Freshly back from vacation in Belize. Hope you guys enjoyed the kickass coverage of boxing events from the rest of the TQBR team while I was feeding howler monkeys and hiking through the jungle and touring Mayan ruins and hitting unmarked speed bumps on the highway (seriously, why put speed bumps on a highway at all?). As much as the team smashed it in my absence, though, there’s always a lot of news that falls through the cracks, and that’s what Lewis Black I mean Quick Jabs is for.
So if you want more boxing cats, which is apparently a preoccupation of man since moving images were invented, click here. If you want musings about what’s up for Carl Froch next, or for Canelo Alvarez, or the other subjects in the headline, or even more, this is the place for you. h/t on cat vid to TQBR unofficial visual consultant Che
Quick Jabs
The gang covered Carl Froch’s big super middleweight win over Lucian Bute real nice, but here are a few spare observations: 1. Froch-Bute is a prime example of how people ought to rate boxers on what they have actually done, rather than what we think they might do. For the longest time, I couldn’t understand why Froch was so far down pound-for-pound lists compared to Bute; sure, Bute looked terrific and Froch always looked rough, but Froch had accomplished things Bute never even sniffed at. Froch’s loss to Andre Ward finally dropped Froch below Bute in my pound-for-pound rankings, but coming off this win it now seems everyone will be moving Froch up pretty far, rightfully…
2. Bute was only overrated in the sense that people were ranking him ahead of Froch well before Bute fought anyone even halfway as good as Froch had been fighting regularly. Bute was, and may still be, a very good fighter, who had beaten some pretty good ones. He just hadn’t proven himself against anyone particularly world class. He’s to be commended for trying to find out what he was made of, taking on a hard-ass like Froch on his home soil. I hope he bounces back, and don’t yet see a reason he can’t…
3. Froch is suddenly getting some of the love he’s long-deserved. In his case, his mouth has made him a lot of detractors, but now everyone’s of the mind that he’s earned the right to be a jackass. I thought he earned it a while back. It’s a pleasant development for Froch to be appreciated in his own time. Paul Williams, another long-underappreciated type whose defeats were celebrated in ways that disturbed me (he had a powerful adviser, and that makes rooting for an action-oriented, take-all-comers fighter somehow contemptible?), has only now, in light of his tragic injury, come to win the praise he should have earned for his boxing career…
4. Bute might yet exercise his rematch clause, but if he doesn’t Froch might finally take an easier fight. Froch wants a Mikkel Kessler rematch, and so does everyone else, but he wants to take something easier first. I might wish he would keep up his unbelievable run of competition, but totally understand that he’s due a break….
5. Ward himself comes out of the weekend one step forward, one step backward. On the plus side of the ledger, his win over Froch now glows a little brighter — it was already impressive, but considering that Froch has either come out a little to a lot ahead or been very competitive in losses, the Ward performance is that much more impressive. Froch said that if he was at his best that night Ward would’ve been in trouble, but let’s not forget Ward won that fight with a broken hand, too. On the minus side of the ledger, Ward does appear a bit foolish for having not been the one to take out Bute when he had the chance. He’d be bathing in some of the appreciation Froch is now enjoying, and while styles make fights, I’m pretty confident Ward beats Bute this weekend. I say “some of the appreciation” because Ward wouldn’t have been the underdog, I bet, which is part of why Froch is getting so much acclaim now. Ward will probably get more money for his upcoming fight with Chad Dawson than he might’ve fighting Bute, though, so maybe there’s also an effect where people (including myself) were asking, “Timothy Bradley, why are you turning down a career-best fight?” and the answer being, “Oh, because you ended up with Manny Pacquiao,” albeit on a smaller scale…
To other things. MTO wrote that Floyd Mayweather got into a fight with his hetero life partner 50 Cent, which is something they’ve been reported to do before. Floyd laughed it off on Twitter. MTO gets a lot of decent intel but also a lot of pure rumor, so who knows whether this one’s true. Only thing I’m sure of is I wouldn’t mind it if those two beat each other to a pulp…
Amir Khan is the exact opposite of his British countryman Froch when it comes to right to be a jackass. He got some sympathy when his junior welterweight rematch against Lamont Peterson fell apart after Peterson tested positive for a banned substance, but Khan simply hasn’t shut up since, saying right afterward he now understood why Peterson was able to handle his punches in the first fight (duh, maybe it’s because Khan didn’t throw many punches with ill intent) to recently basically suggesting Peterson should be in jail. Shut up, man…
The Gabriel Montoya report from last week about the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency having pulled the plug on drug testing for this weekend’s Winky Wright-Peter Quillin middleweight bout and destroying the samples is an intriguing one. I wish so much of it wasn’t sourced to only Wright and I’d feel more comfortable about it. Quillin weighed in here but didn’t shed much light. And it does seem like there’s a serious effort out there by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association and/or its allies to undermine USADA, but I reached out to the USADA Wednesday and they didn’t return multiple messages seeking comment, so they’re not exactly helping their cause. It’s hard to figure an innocent reason why USADA would agree to do the testing and then reverse themselves so quickly — Golden Boy Promotions not wanting to risk losing out on another fight due to drug testing and pulling the plug on the tests perhaps, perhaps? — although under those circumstances it’s easier to imagine why the samples would be destroyed, rather than any indication that anyone tested positive for anything. Also, not sure what GBP was trying to accomplish with this letter — intimidation, maybe, or establishing what they assert is definitively NOT true, but from the sound of things (since the remarks were seemingly attributed to things said to the Nevada State Athletic Commission? that part is a bit unclear) all Montoya was doing was asking questions, as he should…
Meanwhile, we haven’t heard much publicly from the team of welterweight Andre Berto lately, at least in comparison to how Peterson’s team handled things in the aftermath of his positive drug test. Just some Berto yelling. With this stuff, it’s always possible that there’s an innocent explanation, and with Berto it’s the reported low level of the banned substance possibly indicating trace contamination from another supplement. I’m not in deep enough on the issue to rule out the possibility that he took the bad stuff a long time ago. Nonetheless, all of these “possibly innocent explanations” from the past being used now make me deeply skeptical of any wholesome reason someone might test positive for banned substances, so I’m not sure what Berto could say to convince me. Such explanations have become contaminated, if you will…
With Williams down, and possibly embarking on a life of fishing (even in trying times, Williams’ personality shines through), junior middleweight Saul Alvarez does need an opponent for September, and it’s not totally morbid to be speculating about it all so soon. Austin Trout or James Kirkland both suit me just fine as replacement opponents. Kirkland is probably a better option for pay-per-view right now based on name recognition, but assuming Trout wins this weekend, I wouldn’t at all be disappointed if Trout gets the assignment and the fight is moved to non-PPV…
Middleweight champ Serio Martinez isn’t convinced he’ll get Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. next despite Chavez having signed a document saying he will. Very wise, Mr. Martinez…
Timothy Bradley would be forced to do a rematch in November with Manny Pacquiao if he beats the welterweight superstar next month, and I doubt he’s upset about it, cuz that’s more money. I do wonder if, in light of him saying recently that he had been training for three months and other past comments about him being in something like semi-training for a while before, it’s possible that the notorious fitness freak has gone too far and might be sluggish come fight night. Physically, though, Bradley has appeared broader across the chest and doesn’t look like he’s going to be a “small” welterweight moving up a division Friday night. The right balance is crucial…
Comebacking (and hopefully re-retiring) super middleweight Jermain Taylor faced a rape allegation against him, then it was recanted. Moving on…
Heavyweight David Haye has some kind of app where the player of the app cuts off the head of Haye’s next opponent, Dereck Chisora. Haye is obsessed with beheadings — or betoeings!!!!!! #toe Dan Rafael #toe #toe #toe Holy fuck that man’s obsessive joke is aging poorly…
It’s not that Brandon Rios is in bad fights, but I could do without Rios’ next fight as he moves up to junior welterweight being against Mauricio Herrera. Herrera deserved another date after a tough showing against Mike Alvarado, but Alvarado-Rios is the fight to have at 140, and I don’t see any point to sitting through Rios-Herrera to get to it. And I guess the one extra pound makes some level of sense for Rios-Herrera, but dude at some point just has to make weight and moving up from lightweight ought to have helped with that.
