Speaker 1: All right off of a weekend that has seen Connor
ben Avenge defeat not only for himself but for his father,
with a twelve round win over Chris Eubank Junior, very
nearly a final round TKO. We're ready to recap that
main event in London. We're ready to recap Raphie l
Espinoza not surprisingly retaining his WO featherweight title with an
eleventh round technically eleventh round stopped after ten TKO over
Arnold Kagai in the Zamfer Boxing top ranked main event
in Mexico. We're going to recap that card. We've got
some fight news and much more. It is the Fight
Freaks U Night Recap Podcast, and I am back aboard.
I am merely TJ Reeves. Hello to our insider Dan Rayfield.
Neither one of us from a good mood. One of
us was significantly colder throughout Sunday. I have been in Buffalo,
New York. Full disclosure, my Buccaneers beaten by the Bills.
Rayfael I was a popsicle long about four more Eastern
time earlier today.
Speaker 2: As I said, better than me, bro.
Speaker 1: Brother, I am not built for sub twenty degree wind
chill like eighteen wind chill for the whole second half
of the game. So the game is ended. I've done
my stuff, I've flown back. I was not We were
not going to be denied. Your Giants were denied. My
Buccaneers were denied. But the Boxing fans will not be denied.
The peeps, the savages. They'll get a full recap. How
you feeling as we head into a new week? Off
the weekend, we did have some action London, Mexico, et cetera.
Speaker 2: I'm amused by your tales of being frigid in Buffalo
as a person who grew up in upstate New York,
got in Buffalo, but in the Albany area, went to
college and Bingham to the words frigid, cold, and left
there thirty years ago to move to much more temperate,
sunny with some winter but not nearly a severe in
the Washington, DC area. My family is still in that region,
freeing ever hing you know what I tell my mom
all the time. As much as I loved living there
and it was a great place to grow up, I
had never lived there again, just basically because I forget
about it.
Speaker 1: I know that's why all of you moved to Florida
by the way, I know, but I mean this is
what it's all about.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Get back off the airplane and it's seventy five degrees
at night.
Speaker 3: All right, enough about the meteorology.
Speaker 1: Thank you for finding us on the podfeed, Apple, Spreaker, Spotify,
wherever you get the pods.
Speaker 3: A big week this week.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that a little later on with the
big Red season card in Saudi Arabia. We preview going
into the weekend, we recap coming off the weekend, and
on the podfeed you've already heard from Abdullah Mason, who
is on that card. You've heard from David Benavetez, who's
on that card. Big Dan's been hustling. I've been hustling.
We've all been hustling. So follow, subscribe, ratus and review us.
Speaker 3: We love that.
Speaker 1: All right, here's what we're going to do first, because
we already did the recap of the Connor band victory
over Chris Ubank.
Speaker 3: We're going to relive that here on the pod feed.
If you haven't heard.
Speaker 1: It, it's like the old NBC slogan with the reruns
of the summer rayfil We talked about this all the time.
Speaker 3: If you haven't heard it, it's new to you.
Speaker 1: So we're going to play our recap from Saturday night's
YouTube show that we did.
Speaker 3: We did it.
Speaker 1: Exclusively on YouTube, by the way, we find the YouTube
channel as well.
Speaker 3: So you and I went back and forth.
Speaker 1: About the Connor Band victory and the undercard, full recap
of all of it.
Speaker 3: What our thoughts are? Where does Ben go from here?
Does you Bank have anything left? So are we going
to do that?
Speaker 1: And then we're going to get into the top rank
recap here on the pod right after that. But for
right now, let's go back to what we did Saturday night.
It's still fresh, it's still the same on the Connor
Band victory over Chris You Bank Junior, welcome in and
what are your thoughts?
Speaker 2: I mean, listen, it was it was not anything close
to what the first fight was back in April. I
think we saw probably what made stand up as the
fight of the year, and there's not that many fights
of consequence left that would go into that category. And
that's why every fight is different, whether it's a rematch
or our first time round, you never know how it's
going to play out. It could be a different strategy.
Wealk about on our pre fight podcast. A guy wakes up,
maybe he doesn't feel so great that morning. All I
know is this was an entirely different fight. This was
a much more controlled and poised Connor Ben, who did
not just go in there and go crazy wild with
his punches like he did at times in the first fight,
like when he heard him bad in the first fight
in the third round, he sort of tried to empty
the tank and kind of got all out of sorts,
and u Bank was able to weather the storm and
come back. So there's that aspect of it, you know. So,
but Connor Ben fought a brilliant fight. He fought a
outstanding fight ethnically. He was snappy with his jab, he
worked the body, he threw some very powerful right hands,
and he never got himself out of kilter defensively, Like
I don't really think he took like more than a
couple of good, solid shots really the whole fight. I mean,
this was not like the first fight where he you know,
even though it went to twelve rounds, you know, it
took a lot of heavy punches. You banked, whether it
was his age, whether it was cutting the weight, whether
it was the for a guy his age and how
rigorous the first fight was for him a quick turnaround.
All I know is that that Connor ben boxed a
brilliant fights, that he's the worthy winner. Or and Chris
you Bank to me looked I mean, I don't mean
this to like insult him, because he's been a warrior,
but he looked kind of washed, to be honest, all right.
Speaker 1: So that leads to that question, was it all of
those things? Was been that good? Or is you Bank
just done? They were saying. Even in the third and
fourth round of the broadcast, Adam Smith brought it up
and said, is this a fight too far off? Chris
you Bank, Junior? And then it became a topic like
for the rest of the fight.
Speaker 2: First of all, your Adam Smith impression is terrible. Don't
do that again.
Speaker 1: I went a little grovelly. I went a little gravelly
on Adam Smith. But I mean they were asking that
question because he could not seem to get off and
long about the sixth or the seventh round. I don't
think it was any longer he's waiting. I think it
was he could not get off.
Speaker 2: You never got a jab going at all the whole fight.
Never could never could do anything in terms of his offense.
Spent a lot of time basically laying back and trying
to counter. But but Ben was the more aggressive fighter
coming forward. You know, he tried to spend a lot
of time trying to grab on to Ben and do
some holding. It just he just never got on track
at all in any facet of it, whether it was
his right hand or a hook, or a body punch
or a jab. He just just didn't have anything really.
And you combine that with a guy like Connor, who
clearly went to work on things in the months that
have passed since the first fight and was way way
more under control. You got to give credit, I guess
to the constant preaching of Tony Simms, the trainer who's
done a tremendous job with Connor, and they were talking
to him after the fight. I mean, this is a
guy that had Connor Ben from like day one. And
Eddie hearn is recounting the watching his professional debut on
an undercard and thinking like, I don't know if there's
gonna be a second fight, because that's how bad he looked,
and he's made himself into something better. You know, we
can discuss the what we think of the ped situation.
But assuming he was clean tonight and there was you know,
testing for the fight, he looked really good. I mean,
you can't take it away. He gets the big, big win.
It wasn't a world title. It was for for the
British fans. It was for the family rivalry. And so
now he gets the first win for the family. There
now the team U Bank, his father and Chris Junior
each have one win apiece. Connor has the win in
this fight. And of course the rematch between the fathers
was a draw in their memorable fight back in nineteen
ninety three, and so a big crowd saw the you know,
the rematch they wanted, but entirely different tg this nobody.
I mean, they'll remember this because it's part of the
saga of the of the U Bank and then family rivalry.
But on its own as a fight, it's not memorable. Right,
it was a great event. The first fight is probably
gonna be the fight of the year. That was a
whole difference.
Speaker 1: Agreed, agreed, And maybe you know again I said to you,
maybe it's everything you said. Maybe it was too soon
for U Bank. Maybe at thirty six he is done. Well,
learn that here in the near future on can he
fight again and how does he look if he chooses
to fight again, But clearly the knight belongs to Connor
Ben with those lead shots to the body. I thought
it was interesting just follow up on this. You could
hear Brian McIntyre Bomack in the corner imploring a U
bank about the fifth or the sixth round. You gotta
get going, you gotta get started. You also heard him
in the early round saying, come on, Chris, twos and threes,
twos and threes. I took that to mean combinations, throw punches,
So I think they said, yeah. I think they sensed
early he does not have it. Tonight your thought, no.
Speaker 2: Listen, he had he didn't have anything. I mean, it
was pretty evident. You know, you don't think about that.
Maybe in the first two three rounds. Obviously it's a
twelve round fight, but at the end of the day,
if you're not gonna do anything for them, you can't
give away half the fight. I saw some dopes saying,
you know, he's throwing the fight in to make sure
there's a trilogy. If you're gonna do that, you don't
lose twelve rounds I mean, you at least win some rounds.
But in the end, look the score. I had to
fight like one of the official judges had at one
nineteen to one oh seven. That's how I had to
fight the other judge perfectly legit one owaight one eighteen
one away and then I have no idea what the
other judge looking at. Yeahrom sixteen to one ten, eight
rounds before is ridiculous. Now, even whatever you thought of it,
Connor at least closed the show with the two knockdowns
in the final round where he was ready to go.
Uh and I you know, the second knockdown there was
barely any time left in the round. My thought was,
if there's fifteen or twenty seconds left there, or maybe
not even that much longer, he might get the stoppage.
Two big overhand rights that that knocked the U bank
on his rear end. And uh, you know, if you're
gonna win a decision, and you're gonna win a lopside
of the decision, at the very least, you know, leave
something narrable, leave an impression at the last moment.
Speaker 1: Did you did you think I thought after the first knockdown,
he's gonna get the stoppage.
Speaker 3: I thought, you.
Speaker 1: Bank was tired done. He did knock him down again,
and that, ultimately, because he got up, is what saved
you Bank. I thought, did you thought? I thought in
the moment, this is going to be a TKO. He's
got to get him in the last round.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean when he scored the knockdown for the
first time, it was a it was a nice right hand,
and there was about fifty seven seconds left in the
fight when he went down. Obviously he took the eight count,
and it's a few more seconds where you're wiping off
the gloves. He probably got it out twelve to fifteen
seconds in terms of running some time off the clock.
So by the time the referee called him back together,
there's probably like around forty two seconds left or something
like that. Next knockdown doesn't happen, you know, probably I
don't know, thirty seconds or so later. So I thought
maybe he could get him out of there. I didn't
think that he. I thought he was a little more
hurt actually on the second knockdown, because it was a
big shot that kind of caught him a little behind
the head a little bit because he leaned into it.
Then he was on the first knock.
Speaker 1: Out that was about thirty seconds left. He had him
on the ropes. He popped him and you Bank was wobbling.
I'm like, we got him more though, one more good
shot right, one more good shot might be it. And
then again I think the referee was trying to let
you know, no, don't do something stupid and let us
sound savage. Punch happened. But if he can finish, let
him finish. But again punctuation by Connor Benn. Again, let
me say to the audience that's maybe just now finding
the show. We've been on here for a few minutes.
We're live exclusively right now on YouTube recapping the Connor
Ben win. We're gonna talk a little bit about the undercard, etc.
But we thought we would pop on right after the
pay per view on Dezonne from Tottenham hots First Adium
in London. Where what an image Dan Rayfaiel pick it
up on this Nigel Ben jumps into the ring and
thirty five years after he first fought Chris Ubanks Senior
and got stopped, they fought again. What three years later
helped me on my dates and it was a draw.
The Bens finally have a win and Nigel Ben. The
indelible image of him picking up Connor Ben and parading
around the ring with Connor Ben on his shoulders.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm.
Speaker 1: Taking away tonight, on this Saturday night, they finally got
to win your thoughts and comments on those images and
pictures we saw from England.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed the respect showing to the fathers. Uh.
They were part of this promotion more so, I mean,
because we all know about what happened in the first
fight where Chris Senior did not make any appearances until
finally coming into the stadium with his son appearing at
the fight that they apparently patching, you know, things up
after a few years of being apart from each other,
being you know, not having you know, having a fracture relationship,
being a strange from each other. Uh. But for this one,
you know, there was always that, you know, he showed
up the final press conference for example, he was there
bringing him into the to the arena again on fight night.
Nigel thoughways been by his son's side throughout both They
tried not to make it about themselves, but you know,
as we discussed the other night on the pre fight,
when they did the press conference when the when the
Connor and and Chris Junior were doing the photo op
after the after the press converence, you know you had
Nigel and and and Chris seniors posing with each other,
doing a face off like for old times sake. Yeah,
to get a little bit of the shine there, and
they kind of enjoyed that. And what I liked about
what happened with them is now, obviously the sons are
going to do this, but after Nigel and Chris Senior
did that face off, when it was over, they gave
each other a little like a little hug. I don't
think they're gonna be best buddies, but they definitely have
a healthy respect for each other after all these years
and what their names mean to the British boxing public
and how linked they are together. And now the Sun's
in a similar situation. But yeah, to see Nigel, he
was super excited. Obviously he gets the gets the zero off.
The family ledger still two to one one in favor
of Family Ubank, but he does get the win and
and does so. And the most dominant of all of
all the fights that took place, of the family fights,
this was by far and away the most one sided
fight because even when when when Nigel got knocked out
in the first fight against Chris Senior, it wasn't like
he was just demolished. I mean it was competitive and
a great fight leading up to others. Otherwise they wouldn't
have been a rematch. Second fight was a draw. We
saw what happened in the first fight in April between
the Suns. That was a super close, outstanding, fun, exciting
fight and this time was just a complete whitewash. But yeah,
the thing is I also liked about it is that
even before the fight started on Saturday night, you had
Michael Buffer doing the ring announcing, and they had conn
they had rather Chris Senior and Nigel in the ring,
and he introduced him to the crowd and the British
public could pay omash them and cheer them on, and
then it was time to get down to the real
business of the Sons getting back to business and it
was It's amazing that the story of the saga of
this family has taken literally thirty thirty two years, thirty
three years or so to play out, and Connor was
very adamant after the fight, like this is over and done.
There is not gonna be the saga is now complete.
You know, we're one and one, but his plans are
to go to forty seven. They did make the point
and that the broadcasters said this, and you never say never.
Chris u Bank has twins on the way Ryder has
has two kids already that dash forward another twenty five
years now. If they go into the family business, we
could see generation.
Speaker 1: You know, that would be crazy. We're gonna be old
in the homes. I never liked like I like to
joke with you, We're going to be old in the
home and toothless. And then talking about Ben and u
Bank in the what would that be twenty fifties or
twenty sixties?
Speaker 3: Good lord?
Speaker 1: So that leads to this. You mentioned maybe back down
to welterweight. What's next? Would he contemplate staying at middleweight?
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's on your end, but you're
losing your up with your Wi Fi connection badly. I
think you were asking me about Connor Ben's future in
terms of moving down and wait, yes, he was very
He's very clear that. Look, this was his second fight
in the one sixty division. He spent almost his entire
career fighting at welterweight he did have post his suspension
and the drug situation when he had the two smaller
fights he did fight in the one fifties technically at
junior middleweight. Obviously again in this fight, in the last
fight at middleweight, but he wants to go back to
one forty seven. He says he can make the weight
no problem, and they're going to target a world title.
And after everything he's gone through with the two fights
with with with You Bank, fighting well over his natural weight,
scoring the win in this one, obviously, I'm not surprised
at all if the organizations give him a ranking. And
because of his name recognition and the crowd that he
drew and the performance that he put on. You know,
he did serve a couple of years in terms of
the suspension after the drug situation, it won't surprise me
at all if he gets an opportunity to fight for
one of the titles he wants the WBC title. He
said that a million times. That's the belt that his
father had in the super middleweight division, in the in
the middleweight division, and you know he wants to fight
Mario Barrios, who's got that title, and it's no coincidence.
I suppose that if you were to line up the
various title holders at one hundred and forty seven, how
most people would identify Barrios, Although obviously a good fighter
for and he's a world champion, if you had to
rank the top four of the guys that have belts
at one forty seven, he'd probably be fourth out of
the four, But that would certainly be something he would
look at, look at. You know, there's no there's not
a lot of competition at middleweight that that Ben would
necessarily fit in with anyway. So at one seven he
can him hey, and perhaps eventually at one fifty four also,
But he getting this win and doing it in the
manner he did it, and his personality, in the charisma
that he has, you know, for all the problems, he
can be very likable, and you know he's gonna have
some big business out of him. He's still twenty nine
years old. He's not even close to being a shot
fight or anything like that, and you know he's got
a bright future for these next few years that it
seems to me.
Speaker 1: We appreciate all you being here. Quick thoughts on the undercard.
Jack Catterall got a TKO late. I have to confess
I've only seen the highlight. I've not seen the whole fight,
and there's a lot of outcry that the fight should
have been stopped. Quicker damn, what are your thoughts?
Speaker 2: Well, I know that, as we've discussed plenty of times,
Jack Catterall always seemed like a very nice guy and
obviously a good boxer with good skills, but always the
guy for me anyway that I didn't like to watch
because he was always in boring fights, every single one
of them. Literally. Tonight was different. Tonight was a fun
fight to watch. Part of that was because Echo Simmon
is one of those guys that it will comes to fight.
Part of it, I think was the fact that Catterall
was in his first fight under the training tutelage of
Bozi Ennis, who teaches or preaches a more offensive minded
style perhaps than Caterall has been used to in the past,
and so maybe he took some of those points from
him in the training camp and was more willing to
step on the gas a little bit. In any event,
it was a good fight. Caterall totally dominated pretty much
the first half of the fight, but Essamond came on late,
even though he had a very badly swollen right eye
that was bloody, and you know the vision was closing.
He had taken some good shots there. He came back
and he won a couple of those rounds later on,
but Catrell a little too refined, a little too quick,
and he just took it to him. I thought the
stop which was okay. I didn't think there was anything
dramatic as far as why it would have been stopped
a whole lot earlier. But he got a good Winesmon's
coming off the win where he sent Josh Taylor into retirement,
and this was a pretty reasonable matchup by Catterrell. You know,
he he was trying to get back on on the
on the right track after having moved up to welterweight
and having maybe not looked so good even when he
were gonna win. He did lose, of course, to Barbosa
in a terrible performance. He came back from that fight
in July he won against Harlem you Bank, the cousin
of Chris Junior, the nephew of Chris Senior, in a
god awful, horrendous, probably though maybe the worst fight I
ever saw of Caterall and not staying a lot, but
I give him credit. You look good against esamend and
you know what at welter Wait, if he's maybe a
little stronger, a little more offensive minded with Bosey as
his trainer, maybe he can make a run there and
match up with some of the same types of guys
that Connor Ben wants to fight in a title fight.
And besides that fight that was the coach. A Zeem
was supposed to fight Zaa abd Aliav. He dropped out
a couple of weeks ago for I guess it was
an injury of some type, so they replaced him with
the American Kurt Scoby, who's you know, a solid fighter,
was eighteen and one coming into the fight. But when
you watch them against each other, a Zeem was just way,
way too dominant. This was a dominating, one sided beating
by the end of the fight Scoby. You know, I'm
not saying they should have stopped the fight, but he
just had. It was like levels of difference of talent
and everything. Scobe showed a good heart, but was just
outclassed completely. That was a good win for Azeem. Stays undefeated.
You know, perhaps one of the top young fighters in
the entire British boxing game, whatever division. He's only twenty
three years old and he's now got a very solid
win against Scoby he has coming off before that. Earlier
this year he had stopped Sergei Lipinetz, a former world
title holder, although had seen better days but still was
an impressive performance. He had the win against O'Hara Davis Davies,
who was a decent contender. So he's starting to put
some you know, for a kid that's twenty three, he's
only got thirteen fights. He's putting the names of like
good veterans on his resume. He's won the European title
and the fight I think a lot of the Grits
want to see is eventually. I don't think it's going
to be right away We'll be seeing him against Dalton Smith.
Smith's gonna challenge Sybril Mattias for his title coming up
in a little bit, but at some point that's a
very big British fight, a zem against Dalton Smith.
Speaker 1: Okay again, that is from the Saturday night recap that
we did on YouTube. You've got it here on the
pod feed. You don't care how and where it ended
up on the podfeed it did. Go find the YouTube
page and you would have heard that all on Saturday,
got great nostalgia videos. The interview with Abdulla Mason soon
up on there, the interview with David Benavitez, who's got
the main event fight with Anthony Yard coming this week.
All right, So that now segues us off what Connor
Ben did to later in the night on Saturday night,
what Rafael Espinoza did Mexico North American time with his
TKO win over Arnold Kagui. As I said at the top,
Dan not, I mean, it's not a surprise that he won,
and even won by stoppage. But ka, guy took some
punishment in this fight, so pick it up from there.
Defends what are your thoughts?
Speaker 2: Yeah, punishment is putting it mildly as I posted, and
I wasn't being overly dramatic. I truly believe this the
amount of punishment that his corner and the referee allowed
guy to take because he wasn't gonna quick He is
a you know, a hard man, as they say, he
was gonna give it everything he had until he couldn't
stand anymore. They let him down. That as I posted,
I'm watching this fight in about the eighth round, and
he'd already taken a beating through the first seven anyway.
But you know, to me, my feeling, I think I
posted me after the seventh round the fight can be
stopped now he.
Speaker 3: Took he took some sad shots in the seventh.
Speaker 2: Sure, up until that point, you know he's getting his
ass kicked, But okay, they're not going to stop the
fight after about the seventh round. Like, this fight can
be stopped at any time. It got worse than the eighth,
worse than the ninth, worse than the tenth. But the
thing to me is that the kind of shots he
was taking, clean head shots, big big punches, tremendous body shots,
tons of uppercuts. These are the I'm watching this and
my thought was, I've watched boxing TJ in my whole life.
You're watching the kind of fight where when a guy
takes that kind of punishment he ends up in a coma.
And I wasn't being dramatic.
Speaker 3: I was being You've seen it enough. You've seen it
enough that this is where you get.
Speaker 2: Seriously, I've been ringside for fights where guys died, okay,
and yeah, you know that was just a travesty that
they let that fight continue. Espinosa did his job. He
you know, used he's six foot one guy five foot five. Uh,
he's got a esposa his reach. And I looked this
up when I was running my preview of the fight.
His reach is only he's a featherweight one hundred and
twenty six pounds. His reach is almost the same as
the cruiserweight champion ji Opataia. I mean that tells you
how big of a of a wingspan this man has.
And he and he and as he said in his
post fight comments translated, he could have stood on the
outside and just boxed his ears off and won, but
the fans wouldn't have really enjoyed that. So he likes
to get in there and mix it up. He's got
that sort of Mexican warrior dna to get in there
and make a fight out of it. He tried to,
and KA guy tried but just had absolutely nothing for him.
So it got kind of I was like, after like
round eight, I'm like, I don't even to watch this anymore.
Like to me, at that point, the competition has ceased.
It has now moved from it has transitioned from me
a sporting event to being just public violence for no
apparent reason. There's no more competition left, and yeah, you know,
maybe there's some wacky outlier you could find in the
history of boxing where a guy might score, you know,
one earthshaking, big punch lucky. But even if that happened,
at what cost, right, at what costs? Because this guy
just took a devastating beat down. I haven't seen a
fucking ass kicking like that in a long long time.
A good chin, big heart, not nearly as much skills
or speed or power every and the thing is every
now and again. He landed overhand right, He landed just
enough that that guess the referee, whose name was Miguel
Angel Knuel did not want to stop it. I was
extremely disappointed by Marvin Simodio, who was typically an outstanding quarterman.
He's worked with Freddie Roach for years. He's trained a
lot of guys on his own. He was stepping in
for the regular trainer of a guy who was stuck
because he had visa problems coming to the country. So
he had a man in his corner that wasn't usually
his head coach. Maybe that had something to do with it.
If the if the regular coach had been there, maybe
he would have stopped Marvin. Marvin says to Uh, to uh,
a guy after I believe it was after the eighth round.
You know, I'm basically giving you one more round. Go
out there and get it, or I'm going to stop
the fight. He didn't do anything, came back and he
let him go back out again for the ninth round,
and he got his ass kicked again.
Speaker 1: And just clarify the referee as a relatively unknown and
experienced referee.
Speaker 2: In chance regular he's a regular Mexican. I mean, he's a.
Speaker 3: Regular, but he's had a vast career in championship fight.
Speaker 2: I don't know the answer to that. But he was
assigned by the Mexican Commission and approved by the WBO
to handle this world championship fight. So finally, finally, finally,
he takes another ass whooping in the tenth round and
there's a long extended and by the way, they had
actually brought him, the referee had brought him to the
doctor twice to get checked, and they let the fight go,
you know, in the in the rounds before the stoppage. Finally,
after round ten, there's a long extended discussion in the
corner with the doctor and with the referee, and with
the corner, and the bell rings to start the eleventh round,
and they're still doing their conversation and finally the fight
gets waved off, so officially it's a TKO at fifteen
seconds of the eleventh round. But no punches were thrown
in the eleventh round. You know, he just didn't ever
start the round, and you know he was on his stool.
And it is a good dominating victory for Resbinos, who
has now made four title defenses at featherweight. All four
of them have come by knockout. It's hard to understand
what his big fight is because all of his natural opponents.
That would be to unify either in the featherweight division
or for the opportunity to fight for a title at
one hundred and thirty because that won twenty six and
being six point one certainly can handle one hundred and
thirty pounds. Basically, everybody's occupied. I was looking at the
listings of the guys. You got Stephen Fulton, who is
the WBC featherweight champion. He is next going to be
fighting Oshaki Foster, who's the WBC on hundred and thirty
pound champion, so they're out of the picture. You've got
Angelo Leo, who just had a fight finalized. He's going
to have a hometown defense coming up on February twenty first.
Nick Ball last month was ordered to make his mandatory defense.
He's a WBA champion, so he's he's on the hook
to do a mandatory with Brandon Figueroa, so that takes
care of the guys with belts at featherweight. At featherweight,
you have Bruce Shoeshoe Carrington, who's the WBC's interim titlder,
who actually I had posted something about, you know, nobody's
really calling this or that. Shoesho Carrington had posted that
he was calling him out, and I was like, not
a lot of people do call him out, and Shusher
responded to me saying, I'm calling him out. You know. Basically,
I am so that that's a fight that's very makeable
because they're both with top rank. But the other guys
at one hundred and thirty are not available to him either,
because as I mentioned, Foster is fighting Faulton. That doesn't
leave him available. You have the WBO and the IBF
champions who are Emmanuel never at Day and Sugar Nunya
is they're going to meet in a unification fight in February.
And then you have Lamont Roach, who is a WBA champion,
but he hasn't fought at one hundred and thirty in
a while. He had a Tank Davis fight at one
thirty five. In his next fight coming up on December six,
is going to be against Pitt Bull Cruz in the
hunter and forty pound weight class. So the pathway for
a bigger fight for Raphael Espino's as seams blocked. It
seems to me, based on all the things I just
said that making the Carrington fight is something the top
rank could do and would be an interesting matchup.
Speaker 1: All right, So stay tuned on that and just one
more because again we don't want to be overly dramatic here,
and again I've been traveling. Do we have any update
that Kaguy is okay and got checked out? We don't know,
because it's in Mexico. I know you check around all
the time. As far as we know, off the weekend,
nothing seriously wrong in the aftermath in the locker room
later in the night, as far.
Speaker 2: As I know, you know, he just he took a beating.
His eye was all messed up, he was caught, he
was his eyes one of the eyes was completely closed.
I mean he's going to be feeling it for a
little while. But in terms of his overall being able to,
you know, go home to his family, I think everything
was okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 1: And sometimes well yeah and again, where is the corner?
Where is the referee, Where is the doctor? These are
the people in place protect the fighter, which is what
you're saying.
Speaker 3: All right, rest of the card.
Speaker 1: Emiliano Vargas wins controversial Lindolfo del Gato fight and Richard Torres,
what a surprise, got another quick knockout.
Speaker 3: I run it down for us.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, all right, So junior welterate Emiliano Vargas. Of course,
if you're following boxing, you know he's the son of
the former two time junior middleweight champion Fernando Vargus, was
also his father and trainer. He looked good. I mean,
this kid is a star in waiting if he can
continue to develop. He looks like a movie star. He
fights with a very fan friendly kind of style, and
you know they're they're stepping them up incrementally in terms
of his competition, and they're trying to get him rounds
and so even though he won this fight handily, he won,
you know, essentially a shoutout one hundred to ninety nine
ninety twice. He did score a knockdown in the fight,
but he won every single round. But was what was
important is that this was the first this was his
first schedule ten rounder, and he went it was forced
to go the distance. It looked like he might get
him out of there early on because he did score
a knocked down in the first round. But to Jonathan
Monschal's credit, he similar to toughness like a guy just
took everything that that that Emeliano Vargas had to offer,
mostly just a blistering, devastating body attack. I I mean,
he got to be pissing blood today, that's all I know.
I mean, he took so many heavy body shots and
as a miracle that he never went down from the
body shot. I mean the shot that knocked him down
in in the uh in the first round, that was
a headshot, you know, in the last few seconds of
the round. It was not you know, to the body.
So props to Montreal for the toughness he showed. He'll
get more work because he's a good opponent for these
types of fighters that that promoters want to test their
prospects against where they'll probably win, but the guy will
extend them. And frankly, if the guy's not on his game,
who is who's the prospect? Montchreal might pull the upset
and beat them. So ver Vargas gets in at age
twenty one some very valuable rounds and showed he can
go the ten round distance, wasn't huffing and puffing when
it was over, So that's a nice developmental win for him.
Also good for his brand to have a fight in
Mexico where he can appeal to the Mexican fans because obviously,
if he's going to become a star, he's going to
need that backing. And then you mentioned about the leandelfhol
Delgado fight, so this was an elimination fight between Landolfo
Delgado fighting in Mexico for the first time in several years,
since twenty nineteen he was a Mexican Olympian, and you
know he's fighting his countryman, a Gabriel goal Az Vealezuela,
who has been in some fights against reputable opponents, but
he's sort of lost when he stepped up against the
bigger name. So Delgatfa was definitely the heavy favorite in
this fight. They were fighting for the mandatory. So the
winner of this fight, which in this case is Delgado,
officially he's now the mandatory for the IBF champion Richardson Hitchins,
so that will be a fight that the IBF at
some point in the near future will order when that
mandatory becomes due. The problem here is that most everybody,
the broadcasters, myself, lots of other people whose opinions I
was reading on my social media that Delgado got a gift.
It was a competitive fight and del Gato pretty much
dominated the first you know, five or so rounds, let's
say six rounds at most. But valon Zuela made a
big comment.
Speaker 3: He where did del Gatto wear down? In your mind?
Did he get tired?
Speaker 2: Oh? I think it was more val Zuela kind of
got himself going. He started landing some nice right hands.
He also the big moment in the fight, which makes
it even harder to understand giving the fight on two
score cards till Delgado is that val Zuela dropped him
in the twelfth round, So that's a two point round
in a fight where he probably already should have been ahead.
Yet on two score cards he wins Delgato does one
fourteen to one thirteen. So while it was competitive, it
seemed very clear to me that Valon Zuela should have
gotten his hand raise. I mean, you know, that's the
way it goes. But it was you know, I'm not
going to call it the most controversial or the most
heinous decision I've ever seen or anything like that, but
it was very questionable, and once again, you know, the
promoted A side gets the benefit of the doubt. In
the close fight where he got dropped in the final
round that really shouldn't have even he should have even
needed that knockdown to win the fight, but he got
the knockdown and he still don't win the fight except
on one spot card, and even that one sport where
he got the win was probably around too close in
terms of the points. But you know, that was disappointing,
so I feel bad for Vealezuela. Delgado will move on
if he does fight Hitchens. If that fight happens, it
is my opinion that Richards and Hitchins well toy with
Landaff Delgado. It's a no hitter, baby, It's like a
twelve nothing fight. I mean, maybe Delgado wins a round
or two just on out mustling him. But all in all,
Hitchins is so far superior in his boxing abilities and
skills it's ridiculous. So we'll see what happens with that.
And then our boy Richard Torres off a really good win,
a best win of his career. He stepped up and
he looked good. He got the decision against Guido Vonello
in April. That was a, you know, a pretty big
win for him. He's coming back. He fought a journeyman
ish opponent named Thomas Salik from the Czech Republic, who
I think most people sort of anticipated would last a
little bit longer than that, and you know, and Torres
eventually would get to win. So I was all surprised, frankly,
that they got him out of there that quick. So he
lands a beautiful shot right across his nose, the right
hand that kind of went right across his nose, uh,
and then he followed up with an uppercut, and the
blood was everywhere, and it was very obvious that that
Salx's nose is broken. The referee, you know, with the blood,
called the time out, had the doctor check, and the
doctor's like, you know, touching his nose and you hear
on the audio ow ow. Yeah, I've never heard that
of a of a boxer, you know, crying out in
pain like that when the doctor is exam him. At
that point, obviously they stopped the fight. So Torres, you know,
gets a quick two minutes and forty five second first
round knockout, gets in, gets in another fight, and you
know his development will continue. Uh But Richard Torres, he's
you know, he is developing. The Vannella win was good.
He's exciting to watch. He's got a credit interesting and
fun and quirky personality. He's good for the he's good
for the division. He's maybe one of the few American
hopes in the division at heavyweight. Uh So it'll be
go to see how he continues to develop. But find
that Thomas Salix of the world ain't gonna get the
job done. It's you know, I'm not the matchmaker. I'm
not saying you want to rush the guy. It is
the heavyweights. He's to only twenty six years old, but
he can definitely handle on a better level than a Thomas.
Speaker 1: Thomasy a little bit of one, although we like him,
fan friendly, great personality, and right now we've said this, Okay,
who else is an American heavyweight that's even worth watching?
So at least at this point, Richard Torres checks that box.
Speaker 2: The one thing I'll say about the reason why an
opponent like Salak probably gets the call, and you always
have to keep this in mind when you're dealing with this.
This is like the fourth fight down the card, if
this is not like one of the top two fights
or anything like that. There are budgetary concerns. You know.
When you're an opponent for these types of heavyweights, you
know there's money to pay them if you're the co feature,
even at third fight, But when you get further down
the card, the pot of money that can go to
the opponent becomes less and less. So you're walking that
fine line of trying to step the guy up but
also having the opponent fit the budget. I can't always
remember that that you know when you're when you're in
a non saudy card, but the budget becomes an issue.
Speaker 1: All right, some news before we are done. You and
I left the pod Thursday night into Friday, and we
did not know the news that came out on Friday
morning in the UK. Uh. It was actually revealed on
Thursday evening to those involved in then the and then
the word leaked out. The Sun newspaper in England had
it first, and then others began to follow up, and
you did as well, that Joseph Parker in the w
BO interim title fight with Fabio Wordley tested positive for
cocaine and pick it up here on the day of
the fight, after having tested.
Speaker 3: Clean earlier in the week.
Speaker 1: You you reported this just follow up on the chain
of events here and a wild twist on a positive
drug test for a banned recreational drug.
Speaker 2: Correct. I mean, nobody's going to tell you that that
cocaine is performance enhancing, but it is still on the
band list, it is still illegal. And he did test
positive in Avada. You're ine test. I have seen the
letter from Vada that I have looked at and it
is uh, it says you know what I just said,
that he you know, he tested positive for that. So
but from my sources tell me this as you mentioned,
So okay that the Sun reported the positive tests and
then Queensberry Promotions, which is the promoter for Joseph Parker
and for Fabio Wardley and promoted the fight, put out
a statement saying that they were, uh, you know, that
they had informed them the previous night about this pause
adverse finding they call it. It did not specify cocaine
in the statement. Uh, it just said that they're, you know,
the matter is under investigation. The typical you know, word
style that the that they use in these in these instances.
But I saw the letters, so I know for a
fact that it was cocaine. I also spoke to Spencer Brown,
who was the co manager of Joseph Parker, who you know,
told me about how how they found out about it
from Queensberry. They were not aware. He hadn't spoken the
Joe since you know, probably about a week or so.
They were he was waiting to get in touch them
that sort of help him get to the as he said,
get to the bottom of it. We'll see what comes
of that conversation between him and their other manager, David Higgins.
And then the fact is, you know, he lost the fight.
So we're not looking at a scenario where sometimes in
a drug testing situation, the person that has the fail
test won the fight, and so therefore you go through
the whole process where eventually the result has changed fabou wordy,
controversial or otherwise. He did get the knockout. But it's
just an unfortunate situation for Parker. But the thing that
was quirky is about you mentioned. It's the test on
the day of the fight. I think it was a
post fight test. The letter doesn't specify what time of
day it was given, just the date. And so my
sources tell me that he took a similar VADA test
on the day before the fight. That test was clean.
The test that was given to him on the day
of the fight is the one that came back dirty.
If you know anything about cocaine and how it attacts
the system and drug testing, it is one of the
types of drugs that it's only in your system for
a few days, three four days, that type of thing.
And so what that tells you is he if he
failed the test the day off but not the day before,
means he probably ingested.
Speaker 3: Was using it that night or that morning exactly.
Speaker 2: So that's not a good thing. Now. They also gave
him a u cod which overseas testing in Britain gave
him a test also on the day of the fight.
That test last I checked. Maybe it's back by now,
because when I discussed this it was on I guess
it was on what day, on Thursday Friday, on Friday
Friday that that test result had not come back yet.
But that'll be interesting because so positive, that's a problems there,
and we should one's negative and one's positive, that right.
Speaker 3: And so what we should say is we don't know here.
Speaker 1: If there is a subsequent test of the B sample,
well and hold on.
Speaker 3: If they they won't even do that, just let me finish.
Speaker 1: They want to do the B sample, and the B
sample says he didn't test positive, that could be in play.
And what you're saying is there's a totally separate u
COD test as well involved. I'm not looking to absolve
him or giving the benefit of the doubt. I'm just
saying we're in the middle of this and it's evolving,
So go ahead.
Speaker 2: Right in terms of the B sample, anytime you fail
a VADA test or any test for that matter, and
VADA in particular, I know because I've read the letters
a thousand times. It specifically says literally that the athlete
has the right, at his own expense, to have the
B sample open. He has ten days to let them
know what he wants to do. Most of the time
they test to be And as I have stated one
thousand times, I remember this was a big, big bone
of contention after I broke the story that Ryan Garcia
had failed his drug test related to the Devin Hainey fight. Well,
the B sample might come back negatively, And all I
can say is this, I've been covering drug testing for
twenty five years, so roughly, and in my entire time,
I've written who the heck knows how many stories about
drug testing and positive tests? One hundred moll more than that.
I'm sure way more than that. You know, if you
take an account, you know multiple stories on certain cases.
I mean, on Tyson Fury and Ryan Garcia alone, I
probably wrote, you know a dozen of type stories. Here's
the point, it rarely, rarely, you probably got a better
chance I went in the fucking lottery and having the
B sample come back any different than the A sample,
I can't. There's one. I have to actually figure out
what case it was. I know there was a specific
case years ago, and I just for the life of
me cannot remember what test it was in terms of
which fight where there was a difference in the B
sample being negative to the A sample, and it was
legitimately discovered. I believe legitimately that there was a chain
of custody issue with the A sample and it did
get contaminated, and so whatever happened that one came back positive,
but the B sample came back negative and the athlete
was absolved. That's like a once in a lifetime thing. Yes,
So like I say, you might walk out on your
driveway and get hit by a meteorite, better out have
a better B sample.
Speaker 1: Being And let me say, and let me say, I've
been doing this now for thirty five years in the media.
I've been doing this in the national media for over
twenty years, the same as you covering all sports broadcasting
in the football world, broadcasting and covering the Olympics where
they do drug testing, the drug testing baseball. Now we
hear this over and over and over again that they're
gonna test the B sample, and again you're gonna hear it,
I'll say five hundred times, and maybe even all five
hundred the B samples the same thing. There have been
occasions where the B sample might be inconclusive, but the
BE samples not negative for what goes on.
Speaker 3: We've heard that before, so stay tuned. The bottom line.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is it looks right now like he
did a very stupid thing and took cocaine before this fight.
Speaker 3: That's what it looks like.
Speaker 2: And then listen there there is the possibility of a
contamination if cocaine is a recreational drug. And I'm not absolving,
I'm just saying this. I can actually see this being
the thing. You know, someone's preparing your food and they've
been partying, and it's on their fingers, it's on their body,
it gets in it. I'm just saying that is not
that's lot a lot less outlandish some of the excuses.
Speaker 3: And then he needs to come out and explain that now.
Speaker 2: Okay. So so in the original story that I wrote
and most of the reporting that I read from other
people there, I had the comments from Spencer Brown, who
was Joseph's co manager. But he went out, I believe
the next day and posted a message on his social
media saying that he wanted to address the news. Now.
He never said the word cocaine in his in a statement.
He simply said that, you know that before his recent fight,
he had taken the voluntary test and that I quote,
have now been informed that a return in adverse find
an adverse result. This came as a real surprise to me.
I did not take any prohibited substance. I do not
use performance dancing drugs and do not support their use.
I'm cooperating fully with the process that underway, and I
am confident the investigation will.
Speaker 1: Why he if he didn't do it, why did he
not come out and say I never took cocaine. I
don't know what they're talking about.
Speaker 2: Well, he used performance enhancing drugs, but that he.
Speaker 1: Knows that a ped that's right, that's a nuance.
Speaker 2: That that my my lawyer in ten went a when
I saw that.
Speaker 3: You know, yes, it's very simple.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we boil this down to, like my wife when
she's trying to get to the bottom of something in
the fifth grade classroom and education, did you do this
work or did you do this or not? And generally speaking,
the fifth graders are really good about confessing and sometimes
with tears about whether they did it or not. So
it's very easy here to say I did not do cocaine,
and I welcome the B sample to be tested because
I don't understand this.
Speaker 3: He didn't do that.
Speaker 2: So now if there was contamination, the BE sample is
going to show that also, by the way, but.
Speaker 3: You but you better be presenting whatever.
Speaker 1: Who knows okay, and he is he looking at at
least a year, and he could be looking at more
than that, right.
Speaker 2: Control uses the UKA uses the result. See here's the
here's the loophole. We've been down the road with the
connor ben drug test. They don't like to accept VODA
results because yu cod is their official tester. So if
in fact he wound up negative and u con test,
they may pull the same bullshit and try not to
recognize the VADA test. However, if the British Boxing Board
of Control recognizes the test results as actually happened, be
it yukad vada or whatever, he's facing like a two
year ban. If he faces a two year ban, then
there's a reasonable chance at Joseph Parker's career at the
top level anyway is I won't say over, but it's
very badly hurt because he's already thirty three years old
and he's had a lot of tough, hard fights for
the year. So you know, if you take off two years,
it's not out of the rum. You come back, but
you know, one thing at a time. I just wanted
to mention one other thing. A lot of drugs that
if you get caught with it in your system, there's
a threshold that flags an adverse finding. In other words,
you might have a small amount in your system, but
it doesn't reach the amount that would cause a positive
test to trigger. There are certain drugs where you could have,
you know, a ton of it in your system or
a tiny, tiny, little micron, and it being there at
all is going to flag the the the positive test.
So I'm going to read the line in the in
the letter from Vada that was I found very interesting,
where after they said the results of the year analysis
were an adverse analytical finding for cocaine metabolite and then
that's a very long scientific word detected and I quote
at an estimated concentration greater than the minimum minimum reporting threshold.
So apparently you can have cocaine metabolite in your system
at a very very very tiny level, whatever that level is.
What they found in his was at least something above
that level. That's that's all I can say.
Speaker 1: I trouble for him to explain. All right, good reporting.
Let's get to a couple of more things and then
we'll get out of here. Off the boxer match room show.
Turkey al Chic was there. By the way, I mean Rayfaield.
It was kind of a who's who when they're showing
Pierce Brosnan sitting there with Rod Stewart at ringside.
Speaker 3: Hello, that was the big time. That was fun to see.
Speaker 1: Jason Statum, some footballers, the British soccer stars were there,
the whole bit, all right, Turkey Turkey al Chic there
as well as Eddie Hearn and they're mentioning about Anthony
Joshua and Tyson Fury. I thought Tyson Fury's retired, all right,
give me more, give me a little more on this.
Speaker 2: So there's been a lot of discussion, like what is
going to be the next fight for Joshua. You and
I have discussed that. Everybody's talking about the prospect of
this December fight against Jake Paul.
Speaker 1: Should I interject right now, there's now Sunday night, seventy
two hours after you and I last talked. There's no
official confirmation that that fight's happening, and Reeves will further
say a little punchy after flying this evening from Buffalo.
If I don't see something tomorrow that says that this
is happening, then I'm going with my theory this is
to smoke out somebody else to agree to the price
and fight them.
Speaker 2: We'll see what happens with that, right June whatever. But
the thing is, as it relates to this, this is
not related to the possibility of Joshua having this fight
against Jake Paul. That if the fight with Jake Paul happens,
it's like a pit stop because everybody's in expecting that
Joshua would just destroy you. So what Turkey and Eddie
we're discussing was a plan that they are in the
process of putting together apparently, where they have Anthony Joshua
fight somebody decent I guess in Saudi Arabia in February,
and then in September, assuming that he wins, Tyson Fury
comes out of retirement whatever you want to call it,
and finally in the UK they have the big fight
between Joshua and Fury, And as Turkey was saying, I
make my deal with Eddie, do you accept these terms? Yeah,
your nay. Don't worry about what Fury is getting. He
goes to Fury does the same thing. Don't worry about
what Joshua's getting. Here's the deal. Take it or you know,
I don't know to take it or leave it. But
here's what we're offering. And you know where I'm going
to be the conduit. And Eddie was like, you know,
Turkey is the one that's gonna have to make this
fight because for all these years it went unmade for
different reasons, whatever the case may be. They have different promoters.
But again, Turkey Alshik has been making the biggest fight
and boxing. I mean, he whatever you think about the
way they've done it, about him, about Saudi Arabia, about
anything to do with this bottom line, in terms of
strictly boxing, Turkey's delivering the goods and if he can
get uh, you know, if he can get Fury against
usig Don and Benavite's I mean, is a Bevo and
better BV done and and any number of outstanding fights
that they have been involved with h through read season
and the Ring magazine, this is the one that so
far has alluded him and even he even got Joshua
and Wilder done. It's just a Wilder got got right happen, right,
and so but at least Turkey got the deal done.
I mean, we just didn't get to see the fight
for for obvious reasons. But if anybody can deliver Fury, Joshua,
which by the way, is already you know, a little
on the stinky side in terms of sour milk, but
you know, still still edible, he's the one that can
get it done. And I believe that if he comes
back and there's no crazy shit like happened with Wilder
and there's a loss or some kind of other situation
that I'm next September, probably at Wembley Stadium, there's going
to be a big ass fucking heavyweight.
Speaker 3: Fight, all right.
Speaker 1: I believe that it happens when I see that all
the way in September. I don't know why we can't
have it earlier than that, you know, josh we don't
even fool around with Jake Paul just to go the
go have the Fury fight early part of the year,
if I'm waving the wand.
Speaker 3: But stay tuned, stay tuned on that all right.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Mattroom and Dezone did announce their
January February start of twenty twenty six fight cards. You've
talked about a couple of these already schedule recent.
Speaker 3: Pods, So go over it real quick.
Speaker 2: Here, go ahead, Okay, So just to keep one thing
in mind, though, this is not the entirety of the
de Zone January February schedule. This is strictly the Massroom
events because remember they also were going to have Queensberry
events that like, for example, they have the January event
with Moses and Tama. They also have Golden Boy events.
They also have other things they bring in. They do
things with Seleti Pross, They've got lots of other boxing activity.
This is strictly the Matchroom deal that they have. And
I actually for the first time in a long time
where there's been an official announcement of a slate of fights,
and I'm like, man, this is a good schedule, Like
every one of these to me is worth watching. And
they didn't just announce one fight. They announced four main
events officially with venues and dates. And keep in mind
also there will be co features and other undercard matches
add to these shows, and the other thing and They
specified this in their announcement, and I'm glad that they
did this because for a while it's been confusing. They
very specifically said, these are all part of your regular subscription.
None of these are a pay per view up charge
or part of that new Ultimate Planner or whatever you
want to call it. These are you have the zone
on your sub you put on your screen, on your
stream or your screen on a Saturday night, and these
fights are there no extra charge. So we'll start out
on January twenty fourth. We've all known that this fight
was happening, but now the date and location are official.
This is the mandatory fight between the IBF lightweight title
holder Raymond Moretaya in his mandatory defense against Andy Cruz,
the the undefeated Olympic gold medalist. Fight will take place
January twenty fourth at the Font and Blue, Las Vegas.
I had the occasion to stay at the Font and
Blue during the fight week for Terrence Crawford and Canelo Alvarez.
I know the room They're gonna have it in the
Font and Blue Live or the Blue Live Theater. It's
where they had two of the shows during fight week.
Really good spot for not a mega fight, but just
a good fight. That'll be a good location to do
that event. So that's the twenty fourth. Then you move
on to one week later, January thirty first, and I
will add that of the four fights that now, it's
tour in the United States, tour in the UK. So
January thirty first, they are in the Utilia Arena in Newcastle, England.
That is the hometown of Josh Kelly, who as the
mandatory challenger, will challenge Bakram Ortazalia for the IBF Junior
Middleway title. That is January thirty first. Bakram back in
action for the first time in over a year. I
guess they'll be since he knocked out Tim Zou so devastatingly.
Moving on to February twenty first, Nottingham, England at the
Motor Point Arena. This is a rematch between Leewood and
Josh Warrington, two popular former featherweight title holders from England. Uh,
they fought once before. Both of them have kind of
fallen on hard times. Uh you know, Wood's been inactive, Warrington,
you know, retired, came back. They did have their first
fight and so there, you know it was I don't
know if I can't I don't know if it was controversial. Uh,
but will gonna be in his hometown to do this
fight and uh, and they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna
get it on. And keep in mind when they fought
the first time, this is back in in the late
twenty twenty three in Sheffield, England, which was neither this
not the hometown for either guy, was just a you know,
a neutral territory. Wood was way down on all three
scorecards in that fight and he rallied for the knockout
in the seventh round to retain the WBA featherweight title.
And now Warrington is getting a rematch, so that's a
non title Memberrington.
Speaker 1: Warrington very famously had like a farewell moment where he
waved to the crowd and then went and laid his
gloves in the middle of the ring. And it only
reinforces what I say to you repeatedly, these guys never retire.
Speaker 2: And Warreckton has come back actually and has had one
since then, so she has. But listen, you know what,
these two guys at least are evenly matcher both at
the end of their careers. They've both been you know,
good soldiers. The fans I'm sure there will gravitate towards this.
They'll be probably a great crowd in the hometown of Leewood,
and they'll put on a good fight. You know, it
is what it is. I mean, I'll watch it and
then then we got this is to me, you know,
this is All the fights that I'm mentioning are all
worthwhile to watch, but this is the best one, no
doubt about it. This is February twenty eighth. It's gonna
be the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona. And this
is the fight I mentioned earlier when we were going
over some other things. Emmanuel never at A, the WBO
title holder, had one hundred and thirty pounds in the
unification fight against his Mexican countrymen Eduardo Sugar. Nunia's who
is the WBO champ or the w what is he?
The IBF champion correct? Is now the IBF champion correct?
So this is this is a very good fight. I mean,
if you remember when Nunya had his hometown defense after
he won the title in Japan, he defended the title
against Petufo Diaz. This is back in September in Los Mochis,
which is his hometown and uh Navarette was their ring side,
and after the fight was over, the deal wasn't done
yet obviously, but they brought him into the ring. They
both showed respect for each other. They talked of how
much I'd like to fight the unification. Eddie Hearn was like,
let's go and try to make this Mexican war. And
the question was, Okay, that's a great match. Hopefully they
can do it. But if you remember the controversial technical
technical what was it a technical draw? I guess that
they called it or no contest? I forget it. But
the point was they had that that situation between Navarette
and Suarez on the on did the headbutt get caused
by a punch to get caused by a by a
by a.
Speaker 1: Headbut originally Navarate won by technical decision, then it was
overturned by the replay right.
Speaker 2: And what it did became a no contest I guess correct. Okay,
So the w BO, as soon as the California Commission
made that determination, the WBO ordered the immediate rematch, and
so they were on the clock to make that fight.
And I guess and the bottom line was they basically
had an offer out of some type of deal for
Suarez to have another fight at a certain price. While
he waited to allow them to do the the the
unification fight, he still didn't accept it. Maybe that's changed
over the last few days, but the bottom line was
the WBO decided to allow the unification fight. I guess
for the for the good of the sport, and that's
what they're doing. So Suarez is gonna fucking pound sand
for a little while or accept the deal, and the
fans won't care because they want to see Navarett. This
This fight has a chance to be something special.
Speaker 1: Sugar nonnas can punch. We said this before, never taken punch.
Sign me up in February.
Speaker 2: Navarette he's got thirty nine wins and thirty two knockouts
and Nunez has thirty wins and twenty eight knockouts. And
don't believe what you see on the box Wreck record
where it says he's got twenty nine wins because they
refused to put the eliminate fight that he fought against
rock them off in the actual official fights, at least
on the IBA fights. But it was an IBF eliminator
with the judges and the and the supervisor and should
count on the regular record. It drives me absolutely fucking
crazy with box Treck. He's thirty and one with twenty eight.
I don't give a fuck what box Reccess.
Speaker 1: Oh got off a little blast on box Wreck before
the pod is close.
Speaker 2: Box Wreck, but they do stupid shit on Stirtin.
Speaker 1: Well, there you go, and this is you holding them accountable.
I try to hold you accountable and you definitely hold
me accountable. Other than that, I think we are good
tonight with the full recaps. Again for the pod audience here,
we should say that we will be in the preview
mode of this tremendous read season card later in the week.
I'm gonna try to recover from being frozen in Buffalo
and then I head to Los Angeles this week with
my Buccaneers playing the Rams in a wild Sunday night game.
You and I are probably I will say probably, I'll
use that word. We're probably gonna go live again after
the Saudi Arabia cardet Saturday evening US time when it
ends on the YouTube page exclusively. So go find the
YouTube page as well, just like we did this past
Saturday for the Connor Beinn victory over Chris You Bank
so you'll get some some thoughts the way.
Speaker 3: It's a tremendous car.
Speaker 2: That's a really good show. Benevite's Yard, Brian Norman, Devin Haney.
Speaker 3: It's the best card here at the end of the year.
Speaker 2: The final Rodriguez against Fernando Martinez in a three belt
unification fight, and then Abdullah Mason and Sam Noaks in
a vacant lightweight title fight, and then have some other
you know, uh, smaller fights on there, but the main
four said, damn good Park.
Speaker 1: We're looking forward to that for later in the week.
For now, we are good here, Big Dan, have a
good week. Thank you for the time and the insight
on all of this. Read the Substack, The Fight Preach
Unite Substack a newsletter for all the intel breaking news,
great nostalgia, et cetera. We love all of it. Mcdan,
have a good week.
Speaker 3: Thank you. As always YouTube there is Dan Rayphiel. I
am merely TJ. Reeds.
Speaker 1: You have been part of the Fight Preach Unite Recap podcast.
Ye