She's so cute in that video in her boxing robe, is Alexis Krauss, that I don't even mind that it's something of a subpar song by Sleigh Bell standards.
This is the previously promised last bit of business before we fully turn our attention to flooding the site with coverage of Sept. 14's Floyd Mayweather-Canelo Alvarez Showtime pay-per-view clash. Besides the men in the headline, we have fights under discussion — sometimes far in advance — for Zab Judah, Peter Quillin, Tomasz Adamek, Sergey Kovalev and more.
Round And Round
Nonito Donaire is expected to face Vic Darchinyan this fall on HBO, but there are also talks of him facing Evgeny Gradovich early next year. It's a nice fight, but unless Donaire's recent talk of rediscovering his fire is real, and I'm not convinced it is, I wouldn't comfortably pick Donaire against a real featherweight with toughness and some technique like Gradovich.
The trainer of middleweight monster Gennady Golovkin is trash talking Peter Quillin, as if Quillin is going to leave Golden Boy, which is banned from HBO, to fight Golovkin on his home network. Pointless. Quillin had himself tried to make a fight with Martin Murray in England, according to Golden Boy, but Murray's team at Hatton Promotions turned it down. Maybe they'd rather have Murray wait in line for a mandatory shot at Golovkin's title, due up after Golovkin faces Curtis Stevens? That might leave Quillin with Sergio Mora, a fight I can support somewhat based on Mora's most recent performance.
There was talk of an HBO heavyweight meeting between Tomasz Adamek and Bryant Jennings, but then Jennings' manager James Prince and Main Events' Kathy Duva got into a tussle over money and now it won't happen until next year at the earliest. Adamek is going to fight Vyacheslav Glazkov instead in November on NBC Sports, and it's a reasonable enough fight in the interim.
December could bring us a big-time Brooklyn match-up between Zab Judah and Paulie Malignaggi on Showtime, and while it doesn't interest me all that much it would do very well at the box office. It'd be at welterweight, one presumes. Golden Boy is talking about pairing it with another few welterweights, Devon Alexander-Amir Khan and Victor Ortiz, but that strikes me as too ambitious to pull off.
How's this for a fine sequence of flyweight bouts: Tyson Marquez vs. Giovani Segura in November, with the winner to face Juan Francisco Estrada. That is a whole lot of smashing.
Ruslan Provodnikov wants a rematch with welterweight Timothy Bradley, and I only see it as possible if Bradley doesn't beat Juan Manuel Marquez in October. Bradley will be saying names like "Manny Pacquiao" or "Floyd Mayweather" next if he topples Marquez. Also, Provodnikov has to beat Mike Alvarado at 140 first, and that's no guarantee, either.
Sergey Kovalev said he'd be happy to fight light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson, as would everybody if he did. He isn't interested in Bernard Hopkins, who has been pooping on him publicly, but it doesn't matter because Kovalev is with HBO and Hopkins is with Golden Boy. That might leave him with Juergen Braehmer as his next big fight owing to sanctioning belt politics, something HBO has to be worried about given Braehmer's history of pulling out of bouts at the last minute.
This weekend's winner, Efrain Esquivias, isn't the only one who wants a piece of junior featheweight Leo Santa Cruz. Cristian Mijares does, too. Mijares strikes me as the better option of the two.
We conclude with the Chenko section of Round And Round. The October welterweight fight between Kell Brook and Vyacheslav Senchenko will air on WealthTV, which by then will be known as AWE (A Wealth of Entertainment). Also, Vasyl Lomachenko's pro debut next month will not be against Johnathan Oquendo but Jose Ramirez. That's about as tough if not tougher. Lomachenko is some kind of Ukrainian cowboy, I tell you.
(Round And Round sources: BoxingScene, RingTV, ESPN)
