The countdown is on to fight time. This is Big Fight Weekend. Now
here is your host, DJ leaves Ah. Yes, we get ready.
Can I believe it? I'm saying this the final weekend of January. We
get ready to close out January with a very intriguing Golden Boy Maine event Haimi
Mondia, John Ryder. We're ready to talk about that. We got fight
news. We even got a recap from what was a wild dare we say
Fight of the Year candidate already TAJI title defense this past Tuesday, Japan.
We are chalked full on the latest edition of the Big Fight Weekend preview pod.
I am merely the somewhat capable host TJ Reeves. He is our insider.
Fight Freaks Unite is his substack Bigfight Weekend dot Com. He's particularly pleased
with his enchiladas tonight for dinner. I am less pleased as we record the
podcast with my Greek food because I'm still tasting onions. Rayphael, welcome in,
Dan, Rayfel, good to have you. We're ready for the weekend.
How you doing. I'm good. I'm ready for the weekend too.
Before we get a good fight Saturday. Yeah, let's hope. So again,
for all of the peeps you're a part of this podcast feed, you
need to be following, subscribing RTIs and review us. By the way,
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It helps us out with the algorithms. But you need to be following
and subscribing because, for example, you got to hear from John Ryder as
a standalone podcast earlier in this week, the bread Who Gets Ready to Fight
to fight Haimimongia on Saturday night in Phoenix. You heard from him already here
on the pod feed, So we want you to follow and subscribe for that
reason. We preview going into the weekend, usually out overnight Thursday into Friday
morning, and then recap coming off the weekend Sunday into Monday with whatever happens
on the weekend. All right, before we get into the true preview of
the Mangia fight, we got to go back to Tuesday night in Japan Tuesday
morning early in the US time. I have to say that was more than
worth it, highly entertaining and controversial as to the decision. At the end,
Taraji retains against Cannazales in the Unified Junior flyweight title defense two of the
belts on the line. But I think it's safe to say he retained controversially,
Dan Rayfield, they're are my thoughts wild fight, both fighters down early
in the fight. Your thoughts to recap that before we begin the preview process?
What do I always say, first and foremost, if you got up
early like I did, you got your time's worth. If you bought a
ticket and you were in Japan and Osaka, you got your money's worth.
Because that was the hell of a fight. That was just a great battle
between two guys that came to win in a big way who just went for
it. And when you talk about it being controversial, I don't think that
the result is controversial in the fact that it was Taraji that retained not only
the two one hundred eight pounds belts, the WBA and the WBC, also
the lineal title, ring magazine title. It wasn't that he retained the titles
on a majority decision, because definitely he could win the fight. I don't
have a problem with that. To me. What was a little bit questionable
was the fact that of the six scored rounds, you know, by the
three judges for rounds eleven and twelve that on five of those cards, Taji
was given the round ten to nine. And when I watched the end of
that fight, I even I think I even tweeted it at the time he's
given around he's it reminded me of the end of De la Joya Trinidad.
Yeah, he was just giving away the last two rounds. He was not
fighting back at all. He was running literally, you know, he was
throwing some jabs, but there was no desire to have content. Can I
go next level? And I just don't feel like you can win, especially
round twelve in that way. Now, if you want to have him ahead
and he gets your score by and wins the fight, even if you don't
give him the last two rounds, I can live with that. But it's
sometimes it's not the scoring of the fight, it's the manner in which you
achieved the score that to me is problematic. So giving him round twelve and
two of the judges giving him around eleven, I was like, what are
we doing here? Thank you? Can I go next level? Because I
went back and rewatched. I have not looked at the CompuBox, but I
swear on the Tjiyeball Taraji did not land two significant punches in the final round.
He may be landed one significant punch. How do you give him that
final round which two of the judges did, And here's the curious hold on
all three judges gave him round twelve. Okay, but two of the judges
that gave it to him, that made Taraji the winner on their card.
Where if they give Canazalees on two of the judges cards the twelfth we got
the rarest of rare, which is a unanimous draw. One thirteen won thirteen
on all three cards. But that was in reality that that's still a win
in essence for Taraji because he again I got no problem with either fighter winning
by the close margin or if it was a draw, all that's fine.
It was a great fight. Both guys fought battle. You mentioned they both
got knocked down early, not not big knock. I mean, well,
Taraji when he got dropped, I thought it was hurt. I thought he
was hurt as the first and as Alice was cannas Alice was a bit was
a bit of messed up when he got knocked out. But the point is
they they they fought their hearts out except for the final two rounds for Taraji.
So I don't know if it was that he was just super tired,
or he was getting advice or just thought that he had to fight in the
bag, which you just cannot do. Uh So, other than the way
that the scoring went in those last two rounds, I have no problem with
the outcome. But it was a great battle. And I said this before
the fight. I feel like Taraji based on his level of victories and in
the last couple of years and the way he's come back from his one loss.
I'm not saying he's number one tound for pound, but you can make
the argument that you can find a spot for him, perhaps at the lower
and lower part of the top ten. Uh You know, he's got tremendous
heart and a super will and just great exciting style, good power, and
look, it was if you if you love back, you know, I'm
all for getting up at seven in the morning to watch if I get that
kind of fight. It was definitely dramatic and let's see it again. And
Taraji basically said after the fight that he would be willing to do it again.
You feel for Canazales to go all that way, and we did talk
in the preview mode that he's traveled all over the place throughout his career to
go all that way, fight that hard, have it be that close and
you don't win. So yes, that that was worth it. And we
even had we had a title change hands in the co feature where the Japanese
fighter Akui ends up winning the WBA Flyway title from Delachian in the co feature
fight Dan, I have to confess I've only seen a couple of clips of
that and read the recap, but at I mean, he won fairly decisively
on the cards to take the title. Well, I'm very pleased I didn't
wake up and live to see that one. I woke up in time to
see the ringwalks for the main event because in true de Lachey inform, it
was a not a very entertaining fight. Now, I went back and I
did watch the fight after the fact when I was more awake. And you
know, there was some debate I saw on social media, especially with some
people whose the pin as I respect, that had different sub opinions where you
know, some people were like Delachian did a beautiful job without boxing. Others
were like a Koui was the guy that was making the fight, coming for
and landing the bigger punches, even if his aggression wasn't always effective, and
so there was some There was definitely some h differentiation in the way the fights
were scored up In the fight remotely for top Rank and Sinissia as Strata,
who was her cohort on the broadcast, they were both a little surprised.
I think the one the one that was really surprising. And there's always this
wacky outlier on these kind of fights that feels like one of the judges had
at won nineteen one oh nine for de Loachey, which meant they just gave
a Kooi no credit for anything. So I understand if the scores were kind
of all over the place, but I felt like I felt like a Kooi
did enough to win the fight, because the Lachian just does so little and
when he does land and not with big authority, it's it's a lot of
like small punches without without great effect, not a lot of punch and power,
a lot of movement without really doing much with it. You know,
there's some guys you know that can move and box and just you know,
Lomachenko, you know Mayweather, you know, guys like that that can make
you mismake you pay. You know, Devin Haney can do that. There's
there's some guys which of course Stevenson can do that when he's on his game,
that that don't fight in the way Delachean does. Words just about the
box and move, but they can also make it pay for it at times
and clearly land shots even though they're not big shots. But de Lacheyan,
I don't think did enough of that. So I didn't have a problem with
the coolie winning the fight. But yeah, they were a little bit wide
on the cards, but it was you know, unfortunately, it was not
a very good fight. And uh, you know, we don't need to
believer the point, but de Lachey understood his long and indistinguished run comes to
it like that line, very nice on the adjective on that. So there's
a little bit of a recap mode and that's we do that because again it
kind of fell in the twilight zone between our recap show and the preview shows
some of these twos, and it was Japanese cards. Yeah, and it
was a tremendous main event that we would love to see a second time around,
and by the way, props to Christina Poncher and Snisia Strada because they
were talking about how they had stayed up all night. They were doing this
remotely from the Los Angeles studio to do that fight. If I have one
slight criticism, and we've seen this time and again from ESPN with their production
of it, have a Japanese translator if we especially if it's an in a
way fight, if we know that it's a Japanese card, because I would
have loved to have known, what are they telling to Roger Obviously you would
anybody else. What are they telling him in the eleventh and the twelfth round
A. Get a translator that can help it. We know it's a Japanese
card. Is it too much to ask? I'm just saying the way.
One thing I should mention is that because it was a WBC title fight in
the main event, they did use open scoring, yes, so that the
corners were made aware of what was going on as the fight progressed. You
know, they announced the scores after the fourth and the eighth rounds, so
you know it was not a surprise that they were swapping it back and forth.
Because after round four it was what do you call it? It was?
Uh? It was Cannazalis was ahead after it was like I believe that
the draw on one card? What Knazalis was ahead two and after the eighth
round it was Traji that was in, you know, control, but but
not by a big margin, like a couple of points. So you ever
understanding, can you ever recollect a unanimous draw in a big time fight like
ever in your career? Yeah? I don't. I can't think what,
man, But I'm sure that it's happened. I know that it's happened.
Well I don't. I can't. I mean, again, I refer to
you, but I can't think of one in recent history giving I'm saying,
I mean, that would be the rarest of the rare to have three draw
scorecards, and we were close to maybe getting it. Uh okay, So
good stuff on that. Now let's get to Mongia and Rider again. You
talk to John Ryder in the build up to this fight Phoenix Arizona Golden Boy,
his own main event for Saturday. Obviously, I keep saying this.
Mongi has been completely mismanaged. He hasn't been involved in a title fight for
the better part of four years. This is notable competition, still not a
title fight. What do we make of this? In the preview mode?
Here go ahead. I will disagree with your assessment being quote unquote mismanaged because
the manager's job is to get the most money for the least risk, and
they've put him in the least risk and monkey has been making mill Sorry is
that a qualification for the Hall of Fame? He made the most money while
taking the least risk. I don't know your question. Your assertion was mismanaged.
The job of the manager, will repeat, is to get the most
money for the least risk. And if you are managing him, I gia
and you can feed him the level of stiff ruse that he's fought for the
last several years and get him paid millions and millions of dollars when you know
he's very vulnerable. He's super exciting, but against certain kind of guys he
can easily be beaten. You've done your job. So I'd like to see
him step up because I think with his punching power and with his chin and
with his heart, he can gut out and win some fights against bigger names.
Plus he's the kind of guy where if he does suffer a loss is
not going to ruin his career because he's so fan friendly that he can come
right back and not going to have any big impact on his earning power or
his drawing power. So you know, why not take the shot that said,
at least he's stepping up some over the last couple of fights. He
did take on devn Chenko, who is a very good veteran contender who's been
in the ring with lots of good guys, and even when he's lost,
it's been highly competitive. I mean, he gave a great account of himself
against Daniel Jacobson, a title fight. He gave a great account of himself
on a night where he really I thought he won the fight I was ringside
against Triple G. I mean, so he's a he's a very quality opponent,
uh, coming on many many people's Fight of the Year, right,
yes, against against against Mangia deviren Chenko. Did you know he got a
close win against him, all right, So, so those are the kind
of guys that Mangia fought. You know, he fought him in the last
fight, and like I said, that Fight of the Year contender was named
The Ring Magazine Fight of the Year was picked by the Boxing Writers Association as
the fight of the Year I picked at number two. Uh so that was
that was a step up fight in some regard in terms of him post the
junior middleweight division. And now he's taken on John Ryder, who's probably about
the same level of opponent as Deviren Schanko. You know, good solid contenders,
not champions or have not yet been champions. And John Ryder is a
fan friendly fighter. Also. You know, when we spoke in the interview
that I did with him, we talked about how even though you're coming off
of a loss, a one sided you know, pretty much a drubbing where
he lost basically every single round. It was twelve nothing on one square card,
ten to two on the other two plus he got knocked down against Canelo
last May. But despite the fact that he took such a one sided loss,
because he showed so much heart, he made such a hell of a
fight that he keeps himself in play for this type of matchup. So that's
why Mongia is fighting him, because he counted himself well against Canelo even though
he didn't win. And on top of that, most people would imagine that
if you take a look at the way Jimi fights, he takes a look
at the way the Ryder has acquitted himself, and you know it's gonna be
I think are really interesting in terms of the excitement level in the action worth
watching. So that's that fight. Now, This rider of a chance to
beat Mangia absolutely because you know he's a decent puncher himself, and they're both
coming off hard fights. You know, who knows what one took out?
You know which fight took the most out of the other guy. They both
seem awfully confident. I mean, Jimi's got, you know, the youth
on him. He's a little bit a little less mileage, even though he's
been in some hard fights. Well, you brought up the point he's there
to be hit. Now. The real question, the crux of this fight,
and here's the first mention, will handicap it on the bet Us Boxing
Show one Eastern Time Get the handicapping predictions Friday on the bet Us platforms is
does Ryder have enough punch to take advantage of it and make it interesting?
What is your take on? Can it be interesting with a big punch?
What do you think? I mean it can be, but Ryder he well,
Mangia gets hit with everything number one, and Ryder is able to you
know, he throws a lot of punches. He's thirty two wins, he's
got eighteen knockouts, and a lot of those eighteen knockouts, which is,
you know, not a great percentage in terms of his overall fights have come
against somewhat lesser type of guys. Probably. I mean, when he fought
Zach Parker in twenty twenty two, which is a pretty big win for him,
that was in an interim super middleweight title fight which put him in position
to challenge Canelo as the mandatory. He got a stoppage in that fight,
but when you think about the stoppage, it wasn't knockout. He ended up
getting a TKO because Zach Ryder suffered a broken hand and that was by the
fight ended. So, you know, even even when you look at the
knockouts he's had, it's not exactly like he's knocking guys. Are you saying
him beating Joseph Jerko in September of twenty twenty one by TKO is not exactly
a household name. I think that's exactly what you're saying. And other than
that is even a household. We see split decision with Daniel Jacobs, we
see the retirement by Zach Parker, we see loss by decision to Canelo Alvarez,
and I go back three fights before that, this decision decision, and
then before that a TKO with Bill al when he fought when he fought Bill
o Akway. I was at that fight at the table in Las Vegas.
He looked great in that fight. I mean, he really took it to
him. He knocked Hi down a bunch of and did a real number on
him. So so you're saying to me, there's a chance at him having
a punch that could take advantage of Mangia's lack of defense one hundred because Magia
gets hit with everything, and it's not out of the realm of possibility when
you're swinging that kind of leather, and that goes for both guys, for
Rider and for Mangia. It's not out of the realm of possibility. Now,
Mangia has a very good chin that he's showing throughout his career, but
you know, he was in a tremendous war. You don't know, again
what I said before, what it's taken out of good But John Ryder takes
a great shot too. I mean, yes, Canelo knocked him down,
but Canelo couldn't finish him. You know, John's got six losses. He's
only been stopped the one time, and obviously that's not you know, that
shows you the type of ability to take the shot. So the the reason
why the fight is interesting, besides the fact that I think we're gonna see
a great action fight, number one, also, we don't know yet one
hundred percent who Canelo Alvarez is going to fight when he returns on May fourth,
so to me, and maybe it's wishful thinking, maybe there's some thing
more to it. I think you and I and most people would agree.
We'd like to see him fight David Benavidez. Of course, in that fight.
It is my opinion that if that fight does happen, and I hope
that it does, it won't be until September, which means now he's got
an opportunity to see what does he want to do. In May. There's
been the rumors that he's gonna fight the middleweight Jamal Charlotte would move up.
I think that fight's terrible. I have no real desire to see that.
I agree with you in place of in place of other things. I agree
with you. Bad fight. So another guy that could be available in that
spot again, hard to make because it's HEBC, It's Golden Boy, you
know, not the best of friends obviously. Could it be Heimi Mungia.
Great matchup in terms of excitement, Mexico versus Mexico. Both guys make good
fights. Canelo is a big counterpuncher. Mongy is gonna walk straight to him.
The question is if he beats Ryder, and especially if he does it
in a manner better than the way that Canelo does, it might start a
little bit more chatter about that fight. So you're really watching to see how
Mangia performs against Ryder with the idea of how he performed in the Canelo fight
in the back of your mind, to see if they if he can one
up them. If he goes out there and he looks awesome against John Ryder,
that'll make people say, well, Canelo Alvarez, who was, you
know, one of the great fighters of all time. You know he couldn't
he dropped him once, he couldn't stop him, at him bloodied. It
was in his hometown in front of fifty thousand, big homecoming fight, he
couldn't get the knockout. Here comes Mangia, you know, in the next
fight, and an he blasts him out. So there will be an element
of comparison, and perhaps it could spark some consideration where especially if Mangia wins
and comes out with no injuries, that maybe they could somehow. I see
you work. I like the thought process, but I really believe is going
to happen. Just I think the only way it does happen is if Canelo
says that's who I want to fight and overhuls everybody. That's the only way
it happens. And I don't know. And by the way, Canelo Alvarez
is one of the few guys in the business who one hundred percent can overrull
anybody if he wants to overrule Al Hayman or he wants to overrule you know,
his management or whoever. I mean, he can do it. I
mean he when he was with Golden Boy. I'll give you a great example.
I mean, this is before Canelo was a megastar. You know,
Golden Boy was real reticent to put him in the ring with Austin Trout,
and he insisted and he went out there and he you know, won a
competitive fight, but he won the fight, knocked him down, and then
not that long after and I can still remember this, there was a fight
in Las Vegas. I believe it was when he fought against Alfredo Angulo off
the top of my head, maybe I'm wrong, but you could check his
record. At the postfight press conference, Aristoni Lara, who was also with
Golden Boys, showed up and was chirping and chirping and chirping and calling him
out and you know, almost trying to embarrass him in a sense. It
was kind of like what Antonio Tartar did to Roy Jones with another you know,
classic call out that I was out of the press commerce and Canelo went
for it and he's like, you know, fuck that guy, and he
you know, he said, let me fight it. And Golden Boy,
the last guy they wanted to put him in the ring with was the south
paw slick like that when he was you know, still really good, uh
Lara, and you know, he insisted on it, and again he went
out. There was a super close fight, a really competitive fight. I
was, I was there. I had Canelo winning as a most at ringside
because uh Lara just gave away so many those middle rounds by again running and
fleeing in that typical amateurs kind of Cuban style that he had. That he
gave it away. But there was a reason why the matchmakers didn't want him
to do the fight because even though Canelo won, he didn't look very good.
But you know, he's like, basically, like I said at the
press conference, when he started to get in his face and chirp at him,
kind of like Demetris Andre did, he didn'tive him that fight. But
can I was like, you know, fuck that guy, and he went
out there and he fund him. So I'm only making the point that Canell
Alvarez is gonna fight who Canelo Alvarez wants to fight, understood, Gia,
So be it, you know, and let's see how a mongilla looks.
That's Saturday night in Phoenix, de Own Golden Boy main event. All Right,
some news, and this has been something that you have talked about,
you've reported, we've kicked it around on the podcast. It is now official.
Made official. Thursday afternoon, March thirtieth is the return of Premiere Boxing
Champions on the new outlet Amazon. It will be a pay per view although
not all of it will be on a pay per view. Daniell explain that
in a few moments, the headlining fight is as had been rumored for a
couple of days, Tim Zoo fighting Keith Thurman. And I'm going to be
the first one to say it. I have much love for my Tampa Bay
brother from another mother, Keith Thurman, Clearwater, Florida. But I'm looking
at this fight when I saw it on paper, and I think a lot
of people have the same. Do you want me to say it, even
though it's my Tampa Bay brother, what are we doing here? That this
is who Zoo is fighting? You're going to get into that that's the headlining
fight. And we have other championship fights on this card as well, including
Roly Romero and Isaac Pittbull Cruise. So it will not be pitt Bull Cruise
at least for right now fighting Gervonte Davis like we had thought, It's Romero
Cruise for Romero's WBA Junior welterweight title. And speaking of ares Landi Laura,
he's still around. He's defending the WBA middleweight title as well. All right,
so tell me about the official announcement the fights etc. Including Zoo Thurman
in the main event. All right, let's start with the main event and
we'll work our way down the cart. So that was the rumored fight for
quite some time, and so it did not come as a surprise. Now,
Originally, if you go back maybe like a month ago, six weeks
ago, there was a lot of conversation that it was going to be Zoo,
and everybody knew by the way that he was leaving Australia to come fight
in America for the foreseeable future. So the fact that he's on this card
is like literally a zero surprise whatsoever. But the original thought was he's gonna
fight Ericson Lubin, good contender coming off to win over Ramos in a sort
of a controversial kind of fight, but nonetheless was looking to maybe get that
opportunity. And I believe that the people at PBC, in talking with their
partners at Amazon and within their own company, Al Hayman, and talking with
his people the matchmakers and EGb Promotions, et cetera, they just felt like
that's not you know, no knock on on Lubin. But he just didn't
have the name of a Thurman who, granted is not that big of a
name because he hasn't fought for a long time. But then if you're gonna
do a zoo fight and you're gonna make this a pay per view, you
got to have a little bit of a sexier name up top. And so
Keith Thurman, who has never fought as a German at awight, He's always
been a wealtherweight, so you know, he's never fought above one hundred and
forty seven pounds or maybe a half a pound early in his career or something
like that. I mean, but largely you know the couple. If you
look at his early fights, he did have some fights that were like one
p fifty. We're talking about two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight.
So he's been a career long walter. Wait, it's where he became
a world champion and was one of the best in the division for a long
time. But the other problem with Keith Thurman is that he has had no
fights in twenty twenty three, one fight in Mario Barrios in twenty twenty two,
no fights in twenty twenty one, no fights in twenty twenty and is
uh he had a two fight schedule in twenty nineteen, a very close majority
decision over Joses Seedo Lopez and then a you know, a very clear decision
loss to Manny Packa. So now he's getting Tim Zuo. Now. The
interesting thing about the fight is, yes, yes it's a name, but
what's surprising and they just couldn't get it done. And I don't blame the
WBO for not allowing it. This is not going to be a world title
fight, because I spoke to the WBO today and I asked him about that,
because I saw the announcement from PBC and that's had said it was a
twelve round non title main event, even though Tim Zuo was the WA champion
in one hundred and fifty four pounds. I wonder what was up, So
I talked to Tim Zoo's people. They said it was in fact contracted at
a one hundred and fifty five pounds, one pound over the limit, and
in talking to the WBO, the reason is because even though the Zoo people
petitioned the WBO to make it a title defense and get the sanction, the
WBO followed its rules and it was explained to me, look nothing against them
against Keith Thurman. He hasn't fought for two years, he's never fought at
one hundred and fifty four pounds, and he's not in our rankings, so
we're not going to break our rules. End of story. Now, what
they have done since then is in the WBO rules, if you're going to
fight a non title fight and you're the champion, you are allowed to take
a non title fight as long as you're not in a position where you owe
a mandatory. So Tim is up to date on his mandatory. He does
not owe a mandatory at the moment, so he's in an optional stage.
So they have to petition and go to their committee to get them to approve
this as a quote unquote special fight where his title is not at stake.
But what's interesting about is, and that hasn't been done yet, the committee
will probably meet and discuss this over the next few days or a week or
whatever. And in talking to WBO, they basically were like, you know,
it's probably going to be given to him because there's no reason not to.
He's asking, he's meeting all the criteria as not having a mandatory do
as well as the fact that they understand that if Kim Zoo loses the fight,
even though it's a non title fight. If he loses, he forfeits
the title. So that's part I know that. This is where it gets
so convoluted in the rules. I don't care if it's in their rules or
not. It's a non title fight. So what difference does it make?
Even when you were suggesting that, why why does he have to have their
committee's permission to go fight a non title fight. He's not defending the title,
he's not doing mandatory You go fight if he wants to fight a grizzly
bear at the circus, let him go to being sarcastic. But the committee
for some reason did not allow the fight to be a special attraction non title.
He would still do the fight and probably vacate anyway, So that's not
going to be a problem again. But the rules common sense, common sense.
It's a non title fight. He's not due to have a mandatory Why
does he need to have this because to keep his belt? I mean,
it's just that's what the rules say. If you're gonna be the WBO champ,
you got to play by the rules. You know, if you work
for, you know, a company, you follow their dress code, you
follow their of course, when it's in their interest to change their rules or
if they want to let somebody else get paid. Yes, they changed.
I'm gonna tell you one thing. They change their rules all the time,
they amend them. I'm not gonna have this argument with you. I've got
twenty five fucking years doing this and i can tell you, as God is
my witness on these particular matters, the WBO does a tremendous job of following
the rules. They do not fuck around. I will defer to you on
that. I will hear you. So the same thing when you're the WBO
champion in a weight class and you go up and wait, you have the
ability to ask to be the mandatory in the next way class up. That's
just one of the things that goes along with being a champion. So there's
that's the theory behind, by the way, Terrence Crawford being able to move
up and maybe fight who Tim Zu. Because when Crawford was the champion of
their lightweight division and he went to one hundred or I take it back,
when he was the champion of their junior welterweight division, he got the immediate
title shot at welterweight against Jeff Horn because he was installed as the mandatory.
So my point is on the larger picture. For all of the rules you
may dislike about why should he lose his title, there are positive things that
are helpful to those fighters too, such as what I just mentioned. So
it's gonna be a non title fight. It doesn't detract from the if you
are a fan of the fight, it is what it is. Keith Thurman
cannot win the belt if he wins the fight because it's gonna be over the
weight, So he can't be a champion of one hundred and fifty four pounds
if the fight's contracted at one hundred and fifty five pounds. I got you.
So that is the main event. Now, let me just say one
other thing. They have not announced, as I've gotten this question from people
on social media and also frankly from other people in the business, they have
not announced what the broadcast team is. So we're still not aware of whether
they're gonna, you know, get the band back together from showtime, or
they're gonna go a different direction or whatever that will come and do time.
That's the first thing. The second thing is they did not announce the pay
per view price. I am told that most likely, and they're still having
this discussion with their people internally as well as with Amazon and the you know
others in the industry that it probably will be either sixty four ninety nine or
sixty nine ninety nine. We'll see which they choose. You know, me
being the cynic, I'm going to say they're going to go for the sixty
nine ninety nine. I would be shocked if it's not at least the sixty
four ninety nine or sixty nine ninetynine because everything the PBC was doing before was
seventy five or eighty dollars. It's going to be It's not, it's going
to be one of those two. It's the question they're going to kind of
get the extra five bucks off people who knows. So that's the second thing.
And another thing about it is this is available on Amazon uh Prime Video
as a pay per view. But if you first of all, if you
have you don't have a Prime membership, you can still buy at number one.
If you don't want to watch it on Amazon Prime Videos platform, you
can still purchase it as a regular pay perview on your linear television through you
know, in demand on your satellite or on your television like you've always bought
pay per views. And furthermore, our friends have PPV dot Com will be
the other digital distributor of the fight. So yes, you can buy it
on Prime as a pay per view, or you can buy the exact same
broadcast on PPV dot Com, same announcer, same thing, everything. So
I'm just letting people know. I'm not chilling for anybody. I'm just giving
the facts. So because people ask me all the time, how can I
buy it? Where can I buy it? How much does it cost?
Is it the same card, same show, same announce as, blah blah
blah. So it's Prime Video branded and all that, and that's where I'm
sure the bulk of the people probably will purchase it if they buy the fight,
but it will be available on those other platforms and it will be a
similar price structure across the platforms. It will be the same broadcast. We
don't know who the broadcast team is and that is what is going on with
that. So that is the main event. Now as we go down the
card, this is where it gets kind of wacky. The co feature,
as you mentioned, is Roly Romero against Pitbull Cruz for they said in the
announcement for the WBA Junior walterweight title that Roly Romero holds now if we don't
have to go back that far to know that he had been the champion,
but because he was supposedly injured and out for a few months, they allow
our good friend, the old man Ishmael Barroso to fight for against O'Hara Davies,
who was the mandatory for the interim title, with the stipulation on paper
that the winner of that fight would be the interim champion and that on Raally
Romero's return, he would be obligated in his first fight back to fight the
winner of that fight to clear up the interim situation. So even though PBC
announced the fight as the junior welterweight title fight, I spoke personally with Gilberta
Mendoza Sior or a junior rather, who was the president of the WBA,
and asked him about that. He says, look, we haven't got a
sanctuary quest from them yet and we have our order, our mandate about the
Baroso fight, so we're not approving anything until we know that Baroso is taken
care of. So the likely outcome of this is it will in fact be
wind up being for the wo A WBA Junior Walterway title, but they haven't
yet gone through the process that needs to happen, which is to make sure
that Ishmael Baroso is taken care of, which problem means he'll take some kind
of financial step aside. And if you're a foty year old guy who just
won a world title, you know, why not take you know, a
nice paycheck to sit out and just chill and and fight for you know,
wait for the winner. So that's probably what canna happen. But again it
hasn't happened yet, so that part of the announcement was a bit in premature,
but it's gonna wind up being the case. And the other thing that
was sort of whacky about that, and this was what dominated my day,
frankly, was on Wednesday you had a lot of conversation from uh Ryan Garcia
and from his people and Golden Boy and his team that and and others in
the business also that they were in the process of trying to get a fight
finalized between Ryan Garcia and Roly Romeiro for April twenty. Now I tweeted about
that and said, if the fight is made this is when the fight's gonna
happen. And then they were talking. As it turned out, they didn't
finalize the fight. There's a lot of conflicting information, and they ended up
doing Roly against pitt Bull Cruise and that'spot instead, and let kind of left
Ryan I kind of hung out to dry, kind of looking like a fool
because he posted a poster and said he was fighting the fight and made the
announcement on Wednesday night, and they kind of pulled the rug out from under
him, and it kind of made everybody in their side kind of look,
you know, he said, I don't know he was speaking about particular,
but if you look at this social making point, he said, somebody's lying
to me. I don't know if he was talking about this advisor. I
don't be talking about Oscar talking about how Hayman. I have no idea what
he's talking about. But the point is what was he thought was going to
be his pay per view fight April twentieth against Roly, a fight that they
both said that they wanted. Now it's going to be Roly against Pitbull Curis.
Now. I don't know what they're paying Roly to fight. The pit
Bull fight but I'd be shocked, and I just can't see it being the
case that Roly's taking a lot less money. I would believe to fight Pitbull
than he would to get against Tank. I mean, I rather against Ryan,
unless you know, Hayman just was so desperate to keep the fight on
his platform and make a name fight because Pitbull and Roly is actually a fight
that fans will get up for even though it's not the main event, and
just to make sure that he kept, you know, a good quality fight
like that on his show to kick things off. And maybe they're just going
to overpay Raley to be in the match, so you know, who knows
what's happening there. But the bottom line is he's fighting Pitbull in the co
feature instead of Ryan Garcia in the main event. And now Ryan Garcia and
his team are out there kind of with egg on their face looking for a
new opponent, and you know, it doesn't seem to me like they'll go
back to Devin Hainey. You never know, but it's kind of a mess
in that respect. We'll see if he can keep his April twenty a date,
and if he can, who in the world they're going to get the
fight the guns. What was Ryan Garcia's tweet? Now, I'm not fighting
Ramirez, let's be clear. So he's put that out there too well,
and he goes who knows, all right, that's also on. And then
we have another as you mentioned earlier, Aris Landi Laura, and he is
on this card defending against another Australian who's actually also fought Tim Zuo, Michael
Zarafa. All right, so tell me more that and and the distinction too,
please, because some of these fights are not going to be on the
pay per view. But is it your understanding that a Laura fight is also
on the pay per view? I already said that the four fights I'm mentioned
her all on the pay per view, gotcha? Now go ahead? Yes,
Lara's Zarafa that is a mandatory fight is long overdue. Remember there was
a lot of conversation that Lara was going to fight Danny Garcia. That was
a fight that was discussed at the end of last year. Then there were
some possibility, some talk maybe it would be on one of these early Amazon
fights. In the end, Zarafa, who's been waiting for a long time,
made a big stink like he should after the WBA, and they finally
ordered the fight and they ordered to schedule. They perspid, they ended up
making a deal and so now Lara is forced to either vacate or fight the
mandatory. So he's fighting the mandatory now. Arisoni Lara, who was a
great amateur fighter out of Cuba, a world amateur champion, has had a
very strong professional career, excellent fighter as a JERAM MIDDLEWA champion back you know,
several years ago, you know, had some big time fights, had
a Fight of the Year against Jared Hurt, even though he lost very close
in a unification fight. So he's had a good career and he's also had
a lot of stinkeroo. Also, he's got a lot of terrible fights on
his resume in terms of just utter lack of entertainment value. He's also taken
the softway for the most part. And since he fought the Jared Hurd fight
and then he had a draw against Brian Kastania, who went on to distinguish
himself in the two fights with Charlote, his schedule has been absolutely fucking wretched.
He's fought one lesser, lesser guy after another. He fought Canelo's brother,
Owayne exactly Canelo he fought the ever famous Greg Vandetti. He fought that
the honest but club level fighter, Thomas Lamana. He fought Gary Spike O'Sullivan
who was a journeyman, and now he's fighting Zarafa. So since the latter
part of twenty nineteen, he's fought a total of four times against nobody's basically
no quality opponents at all. I mean, if you take a soft touch
in there, okay, but if you're only fighting soft touches and you're only
fighting once a year, it's a waste of time. And by the way,
Laura didn't fight it all in twenty twenty three, So this is like,
I mean, what as my good friend TJ would say, what are
we doing? What are we doing here? And I misspoke. Zarafa has
fought some contenders in Australia, but he did not fight Tim Zoo. I
got that confused. But again, in terms of sexiness in this matchup,
I don't know what the appears thinking of. He is a loss to Jeff
Horn, that's former wealth, but they split a pair. He won the
first fight by knocking out and then he lost by a majority in the second
fight against Horn. But the thing about Laura is that he had been the
long time or secondary middleweight wa WBA champion. He became the only title holder
in that weight class for the WBA winner when a Triple G called it a
day and gave up the title rather than do the mandatory and went into what
is apparent retirement. So as the only title holder, he has fought nobody.
And so now not to say Rafa is nobody, but he's not exactly.
He's better than the guys that he's been fighting on grant in that,
but he's not exactly, you know, a big superstar name. So this
is just you know, he's playing out the string. He's getting his yearly
annuity. He's like forty one years old, and it's just a waste of
time in my opinion. All Right, And the Towering Inferno Sebastian Fondora is
also on this card, and this is the correct me if I'm wrong,
because it's getting laid et cetera. This's the first fight since he took the
loss to Mendoza on the surprise knockout. This is his return and that loss
was like last summer like that, it's gonna basically be like nine or ten
months ago. But this guy's a highly entertaining, you know, very tall
junior middleweight middleweight, et cetera. But Fondora is also back on this card,
real Quay, so he opens the show in as you mentioned, they
will fight for Remember when he got knocked out by Mendoza, it was April
of last year, so it'll be it'll be ten months or eleven months rather
than right. In that Mendoza fight, he was winning every single round and
he got knocked out and he lost the interim one hundred and fifty four pound
WBC title. Mendoza then went and got beat by Tim Zoo in Australia,
and so that interim title no longer was there, So now the WBC.
Because I asked Maury's show Suliman about that, why is he fighting for the
vacant title? He said, well, he was winning every round and Doz
is no longer the interim champion. You know, we don't know what's going
on with Charlot blah blah blah. So they're allowing Boachek, who's a good
contender himself. I mean, he's a very worthy opponent. He's a good
fighter that wouldn't be shocked if he won the fight. They are allowing Fendora
and Bolichik to fight for the interim title because of those reasons. I mean,
you can agree or disagree, but that's what they say. So Mendoza,
you know, cleaned his clock with the one shot basically, and now
Fandor is trying to get back on the horse and see if he can get
a win against a quality guy. And the interesting thing, by the way,
Sir hey Boachik, who is the opponent, who's a Ukrainian fighter that
fights out of Los Angeles, has had twenty four professional fights. He has
never heard the final bell for any of them because he's won twenty three of
his twenty three wins are all by knockout, and his one loss is by
a knockout. So in twenty four fights, you know, he's either the
one that got stopped or he stopped his opponent. Interesting, and he's been
off for a bit. He did have two fights last year though, so
he you know, by today's standards, he's busy. Fought most recently in
July. That shapes up as actually like a potential like sneaky fight of the
night kind of fight. So that's a very solid matchup. You know,
have your say about whether it should be for a interim title or not,
that's a different matter. But in terms of the matchup itself, it's a
quality fight. And what I was gonna also mention to you is those are
the four pay per view fights that were announced. There will be a portion
of this undercard, similar to like when we would watch a Showtime card and
they would put some preliminaries on their YouTube and their Facebook and that sort of
stuff, where if you were watching like a Fox pay per view and they
would show some early fights on the network or on FS one. This is
gonna be the same situation. So the pay perview will be on at eight
o'clock Eastern time start, but in the in the however long prior to that,
there'll be a block of free fights available on Prime And although this was
not announced, I am told that one of those fights will be the WBC's
Flyway champion Julio Caesar Martinez in the fight against Angel Cordova, which, if
you remember, that was originally scheduled for what was supposed to be the final
Showtime card that took place, but was knocked off the card because of an
injury and so it didn't take place, but they're gonna put that back together
and have it as one of those freeview fights, if you will, prior
to the pay per view. So we'll see Amazon Prime, PBC kicking things
off. We'll see if people like the card, if they are accepting of
whatever the price point is. We'll see what they decide in terms of who
the announcers are. But it was a big day in the terms of all
that news coming out. A lot of these fights a sort of dribbled out
here and there. You kind of heard rumors of this, but today they
put it all together and made the formal announcement. Good on that. All
right, let's move on a little more news, and there's some excellent nostalgia
before we wrap up. Okay, you have been reporting on your substack and
we're going to talk about it. Here. You have the date. The
date is June first, now as it stands for Archer better BV and Dmitri
Bivol to fight for the undisputed light heavyweight title. All right, so elaborate
including we have been talking about whether the Ramadan holiday would delay this to July
or August. That apparently is not the case. So elaborate on what else
you found out. Well, first of all, June one is the date.
That is the date that apparently is important to the folks in Saudi Arabia
for whatever the reasons are. Don't know if it's because they have other events,
but June one was when they wanted to fight, and they're the ones
paying a shitload of money for the fight. Now, remember, prior to
the day of Reckoning, card Dmitri Biebel had already signed to fight as long
as he came through the fight that he had on that show, so his
side was all done better. B IV had a daycare of Callum Smith and
then they would get to try to make the deal. Obviously, he won
the fight against Calm Smith by knocked out dominating fashion, no injuries, and
so within a few days after that, that's when Top Rank and Turkey al
Chic and his people in Saudi Arabia started to discuss the parameters and the deal
making you know of this fight. In the post fight of the Callum Smith
fight, it was Bob Aaron that said, because better bev as a devout
Muslim, he was going to observe Ramadan and Ramadan this year runs until the
middle of April, and he said that he would need three months to train
because you know, over you know, gets strong after you do all the
fasting. You know, son, what is its sun rise to sun down?
You fast before you canna eat. So obviously that takes a toll if
you're if you're a professional athlete and trying to prepare for a boxing match.
Uh, and so it would put him in a position where he probably wouldn't
be able to do the fight toll. You know, the July, you
know, early July. In the end, you know, he's gonna have
to suck it up and then because that's when the Saudis want to fight.
It's the fight that he wants. And oh, by the way, you're
getting paid. I don't know the exact amount of money, but multiples of
the biggest payday you've ever made to basically set yourself up and your family up
and next generation up for the rest of everybody's life. So he'll observe Ramadan.
You know, we'll see what kind of how he's gonna be able to
handle that with the fasting in the and the and the training and all.
But the bottom line is he's doing the fight and it's gonna be June one,
and it's gonna be in Saudi Arabian and they're still trying to get everything
papered and you know official. But I don't think that's gonna wind up being
any kind of problem, particularly because people already signed and everybody that I spoke
to involved in this match wants to fight and once and is happy to do
it then. And then Active bevol I spoke to Beebe's manager that Dean Cornell
obvious says, look, we're fine with you, and we wanted to fight.
We would have been happy to do the fight in April. So they're
ready to go. So this is again like a lot of these fights that
have been taking place and that are scheduled to take place in Saudi Arabia.
They're putting up the money and so in short order, we're getting, you
know, the two Nigan who fights against Joshua and Theory. We're getting the
undisputed fight with Theory. We've got the Day of Reckoning, which is a
hell of a deep card. We're getting bevol We're gonna get the five on
five between the you know whatever matches they come up with with the Frank Warren
fighters against the Eddie Hern fighters, and by the way you know there'll be
more after that, it seems. So this is a as I've said,
it may not be a perfect scenario if you're an American boxing man to have
all the big fights taking place in Saudi Arabia, where the atmosphere in the
arena is nothing spectacular, and it's on unusual times for us to watch.
But the way I look at it is, you know, I'm happy that
the Saudi's are putting the money in because if they weren't, then the fights
wouldn't happen all. So it's rather happened under circumstances that we as Americans may
not find to be deal or to not happen at all. Obviously, I'd
rather have the fights happen. So that's good. And this is a big
time fight. And what's interesting is they always talk about because it's like the
political season right now. Politics make strange bedfellows. Everybody's a strange bedfellow.
But they're getting along as long as somebody's paying, and the Saudi's are paying,
and so this is gonna happen. So and I say bravo because I
was critical a couple of podcasts ago about the longer you wait more can happen
to not have this fight happen later in the summer. So the fact that
it's happening June first, as it stands, looks good on that. One
more note, and you had been reporting about this. It was supposed to
happen a couple of years ago, about a year and a half ago,
would George Cambosis and Vasili Lomachenko. You've been reporting this, elaborate on it
now here on the pod that this fight is apparently going to happen now with
Devin Haney moving up and vacating belts go ahead. So you mentioned that it
was supposed to happen a while back, and that was when Cambosis had the
three belts that he had taken off of tia Fimo Lopez, and he was
going to fight Lomachenko, who was one of his mandatories at that time,
who was going to go to Australia. And that was right around the time
that the war with Ukraine and Russia started and he begged out of the fight,
and you know, he wanted to stay back in Ukraine and he served
in the one of the local militias and did what he had to do for
a period of time, and so that was when Hani stepped in and took
that fight instead, and he ended up winning the titles. And now that
Haini is moving up in wait and has vacated the titles and they're vacant,
and so now the IBF has Lomachenko and Kimbos is rated very highly. So
this is not a surprise that they were who already ordered to fight, that
they're going to do this match, but now they have worked out the deal.
I don't it's not one hundred percent like signed on the dotted line yet,
but all the terms are agreed to. And because top Rank is the
promoter of one guy and the co promoter of the other guy, that getting
it all wrapped up is really not that complicated. The complicated part, from
what I understand, was really more about the site, which is going to
be Perth, Australia, which is the western you know, in Western Australia
on the other coast, as opposed to you know, you're Australian geography Brough.
I've learned. I've learned. So one of the things that's different about
what goes on in those types of fights, this happens in Australia a lot
of times. It happens in some of the bigger fights that have taken place
in Mexico and other places, is the local government becomes involved and they fund
a lot of the elements of it, not because they're looking to make money
on tickets, but they use it as a vehicle to promote tourism. And
so this is one of the reasons why this fight is there. They had
to work out the particulars with the folks in the Perth in the Western Australian
government to do the fight. Western Australia is like one of the states in
the country of Australia, so it'll take place in Perth, which hasn't had
a big fight in a long long time. Most of the bigger fights that
have taken place in Australia are typically in the East Coast, which is that's
correct, the Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane. So like for example, if
you're into tennis and you're watching the tennis, Melbourne is a big touristy area.
Obviously they've had title fights there, they have other sports there, they
have different so member they had the Olympics there and all that. A lot
of that was on the Eastern coast, like you're mentioning, this is the
other side of the continent, and I'm just laughing. You've seen me laughing
for the last thirty seconds. You're taking me back to my honeymoon. Rayphiel
I will be married twenty eight years coming in May. We're on the honeymoon
in Honolulu and we're sitting with another couple that we don't know at a luau,
and so we strike up the conversation and it's obviously have an accent,
and my wife says, well, where are you from? And the people
go pith and she goes what he goes Pith and I'm like, she's like,
look at me, going what is he saying. I'm like, they're
from Australia. He's from austral So I don't know that they all called it
pith. But that's that's where the fight will be. And you're just making
me laugh. Maybe I'm punchy right now, but that's what it looks like.
And how soon, how soon the fight's going to take place. It'll
be May twelfth in Perth, will be heah, yeah, okay, I
don't ever need to hear that again. Thank you. I'm doing all of
our listeners a favor. We're gonna lose listeners if you do that again.
Yeah, okay, So May twelfth, Perth in the even the evening,
like day after my anniversary, by the way, that's okay, go ahead,
Yeah, and the night of May eleventh on ESPN on an ESPN you
know, on ESPN platforms here in the United States. So you know,
they're fighting for the vacant ibf idol and Cambosis is obviously going to be home
relatively speaking, he doesn't. He's not from that city, but he's from
the opposite side of the country. But obviously they're going to be room for
him because he's the Australian fighter and Lomachenko has got no problem traveling. And
so I think most people look at this and say, you know, Cambosis
is still living on the one big win against Lopez, and you know,
Lomachenko put up a great fight against Haney, was super close and he probably
would win the fight. But you never know one thing fundamentally in your experience
and from what you've seen, what do we think Lomachenko has left, Because
that's a question. I think he's got. I think he's I don't say
he's got a lot left, but he definitely has got something left. You
don't do that kind of number with Devin Haney, a fighter in his prime
like that where a lot of people walk away thinking you won the fight clearly,
and you know he's still a Lomachenko is still a really good fighter.
But he was so supernatural, so matrix like when he was at his best
that if that was when he was at one hundred percent, the Lomachenko at
you know, eighty percent is still one of the best fighters in boxing.
So he may not be where he was when he was, you know,
making everybody quit and doing shit I never saw before, but he's still really
outstanding just on muscle memory and on just the experience that he has and all
those things. He's still a really, really good fighter. You know,
he's had injuries that have cost him some problems over the years with his shoulder
and such. But if he's healthy and I know he's motivated to win another
belt, that you know he's going to be going to win another title.
I mean, one thing about about Lomachenko, he's never been a fighter driven
by the money. The money comes, of course when you get to that
level and He's made a lot of it, but that's never been the driving
force behind his career. He has said from day one, I want to
win as many titles and as many divisions as I can, and this is
a chance for him to get another belt in the IBF lightweight title. And
so that's that's the fight that will happen. And you know, again,
you know in that way class, they're two of the better guys out there.
I mean, like I said, kim Bosa is living a little bit
on the one big that's where Homa Tanko was a future Hall of Famer and
he's you know, God gloves will travel to his opponent's home country, so
good for him. Nostalgia time. All right, So we're going a little
bit back during last week as we released this weekend twenty years ago Wednesday,
twenty years ago, two thousand and four. Arturrol Gotti, gian Luca Bronco,
you describe it as a very underrated fight. You were there for this
one. Okay, give me more because this is your favorite fighter. Give
me more about this fight from twenty years ago. Yeah, I mean,
like you know, everybody knows who listens watches or you know, has read
me knows Daddy's my all time favorite fighter, and this was a special fight
for him because this is his first fight post the Mickey War trilogy. So
he had seen Mickey three consecutive fights. They did thirty brutal rounds together.
Mickey lost won the first fight, Daddy won the second. Two fights,
Fight number one fight number three were considered the fight of the year by most
people in two thousand and two, and then in two thousand and three.
Second fight at the end of Tonio and two also a very good fight,
not a fight of the year type candidate, but they had they had made
legends of themselves based on that trilogy and when that was over with and he
had emerged as the as the winner of the second and the third fights.
You know, his marching orders to his team that made events and his management
Pat Lynch, can you guys get me a title fight. I want to
be a champion again. He had already been a champion at one hundred and
thirty pounds and was a matter of can he get another one. He was
highly ranked by the WBC and was in position. Bronco was the next guy,
you know, an undefeated fighter at that time from Italy. You know
who'd made also a series of entertaining fights, although not on that top,
top level, and they were able to make the fight. They brought it
to Atlantic City, which is where Gaddy was the most popular and had all
of his fans, and you know, they put on a hell of a
fight. Now, was it a fight that was on the level of of
the Mickey Ward fights or of some of the other all time great fights that
Artaro had against the likes of Ivan Robinson and Gabriel Ruellis and those types of
fights. No, but it was a really good fight. As a matter
of fact. You know, a couple of years ago, the Ring magazine,
when they were still publishing their their print copies, they did an a
magazine issue about the about Gaddy and Ward, and I wrote a story for
that piece, or for the piece for that issue, and my my assignment
for the for the issue was write a piece about the five best Gaddy fights
that were not against Mickey Ward. And my number five on that list was
the Bronco fight. So that tells you that he had a lot of great
fights besides the Mickey fights, and Bronco was one of them. It was
a really good, uh entertaining fight, he won a decision, he got
the second world title. It was like a celebration there in Boardwalk Hall.
And what I always remember about it more even I want to say, more
than the fight itself, but the the the crowd went absolutely fucking crazy because
when when he came to the ring, remember he had just come off the
trilogy with Mickey, and Mickey Ward walked him to the ring. How about
that? And he was side by side, So you got Gotti being walked
to the ring by his great rival and now best friend Mickey Ward. And
who else was there with them? Walking in the ever popular, super famous
beloved nast car driver Dale earn Hard Junior, who was a ar tur Gotti
fan. I do remember watch he would watch ar Turio Gott he fights to
get himself pumped up for race day. About did you have as best you
recollect did you have any idea that was going to happen in advance? Or
were you shocked along with everybody else when that that's who came out for the
ring walk? Well, I knew that that was I knew that that was
what was happening. I knew he was walking ring and I knew that Dell
was there with him. Wow. But the crowd, I mean, the
crowd obviously didn't know that top as it's known. The pop from the crowd
was something else. It was pretty remarkable, uh to to to uh you
know, to see the way that they reacted when they walked into the ring
together. That was pretty special. But it was a great night. And
uh, you know, as a Gotty fan, you know, I don't
root for fights. Even when Gotty was fighting Mayweather, like I knew he
was gonna lose, and I mean I wasn't like, you know, crying
or you know, you know, you're a professional about it. But when
it was over with, you know, I was really happy that Gotty won.
I knew how important it was to him to get another title, and
it was important to his team, and you know, he deserved it.
He won the fight clean against a good opponent, and then went on and
made some title defenses. Made two title defenses, had a Spiccacua knock out
against Leonard Dereen, who was an undefeated former lightweight champion. Had another knockout
against the old veteran James Laahu. You know, had given a lot of
guys a lot of good fights over the years, and that was you know,
then came to Mayweather fighting. That was pretty much all she wrote,
all right, Also on that same day, now five years later in the
chronology back on Wednesday, January twenty fourth, two thousand and nine, Sugar
Shane Mosley Antonio Margarito not just a Moseley win, but massive controversy as well
from that night. And you were right there this having to do with Margarito,
and as best I recall, it was like the tape and a plaster
like substance or what was it that it was almost like tape fists within the
gloves. And you were there for all this, and that was fifteen I
don't want to accept that was fifteen years ago. That was fifteen years ago,
two thousand and nine. Tell me more about that night. The way
that it was portray was that Margarito had hand wraps that were coated with a
plaster like substance, which as the fight would go on and as you would
sweat, it would get wetter and ultimately become hardened as the fight went on.
Now I was ringside with all the other media guys and the undercards happening,
and this is so vivid to me. I can still remember everything about
it because it was so shocking. I mean, I had covered a ton
of fights, but this was, you know, it's, as I've quoted
many times my dear friend Larry Merchant, boxing is the theater of the unexpected,
and so never in a million years would you think this was going to
happen. So we're sitting there waiting for them to, you know, begin
the ring walks, and it's you know, that ten minutes between the end
of the undercard and the beginning of the main event, and we get a
word at ringside from we were told by one of the I don't remember it
was an HBO public relations person or somebody there that was in the know,
was like, hey, we're having a little bit of a delay because they
have to rewrap Margarito's hands. And we're like, okay, well, what's
that all about that? I mean, that's happened before. It's not totally
out of the realm. I've seen that happen before. But then, because
Guy and Early, speaking for those that may not be completely familiar, explain
what typically goes on in the hand wrap process with member of the other camp
commission, explain that. So, yeah, so there's always another person to
be on behalf of the opposing corner or the opposing fighter to watch and make
sure they do the wraps in an appropriate manner. They're obviously being also watched
by a by a inspector and the commission members are there, but you know,
as the opposing team, you're allowed to watch also it's only fair.
And so there was somebody from the Margarito team watching Shane's hands get wrapped.
In Nazene Richardson, who was the late trainer at that time for Sugar Shane
Moseley, was in the dressing room watching Margarito have his hands wrapped and he
did not like something that he saw, and he asked the commission to check,
and they did and they found this like coded pad in the hand wrap
and they made Margarito cut the wrap off, and then they cut the other
one off and they found these illegal pads in both of the gloves or in
the hand wraps, and they made them rewrap and unknown to us at the
time, we didn't know what was going we knew they're being a rewrapped.
Now while that process was playing out, we had we uh not I shouldn't
even say we, I spoke, I knew somebody that was in the dressing
room and was getting word from the person in the dressing room what was happening
that they were found this substance in the gloves. Now that then then it
trickled out to other people also, so we were all sort of like,
Okay, this is crazy. So I can remember sitting there writing like as
best as I could of what I knew at the time, a short news
story for ESPN dot com and trying to gather as much information as possible of
what was happening, because it was highly unusual, not that hand wraps would
be hand wraps would be cut off, in the hand would be rewrapped,
but the reason why, you know, with an illegal substance in the in
the glove or in the pad. And so I remember filing that, getting
that, and this is all while the while the ring walks are happening and
the introductions are happening, and I'm pounding my story and literally hit the send
button and like within ten seconds they ring the first bell to start to fight,
and I'm like, you know, you're kind of was there just interjet
and I don't remember this. Was there ever some question as to whether the
fight wasn't gonna happen because of what they found and the fact there was suspicion
that it was illegal. What do you remember, to my recollection, there
was never the thought the fight's going to be canceled. The fight was was
gonna go on and they were gonna rewrap the hands and move on with everything.
There was too much at stake, too much money. The fans are
there, the TV's on, everybody's there. You'd had the undercard. As
long as he's clean and it's not illegal, there's no reason why it shouldn't
happen. So the fight ultimately went on, and you know, I'm glad
that Nazine Richardson, who was a great boxing person and a great trainer and
a great man, was there to make sure that it was done the right
way, because I'm a little disappointed that the commission didn't catch that. Now.
Because that happened, it led to the belief by many, myself included
that, as I've said before, if you get caught doing something, it's
probably not the first time he did it, and so a lot of people
thought, myself included that he was dirty for the Codo fight, which was
his previous fight when he won that title and knock Miguel out. If you
saw the way Miguel's face got disfigured over the course of that fight, that
he had some a little extra help in his gloves on that night. And
I will go to my grave believing that he cheated in that fight and that
the NATA commission officials and the inspectors missed that in Vegas, because they almost
missed it in California had it not been for the keen eyes of the Great
Nauseine Richardson. However, once the fight started, it was as satisfying as
a fight as you could watch. You know, when you hear that the
guy tried to go into the ring and cheat, I mean, I know
that people say, well, steroids is cheating and peds are cheating and things
like that, and that's true, and there's no doubt about it. There's
something a little more caveman like, a little more barbaric if you put it
in your gloves. I'm not excusing the other stuff, but that's just real
base. If you put something in your gloves to intentionally try to have a
you know, an advantage over your opponent. Again, I'm not excusing peds.
There's something criminal about it. By the way, Yeah, so to
watch Shane, who was considered past his prime and was a big underdog to
go in there. And by the way, let me say this was that
Staples Center. They drew a crowd that night of over twenty thousand fans to
that arena. It was not just the biggest boxing event that they'd ever held
there in terms of the number of people, it was the biggest event period
that they And I don't know if the record was ever broken, but at
the time that this fight happened in two thousand and nine, it was.
And Staple Center opened I believe in two thousand or maybe nineteen ninety nine right
around there. So in about ten years at the building had opened home to
the Lakers and you know, the NHL and any number of major concerts and
other boxing events, et cetera. This was the largest crowd they ever had
in the building period for boxing or anything else. That's how big of a
deal this was. Shane was a local fighter from the La area. Margarito
was a very popular Mexican fighter, and the two you know, communities came
together for a big time, big time event live on HBO, not on
pay per view. And it was, as you know, star studed kind
of crowd there and Hollywood and everything, and Shane Mosley laid an absolute beating
on Antonio Margarito. I mean, a down home ass weapon, as they
might say. You know, I always remember the line from The Great Trainer
Tommy Brooks and the HBO Legendary Night Series when he was talking about the Mike
Tyson against Lennox Lewis fight. I think it was that fight. Maybe it
was Buster Douglas against Mike Tyson, whatever it was, He goes, it
was such a bad beating, it was Grandma's leesol. Couldn't clean that one
up. Yeah, there you go. So Moley just absolutely beat the living
shit out of him, knocked him out in the ninth round. Uh.
And it was very satisfying to know that he cheated and watch him take an
episoute ass kicking. And I have referred to him purposely since an as Antonio
Margachito ever since that occurred. And ultimately, what was the suspension wasn't it
a year or well? How long was the suspension when they discovered what they
did? What do you recalling? What did you report? He became a
pariah. He and his trainer Javier Capatillo. Now Margarito claimed he didn't know
anything about it and that it was captain if I'm just saying that was his
flame and the Commission, and this is my quarrel with the WBC when it
comes to their drug testing situation. They don't play by the rules of strict
liability. And I learned about this concept from this case. I reported extensively
on Margarito and the hand wrapping scandal. The principle of strict liability. And
this is how the Commission. Remember listening to the Commission meeting and hearing this
and talking to the executives at the Commission when this was all happening. You
are the captain of your ship. How that stuff got in your gloves is
not relevant. It's that it was there and you're responsible. And the same
concept would be if you find a ped in or system, how it got
there on purpose, by accident, somebody gave it to you, somebody ran
into your room in the middle of the line and jam that syringed down your
throat, doesn't matter. It's that it was in your system and you are
responsible. So the fact that the gloves had the shit in them, it
was the responsibility of Antonio margot and ultimately what the commission did was the suspension
is one thing. They revoked the license of both Capitillo the cornerman and Margerito
the fighter. He ended up not fighting for I believe it was about sixteen
eighteen months something like that. He ultimately came back and won a few fights,
but you know, was never thought of the way he was previously.
He did get one more big fight against Miguel Coto, who exacted revenge by
beating up his eye, and he also got the pac Yo fight, so
he did get some bigger fights, but you know, he kind of petered
out after that whole situation. And you know, I'm glad that that happened,
because you know, I was always a fan of Margareta to watch him.
He made tremendous fights. But to purposely do that, which I don't
believe for a moment that it was an accident, you're a piece of shit.
Kermit's intron thinks he did it against him, Miguel Coto thinks he did
it against him. I agree. There's probably others that suffered his knockout wrath
that he probably cheated against because these were not like, you know, this
is not something you would just do on a lark. I mean, you
would be doing that over the course of time, it seems to me.
And Capitilla has never been you know, as far as I can recall,
in a big time corner since then. And you know, good he's a
piece of shit also for doing that, because again you're talking about and I
love the point that you can talk about cheating in a game with a ped
to hit a home run, or cheating in a game somehow, you know,
paying off an official to look the other way on a foul call.
In basketball, This is somebody smashing somebody's face, So I know, you
know, that's that's a different level. That's a whole different level on that
one. More nostalgia. And it's interesting it was right around the same date,
but not on the same date. So as we released the podcast twenty
two years ago, January twenty sixth Friday, Vernon Forrest defeats Shane Moseley,
and that was twenty two years ago, and you were there, and that
was very early in your career. You were there for that upset, one
of the signature moments for Vernon Forrest's career, right one of the signists and
not in one of the signaure moments of his career, was we signature would
be the question at it? I mean that was a big time fight.
Now it should have been a unification fight by all rights. I mean,
Vernon Forrest was the IBF champion, Shane Mosey was the WBC champion. But
what happens a lot of times in boxing is the IBF does IBF things,
and they were not going to allow him to have an exception and they were
going to force a mandatory. I don't remember who was against it was uh
to n. I want to say, was it like Michelle Picarillo or something
like that, maybe from Italy? I forget, I've heard you. If
you say so, I'm going with you, Okay, I can keep wrong
on that. It was something somebody like that. That was going to be
a fight that would bring him, you know, five cents on the dollar
if that compared to what he could make for fighting against Sugar Shane Mosey,
who was the golden you know child at that time. He was the pound
for pound number one. He had a big HBO contract. It was a
it was a rematch of a famed rivalry in the amateurs. It was Vernon
Forrest that upset Shane in the amateurs at the Olympics trials to keep him from
going to to the Olympics in nineteen ninety two, and so there was a
lot of heat in that fight. That was a very anticipated fight. So
instead of a unification fight, it just turned out to be for Shane's WBC
title. But you know, in the end, it was a huge fight
for Vernon. It was the signature moment. Now he did beat Shane in
an India rematch, but the first fight, Shane is thirty three and oh
Vernon was undefeated. Also, he was the pound for pound king. Remember
he's two fights three fights removed from his win over Oscar de la Hoya.
That was what put him at that lofty position. He had been, you
know, knocking guys out, not great fighters. But he had blitzed Antonio
Diaz, he had blitzed Shannon Taylor, was undefeated Australian contender, he had
knocked out Adrian Stone in a devastating fashion, and now he set up to
fight Vernon, big big rematch of the amateur rival. He's pound for pound
number one and Vernon I can never forget this now. Vernon, you know,
was tall and was long and was a pretty good punch at a great
jab but not nearly as fast as sugar Shane Mosey. And he said repeatedly,
I can still hear it in my in my mind doing interviews with him,
and hear in his comments jab beat speed, you know, jab beat
speed, jab beat speed, and you know what, the jet beat the
speed. That night, he believe he laid a beating on Shane Mosey.
That was the You know, Shane was an untouchable guy. He had never
been in a tough fight at that point, even though he other than the
delawaya one fight that he had won. And here you have him fighting in
front of a sold out crowd at the Madison Square Garden Theater. And in
that fight when he knocked Shane down in like round four, maybe I forget
the exact round, It was the whole entire crowd at the exact same time.
You could just hear them gasp at the exact moment, like all in
Unison, you know, five thousand people. It was round two and the
whole crowd was like at the exact same time, and he ended up dropping
him twice in that round, and somehow, some way, Shane, who
always had, you know, a huge heart, was able to muster,
you know, the ability to carry on. And I still remember this.
Also, you don't see it on the broadcast, but from my vantage point
where I was seated in the media section, we were sort of closer to
Shane's corner. And again it doesn't show up on the broadcast, but when
he got dropped the second time, Back Moseley, who was Shane's trainer,
came up to the top step with the towel was going to throw in the
towel to stop that fight. I don't remember it was after the knockdowns,
it was later in the fight when he was taking punishment. But the bottom
line, at some point in that fight, Jack Mosey got up on the
ring step with the towel and was about to throw in the towel, and
cash Is Green, who was Sugar Shane's cut man. Literally he yanked him
by the back of his jacket and pulled him off the steps to keep him
throwing in the towel. And the fight carried on and Shane you know,
made it to the final bell and lost the unanimous decision and then ended up
losing again in the rematch, but that was such a at that time.
Again, you mentioned this is two thousand and you know what was it years?
Yeah, it's you know, it's sixteen months or so into my tenure
as the USA today box Ridder, I'm still you know, rookie ish if
you will. That was like the big upset that I saw at that time.
That was like a shocker, Like everybody thought, Sugar Shane is going
to get the revenge for the amateur loss, and Vernon he thought the fight
of his life that night the late Vernon Forest. And that's why we love
boxing. It is really expected. And when you thing about that, big
time fights and big time upsets and results. One other thing about that particular
about that card was on the undercard was the return of Artaro Gaddy, who
had been beaten by Oscar de la Hoya and a lot of people thought his
career was over after the Delie fight that was supposed to be his golden parachute
kind of fight, but he decided to go on and they matched him up
with the former junior walterweight champion Tron Mallett on the undercart and Gaddy came back
and got a fourth round knockout to resuscitate his career, which led to the
Mickey Ward fight. My memory. We talked about this with my situation with
Buddy McGirt about telling you the story about the blood. So this was the
fight where I met him in the lobby of the hotel the week of the
fight against Mallett to tell him the story about why I cover boxing, And
they can listen to that on the previous podcast, the notebook from a McGirt
fight. But that meeting between me and Buddy where I told him indulge me
and let me tell you this story happened about two or three days before this
fight with Arturo and Toronto Lett on the under part of that Sugar Shane fight
that we're talking about against Vernon Forest. I looked out and you just connected
like a web, everything Gotti to Moseley, to the Margarito controversy, to
Vernon Forest to Mosley and back to Gotti being on the undercard. I mean,
I mean, I know I've been. I've been. I've been covering
fights for a long time, and obviously I have a good knowledge of the
fights that before I covered boxing because I watched off you know whatever, you
know from the way back days, all the way to the time I covered
it. For me personally, the most special time in boxing for me was
those early two thousands of fights where we talk a lot about in the nostalgia
that are now around, you know, fifteen to twenty years old, maybe
a little bit more, because that was in the infancy of my career as
a boxing writer. So so much of it is so vivid to my mind
where I have a hard time maybe telling you details from a fight I covered,
you know, six or eight months ago, but I could tell you
chapter in reverse about shit that I did in two thousand and one. Hey,
but there's one more byproduct from that era that it is just lost now.
The fighters more active, they were more known, and therefore their match
jops were more notable, and that's where the bigger money was. And it
all went together. It all went together, with no disrespect to any other
broadcaster, that was HBO, the golden that was, That was the golden
age of that level of boxing. They were the the you know, whatever
you want to call us, steel you know, the New York Yankees,
however you want to describe it. They were the top of the food chain
and there's plenty of other broadcasters that have done a great job in covering the
sport, but when HBO did those types of fights, it just felt like
a big event. Whether it was because you heard the voice of Jim Lampley
and Larry Merchant and you know whoever the analyst was, whether it was George
Foreman or Emmanuel Stewart or you know, Bernard Hopkins, Jes whatever, Roy
Jones. Of course, uh, the graphics, the music, the production
values, I mean everything about it just fit perfectly. And they did so
many good fights at that time. Now, not all of them. I
don't want to have rose colored glasses. They did a lot of ship fights
also, but they still made a very strong, determined effort to give the
fans non pay per views of super high level fights. Shane Mosey vernon Forrest
one and two are among those types of fights, you know. Moseley versus
Margarito was one of those types of fights. You know, we could talk
about those kinds of fights all day long, and those were very special fights.
Well said, good way to wrap it up. Okay, so we've
given you a ton, including all the way back at the beginning of the
podcast, Himimongia John Ryder again, we will make mention that will handicap that
fight some more. Come find us on the bet Us Boxing Show some handicapping
of that one Eastern time Friday, bet Us platforms, YouTube, Twitter,
Twitch, all the bet Us platforms. We will be there Friday, one
Eastern time. And as I always like to say, whatever happens with that
fight card, we are back to recap it off the weekend. And do
you want to share with them? Do you want to tease them on who's
also going to be on the recap podcast? Who you just spoke to?
Do we want to let the cat out of the bag or no? Did
they just know we can talk about find out? I guess. You know.
We'll talk about it between you and me off the air, I guess,
but I'm not sure what order or when exactly will run these. There's
some interesting names. Let's just tease it this way. There's an interesting there's
an interesting world champion name. You just talked to you, and we're gonna
play it for the audience for the peeps, So I'll tell them. We've
got two interviews coming up that are that are set to go. One which
I found to be very interesting. Is the the promoter from the UK who
is head of the Boxer company that has the broadcast contract with Sky and now
with Peacock in the United States. That's Ben Shalom, and they've got some
good fights coming up. They were just a promoter of the Natasha Jonas against
Mikaela Meyer fight that was an ESPN fight because of Mayor's association with Top Rank.
But they've got a tremendous fight coming up on Peacock and Sky in the
UK with the WBA light heavyweight eliminator between Joshua Bowatzi and Dan Aziz, which
is a really good matchup, and the future fights on those broadcast platforms,
Chris Bill and Smith coming in a cruiserweight title events and other Anyways, had
a really interesting conversation with Ben about his start in boxing. He's a young
guy, is only thirty years old, and he's, you know, among
the top three guys in the UK. It's really a three headed monster,
so to speak. You got mat Room Boxing with their disowned deal, You've
got Frank Warren from Queensberry Promotions with the TNT Sports and Ben with Boxer and
Sky is a bigger platform than both of those other platforms, even though he's
not as experience as those other guys and their company is still in its infancy.
So that was a really good kind of fun interview to talk about.
And then we also have and this was a fun interview also. I spoke
just in the last couple of days with Tia Fima Lopez, the Junior Worlterweight
world champion, and we'll play that interview ahead of his upcoming title defense against
Jermaine Ortiz that will take place on February eighth. This is why you got
to listen, You gotta follow, you gotta subscribe to the Big Fight Weekend
podcast feed. So again, off the beat Us Show and off the weekend,
we'll come back and recap. You get us twice twice, the ray
Field twice, the fun you get us, the preview mode going into the
weekend, recap mode. Off the weekend and Sunday night into Monday. My
friend, I'll see you on the bet US show. Have a great weekend.
Let's see what happens with Mongia and Ryder coming this weekend, Dan Raphael,
thank you sounds good. I'll see in the bet US show. There
is our Insider Fight Preaks you night is his substack. I am merely TJ
Reeves. Thank you for finding us on the Big Fight Weekend preview