Here we go with our first standings recap in the prediction game, which I figure we'll do every two fights. The two fights this time were, obviously, the featherweight bouts Juan Manuel Lopez vs. Steven Luevano and Yuriorkis Gamboa vs. Rogers Mtagwa on Jan. 23. (We need a good, catchy name for the game, by the way, if anyone has any nominations.)

Spidershark scored the maximum points allowable by accurately calling Lopez' 7th round knockout and being closest to Gamboa's 2nd round KO. Who is this Spidershark, hmmm? I found it highly suspicious that Gamboa said he wanted to take it to the 4th round in his post-fight interview, and that's the round Spidershark predicted for Gamboa's finish. Are these vague hints of impropriety in any way related to my bitterness at not being in first place? Probably.

BigMaxy also called both fights correctly and picked Lopez to win in the 7th, so we have a second place. There's a 22-way tie for third because that's how many people picked the right winners, and the 11 people bold enough to pick an upset are tied for fourth. Three of you fourthers doubted by boy YURIORKIS GAMBOA! Poor stickfigure doubted both men.

There were a few people who didn't exactly follow the rules (you know who you are, punks) and they got a grace period this time. Not next time! I also failed to specify what qualifies as too specific. For the purposes of this trial run, let's just say a knockout is a knockout -- technical, regular, RTD, whatever. Unless everyone hates that idea and revolts.

I doubt I'll do another prediction and prediction entry until Feb. 6, when lightweights Edwin Valero and Antonio DeMarco square off, although there's the off-chance I might do one of the upcoming weekend's fights or the Feb. 5 Glen Johnson-Yusaf Mack light heavyweight fight. What I'm saying is, stay sharp and be ready to play, playas.

Your standings below; if you see any tabulation errors, notify me and we can adjudicate:

As often as practically and financially possible, I will attend fights around my New Jersey base and write about them for you, Humble TQBR Reader, in the Jersey Fight Journal.

For the inaugural edition of the JFJ, I will hop on the train at the Morristown Train Station with my buddy Scott for the Top Rank featherweight doubleheader at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. Headlining the card is Juan Manuel Lopez, the anointed “next great Puerto Rican superstar,” against Steven Luevano and Cuban sensation Yuriorkis Gamboa against the man who nearly knocked out Lopez in a Fight of the Year candidate last year, Rogers Mtagwa. The following is an uncensored, unauthorized account of all the action from a very solid, often spectacular fight card.

Featherweights Yuriorkis Gamboa and Juan Manuel Lopez passed the hardest tests of their careers in style Saturday night on HBO, and in so doing poured a heap of gasoline then threw a match on the idea of these two explosive talents one day fighting one another. Tough journeyman Roger(s) Mtagwa never stood a chance against Gamboa's preposterous speed and power, going down in two rounds, while Steven Luevano's excellent technique couldn't match Lopez' combination punching.

Both bouts figured as potentially competitive ones, but the cream rose to the top. Mtagwa's power and chin could have been the foil for the explosive but shaky-jawed Gamboa, and Luevano's movement, size and experience could have been Lopez' undoing.

No. Not even close. These were the performances of boxing stars-in-the-making.

I'm not one of these anti-Texas people. I've been there once, driving from Indiana to California. I didn't enjoy the humid heat, but I found nothing to hate.

But Texas' boxing jurisdiction is loathsome. It is nauseating. It's sleazy, it's vile, it's vulgar. Horrible judging, horrible refereeing, nepotism and an utter disregard for the health of boxers are its hallmarks. Now, the Department of Licencing and Regulation is poised to allow Antonio Margarito to fight. Margarito, a fighter who last year tried to load his gloves with plaster before his welterweight bout against Shane Mosley and ended up suspended throughout the country.

Not Texas, though, not anymore. Margarito's promoter, Bob Arum, says the state has given him indicators Margarito will be relicensed there for the March 13 undercard of Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey. Basically, whatever is too repugnant for everyone else is good enough for Texas. But as of now, it has the upper hand. The state should be getting punished and shunned for its bad behavior, but Jerry Jones has a giant stadium that Arum has a hard-on about and as long as Arum's interested in Texas, Texas will be doing good boxing business. So can Arum be convinced to do the right thing? Nah.

What can you do to a man who isn't motivated by making the most money? He would have made a fortune off Floyd Mayweather-Pacquiao, but will be taking less cash instead, so you can't hit him in his pocketbook by boycotting the fight. What can you do to a man who isn't motivated by love of the sport, or its fans? Arum said from the beginning of his career that he didn't care about boxing, and by walking away from Mayweather-Pacquiao, he showed he didn't care about its fans, either. What can you do to a man who is ruled by his emotions, rather than his intellect? Arum can harbor grudges that last decades, even if it's irrational. What can you do to a man who doesn't care how bad his reputation is? He knows he went from defending Margarito by calling the commissioners who suspended him racist, to talking up the illegitmacy of his win over Miguel Cotto, back to being on Margarito's side again -- and he knows how angry he made so many of us at him along the way.

We are helpless, as boxing fans, to do little more than scream and shout and hope someone like Arum listens, and that Texas' boxing scene suffers as a result. On that upbeat note, let's get to some Quick Jabs!

For one time only -- this Saturday's HBO's double-header, Juan Manuel Lopez-Steven Luevano/Yuriorkis Gamboa-Rogers Mtagwa -- make your official predictions for the prediction game here. For what to do next time... Here are the official rules for how to play the prediction game's six-fight trial run:

I first flirted years ago with the idea of a friendly competition whereby friends of the site and myself would see who could predict fights most accurately. (I almost suggested this would be a game of wits, but anyone who regularly predicts fight outcomes knows that the sport quite delightfully can make fools of us all with unexpected outcomes.)

Thanks in part to the prodding of friend of the site/contributor Scott Kraus, as well as the dawning of a new year, the time has come to test interest out there in just such a feature.

I have in mind a loose structure. In any prediction post I write, participants would submit their own predictions in the comments section – with a deadline of, perhaps, midnight the day of the fight. The prediction would name the fighter who would win, as well as the method of that victory, such as KO-4 or SD-12. Points would be awarded for picking the winner correctly (say, 5 points, because being correct matters most); a correct upset call (say, 1 point, because correct upset calls are neat); and the most accurate call of the how the winner won (say, 1 point -- so if you predict KO-4 and it goes down that way, you get an extra point… or if it’s KO-5 and KO-4 is the closest call, you get an extra point… or if it’s KO-3 and someone else had it KO-2, you each get an extra point). I'm flirting with making the whole thing more awesome by awarding points on a more absurd scale, like 500 points instead of 5.

I’m thinking we’ll do a trial period of, say, six predictions (like a six-round fight for a prospect, get it?), to see how it goes. Then, if that’s successful, i.e., we have strong participation and interest in continuing it, we’ll renew for another 12-prediction (like 12 rounds for a big fight, get it?) tournament, and if successful, another and another. That way, anyone who wants to get in but is concerned about starting too far down the standings can hop in for the next round. We’ll award small prizes -- likely, very small -- for each round except the initial trial run, then look at some year-end awards, too. To give you a sense of how much predictin’ might get done, I wrote prediction posts for 72 fights in 2009. Standings would be posted periodically.

Here’s what I need from you: a commitment to participate. I need 10 people to say they’re in, and we’ll go -- in fact, we'll start with a special prediction post kicking off the trial tournament for this weekend's HBO doubleheader and finalizing all rules (or if there aren't 10 people interested, I just won't bring it up again). And if you have feedback on the structure and rules, please offer them.

Double-headers intended to hype a future bout between the two featured fighters are usually as risk-free as boxing matches come. The headliners are never in very tough, because they're showcase fights meant to whet the appetite for the idea of the headliners meeting up, and the chance of a loss could spoil it all.

That is absolutely not the eye-rolling path Saturday's double-header on HBO is taking. Top Rank Promotions says it wants to get its featherweights Juan Manuel Lopez and Yuriorkis Gamboa in the ring against each other at some point in 2010 (although apparently not this summer, as we'd been led to believe). They are two of the finest young boxers in the land today, and their eventual meeting is one of the most anticipated bouts of the new year. But while they are both favored to win this weekend, their opponents, Steven Luevano and Rogers Mtagwa, respectively, amount to the toughest fights of their young careers.

Luevano is very good. He's ranked #2 in the division by Ring magazine, a division where Lopez hasn't fought yet. Mtagwa is crude, but he nearly knocked out Lopez in a 2009 classic, and Gamboa's ability to take a punch is dubious.

It's the first big fight card of 2010, and I could hardly be looking forward to it more.

I never gave away the Muhammad Ali poster from the t-shirt design contest during the summer, because the winner, Kevin, was only really interested in the Manny Pacquiao bobblehead doll.

So here's the deal. Below is a comic by Kate Beaton. She does really wonderful work; my brother recently bought me her book, "Never Learn Anything From History," which made me laugh uproariously, and you can check out her website here.

Here's the riddle:

Why would I publish this particular comic on my blog?

First person with the correct answer wins the Ali poster. Go!

Andre Berto announced Monday he is pulling out of his Jan. 30 welterweight fight with Shane Mosley, saying the the destruction in his native Haiti -- during which he reports that he "lost several relatives" -- has left him "physically and mentally exhausted."

What can you do about that? Berto said he couldn't fight in this state, and obviously my sympathies are with him. Mosley's team says he can understand Berto's decision. For boxing fans, it's a total bummer. Since it was signed, Mosley-Berto has been one of the most looked-forward to fights on the 2010 calendar, and the bumpy ride boxing has taken its fans on lately continues unabated. For people who were planning to attend live, it's a double-bummer because there was a pretty good undercard scheduled, too.

Golden Boy Promotions says this improves the possibility that Floyd Mayweather will meet Mosley, likelier in May than a March 13 duel with Manny Pacquiao's own pay-per-view. I bet it gets moved back. And it's a tremendous fight, it really is, which is why everyone's wanted to see it for so damn long, and would be smart for business reasons because Mosley is a far better opponent for Mayweather than Joshua Clottey is for Pacquiao. Will I be surprised if Mayweather-Mosley ever happens? Totally. There were serious reports earlier today that Mayweather was in real talks with 19-year-old prospect Saul Alvarez, a fight that when first raised every Mayweather fan was like, "No way, that's just a ploy!" That such a woeful mismatch would even be in talks tells you everything you need to know about Mayweather's fighting spirit.

It'll be a pleasant surprise if I'm wrong. Mayweather-Mosley isn't Mayweather-Pacquiao, but it's about the next best thing.

[UPDATE: David Mayo seems to think Berto took some step-aside money to get out of the way of Mayweather-Mosley, although he doesn't offer any direct knowledge or say that he even knows it to be the case -- just lots of strong hinting. It's a possibility that has to be considered, but until I see otherwise, I'll presume that Berto's expressed motive is authentic.]

[UPDATE II: Some commenters have raised a very fair point about whether Mosley should have some kind of tune-up fight. After all, if the fight is in May, he would be coming off a nearly 16-month layoff. That's not a good move for a 38-year-old man; even an ageless boxer like Bernard Hopkins showed symptoms of ring rust in his return to the ring after a lengthy layoff. Ideally, that tune-up would have been a replacement opponent for Jan. 30. There is cause to wonder why that didn't happen. And if Mosley looks terrible against Mayweather, there will be critics who wonder if this all wasn't by design, given Mayweather's history of taking fights when an opponent is at some disadvantage before the bell even rings. Also, it's possible the fight could be later in May than May 1, the date that had been talked about. There's a UFC event scheduled for May 1, and while Mayweather-Mosley probably crushes it, there's no need to go head-to-head when both events would prosper better on different nights -- especially with this many months to decide matters.]

Imagine my surprise, then, when Ouma taunted, bullied, and outhustled the younger Powell, winning all ten rounds on one judge's card in what was indisputably a one-sided fight. Powell left the ring looking like a whipped schoolboy, and I donated $10 to my friend's favorite charity (as we know, wagering on boxing is illegal in New York State). After the fight, Ouma changed in his dressing room and then came up to visit with his family, who were sitting just a few rows in front of us. His face was still unmarked then -- the Jermain Taylor fight lay four months in the future -- and Ouma glowed with youth, optimism, and good health, kissing babies and posing for pictures, an authentic African folk hero in New York. At that moment, Ouma looked for all the world like one of the top three or four junior middleweights in the world, a good bet to win back the belt he had lost to Roman Karmazin the year before.

Four months later, Ouma would take on the quixotic task of fighting then-middleweight champion Jermain Taylor in Taylor's hometown of Little Rock. Badly outgunned but very game, Ouma absorbed an extraordinary amount of punishment from the heavy-handed Taylor in losing a 12-round decision. Since then, Ouma has not been the same fighter.  He took a year off before losing a split decision to Saul Roman. Post-Roman, rumors of substance abuse and bad training habits have clouded the atmosphere around Ouma, and he has not looked good in losing to Cornelius Bundrage and Gabriel Rosado, fighters he should have been able to handle.

Ouma fought with renewed strength against Martirosyan. He robbed the taller Martirosyan of distance -- Martirosyan punched past Ouma for most of the night -- and did solid work with both hands inside.  (Ouma also used his head effectively, something that has always been part of his game.) I do not know whether to think that Ouma has gotten serious about his work again or that Martirosyan is not what we thought he was -- though I lean toward the former view -- but Ouma definitely held his own against a bigger, younger, fresher guy who had a lot to fight for and Freddie Roach in his corner.

It would have been nice to see Ouma get the decision. He has been a fight fan's fighter, he has a great backstory, and he is a charming personality. Redemption, as we know, is one of the classic memes of the fight game, and as in the case of Rocky Balboa, it sometimes comes even when victory proves elusive. Perhaps Kassim Ouma earned a measure of redemption on Saturday night, even in defeat.