Follow all the action as Vasyl Lomachenko and Jose Pedraza square off in a lightweight unification bout.  The action kicks off at 9 PM ET with a lightweight bout between Teofimo Lopez and Mason Menard.  Next up will the The WBO Super bantamweight title bout between Isaac Dogboe and Emanuel Navarrete.

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Round 1: Right from Pedraza..Crowd Screaming “LOMA..LOMA…LOMA”…Hard left from Lomachenko..

Round 2: Good straight left from Lomachenko..Jab..left….Pedraza gets in a right

Round 3 Jab from Pedraza…3 punch combination from Lomachenko..

Round 4 Left from Pedraza..Combination on inside..Right hook from Lomachenko..Good jab..left..hard ;left

Round 5 Lomachenko lands a left to the body…Body shot from Pedraza..Jab and 2 lefts from Lomachenko

Round 6 Right from Pedraza..Ripping combo from Lomachenko..Left…Pedraza gets in a right…Hard left from Lomachenko

Round 7 Lomachenko gets in a right..Left to body..Right inside…Straight left..Body shot that was answered by a combination from Pedraza

Round 8 Right to body from Pedraza..2 hard right hooks from Lomachenko….Left to body..3 punch combination..Inside right hook

Round 9  Right from Pedraza..Right to body..Combination on inside..Hard uppercut/left from Lomachenko

Round 10 Body shot from Pedraza..Another,,,Right hook..Uppercut/left combination….Left from Loamchenko

Round 11 Straight left from Lomachenko..Hard left hurts Pedraza..Lomahenko ripping shots…ALl over Pedraza..Body Shot…LEFT TO HEAD AND DOWN GOES PEDRAZA…ANOTHER LEFT AND DOWN GOES PEDRAZA AGAIN

Round 12 Right hook from Pedraza…Good Straight left..Right hook..

119-107; 117-109 TWICE FOR VASYL LOMACHENKO

Round 1 Left to body by Navarette..3 body shots from Dogboe..Jab..Left and right to body..Left as Navarrete came off ropes..Jab..Right from Navarrete..Right from Dogboe

Round 2 Navarrete trying to use long jab..Right to body from Dogboe..Counter uppercut..Jab from Navarrete..Left to body from Dogboe…Hard right from Navarrete…..Big body shot and left hook..Combinations has Dogboe on ropes..

Round 3 Left to body from Navarrete..uppercut..Hard left..Left from Dogboe…1-2 from Navarrete

Round 4 Body work from Dogboe…Left to body..Jabs

Round 5  Right from Dogboe..good uppercut from Navarrete..another uppercut…Navarrete chasing Dogboe..missing a lot..Left from Dogboe

Round 6  Uppercut from Navarrete..Right..Left..4 punch combination..Body shot from Dogboe..uppercut..right

Round 7 Body work from Dogboe..Body work on inside…Combination from Navarrete..Good body shot from Dogboe..

Round 8 Hard body shots from Dogboe…left to body..Good right and left to body..2 lefts to the head…Long right from Navarrete..Left from Dogboe..Good left to the body

Round 9 Jab from Dogboe..Right to head–Navarrete slips to canvas,,Left from Dogboe….Good right

Round 10 Dogboe has swelling over right eye..Doctor checks it to begin the round..Left to body from Navarrete..Left drives Dogboe into ropes..Body work from Dogboe..Dogboe slips in corner..Body shot from Navarrete..Right from Dogboe..3 punch combination from Navarrete

Round 11 Left to body from Navarrete..Body shot with the uppercut…Digboe slips again..

Round 12 Right from Navarrete,,,Left..Right from Dogboe..Body shot from Navarrete..Digboe thrown to the canvas..

115-113 ; 116-112 TWICE FOR WINNER AND NEW CHAMPION EMANUEL NAVARRETE

Round 1 Right over top from Lopez…Hard right..HUGE RIGHT AND MENARD FALLS FACE FIRST…FIGHT OVER…TIME 44 SECONDS

By Norm Frauenheim

It’s been called a heavyweight resurrection and maybe that’s what it was when Tyson Fury climbed to his feet while Jack Reiss was about to complete the count in delivering last rites to an astonishing comeback in the fight of his life and for his life.

It was as compelling a moment as any. It defined the reason why people watch and why boxing always defies the doom so often predicted. Better writers have called it life in a shot glass and that’s what we witnessed last Saturday in Fury’s controversial draw with Deontay Wilder last Saturday at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. Within a few seconds, it unfolded with undiluted power. One-hundred-and-eighty proof drama.

But did it really mark a heavyweight revival?

Only if there is an immediate rematch.

Business is often about momentum and the heavyweight division captured a lot of it with a fight that was a hard sell. Tickets, hands full of them, were available from scalpers and at the Staples box office hours before opening bell. Showtime’s pay-per-view telecast was tracking this week to do between 300,000 and 400,000. Decent, but not great.

If you missed it live, you can watch the replay on Showtime Saturday night (9 pm ET). Guess here: A big audience will watch. The replay, itself, will serve as a good platform to market a rematch that has emerged as a lot more attractive that Anthony Joshua against either Wilder or Fury.

That’s what Wilder said in a conference call Tuesday, just days after he and Fury defied expectations. Forget Joshua, Wilder said, who in effect told Joshua to go pound nails, or Dillian Whyte.

“Let him continue to fight second-tier fighters,’’ Wilder said. “Maybe one of them knocks him out.’’

The drama and controversy generated by Wilder-Fury stole the bully pulpit right out from under Joshua, who reportedly had ducked a $50-million offer to fight Wilder.

Joshua had all of the momentum in his corner after his victory over Wladimir Klitschko in an April 2017 bout. That fight, too, was dubbed a heavyweight revival. But the revival and momentum were squandered, in part because there was not motivation for Joshua to risk his UK popularity. He had been drawing huge, soccer-like crowds in the UK. Why jeopardize the box office with a risky fight? But who remembers, or even cares, about his subsequent victories over Alexander Povetkin, Joseph Parker and Carlos Takam?

Now, however, Fury returns to the UK riding a huge wave of popularity. There are reports in UK media that Joshua and his promoter Eddie Hearn want to resume negotiations with Wilder for his next fight. But wouldn’t a Wilder-Joshua fight instead of an immediate Fury-Wilder rematch further enrage fans who already think Fury got robbed on Saturday’s scorecards?

The split draw had a lot of people alleging fix and screaming for an investigation. From ringside, I scored it a draw. From round to round, it was close, hard to judge. I scored the first, fourth, fifth and seventh rounds for Fury. I scored the second and fifth for Wilder. I scored the second and eighth even. In each round, there was not much that separated the two. There was Fury’s jab and Wilder’s erratic power, both of which were exerted in the late seconds in an evident to attempt to steal rounds.

On this card, it was 4-2-2 for Fury after eight. In the ninth, Wilder scored a knockdown. Fury won the 10th and 11th. In the 12th, there was the knockdown and Fury’s come-back-to-life moment. It was astonishing and emotional. On this scorecard, however, it was still a draw.

The dramatic moment, I suspect, influenced many to argue that Fury should have won. A further factor was his personal triumph from drinking, drugging and dark thoughts that included suicide. He reportedly weighed 400 pounds a year ago.

He sang at the post-fight news conference and asked reporters to sing with him. Bye, Bye Miss American Pie, Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry filled the Staples Center press room with voices from reporters who joined the Fury choir. It was unprecedented. It was hard not to be won over. I wish he had won. But my scorecard said something else.

It was a draw. But it was a performance that should ensure Fury and Wilder a rich rematch. Only then can anybody call it a true heavyweight revival.

By Norm Frauenheim-

LOS ANGELES – Deontay Wilder wore a mask. It covered his mouth and nose in menacing black. Tyson Fury laughed at the costume, in part because he thinks nothing can hide Wilder’s true character.

“He’s a fraud,’’ Fury said Friday beneath a bright Southern California sun while standing on a stage within a block from Staples Center and the ring where Fury promises to prove just how fraudulent he believes Wilder’s championship credentials are.

Delivering on that promise Saturday in a Showtime pay-per-view bout (9 p.m. ET/ 6 p.m. PT), however, might not last beyond the first right hand that Wilder lands. That’s a prevailing theory.

At some point, the guess is that Wilder will exercise that one-punch power like a paralyzing laser from Darth Vader. Just like that, it’ll be over and Fury will be headed back to Manchester City’s pints and pizzas that a year ago had turned the former heavyweight champ into a sumo-sized mess. The sumo size is gone, however.

If not exactly slim, Fury was a scaled-down 265.5 pounds at a weigh-in that did not include the ritual face-to-face pose for the cameras. It was eliminated because of fears that tension between the two camps might escalate into a fracas, or worse.

It’s notable, perhaps, to know that it is the lightest Fury been since he was at 247 for his 2015 upset of Wladimir Klitschko, then the heavyweight’s undisputed champion. But a reported loss of 150 pounds over the last 12 months continues to generate skepticism about Fury. To wit: Was more than just cellulite lost in Fury’s battle to regain a heavyweight belt?

He’s confident he can take Wilder’s WBC belt, mostly because he sees the same limited skillset others have detected in one of the few athletes from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, not in shoulder pads. But Luis Ortiz saw the same limitation and yet could do nothing about it. Wilder got up from a knockdown and soon followed with right that knocked out of the Cuban.

“I’m going to knock him out, too,’’ Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) said Friday at Fury behind a mask still in place and not there because of the Los Angeles smog.

It was gesture of intimidation, an ominous promise that Wilder’s right will land no matter what Fury does.

Yet, there were questions about just how much leverage Wilder would have behind that feared right in a title defense that could put the winner in line for very rich payday against Anthony Joshua. According to contracts filed with the California Commission, Wilder is guaranteed $4 million and Fury $3 million.

If Fury was a scaled-down version of his former self, Wilder was simply skinny. In a surprise, Wilder was at 212.5 pounds Friday. It’s the second lightest he’s ever been. He was at 207.25 in his pro debut a decade ago.

Perhaps, Wilder hopes fewer pounds will augment his quickness and allow him to move away from Fury in a cat-and-mouse game. If Fury’s astonishing weight loss has in fact left him depleted, it’ll become evident in the later rounds. Fatigue in Fury could set him up for the right, which is feared as much as it dismissed as Wilder’s only weapon.

It all depends on who shows up Saturday. There’s the man who was wearing a mask Friday. And there’s man who wore a cellulite costume a year ago. One or both is about to be exposed.

By Norm Frauenheim-

LOS ANGELES – There aren’t many hints. Just the taunts, trash talk and everything else expected in the parade of hyperbole before any opening bell. Deontay Wilder glares and issues ominous threats like a preacher promising Armageddon. The bearded Tyson Fury smiles knowingly, then maliciously.

It’s been a show without a clue, a crap shoot, which is a label with one word that has often been used to describe the heavyweight division.

This week’s build-up to Saturday’s bout for Wilder’s World Boxing Council belt in a Showtime pay-per-view bout even included a little strip tease a couple of days before Friday’s formal weigh-in.

Fury stripped off his designer shirt, a step in the marketing dance that looked to be spontaneous. It also exposed the first real sign of what might happen after opening bell, although even that tea leaf can be interpreted a couple ways.

Fury, whose turbulent career has often been more Tyson-like in lifestyle than furious in the ring, appears to be in great shape. The look suggests he is in the kind of condition he will need to be if he intends to elude singular power Wilder possesses in a right hand that has fashioned 39 stoppages in 40 victories. That big right is the reason Wilder is a slight favorite.

Stay away from its wrecking ball impact for 12 rounds and Fury wins. That, at least, is the conventional wisdom. The theory is that Fury’s skillset is more thorough and effective efficient than else Wilder can throw at him.

Fatigue in the later rounds, however, has appeared to be Fury’s fatal flaw. That’s the moment when the narrow odds suggest that Wilder’s game-ender lands, putting a tired Fury onto the canvas and Wilder in line for a shot at Anthony Joshua.

But a conditioned Fury is a different kind of fury altogether. It’s how he frustrated and beat Wladimir Klitschko before Joshua sent the great Ukrainian into retirement. Freddie Roach, who will be in Fury’s corner along with Ricky Hatton and lead trainer Ben Davison, says that if he can beat the accomplished Klitschko he can beat a one-dimensional Wilder.

Hard to argue with that thinking.

Then again, it hard to imagine how difficult it was for Fury to regain his conditioning and what that might mean on Saturday (9 pm ET/6 pm PT).

According to reports in the UK media, Fury was at about 400 pounds a year ago. There are photos of him shirtless, alongside Hatton. A sagging beach ball has more muscle definition. A year later, he is shirtless again, looking fit and perhaps renewed. He reportedly lost between 130 and 150 pounds, give or take a few pints. In other words, he shed about a welterweight to get ready for a title bout, a decisive moment on what he is calling his Road to Redemption.

By now, Fury’s crazy lifestyle is no secret. After Klitschko, The Gypsy King and son of a bare-knuckled Irish Traveller drank and drugged his way into obesity and out of the ring. He served a long suspension. Now he’s back with an upper body that looks good. Yet, the transformation in diet and conditioning could not have been easy.

Did a radical restoration come with a price? Could the toll be an erosion in the resources Fury figures to need in the later rounds if he hopes to elude Wilder’s wild power for what some believe could be a scorecard victory?

Maybe.

But, maybe, Wilder’s one-punch power, delivered with an 83-inch reach from awkward stance, has run its course. For the last couple of years, the prediction is that somebody with a more versatile skillset will eventually beat Wilder. There’s even talk that Fury will win by a stoppage with a well-executed combination that Wilder will never see.

Maybe.

At least, a shirtless moment this week seemed to say so.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in Los Angeles undefeated 6-foot-9 Brit Tyson “The Gypsy King” Fury will toe the line with undefeated 6-foot-7 American Deontay “The Bronze Bomber” Wilder in 2018’s most-interesting heavyweight title match. Wilder is a professional athlete who fights like he’s insane. Fury is an insane man who boxes conventionally. Either the affair will be insipid-cum-suspenseful, with Wilder pansearing Fury after nine or 10 eventless rounds, or it will be suspensefully insipid, ending without Wilder landing but one of 1,000 threatened punches.

Embrace the madness – that’s the only sage council for this week. Nobody has any idea what will happen. We’ll all opine freely in a sporadic if predictable game of casual-capture, as none brings the casuals coming like heavyweight prizefights, and those of us who are wrong will disappear from the prediction game till January and those of us who are right will crow toldyousos, keeping and publishing an embellished tally of our past predictions, till everyone is bored(er) of us.

The wisest among us forego the prediction game altogether, the wiser among us forego the prediction game unless we believe fully in an underdog, the gormless among us predict the favorite will win then hogstomp about fightnight reminding those who disagreed what fortunetellers we be. It’s most fun to have no idea what will happen and nearly as much fun to cheer the longshot and anxiously funless to pick the favorite, in the name of being right, and see the underdog transcend himself.

If you’re reading this you’re serious enough about our beloved sport to know following it for any reason but fun is a fool’s errand. You’re also, one hopes, introspective enough to look deep inside your reasoning about Saturday’s match and conclude how much fun it will be, how wickedly suspenseful, when the opening bell rings and you get to cheer for one loon or the other without much idea what comes next.

There’s a good chance not a damn thing, actually, comes next. For 36 minutes, that is, absolutely nothing might happen. Fury is a good boxer but not much of a fightnight entertainer; Wilder is an entertainer but not much of a boxer. From time to time fortune commands such a combination entertain us mightily but most of the time it does the other thing.

If every experience in a lifetime is equal parts impossible and inevitable till it happens, this fight shall make it manifest in real time. If Wilder clocks and clears Fury it will’ve been inevitable an undefeated Olympic bronze medalist should wallop to snot a dilettante exchampion struggling with every known form of autosabotage. When Fury throws a nohitter Wilder’s way it will’ve been impossible a barely tested freestyle puncher might land on a man who slaptaunted Wlad Klitschko 12 rounds deep.

Pressed to choose an outcome, I’d lean impossible, but the good thing is I’m not pressed at all, and the better thing is I’m choosing anyway because it’s fun to watch with a rooting interest and it’s fun to be wrong, too. Were Wilder a product of any but the PBC I’d consider this match a farce, probably, thinking any pay-per-viewer be courting the swindling, Gypsy King and all. But PBC’s approach to boxing has been: Sign everyone, match them with no one, and try to seduce broadcasters.

PBC acquired Wilder via its quadrennial Olympic signing spree then kept him miles from any honestly ranked contender till year 10 of his career. That’s no typo: Deontay Wilder began fighting professionally in 2008 and didn’t get tested till 2018. For a little context, Mike Tyson lost to Buster Douglas in the fifth year of Tyson’s career; Tyson had unified the heavyweight division, peaked and begun his descent five years shallower in his career than Wilder was when he escaped Luis Ortiz in March. For a little more context, Muhammad Ali had won the heavyweight championship of the world from Sonny Liston, defended it nine times, endured a three-year exile, returned to the ring, fought a couple tuneups and lost a decision to Joe Frazier before he was 11 years in prizefighting. There’s no need to pretend times’ve changed is the reason for Wilder’s dossier, either; Anthony Joshua, world’s other heavyweight champion, has accomplished more than Wilder, in five years.

No, by any precedent, historic or otherwise, Wilder is a matchmaking miracle – it’s miraculous in what was often considered a dying sport so many willing victims were excavated from the heavyweight mines. Yet here Wilder is, unencumbered by his resume and earnestly wondering why so many Americans haven’t an idea who he is. Well.

There’s a certain horsesense among even casual fans that values competition more than hyperbole-followed-by-showcase-followed-by-hyperbole. It’s why market forces have shown HBO Sports’ signature-destination philosophy to a signature destination; ain’t nothing compelling about broadcasting LeBron dunking on highschool teams whilst panelists extrapolate how he might’ve fared against Wilt.

Wilder is Saturday’s wildcard. Loopy as Fury’s last few years have gone, variable as his psyche may be, he’s still more of a constant when the bell rings. He’s odd and weird and does everything on an offbeat but he throws the 1-3-2 like a man taught how. Wilder primarily crawlstrokes crazy at shorter men, bodies them backwards incidentally, then hammerstrikes their bowed heads. He inventively uses others’ disbelief against them.

The question, then, is: Can Wilder get Fury to hold in his mind any belief long enough to turn it disbeliefwards?

Each man has the best chance of besting the other man by being himself. Wilder would be a fool to try boxing Fury, and Fury would be a greater fool if he tried to slug Wilder. In the decisive moment that should come in the final four rounds Saturday, when Fury’s lack of conditioning greets Wilder’s abundance of it and Wilder mashes Fury’s head with something dastardly, both men will go hotblooded mindless and their basest combative tendencies will prevail. Wilder will appear a man committed to murder and Fury his resigned victim, and if the referee goes for it Wilder will attain a new stature, and if the ref doesn’t all three scorecards should go 119-110, Fury.

I’ll take Fury, UD-12.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Dmitry Bivol defends the WBA Lightweight title against former champion Jean Pascal.  the action kicks off at 10 PM ET / 7 PM PT as Murodjon Akhmadalie battles Isaac Zarate in a super bantamweight bout.

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Round 1: Pascal tries to lunge in with a left hook..Left from Pascal..Bivol jabbing..Right..Combination on ropes

Round 2 2 hard rights from Bivol..Right from Pascal..Counter left..Combination from Bivol..left..Body..

Round 3 Jab from Bivol..Hard body shot and a right hand…left..Jab..Right..2 rights

Round 4 Pascal tries to land a right..Left to body from Bivol..Good left hook..Hard jab..Body shots from Pascal…Bivol lands a right, Pascal goes down–ruled a slip

Round 5 Right to body from Pascal..Pascal fighting in short bursts..Hard left from Bivol..left to body..left hook..Jab..Right

Round 6 Pascal gets in a right to the body…Right from Bivol..Combination..Jab..right..Hard left to the body…3 punch combination..

Round 7 Bivol lands a 3 punch combination..2 lefts to body and left to head..

Round 8  Pascal comes out throwing wild hayemakers and landing a few…Bivol settles down by landing a right…Siolid right hand..Left from Pascal

Round 9 Bivol jabbing..Right from Pascal..Left to body..Right from Bivol..Good right..Jab,..Combination..left..

Round 10 Bivol coming hard and landing solid shots…Pascal sneaks in a left..Good right from Bivol…2 body shots from Pascal..

Round 11 Right from Bivol…Right from Pascal…Right from Bivol..1-2…combination..

Round 12 Bivol lands a left to the body..Right to body from Pascal..Bivol jabbing..Good right from Bivol

117-111 and 119-109 TWICE FOR DMITRY BIVOL

Round 1 Right hook from Akhmadaliev…2 rights hooks and straight left drives Zarate to the ropes..Right hook..Quick right..Hard left in the corner..

Round 2 Hard left over the top from Akhmadaliev…Zarate trying to work the body..Jab from Akhmadliev…Quick right hook..Hard left over the top..Straight left to the body.

Round 3 Big straight left from Akhmadaliev..Big over hand left…Uppercut and straight left to body..Hige right hook hurts Zarate..

Round 4 Hard straight left from Akhmadaliev…Sapping left to the body

Round 5 1-2 from Zarate..left from Akhmadaliev..Body work from Zarate..Jab from Akhmadaliev..Body shot from Zarate,,Long left from Akhmadaliev

Round 6 Left from Akhmadaliev..Wicked 3 punch combination hurts Zarate..Body shot from Zarate..Left to body..Hard straight left from Akhmadaliev…ripping to the body..

Round 7 Left from Akhmadaliev..Zarate trying to land the uppercut..Straight left from Akhmadaliev..chopping left..Combination on the ropes..Hard left to body..another left to body..

Round 8 Left and right from Akhmadaliv…Right hook on the ropes..straight left..Left to body..More body work sets up 3 hard shots to the head

Round 9  Hard left from Akhmadaliev…Right hook…BIG LEFT DRIVES ZARATE INTO ROPES AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

By Norm Frauenheim-

Manny Pacquiao’s return to the United States this week has a nostalgic feel. He stopped in New York. Then, Los Angeles. It was fun to see him.

That shy, enigmatic smile is still in place. His reunion with trainer Freddie Roach for a Jan 19 fight with Adrien Broner was the perfect touch, especially on Thanksgiving week. The family is back together. But I’m not sure it’ll mean much in a couple of months.

Does he beat Broner? Maybe. He’ll be 40 in a few weeks – Dec. 17. It’s tough to hazard a guess on how any 40-year-old fighter will do. Broner has speed and an overall skillset that Pacquiao didn’t see against Jeff Horn or a shot Lucas Matthysse.

But Broner also has shown – again and again – that he bails out at the first sign of adversity. Power is the last thing to go in any aging fighter. Pacquiao probably still has enough of that to force Broner into surrender or a hasty retreat into a scorecard defeat.

Then what? The widely-reported plan is for Pacquiao to then fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a rematch of their revenue record-setting bout in May 2015. Could it happen? Of course.

For Mayweather, celebrity and legacy are like T-shirts and caps. They are commodities, transactional in every way. He won’t turn away from a chance to cash in all over again. Reportedly, that’s what he and Pacquiao talked about weeks ago, supposedly in a chance meeting in Tokyo, where Mayweather’s on-again, off-again New Year’s Eve date with an unknown kick boxer is apparently on again.

By all accounts, Pacquiao is again in need of money. He reportedly earned between $160 million and $180 million for his decision loss to Mayweather in 2015. It’s anybody’s guess where all that money went within three-plus years. Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s ex-promoter, once said that the Filipino Senator was the Pacific Island nation’s only social welfare system.

To wit: He gives it away, apparently at such a rate he can’t even write a lot of it off. He has fought in the U.S for two years because of a reported IRS bill. Apparently, the IRS problem has been resolved. His spending habits, however, are still enough of question to wonder if he won’t still be fighting at 50.

Above all, there are reasons to think he and Mayweather have overestimated the market’s appetite for a rematch. It’s not as if the under-whelming first fight would ever sell a rematch anyway.

The other issue is that the overall market has changed. HBO is exiting after this Saturday’s telecast of Dmitry Bivol-Jean Pascal in Atlantic City. HBO, a key to Pacquiao’s international celebrity and huge purses, is leaving within two months of Pacquiao’s return. Gone are the nine-figure paydays.

Consider this: Terence Crawford, the best welterweight of the day, is earning between $3.0 and $3.5 million for each of his bouts under his current deal with Top Rank and ESPN. If that’s the new pay scale, Pacquiao can forget $160 million or $180 million. He has name recognition, but would anybody rank him among today’s five best welterweights?

On this list, Crawford is at No. 1, Errol Spence No. 2, Keith Thurman No. 3 and Shawn Porter No. 4. You could put Pacquiao at No. 5, but that would put him ahead of Horn, who beat him in a controversial decision. It also would put him ahead of Mickey Garcia, who is jumping two weight classes – from light to welter – to challenge Spence on March 16.

Garcia, who now has to considered at welterweight, never even mentioned Pacquiao as a possibility early in his dangerous pursuit of Spence. It’s not clear Pacquiao would have agreed to a date with Garcia anyway. But Garcia’s decision to bypass any consideration of the Filipino might say it all about what the market place thinks about Pacquiao’s value these days.

By Bart Barry-

Friday night in Oklahoma, Saturday morning east of there, undefeated Dallas junior welterweight Maurice Hooker successfully defended his WBO title by stopping Mexican-Oklahoman Alex Saucedo in the seventh round of a wonderfully violent contest on ESPN. If it’s tempting to write each man’s stature was improved by the contest it is also inaccurate. Hooker took the left side of Saucedo’s face, with righthands, then Saucedo’s fighting spirit in a masterful assault

He also collected a large purse, acquiesced to the event’s promoter, comporting himself nobly as the b-side, then beat the a-side’s ass. That’s a blueprint for how to thrive in this, our newly re-balkanized and suddenly wealthy sport. Hooker got $1.2 million to defend an obscure 140-pound title round midnight on a Friday, which is way more than he’d’ve made a couple years ago. His copromoters may not have had a cashout in mind when they let Top Rank win the purse bid, but they also may not have expected what happened either. Top Rank sure didn’t.

“Cost-of-doing-business,” one imagines Bob Arum and others to’ve said while creating Saturday’s contract; “we’ll pay-up for Saucedo’s title then control the division, whatever happens.”

Now DAZN’s Eddie Hearn, the solvent one among Hooker’s copromoters, has an admired titlist and a committed platform and a dumptruck of cash with which to build an enticing mate for whoever wins WBSS’ super lightweight tourney. Enviable.

Top Rank, meanwhile, has a chastened contender in Saucedo, a man who has reached his ceiling quite a bit lower than planned. Saucedo appeared like no one Friday night so much as his 17-year-old self, the offensively minded kid who tasted punches aplenty in El Paso’s Sun Bowl when for the first time in his four-prizefight career he happened on an opponent he couldn’t hurt quickly. Perhaps historians someday will regard Maurice Hooker as the best counterpuncher in a generation and Friday will become retroactively sensible – Alex had nothing to be ashamed of getting boiled and iced by an alltime great – but that is not probable. An explanation that ages better might be: Hooker exploited Saucedo’s evidently nonevident defense and hit him more than any chin might withstand.

Saucedo’s chin was Friday’s antagonist, as he took a remarkable number of blows from a man who knows how – a defensive style henceforth known as The Abel. Previously misnamed “Mexican Style” by a Kazakh, misnamed because Salvador Sanchez and Juan Manuel Marquez wouldn’t recognize it, The Abel is where you eliminate a fighter’s head movement, beseech him attack an opponent like a heavybag, and leave every defensive responsibility to his chin.

Each defensive style has its susceptibilities, of course. The Philly Shell, for instance, can be solved by a great jab; The Lock leaves a man open to uppercuts. The Abel is unique in that it relies not so much on what an opponent does but who an opponent is. The Abel requires sympathetic matchmaking to prevail. An example of a scenario wherein The Abel worked exquisitely well was putting a career welterweight in a match with a career middleweight (putting that same middleweight in with a career junior middleweight or middleweight, of course, was less advisable). The Abel is practiced in bars and prison yards round the world but named after its vocalest proponent, Abel Sanchez, a man who sits beside Andre Berto atop the HBO-made Boxing Personalities list.

Years ago, when the flaws in Alex Saucedo’s craft became apparent, a hunt began for a trainer who could cut, sand and lacquer them away. Saucedo was young enough to reform. If Sanchez isn’t exactly the wrong man for that job he’s a workable imitation of the man who was. Rather than fix Saucedo’s defective instrumentation Sanchez plugged Saucedo in, jiltknobbed the amp and told him to wail away.

What resulted was not so much offense-as-defense but offense-or-unconsciousness. Saucedo had no transition Friday; while Hooker was many things Saucedo was binary – either hitting or being hit. Hooker might’ve won 12-0 with his jab alone but couldn’t help himself, took chances, and properly deleted the official scorekeepers’ roles.

There was a moment in round 2, however, when it appeared injustice might be served and Saucedo’s binary commitment to offense might be rewarded another night. He dropped Hooker early with a partially missed cross, and you wondered if The Abel mightn’t be in for a title run at 140 pounds like its run at 160. As Hooker is a career junior welterweight, though, those hopes got canceled a minute later when Hooker thrashed Saucedo through the round’s final minute.

There was another moment, or actually 2 1/2 minutes of them, in round 6, when Hooker retreated to the ropes and let Saucedo punch him like a heavybag. As it happened it looked so intentional on Hooker’s part to make the cynical among us wonder how very much cash might’ve been in Hooker’s cashout package. Or maybe Saucedo’s attack was that devastate fatiguing? No and no. Rather, it turns out, Hooker was metering the dissipation of Saucedo’s power like the battery icon a couple inches northeast of where you read these words. Once Hooker sensed Saucedo’s punches were diminished to breakeven Hooker went for it, knowing he could land 10 flush for every one of Saucedo’s. He was right, too. Hooker beat down a hardpunching, granitechinned Mexican in his adopted hometown and stopped him seven rounds in, gloriously.

Saucedo will return; he’s young and fights charismatic enough to fill a Margarito-sized hole in Top Rank’s roster. But Hooker is the real story and a welcome addition to our beloved sport’s rapidly and radically changing ecosystem.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim

TUCSON – It’s the beginning of a comeback, for a father and a son.

The dad, Oscar Valdez Sr., will take the first step Saturday in his return to the corner as a lead trainer at Casino Del Sol after a long battle with a virus that left him hospitalized for months in Mexico City and kept him in a wheel chair in London while his son fought for Mexico at the 2012 Olympics.

“It was serious, very serious,’’ Valdez Sr., who will make his comeback for nephew Thomas Valdez of Nogales, Sonora, against Luis Coria of Robert Garcia’s Boxing Academy in southern California in a super-featherweight main event on a Michelle Rosado-promoted card.

“Couldn’t run. Could hardly move.’’

Valdez Sr. is still fighting the effects of a food-borne virus he got in Rio De Janeiro during an international tournament with his son in 2011.

The dad’s comeback coincides with one from his son, Oscar Valdez Jr., a featherweight champion who is in his own battle to come back from a brutal victory over Scott Quigg in the rain at StubHub Centre on March 10 when he suffered a fractured jaw that left his face misshapen and his future uncertain.

The son’s jaw, dad said, has healed. About the future, he said he’s never had any doubt. His son, a WBO champ, has been working with new cornerman Eddy Reynoso, Canelo Alvarez’ trainer, in San Diego for a bout – a test run — projected to be on Jan. 12 in either Mexico City, Tucson or Phoenix.

“My son’s mind is the same,’’ Oscar Valdez Sr. said Friday after Thomas Valdez (17-3-2, 7 KOs) was at 128.5 pounds and Coria (9-1, 4 KOs) at 129.5 for the main event on a 10-fight card scheduled to begin Saturday at 6 p.m. (MT). “Has always known exactly what he wants and has always been willing to do whatever it takes to get there.’’

His jaw might the knocked out of place. But never his goals, Valdez Sr. said.

An unshakable will was evident throughout 12 rounds against a bigger Quigg, who was three pounds heavier than the featherweight limit at the weigh-in and at least seven pounds heavier than Valdez Jr. at opening bell.

Valdez Jr. lost blood and guts, leaving both in puddles of gore on wet canvas throughout the later rounds of a leading Fight of the Year contender. But he would not lose the fight or the WBO title.

Will, as intangible is it is inexhaustible in Valdez Jr, has been strengthened by the test, his dad said. But there’s more to it than that in a story about father and son sharing adversity and then the motivation to battle through it. The dad was there on that rainy night, a second carrying a bucket that collected more of his son’s blood than it did rain. He was there to wash his mouthpiece, urge him on and – yeah, he said—sometimes pray.

“After all of these years, I’m still battling to come back from being sick,’’ Valdez Sr. said. “That illness is still in me. With Thomas, I’m probably a more of a strategist and tactician than anything. I can’t hold the mitts. But I feel good, really good.’’

Now, it dad’s turn. Like Son, like Father.

By Norm Frauenheim-

Deontay Wilder is a man with one punch and many words.

Those words – unending, often contradictory and always brash – were there, again and again, Thursday throughout a conference call for his heavyweight title fight Dec. 1 against Tyson Fury at Los Angeles’ Staples Center.

The call ended, but not because Wilder was finished. He talks the way he breathes. He exhales words and I’m sure there were more, many more, throughout a workout that was scheduled to follow his telephonic session at the bully pulpit.

He preached.

He promised.

He bragged.

It was part sales-pitch, part silly, mostly over-the-top and yet sometimes a genuine expression of a fearless fighter willing to risk it all.

“To do this, you gotta be crazy,’’ Wilder said. “We already know you’re not supposed to get hit in the head. Every time you do, there’s deterioration.’’

Then, Wilder slipped into a sing-song tone, including what sounded like a weird lyric to the drum-like thump that comes with every concussive blow to the head.

“You’re, changing, you’re changing,’’ he hummed

It was just one moment among many from Wilder, who has often been dismissed as one-dimensional. That single dimension is his big right hand, which he delivers with Tommy Hearns’ old-school leverage. Wilder’s answer for that one is also one dimensional. It never changes, because he has never lost. That right is a dimension that nobody has been able to beat throughout 40 fights. Thirty-nine of those victories have been knockouts. Maybe, Fury will be the first to find a way to negate, or simply elude that right. Maybe, Fury has the dimensions to finally beat him.

But, in so many words, Wilder said that wasn’t going to happen.

“Never been anybody like me,’’ Wilder said. “No one is going to beat me on Dec. 1. No one, not on this special occasion.’’

There’s a chip-on-the-shoulder motivation behind much of what Wilder says. He often refers to his scrabble-poor roots in Alabama. He often talks about how promoter, matchmakers and rival heavyweight Anthony Joshua have failed to give him just due.

“This is my time to shine, my coming-out party,’’ he said of Dec. 1. “I should have been here a long time ago.’’

Despite the prevailing criticism of what he does within the ropes, Wilder’s abundant words reveal an out-sized personality full of multiple dimensions.

He’s brash enough to be outrageous. A couple of examples:

“You all want to see Ali and the Golden Era, I’m here.’’

“Excuse me Holyfield, I’m The Real Deal, too.’’

A couple of reactions:

Groan.

Groan.

Then, however, Wilder reminded me of the unknown kid I saw and spoke to at the Beijing Olympics. He won a bronze medal, modest by any standard, yet the only medal won by any U.S. boxer the 2008 Games.

Modest and mouthy, all at the same time.

“I’m a Wilder, a different breed,’’ he said a decade after those Olympics.

Among all the words he said Thursday, those were the truest.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in England undefeated Ukrainian southpaw Oleksandr Usyk defended his trove of cruiserweight world titles – Ring, WBA, IBF, WBC, WBO – from the challenge of England’s Tony Bellew, last seen doubleaxing heavyweight David Haye, by emphatic eighth-round knockout. In these United States the match happened before dark, aficionados’ hour, on DAZN, aficionados’ network, while American casual fightfans reliably watched college football.

What a wonderful secret is Usyk for the longsuffering American aficionado. He has fought but twice in our hemisphere, and once in Inglewood on the undercard of Bernard Hopkins’ unforgettable if entirely forgotten farewell to boxing (a lesson from the B-Hop archive: when a man tirelessly tells you you’ll miss him when he’s gone, you won’t). When last Usyk fought in our hemisphere it was 18 months ago and he won via lopsided decision on HBO, which is to write if anyone watched him and remembered him that person has since endured disappointments enough to’ve lost his memories of Usyk in the strogranoff of former Soviet fighters served by Comrade Pyotr during HBO Boxing’s pominki.

Since then Usyk has fought on afternoons, here in the States, on YouTube streams and apps; the nearest he’s come to slickly produced punchstats and pedantic commentators is when he stepped in the WBSS’ whitelight show before unmanning Murat Gassiev in July to hoist the bestlooking new trophy in sport.

It gets better. There’s nothing cool about Usyk in the way American influencers understand the term. He’s zany and awkward and devoutly religious. He’s more likely to kiss a felled challenger than taunt him. And since he doesn’t cherrypick opponents or fight on terms bent to prohibitive there’s no telling how good or bad he’ll look when the opening bell rings. Then there’s the way he fights. He’s none of countryman Lomachenko’s pizzazz, especially not to what untrained eyes have yet to try DAZN. He’s more obviously awkward than innovative, which means whenever the American laity eventually catches up with him they’ll unlikely sense the innovation of making every man across from him, even the most obdurately orthodox, awkward unto paralysis. Usyk is an acquired taste and American casuals haven’t the palate or patience to acquire tastes, accustomed as they are to forcefeedings.

Round 5:30 PM ET on Saturday Usyk began to study and pull apart Bellew in yet another packed English arena (it would be a surprise and mistake if semifinal rounds of WBSS Season 2 happened in many American venues, large and cultivated as the European fanbase is become, comparatively funereal and hollow as American venues now sound). Usyk did nothing outlandish to Bellew. He respected the Brit’s power from the open. He established the quirky beat ever playing between his temples and fought to it till Bellew made him stop. And Bellew did do that numerous times.

As it should be. Two judges in fact had Bellew ahead many rounds later, and whatever DAZN commentators said about it in English, the Spanish booth had Bellew ahead, too. If Usyk was winning on any honest card it wasn’t by much.

There’s not any way to argue Usyk won round 1. Perhaps Bellew didn’t either. That’s a 10-10 round, then, which is not a scorekeeping impossibility, by the way, no matter how anomalous. Usyk and Bellew fairly well split their first 12 minutes together, however that shook-out on the cards. By the midway point of the match the match was close enough not to care about the decision; if one man didn’t snatch the other’s consciousness he wouldn’t have a sympathetic ear among aficionados when his handlers whined about a robbery afterward, as they’re wont to do.

Usyk heard us thinking that, he did. He next invited Bellew to lefthand city, a place not quite inhospitable as Ray Mercer’s fabled righthand city, but a place in the vicinity nonetheless. On the way there Bellew realized he was fully spent.

That’s what will be lost on American casuals most frequently – the psychology of what Usyk does other cruiserweights. Because Usyk is not ferocious his physicality can be lost on careless eyes. Usyk’s combination of size and relentlessness, though, is unprecedented. Nobody his size moves continually for every minute of every round. There’s a tacit assumption harbored by any man who confronts a man big as Usyk: So long as I don’t get hit flush by this beast there’ll be respites aplenty. But there aren’t. Instead there’s a dancing madman with a belligerent jab that portends a lampswitch left. Standing armslength to that is exhausting for any 200-pounder the world over. It’s why Usyk’s attack evinces no urgency. So long as he’s on his rhythm and jabbing and you’ve ceded centermat, he’s swapping your energy for fatigue, and he knows it and you know it and now you know he knows it. And that is terrible depleting.

Bellew was so beaten so instantly Saturday th’t American casuals will mistake the finale for force, they’ll expect other men Usyk touches with his cross to backsplash like Tony, and when they don’t American casuals will accuse Usyk of deterioration and aficionados of exaggeration. So be it. Usyk doesn’t need the bigoted buffoons of the Mayweather faithful to surpass what expectations he’s set for himself, and if he immediately ascends to heavyweight and fights Anthony Joshua at Wembley Stadium it will be unwise but lucrative, and it will happen on a Saturday afternoon in the States, blessedly.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Oleksandr Usyk defends the undisputed cruiserweight title against Tony Bellew.  The action begins at 5 PM ET / 10 PM UK time

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1: Left to body from Bellew..Jab from Usyk..Right from Bellew

Round 2 Right from Bellew..Jab from Usyk..Counter right from Bellew..

Round 3 Left from Usyk..Counter right from Bellew..Straight left from Usyk..Counter right to body from Bellew..Lead right..Right off the ropes

Round 4 Left from Usyk..Good right lead from Bellew..Body shot from Usyk..lead left..Bellew lands a right..Jab from Usyk..Good left..left..Good bidy shot from Bellew..

Round 5 Jab from Usyk..Right from Bellew..Combination from Usyk..Good left..Looping right from Bellew.

Round 6 Good left from Usyk…Jab..3 rights from Bellew

Round 7 Jab from Usyk..Good left..Hard jab..Jab..straight left

Round 8 Left in the corner for Usyk..Jab..Good right from Bellew..right and left from Usyk...HUGE LEFT AND DOWN GOES BELLEW…THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

By Norm Frauenheim-

The gap-toothed smile is Alfred E. Neuman-like. But the eyes are mad, full of enough menace to definitively answer that comic-book question:

What, me worry?

Yeah, Tony Bellew should.

Oleksandr Usyk is scary, more so than perhaps anybody in a business full of fighters who use fear as much as their fists. Bellew knows that, of course. He knows a lot more, too. He possesses clever instincts, has more experience and is still motivated by an inexhaustible love for a dangerous game.

“I just love to fight,’’ Bellew said a couple of months ago at a news conference.

It’s a love that’s bound to be tested, perhaps even exhausted by Usyk, who is favored Saturday in Manchester, England, to keep his unified title in what looks to be a cruiserweight stepping stone to heavyweight, perhaps against Anthony Joshua.

“He’s a monster,’’ said the engaging Bellew, who is coming out of retirement and moving down in weight – he lost 34 pounds – for a chance to become the first UK fighter to ever win a unified title. “I admire him.’’

But he doesn’t fear him. At least, no fear was evident in Bellew’s voice or gestures throughout the build-up to the intriguing bout, which can be seen in the United States on the DAZN streaming service (1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT).

There are reasons for Bellew’s confidence. He’ll have a loyal UK crowd in his corner. If it’s close, that could emerge as key factor on the scorecards. He also knows his way around the ring. Translation: He figures out a way.

“Retired or not, this fight had to happen,’’ said Bellew, whose record (30-2-1, 20 KOs) includes more than twice as many bouts and perhaps twice as many lessons than Usyk’s resume (15-0, 11 KOs). “I will find a way to win.’’

Maybe, but all of the momentum is with Usyk, who has rapidly emerged as a pound-for-pound contender. He’s No. 5 in The Ring’s current ratings, which has his Ukrainian Olympic teammate Vasiliy Lomachenko still at No. 1, ahead of Terence Crawford at No. 2, Canelo Alvarez at No. 3 and Gennady Golovkin at No. 4.

Usyk and Bellew look to be at a career crossroads. Bellew says he’ll retire after Saturday night. Meanwhile, Usyk, an Olympic gold medalist at heavyweight, appears to be just approaching his professional potential.

But Bellew believes he will introduce Usyk to adversity he has yet to encounter. Above all, Bellew said, it will be at the end of his power punches.

“When he feels my power, he’ll know,’’ said Bellew, who is convinced he his power will prove to be the edge in a bout that promises to take the snoozer out of cruiser, perhaps the best fight in a forgotten division since James Toney scored a decision over Vassiliy Jirov in April, 2003. “He doesn’t have my kind of power.’’

Bellew made the claim about his power when the fight was formally introduced during a news conference in September. When Bellew’s remark was translated into Ukrainian for him, Usyk flashed that gap-toothed grin.

“He’s kidding,’’ said Usyk, with eyes that clearly said he wasn’t.

Adams (20-2, 13 KOs) of Los Angeles will take on Mosley (13-2, 8 KOs) in the championship bout that will be seen Live on EPIX®. beginning at 10 PM ET / 7 PM PT

For regular updates on our fighters, events, and promotions, please check Banner Promotions Facebook Page , and follow us on Instagram and Twitter @BannerBoxing

By Bart Barry-

Saturday brought yet another delightful multihour multiplatform celebration of a sport even weekly columnists feared might die four years ago (Pacquiao-Algieri, for bottomwatchers). The World Boxing Super Series delivered another pair of quarterfinal matches on DAZN, late afternoon, and ESPN+ presented an entertaining if not historic scrap from El Paso a few hours later. Our wonderful recrudescence continues Saturday with the return of Oleksandr Usyk on DAZN, in a match to ensure he is recognized as 2018’s best fighter.

Going last to first Mexican super featherweight Miguel Berchelt diswilled Mexican Miguel Roman in a Texas beating brutal as promised. Scottish super lightweight Josh Taylor denuded American Ryan Martin in Scotland. Nonito “Filipino Flash” Donaire benefited from an uncommon bit of bad luck when Northern Ireland’s Ryan Burnett lost his bantamweight title via searing backache.

One of the German philosophers, must’ve been Nietzsche, posited sympathy was the worst emotion because it required its possessor be unseemly superior to its object; a person may feel many emotions towards a person of circumstances superior to his own but sympathy be not one of them. One keeps such a teaching behind his lifelong thoughts after he reads it and especially as he watches prizefighting and especially especially as he watches prizefighting to write about prizefighting. Beatings, hundreds to thousands of them, he witnesses without perching himself highly enough to sympathize with the vanquished because, frankly, why should he? Even the loser of a prizefight has engaged in a display of public courage.

Still, Saturday brought a genuine and weird tingling of sympathy for Ryan Burnett. To see a fighter so dramatically reduced so rapidly through no decipherable fault of his own was unpleasant. So freakishly, too. One sees injured hands, eyes and noses enough to be immune their happenings. Where brittle hands are tragic they’re also to prizefighting what height is to a professional basketball player – sure, theoretically, you could make it to the NBA at 5-foot-9, but it is unlikely your destiny.

But to see a 26-year-old championship prizefighter slip a disk while throwing a cross?

Yet there was Burnett after 10 minutes of movement both mechanically correct and innovative suddenly near paralyzed across half his body. Donaire, having done nothing to cause the injury, had no choice but to exploit his opponent’s weakness unto unconsciousness if possible. Burnett didn’t allow that but neither was he allowed out his corner for round 5 and not too long – though excruciatingly – after that he was wheeled out the arena, unable to make the walk. One winces at thoughts of Burnett’s next week ambling about his house.

Weird and deep as went the pang of sympathy for Burnett, one suspects there was selfishness in the brew. The opening three rounds of Donaire-Burnett were fantastic compelling. Donaire was outclassed but giving an excellent account of himself, and Burnett was beginning to invent and transcend, hitting Donaire disrespectfully and unusually for a fighter his size.

Remember, the last time any aficionado saw Donaire at 118 pounds he was electrocuting Fernando Montiel and unilateraling Omar Narvaez; nobody at that weight who stood and swapped with Donaire did so without fear he’d be Darchinyan’d. Burnett did so fearlessly and creatively. Donaire’s seven years and 15 fights (11-4, 6 KOs) removed from his best bantamweight days, of course, but during lots of exchanges Saturday he was similar enough to prime Nonito – Victor Conte affiliate, future VADA posterboy – to make Burnett look awesome to trained eyes.

No one looked better in a mainevent Saturday than Burnett did those opening 10 minutes against Donaire. The creative way he used the lefthook to corral Donaire into a right uppercut, throwing the 3 as a wide lead, and the way he chalked Donaire with the cross. Then came the cross that felled Burnett, and if you didn’t immediately think “pre-existing condition” you’ve not spent sufficient time round boxers or Democrats. It’s the only sensible explanation that burst over the synapses: Burnett did some sort of campy crosstraining something, whether sledgehammering a tire or pulling a tractor, that made him unright a month out. But with massages, painkillers and pilates, hopes were high things’d hold up. And they did, too, enough for Burnett to move not-gingerly until the moment he was unable to move.

All that is merest speculation but more believable, anyway, than a fighter’s 10,000th thrown punch disconnecting his back from itself.

It was in the shadow of this climactic anticlimax Josh Taylor outclassed Ryan Martin. Readers are duly admonished to suspend judgement on Taylor, as he did nothing more than exactly what he was supposed to do Saturday and in unremarkable fashion. Oh, but his footwork is bewitching!

If that’s true it will manifest itself quickly enough in a tournament designed to reveal character. See, there’s no longer any need to be early on these things. There’s no longer a need to squint at the screen in the hopes of being the only one to see how special a fighter is before he’s proved it, lest he never have the chance to prove it. The WBSS proves it. If your guy is a great fighter he’ll win his season of the WBSS, and in so doing will justify for at least a halfyear your belief in him by being recognized as the world’s best in his weightclass.

Tournament boxing eliminates the matchmaking (cherrypicking) that brought so much misplaced anxiety and argument to Money May’s era and GGG’s middleweight reign. HBO’s gone now, too, so there’s no need to rehash the banal hypothetical hash that became the network’s lowly specialty once Larry Merchant left: Our middleweight champion just poleaxed a welterweight, which proves if he were to campaign at super middleweight he’d have no trouble dominating there, either.

That brings us to Saturday’s third mainevent and a commentary like: Blessed be Timothy Bradley among all ESPN mainevent commentators (Brian “Bomac” McIntyre is fantastic, too, but he does undercards) for realizing our beloved sport is moved on from HBO so there’s no reason to audition for Max Kellerman’s seat, there’s no need to interrupt insights about the present with cliched musings about fighters’ pasts, there’s no need to reargue and reheat and recycle whatever tiny detail your cohosts didn’t buy fully enough, there’s no need to unearth the human condition with every single punch.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Miguel Berchelt defends the WBC Super Featherweight title against Miguel Roman.  The action kicks off at 9:30 PM ET with a battle between former world title challenger Miguel Marriaga and Jose Estrella

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1: Overhand right from Roman..Jab and combination from Berchelt..Hard right from Roman..Body shot from Berchelt..

Round 2 Body shot from Berchelt…Right from Roman..Hard right…Lots of punches being thrown..toe to toe in the center of the ring..Left from Berchelt..Left hook..Hard uppercut

Round 3 Berchelt moving more..Right from Roman..Good right from Berchelt..Hard left..Roman staggered..Body shots..Big left…Roman shows a great chin

Round 4 Left from Berchelt

Round 5 Roman gets in a right..Left hook from Berchelt..Right to body..Left from Roman..

Round 6 Right from Roman…Right from Berchelt..Body shot..Left from Roman..Right and left from Berchelt..3 hard punches..Hard body shot..BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES ROMAN…big LEFT AND RIGHT AND DOWN GOES ROMAN AGAIN

Round 7 Left hook by Berchelt..Left to body and head..Double left hook..3 flush punches bucjle Roman..4 punches to the head

Round 8 Roman trying to land a left..Combination..Big right and left from Berchelt…Right and left to head..2 body shots and a left to head..2 more rights..Flush shots..Roman taking heavy shots

Round 9  Big right from Berchelt..right from Roman..Huge head and body combination…BIG COMBINATION AND DOWN GOES ROMAN..Roman trying to hang around..3 more head shots from Berchelt..BARRAGE OF PUNCHES BY BERCHELT ON THE ROPES AND MERCIFULLY FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1 Jab from Estrella..Jab from Marriaga…

Round 2 Body shot from Marriaga..Another…3rd body shot..

Round 3 Hard body shot from Mariaga..Left hook and DOWN GOES ESTRELLA..Hard combination on the ropes..Hook from Estrella

Round 4 Right from Marriaga…Jab from Estrella..Combination..Marriaga lands a combination on the ropes….HARD LEFT HOOK TO THE BODY AND DOWN GOES ESTRELLA…HE DOES NOT BEAT THE COUNT AND THE FIGHT WAS OVER

Follow all the action from Glasgow Scotland as Ryan Burnett defends his bantamweight world title against Nonito Donaire as well as Josh Taylor taking on Ryan Martin.  The action starts at 3 PM ET.

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY.

Round 1: Jab to body from Taylor..Body shot,,,Left..Right from Martin..Combination from Taylor..Left..

Round 2 Taylor lands a body shot..Right hook..Left..right to body..Jab from Martin..Uppercut from Taylor..Taylor dictating the fight

Round 3 Left from Taylor…Jab from Martin..Combination..Jab..Body and jab from Taylor..Body shots

Round 4 Left-Right from Taylor..Good jab..left to body..left..Right Hook..hard left to body..Swelling around right eye of Martin..Body shot from Taylor..Right from Martin

Round 5  Left from Taylor

Round 6 Right to body from Taylor..Right hook..Straight left…Right hook..Martin not doing anything..Martin cut around the left eye,..Left from Martin..Body shot from Taylor..Left to body..Right..Taylor dominating

Round 7 Good right to body from Martin..Right..Combination from Taylor..Left hook..Body shot..HARD SHOT..MARTIN CAUGHT IN ROPES..FIGHT STOPPED–2:21

Round 1 Jab from Burnett..Jab..Left hook to body. from to Donaire..Right..Right from Burnett..

Round 2 Donaire lands a jab..Good right from Burnett..Right to body..Left hook from Donaire..Right..Jab from Burnett..Good Right..Good combination

Round 3 Jab from Burnett..Good right from Donaire,,another Right…Combination from Burnett..Hard shots from Donaire

Round 4 BURNETT THROWS A PUNCH AND HIRTS HIS BACK,,,HE TAKES A KNEE..Donaire all over Burnett

FIGHT IS OVER…BURNETT CAN NOT CONTINUE..THE OFFICIAL TIME IS 1 SECOND OF ROUND 5

By Norm Frauenheim-

Michael Conlan’s obscene gesture at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games threatens to become a symbolic goodbye to Olympic boxing in a political fight that is just another outrageous example of deeply-rooted corruption.

In a meeting this weekend of amateur officials in Moscow — of all places, there apparently will be a last ditch-effort to save boxing from getting eliminated from the Tokyo Games in 2020. The allegations are dark. Media reports read like a spy novel, or the Mueller investigation:

https://sports.yahoo.com/underdog-candidate-fights-boxings-olympic-future-192048341–box.html

But none of it is exactly a shock, either. It’s disappointing, profoundly sad, for anybody who remembers Muhammad Ali in Rome, Joe Frazier in Tokyo, George Foreman in Mexico City and Sugar Ray Leonard in Montreal. But it could have been corrected and ultimately avoided had there been a vigilant International Olympic Committee more concerned about integrity than rights fees.

Truth is, the IOC should have suspended the amateur ring in 1988 after Roy Jones Jr. got robbed of gold in Seoul. It was then and there that boxing should have been put on notice and told to get its act together. Serve a suspension in 1992 and then come back in 1996 with new procedures, honest judges and without the bagmen.

But the Lords of the Olympic Rings turned a blind eye to the mess. They moved on, collecting huge money from politicians willing to spend taxpayers’ money for the right to stage the circus.

The Lords got richer. Olympic boxing just got more corrupt. I’ll leave it up to somebody else to decide if there’s much of a difference.

For now, it’s just easy to get rid of the obvious blight. Boxing and blight have always been neighbors, of course. But the IOC allowed the sport to become irreparable. It simply ignored it, literally pushing it to the fringe.

In Seoul, boxing was staged within walking distance of the pool and main stadium. The summer games have always been divided into two parts — swimming over the first eight days; track-and-field over the second eight. Over the last few Olympics, that meant Michael Phelps the first week and Usain Bolt in the second.

Between races, there was boxing and gymnastics. After the 1988 scandal, however, boxing got shoved off the midway and into places increasingly hard to find. By 2004 in Athens, the Olympic ring, was hidden in a rough neighborhood, far from the Big Top and NBC’s studios. For the Lords, it was out of sight, out of mind. Too bad. Andre Ward’s gold medal on the last day of those Games was as compelling as any performance in Athens.

Even then, however, the whiff of corruption had begun to cloud the future of Olympic boxing. In 2008, there were allegations of an Eastern European offering bribes to the chief of judges. According to the allegations, he was offering payola for certain judges to get assigned to specific bouts. It was an alleged scheme to fix fights in the medal rounds.

At about midnight in Beijing, a news conference was scheduled. A handful of reporters, including this one, showed up. Nothing much was decided. Nothing much was reported.

The Lords looked the other way. The corruption deepened.

A couple of months after Conlan’s middle finger said it all after the Belfast fighter – now a professional featherweight – lost a controversial decision in the quarter-finals, every judge and referee at the Rio Games were suspended.

Only the boxers and fans were – still are — there. But it’s beginning to look as if they were just forgotten, lost like a business expense incurred by an IOC more interested in big fees than fair fights.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday on DAZN, boxing’s now-essential network, the quarterfinals of the World Boxing Super Series super lightweight tournament happened in New Orleans. Belarusian Ivan “The Beast” Baranchyk (19-0, 12 KOs) walloped the sparkle out Sweden’s Anthony Yigit (21-1-1, 7 KOs) in the first mainevent. And in the second New Orleans’ Regis “Rougarou” Prograis (23-0, 19 KOs) decisioned unanimously England’s Terry Flanagan (33-2, 13 KOs). It was puncher-versus-survivor, both matches, and if that pitting didn’t make the best fights the WBSS has delivered thus far, they were still widely better than what American premium-cable swill they usurped.

Prograis doesn’t hit nearly hard enough for the posing he does. One suspects the origin of this posturing bent of his can be found in his record and generally soft stuff he’s built his resume with. He knows exactly how to throw the blastoff counter and admire its results but is less adept at following the counter with a few more punches. At no point in Saturday’s match was he better balanced and prepared for what came next than after he dropped Flanagan in round 8. He had the pose just right and the strut to the neutral corner down, too, much more than what finishing tactics one’d need to cut the lights of a former titlist.

Prograis has oodles of what the kids call swag – something like a young Yuriorkis Gamboa, without the Olympic gold medal to justify it. He is the fighting pride of transplanted New Orleans, a group generally longer on fight than pride. He’s also the number-one seed in a tournament bound to reveal whatever weaknesses he has, even if they don’t unravel him, and deserves a nod of approval for testing his fistic skills in single-elimination rather than some documentarian’s imagination in an episode of HBO’s defunct “2 Days” series.

Prograis will be 30 years-old round about the time of his semifinal match, which is to write he’s in the permanent period of his career, the time when any loudly publicized alterations to his fighting style will be cosmetic (he’s a lopsided-decision loss away from an Abel Sanchez Mexican-style makeover [though, while we’re on the subject, will any boxing figure’s profile go flaccider absent HBO stimulus than Abel’s?], where he’ll learn not to compromise his punches with head movement).

A prototypical U.K. prizefighter, full of heart and chin as he is bereft of power, Flanagan was an excellent opening exam for Prograis. Flanagan knew some tricks. While he did nothing to raise a referee’s suspicions he intended to elbow Prograis if given the chance, he sure brought his elbows back high and wide on the inside for a guy ostensibly defending himself from counters. He dipped low before clinches, too, the better to butt his assailant. Which is to write, he made Prograis earn victory the right way – by fighting.

Few are the men – no current practitioner save Naoya Inoue springs to mind – who have talent enough to win at the championship level and remain virgin pristine in tactic. Great fighters are dirty fighters, men who in their most challenged moments draw on experiential reserves of every trick employed against them by veteran fighters who often didn’t know and always didn’t care about the potential of the men across from them.

To wit, here’s an anecdote a young prospect recounted some years ago about sparring with Yori Boy Campas:

I knew he was going to hit me in the liver if he could. I’m bigger than him, so I don’t need to get too close to him. His arms don’t look that long. We’re two minutes in and he catches me there and nods. Just to tell me he could do it anytime he wanted. I was like, that’s pretty sneaky. He sees me get ready and throws the hook, really big. Except it doesn’t do anything because his glove is open and he’s hitting me on my elbow. But he’s not hitting my elbow. He’s, like, cupping it. Shoving it out of the way. And he’s still on his right side. Then right behind it come the knuckles. It was tap-slam.

You don’t pay the rent for long with hurting other men unless you’re a supernatural talent, which Campas wasn’t, or you master the patterns of your body and others’. Campas won his 107th professional fight in March, how easily we forget, and will never make any historian’s Top 50 list, true, but upon exiting the crucible of a boxing ring with him no man ever did not admire him, in large part because Campas knew, knows, every single way one man may hurt another with gloved fists. Flanagan is no Campas but surely taught Prograis some things Saturday, things Prograis will call upon unexpectedly someday if he’s humble enough to be wise, which he mightn’t be.

If Prograis challenges himself consistently for the next five years his defense is such he’ll find himself exactly where Flanagan was in round 8, eventually, and if Prograis was conscious of anything more than his own aesthetics after he dropped Flanagan, which he mightn’t’ve been, he’ll draw upon the experience of his own frustration in being unable to foreclose on a man like Flanagan who pays the mortgage but sporadically.

Another reason to evangelize for the World Boxing Super Series, and the concept of tournament boxing in general: There aren’t but a handful of gainfully employed matchmakers anymore worth a ha’penny – there are easily a dozen matchmakers worth quite a bit more than that, but the current marketplace has overvalued signature-destination storytelling, or whatever be the PBC’s equivalent, more than earnest competition – and so, select eight men in any division overlooked by American networks, and then let competition, talent and chance do the rest. Throw in a visionary broadcasting platform and some cool white lights and keep the tournament moving.

Whoever emerges with the Muhammad Ali Trophy (named after Muhammad Ali, we learned Saturday) is henceforth a signature-destination fighter for aficionados; if you’re less excited for Usyk-Bellew than you were for Jacobs-Derevyanchenko you’re a publicist, aspiring or actual, not an aficionado. Tournaments value competition over narrative (the 2009 narrative went: Andre Ward, a spoiled American gold medalist, will be stapled to the canvas by Mikkel Kessler in round 1 of the Super Six), achievement over character development.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Daniel Jacobs and Sergiy Derevyanchenko vie for the vacant IBF Middleweight title.  The action kicks off at 10 PM ET with 2 world title fights featuring Alberto Machado fighting Yuandale Evans.  The action kicks off with a rematch between Heather Hardy and Shelly Vincent.

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Round 1 HARD OVERHAND RIGHT AND DOWN GOES SERGIY

Round 2 Hard left and right from Sergiy

Round 3 Good left hook from Jacobs…Good right from Sergiy..Body shot from Jacobs

Round 4 Good body shots from Jacobs..Another body shot..Left from Sergiy..2 rights..Hard right from Jacobs..Hard left from Sergiy

Round 5 2 body shots from Sergiy..Another body shot..Left to the body and a right to the body..hard body shot from Jacobs..Hard left from Sergiy..Right to body..left

Round 6 Right to body for Sergiy..Left from Jacobs..good body shots..Right..Good right to the body..hard right from Sergiy..Right to head..Body shots from Jacobs..

Round 7 Hard right from Jacobs..Hard body shot

Round 8 Right and left from Sergiy..Uppercut from Jacobs..Hard left uppercut..Left hook from Sergiy..

Round 9 Good left to body from Sergiy..2 hard body punches and left to head..Jab..left hook to body

Round 10 Left hook and hard right from Sergiy…

Round 11 Sergiy lands a right..uppercut from Jacobs..uppercut and straight left..Hard combination from Sergiy..Uppercut from Jacobs…good left hook..Hard left

Round 12 Counter right from Jacobs…2 left hooks from Sergiy..Good body shots from Jacobs..right..Body shot

114-113 SERGIY; 115-112 JACOBS; 115-112 JACOBS

Round 1 HARD LEFT AND DOWN GOES EVANS…Good right from Evans..Hard right ROCKS EVANS…EVANS STAGGERS FOR A KNOCKDOWN…HARD LEFT AND BIG UPPERCUT..DOWN GOES EVANS …FIGHT OVER

Round 1 Right from Hardy

Round 2 Right to body from Hardy..Another right to the body..

Round 3 Hardy lands a right to the body..Hardy cut over her right eye

Round 4 Right to body..Left hook and straight left.  Overhand right and left hook from Vincent.  Good body shot from Hardy..Hard right to body from Vincent..Body combination from Hardy..Good right to jaw from Vincent..Good left hook..

Round 5 Left from Vincent…Good body shot from Hardy..Good body shot from Vincent..Right to body from Hardy

Round 6 Jab from Hardy..Combination from Vincent

Round 7 Hardy cut over her left eye..

Round 8 Left hook from Vincent.  2 lefts to the body..2 rights from Hardy

Round 9 Left from Hardy..Jab..Good uppercut..Good left hook from Vincent..

Round 10 Left from Hardy..Good body shot from Vincent..Body shot from Hardy..Solid right

97-93 twice and 99-91 HEATHER HARDY

By Norm Frauenheim-

TUCSON, Ariz. – They are first cousins. Sparring cousins, too. They even look alike.

Look into Thomas Valdez’ eyes, and you see Oscar Valdez Jr. looking straight back at you. Listen to Thomas Valdez speak, and you hear his cousin’s voice.

They went to the same schools in Tucson. They’ve worked out in the same gyms on the Mexican side of the border in Nogales. They’ve hit the same speed bags. They’ve hit each other, too. It sounds a little bit like a sibling rivalry. But it’s not.

“He’s my compadre,’’ Thomas Valdez said Thursday during a news conference for a Michelle Rosado-promoted card that will feature the super-featherweight against Jensen Ramirez on Nov. 17 at Casino Del Sol.

For Thomas and Oscar Valdez, it’s family, friendship and at times a significant business alliance. Oscar Valdez is not Mexican’s best-known fighter. That title belongs to Canelo Alvarez, and Canelo has unchallenged pay-per-view numbers for overwhelming proof.

At another level, however, Oscar Valdez Jr. might rank as Mexico’s most respected fighter. The World Boxing Organization’s featherweight champion earned lots of cred for all that blood he shed in a brutal decision over Scott Quigg on a rain-swept night on March 10 at the StubHub Center in Carson, Calif.

They say it never rains in Southern California. But it did that night. After 12 full rounds, there were puddles all over the canvas. Puddles of water. And puddles of Oscar Valdez’ blood. He won, beating a bigger Quigg, who was allowed to fight after missing weight at the official weigh-in.

But there was a price. Oscar Valdez suffered a fractured jaw, although that diagnosis sounds too clinical, if not quite accurate.

Valdez’ jaw was twisted out of shape, so much so that his corner had trouble removing his mouthpiece. It looked awkward. It had to be agony. But he fought through it for a unanimous decision in a brutal bout that is at the top of the ballot for Fight of the Year. Since then, however, the question has been whether Valdez was forced to pay too steep a price. Was it costly to his career?

It’s a nervous question for Top Rank, Valdez’ promoter, and all of the fans he won over last March. Against Quigg, Valdez was transformed into a fighter worth watching. But it all depends on how he reacts in his comeback, which figures to happen early next year. What will happen when that first punch lands on that jaw?

Thomas Valdez thinks he has a pretty good idea. He was the first fighter to test Oscar Valdez a few weeks ago.

“I was his first sparring partner,’’ Thomas Valdez said. “He’s solid, 100 percent.’’

First cousins know best.

Top Rank hopes so.

For now, Oscar Valdez’ comeback is planned for mid-January, possibly in Mexico City for a tune-up — a test run for Valdez’ jaw and his new corner. He hired Canelo trainer Eddy Reynoso, who replaces Manny Robles. He has been training in Guadalajara.

Meanwhile, there are hopes that Oscar Valdez Jr. will be in Tucson, his second home, for Thomas’ fight, which has been scheduled for seven rounds. The odd number was a compromise struck by Rosado’s fellow promoter and mentor, Russell Peltz. One fighter wanted to go six rounds. The other wanted eight. Peltz mentioned seven and they had a deal.

For Thomas, the bout represents a chance to hit the re-set button on 22-fight career (16-4-2, 6 KOs). He is anxious to fight in the United States for the first time since 2013.

“It’s been five years,’’ said Thomas Valdez, who graduated from Tucson High School in 2008 before returning to Nogales. “This is a real chance for me to return to Tucson, get my name back out there around here and all through Arizona.’’

He is doing it with Oscar Valdez’ father, Oscar Sr., as his trainer. Mostly, he’s doing because of his cousin, whose last performance is as unforgettable as it was frightening.

“The way we fight is different,’’ Thomas said. “I’m a little bigger. Physically, we aren’t the same. But our hearts and minds are alike. Watching him against Quigg was kind of crazy. As a fan, I was so excited. As a cousin, I was so worried. I kept thinking: Is he going to be OK?

“But what I see in him, I see in myself. We’re fighters.’’

By Bart Barry-

Three broadcasts Saturday, and nothing that happened was quite great and some was very good but everything was at least good, and a block of five hours of good boxing, live sports programming not storytelling, represents an embarrassment of riches suddenly arrived for every aficionado nimble enough to cord-cut and app-embrace. In such case, we are, as the great man said, the aficionados we’ve been waiting for.

Things happened on two apps in three cities, and if a title or two unexpectedly changed owners it wasn’t the important part because the abundance of available boxing was, and there was at once so much of it and it was so good, one now suspects sabotage more than incompetence put our beloved sport in the dismal two-provider forest we just escaped, completely and enthusiastically.

How about a detour?

Not long after reading my 700th book – that looks like a lot but for a writer, truly, it isn’t – I realized, tardily one might say, the act of reading was doubtful to make me a better writer anymore, and based on my retention from the first 700 books, it, too, was doubtful to increase in any endurable way my knowledge of any new subject. If one imagines the average book length to be somewhere round 300 pages and one reliably reads a page every two minutes he spends about 10 hours with each book, and what does he consciously retain from the experience?

In the first year after reading the book about a paragraph’s worth of information – plot and character and style and other loose associations – and after five years perhaps two sentences and a decade later a sentence if lucky and prompted. Some books considerably more than that and most books a bit less. So I nearly stopped reading for a year. When I returned it was via a revelation of sorts: The only reason to keep reading was if I enjoyed it and the only way to enjoy it was to read books I enjoyed – every other consideration be damned. Unexpectedly, this brought me to reading more books generally and many many more books coincidentally.

Which is where in the hell this column is going in its pursuit of a new way to enjoy and enjoy covering and enjoy coverage of boxing: I now read between six and 12 books at once, and if I don’t try to blur them together I neither mind if they do. Someone famous or important once said or wrote something to the effect th’t were it financially feasible any true artist should choose anonymity. My new reading approach grants authors effectively that since I can’t hope to keep more than two or three voices straight at once when I’m making no effort to do so. I read till I have a thought that removes my eyes from the page, have that thought then pick up another book. I don’t have any order, and I don’t seem to get more than 10 pages deeper in one book before migrating to the next.

I impart this lengthily because if you’re reading this you enjoy reading and might try this approach and because, more to the point, it seems a proper fitness regimen for our new aficionado endeavor.

Perhaps this makes me look a quitter to the prigs amongst us; the day a person who’s given more than an average amount of his life to the sobriety and tranquility of the written word opts to ingest it like a teenager on Facegramsnaptwitter, the evilest faction of information technology has ruined us. Quite possibly. Though happily.

So went my Saturday of toggling between three fightcards on two apps. I went Roku (DAZN) to cell (DAZN) to Roku (ESPN+).

“Ain’t you got a laptop?” say my betters.

I do, but I realized I liked choosing more than absorbing a blitz; I didn’t want more than two playing at once and’ve developed an oddly enjoyable dependence on peripheral vision. What follows is by no means a factual report of what happened but an honest account of how I remember perceiving what happened:

Stephon Young is not in the WBSS, is he, better check, no, then what’s up with DAZN’s notification system, OK, over to the other DAZN to see the Tommy Coyle guy the Spanish-language broadcast from Boston likes, looks like he’s landing on the Pole, but whoa, that hook to the liver from Ryan Kielczweski just changed the fight entirely and the Spanish broadcasters missed it somehow, so let’s check ESPN+ to see if San Antonio’s Adam Lopez is on, he isn’t, but there’s the Irish kid with the middle finger from the Olympics, Michael Conlan, against some frightened Italian – now this belongs in Boston, south versus north, more than Las Vegas – and Conlan can’t cut Nicola Cipolletta’s escape which reveals Conlan is exactly basic as “Bomac” just gently implied; the leadin movies for WBSS look better than I expect Esquiva Falcao will so it’s over to DAZN in Florida where the turnout is poor but the fights won’t be because the Cuban with a name like Doritos can crack proper and the veteran Pole’ll have chin enough to make him, and after five rounds it’s true Yuniel Dorticos concusses more than Mateusz Masternak but after seven rounds it’s no longer true, and this fight is excellent and close just like Dorticos’ last fight, which makes me think the second mainevent, the one between the Aussie pingpong player and the Puerto Rican titlist, too, will be good and close, but there’s “The Monster” Inoue, and after five rounds of Rodriguez-Moloney I think Inoue could decision Rodriguez with the jab at the same time he flashfreezes Moloney with the cross so it’s time to give Top Rank’s next Asian ticketseller a second look, disappointing as he looked a year ago, and who’s this Rob Brant dude, does anyone else think he’s making Ryota Murata look like Murat Gassiev against Oleksandr Usyk, and bless Tim Bradley for choosing to score the fight before him, over and over, rather than scoring debate points on his cocommentator – Tim has found himself a new career, not a mere hobby – and bless the Vegas judges, too, for scoring the match, not its promoter’s best interests.

Three cheers for Rob Brant!

Power off.

After all that I thought of Top Rank and Todd duBoef’s Brand of Boxing concept, late Saturday, with its partial anonymization of fight-provider. A few times I was quite conscious I was watching Top Rank and a few more times I was quite willfully watching World Boxing Super Series, but most of the rest of the time I was watching boxing and enjoying watching boxing and feeling my 15 monthly dollars very well spent on ESPN+ and DAZN – whoever was doing the broadcasting.

For dropping HBO at the end of 2017 I’m still paying with the house’s money, anyway.

My loyalty to Showtime in 2019 is by no means assured.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

It’s a huge bet on one fighter. That also makes it oh-so risky. But give DAZN, a global streaming service, credit for its courage. It made the investment, doubling down with a $365-million wager on Canelo Alvarez.

It was announced Wednesday as an 11-fight, five-year deal. In boxing terms, that’s an eternity, meaning time enough for the infinite variety of busted noses, broken hands and all of the other unforeseen circumstances that postpone opening bells and interrupt careers.

If all goes according to plan, Canelo will be 33-years-old and much richer than he is already when the astonishing deal ends in 2023.

The contract has been called the richest in sports. As of today, I guess it is. That could change with the next big deal in baseball, international soccer or auto racing. Let’s just say it has the potential to be one of the biggest ever. The last biggie was the Showtime/CBS deal with Floyd Mayweather Jr. That one was for six fights over 30 months.

At the per-fight level, Canelo’s deal is worth more than Mayweather’s. Canelo is guaranteed more than $33 million — $33,181,818.20 to be exact — for each bout, starting at a new weight, super-middle, against somebody named Rocky Fielding on Dec. 15 at New York’s Madison Square Garden

That’s nearly $2 million more per fight than Mayweather’s guarantee of $32 million on a contract valued at $192 million when it was signed in February 2013. The difference for Mayweather’s final take came against Manny Pacquiao in the deal’s fifth fight on May 2015.

He had beaten Robert Guerrero, a young Canelo and Marcos Maidana twice. Before wrapping up the Showtime contract against Andre Berto, his deal spiked in a victory over Pacquiao because of a contract that included profit sharing. His purse multiplied after the pay-per-view passed a threshold. According to varying reports, Mayweather wound up with between $230 and $240 million after all of the PPV’s record receipts were counted.

That means his Showtime contract would paying him between $422 and $432 million before he went on to add to an even bigger payday for one night in a mixed-mess spectacle against the UFC’s Conor McGregor. Mayweather walked away from the Showtime deal with $57 to $67 million more than the announced number in Canelo’s deal.

The presumption is that the DAZN contract also includes a profit-sharing clause that would allow Canelo to earn more if the buys exceed a certain number.

For the fight fan, there’s good news in that. It would seem to dictate at least one fight at middleweight with Gennady Golovkin, who is 0-1-1 against Canelo. They fought to a majority draw last year and Canelo won a majority decision last month. Both were controversial.

Both also were a big draw, including more than one million pay-per-view customers for each. According to various reports, Canelo collected $50 million for each bout.

At that rate, he might have to fight GGG a couple of more times to supplant Mayweather on boxing’s all-time dollar-for-dollar scale, which this week and perhaps in any other week has been a lot more relevant than the pound-for-pound debate.

By Bart Barry-

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – “How many services must one rent monthly to watch a championship prizefight?” went my thoughts Saturday from an apartment in nearby Zapopan, as ESPN+ and Roku and Sling, one after the other, collected my usernames and passwords then returned unhelpful errors about availability outside the United States. The next gambit, a virtual private network (VPN) that is another monthly service, brought only less helpful errors that implied: We don’t know where you are, pal, and that means you must be somewhere you shouldn’t be.

And so it went, miserably, until four monthly subscriptions took me limping to a compromise pathetic as it was welcome: A YouTube Live stream of a guy holding the camera of his phone at a 30-degree angle to a television, filling 2/3 of his screen with darkspace dark as deep space, while chatty fellow viewers warned him to keep the volume down lest ESPN dam his damned stream.

Without the tranquility of a reliable service and without an audio narration to help me know what I saw, frankly, Saturday’s match ended kind of suddenly, when welterweight titlist Terence Crawford beat to mushy Jose Benavidez Jr. on ESPN, a Disney property still beholden to ancient cable providers the way you and I are beholden to oxygen.

He notices there’s more talk of boxing on SportsCenter these days and imagines such talk representative of boxing’s ascendancy without quite getting his finger on the affiliate scheme that drives much of SportsCenter’s coverage of anything. There’s more boxing on ESPN now, too, which is further evidence of the sport’s ascendancy. ESPN, he assumes, in the few thoughts he bothers giving these sorts of things, has taken the sporting world’s pulse and predicted, accurately it turns out, boxing is rising in the American consciousness the same way soccer did a decade ago. He’s watched his share of Muhammad Ali documentaries and Mike Tyson knockout clips, and if he remembers correctly George Foreman used to do awesome commentary of Roy Jones fights on HBO, or maybe it was the other way around, and since boxing just came on after college football, well, why not?

I didn’t get to a shark metaphor in 5 1/2 previous years of watching Crawford but it came along clear Saturday night after a day at Acuario Michin (admittedly), this city’s new aquarium and its country’s largest – to complement this city’s zoo, its country’s most populous. After the Friday weighin antics, unexpected as a Monday morning, and the symmetrical hatred they supposedly evinced one imagined Crawford’s eyes would flash Saturday if they were capable of it, and they didn’t. Not in the veiny enraged way one understands the term. They were unknowable, like Crawford. They observed Benavidez and did not blink. Which made me wonder if Crawford’s sadism hasn’t been overstated a bit by me and others. Crawford is a predator true. The better a creature is at preying the more indistinguishable be his satisfaction and euphoria, the more lesser predators and prey alike project a euphoria, an almost erotic joy, on his violent activities. Mining such acts for mindfulness, though, introduces an autoimaginary element – how could I do such a thing without it brought me pleasure?

He likes the depictions of street credibility ESPN’s leadin biopics offered before Crawford – “Bud” is a weird nickname for a fighter, but whatever – and “Junior” went after each other Saturday. Lots of athletes come from bad places, but boxers get to really do something about it. The hatred between the fighters was real, anyone could see that. When the opening bell rang he expected the two men to throw the ref out of their way and frenzy violently, but they didn’t because of strategy.

I sat a few feet behind Crawford in February as Benavidez worked through someone named Matthew Strode in Corpus Christi, Texas, and the prevailing emotion Crawford expressed was polite boredom. Some local-sponsor type asked him – “hey, champ!” – what he thought of Benavidez’s performance, and Crawford gazed blankly up from his seat to say, “What do you think?” At 135 pounds, it’s safe to infer, Crawford’d not have been allowed in a ring with Benavidez without first procuring a license to hunt. But at 147 Benavidez was a far abler foil.

He knows these men are smaller than heavyweights, his bailiwick, but there’s this pound-for-pound thing that makes these guys better than heavyweights on a sliding scale of some sort. Crawford is able to drain the spirit out of a bigger man like Benavidez by punching his body. Crawford, too, does this thing with switching his stance that makes him able to hit and not get hit, even if it looks like he’s getting hit. Definitely.

I want men who are not heavyweights to climb weightclasses because doing so reveals their weaknesses in the unfair way of physics. Crawford has few if any weaknesses, but physics precluded him from dashing through Benavidez because Benavidez was a significantly larger man who knew what he was doing better than he was able to do it. Forget not, while an unknown Crawford made fights in Knoxville and Iowa City, 8 1/2 years ago, Benavidez made his third prizefight in a banquet room of our fightweek compound in Texas the night before Manny Pacquiao starred in Cowboys Stadium – Benavidez, not Crawford, would be Top Rank’s successor to Pacquiao.

He sort of sees what the ESPN commentators mean about Benavidez being a good counterpuncher, but he wishes Crawford would just leap in and dominate him like everyone says he can. Crawford’s controlling the outside foot and stuff, and he obviously hits harder, so why not go for it? Can’t be that complicated!

I enjoyed the tension in the ring early, the portentous feeling the wrong man might just win and ruin a whole lot of Nebraskans’ night out. I liked how Benavidez disrespected the champ, hands at his waist, and how Crawford saw something, some honest signal, that dissuaded his attacks for a halfhour, no matter his superior quotient of skill. Benavidez possessed magical skills for a 16-year-old while Crawford possessed them for a 30-year-old, advantage Crawford, sure, but if one were to tally athletic assets then return to Benavidez’s side of the ledger what being shot in a leg took out, the final accounting would be damn close, do not doubt.

I enjoyed the fight.

He loved the ending.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action LIVE as Terence Crawford defends the WBO Welterweight title against Jose Benavidez, Jr.  The action kicks off at 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PT with Shakur Stevenson taking on Viorel Simion in a featherweight fight

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY.

Round 1: Trading jabs…Benavidez mocking Crawford..2 Jabs from Benavidez..Jab from Crawford..Straight lrft to body

Round 2 left to body from Crawford..Jab

Round 3 Combination from Crawford..Body shot from Benavidez..Body shot from Crawford..Double right and body punch..More body work

Round 4 Good right from Benavidez..Body shot..Left from Crawford..Hard body shot from Benavidez.

Round 5 Uppercut from Crawford..Short Right from Benavidez..

Round 6 Body combination from Crawford..Combination..Right hook to head..Good exchange..Right from Benavidez..3 punch combination from Crawford..another 3 punch combination…right to the body

Round 7 Right to body from Crawford..Straight left..Combination to head..Right hook..

Round 8 Good combination from Crawford..Left to body..3 punch combination..Left..right to body.

Round 9 Benavidez walks to the ropes…Crawford sticks his tongue at him..Crawford lands a right to body..Hard left..Right to body..Left hook from Benavidez..

Round 10 Flush left from Crawford…Right to body..another body shots on the ropes..Body shot Drives Benavidez to ropes..Benavidez lands a right..combination..Short left hook

Round 11 Right from Benavidez..Right hook from Crawford..Another

Round 12 Head and body shot from Benavidez…Right..HUGE UPPERCUT AND DOWN GOES BENAVIDEZ..Big right..BIG RIGHT..BENAVIDEZ FALLS INTO THE ROPES AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1 BIG RIGHT HOOK AND DOWN GOES SIMION…COMBINATION AND RIGHT HOOK AND SIMION GOES DOWN AGAIN..Body shot..Short right to the head...HUGE RIGHT HOOK AND SIMION GOES DOWN AGAIN…FIGHT IS OVER…TIME: 3:00 OF ROUND 1

By Norm Frauenheim-

OMAHA, Neb. – Terence Crawford and Jose Benavidez Jr. did more than exchange insults Friday as escalating tensions led to a weigh-in scuffle that included a shove from Benavidez and a missed punch from Crawford, who threw a long right that could have knocked out ESPN’s main event Saturday had it landed.

Both welterweights face possible penalties, likely a fine that the Nebraska Commission could take directly out of their respective paychecks.

“We’re going to discuss it,’’ Brian Dunn, a Nebraska deputy commissioner, said after the wild weigh-in.

According to documents filed with the Nebraska Commission, Benavidez’s purse is $450,000. Crawford’s paycheck is $2 million, although he is expected to wind up with more $3 million after he collects a bonus from Top Rank, which signed him to a contract extension last summer.

“If this were Las Vegas, the Nevada Commission would levy significant fines,’’ said Top Rank’s Bob Arum, who warned both fighters Thursday that they would not get paid if they scuffled during the traditional nose-to-nose pose after a news conference. “This is boxing. You have to keep your emotions in check.’’

Benavidez pushed Crawford with both hands when the two were asked to face each other after both came in under the 147- pound limit – Benavidez at 145 and Crawford 145.4. Crawford then followed with right that missed as Benavidez stepped back.

Benavidez (27-0, 18 KOs) denied he started the incident at the CNI Health Center in a crowded ball room near the arena where the bitter rivals will finally face each other in a fight governed by rules, instead of chaos. The televised card is scheduled to begin at 10:30 p.m. ET (7:30 p.m. PT).

“He got in my face,’’ said Benavidez (27-0, 18 KOs), a Phoenix fighter and big underdog against Crawford (33-0, 24 KOs), the World Boxing Organization’s champion and an Omaha fighter ranked among the top two in the pound-for-pound debate. “It looked like he was trying to kiss me.’’

Crawford was not available for comment in the scuffle’s immediate aftermath. However, Crawford trainer Brian McIntyre said he would ask the Nebraska Commission to fine Benavidez. Crawford, he said, should not be penalized.

“He pushed him, Jose Benavidez pushed him,’’ McIntyre said. “I’m sorry, but if a man pushes me, I’m going to respond. He shouldn’t have touched him. Terence didn’t start it, didn’t do anything but respond. He shouldn’t be penalized. I’m going to ask the Commission to take a piece of Benavidez’ purse.’’

The scuffle was another moment in a week full of escalating tensions. The fighters exchanged words at a public workout Wednesday at an Omaha gym. The insults continued Thursday at a contentious news conference.

Friday, things went off the scale.

By Norm Frauenheim-

OMAHA, Neb. – There’s not much left to say, or even places to say it. They’ve insulted each other in the gym. They’ve insulted each other at a news conference. They’ve insulted each other’s family and friends, teeth and tastes. They’ve even insulted each other’s favorite food. Apparently, Terence Crawford likes chicken. Apparently, Jose Benavidez Jr. prefers burritos.

Give me an opening bell, please.

Fortunately, one is about to happen, a relief from trash talk’s version of a food fight. Or is it the other way around? Whatever it is, it’s been as noisy as it has been repetitive. Only a fight Saturday night in an arena on the banks of the Missouri River can settle what has evolved into what looks to be genuine hostility. Say it often enough and everybody will believe, including those saying it.

“It’s been real since Day One, since the fight has been announced,’’ Crawford said. “It ain’t been nothing but real.”

So real, the fighters are staying at different Omaha hotels, according to Top Rank promoter Bob Arum. So real, that uniformed police were there and vigilant throughout Thursday’s news conference. So real, that Arum warned both against pushing or punching seconds before they faced each other in the ritual stare-down for the cameras after the newser.

“They can say whatever they want,’’ said Arum, who has taken steps to ensure there is no sequel to the near-riot that erupted last Saturday after the Conor McGregor-Khabib Nurmagomedov UFC bout in Las Vegas. “No screwing around. You don’t get paid if you punch the other guy out here. No physical stuff.’’

There was only more of the same.

Over weeks, months and perhaps longer, Crawford (33-0, 24 KOs) and Benavidez (27-0, 18 KOs) have talked themselves into believing the worst about the other. Perhaps, that changes after a welterweight title fight in an ESPN televised bout (10:30 p.m. ET/7:30 p.m. PT) at CNI Heath Center Omaha.

On Thursday, however, their mutual contempt sounded as stubborn as ever after the contentious newser. Each said they would not shake the other’s hand after it was all over. That was about the only thing they could agree on.

“I won’t shake his dad’s hand, either,’’ Crawford said of Jose Benavidez Sr., also his son’s trainer.

The threatening words have filled gyms, ballrooms and social media for days before a bout that appears to be little threat to Crawford’s WBO title or his hopes of moving on to a 147-pound showdown with Errol Spence Jr. Odds are stacked, all in favor of Crawford, who will fight in front of a hometown crowd for the fifth time.

“Bet a thousand dollars on me and you can collect $13,000 when I win,’’ said Benavidez, who says he is motivated by one-sided odds for what will be only his third fight since he suffered a gunshot wound to his right leg from a still unknown assailant while walking on a Phoenix canal bank in the summer of 2016. “I’ve got nothing to lose.’’

Benavidez, a Phoenix fighter and a former WBA junior-welterweight champion, said he hasn’t placed a wager on himself. His father Jose Sr., said he would not agree to a bet with Crawford trainer Brian McIntyre, who challenged him to a $10,000 wager during the middle of Thursday’s news conference.

The stakes are high enough, as it is. Benavidez’ words include an intangible meaning. There’s pressure, self-imposed.

“You guys ain’t scaring nobody,’’ Benavidez said to Crawford and a news-conference audience that recorded every word. “You best bring your A-game on Saturday because you’re going to get your ass beat.

“Guaranteed.”

Crawford, who is either No. 1 or No. 2 in the various pound-for-pound polls, smiled, almost ominously. Throughout his career, he says, he has always been motivated by fighters with brash words and threatening promises.

“Absolutely,’’ said the unbeaten Crawford, whose versatility in switching from left to right and back again has left its mark, including 26 stitches around Australian Jeff Horn’s eyes in his last fight. “I’m not worried. I’m just going to go out there and shut him up.

“That’s it.

“That’s all.”

By Bart Barry-

Sunday morning on DAZN Japan’s Naoya “The Monster” Inoue performed the feats of scoring his second knockout as a bantamweight and completing his first round as a bantamweight, in a two-second span. He snatched Dominican Juan Carlos Payano’s consciousness with the first combination he threw in the second season of the World Boxing Super Series. Since arriving at 118 pounds in 2018 Inoue has needed but three minutes and two seconds to go 2-0 (2 KOs).

Actually, that report is unjust to Inoue. To measure properly Inoue’s knockouts by rounds or minutes is to overgeneralize. There’s a more granular method. Punches landed. His knockouts increasingly come in opening rounds, but incredibly the term “first-round knockout” understates what Inoue is up to. “Seventy-second knockout” brings us closer but not even halfway, since Inoue generally does not throw a punch for a match’s opening minute. What he did Sunday with a former world titlist who made his pro debut 13 pounds (and four weightclasses) heavier than Inoue did, needs be measured in punches landed.

Two. Naoya Inoue landed two punches, and Payano was headbanged to boardstiff.

Whatever one opines of Payano as a person or puncher, fact is, a man does not slumber in the gym where he trains then travel across the globe to get atomized by a twopunch. Even in a match betwixt a man who knows how to punch and a man who doesn’t, more than two punches be near always the rule. You could pay your children’s college tuitions by wagering the largest man in every city $100 he cannot take your consciousness with two punches – no matter how great he and meager you.

It’s very difficult to take an unsuspecting man’s consciousness that quickly and nigh impossible to do it a man whose fists are raised. But a twotime Olympian like Payano? A man for whom the gym is both workplace and habitat, with a twodecade dossier of dissuading boxing’s most basic combination? Impossible such a man’s lights might be cut, jab cross, and yet. Inoue so surprised and unbalanced Payano with a jab, the 1, a punch you learn within two minutes of your first handwrapping, Payano somehow had no expectation Inoue’s cross was next.

A halfdecade of squandering the word “devastating” on a Kazakhstani attrition fighter leaves some of us now entirely beneath the task of describing what Inoue’s gloves conceal. It sure ain’t sixth-round-corner-stoppage power or controversial-decision-loss-to-a-smaller-man power, and so let us be chastened by the misdeed of our past embellishments. If we can’t pledge to abstain from exaggeration in the future we might at least pause to concede some of us unduly weakened the language all of us use by pandering to the invention of a disintegrating network reduced to pandering to our beloved sport’s casualest fans.

A pox on such pandering henceforth!

There are sundry lessons for broadcasters to glean from the pending extinction of HBO Boxing, but an accessible one is this: The easiest way to attain 500,000 viewers is to begin with 2 million and replace matchmakers with storytellers.

Since when does boxing need postmodernist cant about contextual empathy in lieu of evenly matched combat? Not only needn’t one be savvy with a textbook to make great matches, but as it turns out, too much textbooking be a liability.

If DAZN doesn’t know this, thus far in its American incarnation it’s doing a workable imitation of a network that does. In 15 days DAZN has broadcast to Americans a heavyweight championship fight attended by 80,000 Brits, the conclusion of a super middleweight tournament in Saudi Arabia, an entertaining many-fight card from Chicago and the opening of two new tournaments in Japan. An aficionado’s total adjusted cost for all this is $5.

That comes with no Gatti List and no pettifogging commentary team. Blessedly. No Game of Thrones, either, which ought be acceptable to adults.

If there’s a criticism for DAZN it lies in the contrast of commentary crews the network trots out for its American cards. Brian Kenny’s mining every act by an official for controversy is tiresome already, Sergio Mora’s too salesy, and why is Sugar Ray Leonard involved? To lend his immortal name. That’s fair, Leonard is genuinely among our sport’s greatest living practitioners, and he’s gracious, too, but there’s no need for him to have a microphone since nothing is lost when he’s quiet.

More to the point, enough with the threeman commentary crews – for if you pay a man to talk, talk he will. Disagree? Check out DAZN’s singleman broadcasts. Whoever that man is, he’s excellent and unintrusive (and naming him would miss the point widely).

*

But if we don’t narrate for the casual fans, why, they’ll go elsewhere to cross-pollinate cultural issues for their lens humanizing mission.

So be it, really, since evidently they are not empathetic enough to be contextualized.

*

The second half of Sunday’s WBSS kickoff, a super lightweight tilt between Belarusian Kiryl Relikh and Russian Eduard Troyanovsky, a match Relikh won by close and unanimous scores, was competitive and entertaining if partly shaded by its predecessor match. There’s simply no following Inoue right now.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as it happens as Khabib Nurmagomedov defends the UFC Lightweight title against former two-division champion Conor McGregor

The page will update automatically every 60 seconds…NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED

Round 1: Conor lands a left…Khabib gets Conor’s Ankle..Conor gets taken down against the cage..Khabib on top od Conor…

Round 2 Khabib lands a huge right.  He takes Conor down again..Khabib landing ground and pound..Big rights from Khabib…Khabib landing huge shots on the ground..He is going for a choke..Conor gets up..Huge round for Khabib

Round 3  Conor starting to land left hands…Big right from Khabib..Conor landing…good exchanging..Conor blocks 2 take-downs

Round 4 Front kicks from Conor…Take down from Khabib,..REVERSE CHOKE AND CONOR TAPS OUT

By Norm Frauenheim-

It’s a role nobody ever foresaw for Jose Benavidez, Jr.

At 19, he was shy and talented, a prodigy embarrassed by what he heard from his seat in the back row of undercard fighters during a trash-talking rant from Joel Casamayor at a news conference before the Cuban’s last fight, a knockout loss to Timothy Bradley at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand in November, 2011.

After the final expletive, I remember asking Benavidez what he thought of Casamayor’s profane monologue. He said that wasn’t him. He said he was more fighter than talker.

After seven years in a craft that can leave expectations and faces unrecognizable, however, Benavidez finds himself cast as the talker before his steep challenge of Terence Crawford on Oct. 13 in an ESPN-televised bout.

“While he’s talking, I’m working,’’ Crawford said during a conference call Thursday from his Colorado Springs training camp.

It’s a Benavidez role that was cast last February before a victory in Corpus Christi, a comeback from a gunshot wound above his right knee sustained while walking his dog on a canal bank in Phoenix in August 2016.

During the weigh-in, Benavidez spotted Crawford in the crowd. After stepping off the scale, he confronted Crawford. Benavidez accused him of ducking him and invited him to step outside. It was a well-chronicled exchange, often repeated. That, of course, was the idea.

Benavidez talked his way into the fight. He also talked his way into what figures to be the biggest paycheck in his career.

For him, it makes sense, dollars too, for a bout that also was an easy choice for Crawford, who can further embellish his pound-for-pound credentials in only his second fight at welterweight. What’s more, both are promoted by Top Rank, which signed Crawford to a contract extension in early September.

With a new deal at a new weight, Crawford figured he’d grant Benavidez his wish. To paraphrase an old line, the Phoenix welterweight might regret it. One-sided odds put his chances at an upset in Crawford’s hometown at slim to none. But that also means there’s not much to lose for Benavidez, who has been training in Omaha for the last couple of weeks, according to Top Rank.

If Benavidez can hang on, go the full 12 rounds against the feared Crawford, he might gain the kind of respect that could earn him a shot at other welterweights with belts and name-recognition. Most have not been willing to take the risk against Crawford.

Only Errol Spence says he wants the fight in what looms as the biggest welterweight bout in years. Keith Thurman avoids talk about Crawford. Manny Pacquiao doesn’t mention him at all.

But Benavidez sees an opportunity. Give him credit for that.

He’s been talking about and to Crawford for the last two-to-three years. Perhaps, Benavidez sees something in him that nobody else has. On the tale of the tape, Benavidez has advantages. At 6-feet-2, Benavidez is an unusually tall welterweight. Crawford is listed at 5-8. Benavidez has about a three-inch advantage in reach.

It all adds up to a fighter taller and rangier than any Crawford has ever faced. But the tape’s tale doesn’t include any mention of Crawford’s instinct. It’s hard to quantify. He switches from left to right and back to left without any apparent hesitation. Switch-hitting is often considered a weakness, a sign that a fighter isn’t any good with either hand.

In Crawford, however, it’s a strength augmented by power end precision in each hand. Depending on the moment and what he sees, he’ll jab with traditional left, then lead with the left, all within an almost imperceptible split-second. So far, there has been no way to defend against it, or even prepare for it. In an old sport that has seen it all, Crawford has re-introduced a versatile weapon he uses with an effectiveness as unprecedented as it is lethal.

A looming question is whether Benavidez will resort to a controversial tactic that allowed him to escape with a WBA 140-pound title in a 2014 decision over Mauricio Herrera. He stood upright, his back on the ropes and his face behind upraised hands. It was a rope-a-dope posture, and it worked because of precise jab that landed enough to gain an edge on the scorecards. But the crowd booed.

“I think he’ll want to make a real fight of it in front of my hometown fans, but if he does that, we’ll counter it,’’ Crawford said Thursday in what might prove to be the last word on Oct. 13.