Speaker 1: All right off a weekend that has seen Raymond Murra
Taia Retainius IVF lightweight title in a bit of a
surprise get the win over Andy Fruz in the main
event for Matchroom and Desonne in Las Vegas. For ready
to talk about that debut of ZUFA Boxing with their
fight series that was also in Las Vegas. Why were
we not in Las Vegas for all the warm weather?
I know Dan Rayfield's wondering that. Welcome in. It is
the Fight Freaks Unit Recap podcast. I'm the somewhat capable host, TJ. Reeves.
He is our insider, Big Dan Rayfield, you would like
to report, despite your like the Post Office, neither sleet
nor snow nor sub zero temperatures you have posted on
the pod on Sunday. I love the meteorological terms that
they love to flaunt. What's the accumulation? What's the accumulation
right now in Northern Virginia for you, my friend?
Speaker 2: Well, I can't speak for all of Northern Virginia, but
I can speak for my specific like street, my neighborhood.
We probably have not eight inches and it's continuing to
heavily sleep.
Speaker 1: It started now you and I are doing this Sunday afternoon, Florida.
Full disclosure. When did the accumulation start? Mid midday Saturday
Saturday night?
Speaker 2: It started like late last night. And I went to
go to bed after the Maritayah, and after I was
done writing my story about that fight on Subseac, and
I'm mosying up to my room, probably about three o'clock
in the morning, and I looked out the window with
the street light. It was coming down and there was
already probably about an inch on the ground all through
the night, and then probably sometime in mid morning its
switched over. Now it's a sleepy mess. And of course
we got the notification for the least surprising thing of
all time that the schools closed on.
Speaker 1: Here is something vital that we never have to worry
about in Florida and most states in the South. More
than a second. Do you have to dig the car
out because of eight inches? Is it that packed in
around the tires and around the car?
Speaker 2: And we're not we're not dummies. We put the cars
in the drive in the garage.
Speaker 1: But still if you got eight inches outside the garage
door and you got to go somewhere in the car,
not suggesting that you would not.
Speaker 2: We're not going to go anywhere in the car number
one for the night because there's no We got plenty
of work, right right. We did our We did our
good things we're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm working towards. Are we going to
get some social media video of Rayfield with the shovel?
Is there no shovel in the future?
Speaker 2: Now, let me tell you something. Yeah, I've reached the
stage of my life. Yeah, where we hire the kids
to come plow that.
Speaker 1: I was about to say, you've reached the stage of
parenthood where young Rayfield you can spiff that's a great
old word, spiff him ten bucks, fifteen bucks and say, Junior,
clean the driveway out of.
Speaker 2: Or I can say, go do it for free, because
I gave you life, and I give you shelter and
food and clothes.
Speaker 1: You want to eat some of this stuff and not
have four layers of clothes on in the freezing cold,
Go shovel the driveway.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I love this. Okay? Should I mention right about now
eighty two degrees this afternoon in Tampa Bay it is
definitely different. Again, I'm not making light of this. This
is a mess all over the South, we're not ready
for this rayfield freezing conditions, with the frozen sleet, the
frozen rain, iced over roads. Again, this is not the north,
the northeast New England, even you with northern Virginia. An
inch or two of ice and sleet and it's over
baby in the South for several days.
Speaker 2: In upstate New York and we were used to that
eight inches was like a dusting. But here in Virginia,
having lived here for you know, over twenty years at
this point was twenty something, twenty plus years, right, Uh,
they just have no clue how to clean things up
because we're not exactly so the eight inches turns into
like you know, school closures and work closures and road closures.
It's a complete but.
Speaker 1: And again they're gonna be tons, millions, millions and millions
and millions all over the South in particular when we're
power without stuff.
Speaker 2: But we're hunkered down. We got our we got our
milk and our eggs and our bread and our groceries
and we're good to go and all right, well hang out.
Speaker 1: This is this is good, all right, So thank you
for hanging out here with us as we're as we're
ready to rock on on the pod feed.
Speaker 2: By the way, I'm going to say a thing. I'm
a little concerned just because of the mass amount of
airline delays and cancelations that a lot of people who
are involved with the big fight between Shaquar Stevenson and
Tiafimo Lobez which is coming up on Saturday, many many
people involved with that event are traveling are supposed to
be traveling on Sunday and Monday to get to New York.
So for luck, people like Eddie Hurd and his team
who are promoting the Maratia card, as well as Shakor
who was training in Vegas and Keishan Davis who was
training in Vegas, who were at the show, all of
them are supposed to go to New York presumably either
on Sunday or Monday for a fight week. And Tiafimo,
who's been training in South Florida, is supposed to go
to New York, you know, probably today or tomorrow also,
so it's gonna be a mess.
Speaker 1: I saw the New York airports on Sunday morning that
LaGuardia announced were closed for like three hours while they're
having to try to plow the runways you know the
minor detail of we got to clear the area where
the planes can take off and land by the way
that they had already canceled over fifteen one hundred flights
per Sunday and Monday. Just to look Wardia. I know
two people that are trying to get back from Florida
or in the South to New York and they were
told Rayfael Wednesday or Thursday before the attempt is going
to be made for them. All right, good luck with
all the air travel and all the stuff. And you
bring up a great point, but you've got several days
for them to get there and be able to be
there for Fight week, for that fight at Madison Square Garden. Right,
So more on that land in a week. Nice interview
with Dan with Teya Fimo Lopez. We'll put that up
here on the podcast feed. We'll also put it on
the Big Fight Weekend YouTube page. You and Tia Fimo
Lopez talking about this fight with Shakur Stevenson. You had
him one on one. You'll see that. All right, let's
get to it. Let's get to this Raymond Muratia win
that headlines Saturday Nights match Room de Zone show in Vegas.
Where Murratia defeats Andy Cruz. I will say this action
pack fight, and I thought Murratyle was justifiably the winner
because most importantly, I thought he was the better fighter
in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth round to finish off
the fight. Cruise again, the former Cuban Olympic gold medalist
had fast tracked his title shot. What are your thoughts
now now that Muratia has won and clearly made himself
a player at lightweight.
Speaker 2: Well, he was already a player just by the mere
fact that he had had the title. But that was
the trip first of all, and I say this all
the time, really really outstanding fight, I mean really good, exciting,
not going to be the fight of the year, but
a high class, you know, just a really really entertaining fight.
Lots of back and forth, both guys, you know, with
really good skills. Both guys were making adjustments throughout the fight.
I mean you could really it was almost like a
chess match, but that was a fight as opposed to
just a boxing match. It was really outstanding, totally enjoyable
to watch, and I thought the scores were justified in
terms of having Murtia as the winner. He did enter
the fight as a little bit of the underdog, which
I understood because of the fact that Maurtia has never
fought that way before. He fought by far and away,
the best fight of his career. I think it's a
testament to the to the hard work he put in
that he knew that he was in with a real
opponent for the work that is outstanding trainer Robert Garcia did.
He had him prepared as best as he possibly could be.
Scorers One fourteen to one fourteen from Max de Luca
totally justified. I could see it. Steve Weisfeld, who I've
long considered the best judge in boxing, one sixteen, one twelve,
as we discussed, often within the range of acceptable scores.
My scorecard was one fifteen to one thirteen in favor
of Maretaya, and then Tim Cheatham, who's been a good
judge for a long time. I just feel like he
had an off night, scoring it one eighteen to one
ten in favorite.
Speaker 1: More atish, why do we always keep them one eighteen,
one ten, ten to two in a competitive front of
the day. It doesn't matter who it is or what
it is. If we get this over and over again.
Speaker 2: But the most important thing, you know, all due respect
to Tim, uh, the right guy won the fight. You know,
if he had it won eighteen one ten, that's I
don't think that's a great card, but uh, at least
he had it for the right winner. It wasn't some
wacky outlier where the other guy who you know, ended
up getting the call. So Martia wins. But here's the
thing about it, TJ. It was such a good fight
that certainly Murti is gonna go on and have bigger
fights and either defend this title he talked about afterwards
he liked to move up to one forty. He called
out for the winner of Tia Fimo in Jakur, which
would really be a good fight. If he could fight
that way against either of those guys. You absolutely can
give him a good chance to win against either of
those guys. But the beautiful thing about this fight from
my perspective also is that although Andy Cruz comes up
short and is the loser of the fight, in no way,
shape or for him does his stock go down. He
fought a really really outstanding fight. I thought he thought
brilliantly at times. So he falls to six and one.
Obviously he wanted to win the world title, great Olympic
champion and all time amateur, and you live and learn.
I look at it similar, not the same, but like
take for example, Lomachenko, brilliant amateur. Some people think he's
the greatest amateur of all time. He got a title
shot in his second professional fight. He lost a competitive
and close decision to Orlandos Toledo, and in no way
did that take away, you know, his upward trajectory in
the sport. He came right back and remember in that fight,
Solito did not make the weight. He came back in
his next fight, uh, and still got the opportunity for
the vacant title. And we you know, we can uh,
we know what happened with Lomachenka went on to become
a great fighter and he's going to be Hall of
famer in multiple weight classes, set all kinds of records
in terms of the quickness to get to certain titles
and unified titles, et cetera. And uh and and kind
of ironically, if you will, or coincidentally, whatever word you choose, uh,
the Maritaya title, the IBF lightweight belt was the belt
that that that Lomachenko had won and then vacated and retired,
and therefore Maurtaia was upgraded to the full title. Or
so it's sort of like just sort of the way
things go, uh, the evolution of h from one career
to the next. But Andy Cruz fought a really, really
outstanding fight. He's not the prototypical Cuban boxer that has
crazy skills but doesn't necessarily entertain. We talked about this
before his decision to go to Philadelphia and to be
trained by Bosey Ennis, the father Jeron boot Tennis, showed
he was serious about turning his great skills also into
a pro style. So while he possesses great speed and
lateral movement and a good job and you know, every
bit of IQ you could ask for, uh, he is
absolutely not afraid to stand and nix it up at times.
It just made for a sensational fight and uh, you know,
a great job from ur A tie in his team.
Speaker 1: One thing that I did notice and he did this
about four or five times, and crews did this in
the amateur ranks. And it's a Cuban teaching tool and
tactic that if you score a punch, stick your arm
up like to the judges like, I just landed that,
and he was still doing that, uh, even though this
is now his seventh professional fight. He did it several
times in the fight, and that and that kind of
said to me, Okay, that reeks a little bit of
muscle memory, inexperience or whatever.
Speaker 2: Diehard, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Probably the pro judges, they don't care about that crap
about you sticking your arm up and waving at him,
that you landed a punch and he got hit more.
And some of it again is in your You're in
with much better competition and it's a longer fight. He
got hit more than I think, Uh, he was maybe
accustomed to or used to in any other setting. But
it was also again credit Maritia.
Speaker 2: He it was the first time, you know, he's had
previously scheduled twelve round fights like in the eliminator, for example,
but it's the first time he ever went into the
eleventh round of a fight. Uh. And I didn't think he.
I thought he was in great shape. It didn't seem
like stamina was an issue. That wasn't like he didn't
see he he he didn't finish as strong as Maurtia,
but he certainly wasn't kind of you know, dying at
the end of the fight, if you know what I mean.
But for me and I saw some other people sort
of echo the same, uh situation, is that I had
that fight five rounds to five going into the eleventh round,
and I gave the eleventh and the twelfth round both
to Mauritia, and that's what gave him the edge on
my square card. It was just, like I said, a
really really good fight. And if you didn't see it, man, yeah,
absolutely worth the rewatch. I's just from start to finish,
really know, I just like it. You could just see
their minds going through what the needed to do, like
what adjustment can I make? And it was really crowd
pleasing from that standpoint, and they both fun at a
high level.
Speaker 1: On the copy box stats. I know you wrote this
in your substack, and I saw it in the recap too.
In the twelve rounds, each fighter out landed the other
six times, almost even as far as nut almost even.
Speaker 2: It was either I mean.
Speaker 1: Again, some of those punches maybe more cumulatively over those
six individual rounds, but to have that happen tells you
it was a competitive at the.
Speaker 2: End of at the end of six rounds. Murthaia landed
more in those six rounds, and in the other six rounds,
CRUs had the advantage. Here's the other again, I know,
copy box, it's not official. It's a guide. Obviously they
missed punches here and there, but it's over the course
of their forty years. It is a pretty good estimation
of at least the quantity of punches, if not definitely
not the quality of punches. But this is a great
stat by the way, based on this from this Murtia
and Cruise fight, they were only separated by in only
four rounds of the fight where they separated more than
four punches landed. So even like if Cruz landed more
in a particular round, most of the time it was
not by more than four punches, which essentially is even
I mean, you know, because again they can't catch every
single shot. So it was a very very competitive fight.
Their styles mets beautifully. They both came in good shape.
They both really wanted it, and I think Marthia showed
a lot. I mean, he's kind of under I mean,
I've always thought high of him when I had him
on a prospect list, you know, however, many years ago.
But he's kind of sometimes been underwhelming in the fights,
even though he's been winning. He was not underwhelming in
this fight. He did a great job in this fight,
and so did Cruz. All Right, I'm just gonna win
and somebody's gonna lose.
Speaker 1: Marethia said in the ring, I would want Shakour or
Tya Fimo Lopez coming up. How realistic is that for
a unification fight?
Speaker 2: What do you think, Well, it wouldn't be unification. Well,
let me rip backtrack the fight between ten Team, which
occurs at one forty. So if Shaquor win or lose,
was back down to thirty five where he still has
the WBC title, right, I guess not out of the
realm of possibility. And if whoever is the winner is
going to stay at one forty, perhaps also not out
of the realm of possibility. One thing about a top
rank is more willing now to match guys on other
promoters cards as they struggled along without a right steal.
While Mura Tai would get paid a lot of money
to fight either Shakur or Tiafimo, he probably would fit
the budget for that kind of fight because those guys
are gonna want to make the lions share, So from
the financial standpoint, it seems like it would be doable,
but they'll also have other options whoever wins that fight.
But it's good to know that you have a good,
undefeated champion that you could look to as one possibility.
And part of the reason for I think his request
for that type of fight is because if you take
a look at the rest of the lightweight division, least
in terms of the possibility for unification fights. So Shakor's
title is kind of up in there because we don't
know what's going to happen win or lose against tia Fimo.
Abdulla Mason is the WBO champion who was also with
top ranks, so theoretically they can make that fight probably
quite easily. But I don't think anybody thinks that fight's
ready to be made yet. No offense to Abdula Macy
just won the title. They're clearly going to go home
and have a hometown fight at some point, you know,
and that I don't I don't look at that as
like you're marinating. There's not a lot of public demand
for that fight yet. Neither guy is a big star yet,
so you know, while it would certainly be a fun fight.
I would be happy to watch it. I just don't
think that's realistic. Raymond Murtaia has the IBF title and
the WBA belt currently is vacant, So in terms of
title unification, you know, there's not a lot to deal
with at the moment. So h but he just scored
a great win and I'm sure he's not gonna lack
for possible you know, interesting matchups.
Speaker 1: All right, give me the rest. On the undercard, Khalil
Cole did not please. Okay, he won one big, big,
big quote marks. Yeah, it wasn't much of a fight there.
But also we had Israel Madram Off, we had Amari
Jones on this card. Give me, give me the recap
of the undercard.
Speaker 2: Let's go through the co fight co fight against Jesse Art.
First of all, straight up, I feel like Jesse Yart
got fucking robbed in that fight, Okay, and not like dramatic.
It's not like Jesse won the fight ten to nothing
or anything like that. But when you go and watch
all ten rounds, he was out hustling Khalil Co. He
was out landing Khalil Co most of the time.
Speaker 1: There were multiple rounds. I saw this too, because I
saw a little of the fight, but I saw the
recaps of the fight were cod through through fewer than
ten punches in a round, like over and over and
over again, more than two or three.
Speaker 2: He was absolutely fucking terrible in that fight. Jesse Yard
is thirty six years old. He started out as a
super middleweight. He put up two extremely good performances and
losses against Zerdo Ramirez back in the day. He deserved
this fight. Khalil Co is an absolute mutt. If you
ask me, you know, and anybody out there you want
to tell him, I said that, go right ahead. Khalil
Co is one of the most disappointing fighters I can
think of in recent times. He came into the pros
with a very strong reputation from his amateur days. He
makes fun fights. He's got skills, he's got power, he's
got good size. He's now eleven one and one after
this fight. That is a total of a of a
pro career. Of what thirteen professional fights, he has missed
weight in about six of them. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 1: So he's wasting the potential and wasting our time because
he doesn't appear to care enough for train enough.
Speaker 2: So what's terrible about this one, in particular is the
fight's contract at one hundred and seventy five pounds the
light heavyweight limit. He doesn't tell his management, he doesn't
tell his promoter, he doesn't tell anybody that it's there's
going to be a problem. And the last thing anybody
wants to see on the day of the way. And
whether you're the promoter or you're the manager, or you're
the other side, you don't like surprises, at least if
you know what's coming you can get your hands with.
Speaker 1: How don't they don't they weigh a couple of days before,
just so everybody knows. Usually typically where I'm talking about
the team, the team knows, hey, he's not closed, but.
Speaker 2: The promoter and the manager are. What's going on? So
Eddie Hearn and you know his manager is Keth Conley.
They're not standing there when when he's standing on the scale.
So the contract weight one seventy five. He comes in
as my good friend TJ. Reeves likes to say, he
missed the highway. He missed the exit of the highway
by about ten exits. He was one hundred and eighty
two point eight pas pound over he well pounds over, dude,
he was almost eight pounds over.
Speaker 1: The liv didn't train, You didn't train to make the way.
That's what that comes back to.
Speaker 2: So in the end, because they're bigger guys, this is
not like a guy at one hundred and you know,
twelve pounds fly weight missing by eight pounds. There was
no issue with the commission. It wasn't a championship fight,
so they weren't going to cancel the fight. So they
did make a financial deal and jesse Art picks up
you know, another you know, several tens of thousands of
dollars to continue with the with the assignment.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And then Cohen out there and fought terribly. I thought
jesse Art won the first four rounds of the fight. Yes,
he started to run out of gas a little bit
later on and certainly had his problems in the last
couple of rounds. He got knocked around a little bit,
but you know, so he probably lost cleanly, maybe like
three of those rounds, but he won the other rounds.
It was close, but the one guy was making the fight.
One guy was better shots. He rocked Khalil Coe a
couple of times. I just thought this was a terrible
decision ninety five to ninety three. Uh, in favor of
a ninety five, ninety three, ninety six, ninety two for
CO One. Judge had it ninety four to ninety four.
I had it ninety five, ninety six to ninety two
for Heart is the Zone Broadcasting team. Uh. You know,
mainly Chris Mannix Uh. I thought he had a good
scorecard ninety five to ninety three. You know, this was
this was the the A side getting the benefit of
out in my opinion, just a shitty card. And by
the way, here's the thing. Jesse Hart will get calls
for other fights, you know, and Khalil Co wouldn't be
surprised to se him get released. That's how fucking bad
he was.
Speaker 1: M hmm.
Speaker 2: Here's what I think got CO and this this is,
this is this is just the way I fell for
a long time with all those weight misses. You know
the movie Bull Durham yep, one of my all try
and favorite movies. Yes, the character of Nukle loose the
minor league. Yes, Crash Davis is supposed to mentor and
turn into a real professional and then take this stuff down.
Speaker 1: Meet You're gonna need it later with the exacta.
Speaker 2: So here's the thing about khalil Oh. He is in
for the parlance of bull Durham. He's got a million
dollar arm and a ten cent head.
Speaker 1: That's right exactly in strikeouts, new league record eighteen walks,
also a two league record.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, so.
Speaker 1: Enough about him in that, give me more on madrm
Off and then also Amari Jones were interested in go
all right.
Speaker 2: So Magie Moov of course had the WBA title at
junior middleweight and had looked good despite just a very
few professional fights, was a top amateur. He lost that
title in a super close fight to Terrence Crawford in
August of twenty four. I think now that Terrence Crawford
is retired. If you go down and you look at
the entire resume of Terrence Crawford's great career, I think
it's very fair to say that the toughest fight he
ever got in his entire professional career was on the
night he met Israel Majimov in Los Angeles. It was
a super close fight. It's probably the only fight you
could ever even think that maybe Terrence Crawford didn't win
the fight. There was quite a few people I was
at that fight, a few people that thought Magemov had
done enough to eke it out. And then in his
next fight he fought another very competitive and outstanding fight
against Virgil Ortiz and he lost the decision there. That
was for the WBC's interim title. So he was coming
off of the eleven month layoff, the back to back losses.
As they detailed on the broadcast, he had a couple
of surgeries for some smaller injuries. He also had about
of pneumonia which apparently had not fully recovered from. He's
still dealing with the after effects of that, and frankly
it showed. So while he did go out there against
an unknown fighter from the Dominican Republic, Luis David Salazar,
who had no reputation and a resume filled with absolute
Nobodi's magie mov, while he won the fight going away
ninety nine to ninety one and all three score cards,
this was not a very top level performance from Madro.
We've certainly seen him fight a lot better. He didn't
look and he was in the best condition, and I
think there was a lot to be said that the
after effects of the pneumonia, like you don't fight for
eleven months, you've got two losses they just come off of,
and you've had this illness and you've dealt with some injury.
He's like, I'm going to cut the guy some slack.
I mean, he's you know, he's been always a hard
worker and he's been a pretty damn good fighter. So
I'll look at this as like a bump in the road.
Whether he can get back to the love he was
on the ninety foul Crawford, you know, that remains to
be seen. But he gets to win, but it was
not impressive. And as they were talking about on the broadcast,
should the the negotiations ultimately and totally fail to make
the fight between Virgil Ortiz and Boutennis, And we've discussed
that at nauseum, and that fight is teetering on the
brink of not happening. Boutennis is gonna fight and blso
with match from boxing, as is Israel Magema. And so
when they constructed the short list of who could Boutennis
fight other than Virginal Ortiz if they have to go
a different direction, Israel Majmav was on the top of
that list. Whether it's going to translate into actually getting
a fight based on a very lackluster performance in this
fight against Salazar that remains to be seen. I think
if you watch the fight Saturday and you're familiar with Boutennis,
I don't think there's anyone we give Israel Magema of
a chance at hell to beat Boutsennis. And those are
not the kinds of fights, four main event fights that
that the Zowen and Matcham are looking for. So you know,
we'll see what they go to do after this and
who else is on that list. But you know, I
wish that Maginem of good luck and getting better from
whatever his elements are and his injuries and the in
the pneumonia situation. But to get the bigger fights, he
probably gonna have to look better than they did against
a guy that nobody ever heard of, and it wasn't
a very particular entertaining fight on top of that. As
far as Amari Jones goes, one of my very favorite
prospects in boxing. He's now five and zero with four knockouts.
He did go the distance with an extremely tough, very resilient,
very big hearted guy named Jerome Baxter from Pittsburgh who
suffered his first loss. But Jerome Baxter may never be
a world champion, may never you know, be a top
top fighter. But Jerome Baxter earned himself a lot of
phone calls off this performance. People are gonna want to
put him in with their other prospects to test them. Also,
he showed an amazing chin. He did survive a knockdown
in this fight on a very very very pinpoint jab
early in the fight. He showed a lot of balls,
a lot of heart, and he tried That's all you
can ask for. He came back. Just doesn't have the
same skill level as a as a great amateur like
Omar Jones and now a fledgling, you know, top level
prospect in the in the professional ranks. But this was
a good thing for Amari Jones. He went the distance
for the first time in a sixth rounder. He won
sixty to fifty three and all three score cards. It
was crowd pleasing, Like if you are Amari Jones supporter,
if you are his management, if you are match Room Boxing,
you looked at this fight and you got exactly what
you hoped for. A very good performance. Got in rounds.
He had never been past the third round before, got
a knockdown, showed offense, showed defense, and a crowd pleasing
style with an opponent who was there to actually try
to win, even though he was obviously outclassed. So as
an opening, you know that type of fight. Lower on
the main card, it was. It was a good performance
from Jones. I think he's going very far in this game.
I think he's going to be a future world champion.
Speaker 1: And let's see him more frequently because again we keep
talking us, if you are active, if you are in
the consciousness of the fight, fans are going to be
more interested in you and get the reps, get the fights.
Speaker 2: He's at the stage of his career right now where
he is fighting regular I mean, Natrimis is keeping him
on a good schedule. He's fighting every few months, and
that's exactly how it should be, all right.
Speaker 1: ZUFA Boxing had its debut. We talked about it at
length in the preview mode, and again, none of these
fights are ever going to be mistaken for stellar Hall
of Fame memorable fights, but they did get underway. It
was streamed on Paramount Plus. What was your overall thought
here as Callum Walsh won the main event. I was
a bit surprised he didn't stop Carlos Ocampo, a guy
that had been drilled in one round by Errol Spence
and Tim Zuo. As we well documented before this fight,
Walsh the up and comer undefeated. It was a decision fight.
What did you think of the main event and overall
on the show, as ZUFA debuted.
Speaker 2: A lot unpack. I guess as far as the product
it goes, I think it was successful. I mean they
got to and look, I mean, I'll echo the words.
I watched the post fight news conference where Dana White addressed,
you know the entirety of the show and you know
everything in it. As he said, there's a lot of
kinks to work out, there's a lot of things that
they want to do as and his quote was, the
fights were great, but we've got a lot of work
to do, and that's I think affairs. I mean, perhaps
overstating the fights are great, because the main event was
a big stinker, but the rest of the show was
fairly entertaining. You know, we'll catch our stride to the
next three, four or five fights and by the end
of the year we'll be where he wants to be.
He said, he's got it out. He said, I got
a whole list of stuff that we're going to go
through on Monday. Obviously, it was very busy on Saturday
night because they had their big UFC three twenty four
at team and I thought this was the way, just.
Speaker 1: A quick aside and we're going to keep it real
and keep it fair. You wouldn't expect him to say
anything other than those things that they got to get better,
they got to get it right, you will get it right.
Those are the things you would expect. So what did
you think? But on present the production, how it was?
Speaker 2: This is the comment that I liked from Data as
he said, it took twenty five years to get UFC
to become the well oiled machine that it is, and
we're going to do that in a lot less time
in terms of the boxing side of our company. So uh,
the production I thought was pretty solid. They got once
once the pre fight shit was over with, They did
get to the fights pretty quickly. They didn't spend a
million years between each of the bouts on the main card,
so that was good. Uh. They obviously have a very
professional announced team in terms of people like Joe Tessitoor
has been calling fights for a long time. Max Kellerman
and andre Ward top notch professionals. I could frankly do. Uh.
They did a good job, like they always do. I
could do with a little less on the on the
zoofa cheerleading. Put it like that, and I get it's
the first show. I get it's it's their bosses and
call the fights. Most people, once the we all like
to discuss the promotions and the business and all the bullshit.
But once the fights are going, the promoter talk about
the fighters in the fights. I don't need to hear
about zoof I don't hear about Dana and TKO and
all this. Let's just stick to what we got, which is,
you know, the matchups that were there to watch. As
far as the fights go, I mean, we all knew
going into the show these were not world class fights,
and they didn't and to their credit, they didn't try
to tell the public these were big championship all the fights.
The level of difference between seeing Callum Walsh against Carlos
o'campo and Raymond Maratai against Andy Cruz is extraordinarily obvious. Look, oh,
Campo is just a guy. He should not be in
the main event on a televised show. In my opinion,
he's never gonna beat the elite fighters or the top guys.
Klum wash beat him, you know, very easily. It was
unfortunately a boring fight. I don't I don't fault. That's
not zufa's fault. I feel like when they made the match,
they felt there could be entertaining I feel like the matchmakers,
as we spoke about in the pre fight, did a
very good job in terms of at least making matches that,
while maybe not meaningful, would at least produce some entertainment value. Unfortunately,
this one was not the case.
Speaker 1: I agree with my assessment that Walls should have gotten
him out of there. And what I mean, he's a
rising fighter that's had some knockouts. O Campo has been
knocked out I know by world class yeah Colver fighters before.
Should he have gotten him out of there.
Speaker 2: It's not a matter of should he or All I
know is he didn't. And the fact of the matter
is when I see the way he performed, and it's
not just this fight, it's other fights in the last
you know, few fights he has had. The onus now
is on him to show that he's a serious prospect.
I'm beginning to believe that probably he isn't. I don't
say that because I'm rooting against him ornything, right. He
seems like a lovely guy, a hard worker, you know,
got a very appealing personality. But I just haven't seen
it in the skills and in the ability to get
guys out of there. And O Campo, you know, had
no prayer in this fight. I mean he survived the
first round. I mean he took a couple of solid
shots in the end. The scores were ninety eight to
ninety on two score guards ninety seven to ninety one
on the third. It was an extraordinarily uninspiring fight from
by all accounts, you know. But again, I'm not going
to judge the overall zoof of product very harshly because
to me, everybody should be fair. Let them have a
few fights before you make us true assessment. You can't
just judge it on the first event. So a lot
of things they did really well. Like I said, the
production was pretty solid. I'd love to see the fighters
they were wearing essentially ZOOFA uniforms as opposed to having
their own kind of trunks and you know, walk out stuff.
But they're basically copying what they've done in UFC. I
like the boxer to be able to have a little
bit of the personality and put the kind of robot
and the kind of trunks on that they want to work,
but not bowling.
Speaker 1: This is not team sports right to.
Speaker 2: Me, that though, that's small stuff. One thing about it though,
the Apex where they held the fight, it didn't it
just didn't look very good on television, to be quite honest.
The crowd was not really into it. It didn't seem like
that there. It's obviously a small place. They have expanded it.
It held about seven hundred, I guess for the show
on Friday night. I heard some interviews with Dana. They're
expanding and changing around some configurations eventually to hold about
eleven hundred. So I think they can improve that a
little bit. And I'm not being hypercritical. These are just
like smaller type things. I would saying this all in all,
for the first event of something that has come together
rather quickly, they did a pretty good job. And it's
you know again, just because the main event was stunk
out loud, Uh, that's not an indictment on the product.
Because there's gonna be plenty of main events, and you
know this one will be long forgotten. It'll just live
on as a as a trivia question down the road
of what their first main event was.
Speaker 1: And the other couple of fights. Real quick before we
meet one of the news.
Speaker 2: So Missiel Rodriguez was in the co feature against Austin Dinana.
That that you know, he had a good performance, Rodriguez
and getting the stoppage. He's a Robert Garcia fighter. Robert
obviously had MURRATAII outside Garcia, so he was busy in Vegas.
You know, he won the third round, won the first
three rounds and all the scorecards, and then got the
stoppage in the fourth when uh, there had been some
punishment taken by by the fighter and in the cornery
city had double vision, and obviously that's an immediate thing
to stop the fight. So you can There's really not
much of talk about on that fight other than that
Rodriguez kept his his undefeated record and is now sixteen
to o and the is now seventeen and one. He
looked more like a club fighter than a real true professional,
and we're going to see some of that in the
beginning the fight of the night, and this was you know,
they give out sort of like the UFC does they
give out the performance bonuses, where they give out fight
of the night, performance of the night, that type of thing.
This was the best fight on the show, even including
the preliminary fights. This was and I think I said
this in our pre fight when we were breaking it
down on the last episode. This was a welterweight fight
between Julian Hammer Hans Rodriguez, who people have seen. He
was with Top Rank for a long time, had some injuries,
had some layoffs. He was in the main event, I
mean in the opening fight against Cane Sandibal, who's been
a California fighter that's been on a lot of Tom
Loffers three sixty Promotions cards. Now Tom was working with ZUFA. Anyway,
they put on a really good, outstanding battle, really fun fight.
In the end, it was one sided on the score cards,
with Rodriguez winning pretty handling ninety nine to ninety one
on two cards ninety eight ninety two. But those two
guys let it all hang out, put on a really
good show. Rodriguez showed a lot of personality in his
interview afterwards, dull He's got a chance maybe maybe not necessarily.
Uh gonna make the pound for poundless. And we can't
even talk about him now being like a champion of
one of the organizations because they're gonna be fighting eventually
for a ZUFA belt. He did say he wants to
zoof a welterweight title, but he's gonna be a guy.
I think they can at least early on, if you
want to see guys stay busy and make good fights.
They can build a little bit around Julian Rodriguez. It
was a good fight that was a very enjoyable and
Standibal Uh, you know, fought pretty good also even though
he lost, and they'll probably bring him back. That's one
of the things they've talked about is you know, just
because you lose, you're under contract. We're gonna we're gonna
make another fight for you and hopefully you'll be entertaining
the next time, so you know. And there was plenty
of good action on the preliminary fights. There was, you know,
some guys better than others. Robert Merriweather the third, a
young kid looked really good in his uh in his showing.
So again, as Dana White said, and I completely agree,
it is one hundred percent will be a work in progress,
if you know what I mean. This is not gonna
happen overnight. We're have to let it go, let it,
let it develop. There's another card coming up on this
coming Friday, and then they got another one in early
February or February fourteenth, so we'll see. We're going to
get three fights in the bank, three shows in the
bank right from mid February by on which we can
tell a bigger conclusion.
Speaker 1: So that is a segue now to more news about
ji Opataiah joining Zoofa boxing and the date will now
be March the eighth, by the way, which wish me
happy birthday. That is my birthday coming up on March
the eighth, So Opataiah will fight opponent to be.
Speaker 2: Isn't that the anniversary of Ali and.
Speaker 1: Friday Fraser one was my first birthday?
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: I've joked with you before on the pod and you
don't remember this that there is old eight millimeter movie
film of my first birthday in a little tiny apartment
in Mississippi and South Haven, Mississippi, where my family lived,
and they had written on my birthday cake, happy one Birthday.
I don't want to say that they're illiterate in that
part of the world in the early seventies, that's pretty
much illiteracy. But that was my oneth birthday was Ali
Fraser one, nineteen seventy one. There you go anyway, March
the eighth, ji Opataia will fight. Now you've been digging around,
We've had a couple of days. What are you Are
you hearing anything about who the opponent might be or
what do we know for the ZUFA main event with
the IBF Cruise Awey Champion, is it gonna be an IBF.
Speaker 2: Defense and the Ring Magazine Champion the Ring?
Speaker 1: But is it gonna be an IBF defense? What are
you hearing? Go? No?
Speaker 2: I mean, but I listen. He's still co promoted by
Tasman Fighters, and when I spoke to them when the
announcement was made that he had also joined ZUFA, they
made it very clear to me that part of the
deal that they made was yes, he's going to be
allowed to defend his sanctioning body title, and Dana White
said as much when asked about it in the press
conference that was prior to this first kickoff cart Because
there has been a lot of ambiguity there, because how
can you sign a sanctioning body champion when all you
have done since this has become creation. We talk about
how we're not going to so they're gonna, apparently, as
Danas spoke about, when you can go back and listen
to what we talked about it in the last episode, they're
gonna let these top champions that they do sign fight
in their organizational belts. Now. Of course, Turkey al shehk
owns the Ring magazine and therefore owns the ring title,
so he has that ring belt also, but he still
wants to be undisputed, which means unifying the sanctioning body belts.
And while they did so, Jai was there. He had
come to Vegas to do the signing and he attended
the ZUFA show. On their post fight show on Paramount Plus,
they had him on the stage there to do an
interview with their with their team and talked about his
excitement to be here and how thrilled he was for
a young kid from you know, to have big dreams
as a kid in Australia, you know, to now coming
to Las Vegas to defend the world title be his
first fight in the United states he was like over
the moon, as they say, and is very excited about it.
And he did not though mention a specific opponent. However,
there were photos that were put up on the various
I think it was on Zufa social media and on
ji social media. I believe it was where backstage he
did a face off and Rick Reno, who was the
CEO of the Ring magazine, who's the one that's in
all the photos that you see at the weigh ends
these days wearing his hat and his sunglasses. They did
a face off between JII and Noel Mcallian, the recently
crowned WBC champion by virtue of his victory in December
against both the Due Jack. Now, if he wants a unification,
that's the only unification he because Rairez.
Speaker 1: That seems like the logical fight, right. The only question
becomes can they put that together in under sixty days?
Speaker 2: I would you think so? I think it's I mean,
it's certainly possible. There's no reason why they can't. I
mean McAllan fought in December. Uh, he didn't come out,
by the best of my knowledge, with any kind of
particular injuries or anything like that. He was there present
to face off with the guy. Clearly he knows that
that represents for him one hundred percent the biggest paid
that he could have, and I'm sure he has aspirations
to also be a unified champion. And as I mentioned,
he can't fight for the other unified title because Zerdo
has the other two belts and he's got to fight
that's on the docket for a second against Benavidez. So
if he wants to fulfill his dreams of unifying, uh,
you gotta fight Noel McCallion right now. Both guys are
unencumbered by a mandatory defense in the next fight, so
there should be no reason they can't do that fight.
ZUFA clearly has the financial backing where if they want
to buy the you know, make the match, they now
have a gi under contract. I mean that. I'm not
saying it's a great fight, but at least it's gives
the opportunity.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's compelling a cruiser weight, and it's for two
of the belts. And again, Turkey al Chic has a
relationship with Giopatia, paying him a bunch of money for
the Red Season cards that he fought on, So a
lot of this adds up. Then again it's boxing.
Speaker 2: So I mean, I would hope that if they went
to the efforts to have their people make a face
off with them and pose and put it on their
social that they're serious about making the actual fight. Don't
don't tease me that you're gonna make a unification between
Opataia and mccalliy some regular.
Speaker 1: Guys if you're Noel mcaley and what other significant fight
can you get on your own and where? And there's
your answer, So all right, stay tuned.
Speaker 2: I think logically this is probably the fight, and I
sure hope this. I hope they don't do something that
what I would consider bad way to do it is
to put him in Opatai against you know whoever, and
put mckellian against whoever, like in the co feature for example,
and then you know, have the fighting unification later in
the year. Let's let's not fuck around if they're going
to follow the UFC model. The UFC model is you
make the fight when it makes sense, and it makes
sense now to do it, especially early in your paramount
plus days where you're trying to stoke interest in maybe
more meaningful fights than you know, Callum Walsh against you
know Carlos o Campo.
Speaker 1: All right, something else off the weekend that Matt Room
is apparently back in play because ZUFO was talking with
Jesse Bam Rodriguez. There's another name, and this is something
that you and I have talked about. This is going
to help the leverage for the fighters on negotiating on
where do I go, what do I do? Give me
the latest because Bam, as we discussed previously, you wrote
about this on the substack, was essentially a promotional free agent,
but it looks like Mattroom is going to retain him.
Give me the latest here.
Speaker 2: Well, it wasn't. He was essentially a free agent. He
was a free agent. He was allowed to go talk
to anybody. The contract expired. They have had a good
relationship of course, between Mattroom and Bam. Has flourished under
the direction of Matchroom Boxing. Now they've gone about putting
together his events. He's one of the best fighters in
boxing period, a unified three bel champion in the Junior
vandamweight division, a rising American star. Has a great team.
His manager and his trainer, Robert Garcia, that done a
phenomenal job with him from the day one. Robert has
had him. But when they became free agents, of course
they're going to go talk to people, and ZUFA was
making a play to sign him. You know, clearly if
they're signing Opataia and they've been talking to ou sick
and if a guy like Bam Rodriez you know, a
twenty five years older he just turned I guess a
couple days ago, twenty six years old comes on the market.
Why in the world wins you go talk with Your
idea is to try to surround yourself and your company
with the best fighters in the world. So they made
an offer to zuof for boxing that is confirmed by
both I've confirmed that with Mattrium and with Robert they
were offered a contract, but in the Matchroom agreement that
they that had expired, and this is not uncommon, This
happens in a lot of promotional deals. Matchroom Boxing retained
the right to match any offer, So once he received
an offer from ZUFA or perhaps any other offers he
may have received, they're obligated to bring that offer to
Matchrim and Mattrium, i was told, has matched the offer
and while he hasn't re signed on the contract in
terms of pen to paper, he will now be obligated
to re sign based on matching the offer, and so
they're going to move forward with their relationship. And look,
at the end of the day, Bam is going to
probably make a lot of money thanks to having a
competing offer, and they've made a great team together.
Speaker 1: How soon, realistically, do you think we see Bam Rodriguez
again now that they've uped this, could we see him
in March or April? I would like activity. He's been
an entertaining fighter.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess it's going to depend on if
they can land the unification fight for him. That's going
to depend on what the IBF says. Remember the IBF
title fight between will Lebaldo Garcia and the and subsume
me from Japan had been postpone or i'd been by
I don't know if you call it a cancelation or
a postponeman or whatever it was because of injury. And
he also has a mandatory that's supposed to be doing.
So we'll see maybe they can get the optional uh,
because they can say it's a unification fight where the
IBF would sign off. But you got Maloney that's there
that wants the shot. He's supposed to get right March
or April seems a little aggressive. Bam just fought in
UH in November. You know, I'm not into the To me,
I don't care as long as he's not off for
like a year. But I would think probably more deeper
into the year, maybe maybe mayish, but at some point,
you know, sooner than later, we'll see him back. At
the end of the day. He's probably gonna be like
most guys, he's gonna probably fight twice in the year.
It will be a beautiful thing. He could fight three times,
but most likely it's gonna be twice, So there's no
urgency to ring in the next couple of months.
Speaker 1: But this guy's electric. I mean, we keep saying this,
he's the best American smaller white fighter out there. You
could argue other than than UH in a way, the monster,
he's the second most compelling smaller weight fighter that's out there.
Let's keeping macis.
Speaker 2: I think you can make the argument that Bam Erdergs
is the best American fighter in boxing period. Now the
Terrence Crawford is retired. But if you take a look
at people's pound for poundless and if you remove Crawford,
the top guys on the Pound for pund list other
than them were for a long time and still are.
Iszusik Ukrainian in a way Japanese and most people have
now bumped up Bam up to that next group of guys,
and he's American and the other guys I might be
in contention whether it's a Bivol who's Russian or it's
better Biev who's originally from Russia. But you know, now,
Canadian citizen, you go down the list there, you know
that those top guys are from other countries. I think Bam,
you know he's the guy, and you also have other
top Americans Chikor and tia Fimo for example. We're fighting
each other, but at this moment in time, most people
still have damn rated ahead of them. Look, he's he's
a great young fighter, and uh uh. I don't root
for promoters to sign this guy or that guy or whatever.
And I'm certainly rooting against Soup for the signed top guys.
But it feels like the match room, the match in
match room that they've had has worked great for both sides.
Matchroom has put on some great events with BIM, They've
gotten great opportunities and he has performed so uh. The
fact that they may stay together, I don't think is
a bad thing.
Speaker 1: All right, Two more items real quick, No surprise, Tyson
Fury is fighting. We keep hearing April and the name
the gates keep that keeps getting kicked around or one
of them is Mattmadov. Give me, give me some more.
Speaker 2: Is that the name?
Speaker 1: What are you hearing? Kings return.
Speaker 2: Spencer Brown, who was Tyson's manager, has did some interviews
with Sky Sports, which is the big sports uh, you know,
one of the big sports outlets in the UK and uh,
you know, talking about him having come out of retire
and announced he's coming out of retirement to uh to
the fact that he would be back in the ring
and that they are targeting April, which makes sense. And
you know he did say they got about three or
four opponents that they've been talking to and they've sent
I guess sent out contracts or half contracts are done,
but they need to determine, you know, who's actually to
get the fight. And he did bring up Arsenal Deck
Mack Manduff, who did you know, gain some notoriety in
the UK in his last fight because of his victory
against the cult hero David Allen, and he seems like
they're like a certainly a reasonable comeback opponent for Fury
coming off the two losses and the layoff. A guy
with a great, great amount of power, but no chin
not you know, very slow, not a lot of skills.
It's one thing to be to David Allen. It's a
whole different ballgame to be the Tyson Fury. No one
is expecting Feary to be back in the ring against
an elite opponent, but at least maccadool looks the part.
He's a big man and carries a big punch, and
if he lands, and we all know Tyson Fury's been
on the deck a thousand times, we'll see if that happens. Obviously,
the whole point here was if he's going to extra retirement,
set him up for a fight against Anthony Joshua. So
he's still coming back, and you know, everybody's just you know,
lying low on the whole Anthony Joshua situation because of
the terrible tragedy yep, with his friends being killed and
his own injuries. He's been dealing with. Eddie Hearn did
speak a little bit about that in an interview with
Mannix on his own broadcast, and he said, look, I've
been talking to Anthony Joshua right now. Everybody's just giving
him space, uh, to to heal physically from his injuries, mentally,
and at some point you know, he'll come to us
when he wants to come back. I think everybody believes
and recognizes that Joshua is going to fight again. It's
just a matter of when he's comfortable enough emotionally and
mentally and physically to say, okay, guys, let's let's go
plan something so no one's pressuring him. But of course,
if here he goes and wins a fight in April,
the object here is to at some point do the
fight with Joshua when he does return.
Speaker 1: Understood, all right, one more quick note and then we're
out of here. The boxer fight lesser in this in
this country because we got the Ta Femo Lopez of
course Stevenson UH this weekend UH, as well as the
Xander Zaiez title fight in Puerto Rico. But in England
they were to have had a main event in London
with Adam Azim and Gustavo Limo's a junior welterweight main event.
That's not happening, and it's rare that we talk about this.
It's because both guys yeah exactly Oranger go ahead.
Speaker 2: So yeah, as actually you mentioned it's like the third
fight down is actually maybe the fourth fight down because
also in the UK they have the junior middleweight title
fight between Baker and Martazzoliev and Josh Kelly. But this
was the main event for a boxer on their BBC
deal and a Zim was one of the better young
fighters in the sport one hundred and forty pounder. He
was supposed to meet Lemos. This was an IBF Junior
walter eliminator for the number two position in their ratings,
so did carry some significance and more than that was also,
in my opinion, a definite step up in class for
a Zem you know, who have people have a lot
of expectations for. But like you said, the fight was
going to be in London on January thirty first, and
so Lemos gets injured and according to the announcement that
boxer made, they had secured a replacement to fight a
Zem instead. I don't know who that was. They didn't say,
so I'm not sure if it still would have been
an IBF eliminator, but the reality was they were going
to still move forward with the fight. And then when
Azeem was having his final sparring session in the last
couple of days, he suffered his own injury. Not dispose
what it was, but they said something to the effect
of that he had a scan and they determined that,
you know, that he was not gonna be able to fight,
So they said the fight between he and Lemos will
be rescheduled for later in the year, and they've left
up in the air the status of the rest of
the card, which would be frankly a little surprising that
they went through with it, because it is somewhat weak
in my opinion, with you know, Francesca Hennessy, a good
up and coming female boxer on the card, but not
at the level where she's a main event caliber fighter
yet or has the fan base to draw in. But
you know, we'll let them sort that out. But you know,
I'm just bummed out because Adam Azeem has been, as
we've discussed, of my favorite young prospects in the sport,
and he's bummed out fighting.
Speaker 1: But he's hurt. He's hurt so we'll go to see
how hurts.
Speaker 2: And by the way, a lot of those boxer cards
the way you you know, for a while they had them.
I'mocast on Peacock when they had that arrangement, but when
they haven't had that, both before the Peacock deal and
since the Peacock deal, those fights almost always wind up
on the Triller plus Triller TV plus app, So I
subscribe to that for this seven or eight bucks a month,
and I'm always happy to watch those boxer events out there.
Speaker 1: All right, all good. We gave you plenty here on
the Recap Pod, including Raymond Murtaia's big IBF lightweight title win.
They're in Vegas. A lot of news, my friend. We
get ready for Tia Fimo Lopez and Shakur Stevenson. Stay warm,
hopefully the power stays on again for tens of millions
in the southwest, Southeast and the eastern part of the country,
New York and New England getting pounded on Sunday afternoon,
Sunday night, frigid temperatures, everybody hanging there through all of this.
I always love chopping it up with you. I know
you're hunkered down again. I'll mention, it's eighty degrees in Florida.
It will get colder later in a week. But come
come south, come to Florida.
Speaker 2: The week you say colder, does that mean like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fifty instead of eighty. And we're weak. We got
to bring the plants in the PETSI the way.
Speaker 2: One good thing about living where I live is power
outages knock on wood are a few and far between,
because where I grew up in upstate New York, that
we had the regular power lines. Here where I live
in northern Virginia, everything is under underground.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: The chances of having so even when we lose power,
which is a very occasional, it lasts for you know,
a few minutes, not not days or hours or anything.
Speaker 1: Let's hope they get it.
Speaker 2: So let's keep it up.
Speaker 1: Hopefully they get it solved.
Speaker 2: With all of that, and I'm gonna go out some
hot coco. How about that?
Speaker 1: Have some hot coco. What I enjoy about living in
Florida is we go play golf in short sleeves back
in you know, December, January, February, it happens. Listen, have
a great week. We're talking Tia Fimo and Shakur as
this week unfolds. Read him in the Substack, the Bite
Preaching Night's substack and newsletter that's still cranking out. Make
sure you're subscribed up there, follow subscribe on this podcast.
Go find the Big Fight Weekends YouTube page as well.
Big Dan, have a good week.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: You bet there is Dan Rayphael. I am merely TJ Reeves.
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