What? Something in boxing was FAKE? You mean that after their hilarious confrontation in the ring on HBO, Sergey Kovalev and Adonis Stevenson were hugging off camera? Shocking.
Or is this what’s shocking: That trainer Freddie Roach was the one who alleged the forgery? Roach, who doesn’t even pretend that he’s not bullshitting us half the time? This is a nice potential hall of mirrors, with boxing lies refracting upon boxing lies.
As long as it’s entertaining, I guess.
More Roach and Kovalev below in this edition of Quick Jabs, among other subjects…
QUICK JABS
If you’re from the D.C. area and like me saw that Super Bowl ad for a local heating and plumbing contractor featuring Mike Tyson and wondered, “WTF?” then the Washington Post has you covered. It’s nothing miraculous but it’s worth reading to see how this improbable event came together…
Speaking of people named Tyson: Current heavyweight champion Tyson Fury is already talking about how he maybe wants to retire. It’s quite the contrast from what he was recording saying very recently on HBO’s “Real Sports” about how he fights out of love. It could just be some typical Fury psychological instability where he’s up and down all over the place (it’s not the first time he’s said the “r” word), but it would be bad news for his rematch chances against Wladimir Klitschko if it’s a permanent condition…
Manager/Promoter/former featherweight champion Barry McGuigan says Amir Khan is taking a big chance fighting Canelo Alvarez because Alvarez walks around at 200 pounds. Two years ago, Canelo said he walked around at 170. That means he A. gained a lot of weight in two years; or B. was lying back then; or C. McGuigan is inflating things; or D. a bit of all of the above. Yeah, “D.” is a pretty good answer…
Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. thinks Canelo is an “embarrassment” to the middleweight division for fighting the smaller Khan. Hey, at least Canelo occasionally makes the contracted weight limit, unlike Chavez…
When Mexico of all places thinks you need more medical tests before getting into the boxing ring, maybe it’s a signal you shouldn’t step between the ropes, eh, Antonio Margarito?…
Antonio Tarver’s child support problems are getting very ugly. $750,000 is a lot of child support. He lost his Mercedes, then complained he wouldn’t be able to get to his job. That was also not a good look…
Uglier still: The back and forth shootings that began at a weigh-in in Dublin. This could get worse before it gets better…
Roach explained why he allowed his light heavyweight Jean Pascal to go so long against Kovalev the other weekend despite the fact that Pascal was taking a horrendous beating. Fellow trainer Teddy Atlas offered the better perspective in the same piece. Roach shouldn’t have let Pascal go out for at least a couple of those final rounds…
I’m automatically skeptical of anything Thomas Hauser writes because I’ve seen how he can manipulate the reader, who doesn’t have the same information as him. But from the outside looking in, his work on the New York State Athletic Commission in the aftermath of Magomed Abdusalav passes the smell test with me, and it covers some of the bases he sometimes doesn’t (like getting comment from the people he’s criticizing, say). The latest five-part installment is too long, but it’s got a lot of damning detail. Read it when you’ve got some time on your hands.
(photo via)
