By Cliff Rold
One week after a pair of aging warriors got it on in Las Vegas, two aging warriors are gearing up to get it on in Vegas.
Evander Holyfield.
Frans Botha.
It really wouldn’t have been worth looking forward to in the mid-90s. It’s happening this Saturday, in 2010.
It is not a pick of the week.
These are the picks of the week.
Pick It: #6 Andre Berto vs. #9 Carlos Quintana (Saturday, HBO, 10:30 PM EST/7:30 PM PST)
Berto (25-0, 19 KO), the WBC Welterweight titlist, had the fight he needed at hand. He had a crack at Shane Mosley, a veteran name seen as the best 147 lb. after a monster win over Antonio Margarito. By now, he’d know, the world would know, whether he was good enough to go to the next level. Instead, tragedy struck Haiti, the homeland of Berto’s kin and he made the choice to step away from the contest and tend to family affairs. Now he returns to find Mosley locked in to face Floyd Mayweather and himself back in line, waiting for a chance to prove just where he belongs. He finds former WBO titlist Quintana (27-2, 21 KO), just the sort of experienced hand who can push him even further back in line if Berto’s not on his game. In the chief support bout, unified 122 lb. titlist Celestino Caballero (33-2, 23 KO) moves up four pounds and faces Daud Yordan (25-0, 19 KO). The bad part of this fight is that it’s for an interim WBA belt, meaning the WBA will crown a third titlist at 126. The good part, based on what little has been seen of Yordan, is that this fight should kick ass. There might even be some highlights of the latest from phenomenal Cuban Guillermo Rigondeaux (5-0, 4 KO). Yeah, HBO has a good night lined up this week
Pick Deuce: Orlando Lora-David Estrada (Saturday, ESPN2, 9:00 PM EST/6 PM PST)
It’s not a typo. ESPN2 is going on Saturday and it looks like yet another corker in the main event slot; a Welterweight corker at that. Estrada (23-6, 14 KO) has lost three of his last five going back to 2007, two of them by stoppage. Anyone who saw the fights knows that, even in defeat, Estrada brings everything he’s got. The question is what does Lora bring? 26-0-1 with 18 stops, Lora is still largely untested. A product of the rugged learning spaces of Mexico and the American southwest, this is Lora’s big step up. If one could bet on blood alone, this might be the bout to do it. ESPN will also have recaps on last weekend’s Hopkins-Jones bout and David Haye’s impressive stop of John Ruiz. Boxing’s Sports Center is never a bad choice and it probably will even provide a preview of Berto-Quintana just in time to hit the remote.
Pick If Found: Mark Melligen-Norberto Gonzalez (Saturday, Fox Sports, 10 PM EST/7 PM PST)
Boxing fans know the drill by now. Fox Sports has an edition of Top Rank Live. The English broadcasts are regularly pre-empted because of Fox’s deals with regional affiliates. If it’s on where a given reader is, Welterweights Melligen (17-2, 13 KO) and Gonzalez (18-1, 12 KO) are just the right combination of limited and gutsy to make it a show. Also on the show is the return of Lamont Peterson (27-1, 13 KO), his first outing since a ballsy loss to Timothy Bradley last year. It was Peterson’s first title shot and the way he lost virtually guarantees a second chance someday. The road there starts Saturday.
And there’s always Holyfield.
Back in seven.
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Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel and the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com
