt is expected to win the sequel. There are even some bold predictions from Berchelt’s camp that an early stoppage looms in what might be the end of Vargas’ career. But Berchelt, himself, is cautious. He remembers the last meeting, a dramatic confrontation that was among the leading contender for Fight of the Year. Berchelt recalls Vargas’ resiliency. He expects to see it again. Vargas, meanwhile, is no mood to back down

Twenty-eight months have come and gone without too many days or even hours when Francisco Vargas hasn’t thought about Berchelt and a rematch.

Berchelt is there when he awakes. Sometimes, he’s there when he sleeps.

“I have thought of nothing else, but him and a chance to fight him again,’’ Vargas said. A chance at redemption — turning nightmare into a dream — has been a lifestyle for Vargas. That chance is finally here. Vargas looked into the eyes of Berchelt Friday for the first time since he lost to the feared junior lightweight in January 2017 in a bout that was a leading contender for Fight of the Year.

Saturday night, Vargas will face him for the second time in an ESPN televised bout (10 pm. ET/7 p.m. PT) at Tucson Arena in an intriguing rematch and perhaps another Fight of the Year contender on a card that also includes a rematch of WBO super-bantamweight Emanuel Navarrete’s upset of Isaac Dogboe in December.

Vargas expects the same blood, guts and drama. Only the result will be different, he vows.

“I did a few different things for this fight,’’ Vargas (25-1-2, 18 KOs) said after both fighters were at the junior-lightweight limit of 130 pounds. Dogboe (20-1, 14 KOs) was at 121.4 pounds and Navarrete (26-1, 22 KOs) at 121.6.

“I have a few different strategies,’’ Vargas continued. “I’m sure he will do different things too. But I’ll be ready. I am ready. I’ve been getting ready ever since the last one.’’

The last one ended with Vargas bloodied and finished in an 11th round stoppage at Fantasy Springs Casino in Indio, Calif. But finished did not mean forgotten. Vargas hired a new trainer, Joel Diaz, and won a couple fights, beating Stephen Smith in December 2017 and Rod Salka in April 2018. He hasn’t fought since.

“I’ve been waiting for the rematch,’’ Vargas, of Mexico City, said.

The long wait has spawned some inevitable speculation about Vargas’ chances in a second go-round against the emerging Berchelt (35-1, 31 KOs), a fellow Mexican who enters the rematch amid talk that one day he will fight pound-for-pound contender Vasiliy Lomachenko.

Berchelt doesn’t expect a changed Vargas.

“He was a very good fighter two years ago and he’s is very good fighter today,’’ Berchelt said. “I don’t know how it will end. But how ever it ends, I will be the winner.’’

Berchelt trainer Alfredo Caballero told Mexican-speaking media that the World Boxing Council’s junior-lightweight champion will finish Vargas career junior-lightweight champion will finish Vargas’ career.

“Those who are talking will have to eat their words,’’ Vargas said. “I am not the fighter they remember from a couple of years ago. My training is much more together. It’s much different. My trainers get it.

“I get it.’’

By Norm Frauenheim-

TUCSON – Isaac Dogboe, whose African ancestry is at the root of his Royal Storm nickname, is learning kings don’t last long. They are only targets for ambitious challengers and always vulnerable to unexpected trouble, often self-imposed.

At 24, Dogboe returns to Arizona, still a crown prince coming off his first real lesson in what it is to be an ex-king, a former champion. That ex, he vows, will be gone Saturday night at Tucson Arena.

He intends to eliminate the temporary and restore the current in a rematch of his first defeat, administered thoroughly by a tough and skilled Emanuel Navarette last December.

The loss of Dogboe’s World Boxing Organization’s junior-featherweight title was a stunner for anybody who saw his abundant energy, charisma and power overwhelm Hidenori Otake in a first-round stoppage at Glendale, Ariz., last August.

Then, it looked as if a long reign had begun.

In December, however, it was abruptly ended by Navarette.

Dogboe’s scorecard loss was – and has been – a sobering lesson.

“A quiet humiliation,’’ Dogboe said before a media workout this week in a gym a few miles of desert south of a fabled arena where Sugar Ray Leonard, Salvador Sanchez, George Foreman, Michael Carbajal and Alexis Arguello have fought. Legends have won and lost there. It’s a place where Dogboe hopes to hit the restart button on what he foresees as his own legend.

It’s intriguing, because it won’t be easy. Navrette is the bigger fighter. Much bigger. He has a five-inch advantage in height and one-inch edge in reach. When they pose in the ritual face-off at Friday’s weigh-in, Dogboe will still be looking up at him. But that significant tale on the tape does not add up to the reason Dogboe sees for his only defeat. He sees himself. And five months later he sees a different fighter than the one who lost a unanimous decision at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

“I wasn’t prepared,’’ said Dogboe, whose bout is the first of two rematches on an ESPN telecast (10 pm ET) that will also feature Miguel Berchelt-Francisco Vargas in a junior-lightweight sequel to Berchelt’s 11th-round stoppage in 2017. “Weight was a problem. I had to sit in the sauna and sweat. I just wasn’t myself.’’

There were disruptions – Royal disruptions. Dogboe (20-1, 14 KOs) said he interrupted his training in early November for a chance to meet Prince Charles and Camilla in Accra in his native Ghana. The Royals met on Nov. 3. About a month later – Dec. 8, Navarette beat him. It’s no surprise that Navarette (26-1,22 KOs), of Mexico City, says he’ll do it again.

“The pressure is on him,’’ Navarette said. “If he feels it, I’ll knock him out this time.’’

Navarette had the WBO belt he took from Dogboe slung across one shoulder as he spoke to media and fans from a corner of the old gym in an industrial section of Tucson. When it was Dogboe’s turn in the ring, he seemed to spot Navarette and the belt, the symbolic crown the young prince once had. Dogboe suddenly looked energized. He hit his trainer’s mitts with a power that echoed throughout a place often rocked by fighter jets at nearby Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. For that moment, however, all you could hear was Dogboe’s hands pounding out what sounded like a message from a fighter on his own mission.

“This is about redemption for me,’’ Dogboe said. “I’m ready to go to war.’’