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Alvarez Will Not Suffer Any Ill Effects From The SetBack vs. Mayweather

Saul “Canelo” Alvarez 42-1-1 (30) is returning to the ring after being taken to boxing school last September by pound-for-pound champ Floyd Mayweather.
Alvarez, age 23, will meet the always aggressive but somewhat limited Alfredo Angulo 22-3 (18) on March 8th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas Nevada. In his last fight Angulo, age 31, was stopped by Cuban sensation Erislandy Lara in the 10th round. Lara is an outstanding fighter who’s only setback came against Paul Williams back in 2011 via a 12-round majority decision.
As most know the better fight on a technical level would be Alvarez vs. Lara. I’m not sure who I’d pick to win that one. What I do know is, Angulo fought well against Lara in a losing effort and unless he walks into something blindly, he should give Alvarez a good go in what should be a very fan friendly fight from start to finish. The biggest concern regarding Angulo when he’s fighting a good technician is he gets hit so cleanly and he wasn’t blessed with the most durable chin. Keeping that in mind, it’ll also probably be a pretty physical fight, and in that regard you have to lean toward Alvarez.
Granted, as we saw against Mayweather, Alvarez isn’t a life-taker when it comes to punching power. He did get through to Mayweather with some of his best left hooks and Floyd never even seemed bothered or changed his expression much. However, when Shane Mosley and Miguel Cotto caught Mayweather with their Sunday best, Mosley almost put him to sleep and Cotto did force Floyd to at least break off the exchange and have to reset. However, what Alvarez may lack in being a devastating puncher, he possesses the one weapon that makes up for that, and that’s accuracy, good punch placement. If he can be first in initiating most of the exchanges, he will most likely control the fight and eventually set the always willing Angulo up for a possibly memorable finish.
I doubt that Canelo will suffer any ill effects from the Mayweather fight. Floyd isn’t the type of fighter who ruins you mentally or physically after you fight him. What he does best is convince you very succinctly over the course of 12-rounds that he’s better than you and there’s nothing that he did to you during the bout that happened by accident. But it’s not like he beats his opponents in a way that after touching hands with him they begin to question whether or not they want to fight again. In fact Alvarez barely seemed disturbed during the post fight interview in the ring. It was more or less an acknowledgement that Floyd is in a different league than he is as a fighter and he may never again confront another boxer like him again during his career.
What did bother me about Alvarez later after the fight is when he said, “I went into that fight with a strategy on how to win, and we all believed the game plan was solid. We thought he’d stand and fight more, like he did when he fought Miguel Cotto, but he didn’t do that. It surprised us. It was difficult to adjust.”
That is a little perplexing because he’s not being honest with himself. Perhaps that is his way of justifying why he was beaten so lopsidedly. But let’s be honest, Mayweather didn’t run from Alvarez, not at all. Actually, he fought him pretty similarly to the way he fought Cotto – basically he stood his ground a lot and out-boxed them both from the waist up. Mayweather no longer uses his legs as he once did. He’s grown into his body and is capable of standing his ground when he wants or needs to because he’s stronger than his opponents anticipate he is before they fight him. His accuracy, straight punching and speed enabled him to win a majority of the exchanges against Cotto and Alvarez without really moving all that much.
What’s also troubling is the idea that you can go into a fight with someone as good as Mayweather with only Plan A, based entirely on expecting Floyd to do just one thing in the fight. That’s completely idiotic. His trainer didn’t think that if something was working against Floyd, he wouldn’t just switch to something else? What if Angulo doesn’t come out and pursue Alvarez like a wounded lion? Will Alvarez be thrown completely out of whack by that and need half the fight to adjust? That may be an over statement, but the point is, Alvarez must be honest with himself from this point on. He’s being propped up and sold to the boxing public by Golden Boy Promotions as if he is the next big star in boxing. Adjusting is something that all great fighters can do on the fly. Mayweather didn’t change one bit from rounds one through twelve against Alvarez. The problem was Alvarez couldn’t change and had no answers or conception on how to make Floyd uncomfortable. Against Mayweather, he gets a pass because it was Mayweather and he’s done that to virtually everyone he’s faced. But that excuse won’t fly long because there are a plethora of skilled fighters out there. Like Erislandy Lara, for instance, who cannot wait to get in the ring with him and not cooperate with the hopes of making his night real unpleasant.
If Alvarez is all that, he should systematically break down Angulo after a few close calls during the first two rounds and stop him somewhere between the eight or ninth rounds. If he’s really learned from the Mayweather setback, he should be able to take care of his business on March 8th and set himself apart from Alfredo Angulo in much the same manner Erislandy Lara did.
Frank Lotierzo can be contacted at GlovedFist@Gmail.com
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.
One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.
Take your pick.
The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.
Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.
Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.
If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.
He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.
During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.
Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.
Fundora
Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.
Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.
Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.
Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.
Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?
When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.
This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.
Commerce Casino
Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.
UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.
Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.
It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.
Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?
That’s a question for another day.
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).
Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).
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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.
Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.
Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)
Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.
The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).
Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”
A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.
Other winners:
Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon
Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney
Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire
Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix
The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.
The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.
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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.
He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.
Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.
“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.
“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)
Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.
During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”
He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.
He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.
On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.
Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.
If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.
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