The countdown is on to fight time. This is Big Fight Weekend. No.
Here is your host djwaves Tis December as we released this podcast, I
cannot believe I'm saying that the final month of twenty twenty three and we already
have an intriguing Ryan Garcia fight coming up next weekend. We've got Devin Haney
in Regis Progray and you go, you don't have to wait to hear from
Devin Handey. You're gonna hear from him coming up on this preview podcast.
I am the somewhat capable host TJ. Reeves. He is our insider Fight
Freaks. You Night is his substack Bigfight Weekend dot Com. Hello Dan rayhiel,
Are you ready because we've heard from him already on this podcast feed.
Are you ready for the return of Ryan Garcia as we get things underway?
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I mean, you know, Ryan
moves the needle. I think he's a good guy, somewhat misunderstood I think
by some. But anytime one of the biggest stars in boxing is back in
the ring and it's not a paper that's good for all of us fans I
want to watch and those of us who like to cover the sport and cover
the sport for our living. Yes, for copy, to write, things
to talk about, usually action in the ring, druma outside the ring.
What else could you ask for? Yeah, he does move the needle.
As you said, we try to move the needle on this podcast. Thank
you once again to the audience. Dan, we are still on the upward
trajectory. More and more, tens of thousands of you that found us in
November, thank you on the Big Fight weekend preview and then coming off the
weekend the Fight for each recap podcast, I again say to you, we
have worked very hard at this, you and me, and I think the
fans are appreciating. They get a preview going in the weekend, they get
a recap coming off the weekend. We even had a listener reach out and
said, one of the things that's getting me by in life right now is
double the ray Field, double the fun. I don't know what that means
for the rest of his life and who he's got around him, but apparently
you're an important part ray Field of what we should assist him with his therapeutic
needs. Yeah, apparently we are by talking to fights, which we love
to do, and by the way, if you enjoy this show, you
can help us out rate us and review us, because again that helps us
with the algorithms, etc. In particular on Apple podcasts, and several of
you did rate us and review us in November. We'd like to see several
more of you right away. Hit the five star review. It takes like
ten seconds fifteen seconds to write a couple sentences and say I enjoy the show.
Keep up the great work. Hit the five star review. We love
that. Follow and subscribe because again Dan's been doing a tremendous job of getting
newsmakers, fighters, promoters, etc. On the pod and on the interviews
that we do, and we put them as standalones. For example, you
got to hear from Ryan Garcia earlier in this week. You heard him on
the podcast feed, but you got it as a standalone. You're also going
to get David Haney in this podcast, but coming up you'll hear he and
read his Progray in a standalone as well, previewing that fight for Fight Week.
And I am told you've had a recent conversation in recent days, if
not, as we're about to tape this uh with Jake Paul who's about to
be an action in a couple of weeks with a boxer in my part of
the world back in a cruiserweight fight. Jake Paul coming to the podcast feed
They need to follow and subscribe is the point. Jake Paul his second appearance
on the on the podcast, so we appreciate his time. Not so easy
to nail some of these guys down, but you know what, it's a
it's a labor of love and uh, you got to twist a few arms
sometimes, but it's all good. These guys are you know, I very
much enjoy speaking to them, and you know, we do them on the
zoom call so you can see them one on one, and you know,
it lends itself to better than just if you're talking on the phone or in
an audio situation. So it's also I love Hey, Ray pro Gray on
your most recent one was highly entertaining for a lot of reasons. Doesn't hold
back on different subjects. I loved him joking with you. I was flying
on Southwest with my team and I wasn't real sure. I don't like to
fly Southwest. Hey, we love Southwestern alliance. They might they might spind
Well, he's making the point. You're just like I'm I'm a guy that's
flying first class against and Southwest does not have first class, but my payoff
the punchline. Then he saw the offer from Eddie Hearn and he's like,
you know what, I can fly Southwest to come get this kind of offer
if I need to, and then walk away with a lot of money,
and then I can fly first class after that. So that's me saying that.
But I loved his conversation with you. And again, the hustle is
real because you've heard from Ryan Garcia recently. I keep going back over all
these Shakur Stevenson, Tim Zou, Oscar de la Jolla. I talked to
Jamel Herring before his return off about a year and a half retirement. So
again, if you enjoy all of this, get Demetris Andrei. David Benavedez.
David Benavedas has the hat trick. Now he's been on three times,
he's won the fight all three times. Maybe that's incentive for people to come
on board on the pod. All right, let's get into it. As
we mentioned, the Golden Boys show Houston, Texas, the return of Ryan
Garcia. When last we saw him, he was beaten by Gervonte Davis on
a seventh round ko, his first loss. So now he's back, He's
staying at one hundred and forty pounds. Oscar Duarte is the opponent. He
talked to Ryan recently. It is fight week and fight weekend. He's now
meeting with the media. But you talked to him recently with his training camp.
Another new trainer, and here we go with a formidable opponent. Oscar
de la Hoya said this to you about three weeks ago that Oscar Duarte is
a very interesting challenge for Ryan Garcia. I'm paraphrasing what he said, and
now we're here to fight weekend. Your thoughts. I think it's the perfect
kind of comeback fight for Ryan. He made the point that he wanted to
test himself. He didn't he wasn't looking for a knockover opponent, but he
also knew that it wasn't going to be a huge fight in the sense compared
to a Tank Davis fight, which did a million plus pay per view bys
and was a huge success commercially, both on pay per view and in terms
of the ticket sales. But he also wanted to be on knowing that he
wasn't gonna have that level of fight, not go on pay per view,
but do a fight on regular his own platform and save the pay per views
for the big fights when you rake the real money. And he kind of
understands. For all the issues that he and Oscar de la Hoya have,
they have a similar mentality from this standpoint. When Oscar was in his heyday,
Oscar would have some huge pay per view fights, make a huge amount
of money against Pearnel Whittaker, against Hector Camacho, against i Quarte, fights
like that, But he also was understand understood the business well enough to know
that to continue to raise your profile, to give back to your fan base,
that there's nothing wrong with taking and still making a lot of money.
By the way, it's not like these guys are fighting for free. But
go back and an Oscar's case, fight on HBO for fights that were solid,
but not necessarily the megafight. So he'd be back on HBO against Darryl
Coley or against Obakar or a mandatory against Patrick Sharpente, which is a complete
mismatch. But they still drew thirty some thousand to the sun Ball and it
was a live HBO show. And so the point here is that Ryan understands
that also. And so for a Tank day, this kind of pay per
view, Yeah, you go on pay per view coming back against a solid
opponent in Duarte, which is probably not a level of a pay per view
fight. He's doing the fight on regular his own and and wants to put
on a good show and and uh and and get back in position to fight
another pay per view fight. So we'll see him I think, do both
depending on the opponent. Uh. The reason why this is such an important
fight for Ryan obviously you don't want to lose two fights in a row.
But like you mentioned, he changed trainers Joe Goosen, and he split after
the loss against Tank. He's now been training for however long, it's been
several months, Uh, you know Minnie camps and now the full training camp
in Derek James with Derek James in uh in Dallas part of that Errol Spence
Anthony Joshua team now and uh, you know that that's a that's a you
know Ryan, in the interview when I spoke to him, he made the
point that besides what Derek brings in just terms of being a good coach and
and and certain things that he's imparting on him. Uh, A big part
of it is getting out of la and and going to Dallas to get away
from the distractions that he has back at home. And so there's no doubt
that that's an issue. Particular if you listened to the interview where he talked
about or I asked him that, and he talked a little bit about the
crazy amount of money that he made for the Javonte Davis fight. Now he's
got everybody coming after him. You know, he made thirty million dollars.
He had made seven figure pay days before. But to go from making you
know, a couple of million, three million or whatever, and now you
make thirty million, that's a massive mass of difference. So but he seems
focused on this fight. He seems motivated to get back in the win column.
There was a period of time in his career where winning a world title
was not important to him relative to getting the money in the fame. He's
achieved that, so now his goal, he claims, is to fight for
a title. There's been conversations that if he wins, possibly a t Femo
Lopez fight, which Ti Femo has come out and sort of shot down.
But you know, Ti Femo was somewhat mercurial on that point. Hopefully that's
just you know, him talking and not really sitting down and getting down to
business. But I said I would say this, if Ryan is successible against
d'Arte, we're going to see him in a big fight, whether it's against
Ti fiam Lopez or somebody else. And in terms of d'Arte, he's playing
with houase money. He got nothing to lose, He's getting his career payday.
He's only got one loss. He's a good puncher with twenty one knockouts
and twenty six wins. And while he doesn't have a big resume, anybody
who's watched the guy knows that he's a solid fighter. You know, he's
got some like okay guys, but there's really nobody on the record that you
would look at say wow, he beat that guy. But it's just a
matter of watch the guy fight. You know, we talk about sometimes the
eye test. Again, I'm not saying that this is a pound for pound
kind of guy or even necessarily a future big time champion, but he can
certainly handle himself in the ring. He's not an old shot, guys,
you know, and he's twenty seven years old and he'll come to fight,
and you know, it's going to be great to have Ryan Garcia back back
in business, because unfortunately, so many times a guy loses a big time
fight, particularly when they make that kind of money, and they go into
hibernation and you don't see them for eight months, ten months a year.
Well, Ryan fought in April and here he is back at the end of
the year. So he's getting in the two fights, like you know,
your your typical top fighter these days, and that's a good thing. And
so hopefully we'll lead to some huge fights next year if he's successful. And
I for one, I'm very excited to see him back the ry because one
thing about Ryan Garcia, whatever happens in the fight, so usually there's something
interesting going on, whether it's you know, him scoring a big knockout or
you know, in the case of the Davis fight, him being stopped that
was only lost. And if you've seen Dewarte fight, you know he makes
a pretty good action fight. Also not classics necessarily at this point, but
this is a worthwhile comeback fight and I'm happy to see him back in the
ring. All right. Now, what was supposed to have been the co
feature on this card was O'Hara, Davies and Ismail Barrosso Barosso getting another opportunity
here after that whole thing with Roly Romero and the fight being stopped prematurely.
So this was to have been an interim WBA Junior Welterway title fight. But
suddenly on Wednesday Oscar de Lajoya took to social media and said, we got
visa problems, and he didn't mean credit cards, he means with getting a
fighter in the country. So that's now not the co feature. What have
you learned about that? And it means that Floyd Schofield, who you're very
high on, will be moved up in his lightweight fight on the fight card.
Tell us about all of that go. Yeah, So, like you
mentioned, it was supposed to be the co feature, seemingly setting up the
prospect of the winner having an interim title potentially fighting Ryan Ryan Garcia, you
know, Davies or Barroso against Ryan if he won, which would then make
him the mandatory for Rolie when he comes back from his injury, which is
a fight that Ryan has talked about wanting. But that fight, as you
mentioned, postponed because of the visa problems. From O'Hara Davies coming in from
England, and so apparently, like you said, Oscar posted it on social
media. O'Hara Davis also posted it on his social media. From what I
understand, they've worked it out, but it's too close to the fight for
him to actually bother to get here on like a day's notice to do the
fight. So they're not going to do the fight on Saturday. And I
am told by Golden Boy that if all is well in fact with the paperwork,
that they'll simply reschedule. They'll postpone it by basically one month and instead
of taking place Saturday, it will take place January sixth h five weeks on
the undercard when Virgil Ortiz Junior returns in his Jernam midweight debut against Frederick Lawson
in Las Vegas. That's another de Zone show. So the fight will happen,
it's just going to be postponed by it. I interject one thing,
if it was solved within a day or so, call me crazy. How
were they not on this? I'm not asking you to defend them or explain
it. It's more rhetorical. How were they not on this? Like late
last week? Or on Monday to have it solved so he could. If
you could solve it in a day, I mean, it'd be one thing
if you couldn't the next week. Okay, go ahead, but that's the
point they Again I didn't speak them at the particulars, but I have covered
visa issues a billion times in my day. They've gone through the process of
doing the paperwork. Once the paperwork is done, and I'm sure they did
it in a very timely fashion because I knew this site was happening on that
Once it's out of your hands and now it's in the hands of whatever the
government is that you're obtaining a visa from, it's no longer in your control.
So it's they're not giving him special treatment because he's a professional boxer.
There's a zillion people that are looking to get work visas to go to different
countries to do their thing, and he was just another guy in the list.
Some have suggested I don't know this to be the case, but because
O'Hara Davies was one of many MTK boxers that had involvement with the Daniel Kinahan
backed company that perhaps that had put a long took longer. No one's suggesting
that O'Hara Davies did anything wrong in that sense. But they're they're scrutinizing those
folks a bit more, it seems, than somebody that wasn't involved in that
situation. So but the bottom line was, again, it takes time to
do those those visas, and for whatever reason, his was not able to
get done in time, and so he'll do it next month. And and
don't even get me started on passports because in the Reeves household, we had
to wait almost three months, and right now I'm told it's still even in
holiday time, like four or five months. If you're trying to renew your
pasthort, Hello, federal government, I mean good, Look, somebody dropped
the donut four or five months to get back to you. I mean,
good, God on that. Here's a good story for you. Back years
ago, I was supposed to travel to Montreal to cover the I believe it
was the first fight between Sergei Kovalev and Jean Pascal light heavyweight title fight.
My ticket was done from ESPN, my hotel was booked, I had done
my interviews, I had all my stuff ready to go night before, two
nights before I was supposed to leave. I bust out my suitcase. I
started to throw a couple of things in my bag. I go get my
passport and I looked at it and I was like, oh fuck, my
passport was expired. I totally forgot. I thought it was inspiring the following
year, and I couldn't. You can't. I couldn't turn it around in
like literally, so I I didn't go cover. I gotta make a fun
You got to make a phone call. I got a problem with immigration to
Canada. So yeah, well that's the thing. I mean, when I
was growing up, you could just and I grew up in Upstate York and
we would drive to Montreal to you know, I went to baseball games or
just go up for the weekend or whatever. You didn't need a passport.
You just show your driver's license at the border and you're good to go,
right right. But that was totally anyway. So yeah, So the point
is, these are these are that's that should happens. I mean, so
we'll do the fight next month's end of story. They'll do the fight next
one not officially announced, but believe to be on this Ortiz. We'll see
In terms of Schofield, I mean, he's one of their best prospects.
He's fifteen to know. This is a lightweight uh making making his way up
the left knockouts good looking young fighter twenty one years old from Austin. So
hopefully have some fans that are are there in the in the arena because this
fight's also in Texas. You know, he's not taken on a superstar opponent
by any means. And in uh In Ricardo Lopez Torres seventeen and seven with
three but uh, you know it's it's it's a showcase ish kind of fight.
Yeah, and let's see how the guy does. I mean, he
hasn't really fought anybody of real consequence yet. To me, the interesting aspect
of this fight is that his opponent schofield this this fighter I'm talking about in
uh In Ricardo Lopez Torres. Uh. If you go back a couple of
fights ago, he has one win since this happened. But he got knocked
out in the seventh round of an eighth rounder by Mark Castro, who was
an excellent lightweight prospect with Mattroom Boxing, who was also a top amateur.
So at least there's you can use a measuring stick because Cashro is one of
the better prospects out there also, and Cashro knocked him out in round seven.
That was in April of this year, and we'll see if Schofield how
he performs against him. So all right, you know, if you watch
prospects like I do, I'm not saying that that means a whole lot,
but at least it gives you sort of like an idea, you know,
like if Floyd Schofield struggles with the guy, you know, you're gonna maybe
scratch your hddle bit. If he gets rid of him in you know,
one or two rounds, you'd be like, Okay, that's impressive because it
took Castro and also a top level prospect took him seven rounds, so you
know, it's it is what it is. We're all there to see Ryan
Garcia anyway, and we'll see the Barroso and Davies fight next month, and
we'll see what Scofields can do in this new spot. All right. Coming
up in a few moments, you'll hear from Devin Haney getting ready to fight
Reagi's program. More on that in a couple of moments. First, though,
there is another fight of note, and this is the return of Michael
Conlin off of a knockout loss earlier this year, Colin back in a non
title fight with Jordan Gill. This is in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This
is Saturday afternoon US time. One mention now that we'll handicap this fight as
well in the US Boxing show Junior Lightweight Bout. Tell me a little more
about this one as well here while we're in the preview mode. I'm not
really sure what to make of this one, DJ, because on the one
hand, you have Michael Conlin, who was you know, was for a
long time a good featherweight contender, fought a lot of good names, suffered
the dramatic as dramatic as you can get in terms of the way he went
down in terms of a knockout loss to Lee Would in their WBA featherweight title
fight that was in March of last year, a spectacular knockout that he was
on the wrong end of in the twelfth round of a fight that Michael was
winning, where Leewood knocked him out of the ring. He came back,
he got a couple of lesser, you know wins against you know, decent
guys, but not at that level a decision over Miguel Mariaga, who is
uh, you know, a journeyman at this point, even though he's fought
you know a lot of quality fighters. Scored a first round knockout against uh,
you know, Kareem Querrefe. So now he steps back up into a
title fight where he gets the opportunity to go up against Louis Alberta Lopez for
the ib featherweight title. So he's already been knocked out by Lee Wood in
the WBE featherweight title fight. Now he's taken on Lopez in the IBF title
fight. This is in Belfast. Also, Louis Alberta Lopez that we have
discussed in the past, a road warrior. And not only did Michael get
pretty much dominated in the fight, he took a knockout I think in some
ways more hilacious than the one that Lee Would scored. I mean Lee would.
What made it so spectaculous because Michael slipped through the ropes and so he
ended up on the arena floor, so it looked like incredible. It was
dramatic right as the final round too. Yes, that Colin could have gotten
the decision in hen but with Lopez he got just like I used the word
erased like one shot erasure, just out cold basically and frankly when that occurred.
Uh, you know, he had been with top rank for his entire
career. Uh. I mean his pro I was at his pro debut at
the Garden Theater in New York City was one of the most spectacular pro debuts
you'll ever see in terms of the electricity and right right, So now,
uh, this is coming off this knockout. Uh, you know, the
combination of the Lee would knockout and the Lopez knockout and not really sure where
he's going. He's not like he's in his twenties anymore. You know,
what are you doing with yourself? Top ranked? You know, probably they'll
tell you they were they they love Michael, but they wanted him to retire
and uh, but they weren't going to stand in his way of keep on
going. But they didn't want to be involved in putting him in other fights,
and so he was uh, you know, they whatever the deal was,
they they worked it out where he was free to go about his visits.
So he's doing this fight with Matt Trum and they're going to uh to
his hometown once again. In Belfast. He's taken on Jordan Gill. So
as I started off, on the one hand that I told you the story
about Michael Colin. On the other hand, you have Jordan Gill from England
twenty seven and too, not a big puncher, kind of like Michael in
that sense, not a one punch knockout guy. He's also coming off a
rough knockout loss against Keiko Martinez in a European featherweight title fight where frankly,
Jordan Geal was supposed to win that fight. Kiko was a you know,
long in the tooth, as he has been for like a decade. Frankly,
he's pulled a bunch of upsets and this was another one where he scored
a fourth rond knockout. This was, you know, in October of last
year. So Jordan is coming off a much more lengthy layoff than Conlin is.
And so to me, you know, who knows what either of these
guys have. I mean, I just don't know. That was also,
by the way, a featherweight fight. Now they're moving up a few pounds
to fight each other in a jinger lightweight by doubt, So Colin's the bigger
name one thing I think most people agree on in terms of this fight is
that whatever happens should be a fun kind of fight. I mean, these
guys aren't gonna have to go looking for each other, and neither one of
them is blessed with huge power. So you could see kind of a high
pace and a lot of punches landed, and we'll see who can take it
the best. Help me with the name Gwerfee is what you said, is
the fighter that Michael Conlin knocked out in the first round, But also Jordan
Gill knocked him out as well in the ninth round in a recent fight in
in February what of last year, So Conlin has knocked him out since then.
I believe in a one round knockout. So there's a common opponent for
whatever it's worth for this for this atmosphere. He's a popular, prominent fighter.
Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about it on the US show in terms
of the handicapping. But you know, I usually have a pretty good idea
of who I'm picking, like even before we make the official picks for the
show. I got to actually spend a couple of minutes like thinking about this
when I'm looking some stuff up and thinking and assessing the situation because to me,
it's sort of like a toss up kind of fight in that and there
was fifty fifty fight. Hopefully it's good. I haven't looked at the odds
yet, but hopefully we get a good fight. But that's the match,
your main event. Uh, you know, like you said, it's gonna
be a wild crowd. There's worth watching in my opinion, And that'll get
you, That'll get your that'll get your day started earlier in the afternoon before
we get the prime time with Garcia. And by the way, I got
I got other problems, my friend, I got Ryan. I got Ryan
Garcia in that whole card in prime time. I also got my boys kissed
the final concert. Oh that's right. So you know what we have not
covered and we don't need to do it. Let's do it right now.
I mean, I got it. Let's cover it right now. I was
in Indianapolis, Indiana, last Saturday night, my Buccaneers playing the Colts.
No, I still do not want to talk about it. The defeated the
hands of the Colts. But on Saturday night in the downtown Gainbridge Coliseum or
Fieldhouse against Gabbridge Fieldhouse, Gainbridge is the sponsor Kiss was playing that night,
and I thought of you immediately because you were mentioning that Paul Stanley, legendary
member and founder of Kiss, had been in the hospital. Well, obviously
they sprung him from the hospital. They were playing in the heartland of America.
And now this is supposed to be the last show ever, and our
friends at PPV dot com have it on pay per view, and so you're
conflicted right now. But I was sending you the messages from Indianapol. Boys
are right here by my hotel. Apparently, so they played, they had
to cancel a couple of shows in Canada. They canceled the show I want
to say in Knoxville, Tennessee. Paul had the flu. They like you
said Sprongham, he was feeling better. They went through with the show in
Indianapolis. Then they played Rosemont, right outside of Chicago, had a day
off. We're taping this on Thursday last night in Baltimore. I would actually
like to go to that show. It's about an hour and ten minutes or
so from where I live. I wasn't able to do so they played Baltimore
on Wednesday night, day off on Thursday and then they got two shows at
the Garden Friday night and they finish off Satura. This is that's their hometown.
They've been a rock Dan for fifty years. Two founding members left still,
Jeene Simmons and Paul Stanley. They still put on great shows. They're
still popular. I love them. I've been a fan since the late seventies
and it's the last one, and so I'm gonna have to I'm watching that
paper. I mean no offense to Ryan Garcia, but I mean hopefully you're
gonna be uh. I want to rock and roll all night on one screen
and then Ryan trying to rock and roll in Houston on the other screen,
or I gotta figure it out, all right, if I'm not live tweeting
the the Garcita fight, you'll know what. PPB dot com, by the
way, has the concert as a one off no subscription. You can watch
the concert Dans talking about with our sponsor PPV either on PPV dot com streaming
or you can just buy it, you know, through their company in demand
on your linear station. Hang up. But anyway, I would not miss
the last kiss country. I've gone to see them. I had a meet
and greet with them with my wife a few years ago. I got I'll
show you sometimes you were like a little kid that night you told me,
you told me all about it. You were like up against your rock and
roll idols there for a few minutes on a green. So this, this
is a this weekend is much bigger than boxing. We got your conflict,
your conflict. Well, of course, all the college football craziness is going
on all afternoon. If you're a if you're a sports fan in this country,
the NFL on Sunday and the fights and the kiss concert. I don't
know what else you should address you do. You better tweet a picture of
it because I want to see you, or you better send me a picture
sure of it because I want to see it. That's out there if you've
got the makeup on. As I told you the story, I was walking
outside my hotel and a woman came walking by me with a group, and
she had the full white paint and the big black star on the left eye.
Now was that always Paul Stanley or was that watch me watch me drop
some kiss knowledge on you? Was that Ace Freely that had the one black
star over the last time? Who was it? Was it Paul is the
star child, so he where's the star over his eye? So she was
paying tribute to him. Yes, absolutely, so that's that's the story there.
So I'm just trying to keep track of that on a little kiss talk.
And now we get on to the former undisputed lightweight world champion who moves
up to fight Regis pro Gray, coming up for the WBC one hundred and
forty pound title. We heard from pro Gray earlier on the podcast feed.
Now let's hear from Devin Haney. With Dan recently here on the show.
I'm very pleased to be joined today on the podcast by none other than the
lightweight champion of the world, Devin Haney, who is moving up in weight
to challenge Redisprograate for the WBC Junior Walter Weaight world title de Summer Night at
the Chase Center in San Francisco, his hometown where he was born, live
on his own pay per view in the United States, his own worldwide.
Devin, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for doing this.
I appreciate it. Yes, sir, thank you for having me. I'm
excited as well. My pleasure. So actually I wanted to start off with
this. We were supposed to do this interview yesterday and I got a note
text message from your wonderful publicist Crystal, right before we were supposed to get
on the interview, and she's like, hey, can we reschedule tomorrow?
The Vada testers showed up at the gym to do a drug test on Devin,
and then he's got a train. So you know what I've got me
thinking about that. I mean, you've been a guy that's been committed to
drug testing, I think for quite a long time. When you're about to
go in to get to a training session and they show up unexpected, what
is your take on that? I mean, what is your feeling? You
know what you're in forming? You sign up with an age random? I
mean, yeah, yeah, I mean it is good. It makes me
happy knowing that I was a big advocate for it. You know, it
wasn't like a common thing, you know, a two years ago, but
I was in one of those you know, paying for it. You know,
I even out of my pocket to get it done. So you know,
I'm happy to see them come. I'm happy to be tested probably be
tested as well. So even playing field, as I wrote, I said,
I can't even be mad about having the timing of the interview get messedup
because I'm a strong advocate for drug testing. So if they're there to test
the fighter and it disrupts my interview schedule for a little bit, you know
what, no problem. So here we are doing it today. Uh.
Like I said, I'm looking forward to your fight. UH. And I
wanted to start off with this going back to your fight earlier the year.
You had an excellent victory, close victory against Vasilio Muchenko to retain the undisputed
lightweight title. H. Of course you became a free agent after that fight,
but you could have got a lot of different routes. You could have
given them a rematch. Perhaps you could have uh, you know, have
had the mandatory with uh. Of course Stevenson. You obviously could have perhaps
contact of the PBC folks to check in and see what kind of availability Gravante.
Davis said that'd be a big fight to you. Fimo was with top
rank who you were with at the time. You opted to go and look
in the direction of Regis program and move up and wait, I just and
they are all these are all every match I just mentioned would be a very
good fight for the fans, I believe. So I'm just wondering what was
your thought process in pursuing the program fight the way you ultimately did. Yeah,
it was it was a you know, another chance with me to make
history. But you don't would becoming too the business problems wholly gonna dream of
mind and you know it would is you know, a chance for that?
So you know I'm going to be great going up to Way, going up
to Wakes. Do a lot of people have to say that was going well
for a long time. Now finally had the chance to go up if you
fight the champion, and that's what I'm doing. Did you consider any of
those other fights? And I say that because, like, you know,
if you wanted to go up, certainly Lopez was also a champion one hundred
and forty, the lineal champion, even Uh, you know, I just
wondered you thought about those other ones? Possibly? Yeah, you know,
we will wind out all our options, and you know the fight that was
the easiest to make, what was Regi's programs, and uh it made the
most just for me, you know. Uh as a business, you know,
to go get a title and then you know, go back to the
negotiating table and then you know it will be you know, we have much
more leverage making a fight with TV more Lopez. So that's a fight you'd
like in the future that I take it as you're saying, yeah, no,
that's that's that's one of the of the few, you know, like
you said, it's it's a lot of big fights to be made, you
know, slat of big names around around this way class. But just you
know, with me having a title and I got much more leverage. So
in Regis his last fight when he made his first title defense, this will
be his second title defense of this one hundred and forty pounds belt. He
you know, even he's the first admit that he looked pretty pretty poor against
Zuria. He won and barely over the summer, uh, and his thought
process is sort of like, maybe that was a silver lining because your father,
Bill and your trainer and your manager was their ringside watching the fight.
Regis was not impressive. And at that point the way Regis says, you
know what, that's what said, Okay, let's go fight Regis because they
think I'm gonna pushover because I looked bad in that fight, and that if
he had looked good and knocked him out in one or two rounds or just
looked great. You know that Devin Handy would have never fought him. What
is your response to that? Yeah, I mean that's not true because you
know, my dad went to the fight to watch him, so you know,
it wasn't like he wasn't on our radar. You know, we had
we we always had a great relationship. But with Eddie, Eddie heard and
uh, you know he went to the fight and you know, just because
he didn't look good didn't mean that, you know, he was interested in
the fight. I had caught him out previous to that fight, and uh,
and then it just aligned for us to make the fight happen. But
I'm not I'm not a guy that you know it goes and tries to look
for the easy fights. Just guys are here that that does that. But
I'm just not one of them, so you know that doesn't apply for me.
I agree with that. I mean the mere fact that you're fighting him,
and you fought Loma and you went twice to Australia. I think anybody
that's questioning that aspect of your career is sort of kind of crazy. If
you ask me as you get ready for this fight. You know, I
watched the press conference that you had out in San Francisco when to kick off
the promotion on seeing your back and forth on social media. I've seen the
Zone commercial that's run a thousand times. There's been some good smack talk between
you two guys, and obviously that's good to sort of pump up the fight.
I think I feel like it's sort of been not over the top trash
talk the way some guys get, but good enough. But I also wonder
is it a matter of that it's for the promotion or is there serious animosity
between you guys. I get the impression that you're fighting each other, so
there has to be something. But when it's all said and done, you
know, you guys are pretty chill with everybody. I see you guys talk
to other fighters and that you know, everything should be good after the fight.
Where do you come down on that? Yeah, No, it's not
no animosity. You know, at the end of the day, in his
business, won't take done if a personal none, none, nothing that none
of these fighters say. You know, it's it's it's all a sport,
and I want to go in there and put on the best it's you know,
of my career up to date, and uh, I showed the world
out great I am, you know, uh and you know he he believed.
He believes in what he believes in. I believe what I believe in.
So it was back and forth, but that's it really a lot of
people look at the matchup Devin, they say, well, Devin Hayey,
he's just definitely the faster fighter. He's a superior boxer. He can outbox
Regis. Others would look at and say Regis as a much bigger guy.
He's a big, strong puncher, He's a southpaw heavy hitter. Uh.
Regis says that he feels like he can also box with you. Also,
what's your take on the style of the fight that will unfold? Yeah,
well that's no life of time he ever, you know, able to to
box with me. But that's what be the show him on POG except for
knife. You know, I feel like I do everything better than him.
He does to bee like he does everything better than me, So it makes
for a great matchup. He believes in hisself. I believe in myself and
it's good. But I'm I'm the bigger, faster, and I believe I'm
a stronger guy. So I feel like he he you know, has a
big punch, absolutely, but you know I go there handicap him and to
to you know, make a fight one on behind back right, Okay,
So to make this fight possible. Uh, you vacated the WBC lightweight title,
and now you're challenging, of course for the WBC title in the next
way class up. But you're still the champion in the lightweight division. You
hold other belts. I don't know what's gonna happen those exactly. I'm the
champion the recess. So if I was decided to go back down to one
thirty five and then I was just getting my belt back, So well,
that's what I was gonna ask you. So, like Shakur won the vacant
belt the other day, you're fighting this fight at one hundred and fourty,
you still have uh, like I said, other belts. Do you think
you'll whatever happens against pro Gray, do you think that you'll ever fight at
lightweight again? Yeah, if it doesn't make sense, you know, it
would have to make sense, you know for me, you know, financially,
it would have to be a massive fight. But Uh yeah, if
it made sense, absolutely, you know, I would, you know,
take the sacrifice to go back down. But other than that one, all
right, because I was I'm a little surprised to hear you say that.
And I don't know if you remember this, but back when, back when
you first signed with Eddie Hern and Mattrum, it was the weekend of a
big fight. I want to tell you it was a Canelo fight in Las
Vegas. They did a press conference to announce your signing. I was at
that press conference, and I remember this is even before you were a lightweight
champion. There was already the questions from everybody, and you and your father
spoke about it that you were only going to maybe have a couple of fights
at lightweight and you're gonna go up Kevin. That press commerce for like five
years. Aguess. Yeah, no, I do remember that, And it's
crazy, you know how long I was able to, you know, last
at one thirty five, you know, fight at the top level and you
know, be victorious. But it's just so many big fights, so much
money. I'm thirty five, that it's hard for me to leave. And
that's why you know, I was safety about going to one forty because I
wanted to stay and just keep proving myself at one thirty five. But it
was only a matter of time, like I said, it would only it
would have to make, you know, make a lot of money, make
a lot of sense to be able to go to one thirty five. But
other than that, one forties is my new division. That's a fair enough
statement. Uh. And now I look at one hundred and thirty five and
I would not be able to do this interview without asking you about everything that's
gone on between yourself and shore Course Stevenson. Yes, you're fighting Regis and
you guys have had a good back and forth. But he won your vacant
belt the other night. Even he admitted that it was a bad performance.
We don't have to rehash how terrible it was. It was abysmal fight to
watch. Certainly he said he wasn't feeling so great whatever. Uh. He
was your mandatory. Uh, you elected to do this fight. And then
he beat Edwin Delos Santos. Uh. And he's been taking a lot of
criticism for that performance. What do you say to the people that say that
Devin Haney somehow avoided char Course Stevenson, especially coming off that type of showing
that he had the other night. I mean, nobody but you know,
coming off of that type of performance. Nobody but ever dare even say nothing
like that because the world knew that I sent them an offer. And like
I said before, you know, I'm not the type of guy that's dug
and dies any fights. You know, I want to make the biggest fights,
best fights happen, so that that's the last thing you know, I
ever would do is duck. But you know, and and Saturday, well
Thursday just proved you know that that right that you know is not nothing extraordinary.
You know, he's who who is he to duck? You know?
I just I just be arguably one one of the best south paws ever in
my last fight. So why would I be duckish your court? I listen,
I agree with that. I mean, to me, I looked at
it like, hey, you had the opportunity for two fights that we're both
very intriguing for different reasons, and you can only fight one fight at a
time, and you made this decision to fight Regis, which I don't think
anybody can blame you about. I'm interested in this factor to me, and
I you know, because US media guys do these sorts of things. We
start thinking about, like, well, who's in the top level for in
the running for say the Fight of the Year and the Fighter of the Year
and the different kind of awards. And I look down the landscape and I
look at the different guys who've done the business this year. I see Devin
Haney has to win over Lomachenko to retain the title undisputed at one hundred and
thirty five. Now you have the opportunity to win the title at one forty
or a title at one forty against Regis Program, who I would say to
most people is like, at worst, like the second best guy in the
division right now. And to me, that says if you win the fight,
and it's you know, not controversial all that that Devin Haney is stamped
themself as a really solid contender on the on the certainly among the nominees to
be the Fighter of the Year. Is that something that that you aspire to
Is that important to you? Yeah? I mean I want to just you
know, keep people of uh, you know, keep eating whoever they put
in front of me, and you know, let the let the awards do
what they do. Lets people choose. I don't want to get too drawn
up on on you know, this award and that award and this and that,
because I just want to go in there and put on the best show
impossible, you know, because once you get, you know, emotionally involved
in that, you be upset if you don't win, or you know,
you'd be mad at the person that did win, and stuff like that.
But the main win is inside the ring, and that's my main focus.
So this fight is going to be in San Francisco, where you were born,
although you grew up and and I think are more identified at least from
fans as a Las Vegas guy. Uh, And there hasn't but there hasn't
been any kind of major world championship boxing in San Francisco. Last I can
see, it was in the early two thousands and there was a card that
Floyd Mayweather and many pack you. Actually we're both on together in world title
fights. And by all accounts, your fight against Regions are selling well at
the gate, a lot of tickets, a lot of people excited. What
what does it mean to you to to go back to a place where you
were born to do a fight, And I'm not sure what connections you still
have with San Francisco. Yeah, I mean, this is a dream coming
true of mine. You know, my mom my mom still lives in San
Francisco, so you know, I saw a lot of family that still lived
there and the Bay Area in general. My sister lives there. So it's
it's uh, it's gonna be a big event for for for the Bay Area.
Uh, it's something that people can look to because it's not much,
you know outside of the episodes. We have the Woyage and you know,
we have the A's and which the age. I think the A's is leaving
now. Yeah, so we have some teams, but you know they're not
really you know, it's not as it was back in the day. So
uh, now it's something fresh for the people to come out to and you
know where they're nice clothes and kids come out. Uh it's it's it's it's
a huge event and it's doing great, so and great and I'm excited for
it now. One of the things I was curious about, and when I
asked redis this because I also have interviewed him. Uh, he didn't really
seem quite one hundred percent short, which I kind of found surprising. I
just asked. I said, you know this is an optional defense for him.
Is there a rematch clause on either side of this? Is there?
So straight up, whoever wins can just go on and do their business.
No, whoever wins wins, and which I don't win? And if you
and uh, after this fight, are you still with Matchroom? Are you
back to being free agent like and can go to hunt around for whatever the
best deal is after this fight? Uh, I'm back to being in a
free agent. But you know, we just got to see. We got
to see, you know, I got to get past it made a focus
is just you know, like I said, going there, putting on this
show and then uh, seeing what snakes. What would be the ideal way
for this fight to unfold for you? I mean obviously besides getting the victory,
you know, me putting on a master class, me showing everything in
my arsenal empty and everything out or Regis programs and coming out with toys however
he you know stands it. However he stands it. But it would you
be with a showcase, you know, everything, a little bit of everything
and on fight night. I'm looking forward to fight night, Devin, Thank
you very much, for doing this. I greatly appreciate it, and I
wish you nothing but the best of luck. Come up with this big fight
the summer ninth. Yeah, sir, will you be there? You know
what, It's unfortunate I will not be able to make this trip. But
you know what, you're gonna get my money on paper, you because I
got to buy it obviously. Okay, okay, for sure, all right,
I look forward to see school. Thanks a lot, Devin, I
appreciate it. You have a good rest of the training camp, Yes,
sir, good stuff with him, and we should make mention again. It
depends on fighter schedules and when you're able to talk to him at length.
That fight week is coming next week. But you talked to Devin a little
while ago, not that long ago, But you talked to him before all
of this is coming out about him vacating officially the lightweight tis although you were
saying to me, is we're pressing record tonight. You've been in contact with
the WBO and which other one and they have IBF they had not officially heard
from Devin Haney. Yes, I'm officially giving up my version of your You
know your your title at one third five so we got to wait for that
to happen officially, he'll do that, I mean, if I don't think
he would have spoken publicly that he's vaking. But again, he do have
to put out and you know, you have to notify them officially. So
I'm sure his team is his representative or you know, his father or himself
or his lawyer, whoever, they'll they'll send them a letter and you know,
do the usual thank you for the opportunity, and resign the titles.
So now the question that you hear from a lot of people is okay,
well, if he's vaking, well, he was already made the WBC champion
in recess, giving him the opportunity if he wanted to return. But that
title was filled last week with the shir Course Stephenson victory over Edwin Deale Los
Santos, So the WBC belt is now filled. The question is what happens
with the the three titles. So, as I wrote in a piece just
the other day, like earlier this week, the IBF title will they'll order
two former champions, Vasilly Lomachenko and George Camboss, who have both lost to
Devin Haney. They will fight for the vacant IBF title. The target for
that fight is in Australia. Cambos is this home country April fourteenth, which
would be April thirteenth, US time to fight for that vacant IBF title.
They're working on the deal between Top Rank and Lou Debella. Top Rank of
course the promoter of Loma and the co promoter of Cambos's and Debella the co
promoter of Cambos' is also So that's the IBF title, the WBA title,
there won't be a fight necessary because Gervante Davis is the so called regular champion.
They will simply remove that tag and he'll be the only WBA champion.
So that'll eliminate another one of the the regular titles. Interesting, he said
on social media. I guess Wednesday night, Thursday morning something that he's not
interested in that belt and interested in one third whatever that's worth. It's not
worth anything because he is the regular title holder and he's been defending that belt,
and so he'll now be the regular full he'll be the only titlest if
he wants to, so then he's got to essentially tell them I want to
fight at one forty. I don't want this belt anymore, which is what
he was implying. He was implying on social media. He doesn't want that
full title. He doesn't care. Okay, no offense to these fighters,
but they don't know the rules. Most of the time, he has the
title because by virtue of the other title being vacated. If he will,
if he doesn't want to defend the WBA title, that's certainly his prerogative.
He has to have him or his representatives notify the WBA and vacate the title,
or they'll when he comes to set up his next fight, you know,
notify them. He's not defending, so again that's up to him.
But at the moment, he's the champion. I mean, he can give
it up, but until he does or they strip it from that's the way
it's going to be. Uh And in terms of the WBO belt, that's
the one where the participants in the title fight to fill the vacancy. Is
somewhat unclear. Number one ranked in their organization is Lomachenko, but that won't
matter because he's going to fight for the vacant IBF title, as I mentioned
against Cambosis. So now you look down the rankings, number two is Dennis
Barentchik. Number three is Isaac Pittbull Cruz. So the fight that the WBO
likely would order would be Barentchik against Cruise for the vacant title. Now,
if Isaac Cruz is going to go fight a rematch against Gervonta Davis, which
is what a lot of people think is going to be the first fight for
Tank next year, then that would obviously remove him from that situation. And
so then you go further down the rankings and just I don't have to go
through all the top ten, but you're talking about some other guys. Number
four is Angel Fierro, the matchroom fighter for Mexico we've seen in some exciting
fights. Number five is the Golden Boy fighter, William Zapeta, undefeated.
Big hell yeah yeah that name, yep. Number six is Frank Martin,
who, of course was in the news for turning down the fight with Shakor
Stevenson for the WBC vacant title. So you got to figure that other than
Lomachenko, those are the guys that are going to be in the mix for
the vacant WBO title. All Right, more news. We got some nostalgia
coming in a couple of moments, and this involves another vacant WBA title,
the featherweight championship, Kolmatov and Raymond Ford and a purse bid. Give me
more on this and you've also learned more intel on Kolmatov. Yeah. So
anyway, as we have reported and been discussed, Lee Wood vacated the WBA
featherweight title. His plan is to move up to the next way class and
so that meant the title was vacant. His mandatory before he vacated was a
fighter named oda Bek Kolmatov, who is not a well known fighter, but
he's a spectacular up and coming fighter eleven and zero with ten knockouts from Muzbekistan,
big amateur career. I've seen him fight. This dude is the real
deal in my opinion. He can he can really fight. And ray Ford,
who is an undefeated fighter with one draw who's been brought along from day
one by Matchroom Boxing and has you know, gotten you know, he was
a kind of in my mind, was like a suspect early on and kind
of like wasn't really sure is he going to do anything, But he's got
looked a lot better in his last few fights. He's coming off his biggest
win where he scored a pretty one sided decision over Jesse Magdalena, who was
a pretty good fighter in his own right, a former world title holder in
the junior featherweight division. And so those two guys have been matched up according
to the order by the w BAT to meet for the vacant title. Top
They had a purse bid earlier this week. Top Rank won the perse bid
for three hundred and seventeen five hundred dollars. The only other offer in that
per s bid was Matrim, which is the promoter. As I said,
of a Ford and Mattrim got beat by like sixty grand. They bid two
hundred and fifty five thousand and change or something like that. But to go
along with Top Ranks winning person now, they haven't announced this yet, but
what I am told by multiple sources that are involved with the situation is that
Top Rank before they didn't get into the bid to bid, they sign Kolmatov
to a promotional contract and then back to bid, which makes a huge amount
of sense if your Top rank, because with Kolmatov will probably will be the
favorite to win the fight, and that means therefore he'll be the WBA featherweight
title holder. It gives them almost a complete hammer lock on the on the
featherweight division in terms of the titles, because they already are the promoter of
Luis Saberta Lopez who has the IBF title, and they're already they are already
the promoter. Not well, Ray Vargas is the WBC champion, he's with
PBC. But really what they're doing here is they're setting up that because they
also have the WBO title holder and Roby C. Ramirez who defends the title
coming up on December of the ninth. So if they have Colmatov, Ramirez
and Lopez A, it gives them the opportunity if they desire to match some
of those guys in unifications, which will bring a little bit of more attention.
But I think more importantly is they're setting the table for when inevitably Noilla
in a way moves up to featherweight. Now he's going to try to become
the undisputed junior featherweight champion on December twenty sixth when he fights Marlin to Palis.
You know, in a way, he's got two belts, Paulis as
the other two in a way is going to be like a massive favorite in
that fight, and the thought process from everybody involved is that he's going to
become undisputed at one twenty two and in twenty twenty four the monster is moving
up to featherweight and top rank will have plenty of championship fights for him.
He goe to try to run the table again and it's a great chess move
in the long term, and it makes sense in the short, shorter term,
and the immediate term. It makes sense too because it's a good fight
and Homotov is a is a pretty good interesting fighter. If you never saw
him, you can search him out on YouTube. But when he won the
eliminator to get the mandatory position against undefeated fighter named Thomas Patrick Ward, he
went on the road to the UK looked absolutely sensational in that fight. Okay,
one more piece of news. I mean again, it's like all WBA
here in the news items that the WBA's junior bannamweight champion kaz Ioka is going
to be back, and you've got more on this and it's gonna be once
again on a familiar gate for him. Go ahead, So Ioka, like
you said, he is the WBA titlelder he had been the BBO title,
or he had had a unification with Joshua Franco. They ended up in a
draw. He ended up vacating the one belt to take the rematch with him
in the second fight and not do a mandatory Anyway, the bottom line was
he ended up winning the WBA belt also, and they were trying to set
up a unification fight between Ioka and Jan Francisco Astrada, who was the lineal
champion and the WBC champion. That would have been a fantastic matchup. I
mean, you're talking about Estrada, who's a probable Hall of Famer, and
Ioka is definitely a strong consideration. Like I think he's got a really good
chance to be a Hall of Famer. He's won titles in four weight classes.
He's been a lot of good fighters over the years. Anyway, for
whatever reason, they were unable to get that deal done. But Ioka did
not want to give up the New Year's Eve date. This is amazing.
Now in America, there's never boxing events on New Year's Eve. It's not
not even something that they think about. In Japan having fights in and around
New Year's that week and on New Year's Eve itself his tradition. It's been
going on for years and years and years and years, and so Ioka,
amazingly, this is going to be the twelfth time in his career that he
has fought on years ether now. He's only got thirty three professional fights in
his entire career. That means almost not half, but a huge percentage of
his fights as a professional have been on New Year's Eve, and many of
most of them have been world title fights. So anyway, he's back in
the ring on the thirty first taken on a fighter named josber Perez, not
exactly a big name guy from Venezuela twenty and three. But I just find
it amazing that that Ioka, with that amount of professional fights, that such
a huge percentage have always come on New Year's Eve. It's like it's almost
like it's like Canelo Alvarez fighting on Singo demayo. Yes, if you're in
Japan, Ioka's fighting on New Year's Eve. You know, the most famous
fight I'm going to play your song here on a holiday is Rocky fighting Drago
on Christmas? Well, yeah, ROCKI why December twenty fifth or whatever it
was, and he says, what is it? There's no money or whatever,
why would you do this? And of course they filmed it in British
Columbia, so it wasn't really Russia. It was British Columbia, as Barry
Tompkins told us in July, like in the Midsummer But it was allegedly a
Christmas Day fight. And I digress with some movie nostalgia. But right,
did you know this? While I totally digress and before we get to our
nostalgia, I did not know this. I learned something today. I was
today years old, the same age as you, fifty three years of age.
That Stallone wanted to use Queen's another one Bites the Dust for the opening
credits and the opening score for Rocky three, and Queen and Freddie Prince balked
and said, no, mate, you can't use my song. Mate.
By the way, he went, hello, Freddy Mercury, Well, Freddie
Mercury, excuse me, not Freddy Prince. I'm getting my actors and singership,
Freddie Mercury. They rebuffed Stallone to use the song, so he then
with a budget, went to Survivor and said, yo, can you write
me a song? And they wrote the Eye of the Tiger for the movie.
How did that work out? Rayfield thinks that's the greatest opening sequence montage
in the history of cinema. You can disagree with him and fight with him
on social media if you would like, But I didn't know that until today
that Stallane's first choice was Freddie Mercury, Thank you and Queen, and another
one bites the US shout out to our UK brethren and sister and that are
listening to us. But instead they didn't want to do it. And so
there you go. There's some nostalgia that leads us into other nostalgia, and
that is forty four years ago today, November thirtieth, as we released the
podcast Thursday nine into Friday morning on the thirtieth and say hello to December Sugar.
Ray Leonard defeats Wilfred Benitez to capture the WBC's welterweight championship back in the
two belt era. Marvin Hagler on the undercard is fighting the two belt undisputed
champion, Veto Anti Fermo in a robbery. Well, we talked about robbery
in the present day in bad scoring, et cetera. Haggler absolutely beat Anti
Fermo didn't get the decision. But interesting, the Haggler undisputed fight was the
whole feature before the Leonard fight, and they would eventually intertwine and fight years
later. And I vividly remember watching both of these fights that night in November
back now forty four years ago, Sugar Ray Leonard winning in the main event
in a fifteenth round stoppage against Wolford Benitez. What about it, Dan Rayfield,
give me more. Well, this will tell you how big of a
deal boxing was back in nineteen seventy nine when this fight took place. That
those two fights you mentioned, Sugar Ray Leonard against Benita's and Hagler Antiformo.
They were on primetime ABC on Saturday night, not pay per view, not
premium cable, not regular cable, but free to air ABC. And not
only did ABC, as they did lots of times, show those two bouts,
they actually had a split site card because besides the two fights that took
place that we're talking about, that were at the Caesar, the very famous
sports pavilion at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, on the same broadcast, they
showed the then short of third World Championship fight. Uh it was a light
heavyweight championship fight between Marvin Johnson and Victor Galindez. So that was like a
triple header from two different sites on prime time. It was like, you
know, if you were a boxing fan, it was heavenly is the bottom
line. But in terms of Ray Leonard, you know, this was the
guy that was He had won the gold medal Olympics, He had got a
huge amount of publicity and attention from the media and from the networks, and
he was the rising superstar. Hagler, of course, was not yet champion,
and you know, would still be a little while until he got the
opportunity to fight for the title again against Alan Minter who then who was the
guy that bumped off and defeated uh Ante Fermo to get the title. So
the star of the show was Sugar Ray Leonard against Benitez, a fellow Hall
of Famer like Hagler is also and like Sugar, Ray Leonard became and I
think if you if you look at the fight, first of all, it
was it was a very good fight. He stopped Benitez with a few seconds
left in the fifteenth round to win the title, and in the addles of
boxing history, because Benitez was such a great and Ray you know, was
rising star at that time that in terms of like a great win in a
big spot like this is one of like the best big time wins in boxing
history when you really look at the various uh, you know, if what
you think about a big win in a big spot like this was a huge,
huge one, you cannot understate what a big deal it was. Now,
Leonard did go into the fight as a favorite in the fight, but
he still got to get the job done. But it is it was a
crafty guy, was a very quality fighter, had a great resume with the
champion. But the fact that it's forty four years ago still blows my mind
because I remember it as a kid. This was like then. Tells you
how big boxing was. Also the back when Sports Illustrated meant something, not
the fucking dumpster fire it's become with their nonsense AI reporting. We don't have
to get into that. But back then and for many years after, it
was the premier sports publication. It was the best and the most important sports
publication in the history of sports publications. But Sugar Ray Leonard with his arms
raised, you know how sweet it is with the headline across the front cover.
We know he was the cover. Amazing a couple of days after.
I remember, I remember that cover. I remember getting that magazine. I
was subscribing at that time, as as you would read it and subscribe to.
And again we have to convey and you saw it in that great documentary
The Four Kings. How big a deal Ray Leonard was post Olympics, the
marketing of him, the salesmanship. But the guy could fight, and this
was winning a world title. Like you said, primetime TV and how mainstream
boxing was in the sports culture at that time. This was a massive,
massive deal. And then it just kind of goes to the whole situation that
Marvin Hagler faced for so many years. His co feature fight was kind of
just the after that. I still remember Howard Cosa, how would co Sell
losing his mind on the decision that Hagler had not won the fight with Anti
Fermo leading up to the Sugar Ray Leonard title fight. But yeah, I
remember all of that. It's scary to me that it was that long ago.
Yeah, I want to talk a lot on here about activity level and
how it's like we're talking about like, oh, it's like a big deal
that Ryan Garcia, a young fighter is fighting for the second time this year,
hasn't even fought in a world title fight. Yet you say, you
say that's a bit, it's not that big a deal. No, the
guys that fight three or four times. That's here's what I was president.
But now now listen to this. Listen to what he's about to rattle off
on these guys. Here's what I want to say to you. When Sugar
Ray Leonard defeated Wolf for Benitez to win that title on November thirty, it's
forty four years ago as we tape this. That was the final fight for
him in nineteen seventy nine, a year in which he fought nine times,
nine times, and by the way, once he defeated Benitez, he didn't
take six months off. That was November thirty, so end of November,
end of March he's back in the ring. First first defense against Davy Boy
Green, and then three months later he loses the title on a close decision
against Roberto Duran and then only a few months after that he's back in the
ring with October regained the title. So Leonard, from the beneath this fight
on went on a run where he fought Davy Boy Green, who was a
good contender, two fights against Roberto Duran, Then he fought Larry Bonds.
That was the fight that he had in the Carrier Dome and Syracuse that was
like a live HBO fight. Then he moved up in waight again still in
fairly short order and fought Collule and won a title at junior middleweight. And
then he went back down at the end of the night, close to the
end of eighty one and fought Tommy Hearns on their famous first fight. The
point is the dude was crazy, busy fighting top top guys. You know,
it's just a different world now because they understood that activity meant popularity meant
dollars because not everybody was being handed five million, eight million dollars Ray was
making at that time for his fights. Once he became champion, he didn't
have to get back in the ring ENTI the activity level he did because he
was he was the guy that was making the millions of dollars for This was
also part of the culture that was understood this is what you did. Because
how much did Marvin Hagler fight in seventy nine. I guarantee you Marvin Hagler
fought four or five times without looking. I bet Marvin Hagler fought four or
five times in seventy nine easily, So you're probably right about that. I'll
look it up. I'll I'll make you look it up. But I'm telling
you he he would easily fight six, seven, eight times in typical years
because he had a mask going into that Antifermo fight. He had had masked,
had a mass like forty plus wins. So in nineteen seventy nine,
Marvin Hagler fought five times, thank you, and culminated that five fight run
with the draw in quote marks against Vito Antifarma for the undisputed title. And
unfortunately it took him, uh you know, another year or so to get
the fight with Minter. But you know what in that in that ten months
between the draw that we're talking about and winning the title against Minter, he
fought three other times. By the way, just as an assignment. If
you ever have a chance, go look up on YouTube this fight that he
had after Anti Fermo, where he knocked out a fighter named Lucy if Harmanek
absolutely out of the fucking ring, dropped him and knocked him all right,
So great nostalgia on that one. And now that's not all. We got
more a little more here that twenty three years ago Saturday, Tito Trinidad,
Fernando Vargas, and you were there in Las Vegas. Tell me more about
all of that. I mean, I was kind of I was a rookie
still. Then, okay, this is the end of my first year of
covering boxing. I had started at USA today in in uh I had been
hired in February of two thousand, moved to Virginia to start the job in
March of two thousand, made my first trip out to cover fight in April
of two thousand. That was Lennox Lewis against Michael Grant, and then you
know, covered fights on the road steadily for that year. But for whatever
reason, the calendar year of two thousand did not have a ton of Vegas
fights, so I never went to Las Vegas to cover fight called towards the
end of that year. In November of two thousand and I covered another Lenox
Lewis fight, him against David Tua, and then three four weeks later I
was back in Vegas for Trinidad versus Vargas and I was I can't even describe
to you my excitement level personally that I was going to get to go to
this fight. There was I mean, Larry Merchant, my dear friend,
the great HBO commentator, could not have said any better. As they were
talking about the build up to the fight. I don't remember on which broadcast
he said this, but something to the effect that if you could order fights
from a menu like you go to a restaurant, order like a dinner,
you would absolutely order Fernando Vargas against Felix Tito Trinidad. These were supremely exciting
fighters. One was Mexican American, one was Puerto Rican, so the rivalry
was there, both with action styles, Both were young. Fernando was you
know, still in many people's minds. You know, I'm not a prospect,
but you know, not even in his prime yet. Trinidad was in
his prime, had moved up from Welterway where he had dominated for years,
and made a ton of defenses, and they put on as spectacular as a
show as you can imagine. Mandalay Bay was on fire that night. I
can still remember like being in the press room and you know, this was
a co promotion between Don King and and and Kathy do have a main events
at the time. You know, they had Fernando and Don had Trinidad and
the electricity just in the media room of the excitement that people had, what
you could feel it. You just couldn't have had a better fight on paper.
And we talked about it all the time. There's lots of great fights
on paper and unfortunately sometimes they just don't live up to the bill. And
that's, you know, nobody's fault, it just the way things go.
If it was possible for a fight to exceed expectations, in my opinion,
Tito Trinidad against Fernando Vargas exceeded the expectations. It was that spectacular, I
think. And I've spent a lot of time like studying other dreuor midway title
fights, partly because a couple of years ago, when the people at my
friends at the Ring magazine, they did a Feelix Trinidad special like a print,
just like a reflection on his entire career. And I wrote the piece
for that magazine about his run at junior middleweight, which was very brief,
only was three fights, and this four fights, I should say but this
was no No. Three fights. It was David Reid, Mamadou tim and
culminated with Vargas. And obviously the Vargas fight is the is the biggest part
of that three fight run. I think it's the greatest junior middleweight title fight
in the history of the junior middleweight division. Uh you just you can't get
a better fight, I mean. And the thing of that it was we
were sitting there at ringside and the anticipation is like through the fucking roof,
both on the media row as well as in the in the in the crowd,
the promoters were excited, I mean, everybody was excited about the fight.
And like a couple of seconds into the fight, Trinidad lands and Vargas
is knocked on it. You know, He's knocked down from a hook and
we're like, okay, this is not good. And then a couple of
seconds after that he gets up and he gets knocked down again. You're like,
oh fuck, this is gonna be a first round fucking knockout, right,
And the Fernando Vargas is like the guy showed as immense heart and balls
as you could ask for and was able to survive that I still have no
idea how he got through the first round. He ended up coming back,
he dropped Trinidad. There was a low blow in there. They battled back
and forth. The action was just incredibly tremendous fight. Tremendous fight, yes,
and then they get to the late rounds and you know, Fernando was
starting to get behind. He was behind on the cards. He'd been taking
some punishment, but the knockdown at Trinidad was something impressive. He had Trinidad's
I've blown up a little bit. And then Trinidad, you know, as
he is just still a killer with the ultimate closing of this fight and just
dropped him repeatedly in the twelve roun until they finally waved off. But as
in the immortal words of Don King, many times, super sensational fight.
Like I love this fight and to this day and all these years later,
if I was making my list of the top ten fights that I ever covered
in my life, this is in that top ten for sure. Wow.
I've covered hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of boxing events and literally like well I
don't have never counted the total, but thousands of actual bouts, uh that
I've been ringside for and this is as supreme as it gets. And the
thing about it also is that the week of that of that fight is so
memorable to me because of the fact that, and this is not unusual.
There's always like smaller cards around bigger fights, but this one took that to
another level. So that week that I was in Las Vegas, besides this
was obviously the centerpiece of covering this fight, I covered something like five fights
in a few days. In Vegas. Don King had done a boxing show
that was on the old satellite service USSB at the Orleans Hotel that had a
bunch of name guys, heavyweights and whatever. Covered that show that was on,
like I want to say, like Thursday night or Wednesday night. Now
you get the Friday in the in the UH in the UH Mandalay Bay in
their in their one of their ballrooms, or maybe it's it was maybe it's
the MGM one of the ballrooms. There was a ESPN Friday Night fights card
that I covered where I went on the show as a guest and changed my
pick from Trinidad to Vargas like a fucking idiot because I had spent I got
I got, I got, I got bamboozle because I had spent time in
the gym a few days earlier with Vargas and was convinced. And I learned
from that moment on don't ever worry what you see during fight. We don't
change your pick unless it's dramatic. So I was on the set and made
changed my pick on live television to like an idiot. So that was Friday
Night. Now, when the ESPN show ended, I hustled over uh to
the to the Venetian Hotel with a later fight card that was on HBO the
night before the big pay per view. That was a doubleheader that had Marco
Antonio Barrera, then the featherweight king of the world in one fight and the
main event was Bernard Hopkins. Why were they cramming so much into that week
in December? As you recollect just real quick, that's a lot for that
week in one by Don Don was involved with the main show, so he
was doing a show earlier in the week, Friday Night Fights was running a
show on purpose around the big fight. Everybody's in Vegas and the media is
already there, which is your point, right, and HBO was looking for
you know, they were closing out their year, but they were trying to
promote the pay per view the night before, so they went with the Friday
night show and that was on which Bernard Hopkins had his very interesting let's call
it rematch against Antoine Echols for the middleweight title. That was a fight where
Bernard was thrown down and hurt his shoulder but got up and kept going and
you know, and then afterwards made the plea, don't let don King give
Felix Trinidad an opportunity against William Joppy or Keith Holmes for and calling the middleweight
champion if he beats Vargas. You know, caverydy knew he's going to move
up to the middleweight division anyway. So that was on Friday Night, and
then Saturday was the big show, and then Sunday, I'm in Vegas and
it's actually I'm going to a wedding in Vegas because that was the day that
my sister in law got married. But before her wedding, this is back
in the days of when Top Rank we're doing their Spanish language cards on Univision,
but they were on a like one o'clock in the afternoon Eastern time,
which meant early morning or ten in the morning Pacific time, and I went
down to the Applaza Central Hotel early in the morning after a huge fight the
night before, to cover a Julio Diaz fight. Why you ask, because
I was going to stay in Vegas anyway because of the wedding, but because
I had determined that if Julio Diaz wins this fight on this Sunday morning,
that he's going to be the USA Today inaugural Prospect of the year. So
he won the fight. I did my interview with Julio after the fight,
which was the basis of my article. And so there you go. I
did five fights and went to a wedding, all in like the span of
a few days. And the cornerstone event was covering one of the greatest fights
I ever covered, between Felix Tito Trinidad and Fernando Artist. You never fail
to deliver on the nostalgia. That's incredible that there were that many fights in
and around Vegas in the same week in December, not even a summertime.
Summertime is usually when there's much more prominence in boxing all through history. But
wow, all right, A busy, busy podcast previewing the Ryan Garcia fight
that is headlining the Golden Boy de Zonne show on sorry night. You heard
from Devin Haney on this podcast, and well he's in act next week Matchroom
Design main event in San Francisco with Regis Progray for that one hundred and forty
pound world title. News nostalgia. What else do they need to get them
ready for the weekend? Oh, the bet Us Boxing Show coming one Eastern
time on the bet us TV platforms, YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, all
of that social media. I look forward to seeing you there. We'll handicap
these fights a little more, but this is good stuff. We are primed.
We are primed and ready for December, starting with this weekend, my
friend, one more time, And we got a lot coming up in December
too, because we got the big heavyweight card. We got all you in
a way back at it, Jake, Paul, Jake Paul. We've got
Robasi Ramirez in action. We've got, as you mentioned, the pay per
view with Hami and pro Gray on December ninth. Also, So we got
some good stuff coming up. We do, there is no doubt, all
right, my friend, always appreciate it. We'll talk to you on the
bet US Show. Thank you, Dan, Rayphiel Good bet I am merely
TJ Reeves. Make sure you're following subscribing to the Big Fight Weekend Preview podcast
feed for all the great content here. We'll come off the weekend with a
Fight Breaks Unit recap podcast on this very feed with whatever happens for this weekend.
For now, we're good on the Big Fight Weekend Preview