I can’t say I really enjoyed HBO’s latest edition of World Championship Boxing. Carlos Molina’s style, while clinically effective, essentially threw a wet blanket on James Kirkland and any hope of an action-packed fight. Referee John Schorle’s indecisive, confusing and ultimately treacherous disqualification ruling was more of the same boxing nonsense that always seems to benefit the house fighter, in this case Kirkland, one of Golden Boy Promotion’s rising stars in the junior middleweight division. The latest testament to judge Gale Van Hoy’s awfulness, a downright impossible scorecard that showed Kirkland ahead after nine rounds, merely added insult to injury. And while I respect Danny Garcia and his hard-fought win over Erik Morales, there was a note of bitterness watching the old wizard get badly hurt and unable to fight fire with fire, as has been his trademark, in the final two rounds. It’s tough to root for a young, supposedly top 10 contender against a once-great legend fighting past his prime and several classes above his ideal weight. Go Danny, kick his ass! Kick this guy’s ass who’s given us one of the most exciting and memorable careers of the last two decades! No thanks. But lost in all the imbecilic judging and atrocious refereeing was a very brief moment I enjoyed thoroughly: a minute into the ninth round of the main event, when Morales slapped his hands forward like he was playing patty-cake, mocking Garcia’s punches with a condescending smirk.

It got me thinking about some of the masters of denigrating facial expressions and belittling antics. The following gents were all equally adept at throwing snide glances as they were sharp punches:
no comments

(Erik Morales, right, catches Danny Garcia)

What distinguishes the great Erik Morales from his contemporaries, the men he is most often compared -- Marco Antonio Barrera, Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez -- is that Morales never changed.

While his chief rival, Barrera, reinvented himself from brawler to boxer/puncher mid-career in order to stay relevant, and Pacquiao became a two-fisted fighter with a defense after relying on his vaunted left for so long, and Marquez blossomed into a risk-taking action star from the chaste technical brilliance of his youth, Morales seemed to shrug and do what he always had. He stayed Morales.

That stubbornness, that willpower, that tenacity... it's been on display from the moment he captured the boxing world's attention with his 11th round body shot stoppage of junior featherweight champion Daniel Zaragoza 15 years ago, right up to when he out-fought and out-thought junior welterweight Danny Garcia for large stretches of their bout just days ago. He has always been as singularly identifiable as an Alfred Hitchcock silhouette, a Beatles harmony or a Jordan dunk.
no comments

Fightin' animals have been a bit of a theme for the last few weeks on the schedule, so here's man vs. goose for your amusement. Sadly, it's about the best fightin' you'll find for a little while, with the schedule really thinning out for the end of March and through April. Now that Yuriorkis Gamboa vs. Brandon Rios has gone down the gurgler, we'll have to make our own fun.

This week is pretty much a dry spell, unless you're willing to track down a stream of the really, really little guys. There's an okay Friday Night Fights card featuring entertaining lightweight Hank Lundy, though. Apart from that, maybe go on YouTube and watch goose fights?

• Hunk Lundy vs. Dannie Williams, Friday, ESPN2, Mahsantucket Connecticut. I like this match up of once-beaten lightweights. It's much better than the kind of fare we've been getting from ESPN recently, the surprising quality of last week's bout notwithstanding. It's being billed as a fight between up-and-comers, but I suspect these Lundy and Williams don't really have the class to make it far beyond ESPN. Lundy (21-1-1) is just plain fun. He's fast and powerful, but kinda dumb, too. That'd be the main reason he got dropped by David Diaz and stopped by John Molina. Though his chin might have something to do with it, too. At least that's what St Louis' Dannie Williams (21-1-0) is hoping for. Williams is more powerful than Lundy, though not as fast. If he wants to win, he'll want to convince Lundy that a bit of trading isn't such a bad idea. Shouldn't be too hard.
• The Rest. Bullrushing Thai junior bantamweight and Ring Magazine number four Suriyan Sor Rungisvai (20-4-1) faced Japan's Yota Sato (23-2-1) in Tokyo Tuesday [ed.: He lost]... Arthur Abraham (33-3) continues fighting at super middleweight on Saturday in Germany, this time against Piotr Wilczewski (30-2). All the good super middleweights have Abraham's number now... The Ring's number one strawweight Nkosinathi Joyi (21-0) rematches the magazine's number eight man Katsunari Takamaya (24-4) on Friday in East London, South Africa. Their first encounter ended in a no contest due to an accidental clash of heads... Kelly Pavlik (37-2) returns on Azteca America on Saturday night in a super middleweight bout against Aaron Jaco (15-2). It will be interesting to see how he looks... Venezuelan lightweight Jorge Linares (31-2) faces Sergio Thompson (21-2) in Cancun on Fox Deportes on Saturday night, in advance of his July rematch with Antonio DeMarco...Last but not least, lightweight banger and TQBR favourite Jose “El Loco” Hernandez (12-5-1) faces Kenya's Peter Oluoch (11-5-2) in Tacoma, Washington on Saturday night. It's always a fun time with “El Loco.”

no comments

Punching is BORING. Isn't it so INTERESTING to evaluate questions like this: What does "interfering" mean, according to the Association of Boxing Commissions? At what exact moment was Carlos Molina "down" against James Kirkland? Thanks, Texas, for repeatedly giving us the opportunity to closely scrutinize such THRILLING questions, questions that render actual fisticuffs to the sidelines.

But OK. We'll talk actual fisticuffs, too, if you insist. This edition of Weekend Afterthoughts really mainly just focuses on the end of the Kirkland-Molina junior middleweight fight itself. And some of the aftermath, sure.

(By the way, if you thought the funny business in Kirkland-Molina was bad, check out what goes down in the video above in Round 1, when the bell is sounded 47 seconds early when one fighter was badly, badly hurt. It could always be worse, right gang? Right?)
no comments

Cardiff locomotive Gary Buckland chugged past an impassive Paul Truscott in Sheffield, England, on Saturday, dropping him twice (once officially) en route to a commanding unanimous decision win that was scored 119-109, 120-108 and 108-110. Buckland strolled through the first defence of his BBBofC junior lightweight crown and will now attempt to broach European championship class whereas Truscott, 25, who appeared old and staid despite his relative youth, looked like a fighter who should be persuaded about the merits of a life away from being punched in the face.
no comments

If it's boxing in Texas, that means something shady is happening. This Saturday's installment of "don't get excited about a nice scrap, the Lone Star State will find some way to ruin it" came when junior middleweight James Kirkland was awarded a disqualification victory over Carlos Molina just when the fight hit its apex of excitement, a disqualification marked by about a half dozen abnormalities.

The ugliness even overshadowed a solid, high-contact boxing match in the HBO main event where young junior welterweight Danny Garcia graduated from old legend Erik Morales' School of Hard Knocks with a unanimous decision win.
no comments

You've probably already seen it, because it's been out since February, or maybe you haven't, because so few have according to the view count. But boxing promoter Gary Shaw's kid has produced such a comical musical video that it has to be seen, if you haven't witnessed it. I love the idea that some video director thought the best video for THIS song was him typing on an old-fashioned literary-looking typewriter "Girl... u know u sexy," and doin' it in the library of books Jared has assuredly read in full.

It's all by way of some light viewing before you get ready for a packed night of boxing, which we've covered extensively here this week. But there's room for discussion of things that aren't about this weekend, and that room is here, now.
no comments

It was a grinding type of night on Friday Night Fights. That's not to say it was anything you'd keep on your DVR for any extended period of time, but then quality is but a piece in the unexceptional pie we've been fed by ESPN2 this season. It's one thing to settle into a boxing broadcast knowing that it's unlikely to be special, but something else to expect a little more from a card, only be lulled to sleep halfway through one of the copious Cialis or Just For Men commercials.

Last night's action at the Convention Center in Pharr, Texas was a case of the former -- it was a middle-of-the road card that promised little in terms of gore or brutality, and it lived up to that promise in a watchable way.

In the main event, junior middleweight Roberto Garcia gnashed his way to a 31-3 (21 KO) record with a unanimous decision win over Antwone Smith, now 21-4-1 (12 KO). Garcia somehow withstood Smith's banshee barrages over the course of the 10 round affair, essentially bullying his way to a points win, though Smith had a few moments late.
no comments

This is the continuation and conclusion of a two-part series that began with an evaluation of Showtime under its new boxing programming leadership. Now we look at things at HBO under Ken Hershman (at right).

Examining this year so far vs. last, I think HBO has improved a little under Hershman or at least treaded water -- although some of that is a result of bad luck last year with some match-ups that went sour, compared to a fresh slate of potentially quality fights that haven't had a chance to do the same. Remember, we're evaluating not quite three months of programming past and a few more months where the programming slate is incomplete, so it's too early to draw solid conclusions.

no comments

Immediately following this Saturday’s telecast of the NCAA men’s basketball regional finals will be the second round of Main Events' NBC Sports “Fight Night” aired simultaneously with a solid HBO doubleheader.

Despite this, both NBC and Main Events nurse high hopes as their card, featuring former two-division champion Zab Judah against the unbeaten Vernon Paris in an intriguing junior welterweight scrap, capitalizes on both the former’s star power and the sports fanaticism of a captive audience.

“What we are trying to take advantage of is two things -- Zab's name recognition and being right after the quarter-finals of the NCAA Tournament,” explained Main Events CEO Kathy Duva, who spoke with TQBR earlier this month.
no comments