3,425 stories on BoxingScene are published under the Cliff Rold byline.
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By Cliff Rold - This Saturday, we get the fifth consecutive same-day pairing of WBA/WBC/IBF/IBO unified middleweight titlist Gennady Golovkin and now-Jr. bantamweight Roman Gonzalez. It will be the fourth time in those five pairings that they’ve been paired on the same card. The larger Golovkin sells the tickets...
It’s going to be a hard knockout to top. There have already been a few memorable mammoth shots this year. Mikey Garcia’s bomb against Dejan Zlaticanin certainly shouldn’t be forgotten. But the left that David Lemieux landed on Curtis Stevens last Saturday night is the sort of shot a power puncher dreams about landing. It traveled about six inches, landed fully flush, and there was no multiplier. It wasn’t one of those shots where the felled man also bounces off the floor.
The televised card got started with an important clash at bantamweight. 22-year old Luis Nery (23-0, 17 KO), 118, of Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, earned a mandatory shot at long reigning WBC bantamweight champion Shinsuke Yamanaka with a fifth-round stoppage of Colombian Jesus Martinez. Martinez took a beating through rounds three and four and was kept on the stool prior to the fifth. The referee was Abdiel Baragon.
Last week, we got two of the best welterweights in the world. Next week, we get a pair of excellent title fights at middleweight and Jr. bantamweight. In between, it’s bombs away. We hope. Not every fight needs a title on the line. Sometimes, a pair of big punchers is more than enough to make a good night at the fights. That’s what we’ve got Saturday (HBO, 11 PM EST). Curtis Stevens is 4-1 with three stops since a lost title opportunity at the hands of Gennady Golovkin in 2013. David Lemieux is 2-0 with a knockout since losing a unification battle with Golovkin in 2015.
By Cliff Rold - Sports should be simple: win, progress, and ultimately end up with the other winners. There doesn’t need to be that much thought to it. In boxing, a sport lacking the structure and internal logic we might find in a team sports concept, doesn’t always work that way. If it did, the next big fight in the welterwei...
Hardcore boxing followers may have been intrigued. Having seen far worse fights, they’ll easily convince themselves that ‘it wasn’t that bad.’ It would miss the point. In the most anticipated fight so far of 2017, after a string of exciting fights this year including a blazing upset earlier in the day when Tony Bellew beat David Haye, boxing laid an egg. It was exactly the wrong kind of fight in front of the wrong mass of audience.
After two years, the PBC experiment arrives at the showdown that now seems always to have been destined. Their first two network main event winners now face each other on their two-year anniversary in the biggest fight on network television in a long time. Two undefeated, prime, belted welterweights will square off with the winner taking inside track for the money that could wait on the other side. They might not be regarded as the two best welterweights in the world, but they’re the best welterweights to face off so far in 2017.
By Cliff Rold - Almost two years ago to the day, Al Haymon’s Premiere Boxing Champions began a costly, but daring, venture into expanding the stage for boxing in the United States. While critical successes have been hit and miss at times, and there have been some legal tangles along the way, the PBC arrives this...
Not everyone comes to boxing first. Given a slightly different path in life, maybe Deontay Wilder is playing college basketball or football instead of entering a boxing gym at 19. He’s come a long way in the twelve years since. With limited experience and a ton of natural talent, he snared an Olympic bronze medal. After careful, methodical building as a professional, he’s got a belt and is inching closer to some potentially huge fights.
In a night focused on prospects, the best, and most brief, impression was left in the main event on Friday night at the Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula, California. 23-year old Jr. middleweight Justin DeLoach (17-1, 9 KO), 151 ¾, of Augusta, Georgia, needed just two rounds to dispose of 26-year old Chris Pearson (14-2, 10 KO), 152 ¾, of Trotwood, Ohio. It was Pearson’s second loss in his last three fights while DeLoach makes it seven straight after a stoppage loss to Cesar Villa in early 2015.