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Burning Questions (And Speculative Answers) For 2012…RASKIN

In a sport with as many moving pieces, individual interests, and BS agendas as there are in boxing, nothing is ever entirely predictable. But as 2012 dawns, the year ahead feels even more unpredictable than usual. The HBO boxing department has a new leader, and he used to be the head of the Showtime boxing department. Consequently, the Showtime boxing department has a new leader, and he used to be an employee of Golden Boy Promotions. Over at ESPN, both the main man in front of the camera and the main man behind the scenes have stepped down. And switching from the guys in suits to the guys in trunks, my pound-for-pound number one, Floyd Mayweather, takes up residence at the Clark County Detention Center this Friday, my pound-for-pound number two, Manny Pacquiao, might just be in decline, and my pound-for-pound number three, Sergio Martinez, basically told HBO to suck it last week.
2012 is probably going to be a lot different than 2011 and 2010. (Except for one thing: 2010 was âthe year Mayweather and Pacquiao didnât fight each other,â 2011 was also âthe year Mayweather and Pacquiao didnât fight each other,â and 2012 just might be shaping up as âthe year Mayweather and Pacquiao didnât fight each other.â)
With this much uncertainty surrounding the sport of boxing as the calendar turns over, itâs a perfect time to ask and answer all of the burning questions on fight fansâ minds regarding the 12 months to come. Weâll start with the question we just canât seem to get away from, and move on from there:
Will Mayweather and Pacquiao fight each other?
Not in the first half of the year. But could it happen on one of those traditional pay-per-view blockbuster dates in September or November? Itâs highly possible that Floydâseeing a slipping Pacquiao and hearing a ticking clockâwill want it, highly possible that Bob Arum will recognize that the end of the Pacquiao era is nigh and begrudgingly pursue it, and a near-certainty that the fearless and fan-friendly Pacquiao will want it. I think the biggest X-factor is what happens with Pacquiaoâs fight in the spring. My guess is that heâll fight Juan Manuel Marquez for a fourth time. (Iâm not buying the idea of less marketable fights against Tim Bradley or Lamont Peterson, and I think Miguel Cotto is too smart to want a rematch with Pac.) And as we all know now, any fight against Marquez is a fight Pac-Man can lose. If he does lose, Pacquiao-Mayweather becomes pointless. If he winsâespecially if he does so without controversyâPacquiao-Mayweather is red hot again. The final guess here: Pacquiao fights Marquez, defeats him narrowly, and all parties are ready to cash in with Pacquiao-Mayweather in the fall, to the tune of 2.8 million PPV buys.
Will anything happen at heavyweight to make anyone in America care?
Only two things can move the needle at this point: a Klitschko losing or a serious new American contender emerging. The former ainât happening (although I wouldnât mind seeing a healthy Odlanier Solis get a rematch against Vitali; he has the skill to be less than a 10-1 underdog, which probably isnât true of any other potential challenger). So we need an American up-and-comer to get excited about, and Seth Mitchell, who performed as impressively as anyone could have hoped in his HBO debut in December, is the only guy with an outside chance. Unfortunately, I see the mediaâs need to find the next great heavyweight and the fact that the pressure canât be spread among numerous hopefuls as a formula for Mitchell to disappoint. Heâll struggle to an underwhelming decision win against a veteran contender to start the year, then heâll take heat for dialing back the competition to someone sub-Timor-Ibragimov the next time out. Heâll escape 2012 still unbeaten and a legit top-10 contender (in a division that goes only two deep, it should be noted), but the buzz on December 31 wonât be what it was on January 1.
What impact will Ken Hershman and Stephen Espinoza have?
From the looks of things, Hershmanâs job at HBO is going to be even more challenging than he probably expected, with Golden Boy having a built-in relationship with the new Showtime boss, with Victor Ortiz-Andre Berto II already jumping networks, with Sergio Martinez announcing that his next fight wonât be on HBO, and with Mayweather out of the mix for the first half of the year. It sure looks like the stage is set for Showtime to challenge HBOâs supremacy, even if they remain at a budgetary disadvantage. Then again, Hershman didnât earn the HBO job by being an ambition-less dummy. Sort of like how the peak of the WWF-WCW war from around 1996-â99 saw both companies pushing each other to reach new levels of entertainment, I suspect the HBO/Showtime shakeups will work out to the great benefit of boxing fans once the slow first month of 2012 has passed. (And I feel at least 63 percent confident in predicting that we wonât see Gary Russell Jr. in a four-rounder on either network at any time in 2012.)
Will we get Andre Ward vs. Lucian Bute?
Ward has already earned the right to call himself The Man at 168 pounds, but if he wants to be The Undisputed Man, he does still need to take care of business against Bute. And I suspect he intends to. Wardâs apparent disinterest in the Romanian-Canadian immediately following his Super Six finals victory over Carl Froch struck me as a negotiating ploy. Ward knows the fight belongs north of the border and if heâs going to concede home-ring advantage, he wants to at least hardball his way to the larger purse. Plus, Wardâs last five fights have come against Mikkel Kessler, Allan Green, Sakio Bika, Arthur Abraham, and Froch, lasting an average of 11.8 rounds; heâs entitled to a tuneup. So in the spring expect Bute vs. Froch and Ward vs. someone he can knock out, and then in the fall expect Ward vs. Bute if Froch doesnât upset that plan.
Who will be the new Friday Night Fights studio host?
I assume weâll get this answer any day now, since, you know, thereâs an FNF broadcast scheduled for this Friday. But in the meantime, my quick prediction: Bernardo Osuna. Heâs a part of the ESPN family already, heâs polished in front of the camera, he knows boxing, and heâs bilingual, which is handy when it comes to interviewing certain guests or even translating from a distance for Joe and Teddy. I have no inside information on this, other than me talking to Osuna in Las Vegas in November and him saying he didnât know anything yet, but if you find out in a day or two that he got the gig, you heard it here first.
Whose opposition will piss fans off more, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. or Saul Alvarez?
Before I answer the question, allow me to follow my Ring Theory co-host Bill Dettloffâs lead and note that I will henceforth cease to refer to JCC Jr. as a âChavezâ because heâs unworthy of that surname, and instead refer to him as Julio Cesar Salad. Honestly, Salad and Canelo are being moved with near-equal calculated carefulness, but Salad is 4œ years older, so Canelo gets more of a pass if he spends another year fighting safe opposition. That said, Marco Antonio Rubio is a credible challenge for Salad, assuming Top Rank doesnât drug Rubio in the dressing room. So if Alvarez fights a total patsy in April, he might exceed Salad in terms of his heat index. This is a tough call, but Iâll go with Chavez as the greater whipping boy of the fans by yearâs end. The only thing I know for sure is this: Salad will not fight Sergio Martinez in 2012 and Alvarez will not fight Miguel Cotto in 2012, and yet both fringe contenders will insist on calling themselves âchampions.â
Which American former middleweight champion will have a greater impact in the boxing ring, Jermain Taylor or Kelly Pavlik?
This is a modified version of a question I asked Dettloff last week on Ring Theory, and Iâm asking it again because itâs fascinating that Taylor might be in a position to make a little noise again while his two-time conqueror, Pavlik, appears to have unraveled so severely in his personal life that his career might never resume. But Iâm going to go against the grain and select Pavlik as the answer to this question. If Pavlik fights in 2012âa major âif,â I realizeâthe tabloid-ish attention surrounding his first fight will guarantee that his impact exceeds Taylorâs. I think as long as Cameron Dunkin and company can haul Pavlik the hell outta Youngstown and get him into Robert Garciaâs gym in southern California, thereâs a good chance âThe Ghostâ will be in line for 2012âs Comeback of the Year.
What are the three most horrifying things Jose Sulaiman will say this year?
1. âThe WBC proudly supports Jerry Sandusky.â
2. âDid you see the way that bee-otch was dressed? She was asking for it!â
3. âI am pleased to announce I have been re-elected president of the WBC by a unanimous vote of the board of directors.â
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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Avila Perspective, Chap. 121: Prizefighting in 2021

Prizefighting actually dipped underground for the past nine months with professional boxers training illegally in darkened gyms behind shuttered windows and locked doors.
It still remains an underground sport.
The slow death cloud of the coronavirus led to government restrictions forbidding large gatherings especially in enclosed facilities. Boxers still train.
It was a primary reason that prizefighting among the elite was never more bare.
When Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder met at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for their rematch, a crowd of more than 15,000 fans witnessed the heavyweight spectacle. That took place on February 22, and it was the last hurrah in 2020.
A new year begins but the old ways of doing things are no longer in place. Those large purses are unattainable without fans, but itâs difficult to convince the prizefighters. All they know is they want to get paid with pre-2020 checks.
Very few of the top male prizefighters took to the prize ring.
One leading American matchmaker, who did not wish to go on record, said fighters do not understand that ticket sales are an important aspect of the fight game. Many prizefighters feel they are underpaid and being cheated when offered purses that fall under their pre-2020 monies.
No fans, no money.
Television or streaming app revenue is not enough without the clicking of the turnstile.
Fans are the reason that fighters get paid and without fans prizefighting does not exist.
Reality in 2021
Before the advent of television, prizefighters were paid strictly on the basis of ticket sales. The more fans a fighter could attract, the bigger the purse. When television arrived it drastically changed the landscape.
Television networks who delve into boxing bring their own budgets and cable networks like HBO and Showtime drastically changed the landscape. Instead of thousands, millions were being paid to the stars. Mike Tyson, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather were the prizefighters leading the way past $20 and $30 million dollar purses. MMA still hasnât reached those figures. Not even close, unless they are fighting against a boxer as Conor McGregor did several years ago.
During the past three years new players arrived with streaming apps like ESPN+ and DAZN entering the boxing world. One primary advantage has been its worldwide ability to transmit boxing events. However, because not all of the world has access to high tech, those streaming apps are still in the pioneering phase when it comes to building a fan base. At the moment, television still holds the upper hand but the gap is closing quickly.
Lately, DAZN has taken to inserting sponsors logos into their live programming without skipping a beat. It was only a matter of time before they realized the capabilities of inserting commercials digitally. Itâs not a new idea; it was explored decades ago by our own BoxingChannel.tv.
Still, as long as the pandemic exists and fans are unable to attend boxing cards the mega fights that drive prizefighting will not take place. The arrival of various vaccines for the coronavirus are a big plus for the sport emerging out of the underground state of boxing. But the fighters need to fight.
Tyson Fury needs to meet Anthony Joshua in a battle for the heavyweight championship and Errol Spence Jr. must fight Terence Crawford this year. Others like Teofimo Lopez are doing their part to open the eyes of fans to the new breed of prizefighters who can fight, talk and excite with their electrifying skills.
Potential stars like Serhii Bohachuk, Vergil Ortiz Jr. and Charles Conwell are catching the eye of fans and all are basically around the same weight classes. They took advantage of the openings for television and streaming spots.
Prizefighters everywhere need to understand this pandemic may last longer than you think. God forbid, but there could be another looming around the corner. Itâs time to go for broke and get back in the prize ring. Time is not on your side.
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Remembering Young Stribling on the Centennial of his First Pro Fight

This coming Sunday, Jan. 17, marks the 100th anniversary of the pro debut of one of boxingâs most interesting characters. On this date in 1921, Young Stribling, carrying 118 pounds, won a 4-round decision over Kid Dombe in the opening bout of a 4-bout card at the auditorium (it had no name) in Atlanta, Georgia. Stribling would go on to fight for the world heavyweight title and would leave the sport as boxingâs all-time knockout king, a distinction that commands an asterisk.
Striblingâs effort against Dombe, who was billed as Georgiaâs newsboy champion, made a strong impression on the ringside reporter for the Atlanta Constitution. âA young gentleman,â he wrote, âis destined to become mighty popular in the squared circle. He is Young Stribling of Macon, and a classier bit of boxing machinery hasnât been uncovered in these parts in a good many years.â Stribling failed to stop his opponent, but left him âbadly mussed-up.â
Young Stribling, born William Lawrence Stribling, bubbled into a great regional attraction. Name a place in Georgia â Albany, Americus, Augustus, Bainbridge, Rome, Savannah, Thomasville, etc. â and Stribling fought there. As the star forward on his high school basketball team, one of the best teams in the country, he never ventured far from home for a boxing match until he was deep into his career.
Many of Striblingâs fights were held in conjunction with fairs and carnivals and some others were staged in vaudeville houses. Stribling was the son of professional acrobats. As a young boy, he and his younger brother Herbert performed alongside their parents in a novelty act, a mock prizefight done up in slapstick.
Stribling attracted national attention in 1923 when he opposed veteran Mike McTigue, the reigning light heavyweight champion. The bout was held in a 20,000-seat wooden arena in Columbus, Georgia.
A New Yorker, but an Irishman by birth, McTigue brought his own referee, which wasnât uncommon in those days. The arbiter was Harry Ertle, a City Marshal in Jersey City, famed as the third man in the ring for Jack Dempseyâs fight with Georges Carpentier, the first fight with a million-dollar gate.
âThe road is a treacherous place,â a wizened old fight manager was overheard saying at New Yorkâs fabled Stillman Gym. And Columbus, Georgia, a town situated on the banks of the Chattahoochee River and purportedly a Ku Klux Klan stronghold, was certainly a treacherous place for Team McTigue on that balmy October afternoon.
After 10 rather pedestrian rounds, Ertle called the fight a draw. But he was in such a hurry to exit the ring that he did not make his verdict clear. Rather than call the combatants to the center of the ring and raise both their arms, he merely pointed at both corners, âspreading his hands as a baseball umpire calling a baserunner safe after a slide.â
Ertle didnât get far. He was immediately accosted by the head of the local organizing committee who upon confirming that Ertle had scored the bout a draw, ordered the referee back into the ring. âYou will never get out of here (if you donât give the fight to Stribling),â he said. âWe have all the railroad stations covered.â
Ertle went back into the ring, awarded the fight to Stribling, and then three hours later in the safety of a private residence, he signed a statement saying that his original decision should stand. The incident made all the papers and made Stribling a household name in houses where folks read the sports pages.
When Stribling fought McTigue, he was only 18 years old. And he was fast growing into his body, tipping the scales for the fight at 165 pounds.
Stribling and McTigue renewed acquaintances five months later in Newark, New Jersey. In a shocker, the âGeorgia Schoolboyâ dominated the Irishman. Stribling won all 12 rounds in the estimation of one ringside reporter. He had McTigue almost out in the 11th and again in the 12th but reverted to clowning and let him off the hook. âIt was a bad habit,â said a reporter, âthat the kid picked up working the country fair circuit.â
Because New Jersey was then a âno-decisionâ state, McTigue was allowed to keep his title. Stribling would get another chance at the belt in June of 1926 when he met McTigueâs conqueror Paul Berlenbach at Yankee Stadium.
Boxing writers fawned over Young Stribling who seldom appeared in public without his parents; his father was his chief cornerman. His parentsâ names were âMaâ and âPa,â or thatâs what condescending East Coast writers always called them.
The Stribling-Berlenbach fight, wrote syndicated sportswriter Damon Runyon, âwas the most widely advertised and most eagerly anticipated event of some years in New York.â The crowd, reportedly 56,000, âattracted more political bigwigs and social and sporting dignitaries than you could shake a stick at.â And the fight, marred by excessive clinching, was a dud. It went the full 15 rounds and Berlenbach, the Astoria Assassin, won decisively (the scores were not announced).
It was back to the drawing board for Young Stribling, which meant back to the life of a barnstormer. Over the next 33 months, he had 75 (!) documented fights and lost only once, that coming at the hands of clever Tommy Loughran in a 10-round bout at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. That impressive run boosted him into a match with Jack Sharkey, an âeliminatorâ in which the winner would be one step removed from fighting for the world heavyweight title vacated by Gene Tunney.
Stribling vs. Sharkey was the last important bout arranged by Tex Rickard who died seven weeks before the bout materialized in an arena erected on a polo field in Miami Beach. It was North against South, and the crowd, nearly 35,000, was solidly against Sharkey, the Boston Gob. But Stribling came up short again in a rather disappointing, albeit closely contested 10-round affair. There was little dissension when the New York referee gave the fight to the Bostonian.
Later that year, Max Schmeling defeated Paulino Uzcudun at Yankee Stadium, setting the stage for a Sharkey-Schmeling fight for the vacant title. In the fourth round, Sharkey was disqualified after sending Schmeling to the canvas with a punch that was palpably low.
After his setback to Jack Sharkey, Young Stribling fought his way back into contention with wins over three ranked opponents after splitting a pair of suspicious fights with Primo Carnera in Europe. In fact, in a 1930 poll of 55 sportswriters by the New York Sun, Stribling was named the best heavyweight, out-polling both Sharkey and Schmeling. When the German picked Stribling for his first title defense, he was, in the eyes of many people, choosing his most worthy challenger.
Carnera vs. Stribling was the icebreaker event at Clevelandâs Municipal Stadium, the new home of the cityâs baseball team, the Indians. The bout came to fruition on the eve of the Fourth of July in 1931, two days after the cavernous ballpark was formally dedicated in an elaborate ceremony.
Stribling started fast, but Schmeling ultimately proved too strong for him. In the 15th round, Schmeling knocked him to the canvas and then pummeled him into a helpless condition, forcing the referee to intervene and waive it off. This wasnât a great fight, but it was a quite a spectacle, notwithstanding the fact that there were a lot of empty seats. The Ring magazine named it the Fight of the Year.
This would be Young Striblingâs last big-money fight. In his final ring appearance, he outpointed light heavyweight title-holder Maxie Rosenbloom in a 10-round non-title fight in Houston. According to BoxRec, he left the sport with a record of 224-13-14 with 129 knockouts, a record eventually broken by Archie Moore who would be credited with 131.
About those knockouts: It came to be understood that many were bogus, not fictional, but rather set-ups on the carnival circuit where he padded his record against someone with whom he was well-acquainted. But there are also some curious knockouts on Archie Mooreâs ledger. On Mooreâs list of KO victims one finds the names of Professor Roy Shire and Mike DiBiase, popular grunt-and-groan wrestlers.
As to Young Striblingâs fistic legacy, historians are all over the map. The biography of Stribling by Jaclyn Weldon White (Mercer University Press, 2011) is titled âThe Greatest Champion that Never Was.â Thatâs a bit over the top. The reality is that when Stribling was matched against his strongest opponents, his Sunday punch was missing in action.
You wonât find Striblingâs name on Matt McGrainâs 2014 list of the 100 Greatest Heavyweights of All Time. Stribling checks in at #23 on McGrainâs list of the all-time greatest light heavyweights and, with all due respect to McGrain, that also strikes us as a bit off-kilter, not giving Stribling enough credit. In more than 250 documented fights, he was stopped only once, that coming with 14 seconds remaining in the 15th and final round of his bout with Max Schmeling.
Regardless of where you choose to place him, Young Stribling was certainly colorful.
Young Stribling lived his life in the fast lane, and with him that isnât a clichĂ©. He loved to fly, and when he headed off somewhere in his six-seater, said a reporter, âhe would take the plane off the ground in a shivering climb so steep veteran flyers gasped.â On the highways, his preferred mode of travel was a motorcycle.
Stribling married his high school sweetheart and they had three children. On Oct. 1, 1933, he left his home in Macon on his motorcycle and never returned. A head-on crash with an incoming car sent him to the hospital where he died the next day from internal injuries. Ma and Pa were there with him in his final hours, as was his wife who had given birth to a baby boy eight days earlier in this very same hospital.
William Lawrence âYoungâ Stribling was 28 years old when he drew his final breath. He packed a lot of living into those 28 years, including a whirlwind boxing career that took flight 100 years ago this coming Sunday.
Note: The photo is the cover photo from the October 1924 issue of The Ring magazine
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R.I.P. Boxing Promoter Mike Acri

Word arrived yesterday, Jan. 12, that boxing promoter Mike Acri died this past Sunday at age 63. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer.
Acri was from Erie, Pennsylvania, which also happens to be the hometown of Hall of Fame promoter Don Elbaum. The two often worked in tandem, most notably when they promoted the fight between Laila Ali and Jacqui Frazier-Lyde.
Acri promoted Ali; Frazier-Lyde was under contract to the venerable Elbaum. The bout between the daughters of the legendary pugilists, billed as Ali-Frazier IV, took place on June 8, 2001 at the Turning Stone Resort in Verona, New York, kicking off Hall of Fame Weekend at the boxing shrine in nearby Canastota.
Mike Acri birthed the tradition of holding pro fights at Turning Stone on the Eve of the Hall of Fame festivities. The first of these shows, in 1998, pitted Hector Camacho against West Virginia journeyman Tommy Small. Camacho TKOed Small in the sixth, recapturing some of the prestige he had lost in his pussycat showing against Oscar De La Hoya.
Acri was especially proud of the Turning Stone series. âAt these events, you have memorabilia people, you have past inductees, and most important, boxing fanatics from everywhere⊠itâs the ultimate thrill to know that my fight cards are the center of attention for the biggest boxing weekend of the year,â he told prominent boxing writer Jake Donovan for a 2005 story that ran on this site.
Acri had his best run with Paul Spadafora, the trouble-plagued âPittsburgh Kidâ who went on to win the IBF lightweight title and left the sport with a record of 49-1-1.
Spadafora fought frequently â 15 fights in all — at the Mountaineer racino in Chester, West Virginia, where Acri was the matchmaker. The little town of Chester sits roughly 40 miles northwest of Pittsburgh and 40 miles south of Youngstown, Ohio, cities with rich boxing traditions.
Although Acri was with Spadafora when the âKidâ was just getting started, he was best known as a rejuvenator who latched hold of fighters with name value who were cascading into irrelevancy and restored some of their lost luster while maneuvering them into a few good late-career paydays. Exhibit A was Roberto Duran.
Acri was one of the prime movers of the lucrative rubber match between Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard. In his next outing, Duran was shockingly defeated by Pat Lawlor, a third-rater, and was written off as finished, but Acri extracted more mileage from the Panamanian legend, guiding him into two good-money fights with Vinny Pazienza and two with the aforementioned Camacho, interspersed with stay-busy fights that served to keep his name in the news.
Mike Acriâs last co-promotion, if that is the word, was the acclaimed Showtime documentary âMacho: The Hector Camacho Story,â for which he received an Executive Producer credit. We here at The Sweet Science send our condolences to his family and loved ones.
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