It ain’t easy being an opposition leader in the turbulent Ukraine. Even when you try to make peace, even when you’re a fearsome heavyweight boxer named Vitali Klitschko, you might get a face full of fire extinguisher. (via)
Besides that, and besides the subjects in the headline, this edition of Quick Jabs will round up and dig into the latest news developments on Thursday’s Fox Sports 1 card, fighters’ interactions with the topic of “drunk driving," the Boxing Writers Association of America awards and more.
Common sense has long dictated that fights airing simultaneously on Showtime and HBO hurts both. This past weekend we got a sense of how it could impact one fight: The Showtime main event of Lamont Peterson vs. Dierry Jean was surely a more attractive fight than the one on its undercard, Jermell Charlo vs. Gabriel Rosado, yet the audience dipped for Peterson-Jean because the HBO card had started by then. The audience dip probably doesn’t tell us the full extent of how much Peterson-Jean suffered as a result of the HBO broadcast (or how much Peterson-Jean affected the HBO broadcast in turn), because there would surely be an even larger audience gain of X amount from the undercard to the main event had the HBO broadcast not been happening at all. As it is, both cards took a hit. Like we were saying a few weeks ago, competition and Cold Wars have long-term negatives that far outweigh any short-term positives…
Top Rank’s Bob Arum said this week (again) that bad undercards for pay-per-views don't matter. This time, Showtime’s Stephen Espinoza contradicted Arum: "He's 100 percent wrong and his PPV numbers show it." It might be true that the main event drives PPV sales, but it’s hard to imagine how it could have negligible impact, since you rarely have to look very far to find fans who have said they didn’t buy a given PPV because it had a bad undercard. And what Kevin Iole wrote in the above-linked piece is also true: Even if a quality undercard doesn’t motivate buys significantly, quality undercards keep fans happy, which means they’ll be less likely to have one more trigger to abandon the sport…
On Thursday there were two worrisome aspects to what had appeared to be a rare quality FS1 card. 1. Steve Kim said on Twitter moments before the fight and briefly earlier this week on a radio broadcast that welterweight Victor Ortiz had trouble receiving a medical OK and he had heard multiple doctors would not clear him. If this is true (and so far the New York authorities and Golden Boy Promotions have not answered my requests for comment) this is the kind of thing that would’ve been worth trumpeting on high rather than two brief allusions beforehand. Kim often has good access to information, and nobody else seems to have reported same, so he deserves credit for that. But if Ortiz was deemed medically unfit to fight by multiple doctors, why spend more time joking about Ortiz beforehand than alerting the public to this troubling bit of news? 2. A cornerman on indefinite suspension in California appeared to have worked the Gary Russell, Jr. fight. That someone accused of glove-tampering could have able to find work in the corner of a fight held in New York is disturbing. Kudos to FightOpinion for sussing that out…
HBO’s decision not to pick up the Gennady Golovkin fight this coming weekend made a certain amount of sense based on the opponent; Osumanu Adama is a “between fights, off-TV” kind of opponent for the middleweight demon in whom the network has invested heavily. The explanation for why they passed – that they couldn’t work it out technically in the Monte Carlo facility – is a head-scratcher. What’s baffling all around is for the network not to pick up the lightweight bout between Terence Crawford and Ricky Burns, which will instead air on AWE (formerly Wealth), according to a news release. HBO has been giving Crawford shine in lesser fights. Why wait until a really good one to pass?…
Minnesota regulators have ruled the Rances Barthelemy vs. Argenis Mendez junior lightweight fight a no decision, which is the right call for the reasons they gave. It sucks for Barthelemy, sure, since he’s the one with the win taken away and very much was headed in the direction of a knockout win, whether we can forecast that for certain or not. But he knocked Mendez out after the bell, period…
The Association of Ringside Physicians has come out against Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) for Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) and their reasoning is persuasive. This has been more of an issue in mixed martial arts than boxing, but hopefully this nips it in the bud some in both sports…
I’m not a big fan of a lot of what the Boxing Writers Association of America does, but I don’t have any major problems with any of their award winners for 2013: Yes, even Floyd Mayweather for Fighter of the Year (not my pick, but the rationale is spelled out here), Freddie Roach for Trainer of the Year (my pick, for reasons spelled out here) and Dan Rafael for Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism (whom I understand some have a problem with, for reasons I sometimes share, but whose body of work overall warrants the designation in my view). Maybe some of the picks reflect a certain default to “name” fighters but all of them are defensible…
Welterweight Timothy Bradley has now explained how the rematch with Manny Pacquiao went hand in hand with re-signing with Top Rank. Bradley said he thought he would have gotten the Pacquiao fight anyway, and he walked through his reasoning here, but the offer still sounds very similar to what fellow welterweight Robert Guerrero is suing Golden Boy over. I’m not saying either fighter should want to leave; it’s just an eyebrow-raising situation in both cases. Pacquiao did not sign an extension with Top Rank and his current contract is set to expire at the end of 2014, as of now, according to adviser Michael Koncz…
Junior welterweight champion Danny Garcia thinks that Justin Bieber drinking and driving is no big deal, which is reprehensible. Former boxer Kelly Pavlik also thinks drinking and driving is not a big deal, and Friday he collapsed in court from some kind of seizure. The Pavlik story long ago indicated it was not heading toward a happy ending. He’s wrong about drunk driving, of course, but as a fan (and as a human) it would be great to see him get healthy in all the ways he needs to…
Ugh, light heavyweight Jean Pascal had his place searched in connection with a sexual assault case. He’s not guilty of anything until proven so, and as of this moment doesn't appear to be a suspect. Still: Boxers, c’mon…
I’m always down for some boxing tournaments. The one ESPN2 is airing starting Feb. 22 is focused on lesser known fighters and/or prospects, but we could get some better known fighters and contenders out of it. The edition of Friday Night Fights airing in a few hours will decide the pairings…
For a guy who’s so composed in the ring, Andre Ward does put his foot in his mouth a great deal. The super middleweight champion once said of fighting Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr.: "I'm in a position right now where I don't feel like I got to chase anybody. I'm open to any opportunity that's the right opportunity. We want the biggest fights and we want a pay-per-view type of situation and I think we’re right around the corner from getting that. But I will throw one name out: Chavez Jr." Now that Chavez might fight Carl Froch, this is what he says about Chavez: "[Carl] Froch doesn't want to fight [me.] Right now Froch is behind the scenes trying to get what he perceives to be the weak link, which is [Julio Cesar] Chavez Jr. But I can’t blame him. Froch is 36 years old or 37 or whatever he is, he’s trying to cash out." Which, OK, Chavez was crappy in his last fight, so that could lead to his change of opinion, except Ward didn’t dump on Chavez much that night as an HBO commentator. Oops.
