(Brian Rose, left; Prince Arron, right)

Brian Rose proved too organised for an off-key Prince Arron in Wigan Saturday night, claiming the British junior middleweight title in this, his first attempt. The Blackpool underdog showed a steely concentration throughout their encounter, timing the gangling Arron’s attacks to perfection all night. Whenever Arron tried to establish his jab, Rose would come over the top with a right hand; when the champion went for a big right of his own, he found a jab in his kisser. It was simple, but highly effective stuff.

At the end of 12, Rose had split the judges 117-113, 116-113 and 114-115 in his favour, although, in all honesty it had looked a more cut and dried win than Phil Edwards’ scoreline (for Arron) had suggested. It was another strange piece of officiating in a weekend that brimmed with them.

Arron, 153 ¾ lbs., bounced through the strands decked out in Santa Claus-inspired shorts and he showed a penchant for the old boy’s generosity early on, handing Rose, 153 ½ lbs., the first four rounds. The favourite struggled to find a sense of timing and rhythm through the opening act, whereas Rose showed a soldier’s temperament with a sniper’s aim, sticking to his guns as the champion repeatedly misfired in front of him.

Arron spluttered into life in the 5th. Loosening up from his shoulders he began snaking home his jab backed up with right hands, and he crashed home a hurtful looking uppercut near the end of the session in a bid to skew momentum his way. Rose, though, responded well in the next, going back to his basics behind a high and tight guard and an expertly delivered left stick.

The bout’s middle third was as cagey as a caribou shoot. Arron could never quite manage to settle as he would have liked. Just when he appeared to slip into a groove, Rose, focussing hard, would nudge him deftly back out of it using sharply delivered rights and scything left hooks.

Arron fiddled himself a couple of rounds before the last, only for Rose to roar back once again. “The Lion” rallied hard, adding an exclamation point to what was a startling win, one achieved from long odds, to become Blackpool’s first Lonsdale belt holder since Brian London in 1958. no comments

NEW YORK, NY--Junior middleweight beltholder Miguel Cotto seized an opportunity to re-write history Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, out-boxing and out-smarting Antonio Margarito on his way to a TKO victory in a rematch of their brutal 2008 bout that left Cotto with his first professional loss. The ringside doctor stopped the fight at the start of the 10th round after examining Margarito's injured right eye, which was swollen shut.

At the time of the stoppage all three judges had Cotto winning handily, with each awarding Margarito a single round on their scorecards. For one night at least the old Miguel Cotto returned: an athletic boxer-puncher that used a pinpoint jab and excellent movement to withstand Margarito's pressure and control the fight from the outside. Cotto repeatedly ducked shots from the much slower Mexican, bouncing outside, changing direction and landing at will with his lead hand. The final CompuBox stats showed Cotto landing 43 percent of his shots, evidence of his complete domination of the fight.

A stench of injustice has hung over the first Cotto-Margarito fight since the latter was caught with loaded handwraps prior to his beatdown at the hands of Shane Mosley. Margarito's performance tonight will only add fuel to the fire of those convinced he cheated against Cotto, as his punches tonight showed none of the impact of their first bout. But Cotto wisely resisted the lure of revenge and the screams of the mostly Puerto Rican sell-out crowd, choosing instead to stick largely to the gameplan and avoid heavy exchanges. I thought Cotto could win the fight in such a fashion but doubted whether he would be smart enough to avoid a brawl. I clearly underestimated the Puerto Rican's intelligence and ring-savvy. no comments

(Joseph Agbeko, left; Abner Mares, right. Credit: Tom Casino, Showtime)

Two performances on Showtime Saturday in the bantamweight division reminded us of the oft-ignored second part of Egan's nickname for boxing: It's "the sweet science," certainly, but more accurately, it's "the sweet science of bruising."

On the undercard, Anselmo Moreno made a splendid debut on the American scene, dishing out a beating to Vic Darchinyan to win a unanimous decision. The mechanism of the beating was "purty boxin'." In the main event, Abner Mares and Joseph Agbeko revived the action of their first meeting, this time without controversial low blows and ending with Mares sharpshooting his way to his own unanimous decision.

Mares comes out of this with the definitive victory that eluded him the first time, redeemed. Moreno showed what many of us who have seen him realized: The Panamanian is a real talent.

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NEW YORK, NY--We're live at the Mecca of Boxing, Madison Square Garden for the rematch between Antonio Margarito vs. Miguel Cotto. Tonight's card in the main arena and at least two-thirds of the sell-out crowd of 21,000 were seated for the start of the HBO Pay Per View card. Full undercard results after the jump, follow @StiffJab on Twitter for live updates.
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While their more high profile compatriots create headlines overseas as part of an action-packed boxing programme this weekend, Lancastrian junior middleweights Prince Arron and Brian “The Lion” Rose meet Saturday to contest the former’s Lonsdale belt at the Robin Park Centre, Wigan. Arron, 21-3-1 (4), an improving Goliath from Droylsden, comes out punching as a heavy favourite whereas Rose, 17-1-1 (5), the current English champion at 154 lbs., aims to upset the applecart in a manner that has become customary of late whenever this particular national crown has changed hands.
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NEW YORK, NY—New York’s Puerto Rican community was out en masse to support their man Miguel Cotto during Friday afternoon’s weigh-in held in the Theater at Madison Square Garden, but the biggest news came from the undercard when lightweight Brandon Rios failed to make weight for his title defense against former British and European titlist John Murray.
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There's been something of an evolution of the Antonio Margarito tale: What once was grotesque to many of us (and for some of it, it still is) has now become a dramatic storyline in advance of his rematch with Miguel Cotto Saturday night on HBO pay-per-view. If it was my call, Margarito wouldn't have a license to box again after being discovered with loaded wraps prior to his 2008 bout with Shane Mosley. But that Cotto is convinced that Margarito used the wraps against him, too, has introduced an element of "Let's find out if that Margarito win was for real" to the proceedings, and become a subject of nasty, angry exchanges between the two men. With the first fight such a classic, with both men a bit past their best and therefore matching up fairly evenly, with the controversy over Margarito's injured eye nearly derailing the fight and with the victor hard to predict, this bout does have appeal for a lot of reasons -- a lot to others, some to me.

There are still plenty of people who say they never will buy a Margarito fight because of what he did. Good for them; they're voting with their pocketbooks. But after the last time Margarito fought, against Manny Pacquiao, it's become clear that Margarito's going to do big numbers even with the vocal campaign against him that I and some others waged. I therefore didn't see the point this time. And while others disagree, Margarito's obvious power against Pacquiao -- some of which might have been due to a size differential, certainly -- makes it seem less likely to me that he cheated more than once. Any cheating of that dangerousness is bad, but cheating once is better than cheating for the bulk of a career. Lastly, one other element of Pacquiao-Margarito that turned me off was that Margarito had done nothing in the ring to deserve a fight against the best boxer in the world. Margarito had more moments against Pacquiao than I thought he'd have, but it was a fight that ended up a one-sided thrashing. Margarito-Cotto II has more competitive merit.

About that "victor hard to predict" business:
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Saturday is just jam-packed with rematches of serious, serious action fights, a couple of them still fogging up your television screen with controversy from the first time around. Over on HBO pay-per-view, in one of the controversial ones, we get a do-over of Antonio Margarito-Miguel Cotto, a bout tainted and/or enhanced by the suspicion that Margarito had loaded gloves the first time around and by the potential that Margarito's gruesomely reconstructed eyeball might explode. For now, is this space, we'll save that for later and concern ourselves with the sequel to the controversial Abner Mares-Joseph Agbeko bout over on Showtime, the first fight an echo of Norm MacDonald's famous joke after the O.J. Simpson verdict: "Well, it's finally official: Low blows are legal in the state of California."

The galling thing about Russell Mora's refereeing job back in August -- actually, there were a lot of galling things about it, all of them reaching a crescendo when Mora stared directly at Mares' cockpunch in the 11th and ruled it a fair knockdown -- is that it distracted from what was a very good fight that could have given us a satisfactory conclusion to Showtime's excellent bantamweight tournament. Instead, all anyone could talk about was the cockpunching and wonder, "What if Mora had done his job?"

We are on the verge of having to wonder no longer.
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If we don't get a Fight of the Year candidate this week, I will shave my head into a mohawk and you can call me the ugly white Victor Ortiz. This just might be the longest weekly schedule you will ever see and it's pretty much all quality. There's Miguel Cotto vs. Antonio Margarito II on HBO pay-per-view and its stellar undercard. Unfortunately on at the same time is Abner Mares vs. Joseph Agbeko II and Anselmo Moreno vs. Vic Darchinyan on Showtime, with its own undercard that is not too shabby.

But wait, we're not done. Epix continues its strange and optimistic fixation with heavyweight boxing by broadcasting Robert Helenius and Alexander Povetkin from Finland. ESPN Deportes has hard to spell but easy to watch Mexican banger Johnny Gonzalez fighting in Mexico City. Earlier in the week Krzysztof Wlodarczyk is taking on Danny Green in a cruiserweight battle in Perth with featherweight Chris John and junior lightweight prospect Will Tomlinson on the undercard. In a strange Monday fight to start next week, junior welterweight TQBR favourites Ruslan Provodnikov and Demarcus Corley are doing battle in Russia.

There's so much more than that, but you're going to have to read on because otherwise this intro might become so huge it starts to bend the space time continuum. The schedule itself surely will. Stay away from the (main) event horizon and make sure that this week you take a little time away from watching boxing to do important stuff like interact with your family and shower.
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That's your knockout of the weekend, even if it's ill-gotten gains, to have Gary Russell, Jr. doing it against someone as undurable as Heriberto Ruiz. Objectionable competition is objectionable competition. Big knockouts, though, are also good knockouts. The first diminishes the second, even if its essential big knockoutness remains.

I'm back after a week's vacation, but you no doubt noticed I left you in capable hands with the most physically attractive boxing writer staff on the Internet. Take THAT, saddoboxing.com! (Also, they're smart. And good writers.) That doesn't mean I don't have thoughts of my own about what the f is up. I'll be parceling them out beginning now, with a review of what went down over the just-completed weekend before a massive, massive weekend of boxing ahead.
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