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The Pulse 3.0 – 24 Canelo

Anything can happen in boxing and anything can happen in a 24-hour journey from California to Las Vegas to watch the richest fight in boxing history. I have a busy day ahead. Land in Vegas, get my media credential, hit the Andre Ward meet and greet, check in my room, get ready, and go to the fight. Let’s go!
Saturday morning 9 AM – It is Saturday 9 AM and my flight leaves in 25 minutes to Las Vegas as I walk through an empty airport towards the security area.
I overhear the Airport Security talking about Floyd Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez fight and can’t help to chime in.
Airport Security Dude: “I think it starts at 6 but the main fight doesn’t start until about 8.
Me: I’m going.
ASD: Oh really. You will have a lot fun. More than us that watch it on TV.
Me: Floyd’s going to win.
ASD: I know. I don’t want him to but you’re right.
11:05 AM – The taxi line in Vegas looks like a disaster but it’s moving quickly. Homie on the phone behind me is carrying what looks like a 50-pound bag and tries to put in his headset with little success. I happily offer to carry his fumbling bag for a minute while we walk and he takes care of business…. Pay it forward. What a country, the land of the free. The land of fingerprints on cell phones to protect us from the intrusion of privacy.
Yes. We live in a great country, especially during big boxing events that bring the entire world together. No matter the outcome of the big fight, it’s beautiful to see such prideful support for the world’s most essential sport.
I see people wearing TMT hats and t-shirts with pride as if they were sporting a New York Yankees logo. And I see overwhelming Mexican passion all over the place. The boxing energy is awesome. Vegas is like heaven for boxing fans on fight weekend. And yes, I’m still in line for a cab in case you’re interested.
3:38 PM – Andre Ward was kind enough to drive me back to my hotel room from the Fashion Island Mall where he was signing autographs and meeting fans.
There was a great turnout for Ward’s fan event that lasted almost an hour longer than the 12 to 2 PM slot that was expected. Whoever said Ward doesn’t have many fans must’ve forgot. The champ was signing everything from Irish national flags to previously used hand wraps. And someone had what Julie Goldsticker, Ward’s publicist, likes to call “an emotional moment” when a father started to cry after Andre took a picture with his son.
On the way back to the hotel, Ward and I naturally talked about the big fights between Danny Garcia/Lucas Matthysse and Mayweather/Canelo. We agreed that Danny Garcia wasn’t getting enough credit. We both picked Garcia to win a decision and both picked Floyd to win easy. I liked Floyd by decision. He liked Floyd to get a late KO.
5:45 PM – As I make my way to the arena I ran into two guys wearing oversized sombreros and Mexican soccer jerseys in the elevator.
Me: Man, you guys ain’t messing around. I like it.
One of the sombrero guys: Hey, we got to support our guy.
I told them how much I appreciated their passion for Canelo and I wished that there were more fans like them in the sport. Those guys came from Mexico to Vegas to support Canelo just like normal sports fans. There was no hatred for Mayweather. They actually didn’t think Canelo had much of a chance to win, they just came to the fight to root for their guy, and have a great time in the process, and I thought that was one of the coolest things in the world. So what if Canelo loses. At least they had a memorable experience as friends and sports fans.
8:05 PM – I have been in my seat in the MGM arena since around 6:30 PM. I watch the crowd fill and it gets more energetic by the minute. But so far, it is surprising to know that most of the Canelo fans I have talked to support Canelo with a sense of realism. Not many gave the Mexican star a chance to win. One guy told me that Canelo is the biggest sports star in Mexico, a much bigger star than Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, and they’re here to support the man despite the general feeling that he is overmatched against King Floyd.
It’s still around 8pm and in walks fellow TSS writer Springs Toledo. It was my first time meetings Springs and we hit it off right away. Springs is one of the coolest cats in boxing. OK, and he’s also one of the best writers in the sport. He puts stories together that need my full attention. We hit it off right away and jawed about the fights all night.
10:30 PM – Postfight, I leave the arena walking towards the press room and I run into Eddie Johnson, former small forward for the Supersonics and Rockets. I told him he was one of my favorite basketball players growing up and asked his thoughts on the Mayweather fight. Johnson said Canelo should have come out charging from the opening bell. Johnson said, “Hey, that guy (Mayweather) is elusive. If you have the entire crowd behind you, why not go after him in the first two rounds with full force. But that kid (Canelo) didn’t do that. He was boxing. I think that was a mistake.”
10:50 PM – At the post fight press conference Richard Schaefer lectures the swarming crowd of onlookers before all the formalities begin “This is a press conference not a social gathering,” Schafer said. “If you are not with the media then you should not be in here.” No one in the room seems to care for his frustration.
11:30ish – Canelo walks to the podium. I felt sorry for Canelo at the post fight. He looked pale and completely defeated. His confidence, shattered. It was a weird sight. Canelo looked like a normal 23-year-old kid for the first time since I heard his name. He looked humbled. Mayweather humbled Canelo. I think that’s fair to say. About three minutes into Canelo’s portion of the post fight, Mayweather entered the room and interrupted. He walked towards the center podium, embraced Canelo with a warm hug and huddled with the Golden Boy Promotions team while the media waited patiently to hear from the winner of the night. Canelo’s time at the dais was over. It was that brief. He sat in the closest seat he could find, put his head down, and started looking through his phone.
Midnight – I say my goodbyes and run into Virgil Hunter and Alfredo Angulo before I walk out the door. “We’ll be in the gym on Monday,” Virgil tells me. I told him I’d be there.
8:10 AM – My flight to San Jose leaves in exactly one hour. The shuttle ride to the airport costs only seven dollars but the driver needs exact change. I had six one-dollar bills and a few twenties. The shuttle driver grabbed my twenty, told me to get in the van, and said he would try to make change with the other passengers. When we get to the airport the shuttle driver says, “Hey, forget it, just give me the six bucks.” I said, “No, just keep the twenty,” and then go on my way.
Pay it forward baby, what a country!
You can follow Ray on Twitter @raymarkarian
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: San Diego Smoke

Years ago, I worked at a newsstand in the Beverly Hills area. It was a 24-hour a day version and the people that dropped by were very colorful and unique.
One elderly woman Eva, who bordered on homeless but pridefully wore lipstick, would stop by the newsstand weekly to purchase a pack of menthol cigarettes. On one occasion, she asked if I had ever been to San Diego?
I answered “yes, many times.”
She countered “you need to watch out for San Diego Smoke.”
This Saturday, Top Rank brings its brand of prizefighting to San Diego or what could be called San Diego Smoke. Leading the fight card is Mexico’s Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1, 32 KOs) defending the WBO super feather title against undefeated Filipino Charly Suarez (18-0, 10 KOs) at Pechanga Arena. ESPN will televise.
This is Navarrete’s fourth defense of the super feather title.
The last time Navarrete stepped in the boxing ring he needed six rounds to dismantle the very capable Oscar Valdez in their rematch. One thing about Mexico City’s Navarrete is he always brings “the smoke.”
Also, on the same card is Fontana, California’s Raymond Muratalla (22-0, 17 KOs) vying for the interim IBF lightweight title against Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-1, 12 KOs) on the co-main event.
Abdullaev has only fought once before in the USA and was handily defeated by Devin Haney back in 2019. But that was six years ago and since then he has knocked off various contenders.
Muratalla is a slick fighting lightweight who trains at the Robert Garcia Boxing Academy now in Moreno Valley, Calif. It’s a virtual boot camp with many of the top fighters on the West Coast available to spar on a daily basis. If you need someone bigger or smaller, stronger or faster someone can match those needs.
When you have that kind of preparation available, it’s tough to beat. Still, you have to fight the fight. You never know what can happen inside the prize ring.
Another fighter to watch is Perla Bazaldua, 19, a young and very talented female fighter out of the Los Angeles area. She is trained by Manny Robles who is building a small army of top female fighters.
Bazaldua (1-0, 1 KO) meets Mona Ward (0-1) in a super flyweight match on the preliminary portion of the Top Rank card. Top Rank does not sign many female fighters so you know that they believe in her talent.
Others on the San Diego fight card include Giovani Santillan, Andres Cortes, Albert Gonzalez, Sebastian Gonzalez and others.
They all will bring a lot of smoke to San Diego.
Probox TV
A strong card led by Erickson “The Hammer” Lubin (26-2, 18 KOs) facing Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0, 6 KOs) in a super welterweight clash between southpaws takes place on Saturday at Silver Spurs Arena in Kissimmee, Florida. PROBOX TV will stream the fight card.
Ardreal has rocketed up the standings and now faces veteran Lubin whose only losses came against world titlists Sebastian Fundora and Jermell Charlo. It’s a great match to decide who deserves a world title fight next.
Another juicy match pits Argentina’s Nazarena Romero (14-0-2) against Mexico’s Mayelli Flores (12-1-1) in a female super bantamweight contest.
Nottingham, England
Anthony Cacace (23-1, 8 KOs) defends the IBO super featherweight title against Leigh Wood (28-3, 17 KOs) in Wood’s hometown on Saturday at Nottingham Arena in Nottingham, England. DAZN will stream the Queensberry Promotions card.
Ireland’s Cacace seems to have the odds against him. But he is no stranger to dancing in the enemy’s lair or on foreign territory. He formerly defeated Josh Warrington in London and Joe Cordina in Riyadh in IBO title defenses.
Lampley at Wild Card
Boxing telecaster Jim Lampley will be signing his new book It Happened! at the Wild Card Boxing gym in Hollywood, Calif. on Saturday, May 10, beginning at 2 p.m. Lampley has been a large part of many of the greatest boxing events in the past 40 years. He and Freddie Roach will be at the signing.
Fights to Watch (All times Pacific Time)
Sat. DAZN 11 a.m. Anthony Cacace (23-1) vs Leigh Wood (28-3).
Sat. PROBOX.tv 3 p.m. Erickson Lubin (26-2) vs Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0).
Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1) vs Charly Suarez (18-0); Raymond Muratalla (22-0) vs Zaur Abdullaev (20-1).
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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“Breadman” Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards’ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.
It’s true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian “J Rock” Williams. On May 11, 2019, Williams wrested the IBF 154-pound world title from Jarrett Hurd. The bout, a lusty skirmish, was in Fairfax, Virginia, near Hurd’s hometown in Maryland, and the previously undefeated Hurd had the crowd in his corner.
In boxing, Stephen Edwards wears two hats. He has a growing reputation as a boxing coach, a hat he will wear on Saturday, May 31, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas when the two fighters that he currently trains, super middleweight Caleb Plant and middleweight Kyrone Davis, display their wares on a show that will air on Amazon Prime Video. Plant, who needs no introduction, figures to have little trouble with his foe in a match conceived as an appetizer to a showdown with Jermall Charlo. Davis, coming off his career-best win, an upset of previously undefeated Elijah Garcia, is in tough against fast-rising Cuban prospect Yoenli Hernandez, a former world amateur champion.
Edwards’ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at “Boxing Scene” in a column where he answers questions from readers.
It’s an eclectic bag of questions that Breadman addresses, ranging from his thoughts on an upcoming fight to his thoughts on one of the legendary prizefighters of olden days. Boxing fans, more so than fans of any other sport, enjoy hashing over fantasy fights between great fighters of different eras. Breadman is very good at this, which isn’t to suggest that his opinions are gospel, merely that he always has something provocative to add to the discourse. Like all good historians, he recognizes that the best history is revisionist history.
“Fighters are constantly mislabled,” he says. “Everyone talks about Joe Louis’s right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and it’s more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.”
Stephen “Breadman” Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father died when he was three. His maternal grandfather, a Korean War veteran, filled the void. The man was a big boxing fan and the two would watch the fights together on the family television.
Edwards’ nickname dates to his early teen years when he was one of the best basketball players in his neighborhood. The derivation is the 1975 movie “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” starring Laurence Fishburne in his big screen debut. Future NBA All-Star Jamaal Wilkes, fresh out of UCLA, plays Cornbread, a standout high school basketball player who is mistakenly murdered by the police.
Coming out of high school, Breadman had to choose between an academic scholarship at Temple or an athletic scholarship at nearby Lincoln University. He chose the former, intending to major in criminal justice, but didn’t stay in college long. What followed were a succession of jobs including a stint as a city bus driver. To stay fit, he took to working out at the James Shuler Memorial Gym where he sparred with some of the regulars, but he never boxed competitively.
Over the years, Philadelphia has harbored some great boxing coaches. Among those of recent vintage, the names George Benton, Bouie Fisher, Nazeem Richardson, and Bozy Ennis come quickly to mind. Breadman names Richardson and West Coast trainer Virgil Hunter as the men that have influenced him the most.
We are all a product of our times, so it’s no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadman’s estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the “Four Kings” with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.
Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonard’s three-time rival Roberto Duran. “I once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duran’s title defenses on it,” says Edwards. “This was a back before the days of YouTube.”
But Edwards’ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the “Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb whose legend has grown in recent years to the point that some have come to place him above Sugar Ray Robinson on the list of the greatest of all time.
“Greb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,” says Breadman, “but there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?”
Edwards notes that in Harry Greb’s heyday, he wasn’t talked about in the papers as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. The boxing writers were partial to Benny Leonard who drew comparisons to the venerated Joe Gans.
Among active fighters, Breadman reserves his highest praise for Terence Crawford. “Body punching is a lost art,” he once wrote. “[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.”
If the opening line holds up, Crawford will enter the ring as the underdog when he opposes Canelo Alvarez in September. Crawford, who will enter the ring a few weeks shy of his 38th birthday, is actually the older fighter, older than Canelo by almost three full years (it doesn’t seem that way since the Mexican redhead has been in the public eye so much longer), and will theoretically be rusty as 13 months will have elapsed since his most recent fight.
Breadman discounts those variables. “Terence is older,” he says, “but has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.” That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Canelo’s performance against William Scull: “Canelo’s legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.”
Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plant’s last three fights. Their first collaboration produced a Knockout of the Year candidate. With one ferocious left hook, Plant sent Anthony Dirrell to dreamland. What followed were a 12-round setback to David Benavidez and a ninth-round stoppage of Trevor McCumby.
Breadman keeps a hectic schedule. From Monday through Friday, he’s at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, he’s back in Philadelphia, checking in on his investment properties and, of greater importance, watching his kids play sports. His 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are standout all-around athletes.
On those long flights, he has plenty of time to turn on his laptop and stream old fights or perhaps work on his next article. That’s assuming he can stay awake.
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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing 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 boxing match 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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