If I feared watching a ton of Olympic boxing as part of this Guardian deal could be a maddening chore because of the pitty-pat punching and scoring outrages — OK, I did — then day one of the London 2012 Games gave me courage. Day one on Saturday featured excellent action, very few questionable decisions despite an atrocious scoring system and two big wins for Team USA. Any video will have trouble staying up on YouTube, but if you missed it, do yourself a favor and make sure you track down the whole fight between U.S. middleweight Terrell Gausha and Andranik Hakobyan (pictured above), where (SPOILER ALERT) the American scored a dramatic comeback stoppage for the victory.
You see some of the subjects we’ll discuss in the headline. We’ll discuss other things, too, like boxing vs. CSI, a boxing rules change of note and some info on what’s going on at the top of two of the country’s top boxing jurisdictions. And more.
Quick Jabs
So rapper 50 Cent is going to be a promoter now, which is an upgrade over Snooki joining boxing promotion ranks, but similar in some ways — both have shown some business acumen independent of their main claims to fame (50: a formerly good rapper; Snooki: being a trashy lady on a TV show), and both have profiles that make for headlines when they do something. Fitty plans to have featherweight Yuriorkis Gamboa and super middleweight Andre Dirrell in his stable, and, maybe, per a Twitter feud with Golden Boy Promotions’ Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather. GBP’s Richard Schaefer said there was no feud and didn’t sound worried about Fitty stealing Floyd away. Dirrell, for one, is excited about Fitty helping him, bragging about how he had a sitdown with HBO’s Kery Davis via his new promoter. I’m cautiously neutral on whether this will be a good thing for boxing — it takes time for promoters to get matchmaking down, and Fitty starts with two boxers I don’t want to see handled poorly, but there’s the aforementioned stuff about 50 Cent having some business acumen and a helpful profile…
The boss at the Nevada State Athletic Commission, Keith Kizer, recently conducted some excellent interviews with our friend David P. Greisman about performance enhancing drugs, and they’re hugely informative. We don’t often get this side of the story. You can take issue with some of the things Kizer says, for sure — why’s he confused about why VADA only tests a couple fighters per card, when the only fighters VADA tests are those who voluntarily enlist? — but that doesn’t make the perspective any less useful. In other jurisdictional news, California’s commission boss George Dodd, meanwhile, is out, a product of some bad financial management, although he leaves with at least one worthwhile boast…
The Association of Boxing Commissions has approved a new rule allowing for 67 second rest between rounds, for TV purposes, prompted by a request from NBC Sports. Makes great sense. Commercials tend to be 30 seconds. Two 30-second commercials means no time for replays, and the periodic early abandonment of a round to go to commercial or viewers missing a few seconds of the opening of the next round…
Welterweight Victor Ortiz caused an intra-family war amongst the Garcias when he picked Danny as his trainer, but now Danny’s out and so is his manager, Rolando Arellano. Sounds like Ortiz and Danny have a legit dispute about when a fight should be stopped and when a fighter should continue, but the Arellano dispute sounds kinda asshole-ish on Ortiz’ part, although notably we haven’t heard from Ortiz himself, so it could be the other way around. Still, it does seem like Ortiz has a way of creating strife amongst his management and training teams. Ortiz could nonetheless benefit from a trainer, like, let’s say, Emanuel Steward…
A pair of recent cards didn’t do so hot at the gate. The Amir Khan-Danny Garcia junior welterweight clash had more giveaways than actual sales, which isn’t so surprising for a few reasons, like the fact that Khan doesn’t do so hot in Vegas despite being a pretty good TV ratings guy, Garcia wasn’t any kind of “name” and the promotion being a bit on short notice because of him replacing Lamont Peterson. Also, it’s still less than ideal that the gate fees don’t surpass what Khan and Garcia were paid, but come on, are there really so many fighters out there right now who can’t make more money off TV fees than off gates? Also also, the recent middleweight bout between Anthony Mundine and Bronco McKart sold mere hundreds of tickets in LV, which is surprising because Mundine is up next for Mayweather, man, and McKart is the most avoided middleweight EVER! Nah, just kidding, nobody in the United States cares about Mundine yet if they ever will, while everyone knows McKart has been far from threatening for years now…
Top Rank won the purse bid for a junior middleweight clash between Erislandy Lara and Vanes Martirosyan, a fight Top Rank boss had not so long ago described as “a joke.” The only reason I can figure they’re suddenly outbidding Golden Boy Promotions for it is out of spite for their mortal rival…
A couple peripheral developments for Saul Alvarez’ September junior middleweight clash against Josesito Lopez: 1. Paul Williams will attend Canelo-Lopez rather than the dueling Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr.-Sergio Martinez middleweight bout on the same night, which, tough call and all with Martinez and Williams having history and Martinez being cool about Williams’ big career-ending injury. Still, I get it from the perspective of the fight he was supposed to have, having signed to face Canelo before the injury. 2. De La Hoya says he’ll give a $100,000 bonus for the top knockout of the night, which is gonna be more than a good number of fighters make in their overall purse. I’ve always liked the idea of boxing trying this kind of thing out, to see if it leads to better action, but let’s see how it plays in reality…
Criminal boxers: Best not bleed in fights anymore, because an innovative FBI agent just figured out how to bust yo asses.
