Speaker 1: Well off of a weekend where once again Canelo Alvarez demonstrates,
to whatever extent, he still got it even against a
younger contending fighter. He gets to win, he retains the
unified Super MIDDLEWEGE Championships, and we're ready to go over
that the entire card, some news, some nostalgia. It is
the Fight Preach U Night Recap podcast. Hello there, I
am the somewhat rested, somewhat competent host TJ.
Speaker 2: Reeves.
Speaker 1: He's the somewhat rested, somewhat competent. Well, you know what,
You're very competent insider. But we're both a little punchy
here on a Sunday night for reasons we're about to explain. Hello,
Dan Rayphiel back from Vegas. Good to have you back
aboard after Canelo's winning. Ready to go over at all
good do Good to talk to you this evening.
Speaker 2: How are things?
Speaker 3: Things are? Good? Was a good weekend?
Speaker 2: You and I have both traveled.
Speaker 1: You have traveled from Las Vegas all day and night,
and I have traveled from Detroit after my Buccaneers in
the NFL have won the game to go to two
and zero.
Speaker 2: So as I like to joke with you, and with others.
Speaker 1: As long as I don't give out my bank account
in here on the program, I think we're ahead of
the game tonight.
Speaker 2: As we talked boxing.
Speaker 1: We do this twice every weekend, typically review going into
the weekend, recap off the weekend. Make sure you rate
us and review us five star ratings and reviews. Help Apple, Spreaker,
Spotify take thirty seconds. Do that.
Speaker 2: It helps us along the way.
Speaker 1: All right, So you were there inside the T Mobile
arena as Canelo Aluvarez defeats Edgar Berlanga.
Speaker 2: As I said at the top, he still got it.
He is still.
Speaker 1: Talented, quick, the reflexes, the punching power. Berlanga was game.
Berlanga probably could have been stopped had he not been game,
but he was not stopped. He hung in, but clearly overmatched.
That's me saying that. All right, what are your thoughts?
You were right there covering it firsthand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I kind of agree with everything you just said.
First of all, I think it was a almost a
universal prediction that Canello would win the fight, and he
would do so by knockout. Just a mere fact that
Edgar Berlanga went twelve rounds as a win for him.
I mean, if there's such a thing as oral victory
in boxing, it's that kind of fight. I think, frankly,
coming out of the fight, more people are talking or
commenting about Edgar Berlanga than they are about Canelo. And
that's not a negative about Canalo because he just has
been like old man River, just keeps doing his thing.
But Edgar Berlanga, you know, I know some people are
criticizing he didn't deserve the fight. True. You know, he
lost every round, true, got knocked down. True, But you know, listen,
he was entertaining the combination of two of those guys.
It was a good fight to watch. So whether it
was I mean, twelve to nothing or you know, we
talked about what range of acceptable scores for that fight.
You're talking about probably twelve zero, maybe you can make
it tend to two. Two of the judges had attended
to One of the judges, actually, David Sutherland, gave Berlanga
three rounds. I'd like to actually have a conversation with
mister Sutherland about that because that seems a little generous.
But nonetheless, certainly no controversy over the victory.
Speaker 2: You have a shutout, did you have eleven to one,
twelve nothing.
Speaker 3: I had a twelve to nothing. I didn't I didn't
even think there was one round that I even You
know a lot of times in your scoring fights, you're like, well,
maybe you know, I put a little check mark. You know,
I'll put a little asterisk, like close round, I might
write a notation on my paper. In this particular fight,
I had a twelve nothing with no no further commentary necessary.
But just back to Berlanga, Uh, he's gonna get better
from this. I mean he he's gonna grow from it.
And I mean it's not the same scenario, but there
are shades of when Canelo went in the ring with
Floyd Mayweather and got taken to the woodshed. He became
a much better fighter after that. He learned, you know,
things that he didn't know. What he had to take serious,
what he had to you know, practice, what you have
to have in terms of the mentality of how you
perform in those types of events. And Edgar Berlanga, who
is a guy that has idolized Canelo over, has said
so several times, is gonna is gonna follow I think
in that kind of foot past footsteps. I'm not saying
he's gonna become the pound for pound number one or
do the kinds of accomplishments that Canelo did post his
loss to Floyd. But I do think that Edgar is
going to have a bigger fan base. He's gonna have
a lot more confidence. You go twelve rounds with a
master like Canelo, and you survive it, and you have
a couple of moments you know you're gonna be in
be ahead of the game. The knockdown that occurred in
the third round, he just left himself wide open defensive laps.
He got clipped right on the chin and went down
on his rear end. But I didn't think he was
that hurt. He was more pissed off, because if you
watch the replay, he didn't. His reaction was not like,
oh I'm hurt. His reaction was, oh fuck, And he
pounded his gloves together right like he was just mad
at himself because he knew immediately like he had had
a defensive laps and got nailt.
Speaker 1: Let me interject, I thought, and you were close. You're
right there ringside that Canelo was going for the knockout.
But to his credit, Berlanga fired back. He wasn't just
bear hugging him, trying to survive the round he fired back.
I give him some credit there because it was possible,
maybe not probable, that Canelo was gonna end it, like
everybody thought right there in the third.
Speaker 3: I thought he wasn't and give me my win on
the under eight half knocked out. But listen, like Berlanga,
you know he did survive, and you're one hundred percent right.
When the knockdown happened. When they got up off the
deck and the fight resumed, Canelo was just throwing everything
at him but the kitchen sink, as they say, he
was teeing off and he was laying in some shots
in Berlanga, there was not lere was still. I don't
remember exactly how much time was left, but it was certainly,
you know, more than just a few seconds. You know,
sometimes you see a knockout left, okay, So he had
plenty of time to work with to try to get
the knockout. He tried and Berlanga, remember Berlanga had only
been down in his career one time before that against Cosas,
and he survived that fight. That was the fight also
where he suffered the biceps injury, and he came through
that like a champ. So we you know, based on
that victory, he already knew to some degree that he
had heart because of the fact that he overcame not
only the knockdown, but also, you know, more more notably
a significant injury that he ultimately had surgery on. So
from Berlanga's perspective, you know, they'll they'll dust him off,
he'll take a rest, and they'll bring him back. They'll
maybe go to New York to do a fight, maybe
a Puerto Rican weekend fight. They'll they'll, uh, you know,
they'll get him a solid win and then they're gonna
look for something big. I was talking to his manager,
Keith Connelly on Sunday morning after the fight, or you know,
late late Saturday night, I guess it was technically Sunday morning,
you know, And there's there's gonna be possibilities. You know,
at the press conference, names like Diego Pacheco were brought up,
who was also promoted by Matchroom. That may not be
the immediate thing. I think they'll look for maybe a
bigger name. Pacheco is still a work in progress to
some degree, not that Berlanga isn't. But Berlanga is a
little more advanced than Pachecko was. But kayleb Plant who
will talk about who's on the under card would be interesting.
You know there's Christian ran Billy out there. You know
they would love to make eventually another big Mexico Puerto
Rico fight between Berlanga and Jimi Mungee. Who's gonna fight
this coming Friday, September twentieth, So there's gonna be some action.
I mean, Canelo may rule the roost, but the guys
that he beats and others in the way class still
can be in interesting fights if they fight each other.
So Berlanga is twenty seven years old. He showed a lot,
he made a lot of money. He came out of
that fight without any damage to you know, real damage
or anything like that. Uh, And he went twelve rounds
with an all time great in his first really significant fight.
I mean, he'd never really faced a top quality guy.
The guys he'd fought and beaten to get to this point,
you know, being generous, were like, you know, B minus
type guys, C plus type guys, you know, solid professionals,
but not guys who are gonna blow your doors off.
I'm talking about like Padrake McCrory and and uh and
uh you know Jason Quigley and uh, Roma Angulo, you
know Steve Rowles. I mean, good solid pros, but not
you know, the kind of guys that Canelo could probably
beat a couple of those in the same night. And
so in terms of Canelo's performance, I mean, you gotta
be a little concerned that he's now gone six fights
without a knockout.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Some might argue, say, well, okay, fighting to get a knockout,
but he's had knockdowns in four consecutive fights, which is true.
He did knock down Berlanga and I'm clean as a
whistle shop. Like we just talked about. He did knock
down Heimimungky and I am convinced that he carried monkey
in that fight. He did drop Jermale Charlow in there.
Fighting also scored a knockdown in the previous fight against
John Ryder. You got to go all the way back
to the third fight against Glofkin uh in twenty twenty two,
where he did not get a knockdown. So he's he's
he's landing punches, knocking guys down. He's just not It's
not translating to the knockouts.
Speaker 2: At both and the other.
Speaker 1: And the other part of it is that he's older,
and so we can start to, you know, delve in
and speculate, but he hasn't come close to losing any
of these fights. He lost the fight to bevol moving up,
but any of these recent fights, he hasn't come close
to losing them. He's dominated basically all of them, and
one convincingly so. And like he said in the ring
after the fight, they said, you're not fighting young guys.
And so the last three guys that he fought in
Charlow and now Mongia and Berlanga in particular, we're all
young guys. You can say what they want, what you
want about their level of experience, but he didn't come
close to losing.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I'm going to say, I'm not
going to go and say Jamel Charlowe's is down right, right.
Speaker 2: So the last two last he's.
Speaker 3: Thirty four years old. He's been around a long time,
but he's not an old guy like.
Speaker 1: That, right, Mongilla and Berlanga, correct, are I mean, they're
like twenty seven developmental in their twenties. But he didn't
come close to losing either one of them. He dominated him,
is my point. Even if he didn't knock him out,
that's all I'm saying.
Speaker 3: But even if you go back since the BiVO loss,
he dominated the third fight with Triple G, he dominated
and dropped John Ryder, He dominated and dropped Charlote.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: He dominated, and I think could have knocked out Mangia
and knocked him down. And obviously, you know, we saw
what we saw against Berlanga. That was another one sided
scoring fight. But you know, here's the thing. I would
rather spend my pay per view money and watch that
kind of fight that turns out to be like a
twelfth to nothing route, then spend my pay per view
money on a fight that might be closer on the scorecards,
but stink out loud because they're the lack of action.
So you got to pick your poison.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about lack of action here. Oh yeah,
let's stand by.
Speaker 3: But the thing is so now, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1: I was gonna I was gonna say, what is your perception?
You've been around this for so long and been around him,
I don't know what else is out there to challenge him.
And it's not that I want him to retire, but
I don't. I don't think he's going to, but I
could totally see him maybe looking at maybe twenty twenty
five and the two fights if he has two more
fights as maybe being it, because I don't know what
else is out there.
Speaker 2: So what is your thought on that.
Speaker 3: My thought on that is as long as Canelo Albers
is healthy and hungry and making big money, he's going
to fight. He made that very clear. He loves this.
He loves the training. That's the thing. It's not the
bites that are what puts guys in retirements. They don't
want to train. I remember having conversation back in the
day with Lennox Lewis about this exact topic when he
was retired and he was getting chased around to do
a rematch with Klitchko, and he had all these different
entities that were throwing money at him and wanted to
put on the rematch and this and that. I remember
having like a pretty decent conversation with him, and you know,
he was like, what do you think? And I told
him straight to his face, and he agreed with me.
He kind of smiled, He's like, yeah, you're right. I mean,
I'm paraphrasing what he said, but I said, you love
the idea that was chasing around to do these fights.
You love the idea that they're throwing possibly huge money
at you. You don't really have a problem getting in
the ring and doing the fight, But you don't want
to go to training camp for eight weeks and lock
down and fucking put the work in. You've been there,
done that. You know you're not a young guy. You've
made crazy amounts of money and you'd rather put your
feet up than go running at five o'clock in the morning.
It's like the old Hagler quote. You know, it's hard
to get out of bed and new road work at
five am when you're sleeping in silk pajamas. Canelo Alvarez does.
He walks around in the public and soak pajamas, and
he doesn't have a problem doing that. You talk to
anybody on the Canelo Alvarez team, they'll tell you works
just as hard in the training camp today as he
did when he was you know, didn't make any money.
So if you have that mentality, he's not retiring, nor
should he. He's got a tremendous amount of fans. They
sold that place out, so they say last night over
twenty thousand in the building. You know, great energy, He
loves what he does. The fans love him. You know,
he may not be fighting every single guy you demand
to see him fight, but he's not fighting complete bums.
He's fighting solid professionals, you know, former champions and good contenders,
and he's putting on big events. I mean, they went
up against the UFC. They had a bigger crowd than
the UFC. I'm not sure what the gate's gonna wind up,
but it's going to be a big gate for the
fight the other night. So Canelo is not retiring. But
the point is well taken. We talked about in the
pre fight. Who in the world do you fight? Now?
I understand everybodys want a church Benavidez, Benavidez, Benn vide
is fine. Benavidez. I've written thousands of words that I
want to see that fight and as should happen, and
I'm pissed off at Canelo that it didn't happen. But
I can't live my life just like bitching because that
fight didn't happen. Life goes on. He's moved up and
wait and I'll make the reminder as I do on
a regular basis. Consider TJ this my Fight Freaks Unite
Recap podcast public service announcement. Yes, even if Canelo Alvarez
had decided I want to fight David Benavidez on Mexan
Independence Day weekend, David Benavidez was not available because he
was injured and he's out for the next few months,
so you know, he may be back in December, but
he certainly was not going to be available to have
the fight on the Mexican weekend, So that took that
out of the possibility. And as we discussed before the fight,
of the guys that were available that he could fight,
but Mari Lango was probably the most interesting of the
available opponents. So you know, the one thing that irritated
me was they charted like they charged ninety bucks of
the paper view instead of you know, a little bit
less like the half for the most of the recent ones.
But that's all different topic. So who does he fight?
I mean, there's not even like a guy out there
at one sixty eight that would make for like a
good rematch. So he talks about, Okay, maybe Bivol for undisputed.
If Bivol is the victory, gets the victory against better
BF coming up in October, but there's no guarantee that
would happen. Remember, Bivol was willing to do the rematch,
but he wanted to do it at one sixty eight
and fight for Canelo's titles. Canelo wanted to do it
at one seventy five. I mean, I have to suspect
that if that fight actually does come to the point
where they're going to have the conversation, that they'll have
to be able to get over the whole situation with
the way it's too big of a fight for both
guys in terms of their legacies and the money to
dick around about which way classes in. But add one
hundred and sixty eight pounds, And I say that with
the idea that we're not seeing David Morrell and Benevide's
coming back to one sixty eight. He already beat Mangia,
You just beat Berlanga. He already beat uh plant Uh.
You know, Mambili is there. He doesn't have a big
name at all. Unfortunately, that woud probably be a fun
fight to watch. So I mean, I'm not saying that
will happen, but that's there, you know, Pacheco's not ready
for that at this point. Uh. He's even less ready
than Berlango was in my opinion. So this is one
of the rare times where you have a big superstar
fighter comes off of a victory, and you know, if
we am boxing, who fans and press and people in
the industry, everybody always looks ahead like what's next? There's
there was nobody like I was at the press conference
after the fight. There was nobody even that came up
in terms of like would you fight this guy? Would
you fight that guy? No one even really came up
other than the mention about the problem the possibility of
doing a bivolvery match if he's the winner and doing
it at one hundred and seventy five pounds, But in
terms of super middleweight contenders, there was no needs to
my recollection network broached like how will you fight this guy?
He's because when he became undisputed, he beat a lot
of those top guys and has defended against them.
Speaker 1: So now we just sit back and maybe Bevil wins
this upcoming battle with better BV and the Russian undisputed
light heavyweight UH title main event that will be in
October and maybe that becomes the angle, but they'll they've
got time to come up with something. We're not gonna
see he's gonna fight. They're not gonna see him till
the spring of next year.
Speaker 2: Anyway. It's two times a year, and it's not gonna
beat on the spring of next year anyway.
Speaker 3: He's gonna will be uh, you know, he he he.
His plans obviously are going to be I mean it
can always change, obviously, but the plan is come back,
say't go to my weekend and uh and uh and
fight once again. But as I look down the rankings,
like you go, like I'm looking on box Wreck as
an example, and you go down the top ten. Obviously
he's number one, and then from ability, that'd be a
good fight, you know. Okay, that's a I guess a possibility. Uh,
who's gonna you know, he's highly ranked in the organization,
so he could maybe be ten, become a mandatory, and
then beyond that he already Jimi Mangia, you know os
LEAs Iglesias, who's twelve, and oh forget about that. That's
that's that's I mean, he's completely unknown. Pacheco. We discussed plan.
He already beat Dimetriz Andred he's coming off of Lost Night.
I think he might be retiring. You know, Kevin Leiley Sajoe,
who's a good fighter for France, but completely unknown. Berlanga,
he just beat Eric Bazinian is fighting Mangia on Friday. Uh,
probably going to lose that fight. Vladimir Shishkin is fighting
his boy William Skull for the vacant title, you know.
And then you go on with a bunch of guys
that you never heard of. Tavel you know, Selja again,
Steven Nelson, who's why he's number thirteen, is beyond my understanding.
You know, Luca Plantic, Lester Martinez.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard anything worthwhile out of any of that
other than the Billy.
Speaker 3: So you get you get down to like number twenty.
You got stargate devron Chenko. I mean, there's the super
middleweight division. That's what's there.
Speaker 1: But part, but part of it is he's beaten guys
over and over and over again at one sixty eight,
and so this is where we are.
Speaker 3: Here's another one of the problems, TJ. One of the
other problems is that so when you have that scenario
that we just discussed, where there's not a lot of
stuff going on your division. You look to the division below.
Is there a top superstar or a big name at
one sixty that come up to challenge him for the
one sixty eighth title. That's the common thing that happens. Well,
you know, Jamal Charlote. Uh yeah, nobody wants to see
that after the previous situation with the brother Arislandi Laara.
We're gonna get to that fight, but he already beat
Lur years ago. I don't think anybody gives a shit
about a rematch. You know, Hams of Shiraz is a
young guy fighting in the in the Saudi Arabia shows
ready for him. Jannebeks a unified champion, but he doesn't
really bring Canelo anything to the table and has no
real name or fans. And you know, it's whatever, h
Carlos a Damas. I mean, these are not These are
good fighters. I'm not knocking their talents. I mean, janebec
is an Olympian, He's pretty damn good, but he has
no He has nothing to offer Canolo in terms of
either name, recognition, legacy, money, titles. I mean, what is there?
Speaker 1: I'm with you, all right, Stay tuned, stay tuned off
the weekend. All right, now let's get to the undercard,
and I must confess again. I travel to Detroit on
Saturday afternoon with the with the Buccaneers. I was immersed
in some college football throughout the afternoon evening. I did
settle in for what we forewarned. Everybody was more than
likely going to be.
Speaker 2: Dull, if not flat out, what are we doing here?
It's somewhere say it? Yeah? All right, so aras Landy
Laura did win cra crap.
Speaker 1: Pola stoppage, which costs both of us on the bet
Us Show because we both had decision and it ended
up being a stoppage with the one punch on Danny Garcia.
I applaud Maro Ronalo on the play by play call,
and I don't know how much you're aware of this
because hed you're in the arena working it in Like
the fourth round, he began to rail on how bad
the fight was and how neither guy's doing anything, and
Joe Goosen actually tried to defend it and tried to
act like, you know, again, differences of opinions are fine.
He's trying to act like, hey, they're setting each other up.
This is going to be a long fight, and Marrow's like,
neither one of them are doing anything, neither one of
them are throwing punches or attempting to do anything. And
that continued along in the fifth round, in the sixth round,
and it was interesting in the corner. And again I'm
at an advantage in those that were watching.
Speaker 2: The pay per view.
Speaker 1: You're hearing the corner audio that you're not hearing unless
you were somehow plugged in to the PBC on Amazon
a call of the fight, which I don't know if
you were on press road.
Speaker 3: I had my screen on, but I didn't have the
audio because it was loud toough.
Speaker 1: Garciina's father a couple of times said what's wrong? Are
you okay? In the corner, which was an indication of
you know, he's obviously at the end. He's obviously been inactive.
He has talked openly and we didn't cover it a
lot before the fight, about mental health problems, et cetera.
And he looked off for a lot of the fight,
not throwing punches. Maybe it's the way we can speculate
multiple reasons, but there was just nothing to this fight.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Finally, Laura lands the big punch and the fight's over
because the dad in the corner immediately is saying, that's it.
And he's saying to Thomas Taylor repeatedly, that's it. And
Thomas Taylor goes, you want me to stop the fight,
and he said, yes, stop the fight.
Speaker 3: So there I give I give Angel Angel Garcia credit
because a lot of times it's the fathers, I'll let
the fights go too long. But he did the exact
right thing. Then he had lost every second of every
round in a horrible, horrible, horrible fight. It put all
aside of our misery with several more rounds to go.
But I'm gonna just get to one of the greatest
tweets I've ever received when I posted about that particular fight.
I'll give props to a person on Twitter, El Mencho quote,
whoever decided to match these together as a co of
a PPV is a terrorist.
Speaker 1: That is a good line. So this was a to
an ad He'll and pour kool aid all over them.
Speaker 2: As I say, go ahead.
Speaker 3: Yes, this was worse than we expected, and that's hard
to live.
Speaker 2: And we had a low expectation, right, we had no expectations.
Speaker 3: It turned to be even worse. I mean, this was
absolutely pathetic. The thing about is if Arislani Lara has
opponents in front of him like Garcia was, who lets
him fight at his pace, has that like a seven
inch reach advantage, so he was not able Danny to
come close and trying to get inside on Laura, who
does have pretty good punching power. He can fight those
types of fights at that pace and win until he's
one hundred. He's forty one years old. He's, by the way,
he is the oldest active world title holder in the
sport currently and that fight took nothing out of him.
You you know, you have to beat Laura, which is
hard to do. You gotta fight in the way Jared
Hurd did years ago, where it just pressure pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure,
and make him just use up whatever's left of those
old legs of his. But Danny Garcia, you know, has
old legs of his own and was not able to
do so. He hadn't fought for two years, you know.
Added he was his best at one hundred and forty pounds,
where he was a true great. He was less effective
but still very good at one forty seven, even in
his losses to guys like Sean Porter, and Thurman in
world title fights, gave them tremendous competition, very close fights.
You know, at least one of them probably he should
have won.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then he just had the one doubt at about
one hundred and fifty two pounds against a journeyman in
Jose Benavidez Junior, which is David's brother, where he didn't
really look that good anyway, And then was off for
two years and then comes back and fights Laara for
his middleweight belt. Absolutely terrible fight as a co feature.
Speaker 1: Bowing and whistling all the way from the third round
until it finally was stopped on the one punch.
Speaker 3: But I'll say this one thing, Okay, Danny Garcia had
never been stopped in his career. I'm not even sure
if Tom Head, if you ever been knocked down.
Speaker 1: Believe they said it was only the second time he'd
ever been down. Maybe it was the first, you know what,
maybe it was the first. It's all running together for me.
Maybe it was the first he's.
Speaker 3: Got He's always had a good chint and like you know,
he's always given a good effort. He just didn't and
you know what he did to make excuses after the fight.
If you listen to his comments, He's like, look, you know,
I didn't have it. I come off a long laugh.
It just wasn't there, So he wasn't making any excuse.
I respect Danny, I like him. He's a good dude,
and I hope that it's the I hope he got.
I mean, I'm not saying he has to retire because
he's physically damage and can't you know, do it anymore,
but he clearly can't compete with the top middleweights, doesn't
seem to have the desire to make one hundred and
fifty four, has made great money, has a young family,
he has businesses outside of boxing. He's got a promotional business,
he's got a lot of properties he owns, He's involved
with a lot of different things. So in terms of
his finances, he should be just fine. You know, his
time has passed. I mean, it's you know, yep. And
I actually I was thinking about this because I mean,
I'm not emotional about it, but I think about the
the journey and and Danny is a great example. When
I think in my own time of covering boxing, I
remember meeting Danny Garcia as a young prospect. I covered
his professional debut covered him on the way up, a
ton of fights as a prospect, a ton of fights
as a contender. I was there when he won the
title against Eric Morales. I covered, you know, when he
was in big headlining fights against guys like I mentioned
Sean Porter and uh and uh and and Thurman before that,
the big fight against Lucas Matisse, and then he had
fights against Lama Peterson, you know, headlining at Barclay Center,
zab Judah and fights like that. And so I covered
all these big Danny Garcia fights. Then you kind of
see him on the backside a little bit after he
lost some of those fights, then the long ley, after
the comeback, and then to be there again last night
what would potentially be the final fight, Like that's kind
of to me. It's like, that's the way the book goes.
That's you start the book and you get to the
end of the dead line, and that was the last chapter.
I'm not sure what's left after that. So I've seen
the entire trajectory of Danny Garcia's career up close, and uh,
you know, the man in the ring on Saturday night
just had absolutely.
Speaker 1: And let's say it again, I know he won, he
got his hand raised. They're calling it the WBA middleweight title.
Aras Landy Laura didn't show a whole lot of anything
either that he has a whole lot left. He was
just better than the other guy who showed nothing in
the ring on Saturday Night. Awful fight, Okay, I have
to confess the rest of the undercard. I am aware
that Caleb Plant got knocked down by Trevor mccumby and
then got off the deck and eventually stopped him. Am
I to say that was the most dramatic? Is it
safe to say that's the most dramatic of any of
the fights on the card, including the Canello that had drama?
Speaker 3: Did it know?
Speaker 2: It was about the rest of the other card?
Speaker 3: No, it was a very good fight. I mean, you
speak about the knockdown, it was, I mean, yeah, it
was a legiti knockdown. He got punched with a punch
and he went down to the canvas. But it wasn't
the kind of punch that would normally knock a guy down.
He literally got punched on the shoulder and he got
and he got dropped. I don't know if you know what
what got up.
Speaker 1: And he told I saw on the replay. He told
the referee hit my shoulder, but then he shook his head.
He nodded, yes, I understand I got knocked down off
the shoulder.
Speaker 3: I guess, well, yeah, I mean know, a shoulder punch
is still it's about it's illegal. It's a legal scoring air.
If you get punched anywhere, that's a legal scoring air,
and you hit the canvas, that's a knockdown. I mean,
but it wasn't like, you know, he was in a
in dire straits or he's about to get stopped, or
he's hurt, or he's you know, in bad trouble. You know,
it literally was punched on the shoulder. Trevor mccomby's a
heavy handed guy. I mean, he's got a lot of knockouts.
Even though he never fought anybody. This was a chance
for him to show what he could do against a
cop guy. And you know, he may not have won
the fight, but he showed a lot of determination. He
showed a lot of heart, he showed a lot of grit.
He made you know, he was entertaining. So in terms
of the Trevor McCombe future, I say this about lots
of fighters through the years. He was twenty eight, and
oh going into this fight against twenty eight, nobody's and
nobody knew about him or gave dam about him. Now
you go in the ring, you fight a good fight
against Kayleb Plant, who's a well known guy in a world,
you know, former champion and you know, has some notoriety,
is one of the best super midtwights in the division.
And even if you lose, he probably gained more notoriety
and fans in that one fight that went a nine
rounds against Caleb Plinth than he did in his entire
twenty eight fight career prior to that fight. So for McCombe, again,
similar to what we discussed in the main event in
terms of Edgar Berlanga, if there's such thing as a
good loss, McCombe got that on Saturday, because, you know what,
people are gonna want to see him again. He still
has a great record. He put up a hell of
a performance against Plant in a fight that was competitive,
and you know, but Kayleb Plant, you know, Caleb is
still pretty damn good. I mean, I don't think he
would beat a Canelo in a rematch, and I'm not
sure he's gonna, you know, beat you know a few
other guys perhaps, but he's gonna compete with all them.
The one thing I was really impressed by by Kayleb Plant,
who I've won watching his entire career. When he was
coming up, he occasionally we get a nice knock up,
but his game was, let me box you from the outside.
I've got good skills, I got a stiff jab, and
I can really work you around the ring and win
on points. Last night, when he needed to, he bit
down and he became an inside fighter. He crowded McCombe
into the corner, he crowded him on the roads. He
threw a tremendous amount of real short inside body shots
that were doing damage. He had a beautiful little uppercut
that kept connecting on mccomby. I mean, he really changed
his style. He he was like, I'm not going to
be able to do this from the outside. Let me
get right in his fucking kitchen and take care of business.
And that's what he did. Those uppercrts were just rocking
mccumby's head around, and eventually, you know, his eyes were more.
Speaker 1: Experienced, oh more better talented fighter, and he and to
his credit, he got the win.
Speaker 3: His face was getting marked up, and you know, eventually
you could just see like like mccumby's face becoming like this,
you know, deformed to some degree as he kept hitting
them with the punches. The right hand was very effective,
and you know he ended up getting the stoppage. It
was you know, it was it was a It was
a It was the best fight on the card of
the undercard in terms of entertainment value. It Plant was
able to bounce back. You know, remember he had come
into the fight, uh, you know, forgivable losses fair enough,
but he was one and two in his previous two fights.
He had lost in a tremendous battle, but ultimately one
sided at the second half of the fight against Benavidez.
That was back in March of twenty twenty three, so
he was coming off a year and a half layoff.
Prior to that, he had that memorable knockout against Anthony
Durell where he you know, didn't exactly show himself with
a class when he pretended to dig the grave. And
then the fight before that in twenty one, that's when
he got knocked out by Canelo when they were fighting
for the undisputed title. I found it kind of funny,
by the way that on this card he had two
former Canelo victims on the undercard in their own significant fights.
Kleb Plant in this fight, winning the uh for whatever reason,
the vacant interim WBA super middleweight title, and yet Arisoni Lara,
another long ago Canelo victim in the middleweight title defense.
But Kayleb Plant look forward to seeing him back. There's
some action out there. You mentioned, like we talked about
maybe burlanging down the road. Him and Monkey would be
a great fight, And I think mcumby's gonna get some
fights out of this also, you know, dust him off
and he can be in he can be in the
mix with any of these guys like Trigger McCombe. I'm
I'm just thinking of this as we're as we're discussing this,
you know, in a fighter too, when he's back in
the groove like him and Pacheco would be a good
fight as they continue to look for Pacheco to you know,
step up and face better guys. So that was the
kind of fight where both guys growing stature, both guys
will get better fights off of it. And it was
a turnout to be an excellent fight, and I was
really impressed with with Kayleb Plant more so than I
may have been in other fights. You know, he really
showed something and what I liked about it, As I mentioned,
he was able to change his game a little bit.
He was able to adjust and do what he had
to do make him a well rounded fighter. I think
a lot of that. You got to give credit to
Steven Bredman Edwards, who's been his trainer now for the
last couple of fights. They've seemed to be hit it off.
And you know, Steven's a good a good trainer and
a good teacher and Kayleb was a good student, and
it's seems to work. It seems to be working very well.
Speaker 2: For them, all right.
Speaker 1: Uh and there was again, was there any redeeming value
to Roly Romero's win and also Steven Fulton both won
on the undercard You were getting strollered in for the night.
Did you pay a whole lot of attention to these
you were choking about the Romero fight might be where
you would take the bathroom break.
Speaker 3: I mean I watched the fight, obviously, I was there
to cover the fight. So Rolo Romero, who have never
been a huge fan of he does come off the
the you know, the one sided loss and the ass
kicking that cost him his title back in March against
Pitt Pulkers, where he got stopped in the eighth round
of a you know, a one sided fight. Here he
fights manuel A Jaimes, who really didn't look to be
much of anything, and Roley did what Roley does. You know?
He threw enough right hands, enough jabs. Uh, clearly the
better fighter kept him off balance. Wasn't particularly didn't. I
didn't think. I don't think he shined in the fight.
But he did exactly what he needed to do. He
clearly was the winner. It was another boring fight, typical Rollie,
you know, talks a big game outside the ring and
then the delivers very little in the ring. But the
scores were right on the money. All three judges had
it ninety nine to ninety one, nine rounds to one.
And the less set on that fight, the better. The
question I have, though, is now what he'd do with
Roly Romero. I mean, you're gonna get him a title
shot off that. I mean, I have no idea what
they're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: If you have no idea and you don't have much interest.
Let's move on Stephen Fulton.
Speaker 3: Well, now this was this was the final fight of
the preliminaries that were free on Prime, and this was
an excellent fight. I kind of we talked about it
in the lead up. I thought this would be a
good fight. It turned out to be a good fight.
I thought Fulton was taken on, you know, to his credit,
moving up from the junior featherweight division, coming off the
long layoff after he got knocked out by in a
way that cost him his two titles. He's moved up.
He had changed trainers and they weren't taken just just
a nobody. I mean, I'm not saying that Cashrow was,
you know, a top top contender, but he's a very
solid fighter. His losses have only come against the top guys.
You know, he had lost, like, for example, to Luisnary,
but he's pretty damn good. I mean he had he'd
been on a little bit of a winning streak, and
the losses, like I said, I forgive well, you know,
I got a split decision loss against Neary in twenty
twenty three, twenty twenty two. His next fight, he got
stopped by Brandon Figueroa. I believe that was an eliminator
fight in later in twenty twenty two. He had won
three fights since then, and Fulton is no easy easy opponent.
But here's the thing. I thought Cashro won the fight. Now,
in the end, the judges had a split decision. One
judge had it for Cashrow ninety five to ninety four,
and then the two other judges had it ninety five
to ninety four and ninety six to ninety three in
favor of Fulton, who got knocked down, who I thought
was getting beat up the first few rounds of the
fight and then got then had the knockdown that happened
and he was down in the fifth round. That was
a very one sided round. I thought Ksher won a
couple of the later rounds. So you know, I'm not
saying it was Oh I'm not saying Casho should have
won the fight, like you know, eight rounds to one
or eight rounds of two rather, But I thought that Cashow,
the combination of his big start the knockdown in a
decent finish, did enough to win the fight. Now Fulton, certainly,
I felt like it was the winner of the tenth
and the ninth rounds where he did very well, but
I didn't think that was enough to give him the
victory he got it. I'm not going to sit here,
you know, bitching won and say it's some kind of
major controversy. You know, I can totally I understand it.
I just didn't agree with it. But uh, Fulton is
in an interesting position because I think that it was
not a great performance. Yea, he was shaking up the
RUSS and you have to take that into account. You
take into account he's with a new trainer. You taking
a new account that he's moving up. And wait, but
I think there's gonna be a lot of guys in
the featherweight division. I might look at that and say,
you know what, I'll tay, I'll fight that guy. He's
got a good name, he's a former champion one twenty
two and you know he looks beatable. So you know,
it's gonna be up to Fulton to prove that he
is a serious candidate to win a you know, win
a title in the featherweight division, which is what he
wants to do. And they'll be good, you know, if
they can do cross promotion fights, like if he can
work with a top rankor PBC can work with some
of these other promoters on these fights. I'll tell you what,
Stephen Fulton will be in demand and should be able
to get some nice fights.
Speaker 2: All right, So good stuff.
Speaker 1: You were there in the arena and again you've traveled
back and we're doing the whole recap podcast. Let's get
some news, Let's get some nostalgia. Juan Francisco Estrada, we
were looking at the possibility of him finding Jesse Bam
Rodriguez to rematch for the WBC one and fifteen pound title.
Speaker 2: That is now not going to happen.
Speaker 1: We did touch on this a little bit on the
bet Us show on Friday, but for our audience here,
so that fight's not happening. It's a little disappointing here
in that regard, But what else, what else off of this?
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not I'm personally not disappointed. I mean,
it was a pretty definitive victory back when they fought
the first fight back in June where Bam won the title,
and because one Francisco Estrada was the champion and it
wasn't a mandatory fight, he had the right to a
rematch in their contract. It was said to me in
the aftermath that he had vote he had invoked that
right to the rematch, and since then has then changed
his mind. That Room Boxing was making the plans for
December to go forward and do the rematch, but I
guess he or his team informed them that that was
not the case, that he had changed his mind. He
didn't want to do the rematch, and he's going to
move up to the Banda Waite division. And what that
does is it will give you know, a Strata a
chance to, if he can find the right fight, go
for a title in a third way class. And in
terms of Rodriguez, he'll fight that. The Natal is still
looking to try to do a fight for him in
the month of December. The question now is who does
it come against. It's not going to be against this Strata.
I mean when he beat a Strata, there was a
lot of conversation, you know, would he fight Roman Gonzalez.
I remember Roman Gonzalez had come back in the summer
also and won his first fight since he lost in
the rubber match against Estrada, and there was a whole
discussion about, well, you know, mister Honda, who works with
both of them, might not want to match them together.
You know, we'll see if that actually becomes a thing again.
I'm sure Roman, for the money and for the opportunity,
would take it. You know, Bam made it made the
point that he would also even though they're friendly, they've
sparred together. You know, they've been you know, like mentor
student type of relationship. That'll be a mister Honda call
to be honest if that happens. If it doesn't happen.
The name I heard while I was in Vegas from
some people that were there, members Edie Hern and matchroom
folks were there because they had Berlanga. One of the
names that came up was Pedro Givara, who was the
interim champion who had won that belt during the WBC convention.
That could be a possibility. You know, we'll see if
they actually do that, and then it would you know,
that would that would be a fight where you figure
that Bam would be a pretty big favorite, but it
would you know, allow him to fight again at the
end of this year and then keep him in line
for the bigger fight, whoever that may be against. Like
I love the Nakatani fight, for example.
Speaker 1: But you keep saying that's not gonna happen anytime soon.
Speaker 3: If it happens at all, you never say never. But
the point is if you're if you're if you're looking
for an opponent, that that there's a reason for the
fight for whatever. Uh the date is going to be,
and he's still planning to fight in December. The Guavar
fight made sense because he is the WB's interim title
holder in that weight class. Uh, it's probably a pretty
makeable fight. And Wavar is not a bump. I mean,
he may not be a superstar name like you know
Estrada or Roman Gonzalaz, but he's been a champion in
the smaller weight class and uh, you know, he looked
pretty solid when he won that interim title. So again
that's you know, I'm just shooting that out there. Is
what I heard is like one name that was broached
as a possibility. We'll see what happens. I mean.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: One thing that you have to know though is Bam
is the A side and he's the guy that draws
a lot of fans, a lot of attention, and he's
gonna fight. He's not gonna just because the guy he
just knocked out turned down the rematch, not like he's
gonna put his career on hold. He'll be back in
the ring and I look forward to it, all right.
Speaker 1: A couple of other news items. Tea Fimo Lopez was
around and was at the Canelo Berlanga way in calling
out what Jervonte Davis, Terence Crawford, anybody else was he
going after the Easter Bunny, anybody else that Fimo wants
to fight?
Speaker 2: What's up?
Speaker 3: Well, tia Fimo is there around fight week because he's
been working in the gym with Eddie Renoso, you know,
as with with with his father. You know, obviously Tiafimo
Senior is his father, that's his father. He's the trainer.
But they're they're open minded to go and see what
they can maybe you know, glean from somebody else and
maybe do uh, you know, bringing up different voice. So
they've been doing similar training with Eddie Renoso. So he's
been around Canelo. They posted some social media pictures of
tia Fimo with Canelo and for putting aside who Ti
Fimo may fight in the future. I think that's a
good thing because if you're gonna go spend some time
in that gym. Renoso a is a good trainer obviously,
and b he's got a lot of good fighters that
are in and around his gym, so that can only
help in terms of t FEMO, even if it's just
for a little while to get a fresh look at things.
I'm not I don't know if if the plan is
to have Renoso involved with the next fight in terms
of literally when they go fight, or they'll obviously just
you know, have the normal set up with the father,
but to do a little bit of extra that can't hurt.
But anyway, while he was there, you know, in support
of Canelo and his team for the fight against Berlanga,
he spoke to some media people and he was talking
to folks at the way in they did the ceremony
away in on Friday afternoon. He was like, you said,
he's not fighting the rest of this year. That was
his choice. I mean, he could have had the date
on September twenty seventh, then he could have been fighting
Brian Norman for the WBO welterweight title. That was his
choice to turn down. It wasn't like he was to
fight Brian Normany. He just decided he wasn't gonna fight
the rest of the year. I don't really know what
the what the particular reasons were. I don't think he
has any kind of injuries or anything like that, so
with the Heck knows, but he was calling out bigger names.
He wants to fight Tank Davis. That would be a
tremendous fight, by the way, because they're both bigger names,
they both have championship level, you know, accomplishment. It would
be Tank with an opportunity to go up and fight
for the lineal and one of the belts at won
forty against the guy that used to be the full
you know, the real champ at one hundred and thirty five.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And they both would talk a lot and it's a
very interesting fight. Uh. And then a much lesser possibility
was him calling out Terrence Crawford, who you know, obviously
t FIMO was the one hundred and forty pound champion, but
Crawford now is at one fifty four. T FIMO has
never even fought at one forty seven, you know. And
I can guarantee you that even if Terrence Crawford had
interest in that fight, which I doubt he does, he
sures Heck isn't gonna come back to one forty seven
to fight t Fimo Lopez in a non title fight.
So that's you know, I can appreciate his desires. Uh,
it's easy to call out the big names when you
know there's no chance to it's gonna happen. Tank take
Tank may Actually, you know, if they can get their
shit together, it wouldn't be an outlandish proposition. I mean,
remember they were working on uh doing uh you know
tia Fimo. Uh. They they had talked about other fights
where he could have potentially been involved in. So I
don't see why they can't talk about a Tank fight.
Speaker 1: Who.
Speaker 3: By the way, you know, if he does fight at
the end of this year in December, it's not like
there's some clear cut opponent from I know that the
Jose allenswell and name has come up. But no disrespect
to Jose Allen Zuella. But in my opinion, a ta
Femo Lopez from a commercial standpoint and from a legacy
standpoints a much bigger deal. We'll see what happens with
that though, but it's good to see TV talking about
getting back in the ring instead of I'd rather see
him fight at the end of the year than talk
about fighting. But at least he's still interested to get
back in there and take on a big name.
Speaker 2: We shall see.
Speaker 1: Matt s Troom did make an announcement by the way,
with former ib IBF flyweight champion, right Sonny Edwards and
his fellow countryman Galia Phi.
Speaker 2: When are they fighting? What's up with this?
Speaker 3: This is a this is a good fun fight in
my mind. This was the fight will take place on
the Zone broadcast that match from Boxing will do on
November thirtieth. It will take place in Birmingham, England, which
is FIE's hometown. And this is a fight that's been
talked about since back in the spring. You know, Sonny
Edwards had come back. He had obviously he had taken
the loss to Bam Rodriguez and their unification fight, but
they needed to sort of like, you know, dust them
off a little bit. He was able to do that,
and you Fi was the twenty twenty British Olympic gold medalist.
He's only got a handful of pro fights, he's only
seven to no. But he's thirty. You know what is
he thirty something years old, already thirty one years old.
He's on the fast track and he's ready to fight
these bigger names. You know, when you're in that weight
class that are so small and you are of that
age and you turn pro as late as he did,
you know, you're not going to mess around for years
of just doing regular fights. It's time to get on
with it. So these guys have a history together. Edwards
defeated him in the amateur ranks. They have some they've
been sure with each other. So if you like flyweights,
this is a really good fight for the British boxing scene. Uh,
you know, there'll be a lot of talking. It should
be a pretty decent fight. You FI is aggressive, you know,
and uh we've seen Sonny. Uh the the fight with
us Shrada was entertaining. Sometimes sometimes Sonny's infights there maybe
a little bit more slower pace, a little more technical,
but the kind of aggression that you Fi has, you
gotta figure he's gonna try to get him out of
that game, make him fight back, you know, a bit more.
And when Edwards lost the fight, he came back. You know,
he did a pretty good job, you know in his
comeback fight. Again was he hoody fight Kerio? I guess
so that was that was pretty solid.
Speaker 2: After benam Rodriguez brutalized him.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, no doubt about it. So this was a
fight that sort of came up and went. After that loss. Uh,
Edwards had done a new contract with mattrom and match
was also the promoter of You Find. They're looking to
get him in sort of a mix of a of
a bigger name fight, and so yeah, this is a
this is a nice fight. I mean, Uh, as flyweight
matchups go, I mean, there's not maybe a ton of
them to be super pumped up about at the moment,
but this one, this one should be. I mean, it's
for certainly the hardcore folks. I mean, I guess if
you're listening to our podcast, you're probably a hardcore fan.
But this is an interesting matchup in my mind. Right
by the way, if I taken a I know he's
got the accolades from his amateur days, but he's still
taking a big step up going from seven to zero
from the types of guys he's been fighting to fighting
an experienced, veteran former champ you know who still can
fight a bit in Sonny Edwards.
Speaker 2: No doubt.
Speaker 1: All Right, We've talked a lot about Canelo Alvarez on
this podcast, and as we go to the nostalgia Mexican
Independence Day weekend has been a weekend in which he
has headlined repeatedly in Vegas against several different fighters, including
not one, not two, but thrice against Triple G, Gonnati Glovekin.
Speaker 2: And you were there for all of these.
Speaker 1: The first one, September sixteenth, twenty seventeen, is the draw,
the controversial draw, and then the following year, almost to
the day, which is six years ago today Sunday, he
won the rematch. This was after the controversy right of
testing positive for the banned substance and they had to
wait and blah blah blah. And then the long awaited
third fight is also right around the same time. The
anniversary is Tuesday in twenty twenty two, two years ago.
And you were right there again for Canelo beating the
Triple G and what was not a tremendous fight. Canelo
had a hand injury that he revealed after the fight.
All right, So you're as qualified as anybody to talk
this trilogy. Tell me more about when you reflect on it,
about Canelo and these three fights with Triple G.
Speaker 3: First of all, it's a highly unusual fact for there
to be a trilogy that took place on the same weekend.
All three fights to Mexican Inpenn's Day weekend, one on
the fifteenth, one on the sixteenth, one on the seventeenth,
All three to take place inside the same building. All
three events were at the Tmobile Arena. I guess the
main difference is at the first two of these fights
were in middleweight.
Speaker 1: Let me stop you off the top of your head.
Can you think of another important prominent trilogy where all
three fights were virtually the same weekend of the year
at the same place. It would be a real challenge homework.
Speaker 3: Uh wow, Like Gaddy Ward for example, second fight and
third fight were at Boardwalk Call, but the first fight
was in Connecticut at the Mohican Son Bre Morales they
had three three fights, but one was at Mandalay Bay
and tour at the MGM.
Speaker 1: So they were all in Vegas, but they weren't the
same weekend of the year September, you know.
Speaker 3: Mid Morales and Pacio fought, you know, three times in Vegas,
but they had them at different locations. You know, one
was at the Thomas and Max Center. I think one
was at the MGM. I forget where the other maybe
two at them.
Speaker 1: And Fraser fight the two fights at Madison Square Garden
different months of the year, and.
Speaker 2: The three flights at Manila the Folcade. So it's a
great point.
Speaker 3: So that's a that's a really quirky kind of thing.
Just goes to show you the devotion that Canello has
to fighting on that date when he can do so.
But in terms of the overall trilogy, to me anyway
right now, it's like the last great trilogy we've seen
in boxing. I mean, there's there's trilogies that happened, but
this was as big as it gets. I mean, this
was a much demanded fight the first time around. It
irritates when people say that Canelo aged triple g out.
You know, did the fight happen exactly when everybody wanted it? No,
But it wasn't like outlandish. It was like about a
you know, maybe about a year later, when Canelo had
never fought in the middleweight division. Glofkin was still the
top dog, was still knocking everybody out, was still at
the top of his game in my opinion, and still superb,
and they went in there and they had the first fight.
I think the first fight is the best of the
three in terms of the action, although the second fight
was pretty damn good also, and this was the one
that's going to stick in the craw for Galofkin for
the rest of his life and for a lot of
people like that that were supporters of Gloff and are
just like to see the right thing happen, because I
think the way that Triple G's career is viewed is
turns largely on what occurred in this fight, because it
turned out to be a split draw, but the vast
majority of fans and media thought that it was him
that deserve the winner, even even Oscar de la Hoya,
it was Canelo's promoter at the time, you know, thought
it was laughable that they gave the score to one
of the scores to Canelo. By the way that they did,
I think what this one judge had Canelo winning one
eighteen to one ten. That's ridiculous. Now, the other judge,
Dave Moretti, who's been a championship, top level judge for years,
had at one fifteen to one thirteen in favor of Canelo.
That seemed about right. And then Don Trella, also very experienced,
at one fourteen to one fourteen, but Adelaide BYRD rendered
a shit scorecard. From top to bottom. And like I said,
even I can still remember them at the press cards,
you know, even they were like, oh, you know, we
don't think it was quite that way. We thought our
guy won the fight, but it wasn't ten rounds to two.
It was a tremendous fight, and if Gloffkin had got
his hand raised, the way that he legacy is perceived
would be vastly improved and different. But he goes down
as a draw. He got the immediate rematch, and this
is the fucked up thing. They go and do the
rematch and that's another good fight also for the middlewhite championship,
and Canelo wins a majority decision, another very close fight.
That was the fight that I thought, and many other
people that I was there covering the fight with, we
had a lot of us had that fight a draw.
That was the legit draw. Triple G should have got
the win in the first fight. The second fight should
have been the draw fight, and then the third fight,
which was now up at super middleweight where Canelo was
the underspeeded champion. Ganati was on, you know, on his
last legs pretty much. Although he had come off a
nice win in his previous fight, he had waited a
long time because they kept getting postponed for different reasons,
some COVID related, But he ultimately went to Japan and
had a unification fight against Royota Morata. He looked good
in that fight, knocked him out, and then they made
the rematch and he went up to challenge for the
sixty eight pound titles and he lost. And when the
press conference happened, he says, you know what, I'm gonna
go back to middleweight. Remember he was still the unified
middlewait champ at the time, and then eventually he gave
up those belts. When then mandatories came up, he just
was not prepared to go forward to doing it. In fact,
one of them would have been against Arizloni Lara, which
is how Lara got the title because Triple G vacated
and Lara became from the regular champ to the regular
to the only champ of the WBA and Andngalofkin. It
hasn't fought since, and you know, he's never a formally
announced his retirement, but it obviously feels like he's retired.
But the legacy of the Triple G Canelo trilogy is
I believe, like I said, the last great trilogy we
have seen in boxing. Now there'll be other great trilogies
to follow, for sure. The thing that always makes me
sad when I think about the trilogy is that the
second fight was a mega pay per view fight at
Team Obile Arena. Also, like we said, the last HBO
pay per view fight, because it was a couple of
weeks after they did this fight. Remember, the whole boxing
world gathers in Vegas for this mega fight, and it
was only a few weeks after that HBO announced that
it was finished with boxing. And that was a devastating
thing for all of us who love boxing because they
no one ever did it better than HBO Sports. Uh
and so that was bittersweet. And uh, you know, so
I always I'll just remember that was the last pay
per view there. Uh, And that's to me anyway. I
know we've seen big fights happen since that. We've seen
like Lusik and Fury, we've seen that the fights, the
rematch between Wilder and Fury and the third fight and
other you know, big time matchups. But unless I'm forgetting
something for my in my mind, the last real mega
fight in boxing, true mega fight in the United States
in Vegas on HBO pay per view, big, big fucking deal,
even bigger than like Spencon Crawford and which was, you know,
a truly big fight, or even Tank and Ryan that
wasn't even for a title. But the last really big,
super mega fight in the United States that the world
was focused on in Vegas was the remastering in Glufkin,
and you know, that was a huge, huge, huge fight.
Speaker 1: You could maybe argue that the third Fury Wilder fight
was compelling, but I would agree with you because we've
we've now come to understand that Tyson Fury dominated all
three of those fights, and there's not really much dispute
he was that much better.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying this that.
Speaker 3: I don't agree did that because I thought Deana Wilder
won the first fight.
Speaker 1: Maybe well, I don't know, but I mean, there were
a lot of people that believe that that Tyson Fury
won eight or nine of the rounds in the first fight.
Speaker 3: That if you get dropped on your ass twice, almost
knocked the funk out, you didn't dominate.
Speaker 1: I understand, But you're also the first one to preach
those are individual rounds. There's ten other rounds, so I'm
gonna come back at you with your own I understand.
I'm saying, let me finish. The overall point is Fury
bombed him out in the other two fights. There's no
doubt in disputing that. In this these were three two
very competitive fights that could have gone either way. And
then the third one is kind of because Canelo again
had an injured hand that was in it.
Speaker 2: But uh, and I also contemplated this that.
Speaker 3: The didn't really have the He just didn't have the
he didn't have the the imnna say the talent. He
just didn't really seem to have the the the emotion
or the interest in the fight he was.
Speaker 2: And two our point.
Speaker 1: The first fight for Fury and Wilders in Los Angeles,
I believe in the December time frame. The second fight,
about a year and a half later, is in February
in Las Vegas. And the third fight was also in
Las Vegas, but it was in October. So again it
doesn't fit the bill of how wild is it that
the Triple G Canelo rivalry all the second week in September.
Speaker 2: The second week in September.
Speaker 3: Go back to holy Field and Riddic bo. I think
two of their fights were in November. Uh, I forget
when the third one was, but they were. They were
all in Vegas, but they were all not in the
same location, right.
Speaker 2: And not the same month, right on all those.
Speaker 3: Okay, Solofkin and Canelo, That's true. That was a great rivalry.
I mean, there was the man for the fight. They
were both sure beating everybody. Canelo was doing all the
domination in the junior middleweight division. He finally came up
to the middleweight division where Gennadien drilling everybody, knocking everybody out,
you know who was on that crazy long knockout streak,
and just they were both on the pound for pound list,
you know, there was there was so much anticipation and
excitement for those fights, and the first two, which are
really what we're talking about here, even though the third
one was also on the same weekend, they lived up
more or less to the expectations. It was just disappointing
in terms of the way that they were scored.
Speaker 1: All right, and then there is the nostalgia love this
whenever we get the chance to bring it up. It
is forty three years ago Monday, as we released the
podcast Sunday Night into Monday, September sixteenth, nineteen eighty one.
Tremendous build up for Sugar Ray Leonard and Tommy Hitman
Hearns for the undisputed welterweight championship in Las Vegas. We
have talked about this fight before, but it is worthwhile
to bring it up again as part of the Four
Kings and this time frame.
Speaker 2: They finally fought.
Speaker 1: They finally met after a couple of years of everybody
wondering are they got a fight? They did, and Sugar
Ray Leonard, with a dramatic rally late in the fifteenth
round fight gets a stoppage that he needed as it
turned it out. As it turned out, Dan Ray phillis
losing on the cards.
Speaker 3: He wasn't. I mean, this is uh, this is about
as big as a fight as there is in the
history of boxing. The anticipation, the the domassive media coverage.
I mean this was front page news across the country,
you know, newscast type leadoff stuff, mainstream media all over
this thing. They had been building towards this fight for
a while. They had been on national television calling each
other out or their teams looking for the fight, fans
looking for the fight, the boxing industry looking for the fight.
They were young, you know, they weren't waiting to o
their you know, this is not Spence Crawford where they
were you know, near the end of their careers, basically
in their in their mid thirties to late thirties doing
the fight. Tommy was like, I want to say twenty
five to twenty six and Ray was like twenty three.
I mean they were young, young fighters with with long
futures in front of them.
Speaker 2: And another important factor.
Speaker 1: She just alluded to boxing much more mainstream in the coverage,
and they were repeatedly fighting on net were TV, not
on pay per view to.
Speaker 3: Build it more early they were active I mean.
Speaker 1: Yes, actual eve and constantly fighting on free TV to
build up this closed circuit fight. There was no pay
per view to build up the interest in the closed
circuit fight.
Speaker 2: There's no doubt.
Speaker 3: No, it was only it was three months and before
the fight. Now, when you do a mega fight, now,
the notion that the two guys who were fighting each other,
imagine Canelo and Galoftia and we just talked about three
months before the Long Way To fight, they fight on
the same card against other opponents that would not happen.
Tommy took on a nobody, a terrible opponent in Pablo Bayas,
but Ray went up and went up one weight class
and won the Jingior Middlewhite title against Kolule on a
card that took place in June, and they were scheduled
to meet not even full three months later in the
biggest mega fight. I mean, a couple things of note
about that fight, by the way. Main Events the promotion
Company which became one of the biggest, most significant promoters
in boxing for most of the eighties, nineties, two thousands,
and has only been lately the last like you know,
ten years or so that they've petered out some degree.
But they became a powerhouse. I mean, they promoted tons
of big names, Evander Holyfield and you know, many many
top guys, Meldrek Taylor and all those Olympians from nineteen
eighty four, and obviously they promoted Fernando Vargas and Artural Gaddy,
I mean, on and on, just a million champions. This
was their first big event. This was their first like
major fight that they promoted, and again in the manthean
of the four Kings fights. This is about as big
of a fight as there was. I mean, I think
in terms of media and fan attention, it's probably bigger
than the first Duran Leonard fight, which is what kicked
off the Four Kings rivalry. You know, as it turned out,
you know, maybe you could argue finally near the end,
when Leonard and Hagler finally met for the Middleway title,
it may be considered a little bigger and commercially in
mainstream wise than this fight because they had spent so
many years Hagler and Leonard established themselves in the mainstream
even more so than what was.
Speaker 1: Going on, and they had both beaten the other two
at that exactly.
Speaker 3: But I mean, look, it's a great fight. It was
a tale of two fights because Tommy, you know, Ray
was the big was I would say, the big favorite,
but he was the favorite to win the fight. I
actually saw this in one of the media polls that
they had done where they asked for the picks. They
had pulled like something close to like fifty writers and
it was almost forty of them were picking Ray to
win the fight. So, I mean, he was a substantial
favorite from that standpoint, and it was turned out that
Tommy Hearns was the one that was winning and and
and you mentioned that Ray needed the knock, And of
course there's the very famous scene between round twelve and
rounds thirteen where he got the great Angelo Dundee and
Sugar Ray Leonards quarter is simply you know, and Angelo,
if you knew him as a quarterman, he you know,
he spoke softly and carried the big stick. As I say,
he didn't really say a whole lot of stuff. So
when he spoke, you listen. And when he told you know,
this was his I call it his love language, his
coded words. This was you know, you better go out
there and fucking take care of business. But he didn't
say it like that. He says, you're blowing at Son.
Now you're blowing it.
Speaker 1: They got nine minutes left. You're blowing at Son, You're
blowing it. You're about That was again.
Speaker 3: That was enough for Sugar Ray Leonard to know the
deal there. But listen, at the end of the day,
fights just don't get much better than this. This is
everything that we love in boxing. Two great fighters who
would going on to have all kinds of other glory besides.
This match evenly matched different kind of styles. Fans wanted
this fight, and they delivered. Absolute fucking classic. This one
of my favorite fights not that long ago when there
was I don't know what the anniversary was, but I
did a piece in my sub stack in my Fight
for Each Night newsletter where I ranked all nine of
the four Kings fights. This one is very high up
on that list. It's not number one, but it's certainly
way up there. And it only took them eight years
to have the rematch, unfortunately, which was another heck of
a fight too, by the way. But this, you know,
when you talk about like the all time HBO fights,
for example, they did one hundred. They did over a
thousand fights on HBO in their in their history of
televising boxing. This was not live on HBO, but they
had the rights to the replay, which they bought had
their you know, and so it counts as an HBO
fight has it aired on the network, even it was
on a slight delay there by a couple of WEEKIR
a week or two. It's one of the biggest fights
they ever showed in their entire history of doing fights.
And we know the legendary fights at HBO showed, and
this is really what kicked it off. This is so
HBO had done huge amounts of fights through its time
in boxing, and they had done a lot of fights
in the nineteen seventies. But the fight that really I
feel like kickstarted them into the you put them really
into another level, was when they ended up doing this
fight and then picked up what they did beyond that. Anyway,
just one of the all time great fights. I have
taken this.
Speaker 1: I have told this story before. I'll just tell it
briefly here. I'm a young TJ at this point, I
am what eleven years old. We're living in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
My father was in the church ministry. We were the
church in Tennessee where we lived for about four or
five years. And it was a huge boxing fan that
was a member of the church that had a connection
with this with this guy that can only be described
as a millionaire. I remembers a little kid. We're at
this mansion, at this house. This was a weeknight, Dan Rayphil.
If they're having this fight as they would commonly do,
you've explained that before Monday or closed circuit right, closed
circuit fight, and he had one of the massive satellite dishes,
you know, the ones that are the size of a swimming.
Speaker 2: Pool back in the day.
Speaker 1: They're that big out in the front yard, not the
little direct TV dish that they don't even have anymore.
Speaker 2: So we're watching the whole undercard, and.
Speaker 1: I got I got to stay up that night because
I had done my homework, I had taken my nap,
and I got to stay up and be there that night.
And right as they got in the ring and got
ready to fight, the scramble button got hit. For everybody
that was pulling this down. In the early days of
pirrating a satellite feed, not an online stream, they scrambled
it for everybody. We watched the fight listening to the
audio through the squiggly line.
Speaker 3: Count us crazy is if there's a technology, people will
try to steal it.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 3: So by the way, I looked this up through thirteen
rounds because Tommy stopped I mean Ray stopped him in
the fourteenth round. Tommy Hearns was ahead on all three
cards one one, twenty five, one twenty two, one, twenty four,
one twenty two. That's how they did it back then,
when it was fifteen rounds kids, not twelve rounds.
Speaker 1: Yes, And so again we sat there for the forty
five minutes of drama and they were trying everything to
switch the satellite in the front yard, which it took
some time. Again, bear in mind, folks, no internet. This
is pre cell phones. This is this is uh primitive,
uh closed circuit. And there you go. That's what I
remember about that. And I did not get to clearly
see the fight, not through the sprinkly lines, until the
HBO replay.
Speaker 3: So another thing about this fight is that very rarely
you have this type of fight that's so anticipated that
it actually lives up to the hype. But this did.
And lots of people picked this fight as the nineteen
eighty one fight of the year. You know, if you
go look, I mean these lists are done all the time,
but in like the mid nineties when Ring Magazine they
ranked like their top hundred fights of all time or
something like that, they ranked this the ninth greatest fight
of all time. I mean, if you can crack the
top ten, and when you think about all the boxing
events that take a place, that's pretty frequent. Good.
Speaker 1: One other factor too, Hearns had been destroying everybody with
that lethal right hand, and he could not knock Ray
Leonard out. For whatever you want to say about Ray Leonard,
he couldn't drop him, couldn't knock him out. And in
the end Leonard overcame him some question whether the referee,
who was a very good referee at that time, Davy Pearl,
stopped the fight too soon.
Speaker 3: I don't agree with that.
Speaker 1: Heard on the ropes Hearns winning the fight, which Davy
Pearl wouldn't have known. You wouldn't have known what the
scores were, this fight was.
Speaker 3: This fight was stopped just fine. And by the way,
you talk about how Tommy couldn't knock right down when
they met in the rematch eight years later, he put
him on the deck twice and suddenly got a draw.
Speaker 1: Indeed, So there you go, nostalgia on Leonard Hearns one.
Speaker 3: You know, I'll be posting my membilia, yeah, my Twitter
when the day.
Speaker 2: The incredible build up to that fight.
Speaker 3: I'll go back and I'll watch the HBO Legendary Night
special on uts fantastic stuff. I'll watch the fight.
Speaker 2: Gotta do that exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know what I'm gonna do actually now
that because I knew were gonna discuss this on the show.
When I go to bed tonight. And this is the
true story. The one boxing book I keep on my bedside.
It's in my nightstand, is my copy of The Four
Kings by my dear departed friend George Kimball. And I
will when I lay my head down on my pillow
before I actually go to seet, I will start to
read the chapter on Leonard Hearns.
Speaker 1: One good luck hanging in there to read all of that,
but yes, well worth it on on Leonard and Hearns
and the nostalgia. All right, we've covered a bunch with
Canelo's win and that card. I'm glad you got back
safely from Vegas. I'm back from the Motor City. I'm
in a good mood for now, although I'm gonna collapse
soon after the Buccaneer win over the Detroit Lions.
Speaker 3: Why don't we're we're not gonna talk about the Giants.
Speaker 2: Eric, please, your team is struggling for the NFL.
Speaker 1: They By the way, if Anthony Joshua will fight week
at Wimbley Fighting, Daniel Dubois will.
Speaker 2: Be in the preview mode later in the week. Other
than that, I think we're good coming off the weekend.
Anything else in.
Speaker 1: Closing all good, All good, daddy, there is Dan Rayfield.
I'm merely TJ Reeves follow, Subscribe on this podcast feed.
You get us twice every weekend, and you've been listening
to the Fight Freaks Unite Recap podcast