(Mustafa Ameen, at right, mystery manning)

The more the so-called "mystery man" talks, the more confusing it gets, the question of "what it was he was doing at the Amir Khan vs. Lamont Peterson fight in December." Ever since the day he popped up into boxing's richly-populated scandalosphere -- where scandals real and imagined flourish -- he's done very little to make the scandal look more imagined, less real. Just on Wednesday, he said what he was doing with by WBA supervisor Michael Welsh was correcting "error(s)" in his math when tabulating scores for the junior welterweight clash.

Say what?

Why does some dude who is affiliated with a different sanctioning gang outfit -- the IBF -- need to be correcting the scoring of some other organization's official?

And then also Wednesday, for what seems like no apparent good reason, Golden Boy, Khan's promoter, canceled its appeal of the result with the IBF.

This has gotten huge attention overseas, and even a little mainstream attention here in the United States on ESPN and the like. So what do we know now about this whole funky situation, and what don't we?
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If there's one advantage of living on the other side of the world, it's that we have summer when you have winter. Here in Sydney Australia, not much happens in January. People escape town and the heat and go to the beach; there's no traffic and no hassles. The boxing schedule has been reflecting that. All good things must come to an end, though, and as work and life slowly begin to return to normal at the end of January, so too does the pugilistic timetable. This might be depressing to those of you who have been living through cold, stressful, dark Januaries without even boxing to comfort you. Actually, that was the idea. I'm just trying to make myself feel better about moving away from all the action.

This week marks the beginning of the new boxing series on NBC Sports, formerly Versus. Showtime has top junior featherweights Rico Ramos and Guillermo Rigondeaux in a fight that is very intriguing, at a minimum. There's a bunch of fights happening in Britlandia that will be previewed in depth by the suave and good looking Andrew Harrison later in the week, as well as stay busy type fights for Miguel Vazquez, Daniel Ponce De Leon and Lucas Matthyse.

The video above does involve punching, but TQBR usually isn't into random Internet violence videos. He was doing it for a good reason, though. Don't drink and drive (around that guy).
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Trailer
For the first half of the first episode of "On Freddie Roach," the new HBO series documenting the life of the famed trainer that debuts this Friday night, the tone is contemplative, almost meditative, even. As a boxing fan, I could watch trainers and fighters interacting all day. But maybe that's not your scene.

Stick around.

The second half of the episode picks up when, right before fight night for the Amir Khan-Zab Judah match-up, Roach barks at his assistant (and, in a dynamic sure to create drama for the life of the series, the assistant is also his ex-girlfriend) and makes her cry. In the public sphere, Roach comes off like a "good guy," and he probably is, but if you know anything about Roach, you know he also has a temper that flares up at times. From then on, the show gets you far more emotionally invested -- you see the nervous tension of fight night, the celebratory harvest (including boobies!) of a winning performance, and a moving sequence at the end where Roach talks about the origins of his Parkinson's disease and all the resulting medical treatment he needs.

And the second episode is even more riveting.

HBO provided TQBR with a review copy of the first two episodes of "On Freddie Roach," co-executive produced by HBO's own boxing commentator Jim Lampley and Peter Berg of "Friday Night Lights" fame. It is not without problems, besides the slow start; one technical problem, in particular, was immensely distracting. But it's a promising opening two stanzas to the series.
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This is the second and final part of a series that began (and is explained) here. These are some of the runner-ups, essentially.
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These guys over in Taiwan who do computer-animated takes on the news crack me up. I don't agree with their take at all on this particular issue, but it would be better if real life was like this. Who wouldn't want to see Manny Pacquiao punch Floyd Mayweather, Jr. in his freshly prison-raped ass? (h/t)

We will be getting to part II of the series about up-and-coming fighters very soon, but I've been preoccupied this week with preparing for a boxing presentation at Nerd Nite in D.C., a very fun event at DC9, for those looking for something to do this evening. Don't take my word for it. The Washington Post says that listening to me talk about boxing is a great way to spend your weekend.

Also, a little announcement -- you've no doubt noticed Mark Ortega writing a bit more around these parts. As of this week he's joining the staff. Welcome him and his encyclopedic knowledge about fighters and his enterprise reporting and all the other things he does.

Enough house-cleaning! We'll do some Quick Jabs now, hitting some news items in lightning fashion, then go Round and Round, discussing some fights in the works.
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(James Kirkland, with trainer Ann Wolfe)

Every couple years, boxing types get worried about whether there are new young stars in the pipeline to take over once the current standard-bearers depart, particularly here in America. There always seem to be, somehow.

Once annually, I try to guesstimate who those people will be. I did the first guesstimation back in early 2009, and that was a time of transition: Oscar De La Hoya was the only surefire megastar, and he was on his way out, with Manny Pacquiao still unproven as an "A-side" who could carry his own huge pay-per-views and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. still sitting on the sideline with a faux-retirement. Pacquiao worked out pretty well, though, right? And so did Mayweather, yeah? It’s just that both are getting a little long in the tooth, and maybe their time at the top is dwindling. We’re not where we were in 2009, but we might be getting there soon.

Do this for a few years and you start to notice patterns. If you look at the big, big draws of the last decade in the United States – the people who are capable of drawing big television ratings, selling lots of pay-per-view shows, filling up venues – most of them share one trait: They’ve proven themselves to be very good. Few and far between over that period are the big, big stars that are a notch below the elite talent level, like an Arturo Gatti. Being one of the best fighters alive is no guarantee of mega-stardom (Bernard Hopkins, Shane Mosley and others who claimed the pound-for-pound throne during the 00s have never been particularly consistent standouts as attractions, despite some surges in popularity here and there), but it’s a pretty big ingredient.

More often than not, too, they have proven themselves to be particularly exciting in the ring, too, these ultra-popular fighters. Mayweather is an exception, even if some fans do find his style appealing, because plenty don't. But Pacquiao is often particularly exciting, and so is fellow current star Miguel Cotto, as are past-decade superstars like Felix Trinidad, Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera.

That combination of factors makes this year's list a little risky. There are people on this list who are extra-exciting, and there are people on this list who are extra-good. There are not very many who are both. Because the focus here is on younger fighters who could be around for a while – 30 and under – maybe these boxers can shore up their weaknesses as they develop.

Oh, and if you’re looking for a good list of prospects, this ain’t it. These two posts by Mark Ortega are. Nor am I going to focus on places outside the United States. There are big, big boxing stars overseas who sometimes translate domestically (Ricky Hatton) and sometimes don’t (the Klitschko brothers), so where a foreign boxer can make waves here, they’ll get a nod.

The point of this exercise is, rather, to estimate the current stardom and stardom potential of those who would be Next. As with last year, we’ll go in two installments.

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It's another quiet one on the old boxing front. Thank the boxing gods for ESPN2, because without that channel there'd be virtually nothing on. Well, not nothing. There's a German show featuring Arthur Abraham's return to middleweight. So pretty much nothing. To the fights!

• Teon Kennedy vs. Chris Martin, Friday, ESPN2, Las Vegas. Philadelphian junior featherweight Teon Kennedy is aiming to bounce back from a comprehensive upset loss to Alejandro Lopez last August. In that fight, Kennedy (17-1) was outboxed by Lopez (who Martin has been sparring with), who he seemed to follow lamely around the ring. California's Martin (23-1-2) is also trying to come back from a shock loss, against journeyman Jose Angel Beranza in October last year. This fight is an interesting style clash. Kennedy got outboxed by Lopez and completely failed to cut the ring off, despite always throwing and coming forward. Martin got outhussled by Beranza. Each man has the tools to beat the other; perhaps whoever can draw more from his first loss will be the winner.
• Arthur Abraham vs. Pablo Oscar Natalio Farias, Saturday, Offenburg Germany. Arthur Abraham returns to his adopted home and the division he once ruled this Saturday after what turned out to be quite an embarrassing participation in the Super Six tournament. It's the Armenian's first fight at middleweight since 2009. In time we'll see if Abraham (32-3) sucked because he was small for super middleweight or whether people just figured out his compact, slow-starting style. It's doubtful whether his Argentine mystery man opponent, Farias (19-1), will be the guy to settle it, though. On the undercard, The Ring's number four super middleweight, Robert Stieglitz (40-2) faces Henry Weber (15-0). 
• The Rest. This and that.

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(Brandon Gonzales, right)

Middleweight prospect Brandon Gonzales' year is not going to begin the way he would have liked it to.

Gonzales (15-0, 10 KOs), of Sacramento, Calif., was set to appear on Jan. 20th's edition of ShoBox: The New Generation against fellow unbeaten Caleb Truax (18-0-1, 10 KOs) of Osseo, Minn. at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. According to Gonzales trainer Virgil Hunter, that fight is now off as the Northern California based middleweight suffered a torn hamstring a few days ago, causing the fight to be called off.

"The fight is off, he tore his hamstring a few days ago," Hunter said in a phone conversation earlier Monday.

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These two and their promoters just drive me up the wall. Floyd Mayweather, Jr. won't go to jail for smacking around his baby mama until June, in what is a miscarriage of the whole idea that celebrities don't deserve special treatment that we'd been sold on by the judge. Gross. But even though Manny Pacquiao COULD fight in May when Mayweather was going to be in jail, now his promoter says Pacquiao can't fight until June because of cuts that don't take SEVEN MONTHS to heal. Uncool. According to Bob Arum, Mayweather doesn't do any business in Las Vegas, even though the gates say otherwise to such a large extent you have to wonder whether Arum really did go to Harvard. Goofy. This fight won't happen, even if Arum says it can happen in November, until one side or the other is absolutely convinced that they've gotten so old that they'll lose to some schlub, so why not lose to someone who can make you more money? And then, it's only a "unlikely maybe" at best.

That leaves us with Pacquiao maybe fighting Juan Manuel Marquez again next, the fight I'm most interested in for him if not Mayweather, or he could fight Timothy Bradley (a distant second for me), or Lamont Peterson (a distant third), or Miguel Cotto (a remote-as-Pluto fourth). And Mayweather could be fighting Saul Alvarez, a fight that interests me not in the least, or Robert Guerrero, a fight that interests me less than not in the least. All this makes me want to take my ball and go home.

There are other fights that are actually in the works, so let's talk about those. We've got the people in the headline, along with Denis Lebedev, Rico Ramos, Amir Khan and others.
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Who's that mystery man? To me he looks like a slightly more bloated version of The Candyman. Could a slightly more bloated version of The Candyman have been trying to make it so Lamont Peterson beat Amir Khan? I guess it just depends on if Khan said the name "Candy-"... Ah, I almost said it a third time. Whew. Good thing I didn't.

Anyhow: Strange saga, that. Khan and his team have been kicking all kinds of conspiracy theories about the scoring in their loss last month in a junior welterweight fight here in my neighborhood of D.C. This one is more legit-seeming than some of the others, what with the dude constantly rooting around in the scorecards of one of the judges midfight. I'm not co-signing. I'm just saying it's weird-looking enough that somebody ought to explain.

In this edition of Quick Jabs, 'sides the headline and what we just talked about, we'll discuss Victor Ortiz maybe talking himself out of a boxing license; Snooki as boxing promoter; the best way to rob Mike Tyson; and more.
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