(Photo credit: Bob Barton, DKP)

In Saturday night's HBO doubleheader, Devon Alexander-Andriy Kotelnik is about a fighter -- Alexander -- while Tavoris Cloud-Glen Johnson is about a fight. Alexander is a can't-miss talent with physical gifts and wonderful skills, while Cloud-Johnson is a can't-miss battle between two educated volume punchers near the top of their division.

The script could flip around some, of course. Alexander-Kotelnik could end up being a solid junior welterweight scrap, and if the light heavyweight Cloud puts on a great performance, he could join the ranks of up-and-coming Americans that Alexander already inhabits. And, not to discount either Kotelnik or Johnson, both would be thrust into the spotlight by upsetting the favored youngsters, the way middleweight Dmitry Pirog is suddenly a hot commodity for knocking out Daniel Jacobs last weekend.

That's not to say this card is ideal: Alexander is the hungriest boxer in the game right now, willing to fight anyone, but the best opponent he could lure into the ring was Kotelnik, a borderline top-10 140-pounder; Johnson, at age 41, is a bit past his best days and might be cruising for a sad beatdown. But let's say things go chalk. We would have the Fight of the Year in Cloud-Johnson, with Cloud advancing to a possible fight with Chad Dawson in a long-anticipated match-up of prime 175-pounders (if Dawson wins his fight NEXT weekend), and Alexander emerging unscathed against Kotelnik to tee up one of the best few fights in boxing, against Timothy Bradley in January.

Thirteen out of 35 people went three for four over the weekend with the big HBO/Golden Boy pay-per-view show, but it was the man who went four for four who vaulted to the #1 spot. Ultra-young Casey Kasem, eat your heart out, as BenOlson is the new leader of the pack. (Yes, I'm trying to diversify my image options to accompany these updates, quite transparently. Countdowns/standings-related images + prediction-related images = more choices for me.)

Plenty of people took a chance on at least one upset -- be it Juan Diaz upsetting Juan Manuel Marquez (nope), Joel Casamayor upsetting Robert Guerrero (nah) or Rocky Juarez upsetting Jorge Linares (nuh-uh) -- but it was the one that BenOlson picked, Dmitry Pirog upsetting Daniel Jacobs (ding ding ding) that put him over the top. He got 700 points for that pick alone, as it was an upset and he was the one who picked the outcome closest to reality, by default. Nobody else saw Pirog's big right hand coming in the 5th. Jacobs sure as hell didn't. (I can't grant the new name request just yet, BenOlson -- gotta wait 4.0. Rules are rules, even for the current king.)

Now, going into the final prediction weekend, BenOlson has a slight edge. With a maximum 1400 points available, theoretically, a whopping 20 people could still win TQBR Prediction Game 3.0. It would require quite a mathematical turn of events, mind you, for some of the people on the lower end of things to pull ahead, but it's at least possible.

Either way, you'll want to make your next picks count -- tomorrow, I anticipate posting a prediction entry for this upcoming double-header on HBO: Devon Alexander-Andriy Kotelnik/Tavoris Cloud-Glen Johnson. The person who's #1 at the end of those two fights will enter the TQBR Prediction Game Hall of Champions.

Current standings below. As usual, please examine your scores closely. If you see any errors in the tabulation, notify me and we can adjudicate:

So, to atone for my sins, here are the seven hottest women in boxing. Yeah, I know there are only seven and there were ten dudes. Don’t read anything into it mofos!

I took a pretty loose interpretation of "in boxing." Hot fighters got extra points, but I didn’t discriminate against WAGS or "special friends."

This was a little like the Miguel Cotto-Yuri Foreman fight in June, where Cotto in his junior middleweight debut showed signs of being vital but against an opponent unlikely to prove otherwise. Like Cotto, lineal lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez looked excellent Saturday night in winning a unanimous decision rematch against a younger but more worn Juan Diaz. Diaz was caught in no-man's land: If he sold out, he'd get flattened, like last time, but when he tried to box, he got outboxed by a master.

The card might not have delivered on the top-to-bottom promise it presented on paper, but it had its moments. Lightweight Jorge Linares did a better job of surviving the perennial late charge from Rocky Juarez than some others have, showing he was capable of withstanding the shots of a big puncher between putting on a boxing exhibition. Robert Guerrero traded knockdowns with Joel Casamayor in a junior welterweight catchweight fight, dominating but failing to impress. And relatively unknown middleweight Dmitry Pirog knocked out highly-touted Daniel Jacobs in what was a seesaw affair to that point in the only upset of the night.

There's not much to offer with a Quick Jabs column this week -- most of the news was related to Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, and we covered that yesterday -- so we'll basically just do a Round And Round column this week.

But there were a few other things, some of them related to tonight's pay-per-view card. I desperately need that card to deliver. I'm sick of being disgusted by the sport I love. (I need a hero.) Anyway, what Quick Jabs there are, I offer here, then we move on to the fights in the works after the jump:

• Oscar De La Hoya said Golden Boy would keep putting on quality undercards no matter how well tonight's show did. If you've been following Oscar lately, you know he's on a hot streak with the lying. In this case, I hope he isn't. And, you know -- the card should do well. They spent less than $2 million on purses for the PPV portion of the card. I don't know how much they paid for the octopus prediction, though (which, yes, was a little canned, but hey, I'm all for promotional gimmicks). They've suggested that they'd like to get 200,000 buys out of it. That sounds feasible to me. And, lastly, check out this interview with lightweight Jorge Linares, who was on the card. It has some concerning/shocking admissions from Linares that make me worry about his mental state -- he said went into his last fight knowing he would lose, he said, but he's contradicted by his team. Odd.
• Heavyweight David Tua said he had a shoulder injury for his draw with Monte Barrett, but that he didn't want to "take anything away" from Barrett's performance. I'm thinking putting out a news release announcing an injury that amounts to an excuse, legitimate or not, necessarily equals Tua taking away from Barrett's performance.
• Beware Twitter, boxing fans and boxing media. I use it a little, but mostly find it unsatisfactory for communicating thoughts to the degree I prefer. But it's also a minefield of false identities, as the recent revelation about junior welterweight Timothy Bradley's fake Twitter feed shows. A few different sites, including this one, made reference to Bradley's tweets, only for that same account owner to later admit that he wasn't really Bradley. Some sites issued corrections or clarifications. BoxingScene, irresponsibly, did not. Although, as a commenter notes below, there was at least a later acknowledgment that the account was fake, even if it didn't correct the original items.
• Here's something else that's fake: Mayweather Promtions. Surprise!
• [UPDATE] Completely failed to mention, for those who didn't see it, my piece at The Sweet Science about the boxing-movie theater marriage. Still annoyed that I can get pay-per-view figures; boxing ticket sales; closed circuit sales; boxing ratings; movie ticket sales; but NCM Fathom, for essentially no reason, won't give out its numbers. The piece remains modestly informative.

The headline sums it up. But, to elaborate:

If you are familiar with this sport "boxing" that we write about sometimes here you are most likely A. up to speed on the wrinkles of the never-ending downward spiral created in the wake the latest collapse of Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao and B. sick of it. I want to give you the option right now of sitting this one out. But because of events earlier this week in my non-cyberworld, it wasn't something we collectively had the option to hash out in this space, either. Better that you have options than not, I say. Don't hate me for giving you options.

In this edition of the Clarion Bee -- devoted to following the biggest two names and best two fighters in the sport even when one or both of them has annoyed us half to death -- we examine HBO sports chief Ross Greenburg's clarification of what really went down; the destructive war of words that has since broken out between both sides; Pacquiao's affection for catchweights; and Mayweather's affection for hanging out with Don King and killer birds rather than fighting Pacquiao.

Sakio Bika! So angular, so neglected. He’s only making $18,000 for the super middleweight title eliminator he’s in Saturday night, but at least he’ll get a touch of TV exposure to go along with it in the build-up to the big HBO/Golden Boy pay-per-view show. That’s something that’s up this weekend, plus some Friday Night Fights, some Top Rank Live, some GoFightLive, some Solo Boxeo and some stuff that isn’t on the tele in the weekly “what’s up” guide.

Let’s follow the advice of The Flight of the Conchords and try to set aside the homosexual undertones (overtones?) of admiring the bodies of other men: “Not in a gay way, just in a ‘hey mate, I wanted to say that you're looking okay’ way.” That said, I couldn’t help but notice the many handlebar moustaches and eerie similarities with The Village People among the buff men of boxing.

Inspired by @linusesq’s twitter conversation with Timothy Bradley [Ed. update: or a fake Timothy Bradley, anyway?], here are the ten most stupidly ripped men in boxing today.

(Most of the gang, from left to right: Jorge Linares, Robert Guerrero, Daniel Jacobs, Juan Manuel Marquez, Golden Boy's Oscar De La Hoya, Juan Diaz, Dmitry Pirog, Joel Casamayor. Rocky Juarez probably didn't show up until later.)

For me, it's not even a matter of debate: The Golden Boy Promotions/HBO pay-per-view card airing Saturday night is, top to bottom, the most loaded boxing show I can recall in years and years and years -- so loaded, in fact, that some pretty good fights on the card actually have spilled off the broadcast. There will be people who will tell you that the lightweight main event lacks luster because the two combatants, lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez and Juan Diaz, are coming off losses, and that some of the supporting bouts will end up being one-sided. I can't say they're wrong. But find me a card that has four bouts this good on paper in the last two, three years at least and I'll slap my pappy and call him "Georgia."

The motives of this loaded card, those you can question. Is there reason to doubt that Marquez-Diaz II -- a rematch, by the way, of the bout most consider the 2009 Fight of the Year -- would sell very well without a loaded undercard? Are the exhortations of GBP boss Richard Schaefer that fans buy this card or else they might never get a good pay-per-view undercard again a bit blackmail-y? Yes (Marquez hasn't proven he can sell pay-per-view cards without a bigger star opposite him, and Diaz ain't that) and yes (Schaefer needs to realize that good undercards engender brand loyalty over time a la the UFC and that the dividend may not materialize immediately).

The why, though, matters less than me here than that it simply is. It's a really good card and I want it. You should too. I can explain why, if you need such a thing.