There is an old Chinese curse which says” may you live in interesting times”. Well over the last couple of weeks we have certainly been living in interesting times in boxing. We had two major fights which ended in controversy, we had Gennady Golovkin and Saul Alvarez setting out to drum up interest in their coming fight (if you need to be “sold” on this fight you are obviously not a boxing fan) and the date for the Floyd Mayweather vs. Connor McGregor fight rolled out (if you buy this fight you are obviously not a boxing fan).
Apart from the controversy the Andre Ward vs. Sergey Kovalev fight was unremarkable. The first fight was much better. I had Kovalev one point in front but had given the sixth and seventh to Ward as Kovalev looked to be fading. The referee gave Kovalev a rough deal. On three occasions Kovalev stepped back to indicate he had been hit low and on each occasion Ward stopped also acknowledging that he had gone low. By not warning Ward the referee was almost inviting him to keep going low. You can never be 100% sure but I felt that even without the low blows Ward was on his way to a stoppage win. Kovalev made no complains. He made it clear Ward was the better fighter on the night and talked about being 34 and doing something else with his life. Naturally his team has launched a protest. They could not do otherwise. They are paid to look after Kovalev’s interests. I can’t see any action being taken to order a rematch and I don’t believe either fighter wants one at least not in the near future. Ward has said he is looking at cruiser or even heavy. He is not signed up to VADA CBP so we can’t know what he might be smoking! There are fights at light heavy for him and perhaps even cruiser where apart from Olek Usyk the champions are not fearsome beasts. Tony Bellew is a possibility but Tony swings with the wind-he might retire, he might go up to heavyweight, he might fight Ward etc. Clean up your own house first Andre-fight Adonis Stevenson. I have to feel sorry for Guillermo Rigondeaux. The brilliant Cuban gets labelled boring and when he finally scores a spectacular knockout he is one second out on his timing. Judging by precedents such as Rances Barthelemy vs. Argenis Mendez it is likely to end up as a No Decision and instead of moving on he will have to go over old ground. I felt sorry for the referee. The look of amazement on his face when he turned around and saw Moises Flores lying spread-eagled on the canvas was almost comical. The difference between a punch landing before, on or after the bell is a split second and it would have been impossible for Rigondeaux to have stopped that last punch so the real question is did he launch it after the bell? It can’t get much better than Gennady Golovkin vs. Saul Alvarez. Two great boxers-future Hall of Fame inductees who are both still at their peak and who love to fight aggressively. It’s a 50/50 fight for me so my neck is not going to emerge over the top button of my shirt anytime soon. For me like so many others Mayweather vs. McGregor is a non-event which I wish wasn’t going to happen. It will prove nothing. There is no title at stake. There are no redeeming features. What puzzles me is why I feel so strongly. If I don’t care who wins why am I angry about it. There is a lot of anger in the boxing fraternity over this charade and it is being condemned by many big names in boxing. I don’t believe it will hurt boxing unless you feel that a knock to Mayweather’s dignity is important or are we worried that if McGregor wins it will mean that UFC is better than boxing. I find myself where I am totally a’gin it and I am not sure why I am so totally a’gin it-but I am. It is also irritating that they have selected 26 August the same night as Miguel Cotto’s fight against Yoshihiro Kamegai. It has to hurt that show as you can be sure that boxing, UFC fans and general sports fans will buy Mayweather vs. McGregor in sufficient numbers to make it one of the largest sporting events in history-and I am still a’gin it. The WBO are in favour which does not surprise me at all. Mauricio Sulaiman has been talking up an Anthony Joshua vs. Deontay Wilder fight. Sure it is a good fight but don’t you think after five voluntary defences Wilder should fight a mandatory challenger before he looks outside the WBC ratings for an opponent? The WBA have stripped Beibut Shumenov of their secondary cruiser title and upgraded Yunier Dorticos to their secondary champion. They have also ordered their super champion Denis Lebedev to fight Mark Flanagan, their No 8, with the winner to fight Dorticos so that they then meet their stated aim of one champion in each division. Shumenov has not fought for 13 months and reportedly has an eye injury that may force his retirement. The fact that their super champion Lebedev was beaten by Marat Gassiev in December is ignored as that fight was only for the IBF title which makes it all a mockery. As for their one champion why do they show”vacant” against the secondary titles in four divisions if they are trying to drop them altogether? Usual blatant manipulation of their ratings by the WBA saw Paul Smith go from nowhere in March to No 5 in April even though he had not fought since September. It wouldn’t be so bad if the just slipped him in at No 15 but subtlety has never been their strong point. A fight with David Lemieux would certainly give Billy Joe Saunders a chance to boost his profile. No fault of his that Avtandil Khurtsidze got arrested but by 16 September the scheduled date for his next fight he will have had only one fight in 21 months. He and Lemieux have been exchanging barbs but the timing has to be right for Saunders to take on a big puncher like Lemieux and unless the WBO order it a voluntary defence in September and Lemieux after that might work out better for him but he must be desperate to get back into action. The HBO show on 9 September will feature five of the top super flyweights in the world with Roman Gonzalez vs. Srisaket, Carlos Cuadras vs. Juan Francisco Estrada and Naoya Inoue vs. Antonio Nieves. Gonzalez will be looking for revenge for his controversial loss to Srisaket which cost him his WBC title. Cuadras and Estrada will be fighting for the right to meet the winner for the WBC title with Inoue defending his WBO title against Antonio Nieves. The WBO have not yet managed to switch Nieves from No 7 bantam to somewhere at super fly since he lost to Nikolai Potapov in March but they will. The date for the return fight between Vasyl Lomachenko and Omar Salido is set for 8 August. The brilliant Ukrainian will be looking to get revenge for his lone loss as a pro when Salido came in overweight and roughed up Lomachenko on the way to a disputed split decision. The 36-year-old Salido has had wars of attrition with Terdsak, Roma Martinez and Francisco Vargas since then and for me Lomachenko will get the win I thought he deserved the first time. Also rolled out for our pleasure is the Adrien Broner vs. Mikey Garcia fight for 27 July in New York. An intriguing fight that Broner dare not lose. He struggled to beat Adrian Granados on a split decision in February and Garcia is a much tougher proposition. I would take him to easily beat anyone at lightweight and be the only one capable of giving Terence Crawford a real challenger at super light. The WBA have called for purse bids for the return fight between Jamie McDonnell and Liborio Solis for their secondary bantam title. They met in November with McDonnell winning the unanimous decision which proved controversial in some circles but which I though McDonnell won clearly. The minimum purse bid is set at $120,000 with McDonnell share of the purse 75% and Solis 25%. The problem is that although a good fight at a figure of over $120,000 it is only viable as a support to a much bigger fight The supporting fights for the 1 July fight between Manny Pacquiao and Jeff Horn will see Jerwin Ancajas defending his IBF super fly title against his No 3 challenger Teiru Kinoshita. Ancajas gave Pacquiao his first world champion as a promoter. The Japanese fighter is ranked No 3 although the first two places are vacant. He can’t go into one of those slots as he has not beaten a rated fighter-but it is OK to put him No 3! Irish hope Michael Conlan will face Jarrett Owen and Jonel Dapidran, a cousin of Pacquiao, will also be on the card. The worrying part about signing up to the VADA CBP is that you might actually get a random test. That’s the case for former European champion Dennis Ceylan. The Dane tested positive for cocaine and now waits to find out what punishment is in store for him. Still on Danish boxing Mikkel Kessler has ruled himself out of the World Boxing Super Series. Quite sensibly he decided that after four years of inactivity he would need a lot more time to prepare before entering that competition. On almost the same day as Kessler made that decision former WBA champion Firat Arslan said he wanted to take part in the tournament. The 46-year-old German fights 31-1 Goran Delic on 15 July for the vacant WBO European title and is hoping to impress there to earn an invitation. Still in that part of the world Swede Erik Skoglund has despaired of landing a title shot at light heavy so has decided to move down to super middle. Not sure who he is targeting but there are very few easy avenues at super middle whereas if Andre Ward moved up there would be three vacant titles at light heavy. Former WBC super middle champion Sakio Bika is returning to action. The Cameroon-born Australian tackles Australian Luke Sharp (14-5-3) in Sydney on 8 July for the vacant WBC Asian Boxing Council title. It will be the first fight for over two years for Bika. On 1 July Oscar de La Hoya will be heading down to Villa Mercedes in Argentina for the inauguration of a new sports centre there. His cousin Diego will fight in the main event of opening show against Alan Isaias Luques. Fights to watch out for: In his first fight since losing his WBO title to Olek Usyk in September former WBO cruiser champion Krzys Glowacki (26-1) returns to action on Saturday against unbeaten Turk Hizni Altunkaya (29-0). August 15 Kyoto Shinsuke Yamanaka (27-0-2) meets unbeaten Mexican Luis Nery (23-0). It will be defence No 13 of his WBC bantam title for Yamanaka. Interesting to see that the EBU have set a date of 19 July for purse offers for the fight between Ahmed El Mousaoui and Frankie Gavin for the vacant European Union welterweight title as Gavin makes another effort to get his career rolling again. Late substitutions are the bane of the sport. Last weekend in Estonia there was to be a fight between Robert Helenius and Ian Lewison for the WBC International Silver title. Not a bad fight until things fell apart. With Lewisham not able to fight the search went on for a last minute replacement. One was found that was acceptable to the WBC but was not acceptable to Helenius and the only name left on the board was a poor opponent in Evgeny Orlov leaving the choice between a bad fight and no fight and probably no show so a choice between a rock and a hard place for the WBC. Helenius vs. Orlov went on for the Silver title and no one got hurt so sometimes we have to work with shades of grey in this sport. WBC super featherweight champion Miguel Berchelt has gone to jail. Don’t panic! He has visited a jail in Hermosillo, Mexico giving exhibitions and talking to young inmates about how with work and discipline they can fulfil their dreams. He has fitted this into his training for a title defence against Takashi Miura in Inglewood on 15 July. The boxing fraternity in South Africa lost two of its stalwarts in Freddy Rafferty and Len Hunt. Rafferty, a former South African cruiser champion, scored some good wins over opposition such as Piet Crous and Tony Fulilangi in a 14 year career finishing with a 32-14-2 record. Hunt was a top class referee but his major contribution came in his work with the South Africa National Boxing Control Commission as they rebuilt the sport in a post apartheid period. RIP gentlemen. The latest news on German boxer Eduard Gutknecht is not good. Since collapsing after his fight with George Groves and undergoing extensive brain surgery in England Gutknecht is now back home in Germany. Although there has been slight progress his condition is still serious. He can hear and see and has slight movement of his head and arms he is unable to speak. Boxing people from around the world have made donations to help his wife and three children at this time including a generous donation from George Groves and his team. Italian Bepi Ros is another undergoing a bad time. He has serious health and financial problems and again the 74-year-old former Italian heavyweight champion has found the boxing fraternity generous with their help.
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Can’t get too excited over Miguel Cotto signing a multi-fight deal with Golden Boy and going straight into a fight for the vacant WBO super welter title. At 36 (Cotto not me unfortunately) I have to be honest and say I see the great Puerto Rican as yesterday’s man. In his last fight he lost a wide unanimous decision to Saul Alvarez by 10, 8 and 7 points on the three cards and is 18 months older now. The fight with his selected opponent Yoshihiro Kamegai will probably be an entertaining one as much for the Japanese fighter’s style as anything. The WBO’s manipulating of their ratings for this fight are a disgrace. Cotto’s last fight was his loss to Alvarez in November 2015 but despite 18 months of inactivity he has climbed to No 1 spot in the WBO ratings. For the Cotto fight to be a “big” fight Golden Boys’ s selected opponent Kamegai also needs to be rated. No problem after six months of not being in the WBO ratings Kamegai suddenly finds the magic ratings elevator and steps out at No 12 in March this year. Not enough. In the last WBO ratings in May he has climbed to No 5 and they have time to issue a couple more ratings before fight time on 26 August so who knows where Kamegai could rise to by then. Let me see now. Miguel Cotto comes from Puerto Rico and the WBO President Francisco Valcarcel comes from………..or is there an honest explanation?
The eventual aim is a Cotto vs. Juan Manuel Marquez fight perhaps in December. Marquez had a bout scheduled for July in Mexico with no opponent named yet and there is no contract in place for a Cotto fight. Added uncertainty was thrown into the mix with 43-year-old Marquez reporting a shoulder injury in training. The extent of the injury is not yet clear but it may delay his return which could throw the whole Cotto vs. Marquez schedule out. Two world championships fight on the same bill in Sheffield. Two injured fighters two different decisions. Kell Brook suffered another orbital fracture and decided not to risk his vision. George Groves suffered a fractured jaw in the third round and knowing this could be his last chance to win a world title fought on despite the pain. For me both fighters made the right decision under the circumstances in which they found themselves. Both were courageous decisions in their own way. Yes Groves should be praised for the courage he showed in continuing but also Brook for the good sense he showed so good luck to them both. Groves will now face a lay-off for surgery and then hopefully will be back with a whole range of options waiting for him. Errol Spence was very impressive in beating Brook. For many fans he was a champion in waiting and is now a major player in the welterweight division. It is strange that American fighters such as Spence and Gervonta Davis never really reached the heights in the amateur world. Gervonta won a National Golden Gloves title but not much else. Spence won a hatful of titles at domestic level but his best in the wider world was quarter finalist at the World Championships and the 2012 Olympics and he failed to qualify for the Pan American Games. Neither Terrence Crawford , Gary Russell or Keith Thurman hit the heights as amateurs but now they are world class pros. Fighters such as Vasyl Lomachenko, Anthony Joshua, Andre Ward, Deontay Wilder, Olek Usyk have succeeded as both amateurs and professionals so I guess amateur credentials are important but they don’t tell the whole story. I think that Gilberto Mendoza’s response to the controversial scoring in the Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam vs. Ryota Murata fight was disgraceful. Putting the scoring to one side for a moment. Because of the furore and remembering the huge value in the form of sanction fees that Japan represents to the WBA he still owed a loyalty to his judges who the WBA themselves appointed. Instead he threw Gustavo Padilla and Hubert Earle to the dogs and stabbed them in the back-yes both-to appease the critics. He should have made it clear that he saw a need to review the scoring and would do it expediently and dealt with Padilla and Earl in private. But instead of giving them any chance to discuss their scores he effectively disowned them. What sort of message does that throw out to the other WBA judges about scoring against the home fighter and about how loyalty lies with those who pay the sanction fees and not with their own people. I personally scored Murata the winner but I had as much of a disagreement with the 117-110 for Murata as I did with the 115-112 for N’Jikam. So here’s the lesson for WBA judges-vote for the home guy or if you find that impossible at least make the scores close. I checked Padilla’s record of judging in various WBA title fights going back to 2014 and there was not a single instance where he was out of line with the scores of the other two judges. I also checked the record of Earle and there was not a single instance where his score stuck out from the others. The WBA expects loyalty from its judges and they have the right to be treated with respect. Every positive test is a black eye for boxing and normally I would see no upside in that. Shannon Briggs positive test is the exception. His whole “comeback” has been a succession of farcical “action” in the ring and ridiculous posturing and disgraceful behaviour out of it. The great WBA elimination series has fallen apart but then I never took is seriously anyway. Now the WBA are left with Fres Oquendo seeking an opponent. He is No 4 in the last published WBA ratings, one behind Briggs. Oquendo is 44-year-old and has not had a fight since a disputed loss to Ruslan Chagaev in July 2014 but due his taking the WBA to court they can’t remove him. Who says boxing is a young man’s game. The top four in those WBA ratings are Luis Ortiz 38, Alex Ustinov 40, Briggs 45 and Oquendo 40 and then Wlad Klitschko 41. In addition Lucas Browne, the former holder of the WBA secondary title returns to action this weekend after serving bans for two positive tests. He gets an easy one for his return facing Matt Greer ( age? 40 naturally) who has lost his last nine fights Browne is a mere lad at 38. Perhaps we need yet another division named either “The Zimmer frame division” or the “Where did I leave my teeth division”. Never mind weighing in just show us your pension book. This month should see a great deal of clarity emerging in the light heavyweight division. As I write Adonis Stevenson is about to defend the WBC title against Andrzej Fonfara in Montreal and Eleider Alvarez and Jean Pascal fight each other on the same show. On 17 June in Las Vegas Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev meet for the second time. For fans of boxing in Montreal Kovalev vs. Stevenson would probably be the preferred outcome but Ward will have something to say about that. Good to see a resurgence of big time boxing in France. They had a class show topped by Cedric Vitu on 18 May featuring high class fights all the way down the card and as I write Olympic heavyweight champion Tony “The Artist” Yoka is due to have his first pro fight in Paris. His opponent Travis Clark is no threat but no one wants to take a chance with Yoka as Canal + has bought into him so he is the hottest property in French boxing right now. In addition to Yoka unbeaten bantam Nordine Oubaali, a 2008 and 2012 Olympian, fights Alejandro Hernandez for the WBC Silver bantamweight title and 2016 Olympian Souleymane Cissokho is also appearing. On 10 June former WBA champion Souleymane M’Baye continues his comeback as he takes on Karim Aliliche for the French welter title. When you add Sweden’s welcome return to pro boxing, Norway about to have a pro show, Mikkel Kessler passing all his medical tests and ready to return and give an added boost to Danish boxing and Singapore dipping its toe in the water and above all the biggie of over 40,000 tickets sold for Manny Pacquiao vs. Jeff Horn in Brisbane, a place where synchronised swimming usually gets more coverage than boxing. the sport is alive and well. Some bad news from Ghana-Floyd Mayweather Jr is visiting there this month. Only kidding. It will be a huge event for Ghana where boxing sits just behind football in popularity. Things have not been going as well as they might there so this should give the sport a boost. It is possible that Roman Gonzalez will get his return with Thai Srisaket in California in 9 September. The Nicaraguan lost his WBC title to Srisaket on a majority decision in March. If that comes off then there is the possibility of the Japanese “Monster” Naoya Inoue defending his WBO super fly title against McWilliams Arroyo on the same show. If Gonzalez and Inoue win that would set up a great fight between Gonzalez and Inoue. Two former victims of Gonzalez fists will meet for the interim WBC super fly title with purse bids due for Carlos Cuadras vs. Juan Francisco Estrada on 8 June. That’s a tight division with unbeaten Khalid Yafai holding the WBA title, Jerwin Ancajas the IBF title and Johnriel Casimero, Kazuto Ioka, Juan Carlos Reveco and Rex Tso all in the mix. Brit Billy Joe Saunders faces a tough title defence on 8 July in London. His challenger Avtandil Khurtsidze is a rough brawler who pressurises for 100% of the time and has lost only one fight since 2005. Saunders needs to win and win well. With Gennady Golovkin putting the WBA, IBF and IBO titles on the line against Saul Alvarez on 16 September (Alvarez has stated he has no interest in fighting for the WBC title although that will automatically be on the line for Golovkin) and his No 1 challenger Ryota Murata probably going for the mandated return fight with Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam for the secondary WBA title his options are shrinking. If the WBO moves Murata out of the No 1 spot then the logical replacement is No 2 David Lemieux although a win over mandatory challenger Khurtsidze would put Saunders in a voluntary position. The Khurtsidze fight is only his second in the last 19 months so he needs another fight this year. On 17 June under the Tyrone Zeuge vs. Paul Smith fight for the secondary WBA super middle title unbeaten German Stefan Haertel takes on Patrick Mendy. This will be Haertel’s first fight under new trainer the 75-year-old legendary Ulli Wegner. Heavyweights will top the bill in Gdansk on 24 June as Tomasz Adamek tries yet again to make an impact at heavy. Now 40, the former WBC light heavy and IBF cruiser champion takes on 41-year-old Solomon Haumona. This is Adamek’s first fight since being knocked out by Eric Molina in ten rounds in April last year. Haumona’s last fight was a fourth round stoppage defeat against Joseph Parker for the WBO heavy title in July. On the undercard Mateusz Masternak faces Ismayl Sillah at cruiser and former WBO cruiser champion Krzys Glowacki faces American Brian Howard in his first fight since losing his title to Olek Usyk in September. Former IBF super lightweight champion Eduard Troyanovsky returns to action 1 July in Moscow against Italian Michele Di Riocco. It will be the Russians first fight since his shocking 40 second kayo by Namibian Julius Indongo in December which cost him his IBF title. Former undefeated European champion Di Riocco is having his second fight since losing to Ricky Burns for the vacant WBA title in May last year. Also on 1 July a good match for the vacant European light heavyweight title sees unbeaten Dominic Boesel (24-0) tackle former IBF title challenger Karo Murat. The proposed IBF final eliminator between Omar Narvaez and Puerto Rican Emmanuel Rodriguez has finally been consigned to the dustbin. After numerous postponements Narvaez will now face Russian Nikolai Potapov for the vacant interim WBO super fly title with the winner getting a shot at champion Zolani Tete. There is nothing wrong with Tete. He is fit and well but an interim title means another sanctioning fee for the WBO. Strangely for the WBO with this decision they have effectively screwed Puerto Rican Rodriguez who will now await the outcome of the IBF title fight between champion Lee Haskins and Ryan Burnett on 10 June. Trust your mother to embarrass you in front of your friends. The mother of Jarrett Hurd, the IBF super welter champion has told her son you are a 26-year-old world champion isn’t it about time you moved out and had a place of your own. Come on Jarrett you are a big boy now make the leap. I am going to set up a Ministry of Nicknames with stringent rules on the use of extravagant or misleading nicknames which to me amounts to misleading the public. You get guys with the nickname of “TNT”, “Power” , “KO Kid” ,”Dynamite” , “Assassin, Destroyer” etc. with kayo percentages of 2%. You get guys with the nickname of “Baby”, “Kid” “Junior” etc. who will never see 40 again. However it goes both ways. Guys with nicknames such as “Big Baby”, Bumblebee”, “Boo Boo”, “Chocolate Hills and “Mamma’s Boy” ( all true honest) just don’t seem to understand that a nickname is supposed to strike fear into the heart of an opponent. Come on get on board guys. Oh yes you can’t use the nickname “Sugar” under any circumstances unless you are Ray Robinson or Ray Leonard. I will be watching you and you can expect to get a severe reprimand and have to wear the protector cup version of a hair shirt if you break the rules. That should keep you all up to scratch (sorry I couldn’t resist it). (We'd like to apologise for Eric for taking so long to put this up, wesimply didn't see the email until earlier today) With the Andre Ward vs. Sergey Kovalev and Srisaket vs. Roman Gonzalez fights producing disputed verdicts (by me anyway) it is good to see that we will get a rerun of both of them. I thought Kovalev edged Ward and that Gonzalez was a clear winner against Srisaket which just goes to show that whilst two people watch the same fight they will often both see a different fight. Hopefully we get a clear and decisive outcome in both contests. No matter how good a fight is I hate to see it develop into a series as it shuts out other fighters going for the title. Despite how I saw the first one I think Ward will win the return and Gonzalez will get his revenge-so bet on Kovalev and Srisaket!
The WBC don’t want to have to wait until Gonzalez’s injuries heal so they have ordered an interim title fight between Juan Francisco Estrada and Carlos Cuadras which is a great little fight. The WBC has said that whoever wins the respective fights must then meet each other in their next fight. Too often we get the recurring farce of both a real champion and an interim champion defending their titles at the same time. Which part of the word interim do the sanctioning bodies have a problem understanding? The uncertainty over Manny Pacquiao’s next opponent has been settled and it turns out to be who it was supposed to be in the first place. Jeff Horn gets the chance of a lifetime in Brisbane on 2 July in what is arguably the biggest fight ever held in Australia. Boxing badly needs a profile boost Down Under. Today’s newspapers in Brisbane listed sports sections covering “Rugby, Football, Cricket, Racing, Motor Sport, Tennis and Basketball. Boxing came in under “others” and there was no mention of the fight at all. Some publicity drum thumping needed I feel. The 29-year-old Horn, the WBO No 2, is 16-0-1. Despite not taking up boxing until he was 18 Horn won the Queensland State title in only his second amateur fight .He then had extensive amateur experience including being Australian champion and competing at both the World Championships and the 2012 Olympics. He has wins over good level competition in Viktor Plotnykov (32-2), Ahmed El Mousaoui (22-1-1), Randall Bailey and Ali Funeka. None of those are even remotely in Pacquiao’s class and the odds against a Horn win are huge but who knows? Upsets happen and sometimes fighters seem to grow old overnight, but a win for Horn would be one of the greatest upsets in boxing history. Oh unless we forget one of Pacquiao’s team said that a fight with Amir Khan later in the year is a possibility. Don’t hold your breath. It is still not clear who will be in opposite corner when Miguel Cotto fights in New York on 24 June. The latest suggestion is Japanese fighter Yoshihiro Kamegai but nothing is set. Cotto’s team have said it will not be a PPV match and in view of the names coming up of possible opponents that’s the right decision. Austin Trout has put his name forward but that is not a likely option. Young Puerto Rican prospect Alberto “Explosivo” Machado may also be on the bill. He impressed at the weekend with a first round dismissal of Juan Jose Martinez. His last nine wins have taken a total of less than twelve rounds and Martinez was a very respectable 26-3 going in. Juan Manuel Marquez is back in action. No not in the ring. The Mexican great has declared war on JP Morgan Chase & Co. Marquez is suing the bank alleging they did not carry out their fiscal duties with regard to a conspiracy to steal $2.3 million from him. His past tax accountants opened a false account in his name at the bank and then transferred Marquez’s tax refunds into that account and stole the money. Marquez is suing for return of the money plus significant damages claiming the bank failed in their duty and did not train their personnel sufficiently. The Bank denies the allegations. With Thai boxer Wanheng going to 46-0 with a win last week in a non-title six round fight there has been some talk over whether if he gets to 50-0 he beats the current record for a world champion of 49-0 held jointly by Rocky Marciano and Floyd Mayweather Jr. If you think it would not count then you need to come up with some criteria that shows why. Right now it is simple. Get to 50-0 no matter what title you hold, what opposition you face or what nationality you are and you beat the record so right now there is no reason to ignore his claim if he gets there. Ricardo Mayorga returned to the ring last week. He was fatter, slower and heavier but his disgraceful attitude and crass mouth have not changed one little bit. Representatives of women’s rights movements in Nicaragua picketed the show asking people to boycott it. They were rightly incensed by Mayorga’s behaviour at the weigh in. He slapped his Mexican opponent and shouted “shut up you bitch, that is how I shut up bitches”. He then pointed at his opponent’s shaved head and said it made him look like a fat woman with cancer. Disgraceful. In the past Mayorga has been accused of rape and assault against women but none of the allegations have stuck. Dierry Jean is another boxer in trouble. The Haitian-born Canadian, who lost to Terrence Crawford for the WBO super light title in 2015, has been sentenced to 15 months in jail. The crime related to an incident back in 2014. Jean was with a group of guys when they decided to rob a complete stranger, a woman selected at random. Jean was tasked with undertaking the robbery. He approached the woman and threatened to stab her before punching her in the face and robbing her. The case took some time to come to court and Jean pled guilty to the charges. Despite the support of those around him the 34-year-ol Jean has struggled for some time with alcohol and drug problems. The WBC is planning to have its Convention in Kazakhstan this year. Although there is very little professional boxing in the country they certainly have some good exports. Apart from Gennady Golovkin there is also WBA and IBO champion bantam Zhanat Zhakiyanov (27-1), Beibut Shumenov, light Heavy Issa Akberbayev (18-0), super welter Kanat Islam (23-0) and welter Zhankhozh Turarov (20-0). They also have some top flight amateurs about to launch themselves into the pros but there is no sign of any significant growth of professional boxing locally. Shumenov’s next fight will be a defence of his secondary WBA cruiser title against WBA interim champion Yunier Dorticos in Las Vegas on 29 April. The plan is for the winner of that fight to challenge the real WBA champion Denis Lebedev. The next proposed step is for the winner of that series to face IBF champion Marat Gassiev to unify-partially-the cruiser titles. Not sure how the WBA are going to be able to tell Gassiev who to fight. It has been announced that Alex Povetkin will fight again on 1 July in Moscow. That’s one day after his suspension ends and only six months since he last fought. That shows just how weak and derisory the action taken against positive tests is, Some boxers have problems when they retire but Sergio Martinez is not one of them. Now 42 the former WBC super welter and WBC/WBO middleweight champion has been a busy man. He still manages a team of boxers but has involved himself in music, literature and theatre and is now moving into the cinema. “Maravilla” is playing the part of a rural bandit in a western “Pistoleros”. In a recent interview he stressed how important the mental side of boxing was and admitted that he did not see sparring as being that important. He was asked about his defensive skills and whether he had tried to copy the great “Untouchable” Nicolino Locche but Martinez said that that was not possible as Locche, who at one time had a run of just one loss in 113 fights, was from another galaxy-praise indeed. Manipulation of ratings is an incurable disease for some sanctioning bodies. Take the case of Japanese fighter Toshiyuki Igarashi. He is currently the WBO No 1 at flyweight so the mandatory challenger to Zou Shiming. In May 2016 he was rated No 10 by them. Up until last weekend when he fought a technical draw with Martin Cartagena he had had only one fight since that No 10 rating. In September 2016 he beat Thai Weerachai who was having his first pro fight. So from No 10 to No 1 by beating a guy having his first fight. There is no honest answer for manipulation that blatant. Golden Boy prospect Diego De La Hoya will be moving up to ten rounds to top the bill in a Golden Boy/ESPN show. The 22-year-old cousin of Oscar is 17-0. A fighter with another famous name, Tim Tszyu, Has his second fight this weekend. Russian Magomed Kurbanov’s big fight has faded away. Although he is just 10-0 the 21-year-old “Black Lion” was to have faced Shane Mosley in Yekaterinburg where a win would have boosted his profile to new heights. However, Mosley pulled out with an injury. In comes Lithuanian Virgilijus Stapulionis who is a fairly good fighter (27-4-1) but no Shane Mosley. And so fame passes one by. Welter Dmitry Mikhaylenko (22-1) is also on the show. At 45 Mosley should hang his gloves up but like many other he just can’t stay away. The same could be said for Tomasz Adamek. The 40-year-old former WBC light heavy and IBF cruiser champion returns to the ring on 24 June in Poland. No opponent named yet. Former European cruiser champion Mateusz Masternak is also on the show. Masternak gave Tony Bellew a hard time in their December 2015 fight before losing a very close decision. He won his two fights last year and is still rated in the top 15 by all four sanctioning bodies but I can’t see him landing a title shot. I can live with Mosley and Adamek still fighting but James Toney is just so sad. A great boxer now a parody of a boxer. On May 13 in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Toney fights Mike Sheppard for the vacant WBFoundation heavyweight title. Now 48 Toney is just a fat lump who used to be a great fighter. Sheppard is 41 but has at least been active. There are no redeeming features about this fight and the WBFoundation should not be lowering themselves by being involved. Plenty of action coming up in Germany. On 22 April Arthur Abraham and Robin Krasniqi clash in a WBO super middle eliminator. Not sure of the value of that. If Abraham wins it will be a hard sell for him against the champion Gilberto Ramirez as the Mexican won every round when they fought for the WBO title in April last year. If Krasniqi wins it will be Robin who? So an even harder sell. In a supporting bout German heavy hope Tom Schwarz (18-0) fights Adnan Redzovic (17-1) for the WBO Inter-Continental title. Not quite as tough as it looks on paper as Redzovic is 40 and has had only two fights, both against novices, in the past 30 months. On May 13 in Karlsruhe big puncher Vincent Feigenbutz defends his IBF Inter-Continental title. The original opponent was to be Andrey Sirotkin but that is now in question. On 19 May in Hamburg a dinner/boxing show sees unbeaten Mario Daser face former IBO cruiser champion Ola Afolabi, This will be the London-born Afolabi’s first fight since losing to Marco Huck for the WBO cruiser title in February last year. Christian Hammer, Karo Murat and former European champion Igor Mikhalkin are also booked to appear against opponents yet to be named. A show in Lagos, Nigeria on 26 March saw local fighter Otto Joseph win the West African lightweight title with a first round knockout of late replacement Ghanaian Ayitey Mettle. There were four other unbeaten fighters on the show. Additionally there was a show on 2 April in Lagos. It is good to see some action in Nigeria. They have produced so many good fighters but it is a struggle. There is no real money to be made, it can a struggle to raise sponsorship and there is always the possibility that if a fighter does shine he will head for the bright light and bigger money. It is remarkable that the local promoters and the Board keep things going. When I was putting some background together for the fights last weekend I looked at Gilberto Domingos who lost to Vinnie Carita. I noticed that when Domingos fought Billy Wright their respective weights were Domingos 207lbs (94kg) and Wright 325 1/4lbs (147.5kg). A difference of over 118lbs. I am not sure if that is the biggest weight difference for a fight but it must be pretty close. It’s like Wright carrying around bantam champion Jamie McDonnell in his shorts. Let’s not go there. Someone asked me to explain how Roman Gonzalez did not get the decision against Srisaket. I had to admit that I had no logical explanation for it. The CompuBox statistics showed that Gonzalez landed more punches than Srisaket in 9 out of the 12 rounds, he landed more jabs than Srisaket in 11 of the 12 rounds and more power punches than Srisaket in 8 of the 12 rounds. Overall he outlanded Srisaket by 441 punches to 284 and yet none of the judges saw Gonzalez as the winner. Each of the three judges had judged at over 500 fights and between them had judged at over 2000 fights and are all well trusted people, as are the CompuBox workers. It is inexplicable and unfortunately that is boxing for you. Perception is everything and electronic scoring will never be able to, or be allowed to, replace that.
It has been mentioned that a return could be mandated by the WBC over the failure to deduct a point from Srisaket for the first clash of heads and for there being no open scoring as called for by the WBC. It is interesting that Gonzalez’s team missed two chances to get a different result. If they had claimed their man was unable to continue after being badly cut in the clash of heads in the third it would have been a no decision and Gonzalez would have still been champion. They could also have pulled their man out at the end of the eighth round when he was fighting with his face a mask of blood. At that point one judge had Gonzalez in front 76-74 and two had it at 75-75 so it would have been a majority draw and again Gonzalez would have retained his title. In the incredulity of Gonzalez losing let’s not ignore the fact that Srisaket fought a great fight and what he lacked in technique he more than made up for in power and guts. One reaction to Gonzalez losing came from Japanese “Monster” Naoya Inoue, the WBO super fly champion. There had been talk of a unification fight between Gonzalez and Inoue but the Japanese fighter has said he has seen that fade and may now move up to bantam. A pity as Gonzalez vs. Inoue would have been a great fight. For a while there Gennady Golovkin could not find anyone to fight him but that has changed. Since he showed himself to be less of a monster against Daniel Jacobs suddenly a queue has formed. Billy Joe Saunders has thrown out his challenge and Andy Lee said it was the fight he was looking for and there are and will be others. Certainly Golovkin did not show the 100% hunting down aggressive we have come to expect but perhaps that had more to do with respect for the power of Jacobs than any blunting of Golovkin’s ruthlessness. Let’s see what happens in his next fight but I can’t see him metamorphosing into a pussy cat. It is disappointing that Daniel Jacobs chose to skip the day of the fight weight check. It not only meant that he could not win the IBF version of the title but almost certainly indicated that he had bulked up after the official weigh-in and so would have failed the IBF required second test weight. It meant that Golovkin stuck to the rules and Jacobs did not and gave Jacobs an edge and effectively he was cheating. It might be a harsh penalty if a fighter exceeds the weight increase permitted but in this case the WBC, WBA and IBO titles were still there for Jacobs when he skipped the IBF requirement. I think it is a good idea to limit the amount a fighter can bulk up between the day before and fight time and if it is a good safety measure then all of the sanctioning bodies should adopt it. Talking about adopting good ideas it was a pleasant surprise to see the WBA adopting a WBC-like approach to testing for banned substances. It is encouraging but it will really only apply to world title level boxers. Some Commissions/Boards are very proactive on testing but it is patchy and it is only the certainty of getting caught that will deter the cheats. With the Marco Huck vs. Mairis Breidis fight on 1 April only being for the WBC interim cruiser title the winner will be hoping that if Tony Bellew decides against returning to cruiser he will be up rated to full champion. Huck’s IBO title is also on the line and it is an even money match. Breidis is in a different league to the usual Baltic lose anywhere bunch that turn up in European rings. There are suggestions that on 27 May in Helsinki Robert Helenius and Dereck Chisora will face each other. They fought back in 2011 and although Chisora lost a split decision the feeling was that he had been robbed and that performance was a major factor in Chisora going on to fight Vitali Klitschko for the WBC title just three months later. Filipino Donnie Nietes will try to join the exclusive three division world champion’s club when he faces Thai Komgrich for the vacant IBF flyweight title in Cebu City on 29 April. In the past Nietes has fought exclusively for WBO titles at minimum and light fly. This will be his sixteenth world title fight and he is 15-0-1 in those title fights. He was held to a draw by Moises Fuentes but knocked Fuentes out in nine rounds in a return contest. He is unbeaten in his last 31 fights but just does not have that career defining fight in the way that both Manny Pacquiao and Nonito Donaire have. Bulgarian Kubrat Pulev would be a good test for any of the current bunch of challengers and he returns to action with a fight against Kevin Johnson in Sofia on 28 April. Pulev’s only loss is a kayo by Wlad Klitschko for the IBF title in 2014 and he took a split decision over Dereck Chisora in May last year. He is No 2 with the IBF with the No 1 spot vacant so he is very much in the mix. Having dodged a fight with Artur Beterbiev Sullivan Barrera will now face Dominican Felix Valera a former WBA interim champion in Uncasville on April 15. Another important fight that has fallen through was the IBF bantam eliminator between Omar Narvaez and Puerto Rican Emmanuel Rodriguez in Fajardo Puerto Rico. The fight was to take this weekend but Narvaez reportedly had visa problems and Rodriguez will fight Chilean Robinson Lavinaza. On that basis, and the fact that the fight has now been postponed four times, Narvaez is trying to insist he should get a straight shot at champion Lee Haskins. Yet another top amateur is turning pro. Armenian-born Russian Mikhail “Misha” Aloyan will have his first pro fight on 22 April in Yaroslavi. The 28-year-old Aloyan was Russian champion in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2014, won gold medals at the 2011 and 2013 World Championships and at the European Championships and was a bronze medallist in the 2012 London Olympics. He scored wins over Rau’shee Warren, Khalid Yafai, Andrew Selby and many others. Whether he should be welcomed into the pro ranks or not depends on your view of his losing his 2016 Olympic silver medal when the Court of Arbitration for Sport found him guilty of using a banned substance at Rio and disqualified him taking away the silver medal Not sure if they jumped or were pushed but the Eurasia Pacific Boxing Council is no longer an affiliate of the WBC and is now with the WBA. The WBC must feel a bit like someone who has been cured of the plague and has infected one of their rivals. Russian Dmitry Bivol will defend his interim WBA light heavy title against Samuel Clarkson in National Harbour, Maryland on 14 April. Typical WBA in that Clarkson is not in their top 15. You can fight for the interim title without being rated so even they don’t treat their interim titles as valid. Clarkson has never fought in any fight scheduled for more than eight rounds. Their habit of rewarding someone for fighting for one of their spurious titles really distorts WBA ratings (even further). The No 11 light heavy is Serbian Shefat Isufi. No I had never heard of him either. He won their PABA title by beating a Georgian travelling loser with a 25-10-2 record and cemented his position by beating in his first title defence another Georgian have trunks will lose fighters who was 48-21-6 and had lost his last three fights. There is no reason to have respect for their ratings as they obviously do not. Unbeaten heavyweight Sergey Kuzmin is also scheduled to fight on the 14 April show. The Shannon Briggs vs. Fres Oquendo fight for the secondary WBA heavyweight title is set for 3 June. Don’t forget to miss it. Looking forward to Alvarez vs. Chavez? No not that one. This one is on 29 April in Rosario Baja California when Ramon Alvarez, the brother of Saul faces Omar Chavez the brother of Julio Cesar Jr. OK it is not as big but it is a good match. Russian cruiser puncher Dmitry Kudryashov has won 20 of his 21 fights by KO/TKO. The other fight was a shock kayo loss to Nigerian Olanrewaju Durodola. Kudryashov will get his chance for revenge when he defends his WBC Silver title against Durodola in Rostov on 20 May. The last one went less than two rounds and with Durodola having won 23 of his 28 fights by KO/TKO this one could be over just as quick. It all comes down to who lands first. Argentinian Brian Castano has said that he will return to the ring late April or early May to defend his interim WBA super welter title. Castano has won 10 of his 13 fights by KO/TKO but for me he is too easy to hit to go much farther. The upcoming “fight” between Juan Manuel Lopez and trainer Albert Rivera arose from an altercation between the two after Lopez had beaten Rivera’s fighter Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. What looked likely to be a disgraceful match has changed for the better. The two contestants have come together to bring some good out of the bad. They have been going together to schools in Puerto Rico preaching the mantra of “gloves not guns” and obviously the heat that their spat generated has cooled so it will end up as a gently exhibition-I hope. So sad to read of the death of Rodrigo “Rocky” Valdez earlier this month from a heart attack at the age of 70. Rocky fought many of the best on his way up and did not get his title shot until fight No 57. He won the vacant WBC title in 1974 by stopping Benny Briscoe. He lost his title in1976 in his fifth defence in a unification fight with WBA champion Carlos Monzon with two judges only having them two points apart. He challenged Monzon for the titles in 1977. He had Monzon on the floor but again the result was a very close decision for Monzon. After Monzon retired in 1977 Rocky scored his third win over Briscoe to collect the vacant WBA and WBC titles. He then lost twice to Hugo Corro which saw him an ex-champion and he finally retired in 1980 with a record of 63-8-2. He had the misfortune to hit his peak at the same time as Carlos Monzon but the great Argentinian was the only fighter to beat him at that time. Boxing is often a family business and it certainly is where the Cabral family from Argentina is concerned. At the weekend Horacio Alfredo Cabral beat Logan McGuinness in Canada to win the vacant WBC International title. McGuinness was unbeaten with 25 wins and a draw and was fighting in front of his home fans so it was a good win for Cabral. Horacio is 18-1 and this was his first fight outside of Argentina. The most successful member of the family was his uncle Alfredo Horacio who had a 35-2-4 record and after wins over former WBA super welter champion Miguel Angel Castellini and South African Elijah Makhathini was on the verge of a world title shot. Tragically Alfredo died in a car crash at the age of 23 just one week after beating Makhathini. His uncle Ruben Dario Cabral had 69 fights and was Argentinian, South American and WBC International champion. Father Osvaldo and Uncles Jose Mario, Juan Carlos and Raul fought as pros and brother Omar is unbeaten after eight pro fights. Some family business. Some strange goings on in amateur boxing in Poland. At a recent tournament apart from a fight outside the ring by a couple of their high level female competitors some media attendants were puzzled to find official losing results for boxers who were not even at the tournament. It appears that the falsification was tied to the money clubs received for the number of boxers they sent to the tournament. Clever as they even saved on travel costs for those ghost competitors British boxing again showed its financial strength over the weekend. David Haye and Tony Bellew shared just over $8.5 million (£7 million) for their fight with Haye taking down just over $5 million (£4.2 million) and Bellew just over $3.4 million (£ 2.8 million). In contrast Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia each received $2 million so Haye alone took down more than Thurman and Garcia combined. It was good to see a fight with no title attached as the top paid attraction at the weekend. It goes to show that a fight does not have to have a spurious title tag to sell.
In the end neither fight was a classic. Once Haye was injured it then really became a question not of who would win but whether Haye could go the distance. As for Thurman vs. Garcia both fought in too controlled a fashion to generate the heat that might have made it a classic. At least we “only” have three world welterweight champions. For me the Kell Brook vs. Errol Spence fight feels like it will be a much better fight than Thurman vs. Garcia. Then of course you have Manny Pacquiao defending his WBO title against whomever. Pacquiao vs. Horn on-off. Bob Arum says no way Pacquiao vs. Amir Khan-then it was on. Now it appears to be off again as the $38 million dollars proved to be a mirage. Horn thinks it still might go ahead now that the Khan fight appears dead in the water and Khan thinks it is not dead in the water. Bob Arum thinks Pacquiao should fight Adrien Broner or Terrence Crawford both of whom are promoted by Top Rank so he would say that wouldn’t he. I know that Pacquiao wants to get paid the most he can and does not want to end his career on a loss but come on Manny. On/off/on/off its like a prostitute’s knickers on a busy Saturday night ( not that I have any experience related to this of course) so put us out of our misery and pick someone-so that then we can criticise your choice of opponent! Pacquiao has earned the right to look for multi-million dollar purses and of course availability of TV/PPV dates has a big influence on when is a good time to put a fight on. Oh how the world has changed from the days when it was bums on seats and a million dollar purse was a pipe dream. It took years for Pacquiao and Mayweather to meet and it is almost certain they will never fight each other again. On 5 February 1943 Sugar Ray Robinson had his winning streak halted at 40 when he lost a wide unanimous decision to Jake LaMotta. How long did it take for their return fight to go on? One year? Two years? More? They fought each other again just three weeks later! It was a different world in boxing then. Still on money Hughie Fury is looking at a career highest purse in the $1,204,400 he will get for challenging Joseph Parker for the WBO title in Auckland on 5 May. Parker’s purse will be $1,806,600. A lot of water will have to pass under the bridge before it happens but imagine that if everything went their way the Fury’s could hold all four versions of the heavyweight title as the Klitschko’s did but don’t hold your breath. With all of that money sloshing around in British boxing I am surprised that the highest bid for the Andre Dirrell vs. Callum Smith fight came from Dirrell’s promoters and it will probably end up in the USA in early June. With all due respect to Dirrell he is not a high profile fighter and I expected Matchroom to win the bid but there are other big fights to go on in Britain and I guess there is only so much money to spread around. Whoever wins will have to follow the championship fight with two mandatory defences with the first being against unbeaten Turkish boxer Avni Yildirim. So sad to read of the death of Lou Duva. With the help of his family he did such a great job of building the Main Events outfit and was a great manager and trainer and is rightfully in the Hall of Fame. I can honestly say I never met anyone who was as passionate about his fighters as Lou. A giant of a man. RIP Lou. More hypocrisy from the WBA. They have trumpeted that they are aiming towards one world champion in each division. I guess in their language that means one super champion. On 18 March their super champion Gennady Golovkin fights their secondary (world) champion Daniel Jacobs with the IBF and WBC titles also on the line. However they have now said that Ryota Murata and Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam will fight for their secondary (world) title so they don’t even plan to have just one WBA champion-rubbish. I admire what the WBC is doing to try to eradicate the taking of banned substances. I was not sure how serious they were but the strong action they have taken towards Alex Povetkin is what we need to see. It has to be clear that if you take a banned substance there are serious consequences and it is also encouraging to see how many fighters have signed up to their testing programme. Hopefully their proactive approach will shame the other sanctioning bodies into either climbing on board with the WBC or starting their own programme. Of course none of the sanction bodies actually run day to day boxing. That is in the hands of the various Commissions and Boards. The sanctioning body can only ban a boxer from fighting for their titles. The EBU have suspended Erkan Teper for two years but that only stops him fighting for European Boxing Union titles and since there are ongoing legal investigations his home body cannot suspend him. The IBF have taken strong action in excluding Povetkin from their ratings for twelve months. That seems to be a move on their part to show serious they are over the use of banned substances. When it was reported that their then champion Lamont Peterson tested positive for a synthetic testosterone in a random test in 2012 they took no action. Now they have come down hard on Povetkin-or have they? Don’t look closely or you might realise that the last time Povetkin was in IBF top 15 was May 2015!! Some punishment, boy I bet that really worried Povetkin. Former IBF super feather champion Jose Pedraza was hit hard by his loss to Gervonta Davis but is ready to bounce back. The Puerto Rican is moving up to lightweight and will fight again on 5 June but no opponent named yet. Former interim WBC super bantam Julio Ceja is also looking to fight again soon. After losing his title to Hugo Ruiz in February last year he suffered an injury to his right foot which has kept him out of the gym but he is back and just awaiting a name and date for his return. The pairing of Noel Gevor and former WBC champion Krzys Wlodarczyk looks a really good match. They face each other on 13 May in Poznan giving Wlodarczyk home advantage. This is effectively a final eliminator for the IBF title with Gevor currently their No 3 and Wlodarczyk No 4. The first two spots are vacant. Gevor can’t be No1 With some clever management he has become the IBF’s highest ranked fighter without facing a top 15 opponent so can’t be No 1. Another IBF eliminator, this one at bantam, will see oldie Omar Narvaez face Puerto Rican Emmanuel Rodriguez. The 41-year-old Argentinian already holds the Argentinian record for most world title fights at 31 and if he were to go on to win the title at bantam he would be the first Argentinian fighter to achieve that feat. The 24-year-old Rodriguez is 15-0. Again the positions 1 and 2 in the IBF ratings are vacant as neither Narvaez nor Rodriguez have beaten a rated bantamweight. The winner will be the mandatory challenger to Lee Haskins. With the controversy over the result of their last fight it is no surprise that talks are on-going for Mundine vs. Green III. No agreement yet but there is enough money on the table to make it happen. They are 1-1 at the moment and hopefully the outcome is clear enough to not require a Mundine vs. Green IV. The thing I like most about the Olympic Games is the aftermath. Suddenly a whole batch of talented young fighters who have either realised their Olympic dream or seen it fade away pour out into the professional ranks and you can start to look for the next star names. Women’s boxing is a typical example with Nicola Adams, Katie Taylor and Claressa Shields moving over to challenge established champions who will be looking to knock some spots of these newcomers. Whether it is Michael Conlan, Joe Cordina, Paddy Barnes, Shakur Stevenson, Robinson Conceicao, Tony Yoka, Mohamed Rabii, Souleymane Cissokho, Misael Rodriguez, Gary Russell or any one so many more their presence can only be good for professional boxing. Of the class of 2012 Anthony Joshua, Vasyl Lomachenko, Zou Shiming, Olek Usyk, Oscar Valdez and Rau’shee Warren have come through to win world titles and somewhere in those new professionals are tomorrow’s stars. A run of 61 wins in a row sounds impressive but when it only gets you rated No 6 in the WBC flyweight ratings it tells you all you need to know about the quality of Noknoi Sitthprasert’s 61 victims. What is strange is that he was 1-4 in his first five fights. Now 61 wins in a row. I didn’t know there were that many second rate flyweights in Indonesia. They say time marches on but when you get to my age time seems to develop a warp drive that would leave the Star Ship Enterprise far in its wake” My first ever boxing idol was Joe Louis way back in the days when he was the world heavyweight champion-no secondary or interim champions in those days-as he dodged no one and overcame much of the resistance to black fighters caused by the controversial Jack Johnson. Eventually time caught up with Joe and he lost his title, his money and eventually his life. Part of his legacy was the city of Detroit’s decision to name the major sport arena in the city the Jose Louis Arena. Now time has even caught up with this part of Joe’s legacy. The crumbling edifice is to be torn down and a new arena built in the city. However it won’t be named the Joe Louis Arena but instead the Little Caesars Arena. I guess there was money involved in the choice of a name but it is so sad to see a city just dumping the symbol of one of their most famous citizens. Detroit may forget Joe Louis but I won’t. Sometimes when you follow the career of a boxer and he suddenly disappears from view you wonder what happened to him. Did he suffer a career ending injury? Did he have too many other things going on in his life? Did he leave the sport in disgust over a bad decision etc? There is always the possibility of him going off the rails and ending up in jail. That’s not a cause that happens too often but it is what happened with promising Matt Remillard. The Connecticut fighter came up through the amateur ranks and went on to win his first 23 fights collecting the NABF and NABO titles on the way. His winning streak came to an end in 2011 when he was floored three times and retired after ten rounds in losing his titles to Mikey Garcia. Remillard then foolishly got into an argument where he allegedly beat someone up with a baseball bat. He has always denied the baseball bat part of the story but was jailed for five years. He is out now, back in the gym and looking to pick up his career again with a fight on 1 April. He is only 30 so all is not lost but it will be an uphill struggle. It is amazing the disadvantages that some determined people overcome to fulfil their dream. Danish fighter Frederik Hede Jensen suffered from Legg-Calve-Perthes which is a disorder that effects children and leads to loss of bone mass and it particularly affected Jensen’s thigh bones. He was in a wheelchair between the ages of 4 and 9 and that should have ended any hopes he had of becoming a boxer. However he overcame the handicap and was Danish champion last year. He has now signed with Team Sauerland and has his first professional fight in Aarhus on 18 March so I wish him well. Remillard may have thrown his dream away but for Jensen it is a dream realised It was a case of the good, the bad and the ugly for boxing over the past couple of weeks. The good was very good. The two major shows at the weekend were great examples of everything that was good in boxing. The Indio show had a great bell to bell scrap between Takashi Miura and Miguel Roman. Both fighters gave everything they had for three minutes of every round. Some of Miura’s headwork was a bit questionable but you could not question his guts. Once Roman had got over his usual slow start he was hardly ever out of Miura’s face and they served up a great fight. Miguel Berchelt was a revelation against Vargas. He could not match the skills of Vargas but he looked huge at the weight and you have to wonder how a very ordinary Luis Eduardo Florez could have demolished him in just 90 seconds. Vargas showed courage beyond the call of duty but Berchelt was the star.
The Las Vegas show was topped by a fight that provided everything you could want from a fight. For much of the time it was a tense technical battle between two true professionals and even when they cut loose on each other it was still work of the highest quality. But just as important it was a fight between two fighters who had nothing but the highest respect for each other. The referee could have stayed in the casino and played the machines as he rarely had to break the fighters and never had to issued a warning and to top it all in a fight that could have been called either way the one who lost the decision accepted the loss and they both said let’s do it again. The Mikey Garcia vs. Dejan Zlaticanin fight never reached the heights but you will rarely see two better punches than the short inside uppercut and the thunderous right cross with which Garcia flattened the gutsy little Montenegrin. If there was a downside it was the stupidity of Vargas going in to the fight against Berchelt still showing scar tissue over his left eye from the cut he suffered in his drawn title fight with Orlando Salido in June. It was inevitable it would open and the wound was deep. Stupid. It might have suited his management and the promoter for him to fight with that handicap but it was not in Vargas best interests. It was also dumb to put him in three very hard fights in a row-Miura, Salido and then Berchelt. That’s how to shorten a guy’s career. The bad was yet another heavyweight and yet another proposed opponent for Deontay Wilder testing positive for a banned substance. First it was Alex Povetkin now Andrzej Wawrzyk. Now Gerald Washing is Wilder’s opponent for 25 February which means he will have less than a month to prepare. Please Mr Washington don’t even take an aspirin between now and fight time. Washington has followed the Wilder approach to opposition quality. In his last three fights he has drawn with 43-year-old Amir Mansour, defeated beefed-up cruiserweight Eddie Chambers and then beaten 46-year-old Ray Austin. Thank goodness for Anthony Joshua vs. Wlad Klitschko. I don’t care if Klitschko is 41 at least he has been preparing for the fight for 17 months! For me that is the biggest heavyweight fight since Lennox Lewis and Vitali Klitschko. If there is any good news in there it is that the WBA have said they will join the WBC drugs free programme so that could be another step in the right direction. I guess the IBF and WBO don’t think there is a drugs problem. The ugly is the ongoing talk of a fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr and Conor McGregor. Mayweather has said that if the fight was to come off he would expect to get $100 million and McGregor $15 million so that hopefully should put an end to that. McGregor is under contract to the UFC and It is not certain that they would allow McGregor to fight Mayweather but you can be sure some boxing commission somewhere would. Get it off the table; it is nothing to do with boxing. It was a week of now you see it-now you don’t. Jonathan Barros was not allowed to fight Lee Selby when he tested positive for Hepatitis C in Las Vegas and the fight was rightly cancelled. However a test conducted the following day showed negative for Hepatitis C and it now seems the fight with Selby will go ahead but in Britain in March. It was also alleged that Danish boxer Micki Nielson gave a positive test for a banned substance for his fight with Johnny Muller in South Africa. Doubt was cast on this allegation as the results were not reported until more than six months after the fight and also after Nielson had fought in South Africa again in October. That report seems to have faded away. Now we have Alex Povetkin’s people questioning the “positive” test that led to the cancellation of his fight with Bermane Stiverne saying that an independent laboratory had subsequently cleared him. It should be mandatory for any title fight that the test results produced by WADA or any other mutually agreed body are accepted without recourse. Right now there seems to be more loopholes than in the sweaters my Aunt used to knit. Saturday against Renold Quinlan for the vacant IBO super middle title will be an important test for Chris Eubank Jr. A win is obviously a must but just as important is that the show will be PPV on a terrestrial channel. In the past SKY and BoxNation have competed with each other for PPV viewers so this will be an important test of the popularity of boxing and of Eubank Jr. The undercard has good fights with Kid Galahad vs. Joseph Agbeko; Andrew Selby vs. Ardin Diale, David Price vs. Christian Hammer and a testy domestic middleweight title fight between Adam Etches and John Ryder but Quinlan is relatively unknown and may not have been the best choice to ensure good ratings. Everyone involved in British boxing-and other terrestrial channels-will be waiting to see how the PPV figures go. Good to see a champion who is willing to go into the other man’s backyard to defend his title. Jorge Linares is making a habit, and a good living, out of it. He puts his WBA lightweight title on the line in a return fight with Anthony Crolla on 25 March again in Manchester. That will be the third fight in Britain for Linares and it illustrates the financial muscle in British promoting which gets their fighters important home advantage in title challenges. Both Vasyl Lomachenko and Terence Crawford have had dates confirmed for their next fight. Lomachenko will face Jason Sosa on 8 April in Oxon Hill, Maryland. Oxon Hill is what is known as a census-designated place of just 6.6sq miles (no I had never heard of it either and yes it is named after Oxford in England). Looks as though the WBA are up to their usual tricks. Their current list of champions and their latest ratings list Jezreel Corrales as their super super featherweight champion but if that is so then he is only the secondary champion it can’t be a unifier against Lomachenko. Ah but this is the WBA so Sosa will become the super super featherweight champion and Corrales will be upgraded to super super super featherweight champion-or something like that. Crawford has another home fixture as he fights in Omaha on 20 May with his WBA and WBO titles on the line. No opponent named yet but suggestion is his WBC No 1 challenger Antonio Orozco. Other WBA business has seen them order a return between Jamie McDonnell and Liborio Solis. McDonnell retained his secondary bantam title with a unanimous decision over Sosa in December. Something the WBA have not done is to follow their own publicised decisions. When they upgraded Keith Thurman to super champion at welterweight in November they declared that David Avanesyan was promoted from interim champion to secondary champion but as yet they have not kept that promise. Oh and by the way guys at the WBA Rau’shee Warren would appreciate it if you could actually give him the belt he won last June. It would be nice if he could have it before he defends the title against Zhanat Zhakiyanov on 10 February. British fans will not get the domestic fight they want as negotiations for a Kell Brook vs. Amir Khan fight have broken down. It now seems likely that Brook will be under orders to defend against his No 1Errol Spence which will be every bit as good a fight as Brook vs. Khan but it is yet a great British fight that will slip away. Mayweather vs. McGregor is not the only fight that should not take place. Former WBO super bantam and featherweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez was handed a hefty ban after exchanging punches in the ring with Albert Rivera the trainer of Wilfredo Vazquez Jr after he had knocked out Vazquez last October. Now Lopez and Rivera have signed up to fight each other and if the Puerto Rican Commission approves it they should be ashamed. There will be an interesting mix of nationalities on the show in Casablanca, Morocco on 18 February. The principle match will be the professional debut of local welterweight Mohammed Rabii who won a gold medal at the 2015 World Championships and a bronze at the 2016 Olympics. Also on the card South African Simphiwe Vetyeka, a former WBA feather and IBO super bantam and feather champion, has his first fight for ten months, former interim WBA cruiser champion Youri Kayembre Kalenga from the DRC has his first fight since losing to Yunier Dorticos for the interim title in May last year and also featured will be Dutch Gevorg Khatchikian who is 24-2 with his losses being against James de Gale and Gilberto Ramirez. A top class cruiser match will see former WBO champion Marco Huck and Mairis Briedis clash in Dortmund on 1 April for the interim WBC title. Briedis is No 1 and Huck No 2 in the WBC ratings. The interim title fight comes about because of Tony Bellew’s choosing to fight David Haye (and the sanctioning fee will come in handy) and if Bellew returns to cruiser after the Haye fight then the WBC has said that he must fight the winner of the Huck vs. Briedis or the winner of the interim title fight will be elevated to champion. Still on Germany Tyron Zeuge will put his WBA super middle title on the line against Nigerian Isaac Ekpo on 18 March in Potsdam. It will be the first defence for Zeuge of the title he won with a twelfth round kayo of Italian Giovanni De Carolis in November. Ekpo lost a wide points decision against Robert Stieglitz for the WBO title in 2013 but since then has spent his time beating mediocre African fighters but has still somehow climbed to No 3 in the WBA ratings. Ekpo is a very awkward opponent and it will be difficult for Zeuge to look good against him. Stieglitz has a tough test coming up when he defends his European light heavyweight title against Erik Skoglund. That fight is still in the negotiation phase so Stieglitz will defend his European title against Nikola Sjekloca on 18 March in Leipzig. Another good European title fight will see former interim WBA middleweight champion Dmitry Chudinov and Mariano Hilario contest the vacant super middle title. Purse offers for that close on 20 February. Three of Ghana’s top fighters are scheduled to fight in Accra on 11 March. Richard Commey, Frederic Lawson and Duke Micah are all scheduled to face TBA with Commey and Micah challenging for vacant WBC International titles at lightweight and bantamweight respectively. Good to see that Xolisani Ndongeni landed the Fighter of the Year award at the South African awards ceremony. The IBO lightweight champion had tough competition in Zolani Tete and Simpiwe Konkco. He is certainly one to watch and 2017 may be his breakout year. Fight of the Year went to Hekkie Budler vs. Konkco for their WBA/IBO minimum title fight in September 2015. It was the first time the awards had been held for a number of years but not everyone was happy that the BSA decided that an exhibition match between a couple of actors was suitable entertainment. I went to a charity dinner in Dundee in December and the entertainment was a noticeably overweight fan dancer (honest). I can get her phone number if the BSA want her for next year. Budler will be in action on Saturday in Johannesburg when he fights Filipino Joey Canoy for the vacant IBO light flyweight title and Kevin Lerena faces Namibian Vikapita Meroro at cruiser. A third fight will be the light heavyweight scrap between Ryno Liebenberg and German Enrico Koelling. When they fought in Germany in October Koelling won on a split decision. Liebenberg wants revenge but with four losses against world class opposition in his last five fights he needs to win this one to keep his career hopes alive. Snips and Snipes 19 January 2017
I am not one for looking back so what’s ahead for us in 2017. We have already had one unification fight, The James DeGale vs. Badou Jack fight was an interesting mix of styles, a close one with both having a claim to victory. Unfortunately the draw just muddied the waters with Jack immediately relinquishing his WBC title and moving up to light heavy. The WBC have already given the nod for Jack to challenge Adonis Stevenson meaning the super middle division will continue to have the title split four ways. Even though he failed to unify the titles a James DeGale vs. Callum Smith fight with DeGale’s IBF title on the line along with the vacant WBC crown (where Smith is the No 1 challenger) would be huge draw in Britain. However that will need the WBC’s No 2 Anthony Dirrell agreeing to wait for a fight with the winner and the Venezuelan IBF No 1 Jose Uzcategui doing the same, and that won’t happen. It also rules out for some time the possibility of a totally unified title at light heavy between three title champion Andre Ward and Stevenson. One huge fight already signed and sealed and to be delivered on April 29 in London is the Anthony Joshua and Wlad Klitschko clash. They have already sold 80,000 tickets for the fight at Wembley Stadium. I remember going there to watch the first Muhammad Ali vs. Henry Cooper fight and I would be surprised if there were more than 10,000 in attendance but as the Carl Froch vs. George Groves fight showed for the right fight there is a huge audience both for TV and live boxing in Britain right now. It will be only the third time that two winners of the Olympic heavyweight title (which became the super heavyweight title) have gone on to fight each other for a version of the heavyweight title as professionals. The first was George Foreman (Olympic Champion in 1968) vs. Joe Frazier (1964) and the other Wlad Klitschko (1996) vs. Alex Povetkin (2004). Both Lennox Lewis 1988) and Tyrell Biggs (1984) were Olympic Champions but when they fought each other as pros there was no title at stake. The Joshua vs. Klitschko fight hopefully will be a unifier with the vacant WBA title on the line. They have Klitschko at No 2. He has not fought since November 2015 but that is not his fault with delays and then the cancellation of the Tyson Fury fight but at 41 and by fight time 17 months out of the ring, he has not had the best preparation. Can’t get too excited over Deontay Wilder and Andre Wawrzyk for the WBC title on 25 February. Wawrzyk was floored in each of the three rounds his 2013 fight with Alex Povetkin for the WBA secondary title lasted. Of his six wins since then three have been against guys over 40, two against guys just a smidgen away from their 40th birthday and a guy with a 3-14 record. Not a fight for the WBC to be proud of. Interestingly David Haye is now the mandatory challenger for Joseph Parker’s WBO title giving Britain a big say in the division. Obviously the line up for 2017 will depend also on Manny Pacquiao’s plans. There is not much clarity here apart from Pac-Man’s defence of his WBO welter title against Jeff Horn in Brisbane on 23 April and a mention of perhaps four more fights before retirement. Pacquiao has talked about another fight with Juan Manuel Marquez this time in the Philippines. We won’t know what the campaign plan is until Bob Arum tells us. Nacho Beristan has indicated that the 43-year-old Marquez wants to have three more fights and that the knee injury that has plagued Marquez for so long has cleared up, but no mention of Pacquiao there. Horn is obviously very much an outsider but it has been a marvellous achievement for Horn’s team to get such a high profile fighter as Pacquiao to come to Brisbane and you can be sure “The Hornet” will not roll over. In the past if you mentioned Pacquiao then the name Floyd Mayweather Jr would probably appear in the same sentence. Thankfully there is no sign that “Money” is contemplating a return to boxing. I can’t see $25 million enticing him to fight Conor McGregor and even if it did it would be irrelevant to boxing. Mayweather has a growing stable of good young fighters-as Gervonta Davis proved in destroying Jose Pedraza so hopefully that will keep him occupied. Saul Alvarez vs. Jesus Chavez Jr on 6 May will be big in Mexico. Both fighters better make the weight as there is reportedly a $1 million penalty for every pound over the 164.5lbs contract weight each fighter comes in at. Chavez has failed to make the weight for other fights. I can see both fighters adding a surgeon to their camp ready to have a leg sawn off if they are in danger of going over the limit. At middle we have Gennady Golovkin vs. Daniel Jacobs on 18 March in New York. If “GGG” wins he will have to look outside the middleweight division for a big fight. WBO champion Billy Joe Saunders needs a better performance than his close decision over Artur Akavov in December as on the back of that a Golovkin fight would be a very hard sell. As for the listed challengers they have all already been crushed by “GGG” or would start as rank outsiders. Golovkin vs. Alvarez would sell big but despite the posturing there seems to be no real enthusiasm for the fight from the Alvarez camp so it may never get done and there’s the danger that Golovkin might never get that career defining fight he needs and deserves. At super welter without Alvarez then Jermell Charlo vs. Demetrius Andrade would be interesting fight but first Andrade needs to get past Jack Culcay in Germany on 11 March and winning in Germany will be no easier in 2017 than it has been in any other year. Miguel Cotto is still in the picture and he fights James Kirkland in Frisco Texas on 25 February at 153lbs but at 37 Cotto is unlikely to play a big part in the picture in 2017. At welterweight we are getting Danny Garcia vs. Keith Thurman on 4 March to unify the WBC and WBA titles and there seems to be serious discussions over a Kell Brook vs. Amir Khan fight with 20 or 27 May as the possible date, another huge event British fans. Errol Spence will get his title shots this year and they all have to be looking over their shoulders with Terrence Crawford aiming to become a three division champion. There will be a unification match at super light when Ricky Burns puts his WBA title on the line against IBF champion Julius Indongo 15 April in Glasgow. It is a fight that will show us how much the three division champion Burns has left in the tank and whether the shocking 40 seconds one punch kayo of Eduard Troyanovsky was a genuine measure of the power and potential of the Namibian or just a non-repeatable flash. He only a 50% inside the distance wins measure before the Troyanovsky fight and that against a much lower level of opponent than the unbeaten Russian. At lightweight whilst Jorge Linares (WBC & WBA), Robert Easter (IBF) and Terry Flanagan (WBO) are all good fighters a lot of interest will be in how Felix Verdejo, Mikey Garcia, Richard Commey and Luke Campbell perform in 2017 and a move up by Vasyl Lomachenko would open up all sorts of possibilities for Linares, Easter and Flanagan. Verdejo returns from injuries he received in a motor bike crash when he fights in Puerto Rico on 3 February so it will be important for him to show he is 100% recovered If Lomachenko moves up then there are some good but not really high profile fights at super feather. The featherweight could catch fire in 2017 starting with an intriguing return between Carl Frampton and Leo Santa Cruz in Las Vegas on January 28. You can make a case for either fighter winning but you can be sure there will be fireworks. If Frampton wins then again British fans could be in for a treat with a unification fight against IBF champion Lee Selby a distinct possibility. With Gary Russell Jr (WBC) and Oscar Valdez (WBO) holding the other titles it is an exciting division. Rey Vargas (28-0) and Gavin McDonnell (16-0-2) will contest the vacant WBC super bantam title on 25 February in Britain and it will be interesting to see how Jessie Magdaleno grows into his WBO tile. Once gain Guillermo Rigondeaux will struggle to find a suitable challenger and get any recognition for his highly skilled but clinical performances. Rau’shee Warren defends his WBA bantam title against Zhanat Zhakiyanov in Ohio on 10 February. It would be nice to think that the two champions from Britain, IBF champion Lee Haskins and WBA secondary title holder Jamie McDonnell might get together but there is no sign of that. There is a dearth of good challengers for either WBC champion Shinsuke Yamanaka or WBO champion Marlon Tapales. It would be great if there was a chance of Roman Gonzalez and Naoya Inoue clashing at super fly but Gonzalez’s dance card is already marked with a defence of his WBC title against No 2 Srisaket and after that a return with Carlos Cuadras is mandated. A WBO flyweight title defence for Shiming Zou against his No 1Donnie Nietes would be a big fight in the Far East but no news yet on when and if it will take place and there is not too much to get interested in at light fly or minimumweight. We have already had Gervonta Davis burst onto the scene in a big way this year and you can be sure that more young, emerging fighter will make a big breakthrough and who knows there might be another Mayweather, Pacquiao, Ward or Golovkin out there. We have a saying in Britain that after the Lord Mayor’s show comes the dust cart (rubbish truck). Well after Joshua vs. Klitschko the WBA have ordered a fight between Shannon Briggs and Fres Oquendo for their secondary heavyweight title. Briggs wants the fight to be in London. Please no! Oquendo, a 43-year-old who has not had a fight for almost three years against a 45-year-old Briggs who has fought only selected low level opponents since losing to Vitali Klitschko in 2010. It was reported that the last circus in Britain closed recently-obviously not. Interesting super welter match in Montreal on 28 January with Brandon Cook (17-0) from Ontario up against outstanding local prospect Steven Butler (18-0-1). A couple of minor sanction body titles on the line and an important fight for both boxers. Unbeaten Canadian Olympic heavyweight Simon Kean with former Canadian World Championship representative Yves Ulysse (11-0) facing his biggest test against experienced Mexican Jose Emilio Perea. Despite having been rated No 1 by the WBC for a considerable while Argentinian Jorge Heiland will have to go through an elimination tournament to qualify for a shot at Gennady Golovkin. With No 2 Ievgen Khytrov getting blown away by unrated (not in the WBC top 40) Immanuwel Aleem the next mandatory could be the winner of David Lemieux vs. Curtis Stevens match on 11 March. Golovkin has beaten them both inside the distance which again goes back to the lack of real opposition for the Kazak fighter apart from Daniel Jacobs. News of two former world champions from Argentina has former interim IBF cruiser champion Victor Ramirez announcing his retirement and former WBC welter champion Carlos Baldomir detained by the police and facing allegations of sexual abuse of his daughter. Another former champion from Argentina, Omar Narvaez, has not given up hope on becoming a three division champion. At 41, and with 31 world title fights behind him the former WBO fly and super fly champion, is now slated to face unbeaten Puerto Rican Emmanuel Rodriguez in an IBF final eliminator with the winner to be the next mandatory for Lee Haskins. The first two position in the IBF ratings are vacant as none of the rated fighters has beaten another rated fighter (so what are they doing there) so they can’t fill those first two positions. Narvaez is currently No 3 and Rodriguez No 5 which will resolve that dilemma. Narvaez is a candidate for a WBO loyalty award as every one of his 31 title fights has featured a WBO world title. Another eliminator on the cards is Filipino Arthur Villanueva vs. South African Zolani Tete. They are respectively No 1 and No 2 in the WBO bantamweight ratings. A victory for Villanueva would set up an all-Filipino title fight against his Japanese-based fellow-countryman and current WBO champion Marlon Tapales. Filipino Jerwin Ancajas (25-1-1) makes the first defence of his IBF super fly title in Macau on 29 January against the former interim WBA champion from Mexican Jose Alfredo Rodriguez (32-4). Ancajas is reported to be getting his highest career purse of $40,000 for the defence. Boxing in Italy should get a boost when one of their former amateur stars turns pro on 24 February. Domenico Valentino won a hat full of titles at 60kg, including gold, silver and bronze medals at the World Championships, multi Italian national titles, Olympic appearances and a World Military title but at 32 he has left it late to take off his vest. A couple of lighter notes to finish with. I sometimes wonder about the quality and content of some of the tattoos sported by a large percentage of professional fighters. So anything goes unless you are a Cuban amateur boxer. Double World Championships gold medallist and Pan American Games champion Lazaro Alvarez has been dropped from the Cuban national team-for dying his hair! I sometimes wonder how much research some matchmakers do before putting a fight together. Last weekend in China local fighter Xing Xin Yang knocked out Thai Vachayan. Yang, 24, is 5’11 ½” (182cm) and 40-year-old Vachayan is 5’4” (163cm)! Someone should be incarcerated in Xing Xin for that. Yet another case of good goes bad for boxing. The Andre Ward vs. Sergey Kovalev fight was a big one that came together quickly and easily with two of the world’s top fighters facing each other. With Kovalev being such a big puncher and Ward such a clever tactician it was never going to be a toe-to-toe slugging match but a battle of tactics. Ward would have been dumb to stand and trade with Kovalev and Ward isn’t dumb. He fought a clever fight but it was disappointing to see just short bursts of activity and no infighting/body punching (where are the Latino fighters when you need them) and a bit too much holding. Having said that it was an entertaining fight even if it did not live up to its promise. I had Kovalev winning by a narrow margin, a margin thin enough for me to understand how others felt Ward had done enough. All of that got lost in the boxing media/social media howls of rage at Kovalev being robbed and instead of reflecting on a good fight and a good night for boxing we get screams of the sport being crooked, the officials being corrupt and people being driven away by decisions “such as this”. Accept this is boxing. I can think of no other sport where often no one knows who is winning until the end and where there is no definitive visible measurement of intermediate success. There is no touchdown, no goal scored, no crossing the finishing line first, no jumping furthest or highest, no slam dunk. In the end it is down to how the three judges have perceived the fight and more often than not they don’t even agree amongst themselves. There is no right or wrong just opinion and perception so there is always going to disagreement and controversy so accept it or walk away because there is sure to be other decisions you will disagree strongly with-that’s boxing.
One of the problems Ward now faces is that he has three titles and will have three mandatory challengers and the IBF have already said he will have to face the winner of Artur Beterbiev vs. Erik Skoglund. The WBA are likely to soon jump in with their No 1 Dmitri Bivol (who!). It is not all bad news. This weekend we Have Vasyl Lomachenko against Nicholas Walters, Terry Flanagan vs. Orlando Cruz. Next weekend Denis Lebedev vs. Murat Gassiev and Eduard Troyanovsky vs. unbeaten Julius Indongo, Billy Joe Saunders vs. Artur Akavov and on 10 December Terrence Crawford vs., John Molina, Joseph Parker vs. Andy Ruiz, not too enthusiastic over Anthony Joshua vs. Eric Molina, Jermall Charlo vs. Julian William, Jesus Cuellar vs. Abner Mares and on 17 December goodbye fight for Bernard Hopkins. There is talk of a return between Jesse Magdaleno and Nonito Donaire. Of course you also have Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao-only kidding folks-I hope! The fight against the use of banned substances in the sport is still only being tackled in a half-hearted manner. The WBC have taken great strides through their “Clean Boxing” programme but for my money they fumbled their first big test. When Bermane Stiverne tested positive for a banned substance he should have immediately been banned for two years or at least his fight with Alex Povetkin for the interim WBC title should have been scrapped. The fine agreed was substantial but it is not too big a blow for Stiverne as the purse for the Povetkin fight will be much higher than the fine and if he wins it will have been money well spent. Now their interim title fight will be between two fighters who have tested positive for using banned substances and that is not the message the sport wants to send out. We also have the reported second positive test for Australian Lucas Browne which is still under investigation. You have the strange situation where Browne signed up to the WBC programme but was lined-up to fight Shannon Briggs for the secondary WBA title (what rubbish even rating Briggs) but effectively a WBC process has almost certainly led to the cancellation of a WBA title fight. Now that is a first. Of course there is no guarantee the WBA will accepted the WBC drug programme finding in the same way the IBF has ignored Erik Teper’s positive test. It just goes on. With Kubrat Pulev relinquishing the European heavyweight title Pole Mariusz Wach will fight another rated contender, probably European Union champion Agit Kabayel, but Wach reportedly reportedly tested for a banned substance when he lost to Povetkin for the WBC Silver title last November and the ban on Igor Mikhalkin has been lifted by the EBU reportedly due to the controversy surrounding Melodonium so it is a mess that boxing is not structured to handle and does not have the money, resources and in some cases the will to tackle. If the International Olympic Committee is still handing out bans for tests taken at the 2012 Olympics what chance is there of boxing ever getting control of the situation. What a mess the WBA heavyweight division is in. No 1Luis Ortiz withdrew from an eliminator, No 2 Wlad Klitschko is going to fight Anthony Joshua for the IBF title although the WBA will gladly sanction it for their title, Browne is No 3 so in limbo at the moment, no one mentions No 4 Alex Ustinov a 39-year-old 6’ 7 ½” Klitschko clone but without any of Klitschko’s ability , No 5 is Briggs a 44 year-old who two independent ratings both place him at No 36 and who himself has a use of banned substance episode in his past and No 6 Fres Oquendo a 44-year-old who has not had a fight since July 2014 but a judge in the USA has said he must be in the mix after a disputed loss in 2014 to a fight who has now retired. Next big fight for us is on Saturday when Vasyl Lomachenko puts his WBO super feather title on the line against Jamaican Nicholas Walters. Naturally Lomachenko is a big favourite with Walters having had just one fight in the last 17 months and being inactive since his draw with Jason Sosa in December. Now that Sosa has stopped Javier Fortuna and beaten Stephen Smith that draw does not look quite as disappointing result for Walters. I fancy Lomachenko but what I would really like is a good fight and no controversy. I see Bob Arum is at it again. Just as he talked before the Manny Pacquiao vs. Jesses Vargas fight of what Pacquiao would do next he is already talking about Lomachenko vs. Pacquiao. Get this one out of the way first Bob otherwise it sounds as though you are talking down Lomachenko vs. Walters as a fight. Tony Bellew has been looking at his options with a fight against David Haye or the winner of the Denis Lebedev vs. Murat Gassiev in his sights. However the WBC have other plans and have given a deadline of the end of the year for negotiations between Bellew and his mandatory challenger Mairis Breidis or the fight will go to purse offers. Having issued that instruction it will be hard for them to back-off and let Bellew fight Haye or the WBA champion so it may be a case of fight Briedis or be stripped. The agreed rematch between Carl Frampton and Leo Santa Cruz now set for 28 January at the MGM in Las Vegas which gives us something to look forward to in the New Year. Santa Cruz recently spent time sponsoring Childhood Cancer Awareness as his father has an ongoing battle against cancer. Hopefully nothing will happen that would distract him from the return bout and that his father can fight off this dreadful illness. The promoters of the Joseph Parker vs. Andy Ruiz WBO title fight have set the PPV price at NZ $59-59 (US $ 42). Australian Jeff Horn will fight former IBO champion and IBF title challenger Ali Funeka and Ghanaian Isaac Dogboe faces Argentinian Julian Evaristo Aristule in a WBO super bantam eliminator, but not a final eliminator. Also on the show is unbeaten Junior Fa who has a win over Parker when they were amateurs. The show is heavily sponsored by the Samoan Government due Parker’s Samoan heritage so both New Zealand and Samoa will be acclaiming him if he wins. Liborio Solis had lodged a formal protest over his loss to Jamie McDonnell in the fight on November 12 for the secondary WBA bantam title. I watched the whole fight and although Solis made a great start he faded badly and McDonnell was a clear winner. With top class fighters such as Manny Pacquiao, Donnie Nietes and Nonito Donaire backed up by other class performers such as Marlon Tapales, Arthur Villanueva Jason and Albert Pagara, Rey Loreto, Randy Petalcorin etc. you might think boxing is in a healthy state in the Philippines. However there are serious concerns due to the drop in boxers and promotions being licensed over the last two years with a figure of a 50% drop being mentioned. Boxing in the Philippines comes under the banner of the Games and Amusement Board (GAB). The chairman of the GAB has held a meeting with matchmakers and managers and a number of changes have been proposed aimed at tackling the slump. My concern is that the main suggestions actually reduced some of the measures put in place to safeguard boxers. It is proposed to reduce the mandatory rest period between bouts from 45 days to 30 if the fighter’s last fight resulted in a decision. That overlooks the possibility that a fighter may have taken more punishment even though not being stopped. They also propose to allow boxers not in the GAB ratings to fight abroad and to rate 20 fighters in each division instead of the current 15 making it easier for an agent to “market” a fighter abroad which could lead to Filipino boxers being overmatched. Obviously something needs to be done to halt the dropping numbers but I am not sure these are the right measures. A big show in Saint Denis, France on 17 December sees Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam challenging Alfonso Blanco for the interim WBA middle title. Usual bit of WBA skulduggery involved with N’Jikam suddenly leaping into their ratings issued on 1 November even though he had been unrated in the ratings issued 15 September and had not fought since July. Two other fights on the show will feature Yuriorkis Gamboa against Frankie De Alba in the Cuban’s first fight in a year and Michele Soro facing German-based Nigerian Nuhu Lawal. So far just five fights in five years for Gamboa. What a waste of such talent. After fight on the secondary circuit in Germany Lawal gets two high profile fights in just over six weeks following his contest with Martin Murray this month but WBA No 3 Soro is a tough fight for him. In case you missed another bit of WBA cynicism their elevation of Keith Thurman from secondary champion to super champion was just a ruse. If Thurman had been only secondary champion then the fight with Danny Garcia could not really be a unification fight so let’s move everyone up one spot and that will leave an interim title vacant so another sanctioning fee. British Olympic bronze medallist Anthony Ogogo is reported to have undergone surgery to repair a broken eye socket he suffered in his first pro loss against Craig Cunningham last month. It will be a long road to recovery for Ogogo who has been unlucky with injuries. I was surprised to read that a specialist said he had suffered the injury prior to the fight which I just can’t believe. Good to see Mason Menard getting another high profile outing. The Rayne fighter spent nine years building an impressive looking record without ever fighting outside Louisianan and it could have been perceived as being content to be a big fish in a small pond and lacking ambition. He has certainly stepped out of that role this year with a third round kayo of Eudy Bernardo in Verona and a ninth round kayo of 19-2 Bahodir Mamadjonov in Rochester. He steps up to the plate again on 10 December against three-time WBO title challenger Ray Beltran. A win sends him onwards and upwards. Great to see Haitian fighters rallying round to help their fellow countryman. The Jacques Deschamps promotion last week which featured Evans Pierre, Wilky Campfort, Azea Augustama and WBC Silver and IBU female champion Melissa St Vil was a way of showing sympathy for the damage wrought to places and people by Hurricane Matthew and also showing that they had not forgotten their roots. It is an illustration of the way that boxers rally around when there is a cause that they can relate to. It was the first fight in her own country for the Brooklyn-based “Little Miss Tyson” Melissa. With both Katie Taylor and Clarissa Shields joining the professional ranks will give the profile of female professional boxing a huge boost. Already fighters such as Jessica Chavez and Isabeth Zamora Silvain from Mexico, Erica Anabelle Farias in Argentina, Delfine Persoon in Belgium, Susi Kentikian in Germany, Armando Serrano in Puerto Rico, Jelena Mrdjenovich in Canada , Cecilia Braekhus in Norway and so many others are bigger draws than many male fighters in their country but somehow it just died away in the United Kingdom. The spirit of Boudicca is no more. Two other boxing positives . Rodney Berman’s show in East London on Sunday was staged in honour of his long time partner Mzimasi Mnguni. They started working together in 1988 and took a number of South African fighters to world titles. Mnguni had been badly injured in a car accident and then suffered a couple of strokes and he was very moved by Berman’s gesture. And on a lighter note. A charity boxing show in Barry Wales has raised £18,000 for the Children’s Hospital for Wales Noah’s Ark Appeal. The contestants were all from the local police force including both male and female officers. I would think that the local villains would have been first in the queue for tickets so that they could watch the police fight amongst themselves but all for a good cause and on Saturday night the police would be back out on the streets stopping fights instead By Eric Armit
There seems to have been more happening outside the ring than inside over the recent weeks and some of it very sad. Since I live near Dundee the tragic death of Mike Towell has been felt strongly. A terrible tragedy for his family and as he lived locally it was also a big blow to the boxing fraternity in Tayside. Also this week an update said that Spanish boxer Saul Tejada was reported to be still in a coma after being stopped in nine rounds in a Spanish title fight on 7 October and Monday marked a year since Prichard Colon fell into a coma after his fight with Terrell Williams. Yes boxing is a very dangerous sport and Towell’s tragic death brought out a spate of demands that boxing should be banned that seemed more muted than on previous occasions hopefully because of the steps the sport has taken over the years to improve safety standards. However those demands to ban boxing as dangerous fail to give the sport any credit for the part it plays in society. Recently I was off the net for a week as I flew over to Lafayette, Louisiana to visit with a long-time close friend Beau Williford. Beau, a former pro heavyweight who worked with many fighters such as Dennis Andries, Glenn McCrory, Deirdre Gogarty, Chad Broussard, Jason Papillion and Kenny Vice etc. has a gym in Lafayette. The gym plays an important part in the local youth support effort. It caters to people of all ages and genders and teaches them how to box. Fighters from Beau’s gym have won a hatful of titles at local, Regional and National levels. But that was not what impressed me most. Beau insists that any school age kids who want to train there must maintain a minimum of B or C in their schoolwork grades and at least a B in behaviour, so it is not just about finding some boxing talent but also about the whole person. Teaching them about working hard to achieve your goals, discipline, finding an out let for aggression, social responsibility and so much more. He has a team supporting him who share his goals in former pro boxer Anthony Russell from Canada and Female Hall of Fame boxer Gogarty. Whilst I was there a father and mother brought their son to enrol in the gym. The father had trained there a while ago and wanted his son to also benefit from the experience just as he had and Beau gets plenty of returnees and referrals which is the best sign that what he does works. Deirdre has to be one of the nicest people I have met. Apart from winning a world title she has acted as an inspiration to other female boxers such as her fellow colleen Olympic gold medallist Katie Taylor, and her fight with Christy Martin on the undercard to Mike Tyson vs. Frank Bruno outdid that fight for excitement and was credited with giving female boxing a huge boost. Deirdre may have retired but the love of boxing is still there and it is a family affair as she brings along her lovely, lively young son Celtan who has a playpen in the gym and plays happily with his toys as mum hits the heavy bag. Now there’s a though a crèche in every gym. Before I went to Lafayette I called in at the Dundee Amateur Boxing club and there again were youngsters of all ages and gender working hard under the supervision of trainer Greg Menzies being set goals and learning that hard work and discipline is the way to achieve them. These are just two examples but from Mexico to Manchester from Ghana to Glasgow from Manila to Soweto all over the world there are thousands of gyms playing their part in using boxing to benefit the youth of their country and we don’t have to make excuses for our sport and can feel proud for the contribution it makes to bettering and building so many young lives. The second subject drawing attention is drugs. Whilst I believe in harsh penalties to discourage drug cheats I think the BBB of C did the right thing in only suspending Tyson Fury’s licence. Ever since he beat Wlad Klitschko he has had, often deservedly, only bad press except from those who knew the person behind the outrageous comments that seriously offended many groups and the clownish façade. Beating Klitschko did not suddenly turn Fury into Jean-Paul Sartre and nothing that had gone before had prepared him for the media feeding frenzy that surrounded him. I can remember the days when Terry Lawless did not just school his fighters in boxing but also in facing the press and there did not seem to be anyone in Fury’s team willing to take that role or perhaps Fury refused to allow anyone to do that. The BBB of C have given him some breathing space and let’s hope he makes good use of it and gets back to the form that saw him beat Klitschko. On the subject of banned stimulants we have seen the WBC working with VADA to institute a Clean Boxing programme. It saw a large number of WBC rated fighters sign up and commit to accept random testing. It will be difficult to administer but at least they are making an effort to tackle the problem but unless the other sanctioning bodies do the same-and they won’t-and all of the individual Board and Commissions get behind the effort-and many won’t-it will have only a very minimal impact. Performance enhancing drugs is still a major problem and there are so many samples of the splintered approach the sanctioning and national bodies take to drugs. We have Felix Sturm testing positive for the second time with the WBA unable to strip him of his title due to a legal challenge (Sturm has now relinquished the title as elbow surgery will keep him inactive for a time and the BDB say they have never been formally advised of the positive test anyway), we have Sam Solomon waiting for more than three years to prove that the BDB were wrong to rob him of the WBA title for a “positive” test. A court judgement has gone in his favour opening the way for Solomon to press for substantial damages but the BDB have said that they will appeal the decision. We have the WBC deciding to ignore positive tests for Mariusz Wach and Olanrewaju Durodola because of doubts over testing in Russia, the IBF ignoring a positive test by Lamont Peterson. The WBO suddenly putting Erkan Teper into their ratings and letting him fight for their European title despite him having twice tested positive for banned substances and being under investigation by prosecutors in Germany. This has more to do with the WBO bitterly resenting the refusal of the EBU to affiliate to it than any belief in Teper’s innocence, and we have the BDB conspiring to conceal Teper’s first positive test. We have TV appointing Antonio Tarver as an analyst for their boxing coverage even after he tested positive for a banned substance. Presumably they saw a drugs cheat as a good ambassador for boxing. That is just a short selection to illustrate how difficult it is to fight the use of performance enhancing drugs. The only deterrent’s that work on any crime is the certainty of getting caught and the severity of the punishment. Neither of those is in place in sufficient strength in boxing. Once someone signs up to a Clean Boxing programme they should agree that if they give a positive test from an approved, accredited testing laboratory using verified procedures there will be no appeal against it and an automatic five year ban. This won’t make me many friends but I find it curious that the action is solely against the boxer. Surely his management and trainer also have responsibility to ensure he is clean and a positive test for one of their boxers should result in a fine for them. Unfair? Too drastic? Well something needs to be done and not just by the boxer but everyone in the sport. Going back to Fury when he beat Klitschko he kicked the door wide open in the heavyweight division but now after relinquishing his WBA and WBO titles it looks as though he has lifted the lid on a Pandora’s Box. My old “friends” the WBA now have no champion. They talked about wanting to get to a stage of one world champion across the sanctioning bodies but when they were offered a unification match between Anthony Joshua and Klitschko they showed their true colours and turned it down. OK Joshua is not in their ratings but that has never stopped them in the past. There is talk of former secondary champion Lucas Browne fighting Klitschko in Germany on 10 December for their title but Luis Ortiz (another drugs cheat) is still the WBA interim champion although he pulled out of an eliminator with Alex Ustinov. There is Fres Oquendo who has not fought for over two years but has a court order from a US court securing a WBA title shot for him. A mess that even a Klitschko vs. Browne fight won’t clear up due to the other claims. The WBC has mandated a fight between Alex Povetkin (another positive test) and Bermane Stiverne so they will have two champions. The IBF only have one champion in Anthony Joshua and with his mandatory challenger Joseph Parker seemingly aiming for the vacant WBO title as I write he is searching for a challenger for a 10 December defence. If Parker is out of the picture then below him in the IBF ratings (after Parker) you have Kubrat Pulev, David Haye, Johan Duhaupas, Andy Ruiz and Carlos Takam and No 12 David Price throwing out a challenge. Pulev would seem the obvious choice and if Parker does go for the WBO title Pulev will replace him as IBF No 1 so Joshua would get a mandatory defence out of the way leaving him free to fight anyone he likes after that. The WBO title is vacant and Parker could face some of the above such as Ruiz, Haye, Hughie Fury, Pulev etc. All that says is that the heavyweights will be in a mess for months. On the subject of mandatory challengers after Gennady Golovkin’s win over Kell Brook I mentioned that Golovkin’s mandatory challenger Jorge Heiland, the WBC No 1, would be a hard sell. However I was informed by someone who checked directly with the WBC that Heiland is not the mandatory challenger even though he is No 1 and that the WBC was reviewing the situation. Where does that leave Mairis Breidis, Eleider Alvarez, Callum Smith, Andre Berto etc. who are all No 1 with the WBC and are probably assuming being No 1 means they are the mandatory challenger-or are they? It is curious to find Bob Arum talking about Danny Garcia and Keith Thurman as possible future opponents for Manny Pacquiao. Arum has been beating the drum for the Pacquiao vs. Vargas fight but these pronouncements seem to indicate that he sees Vargas as no threat to Pacquiao whilst at the same time to be talking the Vargas fight up. In the second round of Tony Bellew’s fight against BJ Flores whilst the referee was still counting and had his back to Bellew’s corner one of Bellew’s seconds climbed into the ring and started walking towards the neutral corner where Bellew was standing. When he realised the count was still ongoing he immediately climbed out again but I have to wonder what would have happened if the referee had seen him enter the ring. The very least he would have done was to stop the count but strictly speaking it is my understanding that if a second enters the ring whilst the fight is still ongoing that should lead to the instant disqualification of his fighter. The count did continue beyond the three minute mark but it seems to me that the round is not over until a count that started before the bell finishes. Just curious. Going back to female boxing I talked about when referring to Deirdre Gogarty it looks as though it is going receive a big boost with both Claressa Shields and Katie Taylor talking of turning pro. Shields from Flint, Michigan has won five gold medals. Two at the Olympics, two at the world championships and one at the Pan American Games-and is still only 21. The amazing Taylor has amassed 18 gold medals in total competing at the Olympics, World Championships and European Championships. The 30-year-old from Bray, County Wicklow is just too talented as she also played for Ireland at soccer. In fact it has been a good month for outstanding female boxers in the pro ranks. Colombian-born Norwegian Cecilia Braekhus retained her WBA, WBC, WBO, IBF and IBO titles with a stoppage of Anne Sophie Mathis (27-3) on 1 October. She has now defended her WBA title 17 times, her WBC title 18 times, her WBO title 15 times, her IBF title 3 times and her IBO title once. Some record. Puerto Rican Amanda Serrano (30-1-1) won the vacant WBO super bantam title on Tuesday by stopping Alexandra Lazar in 44 seconds. She has now won world titles in four different divisions at super bantam, feather, super feather and lightweight. She trips lightly through the division having won her first title at super feather then came down to feather for a title, on up to light for her third division title and down to super bantam for the fourth. Apart from Taylor Irish boxing now has two of the best amateurs from the lower divisions turning pro in Michael Conlan and Paddy Barnes and you can add Con Sheehan already a pro since last year who has three wins. The 25-year-old 6’5” heavyweight was 203-18 as an amateur and won six Irish titles so reasons for Irish eyes to be smiling. In addition to the above there were reasons to be happy for Cyclone promotions. Ring 8 New York, a veteran's boxers association in New York supporting boxers in need of help have come out with their annual awards. Carl Frampton has been designated “International Fighter of the Year” and his promoters Cyclone Promotions the “International Promoter of the Year” and making it a Cyclone treble Barry McGuigan getting an “International Fighter Achievement” award. Smiles but gloom also for Ghana. Young prospect Isaac Dogboe lifted the “Most Outstanding African Boxer” award at the WBO convention and back at home plans are going ahead for the building of a new boxing arena in Accra. It has been six years since Ghana produced a world champion which is causing some breast beating there. On the downside on Friday for the third time a show to feature Joseph Agbeko was cancelled at short notice as the Ghana Board refused to sanction the event that Agbeko was co promoting. No concrete reason given although there were rumours it related to some problems with a show previously promoted by Agbeko. At 36 time is running out for the former IBF bantam champion. Interesting fights on the show in Kempton Park, South Africa Saturday with local fighter Kevin Lerena (15-1) fighting Dane Micki Nielsen (22-0) in the final of a Super 4 tournament with the prize for the winner $100,000 and Nielsen’s IBF 5(4) also on the line. Hekkie Budler returns for the first time since losing his WBA title to fight fellow-South African Siyabonga Siyo for the interim WBA Pan African minimumweight title and the fight between Cris Van Heerden and Namibian Sacky Shikukutu should provide plenty of action. Some top class fights coming up in Germany. Marco Huck will clash with Dymtro Kucher in Hanover on 19 November. Huck will be putting up his IBO cruiser title and Kucher his European title. Whoever wins it will probably result in the European title becoming vacant as a fighter is not allowed to hold a version of a world title and the EBU title. On 5 November Jack Culcay defends his secondary WBA super welter title (Erislandy Lara is the real champion) against Demetrius Andrade and Italian Giovani De Carolis will meet Tyrone Zeuge in a return. The Italian retained his secondary WBA super middle title with a draw against Zeuge in July but with Sturm relinquishing the real title it might be that the promoter will push for this to be for the full title. Also on the card unbeaten Stefan Haertel will move up to ten rounds for the first time. On 3 December Vincent Feigenbutz is scheduled to face Albanian Mile Keta at super middle. This should end early as Feigenbutz is 24-2 with 22 wins by KO/TKO and Keta is 21-3 with 17 wins by KO/TKO. November 10 in Paris will see a couple of competitive European title fights. In an all-French affair Guillaume Frenois (41-1) and Samir Ziani (22-2-1) meet for the vacant super feather title and Frenchman Cedric Vitu (44-2) makes the third defence of his super welter title against Spaniard Isaac Real (15-1-1). In Cebu City Philippines on 26 November Milan Melindo takes on Thai Fahlan Sakkreerin for the IBF interim light fly title and in Frederiksberghallen, Denmark on 29 October Lolenga Mock again banishes old man time as the 44-year-old from Denmark by way of the DRC takes on Frenchman Nicolas Dion as he goes for his fifth win in a row. By Eric Armit-
Although most people were convinced that the Gennady Golovkin vs. Kell Brook fight would end in an inside the distance win for Golovkin the fight still drew excellent viewing figures. The live fight had 843,000 HBO viewers with the replay adding a further 593,000. When you consider that there was substantial money paid out by Sky customers a live gate of almost 20,000 and TV Azteca getting over 1.5 million viewers it was a very lucrative fight. Brook would have attracted a lot of British fight fans but the real message is how much of a draw Golovkin has become. Liam Smith may ruin the plans but if Saul Alvarez starts acting like he actually wants to fight Golovkin and signs on the line Golovkin vs. Alvarez could be the biggest draw since Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao. Alvarez will bring to the table a huge Mexican audience. HBO are said to be talking Saul Alvarez vs. Kell Brook in May 2017! Come on guys there is a whole ocean of water to go under the bridge before anyone can talk sensibly about that. Roman Gonzalez vs. Carlos Cuadras drew 833,000 viewers to HBO. It had the advantage of taking place at a time which suited the US market but it also drew in over 2,000,000 viewers in Mexico and Alvarez is a much bigger name to Mexican fans than Gonzalez or Cuadras. Saturday night sees Alvarez vs. Liam Smith and in Poland Krzys Glowacki vs. Olek Usyk, on 24 September it is Anthony Crolla vs. Jorge Linares, Marco Huck vs. Ovill McKenzie and Donnie Nietes vs. Edgar Sosa and October kicks-off with Joseph Parker vs. Alex Dimitrenko and Juergen Braehmer vs. Nathan Cleverly and November will bring us Sergey Kovalev vs. Andre Ward. Boxing is alive and well and the world did not end when Mayweather walked away and does not need him to come back-unless he wants to fight Golovkin!! Plenty of speculation on who both Golovkin and Gonzalez should fight next. The sanctioning bodies have put their oar in. The WBA have said Golovkin must defend against Daniel Jacobs within the next 120 days and the WBC have ruled that Gonzalez must defend against Thai Srisaket with the parties given 90 days to come to terms or it will go to purse offers. Jacobs makes sense for Golovkin as he holds the secondary WBA title but if Golovkin decides it is not the fight he wants or is not a big enough fight then he can walk away from the WBA title and still hold two titles. Unfortunately his WBC mandatory challenger is Argentinian Jorge Heiland and his IBF one is Tureano Johnson both of whom are good fighters but neither is the sort of names to attract big purses or big viewing figures. Srisaket is a former WBC champion who has lost only one of his last 39 fights and has 13 wins in a row by KO/TKO. The loss was a technical decision against Cuadras when he was behind on all three cards. He has a good win over Jose Salgado (34-2-2) which saw him collect the WBC Silver title but the other victims are second class at best. Again it would not be a big money fight but the WBC will not be able to swerve past Srisaket. With Juan Francisco Estrada relinquishing the WBA and WBO flyweight titles to move up to super fly then a fight with Estrada or the Japanese star Naoya Inoue, who holds the WBO title, would be much better fights for Gonzalez but unlike Golovkin Gonzalez only has the WBC title so may be a little more reluctant to relinquish and might take the Srisaket fight just to clear the board for himself. Random thoughts about last weekend’s fights. Plenty of criticism of the scores which had Brook level on two and ahead on one after four rounds. So it is not only the AIBA/Olympics where the scoring is controversial? Perhaps there are few cases of people in glass houses throwing stones over Rio. Scoring in fights is so subjective. The scores for Roman Gonzalez against Carlos Cuadras were 117-111, 116-112 and 115-113 all for Gonzalez. I managed to convince myself that 117-111 was too wide and 15-113 too narrow. So how far apart were the judges in their assessment? If you think about it if the 117-111 judge had scored one round differently and given it to Cuadras instead of Gonzalez he would have scored it 116-112. If the judge who had it 115-113 had scored one round differently and given it to Gonzalez instead of Cuadras he would have scored the fight 116-112. They gave what looked like widely divergent scores but really just scoring one round differently would have brought all them all together. Also on scoring I am not in favour of the scores being revealed after 4 and 8 rounds but I find myself wondering if Stuart Hall would have changed his tactics if he knew that one judge had given all of the first nine rounds to Lee Haskins and another had given Haskins all of the first seven rounds. Effectively Hall needed a knockout but did not know it. The Robert Easter vs. Richard Commey results was very close and naturally Commey’s team with the support of the Ghana Board is to protest and the Sports Minister has also volunteered to support the appeal. There was no return bout clause in the contract so Commey will almost certainly have to wait for his chance. Gonzalez is now a four division champion. How does that compare to six division champion Pacquiao. Manny is 5’5 ½” turned pro at the age of 16 weighing 106lbs, won his first title in his 25th fight at 112lbs, his second at 122lbs in his 35th fight, next it was 130lbs in fight No 51, he took the fourth, the 135lbs title, in fight No 42, the fifth at 147lbs in fight No 55 and his the six at 154lbs in fight No 57. When you lay it out like that it shows just what an incredible achievement winning titles in six divisions is. Gonzalez is 5’3” tall and he turned pro at 17. He won his first title at 105 lbs after 21 fights, his second at 108lbs in his 28th fight, his third at 112lbs in fight No 40 and his fourth on Saturday at 115lbs in fight No 46. So they both started at approximately the same age and weight but by his 46th fight Pacquiao had skipped past the featherweights and was already weighing 129 1/2lbs and fighting Erik Morales at super feather and accelerated through the weights from there. It would be nice to think that Gonzalez might go on to win more division titles but at 5’3” tall he is just that bit smaller than Pacquiao so Manny’s record of being the only fighter to win titles from flyweight to super welter is not under threat. A memory can be an evil thing in boxing. If you have one you are likely to remember things some people would rather have you forget. An example was the trumpeting in 2015 of how the IBF, WBA and WBC were all going to work together for the good of boxing. They were going to lay down criteria for unification bouts, and also work together on weigh-ins, anti-doping and other medical issues, designation of judges, electronic scoring and other subjects. The WBA President talked about a drive to get single world champions and the adoption by the other two bodies of ½ point scoring. All wonderful stuff and then the bodies went their separate ways and did things their own way with not even a nod towards all the wonderful stuff they were going to do together. OK that’s not 100% accurate. The WBA and WBC did agree to both use “super” as in super welter etc. which was no big deal as they were both already using that designation. This is the time for you to break out with thunderous applause as the huge world shaking change is that the WBC agreed to stop using strawweight and go over to minimumweight. Yes that was the world changing decision they made. Well not quite. The IBF did not agree so to this day the IBF still designate the lower weight divisions as junior light, junior bantam etc. There you have it. Three of the “greatest” minds in boxing took two meetings and could not even agree to call the weight divisions by the same name-and the WBO declined to even attend. The WBA’s pledge to work to one unified champion in each division? I am shocked and amazed that they now have only 38 champions spread over the 17 division what a sacrifice that must be. Two sayings come to mind. “Turkeys voting for Christmas” and “Listen to the words but judge by the actions”. None of the bodies will give up one slice of their power and there is a huge gap between what they said they would do and what they have done. The only one who comes out with any credit is WBC chief Mauricio Suleman as he at least initiated the meetings but was naive to think any real progress would come from them but he tried unlike the WBO who took the attitude that we are not interested in the good of boxing only in our sanctioning fees. They trumpet their fight against drugs and then introduced to their ratings last month heavyweight Eric Teper who is suspended by the EBU until July 2017 after testing positive twice in fights and on 15 October he fights for their vacant WBO European title. Strange way to combat drugs in boxing. On the same subject Russian Igor Mikhalkin is hoping for some leniency. He tested positive for melodonium after the defence of his European light heavy title against Patrick Bois in March and was stripped off his title and given a two year suspension by the EBU. His plea for leniency is based on his confirmation he had used it but not knowing it had gone on the banned list and on having used only a very small amount. I can’t see that reasoning flying but he could always fight for a WBO title! Felix Sturm’s move to Bosnia is unlikely to solve anything as he is still the subject of an ongoing police investigation after his positive test when winning the WBA super middle title from Fedor Chudinov in February. The Russian Federation announced itself pleased with its boxing team’s performance in Rio where they took home one (hotly disputed gold medal for Evgeniy Tishchenko), one silver and two bronze-and then sacked their coach! Such a tragedy to read of the early death of Bobby Chacon. He was one of the most exciting fighters of his era. The “Schoolboy” was a huge ticket seller with his explosive aggressive style and won WBC titles at both featherweight and super featherweight. He ducked no one and his record reads like a who’s who of the top fighters of his day. He beat Frankie Crawford, Chucho Castillo, Danny Lopez, Alfredo Marcano, was 1-2 in fights with Ruben Olivares, Rafael Limon, Cornelius Boza-Edwards and even some guy called Freddie Roach and at his peak only lost to the best such as Olivares, Boza-Edwards, Alexis Arguello and Ray Mancini. A great career but Bobby paid for his brave, wide-open style and wide-open life style suffering eventually from pugilistic dementia and dying at the early age of 64. He is rightly in the Hall of Fame. Nice to see the WBC arranged a dinner in Mexico to honour Sugar Ramos. The Cuban great still looks in good health at 74. He was a great featherweight who escaped Cuba in 1960 to continue his professional career in Mexico. He lost only once, on a disqualification, in his first 49 fights winning the WBA and WBC feather titles in 1963 with a win over Davey Moore who at that time had lost only one of his last 38 fights. Tragically Moore hit his neck on the bottom rope when knocked down in the tenth round and died two days later from the whiplash effect of his neck hitting the rope. Ramos made successful defences against Rafiu King and Mitsunori Seki and then went to Ghana to defend his title in 1964 against the local hero Floyd Robertson in the first world title fight ever held there. Ramos had to climb off the floor to take the split decision with the Ghana Board first declaring it a no contest and then proclaiming Robertson the winner and world champion-which everyone ignored. Ramos lost his title to Mexican Vicente Saldivar in September 194. He twice challenged for the lightweight title losing both times to Carlos Ortiz and from then he faded although he was still good enough to beat future WBC lightweight champion Chango Carmona, former WBC champion Raul Rojas and Lyle Randolph. He ended with a 55-7-4 record with 40 wins by KO/TKO. I had the pleasure of seeing him destroy Brit Sammy McSpadden in two rounds at the Empire Pool Wembley in 1963 and was awestruck by the flashing hand speed and accuracy of his combination punching. May you have many more happy years Sugar. When “Magic Man” Paulie Malignaggi beat Antonio Moscatiello in London in December he probably thought he had fulfilled an ambition to win the European title. Actually it was ‘a’ European title, namely the European Union title which is for fighters from or licensed in a country within the European Union so excludes places such as Ukraine and Russia as opposed to the European Boxing Union (EBU) title which is for all European fighters. Paulie is going to try to put that right. He is co-challenger for the now vacant EBU welterweight title along with French fighter Ahmed El Mousaoui (24-2-1) and the fight is out for bids with purse offers due 20 September. This time it is for real Paulie. The EBU nominated Callum Smith and George Grove to contest the vacant super middle title and they state that it is in a period for negotiation. If he takes the fight Smith will be risking his WBC No 1 position so although it would be huge fight for Britain he may not want to go down that road. As usual there are some high quality EBU title fights on the boil. Unbeaten Anthony Yigit and former champion Lenny Daws are paired for the vacant super light title with Sauerland Event and Hennessy Sports said to be in negotiation with either agreement or purse offers by 28 September. Frenchman Mehdi Amar will defend his light heavy title against former WBO super middle champion Robert Stieglitz in November, Brit Ryan Walsh (21-1-1) has an away date on 15 October in Frederickshavn, Denmark against Denis Ceylan (17-0-1) for the vacant feather title. Ivory Coast-born Ryad Merhy has been getting some good result in Belgium and he gets his big chance as he is to challenge Dmytro Kucher for the light heavyweight. Kucher won the tile in June with a one round stoppage of Enzo Maccarinelli. He is 24-1-1 with 18 off his 24 wins by KO/TKO. Merhy is 19-0 with 16 of his wins by KO/TKO. The deadline for negotiations is set for 6 October. Computers!!! The first time I put Golovkin in my spellchecker it came up with “lovemaking” can you image the headline? Lovemaking gives Brook a fractured orbital bone. I could not find anything in the Kama Sutra (that I borrowed from a friend-honest) that covered that. |
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