This is why boxing os in the gutter I'm the usa compared to mma.
Mma is a unified global subculture that surpasses racial, national and religious divide.
Boxing is stuck in the 60s and its because the black fans mostly hating on everyone else.
Yet they don't even support their own. There's a reason canelo got 100m and crawford got 10m.
I like that it is 1-1 and don't like the idea of one of them going the rest of his life as the official loser of the two. Beterbiev is getting old now.....a younger Bet would probably have knocked bivol out if i'm honest.
1) ive often spoke of boxing's fixed fights..and i do find the dubois situation dodgy. However, why would the saudis want to fix bakole a loss? there is little money riding on that. The reality is that bakole wasnt prepared and he'd never boxed at this level before. Jared Anderson struggled with charles martin. Bakole was beat by Michael Hunter. We all expected him to be more durable/tougher.
I saw nothing dodgy about Bakole's loss. Bakole was in no condition to fight on this level, but he took it for a good payday. Overall it hink bakole is a very happy man. he has not earned a lot in boxing. Despite living in the UK, he doesnt have the personality of a Chisora and is boring to watch. So this opportunity is probably the difference between owning a decent house in England vs living on rent.
An example of a fake fall, is ortiz against wilder in the second fight, or helenius against wilder. this bakole loss was legit. Bakole lost his equilibrium, he is also inexperienced and just went to the corner knowing he's already lost. That punch to the top of his head, is similar to the one that Chisora landed on Carlos Takam.
2) i watched the tnt one where they were giving everything to beterbiev. The situation where bivol started struggling in rounds 3 to 6 and wasnt throwing his right hand, was either a strain/injury which he recovered from, courtesy of adrenaline, or he was playing possum and allowing beterbiev to open up early, to tire him out. it seems the latter is true.
to even think that was a fixed fight means you're an obvious imbecile.
How did he have it?
after the 3rd he had beterbiev up. after the 10th, he still had beterbiev up by 1 round. by that point, i had it 7-3 to bivol, maybe 6-4.
The thing I liked about the Saudi involvement was the infinite money to get guys to fight each other. What I honestly never thought about was the control it gives them. If Biev had won, he loses huge money, GUARANTEED Saudi money. Same with Dubois, he was likely told to bow out and promised a huge payday for the Usyk rematch. That fight is huge right now as Dubois looks majorly improved and Usyk would be unifying for a second time.
They have an interest in making Shakur look good as well. He has been ruined reputation wise by his last few fights.
I mean I wanted good fights with the best. I didn't want Hulk Hogan scripted against the Ultimate Warrior. It seems blatant to me what was going on.
another dumb take
it was the saudis that put the parker fight on for dubois. they didnt need to do that and nor did dubois need to accept it. it was a voluntary fight that dubois welcomed because he knew usyk won't be fighting anytime soon.
if there's anything dodfy from dubois's end, it is via frank warren, not the saudis. the saudis then had to overpay Bakole to come in last minute.
when they fix fights in boxing, it is through betting....and the saudis have enough that they dont need to do that sh**.
saudi involvement in boxing is just a means through which they get mainstream sports media attention in a positive way that may protect them when the west decides to back a new regime. ie it is about kissing as much white a** as possible. these events, they have len blavatnik, the dazn owner who is a hardcore zionist, best friend of netenyahu, sitting with them. So if blatantik wants a fight fixed for his own benefit (because he is in the betting industry) then the saudis simply comply.
it isnt saudi running any of it. they're just there to wipe a**es and give them all big paydays.
I'll explain it again for the morons.
A low blow is any punch that lands below the belly button on a fighter. The punch does not have to land on the testicals to be considered a low blow.
How does one determine where a low blow is then when you can't see either fighters belly button in virtually every fight? The referee determines before every fight where the bellybutton is on each fighter in relation to his trunks, and then determines where a punch must land in order to be considered a low blow.
In this fight the referee determined that anything landing on the trunks would be a low blow. Sometimes if the trunks are worn higher the referee will determine that punches below the belt line will be considered low.
The referee said before the fight anything below the top of the trunks would be low. Khan's punch started below the belt line and continued up, landing square on the belt line, which is a low blow.
Plain and simple no question, no debate, period
Zab should have been given five minutes. Would he have won, no. Was he really hurt, probably not.
It was a low blow either way. Just for the record, according to that definition, Zab also landed a low blow, and each fighter technically probably landed more than one on each other.
bingo
the version of ruiz that fought joshua in NY, was humble, quite lowkey and mellow, quite shy. Now he slooks like a bimbo with fake teeth, hair and nails done, facial, probably will get lipo and a boob job next.
Dazn offered Wilder $20m for Brezeale. Showtime had to pay up and it was around $10m which was crazy money. They lost a lot on that and then decided it wasn't worth doing the Wilder-Ortiz fight. The Fury 3 fight was espn wasn't it? im assuming because Fury was A side.
Espinoza is a complete idiot. The guy had the chance to make AJ-Wilder back for the September 2018 date, but allowed Canelo GGG to get scheduled only 2 weeks before their proposed fight, asked eddie to move the fight to october (and thus, Wembley stadium was out of the question, october is a very wet month). The fight fell apart.
In that first fight, the 9th round kd was an illegal punch to the back of fury's head, but boxing is rife with corruption and no one cares.
same reason why fury got to push whyte and it wasnt even acknowledged. a proper ref there would have ruled that a push and warned fury, let whyte recover and let it continue. yes fury had the W in the bag by then but still....illegal moves are illegal.
Wilder was losing to ortiz, illegal moves, a dodgy ref etc saved him.
On paper dazn may be in the red, but it doesnt matter because that red is down to the rights they've aquired all over the world.
What i compare is their expenditure on rights specifically in one trading period and then their turnover the next. It was pretty much close to x2. Eg spend $200m on rights fees, turnover $400m the next year. However each time they've doubled down on rights fees too. So they clearly project GROWTH to keep spending it but their paper debt grows.
Furthermore their rights deals are usually restructured (esp due to covid). They actually restructured them during covid lockdown to such an extent that they broke off existing contracts with rights providers due to the lack of sport, then directly won the rights deals. How well they do out of that i don't obv know but they would not be playing around here if they were losing money and not seeing growth.
Now with global expension, i imagine it takes even more tinvestment but a longer time period, but the end game is a monopoly on the world.
They spent $200m on staff costs in 2020 and people think eddie hearn's $120m a year is what broke the camel's back, how does that work?
Now they've become a legit betting firm in their own right too. This is an entity that is linked to sports betting entirely through Perform group that merged with stats 2 weeks before THE mother of all fixes. I've been repeating this ever since and was already telling people before than they dazn is not there for mere subs, they are there for a much bigger pie, the betting industry.
grown men lacking the basic intelligence to understand that dazn's entry into the US market came only after sports betting was legalised nationally in the US. In fact it's the reason why premier league clubs are worth so much that the glazers wouldnt even sell for $4b to saudis. What do they see we don't? it's always been this anticipation of a coming global betting monopoly.
no one in the world is better prepared right now to become that, than len blavatnik...
all dazn is, is a means to own the rights to data.They will profit from subs and from ads too, but it is sports data merged into an AI system to effectively game a global sportsbook. The reality is they want to normalise betting to the extent where you think of betting expense just like you would your broadbant contract. like £50 a month is affordable right? and you get to win every now and then, but overall the house wins big and when it matters.
With an expected value of $39 billion by 2033, the industry is undergoing rapid expansion. To get more clarity on how massive that predicted growth is- the industry was worth less than $1 billion last year
how much would betting firms pay the data/intelligence provider? 5-10%?
you already know that for a long time, premier league has been dominated by Opta stats....they effectively control the sport already and you dont know it.(i dont seperate daznfrom then, it is all one entity owned by blavatnik).
Okay... Whatever you say 'bro'
You are clearly thinking of someone else or have no idea what the **** you're talking about. I don't remember the last Eddie Hearn interview I watched. Saying some vague unrelated **** out of context isn't clever.
it wasnt meant to be clever or deep enough to evoke any kind of response either. it's just a subtle reference to certain comments on his interviews, in re to the 'naughty' comment,
you didnt get it but it's minor.
Kambosos was 2 rounds up when Teo knocked him down..so it was even going into the 11th round. Kambosos won those final two rounds with ease too.
Lopez was dictating the pace and taking the fight to kambosos, but kambosos was consistentlyu counter punching and landing clean shots repeatedly, enough to clearly win the middle rounds.
I still think that Khan trolled Brook into fighting GGG.
Agree that he's made some daft decisions.
difference is that brook is a good counterpuncher, so crawford fought a different style. they were essentially waiting to counter one another, it became a chess match and then crawford beat him to the punch but only once he'd tasted a bit of brook's power and realised it was no threat.