379 stories on BoxingScene are published under the T.K. Stewart byline.
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Rocky Juarez will face off against WBA featherweight titlist Chris John on the Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs. Juan Manuel Marquez undercard at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas on Sept. 19th. It will be Juarez' fifth try at winning a world title belt and it could be his last if he doesn't win – and Juarez realizes as much.
Trainer Henry Ramirez hints that the strategy for his man, heavyweight contender Chris Arreola, will be to run straight at Vitali Klitschko and make the WBC belt-holder fight from the sound of the first bell. The two will meet in the ring at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Sept. 26th.
By T.K. Stewart - The great fight writer, Jimmy Cannon, once described boxing as “the red light district of sports.” With that in mind, it can easily be said that Jeff Lacy has seen the best and the worst of that seedy neighborhood. After a successful amateur career that saw him compete in the 2000 Olympic Games, Lacy burst onto the professional scene eight years ago. He was a darling of the Showtime network as many of his early bouts were telecast on their airwaves. Lacy's style was well-suited to the rigors of the pro game and it seemed he was scoring one highlight reel knockout after another as he blazed to certain stardom. And Lacy did meet with much success. After 16 victories he won the vacant IBF super middleweight title in 2004 and by the end of the next year he had already defended that belt four times. For Jeff Lacy the sky seemed to be the limit. He had appeared on nearly every television network that still broadcast boxing on a regular basis and he was even appearing in ESPN commercials. It was though that with the careful guidance of Shelly Finkel, Jim Wilkes and Gary Shaw that Lacy would be the new face of boxing and that he would develop into a crossover star capable of carrying the beleaguered sport of boxing on his thick shoulders.
Newly minted WBC super lightweight titlist Devon Alexander has worn his championship belt for less than a two weeks, but he has immediately dropped the gauntlet and is sending a message that he will fight anyone that is willing to step forward.
Tickets for the WBO welterweight title bout between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto don't go on sale until Monday, but the buzz is already beginning to build and rooms at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas are beginning to fill-up.
by T.K. Stewart - The first time I saw Nonito Donaire in person was on a cold December night back in 2007 at the Foxwoods Resort and Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut. Donaire weighed all of 111-pounds on that night. He told me that in order to boil his body down to the flyweight limit he had lost 29-pounds in the weeks leading up to his first title defense against the always tough Luis Maldonado. He would stop Maldonado in eight one-sided rounds after Charlie Dwyer, who I figured must be a sadist in referee's clothing, finally decided to step in and call a halt to a fight that Donaire had dominated. Since then, little Nonito Donaire has grown – and not just in the literal sense. No longer able to squeeze his body into a flyweight sized suit, the 26-year-old is moving three pounds north to the super-flyweight division as he is currently readying himself to take a shot at Panama's Rafael Concepcion for the interim WBA title. The fight will take place next weekend at the Hardrock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and will be televised on pay-per view as “Pinoy Power 2” by Top Rank. On Thursday afternoon, Donaire spoke with several boxing writers on a conference call and one got the sense right away that “The Filipino Flash” sees himself, and his boxing future, in more grandiose terms than he did just a couple of years ago. The 112-pound division is forever in his rear view mirror as he claimed it would be very difficult for him to ever make the flyweight limit again because “the weight now is very difficult to shed.” But aside from his weight, and perhaps more importantly, Nonito Donaire now seems to have a larger vision for himself and for his future. He wants to be part of the big picture in the world of boxing and he seems to have finally gotten to a place in his personal and professional life where he realizes that anything is possible.
In a week that saw his good friend and protege, Devon Alexander, win the WBC super-lightweight title with a win over Junior Witter, 154-pound IBF titlist Cory Spinks is in a good mood.
With recent reports of a dispute over the weight at which the proposed Zab Judah vs. Matthew Hatton fight is to take place (140 or 147) on the undercard of the Sept. 19th Mayweather vs. Marquez show, little of that seems to be bothering Judah.
BoxingScene.com spoke with trainer Freddie Roach on a variety of subjects. Roach is still smarting over the fact that Floyd Mayweather, Jr. opted to fight Juan Manuel Marquez before Pacquiao.
By T.K. Stewart - By the time 22-year-old Devon Alexander skips up the steps, slinks through the ropes and slides into the ring tomorrow night against England's Junior “The Hitter” Witter, his young eyes will already have seen more than most will see in a lifetime. Recruited into the world of boxing as a seven-year-old second grader by his trainer, Kevin Cunningham, who once roamed the halls and kept the peace as a police officer at Alexander's elementary school, he has lived a life that few do. And he credits boxing with saving his life. After streaking to an amateur record of 300 wins against 10 losses and while winning nearly every title there was in the unpaid ranks, he turned to full-time prizefighting only a few months after his seventeenth birthday. His eyes saw the worst that the streets of North St. Louis has to offer. A place where gunshots and killing are simply part of the daily routine. On Wednesday alone, there were two murders in the neighborhood that Devon Alexander's family calls home. The St. Louis police found one man who had been shot to death while sitting in his car. The other was gunned down as he exited a halfway house. Alexander was reared there, where violence is the norm. Where drug dealers and gangs lay claim not just to street corners, but to entire neighborhoods. It's a place where the social contract has been horribly broken. Human life has little value in North St. Louis and it's just the type of place that Thomas Hobbes once wrote about, where life is “nasty, brutish and short.”