By Bart Barry-

New Year’s Eve, Japan Standard Time, Japanese super flyweight Kazuto Ioka defended his title by eight-round stoppage over undefeated Japanese super flyweight Kosei Tanaka in a fight televised by YouTube hours after it finished, or some other way more-committed viewers discovered in realtime.  It was an excellent match and a wonderful showing by Ioka.

There’s something prickly insular about aficionados who fixate on lower weightclasses, but that doesn’t make them wrong.  If heavyweight-only casuals are boxing’s beer-drunk frat boys, flyweight fixators ain’t the kids who got picked first for kickball.  They like knowing things most fans don’t, they’re often smug, they correct your pronunciation, and for being so esoteric they must watch their heroes at times so symmetrically middle-of-the-night they can’t decide whether to awake or remain awake.  This last halfdecade, though, they’ve been rewarded more often than their cool peers.

This habit continued New Year’s Eve in Japan and sometime between Wednesday and Sunday in the U.S.  Truthfully the best super flyweight prizefighters currently in practice are Western Hemisphereans, but enough superb 115-pound fighting happens in Asia to be disproportionate.  One of the world’s three best fighters at any weight – quite probably the world’s single best fighter if not most accomplished – is a 118-pound guy from Japan.

Unlike others who travel to these shores for larger paychecks Asian fighters bring their power and honor with them.  Many years ago, when Golden Boy Promotions was believed an innovator of sorts, there was an event called World Cup of Boxing that pitted Mexico against Thailand in a casino outside Tucson, Ariz.  Mexico won all but one of the many title fights, as I recall, but the Thai fighters acquitted themselves with such professionalism and toughness, the wholly Mexican crowd applauded them often and loudly.  These were the previous generation of guys who survived a culture that made Srisaket Sor Rungvisai possible.

Sor Rungvisai deserves mention because of his place in the 112-pound ratings and what he accomplished as a virtual unknown in a 2017 match with the world’s best prizefighter at the time, and because his position in the ratings, second, between Gallo Estrada and the aforementioned Chocolatito Gonzalez, lends a bit of sobriety to this treatment of Ioka’s accomplishment.

Ioka hasn’t been in a hurry to match himself against any of the guys atop his division, even while defending the WBO’s title a few times.  His name doesn’t come up much.  That’s unfortunate because what he showed against Tanaka was proper compelling.

Whatever the scale said about it, Tanaka appeared the larger man in frame and physicality, Ioka an old, soft guy with high blood pressure.  Were it not for his composure Ioka might’ve looked overmatched from the opening bell.  This is where the difference between super flyweights and super heavyweights, and the divisions’ diverse super fans, pops up.

You don’t have to know very much at all about boxing to know in 30 seconds who’s going to win most heavyweight fights.  The size disparities are often gross, the skill disparities nearly so, and the 1-2s unfurl slowly enough for even the dullest of viewers to ascertain what’s happening.  Things are quite different at lower weightclasses.  The size disparity is usually negligible, and to get on any stage grander than TikTok you must be exceptional.

Back to Ioka’s composure.  Tanaka looked to be moving Ioka with a number of his punches early.  But Ioka undid the larger man like the master Juan Manuel Marquez did to Juan Diaz in Houston and Michael Katsidis in Las Vegas.  Ioka bet on straighter punches.  He fought with a certain obliviousness of whatever Tanaka was doing.  Is he hitting me with straight punches?  No?  Then I’ll win.

There was some irony, then, in it being an Ioka left hook that ruined Tanaka’s night.  Tanaka went down hard and never got back to the aggressiveness he needed if he were to unsettle Ioka – which he weren’t.  If Ioka wasn’t quite the finisher Marquez was it’s because nobody is.  Ioka did just fine.  

If the stoppage were a touch early, especially by American standards, let it be.  I don’t know enough about Japanese fight culture to do more than suspect this, but here it is: The stewardship referee Michiaki Someya took of Kosei Tanaka’s wellbeing is a major reason Japanese fighters comport themselves bravely as they do.  The referee, like any good regulator, is a braking mechanism, and until you install brakes on a racecar you daren’t shift it out first gear.  Too, there’s a homogeneity to Japanese culture, very different from America’s, that allowed all three men in the Ota-City General Gymnasium to see themselves as part of the same ecosystem and behave accordingly.  Both fighters were free to exert hard as possible, knowing their contest would be well and honorably regulated.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim–

A welcome chance to say goodbye to a lousy year begins amid reasons for skepticism about whether the new one will be any better.

The calendar changes.

The mood doesn’t.

Not with comments from Errol Spence and Terence Crawford that seem to eliminate any chance of them fighting in 2021 or any other year. Not with Canelo Alvarez headed for a mandatory title defense against Avni Yildirim, a super-middleweight with less name recognition and perhaps fewer skills than Callum Smith.

Yet, the year’s second day offers some promise, a glimpse perhaps at an emerging new face that can drag boxing out of a balkanized never-never land crisscrossed by rival promoters, networks and acronyms.

The promise is there, in Ryan Garcia’s unscarred face. There, too, in power augmented by hand speed. There, too, in charisma, the so-called “it” factor. It isn’t quite the intangible it once was. Garcia can put a number on it.  His social-media audience is reported to 7.8 million. That’s not a following. It’s an empire.

That it, and all of its expectations, will be watching Saturday when Garcia’s star potential undergoes its first substantive test against Luke Campbell on DAZN at American Airlines Center in Dallas.

News broke Thursday that no more tickets were available for seats allowed under the socially-distancing protocol mandated by Texas. It wasn’t exactly clear what the sellout means in terms of numbers. But there’s a sense that Garcia would generate a capacity crowd no matter how many seats.

It’s easy to dismiss the social-media aspect. It’s a target, an inevitable one for Campbell, a UK Olympic gold medalist who says Garcia’s popular appearances on video are a one-man show. In the ring’s reality, he’ll be facing – fighting — Campbell instead of just a stationary bag and a camera.  Yet in an unexpected twist for fans skeptical of social media, Garcia’s huge following is a reason to like him.

He was a fighter before he was a social-media star, unlike the new generation of YouTubers. They gained social-media fame before they ever stepped through the ropes. On a YouTubers’ tale of the tape only the social-media number counts.

To wit: Garcia is real, the Paul wannabes aren’t. I wouldn’t know Jake from Logan or Rand. I just know one of them is supposed to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. some time in February in an exhibition that figures to make them money and a few fight fans exasperated.

The fear is that the YouTubers are poised to become the future face of the game. From this corner, that’s a future that won’t last long. But Garcia is the potential counter. He has a real chance at putting some reality back in the virtual. Can he? Will he?

A lot will be learned Saturday in a bout that is also another sign that the 135-pound division will be boxing’s best in 2021. There’s Teofimo Lopez, Devin Haney, Gervonta Davis and Australian George Kambosos Jr. There’s still Vasiliy Lomachenko, who doesn’t figure to disappear after his loss to Lopez. The vanishing prospect of Spence-versus-Crawford makes the welterweights less interesting, even irrelevant. Crawford recently tweeted that, bleep it, he’d go back to lightweight. He, too, can see that things look a lot more interesting at 135 than 147.

On Saturday, the lightweight division’s many possibilities may continue to unfold. For Garcia (20-0, 17 KOs), it’s a risky step, mostly because Campbell (20-3, 16 KOs) knows what he’s doing. In his only world-title shots, the Brit lost a unanimous decision to Lomachenko and a split decision to Jorge Linares.  He also lost a split decision to Yven Mendy nearly five years ago.

Campbell, 33, has been hit by punches from angles never seen by the unbeaten Garcia, who is coming off four straight stoppages, the last two in the first round. Campbell is a good body puncher. His pressure figures to back up Garcia, who has never shown he can fight off his back foot.

More important, perhaps, Campbell has never been stopped. He’s tough, a seasoned fighter against a young one who has never gone 12 rounds. The 22-year-old Garcia has gone 10 rounds twice, both in 2018.

For Campbell, the fight looks like A Last Chance. For Garcia, it’s A Beginning.

The pick: A Beginning.

Garcia’s punches travel at a rate never seen by Campbell. He still won’t see them, especially the left which will land more than once for Garcia, who will win a significant measure of proof along with untold numbers of additional social-media followers in a seventh-round TKO. 

By Kyle Kinder-

Over the last decade-plus, Hawaii has quietly emerged as a breeding ground for world class fighters.  Amongst them include an elite few who have fought their way to stardom, headlining Pay-Per-Views and capturing world titles in the process.

Of course, those fighters compete inside a caged octagon, not a boxing ring.

Save for Brian Viloria, the state’s lone male boxing champion this century; Hawaii hasn’t produced many buzz-worthy pugilists of late.

Enter Waianae’s Asa “Ace” Stevens. 

A former 2019 National Golden Gloves Champion and 2018 World Youth Boxing Champion, Stevens shed his amateur status in November 2019, but has yet to make his pro debut. He’ll finally get his chance Saturday January 2 on DAZN.  

“I’m super excited…my first pro fight on a big stage, fighting on the undercard of Ryan Garcia.  I’m excited and anxious for a fight already to get it going,” Stevens said.

In February, Stevens, who is managed by Split-T Management under the guidance of Tim VanNewhouse, inked a promotional deal with Golden Boy Promotions.  He thought he would turn pro the following month.

“We were going to fight in March and then the whole COVID thing came.  Then we were told we were going to fight in July and then July came and COVID was just getting worse,” Stevens recalled.  “Then we thought maybe we’ll get a fight in October and then on December 5 we were supposed to fight, but the main event…Luke [Campbell] got COVID, so they pushed it back another month.  It’s kind of frustrating, but we’ve been working hard this whole time.”

Though disappointing, the constant postponements never derailed Stevens’ determination.  Day after day, the 20 year-old southpaw headed to the Nito Boxing Academy in Waianae — a less glamorous part of O’ahu on the island’s western shore  —  where he and trainer Carlos “Nito” Tangaro worked to sharpen his skills and stay in fighting shape.  

“I’m more of a counter-puncher, a boxer,” Stevens said about his style.  “I like to figure out what my opponent is doing, I like to use the jab a lot, I’m very defensive, but I can work on the inside if I want and throw hard shots…and work on different angles.” 

As an amateur, Stevens racked up gold medals and tournament trophies at various weights 125lbs and below.  On Saturday, he’ll debut at 118lbs (bantamweight), what he calls “a comfortable” weight.

And while carrying 118lbs within his 5’5” frame may feel comfortable — fair or unfair — he’s also aware he carries the hopes of Waianae on his shoulders.  After winning Gold at the 2018 World Youth Boxing Championships in Budapest, the young Hawaiian was catapulted to local celebrity status.  Upon his return to US soil from Hungary, Waianae gave him a hero’s welcome, complete with a victory parade.  Since then, Hawaiian cable news channels and other media outlets have kept tabs on Stevens’ every move — covering his 2019 National Golden Gloves title, his shocking withdrawal from the US Olympic trials, as well as his signing with Golden Boy and all updates about his ever-elusive pro debut.

“It’s kind of motivating knowing that there’s a lot of support and a lot of people out there looking at me,” Stevens said of his community.  “But it’s kind of like a little pressure because there’s a lot of high expectations out of me,” he admitted.  

Being asked to operate under the brightest of lights is nothing new for Stevens, however. 

“You can say I thrive under pressure situations,” he remarked.  “I’ve had to travel all throughout the country, I’ve had to go into uncomfortable situations, and I’ve always come out on top.”

And winning is something that just might be in his blood.  Stevens’ cousin is Max Holloway, the MMA superstar and former UFC Featherweight Champion.  

“I admire his hard work, the work he puts in the gym, the way he cuts off distractions,” Stevens said of his cousin.  “He’s always in shape. I can learn a lot from him and his hard work and consistency.”

There was a brief moment when Stevens considered following in his cousin’s footsteps, opting for the MMA route like many other young fighters from the Aloha State.  “I actually had a couple kickboxing fights when I was 13 or 14 years old,” recalled Stevens.  

But it was in the summer of 2015 that boxing officially hooked Stevens.  “There’s not too many boxing tournaments around here, so we had to travel all over…to Kansas City…to Las Vegas,” he said.  “And it was in 2015 when I really got attached to boxing because I traveled all over.  We went to three tournaments and I won all three.  So I was like damn…this is for me.”

With such a storied amateur career in his rearview, it’s safe to conclude that Stevens has the potential to reach any goal he sets his sights on as a pro.  “I want to become a world champion in multiple different weight classes,” declared Stevens.  “And I want to financially help my family and take care of the people around me.”

As a means to reaching his goals, he’ll look to punish those placed before him, starting with Mexican Francisco Bonilla (6-8-3, 3KO) on January 2.

“You should expect a great performance by me, a great show,” Stevens said.

In all, more than thirteen months will have passed from the time Stevens announced he was turning pro to the time he’ll hear the opening bell on Saturday in Dallas.  He’s had more than enough time to prepare for his first test as a professional boxer.  It’s up to him to Ace it.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – Nine days since we put an irresponsible number of aficionados in Alamodome this city hasn’t time to calculate new infections because we’re readying for Tuesday’s kickoff of Alamo Bowl – and yes, fans will be in attendance in an indoor stadium yet again because you can’t tell Texans what to do, especially when they’re trying to protect wealthy people’s fortunes for them.

It’s written 30 miles in near every direction from this city: Trump 2020 flags defiantly still flying on poles outside most every ranch.  Wealthy ranchers’ enduring fealty to a defrocked and deregulating protector of their interests is understandable, in a shortsighted and greedy kinda way, but I’ll be damned if I can figure what’s in it for their ranches’ hands.  Something about culture war this or guns that.  Heavens, such aspiring predators are but dimwitted prey.

I started teaching myself the ancient Chinese game of Go a few months back.  No, not because I saw A Beautiful Mind – as a few acquaintances asked.  Rather it came via what inspiration I feel helping my six-year-old daughter learn how to read.

When we began our weeknightly episodes in August the haul looked impossible.  Suddenly something incredibly important to me most of my life, reading, a thing I do not remember learning to do, required immense amounts of memorization and exceptions to rules overwhelming most reasons for committing rules to memory, even.  Why isn’t “enough” pronounced enoo if you’re not going to pronounce “through” like throff?

But in four months, against all expectations, my daughter’s speed of reading has improved fivefold.  Which set me to wondering if there were an activity at which I might improve myself so much so quickly.  I settled on the game of Go.

Years ago a guy in a coffeeshop told me if he were to do it all again for complexity he’d learn Go, not Chess, and towards the end of October I told myself that if I were going to replicate the miracle every first grader accomplishes with phonetics and brute repetition, if I were going to need but a few months to make a 500-percent improvement, why, there was no need to worry about lost time.  After all, it’s a relative measure.  I’m not trying to beat a 9-dan pro (I’m not even trying to beat her six-year-old daughter); I’m just trying to be five times better in four months than I was when I started.  I’m pretty much there, too.

Were I having to find locals with whom to play on a 9×9 board I’d be nowhere near my goal.  But thanks to what AlphaGo has wrought there are lots of artificial-intelligence-inspired apps for playing the game against a machine.  This allows you to learn via repetition – making similar mistakes and being punished in similar ways thousands of times quickly.  (These programs, beginning in the 1950s with machine-learning Checkers, attained their primacy by playing themselves millions of times.)  I suspect those of us who learn to play against machines, not humans, will be different sorts of players than those who learn the traditional way.  This might worry me if I were trying to become a professional or even a competent amateur, but since I’m only trying to be better compared to myself, well.

All of this has a bit to do with how I saw Canelo Alvarez’s undressing of Callum Smith, believe it or not.  In Go there’s fighting and there’s acquiring territory, and they’re only the same thing to beginners.  One wins at Go by acquiring territory, not winning fights.

When you start playing, though, especially as a westerner, you tend to shortcircuit with a misplaced pride that makes you hit back every time you’re struck.  He takes two of your stones, you take three of his!  You obsess yourself with a single fight in a small corner of the board and keep your eyes set till you’ve won.  Then you look up and see you’ve lost the game, bigly, while fixating on your terrible little patch.

Callum Smith didn’t obsess in any such way, a couple Saturdays ago, but he looked up at the closing bell of every round and seemed surprised to have lost so dramatically.  There were invisible lines on the mat, lines and rules visible only to Canelo, and Smith didn’t even know he crossed them, or Canelo crossed them.  But those lines told Canelo all he needed to know; so long as his lead foot got to position A within three steps, it didn’t matter what Smith’s jab or hook did.  Smith was so badly overmatched, so elegantly handicapped by Canelo’s prowess, he would need to fight that exact same Canelo making those exact same moves a dozen times before he’d have a chance at a draw, and 50 times before he’d win a decision.

Impressive to be so many levels beyond a Ring super middleweight champion.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

One more week to go. A forgettable year is ending. Good-bye, good-riddance, 2020. But any farewell is worth a look back. Besides, Saturday is Boxing Day in Britain, Canada and other countries. Not sure about the name’s genesis.

Historically, it’s supposed to be a time to give money collected in Christmas boxes to the poor. Yet these days, it’s also a bank holiday. That sounds a little bit like an oxymoron. Nobody goes to the bank for charity. Then again, Boxing Day in this country could mean pay-per-view. Still, it’s as good an opportunity as any for a last look.

The good, the bad and the silly:

Fighter Of The Year: Tyson Fury. The heavyweight champ did exactly what he said he would on a memorable night on Feb. 22 in a rematch with Deontay Wilder. Fury talks a good game. He executes an even better one. He went straight at Wilder, confusing him and dropping him twice. Wilder’s corner threw in the towel midway through the seventh.

Fighter Of The Year, Honorable Mention: Teofimo Lopez. The lightweight champ displayed poise, patience, and – in the end – power for a unanimous decision on Oct. 17 over Vasiliy Lomachenko, No. 1 in several pound-for-pound polls. It propelled Lopez to his first ranking among the pound-for-pound top 10. Expect him to be there for a long time in an emergence that could put could put in contention for the top spot in 2021.

Best Music For A Ring Walk: Fury entered the ring to Crazy, Patsy Cline’s country classic. It was an acknowledgement of Fury’s own battle with depression. But it also foretold how Wilder would behave for weeks after the crushing defeat. He went crazy. Wilder blamed his comic book costume – an armored medieval-like number for fatigue in his own ring walk. Then, he went for weeks before firing trainer Mark Breland for throwing in the towel. Then, he alleged his water bottle was spiked and Fury’s gloves were loaded. Crazy.

Fight Of The Year: Jose Zepeda vs. Ivan Baranchyk The junior-welterweight bout on Dec. 12 would have been a Fight of the Year in almost any year. There were eight knockdowns over five rounds. Up and down, it went, a dizzy drama from start to finish. Zepeda, down twice in the first round, got up a total of four times, finishing Baranchyk with a right-left combo. Baranchyk, unconscious as he fell, landed on the canvas on the back his head. His right leg was pinned at wrenching angle beneath him. It was crazy. It was stunning.

Knockout Of The Year: See Fight Of The Year.

Welcome Back: Errol Spence Jr. Questions followed Spence into the ring on Dec. 5 for the first time since the welterweight champion was thrown through the windshield of a Ferrari as it flipped in midair in a frightening accident in October, 2019. Spence answered them all, scoring a unanimous decision over a dangerous Danny Garcia.

Think Again: Spence’s successful return seemed to re-ignite talk about a 147-pound showdown with Terence Crawford. But Spence quickly threw cold water on the speculation, however, in an interview before Canelo Alvarez’ beatdown of UK super-middleweight Callum Smith on Dec. 19. For the fight to happen, Spence said, he would have to get the lion’s share of the total purse. A 60-40 or 70-30 split, he told DAZN. Translation: He’s not fighting Crawford, at least not any time soon.

Prospect Of The Year: Edgar Berlanga Jr. The 23-yerar-old super-middleweight tweeted he would have knocked out Callum Smith “within six rounds” on the night Canelo scored a 12-round decision over the super-middleweight champ in A San Antonio MISMATCH. Who’s going to argue? Berlanga is perfect. That’s perfect, as in 16 fights, 16 victories, 16 first-round knockouts.

The Debating Game: There’s no end to it. Who’s pound-for-pound No. 1? Canelo or Crawford? Depends on the network. ESPN has Crawford on top of its poll. DAZN ranks Canelo No. 1. The debate is really about the two networks. Crawford has been fighting on ESPN. Canelo sued in a split with promoter Oscar De La Hoya and DAZN. De La Hoya is gone, but Canelo’s still fought on DAZN.

Year’s Biggest Loser: Pay-per-view. Lots of numbers get reported. But the sources are never identified. Be skeptical. It’s safe to say the PPV market has been slammed by a Pandemic that has lot boxing’s traditional customers struggling to pay the rent.

Year’s Biggest Winner: Top Rank’s Bob Arum. At 89, he still understands the market place better than anyone. Pay-per-view is the wrong model for tough times. Throughout the Pandemic, Arum has kept his cards in the Bubble and off pay-per-view. It’s time to preserve the customer base. A PPV price tag for forgettable fights only chases away potential buyers.
Happy Boxing Day.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – Into this friendly city whose citizens have been generally vigilant about Covid, vigilant as local officials have required, many multiples more vigilant than state officials have, strode Canelo for his fourth Texas prizefight, second in Alamo City.  If it wasn’t his easiest Texas fight it wasn’t his most difficult either.  Which is a surprise and a half – since Callum Smith, the man Canelo beat up Saturday, was by far the most accomplished prizefighter Canelo has fought in Lone Star State.

What you opined of Saul Alvarez’s Saturday performance depends mostly on what you opined of Smith on Friday, what you opined of an undefeated Ring champion who’d won his title by knockout in the finals of a single-elimination tournament.  I learned this lesson about opinion’s effect, contrasting my feelings about Spence-Garcia a few weeks back and Alvarez-Smith Saturday.

I did not think particularly highly of welterweight Garcia, after opining quite highly of him at 140 pounds, and Spence’s workmanlike decision did next to nothing for me, aesthetically.  I opined quite highly of Callum Smith, and it rendered me thrice as susceptible to commentator hyperbole about Canelo.

It’s probably in the word subtlety.  When man’s most primal impulses manifest themselves subtly, perhaps someone with a microphone’s shining you.  While lots of subtle things happen in any confrontation, there is nothing subtle about a man’s consciousness being removed from him on television; in the absence of that spectacle recourses to subtlety deserve be discounted.

Canelo has come a long way since his last Alamodome match, hasn’t he?  Then, Canelo made his sixth defense of his first WBC title, a 154-pound trophy he won beating Matthew Hatton (the EBU European welterweight titlist at the time).  Canelo won a fair, unanimous decision over Austin Trout.  I was ringside for that.  Till that point I rated Canelo below “Son of the Legend” Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. among anointed Mexican prizefighters.  If Canelo wasn’t fully a promoter-manufactured entity he was having an awfully easy run – that would end in humiliation with Floyd Mayweather, five months after the Trout fight.

Watching Canelo from ringside afforded something watching Chavez Jr. did not, though.  On television Canelo didn’t have much an identity more than redhaired horseman from Jalisco.  With Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales and Juan Manuel Marquez still active, at various levels of decline, Canelo mightn’t have been among his country’s best five prizefighters, while being promoted as if he’d eclipsed all of them.  I went to Alamodome in 2013 half expecting Trout to undress him.

I was disabused of that in round 1.  The first time Canelo let fly a hook, actually, I noticed he had access to an entire other level from Chavez Jr.’s.  I’ve written about it before, but Canelo has a different sort of intensity than television shows.

Back then, too, Canelo was given to one defensive-clinic round every fight, a round when he tried to be Will o’ the Cinnamon, showing aspirational levels of head and shoulder movement.  It was corny – like a voluptuous Instagram model in prop glasses with a caption that reads “Beauty AND BRAINS!”  Saturday showed Canelo’s cornball defensive rounds weren’t wrong but early.  Across from Erislandy Lara, Mayweather and Trout, men with better reflexes, Canelo was too slow to make his feints look even hopeful.

The higher Canelo moves in weight, though, the more a defensive genius he appears.  Against Callum Smith he showed a defensive awareness that set Twitter ablaze with comparisons.  It might be inferred the worst loser Saturday was not Smith, in fact, but “Saint George” Groves and by further inference late-career Carl “The Cobra” Froch.  How bloody sluggish must Groves’ve been to make such a bull and bully of a man limited as Callum Smith?

Smith was wholly unprepared for Canelo’s intensity, for his presence, for his speed even, Saturday.  A giant of a man, Smith went from graceful athlete to gangly reluctant in fewer than three minutes.  Late as round 6, I continued hoping like a loon a limited Brit might surprise a fully actualized Mexican prizefighter with a left hook – makes me chuckle at myself, typing that – then Canelo just about broke Smith’s left arm in half with a righthand or two.  By round 9 Smith’s corner was threatening its charge with the white feather.  The championship rounds were about one more hopeless UK fighter’s grit.

There wasn’t an obvious opportunity to ice Smith so Canelo didn’t try very hard, which earned him some derision from what GGG deadenders Canelo sneered at in his incompetently translated postfight chinwag.  Healthy as he feels and looks at 168 pounds Canelo hasn’t an inkling to weigh one ounce less to retire Gennadiy Golovkin, who didn’t rehydrate to the super middleweight limit Friday.

Without HBO around anymore to sensationalize Soviet Bloc fighters to feed Canelo, and without any obvious rivalries between 168 pounds and whatever Andy Ruiz weighs right now, and with his agency as a selfpromoter freer than ever, Canelo has some planning to do.  If he’s serious about unifying titles at 168 pounds – he needn’t be; he has The Ring title already – he should forego whoever holds the IBF belt and unify WBC titles in a match with David Benavidez, who at age 24 is at least as good as Canelo was when he lost to Mayweather at 23.  Maybe that fight would go the way of Crawford-Benavidez.  Maybe it wouldn’t.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Canelo Alvarez takes on Callum Smith for the WBA/WBC Super Middleweight championship.  The action begins at 8 PM ET /1 AM in England with an undercard featuring some top undefeated Prospects.

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1: Right to body from Alvarez

Round 2 2 Body shots from Alvarez…Jab from Smith..Good Jab..Pawing jab…Hard jab from Canelo

Round 3 Right from Canelo..Good jab and right hand..2 jabs..Jab and right hand

Round 4 hard jabs from Smith..Hard right from Canelo..Body shot from Smith…Hard right from Canelo..Hard body shot..1-2…Good combination on the ropes..Good uppercut..

Round 5 Hard body shot from Canelo…

Round 6 Good right from Canelo..Body shot..Right…

Round 7 Combination from Smith..Hard body shot from Canelo..Long jab…uppercut..Long right

Round 8 Right from Canelo..Lead uppercut and right hand..Combination from Smith..Good right..Thudding right and uppercut from Canelo..snapping jab..Nice right and uppercut from Smith..

Round 9 Right and jab from Canelo..Uppercut..Blood from nose of Smith..Hard right from Smith..Hard body shot and right from Canelo..Big right Hurts Smith…Uppercut from Canelo..Uppercut and right..Canelo starting to bust up Smith..Hard right hurts Smith..Hard right

Round 10 Hard body shot…Hard uppercut..Smith being punished…4 hard body shots..Hard body shot..Hard right and a body shot

Round 11 Body shot from Canelo..Hard left hook..Snapping jab..Hard right hurts Smith..Another right..Jab to the head..

Round 12 Right from Canelo..Snapping jab and right hand…Combination from Smith..Right from Canelo..Combination..Hard thudding right hand

119-109 TWICE; 117-111 FOR CANELO ALVAREZ

Round 1 Right from Sanchez..Hook and right hand…Hard right..Hard right and another..right to body..Uppercut…Body shot
Round 2 Big hook from Sanchez…Ferandez hurt…Sanchez lands a right over the top..Right..
Round 3 Sanchez lands a right behind the head..Hard right from Sanchez
Round 4 Hard body shot that is followed by a jab from Sanchez
Round 5 Hard right from Sanchez
Round 6 Hard right from Sanchez
Round 7 Body shots from Sanchez…HARD RIGHT DOWN GOES FERNANDEZ..FERNANDEZ FALLS OUT OF RING…FIGHT OVER

Round 1: Jab from Ford…hard left drives Lopez fight..Right to the body..hard left hurts Lopez..RIGHT HOOK AND DOWN GOES LOPEZ
Round 2 Hard jab drives Lopez back..Lopez lands a left…combination from Ford..
Round 3 Hard left from Ford
Round 4 Hard uppercut from Ford…Double jab followed by a left ..Lopez lands a left
Round 5 Hard left from Ford..Jab..hard body shot
Round 6 Good jab from Ford..Sharp right hook..Uppercut…Slapping left from Lopez..Left to head from Ford
Round 7 RIGHT HOOK AND DOWN GOES LOPEZ…HE TAKES THE 10-COUNT–FIGHT OVER

Round 1 Jab from Jones..Left from Williams..Jab..HARD LEFT AND JONES IS HURT…WILLIAMS ALL OVER JONES AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1 Right from Castro..Right to body and head…3 punch combination..Right to body from Valdes///Right from Castro
Round 2 Right snaps back Valdes head..UPPERCUT AND DOWN GOES VALDES…Hard Body shot..Hard body shot
Round 3

Follow all of the action as Gennadiy Golovkin defends the IBF Middleweight Title against Mandatory challenger Kamil Szeremeta.  The action begins at 5 PM ET / 4 AM in Kazakhstan / 11 PM in Poland with a five-fight undercard featuring Ali Akhmedov against Carlos Gongora and John Ryder battling Mike Guy

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Round 1: 2 jabs from Golovkin..Jab..Redness on the face of Szeremeta..Right from Szeremeta..Good upperccut from Golovkin…LEFT HOOK AND DOWN GOES SZEREMETA

Round 2 Right from Golovkin..COVERHAND RIGHT TO THE HEAD AND DOWN GOEZ SZEREMETA…Golovkin lands a left hook..jab..Nice uppercut..Hard right

Round 3 Nice uppercut from Golovkin…Grazing right..Body shot…Good left to the liver

Round 4 double left hook from Golovkin..OVERHAND RIGHT AND INSIDE LEFT AND DOWN GOES SZEREMETA…Hard body shot..

Round 5 Good right from Szeremeta…Left hook to body from Golovkin…Uppercut to the body..Right to the ear…

Round 6 Hard uppercut and left hook from Golovkin..Right from Szeremeta..Body punch from Golovkin…Left..Good right 

Round 7 Clubbing right from Golovkin…JAB AND DOWN GOES SZEREMETA…FIGHT STOPPED AFTER THE ROUND

Round 1: Jab from Ryder..Right from Guy
Round 2 : Left From Ryder
Round 3 Not much 
Round 4 Ryder jabbing and trying to set up the left
Round 5 Left from Ryder
Round 6
Round 7 Hard left from Ryder
Round 8 Guy missing a lot
Round 9 Good body shot from Ryder

Round 1:

By Norm Frauenheim–

A media call with Gennadiy Golovkin this week was preceded by a warning not to ask a question. The question. Don’t ask about Canelo Alvarez, the electronic missive said. You will be muted.

Give me liberty or give me muted.

Saying no to reporters is a little bit like ordering lions not to eat red meat. If not defiance, it often ensures an artful attempt at a round-about way to ask the prohibited without mentioning the letter-of-the law.

But there was nothing artful and surely no defiance during a Zoom session a few days before GGG’s return to the ring Friday night against Kamil Szeremeta (21-0, 5 KOs) in Hollywood, Fla.

Promoter Eddie Hearn answered questions about Canelo. But Hearn’s history tells you he’ll talk about almost anything. After all, he once promoted Logan Paul. Meanwhile, Golovkin (40-1-1, 35 KOs) was asked about his future. (Hint, hint). He was asked about his legacy. (Hint, hint, hint).

He never went there. Not once. He later was quoted about Canelo in a story reported by AFP, the international press service headquartered in Paris.

“I don’t think about this because I’m tired of thinking about it,” Golovkin told AFP. “It’s been over two years that we’ve been throwing this around. It’s not my fault that this fight has not taken place. Currently, it’s too early to say, but there is a possibility this fight might never happen.”

Done. Enough said. For once, a prohibition on one question makes sense. There nothing left to say about GGG-Canelo 3. No outrage necessary, mostly because a third GGG-Canelo fight is way beyond its past-due date.

The question lingers this week only because of the DAZN schedule. By coincidence or not, GGG’s middleweight title defense (DAZN/5 p.m.ET/2 p.m. PT) in his first fight in 14 months is followed 24 hours later by Canelo (53-1-2, 36 KOs) in a super-middleweight bout against Callum Smith (27-0, 19 KOs) Saturday (DAZN/8 p.m.ET, 5 p.m. PT) in San Antonio. The scheduling is a sign that DAZN still wants a return on GGG and its initial investment in Canelo, who is now a free agent after suing both the streaming network and his former promoter, Oscar De La Hoya.

“I really think the challenge he wants is Canelo Alvarez,’’ said Hearn, who will be in San Antonio Saturday as Smith’s promoter.

But, Hearn said, “a lot has to happen.’’

Maybe too much.

From the looks of it, GGG is in terrific condition. He stepped on the scale Friday at a sculpted 159.2 pounds, safely under the 160 mandatory. He’s never missed weight. Truth is, there’s been any doubt that he ever would. GGG has been the consummate pro. But a scale isn’t a clock. GGG is 38. Presumably, he’ll be near or at 39 the next time he fights. His birthday is April 8. His hourglass is running out of prime time.

Meanwhile, Canelo is 30. He’ll be 31 on July 18. Best: A couple of prime-time years are still on Canelo’s clock. But the scale indicates he has moved up and beyond middleweight. There’s a reason he’ll be at super-middleweight (168) in his first fight since his 11^th-round stoppage of Sergey Kovalev at light-heavyweight (175) more than a year ago (Nov. 2, 2019).

“I personally don’t see Canelo coming back to 160,’’ Hearn said.

The question, then, is whether GGG, a natural middleweight, can ever really fight at 168. Then again, that’s a question that Canelo might have to answer Saturday against the unbeaten Smith.

It’s hard not to conclude that GGG and Canelo missed the optimum moment for a decisive third fight. They fought to a controversial split-draw in September 2017. Canelo won a debatable majority decision in September 2018. The third fight, a trilogy’s definitive chapter, should have happened a year later, September 2019. But it didn’t because of personal animosity. The contempt is mutual and real.

Perhaps, big money can change that. But an opportunity has been missed, more by Canelo than GGG. Canelo’s claim on pound-for-pound supremacy is attached to skepticism from fans who argue that Canelo did not beat GGG decisively, if at all.  A chance to deliver the proof was there in 2019, Pre-Pandemic, at a time when Canelo was improving and GGG appeared to be in decline.

Now? Who knows? Or who cares?

From a historical perspective, there’s a parallel. In September 1981, Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns, then welterweights, fought one of the most memorable bouts ever. Leonard, then 25, beat the 23-year-old Hearns, scoring a fourteenth-round TKO in an outdoor ring on the tennis courts behind Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace. The fight begged for a rematch. Begged for a trilogy. But it took nearly eight years for even a rematch to happen, in part because Leonard retired and then came back because of a detached retina.

But they had lost their moment. Time robbed them of it. By today’s standards, they were still young. Leonard was 33; Hearns was 30. But the fight at super-middleweight, also at Caesars Palace, was a bust. It was a draw, despite two knockdowns. Hearns floored Leonard, once in the third and again in the eleventh. But it was more than controversial. It was forgettable.

Not worth asking about, either.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at Wembley Arena, in its cafeteria or lobby, British heavyweight titlist Anthony “AJ” Joshua went through in nine rounds a limited old Bulgarian named Kubrat “The Cobra” Pulev in four or so rounds longer than Wlad Klitschko did in 2014.  Saturday in San Antonio, Mexican middleweight champion and light heavyweight titlist Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will challenge British super middleweight champion Callum “Mundo” Smith.  DAZN brought and brings us both.

AJ won the first match of his AR (After Ruiz) career by convincing stoppage that made some new fan, someone who discovered boxing Saturday, there must be one, think AJ is an indestructible force other heavyweight champions’d be wise to avoid.  What that means is a fresh round of socialmedia negotiations commences.  They’re all hypothetical at this point, exactly as most contemporary prizefighters and their followers prefer them.

Until a Covid vaccine is widely distributed round the world and its effect widely proven round the world all plans for heavyweight superfights are noise.  Here in the U.S. we know all about cacophony (and handling a pandemic catastrophically badly).  Bob Arum and Tyson Fury will do their part to ensure failed negotiations for AJ-Gypsy King get blamed on someone else – they’ve already begun that campaign.  Fury has been lucid for a couple years now, blessedly so, but Arum and others know tomorrow is promised to no promoter and waiting for things to marinate “until we can have fans in the seats again” mightn’t be perspicacity’s own path.

Joshua knows to wait favors him.  So long as the AR charade holds up with Eastern Bloc guys – a Pulev to Usyk to Povetkin run has to be the preferred course – there’s no need to go the riskier route of a Fury fight or, God save AJ’s chin, a match with Deontay Wilder.  Saturday AJ proved against a smaller, older, lighter-hitting, less-athletic version of himself he is a monster.

Even still the sheen is off.  There’s no longer an inevitability to AJ.  One no longer thinks of the kid who dethroned Wlad Klitschko but the man who went wobbly woebegone against a fat little guy who could punch in combination.  That AJ, though, had something like pride and initiative – he was trying to finish Ruiz, remember, when his career comically unwound.  Better for AJ that we remember that bemused countenance and refusal to step forward till he good and felt like it, not the way he ran from the Snickers spokesman six months later.

Tentative as he got after Corrie Sanders denuded him Wlad never had athleticism enough to run like AJ did in Saudi Arabia; Wlad had the heart for it but not the coordination.  Pulev wasn’t much of a matchmaking risk for AJ’s braintrust.  He was a mandatory of some sort, a proven victim, and at age 39 near to immobile as a credible challenger could be.  He also wasn’t much of a finisher.  If AJ chose to plant and punch and his righthand arrived in second place, it was essential he’d have time to settle things before he had to punch or defend again.  Pulev was not a man to rush forward.  

Actually, who cares?  Until AJ fights Fury or Wilder he’ll not be considered credible by aficionados, so why shoehorn anything more into Saturday’s match?

Especially when we can be treating Canelo’s upcoming fight with Callum Smith.  Saturday at Alamodome in a city whose daily new Covid cases are now about the worst they’ve been and eight times or so worse than they were in October, there is a misery of an undercard followed by a properly compelling mainevent, for those dumb enough to put themselves in an indoor arena.

After his excellent win at World Boxing Super Series, Smith has been in hiding.  He fought well 18 months ago and badly five months after that.  He is the Ring champion at super middleweight and deservedly so.  Canelo is the Ring’s pound-for-pound champion, having fought at too many different weights recently to be considered anything other than one of the world’s best fighters, regardless of weightclass or belt.

If Canelo is not the world’s very best fighter it is not for reluctance.  He has made a fight with everyone aficionados have asked him to, especially those men aficionados suspected would make him look bad.  He hasn’t given Gennadiy Golovkin a rubbermatch because he doesn’t believe Golovkin deserves one – an assertion Golovkin is doing his damndest to prove by fighting a 31-year-old Pole with a 24-percent knockout ratio, this Friday.

Yes, the world’s most-feared man, one willing to fight anyone, even career welterweights, between 154 pounds and 168, though not at 154 pounds or 168, will, to his credit, be matching himself against his third career middleweight in a row when he makes a good boy out of the Ring’s number-six-rated middleweight, Kamil Szeremeta, in yet another worst-opponent-the-broadcaster-would-approve showcase for GGG.

Golovkin and his enablers consider his rivalry with Canelo unfinished.  Canelo doesn’t even recognize Golovkin as a rival.  Canelo’s right.  After icing a former light heavyweight champion in his last fight Canelo is about to fight the undisputed super middleweight champion of the world.  Golovkin, 0-1-1 (0 KOs) in career superfights, meanwhile, has returned to making war on mediocre middleweights – though, noticeably, without foundering HBO to overestimate wildly his achievements as he does.  Better put: Did you even know GGG was fighting this week?

Canelo-Smith should be excellent.  Smith has all the tools, and talent aplenty too, but not a fraction Canelo’s experience.  Neither suffers a want of selfbelief.  Had Smith kept improving or challenging himself after WBSS he’d be a favorite Saturday.  Unfortunately he hasn’t.

I’ll take Canelo, UD-12.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Anthony Joshua defends the IBF/WBA/WBO Heavyweight Titles against Mandatory challenger Kubrat Pulev.  The action begins at 1 PM ET / 10 AM PT /6 PM in England  and 8 PM in Bulgaria.  Undercard fights will feature Lawrence Okolie, Hughie Fury and Martin Bakole

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Round 1: Jab from Joshua…

Round 2 Jab from Joshua…Combination…Long Jab…

Round 3 Long right from Joshua…Joshua boxing from Distance..Huge counter right from Joshua, Hurts Pulev..2 big uppercuts…PULEV TURNS HIS BACK AND RULED A KNOCKDOWN….Right and left from Joshua…UPPERCUT AND DOWN GOES PULEV..Uppercut on the inside

Round 4  Sharp jab and right hand from Joshua…Pulev lands a jab and right hand

Round 5 Jab and hard right from Joshua…Right from Pulev..

Round 6 Good jab from Pulev..2 jabs from Joshua..Good jab from Joshua..

Round 7 3 Uppercuts in a row from Joshua..Uppercut from Pulev…Joshua Jabbing to the body..Nice right from Pulev

Round 8 Good right from Pulev

Round 9 Stiff jab from Joshua…4 uppercuts land..2 big uppercuts AN DOWN GOES PULEV…Pulev wobbling…HUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES PULEV…PULEV DOES NOT BEAT THE COUNT…FIGHT OVER

Round 1 RIGHT TO THE BODY AND DOWN GOES JEZEWSKI…JEZEWSKI IS WOBBLING AND GOES DOWN AGAIN

Round 2  Left hook from Jezewski…BODY SHOT AND DOWN GEZ JEZEWSKI…FIGHT STOPPED

Round 1: Body shot from Wach..Fury lands a right..Jab and right..Right…body combination from Fury
Round 2 Right from Fury…Good uppercut from Wach…Fury pressuring Wach…Good right from Wach
Round 3 Right from Fury
Round 4 Big right from Fury..Right..Fury cut over his right eye (clash of heads)
Round 5 Wach lands a hook and right…Left from Fury…Right at the bell from Wach
Round 6 Ringside doctor looks at the cut…Good right from Fury…
Round 7 Jab from Fury…
Round 8 2 Jabs from Fury..Right
Round 9 Body shot from Fury…Nice Jab
Round 10 Good right from Fury…Jab..Clubbing Right

100-90 twice and 99-91 for FURY

Round 1 Good right from Bakole..Jab…Body and head shots…2 jabs from Juzmin..right
Round 2 Good hard right from Kuzmin..Good uppercut…Good uppercut from Bakole…Right and exchanging of good hook…Good right from Bakole..Uppercut..Right from Kuzmin..Jab snaps Bakole’s head back..Right from Kuzmin
Round 3 Long jab from Bakole to body and head..Double jab…
Round 4 1-2 from Kuzmin…
Round 5 Hard hook from Kuzmin…Combinatiom…Good right and another..Hook to the head…Combunation and jab from Bakole
Round 6 Jab from Bakole..Hook from Kuzmin
Round 7 Good jab from Bakole…Body shot
Round 8 Kuzmin lands a hook…Good uppercut…Body shot from Bakole..Good work on the inside from Bakole
Round 9 Good hook from Kuzmin
Round 10  Nice snapping right hand from Kuzmin…Combination…

98-92, 97-93, 96-94 BAKOLE

Round 1: Right from Conway
Round 2 Conway landing a jab…Good right..Jab..
Round 3 Sharp jab from Conway…Sharp right…Hook to the body
Round 4 1-2 From Cinway..Uppercut..Good body work from McGowan..Right from Conwat,,Hard right
Round 5 Good work from Conway…Right to the head..3 punch combination..Good body shots from McGowan,..Hard jab from Conway
Round 6 Jab from Conway..Good combination..Body shot from McGowan..Counter right from Conway…
Round 7 Hook and jab from Conway
Round 8 LEFT HOOK AND DOWN GOES MCGOWAN..Conway landing body shots…Snapping right hand..Body shot..Right to body and head..Nice Combination
Round 9 Good uppercut from Conway…Jab..McGowan face is bleeding..Hook from McGowan..jab and right hand from Conway..Body and head combination McGowan
Round 10 Double uppercut from Conway..Bosy work..Jab…Combination

100-89; 99-90 TWICE FOR CONWAY

Round 1 Hook to body from Marku…Combination..Hard left and left to body
Round 2 Jab from Stewart..Body shots from Marku..Nice Uppercut…Uppercut and hook from Southpaw stance..LEFT TO THE BODY AND DOWN GOES STEWART…
Round 3
Round 4 Good Body shot from Stewart…Left to body from Marku..Combination..Right to the body…Uppercut..Stewart lands a body shot…Jab…
Round 5 Nice body shot to head and body from Stewart…Body shot from Marku..Leaping left hook…
Round 6 Left from Marku…Right hand lands..
Round 7 Marku landing on the ropes…Combination from Stewart..Good body shot
Round 8 Good body work from Marku..Stiff left..Stewart fighting out of the corner..Right knockouts out Stewart’s mouthpiece

SCORE WAS RULED 76-76 …TERRIBLE DECISION

By Norm Frauenheim–

Three more significant fights close out a year best forgotten. Good-bye and good riddance, 2020. The fear is that a long, dark year won’t be so easy to dismiss, not for boxing or anything else.

But symbolically, at least, the proverbial page turns amid hopes, perhaps prayers, that Anthony Joshua or Shakur Stevenson or Canelo Alvarez can knock out the nightmare.

Joshua and Stevenson fight this Saturday, Joshua on DAZN against Kubrat Pulev in London and Stevenson against Toka Kahn Clary on ESPN in Las Vegas in the so-called bubble at the MGM Grand.

Canelo gets the last word seven days later, Dec. 19, in an interesting fight against super-middleweight champion Callum Smith, also on DAZN, at San Antonio’s Alamodome.

All three have one thing in common. Joshua, Stevenson and Canelo are fighting to stake a claim on better days expected in 2021. Vaccine, the COVID counter, is here. It’s already being administered in the UK where the injection is called the jab. At a boxing level, that figures. The UK speaks the language.

For the last year, at least, the UK proved it knew more about boxing than the U.S. ever did. Before the pandemic forced the sport into a shutdown and into a bubble, UK heavyweight Tyson Fury had a jab and American Deontay Wilder did not. On Feb. 22, Fury overwhelmed Wilder, who blamed his loss on a spiked water bottle, loaded gloves and maybe voter fraud. He even blamed a bizarre costume, a medieval-looking outfit that clanked like a tomato can on his walk to the ring.

He went down like a tomato can, too.

But it’s not clear whether a lesson in the fundamental necessity of a jab came out the wreckage of a seventh-round surrender to the skilled, clever Fury. Without at least that, it looks as if Wilder might have to settle for Bridgerweight wages in a new division (200-224 pounds) announced by the World Boxing Council.

From this corner, it looks as if Fury will bypass a third fight against Wilder and go straight to an all-UK showdown with Joshua. Joshua figures to beat Pulev. There are some questions, however, that linger like everything in a bad year. We haven’t seen Joshua fight since he played it safe in a unanimous decision over a woefully-unprepared Andy Ruiz more than a year ago – Dec. 7, 2019 – in Saudi Arabia. It was a rematch of his stunning loss, a seventh-round stoppage, on June 1, 2019 to Ruiz, then a stand-in and forever a stand-in.

A cautious Joshua? Or the Joshua who lost to Ruiz? Either version loses to the pedestrian, yet competent Pulev. But Joshua has had a year to forget about Ruiz. It would be a surprise if he hasn’t moved on. Expect him to return more like the heavyweight who stopped Wladimir Klitschko in such dramatic fashion in April 2017.

Then, there’s Stevenson in a Saturday doubleheader. He’ll be making his second appearance at 130 pounds against Clary, known mostly for MMA success. Stevenson, who opened Top Rank’s bubble in June with a stoppage of Felix Caraballo and will close it in December, is talking as though he has pound-for-pound aspirations.  He says he wants to knock Carl Frampton into retirement. He called out former pound-for-pound No. 1 Vasiliy Lomachenko, telling Boxing Scene that the Ukrainian was “too scared” in his loss to Teofimo Lopez on Oct. 17. He’s placing bet, a P4P chip on 2021.

So, too, is Canelo. He might have the best bet of all. But his bout against Callum Smith is problematic, in part because of Smith solid skillset and his own extended stay on the sidelines. Canelo has been idle for more than a year. His last fight: November 2, 2019 in an 11^th-round stoppage of shopworn light-heavyweight Sergey Kovalev.

Since then, Canelo sued and split with promoter Oscar De La Hoya. He’s a free agent, his own promoter. He’ll be back on DAZN, at least for this fight in front of a socially-distanced crowd of fans who figure to be culturally aligned with the best Mexican fighter of his generation.

The Canelo fight also will happen five weeks after welterweight Terence Crawford’s stoppage of Kell Brook in a pound-for-pound statement on Nov. 14.

Errol Spence followed that up with a solid decision over Danny Garcia last Saturday in his first bout since surviving a scary car crash more than a year ago. Now, there’s talk that Crawford-versus-Spence has to happen in 2021. Didn’t we hear that last year? And the year before? Blah-blah-blah.

The clock is ticking while fans are talking. Crawford is 33; Spence is 30. There’s not much prime time left in the hourglass. Yet, Crawford, himself, isn’t exactly clear about what he wants to do. The latest uncertainty came in the form of a tweet this week.

“I’m moving back down to 135,’’ the former lightweight champ said Wednesday in a tweet that ended with an expletive.

Is Crawford, who knows how to feint, just effing around?

It’s also not clear how Canelo will look in his first fight in more than a year. But he will have the last word. Here’s hoping it includes Good and bye to a year that in boxing terms has been an undisputed mess. 

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at AT&T Stadium in the Covid hotspot of Texas at the end of a PBC on FOX pay-per-view card, welterweight titlist Errol “The Truth” Spence decisioned former junior-welterweight champion Danny “Swift” Garcia by fair, obvious, unanimous scores.  It was the first time the men fought but bore resemblances enough to Spence’s last AT&T Stadium appearance to be a rematch.

It was a decent fight.  Hard stop.  It wasn’t great or evidence of greatness.

Last year Spence and his handlers and enablers did heavy lifting to keep the extent (and cause) of his one-automobile accident quiet for too long to regale us now with a comeback story.  If you’re transparent about what you did, you enroll yourself in the redemption sweepstakes.  Spence did not do this.  PBC handled the entire affair with signature cynicism.  When people wanted updates on Errol’s condition and the cause of his hospitalization, we were to respect Errol’s privacy in his difficult time.  When it appeared Spence was fully recovered and his tilt with Garcia shouldn’t be anything special, we started seeing an image of Spence in the hospital and hearing about his amnesia.

Would Spence be able to withstand Garcia’s attack?  We knew the answer to that question about five minutes in, and the drama of the match suffered for it.  For without Spence permanently damaged by his ejection from a Ferrari at speed, Spence-Garcia would be little more than Spence-Garcia 2.  

There is no evil in Errol.  He is a laidback, likable Texan.  A suburban kid, a country boy, an excellent athlete, a fair entertainer.  Three years ago there appeared a genuine chance at greatness.  There doesn’t any longer.  He fights without malice.  He’s larger and more physical than his opponents and fights like he thinks it would be unseemly to press such advantages too far.

So it was in the moment after the final bell Saturday.  Errol and Danny did a lap round the mat like coworkers, like Danny forgot his badge and Errol held the door for him.  Nobody’d dared to do much for 48 minutes, except when Garcia dared to steal the final five seconds of some rounds.  Spence took no obvious chances.  He applied his template for disarming smaller men and wavered rarely from it, and when he did waver Garcia hadn’t the commitment or crunch to do more than spank him playfully for being naughty.

There was a caveat, and after the opening three or four rounds the only interesting part of the spectacle: Spence reacted bizarrely to every cross Garcia threw at his abdomen.  By comparison to his otherwise nonchalant defense Spence’s reaction to Garcia’s righthand to his belly was cartoonish, jackknifed and jumpy.  Something future opponents should research further.

Spence’s attack is effective but not compelling.  Aesthetically it works best against men large as he.  Two of Spence’s three pay-per-view matches, lamentably, have come against men both smaller and much smaller.  Saturday’s Garcia looked the part at least; last year’s Garcia did not.  Twenty-one months later that fight has aged worse than Tyson-Jones.

At least Spence’s cautiousness in Arlington that night was about not being the future star of an antibullying campaign; had Spence done something dastardly enough to make Mikey’s big brother fly the white feather he mightn’t have been sympathetic to as many people as he is today.  Nothing is more frightful than losing one’s marketability.

Spence didn’t hurt this year’s Garcia because apparently it’s not what he’s into.  PBC fighters treat PBC fights like league events.

It’s why Bud Crawford looked so damn dark in the crowd Saturday.  Into the scripted and tightly controlled environment of a PBC production Crawford strode, a large black bar stretched across PBC’s pastel landscape.  Crawford is dangerous.  He’s unpredictable because he takes this whole thing personally.  It’s not a promotional game to Bud.  He’s not good at the business of boxing.  Bud looked an actual psychopath at the afterparty of a Hannibal Lecter-tribute troupe, Saturday.  Bud sneers where PBC personalities smile.

Spence may fight like Marvelous Marvin Hagler, but Bud has his personality.  Spence had his chance after another highpaying tuneup to demand the one fight every aficionado wants.  Instead he announced plans to horse around, maybe take another tuneup next summer.  It wasn’t quite Marvin attending Sugar Ray’s retirement announcement – there is, after all, almost no chance PBC invited Crawford to be in Dallas – but it had a similar rhythm.

Crawford was there to make that point.  Point made, Bud.

Spence isn’t afraid of Crawford, but he has too many highpaying opportunities with safe coworkers like Keith Thurman to dance with someone evil and unmarketable as Bud.  During the uneventful second half of Saturday’s fight there was time to ask a question like: How would things be different if suddenly Crawford and Spence switched promoters?

Both men would benefit.  Spence would get refined further by Top Rank matchmakers who’d excavate from Bolivia some spoiler that taught Spence the limits to his current style, limits he might transcend.  Bud would get to feast on PBC’s soft spread the way old Manny Pacquiao has, first hospitalizing Adrien Broner than retiring Keith Thurman before stopping Shawn Porter.  Then he could tell horseman Errol their stable is clean.  Time to fight.  Spence would respond as a prizefighter should.  Both men would have a chance to be great.  

After Saturday, I’d take Bud, KO-12.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Errol Spence Jr. defends the IBF/WBC Welterweight titles against former two-division world champion Danny Garcia.  The action begins at 9 PM ET / 6 PM PT with Eduardo Ramirez taking on Miguel Flores; Josesito Lopez against Francisco Santana and Sebastian Fundora battling Habib Ahmed

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Round 1: Jab from Spence..Combination..Counter left from Garcia..Right to body..Left to body from Spence..Counter from Garcia..Good left from Spence..Right from Garcia..

Round 2 Good straight left from Spence..Lead left..

Round 3 3 punch combination from Garcia…Jab from Spence..Hard left to body,..Hard right from Garcia..Good jab from Spence..

Round 4 Spence applying pressure..Hook from Garcia..2 rights..Jab from Spence..Body shot

Round 5 Hard left from Spence..Hard right..2 body shots from Garcia..Combination from Spence

Round 6 Body shot from Garcia..Good body shot from Spence..Combination on the ropes..Jab..Right counter from Garcia…Left counter from Spence

Round 7 Right from Garcia..2 rights to the body

Round 8 Body shot from Garcia..Spence working on the inside..Good body shot,..Garcia right eye swelling…Double jab and left to body

Round 9 Combination from Garcia…

Round 10 Quick right from Garcia

Round 11 Spence jabs to the body..Body shot from Garcia,,

Round 12 Good right hook from Spence..Spence working on inside..

116-112 TWICE AND 117-111 FOR SPENCE

Round 1 Huge uppercut hurt Ahmed..Hard hooks

Round 2 Power shots landing for Fundora..HuGE SHOTS ON THE ROPES FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1: Jab by Lopez…LEFT TO BODY AND BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES SANTANA..  Left hook wobbles Lopez..Body shot from Lopez

Round 2 Body shot by Lopez..Counter from Santana

Round 3 Hard right and Combination from Lopez..Hard Jab

Round 4 Good jab from Lopez..Counter right from Santana..Good counter hook…

Round 5 Good body shot from Lopez..Body shot hurts Santana

Round 6 Lopez lands a body shot…Body shot

Round 7 Left hook from Santana..Good left hook from Lopez..2 rights and left uppercut ..Hard left hand..Body shot

Round 8 Left from Lopez

Round 9 hard right hurts Lopez…BIG FLURRY AND DOWN GOES SANTANA

Round 10  BIG HOOK AND DOWN GOES SANTANA..Right from Lopez..HUGE HOOKS AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1 Hard Right hook from Ramirez..Overhand left..Hard body shot..Body work from Flores

Round 2 Good uppercut from Ramirez..Lead left..Hard shots and a body shot from Ramirez..Uppercut..2 body shots from Flores..

Round 3 Left from Ramirez…Good body shot from Flores

Round 4 Good right to body from Ramirez..Flores lands a body shot and hook to head..Good combination from Ramirez..2 jabs from Flores..

ROUND 5 HUGE RIGHT COUNTER AND DOWN GOES FLORES…HE GETS UP BUT THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

Follow all the action as Billy Joe Saunders defends the WBO title against Martin Murray from London.  The action starts approx. 5 PM ET / 10 PM in England.

NOW BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPATE AUTOMATICALLY

Round 1

Round 2 Jab from Saunders..Sharp Jab…

Round 3 More jabbing from Saunders…Uppercut..Good left

Round 4 Lead right from Murray…1-2 from Saunders…Good left from Saunders ruled a slip.

Round 5 Right hook from Saunders..Left uppercut..Combination

Round 6 Saunders boxing and jabbing

Round 7 Saunders land a 1-2

Round 8 Saunders lands a 3 punch combination…Saunders be chastised for a low blow…Good uppercut from Saunders.

Round 9 Right hook from Saunders..2 body shots..Good straight left

Round 10 Saunders lands a straight left to the body..Good left..Body shot

Round 11 Good left from Saunders..

Round 12 1-2 from Saunders

120-109 twice and 118-110 FOR SAUNDERS

By Norm Frauenheim–

A business always in search of an audience moves on to Errol Spence-Danny Garcia one week after Mike Tyson-Roy Jones Jr. left questions about where it is headed:

Back to the future.

Or back to nowhere.

For now, at least, it might not be limited to either-or. There are other potential options, like say a stop at the senior-citizen center. A dangerous sport, one seemingly limited to the young and fearless, drew a huge audience last Saturday for a couple of fighters older and vulnerable. Only their name recognition hasn’t eroded. The numbers don’t lie.

I called Tyson-Jones, an exhibition featuring a couple guys in their early fifties, “mostly frivolous.” I was wrong. Nothing frivolous about a reported 1.59 million pay-per-view buys and counting. At $49.99-a-buy, that’s $74.985 million and counting. That’s some serious business.

Spence and Garcia, who are a couple of decades younger, won’t approach that number, especially at a pay-per-view price tag $25 more than the Tyson-Jones fee. At $74.99, it’s hard to guess how many potential PPV customers just won’t buy. Even at the more reasonable price offered by the Tyson-Jones promoter, it’s safe to say that most in the Tyson-Jones audience won’t reach into their pocket.   

Too expensive? Maybe. Still, the most optimistic guess is that the Spence-Garcia welterweight bout this Saturday on Fox will get a fraction of the buys that Tyson-Jones did. Plug in your own guesstimate here. But the reason for the expected small fraction exposes a perilous fault line in today’s boxing business.

There are no proven stars. The potential stars remain unproven, because they don’t fight each other anymore. There’s nothing new about that statement. But the numbers for Tyson-Jones, an exhibition in nostalgia, punctuates it with some powerful evidence. And urgency.

Maybe, Terence Crawford-versus-Spence emerges as a realistic possibility, post-Pandemic, from the Spence-Garcia fight on the Dallas Cowboys homefield in Arlington, Tex. But there are a couple of big ifs attached to that one. Spence has to win while also looking like the fighter he was before he was thrown from his Ferrari in October 2019. He hasn’t fought since then.

Garcia might have been at his best at a lighter weight, 140 instead of 147, but he’s been a giant killer and his counter left could do some real damage in early rounds when a tentative Spence is still trying to regain familiarity with his old work place.

Meanwhile, more senior citizens are bound to get out of their rockers for just a chance at a fraction of the money collected by Tyson, whose purse was reported to be $13 million. Call the bout an exhibition. Call it two guys in a brawl at a backyard barbecue, Snoop Dog’s apt description. Call if whatever. They didn’t pay Monopoly money. The cash real, enough to buy a lot of ribs.

Before Tyson-Jones, Oscar De La Hoya said he would watch carefully. De La Hoya, who turns 48 on Feb. 4, has been talking about a comeback. He had to like the numbers he saw from Tyson-Jones. He could have seen a new revenue stream for his company, Golden Boy Promotions, since the split with Canelo Alvarez.

Already, there are headlines about Evander Holyfield calling out Tyson for a rematch. After all, Holyfield still has one ear to give. There’s Buster Douglas, too, in what would be the inevitable rematch of his 1990 stunner over Tyson, one of the biggest upsets in the last century.

For a few years, there are endless possibilities. No telling what would happen to the rules. Endless possibilities there too. The Tyson-Jones rules were written to prohibit a knockout. In a few more years, a state commission might have to include a rule that you can’t hit your opponent over the head with a cane. OK, I’m getting carried away.

But the point is this: Boxing among seniors with name recognition and notoriety is not sustainable. The business goes nowhere without the younger generation that will fight this Saturday night. The young guns were there in the late 1970s and into the 1980s.

An aging Muhammad Ali fought a wrestler in Tokyo in 1976. George Foreman fought five guys in Toronto in 1975. But the circus came and went, mainly because Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns were there and preparing to fight each other through an era as rich as any in history.

It’s time for history to repeat itself. If it doesn’t, only the business will be history.  

By Bart Barry-

Friday’s super middleweight fight was awful.  Saturday’s welterweight fight should be excellent.  Saturday’s heavyweight farce wasn’t bad at all.  There’s no laying out with T-square and drafting board a column that treats a sport dominated by a 54-year-old.  The casuals can’t hear you, friends – they’re not sticking round for your junior bantamweights in Tokyo on New Years.  In its superficial, hyperbolic way, though, pop culture gets some things right.  Iron Mike is one of them.

Tyson got by Saturday with what gets him by always since he lost his invincibility more than half his lifetime ago: Charisma.  It was instructive for this reason, if perhaps no other, to see him across from Roy Jones Jr.  Both men dominated their eras for long as they lasted, but only one had charisma.

Jones has admiration and accomplishment and intelligence but not charisma.  I’ve been in the same room with Jones for 10 minutes and not realized he was there till someone pointed him out.  No one can say that about Tyson.  Some of that is scale.  Tyson is naturally a much larger man than Jones and in his prime felled much larger men still and carries himself as such.

There was always something strained about Jones; he memorized the Ali schtick and wore the Jordan shoes but couldn’t shrug things off the way the greatest do; he tried too hard, moving from overanimated to uninterested without pausing at connected.  That came through Saturday.

Tyson lumbered forward with the same head movement and punch combinations he threw 35 years ago; deprived of his speed and power Tyson looked like no one so much as Mike Tyson.  Jones looked like he didn’t want to be there.  He did some of his nervous showmanship then leaped away and didn’t return but to hold and wrestle.  He pulled his punches, too, which was interesting – and understandable.

Tyson didn’t want to embarrass himself but knew so long as he tried hard everyone would forgive him; he’s been fucking up in front of the world and getting forgiven for a quarter century.  For Jones the stakes were higher.  Jones was afraid of making Tyson mad.  Anyone who’s sparred with a much bigger or better fighter has pulled his punches, in the sort of ironical twist you can’t anticipate till it happens to you.  You turn over that cross and it lands crisply, finally, and you ain’t admiring your work – you’re apologizing in the name of deescalation.

Tyson winged away because, really, what was Jones going to do about it?  Tyson is a born showman; it’s why he could come to the ring in his prime wearing nothing but black shorts, while Jones had to wear sparkly outfits and choreograph dance numbers to retain a fraction folks’ interest.

Reportedly the purses for Saturday went 10 to Tyson and three to Jones.  The fairest metaphor of all.

What happened Friday on DAZN was much less a spectacle and a bad fight too.  Danny Jacobs appears to be a genuinely good, likable guy.  His every fight is a disappointment.  In the leadup to his match with Gabriel Rosado he made the mistake of promoting his fight like a grudgematch.  It’s not who Jacobs is.  It’s not his temperament.  When the opening bell rang and Jacobs spent the next 10 minutes cautiously looking for opportunities to peck away at the man he supposedly despises – that was Jacobs’ temperament.

Rosado was no better.  Nobody expected him to be.  There are a number of men both Jacobs and Rosado can lose controversial decisions to in their new division but neither should again be asked to shoulder the weight of an a-side.

Which brings us to Saturday’s match between Errol “The Truth” Spence and Danny “Swift” Garcia.  About the only bad thing to be written about this fight is its pricetag.  It’s not a superfight or a superspectacle.  Fans should not be asked to bailout PBC’s fiscal year with three pay-per-view events in Q4.

For all the celebration of Spence and denigration of Garcia these last few years it’s a fair question who’s more deserving.  Since icing Kell Brook 3 1/2 years ago Spence has gotten praise greater than his record merits.  He hasn’t gotten any better.  He played tag-and-go-seek with Mikey Garcia in his pay-per-view debut, a dud of a fight.  He squeaked past Shawn Porter in a much closer test than aficionados expected.  He survived a Formula 1-style crash.

Now Spence swaps blows at welterweight with a very good junior welterweight who has been, at best, a b-level welterweight.  There’s no reason to think Garcia will offer Spence more than Porter did.  At 140 pounds Spence wouldn’t want to run himself into Garcia’s lefthook, but at 147 there’s less to worry about.

The intrigue, here, the salespitch, is we don’t know what effects of Spence’s crash have endured after 14 months.  Spence hasn’t been fighting, of course, and modern supercars like Spence’s Ferrari have extraordinary safety features, but if Spence isn’t right Garcia should be the man to expose it.  Swift is crafty and feisty and commits to counters – he sees them and commits to them wholly.  Spence has few weaknesses but he hasn’t Garcia’s experience.

The winner of Saturday’s match likely gets to coax Keith Thurman out of retirement.  The loser probably gets to brush gently the rust off Manny Pacquiao.  Enjoy Saturday’s fight for what it is, in other words, because it’s not leading anywhere.

I’ll take Spence, SD-12.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim—

It’s not exactly clear what Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. will be doing Saturday night. Best guess: It’s part boxing, part nostalgia and mostly frivolous.

But the circus never loses its appeal, especially if the pay-per-view money buys a few laughs. Not enough of those these days. Twelve-ounce gloves, eight two-minute rounds, and no official winner, all for $49.95.

The California State Athletic Commission also has included no knockouts in rules and regs for an exhibition that might have been a cellar fight, so-called during an era when boxing was mostly an underworld pursuit.

The no-KO rule sounds like a necessary precaution — the legal fine print perhaps — for a couple of legends who are a couple of decades beyond their head-knocking best. Tyson is 54, Jones 51. But the KO prohibition is also absolutely ridiculous, especially for Tyson, whose feared identity has always been defined by scary power.

No KO chance, no real drama, fewer PPV buys.

The California Commission (CSAC) knows that, of course. That’s why executive director Andy Foster offered an explanation when updated rules were reported this week.

“So, technically, there won’t be a winner unless a knockout somehow occurs, or either fighter is deemed unfit to continue,’’ Foster said.

Somehow is the operative word here. Triller, the exhibition’s promoter, responded, saying that a KO could happen. Of course. The only way to prohibit one is to prohibit the exhibition altogether.

“A knockout is allowed,” Triller co-owner Ryan Kavanaugh told Variety, a show-biz publication that will never be confused with The Ring.  “We heard someone say there’s no knockouts. A knockout is absolutely allowed.  …

If someone’s bleeding, the fight’s not going to stop.”

Kavanaugh also had his own explanation for 12-ounce gloves instead of the usual 10-ounce.

“That’s like putting in an extra Kleenex between two trucks crashing,” he said.

Also, there will be judges, although they won’t be working for the Commission. They won’t even be in the building, the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. They’ve been appointed by the World Boxing Council. Former women’s great Christy Martin, ex-light-heavyweight champion Chad Dawson and former lightweight and junior-middleweight champ Vinny Pazienza will judge from a studio. No franchise belt for the winner. But there is a WBC title, the Frontline Battle Belt, which will honor Black Lives Matter, also inscribed on the belt.

If reports about the purses are accurate, they’re astonishing. Reportedly, Tyson will collect $10 million, Jones $3 million. Remember, when this exhibition was announced it was supposed to be

for charity.

Triller also announced Wednesday that DraftKings is the event’s “official sports-betting partner.” However, sports books reportedly began to take down the line Thursday, an expectation perhaps of further controversy. Off-shore betting sites had Tyson as a slight favorite over Jones, who held titles from 160 to 175 pounds and took a heavyweight title from John Ruiz in March 2003.

The wager here: Fatigue. The hope: Both fighters get tired before they can land a knockout punch. Call it a safe bet.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – Friday afternoon this city landed the biggest prizefight of the rest of the year when promoter Matchroom Boxing announced Mexican middleweight champion and light heavyweight titlist Saul “Canelo” Alvarez would challenge for undefeated Englishman Callum “Mundo” Smith’s super middleweight Ring championship at Alamodome the Saturday before Christmas.  Four hours later every resident of this county got a text message that read:

936 new COVID-19 cases reported today – the most since July.  With the virus spreading, limit unnecessary outings, avoid social gatherings and wear your mask.

936 nuevos casos de COVID-19 reportados hoy, la mayor cantidad desde julio.  Limite las salidas innecesarias, evite las reuniones sociales y use cubrebocas.

If it appears these messages are at cross-purposes with an Alamodome superfight it’s because they are.  Here’s a sentence I didn’t before imagine writing: If you are not from here and planning to come for the Canelo fight, please do not.

The events of 2020 have made, for responsible adults, many previously unimaginable behaviors standard.  Everyone else has, in varying degrees, pretended things are normal, returning to normal, nearly normal or I’ve-waited-long-enough-for normal.  The contortions this has put folks in have been universally ugly.

A quarter of a million Americans have died from Covid.  That reality is too horrifying for all and leads some to dissemble by wondering about the numbers, asking if anything might’ve been done differently, picking nonsequitur fights with elected officials – threadbare arguments about “tyranny” and “free market” and (coming soon) “national debt”.  Looked at as goodfaith inquiries from reasonable people, these arguments raise immense ire in responsible adults.  Looked at as the castings-about of children, these arguments appear tantrums.  Which is what they are.

The formula for not spreading Covid has been unchanging for seven of the last eight months: Stay home unless you absolutely have to go out, wear a mask whenever you do go out, and keep six feet between yourself and others.  To avoid infecting yourself, do all these same things and wash your hands frequently and avoid touching your face.

The absolutely-have-to-go-out clause above raises plenty of socioeconomic questions.  I’m not oblivious of them or the injustice of declaring things like meat-processing plants vital to national security.  In this city, too, a number of busdrivers have died of Covid, their exposures to infected and generally asymptomatic folks – themselves commuting to jobs that preclude their families’ hunger – too great for too many hours to be properly mitigated by some flimsy cloth stretched across rubberbands.  These folks deserve our deepest sympathies and financial aid in whatever form we can provide it.

But the men filling Home Depot every day for six months because it’s what happens to be open and they can’t stand being alone or with their families?  They’re a different story.  Especially the jackasses who do so masklessly.  The uncharitable if understandable reaction to such folks’ almost inevitable acquisition of the virus is they had it coming, which they did, but here are two entities that didn’t: Employees and familiars of these folks, and the American healthcare system in the long run.  What is lost on those who fixate on mortality rates is a question like: What will be the lasting impact of 12 million Americans with lingering respiratory issues?  What will that do to gross domestic product, to healthcare costs, to their children’s prospects?

Aside from the fighters themselves, their trainers and cutmen, and a handful of officials, nobody must be in Alamodome next month.  Every national promoter has proved this, out of necessity, since August.  Canelo, angry his paycheck got affected by Covid like everyone else’s, declared an empty arena, or at least a paycheck empty of a live gate, unacceptable, and a scramble began for some state, any state, dumb enough to host large indoor gatherings during a pandemic.  Nobody had to look hard.

Twenty days before our 10-fold increase in Covid cases PBC held a “successful” pay-per-view event at Alamodome.  Did Davis-Santa Cruz cause the spike in cases?  No, probably not.  Rather there was a correlation between our once-vigilant city’s newfound complacency and a 9,000-person event in an indoor arena.

Oh, I know, Canelo-Smith’s promoter will find a podiatrist or dentist somewhere to say the precautions being taken by a part-time staff of minimum-wage security guards are topnotch, and every patron will get a free squirt of hand sanitizer with any ticket purchase above $30, and thousands of people drinking and shouting for hours cannot possibly spread anything because at least half the guards working the doors’ll have functioning forehead thermometers and half of that half will remember to use them, too, so never mind World Health Organization guidance or restrictions from Center for Disease Control.  They can’t tell us what to do!

Last week’s announcement brought to mind two anecdotes.  A month after The Legend of Muhammad Ali was published, I brought an author’s copy Christmas present to the gym for the kindly father of an aspiring pugilist.  He told me his son idolized Ali.  I told him be ready to talk his limited son out of a prizefighting career someday soon.  He told me not to worry because his son had a great chin and lots of heart like Ali.  I told him I didn’t want to see his son finish his days like Ali.  He assured me boxing had nothing to do with Ali’s condition.

My mother used to say of the most delicious things in life they were “to die for”.  I happen to be a big Callum Smith fan and give him a real chance against Canelo in December.  It should be an excellent, consequential prizefight.  But I don’t think it’s to die for.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim–

The dimensions to Terence Crawford’s dynamic versatility often looks to be unlimited. Within the ropes, he has all the angles. Left-handed to righthanded, there’s power and poise, all wrapped within an edgy, defiant persona.

Like him. Fear him. Avoid him. This Bud is not for everyone. But he’s impossible to ignore, especially in a sport populated with fewer and fewer performers who know how to close the show. Name one other than Crawford.

Canelo Alvarez? Naoya Inoue? Yeah, maybe. Stoppages are part of their job description.

But nobody has that predatory instinct, evident in both eyes and in each hand, at the very moment when an opponent is hurt and ready to fall. It’s a reason to watch. Crawford defines the ring’s so-called controlled violence better than anyone in his generation. Nobody controls that violence more skillfully. Nobody finishes with such deadly efficiency, either. Kell Brook still doesn’t know what hit him.

But the supreme control that Crawford exerts within the ropes isn’t always apparent outside of them. It’s an irony, a paradox, perhaps. But it’s not exactly a new one. Politics, promoters and time have always been there, been in the way. They are there for Crawford, now at a career crossroads.

Controversy has raged since his fourth-round stoppage of Brook Saturday in a bout that furthered his claim on the pound-for-pound’s top spot. He can’t finish the debate. Then again, who can? That’s why it’s called a debate. It’s a parlor game. For Crawford, the ongoing argument doesn’t rage so much about whether his No.-1 claim is credible. It is and — for now – he has the last word. The question is how to strengthen that claim, along with his Hall of Fame resume.

From this corner, he passes the eye test. He’s No. 1. But the record says something else. Consider Brook. His skillset is a lot more faded than his name. If Canelo is impressive against Callum Smith on Dec. 19 in his first fight in more than a year, the pound-or-pound momentum figures to shift in his favor.

For Crawford, the argument continues to be Errol Spence Jr and/or Manny Pacquiao. Only against one or both can he further his pound-for-pound argument. In the immediate wake of the Brook victory, he said wanted Pacquiao, whose name brings big money and international attention. Mention Pacquiao, however, and fans think 42. That’s how old the Filipino Senator will be on Dec. 17. Of course, Crawford is expected to be a 42-year-old man.

That turns to the debate to where it has always been:

Spence.

From the fans perspective, Spence-Crawford has to happen. Crawford’s credibility hinges on it. Boxing’s credibility depends on it. But there’s a potential problem. Actually, there are a couple.

Problem One: The demand for Crawford-Spence is as loud now as ever, precipitated by Crawford’s knockout of Brook and the Dec. 5 date between Spence and Danny Garcia. The demand’s tone, however, assumes that Spence will be the same fighter he was before his scary car crash in Dallas October 10, 2019. Nobody has seen Spence answer an opening bell since then. Then, there’s the accomplished Garcia, no soft touch. Remember, Garcia upset Amir Khan and Lucas Matthysse when nobody thought he had a chance. Garcia has been at his best when he’s overlooked. Let’s just hold our breath, wait and see.

Problem Two: Even if Spence wins and looks like the welterweight we remember, boxing’s promotional rivalries might make the fight impossible. Crawford is under contract until next October, according to multiple reports. Spence is a PBC client. Spence is also a big welterweight. He’s already talking about a jump to middleweight in a bid to fight Canelo, who faces Smith at super-middle.

Noisy signs of a Crawford-Top Rank split have been apparent for a week. Top Rank’s Bob Arum ripped Crawford for not being a better self-promoter in a story reported by The Athletic.

“He’s got to promote like [Teofimo] Lopez does. He’s got to promote like Shakur [Stevenson] does… like [Floyd] Mayweather did, like [Manny] Pacquiao did.” Arum told The Athletic. “If he doesn’t, then who the f–k needs him? He may be the greatest fighter in the world, but, hey, I ain’t going bankrupt promoting him.

“The question is, ‘Do we want to keep him?’ I could build a house in Beverly Hills on the money I’ve lost on him in the last three fights, a beautiful home. Nobody questions Crawford’s innate, tremendous ability. By beating a naturally bigger guy [in Kell Brook], decisively, that’s a big statement that’s he’s making. The question is, ‘Does he pay the bills?’ Look, you can have the greatest opera singer in the world. If the fans don’t support it, you’re out of business.”

Arum suggested that Crawford is a virtuoso without an audience. The next day, Crawford countered on The Ak and Barak Show.

“Personally, if he feels that way, he can release me now,’’ Crawford said on the Sirius XM show. “He can just release me.’’

He can. But an outright release is not Arum’s history.

Mikey Garcia sued him in April 2014. At the time Garcia was 26, unbeaten and a fighter with a pound-for-pound future. The lawsuit put him on the shelf for about two-and-a-half years. His career stalled. Garcia, a four-division champion, lost at welterweight in a one-sided, disappointing performance against Spence.

Now, Garcia wants a fight with Pacquiao. But time is an issue.

Garcia is 33, same as Crawford.

Crawford can’t afford to wait. On the career clock, he’s in prime time. Maybe, he could try to do what Floyd Mayweather did. Mayweather bought his way out of a contract with Top Rank after he said no to an $8-million offer to fight Antonio Margarito. The buyout cost him $750,000. Turns out, it was a brilliant investment. Eleven years later, Mayweather was the world’s richest athlete with a billion dollars in career earnings.

A key difference was time. Mayweather gave himself some. He was 29 when he bought himself out of his Top Rank deal. On Crawford’s clock, the time to move looks a lot like right now.

By Bart Barry –

Saturday in the Bubble at MGM Grand in the mainevent of a dreadful ESPN card Nebraskan Terence “Bud” Crawford needed about 3 1/2 rounds and punches to stop overmatched Brit Kell “Special K” Brook.  Referee Tony Weeks, generally the perfect man for any Crawford fight, lost interest in watching Brook get brutalized a bit quicker than expected, though no one complained.  Bud got his victory, Brook got his paycheck, aficionados got to sleep early.

Bud did what had to be done to defend his fringe welterweight title and top spot in a hypothetical ranking that only matters so much when no one fights one another.

The title pound-for-pound was invented for Sugar Ray Robinson, if historians can be believed, to clarify how much better Robinson was than everyone else, especially what heavyweights dominated American sport.  It was nobody’s obsession in the 1980s when the best welterweights and middleweights fought one another.  It grew mighty longer legs during the Mayweather era when not-fighting was very much en vogue.  It’s why it’s important right now for Bud – because he’s not-fighting anyone any aficionado wants to see him fight.

It’s a promoters-n-eggheads obsession these days, as a generation of kids raised on destination fights comes of age and isn’t quite sure what to do with someone like Teofimo Lopez who moved himself prematurely and succeeded.  See, what Teofimo should’ve done is let his fight with Lomachenko marinate another few years – what we now call “waiting till there can be fans at the fights again” – and threatened his peers on Twitter and harangued his promoter for more money and given prickly interviews to various apps about what he couldn’t wait to do someday.  Instead Teofimo stamped paid on Lomachenko’s overwrought pound-for-pound bill and sent him out the Bubble.

There was Bud, though, well ensconced in the Bubble on Saturday, making a demand of his promoter not for the one fight everyone wants to see with his peer Errol Spence, no, but instead with Manny Pacquiao, a 41-year-old Senator inactive for 17 months and semiretired from boxing.  Bob Arum’s response was pitchperfect: After rambling about some Middle Eastern venue and ministers of health and such, he reassured Bud talks were ready to restart for a fight scheduled to happen either “before Ramadan or after”.  Bud didn’t press his soon-to-be-89-year-old promoter either because his Midwestern sensibilities wouldn’t allow curtness with an elder or because Bud doesn’t really want Spence anymore.

That sentence was unwritable three years ago when Crawford first moved from junior welterweight.  Back then Bud was everything we wanted in a fighter; he rose on merit, not hype, he cleaned-out a division before scaling higher, and he was a bit of a psychopath when any bell rang.  He’s fatted now.  Too much British cooking, lard, flour and boiling.  No one thought so at the time, but Bud’s second fight as a welterweight, a 12-round bloodletting with Jose Benavidez, a one-legged former prodigy from Phoenix, was the most impressive thing Crawford has done since unifying titles at 140 pounds, maybe the most impressive thing he’s done since stopping an undefeated Yuriorkis Gamboa in 2014.

Now then, much of the grief we give Bud is grief intended for Arum, for the aspiring nonagenarian’s refusal to compromise with Al Haymon, whose PBC manages every welterweight worth Bud’s fighting.  Arum knows this and can’t be bothered to do a thing about it.  He wore gymnasium-casual to Bud’s postfight interview Saturday, talked trash about Spence’s upcoming opponent, Danny Garcia – ranked a halfdozen or more spots above Kell Brook – and enjoyed Bud’s giving him an out with the Pacquiao plea, a demand from Bud for money, not greatness.

Spence is not blameless in all this, but if he beats Garcia and Thurman and Pacquiao and moves to 154, is anyone not affiliated with Top Rank going to accuse him of ducking Bud?

Bud has real hate in his heart and alleviates some of the evil by semiannual sadism sessions with what luckless men Arum finds for him, men like Jeff Horn, Amir Khan and Egidijus Kavaliauskas.  Saturday it was softened Kell Brook’s turn, and the best that can be said for Brook is that he acquitted himself well for a quarter fight then got out the ring without suffering much.

So strapping and muscular that Special K!  Muscles and fists haven’t been Brook’s undoing as a professional, though – his face has.  The first time Crawford put proper leather on Brook’s surgically repaired face Brook flew backwards as if detonated.  From a jab.  Some hours and words shall be lost by others to explaining the extraordinary leverage and concusiveness of Bud Crawford, when the truth of what happened is simpler.  Brook is not that good, and Crawford is.  When an aged b-level guy runs himself into the onrushing fist of a prime a-level guy what happened Saturday is what happens.  Too much lifting was done for Top Rank’s choice of opponent last week for folks to let the simple explanation stand.  After all, Brook was just a dozen GGG punches and another dozen Truth punches from being undefeated when Bud torqued him with that southpaw jab of his.

Brook took his loss gracefully, like a proper b-sider should, while hemming a bit when asked to fulfill his contractually obligated comparison of Crawford to Spence.  He was there, after all, not to pique interest in a Crawford-Spence superfight his promoter can’t deliver but to make a soundbite ESPN can play before each of Crawford’s next couple, or halfdozen, nonevent title defenses, something such as “Spence wears you down like a kid, but Crawford hits like a man!”  Brook wasn’t the perfect b-side, then, but he was a fine one, and really, who are we kidding?  

Nobody was awake when Brook got interviewed.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Terence Crawford defends the WBO Welterweight title against former champion Kell Brook.  The action begins at 10 PM ET / 9 PM CT / 3 AM Sunday in England with a rematch for the WBA Super Flyweight title as Joshua Franco defends the title against Andrew Moloney

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Round 1: Jab from Brook..Jab-Right hand..Right to head..Left from Jab..

Round 2 Jab from Brook..Right uppercut..  Brook outlanding Crawford 20-13

Round 3 Crawford jabbing from southpaw stance..Brook lands a right..Right lead..Left from Crawford..Right from Brook..Right from Crawford..Swelling around the right eye of Crawford

Round 4 RIGHT HOOK AND BROOK STAGGERS INTO THE ROPES FOR A KNOCKDOWN..HUGE LEFT AND RIGHT…BROOK HURT,,,FIGHT OVER

Round 1 Moloney jabbing..2 rights to the body..Franco swelling over right eye from accidental headbutt…Moloney outlands Franco 25-11

Round 2 Referee Calls in Doctor to look at Franco’s eye which is swelling badly..Good combination from Moloney

Round 3 Doctor looking at eye ….FIGHT STOPPED…FIGHT RULED NO DECISION…Commission now looking at replays as it appears there was no headclash in round 1….RULED NO-CONTEST

By Norm Frauenheim-

Terence Crawford, not known for wearing his heart on his sleeve, wore it on his face instead. There it was on a mask that could have been a billboard.

P4P, pound-for-pound, repeated and emphasized in black across white cloth. It was bold messaging impossible to mistake, especially for Kell Brook or anybody else tempted to interpret the body language in boxing’s faceoff ritual.

Crawford plans to state his case.

Or, at least, restate it Saturday in his first appearance during a Pandemic that has shuffled and re-shuffled the pound-for-pound debate.

It changes by the week.

Vasiliy Lomachenko gets knocked off in a loss to Teofimo Lopez. Naoya Inoue wins easily, knocking out an overmatched Jason Moloney. Gervonta Davis makes a bid for consideration with a stoppage of accomplished Leo Santa Cruz. Devin Haney puts himself in the conversation with a thorough decision over faded Yuriorkis 

Gamboa. Canelo Alvarez puts himself back on the board, formally splitting with promoter Oscar De La Hoya amid plans to fight somebody, reportedly Callum Smith, in mid-December.

It’s intriguing. Contentious, too.

At the top of the pound-for-pound scale, there are three – Crawford, Canelo and Inoue. There’s a good argument for any of the three, reasonable enough to argue that the top spot should be vacant until somebody delvers a convincing performance.

Enter Crawford, who takes his turn at the bully pulpit against Brook on ESPN in the Bubble at the MGM Grand’s Conference Center in Las Vegas.

“I’ve always felt that I’m Number One, pound-for-pound, in the world,” Crawford said, mask and message still in place, during a news conference Wednesday. “This is what I do.”

Crawford, a leading pound-for-pound contender for the last couple of years, has been criticized for the quality – specifically the lack of it – in his opposition since the former lightweight champion jumped from junior-welterweight to welter in June 2018 against Jeff Horn.

It’s the kind of criticism often attached to any claim on the pound-for-pound’s top spot. That’s why it’s called a debate. Roy Jones Jr. was dogged by the criticism throughout much of his brilliant career, which once included a 2002 hip-hop lyric and career slogan: Ya’all Must’ve Forgot. Viewed through history’s unerring vision, it’s unforgettably clear today. Jones dominated, especially in 1994 when he scored a dazzling decision over dangerous James Toney in a super-middleweight bout. There was simply nobody better.

It’s hard to know whether Crawford will be seen the same way one day. Boxing’s balkanized rivalries might mean the Top Rank-promoted Crawford will never face anybody on PBC’s (Premier Boxing Champions) deep welterweight roster – Errol Spence Jr., Danny Garcia, Keith Thurman and Shawn Porter.

Before Spence’s scary car crash in October 2019, there was talk – urgent talk – about Spence-Crawford. It had to happen. Now? Who knows? In another bout with potential pound-for-pound significance, Spence returns for the first time since the crash on Dec. 5 against Garcia. It’s no tune-up. Spence calls himself The Truth. We’ll get the truth, post-accident, in about three weeks.

Crawford had an interesting comment during a Zoom session about Spence and whether his career hinges on a showdown with the Dallas welterweight. Crawford wasn’t sure. He was asked: If there’s no fight with Spence in 2021, is there a chance it’ll never happen?

“Yeah, it might,” Crawford said. “It might. You know, but like I said, I never really felt like I really needed Errol Spence for my legacy or my career. You know, I’ve accomplished so much in the sport of boxing that, you know, I really didn’t need him.

“You know, yes, I needed him for my legacy at the welterweight division and becoming a two-time, undisputed champion at two different weight classes. But if that fight don’t happen, I don’t feel like, you know, it’ll hurt my legacy. It just hurts the legacy of (me in) the welterweight division.”

Like the rest of boxing, it sounds as if he’ll wait and see how Spence looks against Garcia. There’s nothing else Crawford can do, especially against Brook, a sudden star when he upset Porter more than six years ago.

Since then, he lost to Gennadiy Golovkin in a jump to middleweight and then to Spence in a move back to welter. He suffered a fractured eye socket in each. Brook, who has also fought at junior-middleweight, is bigger than Crawford. The power in his right hand is dangerous.

“He’s never faced a fighter like me,’’ said Brook, who said he has always been prepared for Crawford’s quicksilver way of switching from orthodox to southpaw and back.

For Crawford, the task is to prove there is simply no fighter like him at any weight. His mask says he will.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – We’ve got COVID under control round here in a way many of our countrymen haven’t.  It affords this friendly city a chance to be a friend to other Texas cities.  For a couple weeks we’ve been shouldering part of El Paso’s burden by treating its patients.  If our new President’s promise of an empathy renaissance comes, it will be cities like this one, cities that kept their decency in an indecent time, to which the country shall look for guidance.

A couple Saturdays ago boxing’s eyes looked this way, I know, and were two of my three favorite fighters not in action on apps I’d’ve made some effort to cover junior lightweight Gervonta “Tank” Davis’ icing of Leo Santa Cruz.  But with Oleksandr Usyk on DAZN and Naoya Inoue on ESPN+ there was no justifying a pay-per-view purchase and still much less justification for a trip to Alamodome.  Not in a pandemic, no.

What I missed was an entertaining scrap contested at a worldclass level by two guys who know how.  It wasn’t complete a coronation as social-media feeds indicated.  In insolation Davis’ left uppercut counter looked historic.  But Davis threw the punch a dozen times before he landed it, which speaks to his opponent’s negligible pattern recognition much as Davis’ ring IQ.

Santa Cruz has never been a crafty fighter.  He’s ever been best when swimming frantically at smaller men.  He was best when swimming frantically at Davis, too, who didn’t have much better of a response than shell-and-tackle.  The rest of the time Santa Cruz retreated in a concession to how much thicker Davis was than he.  Santa Cruz made his professional debut 10 pounds lighter than Davis did.  That sort of difference matters when one man relies on constant activity and the larger man relies on concussive effect.

Davis had the perfect strategy for a man who didn’t have the balance or power to unman him.  He executed it.  Davis must be kept active, as his handlers know, but that brings issues.  He is in the wrong division to make meaningful matches with fellow PBC talent, and he doesn’t really want to go to lightweight and get threshed by Teofimo Lopez, anyway, a fight PBC would never allow.

If numbers can be believed Davis draws.  So long as he stays at 130 pounds he looks likely as anyone to scrub the division.  Those looks allow him to claim avoidance by promoter Top Rank’s junior lightweights, a grift less-talented and less-charismatic men than Davis have run a long, long time.  Davis should make plenty of money in the next few years.  That’s neither a great legacy nor a bad one.

More than can be said for lightweight Devin “The Dream” Haney who looked flat mediocre on DAZN against Yuriorkis “El Viejito” Gamboa on Saturday.  Gamboa fought with what joylessness marks every Cuban prizefighter, supremely competent boxers who go through the dull motions of points compiling whilst saving their few enthusiastic moments for aggressive fouling.  Gamboa’s best moments came after the ref yelled “Break!”

Haney’s best moments were marginally better than his worst moments, a mark of professionalism, yes, but nothing any aficionado had to watch to believe.  Whatever images get conjured by reading Haney UD Gamboa are exactly what happened.

*

Now a detour here, as it’s difficult, apparently impossible, to concentrate for long on anything but Four Seasons Total Landscaping, the one political story of my adult life about which I’ve laughed, heartily, zanily, for an entire day.  We’ll likely never know the truth of how it came to pass, our President tweeting about an upscale downtown Philadelphia hotel he thought his team’d booked, getting informed the event was actually happening at a landscaping company a halfhour away, and staying in the bit.  But to see his legal team leveling the most-serious allegation against democracy in American history, beside a canary-yellow garden hose, was surreal and fitting a spectacle as television has offered.

I haven’t the comedic expertise to say what made this so absurdly funny, but I’m glad to have lived it.  Ron White, Bill Burr, Doug Stanhope, Bert Kreischer, Adam Carolla; I’ve attended shows by each of these men, and I’ve laughed at each show and plenty, but never has any professional comic made me laugh like Four Seasons Total Landscaping.  It’s somewhere in its mix of hubris, irony, sycophancy, layers, possibilities, and most of all professional newsmakers’ incredulous reactions. 

Did the legal team intentionally book a landscaping company, leading their striving philistine boss to reasonably assume a public subversion of America should happen in the finest of trappings? did the striving philistine boss assume a reservation, subsequently declined, and force his flunkies to scramble for any venue with the same name? did the first and most obvious explanation happen – wherein a staffer, from the most dilapidated staff ever to staff the White House, google the wrong venue and not get corrected by whoever answered the phone?  That the official explanation might be true, a day later, is even funnier than were it one more lie.

Not since fat little Andy Ruiz sent the giant and invincible Anthony Joshua stumbling everywhere has something so unlikely and delightful come to pass.  Ruiz-Joshua 1 was an unexpected twist in a niche story written in the darkest corner of sports.  Four Seasons Total Landscaping was an attempt to subvert democracy by the President of the United States, a self-coup, un autogolpe, auto-sabotaged by its own morons standing in a dirt lot across from Fantasy Island Adult Bookstore.

It’s simply too rich.  This couldn’t have ended any other way.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim—

Boxing during the Pandemic will be remembered for more than postponements, life in a bubble and eroding wages. There’s risk, which means winners and losers in a shuffle that figures to alter the look – the very faces — of a game fighting to move into a post-Pandemic era.

Four Winners

No. 1: Teofimo Lopez. His upset of Vasiliy Lomachenko puts him on top of this list. He’s poised to be the game’s biggest star after his career-changing performance. He won by a decision, which appeared to be the most unlikely way to beat the skilled Lomachenko. The versatile Lopez is comfortable in the ring and in front of the camera. That combo will be very hard to beat.

No. 2: Naoya Inoue. He’s been called the next Manny Pacquiao. The Next in boxing is like The Next in any other sport. There’s never been another Muhammad Ali or Roberto Duran. But the Japanese bantamweight champ lights up a ring with singular speed and power. He doesn’t have Pacquiao’s back story or the Filipino Senator’s political ambitions. But he is as much fun to watch as Pacquiao was in his early days.

No. 3: Gervonta Davis. His KO last Saturday of Leo Santa Cruz is a Knockout-of-the-Year contender. His dangerous power is dynamic, in the ring and at the box-office. It stops, it sells. There are questions. His misadventures outside of the ring continue to threaten his career. If he can continue to show the poise and discipline he had against Santa Cruz, however, anything to everything looks possible, including a huge fight with Lopez.

No. 4: Shakur Stevenson. He was the first known name to enter the bubble and defend his featherweight title last June in a predictably one-sided victory, a sixth-round stoppage, over Puerto Rican Felix Caraballo in June. His well-balanced skillset is as deadly as it is thorough, perfect for post-Pandemic pound-for-pound contention.

Four Losers

No. 1: Deontay Wilder. He blames everybody and everything but himself for a career gone awry last February in brutal rematch loss to Tyson Fury. His social-media rant last week is embarrassing.  It’s loaded with conspiracy theories. From altered gloves to a spiked water bottle, it’s all there. What’s missing is accountability. Wilder can be entertaining. Yet, his rant sounds like a desperate cry from a fighter who hasn’t turned the loss into a valuable lesson. He’s one dimensional, a heavyweight champ seemingly left with nowhere to go.

No. 2: Lomachenko. There’s a reason for weight classes. Lomachenko went a few too many notches on the scale above his optimum weight. He’s a natural featherweight. His move to lightweight led to injuries, including his shoulder. He underwent surgery during the week after Lopez. There are fights for him at featherweight or perhaps junior-lightweight. But big money won’t be there.

No. 3: Mikey Garcia: Once a leading pound-for-pound contender, Garcia has been idle throughout the Pandemic since his decision in February over Jessie Vargas, a comeback after a disappointing loss to Errol Spence Jr. in March 2019. Garcia had hoped to fight Pacquiao, but COVID eliminated that possibility. Garcia also had once been seen as possibility in a dream fight against Lomachenko when both were at featherweight. It didn’t happen. At 32, Garcia has beginning to slip out of sight, out of mind from a business that is moving on.

No. 4: Canelo Alvarez. A $280-million lawsuit against streaming service DAZN and promoter Oscar De La Hoya has put him on the shelf for who-knows-how-long. Only the lawyers are busy. He’s idle. He hasn’t fought in a year. Fair-or-not, it’s impossible to defend his pound-for-pound claim without a fight.

Four On The Waiting List

No. 1: Devin Haney. His number is about to be called. He finally gets his chance to crash the shuffle at the top of the game with a bout Saturday night on DAZN in a lightweight bout against Yuriorkis Gamboa, whose reflexes have faded a lot more than his name. The bout is a mismatch, but it is chance for Haney to test a surgically-repaired shoulder in his first fight in nearly a year. “All eyes are on me,’’ he said Thursday. “It’s my time to show up and show out.’’

No. 2: Oleksandr Usyk: He was a great cruiserweight – maybe the best ever. But there are still questions about whether he belongs in the heavyweight division. He scored a decision last Saturday over nine-time loser Dereck Chisora, but it wasn’t easy.

No.3: Terence Crawford. The unbeaten welterweight makes his first appearance during the Pandemic on Nov. 14 against Kell Brook, a former welterweight who had been fighting at junior-middleweight and middleweight. It’s an interesting fight. It’s also Crawford’s first fight since a TKO of Egidijus Kavaliauskas last December. Idle doesn’t win many arguments. For Crawford, Brook is a chance to re-assert his pound-for-pound credentials.

No. 4 Spence: The unbeaten welterweight is back from a scary car crash in October 2019. He faces Danny Garcia on Dec. 5 on the Dallas Cowboys homefield in Arlington, Tex. It would be a risky fight no matter when or what the circumstances. For Spence, however, that risk represents the opportunity that is changing the face of the game.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in England in a heavyweight match broadcast by DAZN, Ukrainian cruiserweight prodigy Oleksandr Usyk worked alongside London’s Dereck Chisora to show what a bad idea Usyk’s migration to heavyweight was, winning a sloppy and close decision against a c-level fighter praised for trying hard, a couple hours before Japanese prodigy Naoya “Monster” Inoue origami-ed Australian bantamweight Jason Moloney in a match broadcast by ESPN+.

I looked forward mostly to Usyk, a fighter whom, until Chocolatito looked splendid the Saturday before, I’d’ve called my favorite among all actives, and quickly.  Had I forgotten about Inoue?  I suppose I had a bit, but for a good reason, for Inoue: I knew Monster was in fine promotional hands.

There’s an evangelical quality to writing a weekly column about a sport that isn’t a league and hasn’t a season.  However limited or vast one’s readership he’s given a chance to petition strangers on his favorite fighters’ behalves.  For many reasons, beginning with its unfortunate affiliation with Richard Schaefer, the World Boxing Super Series has maintained a cursed sort of feel here in the U.S., home of so many recent cursings.  I freely admit a personal favoritism for the WBSS, its participants and especially its champions.

I’m not oblivious as I feign of the fiscal goings-on of our beloved sport, but I don’t care about them either.  It’s not my role.  It’s not yours.  I watch prizefighting to see men perform heroic acts and transcend themselves.  Entering oneself in a single-elimination tourney like WBSS is a proper pathway to those ends.  WBSS has given us spectacular finishes and spectacular champions, Usyk and Inoue chief among them.

WBSS took more from Usyk than Inoue, evidently, as the quirky Ukrainian has not been the same since.  Saturday he was further from the same as he’s ever been.  Chisora was two things too much for Usyk: Wide and slow.  He was, in the final tally, not too powerful, as Usyk wagered Chisora would tire and did not lose the bet, despite getting made proper miserable for some 12 of their 36 minutes together.

No, what foiled Usyk, what made him nothing like the otherworldly cruiserweight we loved a few years back, was the way Chisora’s 55 1/2 extra pounds bent the geometry of Usyk’s attack.  There was no popping and stepping round Chisora; he was very much wider than Mairis Briedis, Murat Gassiev and Tony Bellew.  Far sloppier too.

It was a bit reminiscent of watching “Fast” Eddie Chambers’ 2010 tilt with Wlad Klitschko, a match in which Fast Eddie’s shoulders fit within the span of Klitschko’s chest.  No matter what lateral movement Chambers employed it was hopeless; he couldn’t get outside Wlad to spin him, with four steps and a hop.  At least Chambers was acclimated to heavyweight pace, which is glacial.

Usyk missed a number of the large number of punches he missed Saturday because he threw the second or third punch of a combination where his first punch should’ve sent Chisora, and did send Chisora, too, just a few seconds after Usyk expected Chisora to get there.  The bemused look on Usyk’s face said nothing so much as: “There’s boxing, and then there’s heavyweight boxing!”

Usyk is committed to finishing his career a heavyweight, though he could certainly return to cruiserweight (he’s fought twice in two years and gained merely 15 pounds, which is about the monthly American COVID-19-lockdown rate).  This is poor strategy.  There’s no telling if Usyk realizes this, as he’s too eccentric to read.  He’d have done much better cherrypicking a heavyweight beltholder, while continuing his cruiserweight reign, making a one-night-only spectacle of trying to outbox AJ, Gypsy King or Wilder & Wilder.  Instead he’s getting his tires balded and brain softened by men with a fraction his talent but unlimited size.

I’ll still watch him and tell fellow aficionados he’s one of my favorites, but my enthusiasm for him got beat out me Saturday.  About the opposite how I felt watching Inoue.

If Monster is not fully recovered from what he and Nonito Donaire did to one another a year ago this week, he is quite nearly so.  It feels good to watch a man be excellent at something, whatever that thing be, no?  Inoue is near as we have to a perfect offensive machine.  He is our sport’s apex predator and best fighter.  His attack is varied, educated, balanced, gorgeous.

He turned pro as a light flyweight, won a title there, defended it once, skipped a division and blasted in two rounds Omar Narvaez, a fabled Argentine making his eighth defense of that title.  In three years Inoue outgrew that division, moved to bantamweight and began winning title fights more easily and quickly than he’d done at either his two previous weightclasses.  Nobody does that.  Ask Chocolatito or Usyk.  Fighters gain weight on their chins, not their fists, which is what makes scaling divisions such a feat.

Excepting his fight-of-the-year ordeal with Donaire, Monster hasn’t been tested much in the 11 rounds of his other four bantamweight title fights; it’s not that he’s that much better than what softies he’s been matched with, it’s that he’s that much better than everyone.  We know this because it was a tourney doing his matchmaking in 2018 and 2019, not a promoter.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow All the action as Gervonta Davis and Leo Santa Cruz battle for the WBA Junior Lightweight and Lightweight World Titles.  The card begins at 9 PM ET / 6 PM PT with a three fight undercard featuring Mario Barrios defending the WBA Super Lightweight title against Ryan Karl.  Regis Prograis takes on Juan Heraldez; Isaac Cruz fights Diego Magdaleno.

THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY.  NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED

Round 1: Counter uppercut from Davis..Body shot from Santa Cruz..Uppercut from Davis…Blood from the bridge of Santa Cruz nose..Trading rights..Counter right from Santa Cruz..Davis Pushed down..Right to body y Santa Cruz

Round 2 Right from Santa Cruz..Davis Throws Santa Cruz down on purpose..Santa Cruz lands a flurry on the ropes..Good counter uppercut from Davis

Round 3 Counter left from Davis..Left from Santa Cruz..Left hook..Left..2 Lefts from Davis…Body..

Round 4 Left uppercut and right hook from Davis..Left hook from Santa Cruz..Lead right hook from Davis..Jab from Santa Cruz..Double jab;eft from Davis..Left..Jab to the body

Round 5 Counter left from Davis and another…Right from Santa Cruz..Right hook from Davis

Round 6 Right t o body from Santa Cruz..Nice Right..Mouse under the right eye of Davis..Combination from Santa Cruz..Low Blow from Davis..Left from Davis…Davis landing shots…Combination back from Santa Cruz….HUGE UPPERCUT AND DOWN GOES SANTA CRUZ AND HE IS KNOCKED OUT COLD

Round 1 Left to body from Barrios..Hard left hook

Round 2 Left hook to body from Barrios…Right from Karl  and another right..Chopping right from Barrios…Counter left hook to the body..Bllod from Nose of Karl..Counter right and counter left

Round 3 Lead Left drives Karl back..Right and left from Karl..Body shot from Barrios…Check hook

Round 4 Nice left hook to the body from Barrios..2 left hooks..Right Uppercut..Jab staggers Karl

Round 5 Body shot from Barrios…Jab..Right from Karl

Round 6 Thudding Punches from Barrios…BIG RIGHT AND KARL DROPS TO A KNEE….Straight from Karl..Karl cut on his forehead (Clash of Heads)..Right from Karl…Blood very bad…Doctor checks Karl..Says he can go on..Big uppercut from Karl….BIG RLEFT AND DOWN GOES KARL…FIGHT OVER

Round 1:  Heraldez trying to counter…Overhand left from Prograis..Straight left..Hard left
Round 2 Combination from Conceicao..Prograis lands a left
Round 3 2 left from Heraldez..COUNTER LEFT AND DOWN GOES HERALDEZ.. 4 Lefts from Prograis AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1 Cruz going right at Magdaleno AND DOWN GOES MAGDALENO..HARD BARRAGE AND HUGE UPPERCUT AND DOWN GOES MAGDALENO AND THE FIGHT IS OVER

By Norm Frauenheim—

From presidential to pound-for-pound, it’s the political season. The first will conclude, hopefully, in a few days. Only relief will be unanimous at the end of a presidential bout with more low blows and cheap shots than rules and decorum.

The other will continue, as contentious as it is entertaining. Actually, the pound-for-pound campaign is just starting all over again, re-ignited a couple of weeks ago by Teofimo Lopez’ upset of Vasiliy Lomachenko.

Lopez’ victory in a compelling lightweight bout knocked a leading, longtime contender out of the debate. Lomachenko had been No. 1 or No. 2 in virtually all of the pound-for-pound ratings. But his loss shuffled the deck, moving Lopez into the argument for the first time with a ranking among the Top 10’s second five.

It also left Canelo Alvarez alone and idle at No. 1.

Idle is the issue. Time is the question. How long? How long will Canelo’s lawsuit against streaming-service DAZN and promoter Oscar De La Hoya keep him out of the ring?

There are no victories in inactivity. It’s fair to argue that Canelo should not be penalized because of legal process. But he filed the lawsuit. Fair or not, inactivity is an unwanted consequence. Nevertheless, a prolonged stretch outside of the ring will only erode his claim on No. 1.

Only a current, convincing argument keeps you in the debate. Canelo doesn’t have one. The middleweight champion’s last fight was almost exactly a year ago –  an 11^th-round stoppage of light-heavyweight Sergey Kovalev on Nov. 2, 2019 in Las Vegas.

Since then, a speculated bout with super-middleweight Billy Joe Saunders never happened because of the Pandemic. Then, there was the Canelo lawsuit for $280 million in damages. It’s a huge number, all adding up to potential complications that could keep the lawyers in court and Canelo out of the ring for who-knows-how-long.

Meanwhile, the pound-for-pound contenders and wannabes will fight, each hoping to deliver a performance convincing enough to further their own claim. Two of the contenders will be in the ring Saturday.

In Las Vegas, there is top-five contender Naoya Inoue in his Top Rank debut and his first appearance since his Fight-of-the-Year performance against Nonito Donaire, also last November. Inoue, appropriately nicknamed The Monster for a Halloween-night fight, faces Australian Jason Moloney. Inoue is supposed to win. Still, it’s an interesting bout, in part because Moloney is the bigger fighter. He started at junior featherweight (122 pounds) before moving down to bantam (118).

There’s a reason for weight classes. Inoue, a former junior-flyweight (108) champion, suffered a fractured eye socket in his dramatic victory over Donaire at 118 pounds. That might have been a red flag in Inoue’s attempt to move up the scale. We’ll see. If Inoue emerges unscathed and delivers a big victory, however, his pound-for-pound cred only strengthens.

Meanwhile in London, Oleksandr Usyk has an opportunity to prove he belongs among the top five pound-for-pound contenders and in the heavyweight division. Usyk faces Dereck Chisora at Wembley Arena. Usyk, who can twist his face into a scary Halloween mask, ranks as one of the best cruiserweights ever. But his heavyweight debut in a seventh-round TKO of Chazz Witherspoon Oct. 13, 2019 in Chicago left questions. Usyk can answer and reaffirm his right to pound-for-contention.

Then at the Alamodome in San Antonio, there is pound-for-pound wannabe Gervonta Davis in a 130-pound pay-per-view fight (Showtime) against Leo Santa Cruz in what might be the best Halloween offering. Davis is younger. He turns 26 on Nov. 7, a week after the fight. He possesses more power than Santa Cruz, 32, who was at his best at featherweight.  Davis is bigger.

Does Santa Cruz still have the wheels and energy to take Davis into the 12^th and final round for what would likely be a victory on the scorecards? Can he elude Davis’ power? Can he endure it?

Davis thinks not. So, too, do the oddsmakers, who make Davis a minus-700 favorite, meaning he has an 87.50 percent chance of winning.

“I think the winner should be in the top 10 of the pound-for-pound list,’’ Davis said Thursday at a news conference.

It sounds as if Davis is already campaigning for a ranking that might lead to a showdown with Lopez, who started this edition of a pound-for-pound debate that promises to get very interesting.   

By Bart Barry-

Friday in Mexico City in the co-main and main event of a DAZN card Nicaraguan Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez defended his WBA super flyweight title by lopsided decision over Mexican Israel “Jiga” Gonzalez, and Mexican “El Gallo” Juan Francisco Estrada defended his Ring super flyweight championship by stopping Mexican Carlos “Principe” Cuadras.  Rumor is, Chocolatito-Gallo 2 is next.  How blessed are we!

What a thrill it is to watch Chocolatito and to see other aficionados on Twitter, men whose opinion one respects, watching Chocolatito and their love for this brutal thing of ours and our love for the way Chocolatito does what he does.  May he continue to do so long as he wishes.

Three years since his brutal loss to Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, three years and a title match and title defense in a division Rat King made him look far too small to compete in, Chocolatito forces us to consider it was a styles mismatch more than an illadvised curtain call that put him bellyup in Carson, Calif.  His matchmaking has been far carefuller since 2017, yes, but still he is beating larger and younger men in world-title matches, which a fraction of prizefighters in history can say.

Friday in the opening rounds of his match with Jiga, Chocolatito did what Papachenko wishes his son had done with a larger, younger man: jab with him, step inside his power, let years of mastery dictate the flow of his attack.  Chocolatito is a greater prizefighter and man than Vasyl Lomachenko because of the choices he makes, because he cannot abide not-knowing the way Lomachenko can.  It can never be said of Chocolatito “if only he’d started to attack earlier” because he attacks from every opening bell.  If that means he loses a vicious KO-by rather than what Mexicans call a “polemical decision” then he suffers that fate ungladly but surely.

It’s why he inspires a disproportionate love in his American admirers, men who have very little in common with a 115-pound Nicaraguan but stalk him nevertheless on YouTube and Tokyo broadcasts at various hours of the night and early morning, knowing there’s a purity in who Chocolatito is – respectful of every opponent’s humanity before and after every fight as he is disrespectful of their volition during – that is so different from what swindles American prizefighting and its swindler promoters and swindler networks and, yes, swindler fighters, too, give them.

What doesn’t stop being surprising is how little malice Chocolatito brings to the act of striking other men about their heads and bodies.  Maybe there’s viciousness in his heart masked adeptly by layers of professionalism and mastery.  That is doubtful.  Contempt, hatred, malice, viciousness – these things exact a tariff and a half on their bearers, sapping them, and does Chocolatito ever look tired? 

Friday he went out, removed his much longer opponent’s advantages of length and speed in three rounds then began to strike Jiga with nigh every punch in boxing’s lexicon, breathing metronomically as he did, looking at all times unperturbed.  When Chocolatito found he could no longer miss with his cross, after measuring Jiga for it early (inching his lead foot behind a blinding jab), he began to miss with it intentionally to cock his hips and shoulders for the lefthook to Jiga’s body.  At super flyweight Chocolatito no longer carries the concusiveness he did at lower weights, but he still has more than enough to break opponents’ wills.  Jiga looked little better than discouraged in his final 20 minutes with Chocolatito.

Soon after Chocolatito defended his title Gallo Estrada made a defense of his own against a considerably better opponent, countryman Carlos Cuadras, getting himself felled early, and finishing Cuadras, who’d never before been finished by anyone, not even semi-prime Chocolatito four years ago, in the 11th round of a fantastic scrap. 

Estrada is special.  Super flyweight would belong to him alone were it not for Chocolatito’s return in 2020.

After their matches Estrada, face badly swollen, and Chocolatito embraced, sat beside one another and conspired to have a rematch of their 2012 fight.  Estrada’s strongest words were for neither Chocolatito nor Cuadras but for his promoter, and his desire to get paid well for a rematch with Chocolatito.  Estrada got decisioned seven pounds and eight years ago by an ascendent master.  Estrada would immediately rise to 112 pounds and not lose again in 10 fights until an extremely close decision with Sor Rungvisai, three months after Rat King sent Chocolatito to a California hospital.  Estrada’s first fight with Sor Rungvisai was so good they had a rematch 14 months later.  Estrada won that, close but unanimous.

Which brings us to Chocolatito-Gallo 2, a rematch that almost certainly will happen and just as certainly will be fabulous.  Had they never fought before, odds should favor Estrada heavily; he has had better success against better fighters at super flyweight, he is the slightly larger man, he is today the quicker man of both foot and fist, and he is a masterful boxer.  They did fight before, though, and Estrada is fully cognizant of just how great Chocolatito is.  Too, Chocolatito’s style, volume-puncher, tends to unwind boxers like Estrada, no matter how good they be.

Chocolatito-Estrada 2 will be like only Chocolatito-Estrada 2.  Both men are originals.  No comparisons are needed.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action LIVE as Khabib Nurmagomedov defends the UFC Lightweight Title against Justin Gaethje

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Round 1 Big right from Khabib..Counter from Gaethje..Jab from Khabib..Leg Kick from Gaethje..Right..Body kick from Khabib..Knee…Left….Body Kick..Body shot and left hook From Gaethje..Right over the top..Counter left,,Takedown by Khabib..Khabib has an armbar

Round 2 Leg Kick from Khabib..Left from Gaethje..Leg Kick..Takedown by Khabib…Triangle Choke…GAETHJE TAPS

Round 1 Leg kick by Whittaker..Leg Kick by Cannonier drops Whittaker..He gets up…Upper body kick by Whittaker..Nice Jab..2 kicks by Cannonier..Counter by Whittaker…Combination…High Kick..

Round 2 Double jab from Whittaker…Counter right from Cannonier..Swelling around right eye of Cannnier..Right..Straight for Whittaker..Double jab–right hand

Round 3 1-2 then a big kick rocks Cannonier…Cannonier is down…Taking shots on the ground…Body shot from Cannonier..Right hurts Whittaker..

Round 1 Body shot from Harris…Head punch..Straight from Volkoff..Jab..big Left…Right from Harris..Nice right..Right hurts Harris.

Round 2 Volkoff LANDS A KICK TO THE BODY..HE HIS HURT…VOLKOFF LANDS SOME SOLID SHOTS AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

Round 1 HAWES LANDS A HUGE RIGHT THAT KNOCKS MALKOUN DOWN AND THE FIGHT IS OVER IN LESS THEN 20 SECONDS

Round 1 Shakirova lands a right..Spinning back fist..Good counter right from Murphy..Right from Shakirova…Elbows from Murphy..2 Kicks to the body from Shakirova

Round 2 Combination from Murphy..Takedown….Murphy gets the CHOKE AND SHAKIROVA TAPS

Round 1 Front Kick by Ankalaev..Right Hook..Over hand right by Cutelaba..Ankalaev lands a knee…STRAIGHT LEFT KNOCKS DOWN CUTELABA….HUGE LEFT AND DOWN GOES CUTELABA..9 HUGE GROUND AND POUND STRIKES AND FIGHT IS OVER