0 comments by Tim Starks on 3/17/2012
Your middleweight champion is doing all he can. Sergio Martinez at least got himself into the discussion as a potential future opponent for money-makin’ Floyd Mayweather, Jr., even if that honor went to someone else in May. He keeps pestering the WBC to give him the shot he was promised at a potentially rich fight […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor
We ought to start calling these weekly Friday Night Fights recaps “The Broken Record Column” — at least until ESPN begins to deliver with some entertaining match-ups on Fridays. This year hasn’t been a particularly stellar one for the show, to say the least. They should be thrown a partial bone this week though, as […]
0 comments by Tim Starks
(from left: Kell Brook, Eddie Hearn and Matthew Hatton) If a promoter’s aim is to squeeze the mostest out of the leastest then Eddie Hearn, the prodigal son of Matchroom Sports’ bedrock, Barry, appears to have the chops to fill his old man’s shoes. Hearn lays on a weekend welterweight attraction from the Motorpoint Arena, […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 3/16/2012
Welcome to the future. We’re now two months into the reigns of the new bosses at boxing network giants HBO and Showtime, Ken Hershman and Steven Espinoza. That’s not enough to give a passing or failing grade or anything — nor even enough of a statistical sample from which absolute conclusions of any can be […]
0 comments by Alex McClintock on 3/14/2012
I can’t promise you that this week’s fights will be as adorable as the one in the video above. In fact, it seems downright unlikely. Still, there are a lot of them, so maybe it’s possible. Sergio Martinez seems pretty popular with the female fans and his opponent in this Saturday’s St. Patrick’s Day middleweight […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 3/13/2012
That’s more like it. I second what our Patrick Connor said — we were due for some mighty good action, and Orlando Salido vs. Juan Manuel Lopez II delivered. But it isn’t unmitigated joy that boxing gave us this past weekend. Let us parse the Fight of the Yearness of the bout; the craziness of […]
0 comments by Tim Starks
I won’t make any friends with this column, so go ahead and start the hating below. I’m fortified with spiced rum. And I put my motorcycle helmet in the basement so I’m not riding tonight. Here’s the thing: I’m kind of wondering, half seriously, if there shouldn’t be some sort of extra scrutiny of boxers […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 3/11/2012
(Orlando Salido finishes off Juan Manuel Lopez; photo credit: Amanda Kwok, Showtime) We powered through one of those cyclical lulls over the past month or so, where the best we could do is make sense of mismatches and canceled fights. Heading into this Orlando Salido vs. Juan Manuel Lopez rematch on Showtime Saturday, we really […]
0 comments by Tim Starks
(Paulus Moses, left; Ricky Burns, right) Ricky Burns contained Paulus Moses in Renfrewshire on Saturday evening to affirm his position in the upper echelons of the lightweight class. The Coatbridge fighter was made to work hard in every round at the Braehead Arena, Glasgow, and while the points margins of 119-110, 120-110 and 117-111 suggested […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 3/9/2012
For a fight so beloved — and it’s a genuinely good fight, so it deserves all the fawning and swooning — Orlando Salido-Juan Manuel Lopez II Saturday on Showtime has an air of “race to the bottom” about it. The first fight was really just expected to be a ho-hum affair with a tint of […]
0 comments by Tim Starks
Scotland’s world-rated lightweight Ricky Burns (at right) faces a tricky assignment this weekend on his return to the Braehead Arena in Renfrewshire, Glasgow, after a short campaign on the road. His opponent, Namibian policeman Paulus Moses, is ranked one place above him with Ring Magazine (Moses holds down 6th spot at 135 lbs. with Burns […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 3/7/2012
Before Yuriorkis Gamboa lost his damn mind, the Internet lost its damn mind. Gamboa didn’t show up for the news conference in Miami Monday for his April fight against Brandon Rios, so contradictory, far-flung theories flew like so many chicken feathers as though they were fact: Golden Boy was stealing Gamboa away from Top Rank! […]
0 comments by Alex McClintock on 3/6/2012
I wasn’t so sure about the whole world ending in 2012 thing until Sonny Boy Jaro beat Pongsaklek Wonjongkam on the weekend. Now I’m starting to think it might happen. The only thing that stopped me from running into the street for a naked looting session was Wlad Klitschko KOing the hapless Jean Marc Mormeck. […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 3/4/2012
Our men Patrick Connor and Mark Ortega already covered some of the weekend’s action, but in two other weekend fights expected to be mismatches, one went the route of big-time upset — the one in the video above — and the other was even more of a mismatch than expected. Living Thai legend Pongsaklek Wonjongkam […]
0 comments by Tim Starks
WOODLAND, Calif. — Saturday night, from the Woodland Community Senior Center, 2004 U.S. Olympian Vicente Escobedo fought in his hometown for the first time in his 28-bout career, as he met Lonnie Smith of Las Vegas in the ten-round main event of TeleFutura’s Solo Boxeo. Escobedo made it a successful homecoming, dismantling Smith in the […]
