Follow all the action LIVE from Madison Square Garden as Gennady Golovkin and Daniel Jacobs square of the world Middleweight championship.  There will be a 3 fight undercard that starts at 9 PM et / 6 PM headlined by Roman Gonzalez defending the WBC Super Flyweight title against Srisaket Sor Rungvisai.  Also Carlos Cuadrad battes David Carmona.  The action kicks off with Ryan Martin against Bryant Cruz

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Round 1: Jacobs lands a combination

round 2  Left inside from Jacobs..Jab

Round  3 Hard uppercut from Golovkin

Round 4..BIG LEFT AND DOWN GOES JACOBS..Golovkin landing heavy rights..Left inside from Golovkin..trading jabs..Left and right frin Golovkin

Round 5 Big right from Golovkin…Jab,,Hard left to body,,Big right…Left from Jacobs

Round 6 Jacobs jabbing from southpaw stance..Staright left..Right from Golovkin..Body shot from Jacobs..Good right..Right from Golovkin..Body combination from Jacobs

Round 7 Combination from Jacobs..Hard right from Golovkin…Left and right from Jacobs…Good right..right and jab from Golovkin..Straight left from Jacobs..1-2…Hard jab from Golovkin…Great action after the bell

Round 8 Hard right from Jacobs…Straight left..Body work..Combination on the inside..Left to the head..Right from Golovkin..

Round 9 Jab from Golovkin…Jab. from Jacobs..Good right..left to body..Jab and uppercut from Golovkin…Hard uppercut hurts Jacobs,,Big flurry on the ropes

Round 10 Jacobs popping the jab..Hard right,,Jab,,1-2..Good left

Round 11 Right from Golovkin..uppercut..Left from Jacobs..Combination inside..good uppercut..Combination..Jacobs faster hands are the difference

Round 12 Right from Golovkin..B0dy shot from Jacobs..Good right from Golovkin..Hard right and uppercut from Jacobs..Left from Jacobs..

115-112 twice…114-113 golovkin

Round 1 Body shot from Rungvisai..left and right…HUGE RIGHT TO THE BODY AND DOWN GOES GONZALEZ..

Round 2 Right from Rungvisai..head combination..Right from Gonzalez…combination..right,,,

Round 3 Gonzalez is cut around his right eye.Left from Runvisai..Great toe to toe action..Right from Gonzalez..Cut ruled a headbutt

Round 4  Left from Rungvisai..Good right, left and left hook from Gonzalez..Hard right from Gonzalez..striaght rght and body shot..4 hard shots to the head

Round 5 Right to body from Gonzalez..left from Rungvisai..Body shot..right from Gonzalez..Right Combination to the head..

Round 6 Straight right from Gonzalez…Left from Rungvisai…1-2 from Gonzalez..Hard body shot..ANother head butt/cut on Gonzalez

Round 7 Right from Gonzalez..Good right to the body…

Round 8 Right to body from Rungvisai..right to head,,hard right inside..right,,,left,,,hard left

Round 9 Gonzalez lands a left..Combination from Rungvisai…right from Gonzalez..Left hook..Uppercut from Rungvisai..Left from Gonzalez…

Round 10 left from Gonzalez..Left from Rungvisai..Right back Rungvisai..

Round 11  Hard right from Rungvisai

Round 12 Left from Rungvisai…Hard right from Gonzalez..Left from Rungvisai..

113-113 ; 114-112 TWO TIMES FOR RUNGVISAI

Round 1: Cuadras gets in a left hook..Right to body..1-2 from Carmona…hard left hook from Cuadras

Round 2 Left hook from Carmona

Round 3

Round 4 Combination from Carmona..Right over top from Cuadras….Left hook..1-2 to the body

Round 5 Left from Cuadras

Round 6   Right from Carmona..left from Cuadras..right from Carmona

Round 7 Jab from Cuadras

Round 8 left from Carmona..left to body

Round 9 1-2 from Carmona..

Round 10 Jab from Carmona….1-2 from Cuadras..jab..Body shot from Carmona…Body from Cuadras..Left..

CUADRAS WINS 97-93 TWICE AND 96-94

Round 1-7 :  Martin dominating usinh is length

Round 8:   hard ComBINATION AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

WINNER BY TKO –RYAN MARTIN

By Norm Frauenheim-

It’s a many-sided fight, loaded with intrigue and potential for explosive surprises at just about every level. But will Gennady Golovkin-Danny Jacobs Saturday night sell?

It’s an HBO pay-per-view fight screaming for attention during the first week of the NCAA basketball tournament.

Although already perilously close to joining boxing at the sporting fringe from November through February, college basketball still comes off the edge and squarely into the spotlight for three weeks from mid March to early April.

It’s a spring rite, an annual fast break full of moms and pops with brackets in one hand and a few dollars to wager in the other. Office pools are everywhere and that means everybody is watching, especially during the first couple of rounds when big upsets are likely.

If you’ve ever been in Las Vegas for a fight during the first week of the NCCA tournament, you know what I’m talking about. The books are jammed. Lines stretch from the betting windows almost out on to The Strip with people wanting to bet on the next Cinderella. A very good fight might be at the casino’s arena that Saturday night. But nobody knows about it.

In America’s virtual village, Golovkin-Jacobs, at New York’s Madison Square Garden, is that fight. Looks to be good, could be great. Jacobs is a terrific story. He beat cancer and he’s been beating everybody in front of him ever since.

Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) has been that force of nature, an unbeaten and unstoppable middleweight who hopes to pound out a legend the equal of any in a division with a rich history. His bout against Jacobs has been called a steppingstone to a bigger confrontation with Canelo Alvarez. Yet, Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) is a challenge – perhaps GGG’s biggest ever as he approaches another birthday. He’ll be 35 on April 8.

If the fight had been in mid-February or mid-April, it would have had a better chance at a solid PPV number. In an era of declining expectations, solid would mean anything from, say, 250,000 to 300,000. GGG’s pay-per-view sample is too small to judge. He has fought on PPV only once, against David Lemieux in October, 2015 in an HBO telecast that did a reported 150,000.

With the Canelo showdown still on the horizon and the compelling Jacobs story as part of Saturday’s promotion, there’s more reason to watch. But it happens on a day with second-round NCAA tournament games on CBS, TNT and TBS scheduled from noon (ET) to 9:30 p.m. (ET) and all without a PPV price tag.

The day’s final tournament game is scheduled a half-hour after the start of the PPV telecast of a card that includes pound-for-pound king and junior-bantamweight Roman Gonzalez (46-0, 38 KOs) against Srisaket Sor Rungvisai (41-4-1, 38 KOs).

It’s a good card. Maybe great. On a day full of basketball for free, however, is it worth $54.99 for the standard telecast, $64.99 for high-def? After wall-to-wall hoops, I’m guessing a lot of casual fans will just pass and wait for the replay.

That’s unfortunate, especially for the under-appreciated GGG, Jacobs and Gonzalez.

GGG, who sells out arenas, draws a solid audience in non-PPV bouts. His victory over Kell Brook in September drew 843,000 for a London bout that happened earlier in the day in the U.S. His April victory over Dominic Wade at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif., posted a biggie, 1.34 million.

Let’s assume Golovkin does the expected and beats Jacobs. If the victory is spectacular, yet the PPV number isn’t, it creates a potential complication for him in negotiations with Canelo, whose May 6 bout with fellow Mexican Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. could be PPV blockbuster. Let’s assume Canelo does the expected and beats Chavez Jr., yet with a PPV number three to four times bigger than GGG’s number against Jacobs.

What should be a 50-50 fight, won’t be in terms of what Canelo says he’s worth. He’ll ask for the lion’s share of a 60-40 or 55-45 split. GGG, who has been the consensus champ at 160, wouldn’t be the first fighter to be insulted by that kind of proposal. He also wouldn’t be the first to walk away from the table, further delaying a fight the business desperately needs.

That begs a question: On a weekend dominated by attention on the NCAA tournament, why-oh-why is GGG-Jacobs on pay-per-view? That answer is a slam-dunk.

By Bart Barry

Saturday at Madison Square Garden on the undercard of HBO’s pay-per-view match for the unified middleweight championship of the world, the world’s best prizefighter, Nicaraguan Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez, will defend his super flyweight title against Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek, a fighter whose recent reign of terror on Thailand’s amateur program Chocolatito should bring to a brisk and violent conclusion – and perhaps rekindle in so doing.

After the decade Chocolatito labored in obscurity it brings no joy to write a match of his does not belong on American television much less HBO PPV, but heavens to Murgatroyd, this one verily does not. Instead this represents the sort of back-wages wager Bernard Hopkins taught prizefighters to make with their managers and promoters and broadcasters, today marginally more one-in-the-same as they’ve ever been, once acclaim was had and serious observers were seriously interested in observing one fight. We shall hitherto call it the Morrade Hakkar Clause in homage to the silly Frenchman HBO approved for the second defense of a middleweight title Hopkins won from Felix Trinidad in the greatest moment of Hopkins’ career to that point. Before Hopkins’ negative fighting style and self-intoxication were considered alternately brilliant and charismatic they were considered properly unbearable but HBO was hot on the trail of a rematch between Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr. in 2002 and eager to agree to most any demands Hopkins made, and Hopkins’ demands, inspired by Jones’ demands, were wild for a man who couldn’t sell 8,000 tickets in his hometown but reasonable through a lens of his accomplishments and Time Warner’s annual corporate revenues. HBO acquiesced and Hopkins-Hakkar was atrocious.

And Trinidad put Hopkins through fractionally the suffering Chocolatito experienced against Carlos Cuadras in September, writing of back wages, which is part of the reason Chocolatito mentioned HBO by name in December:

“I’m 29 years-old, and one has to seize the moment we are in,” Chocolatito said. “I will give a rematch to Cuadras, but I need a good purse from HBO. I believe I deserve it.”

As a craftsman of course Chocolatito deserves it but as an entertainer he likely doesn’t and it’s no one’s fault he believes he does because, after all, America sells meritocracy to the rest of the world, and so why shouldn’t the prizefighter American aficionados consider the world’s best make 0.4-percent the purse the last guy Americans considered the world’s best made against Manny Pacquiao? Because we didn’t know what the hell we were doing a few years ago and we still don’t – that’s the honest answer, but what American businessman’s honest enough to say it, and what Nicaraguan’d be ingenuous enough to believe it?

Instead we’ll cite the dynamics of a free market, when convenient, while having the world’s best fighter defending a title in his fourth weightclass on the undercard of a middleweight-unification bout, HBO champion vs. PBC, between two men who’ve never chanced a moment outside the middleweight division, though the HBO champion is frequently reportedly willing to fight anyone between 154 and 168 pounds and hobbled only by junior middleweights who won’t come up to 160 and super middleweights who won’t come down to 160 but otherwise ready, willing and able. The main event is expected to be mismatched enough for last week’s prefight promotion to be about gossiping whether the HBO champion has time between Saturday’s inevitable defense and September’s better-paying inevitable defense to make another inevitable defense in June.

Not to be outdone Roman Gonzalez will fight Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek, a man whose last two opponents sported a cumulative record of 0-0 before Sor Rungvisai, in his 45th and 46th prizefights respectively, welcomed them harshly to the professional ranks, in a match Gonzalez will win decisively no matter his opponent’s physical advantage. There’s no way to rehearse for someone gifted as Gonzalez, though if fighting men in their pro debuts properly prepares Sor Rungvisai for Chocolatito, one weeps for the futures of amateur heavyweight boxers with Deontay Wilder on the loose. Absurd as we rightly consider most athletic commissions in the U.S. how about that Thai commission(s) approving the WBC silver super flyweight champion for four 2016 matches against opponents with a cumulative record of 15-19! (Sor Rungvisai fought as many men making their pro debuts in his eighth year of professional fighting in Thailand as he did the year he made his own pro debut.)

There’s no occasion for not being snide on occasions such as these but enough of the griping: Any opportunity to see Chocolatito ply his wares must be embraced because Chocolatito is a rare talent, and as aficionados we owe HBO a debt of gratitude for bringing him more exposure, a debt all aficionados will argue is still much less than the cost of an HBO subscription and quarterly pay-per-view bills, but some gratitude’s due nevertheless. From Saturday’s victory things’ll go one of two ways for Chocolatito: After taking another 36 minutes of abuse from a career super flyweight he’ll double his demands for a rematch with Carlos Cuadras and price himself back to obscurity, or he’ll glide so easily through Sor Rungvisai and receive such disapprobation from the Nicaraguan media – “Stop talking about money like an American, Alexi never did; you’re better than that, you’re a Nicaraguan” – he’ll abandon his campaign to match compensation to achievement and return to beating fellow world champions for somewhat less than he deserves but way more than another 115-pound athlete makes in the world.

Making him what Floyd Mayweather would call a “dummy” and historians will call an “all-time great.”

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Frauenheim-

A couple of things didn’t happen during the last week, neither one much of a surprise and yet both significant for a sport that is either dying, or rebounding, or just going nowhere.

Item One: Nothing about Keith Thurman’s split decision over Danny Garcia last Saturday resembled Sugar Ray Leonard’s classic over Thomas Hearns in 1981. It was more like the Leonard-Hearns rematch in 1989. Don’t remember that draw? Neither does anybody else.

Item Two: Manny Pacquiao and Amir Khan announced a fight in the United Arab Emirates and then found out a promised $38-million was, well, fake news. The real story: There was no money, no fight at all.

What to make of it?

Bottom line, there is no more lotto at the end of a boxing rainbow that appeared like an illusion in 2015 when Floyd Mayweather Jr. collected between $220-and-$230 million for a dull bout that netted Pacquiao a reported $180 million.

Promoter Bob Arum, who warned Pacquiao about another UAE tease, told the Los Angeles Times that the Filipino and advisor Michael Koncz “were talking to the wrong people.’’

Truth is, there are no right people anywhere – not in the UAE, or Dubai, or Vegas, or New York — willing to invest $38 million in a boxing card these days.

The business is starting over, which might be bad news for Pacquiao, a Filipino Senator who is generous to a fault and always looking for a way to fund his next political campaign.

He needs the money. That’s no secret. If the Senator is entering his prime as a politician, however, he’s past his peak as a fighter. No secret there, either.

Pacquiao, who was guaranteed $4 million for a victory over Jessie Vargas in his last bout, is caught in a changing market. The irony is that he helped fuel the astonishing run-up of purses that climaxed with his loss to Mayweather.

Now, however, there are younger welterweights willing to fight for a fraction of the wages he and Mayweather earned.

That brings us back to Thurman and Garcia. Each had career-high guarantees of $2 million for a CBS fight that generated big ratings in prime time. The audience averaged 3.74 million over the 12 rounds and peaked at 5.1 million.

The fight itself is hard to judge in terms of whether it won over some disaffected fans. There were no knockdowns. Over the final three rounds, Thurman played it safe, staying out of harm’s way. The split scorecards say that was a risky tactic. But, in the end, it worked for him.

The bigger debate is about whether the bout was another turn-off for casual fans. The guess in this corner: It wasn’t. There was no pay-per-view, a fee that almost ensures outrage if it isn’t a classic.

The parallel to the first Leonard-Hearns bout was an impossible reach. But it was free. It didn’t cost anybody $100 for the right to get bored and then angry, all in high definition.

In part, that was always Al Haymon’s plan when he introduced Premier Boxing Champions a couple of years ago. He foresaw that pay-per-view was killing the business. His validation rests in the numbers for CBS’ primetime telecast.

Mayweather-Pacquiao set a pay-per-view record. At its peak, the 5.1 million for Thurman-Garcia was bigger than the 4.6 million PPV number for Mayweather-Pacquiao.

Under the old PPV model, Thurman and Garcia would still be invisible to casual fans. They aren’t now. They are introducing themselves to a bigger audience and doing it for price that might sustain the business as it finally moves into the post Mayweather-Pacquiao era.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn New York, Keith “One Time” Thurman won a split decision over Danny “Swift” Garcia adding another alphabet trinket to his collection while doing little to stake his claim to welterweight supremacy. What distinguished Thurman-Garcia was not an interplay of fists, but an absence thereof. Thurman earned the victory because in those early moments when a fight appeared imminent, he seemed most eager to conjure one—and because when he wanted anything but Garcia could not coerce him enough to the contrary.

There were moments of drama between Thurman and Garcia, to be sure. Such moments are near guaranteed every time Thurman steps into the ring, and they came, as they almost exclusively now do in his fights, in the opening rounds. It is in those rounds that Thurman best embodies his moniker, trying to spark opponents with his considerable athleticism and less considerable power, throwing punches with a ferocity that speaks to the sense of performance he does not always honor but always carries within him. Thurman landed a few of those punches on Garcia who, whatever he suffered, responded without a hint of retreat, cranking little semi-circles from his left shoulder, measuring the counter left hooks that would soon enough inter Thurman’s daring.

Garcia proved, rather unsurprisingly, that he could handle whatever evil was delivered in Thurman’s early gusto. The clearer that message became, the more Thurman abandoned his combinations, his connection with the ground when he threw them, and eventually, his commitment to the moment. His chances of a finish quick and spectacular having evaporated, Thurman employed instead a brand of “boxing” antithetical to the reputation he—less convinced and less convincingly—encourages we preserve. If this is what passes for an offensive welterweight, perhaps Floyd Mayweather, who also landed less than fifteen punches a round but was at least skilled enough to stand directly in front of his opponent while doing so, was less a defensive specialist than he is often (disparagingly) remembered as.

For his part, Garcia was hardly better, worse even, if you consider his effort to take the rounds Thurman needed to spare and was willing to concede. Still, he stood his ground against Thurman, as he did against former boogeyman, Lucas Matthysse, digging the balls of his feet into the canvas and committing fearlessly a retort to every Thurman punch.

How undauntedly Garcia stares down daunting power; how quickly does this defiance shake an opponent’s confidence. Garcia is a more complete fighter than Thurman, there is more that is impressive and instructive in his game. But when all he needed were the basics, when a double jab would have won him the rounds Thurman tried to steal with an ill-placed blow and a cloud of smoke, Garcia too often holstered his weapons. If you believe enough of the Thurman narrative, he left an opportunity to distinguish himself in the ring. Garcia left victory there, however, and that mentality will make an opponent of him sooner rather than later.

What is perhaps most frustrating about what transpired is the absence of consequences both fighters stand to face for their performance. This is not to say fighters should be punished for poor performances, at least not exactly. But the lack of fallout for failing to live up to expectations, whether those expectations are the product of promotional ballyhoo or the proclamations of the fighters themselves, is a bit difficult to take. Again Thurman was placed in a position to distinguish himself as the future made present, and instead he was again left speaking laudatorily of his boxing ability (evermore a Thurman euphemism for a night he goes the distance). Garcia merely adds a disputed loss to his trio of disputed victories. He is likely to see little financial penalty despite scaling back his competition again in the aftermath of a loss that, as close as it was, he need waste no one’s time regrouping from. Matchmaking is already too glacial in its pace, and the concept of the comeback feels empty when a defeat carries none of the penalty, physical or otherwise, that need be recovered from.

The hope is that Thurman moves quickly, moves within the next four or five months to an opponent who presents the type of challenge that will not allow him to bore. Again, Thurman is a fighter, and pressed—as he was by Shawn Porter last year—he often responds like one. Whatever his limitations, he appreciates his responsibility to the crowd. And while he is not fighter enough to consistently embrace that responsibility a better opponent might give him no choice but to. For Garcia, there should be only fights that demand he comport himself like a loss means more than simply defeat—no more fights whose outcomes, good or bad, seem to barely register with him. And if that is asking too much of either fighter so too is asking for a charitable assessment of them.

By Bart Barry

Saturday welterweight Keith “One Time” Thurman majority-decisioned Danny “Swift” Garcia to become the undefeated, undisputed, unified champion of the PBC. The fight went along like PBC championship bouts often do, with neither man felled or bloodied and both in conscious attendance at the reading of official scorecards, guardedly optimistic. As PBC tradition tends to dictate the gloves looked too big in round 12 – Thurman’s patriotic Rivals and Garcia’s neon-canary Reyes – and both men looked fresh enough to box till a 15th round despite laying everything on the line and giving all their blood sweat tears nuts and guts etc.

It wasn’t as much of a PBC-style spectacle as others in the storied management company’s predecessor years because it featured evenly matched titlists, something no one in Al Haymon’s outfit anticipated being fiscally mandated until 2020 at the earliest. Turns out, not even casual fans are quite dumb as the PBC business model supposed which might’ve been obvious – not even the diehardest Patriots fan’d watch a season full of Pats v. Browns – had more than mere market saturation been considered during the company’s formation but apparently wasn’t.

Danny Garcia has long been a Haymon-model outlier while Keith Thurman’d be its purest incarnation were it not for Deontay “Windmill” Wilder. That started Thurman a few points ahead on PBC scorecards that came in fairly for a reason like: Garcia is a 140-pound athlete who outgrew the junior welterweight division, not a welterweight, and therefore his properly applied counterpunches did a few fractions less than sufficient to win rounds Thurman successfully stole in their final 10 seconds. Fair play all round.

But color me enduringly unimpressed with Thurman, now the unified welterweight champion of the PBC if probably not the world. What adjustments did Thurman make Saturday? He holstered his righthand for about three rounds after Garcia baloonpricked his liver a twotime but there’s no calling that a strategy or tactic when words like “compromise” and “surrender” remain available. Aside from that Thurman ferally overshot with 2/3 his powerpunches and did the retreating resting skipping thing the PBC calls “boxing” in homage to master “boxer” Amir Khan’s signature flight pattern, while Thurman must’ve reminded his Florida trainer of no one so much as fellow Floridian Jeff Lacy who once walloped hapless opponents with thrice Thurman’s rage till he came to someone competent and hadn’t the squareroot of a plan b.

Thurman manages to have roughly Lacy’s accuracy with a whole lot more hedging on his shots, often swimming tentatively forward in a way Lacy never did. Combine that with PBC matchmaking and opponents born in lower weight divisions, with the noble exception of Thurman’s single 2016 tilt against Shawn Porter, and you have a unified champion and comparative superstar, as planned, even if not yet sharing celebratory stature with Deontay “Wilder &” Wilder.

I began watching Saturday’s fight with no particular sense for it – and again, credit where it’s due: with no certain forecast – but a suspicion Garcia’s craft and experience’d crack Thurman for having faced at least three men superior to Thurman at junior welterweight (and probably four [Nate Campbell] and possibly five [Kendall Holt]), and when Thurman spent the better part of rounds 4-6 with his right elbow protectivepinned to his liver one rightly assumed Thurman’d get wild and get countered properly, and he did, and it didn’t matter. Credit to Thurman’s whiskers or PBC’s matchmaker but really not both.

Even in losing a fair decision Garcia was simply the more compelling man to watch Saturday in part because he plays against type in a way few of his coworkers do: He dresses gaudily and gives his dad’s jackassery free reign but then throws punches proportionately audacious, which in a different time might’ve been expected but surely isn’t these days. Experience leads one to anticipate Garcia’s ringwalk anticipates an accordion’s posture before adversity but Garcia does the opposite surprisingly often – he imperils himself and chances embarrassment or worse by whipping hooks with little technique allotted to selfpreservation.

Say what you will about his dad, their pairing works very well and not merely for the obvious reason Angel Garcia makes a target of himself for the terminally anxious so his son isn’t one. Somewhere in Garcia’s audacity lies a trust in his father’s judgement; if Garcia’s gambles on hooks bankrupt him, Dad will intervene before any too-permanent damage accrues. That’s much more than can be said for most prizefighter-trainer relationships, isn’t it? Tomorrow Garcia can fill PBC’s welterweight-gatekeeper role when Robert Guerrero and Shawn Porter are unavailable and spoil a few coronations, too, but his days as undefeated top billing are through.

Which leaves the PBC welterweight champion Keith Thurman, captain of the junior varsity, in a better professional position than his resume or technique necessarily justify. According to PBC highlights Thurman is all things to all people: a ferocious beast in the ring and a philosopher of pacifism outside it, a classically trained pugilist and a selftrained flautist, a man so mindful he meditates before cameramen. Neither Thurman nor his matches are nearly good as PBC tells us they are, but that’s where we find ourselves, still, in 2017.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action LIVE from Ringside as undefeated welterweight champions Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia get it on in a much anticipated bout from Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.  The action kicks off at 9 PM ET / 6 PM PT with a Junior Middleweight bout between Erickson Lubin and Jorge Cota

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Round 1: Thurman trying to push the action…Hard right from Garcia..Counter right..left to body..left..Huge left and right from Thurman…Right…right to head

Round 2 Right to body for Thurman..Right from Garcia..Right from Thurman..another right over the top

Round 3 Right from Thurman..right to the head..Combination from Garcia..Jab from Thurman..Right to body for Garcia..

Round 4 Counter right to body from Garcia..Jab..Counter right..Big right from Thurman..jab..

Round 5 Right from Thurman…Hard right..right…Counter left From Garcia..

Round 6 Thurman sneaks in a right to the body.Counter left..Good right from Garcia..Overhand right from Thurman

Round 7 Right from Garcia..Combination..Good right from Thurman..overhand right from Garcia..Garcia warned for a low blow..Left from Garcia..

Round 8 Right to body by Garcia..Left hook from Thurman..Jab..Counter right from Garcia..

Round 9 Left from Thurman..Uppercut..Right from Garcia

Round 10 Right from Garcia..jab..right..Thurman lands an overhand right..Hard uppercut from Thurman..Counter right from Garcia.

Round 11 Counter left from Garcia.Garcia working  on the ropes..

Round 12 Counter right from Thurman..right…Right from Garcia..Hard combination..

116-112 THURMAN…115-113 GARCIA…115-113 THURMAN

Round 1 Left from Lubin..

Round 2: Body work for Cota…Right hook from Lubin..Jab from Cota..Hard straight left and right from Lubin..

Round 3 Lubin working body on the ropes…Hard combination rocks Cota..Hard overhand left

Round 4 HUGE LEFT AND DOWN GOES COTA…HE GETS UP BUT THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

By Norm Frauenheim-

Boxing loves history. It remembers, yet it can’t repeat. Not yet, anyway. I’m not sure it has to. These days, just a good fight is enough. Keith Thurman-Danny Garcia Saturday in CBS prime time looks as if it fits the latter part of the bill.

With the year only a couple months old, it’s the best in 2017 thus far. It has a chance to be better than anything seen last year. History can wait, perhaps on a rematch in the evolution of a classic rivalry. Yet, the parallels are there, as irresistible as they are inevitable. In part, that’s why Sugar Ray Leonard will be there as a CBS analyst and a ringside symbol of what the sport would like to be all over again.

Thurman, the WBA’s welterweight champion, and Garcia, the WBC champ, are fighting for the same titles that were at stake when Leonard and Thomas Hearns battled each nearly 36 years ago in a September, 1981 bout that ranks among the all-time classics.

Changes since Leonard prevailed — retaining the WBA’s belt and taking the WBC’s version from Hearns in a 14th-round stoppage– at an outdoor ring behind Las Vegas Caesars Place and before a reported network television audience of 300 million – have forever altered boxing. There are countless titles and more television networks than acronyms. There are fewer fighters these days. More great athletes risk head trauma on the football field than they do in the ring anymore.

“Fortunately, I was in an era where there were just a lot of guys out there who were so talented,’’ Leonard said during a conference call before Saturday’s bout (PT 6-8 pm/ET 9-11 pm) at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

For Leonard, there were so-so many, although it’s ironic that the rivalry with Hearns was a business partnership that fell short of its potential. They fought a second time, nearly eight years later in 1989.

But it was forgettable, a draw that left nobody interested in a third step of a trilogy. Still, there was Roberto Duran and Iran Barkley and Marvin Hagler and all of the other legends of that time. There were so many chances at creating legacies, and Leonard, Hearns, Duran and Hagler did exactly that.

There aren’t as many opportunities these days and perhaps the willingness to do so just isn’t there anymore. The game conducts itself according to Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s business model: The biggest reward for the smallest risk. It worked for Mayweather, who fulfilled his Money nickname millions of times over. But it has created problems for fighters who might have had a better chance at a legacy for themselves in Leonard’s era.

“I always thought that we had to continue to raise the bar as a fighter, as a champion, and continue to fight better and better competition,’’ he said “When I was fighting, I swear, I wanted to be the underdog -psychologically, spiritually and mentally. If I wasn’t challenged, if I wasn’t considered somewhat of an underdog, I couldn’t perform the way I normally would. It’s what would get me going.’’

For Thurman (27-0, 22 KOs) and Garcia (33-0, 19 KOs) those kind of challenges loom in a bout that is only the third between unbeaten welterweight champions and the first since Felix Trinidad’s controversial victory over Oscar De La Hoya in 1999.

Thurman-Garcia is also intriguing for elements not reflected in their records. Thurman is a compelling personality. He is boxing’s enlightened warrior, a fighter who studies Eastern religions, plays music and talks philosophy.

He’s likable, the flip side to Danny Garcia’s offensive trainer and father, Angel, whose racial slurs at a news conference a few weeks ago left questions about whether the New York State Athletic Commission would license his to work the corner. It did, which adds a controversial edge. Will Angel’s presence put additional pressure on his son?

Danny Garcia is likable in his own way, but his father has turned him into the bad guy. Every great fight needs some good-and-evil, but Danny Garcia has been forced into an ill-fitting role by an offensive dad.

Meanwhile, the ever-poised Thurman has kept his cool throughout the race-baiting rhetoric from Angel Garcia. At opening bell, however, will he be motivated to make the son pay for what the dad said? There’s a danger in that, too especially against the counter-punching Danny Garcia, whose left is as lethal as any if it is allowed to land.

There’s potential on several levels for the kind of fight that Leonard experienced and endured.

“It is an out-of-body experience,’’ said Leonard, who on Wednesday picked Thurman to win. “It’s déjà vu. Like holy, I’m 60. It’s a kind of thing that is so special. It’s so rare of a unification. it seems like. It speaks volumes to me as far as the significance of it. And these guys, Keith and Danny, they know it.

“They realize it.”

Leonard has been there. Maybe, Thurman Garcia and will get there.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Ala., Alabamian Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder dropped California’s Gerald Washington in round 5 then went nuts long enough to frighten a technical stoppage out the match’s Canadian referee and retain a WBC heavyweight title.

The preceding words are believable if you didn’t endure the PBC broadcast but incredible if you did. The Bronze Bomber: Seeing is disbelieving.

It’s nigh impossible to write well about mediocre subjects and far as Wilder is from even mediocre this column ought be submitted in Crayola magicmarker on cardboard so adjust expectations accordingly. Things aren’t even farcical with Wilder anymore because they’re not fun and that might be the cruelest turn of all: Wilder was a fun dude when first he turned pro. You knew then at ringside he’d not amount to much of a prizefighter but tall as he was and friendly, too, you cheered for him to sprint through hopeless men a few years before his handlers fed him to a Klitschko or less but never did you or anyone ringside foretell a record of 38-0 (37 KOs) because lads like Harold Sconiers (17-20-2) and Jason Gavern (25-16-4) are both rarer and better than Wilder’s handlers expected or at least rarer than the rest of us did.

Yet here we are, miraculously enough; Wilder’s approaching one of the great matchmaking feats in modern boxing history and doing it with a 97-percent knockout ratio that makes a piker of K2 Promotions’ stabling of cautiously matched titlists. Oh, but Wilder wants to travel to foreign lands to obliterate formidable challengers and true champions alike, but nobody can pass a drug test or meet reasonable contract demands or whatever else. There’s far too much irony in boxing to believe anything that happens anywhere but the blue canvas and fly the most-feared canard in Wilder’s direction, but if you’re PBC and you can fool naifs in Alabama the target is altogether too rich not to try.

Wilder looked awful in the opening rounds Saturday and the closing seconds, too, being pulled windmilling off an opponent who appeared in no serious jeopardy, and that’s symmetrical a thing as might be written about anything Wilder does in gloves. Washington, ostensibly an overmatched 34-year-old in only his 19th professional fight, didn’t flinch when Wilder feinted in the match’s opening 10 minutes which presented a problem for Wilder whose primary strategy was looking ominous for the opening four or so rounds. If Washington didn’t buckle Wilder with his jab he did move him and if it wasn’t by hurting Wilder it was by exploiting his poor footwork and questionable balance. Both men fought with their guards lowered in part because they didn’t know they should be raised and in larger part to taunt PBC viewers.

Washington threw punches more than his contract terms dictated – much as Wilder made for the fight he didn’t inconvenience himself with more than a handful of attempts every three minutes, and much less as Washington surely earned for his challenge he didn’t need to fight like he did – and this sent Wilder scrambling a few times to the ropes where he sort of yanked his chin backwards and leaned rightwards, or maybe to his left, no matter, and assumed he was long enough to stay out Washington’s range, which he was, just.

Wilder’s record and what’s said about him on PBC broadcasts raises this fear: There’s more to Wilder than appears and it behooves all of us to find it. Since nobody has found it, since little more than commentary on Wilder’s height and ferocity fills analyses of his success, I selfishly watched part of Saturday’s match with an open mind hoping to crack the riddle but got tired and missed swaths of inactivity and inevitably abandoned the enterprise yet again.

Deontay Wilder is not a good prizefighter and won’t become one in our lifetime. He’s not one Emanuel Steward from setting title-defense records the way Wladimir Klitschko evidently was; Klitschko had offensive form and footwork and needed a psychologist more than a trainer so once Steward had Klitschko’s fragile psyche and chin tucked nervously behind jabjabhold jabjabhold jabhookcross there were lots and lots of fightstarved Germans to feed Wlad’s signature attrition style. The last thing Wilder needs is a psychologist; if the day arrives Deontay looks inwards or down from the tightrope he now treads the entire charade crashes momentarily so it is better he despise his opponents or attack bystanders in hotel lobbies but not seek to improve at the craft of prizefighting.

Fortunately for Wilder and the entire Alabama ecosystem he sustains there’s no chance Wilder is about to start improving. If anything he looks worse today than he did upon turning pro 8 1/2 years ago, even when a spectator considers the (slightly) improved competition he now confronts: The Bronze Bomber I saw at Desert Diamond Casino in 2009 threw a much straighter and necessarily better cross than what whirligig-dervish finisher PBC viewers routinely witness and with each passing year Wilder borrows from craft to pay rage.

It’s worked so far and no one at PBC should hasten to change this formula: Get decent fighters picked-off with drugtesting, put matches in locales with inexperienced commissions, let Wilder’s lunacy frighten referees into premature stoppages, and get VADA on the Anthony Joshua trail soon as possible. To hell with cashouts – Deontay Wilder could be the undefeated, undisputed, unified heavyweight champion of the world by this time next year!

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as WBC Heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder defends his title against Gerald Washington.  The action begins at 8 PM with an IBF Junior Middleweight title clash between Tony Harrison and Jarrett Hurd.  The action begins with a Heavyweight tussle between Dominic Breazeale and Izuagbe Ugonoh

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Round 1: Jab from Washington..

Round 2 Right to body from Washington

Round 3 Jab from Washington..Jab..left to body

Round 4  Right from Wilder..

Round 5 BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES WASHINGTON…WILDER ALL OVER WASHINGTON,,BIG LEFT AND THE FIGHT IS OVER

Round 1 Left from Harrison

Round 2: Right from Harrison

Round 3 Jab from Harrison..Good right..Good combination

Round 4 Jab from Harrison..Combination..

Round 5 Quick shots from Harrison..Good uppercut from Hurd…rocks Harrison

Round 6 Combination from Harrison..Right Hand..Jab..Hook and right..Body

Round 7 Jab from Harrison..Hard right from Hurd..Body shot from Harrison..Big right from Hurd..

Round 8 Right from Hurd..Big uppercut..

Round 9 Body shot from Hurd…uppercut..BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES HARRISON…FIGHT OVER

Round 1 Ugonoh lands a double jab and right..Body shots..Body shot and another..

Round 2 Hard Body shot from Ugonoh..Hard right to the body…Hard right and a jab

Round 3:  Big right from Ugonoh…BIG RIGHT FROM BREAZEALE DOWN GOES UGONOH..Bg Right from Brezeale..Bight right Ugonoah…Brezeale is hurt..Wild right lands..Huge right..Body shot..Big right from Brezeale at the bell

Round 4 Ugonoh lands a left…Body.. anda hook,,,BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES BREAZEALE..

Round 5 HUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES UGONOH…BREAZEALE ALL OVER UGONOH AND DROPS HIM THROUGH THE ROPES…THE FIGHT IS OVER

By Norm Frauenheim-

Okay, we’ve all seen it. Canelo Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. shook hands on a bet that begs another wager.

Real?

Phony?

Promotional show?

Odds are, it’s the third – all for show. Odds are, neither fighter could afford the payoff. Let’s say the purses for their HBO pay-per-view bout on May 6 at Las Vegas T-Mobile Arena are close to what each fighter says they are – $24 million for Canelo and $6 million for Chavez.

Is either fighter going to throw away that kind of a guarantee on something as fickle as a lucky punch, or a lousy judge, or inadvertent slip on a slick stretch of canvas? Didn’t think so.

And what trainer, or manager, or bucket guy, or promoter, or gofer would continue working for a fighter who just bet his whole purse? These guys work for a living, too. They need their piece of the purse just to eat. They’ll get an attorney before they let this bet rob them of their livelihoods.

In the wake of their handshake in front of television camera at a Univision studio Wednesday in Mexico City, Chavez Jr. – of all people — sounded like the grown-up in what appeared to be a spontaneous moment brought on by Canelo’s sudden willingness to risk it all.

“Let’s see what the exact terms of the bet are going to be,’’ Chavez Jr. said through an interpreter who might have been a lawyer.

Meanwhile, Bob Bennett, executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, sounded skeptical about the bet in comments to the Los Angeles Times.

“I’m not sure out deputy attorney general would even allow it,’’ Bennett told the Times.

At least, he wouldn’t allow it in Nevada. But who’s to say that they couldn’t live up to the handshake-seen-across-the world, days after the bout and after both have returned to Mexico?

The cynic in me says there are better bets on what really could happen.

To wit: There’s a pretty good chance that Chavez Jr.’s purse will be at least $1 million lighter on the day before opening bell. According to contract terms, he pays $1 million to Canelo for every pound he is over the 164.5-pound catch-weight. Chavez’ problems on the scale aren’t a secret.

To wit: There’s a pretty good chance Chavez Jr., a 4-1 underdog, gets frustrated late in a one-sided fight. With nothing to lose, he throws a low blow or an elbow, injuring Canelo in way that further delays the showdown with Gennady Golovkin. That’s a losing bet for a business that desperately needs Canelo-GGG in the wake of lousy 2016.

That said, Canelo-Chavez Jr. looks like a very good preliminary to this year main event. That handshake on a winner-take-all bet makes it all the more entertaining. It gets people talking about what they imagine boxing is all about.

Or should be all about.

Limbs are at risk. Their lives are at risk. But the money? Don’t bet on it.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at the Cintas Center in Cincinnati Ohio, Adrien “The Problem” Broner won a split decision over Adrian “El Tigre” Granados, in a fight whose outcome reflected what talent, yes, but also what geography and promotional favor were at play. If you were looking for something approximating a level playing field, Broner-Granados, like many a main event, left you wanting. What you got instead was a ten-round match at the welterweight limit because Broner was unable to make the contracted weight of 142 pounds and because Granados, understanding his role in the proceedings, dare not protest. The fight was, however, live streamed on Twitter, thereby sparing many an aficionado of having to beat back a swarm of pop ups to see the action.

Whatever the merits of Saturday night’s main event, it has been three years since Broner gave a memorable performance. That night, Broner danced into the ring in the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, got humiliated by Marcos Maidana, then hurried woozily out of the spotlight. For many, Broner’s appeal to that point lay primarily in seeing him humbled, that it came at the hands of an affable killer like Maidana only made it sweeter. Having scared Broner out of the welterweight division, Maidana parlayed his victory into a fight with Floyd Mayweather, that fight into a rematch, and ultimately, an early retirement. He gave Mayweather hell in their first fight, yet it was his solving of “The Problem” that Maidana will be remembered best for. And that speaks to the kind of presence Broner has.

That presence is a little difficult to explain. At lightweight, Broner treated his invariably overmatched opposition as a professional should: walking them down and whacking them away with left hooks and a particularly evil rear uppercut. For a time, there was something compelling about seeing him terrorize opponents if only because, his clownish behaviour aside, Broner was merciless when the bell rang. There was something endearing about his ambition too—however much it smacked also of poor discipline—when he moved directly to welterweight in pursuing his ten-digit dreams. Broner commanded attention then, with thousands of words being devoted to him, his future, his similarities to his sometime-friend and mentor.

But all that attention seems foolish now because really, there is nothing remarkable about Broner. Still glacial in his transitions between offense and defense, Broner now resorts to little more than holding and pot shotting, and however much the commentary team may have lauded him for landing the harder punches (whatever that means) Broner hurt Granados no more than Granados hurt him. Gone too, like the opponents he could bully, is his penchant for bullying, the redeeming element in Broner’s earlier violence.

He was done no favors Saturday, having to follow Lamont Peterson, who whittled his way to a victory over David Avanesyan on the undercard. At welterweight Peterson is even less a puncher than Broner, but he compensates for that middling firepower with volume proportional to proximity. Peterson demands you fight; there is real craft in his angles, his head movement, and in the combinations he pistons home. There is too, in Peterson’s dogged efforts to hammer out his fortune three minutes at a time, a reason to watch.

Except people do not turn in to see Peterson like they do Broner, a fact that must baffle and frustrate the latter’s remaining detractors. And such detractors remain, though they number far less than they did before Broner was thrashed against the ceiling of his potential by the beloved “Chino.” How to explain a fighter who so many found repellant becoming endearing? How does a fighter whose greatest appeal once lay in his eventual comeuppance enjoy a greater popularity since that supposedly ruinous defeat?

Perhaps it is because this version of Broner often makes better fights than he is credited with. No, he is not facing the more celebrated names in Haymon’s stable, but his efforts against Maidana and Shawn Porter are a glimpse into why. Broner’s name may have some star quality to it, but the fighter that owns it is hardly stellar. He is, however, especially considering his standing within Haymon’s universe, relatively well-matched, and in those matches, he comports himself respectably.

When he was turning the lights out on sympathetic characters like Antonio DeMarco or failing to make weight against Vicente Escobedo, forcing the already dwarfed fighter to either accept being further disadvantaged or walk away from a payday, Broner’s antics were more likely to offend. Now, however, with a pair of telling losses and some less than glossy wins on his ledger, with all that made him exceptional forfeited to the scale, and with him fixed at least a tier below the fighters he was supposed to separate himself from, Broner is too mediocre to be upsetting. The fighter who for years appeared to take neither himself nor his profession particularly seriously is undeserving of even the most complimentary enmity. When ya boy AB is just doing AB people are chuckling or yawning, not screwing up their faces.

His recent about-face is not the product of some awakened duty to be a role model or any other more noble rationale: it is born of Broner’s recognition that he cannot reconcile his words and deeds. A high profile win or two would surely see a return of “The Problem.”

So, gone forever, then?

By Bart Barry

Saturday on Twitter @ShowtimeBoxing American bronerweight silver titlist Adrien Broner decisioned Adrian Granados by majority scores at Cintas Center in Broner’s hometown of Cincinnati whose crowd leavened Broner’s acts with applause enough to sway judges to give the hometown man a nod in a decision that was not egregious – as hometown nods go. Granados applied heat and humidity and Broner did not wilt and the fight was very good, marking consecutive weeks of broadcasting excellence for Showtime, double the PBC’s mark in 2016.

Adrien Broner is what we’ve got now and it behooves us to enjoy him and appreciate him best we can. Whither this new, sporting approach? Why, it’s not like anyone with access to YouTube from a codger aficionado to a teenage boxing naif could mistake this era for a great one; we no longer need to write disclaimers round the shabbiness of one’s competition – it’s baked in. It’d be graceless anymore to insist someone like Granados is a c-level guy who probably’d not’ve made it out the amateurs 30 years ago much less to a 10-round main with a “former four-division world champion” like Broner who at age 27 is in his physical prime and still going relief-by-scorecards with an opponent who couldn’t’ve gotten in the fourth round with a 2009 version of Manny Pacquiao or been kept out the hospital after confronting even a one-eyed Antonio Margarito.

Broner is not an elite fighter, however many world titles Richard Schaefer and HBO once conspired to win him; Broner is a gifted athlete with some elite offensive moves who’s plied the craft of leathering since childhood and learned some tricks thereby. Had his body and lifestyle allowed him to stay at 130 pounds or even lightweight, though, he’d be esteemed today more highly than Gennady Golovkin for a breathtaking streak of chloroforming every man in fewer than 10 minutes easy. But Broner took illconsidered chances and rose upwards to larger weights and purses and got exposed in the fairest sense of the word (as would Golovkin, truth be told) – or did you think it accidental nobody noticed Broner’s footwork was embarassing and his infighting consisted of forearms and tackling exclusively when AB dashed through Jason Litzau (28-2), Eloy Perez (23-0-2) and Antonio DeMarco (28-2-1)? Until Broner was made to retreat, in other words, nobody knew Broner didn’t know how to retreat and until Broner was unable to tremble an opponent with a single punch nobody knew Broner’s commitment to one combination took so much from him he’d need 15 seconds of breather when finished.

Perhaps Paulie Malignaggi knew it before he proved it in 2013, but Malignaggi has always had an elite-level eye whatever he is as a prizefighter.

Writing of whom, Malignaggi is good a place as any to start a reconsideration of Showtime in February of 2017. While HBO alternately hibernates, schedules starryeyed spectacles, and employs more Soviets than the Trump administration, Showtime quietly strung together two excellent main events in two weeks, which, given the current state of matchmaking, puts Showtime’s Feb. 11-18 in the running for Boxing Week of the Decade. Showtime did it on a budget, too, and did it on Twitter and announced, get this, future live streaming of sports – a technological hurdle most American broadcasters still claim insurmountable even while Brazilian models approach their third decade of webcamming. How in the hell Showtime will monetize Saturday’s online broadcasting excursion is anyone’s guess – I watched the match on my phone’s Twitter app, sitting in my car outside a coffeeshop, using a 4G connection – but then, aside from those aforementioned webcam models, who really has monetized an online service (as opposed to selling ads)?

Had Saturday’s match happened in Granados’ native Illinois before a partisan-Latino crowd Granados’ performance would’ve gotten him a majority decision which wouldn’t’ve changed his career trajectory or Broner’s more than a degree or two. Too many words and other resources are already committed to the Broner mythos to make him a welterweight gatekeeper yet, and too much evidence already has accrued on Granados’ resume to promote him as greater than one.

The match was there for Granados’ taking in the final rounds but he didn’t take it and showed fatigue enough to embolden Broner to finish effectively enough to deserve another go at a junior welterweight title if he can make 140. Broner may not finish fights effectively as he sometimes begins them but he does finish fights much better than his socialmedia persona anticipates: loud boorishness tends to crinkle when things get harder than incredibly easy, and Broner does not. Broner nearly came back on Chino Maidana in his first loss, and Broner dropped Showtime Shawn in round 12 of his other loss, and whatever badfaith kept Saturday’s match at 10 rounds while not-keeping it at 142 pounds, Broner brought every bit as much fighting spirit to round 10 as his lesstalented opponent.

To paraphrase Malignaggi in the closing rounds, say what you will about Broner, but he’s never in a bad fight. However that happens it’s good that it does – and may it continue.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as former 4-division world champion Adrien Broner takes on Adrian Granados in a welterweight bout.  The action starts at 9 PM ET / 8 PM Chicago time/ 6 PM Pacific with a light heavyweight bout between Marcus Browne and Thomas Williams, Jr.  Also on the card is the WBA Welterweight title bout between David Avanesyan and Lamont Peterson.

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Round 1: Combination from Granados..Nice right..body work..Jab from Broner..Uppercut on inside..check left hook..Left..Broner bleeding from Nostrils..

Round 2 Counter left from Broner…Counter..Nice combinations..Right from Granados..Right uppercut from Granados..Right..right to body..left

Round 3 Right from Granados..Blood on nose of Granados..Sharp jab from Broner,,left hook from Granados…Big right from Broner,,Nice left hook…

Round 4 Broner lands 2 hard shots…Jab to the body..left hook..jab to body,,Good right from Granados..body shot..

Round 5 Lead right for Broner..Right uppercut from Broner..uppercut from Granados..left hand–right uppercut and jab from Broner..Chopping right from Granados

Round 6 Right hand from Broner..Right hook from Granados…Left and right from Broner..2 uppercuts from Granados…Right from Broner,,left uppercut from Granados..

Round 7 Left hook from Broner..Left hook to body from Granados..right from Broner..Right..Good combination from Granados…body from Broner..Good combination from Granados..

Round 8 Good right from Broner…Another hard right..Right uppercut from Broner…Broner jabs to the body

Round 9  Right uppercut from Granados on the inside..body work..left hook from Broner..right uppercut..right from Granados,,Right uppercut from Broner and another…right…Hard left hook..uppercut from Granados..

Round 10 Left from Broner..Right from Granados..Short right uppercut from Broner..Good right and combination

97-93 Broner…97-93 Granados..96-94 Broner

Round 1

Round 2 Good left hook to body from Avanesyan..Left hook to body..counter right..Right to body from Peterson..Left hook – Right to head from Avanesyan

Round 3 Avanesyan cut over right eye…Exchanging uppercuts..Nice left hook to body from Avanesyan…Cuffing right to the head..Left hook to body

Round 4 Nice right from Avanesyan..Nice combination…

Round 5 Nice body shot from Avanesyan..Check hook from Peterson

Round 6:  Uppercut lands for Peterson..Left hook fro Avanesyan..Right uppercut..Left..Right uppercut from Peterson..Double left from Avanesyan

Round 7:  triple left hook to body from Peterson..Left hook from Avanesyan..Left hook to body from Peterson..Hook from Avanesyan..Right uppercut..

Round 8 3 left hooks and right from Avanesyan..Right hand over the top..Left hook to body from Peterson..Right from Avanesyan..

Round 9 Right from Avanesyan..4 punches from Peterson…Left hook from Avanesyan..Left from Peterson..Combination from Avansyan..2 rights from Peterson

Round 10 2 left hooks from Avanesyan….Peterson rips a left to the body..

Round 11 left from Peterson backs Avanesyan to the ropes..Left hook to the body..hard jab backs Avanesyan up..Right uppercut

Round 12 Good counter right from Peterson..left hook to the body…trading uppercuts..Right hand from Avanesyan..Peterson lands a right..Left from Avanesyan..Peterson landing hard body shots

115-113, 116-112 twice for the NEW CHAMPION LAMONT PETERSON

Round 1 Combination to body from Browne..Jab..Jab to body..

Round 2:  Right hook from Williams..JAB AND DOWN GOES BROWNE…BROWNE HIT HIM IN BACK OF HEAD WHILE IS DOWN…DEDUCTED A POINT..Big left from Browne..

Round 3 Right hook to body from Williams..Counter right hook..Uppercut on inside…right hook to body from Browne

Round 4:  Big to the temple from Browne…Right hook to the face..straight left..Counter LEFT AND DOWN GOES WILLIAMS..Double jab from Williams…Body work.

Round 5 Good left to the body and 2 jabs from Browne..Right hook to jaw from Williams..Right hook from Browne..Good right..1-2..

Round 6 Big left AND DOWN GOES WILLIAMS…HE DOES NOT BEAT THE COUNT…..42 seconds

By Norm Frauenehim
Pound-for-pound recognition comes with a lot credentials. But it doesn’t pay the bills. In fact, it often makes a good payday harder to find.

Vasyl Lomachenko, whose rapid rise to pound-for-prominence is unprecedented, is finding out just how hard it can be.

During a conference call Wednesday for an April 8 title defense against Jason Sosa, Lomachenko, already a pound-for-pound contender after only eight pro fights, expressed frustration about the way potential fights fall apart. Why? His varied skillset is just too much of a risk for opponents looking for a way to get ahead.

“Other champions were running like rats from a sinking ship and not coming into the ring,’’ said Lomachenko, who will defend his WBO 130-pound at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, MD, in an HBO-televised bout. “Nowadays, it’s not about the sport. All of the boxers have become businessmen and they are looking just to get the money and not the glory.’’

There’s no protein in glory, of course. Prize-fighting – emphasis on prize – is strictly business, especially for aging fighters. Lomachenko was hoping for a rematch with longtime gate-keeper Orlando Salido, who beat the two-time Olympic gold medalist in the Ukrainian’s second pro bout in March 2014. But after 61 bouts, the 36-year-old Salido might be looking for more than just one more payday. A likely loss to Lomachenko in a rematch would probably mark the end of his chances at another good purse.

“Yes, I was a little disappointed,’’ Lomachenko said when asked what he thought of futile negotiations with Salido. “Ass far as I knew, everything was moving along and everything was agreed to. Then all the sudden, they turned around and said he wasn’t going to fight. But, you know, such is life.’’

The good news for Lomachenko is that his professional life is just beginning to unfold. For now, he’s at that never-never stage, a career step as inevitable as it feared for some of the best. Being feared also means you’re avoided. But there are ways out of the dilemma, especially for a 28 year-old fighter who still appears to be a year or two from his prime.

At a lanky 5-foot-6, Lomachenko looks as if he has room to grow up and out of the junior-lightweight division.

“If the thing is going to go like it is today — everybody running away and not fighting me — I will be forced to go to 135 pounds,’’ he said “I would hope that the guys at 135 would be standing up and coming to fight.’’

That brings us straight to a potential mega fight with Mikey Garcia, who came out of his frightening knockout of Dejan Zlaticanin on Jan. 28 with a third title at a third weight and his own share of pound-for-pound recognition. Would a Garcia-Lomachenko fight happen right away? Nothing ever does in boxing anymore. But Garcia sounds willing and Lomachenko’s current career path seems to make the bout more likely, perhaps early next year.

Garcia, who has added scary power to his brilliant tactical skill, has already achieved some of what Lomachenko is pursuing.

Lomachenko joked on the conference call that he doesn’t see a pound-for-pound contender when he looks in the mirror

“I am usually working on my hair at that moment,’’ he said.

When he does look at the 135-pound lightweight division, however, he sees himself at the top of the pound-for-pound debate.

“If you want to just talk regarding me as a pound-for-pound fighter, I would probably say that I will probably be the No. 1 pound-for-pound after I beat a couple of champions at 135,’’ he said.

From promoters to networks to fans, Lomachenko-versus-Garcia would look awful good in any mirror.

Attachments area

By Bart Barry-

Friday at Buffalo Run Casino in Miami, Okla., in a match televised by ShoBox between Russian-Oklahoman super lightweight Ivan “The Beast” Baranchyk and Arizona’s Abel Ramos an unlikely thing happened: An inspired fight before an inspired crowd – folks donning Jason Voorhees hockeymasks to see The Beast ply his wares – with excellent refereeing and commentary.

An honest prizefight is what it was, was what it is; two guys whose records corresponded and whose styles meshed and whose officiating was proper and whose willingness to exchange was admirable. But thrice as admirable when pitted against their competitor spectacles on other locations round the cable spiral both Friday evening and most evenings these last two years. ShoBox used to do lots of this sort of thing and perhaps hasn’t stopped doing so but its parent network’s sequestration by an overleveraged manager returned home to a network that pays him after plethoras of failed gambits on networks he paid to broadcast his miserable mismatches made most aficionados move their Showtime subscription dollars to more essential products like sugary breakfast cereals, organic avocados or almond milk: Nobody took a stand and cancelled his Showtime subscription so much as he elected to deselect it when he remembered he still got billed for it, and his Showtime-dedicated funds went aimlessly back in the household budget.

Friday was a wondrous break from what PBC fare ruined Showtime, in other words, and a chance, too, to see a Russian fighter developed somewhere other than HBO, and development is exactly what one hopes will come for Baranchyk now that he knows his admirably mindless commitment to punches becomes a handicap when no one is there to stop his punches for him. Round 1 saw something an aficionado doesn’t see every day: a double lefthook lead throw in doublestep. Baranchyk leaped with a lefthook lead missed widely enough to land squarely enough to stutterstep then launched himself again. Where does one practice such a maneuver often enough to unveil it in a televised prizefight – on a line of heavybags?

The problem for Ramos, well, for both men but especially Ramos, was how unpunished went Baranchyk’s bad behavior; if you let an opponent hurl himself unabashedly in your direction and do not welt him for the offense, he’s going to keep on keeping on till he clips you. And clip you Baranchyk did in round 3, throwing fearlessly an overhand tornadomill right that clubbed Ramos into the deep ropes, from which Ramos energetically rose to drop Baranchyk with an even better lefthook counter, a favor returned by Baranchyk a few minutes later. By then the fight was even-to-favoring-Ramos but about to move quickly in its opposite direction as Ramos’ one glaring flaw became exploited tirelessly by Baranchyk.

Ramos floats his chin slightly at ringcenter and muchly in retreat. In the match’s opening moments Ramos looked a touch too elegant in his long and relaxed frame though one couldn’t quite name it till Baranchyk made him step backwards, and up came the chin. It’s a slight but real flaw that, worse still, is really deep, and here’s why: The plane on which Ramos now rests his eyes in a fight is different for his having learned to look out the center of his eyes than if he’d learned to look out their tops, and very much of his natural tempo and balance would now be disrupted by the claustrophobia of lowering his chin another inch to the top of his chest, where Baranchyk’s chin gets plugged soon as his hands come up.

Fathers, teach your sons to tuck their chins the same day, first day, you set their stances.

It’s very possible Ramos’ floating chin was no more apparent to Baranchyk than it has been to Ramos’ handlers but the comparative ease with which Baranchyk made Ramos take backwards steps was not lost for an instant on the Russian. Once Ramos was getting moved back the forced retreat generally continued till the ropes, and once the men were pitched on the ropes Baranchyk was an inevitable favorite because, while Ramos might’ve been able to infight slightly better than other tall folk, he was doing the one thing Baranchyk wanted to do, which bears reiteration: Had Ramos stood at ringcenter and strafejabbed Baranchyk the Russian’s naked leads would’ve grown more desperately emphatic, but by fighting chest-to-chest as Ramos did he gave Baranchyk the one chance Baranchyk’s tempo and technique and conditioning are shaped to exploit.

Ramos might have prevailed fighting Baranchyk’s fight – à la Alexis Arguello – and he would have certainly prevailed fighting from outside while Baranchyk could not have prevailed from the outside, so it made no sense for Ramos not to fight there. Some of Ramos’ infighting was pride but much of that pride was a reaction to feeling the scratch of shiny wrappingtape on his shoulderbacks and knowing if he didn’t fire back the Russian’d deposit him on the scorer’s table.

Which moves to a final point of applause for Friday’s prizefight, and it goes to the referee: Oklahoman Gary Ritter did a fine job of remaining practically invisible in a scrappy contest whose delicate balance would have been ruined by an official more officious. Did Ritter’s relaxed policing favor the adopted Oklahoma volumepuncher from Russia? Surely it did a little but it also gave Abel Ramos valuable experience and entertained a partisan Miam-uh crowd and a nonpartisan Showtime viewership. More of that, please!

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Robert Easter, Jr defends the IBF Lightweight championship against Luis Cruz.  The action starts at 9 PM with the WBA Bantamweight title fight between Rau’she Warren and Zhanat Zhakiyanov.

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED.  THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY 

Round 1: Easter lands a right..

Round 2 Easter lands a body shot…Nice hook..

Round 3 Combination from Easter

Round 4 Body shot for Easteghtr

Round 5 Good body shot from Easter…2 lead lefts from Cruz

Round 6 Nice left from Easter…Body shots..Big right…Double left,.

Round 7 Good combination from Easter…Hard body punches..

Round 8 Easter jabbing

Round 9 Easter working and landing on the ropes

Round 10 RIGHT HAND AND DOWN GOES CRUZ….Cruz on the ropes trying throw back…Bog hooks from Easter..

Round 11 Body shot from Easter…BIG RIGHT HAND AND DOWN GOES CRUZ

Round 12 Easter opening up on Cruz…Big right…HUGE RIGHT AND DOWN GOES CRUZ…

119-106, 118-107 and 117-108 FOR ROBERT EASTER JR.

Round 1 Nice combination from Warren..Big uppercut…Hard combination hurts Zhakiyanov…COMBINATION AND DOWN HE GOES…HARD RIGHT HOOK AND DOWN GOES ZHAKIYANOV AGAIN

Round 2 Uppercut from Warren

Round 3 Uppercut from Zhakiyanov…3 more uppercuts..Big right hand and Warren goes down.  They call it a slip..Big right from Zhakiyanov

Round 4 Left from Zhakiyanov…Blood from nose of Warren..Nice uppercut from Zhakiyanov…Body shot from Warren..Right from Zhakiyanov

Round 5 Zhakiyanov lands a right..lead right

Round 6 Warren boxing and moving

Round 7 Good body work from Warren..Good left..Uppercut

Round 8 Uppercut from Zhakiyanov …Counter left from warren..2 rights from Zhakiyanov…2 more rights

Round 9 Zhakiyanov landing on the ropes

Round 10 Right from Zhakiyanov..Counter from Warren..Zhakiyanov lands an uppercut

Round 11 Nice hook from Warren..Body shot…

Round 12 Right from Zhakiyanov

115-111 Warren…115-111 Zhakiyanov…116-110 Zhakiyanov

Round 1 Good jab and body shot from Gausha…3 rights

Round 2 Big right from Gausha..Left hook..

Round 3:  BIG RIGHT AND DOWN GOES GAUSHA..1-2 from Gausha..Hernandez laughing

Round 4 Combination from Gausha..Good right hand..

Round 5 Nice uppercut from Gausha..quick 1-2..2 right hands..2 uppercuts..Hernandez trying to fight back

Round 6 Hard right from Gausha..6 punch combination..Big uppercut..

Round 7 2 LOW BLOWS BY HERNANDEZ AND HE IS DEDUCTED A POINT

Round 8 Combination from Gausha..Big right

Round 9 Uppercut from Gausha..

Round 10 Gausha lands a big right and right uppercut

98-90 twice and 97-91 for TERRELL GAUSHA

By Norm Frauenheim-

Power speaks for itself. Find it, and a fighter doesn’t need words. He already has the singular answer for nearly every question. Just ask Mikey Garcia.

With one frightening flash of power a couple of weeks ago, Garcia ignited an interest in him that hadn’t really been there until he left Dejan Zlaticanin on his back, as lifeless as a flat board, under the ring ropes at Las Vegas MGM Grand.

Just like that, Garcia was somebody he had never been. He was scary, scary good.

The cognoscenti had always appreciated him for his tactical skill and evident smarts. Amid boxing’s chaos and carnage, Garcia was an example of an art form seldom seen in a scarred game sometimes called the sweet science. But an if or two were also attached to him.

He was too much the craftsman, a precise artist who could paint by the numbers as effectively as anyone. It was art all right, yet without the edgy anticipation that it could all end with one broad brush. Art is good in a museum, but it doesn’t do well on pay-per-view.

Garcia transformed himself from very good to potential stardom with a signature knockout of Zlaticanin in what had been considered a risky fight on the undercard of Leo Santa Cruz’ rematch victory over Carl Frampton.

Santa Cruz-Frampton was an entertaining bout, good enough to probably make a third one inevitable. A couple of days after, however, it had come and gone. But there is still talk about Garcia, whose knockout of Zlaticanin might be the biggest at the MGM Grand since Manny Pacquiao lifted Ricky Hatton off his feet and dropped him onto the canvas in a lifeless heap for several long moments in May 2009. Power has its own momentum, too.

There are stories and questions all over social media about who and what are next for Garcia, who won his third title in a third weight class in only his second bout since more than two years on the shelf during a contract dispute with Top Rank.

“I could get back very, very soon,’’ said Garcia, who is already back in top the 10 of the various pound-for-pound rankings. “I don’t want to wait.’’

Nobody else wants to wait either. Hopefully, he’ll get a chance this summer to unite the 135-pound title against the winner of Anthony Crolla’s challenge on March 25 of Jorge Linares, The Ring and WBA champion. There are also possibilities against WBO champ Terry Flanagan and Robert Easter Jr., the IBF’s belt holder.

But all of it sounds like a prelude to what could be one game’s next mega fight. Terence Crawford, the current champ at 140, has been speculated.

The other, Vasyl Lomachenko, is even more intriguing. In terms of style, Garcia-Lomachenko always has loomed as a chess match between two the game’s re-eminent masters. Garcia’s newfound power introduces a whole new element.

“I would definitely take on a challenge like that if he comes up to 135,’’ Garcia said after his victory over Zlaticanin. “He’s still at 130. If he decides to move up, we’ll talk. But it’s not up to me. It’s up to him to move up.’’

The good news is that Lomachenko is already thinking about a move to 135, according to his promoter, Bob Arum, who told ringtv.com Tuesday that he expects the two-time Olympic gold medalist to make the jump by the end of this year.

That begs another question. Would Arum, also Crawford’s promoter, be willing to do business with Garcia after the prolonged contract dispute? More good news. Arum told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week that, yeah, he would.

“If the fight makes sense, then why not?” Arum said. “Whatever happened between Garcia and us is in the past. The one thing I have learned is to never hold grudges. If a fight with Lomachenko or Crawford makes sense, and if there’s a market for that fight, we would be open to it.”

Power is about business, too.

By Bart Barry-

For a decade now when you ask a contemporary prizefighter or even just a kid in the gym eight years from turning pro if ever to name his favorite fighter, what he hears you ask is: Who among active fighters do people say made the most money in his last match? Since talk of a-sides and pay-per-view buys has replaced in many cases arguments about chin density or fistic mass the answer your query receives shouldn’t surprise you – even as a slowfooted Mexican kid says Floyd instead of Chocolatito.

Been thinking muchly on competence these last few weeks and as there’s no prizefighting of particular note this month or next month or the month after it’s good an idea as any to treat because it feels increasingly fleeting and comes with increasingly fewer reminders. A fetish has become of “flow” in some circles like psychology and neurology – fields reliably comprising a ratio of two scientists for every 1,000 gurus – and while it’s an interesting idea (“the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity,” according to Wikipedia) its most zealous adherents see in it a shortcut more than a performance enhancer. They do not achieve flow via mastery but flow in lieu of mastery, bumping from one unverifiable accomplishment like fluency in a language no one round them speaks to another like deejaying, without suffering the inconvenience of fundamentals.

Since these trends are pendular a fit argument can be made sometime in the last decade society fetishized certifications and reductionism too far and now the pendulum swings its way back, but there’s more to it than one pendulum. There is a shifting-criteria idea, too, gaining momentum – alternative facts from the American political right and grade inflation from the left – wherein standards are moved to meet subjective ideals instead of objective values. Here comes the concerning part: If you eschew expertise and ignore those who protect the canon, as it were, you do no lasting damage and likely enrich yourself in the process (pop musicians); if you pursue expertise while others weaken the canon little damage is done to anything but your savings account, as you commit personal resources to accomplishments less valuable than before (poets); but if you eschew expertise while others refine the definition of expertise in your favor you achieve influence.

Since this still purports to be a column about boxing we’ll use the example of Floyd “Money” Mayweather. For a goodish amount of time aficionados cared deeply about competitive spectacles and nothing for purses. With the advent of closed-circuit- and pay-per-view-type viewing experiences the number of aficionados willing to pay for a match contributed to a formula for evaluating its appeal, and reporters duly recorded it and later wrote novelty round it – how many dollars/second, for instance, Mike Tyson make in his match with Michael Spinks. It was never the primary criterion, though, till “records” began to fall and fighters other than heavyweights, Oscar De La Hoya being the first to come to mind, began to set those records. But even recently as De La Hoya’s match with Felix Trinidad aficionados cared far more about the match’s deserving winner than who made how much, and for all his accumulated wealth De La Hoya, who had genuine prizefighting expertise, really did fight prime versions of men who could beat him.

But the erosion was underway. Mayweather, who also had genuine prizefighting expertise, changed his nickname to Money and went about selling his undefeated record in place of competitive spectacles, which mattered little at first because those who protect the canon saw it as an amusing aberration and trusted aficionados’ perspective on Floyd would ever weigh his handicapping opponents against what revenues he generated to ensure he did not become more than an amusing aberration. But then circumstances began to converge, and a dearth of prizefighting expertise among prospects decimated the ranks of aficionados – which meant no one was left to guard the canon even while hustlerish things like purse size replaced expertise. This is how you get an Adrien “About Billions” Broner whose blinding handspeed, flow, in fact blinded observers to his abysmal footwork and defense, mastery, and merged with an evolving marketplace view like: the quality of a prizefighter is proportionate to the size of his purse.

A partial antidote to this is Mikey Garcia – partial, not full, because he lost years of his career to a fixation on purse size – who just untied Dejan Zlaticanin a couple Saturdays ago and reasserted his mastery of timing and space while so doing. Garcia is much better at the prizefighting craft than all but a handful of his contemporaries, most of whom are foreign-born and foreign-schooled. Garcia is of a prizefighting family: his handspeed remains a complement to his expertise not its replacement. To see Garcia from ringside, not unlike seeing Andre Ward, is to witness, in a word, competence, and while that may no longer ensure the wealth it brought even a generation ago it still pays quite well or at least better than poetry does.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Norm Fraienheim-

Anthony Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko arrived in New York this week for a timely news conference that helped deflect attention on the bizarre circumstances that continue to unfold in the wake of Alexander Povetkin’s positive test for a banned substance in December.

The prospect of Joshua-Klitschko on April 29 in front of a projected crowd of 90,000 at London’s Wembley Stadium offers some hope in what looks like the most compelling heavyweight fight in years. The flip side is Povetkin, a mystery wrapped in a mess.

Two days after Joshua and Klitschko met the media at Madison Garden, there were reports from Russia that Povetkin’s B-sample came up positive for the PED that forced a cancellation of his Dec. 17 bout against Bermane Stiverne for the World Boxing Council’s interim belt in Ekaterinburg, Russia.

It’s hard to know what to make of the early reports from Russia. Donald Trump might believe them. Without some confirmation from The Associated Press or some other mainstream outlet, however, it’s wise to be skeptical. The test of the B-sample was conducted in Los Angeles. The original test was reportedly done on Dec. 6, presumably in Russia.

I tend to believe initial stories abut the B- sample, which confirmed that there were traces of Ostarine, a steroid, in Povetkin’s A-sample. Here’s why: Quotes defending Povetkin and questioning the integrity of the testing process from promoter Andrey Ryabinsky and a Russian lawmaker were included in reports about the B-sample.

It was as if they knew what the result would be.

Ryabinksy said Povetkin came up clean in “alternative tests” conducted in Lausanne. Somehow, this sounds like those “alternative facts” that Trump staffer Kellyanne Conway introduced to today’s Orwellian rhetoric.

Then, there was a reported lawmaker and chairman of a sports committee, Mikhail Degtyaryov, who was quoted as saying: “The provocation against Povetkin exposed the fragility and weakness of the anti-doping system.’’

The Russian lawmaker didn’t mention that other system, state-sanctioned doping, which The New York Times exposed in May 2016. Not even Vladimir Putin could completely deny that report. It resulted in a partial ban of the Russian track-and-field team at last summer’s Rio Olympics. Ramifications continue.

On the same day that there were reports from Russia about Povetin’s B-sample, Reuters reported that the International Olympic Committee stripped the Russian women of the 400-meter relay silver medal from the 2012 Olympics after Antonina Krivoshapka’s B-sample came up dirty.
https://sports.yahoo.com/news/ioc-sanctions-three-athletes-anti-doping-breaches-092922488–oly.html

It’s impossible to separate Povetkin, a 2004 Olympic gold medalist, from the rest of Russia’s sports system. I don’t know him. I’ve never met him. I liked his boxing skills and he might have beaten Deontay Wilder in Moscow last May. But that one got cancelled, too, when Povetkin tested positive for meldonium.

Regardless of whether he gets sanctioned or suspended, the best guess is that Povetkin will simply fade from the scene, forgotten amid all the attention on Joshua and Klitschko. The game will move on.

The question is whether Wilder can regain the momentum he had before the cancellation. It cost Wilder a reported $4.5 million and a lot more. In an effort to stay busy, he fought and beat Chris Arreola in July, but he suffered costly injuries to his right hand and biceps.

He’ll test the hand and arm in a Feb. 25 return against former football player Gerald Washington, who replaced Poland’s Andrzej Wawrzyk. Wawrzyk got bumped off the card because – yeah, you guessed it – he came up dirty in drug testing.

It’s fair to wonder whether Wilder would have beaten Povetkin in a Moscow victory big enough to put him first in line for Joshua. Could it have been Wilder at New York’s news conference instead of Klitschko? We’ll never know. Then again, we’ll never know a lot of things in a world growing curiouser and curiouser.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, lightweight, Mikey Garcia, participated in his first significant fight in three years, facing Montenegrin sparkplug, Dejan Zlaticanin. Having positioned himself to ladle a helping from the Waddell and Reed pot, Garcia returned finally to the only vocation that was ever going to provide him the lifestyle he desired. And, as he had before he left, Garcia looked masterful, dispatching Zlaticanin with a violence and efficiency that reminded witnesses what Garcia is capable of and what frightening consequences prizefighters tempt.

Boxers who forfeit a portion of their primes to out-of-the-ring considerations face a unique peril upon return: their sport does not pass them by so much as it lies in wait. Provided it is against an opponent of some merit, returning to the ring after a prolonged absence brings very real concerns. For Garcia, those concerns regarded not only ring rust—which he may not have shed entirely in an underwhelming tune up last July—but also issues of style. When offensively ablaze, Zlaticanin employs a volume that breaks icy opponents. But while the pressure fighter may be the boxer’s theoretical kryptonite, the abyss in class between Garcia and Zlaticanin, an abyss that figured immediately, made such abstractions moot.

It was, in many ways, a typical Garcia performance. With the opening bell, Zlaticanin entered into a fight not only with an opponent who could—and would—leave him senseless, but with his own frustration. The question for Zlaticanin was whether he could refrain from making mistakes against an opponent who invites them. And if Zlaticanin could not, could he at least survive those mistakes once made.

The third round brought answers. At a loss for how to kickstart his offense, Zlaticanin, chin extended over his front foot, lunged a desperate cross at Garcia, and suffered the uppercut Garcia had been waiting to whip. Spun from the blow, Zlaticanin teetered woozily into a right hook so vicious it not only sealed the win for Garcia but put his victory celebration on hold.

As he has throughout his career, Garcia forced an opponent to make a mistake—and then ruined him for it. Perhaps forced is the wrong word, though, because what Garcia really does is ensnare you in a battle of wills, demanding you choose between losing a dull decision and risking a strategy more likely to see you victimized than victorious.

He is then, anything but the typical Mexican fighter: if there is any of the attritionist’s mentality in him he has yet to show it. Indeed, Garcia is so measured in his approach that he can even bore; his fights are more impressive than exciting. That tempered violence could be a product of Garcia being trained by his brother Robert (a former fighter), and the fraternal concerns such a partnership might entail. Garcia’s wiring is likely another factor, as is the fact that he was born and raised in the US, away from the psychology of Mexico proper.

But were his last name Williams, were he born in Baltimore instead of Oxnard, into a fan base dwindling instead of eternal, one wonders how Garcia would be perceived. What would Garcia’s people say about his win over Orlando Salido, where, his nose broken by a headbutt, Garcia opted to take the win the foul afforded him rather than confirm his machismo? How would they judge Garcia’s refusal to accept a catchweight against the ghost of Juan Manuel Lopez, only to come in overweight himself, gaining an unfair advantage against an opponent who was getting sparked regardless? There are even examples of Mexican fighters with styles similar to Garcia struggling to capture the hearts of their people. Consider the cooler welcome that met a young Juan Manuel Marquez, how appreciation of him lagged behind that of countrymen Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera until Marquez became less perfect, more aggressive, until he had to defend the pride of a country from a rampaging nemesis.

Garcia has suffered little criticism for his conduct, he knows none of Marquez’ early troubles, and yet the hope is that things stop going so smoothly for him. There is little intrigue in yet another supremely talented fighter—and Garcia is most certainly that—merely reaffirming the obvious twice a year. The destruction of Zlaticanin proved that Garcia remains the nightmare proposition he was before his self-imposed hiatus. No one at lightweight is fighter enough to solve Garcia, and he is unlikely to find much trouble among the premier boxing champions at junior welterweight either. And if that is being naive, better to be so in support of Garcia than in support of those men with the opportunity but not the chance to beat him.

So how good is Garcia? And do he and his team care to answer that question? Because the fighter to pose it is out there. You know who he is, as do the Garcia’s. The Garcia’s also know, as anyone who follows the sport does, just how well-insulated the family’s fighting pride is from this threat. (What is less clear, though far more interesting, is whether that awareness figured at all in the departure from Top Rank).

Of course, the obvious fight to make for Garcia is likely to one day number among the casualties of boxing’s fractured landscape. But should he ever get the itch to really prove himself, he will to do so with Oxnard and Omaha in the stands.

By Norm Frauenheim

LAS VEGAS – The dateline is accurate. But the feeling was something else. More like Belfast.

Carl Frampton’s fans, Framptonistas, were there, transforming a weigh-in Friday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena for a featherweight rematch Saturday with Leo Santa Cruz into a scene that resembled a Belfast pub at last call.

There are some conflicting numbers about just how many Belfast fans traveled the 4,896 miles to Las Vegas. One estimate put them at 4,000. There’s another one at 5,000. There’s a third at 5,500. Whatever it is, it had to surprise Santa Cruz, a Los Angeles resident who thought – perhaps hoped — he would be the crowd favorite.

Santa Cruz wasn’t in Brooklyn last July when Northern Irish fans jammed Barclays Center for Frampton’s victory by majority decision. If the weigh-in was any indication, Frampton is at home just about anywhere. Where ever he fights, Belfast follows.

There was no difference on the scale. Both featherweights were at 125 pounds. But on any scale that measures noise, Frampton was the deafening favorite. There were flags, chants, beer, beer and more beer. Did we mention beer?

A personal memory: A couple of years ago, I traveled to Belfast. After touring the city’s turbulent history and the wall that symbolizes what it citizens call “The Troubles,’’ I checked into a downtown hotel.

Some time in the early morning, I awakened by the sound of trash cans. After long night at a pub, some kids were kicking them down the street like soccer balls and screaming: “I’m effing Irish, so do something about it.’’

Those kids are here. Will it matter? Frampton (23-0, 14 KOs) is a slight favorite in the Showtime televised bout (telecast begins at 10 p.m. EST/7 p.m. PST). Any edge might tip it one way or the other. For Santa Cruz (32-1-1, 18 KOs), that could have meant a more favorable crowd. Without that, he’ll have to count on his father and trainer, Jose, who has recovered from the cancer that kept out of the corner last summer.

“It’s going to be another great fight, another hard fight,’’ Santa Cruz said moments after he stepped off the scale. “But we’re going to win.’’

The crowd booed.

Selby-Barros bout off the card

Lee Selby’s defense of his IBF featherweight title was cancelled because challenger Jonathan Barros failed to get licensed by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. The cancellation was announced during the weigh-in. No details were provided. According to various reports, Barros failed the physical, which includes eye and blood tests.

“I’m terribly sorry,’’ Selby, a Welshman, said. “I’m almost in tears.’’

Mikey Garcia makes weight for tough test

Mikey Garcia’s lightweight title is at risk against emerging Dejan Zlaticanin. Both were at 134.5 pounds Friday.

“I didn’t want to cherry-pick opponents,’’ Garcia (35-0, 29 KOs) said. “I want to fight the best guys out there and he’s one of them.’’

Zlaticanin (18-0, 11 KOs) of tiny Montenegro is unknown among fans. But he promises that will change.

“After Saturday, you won’t have a problem pronouncing my name.’’ he said.

By Norm Frauenheim-

Family, Leo Santa Cruz said as he looked at Carl Frampton Thursday during a new conference for their featherweight rematch at the MGM Grand.

“He fights for his family,’’ Santa Cruz said. “I fight for mine. When you do that, you do it from your heart. That’s why this fight will be so good, better even than the first one.’’

It’s a sequel notable in part for what it is absent. There’s no malice in the build-up. Mutual respect can be hard to market. In social media clogged by angry words and noisy insults, it’s hard to get noticed these days. After a while, Conor McGregor and Donald Trump start to sound like the same guy. There’s always another insult. But there’s never a fight. Not a real fight, anyway.

But there will be one, another one, Saturday night between two fighters who seem to like each other almost much as they like to fight. Frampton and Santa Cruz will enter the ring for the Showtime-televised bout tied together by respect for each other and the craft they‘ve learned – Santa Cruz from his dad and Frampton from a Northern Irish heritage exemplified by his manager, Barry McGuigan.

The stakes have never been higher for either. For Frampton, it’s a chance for a Belfast kid to stake a claim on bigger money and international celebrity. For Santa Cruz, it’s a fight he hopes to win for a dad and trainer, Jose, who has beaten cancer. In the end, it’s family business for both.

Stakes means expectations — pressure, and perhaps more of that confronts Santa Cruz than it does Frampton, the favorite after his victory by majority decision in Brooklyn last July. Santa Cruz suffered his first loss without his ailing dad in the corner. There’s always a question about how a fighter reacts to his first loss. For Santa Cruz, his first fight after his only defeat includes his father, who sat next to him wearing a black cowboy hat during Thursday’s news conference. They looked inseparable, son-and-father, a relationship determined to re-prove itself as a winning combination.

Santa Cruz conceded he would have to do some things differently in the rematch. He said his roots as a Mexican fighter often lead him into a brawling style, all designed to please fans.

“This time, I have to use distance and my reach,’’ said the 5-foot7 ½-inch Santa Cruz, who holds a seven-inch advantage in reach over the 5-5 Frampton. “It’s important to go out and be smart.’’

But Frampton doesn’t foresee too much that Santa Cruz can change from the first 12-rounds.

“I think this fight can’t be much different than the last one,’’ said Frampton, a thinking man’ fighters who has stayed unbeaten with fast hands and unerring instinct to make the right adjustment at precisely the right moment in close bouts.

In part, Frampton has the edge in betting odds and perhaps confidence because there’s pressure on Santa Cruz to make the first adjustment.

“Leo Santa Cruz has lost his first fight,’’ Frampton trainer Shane McGuigan said. “I feel like he he’ll have to make the first adjustment.’’

The suggestion is that Frampton will have a counter. He always has. But the guess is that there will be more than just one. Otherwise, there’d be no reason for a rematch between a couple of craftsmen who know that each will need plenty of counters to continue that fight for family.

By Bart Barry-

SAN ANTONIO – Saturday at a livemusic venue called Fitzgerald’s sometime round midnight underground hip-hop artist R.A. the Rugged Man (R.A. Thorburn) took the stage before an audience of perhaps 300 people and scaled his performance for 20,000, which came expected to anyone in attendance: there was no chance Thorburn’d give less than everything to a show whatever its size. About two hours later and 30 minutes past lastcall and 15 minutes past closing Thorburn continued to perform, playing his fifth or sixth “one more song” of the night.

Like most anyone reading this column I discovered Thorburn through his roughtrade undressing of Floyd Mayweather in a 2009 interview. Curiosity about a guy who knew Floyd’s mind and spirit well as Floyd got me to listen to a few samples from a musical genre I loved until 1992 then abandoned completely. Thorburn’s talent arrived like a flash of light, unmistakable, and I pledged to see him in the crucible of a live performance if ever the opportunity arose.

It did Saturday and so did this observation: Never has a performer needed the stage more than Thorburn does. What happened at the end of his concert betrayed a compulsion more than a desire to entertain; his numerous appeals – “If y’all make some noise, I’ll do one more song” over and over again – were pleas much more than demands or even statements; it was a glare inside the psyche of a man doing the one thing that holds him together, manifesting a need for his audience’s energy and kindness, affirmation of a potent and unusually physical sort, in a charming-to-the-edge-of-disconcerting way.

It is no secret the sorry financial state of the music industry – and notice you never hear talk of a sculpture industry or a literary industry – but slightly more of an insight to see musicians’ necessary return to performance art, vending concert experiences in lieu of studio experiences, as the exclusive future direction for those who hope to make a living at the craft, but what three hours of undercard performances showed Saturday is contemporary hip-hop artists either don’t know this or lack the tools for it. What one sees in the coming generation of rappers is weakness, simple stagefright, hoping to disguise itself as a personal journey towards higher consciousness. From the hunched shoulders and swallowed syllables to a common retreat from the stagefront edge, complementing sundry cliches about day-one this and haters and enemies that, these aspirants resemble nothing so much as a oneway series of emails from a dating profile:

Message 1: Whatup bae this is Hier Konshuznezz the Unlimitid 1. im one of a kind so im kinda the one. Hit me up if you down. Holla!

Message 2: lol this thing on? im talkin at you gurl

Message 3: HELLO! Holla!

Message 4: u think ur 2 good for me bitch?

Message 5: can we jus start over? im sorry for using that word in my last. im not that kinda guy. i have so much pain in me. i understand if you dont want to talk to me. Sorry. Bye.

Then Thorburn takes the stage and the tenor changes. He and his apprentices are large and imposing in a way that’d be menacing were they not smiling at themselves and the audience, had they not the presence and ironical knack that once composed basic stagecraft but now’s a rarity: Their exaggerated gestures are enormous, they reclaim the stage’s front edge from the audience the way competent trainers teach their charges (King of the Mountain: You imagine the center of the canvas as the base of a mountain against which you set your backfoot, and which you do not forfeit), they make eyecontact with their audiencemembers and project to the backwall, they use their bodies as instruments. Then Thorburn in his desperation to connect pulls strangers onstage with him and bangs against them like props and urges them to be irresponsible, and when this doesn’t suffice Thorburn climbs offstage and moves through his audience colliding with them, telling them to collide with him, offering them something they will not forget instead of something “unforgettable”:

The audience is no longer 100 strong the houselights are on brightly the bar is clean and Thorburn starts to clear the stage by telling audiencemembers to dive in the waiting arms of, well, perhaps two or three others and some splatter and others get caught and still Thorburn does not relent, starting a fourth one-more song or fifth. Then he climbs offstage a final time and tells everyone to follow him to the door for pictures and handshakes, where he remains.

Last week by way of coincidence I read Geoff Dyer’s wonderful “But Beautiful: A book about jazz” that does what all Dyer’s books do which is defy classification between fiction and non- before concluding with an essay about what happened to jazz as popular music: It stopped being about improvisation and began being about technical mastery and thereby receded from our country’s predominant artform to a niche notch on the FM dial and a catalog of deceased household names. This is where underground hip-hop now heads. Its need to distinguish itself from what cloying slop fills arenas is understandable, admirable: Keepers of the Public Enemy flame, as it were, artists proudly inspired by Kane, G Rap, Erick and Parrish, and Rakim, not Kanye West and Nipsey Hussle, but this distinction brings about a display of technical mastery that is nigh unlistenable.

Like Coltrane throttling his sax the velociraptor speedspitting feats exemplified best by A-F-R-O, Thorburn’s 18-year-old prodigy protege, go from astounding to tedious in less than a song – you admire his linguistic capacity to know and use so many words that rhyme while being so unable to decipher what he’s saying you’re unsure if he’s rhyming words or making sounds but trust he’s rhyming words until you ask yourself why you should have to trust this about something that ostensibly happens in your native language.

Oh well. It’s still stagecraft. It’s still part of the Rugged Man experience. If it’s art for art’s sake that’s not a bad way to go out.

*

Editor’s note: Next week this column will take a deserved sabbatical and return on Feb. 6.

*

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Michael Serra-

On April 29th at Wembley Stadium, Anthony Joshua defends his IBF heavyweight championship against former champion Wladimir Klitchsko.

The general consensus is that Joshua despite winning the title, is largely untested, and still has lots more to learn! Question marks loom over the champion.
In recent performances Joshua has at times looked a tad crude for better use of the word and in winning the title last April, had very little to beat in the champion Charles Martin whom contented himself by taking the count and making no attempt whatsoever to get up and continue.

Last time out Joshua looked a lot more mature, better defensively and looked much better but in all fairness, Eric Molina provided very little and soon folded once Joshua landed, yet again it told us nothing and proved little more than a routine defence for the likeable Hertfordshire man!

Klitchsko hasn’t boxed since losing to Tyson Fury back in November 2015! That night he seemed out of sorts, letting the Mancunian spoil and grab his way through a lackluster twelve rounds.
This is a typical match up of the changing of the guard, the old lion versus the young lion.

This is definitely what the American’s would call ‘a pick em’ while Joshua has youth on his side, Klitchsko has experience.

Joshua’s best chance of victory is going to be by the short route, he has what we call the proverbial punchers chance, and if he can land clean enough he may well be with in a chance of stopping the Ukranian.

Remember back in 2003 when Wladimir defended his WBO title against Corrie Sanders! This is I feel Joshua’s best chance of victory, however if Klitchsko get’s into a rhythm and starts to work that left jab of his, then the Englishman could be in for a long and painful evening.

I’m going to stick my chin out here and go for a stoppage in favour of Joshua, I feel ring rust and father time won’t help and I feel Johshua hits as hard if not harder than Sanders! And that was almost 14 years ago! Joshua for me in six rounds!

For ticket details please visit www.matchroomboxing.com

By Jimmy Tobin-

It was easy to look past the character being interviewed; rare are the moments when much of interest ever issues from that mouth; easier still to ignore the antagonist conducting the interview, wholly unfit as he is to speak to men almost invariably his better. Behind this charade stood the fighter, silent, sullen, like a child toeing the ground in earshot of a conversation about him that he is not allowed to participate in. When finally allowed to speak, like so many of his fraternity he offered a cliché, but one that because of its veracity boasted some charm.

“I’ll fight anyone.”

Saturday night, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Badou Jack did not fight just anyone. For the fourth fight in a row, Jack fought a man capable of beating him, and not in the empty sense that says anything can happen in a prizefight—those who follow boxing understand how often matchmaking pares the potential for the unexpected down to mere theory, empty promise, tease. His opponent, James DeGale, a former Olympic gold medalist and fellow owner of a super middleweight trinket, fought Jack on mostly even terms leading to mostly even scores of 114-112 for DeGale, and 113-113 twice.

This was the second consecutive draw for Jack, who was unable to turn back a chemically enhanced Lucian Bute last April. But these draws, however bitter, are not the past Jack need bury. No, that past was etched into his ledger in 2014, when a then-undefeated Jack was splayed in the first round by a right hand from Derek Edwards. For many, it was a moment of a delicious schadenfreude: a member of Floyd Mayweather’s Money Team humiliated in a nationally televised showcase. Jack, yet too irrelevant to warrant such animosity, was vilified, his unmaking celebrated, by people who had desired a Mayweather failure for so long they were willing to accept a vicarious one.

If any of that ill will persists, Jack is undeserving of it. He is not his promoter, he is not his advisor, and he is not typical in the derogatory sense anyone who has grown frustrated with boxing understands. “The Ripper” rehabilitated himself by beating fighters who did not simply assuage his pride but actually confirmed his merit. He did not, like too many fighters of privilege earned or otherwise, secure victories primarily through matchmaking, but by steeling himself against greater challenges and answering the call of the moment.

Jack imperiled himself again against DeGale, the fighter of greater pedigree, the southpaw with a handful of tricks and some understanding—though not a mastery—of how to employ them. Degale dropped Jack in the first round with a lead left hand; and that auspicious start carried over through the early rounds while Jack parsed the frivolities of DeGale’s style, the empty threats in his movement, in all the hitting and not hitting and moving. Over the second half of the fight, however, when it became just that, Jack revealed who he has become since a lazy jab against Edwards cost him his daylights. Jack left DeGale looking like a man jumped into a gang. He rocketed DeGale’s mouthguard, and even a tooth, out of his mouth, setting up this facial reconstruction with a committed body attack. In the twelfth, punctuating the swing of control, Jack dropped Degale with an uppercut.

This second half surge (attributable in part to DeGale’s limitations and to the quality of the matchup), was improbable considering Jack’s struggle with the scale. Typically, a weight-drained fighter’s performance resembles a tractor pull: an explosive start is followed by a quick and steady exhaustion before the finish line. That Jack was able to improve as the fight wore on bodes well for his prospects at light heavyweight, where he is headed despite the appeal of a rematch with DeGale.

Could he make 168 pounds again, most everyone would expect him to pursue his satisfaction against DeGale. Certainly, the weight is the defining factor in his leaving a Degale rematch on the table. But there is also a sense that Jack is willing to leave another bitter moment in the past because he knows greater challenges await. No one will hold a draw with DeGale against him, nor should they, since perhaps the most pronounced takeaway from those twelve rounds (and many that preceded them) is that regardless of the outcome Jack guarantees action, and the moments that birth and sustain that reputation very often outshine the results.

Like all volume fighters, Jack will have to be mindful of the power that awaits him at light heavyweight: the element of attrition in his style he will always tempt disaster against opponents who need but one clean look. Nor can you, whatever your promotional or network allegiance, ascend to the top of that division without sharing the ring with a fighter known primarily for relieving men of their senses. But Jack, the fighter who professes a willingness to fight anybody and has the daring to make good on his words, has earned the right to worry about his future. His past—or at least the moment in it that once defined him—should hound him no longer.

By Bart Barry-

Friday brought what announcement boxing craves – a superfight! And here it is: May 6 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas Mexican cinnamonweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will trade hands with Mexican chavezweight champion Julio “Son of the Legend” Chavez Jr. at the celebrityweight limit of 164 1/2 pounds. What we know of boxing contracts assures us even this loopiest of catchweights remains open to negotiation till opening bell – and without mandatory-minimum sentencing there’s good a chance of Chavez weighing over 200 pounds on May 5 as under 165 – and so as to ensure competitive bidding there are still threats of returning to the stadium where the Dallas Cowboys play, whatever it’s currently called, but if you’re a Mexican national booking his Cinco de Mayo vacation plans anywhere but Nevada, eres un payaso.

The obvious temptation is to go full misplaced aggression on this fight and use it as a convenient metaphor for what plagues our oncebeloved sport as if such metaphors composed a paucity, and of course for those GGG fans who long for a fight that justifies their ardor by legitimizing their guy last week’s announcement brought more ire – which says lots about the chances they honestly give a post-Pirog Daniel “Miracle Man” Jacobs, and the word ‘honestly’ must be emphasized because the promotional center of boxing is about to pretend Jacobs is a daunting foe, maybe even dangerous as David Lemieux – but Cinnamon versus Son of the Legend is an actually intriguing prizefight in spite of itself. It’s not what boxing needs, but who in the hell even knows what that is anymore? Boxing’s woes now need remedies prescribed in years, not fights, so it’s way outside the point to accuse any fight anylonger of not benefiting the sport that, were it not for certain broadcasters’ bespoke budgets, would soon find itself remanded to UFC undercards in the U.S.

This fight will sell hugely among Mexicans largely because it is so exclusively Mexican – it has nothing to do with WBC titles (though one gets giddy imagining what sanctioning ploys Consejo Mundial de Boxeo has planned) or official records or contrived gravity and legacy; it will feature two Mexicans who at least partially resent one another’s acclaim in the sense one man’s acclaim taxes the other’s revenue in the finite if inelastic Mexican boxing marketplace. From an aficionado’s perspective this fight made much more sense when this column prescribed it six years ago but from a promoter’s perspective it’s good a time as any.

Chavez ate himself hastily away from Canelo before HBO succeeded in making Canelo the draw he is now – HBO’s interest in Canelo began with the network’s stint as “an Oscar De La Hoya-search company that populates its undercards with Al Haymon-managed trial balloons” until Haymon bought Showtime and now HBO’s interest in Canelo is some combination of wanting exclusivity with the last guy in the sport who moves the pay-per-view needle and selfinterested altruism: without HBO as a partner Golden Boy Promotions probably wouldn’t see fiscal 2018 and then HBO would be stuck broadcasting solely Top Rank cards and every single product of the former Soviet Union’s amateur program.

Which brings us limping towards Son of the Legend whose career and life were shortened by his 2012 match with middleweight champion Sergio Martinez. Never a picture of discipline before Maravilla calmly, crisply, cooly diddled his cranium hundreds of times Chavez Jr. lost his remaining impetus thereafter and snuck through the next two years and two sizable paychecks beating on Brian Vera before changing his manager and promoter and advisor and getting bitchmade by a limited Pole named Andrzej Fonfara. Rumors of Chavez’s reform persist as ever, but making fights in El Paso and Monterrey as Chavez has done for the last two years has convinced no one Chavez is on the fruitful side of his career, and therefore the time is now for making a fight that proves nothing, but again, so what?

It’s no insight to say Golden Boy Promotions cannot afford to get Canelo beat; Cinnamon is nowhere near frightened of Gennady Golovkin as Oscar De La Hoya is since Canelo is not using his fortune to supplement more than a car collection and some houses while De La Hoya is using Canelo to subsidize a whole lot more. There’s no chance De La Hoya or HBO thinks Chavez can beat Canelo, but Chavez can beat Canelo, and Mexicans know this because whatever fuzziness Chavez’s lifestyle has brought his fighting trim the fact remains Chavez took Martinez to the quivering precipice of a knockout, and that Martinez was better in every way than Canelo.

The Maravilla whose career Chavez effectively razed in 90 seconds was creative and mobile and talented as any fighter Canelo has faced including the Floyd Mayweather who embarrassed him in 2013. And Chavez came a punch from snatching Martinez’s consciousness with nothing but size and will; he measured the physical disparity between a man who walks the earth at 210 pounds and starves to 160 and a man who had to eat his way up from 154 and invested in it by being hit relentlessly for 34 minutes simply for a chance to spend one minute whacking that smaller man with impunity.

Canelo is naturally larger than Martinez but not nearly large as Chavez, and if Canelo plans to stand in the pocket and counterpunch with Chavez he will get hit. No evidence has surfaced Canelo’s whiskers aren’t stiff but 36 minutes with Chavez should moisten them for Golovkin (unless Canelo can sue revenue projections for another year of PPV showcases), and therein lies the delicious irony of this money grab: In seeking one last enormous payday for Canelo before his reckoning with Golovkin the Cinnamon handlers ensure their man’s eventual middleweight-unification match will be a cashout.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

Follow all the action as Badou Jack takes on James DeGale in a super middleweight unification bout.  The action begins at 9:30 PM ET / 6:30 PT with a IBF Junior Lightweight title bout between Jose Pedraza and Gervonta Davis.

NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED

Round 1 Degale trying to push the pace…STRAIGHT LEFT AND DOWN GOES JACK..

Round 2 Right from Jack..Right..Combination from DeGale

Round 3 Right hook from DeGale…Jack jabs to body..Right..Good right…Combination from DeGale..Left and right from Jack..Combination inside from DeGale..

Round 4 Hard uppercut from DeGale..Combination..Combination…Jack sneaks in a right..Right hook from DeGale

Round 5 Pushing left from DeGale..Right from Jack followed by a combination..Left from, DeGale and n uppercut..good right hook..Left from Jack his referee Arthur Mercante

Round 6 Body shot from DeGale..Jack landed hard shots on the ropes..Jab…Hard combination from DeGale

Round 7 Jack buckles DeGale with a right..Right hook from DeGale…Left from DeGale…

Round 8 Hard right rocks DeGale..right…DeGale face bleeding..Body shots from Jack,..left inside..DeGale trying to fight back…Uppercut from DeGale..

Round 9 Right hook from DeGale..uppercut..Right from Jack..Right hook from DeGale..Right from Jack..Hard combination from Jack..

Round 10 Body combination from DeGale..Head combination on ropes from Jack..Trading in middle of ring..Good 4 punch combination from Degale..2 rights from Jack…

Round 11 Hard long right from Jack..Right from DeGale..Body work from Jack..DeGale comes back with a combination….another quick combination..

Round 12 Right hook from DeGale..Body shot from Jack…HARD COUNTER RIGHT AND DOWN GOES DEGALE…Jack all over DeGale…DeGale bleeding bad from his right eye,,Big shots from Jack..Hard right from DeGale at the bell

114-112 DeGale…113-113 on 2 cards,,,,,MAJORITY DRAW

Round 1 Davis jabs to the body..Overhand left…Hard combination…Hard right hook…Pedraza taking it well..Right hook..

Round 2 Pedraza trying to jab…Body shot and combination from Davis

Round 3 Quick right hook from Davis..Left over the top..Popping jab…Straight left..Jab from Pedraza…Pedraza bleeding from the nose

Round 4 Body shot from Pedraza..Ripping body shot from Davis..Left over the top..Good body shot from Pedraza

Round 5 Hard combination from Pedraza..Body shots..5 punch combiantion..Davis talking trash..he lands a combination of his own

Round 6 Pedraza lands a left…hard left from Davis…Body shot hurts Pedraza..Thundding left..4 massive head shots from Davis..

Round 7 Doctor checking Pedraza…Right hook from Davis..Back left hurts Pedraza..Vicious uppercut and LEFT AND DOWN GOES PEDRAZA…HE GETS UP AND THE FIGHT IS STOPPED

Follow all the action as Erislandy Lara defends the WBA Super Welterweight title against Yuri Foreman.  The action kicks off at 9 PM ET / 6 PM PT with a super middleweight clash between former world champion Anthony Dirrell battling Norbert Nemespati.

THE PAGE WILL UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY…NO BROWSER REFRESH NEEDED

Round 1: Lara lands a straight left

Round 2 Good straight left from Lara

Round 3 Double jab from Lara..LARA SCORES A KNOCKDOWN

ROUND 4 LARA LANDS A HUGE UPPERCUT, DOWN GOES FOREMAN…HE CANT GET UP IS COUNTED OUT

Round 1 Left hook from Dirrell…

Round 2 Dirrell coming forward..Combination from Nemespati..Couple big shots from Dirrell..Dirrell landing on the ropes

Round 3 Dirrell has a bloody nose..Body shot from Dirrell..another one

Round 4 Jab-Hook combination…Big right from Dirrell…Dirrell taking charge

Round 5 Dirrell lands a leaping left

Round 6 Good right from Dirrell…and another….FIGHT STOPPED BY NEMESPATI’S CORNER

By Norm Frauenheim-

The James DeGale-Badou Jack fight Saturday night is a good bout and perhaps the first step in an attempt to hit the reset button after a sobering 2016.

It’s no secret that there wasn’t much to celebrate in the bygone year. It’s hard to know if the business has hit bottom and can finally embark on a long recovery.

But at least that old calendar can be tossed and replaced with one that includes inevitable hopes for a renewal.

DeGale-Jack at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in a Showtime-televised 168-pound fight represents a beginning in a January that includes a terrific rematch of featherweight Carl Frampton’s decision over Leo Santa Cruz on the 28th.

A chance at gaining some momentum is there. The question is whether that’s enough to bring back some of the fans who raced for the exits in something of an exodus during the 20 months after Floyd Mayweather’s disappointing decision over Manny Pacquiao in May 2015.

It’s impossible to overstate the damage done by Mayweather-Pacquiao. Other than time, it’s not clear what can repair it. Just follow the money, always a reliable guide.

Forbes released a list on Tuesday, a projection of boxing’s top moneymakers in 2017. From one to 10, they are:

Canelo Alvarez, Andre Ward, Gennady Golovkin, Sergey Kovalev, Pacquiao, Wladimir Klitschko tied at sixth with Anthony Joshua, Keith Thurman, Deontay Wilder, Terence Crawford and Vasyl Lomachenko.

Alvarez is at the top because he reigns as the game’s biggest draw based in part on a reported pay-per-view audience of 300,000 for his knockout of Liam Smith in September at Cowboys Stadium. There’s also promoter Oscar De La Hoya’s promise that Canelo will finally fight Golovkin next September.

For now, Canelo-GGG is seen as the bout that will put boxing back at one million on the PPV scale. The number means more than money. It represents relevancy.

In the larger sports market, boxing has been sliding toward irrelevancy at a perilous rate. Again, follow the money.

In Forbes’ last ranking of the world’s top 100 athletes for earnings from June 2015 to June 2016, three boxers were included – Mayweather at No. 16 with $44 million, Pacquiao at No. 63 with $24 million and Canelo at No. 92 with $21.5 million.

The retired Mayweather, No. 1 in three of Forbes’ last four lists, is there, mostly for the $32 million he collected for his last fight, a victory over Andre Berto in September 2015.

Pacquiao got $20 million for his rematch victory over Timothy Bradley in April 2016. Canelo cracked the top 100 for his purses against Miguel Cotto in November 2015 and Amir Khan in May 2016.

Here’s the question: Will any boxer be among the next 100 on the 2017 list Forbes is expected to release in June?

Doubtful. A blockbuster would have to happen during the next six months.

Joshua-Klitschko on April 29 at London’s Wembley Stadium? Maybe. The emerging Joshua figures to beat an aging Klitschko, but he might be a year away from entering the Forbes’ rankings.

A possible Canelo-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fight in early May? It would be a moneymaker, especially among Mexican and Mexican-American fans. But it is way past due and would fall short of being Forbes’ worthy.

The best chance at restoring the relevancy defined by money appears to be in the June 2018 list, which would account for the promised GGG-Canelo showdown.

But even that hinges on bringing fans back into an increasingly empty tent. From this corner, the public appetite for a good fight is still keen.

But boxing has failed to provide it, hence all of the silly talk about Mayweather versus Conor McGregor, the mixed-martial arts megaphone who was at No. 85 on Forbes’ last list with $22 million.

If Mayweather-McGregor ever really happens, I’ll begin to believe some of those boxing obits. Mayweather-versus-McGregor would be a damning confirmation that boxing can no longer provide fights that the market place wants and will always want.

For now, the key is to show that the business can still deliver. That brings us back to the beginning, back to DeGale-Jack Saturday night in what could be the first fight in a much bigger one.