When I called strength and conditioning coordinator Angel “Memo” Hernandez (aka Angel Heredia) a couple weeks ago, I wondered what kind of person I’d be talking to. Was he the guy former BALCO associate Victor Conte (a former PED peddler himself) constantly bashes on Twitter for being a crook? Or was he, as he claims, just a man who had cleaned up his act?

“Hold on,” he said to me on the phone the minute he picked up. “I’m in Nevada and they have cell phone laws over here. Let me pull over. Call me in five minutes.”

Indeed, a few minutes later I was chatting with the man who perhaps most famously -- at least by boxing’s standards -- helped welterweight Juan Manuel Marquez (pictured at right with Heredia) build his 38-year-old body into the Manny Pacquiao-decapitating form we saw last December.

To begin, I asked him what he thinks about Conte.

“To be honest with you, one of my least concerns is him,” he told me. “He doesn’t possess a single college degree and yet calls himself a nutritionist. I just think that’s being a con artist. Putting that aside though, I think there is a lot of jealousy. He’s put himself as the Godfather of cleaning up the sport and trying to redeem himself from what he did in the past.”

If you follow either or both men on Twitter, you probably know Conte has made no bones about calling Hernandez out as a cheat. He does this repeatedly. The two argue back and forth almost daily, and even bring their own fans into the fray at times to help plead their cause.

Hernandez said it was, and continues to be, Conte who engages him first.

“It kind of surprises me that a guy like that who calls himself very smart is acting like a little kid, sitting behind a computer and making things up with no proof,” said Hernandez. “He tells everyone that every boxer I work with, that I supply them drugs and all this kind of stuff. It’s very childish. I don’t think anything positive about him at all.”

(Lucas Matthysse drops Lamont Peterson; credit: Tom Casino, Showtime)

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- In the Godzilla movies, the great, giant lizard that demolishes all emerges from the sea. Saturday night on Showtime, boxing's scariest monster emerged onto the beaches of Atlantic City: Lucas Matthysse.

The first victim of a frightening new era for anyone around 140 pounds was Lamont Peterson, no worse than a top four man in the division, and a match-up that divided large swaths of fans nearly evenly. Those of us who picked Peterson were not even close, and even the fans who thought it would be a tight fight were way, way off. After an unexpected defensive duel in the 1st round, Matthysse dropped Peterson at the end of the 2nd with a left to the top of his head that ruined Peterson's equilibrium and resulted in a delayed-reaction knockdown.

With his legs still shaky to start the 3rd, Peterson either couldn't fight at range like he had been or made the decision that he'd have to go inside. He landed one good uppercut that got the small crowd of no more than 2,000 -- but probably less than that -- excited that we could have a real fight on our hands. There was no home field advantage here, despite Matthysse's Argentina being so much farther away from Atlantic City than Peterson's Washington, D.C. Incidentally, Matthysse walked out to AC/DC's "Highway To Hell," so the AC/DC dynamic benefited Matthysse in multiple ways. Bad omen.

Anyway, it was an illusion that Peterson would make something of his refined approach and his uppercut. When the pair traded left hooks, Peterson landed on his back. When he got back up, referee Steve Smoger let him continue, but maybe he shouldn't have. One more right hand/left hand combo, and Peterson was down again, and this time Smoger understood Peterson was in no shape to continue. Peterson tried to say in the post-fight interview that he was done in by punches to the back of the head, and while there were indeed some rabbit shots, they weren't what caused all the trouble: Peterson just plain got smashed by an evil puncher, and Peterson has nothing to be ashamed of. If he fights Dierry Jean next, as his alphabet sanctioning belt would demand, it's a good bout, and no fans should hold it against Peterson that he got crushed.

The victorious Matthysse was mobbed ringside by his fans, and it's hard not to be excited about him. He's in the hurt business, and he hurts people better than anyone fighting right now. Apparently the plan is still for him to fight Danny Garcia in September, but I wouldn't be surprised if Garcia finds a way out of that one. Before Saturday, I would've picked Garcia to win. No more. While it was easy to have reservations about whether Matthysse was a one-dimensional puncher and not much more based on how he was outboxed pretty extensively even in dubious losses to Zab Judah and Devon Alexander, Matthysse has knocked off the anemic work rate and slow starts of those days. He just sliced through a top-notch contender with the speed of a saw blade shot out of a bazooka. Make no mistake: Matthysse has teeth, and there's no point denying anymore whether everyone should be afraid.

(credit: Tom Casino, Showtime)

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Keep coming back here for updates on the undercard for Showtime's main event of Lucas Matthysse-Lamont Peterson (junior welterweight). It's a DEEP card, in terms of number of fights, which I previewed here. Highlights -- among the "names", anyway -- include Anthony Peterson, Shawn Porter and Devon Alexander, as well as other brothers of famous fighters or 2012 Olympians.

Because the first fight was at 3:30 p.m., I opted to show up a little late and therefor missed the first three bouts, all TKOs for lightweights Robert Easter, Jr. and Jamel Herring and bantamweight Rau'Shee Warren. The live results will go in reverse chronological order.

At Friday's weigh-in for Lamont Peterson-Lucas Matthysse Saturday on Showtime, BoxingScene's David Greisman and I did some interviews on the fight itself, the topics in the headline, some upcoming bouts, the latest figure for Floyd Mayweather-Robert Guerrero pay-per-view sales and more. Read on for word from welterweight/Showtime commentator Paulie Malignaggi; upward-moving junior welterweight Amir Khan;  and Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer.

It's one of those kind of fights, is Lamont Peterson vs. Lucas Matthysse Saturday on Showtime: The more you dissect it, the more footage you watch, the harder it gets to figure out who will win. You might have started off one way and flipped back and forth repeatedly. In that sense, your fractured crystal ball reflects the odds in general -- by one sports book, Matthysse is the ultra-narrow favorite, but the closer it gets to fight night, the more writers come out picking Peterson.

That kind of fight might be enticing enough on its own, but the attraction is compounded by yet other things, like the ways in which Peterson and Matthysse are alike, and they ways they're different. Matthysse is a brawler who can box; Peterson is a boxer who can brawl. If you mope around lamenting the sorry state of body punching in boxing today, this weekend has a pot of gold to cheer you up. Even if both men take turns avoiding contact for stretches, there will be a significant percentage of the war waged in the trenches. The winner, too, will cement his spot as a top-two fighter in the top-heavy 140-pound division, with a nearly equally compelling fight awaiting the victor against Danny Garcia that could crown a new lineal junior welterweight champion.

Peterson-Matthysse has got all of the colors of the rainbow, only if a rainbow could be drenched in blood -- pretty, mixed with violent, mixed with the sharp-contrasting-mingling colors, mixed with the excitement of such a rare event. There are people, and I'm one of them, who have been looking forward to this bout more than any other on the 2013 calendar.

(A cast of thousands, from left: Anthony Peterson; Devon Alexander; Lamont Peterson; Lee Purdy; Anthony Ogogo)

If you're headed to Atlantic City this weekend for one of the year's best main events -- the junior welterweight scrap between Lamont Peterson and Lucas Matthysse -- or even if you're just trying to figure out how much of the Showtime/Sho Extreme broadcasts you want to catch, here's a handy guide to the men on the TEN-FIGHT UNDERCARD. The one that begins at THREE THIRTY P.M. It walks a fine line between, "Wow, lots of boxing for my money!" and "Uh, is it worth it to be at the fights for the equivalent of a full workday, and what happens if there are a bunch of early knockouts, won't I just be sitting around for hours anyway?" But there are some worthwhile fights and fighters on the undercard, and I believe they'll run in the order I listed below, latest to earliest. I'll change it around if I find out differently later.

(Dusty Harrison, left, and D.C. based rapper Wale, right; via)

These are flush times for D.C. boxing. This Saturday, two of the top ticketsellers in the Beltway will appear on separate cards: junior welterweight contender Lamont Peterson fights in Atlantic City against Lucas Matthysse, while blue chip welterweight prospect Dusty Hernandez Harrison holds down the home front in Washington, D.C. in a step-up bout.

Acclaimed amateur Harrison made headlines for getting an exemption from local boxing regulators to begin his professional career at the green age of 17. Approximately two years later, he's fighting his first pro opponent with a winning record, Eddie Soto, and in only his second eight-round bout. It's an important moment in Harrison's career, one that in it short life has been wrestling -- and by the testimonials of his team, successfully so far -- with one word: "maturity," both mental and physical.

"I think it's a really good test for me, a perfect step-up fight," Harrison said in an interview with TQBR this week.

Key Harrison team member Jeff Fried said that with Harrison as the headliner of a nine-fight card Saturday at the University of the District of Columbia Sports Complex, they have every expectation of him selling out the 3,000-seat venue, although it's a bigger venue by a factor of three than Harrison has ever headlined.

Harrison is one of the torchbearers for a revival of boxing in the region, led by the Peterson brothers, featherweight Gary Russell, Jr., and heavyweights Seth Mitchell and Tony Thompson. Each are at varying stages of their careers, having suffered setbacks they haven't yet bounced back from (Mitchell/Anthony Peterson), having suffered setbacks subsequently overcome (Lamont Peterson/Thompson) or not having taken off yet at all (Russell). Harrison, all of 18 years old, is somewhere between the second two categories.

In August of last year, Harrison got dropped hard in the 6th and final round by 2-5-0 Marqus Jackson. The video is compelling footage. Fried, who has advised the likes of Riddick Bowe, Shane Mosley and Winky Wright, said he watched it 40 times while trying to decide whether to join forces with Harrison and his trainer father, Buddy. And everyone thinks -- oddly enough -- it was a wonderful occasion.

"I think it was the best thing that has happened to me," Harrison said.

Lucas Matthysse, the hard punching Argentine, WBC interim junior welterweight titlist and number one Ring-ranked junior welterweight, will challenge the IBF strapholder Lamont Peterson this Saturday in Atlantic City. It’s a storied town, one that has seen some classic fights down the years. Yet it’s also synonymous with the darker side of the sweet science, and the forces at work behind the scenes that so often keep the fans and their expectations tantalizingly apart. I suppose in that sense it’s the perfect setting for these two, given the extent to which their respective careers have been intertwined with that mercurial virtue known as justice.

Get excited, there are some good fights this week. There is also a ridiculously cool Game of Thrones poster at the top of this post, designed by Saul Bass and available for $40. We’d really like to see someone do something similar for some vintage fight posters – how cool would that be?

Anyway – from Moscow to Cancun, let’s get to the fights.