The Queensberry Rules - A Boxing Blog
If ESPN2 airs a better main event this year than the one it has coming up this weekend on paper on Friday Night Fights, I'll be mighty surprised. Glen Johnson (#3) and Yusaf Mack (#7) are two of the top Ring magazine-ranked light heavyweights in the world, and the winner will get a shot at alphabet title holder Tavoris Cloud (#6). So we're talking a quality fight here, in the significance category. But wait, there's more! I think it has the makings of a good brawl with a dosage of skill. So it could be a quality fight in the action category, too.
It's a fight worthy of an HBO undercard, even if HBO, as the fight was originally scheduled, foolishly wasn't going to air it on the canceled Jan. 30 card headlined by welterweights Shane Mosley and Andre Berto. One of the few good things about that fight getting canceled is that it means Johnson-Mack got bumped to another night, and FNF was there to catch it for us.
(I'm only going to announce this so high just this once to remind everyone who's participating, but this preview and prediction piece triggers the prediction game. Remember the rules. Now, on to the actual preview.)
In a Boxing Monthly preview piece from 1999, Steve Farhood carried out an analysis of boxing "superfights" over a 20-year period. In order to determine just how many of the sport’s biggest nights were what they had been purported to be, the writer used a three-point criteria, which was as follows: Are both fighters in their primes? Are both at their best weights? Are both legitimately great fighters?
The piece is worth a second look because of the recent maneuvering of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
Mr. Farhood whittled down 33 bouts considered from 1979-1999 to just the following eight bonafide, classic match-ups:
Jorge Arce hasn't looked so hot the last year or so, but he mysteriously got another title shot and won it, beating Angky Angkota in a 7th round technical decision Saturday on Fox Sports Net to take the WBO junior bantamweight trinket.
In the 1st round, Angkota was exploiting Arce's weakness for people who don't just stand around in front of him and get punched, and he claimed the opening frame with movement, angles and counter shots. Then, in the 2nd, Angkota took it upon himself to back into a corner and let Arce work himself over. If I came up with one strategy I wouldn't employ against Arce, even a 30-year-old version with a lot of miles on his odometer, I'd think it would be backing into a corner and allowing him to work me over. Angkota had his moments countering off the ropes, but Arce can soak up abnormal, almost scary amounts of punishment, and Angkota is no puncher anyhow. He wasn't the schlub I feared he might be -- I'd overlooked a win on his record against Donnie Nietes -- but Arce hammered away at him, particularly to the body, far more than Arce got hammered back.
A head butt in the 7th opened a severe gash over Angkota's right eye, and the doctor appropriately recommended a halt to it. Arce won by scores of 58-56 and 60-54 twice.
Arce showed he's still an offensive force against someone who is willing to trade in close-up combat, and his endurance was impressive -- better than recent fights, where he's looked a little dead-legged in spots. I'm guessing his trinket gives him a string of OK mandatory and optional defenses, which could lead to one more big fight for Arce. I don't favor him to win that big fight, but talk of retirement, anyhow, is now over.
no commentsI guess this is just going to happen once a month or so in boxing now. We get a great fight and then we get a nauseating result.
On Fox Sports Net Friday, Gabriel Campillo-Beibut Shumenov II had the makings of an excellent light heavyweight bout, and it delivered. But Campillo pretty clearly won the bout, I thought, eight rounds to four, with one round scored 10-8 in my books because of the one-sided beating he put on Shumenov in the 9th. Instead, Campillo lost a split decision, with Patricia Morse Jarman scoring it a horrendous 117-111 -- nine rounds to three for Shumenov. Shumenov co-promoted the card with Golden Boy, and I'm sure it's a total coincidence that in every card where this has happened of late, the main promoter's fighter has won with the aid of one or more scorecards that appeared to be filled out in advance. The running tally of major fights where this has happened since August, by the way, is four.
On ESPN2's Friday Night Fights, Jesse Brinkley-Curtis Stevens (super middleweight) was another terrific fight where one boxer rather clearly won. But this time the judges got it right. Brinkley came out on top with a wide decision win that reflected reality.
In other noteworthy TV fights, bantamweight prospect Chris Avalos knocked out Jose Nieves in four on Showtime and junior middleweight prospect Erislandy Lara graduated to contender status by knocking out "Contender" TV star Grady Brewer on FSN.
From time to time, it occurs to me that I never have any action shots on the blog. It's always stuff like Hieronymous Bosch paintings or people dressed up as gorillas or the occasional boxer standing or sitting around. So in honor of that, I've chosen an action-oriented graphic that relates to one of the crazier things Roger Mayweather has ever said. Is there a family that lives in a more reality-free zone, and yet is still taken seriously by anyone?
Uncle Roger said on The Boxing Truth Radio this week of Manny Pacquiao:
That mother***** is on the A-side meth, that's what the f*** he's on... It's called the A-side meth. He on that or he on something else. The A-side meth is what they used to have 500 years ago. Remember when the Philippines were fighting the US soldiers? They were shooting them motherf****s with 45s. And 45s were bouncing off their motherf****ng a**. They weren't even dying!
My first reaction was, "What did he say?" Then, when someone transcribed it as "A-side meth," I wanted to know what that was; apparently, nobody had ever mentioned it before in the history of mankind, because nothing came up on a Google search. After that I was impressed that a drug invented 500 years ago was sophisticated enough to escape mere urine testing. Then I was confused, because I didn't realize the United States and the Philippines fought 500 years ago. I thought the United States came into existence more like 200 years ago. At any rate, I'm pretty sure the .45 wasn't invented 500 years ago. It wasn't even invented in time for the Philippine-American War, for that matter. And if there was a drug that someone could take to make bullets bounce off them, I'm guessing we might see that being used on the battlefield still today.
But then I found that action shot above, and I noticed that NO FILIPINOS WERE FALLING DOWN. (OK, well, there's one dude who fell down, but it's obvious he just tripped.) That's right: Roger Mayweather was correct on this one, and the painting above is absolute, irrefutable proof of that.
On to the Quick Jabs.
This past weekend, we saw my boy YURIORKIS GAMBOA! throwing punches so quickly that when HBO replayed the featherweight's knockout flurry, HBO's Bob Papa remarked, "It's fast in slow motion."
Some fans love boxers above all who are heavy hitters. I can dig it; I like a spectacular knockout pretty well myself. But my preference is for speed. That's the stuff that makes me "ooooo" and "ahhhhh," that makes me almost giggle. And don't think speed and power aren't related; we all know the saying "Speed kills." When lightweight David Diaz said it wasn't Manny Pacquiao's power that troubled him but his quickness, he enunciated that most vividly: "I thought he had a knife. It was like he was hitting me with a blade."
With that, I submit the following no-frills list of the 10 fastest boxers today. I only picked among fighters in Ring magazine's divisional rankings, or fighters who I thought deserved to be among them. It's no-frills because there's not much more to say about these guys than that they're on my list. You know transcendent speed when you see it, and there are only so many adjectives for "fast" anyway. They're in pound-for-pound order by best overall fighter, because it's sometimes hard to estimate whether a junior bantamweight is quicker than a light heavyweight because he's smaller or because he's faster even if you take weight out of the equation.
Lou DiBella, who promotes Stevens, had promotional options on Dirrell in the event that he won. But DiBella was so disgusted by the way Dirrell fought, he doesn't plan to pick up the option and said he doesn't want to ever have Dirrell on one of his cards again. – Dan Rafael, June 19, 2007
The “fight” between Andre Dirrell and Curtis Stevens is infamous among fight fans the way that Manos: Hands of Fate and Uwe Boll flicks are among movie buffs, the way Starship albums and Kevin Federline’s Playing with Fire are among music lovers, the way Red Dog is among beer drinkers. It is the Castillo-Corrales I of terrible fights. Harold Lederman, as grizzled a ringside vet as we have, referred to it in the 10th round of the HBO broadcast as, “the worst fight I’ve ever seen.” Lou DiBella provided more evidence for being the most likeable promoter in boxing today in the Dan Rafael quote above. Christening a fight the “worst ever” is practically impossible, but Dirrell-Stevens doubtless makes the short list of every hardcore boxing fan who ever saw it. The only redeeming aspect of the fight is its infamy as an awful spectacle.
Crappy filmmaker extraordinaire Uwe Boll once challenged his critics to box him. Meta! (I swear, that’s the ONLY reason I included this picture…)
I got invited to do a "Syllabus" at Bookforum, the literary review magazine, so naturally I leaped at the opportunity. The idea was to do a list of essential boxing books. You can read it here (free registration required). In addition, there's a review at the site and in the print edition by Katherine Dunn of the new Sugar Ray Robinson biography, "Sweet Thunder: The Life And Times Of Sugar Ray Robinson," and I intend to check out that book soon.
Also, as the archives of this site were broken for almost all of 2009 when I was at MVN, and because they required some serious clean-up and organizing when I moved over to Bloguin, those haven't been working in full until the last week or so. If you hover over the word "Archives" in the menu bar, you'll see you can go all the way back to the earliest iterations of this blog in 2006. You also can search the entire archives for keywords in the "Search TQBR" function at the left, if you want to find out, say, which curse words I've used the most.
You'll find that if you go back more than a year, the text of most entries is all crammed together, and I apologize for that, but I don't have the time or willpower to go back and insert paragraph breaks. I wasn't at any iteration of it until late 2007, but I still was proud to discover the blog is coming up on post #1,000. It honestly doesn't feel like that anywhere near that many, even taking into account the contributions of others. You all have made it pretty fun and fresh.
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Even though the boxing schedule for the week lost its marquee attraction, the canceled welterweight showdown between Shane Mosley and Andre Berto once booked for Saturday, the schedule is still jam-packed to the point of being a Heironymus Bosch painting -- on Friday in particular -- with nice little fights.
Consider:
- Jesse Brinkley-Curtis Stevens, Friday, ESPN2, Nevada. If there's a fight I'd pick to be the best brawl of the weekend, it's this fight between a pair of super middleweights on the cusp of making a splash in that deep division. Brinkley is a proven action fighter, and Stevens is too -- it wasn't him who stunk out the joint when he and Andre Dirrell fought in that historically bad bout on HBO a couple years ago, but Dirrell. It's a title eliminator for a shot at some alphabet belt or another, and it's a nice spotlight for two men who haven't had it in a while (Brinkley not since he was on "The Contender" and Stevens not since the aforementioned Dirrell bout). I might favor Stevens' skill level here, but they're fighting in Brinkley's home base of Reno and he's the more experienced boxer, so...
- Gabriel Campillo-Beibut Shumenov II/Erislandy Lara-Grady Brewer, Friday, Fox Sports Net, Nevada. Over in Las Vegas is the most meaningful of the weekend's fight cards. I'll get to the main event in a second, but I'm most interested in seeing how junior middleweight Lara fares in a dramatic leap up in competition. Lara's a wonderful-looking talent who's passed every test with ease, but Brewer's a more proven commodity, having won a season of "The Contender" and beaten the better opposition of the two. It may not be the most exciting fight of the weekend, but it's the one I'm looking forward to most. The main event is a rematch of what was said to be a close fight that most thought Campillo won to keep his light heavyweight alphabet title belt over the boldly matched young Shumenov. This fight, too, has some significance.
- Chris Avalos-Jose Nieves, Friday, Showtime, New Mexico. All right, so anytime Avalos is in the ring, it stands a chance of being the most brawl-y fight of the weekend, so don't be surprised if Avalos-Nieves trumps Brinkley-Stevens. It looks to me that the bantamweight prospect Avalos is taking another small step up in competition in Nieves, who has beaten dangerous journeyman Tomas Rojas and fought another prospect, Victor Fonseca, to a very close decision loss in his only career blemish. Also on the card will be junior lightweight Archie Ray Marquez, who's cracked most people's list of the most promising prospects in boxing these days. He'll be fighting Derrick Campos, who once gave Dmitriy Salita hell, which might not be saying much unless you consider that this is just Marquez' tenth fight. Lastly, Nick Charles makes his return to the Showtime broadcast team, his cancer 80 percent in remission.
- The Rest. Telemundo is going head-to-head-to-head-to-head with the packed Friday schedule, and there's not much to speak of on the card, other than maybe the return of Luis Melendez, the bantamweight against whom Z Gorres collapsed last year... More Friday, but untelevised: Peter Manfredo, Jr. fights middleweight trial horse Matt Vanda, and Darnell "Ding-A-Ling Man" Wilson reemerges at cruiserweight against "TBA," which, given his recent streak of losses, is about right... On Saturday on Fox Sports Net, worn-down Jorge Arce inexplicably gets yet another title shot at junior bantamweight against the likewise-undeserving Angky Angkota, on a card that also features featherweight prospect Miguel Angel "Mikey" Garcia... In Germany Saturday, Ring's #3 middleweight Sebastian Sylvester makes a defense of his alphabet belt against Billy Lyell, a late sub and about as good as his team could have done under the circumstances, while heavyweight prospect Robert Helenius takes on the faded Lamon Brewster.
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:
