No, junior lightweight prospect Adrien Broner didn’t have a vigorous sparring session with Miguel Cotto or some other nasty body puncher. According to our Mike Coppinger, who wrote about him in the latest edition of The Ring, Broner decided to get eight tattoos at once, after having zero prior. Also, that is a Blow Pop in his hands. Comedy. Broner is a character, it would seem.
There are more important things to talk about, admittedly.
Quick Jabs
I linked to the article a few days ago for other reasons, but Steve Kim has a good interview with promoter Bob Arum about the CBS deal. If things go according to Bob’s plan, we could see Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. in a middleweight fight against Sebastian Zbik ON the network, as opposed to how it’s going for the Manny Pacquiao-Shane Mosley deal, where the fight is on Showtime pay-per-view and just promoted by various CBS mechanisms. That would be a huge development. It would also, potentially, be another step toward putting a fight in the deal that fails to enthuse most hardcore fans but could still do good numbers. So, it cuts both ways. But it’s a pretty fascinating idea, and I wouldn’t put it past Arum, given his recent successes.
P.S., on those Chavez numbers — it had previously been reported that Chavez’ last fight on Fox Deportes and Fox Sports Net did “much” bigger numbers than the junior welterweight fight between Timothy Bradley and Devon Alexander. That report now looks very inflated. Fox Deportes announced that 400,000 people watched Chavez-Billy Lyell on its network, which is a huge number and very impressive for a relatively small outlet. But unless the show did at least 1 million viewers on Fox Sports Net — and if it had, I think there would have been a news release from Fox Sports Net like the one Fox Deportes put out celebrating its figure — then Bradley-Alexander still won out.
Pacquiao and Mosley are doing a media tour. They’re reportedly coming to my town of D.C.! Count on a report from TQBR on that, one way or the other, if they do it. The news release Top Rank put out doesn’t mention D.C.
As for Bradley, his promotional future is up in the air, something Corey Erdman and I discussed at length on Pound 4 Pound Radio this week. To summarize: He could leave Gary Shaw for Golden Boy or Top Rank. My priority is anything that makes it so Bradley-Amir Khan can still happen, which would mean staying with Shaw or going to Golden Boy, since Top Rank won’t do business with the Khan-promoted Golden Boy. Another note: It’s probably not a good idea for Shaw to be feuding with Bradley’s management team right now. He should try and make peace there if he wants to hold on to Billy Goat I mean Timothy Bradley.
Team Khan is having a bizarre feud with Alex Ariza, the big name strength and conditioning coach. It involves allegations of Khan’s team breaking into Ariza’s hotel room. Get caught up here. I have no opinion on this, but it’s a soap opera that must be read about to be believed.
The WBC is threatening to sue Pacquiao over some back dues. Read about their hilariously pathetic-sounding letter here.
Yet another television station, Epix, wants to get into the boxing business. There is just a tremendous amount of the stuff in the offing for televised/webcast boxing these days.
Looks like Melvina Lathan’s on the way out in New York, due to some budget cuts. Michael Marley’s bad news/good news formation sounds about right to me.
Lotta close fights and upsets this weekend. The Friday Night Fights card on ESPN2 had two close ones. In the main event, I scored it a draw between Brian/Bryan Vera and Sergio Mora, although it was Vera who got the huge upset split decision from the judges. I thought for most of the fight Vera both outworked AND outboxed Mora, but Mora finally turned up the volume a bit after two crappy rounds and won the 4th then final four rounds on my card. It was a good scrap, rare for a Mora fight, but Mora fights are clearly always going to be a c.f. when it comes to scorecards because he only ever fights in spurts, which really hurts him on some nights. On the undercard, welterweight Charles Hatley was held to a majority draw (which is also how I scored it) by Chris Chatman in a good fight bookended by knockdowns, the first for Hatley and the second for Chatman. Hatley, the prospect in the bout, didn’t fight poorly so much as Chatman fought well, although Hatley probably needs to shorten up his punches and not pull straight back on defense so often. Chatman also gave Demetrius Andrade a hard time a while ago, so he’s earning a name for himself as a really tough test for young fighters. Other results: here and here and here and here and here.
