Hitchins would have schooled Duarte silly. Duarte is a limited, basic fighter and he’ll get beaten soon at world level anyways. Hitchins only pulled out because he couldn’t make the 10lb rehydration limit, not because Duarte is some intimidating killer.
Badou Jack is fighting Noel Mikaelyan instead of Rozicki btw.
It doesn't seem that bad tbh. There have certainly been plenty worse that have been shoved onto PPV. All the matchups are pretty competitive. Ajagba vs Bakole should be a decent heavyweight dust-up between two big hitters. Jack has always been pretty reliable entertainment even if he is ancient now. And Munguia-Surace 2 is a pretty interesting match-up to see if Surace can catch lightning in a bottle again. And Canelo-Scull is a unification for the undisputed title, so it's hard to complain even if Scull is one of the worst champions in the sport.
Crawford will be slow and sluggish. He hasn’t fought in over a year and has never fought at 168 before. His body isn’t adjusted to cutting down to 168 and rehydrating back up. Crawford is a slow starter anyway but being out of the ring so long and being heavier than he’s used to means he’ll struggle to find his own rhythm, let alone start timing Canelo’s.
Too many Crawford fans have gotten their panties in a twist after Scull ran a half-marathon, but the difference is that Scull is 33 and a career-long super middleweight, Crawford is 37 and began his career at 135. If he tries dancing like Scull, he would gas out and lose a decision for being too negative.
Everybody’s been talking about how Crawford is a bad style for Canelo because he’s slick (which doesn’t make sense anyway because Canelo has beaten plenty of slick fighters) but neglect to mention that his two toughest fights were against pressure fighters who feinted him out of position and countered him in Porter and Madrimov. Crawford-Canelo is still a size-mismatch, don’t let a Cuban salsa class fool you into thinking it isn’t.
Carefully guided career path.
Not too many dangerous opps at their real peak.
Claused Cotto
Done La Hoya
Hatton (Not even May fans count Hatton)
Plodding, predictable and shopworn Erik and Marco (extremely fan friendly, doe !)
Beating Sometime was his true highlight thanks to a flash knockdown and Sometime not having the best 2 years leading up to the fight.
Nevertheless, a solid W.
You must be fun at parties.
He had a decent jab for a while under Breland and he was an excellent judge of distance and had a pretty intuitive feel for timing. Apart from that, it was mostly his athleticism and explosiveness which carried him through his career. That right hand really was something special though.
Shakur Stevenson imo. 135 is a stacked division and if he could win against Tank and Loma that would significantly boost his profile. He had all the talent and ability to be P4P no. 1 and while his style isn't all too fan-friendly for casual viewers I do think that if he keeps winning at the top level then he'll continue to grow in popularity. He just needs to learn how to see himself outside of the ring like Floyd could.
How is Taduran more proven at the world level?
Taduran vs world title winning opposition:
L vs Wanheng Menayothin UD 12
D vs Daniel Valladares TD 4
L vs Rene Mark Cuarto UD 12
L vs Rene Mark Cuarto TD 7
W vs Ginjiro Shigeoka TKO 9
Melvin Jerusalem vs world title winning opposition:
W vs Florante Condes MD 8
L vs Wanheng Menayothin UD 12
W vs Masataka Taniguchi TKO 2
L vs Oscar Collazo RTD 7
W vs Yudai Shigeoka SD 12
W vs Yudai Shigeoka UD 12
Both guys also have one loss to non-title winning opposition.
Because Taduran ought to have gotten the nod over both Cuarto and Valladares. Jerusalem was pretty lucky to get the decision over Yudai in either match imo, both those fights were very close, more so the rematch admittedly.
Lennox avoided southpaws for a reason. He hated fighting them in the amateurs and there are sparring stories of him not being able to figure out southpaws and getting whooped by them. Usyk beats Lennox.
Opetaia murders Jake Paul.
Zurdo boxes his ears off and probably stops him.
And Badou Jack makes him look like an amateur.
Jake Paul hasn’t beaten anyone world class and probably won’t ever. He gets badly beaten by anyone in the cruiserweight top 15 and cruiserweight isn’t even a hot division right now. Jake Paul is a good club level fighter but the man got beat by Tommy Fury for crying out loud. He gets embarrassed by anyone world level.
Why would a 27-year old getting his first big opponent and headlining a PPV for the first have to retire after one loss when he has a promising career ahead regardless of the fight’s outcome? That’s just nonsensical from Benavidez.
Again, Ball is not fighting anyone good before he gets the Inoue payday. Inoue is planning to fight Akhmadaliev in September and then Ball in December.
And I saw the Castro fight and had the same concerns as you did, but you're forgetting how easily he handled Figueroa the second time around.
Yeah, I thought Fulton looked stellar against Figueroa but I’m still unsure how much of that was due to Fulton’s ability and how much was due to how flat Figueroa looked.
Kudos to Sandoval for his win, in Japan, no less.
Japan is famously generous to foreign fighters. They get neutral refs and judges for all their title fights, so it's fairly common for Japanese fighters to get robbed in their own hometowns.
Dubois-AJ wasn’t even the best KO in an AJ fight this year, let alone KOTY. Leo vs Lopez, Bahdi vs Sylve, or Inoue vs Nery, among a dozen other superb KOs from last year were, imo, more deserving of KOTY compared to Dubois-AJ.
damn, probably has to retire now as the jap commision are very strict on these kind of things. that being said, never saw what was so special about these 2 brothers, both have lost to the same guys (who are not elite level by any margin) twice now. we had a few people on the forum who said they were the next best thing and they will continue what inoue has started
Really not the time to be making these kind of comments when his life still hangs in the balance. It just reads as very insensitive.
TBRB:
1. Collazo
2. Jerusalem
Ring:
C. Collazo
1. Jerusalem
ESPN:
1. Collazo
2. Jerusalem
WBA, WBO, WBC, Ring, TBRB titles on the line
This would crown the first lineal world champion at strawweight since Ricardo Lopez abdicated his throne in October 1999.
And yet Taduran is probably better than Jerusalem anyway since he beat the better Shigeoka brother in better fashion and is more proven at the world-level.
I'm going to see this card in person, so I'm personally pretty excited to see Itauma in person. We don't really ever get any quality HWs in Scotland. Ever.
Fatal Fury isn’t the name of the promotion, it’s a tie-in promotion with a Japanese Street Fighter-esque video game series. Lazy journalism to not even check why Fatal Fury has been plastered over posters but complain about it anyway.
I agree with you on almost all that you stated but the time has come and the time is now
Boots has 34 fights under his belt , Ortiz has another 24
How much more marinating can be done at this point ???
Both men are still squarely in their physical primes and neither seems to be slowing down. I expect Vergil to get a title at 154 later this year and Norman Jr. seems to be next up for Boots, probably later this year. If Vergil beats the winner of Fundora-Zayas and inherits the WBO belt from Crawford, both of which seem pretty likely, then a fight with Boots becomes a huge event between two unified, hard-hitting American champions. They are both still young, the fight will still most likely happen when neither man will be past prime. Things happen how they happen for a reason in life.
While I certainly appreciate reading the debate in this thread regarding cutting off the ring...
...that's not the only way to catch a rabbit.
You don't chase, you build your control.
Canelo used to set traps very effectively, does getting older drain the mind of the ability to think through not just a vague strategy but appropriate tactics with which to achieve it?
One can absolutely walk a runner down in straight lines; slowly, gradually & sneakily with the back foot settings (a la Sean Strickland in MMA or like Foreman II used to), using punch angles that restrict him by being where he's going to be (e.g. like Canelo did to Khan).
When was the last time Alvarez tripled up or varied the level of the jab on the way in...??? Used the waist & knees in any way whatsoever....????
We out here acting like a boxer (in this instance a knockout artist at that!) taking the risk of expending energy in order to force the fight against an opponent who is reluctant/unwilling to engage is a criminal expectation or suttn, like WT actual F smh looooooooooool.
We must not make excuses for the poor performances of supposed champions, regardless of what the opponent does (outside of extreme silly shït).
You think Chavez ain't catching this guy? Baby Beterbiev? FOHeeeeeeere
I assume you’re talking about Chavez Sr and not Jr. Julio actually had a very similar fight against a contender called Lonnie Smith during his reign at 140. Like Scull, Smith opted to fight very negatively and with lots of movement, and just like Canelo, a similarly aged Chavez struggled to land anything all that significant against a similar type of fighter.
I thought Canelo did a very nice job of varying his jab in the early rounds against Berlanga but then he seemed to step off the gas and was content to just land his left hook for the most part. But his legs aren’t all there anymore. Years of roadwork and gruelling training have wrecked his knees imo.
Jake Paul has a better record than Gervonta Davis.
He really doesn’t though. The man got beat by Tommy Fury for crying out loud. That walking corpse wearing the skin of Mike Tyson, a washed and overweight pot addict in Chavez Jr., a handful of journeyman, retired MMA fighters, and a basket ball player are absolutely not better than the plethora of world champs and world rated contenders Tank has beaten. The difference between their levels of opposition and boxing ability is vast.
Norman vs Boots is a good fight. Norman will, most likely, be the guy running 147 once Boots moves up and that's the type of win that would age well. Norman also seems to have a style which will cause Boots more problems than Vergil would.
Barrios isn't really cut out for world-level and would get utterly demolished by Boots. Sasaki, Giyasov, and Cissokho would all be more meaningful wins than Barrios, but, unfortunately due to the cruel hands of fate and Al Haymon, Barrios has a belt and none of the many contenders at 147 better than him don't. There are a lot of better fights for Boots at welter than Barrios but undisputed is a good accolade to have and stamps his claim as a historical welter.
Honestly, I don't really think 147 is half as bad as people make it out to be. There are plenty of fun fights to be made with exciting, flawed contenders from all over the globe. The talent is there, it just needs activity.
If Vergil wins a title at 154, then that would make a Boots fights much bigger in the coming future and allows them to build up a rivalry. Let each man build up their profile at their own weight and that fight could become a big event between two of the most exciting and talented Americans of recent years.
Barrios is really not that good. The man well and truly does not belong at world level. Even then though, he’s probably still good enough to beat a guy much smaller and significantly older. I’d love to see Manny pull another rabbit out of a hat but I fear he’s run out of tricks.
It means catching your opponent long enough to land significant punches on him. If you only landed 55 punches on an opponent over 12 rounds, how the hell did you cut off the ring effectively??
I know its hard to cut off the ring sometimes, but you never heard that excuse for other fighters like Benavidez who just get trashed when they struggle to find Plant for 6 rounds, but when its Canelo, you are all so understanding.
That’s not what cutting the ring off means. You’re confusing it with setting up offence off of closing the gap between yourself and your opponent. Cutting off the ring is an offensive tool, but it is not the same as offence. Cutting off the ring is a footwork technique in much the same way the L-step or pendulum step is. You can set up offence off of any of these techniques, but they are not inherently offensive. If someone bounces on their toes like Bivol does, they are pendulum stepping, even if they don’t throw jabs and crosses while they bounce. If a fighter is moving forward and mirroring the lateral movement of their opponent to pressure them and force them onto the ropes, then they are cutting off the ring. You are mad at Canelo for not establishing consistent offence off of cutting off the ring, not for his inability to cut off the ring, since he was cutting off the ring for the whole fight.