By Norm Frauenheim

TUCSON – There was no main event. There was only a reunion.

Roy Jones Jr. and James Toney stole the show — their own show — Friday night, as co-promoters of a card at Casino Del Sol that lost its main event when junior featherweight Hanzel Martinez was hurt Wednesday night in an auto accident.

Jones and Toney, once sworn enemies in a 1994 super- middleweight out called Uncivil War, re-emerged as business partners in what they say is just the beginning.

“We’re going to take over the world, man,’’ said Toney, who made his old rival laugh at his dance steps, jokes and gestures as they stood in the ring, almost arm-in-arm, before each bout televised by the CBS Sports Network. “We’re just starting.’’

More like starting over.

Twenty years ago, the guess was that the two would only meet again in a bitter rematch or an old-fashioned duel. There could only be sequel of the hostility that lingered after Jones’ unanimous decision over Toney in a clash at Las Vegas MGM Grand.

“Nah, nah, nah’’ Toney said. “You gotta get past all of that. Time to grow up.’’

John “Pops” Arthur — Toney’s CEO, advisor, mentor and confidante — said Toney and Jones ran into each other last year at a boxing meet-and-greet.

“James had always wanted a rematch, yeah,’’ Arthur said. “I told him to move on and put his anger aside. I told him to approach Roy like a businessman. When people saw them together, I think they probably thought they’d only agree to rematch.’’

Given their pasts, it would have been a reach to think anything else. Both fighters have continued to fight far beyond their primes, despite calls from fans and media for them to retire.

This time, Arthur said, they shook hands. But not for a remake of some old hostility. This time, it’s all about business, Arthur said.

Arthur foresees a long-term partnership, which would be a lot better for their financials and their brain cells than a rematch ever could be.

“We’ll do a lot more of these, no doubt,’’ Toney said.

With the Martinez-Prosper Ankrah bout off the card because of a concussion and back injury suffered by Martinez during an accident in Tijuana, the show went on with Emmanuel Robles in an eight-rounder against Pipino Cuevas in a junior welterweight bout.

In his first bout since signing with Roy Jones Jr. in early March, Robles (15-0, 4 KOs) made it look easy against an out of-shape Cuevas

Robles floored Cuevas (17-16-1, 15 KOs), winless over his last seven bouts, with a crushing left in the third round. Cuevas got up, but blood poured from his nose. He looked beaten. in the fourth, he would be.

At 25 second of the round, referee Tony Zaino stopped it when Robles landed a series of blows against a defenseless Cuevas.

On The Undercard

Keenan Carbajal (11-2, 6 KOs) wore red-and-white trunks cut in the style of his Hall of Fame relative, junior-flyweight legend Michael Carbajal. Flashed a little bit of his power, too.

Keenan Carbajal, bigger and more confident than ever, delivered a lethal succession of combinations, overwhelming an overmatched Lorenzo Trejo in the second round.

The featherweight bout was scheduled for eight rounds. Carbajal, of Phoenix, could have put Trejo (35-31, 22 KOs), of Mexico, onto the canvas that many times or more, if not for referee Rocky Burke, who ended it at 2:21 of the second and Trejo on the canvas for the third time in the round.

An introduction of Randy Moreno’s power was warning enough for Christopher Turton. Moreno (3-0, 2 KOs), of Las Vegas, rocked him, sending Turton stumbling across the canvas midway through the first round of a lightweight bout scheduled for four. A dazed Turton (2-3, 1 KO), of Colony, Tex., took a seat after the first and quit before the second ever began.

Tucson cruiserweight Jesus Santamario’s debut was a knockout, but not exactly the kind of knockout a young fighter envisions for his first pro bout. Edgar Ramirez (3-0, 1 KO), of Mexico City, crushed him with power he had never encountered, bouncing him off the ropes and onto the canvas for a quick knockdown, then finishing him with short right to the back of the head at 1:13 of the first.

Before the CBS telecast, Phoenix super-flyweight Elihu Soto (5-0, 3 KOs) employed precise and painful body blows to score a four-round unanimous decision over Yezber Romero (2-2, 1 KO) of Eugene, Ore.

By Norm Frauenheim

It’s hard to know what to make of Canelo Alvarez’ surrender of the WBC’s middleweight title late Wednesday in an announcement that wasn’t exactly a shocker.

A disappointment, yeah. But a surprise? Not these days, not in the wake of a fan base eroding faster than political civility in the year since the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao dud.

The best that can be said of Wednesday’s move is that it was an empty gesture.

In boxing speak, Canelo “vacated” the title about a week before a deal was mandated for bout with Gennady Golovkin In a prepared statement, he said he did so because he didn’t want reported negotiations with GGG to be subjected to “artificial deadlines.”

Vacated and artificial are just a couple of ways of saying empty, empty.

Put it this way: Canelo gave up a 160-pound title that he won and defended at 155 pounds. GGG was awarded a title he has long pursued without ever having to throw a punch.

Meanwhile, Canelo is still the division’s lineal champ, meaning he beat the man who beat the man. Think of a flow chart, lines of succession. I’m not sure where any of the lines really lead, other than nowhere in boxing’s current climate.

At best, it was a subtle way of saying that Canelo-GGG won’t happen until next year. But didn’t we suspect that anyway? In so many ways and words during the days before Canelo’s dramatic knockout of Amir Khan on May 7, that was the message.

During trainer’s roundtable a couple of days before opening bell at Las Vegas new T-Mobile Arena, Canelo’s corner man Eddy Reynoso essentially told everybody they’d have to wait until at least next year.

He said that Canelo would not fight a true middleweight in his first bout after Khan, who jumped from welterweight to sacrificial lamb in a bold, yet futile bid to upset the maturing Mexican.

“No, not at all,’’ Reynoso said through an interpreter.

When asked when Canelo would face a fighter with a proven record at 160, Reynoso said: “Maybe in two or three fights. But now, not at all.’’

In giving up the WBC title, Canelo might be getting out from under mounting pressure for him to defend a time-honored title at a catch-weight while forcing the 34-year-old GGG to wait until after still another birthday.

The move also could weaken whatever leverage GGG had in negotiations, which both sides say are still ongoing. He’s no longer the mandatory challenger.

But does any of this matter to fans? Canelo promoter Oscar De La Hoya has said that the GGG-Canelo fight is the antidote for a lingering hangover from Mayweather-Pacquiao. No argument, there.

But De La Hoya is caught in a dilemma. What’s best for boxing might not be best for Canelo and De La Hoy’s business. He’s trying to maximize the money he and his star client can make in a long-awaited confrontation against GGG.

Okay, but the timing is risky. Crashing pay-per-view numbers since the Mayweather-Pacquiao turnoff are evidence that GGG-Canelo has to happen ASAP.

De La Hoya likes to refer to promoter Bob Arum’s old term about how to market a major bout. Marinate, says Arum, who likes to let public demand stoke the fires for a while.

But while Canelo vacates, the public marinates in familiar exasperation and further impatience. An empty gesture this week threatens to create more empty seats everywhere. That’s a lousy recipe in any book.

By Bart Barry–

Arrived too early in their dressing rooms, to satisfy broadcaster’s schedules, and bored, the main event guys do anything to calm themselves: text watch the monitors’ undercard scraps stretch nap . . .

There’s weightshifting in the queue, left to right to right right to left. Someone has a small banner in the right leg of his jeans covered in clever script about a cousin’s friend on the undercard and he fingers its stitching to a rash. Many of the guys wear shiny suitjackets or shirts with shiny script congruent to the MMA fashion show (a redundancy) of the decade past. Others wear flared-tight-flared white buttondown ensembles with roughsilk piping and bluejeans with logos and an overpriced belt they think women notice, a profession of physique and badassery to put others on notice if anyone were able to distract himself from autofixation long enough to notice.

pace undress partially redress, not time yet, talk through handlers’ concerns meet local celebrities absorb familiars’ fears laugh senselessly at a promoter’s lame support tell a bottling company exec how much his sponsorship means

The few women in line clutch their men’s hands in an unspoken theatrical treaty: If all these guys are posers like you, sweetie, then I have nothing for you to protect me from and that’ll make you feel emasculated enough to drink too much and create a petty confrontation to save me from, so let me act a little frightened in this ridiculous red dress you bought me for this occasion to impress your buddies.

lower eyelids cradle napes with folded fingers imagine remembering a hundred training tips fantasize about the purse check stretch stretch doubt the other guy’s routine envy no one

Security at the door is a hyperbolic symmetry of the same sorts of men in line, though paid marginally less, and trying to put a charismatic mask on faces quick to trigger and show offense, all faux players in a faux presentation of peril and might. Keys, wallet, belt and hat resecured, there are the concession lines to navigate, which way’s the beer and why must bottled water be poured in a cup?

listen for noise from the other guy’s room field rumors about the other guy’s camp make fists then relax replay the weighin with goodfaith replay the weighin with badfaith worry what the eyes betrayed of fear or excitement like fear or calm like fearlessness feel lonely enough to blame the manager and familiars

Inside the usual human gambit of imitation for affirmation’s sake finds too many beers bought causing overwrought reactions to a combatant’s bravery via its contrast – his opponent’s inactivity, resignation, caution; failure. No fight is average, no match is scored fairly, no prizefighter makes a simple decent account of himself; every match is a war or a waste of time like I told ya was going to happen, every decision has a corrupt judge or an honest judge whose virtue is wildly offset by two villains, every prizefighter is a future great I saw first or worthless.

feel misunderstood wish the whole thing might be called envision a loss and how it can be soothed tomorrow catch scold think about bills say everything is handled concentrate worry concentrate worry worry worry concentrate begin to exert in relaxing postures get anxious about the middle knuckle of the left hand forget about that knuckle text a compassionate someone, wife friend mom, i love you

The lights dimmed and the main event entrance tunes beginning to roar, press row fills with yawns inexplicably – except yawns as a circuitbreaker, not an expression of boredom, a fatigue courted by anticipation, a recognition of the coming fight’s value, a collective plea that what happens next bring an unbearable spectacle but not quite, all underwritten by a collective of individual fears about talent and presence and the tall pile of unpredictables and unknowables and uncontrollables (luck) that conspire to make a written account of combat either something that duly honors its subject or doesn’t.

obey orders begin to warm meet the referee and seek connection try to read sympathy get frustrated by the cameras and their effect take the trunks off their hanger and leave the robe adjust the cup both balls in and snug but not tight or queasiness put the boots on and slam the heel left foot first and tie the laces watch the other guy’s trainer watch the hands get wrapped notice the games transcend the games wonder if feeling above the games is being a victim of the games then try to be oblivious of the other trainer’s games unless it’s too much but what is too much if it’s his job to be too much

The heeltapping triples its time under the collapsible tables as young writers do a last rewrite of their prework and old writers wish they would just get on with the fight for fuck’s sake.

punch palms with freshwrapped fists out of habit force the open hands in leather stiffness and scent watch the white taperoll go round round round round wonder what the official’s blackmarker scribble means to him more posturing hit the pads endure the national anthem going on and on hear the name amplified wish it were over hear the first notes push through the door surge surge surge clear bright loud glide doubt affirm affirm nod trust hope doubt hope hope . . .

The bell rings and everywhere everything wiggles: relief, no relief, relief, no relief.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Deontay Wilder, an emerging champion and a compelling personality, wants to make history. Maybe, he should just make a statement, instead.

Wilder is about to leave for Moscow and become the first American heavyweight champion to defend his title there on May 21 against Alexander Povetkin in a risky venture complicated by ongoing disclosures of Russia’s systematic doping.

Depending on the source and based on a very big assumption that all will be on the up-and-up, the fight is a toss-up. Wilder might win. Might lose. But he would score a victory for everybody – boxers, skaters, skiers, sprinters and swimmers – if he just said, hell no, he won’t go until the Russians clean up their act.

What would he have to lose? Plenty, at first. He’d lose a paycheck. He’d risk lawsuits and his title. The World Boxing Council probably would have no choice but to strip him of the belt. Then, there are crazies in the boxing crowd who would question his guts and his promise to knock out Povetkin.

A Wilder victory on Russian scorecards would have to go down as a contender for Upset of the Year. After all, this is a country that, according to the New York Times, conducted a urine exchange – dirty for clean — though a hole in the wall at the Sochi Olympics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/sports/russia-doping-sochi-olympics-2014.html?_r=0

Yet despite Russia’s Hole In The Wall Gang, there have been no criminal charges while the country continues to move forward on plans for the 2018 World Cup.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/apr/08/russian-doping-scandal-no-criminal-charges-sports-minister

http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/russian-doping-scandals-won-t-impact-2018-world-cup-preparations-116051200324_1.html

The fight will happen two weeks after the WBC announced its Clean Boxing Program, year-round testing that will be administered by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association President Dr. Margaret Goodman.

Wilder Promoter Lou DiBella said Wednesday during a conference call that testing has been underway for seven to eight weeks. However, DiBella also said he would have preferred to have had the testing begin earlier.

The unfolding scandal probably means the Russians will be very careful not to exchange urine samples like shots of vodka before opening bell next week. The world is watching. But that’s not the point.

Thus far, we’ve heard from bureaucrats representing all of the world’s sporting acronyms. We’ve heard threats to ban Russia’s track-and-field athletes from this summer’s Brazil Olympics. Blah, blah, blah. It’s bupkis, or business as usual after the fight. We’ve yet to hear from an athlete in a substantive way. Enter Wilder, who has a chance to say and do something that – long term – would stand as a courageous triumph.

It wouldn’t be the equivalent of the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics for Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. Over time, the boycott, ordered by then-President Jimmy Carter, has been judged to be a mistake. Athletes were caught in the middle, forced to pay a price for an international confrontation they didn’t create.

But state-run doping is all about the athletes. It puts their integrity, livelihood and health in jeopardy.

The heavyweights have a rich history of making a real difference. Jack Johnson broke the color line before Jackie Robinson, becoming the first African-American to win the heavyweight title during an era that spawned The Great White Hope. Joe Louis knocked out Germany’s Max Schmeling in a 1938 rematch that came to symbolize the coming world war between democracy and fascism. Muhammad Ali was stripped of his title and license when he refused to be drafted because of his opposition to Viet Nam.

They are remembered for how they responded when confronted by events, each in their own time. It’s Wilder’s time.

By Norm Frauenheim-

Andrew Tabiti, a Floyd Mayweather Sr, trained fighter, hopes to take some of the snoozer out of cruiser against Keith Tapia Friday night in the 200-pound division tonight at Las Vegas Sam’s Hotel and Gambling Hotel in a bout televised by ShoBox: The New Generation.

Tabiti (12-0, 11 KOs), of Las Vegas, is looking for victory over Tapia (15-0, 6 KOs), of of Puerto Rico, that would put him into the championship mix of a Euro-dominated division.

It’s no coincidence that the card (10 p.m. ET/PT) features another cruiserweight bout between 2012 U.S. Olympian Michael Hunter (11-0, 8 KOs) against Isiah Thomas (15-0, 6 KOs) of Detroit.

The undercard includes Tucson welterweight Alfonso Olvera (7-2, 3 KOs) against Sanjarbek Rakhmanov (4-0, 3 KOs) of Uzbekistan.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas lineal middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez wrung Amir “King” Khan’s neck with a single and singular righthand in round 6 of their mismatch. No count was needed and fortunately no stretcher either. It was another installment of contemporary boxing’s Theater of the Fully Expected, a distasteful inversion of most that once made our sport widely palatable.

Let us have no more talk of Khan’s exceptional bravery in waging a fight everyone knew he would not win, already, because if we do that we must also credit Canelo’s equal bravery, and how badly does anyone wish to do that? The 19th century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz teaches us courage requires a sort of symmetry that relies necessarily on a doubtful outcome. Rarely is there cowardice in boxing; an absence of bravery in the ring manifests itself as resignation caused by a doubtless outcome, not openwinged flight.

To be courageous in victory a winner must entertain doubt of a contest’s outcome; to be courageous in defeat a loser must also retain doubt about that outcome – when a 300-pound bouncer snatches the consciousness from a drunk 150-pound fratbro no one credits the bouncer’s courage and, quite properly, no thinking person credits the fratbro’s bravery either. Von Clausewitz’s insistence on a doubtful outcome makes courage an intensely personal quality, a thing only its bearer can certainly audit. As it should be.

There are no fans of reductionism here, so let us traffic in probabilities and possibilities. Is it possible Amir Khan, a fighter 29 of 30 experts expected to lose, did not expect at any time during the proposal and promotion and performance of his fight with Alvarez that he might possibly win and went through with the discombobulating ruse only to amass a fortune? Yes, definitely possible; no, definitely not probable. Is it possible when Alvarez felt that first underpronated right cross from Khan in round 1 Canelo thought, “This is madness, I’m in with a beast, my victory is nigh impossible, and my survival unsure!”? Again possible, not probable.

Somewhere between these poles is where most of life and all but an instant of Saturday’s match happens/ed. Whatever postsalesmanship went off during the telecast with the team’s squinting to assure buyers they’d gotten at least nine minutes of competitiveness more than feared and Harold Lederman ably ratifying their pitch, writing as one person who picked Canelo to win by knockout I can offer without equivocation there were not three seconds of the 900 that comprised the opening five rounds during which even a pinhole of doubt flashed my mind. Khan was going to sleep unless Andre Ward’s trainer mounted the apron midround.

Frankly one didn’t even need to watch Khan’s customarily jittery approach to know it; Canelo’s mien told the entire tale. Certain as I am I did not doubt Canelo would take Khan’s consciousness is how uncertain I am I watched Khan as more than a prop in the opening five rounds – like a fidgety double-end bag. It was not until the fifth round brought palpable contempt in Canelo’s bearing, though, the outcome became doubtless. Canelo got Khan with the same move with which Canelo cut James Kirkland’s lights a year ago in Houston. He even got Khan’s hopeless, unwinding left to play corkscrew and win Canelo his second consecutive knockout of the year, and congrats on that.

Canelo dishragged Khan and it was magical.

The entertainment runnerup Saturday was the contortionist’s trick of HBO broadcasters mentioning repeatedly Mexico City’s WBC and its suddenly binding resolution to make the HBO middleweight champion of the world the WBC middleweight champion, without mentioning the WBC by name. It felt born of what fantastic consequence the nearly inconsequential media assigns itself; with a new man at the helm of the WBC here’s a chance for him to get his agency’s acronym back in our throats (even if half our infomercial series and all of our introductions and postfight festivities are a voluminous WBC endorsement in highdef) but if the new guy chooses not to strip with urgency his country’s most popular fighter, why, he can say adios to a future “Real Sports” feature and an edgy “On Mauricio Sulaiman” film and even a perky journalist saying amazing things about him on “The Fight Game.”

Canelo is selfaware and arrogant enough to know HBO and the WBC need him much more than he needs them, and good luck dictating terms to him about ratifying Gennady Golovkin as the greatest middleweight champion in recent memory (an authoritative prepositional phrase we use when we’re too young to know very much or too lazy to do research more than google). Golovkin will fight Canelo on Canelo’s calendar and by Canelo’s rules or Golovkin will cost HBO increasingly more money in promotional subsidies subsidized by revenues from Canelo’s pay-per-view matches. That seemed to be the message in Canelo’s postfight use of the Spanish term “mamadas” (better even than the colorful translation it got): Your network can take the funds I raise and use them to erect and decorate another fighter at my expense but before you say any of this to my face, Max, remember who works for whom, who pays your salary and Gennady’s promotional fees.

If David Lemieux starts dieting right now there’s a good chance he can make 155 for Sept. 16.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

 

Follow all the action as Canelo Alvarez defends the Middleweight title against Amir Khan.  The action begins at 9 PM ET / 6 PM PT with a 3 fight undercard with David Lemieux battling Glen Tapia; Mauricio Herrera taking on Frankie Gomez and Patrick Teixeria fighting Curtis Stevens

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Round 1 Hard right from Khan…Combination…right to body from Canelo…Hard left hook..left

Round 2 Alvarez reaches for a right to the body..1-2 from Khan..Left hook from Alvarez..

Round 3 Canelo lands a left hooks..Khan lands a 1-2

Round 4 Good right from Khan…Right to body from Canelo…Left to the body..Counter left from Khan…

Round 5 Canelo lands a right..Good right to the body

Round 6 Hard body shot and left to head from Canelo…Good right from Khan…Jab from Canelo…HUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES KHAN AND KHAN IS NOT MOVING FLAT ON HIS BACK

Round 1 3 punch combo from Lemieux..left hook..uppercut…

Round 2 Body shot and right from Tapia…2 rights…Left hook fro, Lemieux…right..Huge body shot hurts Tapia..2 good body shots from Tapia…

Round 3 Uppercut from Lemieux…Good jab from Tapia…

Round 4 HARD LEFT HOOK AND DOWN GOES TAPIA…TAPIA’S CORNER STOPS THE FIGHT

Round 1 Gomez gets in a left

Round 2 Combination from Gomez…Herrera is cut under the left eye…Good  uppercut

Round 3 Right from Gomez…Herrera lands a good body shot…Gomez lands a good right…

Round 4 Hard right from Gomez..

Round 5 Good combination from Gomez..2 good body shot…

Round 6 Gomez flurries on the ropes..Body shot…

Round 7 Gomez moving…boxing well

Round 8 Herrera flurries

Round 9 Gomez lands a right…jab…Hard right to the body

Round 10 Uppercut and combination..Counter right from Gomez

100-90 on all cards for Frankie Gomez

Round 1 Stevens coming out aggresive..Hard left hurts Texeira

Round  2:  Texeira lands 2 lefts…COUNTER LEFT AND DOWN GOES TEXEIRA…TEXEIRA WOBBLES ON THE WAY UP AND THE FIGHT IS OVER

Follow all the action as Anthony Crolla defends the WBA Lightweight title against undefeated Ismael Barroso.  The action kicks off at 2:30 PM ET with an appearance by former world title challenger Martin Murray.  Also a big Heavyweight elimination bout between former world title challengers Dereck Chisora and Kubrat Pulev

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Round 1 Crolla gets in a right..Barroso gets in 2 lefts..sharp combination..

Round 2 Body shot from Barroso…uppercut..Left to the body..

Round 3 Barroso gets in a right hook..Crolla gets in a right..

Round 4 Right from Crolla..body shot..Combination from Barroso..Right from Crolla…uppercut…Barroso throwing alot…Crolla cut over his right eye

Round 5 Body shot from Barroso…left to the body…uppercut and body shot from Crolla..

Round 6 Hard right staggers Barroso…another right…Crolla has Barroso in trouble

Round 7 HARD FLURRY AND DOWN GOES BARROSO…HE DOES NOT BEAT THE COUNT

 

Round 1 Right from Pulev

Round 2 1-2 from Pulev..

Round 3 Chisora gets in a round…working the body..uppercut from Pulev

Round 4 Right over top by Chisora…Good combination from Pulev..Jabs and rights on the ropes..

Round 5 Uppercut from Pulev..Jab..2 hard rights

Round 6 Hard right from Pulev..Good right from Chisora..Pulev is cut over his left eye…Right from Pulev…another right..

Round 7 Chisora lands a right to the body..Right from Pulev…Right

Round 8 Right from Pulev..3 hard rights on the ropes..

Round 9 Chisora lands a left..right…Right..Body shot and right from Pulev

Round 10 Body shots from Chisora

Round 11 Hard right and body shot from Pulev…Chisora right eye beginning to swell

Round 12 Right from Pulev..Jab..

116-112 Pulev; 115-113 Chisora; 118-110 Pulev…PULEV VIA SPLIT DECISION

Round 1 Murray working the body

Round 2 MURRAY LANDS A LEFT TO THE BODY AND DOWN GOES SPERA…RIGHT HAND AND DOWN GOES SPERA AND THE FIGHT IS OVER–TIME 1:47

 

Round 1 Singleton lands a sharp right..Right..DOUBLE LEFT HOOK AND DOWN GOES ANWAR

Round 2 Anwar lands a hard right…2 punch combination

Round 3 Singleton lands a solid right..Left shakes Anwar

Round 4 Right from Anwar

Round 5 Combination from Anwar

Round 6 Good right from Singleton..Right…left hook..

Round 7 Anwar lands a left…Jab from Singleton..Left hook..Right from Anwar

Round 8 BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES ANWAR…SINGLETON ALL OVER ANWAR AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

By Norm Frauenheim

LAS VEGAS – Canelo Alvarez stood on a stage, beneath threatening skies and surrounded by weathered, scarred and aging faces of fighters who have been what he hopes to be.

He looked to his right and saw Roberto Duran. To his left, he saw Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis, Oscar De La Hoya and Bernard Hopkins. Each has been where Canelo wants to go.

“The thing is, I want to be legend,’’ he said during a conference call a couple of weeks before his fight Saturday night against Amir Khan in a defense of his WBC middleweight title at the new T-Mobile Arena.

There is no map, no well-traveled path, on how to get there. For every great fighter on the stage Friday for a weigh-in in front of the T-Mobile Arena, there were different challenges and controversies. They are legends, in part, because of skill, durability, style and guts.

There’s also luck. Legend making can be as unpredictable as the approaching weather. But there was no downpour Friday despite dark clouds that promised a desert storm. It was just coincidence, but legends can’t be made without good timing. For Canelo, the timing has been almost perfect throughout his career.

De La Hoya, his promoter, calls him the game’s new face. He might not be quite there yet. But Canelo is in the right place and precisely at the right time to put a face on a game that has begun to search for one.

Maybe Floyd Mayweather Jr. is coming back. Maybe not. Crazy stories about him fighting UFC star Conor McGregor are just a sure sign that the comeback talk will be with us at least until we know whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is moving into the White House next year.

Early next week, we’ll know whether Manny Pacquiao is a new Filipino Senator. Elections are scheduled for May 9. After beating Timothy Bradley on April 9, Pacquiao said he’s “50-50” on retirement. If he wins a seat in the Filipino Senate, it will get a lot harder for him to move back into the ring.

Opportunity is in the forecast.

Years from now, Canelo’s date with Khan might not be considered critical. It’ll only be critical if he loses, and few expect that in a 155-pound bout against a skilled, yet undersized Khan, who has been at more than 140 pounds only four times before a two-division jump for a spot on Saturday HBO’s pay-per-view card (6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET).

For Canelo (46-1-1, 32 KOs), the key is not so much in if he wins. It’s in how.
If Canelo is a legend in the making, he has to look good – very good — against Khan (31-3, 19 KOs). Five-to-one odds in favor of Canelo suggest that the Mexican will dominate in a style that will only further speculation about a showdown with Gennady Golovkin, who plans to be at the fight.

At the sports book and on the scale, he has key advantages. He is expected to be 17 to 18 pounds heavier than he was Friday. That means Khan, who is not expected to heavier than 165 at opening bell, could be facing a fighter who is a couple of pounds short of being a light-heavyweight. Khan’s quick feet might not be fast enough to keep Canelo off him throughout the scheduled 12 rounds.

“I’m confident that this is my time,’’ Khan said at the weigh-in.

If Khan stays disciplined and resists the temptation to trade punches, maybe it will be his time. Slick defense and agile footwork are supposed to keep him out of range, and away from Canelo’s dangerous combinations.

From start to finish, however, Canelo’s stubborn pursuit and upper-body strength figure to keep the pressure on. The betting odds are one-sided because few think Khan can stick to his game plan. One moment of fatigue, physical and/or mental, could leave Khan’s vulnerable chin open for the KO combo that many believe is inevitable, perhaps in the later rounds of just one chapter in a bigger story.

Notes From The Scale: David Lemieux has been mentioned as a possible foe for Canelo. However, Lemieux has had trouble making 160, much less 155. Lemieux (34-3, 31 KOs) was right at 160 Friday for his middleweight bout Saturday against Glen Tapia (23-2, 15 KOs), who was at 159.5. …Curtis Stevens (27-5, 20 KOs) was at 160 and Patrick Teixeira (26-0, 22 KOs) was at a 159. …Mauricio Herrera (22-5, 7 KOs was at 145.5 and Frankie Gomez (20-0, 13 KOs) at 146 for their welterweight bout.

By Norm Frauenheim-

LAS VEGAS – Canelo Alvarez is not a middleweight now and probably won’t be one until sometime next year.

That, at least, was trainer Eddy Reynoso’s likely timetable when asked Thursday whether Canelo’s next fight would be against a true middleweight if he beats Amir Khan Saturday at a catch-weight in his first defense of the WBC’s 160-pound title.

“No, not at all,’’ Reynoso said during a trainer’s roundtable at the MGM Grand. “Maybe in two or three fights. But now, not at all.’’

The plan is for Canelo to fight two more times this year, once in September and again in December. He intends to fight both times at 155-pounds, the contracted weight for the HBO pay-per-view bout against Khan at the new T Mobile Arena.

The question, however, is whether Canelo still will have the WBC title if the 5-to-1 betting favorite beats Khan.

According to an agreement with the WBC for an interim fight after his victory for the belt over Miguel Cotto in November, Canelo has 15 days after the Khan bout to reach an agreement with Gennady Golovkin, the mandatory challenger and presumptive middleweight champion.

Without an agreement with GGG or another deal for an interim bout in the wake of a predicted Canelo victory, the WBC’s next step would be to strip the popular Mexican of the title.

“We will follow the rules,’’ WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman said.

Canelo’s stubborn demand for a catch weight has generated controversy over whether the 25-year-old is ready for thunbeaten and feared Golovkin.

“We’re ready to fight anyone,’’ Reynoso said. “It’s not a difficult fight. It’s a hard fight to make and we’re going to have to sit down with Oscar De La Hoya to do that.

“But as a fight, it is not difficult, because he (GGG) is a fighter who comes forward.’’

Bernard Hopkins, De La Hoya’s promotional partner, defends Canelo’s right to demand a catch weight.

“Who’s the star?’’ said Hopkins, a longtime middleweight champ in 2004 when he agreed to a 158-pound catch weight for a bout against De La Hoya.

Hopkins came in at 156 and won a ninth-round stoppage in a career-defining bout. De La Hoya was fighting at middleweight for only the second time, but his celebrity propelled Hopkins to more money and media attention than he would have received against any other fighter.

“The guy fighting on Cinco de Mayo weekend is the guy generating the numbers,’’ Hopkins said. “He’s the star. Why does everyone want to give GGG a free pass?’’

Canelo has said that GGG has fought a collection of nobodies. A couple of those nobodies are on Saturday’s undercard. There’s David Lemieux, who lost to GGG in October. There’s Curtis Stevens, who lost to GGG in November, 2013.

“Triple-G not being ready for Canelo?,’’ said Lemieux, who faces Glen Tapia Saturday night. “I don’t think that’s the case. Sometimes, people have got to say whatever they want to say.

“But we all know Triple-G has a long amateur history. He’s a very good fighter. And it’d be a very interesting fight if he fought Canelo. Canelo has fought a lot of tough opponents, but so has Triple-G.”

Canelo, Stevens said, has the leverage because of his pay-per-view numbers, including 900,000 for his victory over Cotto.

“Canelo, he’s the man, the pay-per-view superstar, and he is a junior-middleweight, not a true middleweight,” said Stevens, who fights unbeaten Patrick Teixeira Saturday. “Canelo makes the rules in this case. It’ll be a good fight if it happens.”

By Norm Frauenheim–

LAS VEGAS – Donald Trump and Oscar De La Hoya are accusing each other of cheating and lying. There’s nothing to the rumor that De La Hoya will be Trump’s running mate, either. At least, we don’t think so. But that could all change in a TMZ minute.

The only certainty Thursday was that boxing and presidential politics were one and the same when it comes to the truth. There is none.

In a sequence of tweets and news reports that turned into a rapid-fire farce throughout a few hours, Trump countered De La Hoya’s charges of cheating on the golf course, saying he had never played golf with the Hall of Fame fighter-turned promoter.

http://www.usnews.com/news/sports/articles/2016-05-05/trump-i-have-too-much-integrity-to-cheat-in-golf

Then, TMZ posted video of De La Hoya on the golf course, playing a round of golf in 2010 with the former promoter-turned-Republican presidential nominee.

http://www.tmz.com/2016/05/05/oscar-de-la-hoya-donald-trump-golf/

De La Hoya can be heard praising Trump, who swings a club as if he got a lesson from Charles Barkley.

Trump also said reports of him attending the De La Hoya-promoted fight Saturday between Canelo Alvarez and Amir Khan as “Totally untrue.” De La Hoya said at a Wednesday news conference at the MGM Grand that he had “confirmed” Trump would attend the fight at the T Mobile Arena.

De La Hoya had offered him two tickets. De La Hoya wasn’t sure where he would sit. Given the nature of any fight crowd and Mexican anger at Trump for his controversial comments about immigration, he might have had to watch the bout from a seat in an armored personnel carrier.

Meanwhile, Trump showed up in other photos and video, eating a taco salad. It was his way of celebrating Cinco de Mayo. He said it was made at a Mexican restaurant in the Trump Tower, perhaps by some of the undocumented immigrants he promises to deport if he gets elected.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/05/05/trump-uses-taco-bowl-try-reach-out-hispanic-voters-cinco-de-mayo/83981070/

Anybody for a game of liar’s poker?

By Norm Frauenheim-

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – Amir Khan might be a big underdog against Canelo Alvarez Saturday, but he won the news conference Wednesday.

Khan scored a knockout with a punch line.

“You never know, but this could be the last fight for me and Canelo here,’’ Khan said at the MGM Grand. “That’s it, if Donald Trump becomes president.’’

Khan is Muslim, a UK fighter of Pakistani descent. Canelo is Mexican. Trump’s call to make America great again doesn’t exactly include either.

Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, has campaigned by saying he would bar Muslims. He’s also promising to build a wall, 10 feet high, along the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

Oh yeah, Trump also might be at the Khan-Canelo fight Saturday night in the T-Mobile Arena’s boxing debut.

After Khan’s line, promoter Oscar De La Hoya announced that Trump would be attending the middleweight bout for Canelo’s World Boxing Council title.

“I just received confirmation that Trump will be here Saturday night,’’ De La Hoya said.

De La Hoya re-confirmed to a handful of reporters after the news conference that he had been told Trump had accepted his offer.

De La Hoya offered Trump two tickets last week during an appearance on Cavuto Coast to Coast on Fox Business News.

Tickets are still available for the fight, an HBO pay-per-view bout. The billionaire politician, who got Mike Tyson’s endorsement last weekend and was at ringside for Gennady Golovkin’s victory over David Lemieux at Madison Square Garden in October, could probably afford to spring for a couple of tickets on his own dime.

But De La Hoya wants Trump to witness a unique, international event between two accomplished athletes from backgrounds he has targeted with comments that have angered Mexicans and immigrants.

“”I have Amir Khan, a Muslim fighter from the U.K., fighting against the most popular boxer in Mexico, Canelo Alvarez, opening up the new T-Mobile Arena,” De La Hoya said when he first made an offer that he figured Trump could only refuse. “We have an opportunity to show Mr. Trump just what Mexicans and Muslims can achieve — and in a city that screams America: Las Vegas. Trump, let me invite you so that you can see what a Mexican and a Muslim can generate.”

It’s not exactly clear where Trump, a former business associate of Don King and Bob Arum, would be seated if he shows up, presumably with somebody other than Ted Cruz. At recent campaign stops in California, violence erupted among demonstrators opposed to Trump, whose name has been booed loudly by fight crowds ever since the ex-promoter became a politician.

“Not in ringside seat,’’ De La Hoya said during the news conference. “But we’ll make sure he sees the fight.’’

By Bart Barry-

Saturday Mexican super middleweight Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will defend the lineal middleweight championship of the world, not to be confused with the PBC middleweight championship or the HBO middleweight championship, against Britain’s Amir “King” Khan, currently the WBC’s silver champion of the welterweight division. The match will happen in Las Vegas on pay-per-view, naturally.

All the boxes are checked – Face Off, 24/7, Greatest Hits – but interest is wholly wanting.

I’ve been ringside for fights enough of Canelo’s to know they’re better in person than via television yet I hadn’t a farthing of an impetus or a modicum of that farthing to travel to see this fight. Amir Khan has never struck me as better than a highlight reel of nationalistic and ethnic special effects. Surely some Brits and lots of Pakistanis feel something like pride when they watch him, but in many more cases, I infer, persons claim to be impressed by Khan because their own box-checking told them to be so: Handsome, well-spoken, fast hands, bilingual, beloved by others.

That was certainly Oscar De La Hoya and Richard Schaefer’s calculation way back when. Not too long after Khan – an Olympic silver medalist, have you heard? – got plastercracked by Breidis Prescott in 2008, he won a cynical rehabilitation match against Marco Antonio Barrera 18 months after Barrera resigned his ownership stake in Golden Boy Promotions by retiring, and not long after that Khan began appearing at ringside as Oscar’s guest.

After racing through Paulie Malignaggi in the best performance of his career Khan raced away from Marcos Maidana in the expiring moments of their 2010 match – a performance that couldn’t be talked to pretty. The image of Khan in perimeter-hopping flight, eyes wide, tail high, pride low, endures and endures. It’s why many of us cheered for Danny Garcia in 2012, seven months after Khan lost a decision to Lamont Peterson. Garcia uncorked Khan with a left hook that’s aged better than both Garcia and Khan.

Then it was back to the rehabilitation circuit for King Khan, a string of decision victories against opponents a prizefighter of Khan’s celebrity should not have needed judges to best. After making Chris Algieri, a small welterweight, look formidable enough to get Algieri recently fed to a PBC prospect, a year ago Khan settled in for a victory hibernation. It took a cashout arrangement for Khan and his advisor – I’m going to cash you out, Amir, because I’m out of cash – to get Khan back in the ring, this time in a match for the lineal middleweight championship of the world Cinnamon Alvarez beat from the waist of Miguel Cotto who won the title from a cripple who decisioned a drunk.

Which mightn’t be amusing as it is were it not for the purists now propped high on their hindlegs by dudgeon for Canelo’s refusal to defend this august title above 155 pounds. Gennady “He’ll Fight Anyone Between 154 and 168 Pounds” Golovkin, the reigning, defending and undisputed middleweight champion of HBO, may not have a chance to sue posterity for greatness, his partisans fear, if he cannot accumulate on his record some marquee welterweights or 154-pounders willing to face him at the middleweight limit.

Fans are now clamoring for Canelo to fight Golovkin, except they aren’t. HBO is clamoring for Canelo to fight Golovkin for a combination of reasons like: The Golovkin marketing budget is starting to outpace its effect. Most idiots left boxing with Money May, and the aficionados who remain are more interested in great matches than abetting networks’ lame starsystems, which means the HBO middleweight champion will never get back on pay-per-view without either luring Canelo into a match with him or, heaven forbid, moving up in weight and challenging himself.

Golovkin won’t move up in weight for the same reason Canelo won’t move up in weight: Why the hell take a risk when there are millions to be made by not taking risks? And before you say “Posterity!” wipe that smirk off your face.

Nobody thinks Canelo will beat Golovkin at 160 pounds – so how does anyone expect the disinterested among us to believe there is clamoring for a match whose promotional tagline would be “Ratify Golovkin!”? Canelo knows this, and Canelo knows he is the AAA-side in a match with Golovkin, and he is behaving like it. A question for those who sincerely believe Golovkin’s starching Canelo at 160 pounds is what’s best for our beleaguered sport: Then what? Canelo is off pay-per-view till he can be rehabilitated, and Golovkin has no one to fight with his easy new prestige. Or is the idea actually to harangue the welterweight champion of the world out of retirement?

Goodness, stop it.

Back to Saturday’s spectacle. The best outcome is Khan, SD-12: A narrow, controversial decision in which Khan outbusies Canelo, who shows massive amounts of frustration for his loyal fans at Khan’s unwillingness to engage in a manly way. Oscar, Canelo’s promoter, can get in the ring afterward and tell us about protesting the decision and hiring investigators and so forth. The WBC – to whom Golovkin’s folks pretend they’ve pinned dreams of fairplay; yet in whose sweatsuit Canelo trains – can order an immediate rematch, and knowing Canelo will win that by prefilled scorecards emulate Hollywood by ordering a sequel to the rematch at the same time they order the rematch, filling Canelo’s calendar until Mexican Independence Day 2017, time enough for him to grow in to a middleweight while Golovkin grows out of one.

Some folks will remember Canelo didn’t move up to 160 pounds while Golovkin was still there. Some folks remember Golovkin didn’t move up to 168 while Andre Ward was still there. As we’ve seen, though, that’s nothing some quality agitprop can’t fix.

I’ll take Canelo, KO-8, because, who are we kidding, Khan has no chin.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Badou Jack defends the WBC Super Middleweight title against former world champion Lucian Bute.  The action begins at 10 PM ET / 7 PM PT with an IBF Super Middleweight title bout between James DeGale and Rogelio Medina….NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED

Round 1 Jack lands a left to the body

Round 2 Bute lands a right to the body..Jack lands a left to the body..Combination from Bute..Jack lands a right to the body and a left hook to the body..Left from Bute..right to the body from Jack..

Round 3 Bute lands a straight left…Cut around the right eye of Bute..Jack lands a body shot..

Round 4 Jack lands a right…Left and uppercut from Bute…Short left to the chin from Jack…Body work..counter shot..

Round 5 Counter right from Jack…Overhand left…left hook to the face..

Round 6 Jack lands a right to the body…Hard right…Right uppercut from Bute..3 punch combination..stiff right from Jack…Left hook to the head..

Round 7 Combination from Bute…Left and right from Jack…1-2…

Round 8

Round 9 jack working the body…Counter left hook…Right uppercut to the body

Round 10 Left and right for Bute..2 lefts and right hand for Jack

Round 11 Right uppercut from Bute…Bute getting better of exchanges

Round 12 Bute coming forward

117-111 Jack; 114-114 twice…..A DRAW

 

Round 1 DeGale landing the jab…landing head punches..right hook..body shots

Round 2 DeGale landing blistering shots…focusing on the body

Round 3 Medina working the body on the ropes..DeGale landing to body and the head…right uppercut from Medina..

Round 4 Medina lands a right..sweeping right from DeGale..Medina digging at the body..Combination from DeGale..Medina landing to the body…left uppercut from DeGale..Counter jab from Medina…body…

Round 5 Left from Meduppercut..ina..Right from Medina..Combination from Medina..Good exchange on the ropes..Right uppercut from DeGale..right…

Round 6 DeGale lands a jab…Medina lands a left hook to the body..right…Huge combination backs up Medina,..

Round 7 Left from Medina…right hook from DeGale…Both get in jabs…Left from Medina…Uppercut from DeGale

Round 8 Left hook from Medina..right from DeGale…Long right…Left hook to the body from Medina..Nice right uppercut and body shots from deGale..

Round 9 Hard uppercut from DeGale…Medina working the body…combination..Combination from DeGale…Right uppercut

Round 10 Medina coming forward trying to work the body

Round 11 Medina making the fight

Round 12 Medina lands a right…Counter from DeGale..right uppercut..Jab from Medina..Nice combination..Left from DeGale..uppercut..

 

115-113, 117-111 twice for James DeGale

By Norm Frauenheim

By now, all the arguments have been stated and re-stated. We’ll hear them again, ad nauseam, next week in the final days before Canelo Alvarez and Amir Khan fight at Las Vegas’ new T-Mobile Arena.

Catchweight or middleweight? Should Canelo surrender the WBC’s 160-pound title or move forward with a mandatory defense against Gennady Golovkin? Those questions will be heard about as often as Donald Trump’s name.

Fair or not, Khan figures to become a footnote, at least in the pre-fight proceedings. That might become a very big piece of motivation for him and he’ll need every bit of it against the bigger, stronger Canelo.

Nevertheless, the GGG question isn’t going to go away. For Canelo promoter Oscar De La Hoya, it’s a classic dilemma.

The young promoter, a Hall of Fame fighter who wanted to fight the best and still does, faces controversy no matter what path he chooses in the wake of a likely Canelo victory.

On the one hand, there’s growing public pressure on him to do the deal for Canelo-GGG in September. On the other, there’s the risk of losing income that Canelo, the game’s current pay-per-view leader, figures to generate if he isn’t ready and suffers a one-sided knockout.

What would you do? For vocal fans armed with the various forms of the social-media megaphone, it’s easy to demand that the bout happens ASAP. They don’t have any skin in the game. It’s not their money. If it was, what would they do? If it was your money, what would you do?

The guess here is that a big percentage would delay the inevitable, especially after watching GGG’s powerful blowout of Dominic Wade last Saturday.

Wade won’t be remembered for anything other than being GGG’s 22nd straight knockout victim. He didn’t look as if he could beat any known middleweight, or good junior middleweight for that matter. Nevertheless, GGG’s dominance was evident in his power, style and body language. He’s in his prime and fought as if he wanted everybody to know exactly that.

With all due respect to unbeaten flyweight Roman Gonzalez and his one-sided decision over McWilliams Arroyo Saturday, Golovkin trainer Abel Sanchez said GGG was pound-for-pound No. 1. No argument here. I didn’t hear much of an argument from anywhere else either.

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: Khan’s skill set – fast hands and faster feet – could make Canelo look bad. But Khan’s instinct is to brawl after he gets tagged. At some point, that will do him in, say, after the eighth round. Canelo wins a stoppage, but not in a dominant enough fashion to suggest he’ll have any chance against GGG four months from now. He’s 25, yet still another fight or two away from the kind of maturity he’ll need for a legitimate shot against GGG.

“Many things have changed,’’ Canelo said of how he has grown since his lone loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. “I’m more experienced now. I’m more of a complete fighter. I’ve learned so much in that fight. So many things have changed. I think I have more confidence around the ring, so there’s many things that have changed.’’

But the suggestion is that more still has to change in an ongoing process for the young Mexican who is about nine years younger than GGG. Canelo’s demand for a 155-pound catchweight is just a dodge. Truth is, it’s his corner’s way of saying he still needs to mature. It would be refreshing if they just said that. But pride and business won’t allow them to. Instead, we get euphemistic talk, all rhetorical feints and all very annoying.

For De La Hoya, the question looks to be simple enough. Canelo is the key to his financial war chest, which will be critical for a while.

The boxing business is down, predictably so amid the continuing hangover from Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao, a turn-off for all of the causal fans who bought the hype and the fight last year. HBO has cut it boxing dates. That’s why Bob Arum will stage Terence Crawford-versus Viktor Postol on pay-per-view on July 23.

There’s a further red flag in a $925-million lawsuit that investors have filed against Waddell & Reed, which bankrolled Al Haymon’s ambitious PBC venture. http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/04/28/investors-furious-at-money-put-into-boxing.htm

It’s hard to know where the suit is headed. But it is enough to know that a big risk in September just wouldn’t be wise.

By Bart Barry-

Editor’s note: For part 13, please click here.
SAN ANTONIO – Thursday evening in this city’s irreplaceable McNay Art Museum, as part of its quarterly series Artists Looking at Art, local sculptor James Hetherington conversed with the museum’s chief curator about what relationships are shared by the materials he uses and their discovery and the works they eventually compose. Series of reactions he catalyzes that often form tributes to the originators of their component parts, Hetherington’s sculptures are large and enormously heavy and assembled from pieces he recovers from a local salvage yard. They form among many things Hetherington’s contribution to an ecological conversation about sustaining our world by repurposing materials.

What Hetherington is after does correlate in its way with boxing (for once).

Somewhere in his language of sustainability, an idea whose cliche is not lessened by the fullness of its artist’s belief, is the idea of taking parts as life presents them and relating them to one another oftener with a welding torch than a saw and prizing the sum of their reactions followed by their new collective’s reactions to the elements of their spaces.

When his thoughts were interrupted by questions about the colors he uses Hetherington confirmed with diminishing enthusiasm the colors of his sculptures come via oxidation much as intention. The artist’s vision for his work is its initial condition and what follows is iterative; the pieces he scavenges in junkyards and fits together and the effects then taken on them by wind and rain and sunlight, elements taking their effects meanwhile and too on those who view the sculptures, harmonize (cooperate) with and alter (compete with) the pieces in a process whose varying results are, like every other experience, equal parts impossible and inevitable.

In this sense Hetherington plays an exceptional boxing trainer much more than a fighter or a middling trainer. Our beloved sport bursts with middling trainers – men who endeavor to carve or melt younger men into proven or at least popular fighting styles and shapes without very much regard for these men’s natural endowments or deference either to nature. Even exceptional trainers rarely prove to be ponies with more than one trick but at least they have that trick, and with promotional-television revenues involved, one trick a multimillionaire can make.

Emanuel Steward was very good at teaching tall men to dominate with straight punches. Freddie Roach is quite good at helping athletic punchers maintain their balance while increasing aggression. But Roach would prove no better at improving Wladimir Klitschko – whose post-Steward dominance of opponents remains proportionate to the number of inches he towers over them – than Steward proved at improving Miguel Cotto.

If the best trainers, then, work to harmonize the materials they’re given within the hard if not narrow boundaries imposed by a sport in which death is possible and permanent damage is assured, a new question arises: How essential are exceptional trainers?

Their essentiality generally relates to the experience of the men they train. While Floyd Mayweather Sr. and Nacho Beristain, both, were perfectly essential in the developmental stages of their respective prodigies, Little Floyd and Juan Manuel Marquez, neither has provided more than comfort and familiarity in his charge’s most recent matches. Maybe even Abel Sanchez once was essential to the development of Olympic silver-medalist Gennady Golovkin after Golovkin was already good enough to win a silver medal without him, but with the competition K2HBO now feeds him, Golovkin could score a knockout with an actual pony in his corner.

This may not be an important question as it relates to contemporary art but it remains an interesting and frequent one since Andy Warhol elevated tracing others’ works, whether labels or photographs, to something critics credited with approximating originality. It’s a question that made James Hetherington a touch sheepish Thursday night too. While he properly believes his talent for vision and scavenging and attachment makes him an artist and his productions art, Hetherington is aware consensus among the commonfolk at times can be shaky.

The laity reliably appraises fine art, as opposed to fashion art, by asking: Could I do this? If the answer is yes the art is fashion and if the answer is no a piece requires secondlooking. Yes, but. Like most who enjoy reduction – pursuing the known, not the unknown – these earnest folks who would doubt a curator that included commonly doable things in an exhibition (still preferable company to what art-school airheads relentlessly shout “a-mazing!” at their classmates’ collaborative doodles) must move the variable t before they reject what they see once it exists.

This seemed to be Hetherington’s slightly defensive rebuttal when he reported he sees all these works in his mind before he finds their parts. That is his art (where welding and pipefitting get regarded as trades and crafts). There’s a reason, Hetherington properly insists, no one else in the neighborhood meanders in the same junkyard then scores commissions to erect his works in public spaces no matter how obvious these creations later appear in their finished states.

It’s a skill, a science even, to reduce works of complexity to their component parts; it’s an art to snatch from the inconstant pulses of one’s own mind a set of shapes and materials to recover and conjoin and ultimately present to the eyes of other impossibly complex beings whose own inconstant minds pulse ever rabidly about. The most Hetherington or any creator can do is drop his works in the universe of feedback loops and hope for the best.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as world Middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin defends his titles against undefeated Dominic Wade.  The action begins at 10 PM ET / 7 PM PT with the WBC Flyweight title bout between Roman Gonzalez and McWilliams Arroyo—THE PAGE WILL REFRESH AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1: Golovkin lands a left to the body..Wade lands a body shot..RIGHT TO BACK TO THE HEAD AND DOWN GOES WADE

Round 2 Hard right hurts Wade…good body shot..body shot…Wade gets in a combination…RIGHT HAND AND DOWN GOES WADE.HUGE OVER HAND RIGHT AND WAD GOES DOWN AND DOES NOT BEAT THE COUNT

Round 1 Arroyo working body with left hook..

Round 2 Arroyo lands a left..Combination from Gonzalez…Combination

Round 3 Hard body shits and left hook from Gonzalez…Quick left hook from Arroyo…Gonzalez answers with a left…right hurts Arroyo…Gonzalez outlanding Arroyo 62-40

Round 4 Good right from Arroyo…Good right from Gonzalez…the sole of Arroyo’s shoe has come off..

Round 5 Left hook from Gonzalez

Round 6 Gonzalez lands a left to the body and right to the head..

Round 7 Hard left to the body from Gonzalez..Big left hook..

Round 8 Big left hook from Gonzalez..2 hard rights

Round 9 Right from Gonzalez…

Round 10 Arroyo lands a left hook..straight right and 2 lefts to the body from Gonzales..right..Left hook from Arroyo…Gonzalez outlanding Arroyo 295-160

Round 11 Big right from Gonzalez..Good right…Hard left to the body..Body shot from Arroyo..Gonzalez outlanding Arroyo–327-174

Round 12 Arroyo lands 2 rights..Gonzalez lands a good right..Left hook from Arroyo..360-193 punch advantage for Gonzalez

119-109 TWICE AND 120-108 FOR GONZALEZ

 

Follow all the action as it happens when WBO Jr. Featherweight champion Nonito Donaire defends his title against Zsolt Bedak.  The action begins at 8 AM Eastern Time / 8 PM in The Philippines with a 3 fight undercard featuring Super Featherweight bout between Paul Flemming and Miguel Angel Gonzalez; Featherweights Mark Magsayo and Chris Avalos as well as Jason Pagara battling Miguel Zamudio–PAGE WILL REFRESH AUTOMATICALLY 

Page will refresh automatically

Round 1 Donaire lands a left to the body

Round 2 Left hook lands solid for Donaire….LEFT HOOK AND DOWN GOES DONAIRE…Bedak bleeding from the nose..Hard uppercut…LEFT TO TOP OF HEAD AND DOWN GOES BEDAK

Round 3 1-2 from Donaire…uppercut…RIGHT HAND BY DONAIRE RULED A KNOCKDOWN AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1 GONZALEZ LANDS A RIGHT AND DOWN GOES FLEMING…Right from Gonzalez..

Round 2 Gonzalez lands a body shot..Right from Fleming…Right from Gonzalez

Round 3 Fleming lands a right to the body…Straight left…Left to body from Gonzalez…

Round 4 Fleming lands a combination against the ropes..Uppercut from Gonzalez…Fleming warned for a low blow..

Round 5 1-2 from Gonalez…Body shots from Fleming..4 punch combo from Gonzalez

Round 6 Good combination from Fleming…Body shot…

Round 7 Fleming going to the body..Good left..3 punch combination…Gonzalez lands a right

Round 8 Fleming counters with a right…left…right on the ropes…1-2 from Gonzalez..

Round 9 Fleming lands a combination…left

Round 10 Body shot from Fleming…left…good left..

97-92 twice and 96-93 for FLEMING

ROUND 1 Magsayo lands 2 lefts..Right from Avalos..Counter from Magsayo..left hook to the head..Hard right..

Round 2 Big right from Magsayo..Avalos is hurt…Hard rights on the ropes rocks Avalos..Big overhand right..Counter right from Avalos

Round 3 Left from Avalos..right..HARD LEFT AND DOWN GOES MAGSAYO..Good right hand..Avalos working the body

Round 4 Left from Avalos…1-2…Jab…

Round 5 Left from Magsayo..Right from Avalos…Uppercut from Magsayo..Left…Hard left wobbles Avalos..Hard 3 punch ccombination wobbles and rocks Avalos head back.

Round 6 Good left hand from Magsayo…ANOTHER AND THE TOWEL GETS THROWN IN 

 

 

By Norm Frauenheim–

If boxing mimics politics – as it so often does, Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez are still in the primary season.

It moves onto another stage Saturday (HBO 10 pm ET/ 7 p.m. PT) with Golovkin expected to make another statement about his middleweight dominance against Dominic Wade at The Forum in Los Angeles just two weeks before Canelo faces Amir Khan on May 7 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

It’s only a guess as to whether the two fights can push GGG and Canelo closer to fighting each other. If it had been up to GGG, he would have been looking into Canelo’s unblinking eyes during the nose-to-nose stare-down for the cameras in a news-conference ritual Thursday in Los Angeles.

But it was the unknown Wade instead of Canelo staring back at GGG because of an agreement that allowed Canelo one defense of the WBC’s 160-pound title he took from Miguel Cotto in November.

It’s a deal that has generated inevitable criticism from fans weary of waiting. The last time they waited, they got Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s dud of a decision over Manny Pacquiao. Anybody want to do that again? Didn’t think so.

But the question of when remains as unclear now as it was months ago. Perhaps, more so, especially in the wake of Canelo’s continuing insistence that the fight be at a catch weight, 155 pounds.
“I really haven’t discussed the topic of Canelo, or regarding Canelo, with Golden Boy,’’ said Tom Loeffler, CEO of K2, GGG’s promoter. “We had the meeting with the WBC when Canelo was obligated to fight Gennady by winning the WBC title.

“But since then, since we had the agreement that he could have one voluntary defense and then would have to fight the winner, Gennady, or Dominic Wade, since then we haven’t had any discussions. We figure we’d focus on April 23, they would focus on May 7 and then after those two fights, we’d figure out the situation.’’

There’s little, if any, doubt abut the outcome in either fight. Golovkin is an overwhelming favorite to continue his string of knockouts, now at 21 and counting. Odds in his favor are anywhere from 70-to-1 to infinity-to-1.

Two weeks later in T-Mobile Arena’s first opening bell, Canelo is nearly a 5-to-1 favorite. That’s one-sided, yet close enough to think Khan has a better chance at making Canelo look bad than he does at beating him.

Khan has the right skill-set – quick feet and hands – to make it difficult for Canelo. In evaluating Khan, there’s been a lot of talk about Canelo’s loss to Mayweather, who in 2013 schooled the popular Mexican, then 22.

But Mayweather has taken just about everybody he’s faced to school. That’s why he’s 49-0. A more telling moment in Canelo’s career, perhaps, was Erislandy Lara in July 2014.

Lara never kept his distance, circling Canelo like a spinning top. An aggressive Canelo moved forward throughout the 12 rounds, an aggressive pursuit which was enough for a split decision.

But Lara made him look bad. Since then, Canelo, now 25, scored a sensational stoppage of James Kirkland and followed up against Cotto with a performance that included some newfound signs of maturity.

Against Cotto, he showed more upper-body movement. He was a more complete fighter, but perhaps not complete enough to contend with GGG, who at 34 is in his prime.

The guess in this corner is that he beats Khan, but his performance will determine whether he goes straight from Khan to GGG or back to the WBC for another agreement on another voluntary title defense.

Canelo promoter Oscar De La Hoya would not eliminate any option during a conference call this week. Even a Cotto rematch is a possibility.

“Might be,’’ De La Hoya said.

A move to further delay a mandatory with GGG could also put the WBC in an awkward spot. The WBC will have to decide whether to strip Canelo of the title if he doesn’t face GGG next. The ruling body is based in Mexico City. Canelo is, far and away, Mexico’s most popular fighter. Remember, boxing mimics politics.

“I’m not even thinking about that,’’ Canelo said this week. “I’m preparing for this fight on May 7. I’m not even thinking about that.

“After the fight, we’ll see. We’ll decide and see what’s the best course of action. But right now, it’s not even in my mind. Hasn’t even crossed my mind. I don’t know.”

By Norm Fraunheim-

Nonito Donaire remembers 2012 as though it is history about to repeat itself.

Donaire fights for the first time in 2016 Saturday at home in the Philippines at Cebu City against Hungarian Zsolt Bedak in defense of a title he won in December and at a weight, 122 pounds, he dominated four years ago when he was Fighter of the Year.

“I have a second opportunity,’’ Donaire said in a conference call Thursday for a bout that will be televised in the U.S. by InDemand Pay-Per-View. “Not everybody gets that. I want to re-write everything that I did in 2012.’’

Re-live it too, yet this time with a deeper appreciation for what it all means.

In the first defense of a WBO super-bantamweight title he won in a decision over Cesar Juarez in December in Puerto Rico, Donaire returns to his Filipino roots in a fight the has dedicated to his father, Nonito Sr, who will be in his corner.

“My dad never left me through all my ups and downs,’’ said Donaire, who is 3-0 since Nicholas Walters knocked him out in a 126-pound bout in October, 2014. “I just want to thank him.’’

Donaire (36-3, 23 KOs) also intends to thank his Filipino fans with a victory over Bedak (25-1, 8 KOs), who beat Abner Mares at the 2004 Olympics.

In a sure sign that Filpino boxing is still thriving in the post-Manny Pacquiao era, about 18,000 tickets have already been sold, according to Donaire and promoters. There’s talk that the walk-up sale could put the crowd at 30,000, he said.

“Boxing will always thrive here,’’ Donaire said. “Filipinos want somebody to represent them, somebody to look up to. For me, it’s an honor and I’m going to show that in my performance.’’

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at Barclay’s Center in a PBC match televised by NBC, Texas welterweight southpaw Errol Spence stitchripped New York’s Chris Algieri. Spence won every round en route to a TKO in the fifth. Algieri was game throughout, though, again transcending what lowly expectations his social-media brand sets.

Errol Spence is a good fighter with much potential, and that is everything we know of him. He knockedout a viable opponent in only his fourth year of prizefighting, and that puts him well ahead of the standard PBC development template. But Chris Algieri is the consomate b-side, a guy teed-up to be stiffened by Ruslan Provodnikov execution-style two years ago who managed both to survive and win, getting himself invited to Manny Pacquiao’s “Live from China” tour – joining Algieri evermore to a trivial club whose only other member is Brandon Rios – getting him knocked down a bushel and a peck by the congressman, which got him elevated to the top of Amir Khan’s wishlist, getting him decisioned unanimously though not indignantly by Canelo Alvarez’s next victim, making Algieri a perfect matchup for Errol Spence’s primetime debut.

Last year Spence might have fought on NBC against a lad whose name rang no bells with aficionados, both in April and October, but last year the PBC’s coffers were bursting and the public’s perceived appetite for steaming refuse was unlimited. Limits of gullibility shown by viewers and an eerie echo emanating from those coffers this year led the PBC to drop Spence in Lake Algieri, the sort of blackwater-peril Keith Thurman didn’t see till his ninth year of professional fighting. And Spence became the first man to stop Algieri in the 140 years since the 9th Marquess of Queensberry sanctioned rules, so there!

“First man to knock out (insert well-worn journeyman)” is a dumb way to promote a victory, but it’s what the PBC had, and so it made its way instantly into independent fight reports across the fruited plain. To knockout a guy who goes on to dismantle champions is a feat. To knockout an undefeated man, too, is a feat oftentimes. To use a knockout like an exclamation point on a runon sentence comprising oodles of predictable clauses is no feat at all or not one appropriate to the concerns of writers – unless they’re angling for jobs with a promoter or lazy.

Here’s an appropriate concern to those who would profess an expertise in pugilism or sentencemaking. Spence shows a slight case of Devonitis – an affliction named after Devon Alexander and identified via the following symptoms while jabbing: A guard that flies off the cheek, and a chin that rises with a combination’s progress. Spence does not have a severe case, and even if he did, Alexander’s career informs us, those who are paid to notice such things wouldn’t notice such things anyway until a few millions of dollars were made.

USA Boxing, of which Spence is a product, specializes in the dropped-gloves charge, too, and if Spence doesn’t do it baldly as others like Vanes Martirosyan, he does do it a bit. Which is a good thing for aficionados because it means there’s a chance someone on the PBC roster might make fights that are both dramatic and suspenseful.

Spence can be counterpunched and was counterpunched by Algieri. Spence fired back because that is his composition as a prizefighter and because Algieri doesn’t hit very hard. When Spence caught Algieri with left crosses that arrived with the curvature of hooks Algieri was devastated by the blows in a way he was not by Provodnikov’s or Pacquiao’s or Khan’s, in part because Spence is a natural welterweight while Provodnikov fought Algieri at 140 pounds and Pacquiao began his career at 106 and Khan is, well, Khan.

If that is not entirely fair to Spence, neither was the hyperbole heaped upon him by the PBC broadcast crew Saturday. Fairness travels both directions, and presenting Algieri as more than a quintessential b-side is not fair to the men who beat Algieri however much such unfairness is encouraged by their promoters.

Spence did what he was supposed to do, albeit three years prematurely, and that is a comfort of sorts to those few of us who still take a disinterested interest in our oncebeloved sport. Spence has special qualities. In a previous era there’d be no reason to write that already, as professional matchmaking would make his development inevitable and his ascent obvious. In this era, though, and with Spence’s advisor/manager/promoter seeing to Spence’s development, there’s no telling.

Spence made the fourth fight of his career in a small San Antonio gymnasium, the 11th fight of his career in a San Antonio bullring, and the 12th at a converted venue Alamodome expertly named Illusions Theater. Each time I was ringside, and each time Spence was the most talented fighter on the card. In the bullring Spence’s palpable talent was made noticeably more palpable through its juxtaposition with an Olympic teammate’s talent. Terrell Gausha is not good enough at boxing to make his living as anything but a PBC prospect, and so the PBC’s championing of Gausha brings a necessarily nervous titter from those who might otherwise assert Spence will someday reach his potential under that banner.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim

Bob Arum ripped Donald Trump. Mocked him, too, from a bully pulpit on a stage for what the promoter called the No Trump Undercard. It was clever advertising and might have generated as many pay-per-view sales as Manny Pacquiao’s decision over Timothy Bradley in the main event.

Part show and part substance, part satire and part serious, it was mostly words, another political debate during a political season as silly and tiresome as any boxing news conference ever could be.

But it had a face, too.

Oscar Valdez’ face.

In one promising featherweight, Valdez personifies two cultures that Trump wants to divide with a wall. Valdez’ roots are on both sides of the border between Arizona and Mexico. He went to grade school in Tucson. He began to box there. Then, he moved to Nogales on the Mexican side of the border where he became a two-time Mexican Olympian. He speaks like an American kid. He speaks like a Mexican kid. There’s no wall big enough to separate the American from the Mexican in Valdez.

“I’m not really into political end of things in the USA,’’ Valdez said before delivering the card’s best performance, a fourth-round stoppage of Evgeny Gradovich, the self-proclaimed Mexican-Russian and the IBF’s former 126-pound champion, at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand. “But what I do know is that I that I wouldn’t want Trump to be president of the United States. It would affect other countries.

“Mostly, I’m just focused on this fight. But I’m also excited to be on this card. Knowing that we have Bob Arum’s support on what he’s calling the No Trump Card, it just brings a little more flavor to it.’’

More edge to it, too.

In addition to Valdez, the April 9 card included Gilberto Ramirez, who won a WBO title became the first Mexican to win a major super-middleweight belt with a decision over Arthur Abraham, a German of Armenian descent. There was also junior-welterweight Jose Ramirez, a 2012 U.S. Olympian, faces Manny Perez of Denver in a bout scheduled for 10 rounds. Ramirez, the son of farm workers in central California, is an activist in water conservation.

Valdez, Gilberto Ramirez and Jose Ramirez were the collective face of what Trump’s proposed wall opposes, Arum said. Trump loves to talk about winners. On Arum’s card, however, he was the loser. Mexico 3, Trump 0.

“Without a wall, they just show that, back and forth, great things happen across the border between the two countries,’’ Arum said.

There is already a wall along much of the border between Mexico and Arizona, where there was a heated immigration controversy about six years ago with the state legislature’s passage of SB 1070.

Valdez, who fought in Tucson in December, has traveled through that wall’s checkpoints often, visiting his mom and grandmother in Tucson and his family in Nogales.

“I’m blessed to have grown up on both sides,’’ said Valdez, who now lives in Hermosillo when he’s not training in Southern California. “Having grown up in Mexico means so much to me. My culture, my family, is everything. Having grown up in the United States means so much. It’s so important to know English. It’s meant so much to have gone to school in Tucson and still have friends and family there. It will always be my second home.’’

In part, Valdez’ emergence as a featherweight contender is a symbol of Arizona’s resilience as a boxing market. It’s always been a good one, yet it all but disappeared for a couple of years in the wake of SB 1070.

Mexican advertisers stayed away, forcing Arum to move a Jose Benavidez Jr.-featured card in 2010 out of the state and to Chicago early in his career. The controversy even prompted Jose Sulaiman, the late president of the World Boxing Council, to issue an edict, asking Mexican fighters to boycott the state. Some did, some didn’t. But the impact knocked Arizona out of the ring of viable markets long enough to wonder if it would ever come back.

It has, it is, because of the gyms that dot the state’s Sonoran desert like cactus. From Phoenix to Tucson, from Michael Carbajal to Oscar Valdez, there’s always another one. Good fighters are part of the landscape. Part of the culture.

At some point, Valdez, who stopped Gradovich with the best left hand from a fighter with Arizona roots since Carbajal, hopes to fight again in Tucson, although his rapid ascent might keep him in bigger markets. In the immediate aftermath of his victory over Gradovich, there was talk he would wind up on the Terence Crawford-Viktor Postol card on July 23, also in Vegas at the MGM Crawford.

“I do know people – cousins, friends, family — who have been deported, especially in the state of Arizona. There was a time there when it got really crazy. You know, it was sad. Just sad. I know my friends. They’re not terrorists. They just come to work, come to make a better life.’’

Fight for one, too.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at MGM Grand in the first retirement match of his career and second rematch with California’s Timothy Bradley, Filipino welterweight Manny Pacquiao decisioned roundly Bradley by three fair scores of 116-110, an odd-looking tally representing both a Pacquiao pulldown in round 7 and a knuckleball knockdown in the ninth. The deserving man won. Little more can be said for the fare.

An emotional sendoff it was not. It was a luggery, a strained thing, an effort to aggrandize hoarse as Teddy Atlas’ voice. Too, there was promoter Bob Arum seated beside Jerry Jones, owner of the stadium where Pacquiao fought Joshua Clottey and Antonio Margarito in 2010, as if to put the lie squarely to the halfassery of promoting the match in front of them like Pacquiao’s last – or was Jones onhand to offer Arum his venue for Lomachenko-Walters?

Pacquiao fought Bradley the way he had for their 24 rounds that preceded Saturday’s belligerence: as a congressman vote-counter campaigning for a win. There was naught of the mania Pacquiao showed Erik Morales, naught of the rage he flashed at Juan Manuel Marquez. It was a politically correct effort by Pacquiao, sanitized, sportsmanlike, humane. Right down to the requisite spar-with-me-bro glove kisses at the open of each round.

Bradley wanted to win the right way more than he wanted to win, seeing chances to lead with his head as he so often did on his way to the majors and banishing the thought quickly as it arrived. Manny and Timmy are great buddies! They fought like it, too, much to the chagrin of the comparatively small number of us born-every-minute folks who purchased their fight.

Trainer Teddy Atlas convinced Bradley during their camp what the promotion somehow convinced the rest of us: Finding and blitzing a heavybag like Brandon Rios prepared a man for counterpunching Pacquiao. The only men who succeeded in counterpunching Pacquiao in his career, though, were the two master counterpunchers of the era, Marquez and Floyd Mayweather. Bradley, a volume puncher athletic enough to counterpunch b-level guys, was not going to win a match in which he was outworked anymore than Pacquiao had a chance of outsmarting Mayweather 11 months ago.

There was a spot in the first rounds of the match in which Bradley clearly knew Pacquiao was about to jab him, prepped himself to parry or slip, and got smitten anyway. When something that discouraging happens to a professional athlete his trainer can feed a third of MGM Grand with five loaves and two fish between rounds and it ain’t going to matter. Atlas spent a commentary career watching Pacquiao on video like the rest of us, no doubt thinking all the while if only he could teach someone with great reflexes to see Pacquiao’s triggers and tells the way Atlas did, historians would wear Atlas’ name on their lips for a generation. He got that guy with Bradley, and it mattered nothing at all.

Bradley’s best chance with Pacquiao was his first chance; Bradley was the wildcard in that fight, rhythmically unpredictable, flexibly awkward. It was a match in which either guy might have sprained an ankle careening past the other, and it just happened to be Bradley who did. Ever since then Pacquiao has been everything Bradley is – only much more so.

By the sixth round Saturday what became apparent was this: Only Marquez among all men who matched themselves against Pacquiao had the balls to see Pacquiao’s jabfeint-hopback-jabpounce and step directly into it, manifesting a faith in his physical genius that said, “One of us goes to sleep right now, and I don’t much care which.” Bradley saw Pacquiao’s signature move and tried to jab it or retreat from it or absorb and counter it. But not once in 108 minutes of standing across from Pacquiao did Bradley sellout the right hand Marquez-style. Wherever go one’s memories of Pacquiao, then, should follow Marquez – the two matched wonderfully and gave us so very much in their four fights.

Asked for Pacquiao’s legacy my thoughts go immediately here: 6-2-1 (3 KOs). That is Pacquiao’s record against prime versions of Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales and Juan Manuel Marquez. There is nothing any prizefighter has done in the last 25 years that is so impressive as that. No handicapping, no trickeration, no legerdemain, no bullshit: Pacquiao fought three first-ballot guys nine times. And most of that happened before SportsCenter even knew the Filipino’s name.

Pacquiao leaves the game, if he does, having amortized most of that goodwill, yes – despite what those whose salaries now rely primarily on Pacquiao revenue tell us during telecasts. Some of us have enriched him for woeful garbage like his matches with Shane Mosley, Brandon Rios and Chris Algieri. So be it. Historians will not either forgive Pacquiao’s effort against Mayweather with its submissive lack of urgency, even while they concede things might have been different before Floyd orchestrated a five-year delay (we will not forget how close they came to signing contracts in December 2009).

When Pacquiao’s matches happened against Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto, I cared very little. I care less now. The way Pacquiao unmanned Barrera, though, 2 1/2 years after Barrera undressed Naseem Hamed and 15 months after Barrera decisioned Erik Morales, the way Pacquiao made Morales make heroic choices to beat him 11 years ago, the way Pacquiao swarmed Marquez in 2008 till both men were covered in blood – those images form Pacquiao’s legacy for me.

Before his charge’s third fight with Pacquiao, Mexican trainer Nacho Beristain – actually the sort of mentor Teddy Atlas tells everyone Atlas is – described Pacquiao as “a wildcat.” A better image of the prime Pacquiao is not yet unearthed: Beaming maniacally round his mouthguard, banging his gloves together, blood on his trunks and gloves and beard, beseeching madness and violence from other men before slashing their faces open with weirdly angled punches thrown at the wrong moments of an unknowable beat . . .

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Fraueheim-

LAS VEGAS – Timothy Bradley stepped onto the scale and gestured as if to say there wouldn’t be any surprises

There weren’t.

At a weigh-in without an ounce of the unexpected, Bradley and Manny Pacquiao both came in under the welterweight limit of 147 pounds for their third fight Saturday in an HBO pay-per-view bout at the MGM Grand.

Bradley, his face a serene mask of confidence and his upper body sculpted like an ancient statue, came in at 146.5 pounds. Pacquiao, a little less sculpted yet smiling as he always has, was one pound lighter at 145.5.

There was no trash talk. No threats. History stood between them and perhaps in front of them. Roberto Duran was there, holding a WBO belt specially made for the occasion.

Pacquiao was to his right, Bradley to his left. After posing for the requisite photographs, they turned and left Duran, standing alone with the belt and alone in his undisputed place among history’s all-time greats.

For Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) and Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs), history isn’t the issue. Only Saturday night is. For them, it’s one last chance to settle some of the questions that have been there since Bradley’s controversial victory by split decision in their first meeting in 2012.

It’s a chance for Bradley to prove that maybe it wasn’t quite as controversial as everybody thought it was four years ago. For Pacquiao, it’s a chance to put a final punctuation point on what is perceived to be a rivalry, despite his clearcut decision in their first rematch. The Filipino can prove, once and for all, that he has always been the better fight.

“I have a lot to prove,’’ Pacquiao, a slight favorite, said Friday in what has become a refrain throughout the last few weeks.

Enough proof might be a definitive reason for him to walk away, say farewell, to a career that has already made its own share of history in the ring and for the Philippines. He’s a Congressman and candidate for his country’s Senate. There’s talk he might be president one day.

On Saturday, however, the current Congressman, would-be Senator and wanna-be President only hopes to be the winner.

Bradley, who has endorsed him as politician, is confident that the canvas-covered district between the ropes will belong to him this time around

“Got to get ready for tomorrow, baby,’’ Bradley said. “I think there are going to be a lot of disappointed fans out there.’’

Bradley was talking to Pacquiao’s constituency, a deeply loyal crowd whose faith in him as a Filipino icon remains unshaken by his controversial comments about gays in February.

Questions linger, of course. At opening bell, the biggest one will be about Pacquiao’s right shoulder.

He underwent surgery for a reported muscle tear after a disappointing loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in May. How strong is the shoulder? Pacquiao’s promoters say he has fought with the tear since his 2008 victory over Oscar De La Hoya. There are questions about why he didn’t undergo surgery then.

If he had undergone surgery earlier, would he have avoided his long knockout drought? He hasn’t scored stoppage since 2009.

“I don’t know,’’ Pacquiao said.

The guess is that Bradley will test the surgically-repaired shoulder often and early. But the other guess is that Bradley could encounter twice as much power and from more angles from Pacquiao now than he did before surgery.

There are a lot of guesses now. In the end, maybe there’s a surprise.

HBO’s pay-per-view telecast is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. with junior-welterweight Jose Ramirez (16-012 KOs of Avenal, Calif., against Manny Perez (25-11-1, 6 KOs) of Denver. Ramirez was 138 pounds and Perez was 137.5 Friday.

The telecast’s second bout features Mexican featherweight Oscar Valdez (19-0, 16 KOs) of Nogales against ex-IBF champion Evgeny Gradovich (21-1-1, (KOs) of Russia. Valdez was 125 ½ pounds, Gradovich 126.

The third televised bout features WBO super-middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (44-4, 29 KOs) of Berlin against Mexican Gilberto Ramirez (33-0, 24 KOs). Both were at 168 pounds Friday.

By Norm Frauwnheim

LAS VEGAS – At a time when politics appear to be imitating boxing or vice-versa, there was an endorsement Wednesday for a politician from a fighter who will do more than just promise to punch his rival in a few days.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz weren’t even there.

Too bad.

They might have learned something about decorum from Timothy Bradley and Manny Pacquiao.

Bradley gave Pacquiao a ringing endorsement for his run at another political office in the Philippines at the final news conference for their welterweight rematch Saturday night at the MGM Grand. Bradley got the office wrong.

“He deserves to become governor of the Philippines,’’ Bradley said.

Last anybody checked, Pacquiao, a current Congressman, is running for the Senate. The talk is that he hopes to be the Filipino president one day. Governor of the Philippines is not a title that exists, although maybe the World Boxing Association can create one. But you get the idea. Trump and Cruz wouldn’t endorse each other for dogcatcher. Instead, they look at each other like a dogcatcher might look at his shoes to see what he just stepped into.

But it looks as if Bradley and Pacquiao genuinely like each other. Before the news conference, they stood next to each other, talking and smiling. They posed for the cameras without the unblinking stare-down that is part ritual and part theater. They just looked like a couple of old comrades, happy at the chance to do some more business.

Bradley’s endorsement, of course, included a presumption that he’ll win Saturday night. He prefaced it by saying that he didn’t agree with the idea that Pacquiao has to win the fight to win votes for a seat in the Filipino Senate.

“I think that’s baloney,’’ said Bradley, who spoke for about 10 minutes and thanked juts about everyone, including his wide and manager, Monica, whom he called Super Woman.

Losing a fight, Bradley said, should have no impact on how Filipino’s looks at Pacquiao, an icon whose image took hit in February for controversial comments about gay sex.

“He’s truly a man who is going to do it right for the Philippines,’’ said Bradley, a 2-to-1 underdog in their third fight. “He’s a man of his word, a man for the Filipino people. He’ always shown that.’’

In his turn at the bully pulpit, Pacquiao sounded a lot like politician on a campaign. He talked about his faith and his humble roots.

“You know my life,’’ said Pacquiao, who says he will answer an opening bell for the last time Saturday night in an HBO pay-per-view bout. “I came from nothing. I slept in the streets. No food. I just drank water to survive.’’

He’s done more than survive. His ring earnings, including an estimated $150 million for his dull loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in May, were unimaginable for a kid sleeping in cardboard box on the streets of Manila when he first began boxing. Much of that money has gone to help his fellow citizens, said Pacquiao, who is guaranteed $20 million Saturday. Bradley will get $4 million

“The money you pay for this boxing goes to thousands of poor people,’’ Pacquiao said.

His generosity and political career raise questions about whether he can afford to walk away from the pay-for-punches racket. He gives away much of what he banks, according to his promoter, Bob Arum of Top Rank.

“I once said, and it’s still true, that the social system in the Philippines is called Manny Pacquiao,’’ Arum said.

Pacquiao’s political life creates complications. They were evident during the new conference. The Filipinos regulate how much TV time a political candidate gets. According to Arum, Pacquiao is limited to 120 minutes.

“It’s crazier than the Democrats and Republicans in this country,’’ said Arum, who is staging a No Trump Undercard featuring junior-welterweight Jose Ramirez, super-middleweight Gilberto Ramirez and featherweight Oscar Valdez before Pacquiao-Bradley.

So crazy, Arum said, that the Filipino agency assigned to regulate political campaigns was still arguing Wednesday whether a 12-round fight would be counted as 36 minutes, three for each round, or 48 minutes, which would account for the 60 seconds between each round.

There’s also a Trump-versus-Cruz -like intensity to the rivalry between the respective trainers, Teddy Atlas for Bradley and Freddie Roach for Pacquiao.

“Like the old-timers used to say,’’ Atlas said when he was introduced Wednesday, “it’s all over but the shooting.’’

Shooting is what almost happened many years ago when Roach and Atlas figured out they didn’t like each other, according to story by Lance Pugmire for the Los Angeles Times. In 1997, Michael Moorer, the IBF’s heavyweight champion, Atlas quit and he hired Roach.

Roach told Pugmire that he walked in on argument that Atlas and Moorer’s manager, John Davimos. Atlas punched Davimos, according to Roach. Then, Roach said, two men, each with a gun, pointed their weapons at him. Roach said he believed the men were Atlas’ associates. Roach said he was told to leave.

Apparently, a good governor wasn’t around.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at MGM Grand in a fight for the vacant WBO International (better than domestic, less than world) Welterweight belt Filipino Manny Pacquiao will make the first last match of his career against California’s Timothy Bradley. It will be the third time the men meet and Pacquiao’s first fight since disappointing himself, pay-per-viewers and his entire country against Floyd Mayweather in May. Expectations are low.

And so we return to the unpleasantness, the badfaith, the malcontentment. This fight will be preyed upon by what abiding discontent aficionados feel towards Pacquiao, and after his performance in the Fight to Save boxing there’s no chance casual fans want a part of it.

Cynicism all round, then, and what else is new? It’s deeper and uglier this time.

Those casual fans who felt hoodwinked by Pacquiao’s performance 11 months ago and then rightly resented talk of his shoulder afterwards, persons inexperienced in the hucksterism of our beloved sport, persons who didn’t know every loser in every fight has a plethora of excuses – the dishonorable ones reading us their list; the honorable ones having their trainers do it – had no intention of buying the second fight of their lives Saturday, but Pacquiao’s comments against homosexual acts, well, those ignited the same persons to encourage a boycott.

It’s not a legacy or a revenues booster, but bless Pacquiao for holding his line frankly, for resisting the media bullying that now passes for awareness or enlightenment or openmindedness or whatever the next euphemism is for herd animals collectively rising on their hindlegs to whinny disapproval via social media, outstanding birthplace of antisocial behavior. Pacquiao’s comments were not new or in any way different from previous comments he’s made, and they were far more honest than whatever halfassed apologies came later and the corporate distancing his business partners foisted on us, hating the sin and the sinner unless some revenue might yet be milked from the sinner and then hating only the sin.

Once more the foil in all this is Timothy Bradley, decent, gracious, genuine, grateful, and wholly unmarketable. Someone somewhere probably hoped the folks so theatrically offended by Pacquiao’s unwavering commentary would rally behind a friendly black Californian, husband in a mixed marriage, father to biracial children, but no: Those who consider being offended an intellectual feat rally against things, not for them.

Bradley did his part to get the rubber match: he looked vulnerable against secondrate competition till hiring a famous trainer then looked unstoppable against secondrate competition. Teddy Atlas has failed a bit as a ham, though, hasn’t he? There was supposed to be a battle of wits between Teddy and Coach Freddie, an antagonism onto which novelty seekers might latch, but it hasn’t come off. Atlas, finally, takes himself and his profession too seriously to make mirthful with Coach Freddie. There is no American interest in the sport of boxing anymore either, which must be considered a hindrance of sorts.

Pacquiao has chosen for his farewell tilt a far superior opponent to the guy Money May used for his failure of a goodbye in the fall, but it’s hard to imagine that will save this. Bradley, after all, is the unsympathetic guy who robbed Pacman in 2012.

That was an enduring example of the way misanthropes rally against things and not for them. Tired as they were of cheering for Pacquiao a large number of folks decided to project their rage with life on Bradley, just about the least-deserving target of mass hatred prizefighting has produced in a generation. It took Bradley to show some of us what a large number of despicable people populate our ranks, and no we haven’t forgotten.

Coincidentally, this was not Pacquiao’s fault. He thought he won the first match with Bradley, even if he knew he didn’t win its predecessor, his third match with Juan Manuel Marquez, but he wasn’t fractionally animated in the post-Bradley-fight press conference as his promoter Bob Arum – realizing, as Arum did, this decision would cool talk of a Mayweather megamatch for years. We forget that now for a couple reasons, the largest of which being what a dreadful thing the Mayweather match was when it did happen.

The other reason: Marquez knocked Pacquiao stiff six months after Pacquiao was robbed by Bradley. Those of us who watched from ringside as Pacquiao was conclusively outboxed in the second half of his third fight with Marquez and then made to miss continually by Bradley were not surprised Marquez got him – even if every person at ringside was jolted by how decisively Marquez took Pacquiao’s consciousness – and even less surprised how hopelessly Pacquiao fought Mayweather 2 1/2 years later.

Apparently Pacquiao beat Bradley in their rematch – after mis-scoring their first fight I was seated too far from the ring to see the fighters as more than circling electrons in a microscope, and I didn’t care enough to watch the tape – which got Pacquiao a shot at Chris Algieri, which somehow got Pacquiao a shot at Floyd Mayweather, which again went the way every aficionado knew it would even while some boxing writers did their promotional best to envision ways Pacquiao might win.

One hopes Saturday’s match is competitive as it should be, raising Bradley’s next purse while sending Pacquiao into his first retirement with dignity. It can’t possibly be worse than his last fight.

I’ll take Pacquiao, SD-12, in a match Bradley wins by two rounds.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

There was a time when Manny Pacquiao was known for distractions as much as his power. It’s hard to tell whether that power will ever be back. But there are signs that the distractions are making a comeback.

They are there in angry tweets and the social-media outrage that have echoed for nearly two months in the wake of his comments about gay sex during a political stop in the Philippines.

They are there in his campaign for a step up in political class, from Congressman to Senator.

The tone is different. There is widespread condemnation instead of the familiar praise before his April 9 rematch with Timothy Bradley at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand in an HBO pay-per-view bout.

The inevitable questions are all about whether the potential distractions can have the same effect as a well-executed feint.

Pacquiao has heard them all before.

Maybe, that’s why he’s smiling the way he used to.

He was at his best within the ropes when there was a storm of distractions outside of them.

Don’t forget, Pacquiao was considering his first run for office when he stopped Erik Morales in a second rematch in December, 2006. He lost an election for a seat in the Filipino Congress in May 2007 and went on to beat Marco Antonio Barrera in their rematch that October.

In November 2009, he was thinking about his second run at a Congress when he scored a 12th-round TKO of Miguel Cotto in his last stoppage. He went on to to win the election in May, 2010 and then scored a punishing decision over Antonio Margarito that November.

Oh, yeah, there was also basketball, questions from tax authorities, acting, singing, women, gambling and who-knows-what all on an exhaustive laundry list of items, all with a better chance at beating Pacquiao than any opponent in those days.

Maybe, distractions are like sparring partners. Pacquiao needs them. Some fighters, perhaps the best, do. That, at least, was Bradley trainer Teddy Atlas’ suggestion in a conference call.

“He’s had distractions, that maybe you could call chaos,’’ said Atlas, who won’t let himself or Bradley get fooled by the distraction theory. “Definitely a lot of things swirling around him throughout most of his career.

“Whether it was politics, whether it was singing, whether it was some personal situations he was going through that everybody goes through. Whether it was religious thoughts and growth, so to speak. Whether it was all the pulls on him because he’s an iconic figure in his country, where he gets all the attention you could never get here for one fighter.

“He has always dealt with that. It’s never impacted him.”

It hasn’t, perhaps because the distraction theory doesn’t go far enough. Maybe, distractions are a source of strength. A reborn Pacquiao before his loss to Floyd Mayweather in May had the body language of a fighter nobody recognized any more. The old smile looked artificial, almost as if it was forced. He had to fight because so much money was at stake. But it was a joyless exhibition.

He was there, single-minded and yet also suffering an undisclosed shoulder injury that led to a dull performance. He didn’t have any fun and neither did anyone among a record-setting pay-per-view audience. There’s been a reported lack of buzz for the April 9 fight, and its fair to say that the disappointing May bout is the reason.

Yet, the fight is interesting on a couple of other levels, including the question about whether Pacquiao can resurrect the genuine enthusiasm he once had for a brutal craft that is at the very foundation of his political career.

For him, maybe, the distractions are part of a crazy show, a circus parade that ended with a Pacquiao knockout. Or, maybe, the ring has always been the one place he could control when chaos trapped him as a poor kid and the chaos his wealth bought when he got rich. But he embraced all of it. About that, there’s no maybe.

“I make the comparison to Floyd Mayweather,” Atlas said. “They said the same things about Floyd throughout his career.

‘You think this distraction is gonna bother him, Teddy?’ ‘No, because the last one didn’t. And the one before that didn’t. And the one before that didn’t.’

“Floyd was a guy who always had distractions, who always had stuff going on in his life that might distract somebody else. But at the end of the day, it did not distract him from what he was doing.

“I feel like Pacquiao is the same kind of person in that way.’’

If Atlas is right, the current distractions might make Pacquiao a dangerous fighter all over again

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in Oakland former undisputed super middleweight champion and current number-one ranked contender for the HBO light heavyweight championship Andre Ward completely decisioned undefeated Cuban Sullivan Barrera. Despite controlling every minute of the match Ward displayed enough vulnerability to whet hopeful aficionados’ imaginations something dangerous and competitive might happen in the late fall if Ward has the stones to risk life and limb in a match with Sergey “Second Most Feared Fighter on HBO” Kovalev.

It was a typical Andre Ward fight comprising technical precision and relying on its opponent’s craft to provide emotion. Barrera had some craft but mostly strongman assertiveness. As Ward boxes most every opponent the same, a manifestation of his obsessive control, there weren’t many surprises after the first three minutes passed. While the mammalian mind specializes in pattern recognition, the human mind specializes in pattern completion, recognizing patterns with less data than other species – abstraction, that is – and so there was nary a human who watched round 1 of Saturday’s match and didn’t intuit about exactly where it was going in the next 33 minutes, and that was where it went.

That marks Ward at once an extraordinary craftsman and substandard entertainer. But his entertainment value is evidently others’ concern – though neither of his copromoters, Roc Nation Sports and Home Box Office Sports, seems fractionally good at its craft as Ward is at his. For the best part of his professional career Ward has understood his status as American boxing’s last and probably final Olympic gold medalist and the weight of that metal, ignoring any who endeavored to move him anydirection he did not choose himself. Ward is a bright dude, too, and that precluded others’ convincing him their direction for him was his own direction.

If and when Ward chooses to redeem HBO’s matchmaking by matching himself with the network’s light heavyweight champion it will be on terms that do not appear favorable to anyone but Ward, and this will happen because Ward doesn’t need the fight because his selfworth is too well established to bend very much. Kovalev will bend in negotiations, one assumes, because he probably wants the Ward fight more than Ward does. Kovalev doesn’t need the fight, but he does want it; Ward seems neither to need nor want to fight Kovalev.

Having emptied a once-exceptional 168-pound division and failed to lure Gennady “He’ll fight anyone between 154 and 168 pounds!” Golovkin to fight him at super middleweight, Ward now tentatively, carefully, controllingly moves himself to 175, requiring three tuneups to ascend seven pounds, a tuneup-per-pound mark unlikely to be surpassed until Cinnamon Alvarez’s eventual ascent to 160. And that’s not a criticism of Ward either. He knows it’s HBO’s credibility, not his, that requires a 2016 match with Kovalev, and he knows, too, the only equalizer Kovalev has in that fight is size. So Ward patiently acclimates himself to the new weightclass, caring very little for what arbitrary timelines a broadcaster sets, gradually and decisively removing the sole advantage the network’s light heavyweight champion has.

If one draws up a chart of things Kovalev has more than Ward, it probably stops here: 1. Size, 2. Right cross. Notice meanness and ferocity didn’t make the list. Kovalev might have psychopathy going for him, but he is no more ornery in a fight than Ward is and not nearly so adept at fouling. Ward has approximately twice Kovalev’s craft and can effectively fight while moving in three times as many directions as Kovalev, who does incredibly well while moving forward and moving forward. Ward will tangle him and frustrate him in a way Bernard Hopkins was too old to do and no one else’s had the chops to try.

Early Saturday Ward reviewed Barrera’s physicality and class and decided it was better to slip punches and keep distance than go shopping inside. He’ll decide otherwise against Kovalev, planting his shoulders in the Russian’s chest and his head all over the Russian’s face, yes he will. Kovalev will make the bully’s choice and endeavor to outmuscle Ward, and Ward will have him. Ward is good an infighter as we’ve seen in a generation, and the secret of that goodness is his footwork; Ward churns his hips and feet where others stand still and wrestle above the waist. There are lots of ways Ward can prepare for Kovalev and not one way Kovalev can prepare for Ward, and one senses nobody who knows that in Kovalev’s circle will tell the Russian, making the proper assumption th’t refitting Kovalev at this point is a fool’s errand; go forward with full confidence, Sergey, or don’t go.

Talk of Ward’s rust or slippage, too, is irrelevant. Ward has been sharp enough to control every opponent he’s faced since his 13th birthday, and that will be true of Kovalev or Ward will not make the fight. Ward takes through all his life the confidence and distrust Floyd Mayweather brought in the prizefighting ring; where Mayweather played the buffoon in promotions then got real serious when the bell rang, Ward stays real serious.

Immediately before and after the dullest spectacles of his career Bernard Hopkins warned us how much we’d miss him when he was gone. He’s been gone for nearly a year and a half, and he isn’t missed – in large part because we still have Ward. There is neither another Andre Ward in the pipeline nor even much of a pipeline: In the end we may miss Ward more even than Hopkins assured us we’d miss Hopkins.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

Nearly twelve years have come and gone since Andre Ward won America’s last Olympic gold medal in boxing, yet there’s a sense he’s still unknown among casual fans who know all about Floyd Mayweather Jr., know a little about Manny Pacquiao and remember Mike Tyson.

Mayweather sells cash and controversy. Pacquiao sells a naïve smile, his role as a man-of-the-Filipino people and some controversy of his own lately with comments about same-sex marriage. Tyson sold fear.

For them, it has been a business model, a way to unlock the pay-per-view vault. Through design or just dumb luck, they figured out how to achieve the kind of celebrity that makes them more than a boxer and puts them on a list a lot more valuable than any rating. Dollar-for-dollar or pound-for-pound? Any bets on where Ward would rather be ranked? Forbes or The Ring?

But he’s never been on Forbes’ annual list of the highest earning athletes, despite his pound-for-pound credentials, mostly because he’s never been a pay-per-view headliner.

Perhaps, that’s because of inactivity brought on by injuries and a promotional lawsuit, or stubborn pride, or just his unerring competency over a couple decades. He hasn’t lost a fight since he was 12 years old. Mistakes attract attention, especially these days, and Ward (28-0, 15 KOs) just doesn’t make many on either side of the ropes. He’s hard to know. Harder to beat.

Now 32 and the clock ticking on his prime, he embarks on a stage of his career defined by a last chance to become the pay-per-view star that everyone thought he would be after he stepped off the medal stand at the Athens Games.

It begins Saturday in hometown Oakland on HBO (9:45 pm ET/PT) in his debut at light-heavyweight against former Cuban amateur Sullivan Barrera (17-0, 12 KOs), whose record and size suggests his welcome to 175 pounds could be a tough one.

“We did not pick him because he’s a soft touch,’’ Ward said at a media workout. “We picked him because he was going to get me ready and show me what this weight class is all about. If you look at my career, there’s a place for tune-ups, which I haven’t had a lot of. You want to fight the best and if you aren’t fighting the best, you want to fight the No. 1 contender. That’s what we’re doing.’’

What Ward is doing is testing his readiness for Sergey Kovalev, the feared holder of most of the light-heavyweight belts and a Russian fighting to get his own foothold in America’s PPV market. Kovalev, who is expected to be ringside at Oracle Arena, and Ward have an agreement to fight, perhaps in November and presumably on HBO’s pay-per-view.

It’s a projected fight that has fans more interested in combinations than celebrity drooling in anticipation. With the Canelo Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin possibility looking as if it will be placed in a Mayweather-Pacquiao-like delay because of Canelo’s continuing insistence on a 155-pound catch-weight, Ward-Kovalev is the biggest fight out there.

The question is just how big it could be. Hints at an answer will be in how Ward does against Barrera, whose promoter, Main Events, also promotes Kovalev. Ward’s singular brilliance has been absent from the ring’s stage, in part because of injuries that are surely causing some sleepless nights at HBO, Main Events and his own promoter, Roc Nation.

He fought and beat Carl Froch at 168 pounds in 2011 with a hand that was broken in two places during sparring. Surgery on his right shoulder forced the cancellation of a planned bout with Kelly Pavlik in 2013. A knee injury forced him off the PPV card featuring Canelo’s victory over Miguel Cotto on Nov. 21.

His history of injuries and his introduction to 175 pounds against someone with 12 stoppages in 17 fights add up to a reason for concern. The guess here is that his command of the ring and versatile skillset will be too much for the tough Barrera. Ward wins.

But he needs to do more than just that. He needs to emerge unscathed and able to fight on in a way that will remind fans of where he has been.

And where he is going.

LAS VEGAS (March 22, 2016) – World Boxing Association (WBA) Interim Cruiserweight World champion Beibut Shumenov (16-2, 10 KOs) is targeting the May 21st unification title winner between WBA titlist Denis Lebedev (28-2, 21 KOs) and International Boxing Federation (IBF) champion Victor Emilio “El Tyson de Abasto” Ramirez (22-2-1, 17 KOs).

When Shumenov defeated B.J. Flores (31-1-1, 20 KOs) last July in Las Vegas, the former WBA light heavyweight champion became WBA Interim champion as well as its No. 1 mandatory contender.

Lebedev, however, hasn’t fought a mandatory fight since last April 10 in which he won a 12-round decision over then Interim WBA champion Youri Kalenga. Lebedev made a voluntary tittle offense last November, stopping Lateef Kayode in the eighth round.

Shumenov will be back in the ring next month (April), full details forthcoming, and then he will challenge the Lebedev-Ramirez winner within 90/120 days of their outcome.

“I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to fight the Lebedev-Ramirez winner because it’s always been my goal to unify the titles,” Shumenov explained. “Lebedev has always been my target. Ramirez is the other fighter I’ve really wanted to fight and my manager tried to make a fight between us, too.

“I’ve been in the gym since my last fight, training hard to perfect my skills. Now, I am a completely different fighter since I fought last July. My team is extremely happy and confident that I can beat all of the other world cruiserweight champions.”

Last December, Shumenov was scheduled to defend his Interim WBA crown against two-time world cruiserweight champion Krzyesztof “Diablo” Wlodarczyk (50-3-1, 36 KOs), but a serious medical issue concerning a family member forced Shumenov to withdraw from the aforementioned fight.

“The opportunity to fight the winner of Lebedev/Ramirez in a big unification fight just came about this year and I didn’t have that option back when I agreed to initially fight Wlodarczyk back in December and I was unable to foresee what would happen to my family personally,” 32-year-old Shumenov said. “I have no problem fighting Wlodarczyk in the future, but only after I fight the Lebedev-Ramirez unification winner. In addition, at any time, I have no problem fighting WBA No. 2-ranked Yunier Dorticos.

“Right now, I’m at my fighting prime yet still improving, training with my coach, Ismael Salas. I want to show the world my skills before I get too old. Literally, I’m ready to fight tomorrow and I’ve been ready for months. I’ll be back in the ring next month and then I’ll get my shot at the Lebedev-Ramirez winner.”

Fans may friend Beibut Shumenov on his Facebook Fan Page at www.facebook.com/BeibutShumenov.