http://youtu.be/PFwA4jaSNZM
Everybody’s trolling these days. The only appropriate response is to put up a couple knockout videos from recent weekends before discussing it all, so as to give you happy thoughts before delving into the sad business stuff (if you can be happy about knockouts, anyway). The one above is from this past weekend, via Andy Lee, and it lands in an odd place for a knockout punch — kind of on the side of the head. The one below is more traditional, via Nicholas Walters, and the beginning of the end starts around 27:20. When there are Knockout of the Year candidates around, TQBR tries to give them to you. Maybe we’ll have another before this Quick Jabs is over. Can you guess which one?????
http://youtu.be/44xauZGtKXE
OK, now to all the Cold War/Civil War business, followed by some discussion of television ratings, a scandalous fight that not enough people thought was scandalous and Roy Jones, Jr.’s penis. We will only give you options to click the link. We will not put it right in the post or anything.
QUICK JABS
Bob Arum, the boss of Top Rank, has taken the occasion of Richard Schaefer’s departure from Golden Boy to remark upon what an “evil man” he is. It’s funny in the way that Arum is funny, and it’s sort of true that most boxing people just eventually get over his insulting (psychotically hostile) remarks in shorter order than Schaefer did. But c’mon, Schaefer never did anything as bonkers as comparing Floyd Mayweather to Hitler, or saying an athletic commission that banned a guy for having loaded gloves was racist, or alleging that mixed martial arts was homosexual, or admitting bribing one of the sanctioning organizations. Hell, has Schaefer even said anything as “Huh?” as Arum declaring last week that Mexicans refuse to do deals over phones? I’m not at all saying Arum is a “bad person,” because who can say THAT about most anyone? It’s just odd to hear Arum calling somebody that. This is more than the pot calling the kettle black…
Next up is the mystery of who booted Arum from the Showtime/Golden Boy conference call on the upcoming Gary Russell, Jr.-Vasyl Lomachenko fight. Showtime’s Stephen Espinoza said it wasn’t him, Arum says it was, who gives a flying fuck. Only in boxing can who’s on a conference call or not become grounds for impugning of character and mental wellness and going public with a dumptruck full of finger-pointing bullshit. Like the first item, it’s amusing in a way. But you just have to shake your head at the petty egos that allow something like this to dominate a news cycle for a day…
So many pots, so many kettles. Light heavyweight Bernard Hopkins seems to be siding with Schaefer in the Golden Boy schism, on the basis that Oscar De La Hoya is just a figurehead. I don’t know if any of you have seen Hopkins, a Golden Boy managing partner, run a press conference, but I have. The word “figurehead” comes to mind…
None of this is to say I think De La Hoya is more right or wrong about whatever is happening, because so much of it is inscrutable. This column by Chris Mannix is informative — I wouldn’t agree with all of it, not even with the idea that Golden Boy is now a “dumpster fire,” but it’s very possible a bunch of GBP executives are about to flee. I like the idea of Top Rank and Golden Boy working together again, in theory, but the landscape of what GBP even “is” anymore has shifted. Schaefer had some pros and cons; De La Hoya had some pros and cons; Top Rank had some pros and cons; various lawsuits and forthcoming interviews are sure to shed light on who’s to “blame” in the overall Cold/Civil Wars sooner than I can assign it myself…
As for Floyd Mayweather, maybe his refusal to work with the currently constituted GBP isn’t so ironclad. He’d be down to face Canelo Alvarez again, say. I expect that as September approaches and his available opponent base shrinks, he’ll be a bit more liberal about when he’d work with GBP in the “future.” Marcos Maidana and Amir Khan remain some of his best options, and both are signed with both Mayweather adviser Al Haymon and Golden Boy, as opposed to the bevy of opponents signed with Mayweather’s hated foe Arum and who therefore are unavailable by choice, or who are signed only with Haymon and therefore are free as birds to face Floyd…
Freddie Roach be trolling. The trainer of Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto is declaring that Mayweather is “shot,” which is a far cry from what Mayweather is, however much there are legitimate questions about him slowing down in light of his showing against Marcos Maidana. That comment and the newly simpatico Top Rank/Golden Boy situation points, for me, to Cotto facing Canelo next. Former middleweight champ Sergio Martinez’s boxing career is officially in doubt, following the Cotto loss. Anything more than a farewell bout against an easy opponent in Argentina is a bridge too far. Meanwhile, Cotto had been mentioned for a Timothy Bradley bout before he beat Martinez, somehow. Makes no sense; Bradley is a welterweight. Ignore….
Speaking of Mannix, he did a great job in this interview with HBO’s Ken Hershman. He pressed Hershman within reason, yet Hershman was very insistent on being evasive on key questions. This Reddit interpretation of Hershman’s remarks was also informative about his philosophy as HBO Boxing boss…
In moving from HBO to Showtime, light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson saw a dramatic decline in audience from his last fight. A drop is to be expected given the smaller subscription base at Showtime. Showtime’s Espinoza, who is usually impeccable in his Twitter arguing skills if not also insufferable, got smashed for suggesting the difference was a holiday weekend featuring a major sporting event, when Stevenson’s last fight on HBO featured similar conditions that at least equaled those of the prior HBO fight. I’d suggest that the drop isn’t only about the network switch, however. The Stevenson Showtime debut got nothing but negative publicity — for being a mismatch (Andrzej Fonfara did better than Tony Bellew, but there are only so many forecasted mismatches in a row one can have); for spoiling the fight with Sergey Kovalev; and for all the previously submerged high-level attention Stevenson got from Grantland about his sordid past. Stevenson-Hopkins is a fight between two top 175-pounders who have been spending time on the wrong side of a ratings hill, and they need each other to reverse the trend…
Those ratings came in below the ratings for the HBO airing of Carl Froch-George Groves II, a fight that aired in the afternoon in the United States and pitted two British boxers against one another. The fight did improved ratings from the first bout, which counts as a success, especially given the no doubt low fee HBO paid for the bout (the accompanying Nonito Donaire-Simpiwe Vetyeka fight, meanwhile, did numbers hardly anybody should be happy with, even keeping in mind it was a tape delay). Oh, that reminds me.
http://youtu.be/GpLJ9KNtnK0
I’ve gotten away from critiques of the general boxing media because the targets are too plentiful — I’ve largely reserved my criticism for extremely biased or compromised coverage. That said, it was very disturbing to read all the straight-laced articles about the Donaire-Vetyeka featherweight results, since it was one of the more corrupt-looking bouts in recent memory. ESPN, Ring, the AP — none of them paid any mind to the suspect events surrounding the end of the bout, which ended at precisely the right moment for the “house” fighter, just when it would go to decision just after he scored a knockdown, despite the fact that it could’ve been stopped earlier. It probably would not have done much good had they given any heed to the fishy circumstances, because investigations of gross boxing officiating are scarce as it is, but you’d like to think honest accounts of the fight could at least give some kind of shrift, even short, to something so shady…
Assuming no failed drug tests, hard not to be happy for plugger Sam Soliman beating Felix Sturm in his middleweight rematch with the German. Soliman worked his ass off in that fight, as he always does. Too bad he didn’t get a slice of fellow Aussie Daniel Geale in a big payday, but maybe Geale will retain some marketability after his bout this summer with Gennady Golovkin…
I like to think D.C. is a good boxing town. But this video didn’t paint us in the best light in that regard.
Should Erik Morales really retire for good, as he has said he is — never a sure thing for great fighters, which makes commemorating their careers an on-again, off-again chore — he’s a surefire Hall of Famer and one of the 10 best Mexican fighters ever. For a while, he was the only Mexican who had beaten Manny Pacquiao, and his trilogy with Marco Antonio Barrera is one of the finest in boxing history. I can only knock him for a drug test failure and for never fighting Juan Manuel Marquez. Admittedly, Marquez’s risk-reward ratio never made sense for Morales, and they shared a promoter who wanted to keep Morales away from Marquez for that reason when they were both younger men, something Marquez didn’t really help by struggling with Freddie Norwood. Morales had that regal arrogance and disdainful macho that made him a compelling figure in and outside the ring, with his skill level and toughness enhancing the in-ring product and performance…
There are already too many boxers’ penises that have scarred my psyche over the year at weigh-ins, and now an increasing number of their units are being imprinted on my memory by an overdeveloped notion to click on the forbidden online. Do with Roy Jones’ penis-viewing options, via a “sidepiece,” what you will.
