Now I'm starting to get worried. One week ago, at a one-month mandatory weigh-in, Canelo Alvarez was very cut at 166.8, as you can see. At the same weigh-in for Austin Trout, he was actually lighter. Here's the problem: He has to get a pound and a half lighter than he was for Trout, down to 152, in advance of his catchweight bout with Floyd Mayweather in the biggest event of 2013 on Showtime pay-per-view. As you can tell from his physique, he's very big up top — I'm beginning to be concerned that his body will be cannibalizing muscle badly. Super middleweight champion Andre Ward recently posited the same theory. There was always a risk that this would happen given how big Alvarez rehydrates to, but then, there was also no strong evidence that it would. That has changed too much for me.
Then again, it's possible his head is photoshopped onto somebody else's body there. It don't look right. This isn't me advancing a conspiracy theory. This is me making fun. Anyway, I recently listed Mayweather-Alvarez on our Facebook page's poll of the big fall PPV bouts as my favorite — Lucas Matthysse-Danny Garcia for the junior welterweight championship won the poll, which you already know if you "like" us on Facebook — but Manny Pacquiao-Brandon Rios might be moving up to take its spot on my personal list because of my worry about Mayweather-Alvarez being damaged by potential Alvarez weight difficulties.
In this edition of Quick Jabs, we take a look at the subjects in the headline, how boxing is doing in 2013, whether Vitali Klitschko will ever fight again, the pile-on on Andre Ward and to a lesser degree Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr., and more.
Quick Jabs
How's 2013 so far for boxing? Brian Campbell of ESPN makes a convincing case it's got a chance of being better than the last "best year since…" in 2007. On the whole, I agree with his argument. A couple points, not even quite counterpoints: Some of the things he talks about in the article, such as the Golden Boy-Top Rank feud, too many title belts, etc. have ended up not hurting the sport too much this year, but then, the sport hasn't exactly shown signs of growth per se in 2013, and all of those things are potential factors for erosion after 2013. In other words, as good as the year has been in delivering fan satisfaction, there aren't any conclusive factors that boxing is doing better than in 2012 (for instance, there are few of the same ratings highs as last year) and there is cause to worry that whatever good comes of this year will be inhibited come next year by illness that has yet to exhibit symptoms. We're getting the fights we want now. What happens when Golden Boy or Top Rank run out of viable in-house opponents?…
Not long ago, the aforementioned Ward said something that almost every boxer on Twitter has said at some point — paraphrased, that unless you have been a prizefighter, you don't get to criticize a boxer for X or Y, in this case how much money he is requesting for a bout. There was a Twitter-wide pounce on the bad logic there, and one retort even was our Boxing Tweet of the Week (on Facebook — confusing, I know), but the virulence of the mockery of Ward far surpassed that of the kind of mockery other boxers who have made similar remarks in the past have received. Crowdsourcing it, I came up with the following explanations of what happened there, and it's "all of the above": A. Some people genuinely don't like Ward's personality or fighting style. B. One prominent writer who once called Ward good for the sport, Steve Kim — but since has come to carry a grudge against him — led the charge, at one point tweeting or RTing approximately 50 remarks over the span of a few hours about the Ward comment in a rather obsessive showing that probably caused folk to think there was more blowback than there was (it was actually a continuation of Kim's daily attacks on Ward, further exacerbating the "oh, there's really a backlash!" effect); C. Sometimes a mob mentality ensues on Twitter, where if one person is making fun of someone then before long everyone else is, too. D. Because Ward hasn't fought in forever and is apparently being a bit fussy about a comeback opponent, he invited some extra heat by talking about boxers' critics when he's not really boxing right now, whereas if he was in the ring people would have something else to talk about. None of this is to say that there isn't a defense of Ward here, either — he clearly has been getting crabby about all the Internet snark directed his way, and if other peoples' salary demands were known they'd probably get made fun of more often than athletes whose purses/contracts are so often in public view — but the gist is, his comments were goofy and there were some fairly unique circumstances that led to the volume and intensity of criticism he received…
Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr., too, recently encountered some Internet snark, but at well below half the volume and intensity Ward got, over him delaying his September super middleweight fight with Bryan Vera once more. The skepticism of the excuse that he suffered a cut came from a general skepticism of fighters' injuries, some of which is based on years of justification, since fighters have cited a phantom injury as an excuse to pull out of a fight before. Some of it is based on the fact that Chavez was super-plump last time he was in the public eye, and he has well-known trouble making weight, so there's a plausible cover-up theory to be had. Some of it is based on how short the delay was, just a few weeks — if the cut wasn't that bad to need so little time to heal, maybe it was just about buying a little more time to cut weight? And some of it was based on skepticism about the cut itself, which a few people have said didn't look that bad and who knows when the picture was taken, etc. The snark part was more due to people wanting to make some some fat jokes about Chavez. People love fat jokes…
The Time Warner Cable-CBS feud that has left channels like Showtime off the TWC roster showed one sign of halting, temporary progress Wednesday but there's no strong indication that the war will end before this weekend's first big Showtime boxing card since the spat began. Although the aforementioned Kim reported that this is unlikely to affect Showtime PPV, if I was a TWC subscriber, I'd still be getting nervous around now. These kind of disputes usually only last a few days, not weeks…
Junior featherweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux is in a foul mood toward his promoter, Top Rank. He recently expressed some understandable anger toward Top Rank's Bob Arum for saying he was a boring fighter and difficult to promote; what fighter would like to hear that from the person who's supposed to be hyping him and getting him fights? It looked like he was going to finally get one against Chris Avalos in late September, but there were varying accounts about why it fell through, with Rigo himself saying it was because he didn't have enough time to train. It sounds like he had at least six weeks, which would make it a short camp but it's not a good look if you're pining to get back in the ring…
Top heavyweight Vitali Klitschko is now saying he won't fight until early 2014 at the earliest, and the sanctioning outfit that gave him his belt is OK with that because they don't mind screwing over Bermane Stiverne if it means the higher fees that comes with a later Vitali title defense. Thing is, he might not ever make it back. He cited an injury in seeking delay of the purse bid, and he's struggled with injuries that have derailed him for years in the past. He's also contemplating a run for higher office in the Ukraine again, this time president (!!!!)…
Serhiy Liakhovich is protesting his knockout loss to heavyweight prospect Deontay Wilder, citing punches behind the head. Nope. Usually I say, about almost every protest, "It probably won't be successful," even if the protest is on sound foundation. This one isn't. It's too sad to be laughable. There was nothing illegal. I just watched the KO again, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. There is none to give. Liakhovich should retire. He's in denial about where he is as a boxer these days, and making absurd excuses about a completely legal loss…
Manager-promoter roulette! 1. Junior welterweight Hank Lundy has signed with manager James Prince, because clearly he needs someone chased with baseball bats or whatever the rumor was about Prince and Floyd. 2. Welterweight Marcos Maidana is signing with Al Haymon. These days, I'm more surprised to learn when a Golden Boy fighter isn't with Haymon already. 3. Junior welterweight Zab Judah is now signed with Golden Boy. Another non-surprise, since he fights so many GBP fighters these days. 4. Middleweight Matthew Macklin is now with Anthony Catanzaro. Feast your eyes on that, ladies. Also, homosexual men…
Besides the already-posted recap of the fights, I don't have a ton of insights about the Fox Sports 1 boxing program Monday that you wouldn't have read anywhere else. The commentating team needs some time to gel, and maybe Bernard Hopkins will never get his malapropisms under control, and it moved pretty briskly. The undercard, it's true, was not great in reality more than it was bad on paper. The main thing I'd like to see improved is Paulie Malignaggi's interviewing, because his commentary is great while his questions are pure softballs where the only possible answer is usually, "Yes, what I did was great, it's true." Malignaggi's a smart guy — he can figure it out. I do think that while ratings aren't really the goal, it's going to get killed on Monday nights once the football season starts, because a big percentage of the universe of boxing viewers is still going to pick the NFL over mid/low-level pugilism. As long as we get some good fights and some good development bouts well beyond what Golden Boy's Fight Night Club became, it'll probably pay off for everybody…
Nathan Cleverly is taking his loss last weekend hard. The light heavyweight contender said he might retire, something he always contemplated should he eventually lose. That's a pretty crazy standard on which to base one's boxing career. Then again, it might explain why he fought so many patsies in a row after the near-loss to Tony Bellew — he was trying to keep his boxing career going…
I can't remember whose line I'm stealing — I think Dan Rafael of ESPN? — but Gary Russell, Jr. could earn a lot from Olympic great Vasyl Lomachenko, who plans to make his pro debut against featherweight Jonathan Oquendo on the HBO PPV undercard of the welterweight fight between Juan Manuel Marquez and Timothy Bradley, per a news release. I think Lomachenko might even be going too far in the other direction — that's a ridiculously high level of opponent for a debut. P.S. A friend pointed out to me that in my critique of Russell, he had in fact faced one of the men on Ring's list that I linked to; I overlooked the fact that that name was on the list, so totally my bad, but the thrust of my remarks remain about the talented but under-tested featherweight…
I already commented on some of the remarks from the promoters of last weekend's show, Darren Barker-Daniel Geale on HBO, and I updated that post with a mea culpa. There were two things about which I had thoughts that I didn't share in the post: 1. It rubbed me the wrong way for Shaw to suggest that boxers weren't loyal because their brains are scrambled; it's not even funny as a joke, really. 2. I appreciate Hearn's stance that the alphabets weren't going to screw him over. But they screw everyone over, eventually. The only way to avoid being screwed over by that gang is to get out of their game.
