Last year, I said the key to whether Golden Boy Promotions’ stacked undercard for the pay-per-view welterweight fight between Floyd Mayweather and Juan Manuel Marquez was the start of a trend is whether Golden Boy did it again. If they did, I reasoned, it was because it was worthwhile for them.
So here Marquez is, moving back down to the lightweight division, taking a rematch with Juan Diaz this month, and the undercard is stacked again. GBP boss Richard Schaefer said he sees long-term value in this. I think he’s right; just ask UFC fans why they prefer their sport over boxing, and you’ll see that they’ve become loyal customers in part because of good pay-per-view undercards. And as with Mayweather-Marquez, there is probably an unspoken short-term motive — without a strong undercard, Marquez-Diaz II may not sell as well. Mayweather-Shane Mosley’s undercard wasn’t up to the level of Mayweather-Marquez or Marquez-Diaz II, perhaps because Mayweather-Mosley was going to do well no matter what, which is bad long-term thinking.
Whatever the motive, no matter how overdue, this short string of quality undercards is the right way for the sport to go. The trend deserves more than two occurences, and I, for one, applaud it.
Let’s herd the other Quick Jabs, nerf-herders, including video of a recent full fight with a controversial conclusion and discussion of another recent full fight with a controversial conclusion.
Quick Jabs
Dan Rafael has an informative interview with HBO boxing chief Ross Greenburg here that is recommended reading. Say what you will of the network — and Maxboxing’s Steve Kim, upon noting my Twitter post of the interview, referred to the article’s contents it as Greenburg’s annual Groundhog Day speech — but it’s important to hear from arguably the most powerful force in boxing. They should do this more often. Notable, to me, is that HBO is interested in airing all of the five most desirable fights I mentioned in this post, and Greenburg explains the delays. Of them, a junior welterweight fight between Timothy Bradley and Devon Alexander appears most likely, not just because of what Greenburg said but because Bradley promoter Gary Shaw has now talked about that fight happening next, even if the fight is conditional on money…
As for Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao, you’ll be surprised to learn that when I put a big asterisk on Pacquiao promoter Bob Arum’s statements about the fight’s terms being agreed to, I was right to do so. Arum, serial liar, was apparently lying. First, two outlets reported that the Mayweather camp remains preoccupied with the Pacquiao lawsuit against him. Second, Rafael said in his chat that not all terms had been agreed to. And hey, guess what! A representative from Pacquiao’s camp — albeit not the most reliable one — insists the lawsuit is going forward…
At first I was going to directly rebut this article published by ESPN this week via time travel back from 2008 about how boxing was dead and mixed martial arts was better. You know, things like pointing out that no two MMA events this year collectively drew more than 100,000 fans, as two boxing matches did collectively this year. Then I realized that this top 10-list was the top 1 reason why ESPN shouldn’t trust people who write Drew Barrymore movies to write about combat sports. Also, his name is “Geoff LaTulippe.” I recognize this is a shameless ad hominem attack, unjustified by LaTulippe’s own errors, but you know it’s true…
ESPN still can do the occasional bit of good work that’s boxing-related when in the hands of people who aren’t Rafael. This examination of whether football is more dangerous than boxing is worth reading…
Friend of the site Arthur Billette tracked down video of the controversial Selcuk Aydin-Jo Jo Dan (aka Ionut Dan Ion) welterweight scrap for us; check out his links in the comment section of this post. My verdict? The judge who had it 116-111 for Dan had it right. The two judges who had it 114-113 for Aydin were wrong. And I think they were wrong by a good deal. There were only two rounds I even thought were close: the 4th, which I scored for Aydin, and the 11th, which I scored for Dan. The only rounds Aydin definitively won were the 1st, when he scored a knockdown, and the 8th, and the rest was all Dan. Under the circumstances, I think calling the fight a robbery isn’t beyond the pale. Dan outboxed him thoroughly. There were some commentators who said they thought the fight was close, based on Aydin’s harder punches. But watch the fight and show me a round other than the ones mentioned where Aydin landed more than a couple hard punches to Dan’s significantly higher volume of clean shots around, under and between Aydin’s defense. Not that Aydin’s defense was half-bad — Dan was simply working harder and getting results because of it. So I don’t think you can legitimately argue that Aydin won a close fight based on the scoring gray zone responsible for so many close or controversial decisions, where one fighter is landing more and the other landing harder, because the gulf between the number of Aydin’s hard punches and Dan’s clean punches was so wide. I think you end up with a decision like this because of bad judging that’s responsive to the crowd’s cheers. The crowd would explode on every big Aydin shot, and explode at even missed or blocked big shots, and somehow to the judges who gave it to Aydin, that communicated that he was winning. He wasn’t, and he didn’t deserve to. That said, it was an enjoyable fight, and I would like to see both men again. Dan, if nothing else, gets the moral victory of looking good in a meaningful fight and winning over some people, but he earned more than that…
This Joshua Clottey interview doesn’t break much new ground on why he stank out the joint against Pacquiao in the spring, but the ground it does break is interesting: “Every time I would punch he would hit me. He always seemed to know when I was going to hit and that makes it a lot harder. It is not about the punches that he shows. He knows I am going to throw so he hits me over the top. He knows I am going to go backwards. He knew what I was going to do.” We all know Pacquiao’s boxing IQ has risen tremendously in recent years, but this confirms it. Sure, as puzzles go, Clottey is a fairly one-dimensional puzzle, but nobody else had figured him out so easily…
Speaking of fighters with bad reputations, I was noticing today after Doug Fischer’s remark that people “HATE” junior middleweight Kermit Cintron that Lou DiBella — a promoter I admire more than the others — has a tendency to have a lot of people in his stable who at one point or another are hated by a good segment of boxing fans. Welterweight Andre Berto, super middleweight Allan Green, junior welterweight Paulie Malignaggi, Cintron, recently-retired Jermain Taylor… what gives?…
There are two things about tonight’s ESPN2 card that I failed to mention, but other reporters did: One, it’s the first Friday Night Fights exposure for a big TKO Boxing card, a promoter that has been building a model that is separate from TV revenues. Two, it will feature Randy Caballero, a bantamweight prospect with some buzz. A tip o’ the pen to Jake Donovan on the first and Kim on the other…
Big kudos to promoter Universum for making its boxing library available online, and for deciding to make fights available online the day afterward, too…
This has to be the stupidest reason I’ve heard of a boxer punching someone ever: British welterweight Kell Brook was peeved that a club manager wouldn’t let him use the ladies restroom…
We close with this fight, a heavyweight bout from this week between Australian heavyweight Alex Leapai and Travis Walker. It is noteworthy for two things, the first being that it’s a good, action-packed if somewhat sloppy heavyweight fight, with traded knockdowns (although the first one wasn’t counted), swings in momentum and lots of hard punches. (BLH, where I discovered the clip, called it “easily the best heavyweight fight in years,” which I think is overstating the case, but it is a good fight.) The second thing, unfortunately, is that it’s a bad stoppage. I’m very reluctant to criticize referees for rescuing a fighter from punishment earlier than later. But Walker wasn’t in worse shape than Leapai had been in that very same round, and the fact that it was a fight on Leapai’s home soil makes it suspect. Who knows how it would have ended, but Walker went from nearly having the kind of victory that would give his career a bit of a rebound to being unfairly handed a loss in the 4th round. Even if you count this loss, Walker has established himself as no worse than one of the more exciting journeymen in boxing.
