Berto Gets TKO Win, Stops Zaveck After Fifth Round…WOODS

Published

13 years ago

September 4, 2011

BertoOrtiz_Hogan21 This fight won't remove the hurt from his last bout, but Andre Berto helped ease the sting a bit with his stoppage victory over Slovakian Jan Zaveck in the main event which unfolded at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Mississippi on Saturday night.

After the fifth round, Zaveck's corner said no mas, with their man's right eye swollen badly. He wanted to continue, and swore in dismay, but he was starting to eat clean, hard shots in the HBO After Dark headliner. Berto, who dropped his WBC crown to Victor Ortiz in April, threw 90 more punches, while Zaveck landed 20 more, but Berto's power was the difference-maker.

Both men have a tendency to drop their heads, and lower their eyes, which lessens their ability to pick up incoming fire. Berto took full advantage of that, and cracked Zaveck while the loser looked down. No one can question his heart, as he seemed genuinely irked that his face was busted up. “Is my right eye swollen too?” he asked his corner while they tried to urge him to quit.

Berto (age 27; from Florida; 27-1 with 21 KOs entering) weighed 146 3/4 pounds , while the IBF welterweight champion Zaveck (age 35; from Slovenia; 31-1-1NC with 18 KOs entering) was 146 1/2 pounds.

Analyst Max Kellerman mentioned that Berto hired ex Balco chemist Victor Conte to recommend supplements, and lauded the hire. Berto did indeed look strong and fast and fiesty in the first. He ripped to both sides of the body. Zaveck didn't come to survive; he thrived in the first with a solid uppercut, and didn't look overwhelmed by his first fight in the States. Berto pumped a jab, but mostly as is his custom wants to get it done with power shots. Trainer Tony Morgan told Berto after the second that he wanted bhim to get in and get out, and move his head more. The Zaveck corner told their guy to “be careful.”

In the third, both men were squared up, winging it, though Zaveck wasn't as busy as Berto. His right hand to the body after Berto piled up combos with a minute left wasn't enough to win him the round. Berto took the fourth off, somewhat, and I think let Zaveck open up. He roared back in the fifth, and opened up a nasty cut on Zaveck's right eye. The fight became a rumble, but Berto had more skills, and more strength. Zaveck went back to his corner and his trainer didn't like his face. “Both eyes are swollen, it's too much,” the trainer said. The left eye was cut too, not as badly, though.

In the TV opener, Gary Russell Jr clashed with Leonilo Miranda (26-3 entering; from Mexico), in a clash of featherweights. Russell looked solid against a guy who'd amassed wins at home, and emerged the victor, by scores of 80-72, 80-72, 79-72.

The 17-0 Russell has been having hand problems but they looked to be working well early. The 23 year old Russell comes from Maryland, and was selected for the 2008 Olympics. His hand speed is most noticeable, one termed an “exceptional” talent by Kellerman. Jones said he thinks Russell will be a big star in years to come, but heard his brittle hands are troublesome.

The two lefties started fast, but Russell was faster. His jab is crisper than a Deadhead, and though he often throws it in singlet form, he put a few combos together late in the first. His father-trainer Gary Sr asked him to add the hook to the mix after the round.

In the second, Jones had me shaking my head when he told Kellerman that Russell wasn't really a “boxer” because he stays in the pocket, and doesn't really move his feet much, after Kellerman had made a point of saying what an impressive “boxer” he is. Kellerman defended his point, and then Jones flip-flopped, and admitted that Russell is indeed a boxer. “You are boxing, he is a boxer,” Jones said. It was a more-than-a-bit-strange exchange. Russell, during all this, was in a comfort zone. He stood in the pocket, slipped some when he had to, but basically stayed in an offensive mode.

Russell got nastier in the fourth. He worked over Miranda on the ropes a minute in. Body and head, hard shots were landing on Miranda. Russell did go low-ish a few times, but nothing Golota-ish. Watching Russell slip punches, and then slide to reset, I flashed back to Jones Jr. telling us he isn't really a “boxer” and I shook my head again.

Russell blasted Miranda in the sixth, and the underdog ducked outside the ropes to get some air. Kellerman by this time cemented himself as at least a vice president in the Russell Jr Fanclub, as he said that he could see Russ and Donaire in a super fight in a couple years. We shall see how it plays out. I'd like to see him against top 20 guys first, then top tenners, and of course if those hands are as brittle as they say, his time could be short.

All wondered if maybe Russell hurt a hand by the eighth. Why wasn't he putting Miranda down, then?

We'd go to the cards…

Russell said his bum left hand felt good, so the “hurt hand” theory went out the window. He also said he was ready for the division's elite.

SPEEDBAG Kellerman to end the show sort of ripped Al Haymon a new one. He said the advisor gets slammed for having excess influence at HBO, and evidenced Russell getting to fight an eight rounder against a journeyman. Max said the coddling of Haymon fighters by Haymon and those who sign off on the fights on TV is unfair to the fighters themselves. Max is Mensa smart; I'd be surprised if he didn't have cover as he said this. Might there be a good idea among those truly in the know who'll be running HBO boxing, and might Max understand that Haymon's coziness, or perceived coziness, might be at the end of the line under the new regime?

OTHER ACTION (From DiBella Release)
Biloxi, MS – (9/3/2011) – It was a clean sweep for DiBella Entertainment (DBE) stable-mates Thomas Oosthuzien, Randall Bailey, Luis Orlandito Del Valle and Ivan Redkach earlier in Biloxi, Mississippi, on the undercard of tonight's live HBO Boxing After Dark telecast, featuring former WBC Welterweight Champion, Andre Berto looking to reclaim a piece of the welterweightr crown when he takes on reigning IBF Champion, Jan Zaveck.

In a very entertaining fight, South Africa's Oosthuzien defended his IBO Super Middleweight Title with a twleve round unanimous decision victory over Aaron Pryor Jr. The southpaw Oosthuzien, who was making both his U.S. and DBE debut, was able to work behind a vicious body attack to outwork Pryor for most of the fight. Pryor hung tough, and did some good work of his own, causing a nasty cut to open over Oosthuzien's right eye, but in the end Oosthuzien was the much busier of the two, winning by scores of 117-11 on all three judge's scorecards.

IBF #2 rated welterweight, Randall “The K.O. King” Bailey improved to 42-7, 36KO's with a dominant ten round unanimous decision over Yoryi Estrella. Bailey, the manadatory challenger to tonight's main event winner, controlled the action throughout, dropping Estrella with an uppercut in the 5th round, before going on to win by scores of 100-89, 100-89, 98-91.

Del Valle knocked out Anthony Napunyi with a tremendous overhand right, improving to a perfect 14-0, 11KO's. Official time of the stoppage was 1:21 of round three.

Redkach improved to a 8-0, 7KO's stopping Vernon Alston (4-2, 4KO's) in the third round of their scheduled six round lightweight contest.

In the opening bout of the evening, Gerald Jordon (8-5-1, 5KO's) scored an upset six round split decision over previously undefeated welterweight Sergio Vartanov (9-1, 6KO's).

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Michael Woods

Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-289-East-L.A.-A-Fight-Town-Claressa-Shields-and-More

Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

East Los Angeles has long been a haven for some of the best fighters around if you can keep them out of trouble. For every Oscar De La Hoya or Seniesa Estrada there are thousands derailed by crime, drugs or drinking.

Boxing has always been a favorite sport of East L.A. Every family has an uncle or two who boxes.

On Friday, 360 Promotions’ Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) fights Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1) in the main event at Commerce Casino, in Commerce, CA. UFC Fight Pass will stream the fight card.

The City of Commerce used to be part of East L.A. until 1960 when it incorporated. It’s still considered to be part of East Los Angeles, but informally.

Plenty of fighters come out of East L.A. but few make it all the way like De La Hoya and Estrada. Will Trinidad be the one?

The first world champion from East L.A. or “East Los” as some call it, was Solly Garcia Smith back in the late 1800s. Others were Richie Lemos, Art Frias and Joey Olivo. There is also 1984 Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzalez.

Once again 360 Promotions brings its popular brand of fights to the area. On this fight card includes two female bouts. One features Roxy Verduzco (1-0) the former amateur star fighting Colleen Davis (3-1-1) in a featherweight fight.

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

The next day, also in East L.A., Elite Boxing stages another boxing card at Salesian High School located at 960 S. Soto Street in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles.

Elite Boxing has promoted several successful boxing cards at the Catholic high school grounds. The area is saturated by many of the best eateries in Los Angeles. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself and grab some of that delicious food.

Boxing has long been a favorite sport of anyone who lives in East L.A. It’s a fight town equal to Philadelphia, Brooklyn or Detroit. There’s something different about the area. For more than 100 years some of the best fighters continue to come out of its boxing gyms. Some will be performing on these club shows.

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

Speaking of fight towns, pound-for-pound best Claressa Shields who won two Olympic Gold Medals in boxing, moves up another weight division to tackle the WBC heavyweight world champion Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse on Saturday, July 27, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

Shields (14-0) cleaned out the super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions and now wants to add the big girls to her conquests. She will be facing Canada’s Lepage-Joanisse (7-1) who holds the WBC belt.

The last time Shields gloved up was more than a year ago when she fought Maricela Cornejo. Don’t blame Shields. She loves to fight. She loves to win. The last time Shields lost a fight was in the amateurs and that was three presidential administrations ago.

Shields doesn’t lose.

I wonder if Las Vegas even takes bets on her fights?

The only fight she may have been an underdog was against Savannah Marshall who was the last opponent to defeat her. And that was in 2012 in China. When they met as pros two years ago, Shields avenged her loss with a blistering attack.

Don’t get Shields mad.

Perhaps her toughest foe as a pro was in her pro debut when she clashed with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in Las Vegas. It was four rounds of fists and fury as the two pounded each other on the undercard of Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in November 2016.

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

Assisting Shields on this fight card will be several intriguing male bouts. One guy you should pay special attention is Tito Mercado (15-0, 14 KOs) a super lightweight prospect from Pomona, California.

Many excellent fighters have come out of Pomona including Sugar Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley Jr., Alberto Davila and Richie Sandoval who just passed away this week.

Sandoval was best known for his 15-round war with Philadelphia’s Jeff Chandler for the bantamweight world title in 1984. Read the story by Arne K. Lang on this link: https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-boxing-articles-boxing-news-videos-rankings-and-results/81467-former-world-bantamweight-champion-richie-sandoval-passes-away-at-age-63 .

Fights to Watch

Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) vs Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1).

Sat. ESPN+ 12:30 p.m. Joe Joyce (16-2) vs Derek Chisora (34-13).

Sat. DAZN 3 p.m. Claressa Shields (14-0) vs Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse (7-1), Michel Rivera (25-1) vs Hugo Roldan (22-2-1); Tito Mercado (15-0) vs Hector Sarmiento (21-2).

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Arne’s Almanac: Jake Paul and Women’s Boxing, a Curmudgeon’s Take

Published

2 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Arne's-Almanac-Jake-Paul-and-Women's-Boxing-a-Curmudgeon's-Take

Jake Paul can fight more than a little. The view from here is that he would make it interesting against any fringe contender in the cruiserweight division. However, Jake’s boxing acumen pales when paired against his skill as a flim-flam artist.

Jake brought a 9-1 record into last weekend’s bout with Mike Perry. As noted by boxing writer Paul Magno, Jake’s previous opponents consisted of “a You Tuber, a retired NBA star, five retired MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, and two undersized and inactive fall-guy boxers.”

Mike Perry, a 32-year-old Floridian, was undefeated (6-0, 3 KOs) as a bare-knuckle boxer after forging a 14-8 record in UFC bouts. In pre-fight blurbs, Perry was billed as the baddest bare knuckle boxer of all time, but against Jake Paul he proved to have very unrefined skills as a conventional boxer which Team Paul undoubtedly knew all along. Perry lasted into the eighth round in a one-sided fight that could have been stopped a lot sooner.

Jake Paul is both a boxer and a promoter. As a promoter, he handles Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female boxers in history. That makes him the person most responsible (because the buck stops with him) for the wretched mismatch in last Saturday’s co-feature, the bout between Serrano and Stevie Morgan.

Morgan, who took up boxing two years ago at age 33, brought a 14-1 record. Nicknamed the Sledgehammer, she had won 13 of her 14 wins by knockout, eight in the opening round. However, although she resides in Florida, all but one of those 13 knockouts happened in Colombia.

“We found that in Colombia there were just more opportunities for women’s boxing than in the United States,” she told a prominent boxing writer whose name we won’t mention.

The truth is that, for some folks, Colombia is the boxing equivalent of a feeder lot for livestock, a place where a boxer can go to fatten their record. The opportunities there were no greater than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995. It was there that Peter McNeeley prepped for his match with Mike Tyson with a 6-second knockout of professional punching bag Frankie Hines. (Six seconds? So it would be written although no one seems to have been there to witness it.)

Serrano vs Morgan was understood to be a stay-busy fight for Amanda whose rematch with Katie Taylor was postponed until November. Stevie Morgan, to her credit, answered the bell for the second round whereas others in her situation would have remained on the stool and invented an injury to rationalize it. Thirty-eight seconds later it was all over and Ms. Morgan was free to go home and use her sledgehammer to do some light dusting.

The Paul-Perry and Serrano-Morgan fights played out in a sold-out arena in Tampa before an estimated 17,000. Those without a DAZN subscription paid $64.95 for the livestream. Paul’s next promotion, where he will touch gloves with 58-year-old Mike Tyson (unless Iron Mike pulls a Joe Biden and pulls out; a capital idea) with Serrano-Taylor II the semi-main, will almost certainly rake in more money than any other boxing promotion this year.

Asked his opinion of so-called crossover boxing by a reporter for a college newspaper, the venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum said, “It’s not my bag but folks who don’t like it shouldn’t get too worked up over it because no one is stealing from anybody.” True enough, but for some of us, the phenomenon is distressing.

—

The next big women’s fight happens Saturday in Detroit where Claressa Shields seeks a world title in a third weight class against WBC heavyweight belt-holder Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated in 14 fights as a pro, Shields is very good, arguably the best female boxer of her generation which makes her, arguably, the best female boxer of all time. But turning away Lepage-Joanisse (7-1, 2 KOs) won’t elevate her stature in our eyes.

Purportedly 17-4 as an amateur, the Canadian won her title in her second crack at it. Back in August of 2017, she challenged Cancun’s Alejandra Jimenez in Cancun and was stopped in the third round. Entering the bout, Lepage-Joanisse was 3-0 as a pro and had never fought a match slated for more than four rounds.

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

True, on the women’s side, the heavyweight bracket is a very small pod. A sanctioning body has to make concessions to harness a sanctioning fee. Nonetheless, how absurd that a woman who had answered the bell for only 11 rounds would be deemed qualified to compete for a world title. (FYI: Alejandra Jimenez was purportedly born a man. She left the sport with a 12-0-1 record after her win over Franchon Crews Dazurn was changed to a no-contest when she tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.)

Following her defeat to Jimenez, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse, now 29 years old, was out of action for six-and-a-half years. When she returned, she was still a heavyweight, but a much slender heavyweight. She carried 231 pounds for Jimenez. In her most recent bout where she captured the vacant WBC title with a split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, she clocked in at 173 ¼. (On the distaff side, there’s no uniformity among the various sanctioning bodies as to what constitutes a heavyweight.)

Claressa Shields doesn’t need Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to reinforce her credentials as a future Hall of Famer. She made the cut a long time ago.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63

Published

4 days ago

July 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Former-World-Bamtamweight-Champion-Richie-Sandoval-Passes-Away-at-age-63

Richie Sandoval, who won the WBA and lineal bantamweight title in one of the biggest upsets of the 1980s and then, not quite two years later, suffered near-fatal injuries in a title defense, has passed away at the age of 63.

News circulated fast in the Las Vegas boxing community on Monday, July 22, the grapevine actuated by a tweet from Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler: “Boxing and the Top Rank family lost one of our own last night in the passing of former WBA bantamweight champion Richie Sandoval. It hurts personally and professionally to know that Richie is gone at age 63. RIP campeon.”

Details are vague but the cause of death was apparently a sudden heart attack that Sandoval experienced while visiting the Southern California home of his son of the same name.

Richie Sandoval put the LA County community of Pomona, California, on the boxing map before Shane Mosley came along and gave the town a more frequently-cited mention in the sports section of the papers. He came from a fighting family. An older brother, Albert “Superfly” Sandoval, became a big draw at LA’s fabled Olympic Auditorium while building a 35-2-1 record that included a failed bid to capture Lupe Pintor’s world bantamweight title.

Richie was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic boxing team that was stranded when U.S. President Jimmy Carter (and many other world leaders) boycotted the event as a protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

As a pro, Sandoval’s signature win was a 15^th-round stoppage of Jeff Chandler. They fought on April 7, 1984 in Atlantic City. Chandler was making the tenth defense of his world bantamweight title.

Despite being a heavy underdog, Sandoval dominated the fight, winning almost every round until the referee stepped in and waived it off. Chandler, who was 33-1-2 heading in and had avenged his lone defeat, never fought again.

Sandoval made two successful defenses before risking his title against Gaby Canizales on the undercard of Hagler-Mugabi in the outdoor stadium at Caesars Palace. In round seven, Sandoval, who had a hellish time making the weight, was knocked down three times and suffered a seizure as he collapsed from the third knockdown. Stretchered out of the ring, he was rushed to the hospital where doctors reduced the swelling in his brain and beat the odds to save his life. This would be Richie’s lone defeat. He finished his pro career with a record of 29-1 (17 KOs).

Bob Arum cushioned some of the pain by giving Richie a $25,000 bonus and offering him a lifetime job at Top Rank which Richie accepted. And let the record show that Arum was good to his word.

A more elaborate portrait of Richie Sandoval was published in these pages in 2017. You can check it out HERE. May he rest in peace.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!