It might not be the best timing, but Tyson Fury uppercutting himself in the face will never not be funny. Fury was meant to fight this week but his opponent, David Haye, got cut. That would have been a nice fight, but I suspect Fury would have had no need to punch himself with Haye there to do it for him.
There are still a fair few good fights on, though, including Adonis Stevenson defending the legitimate light heavyweight championship of the world against Tavoris Cloud and Julio Cesar Chavez doing his thing against Brian Vera. Saturday will also see the debut of HBO’s 24/7 docu-mercial on Tim Bradley vs. Juan Manuel Marquez. Hopefully they do something innovative with this series, as we’ve seen a lot of Bradley and Marquez before. Much more intriguing is the epilogue episode of All Access: Mayweather vs. Canelo, set to air on Showtime on Wednesday night. The lead up to the fight will be covered, but I'm dying to see footage of how Alvarez reacted to his first loss, considering how maudlin he looked at the post-fight presser.
- Adonis Stevenson vs. Tavoris Cloud, Saturday, HBO, Montreal. HBO is offering an enjoyable split site doubleheader (which was to be a tripleheader before Haye got cut), pairing Chavez and Vera with Stevenson and Cloud. Though the Chavez outing is technically the main event, the light heavyweight championship bout from Montreal is doubtless the more significant fight. There will be full previews for both later in the week, but quickly; I don’t think this will be an easy fight for Stevenson (21-1, 18 KO). The Canadian does have natural advantages that make him the favourite, but he’s not the kind of skilled boxer who’ll be able to avoid Cloud (24-1, 19 KO). And despite Stevenson’s height advantage, it’s the Floridian who has the longer reach. I don’t see how this goes the distance. The off-TV undercard features a who’s who of Montreal based fighters, including Jean Pascal, Eleider Alvarez, David Lemieux and Antonin Decarie.
- Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. vs. Brian Vera, Saturday, HBO, Carson Calif. The word around town is that this supposed “super middleweight” fight will be contested at 173 lbs., more or less because Chavez is a lazy so-and-so who can’t be bothered to get in anything approaching fight shape. That kinda sucks for Vera (23-6, 14 KO), a long time battler who’s put together a string of impressive wins but has no negotiating leverage. So Chavez’s already considerable size advantage will be magnified on the night and he’ll outmuscle the game Vera, who just doesn’t know how to stay out of range. Sad face. This kind of thing is getting very tiresome from Chavez. Like the off-TV Montreal undercard, the Californian fights are pretty stacked and feature prospects/contenders like Karim Mayfield, Diego Magdaleno and Oscar Valdez.
- The Rest. The sole televised Friday night offering pits junior bantamweight David Carmona (15-1-4, 8 KO) against Antonio Tostado (11-0, 5 KO) on Telemundo… UniMas has junior middleweight prospect Glen Tapia (19-0, 11 KO) taking on Elco Garcia (27-8, 13 KO) in Atlantic City on Saturday… Meanwhile junior welterweight vet Humberto Soto (61-8-2, 35 KO) fights Mahonri Montes (28-2-1, 21 KO) in Los Mochis… And finally next Monday brings a Golden Boy show on FS1/Fox Deportes headlined by Brooklyn’s Sadam Ali (16-0, 10 KO), who faces Jay Krupp (17-5, 8 KO) at the Barclays Center. That card will also include development fights for light heavyweight and 2012 Olympian Marcus Browne and awesomely named junior featherweight Claude Staten, Jr.
