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RASKIN’S RANTS: Heavy Thoughts On The Light Heavy Title

When I worked full-time at The Ring magazine’s editorial office from September of 1997 through February of 2005, we received a phone call at least once every couple months from someone asking to speak with Bert Sugar. This despite the fact that Bert hadn’t worked for The Ring since 1983. Bert only edited the magazine for about five years, but as a talented writer, a renowned historian, a great self-promoter, and a magnetic personality, Sugar made his name is almost as synonymous with The Ring as Nat Fleischer’s.
I’m quite well aware that my name does not carry the same enduring weight as Bert’s. But somewhat similarly to Sugar, many people have assumed for the last six-plus years that I still worked full-time for The Ring. And over the past six weeks, since my working relationship with the magazine was terminated completely, I’ve received plenty of tweets and emails from people who are under the mistaken impression that I’m still connected with the magazine. (Perhaps this has a little something to do with the fact that Golden Boy Promotions still hasn’t issued a single public statement of any kind about their firing of Nigel Collins and their decision to replace him with Mike Rosenthal and Doug Fischer, the web editors that Golden Boy hired in 2008. Clearly, GBP is bursting with pride and excitement over the changes they’ve made.)
Last week, after the new guys at The Ring elected not to award their light heavyweight championship to Chad Dawson and instead continued to recognize Bernard Hopkins as the champ pending a ruling on the Hopkins camp’s appeal of Dawson’s TKO win, quite a few emails and tweets came my way. Some of those who wrote to me were aware that I have no input on The Ring’s rankings anymore, while others were unaware. For this week’s mailbag (I can’t call it a “mini-mailbag” as I usually do, and 1,500 words from now you’ll see why), here’s an email from the latter category, full of points worth addressing at length after I quickly set the reader straight about my current role:
Hi Eric (and by extension, the Ring Ratings Panel),
I’m not happy about The Ring choosing to withhold its championship belt from Chad Dawson. In past instances where a Ring belt has changed hands on a poor decision, controversy, or questionable call by officials, The Ring has made the case that they can’t play arbiter and must uphold the decision rendered by the appointed officials. I recall Nigel Collins himself writing an editorial to this effect a few months ago, though I don’t remember the exact circumstances he was referring to.
Since the ownership of the best publication in boxing changed hands, I have not noticed any kind of Golden Boy bias, and I have all the respect in the world for Bernard Hopkins (a true living legend) … but this decision is puzzling given the lengths the magazine has gone to in the past to uphold the decisions of commission officials, regardless of the opinions expressed by journalists, fans, promoters, or boxers.
I think some of the credibility of the Ring Championship policy has been chipped away by this decision.
Respectfully,
Lucas Pettenuzzo
Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Lucas,
I am no longer a contributing editor to The Ring and I am not on The Ring Ratings Panel anymore. Like you, I am just an outside observer now when it comes to ratings decisions. And as a fellow outside observer, I agree with you: This particular circumstance is troubling.
Before I go any further, let me say that it’s reasonable for people to think I have an anti-Ring bias or an agenda when I levy criticism toward them. I am still pissed at the way things went down and worried that The Ring name will be dishonored, and I do have a personal relationship with Nigel and many writers who were tossed to the curb last month. But I believe I’m capable of separating personal feelings from professional opinions. And I believe that if Nigel had made this same decision that the new editors made (not that he ever would make this decision, but please just go along with the hypothetical), I would be equally opposed to it.
Here’s the big problem with letting Hopkins keep the belt pending the result of the appeal: It sets a dangerous precedent. As we all know, results of boxing matches are appealed every week. Sometimes the appeals have merit (as this one does; I believe the result should be changed to a no-contest and I think it’s highly like that it will be). Sometimes the appeals are a waste of everyone’s time. But here’s what the new guys at The Ring have done: They’ve forced themselves to wait out every appeal of every result of a Ring title fight before recognizing the result, or else they’ll be guilty of inconsistency. And if they end up treating fighters promoted by Golden Boy differently than fighters not promoted by Golden Boy, then all of the worst fears everyone had when GBP bought The Ring will have come true. (For me, those fears came true about six weeks ago; but everyone else should be willing to wait for bias and corruption to come through on the pages of the magazine and in the rankings before concluding definitively that this venerable publication has been compromised.)
Let’s say Amir Khan vs. Zab Judah had been a Ring championship fight. Khan won by knockout, and very few people considered it controversial. But Judah filed a protest. By the precedent set last week, The Ring wouldn’t have been able to recognize Golden Boy’s own fighter, Khan, as the champion until the protest had been officially denied.
Uncomfortable as it sometimes was, Nigel followed the obvious rule when it came to Ring title fights to always recognize the official decision. When Joel Casamayor won a horrid decision over Jose Armando Santa Cruz in defense of the lightweight title, The Ring had no decision to make; it recognized Casamayor as champ because, officially, he won the fight. Anything else would have turned The Ring championship into a laughingstock.
Rankings decisions are different when there’s no Ring title at stake. It’s still a bit of a slippery slope to unofficially “overrule” the referee’s or judges’ decision and rank the “losing” fighter above the “winning” fighter, but such a move is permissable when it comes to all the gray area in ranking fighters. With championship bouts, there is no gray area. It’s black and white. The winner gets the title. The loser does not.
In the case of Hopkins vs. Dawson, The Ring’s actions should have been simple. Dawson was named the winner by TKO. Dawson is the champion. If and when the result is changed to a no-contest by the California commission, you reverse course and recognize Hopkins as the champion, wiping Dawson’s reign from the books. This is so obvious, I can hardly believe I have to spell it out. Then again, I could hardly believe it when I heard about what The Ring editors had done last week.
I shudder to say it, but The Ring is behaving much like an alphabet gang does. Incidentally, the WBC made its own rash decision last week and ignored the fight’s official result, declaring the bout a technical draw and returning the title to Hopkins. Congrats to The Ring editors on landing in such esteemed company as Jose Sulaiman. I’m not saying The Ring championship policy as drawn up by Nigel Collins is perfect—I never claimed it to be—but it was near impossible to corrupt and was built on the belief that patience is preferable to kneejerk reactions.
Best-case scenario, The Ring’s decision to ignore the official result of the Dawson-Hopkins fight came as a result of a lack of patience. Or maybe it’s a mix of that and the new editors’ egos leading them to want to exert control and put their own stamp on things quickly, trying to distance themselves from whatever was established before they came along. As Tim Starks wrote on the Queensberry Rules blog last week, “I hope this is just a bad call from new leadership still finding its legs.”
Worst-case scenario, they’re letting themselves be influenced inappropriately. I hope that’s not the reality of the situation. I hope nobody at GBP is telling them what to do. But many fans came away last week asking that question. When you make up rules on the fly, and they happen to favor Golden Boy fighters, you’d better be prepared for suspicion from the public.
Since The Ring championship policy began, and particularly since Golden Boy bought the company, I’ve tried to fend off critics who made the compelling argument, “Sure, I respect Nigel, but why should I go all in recognizing these titles when I know Nigel won’t be around forever and we can’t predict what will happen when he’s gone?” For years, I thought they were wrong and I was right, that The Ring championships were above reproach and would remain so. It turns out they were right and I was wrong, and I’m man enough to admit that. I always assumed Nigel’s successor would be someone who would be prepared by Nigel to be the steward of the magazine’s editorial department. I never really considered the possibility that there would be a hostile takeover. As a result, I feel like a fool. And to everyone I thought was wrong about the long-term issues with endorsing The Ring championship, I apologize, because it seems you’re being proven correct. (Which isn’t to say everyone couldn’t have endorsed Ring titles short-term, with an option to reevaluate later, but I digress.)
To be clear, this decision by The Ring’s new regime to recognize Hopkins as the champ for now in no ways proves there’s corruption afoot. All it proves is that the new editors are prone to making short-sighted decisions that fly in the face of how the championship policy is supposed to work. Not that any of this comes as a massive surprise; after decades of Nigel fighting against the alphabet bodies, The Ring’s website increasingly seems to serve as a public relations firm for the WBC.
In the end, California will probably overturn the result and the final outcome will be as The Ring believes it to be now: Hopkins is light heavyweight champion. But the difference between right and wrong does not come down only to the end result. It’s also about the process. And I believe all of the fans who are questioning that process have reason to be concerned.
Sorry if I was a bit long-winded on that, but it’s not a subject that can be properly addressed in just a sentence or two. Now let’s transition to subjects that can and will be addressed concisely, with the weekly Rants:
–If indeed a doubleheader featuring Marcos Maidana-Erik Morales II and Antonio DeMarco-Jorge Linares II comes off, those are two hours I will spend not caring one bit about the fact that we’re not getting a Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather fight. You just can’t put together a better show than those two rematches for creating new fight fans and reminding old ones why they love this sport.
–I’m not sure what’s sadder: that Roy Jones has plans to fight again, or that he takes advice from a guy whose first name is “McGee.”
–Speaking of Jones, I enjoyed his line during Saturday night’s HBO broadcast, in reference to the opponents he fought in his prime and the opponents Nonito Donaire is fighting now: “We don’t rank ’em, we spank ’em.”
–I think we can all agree that Omar Narvaez failed to establish himself as the most fearsome Omar in HBO broadcasting history.
–I find the discussion over whether Donaire should move up to 122 pounds or remain at 118 fairly pointless. I honestly don’t see anyone in either division who’s going to give “The Filipino Flash” a test right now. It’s when he climbs to featherweight that I expect things to get interesting.
–In an interview I conducted with Chuck Wepner last week, Wepner noted that the fight that earned him a shot at Muhammad Ali was a knockout over “Terrible” Terry Hinke. This begs the question: Has there ever been a boxer named Terry who didn’t have the nickname “Terrible”?
–As you may have noticed on ShoBox on Friday night, ring announcer David Diamante is using the catch phrase “The fight starts now!” If “the fight” in question is the one to convince Diamante to stop trying to force a catch phrase, then I agree, it starts now.
–I don’t think Edwin Rodriguez will ever be in the running for any Fighter of the Year awards, but I could see him being in some Fight of the Year candidates. And there’s nothing at all wrong with that.
–In case you missed it, last week’s episode of Ring Theory (http://ringtheory.podbean.com) was loaded with analysis of Hopkins-Dawson, DeMarco-Linares, and Ken Hershman’s move to HBO. And of course, there was the surprise guest appearance of Richard Schaefer, which can be heard in this free preview clip: http://tinyurl.com/3mc8p63. Thanks again for taking the time, Richard.
Eric Raskin can be contacted at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com. You can follow him on Twitter @EricRaskin and listen to new episodes of his podcast, Ring Theory, at http://ringtheory.podbean.com.
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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Recap and More

It’s old news now, but on back-to-back nights on the first weekend of May, there were three fights that finished in the top six snoozefests ever as measured by punch activity. That’s according to CompuBox which has been around for 40 years.
In Times Square, the contest between Devin Haney and Jose Carlos Ramirez had the fifth-fewest number of punches thrown, but the main event, Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero, was even more of a snoozefest, landing in third place on this ignoble list.
Those standings would be revised the next night – knocked down a peg when Canelo Alvarez and William Scull combined to throw a historically low 445 punches in their match in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 152 by the victorious Canelo who at least pressed the action, unlike Scull (pictured) whose effort reminded this reporter of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – no, not the movie starring Paul Newman, just the title.
CompuBox numbers, it says here, are best understood as approximations, but no amount of rejiggering can alter the fact that these three fights were stinkers. Making matters worse, these were pay-per-views. If one had bundled the two events, rather than buying each separately, one would have been out $90 bucks.
****
Thankfully, the Sunday card on ESPN from Las Vegas was redemptive. It was just what the sport needed at this moment – entertaining fights to expunge some of the bad odor. In the main go, Naoya Inoue showed why he trails only Shohei Ohtani as the most revered athlete in Japan.
Throughout history, the baby-faced assassin has been a boxing promoter’s dream. It’s no coincidence that down through the ages the most common nickname for a fighter – and by an overwhelming margin — is “Kid.”
And that partly explains Naoya Inoue’s charisma. The guy is 32 years old, but here in America he could pass for 17.
Joey Archer
Joey Archer, who passed away last week at age 87 in Rensselaer, New York, was one of the last links to an era of boxing identified with the nationally televised Friday Night Fights at Madison Square Garden.

Joey Archer
Archer made his debut as an MSG headliner on Feb. 4, 1961, and had 12 more fights at the iconic mid-Manhattan sock palace over the next six years. The final two were world title fights with defending middleweight champion Emile Griffith.
Archer etched his name in the history books in November of 1965 in Pittsburgh where he won a comfortable 10-round decision over Sugar Ray Robinson, sending the greatest fighter of all time into retirement. (At age 45, Robinson was then far past his peak.)
Born and raised in the Bronx, Joey Archer was a cutie; a clever counter-puncher recognized for his defense and ultimately for his granite chin. His style was embedded in his DNA and reinforced by his mentors.
Early in his career, Archer was domiciled in Houston where he was handled by veteran trainer Bill Gore who was then working with world lightweight champion Joe Brown. Gore would ride into the Hall of Fame on the coattails of his most famous fighter, “Will-o’-the Wisp” Willie Pep. If Joey Archer had any thoughts of becoming a banger, Bill Gore would have disabused him of that notion.
In all honesty, Archer’s style would have been box office poison if he had been black. It helped immensely that he was a native New Yorker of Irish stock, albeit the Irish angle didn’t have as much pull as it had several decades earlier. But that observation may not be fair to Archer who was bypassed twice for world title fights after upsetting Hurricane Carter and Dick Tiger.
When he finally caught up with Emile Griffith, the former hat maker wasn’t quite the fighter he had been a few years earlier but Griffith, a two-time Fighter of the Year by The Ring magazine and the BWAA and a future first ballot Hall of Famer, was still a hard nut to crack.
Archer went 30 rounds with Griffith, losing two relatively tight decisions and then, although not quite 30 years old, called it quits. He finished 45-4 with 8 KOs and was reportedly never knocked down, yet alone stopped, while answering the bell for 365 rounds. In retirement, he ran two popular taverns with his older brother Jimmy Archer, a former boxer who was Joey’s trainer and manager late in Joey’s career.
May he rest in peace.
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Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

Japan’s Naoya “Monster” Inoue banged it out with Mexico’s Ramon Cardenas, survived an early knockdown and pounded out a stoppage win to retain the undisputed super bantamweight world championship on Sunday.
Japan and Mexico delivered for boxing fans again after American stars failed in back-to-back days.
“By watching tonight’s fight, everyone is well aware that I like to brawl,” Inoue said.
Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs), and Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs) and his wicked left hook, showed the world and 8,474 fans at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that prizefighting is about punching, not running.
After massive exposure for three days of fights that began in New York City, then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then to Nevada, it was the casino capital of the world that delivered what most boxing fans appreciate- pure unadulterated action fights.
Monster Inoue immediately went to work as soon as the opening bell rang with a consistent attack on Cardenas, who very few people knew anything about.
One thing promised by Cardenas’ trainer Joel Diaz was that his fighter “can crack.”
Cardenas proved his trainer’s words truthful when he caught Inoue after a short violent exchange with a short left hook and down went the Japanese champion on his back. The crowd was shocked to its toes.
“I was very surprised,” said Inoue about getting dropped. ““In the first round, I felt I had good distance. It got loose in the second round. From then on, I made sure to not take that punch again.”
Inoue had no trouble getting up, but he did have trouble avoiding some of Cardenas massive blows delivered with evil intentions. Though Inoue did not go down again, a look of total astonishment blanketed his face.
A real fight was happening.
Cardenas, who resembles actor Andy Garcia, was never overly aggressive but kept that left hook of his cocked and ready to launch whenever he saw the moment. There were many moments against the hyper-aggressive Inoue.
Both fighters pack power and both looked to find the right moment. But after Inoue was knocked down by the left hook counter, he discovered a way to eliminate that weapon from Cardenas. Still, the Texas-based fighter had a strong right too.
In the sixth round Inoue opened up with one of his lightning combinations responsible for 10 consecutive knockout wins. Cardenas backed against the ropes and Inoue blasted away with blow after blow. Then suddenly, Cardenas turned Inoue around and had him on the ropes as the Mexican fighter unloaded nasty combinations to the body and head. Fans roared their approval.
“I dreamed about fighting in front of thousands of people in Las Vegas,” said Cardenas. “So, I came to give everything.”
Inoue looked a little surprised and had a slight Mona Lisa grin across his face. In the seventh round, the Japanese four-division world champion seemed ready to attack again full force and launched into the round guns blazing. Cardenas tried to catch Inoue again with counter left hooks but Inoue’s combos rained like deadly hail. Four consecutive rights by Inoue blasted Cardenas almost through the ropes. The referee Tom Taylor ruled it a knockdown. Cardenas beat the count and survived the round.
In the eighth round Inoue looked eager to attack and at the bell launched across the ring and unloaded more blows on Cardenas. A barrage of 14 unanswered blows forced the referee to stop the fight at 45 seconds of round eight for a technical knockout win.
“I knew he was tough,” said Inoue. “Boxing is not that easy.”
Espinoza Wins
WBO featherweight titlist Rafael Espinosa (27-0, 23 KOs) uppercut his way to a knockout win over Edward Vazquez (17-3, 4 KOs) in the seventh round.
“I wanted to fight a game fighter to show what I am capable,” said Espinoza.
Espinosa used the leverage of his six-foot, one-inch height to slice uppercuts under the guard of Vazquez. And when the tall Mexican from Guadalajara targeted the body, it was then that the Texas fighter began to wilt. But he never surrendered.
Though he connected against Espinoza in every round, he was not able to slow down the taller fighter and that allowed the Mexican fighter to unleash a 10-punch barrage including four consecutive uppercuts. The referee stopped the fight at 1:47 of the seventh round.
It was Espinoza’s third title defense.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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Undercard Results and Recaps from the Inoue-Cardenas Show in Las Vegas

The curtain was drawn on a busy boxing weekend tonight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas where the featured attraction was Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue appearing in his twenty-fifth world title fight.
The top two fights (Inoue vs. Roman Cardenas for the unified 122-pound crown and Rafael Espinoza vs. Edward Vazquez for the WBO world featherweight diadem) aired on the main ESPN platform with the preliminaries streaming on ESPN+.
The finale of the preliminaries was a 10-rounder between welterweights Rohan Polanco and Fabian Maidana. A 2020/21 Olympian for the Dominican Republic, Polanco was a solid favorite and showed why by pitching a shutout, punctuating his triumph by knocking Maidana to his knees late in the final round with a hard punch to the pit of the stomach.
Polanco improved to 16-0 (10). Argentina’s Maidana, the younger brother of former world title-holder Marcos Maidana, fell to 24-4 while maintaining his distinction of never being stopped.
Emiliano Vargas, a rising force in the 140-pound division with the potential to become a crossover star, advanced to 14-0 (12 KOs) with a second-round stoppage Juan Leon. Vargas, who turned 21 last month, is the son of former U.S. Olympian Fernando Vargas who had big money fights with the likes of Felix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya. Emiliano knocked Leon down hard twice in round two – both the result of right-left combinations — before Robert Hoyle waived it off.
A 28-year-old Spaniard, Leon was 11-2-1 heading in.
In his U.S. debut, 29-year-old Japanese southpaw Mikito Nakano (13-0, 12 KOs) turned in an Inoue-like performance with a fourth-round stoppage of Puerto Rico’s Pedro Medina. Nakano, a featherweight, had Medina on the canvas five times before referee Harvey Dock waived it off at the 1:58 mark of round four. The shell-shocked Medina (16-2) came into the contest riding a 15-fight winning streak.
Lynwood, California junior middleweight Art Barrera Jr, a 19-year-old protégé of Robert Garcia, scored a sixth-round stoppage of Chicago’s Juan Carlos Guerra. There were no knockdowns, but the bout had turned sharply in Barrera’s favor when referee Thomas Taylor intervened. The official time was 1:15 of round six.
Barrera improved to 9-0 (7 KOs). The spunky but outclassed Guerra, who upset Nico Ali Walsh in his previous outing, declined to 6-2-1.
In the lid-lifter, a 10-round featherweight affair, Muskegon Michigan’s Ra’eese Aleem improved to 22-1 (12) with a unanimous decision over LA’s hard-trying Rudy Garcia (13-2-1). The judges had it 99-01, 98-92, and 97-93.
Aleem, 34, was making his second start since June of 2023 when he lost a split decision in Australia to Sam Goodman with a date with Naoya Inoue hanging in the balance.
Check back shortly for David Avila’s recaps of the two world title fights.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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