CHAMBERS DECIDES IT’S TIME TO CRUISE (FOR NOW)

Published

12 years ago

July 10, 2013

Bernard Fernandez

What is the difference between being heavyweight champion of the world and cruiserweight champion of the world?

Well, some would say the difference is zero.

Plus another number.

Even now, a quarter-century after his final bout as a cruiserweight, Evander Holyfield probably remains the greatest fighter ever to compete in that netherworld that exists between light heavyweight and heavyweight. On April 9, 1988, the “Real Deal” added Carlos “Sugar” DeLeon’s WBC cruiserweight championship to the WBA and IBF belts he already possessed when he stopped DeLeon in eight one-sided rounds at the Caesars Palace Sports Pavilion in Las Vegas. It was Holyfield’s fifth defense of the then-190-pound title he ascended to when he outlasted rawhide-tough WBA champ Dwight Muhammad Qawi to take a memorable 15-round split decision on July 12, 1986, in Atlanta.

Holyfield had no difficulty making 190 pounds back then. Presumably, he could have held onto his cruiser titles for damn well as long as he pleased. With the exception of Qawi, the other fighters he defeated in his relatively brief reign – Henry Tillman, Ricky Parkey, Ossie Ocasio, Qawi again and, finally, DeLeon – hadn’t posed particularly significant challenges to his reign.

But Holyfield knew his history, and, obviously, his math. His purse for fully unifying the cruiserweight title against DeLeon was $300,000. Even as he was winning that matchup with almost casual ease, it was public knowledge that undisputed heavyweight champion Mike Tyson had signed to defend his WBC, WBA and IBF titles against former champ Michael Spinks on June 27, 1988, in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall. Tyson was to receive a minimum of $15 million for that much-anticipated showdown to Spinks’ $13.5 million.

Is it any wonder Holyfield’s promotional company, Main Events, brought in Houston-based conditioning expert Tim Hallmark to bulk up their muscular yet lean king of the cruiserweights to make a run at possible eight-figure paydays? Holyfield would have had to fight and win 50 times to rake in what he received against DeLeon equal to what Tyson got for 91 seconds of demolition work against Spinks just 2½ months later.

Holyfield, of course, made the transition seamlessly, going on to win some version of the heavyweight crown four times while establishing himself as one of boxing’s all-time best big men. He stands as Exhibit A for why so many cruiserweights (and more than a few light heavyweights) have attempted to follow the same path, packing on pounds in the quest for greater glory and a heftier bank account. And it’s relatively easy to gain weight, right? Just pass the doughnuts or a six-pack of beer.

But sometimes it is more prudent to go in the opposite direction, at least temporarily, which is why smallish heavyweight contender “Fast” Eddie Chambers (36-3, 18 KOs) is slimming down to the cruiserweight limit (now 200 pounds) for his debut bout in the lower weight class, a scheduled 10-rounder against South Africa’s Thabiso Mchunu (13-1, 10 KOs) on Aug. 3 at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn. The bout will be televised by the NBC Sports Network, which doesn’t appear to have the same aversion to cruiserweights that HBO, Showtime and other American broadcast outlets have shown since the division was introduced to scant enthusiasm in 1979.

Interestingly, Main Events president Kathy Duva – a publicist for the company which was then run by her late husband, Dan Duva, who oversaw Holyfield’s move up to heavyweight – not only has approved Chambers’ strategy of mixing it up with fighters more his own natural size, but she has readily endorsed it. Sometimes it is prudent for David to avoid Goliath, and for Jack to not climb that beanstalk.

“Our suggestion to Eddie was that it’s good to be able to walk around the rest of your life and say you were champion of the world,” said Duva, who now promotes Chambers along with Dan Goossen, of Goossen Tutor. “Eddie Chambers should be able to do that. He is that good. He has that kind of skill. In the cruiserweight division, he can dominate.

“Eddie still wants to win the heavyweight championship, and we’re OK with him moving back up to heavyweight eventually. But there is a better way to move him at this particular time. I’m playing chess. That’s what we do here. I need to position him, and it’s better to position him as the cruiserweight champion than as just another pretty good heavyweight, most of whom only have a goal in life to go to Germany and have somebody twice their size (read the Klitschko brothers, Wladimir and Vitali) beat the living hell out of them.”

The 6-1 Chambers knows what it’s like to almost always be the little guy trying to chop down much heavier opponents who tower over him. Although he was well behind on points in his March 20, 2010, title bout in Dusseldorf, Germany, against IBF/WBO/IBO/The Ring champion Wladimir Klitscho – who was 5 inches taller and outweighed him by 34¼ pounds – he hung in there until being stopped with less than a minute remaining in the 12th and final round.

“These super heavyweights operate in a system that’s patently unfair,” Duva said. “Guys that big may be less skilled, but they’re still going to beat guys who are more talented, but are so much smaller. You never see that kind of disparity in the lighter weight classes. Look at (Floyd) Mayweather-(Canelo) Alvarez. How much of a big deal was it that Alvarez had to give up two pounds to fight at a catchweight demanded by the Mayweather camp? But when Eddie Chambers gets in the ring against some of these huge heavyweights, he’s expected to give up 30, 40, even 50 pounds – and still win.

“But guess what? With only a couple of exceptions, he still did win those kinds of fights. He went into the last round with Wladimir Klitschko and the only reason he got knocked out is because he was still trying to win, unlike most of the Klitschkos’ opponents.”

It’s hard to dispute Duva’s assertions. In his last six fights, Chambers was outweighed by an aggregate 232 pounds – an average of 38.7 pounds. The last time he fought someone lighter than himself was Oct. 3, 2008, when he came in at 219 pounds to 205 for Livan Hernandez, himself a bulked-up former cruiserweight.

Chambers, 31, a Pittsburgh native who since 2002 has been based on the other side of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, was a trim and career-low 202 pounds for his most recent ring appearance, a 12-round unanimous-decision loss to Tomasz Adamek for the vacant IBF North American heavyweight title on June 16, 2012, in Newark, N.J. But it should be noted that Chambers tore a muscle in his left biceps early on, an injury that reduced him to throwing almost nothing other than right-hand leads and is a major reason why he will have been inactive for 13½ months by the time he steps inside the ropes against Mchunu. Oh, yeah, and Adamek (a former light heavyweight and cruiserweight titlist) outweighed Chambers by the obligatory 23 pounds.

“I think it’s a good idea to go down to cruiserweight, maybe dominate for a few years, then come back up to heavyweight with a stronger position as a world champion,” said Chambers, who noted he is usually at 196 or 197 pounds after a workout these days. “I really want to become a world champion, regardless of what class it’s in. When you’re a world champion, you can take satisfaction in having that distinction for as long as you live. There are great fighters who never became world champions, but there is a tendency to feel that your career is not complete until you earn that title.

“I’ve been a ranked heavyweight for a long time, but I don’t have that world championship. My detractors will say that’s why I’m moving down. That’s all right. Let them say whatever they want. Now I get to fight guys my own size for a while. When you look at the size differential with some of these really big heavyweights – I’m mainly thinking about the Klitschkos – it can change your mind a little bit about the notion of entering the ring with at least an equal chance to win.”

Perhaps Chambers’ expectation of domination at 200 pounds is overly optimistic. The reigning cruiserweight champions might not pose quite as large a hurdle to clear as the brothers Klitschko, but it would be wrong to presume that Poland’s Krzsztof Wlodarczyk (48-2-1, 34 KOs; WBC), Panama’s Guillermo Jones (39-3-2, 31 KOs; WBA), Germay-based Cuban Yoan Pablo Hernandez (27-1, 13 KOs; IBF) and Germany-based Serbian Marco Huck (36-2-1, 25 KOs; WBO) are chopped liver. But the path to the world title “Fast” Eddie so cherishes has to have fewer potholes than the one to the heavyweight crowns hoarded by the Klitschkos. Besides, Chambers is not even ranked at heavyweight by any of the world sanctioning bodies at present.

It should be noted that WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner successfully stepped up two weight classes to challenge for Paulie Malignaggi’s WBA welterweight title in Broner’s first bout as a 147-pounder. Is it so unreasonable to believe that someone with Chambers’ credentials, should he impressively take care of Mchunu, could step to the front of the line for a shot at one of the cruiser kings?

Even Chambers, however, admits that the cruiserweight division, at least in the United States, traditionally has been regarded as the “black sheep” of boxing, which is why he even briefly

contemplated paring all the way down to the light heavyweight limit of 175. But then he thought of the debilitating effects that sort of downsizing had on Chris Byrd and Roy Jones Jr., who skipped over the cruisers altogether after having won heavyweight championships. No, trying for light heavyweight definitely would be a bridge too far.

“As much as I would love to try my hand at light heavyweight, which is one of the eight traditional divisions, and a division in which there was and is a lot of interest, I know what trying to go all that way down did to Chris and Roy,” Chambers said. “Trying to take off 20 or 25 pounds of muscle is harder, much harder, than trying to put it on. By skipping over the cruisers, those guys did damage to themselves. They never were the same.”

The cruiserweight division, for whatever reason, never gained the popularity some thought it might have gained when it was created as a bridge between light heavyweight and the larger heavyweights who were beginning to emerge in the late 1970s. It takes a real boxing history buff to recall that the WBC was the organization to sanction a cruiserweight title bout, which pitted Marvin Camel against Mate Parlov on Dec. 8, 1979. In what might be considered an omen, that fight did not even produce a champion; it ended in a draw. But Camel etched his name in the record books when he defeated Parlov in a rematch three months later. The WBA then went into the cruiserweight business in 1982, the IBF in 1983.

Alas, Camel is far less celebrated as the first cruiserweight champ than is former New York Yankee Ron Blomberg, who became the first designated hitter in Major League Baseball when he strode to the plate on April 6, 1973, for his historic first at-bat against the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park.

To her credit, Duva is no Johnny-come-lately when it comes to heralding the potential glories of the cruisers. Prior to Adamek’s IBF cruiserweight defense against Bobby Gunn on July 11, 2009, Duva mounted her soap box to proclaim that there should be a more prominent place of honor for the 200-pounders.

“All these huge heavyweights are the reason the division is in the sorry state it’s in,” Duva said. “Big, lumbering guys who can’t get out of their own way are never going to make exciting fights. Let’s face it, if you’ve got a 6-5, 240-pound, athletic guy in the United States, he’s probably playing basketball or football.

“Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson … those were small heavyweights. They could have gotten down to 200 if they had to. And think about some of the great heavyweights throughout history – Jack Dempsey, Rocky Marciano, even Joe Louis. They’d probably be cruiserweights today.”

Four years later, Duva is beating the same drum.

“If I had my way, I would rename the cruiserweight division the heavyweight division, because that’s what it really is,” she said. “I would call anything about, say, 220 the super heavyweight division, like they do in the Olympics. That’s what I would do if I were in charge of the world. Cruiserweight is a terrible name. It doesn’t sound tough enough, or something. If the cruiserweights were called

heavyweights, and bigger heavyweights were called super heavyweights, a lot more people would be interested in seeing today’s cruiserweights.

“Let’s be honest. Super heavyweights are slower. They often win by imposing their size on smaller opponents. But cruiserweight fights are fun to watch. They’re more exciting. I’m just fortunate I have this platform at NBC where we can do things that network TV executives elsewhere generally don’t want to do, which is to give these guys a chance.

“Some of the best fights I’ve ever seen were in the cruiserweight division, or involved small heavyweights or big light heavyweights who could make cruiserweight if they tried. The best fight I ever saw in person was Matthew Saad Muhammad and Yaqui Lopez, who were big light heavys. Great cruiserweight fights were Holyfield-Qawi, the first one, and Adamek-(Steve) Cunningham, also the first one. We were fortunate to promote both those fights.”

Duva’s plan is to have Chambers fight regularly on the NBC Sports Network, which will help him develop more of a following if he can get more eyeballs in the U.S. to see what he can do at a weight that presumably fits him better.

“I think the way for him to go is to dominate the cruiserweight division, and to be seen on television doing it,” she continued. “This is an American athlete, a tremendously articulate young man, nice personality, good-looking, charming as hell. He’s got everything. But he’s always portrayed as the little guy with no chance.

“But that little guy went to Germany and beat (Alexander) Dimitrenko, a guy twice his size. But nobody on this side of the Atlantic saw it, so what good did it do him? We have to change that.”

Holyfield, of course, is the most notable exception to the widely accepted rule of thumb that cruiserweight champions – think Al “Ice” Cole and Jean-Marc Mormek — don’t make much of a splash at heavyweight. So maybe Chambers’ second expedition at heavyweight, if and when he makes it, won’t be any more of a breakthrough journey than the first.

“Some cruiserweights will move up and do well, and some won’t,” she reasoned. “What the goal should always be is to provide entertainment to boxing fans. With Eddie, we think it’s best to take a step back, figure out what’s broken, and how to fix it.

“One of the things I’ve been on the warpath on for quite some time is the idea that being a cruiserweight is somehow second-rate. It’s so absurd. Somehow, some way, we have to change that kind of thinking.”

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Bernard Fernandez

Thomas Hauser’s Literary Notes: Johnny Greaves Tells a Sad Tale

Published

2 days ago

May 11, 2025

Thomas Hauser

Johnny Greaves was a professional loser. He had one hundred professional fights between 2007 and 2013, lost 96 of them, scored one knockout, and was stopped short of the distance twelve times. There was no subtlety in how his role was explained to him: “Look, Johnny; professional boxing works two ways. You’re either a ticket-seller and make money for the promoter, in which case you get to win fights. If you don’t sell tickets but can look after yourself a bit, you become an opponent and you fight to lose.”

By losing, he could make upwards of one thousand pounds for a night‘s work.

Greaves grew up with an alcoholic father who beat his children and wife. Johnny learned how to survive the beatings, which is what his career as a fighter would become. He was a scared, angry, often violent child who was expelled from school and found solace in alcohol and drugs.

The fighters Greaves lost to in the pros ran the gamut from inept local favorites to future champions Liam Walsh, Anthony Crolla, Lee Selby, Gavin Rees, and Jack Catterall. Alcohol and drugs remained constants in his life. He fought after drinking, smoking weed, and snorting cocaine on the night before – and sometimes on the day of – a fight. On multiple occasions, he came close to committing suicide. His goal in boxing ultimately became to have one hundred professional fights.

On rare occasions, two professional losers – “journeymen,” they’re called in The UK – are matched against each other. That was how Greaves got three of the four wins on his ledger. On September 29, 2013, he fought the one hundredth and final fight of his career against Dan Carr in London’s famed York Hall. Carr had a 2-42-2 ring record and would finish his career with three wins in ninety outings. Greaves-Carr was a fight that Johnny could win. He emerged triumphant on a four-round decision.

The Johnny Greaves Story, told by Greaves with the help of Adam Darke (Pitch Publishing) tells the whole sordid tale. Some of Greaves’s thoughts follow:

* “We all knew why we were there, and it wasn’t to win. The home fighters were the guys who had sold all the tickets and were deemed to have some talent. We were the scum. We knew our role. Give some young prospect a bit of a workout, keep out of the way of any big shots, lose on points but take home a wedge of cash, and fight again next week.”

* “If you fought too hard and won, then you wouldn’t get booked for any more shows. If you swung for the trees and got cut or knocked out, then you couldn’t fight for another 28 days. So what were you supposed to do? The answer was to LOOK like you were trying to win but be clever in the process. Slip and move, feint, throw little shots that were rangefinders, hold on, waste time. There was an art to this game, and I was quickly learning what a cynical business it was.”

* “The unknown for the journeyman was always how good your opponent might be. He could be a future world champion. Or he might be some hyped-up nightclub bouncer with a big following who was making lots of money for the promoter.”

* “No matter how well I fought, I wasn’t going to be getting any decisions. These fights weren’t scored fairly. The referees and judges understood who the paymasters were and they played the game. What was the point of having a go and being the best version of you if nobody was going to recognize or reward it?”

* “When I first stepped into the professional arena, I believed I was tough. believed that nobody could stop me. But fight by fight, those ideas were being challenged and broken down. Once you know that you can be hurt, dropped and knocked out, you’re never quite the same fighter.”

* “I had started off with a dream, an idea of what boxing was and what it would do for me. It was going to be a place where I could prove my toughness. A place that I could escape to and be someone else for a while. For a while, boxing was that place. But it wore me down to the point that I stopped caring. I’d grown sick and tired of it all. I wished that I could feel pride at what I’d achieved. But most of the time, I just felt like a loser.”

* “The fights were getting much more difficult, the damage to my body and my psyche taking longer and longer to repair after each defeat. I was putting myself in more and more danger with each passing fight. I was getting hurt more often and stopped more regularly. Even with the 28-day [suspensions], I didn’t have time to heal. I was staggering from one fight to the next and picking up more injuries along the way.”

* “I was losing my toughness and resilience. When that’s all you’ve ever had, it’s a hard thing to accept. Drink and drugs had always been present in my life. But now they became a regular part of my pre-fight preparation. It helped to shut out the fear and quieted the thoughts and worries that I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.”

* “My body was broken. My hands were constantly sore with blisters and cuts. I had early arthritis in my hip and my teeth were a mess. I looked an absolute state and inside I felt worse. But I couldn’t stop fighting yet. Not before the 100.”

* “I had abused myself time after time and stood in front of better men, taking a beating when I could have been sensible and covered up. At the start, I was rarely dropped or stopped. Now it was becoming a regular part of the game. Most of the guys I was facing were a lot better than me. This was mainly about survival.”

* “Was my brain f***ed from taking too many punches? I knew it was, to be honest. I could feel my speech changing and memory going. I was mentally unwell and shouldn’t have been fighting but the promoters didn’t care. Johnny Greaves was still a good booking. Maybe an even better one now that he might get knocked out.”

* “Nobody gave a f*** about me and whether I lived or died. I didn’t care about that much either. But the thought of being humiliated, knocked out in front of all those people; that was worse than the thought of dying. The idea of being exposed for what I was – a nobody.”

* “I was a miserable bastard in real life. A depressive downbeat mouthy little f***er. Everything I’ve done has been to mask the feeling that I’m worthless. That I have no value. The drinks and the drugs just helped me to forget that for a while. I still frighten myself a lot. My thoughts scare me. Do I really want to be here for the next thirty or forty years? I don’t know. If suicide wasn’t so impactful on people around you, I would have taken that leap. I don’t enjoy life and never have.”

So . . . Any questions?

****

Steve Albert was Showtime’s blow-by-blow commentator for two decades. But his reach extended far beyond boxing.

Albert’s sojourn through professional sports began in high school when he was a ball boy for the New York Knicks. Over the years, he was behind the microphone for more than a dozen teams in eleven leagues including four NBA franchises.

Putting the length of that trajectory in perspective . . . As a ballboy, Steve handed bottles of water and towels to a Knicks back-up forward named Phil Jackson. Later, they worked together as commentators for the New Jersey Nets. Then Steve provided the soundtrack for some of Jackson’s triumphs when he won eleven NBA championships as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers.

It’s also a matter of record that Steve’s oldest brother, Marv, was arguably the greatest play-by-play announcer in NBA history. And brother Al enjoyed a successful career behind the microphone after playing professional hockey.

Now Steve has written a memoir titled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Broadcast Booth. Those who know him know that Steve doesn’t like to say bad things about people. And he doesn’t here. Nor does he delve into the inner workings of sports media or the sports dream machine. The book is largely a collection of lighthearted personal recollections, although there are times when the gravity of boxing forces reflection.

“Fighters were unlike any other professional athletes I had ever encountered,” Albert writes. “Many were products of incomprehensible backgrounds, fiercely tough neighborhoods, ghettos and, in some cases, jungles. Some got into the sport because they were bullied as children. For others, boxing was a means of survival. In many cases, it was an escape from a way of life that most people couldn’t even fathom.”

At one point, Steve recounts a ringside ritual that he followed when he was behind the microphone for Showtime Boxing: “I would precisely line up my trio of beverages – coffee, water, soda – on the far edge of the table closest to the ring apron. Perhaps the best advice I ever received from Ferdie [broadcast partner Ferdie Pacheco] was early on in my blow-by-blow career – ‘Always cover your coffee at ringside with an index card unless you like your coffee with cream, sugar, and blood.’”

Writing about the prelude to the infamous Holyfield-Tyson “bite fight,” Albert recalls, “I remember thinking that Tyson was going to do something unusual that night. I had this sinking feeling in my gut that he was going to pull something exceedingly out of the ordinary. His grousing about Holyfield’s head butts in the first fight added to my concern. [But] nobody could have foreseen what actually happened. Had I opened that broadcast with, ‘Folks, tonight I predict that Mike Tyson will bite off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear,’ some fellas in white coats might have approached me and said, ‘Uh, Steve, could you come with us.'”

And then there’s my favorite line in the book: “I once asked a fighter if he was happily married,” Albert recounts. “He said, ‘Yes, but my wife’s not.'”

“All I ever wanted was to be a sportscaster,” Albert says in closing. “I didn’t always get it right, but I tried to do my job with honesty and integrity. For forty-five years, calling games was my life. I think it all worked out.”

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His next book – The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing – will be published this month and is available for preorder at:

https://www.amazon.com/Most-Honest-Sport-Inside-Boxing/dp/1955836329

In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Argentina’s Fernando Martinez Wins His Rematch with Kazuto Ioka

Published

3 days ago

May 11, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Argentina's-Fernando-Martinez-Wins-His-Rematch-with-Kazuto-Ioka

In an excellent fight climaxed by a furious 12^th round, Argentina’s Fernando Daniel Martinez came off the deck to win his rematch with Kazuto Ioka and retain his piece of the world 115-pound title. The match was staged at Ioka’s familiar stomping grounds, the Ota-City General Gymnasium in Tokyo.

In their first meeting on July 7 of last year in Tokyo, Martinez was returned the winner on scores of 117-111, 116-112, and a bizarre 120-108. The rematch was slated for late December, but Martinez took ill a few hours before the weigh-in and the bout was postponed.

The 33-year-old Martinez, who came in sporting a 17-0 (9) record, was a 7-2 favorite to win the sequel, but there were plenty of reasons to favor Ioka, 36, aside from his home field advantage. The first Japanese male fighter to win world titles in four weight classes, Ioka was 3-0 in rematches and his long-time trainer Ismael Salas was on a nice roll. Salas was 2-0 last weekend in Times Square, having handled upset-maker Rolly Romero and Reito Tsutsumi who was making his pro debut.

But the fourth time was not a charm for Ioka (31-4-1) who seemingly pulled the fight out of the fire in round 10 when he pitched the Argentine to the canvas with a pair of left hooks, but then wasn’t able to capitalize on the momentum swing.

Martinez set a fast pace and had Ioka fighting off his back foot for much of the fight. Beginning in round seven, Martinez looked fatigued, but the Argentine was conserving his energy for the championship rounds. In the end, he won the bout on all three cards: 114-113, 116-112, 117-110.

Up next for Fernando Martinez may be a date with fellow unbeaten Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, the lineal champion at 115. San Antonio’s Rodriguez is a huge favorite to keep his title when he defends against South Africa’s obscure Phumelela Cafu on July 19 in Frisco, Texas.

As for Ioka, had he won today’s rematch, that may have gotten him over the hump in so far as making it into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. True, winning titles in four weight classes is no great shakes when the bookends are only 10 pounds apart, but Ioka is still a worthy candidate.

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Emanuel Navarrete Survives a Bloody Battle with Charly Suarez in San Diego

Published

3 days ago

May 11, 2025

David A. Avila

Emanuel-Navarrete-Survives-a-Bloody-Battle-with-Charly-Suarez-in-San-Diego

In a torrid battle Mexico’s Emanuel “Vaquero” Navarrete and his staccato attack staved off the herky-jerky non-stop assaults of Philippine’s Charly Suarez to win by technical decision and retain the WBO super feather world title on Saturday.

What do they feed these guys?

Navarrete (40-2-1, 32 KOs) and his elongated arms managed to connect enough to compensate against the surprising Suarez (18-1, 10 KOs) who wowed the crowd at Pechanga Arena in San Diego.

An accidental clash of heads opened a cut on the side of Navarrete’s left eye and forced a stoppage midway through the fight.

From the opening round Navarrete used his windmill style of attack with punches from different angles that caught Suarez multiple times early. It did not matter. Suarez fired back with impunity and was just as hungry to punch it out with the Mexican fighter.

It was savage.

Every time Navarrete connected solidly, he seemed to pause and check out the damage. Bad idea. Suarez would immediately counter with bombs of his own and surprise the champion with his resilience and tenacity.

Wherever they found Suarez they should look for more, because the Filipino fighter from Manila was ferocious and never out of his depth.

Around the sixth round the Mexican fighter seemed a little drained and puzzled at the tireless attacks coming from Suarez. During an exchange of blows a cut opened up on Navarrete and it was ruled an accidental clash of heads by the referee. Blood streamed down the side of Navarrete’s face and it was cleared by the ringside physician.

But at the opening of the eighth round, the fight was stopped and the ringside physician ruled the cut was too bad to continue. The California State Athletic Commission looked at tape of the round when the cut opened to decipher if it was an accidental butt or a punch that caused the cut. It was unclear so the referee’s call of accidental clash of heads stood as the final ruling.

Score cards from the judges saw Navarrete the winner by scores of 78-75, 77-76 twice. He retains the WBO title.

Interim IBF Lightweight Title

The sharp-shooting Raymond “Danger” Muratalla (23-0, 17 KOs) maneuvered past Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-2, 12 KOs) by unanimous decision to win the interim IBF lightweight title after 12 rounds.

Both fighters were strategic in their approach with Muratalla switching from orthodox to southpaw at various times of the fight. Neither fighter was ever able to dominant any round.

Defense proved the difference between the two lightweights. Muratalla was able to slip more blows than Abdullaev and that proved the difference. The fighter from Fontana, California was able to pierce Abdullaev’s guard more often than not, especially with counter punches.

Abdullaev was never out of the fight. The Russian fighter was able to change tactics and counter the counters midway through the fight. It proved effective especially to the body. But it was not enough to offset Muratalla’s accuracy.

There were no knockdowns and after 12 rounds the judges scored it 118-110, 119-109 twice for Muratalla who now becomes the mandatory for the IBF lightweight title should Vasyl Lomachenko return to defend it.

Muratalla was brief.

“He was a tough fighter,” said Muratalla. “My defense is something I work on a lot.”

Perla Wins

Super flyweight Perla Bazaldua (2-0) eased past Mona Ward (0-2) with a polished display of fighting at length and inside.

Combination punching and defense allowed Bazaldua to punch in-between Ward’s attacks and force the St. Louis fighter to clinch repeatedly. But Ward hung in there despite taking a lot of blows. After four rounds the Los Angeles-based Bazaldua was scored the winner 40-36 on all three cards. Bazaldua signed a long term contract with Top Rank in March.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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