Boxing Thread

[mikey]

If you're looking for a fight next weekend, Kevin Anderson fights Eamonn Magee on Sky Sports next Friday for the British Welterweight title. Both men are on the comeback trail with Anderson having dropped his Commonwealth Welterweight title to Ali Nuumbembe via a split decision in February and Magee still smarting from his WBU Welterweight title loss to Takaloo last May.

 

Weirdly, if you were a fan of the Contender, three fighters from the first series fight next week. Joey Gilbert, who has successfully started to promote himself, defends his NABO Middleweight title in Reno, Peter Manfredo makes a speedy return in Rhode Island after the "pounding" dished out to him by Calzaghe and Jimmy Lange defends his WBC Continental Americas Light Middleweight title in Virginia.

Edited May 6, 2007 by mikey

[mikey]

For all Oscars efforts he really didn't land a great deal. Maywaether looked good bu was obviously a little wary of mixing it up, but you don't have to mix it if you are good enough to dictate the fight for long periods and he did that (just).It was a split decision but I felt Mayweather won fairly handily. I know there were aspects of the fight that depended on interpretation but I think in his particular case you can use one measurement as a fairly good indicator of who won - Oscar was blown up and the final bell couldn't come soon enough, Mayweather could have gone a another twelve rounds if need be.on a side note - anyone underestimating how great Floyd is should take note of the fact that the guy weighed in at 150 pounds, he was outweighed by more than a weight class and didn't look in any discomfort for a second.

Eh..... Mayweather is good, great even but he's avoided so many fighters in recent years due to the level of fame and notoriety he had. Beating DLH at this stage in his career is not as big as it once was and he avoided plenty of fighters at both light welterweight and welterweight.

[Joe_the_Lion]

For all Oscars efforts he really didn't land a great deal. Maywaether looked good bu was obviously a little wary of mixing it up, but you don't have to mix it if you are good enough to dictate the fight for long periods and he did that (just).It was a split decision but I felt Mayweather won fairly handily. I know there were aspects of the fight that depended on interpretation but I think in his particular case you can use one measurement as a fairly good indicator of who won - Oscar was blown up and the final bell couldn't come soon enough, Mayweather could have gone a another twelve rounds if need be.on a side note - anyone underestimating how great Floyd is should take note of the fact that the guy weighed in at 150 pounds, he was outweighed by more than a weight class and didn't look in any discomfort for a second.

Eh..... Mayweather is good, great even but he's avoided so many fighters in recent years due to the level of fame and notoriety he had. Beating DLH at this stage in his career is not as big as it once was and he avoided plenty of fighters at both light welterweight and welterweight.

Beating Oscar at this stage doesn't mean as much as it did a few years ago - being outweighed by a stone and beating him cancels that out. If floyd wighed 154 naturally he would have destroyed Oscar - at any stage in his career.and who has he avoided?

[mikey]

He didn't hurt Oscar. He won the fight, he put money in my pocket but he won the fight because of his boxing skills and speed. It's not like he hasn't fought bigger guys before either, as Baldomir is HUGE, possibly as big as De La Hoya. Since stepping up from lightweight, he's been a smaller man. He has a lightweight's frame.By avoided, I don't mean dodged. I mean that by being the rainmaker at the welterweight divisions, his management have been able to pick and choose the matches. He didn't go anywhere near Kostya Tszyu, Margarito, Cotto or Hatton and that's just off the top of my head. He moved up to take on Judah and then Baldomir, mainly because he was chasing De la Hoya. I'm not saying he's done a Dariusz Michalczewski or something but he has hardly cleaned out every division he's been in.

[Joe_the_Lion]

He didn't hurt Oscar. He won the fight, he put money in my pocket but he won the fight because of his boxing skills and speed. It's not like he hasn't fought bigger guys before either, as Baldomir is HUGE, possibly as big as De La Hoya. Since stepping up from lightweight, he's been a smaller man. He has a lightweight's frame.By avoided, I don't mean dodged. I mean that by being the rainmaker at the welterweight divisions, his management have been able to pick and choose the matches. He didn't go anywhere near Kostya Tszyu, Margarito, Cotto or Hatton and that's just off the top of my head. He moved up to take on Judah and then Baldomir, mainly because he was chasing De la Hoya. I'm not saying he's done a Dariusz Michalczewski or something but he has hardly cleaned out every division he's been in.

Much of what you say is true and I agree it would have been nice to see him clean up the best of each division but I guess those days are past, afterall Oscar didnt go near Chavez until he was shot to pieces. Edited May 6, 2007 by Joe_the_Lion

[mikey]

And therein lies the problem with boxing. In boxing, Tito Ortiz would have ducked Chuck Liddell forever.

[Joe_the_Lion]

And therein lies the problem with boxing. In boxing, Tito Ortiz would have ducked Chuck Liddell forever.

Never has a truer word been spoken.With the right promoters both guys would have existed alongside each other and we would have argued the toss endlessly about who was better (perhaps even conceding to the other guy that it would be close) all the time unaware that Tito will always be Chuck's bitch.

[mikey]

I wonder what happens when boxing blows its superfight load. De La Hoya will likely never generate another payday like the one he just had, unless he entices Mayweather out of retirement. People aren't interested in fighters uniting whatever version of the alphabet soup titles, they just want the best fights now. Besides, win two belts and the IBF will strip you inside three months for not fighting a mandatory or the WBA create an ordinary champion as you're now a "super champion". Hatton/Castillo is going to be a fight over the Ring's Light Welterweight title and the IBO version of the belt. Similarly, when Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson fought, they gave up their major titles to make the fight happen, which was also over Tarver's IBO title, the only sanctioning body that didn't strip him of their belt.I suppose people said this years ago but I can't help but think it will take 10 years to build the stars up again.

[RMC420]

Setanta brings the boxing on Saturday night/Sunday morning~!1:00am Explosive: Cotto v JudahPreview of the WBA Welterweight Title Fight between Miguel Cotto and Zab Judah.1:30am LiveWBA Welterweight Title Fight - Cotto vs JudahLive from Madison Square Garden in New York - Miguel Cotto the undefeated champion who posseses one of the hardest punches in boxing, will defend his title against two times world champion Zab 'Super' Judah in what is sure to be a knock-out match!And they've got Hatton in a couple of weeks as well. Although you have to pay extra for it...

[Egg Shen]

is Judah/Cotto free on Setanta?i watched the build-up show, its gonna be awesome.

[nfc90210]

I was on boxrec.com looking at the pro record of former world title challenger turned actor Randall "Tex" Cobb. http://www.boxrec.com/boxer_display.php?boxer_id=002540Anyway, on the 15th of September, 1992 Cobb fought Sonny Barch. This fight was part of Cobb's brief early 90's comback. The result of the fight was a no contest. The reason...

Both fighters tested positive on cocaine. Originally a TKO win for Cobb.

This gave me minor lolz.

[nfc90210]

Forgive me if this has been touched on before.I found this across this at DVDVR and found it very interesting.http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.php?showtopic=37088

Boxing, moreso than any other sport I can think of, loves to wallow in mystery and conspiracy. It's not surprising given its illegal nature in most of the country up until the early 20th century, but it does leave us with many seemingly contradictory and nebulous factoids to sort through.One whispered rumor that stretches back to the 1920s is this:In 1921, immediately following his record-breaking million-dollar gate fight against Georges Carpentier, heavyweight champion of the world Jack Dempsey quietly drove up to Saskatoon, Canada and, in an illegal prizefight staged by high-roller gamblers, met and knocked out Jack Johnson, the former heavyweight champion who had been released from prison in July of that year.A tall tale perhaps, and one that begs many questions - Dempsey made $300,000 to fight Carpentier, how much could a hundred-or-so high rollers offer the champ for a private bout? The biggest elephant in the ring, of course, is the lack of confirmatory evidence in the papers of the day. Or so I thought.A seller on eBay claims to have an original copy of a 1921 newspaper, "The Brooklyn Eagle", which purportedly has a round-by-round description of the bout as relayed to them from a firsthand source in attendance. Now this rumor of a Dempsey vs Johnson fight stretches all the way back to this period, but neither Dempsey nor Johnson ever confirmed it, or even debunked it to my knowledge. Boxing historian Monte Cox gives the following account of Dempsey's reaction to the rumor:

Lew Eskin, former Boxing Illustrated Editor, wrote an article about it in Dec 1985 Fightbeat magazine. He asked Dempsey about it who was evasive. The only thing Jack would say is he boxed a series of exhibitions during that time. He asked Dempsey if he could publish the story in B.Ill. but Dempsey said, "Not Now" which Eskin took to mean not in his lifetime. The bout with Jack Johnson was allegedly an under the table affair for rich gamblers.

One of the truly intriguing aspects of Jack Dempsey was that as a mature adult world champion, he worked tirelessly to recreate his image as that of a gentleman, and did a good job of it too. He took diction lessons, read a newspaper from front to back every single day, and made every effort to distance himself from gamblers and other shady types (Al Capone was a big Dempsey fan and actually offered to promote Dempsey after Jack split from Doc Kearns - Dempsey quickly and quietly declined). But there is no doubt that during his hardscrabble years as a young hobo and itinerant worker, Dempsey couldn't help but associate with such men - heck, he worked in brothels and speakeasies all over Colorado and Utah! Dempsey was so ashamed of this aspect of his life that he outright denied all of it after his career was over; even the 1917 Fireman Jim Flynn fight in Utah, a dive so blatant that both fighters were chased out of town and boxing banned, is stated by Dempsey himself as being completely on the level - the journeyman Flynn KO'd Dempsey with one punch within 10 seconds (for his part Dempsey took his money, rumored to be $500, and was fighting in California 3 weeks later).So Dempsey was not above doing the bidding of gamblers during his young and hungry years out west. Could he have repaid a favor to some by fighting Jack Johnson in some remote Canadian basement only 4 years after the Flynn debacle? I don't know, but I'd sure be curious to read that article!

The link to the E-Bay seller is below...http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Rare-oddball-boxing-...1QQcmdZViewItem

[RMC420]

is Judah/Cotto free on Setanta?i watched the build-up show, its gonna be awesome.

If you subscribe to Setanta, you'll be able to watch it at no added cost.I may have misread the Hatton blurb about Setanta folks having to pay more to see the fight.Here's the guff:Ricky's camp, led by Dennis Hobson and Fight Academy, has selected Setanta Sports to cover this crucial fight against Mexico's Jose Luis 'El Terrible' Castillo at the Thomas & Mack Centre in Las Vegas.Setanta Sports Director of Sport, Trevor East, commented: "Setanta is delighted to have secured Ricky's next title fight and we're thrilled to be working with the UK's most popular and talented boxer. This is further proof that Setanta Sports is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to showcasing the best UK sporting events."Ricky Hatton said: "I'm really looking forward to working with Setanta Sports for this world title fight. This fight should be a cracker as Castillo is one of the best pound for pound fighters in the world with over 47 KOs in his career, so all I can do is encourage people to pick up the phone and subscribe to Setanta if you want to see another world title fight return to England."Freeview viewers who want to see the fight will pay a fee of Edited June 9, 2007 by RMC420

[Egg Shen]

Cotto/Judah was an absolute war...Cotto is a machine.

[mikey]

Judah is made for Cotto though. A pressure fighter against a guy who doesn't like pressure. Is there a more protected fighter out there than Cotto?