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You’re Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
Borrowing from the classic style and prose of hall of fame sportswriter Jimmy Cannon (April 10, 1909 – December 5, 1973), the writer takes a look at the career of Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and discovers that time is not the only vandal.
You’re Floyd Maweather, Jr., aged thirty-five, the preeminent star in the sport of boxing. People love you, and they hate you. They love you because of how great you could be. They hate you because you seem unwilling to prove it. Still, you are the alpha figure in boxing today, and you love it. You make more money than any other fighter in the sport. In fact, you have the fantastic ability to make in one night more than what ninety-nine percent of fighters make for their whole careers. You’re Floyd Mayweather, and you’re the best fighter in the world…maybe.
Oh sure, you’re still undefeated. No one can take that away from you. You wouldn’t give them the chance. Yeah, you’ve beaten some of the very best fighters of your era. The names on your resume are nothing to scoff at. Not at all. Ricky Hatton, Oscar De La Hoya, Shane Mosley, Juan Manuel Marquez, Miguel Cotto. Big names. Huge. But there’s more to a legacy than just “names,” isn’t there?
You started out the right way. No doubt about it. You began your career as good a prospect as any. Your hands were fast; your feet too. You were an exceptional amateur talent with the litany of accomplishments to prove it. You weren’t just another athlete who boxed, you were a real fighter, born and bred. That picture of you in the gym as a tyke with boxing gloves on, it’s legit. That was you. You were born for this. God made you to be a boxer.
You won amateur titles all through your youth, national titles even. Then you went to the Olympics and did your country proud. You earned a bronze medal in the 1996 Olympics. Almost everyone thought you got jobbed in your loss to eventual silver medalist Serafim Todorov of Bulgaria. That Bulgarian judge did all he could for the other kid. He did you in. You won it for sure, and you would’ve won the gold medal, too. Impressive stuff. Men have been well reasoned to be prouder for doing less. Not you, though. You aspired for something more. Greatness.
You were a “can’t miss” prospect, and you didn’t. You coasted through the rite of passage palookas and hobos they put in front of you with ease, just like you should. Your handlers did everything right. They lined up marks for you to look good against, and you did. They patted you on the back. Said you’d be champion one day. Told you that you could be the greatest. You ate it up. We all did. You were something special. Everybody saw it. Heck, after your seventh professional fight, Manny Steward said he thought you’d go on to be the best ever. Ever!
You won your first title in 1998 at junior lightweight by obliterating tough guy Genaro Hernadez. You’d been a professional for just two years, and you were already champion. By the end of the year, you started getting listed among the pound-for-pound elites. All you did was win, no matter who or what they put in front of you, and you did it convincingly. You started getting noticed. You said you wanted to be like Oscar De La Hoya and Roy Jones, Jr. You didn’t just want to be the best in the business, you wanted to make the most money, be the biggest star.
Your junior lightweight run culminated in maybe the most impressive win of your career. When you met undefeated slugger Diego Corrales in 2001, you were sure to be up against your stiffest test. But you weren’t. You beat Corrales like he was an amateur, knocking him down five times en route to the TKO.
After a few more wins, you were ready to move up in weight. You had dreams to chase. And money. Then it happened, the unthinkable. You almost lost. You! Lightweight champion Jose Luis Castillo gave you all you could handle. Kept you on the ropes with punches coming from all angles. Worked you over good. You were lucky. The judges gave you the nod, even though Castillo out-landed you, even though the crowd booed you. It was close. Too close.
You did the right thing. You took an immediate rematch. At the end of it, the official scorecards were closer than last time, but you got the call again. It was a tough test, but you passed. They wouldn’t have robbed Castillo twice, right? You deserved to win. Maybe you learned something there, though. Maybe you learned taking the toughest fights might not be all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe you learned you liked winning more than anything else. Winning and money.
You didn’t let it deter you. Not at first. You moved up in weight again. You potshotted Demarcus Corely to an easy decision win in your junior welterweight debut. By now, you were one of HBO’s bell cows. You were setting up big PPV dates, so they gave you something easy. It’s understandable. You’d earned it. Next up, was blood and guts warrior Arturo Gatti. He had world class heart, but not the skills to match it. Not like you. You destroyed him. Easy money, and lots.
You skipped over light welterweight champion Kostya Tszu and moved up to welterweight instead. People were disappointed, but it wasn’t like you had some kind of history with this type of thing. Not yet. HBO gave you another gimme in Sharmba Mitchell. It was your first fight at the weight, after all. You had big fights to set up. You wanted Zab Judah and you got him, even though he lost the championship in his previous fight against Carlos Baldomir. You beat Mitchell and got what you wanted.
Against Zab Judah, you really showed your stuff. He was just as fast as you. Maybe faster. You found that out quickly. You adjusted, though. You had more than just fast hands. Much more. You had skill. You had stamina. After maybe losing three of the first four rounds, you won the last eight with ease. It was vintage stuff. A glimpse of perfection, perhaps. You showed how great you can be. For good measure, you followed it up by nabbing that linear title from Baldomir. He probably didn’t win a round against you.
Your ship was about to come in. You figured out you didn’t just want to be like Oscar De La Hoya, you wanted to beat him. A fight against the Golden Boy would open a lot of doors for you, and you knew it. You even moved up to junior middleweight to do it. It would be a tough test, but you believed in yourself. Besides, you reasoned, you’d make more money than you had ever made before in your life. It was worth the risk. It had to be. He was passed his best. You were not.
The fight was close. De La Hoya was bigger than you, and it showed. You made the adjustments. You eked out a majority decision win. Most people didn’t see it that close. You were the clear winner. Your undefeated record remained intact. You took De La Hoya’s title, but more than that, too. You took over his mantle as boxing’s biggest draw. You called yourself “Money” Mayweather now, and for good reason. Money became your primary reason for fighting. You didn’t care about titles. Or history. Or legacy. After all, you said you had proved all you needed to prove. What else could keep you fighting? Not the challenge of Miguel Cotto or Antonio Margarito at welterweight. Let them fight each other, you told yourself. Not Paul Williams. He was too big, a freak of nature. Not anyone that presented too much risk, you told yourself.
You saw an opportunity in Ricky Hatton. The junior welterweight from Britain was undefeated but a little crude. He was a huge draw like you, though, and you knew it. You signed the fight, and had him come up to welterweight to do it. You wanted all the advantages you could get. As boxing’s new golden goose, you deserved them. Hatton came out fast. He knocked you off balance with a jab, but you settled in. He was no match for you. By the middle of the fight, you were dominating. You knocked him out in picturesque fashion in round number ten. He had rushed at you like a bull, and you made him pay.
After defeating Ricky Hatton in December of 2007, you decided to do that thing fighters do where they say they’re retiring from the sport only to resurface a year or so later. Everybody knew it. You wanted some time off. It’s understandable.
That’s when you saw him for the first time really. Everybody did. He was smaller than you. He had all those losses. But he was mesmerizing now. How did he destroy Oscar De La Hoya like that? How? How could he be so fast, so strong, so terrifying? That’s when you decided to come back. Was it that he was taking attention away from you? Did you intend to fight him? It certainly seemed so at the time.
You returned in September of 2009. You picked the guy he had all that trouble with, Juan Manuel Marquez. You needed a tune-up first, and what better way to prove your superiority over him than by using his big nemesis as a tune-up? You made Marquez jump a couple weight classes to do it, but he took the fight. He was no match for you, especially after you didn’t even bother to make weight. You won a wide, unanimous decision victory. You promised to fight him soon.
You decided to go after Shane Mosley first. Mosley was older than you, but he was one of the best of his era. He caught you with a huge right hand in the second round and almost put you down. You recovered nicely though. You still had your legs. His were gone. You out boxed him like everyone thought you would. It was a nice win, but it wasn’t the win people wanted for you. You knew it. You promised to fight him next. You just wanted him to take drug tests. That’s all. You’re cleaning up the sport. He had to be on PEDs, you reasoned. He just had to.
You didn’t fight again for sixteen months. When you decided to come back this time, you chose Victor Ortiz reasoning it’d be good preparation for who you really wanted to fight. At least it seemed that way. Why else would it have been Ortiz? Was he on your level? He had lost to Marcos Maidana. Still, both Ortiz and the one you said you really wanted to fight if only Bob Arum weren’t stopping it, were hard-hitting southpaws. Ortiz was young and strong, but you would handle him. He proved to be dumb in that he let his hands down in front you after he tried to intentionally foul you. You starched him without mercy and won by knockout. It was all set up again.
You didn’t fight again until May of the next year. You decided not to fight him this time because he wouldn’t take the drugs tests or something. People started to lose track of the reasons. You decided to take on Miguel Cotto instead. You didn’t want to fight him at MSG. After all, one of his opponents likened it to fighting the devil in hell. Why would you do that? You took home court in Las Vegas, just like the big money guy should. It was a big event. Cotto wasn’t the same Cotto you didn’t fight all those years ago. Antonio Margarito had suspiciously beat much of that out of him. What was left was demolished by the fighter you said you wanted to fight but never did. Still, Cotto had rebounded nicely of late. He’d won three in a row, including a redemption match against Margarito.
The fight was more than you bargained for. He bloodied your nose. Nobody does that, but he did. He out-boxed you at times. You were winning, but you started to look your age. You seemed slower, more tired. You beat him with grit and determination. It was a good win. You closed the show like you should have. You swept him over the championship rounds. That’s what you do. Those were your rounds, champ. In the last round, you staggered him. He looked like he was ready to fall. But there was that risk there. You saw it. You knew you had the fight won. Why risk losing your undefeated record? You didn’t have anything to prove, you said to yourself. You’d play it safe. It doesn’t matter what that other guy did against him. You were still undefeated. He wasn’t.
Your outside the ring lifestyle may have gotten out of control a little bit. You liked partying with people you shouldn’t be around. You liked going to the club and making a scene. You loved the attention, the worship of the sycophants. The Money Team, you called them. They’re still with you. They’re still your people. They weren’t there when you went to jail, though. You were alone. That’s okay. Everybody makes mistakes. It happens. You had a lot of time to think in there. No one messed with you. They knew who you were. You liked it.
When you got out, you didn’t rush right back into boxing. Why would you? You’d been behind bars for three months. You weren’t in a rush. Your legacy was secure, at least to you. You didn’t need to fight him. Not yet.
He lost that December. That guy you beat easily a few years before, his nemesis Juan Manuel Marquez, knocked him out cold in the fifth round. See? You didn’t need to prove anything against that guy. See?
You’re getting ready for your return now. Time for you to fight again. You’ve targeted Cinco de Mayo weekend. After all, that’s the most lucrative date in the sport, and you’re boxing’s big money star. You have to fight. You’ll make more than anyone else in the world that night, and that’s what it’s all about, you say. You don’t have anything else to prove. You’ve done it. You’re the money man, now. Money Mayweather. And you’ll make plenty of it fighting guys like Robert Guerrero or Devon Alexander, guys who you’ll be heavily favored against just like always, for as long as you want. What else does a guy fight for?
But to some it seems that it should have been for more than just money. You could’ve been the greatest, just like Steward said, but you’re not. And it’s too late for it now. Too late. That’s why you’ve affected people so. You can’t help it if a whole lot of people feel lousy every time you fight now. But they do. They do.
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Fury-Usyk Reignited: Can the Gypsy King Avenge his Lone Defeat?
In professional boxing, the heavyweight division, going back to the days of John L. Sullivan, is the straw that stirs the drink. By this measure, the fight on May 18 of this year at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was the biggest prizefight in decades. The winner would emerge as the first undisputed heavyweight champion since 1999 when Lennox Lewis out-pointed Evander Holyfield in their second meeting.
The match did not disappoint. It had several twists and turns.
Usyk did well in the early rounds, but the Gypsy King rattled Usyk with a harsh right hand in the fifth stanza and won rounds five through seven on all three cards. In the ninth, the match turned sharply in favor of the Ukrainian. Fury was saved by the bell after taking a barrage of unanswered punches, the last of which dictated a standing 8-count from referee Mark Nelson. But Fury weathered the storm and with his amazing powers of recuperation had a shade the best of it in the final stanza.
The decision was split: 115-112 and 114-113 for Usyk who became a unified champion in a second weight class; 114-113 for Fury.
That brings us to tomorrow (Saturday, Dec. 21) where Usyk and Fury will renew acquaintances in the same ring where they had their May 18 showdown.
The first fight was a near “pick-‘em” affair with Fury closing a very short favorite at most of the major bookmaking establishments. The Gypsy King would have been a somewhat higher favorite if not for the fact that he was coming off a poor showing against MMA star Francis Ngannou and had a worrisome propensity for getting cut. (A cut above Fury’s right eye in sparring pushed back the fight from its original Feb. 11 date.)
Tomorrow’s sequel, bearing the tagline “Reignited,” finds Usyk a consensus 7/5 favorite although those odds could shorten by post time. (There was no discernible activity after today’s weigh-in where Fury, fully clothed, topped the scales at 281, an increase of 19 pounds over their first meeting.)
Given the politics of boxing, anything “undisputed” is fragile. In June, Usyk abandoned his IBF belt and the organization anointed Daniel Dubois their heavyweight champion based upon Dubois’s eighth-round stoppage of Filip Hrgovic in a bout billed for the IBF interim title. The malodorous WBA, a festering boil on the backside of boxing, now recognizes 43-year-old Kubrat Pulev as its “regular” heavyweight champion.
Another difference between tomorrow’s fight card and the first installment is that the May 18 affair had a much stronger undercard. Two strong pairings were the rematch between cruiserweights Jai Opetaia and Maris Briedis (Opetaia UD 12) and the heavyweight contest between unbeatens Agit Kabayal and Frank Sanchez (Kabayel KO 7).
Tomorrow’s semi-wind-up between Serhii Bohachuk and Ismail Madrimov lost luster when Madrimov came down with bronchitis and had to withdraw. The featherweight contest between Peter McGrail and Dennis McCann fell out when McCann’s VADA test returned an adverse finding. Bohachuk and McGrail remain on the card but against late-sub opponents in matches that are less intriguing.
The focal points of tomorrow’s undercard are the bouts involving undefeated British heavyweights Moses Itauma (10-0, 8 KOs) and Johnny Fisher (12-0, 11 KOs). Both are heavy favorites over their respective opponents but bear watching because they represent the next generation of heavyweight standouts. Fury and Usyk are getting long in the tooth. The Gypsy King is 36; Usyk turns 38 next month.
Bob Arum once said that nobody purchases a pay-per-view for the undercard and, years from now, no one will remember which sanctioning bodies had their fingers in the pie. So, Fury-Usyk II remains a very big deal, although a wee bit less compelling than their first go-around.
Will Tyson Fury avenge his lone defeat? Turki Alalshikh, the Chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority and the unofficial czar of “major league” boxing, certainly hopes so. His Excellency has made known that he stands poised to manufacture a rubber match if Tyson prevails.
We could have already figured this out, but Alalshikh violated one of the protocols of boxing when he came flat out and said so. He effectively made Tyson Fury the “A-side,” no small potatoes considering that the most relevant variable on the checklist when handicapping a fight is, “Who does the promoter need?”
The Uzyk-Fury II fight card will air on DAZN with a suggested list price of $39.99 for U.S. fight fans. The main event is expected to start about 5:45 pm ET / 2:45 pm PT.
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Unheralded Bruno Surace went to Tijuana and Forged the TSS 2024 Upset of the Year
Unheralded Bruno Surace went to Tijuana and Forged the TSS 2024 Upset of the Year
The Dec. 14 fight at Tijuana between Jaime Munguia and Bruno Surace was conceived as a stay-busy fight for Munguia. The scuttlebutt was that Munguia’s promoters, Zanfer and Top Rank, wanted him to have another fight under his belt before thrusting him against Christian Mbilli in a WBC eliminator with the prize for the winner (in theory) a date with Canelo Alvarez.
Munguia came to the fore in May of 2018 at Verona, New York, when he demolished former U.S. Olympian Sadam Ali, conqueror of Miguel Cotto. That earned him the WBO super welterweight title which he successfully defended five times.
Munguia kept winning as he moved up in weight to middleweight and then super middleweight and brought a 43-0 (34) record into his Cinco de Mayo 2024 match with Canelo.
Jaime went the distance with Alvarez and had a few good moments while losing a unanimous decision. He rebounded with a 10th-round stoppage of Canada’s previously undefeated Erik Bazinyan.
There was little reason to think that Munguia would overlook Surace as the Mexican would be fighting in his hometown for the first time since February of 2022 and would want to send the home folks home happy. Moreover, even if Munguia had an off-night, there was no reason to think that the obscure Surace could capitalize. A Frenchman who had never fought outside France, Surace brought a 25-0-2 record and a 22-fight winning streak, but he had only four knockouts to his credit and only eight of his wins had come against opponents with winning records.
It appeared that Munguia would close the show early when he sent the Frenchman to the canvas in the second round with a big left hook. From that point on, Surace fought mostly off his back foot, throwing punches in spurts, whereas the busier Munguia concentrated on chopping him down with body punches. But Surace absorbed those punches well and at the midway point of the fight, behind on the cards but nonplussed, it now looked as if the bout would go the full 10 rounds with Munguia winning a lopsided decision.
Then lightning struck. Out of the blue, Surace connected with an overhand right to the jaw. Munguia went down flat on his back. He rose a fraction-of-a second before the count reached “10,”, but stumbled as he pulled himself upright. His eyes were glazed and referee Juan Jose Ramirez, a local man, waived it off. There was no protest coming from Munguia or his cornermen. The official time was 2:36 of round six.
At major bookmaking establishments, Jaime Munguia was as high as a 35/1 favorite. No world title was at stake, yet this was an upset for the ages.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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Steven Navarro is the TSS 2024 Prospect of the Year
“I get ‘Bam’ vibes when I watch this kid,” said ESPN ringside commentator Tim Bradley during the opening round of Steven Navarro’s most recent match. Bradley was referencing WBC super flyweight champion Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, a precociously brilliant technician whose name now appears on most pound-for-pound lists.
There are some common threads between Steven Navarro, the latest fighter to adopt the nickname “Kid Dynamite,” and Bam Rodriguez. Both are southpaws currently competing in the junior bantamweight division. But, of course, Bradley was alluding to something more when he made the comparison. And Navarro’s showing bore witness that Bradley was on to something.
It was the fifth pro fight for Navarro who was matched against a Puerto Rican with a 7-1 ledger. He ended the contest in the second frame, scoring three knockdowns, each the result of a different combination of punches, forcing the referee to stop it. It was the fourth win inside the distance for the 20-year-old phenom.
Isaias Estevan “Steven” Navarro turned pro after coming up short in last December’s U.S. Olympic Trials in Lafayette, Louisiana. The #1 seed in the 57 kg (featherweight) division, he was upset in the finals, losing a controversial split decision. Heading in, Navarro had won 13 national tournaments beginning at age 12.
A graduate of LA’s historic Fairfax High School, Steven made his pro debut this past April on a Matchroom Promotions card at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas and then inked a long-term deal with Top Rank. He comes from a boxing family. His father Refugio had 10 pro fights and three of Refugio’s cousins were boxers, most notably Jose Navarro who represented the USA at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and was a four-time world title challenger as a super flyweight. Jose was managed by Oscar De La Hoya for much of his pro career.
Nowadays, the line between a prospect and a rising contender has been blurred. Three years ago, in an effort to make matters less muddled, we operationally defined a prospect thusly: “A boxer with no more than a dozen fights, none yet of the 10-round variety.” To our way of thinking, a prospect by nature is still in the preliminary-bout phase of his career.
We may loosen these parameters in the future. For one thing, it eliminates a lot of talented female boxers who, like their Japanese male counterparts in the smallest weight classes, are often pushed into title fights when, from a historical perspective, they are just getting started.
But for the time being, we will adhere to our operational definition. And within the window that we have created, Steven Navarro stood out. In his first year as a pro, “Kid Dynamite” left us yearning to see more of him.
Honorable mention: Australian heavyweight Teremoana Junior (5-0, 5 KOs)
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