All's well that ends for British boxer Curtis Woodhouse and his Twitter troll, upon meeting face to face. Nice apology, nice acceptance, good insight from Curtis about how he shouldn't have to block anyone — that the onus is on the troll to stop with the abuse. It's remarkable, really, how much time people spend on Twitter venting their spleens in totally unacceptable ways at or about people they don't like. Strange that a medium so centered around fleeting thoughts has a way of deepening and prolonging negativity.
Floyd Mayweather was trolling Andre Ward this week, because he's emotionally mature and not at all insecure; Carl Froch was playing dress-up in the latest boxing/video game crossover; and a variety of boxers were making preparations for their next fights, like the men in the headline and Gabe Rosado and Chad Dawson.
Quick Jabs
How dare Andre Ward side against Mayweather on anything, let alone loyalty to a friend he's known a long time like Mayweather's May welterweight opponent Robert Guerrero. Clearly, this is grounds for another Mayweather tantrum. Sure, what Mayweather said about the super middleweight champ's bankability isn't far off from the truth, but then, wasn't really any more bankable over a similar number of fights in his career, despite a mistaken figure in this story about Ward's last gate — although he was more accomplished, because Mayweather stepped up the competition earlier than Ward did. I doubt this ends in fisticuffs, as Ward seemed to offer. No, I bet it ends with Ward manager James Prince dangling Mayweather out a window or showing up with a baseball bat, some old-school Suge Knight-type shit, similar to how the first Mayweather-Prince showdown reportedly went…
Slight update to the schedule: Welterweight contender Pablo Cesar Cano is out of his fight this weekend against Manuel Perez, citing an illness…
It's not surprising that an expected stinker like the lightweight bout between Richard Abril and Sharif Bogere didn't move a ton of tickets, right? But it moved an identical number to the last fight featuring junior welterweight action star Lucas Matthysse. There are always mitigating circumstances, but it just goes to show, once more, that guaranteed action doesn't uniformly outsell other kinds of fights. Up that alley, boring Bernard Hopkins' TV ratings dipped for his light heavyweight bout between Tavoris Cloud, after some very nice numbers of late. This could be a temporary swoon like the one that happened recently to lightweight Adrien Broner, or it could be that Hopkins-Cloud suffered because of his loss and no contest in his last two. Nonetheless, Hopkins-Cloud compares favorably to the ratings HBO was doing in the back half of 2012…
I missed these comments from 108-pound Ulises Solis on still having symptoms from his alleged assault by 154-pound Canelo Alvarez. Friend of the site Chris asked whether there were every any charges brought, but as hard as I tried, I couldn't find any evidence that any had been. Mysterious…
British heavyweight Dereck Chisora got his boxing license back. This is good. He sinned all right, but not in some way that should have led to a long ban if any…
Carl Froch cosplay for the latest installment of the video game Gods of War. Behold:
Round And Round
Middleweight Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. is looking at a few opponents for his return in May, and I like them in this order: Brian Vera, Matthew Macklin and Giovanni Lorenzo. Chavez-Vera is brutal, on paper, and it's bolstered by Vera coming off two quality wins. Macklin is probably the hardest of the fights, so that makes it interesting, while Lorenzo is of little interest.
Coming off his win last weekend, light heavyweight Bernard Hopkins is throwing out mixed signals — he said on Twitter that he'll honor his commitment to face mandatory challenger Karo Murat, but he also said that he's aware the fans only want to see him in big fights. Hopkins-Murat isn't a big fight. So I'm not sure what he'll actually do, because Murat ain't a big fight.
Another fighter who won last weekend, junior lightweight Argenis Mendez, is also targeting his next opponent, and the names he mentioned were Yuriorkis Gamboa and Rocky Martinez. Both are very nice fights. I feel like Gamboa has more to gain from taking the fight, and his promoter 50 Cent has commendably not been shy about matching his guys tough.
All signs point to Chad Dawson being skipped over for a light heavyweight rematch with Jean Pascal, and Pascal going up against Lucian Bute in May. So Dawson is looking at Adonis Stevenson, who would move up and challenge Dawson for his lineal championship in June. Nice fight, very risky for both men.
On the undercard of Mayweather-Guerrero we might get a quality junior middleweight match-up between Gabriel Rosado and J'Leon Love. Love is ready for a step-up — we need to find out what this guy is made of if he's going to keep gracing our airwaves. Rosado is "just right," a tough guy who will help us find out what Love is made of, or, instead, reestablish him in the division after a loss one division north at middleweight against monster Gennady Golovkin. We are still getting the featherweight Abner Mares-Daniel Ponce De Leon bout, which might steal the show, but won't be getting the junior featherweight Leo Santa Cruz-Rafael Marquez bout because the injury-prone Marquez is injured, which is fine with me as that bout was rather sad owing to Rafa being seriously old.
Remember when Tomasz Adamek passed up on a heavyweight meeting with Kubrat Pulev because he had a bigger opportunity in the works? Tony Grano said he's angling to be that guy. I like Grano just fine, but if that's who Adamek ends up with in May we'll know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was just ducking Pulev. It's fine for him to be avoiding a fighter like that with his miles, I just don't think the facade is needed. Better to be like San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich resting Tim Duncan and listing the reason as "DNP — old."
(Round And Round sources: BoxingScene, Twitter)
