Keith Thurman Can Bomb In the Ring, and Land Power Shots Outside, Too

Published

10 years ago

April 23, 2014

Much of the air in the room of the sport has been sucked up by the megastars Manny Pacquiao (who gloved up and beat Tim Bradley on April 12) and Floyd Mayweather (who takes on Marcos Maidana May 3 in Vegas) in the last six weeks or so. To the point that, other cards and other fighters who likely deserve more attention, and more media buzz, have suffered.

One such soul is Keith “One Time” Thurman, a 25-year-old Florida resident stepping into the ring, and looking to defend his WBA interim welterweight crown, on Saturday night in California.

First we all went ga-ga over Manny, and this week we’ve been starting to perk antennae to near max efficiency as we count down to Mayweather’s first tangle of the year.

I wanted to rectify that, just a bit, and chat with the young gun who in the last year has started to have people talk about him as a pound for pound top 10 candidate. I wondered if he felt the same, that his Saturday scrap, topping a Golden Boy card, and a triple-header on Showtime, was under radar somewhat.

“My true opinion is,” he said, pausing for effect, “I don’t know and I don’t care. My job is to step in that ring, and perform, and I will put on a great performance.”

The buzz factor has also been limited by the choice of opposition; Julio Diaz is 40-9-1, 34-years-old, and coming off a draw, and two losses. He is excessively fortunate to be given this opportunity against two-fisted banger Thurman. “I was hoping for a bigger challenge,” Thurman admitted. “But they gave me this test. It’s a stay busy fight for me.” He said that he is pleased in knowing the true die-hard fans will watch the tussle, which he termed “high risk, little reward.” He noted that Diaz is likely to be fueled by the understanding that he NEEDS to win, or his window will close with a crash. “No, I don’t believe he is in my league, and I believe I will outclass him.”

Only a fool looks past the task in front of him; but it’s not unwise to at least ponder the roads that might be taken further along the journey. Thurman told me he can easily say a road leading to Shawn Porter (24-0 with 15 KOs), the 26-year-old Ohio resident who defended his WBC welter title against Brooklyn’s Paul Malignaggi on April 19, notching a TKO4. Thurman didn’t go out of his way to shower Porter with praise, however. He told TSS that he thought Malignaggi turned in “one of the worst performances of his career. It was a bad boxing performance, for a guy who knows a lot about fighting. I think it has to do with ego, I think he underestimated Porter. He never had his hands up, for four rounds! He could’ve blocked those jumping left hooks.” I thought Porter was simply too strong for Malignaggi and that the startegy might have been immaterial, because of the power edge, and told Thurman that concept. He continued, noting that Malignaggi was susceptible to power brokers when he fought at 140 pounds, and should really have used a different gameplan, should have run some more to lessen the number of shots he was eating. (Note: I reached out to Malignaggi, to get a response, and heard back. “It’s fine, all fighters are allowed to have their opinion,” Malignaggi told me. “Thurman is a young man, on some things he is ignorant, but he’s got that youthful ‘jump the gun’ mentality, we all have it and we all go through it. I have my own opinions and I feel strongly about what happened on Saturday night, there’s no need for the back and forth from me, however. I will leave it at Porter fought a good fight and was VERY well prepared to fight.”)

“I know me and Porter are going to fight,” Thurman continued. In fact, he knew that before anyone else brought up the idea, he said. Both are part of the class of 2008, Thurman said, and he’s sparred with Porter previously. He said that the styles will work in his favor when he does tangle with Porter, because he has a higher caliber of firepower to draw on.

“I do respect his power,” he said, “but I seem to find a way to land big punches” while Porter more so grinds you down. “At any given point, in any given round, I have the ability to put you down,” Thurman stated. “And I would love to fight Shawn Porter. When we meet up, there will be only one remaining young, undefeated welterweight. It would be a terrific, fan friendly fight, and we’d see who is the cream of the crop. And the winner would deserve a shot at Mayweather. It could be 2015, or whenever. The longer Floyd stays in it, he will have to answer to one of these young dogs coming up.”

I love the idea of a Thurman-Porter clash taking place, as an eliminator, with the winner to get a shot at the Mayweather lotto ticket. Thurman is down with that, he said. He expects to handle Porter when and if that pairing is made. And yes, he’d adore a shot at Floyd. He’d take it ASAP, or later.

“I’m ready now,” he said. “I’ll be more ready later. The older he gets, the more gray hairs he gets, and wrinkles on his forehead….I’m coming to my prime, he will be fading out of his. He can postpone it till his last hurrah if he wants.”

Thurman noted, as have many on message boards, that Floyd has chosen, in his last five fights, a fighter of Puerto Rican extraction, a Puerto Rican, a Mexican-American, a Mexican, and now a Latino, Marcos Maidana of Argentina. “With all due respect, I love the sport,” he said, “and I’m mixed, African-American and Caucasian, my mom is white, my father is black, whoever says that on a message board knows their Mayweather history. He’s fought more Latinos than Africans or African-Americans.” Thurman said Floyd is canny to attach his fights to Latino holidays, which helps insure good PPV numbers, from a marketing perspective, because Latinos tend to regard boxing higher on the sports food chain than most other racial/ethnic classes. Thurman noted that African-Americans, like Shane Mosley, and Zab Judah, and Chop Chop Corley, had more luck finding Mayweather than his recent opponents did, for whatever that’s worth.

“Again, with all due respect, boxing is one of the most racial sports,” he said. “It’s almost always a Mexican vs. an American, a Puerto Rican versus a Mexican, a black versus a white, etc. Fighters are always representing their heritage. Basically, I’d like to see diversity in Mayweathers’ choices,” Thurman said, in wrapping up.

My take: Thurman is coming into his own in the ring, and finding his place outside, as a talker, as a fight seller, as a self-marketer. Or, more appropriately perhaps, WE are simply finding out in Thurman what has been there in front of us for a spell. Those megastars, and our perhaps excessive attention paid to them, maybe do a small disservice to the sport as a whole, because it means we don’t spread the wealth of coverage and attention around like we should.

Readers, talk to me…how do you see Thurman’s near-term arc playing out? What would Thurman-Porter look like? And is Thurman a stellar candidate to face Floyd, and would he have a decent chance to beat Mayweather?

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

East Los Angeles has long been a haven for some of the best fighters around if you can keep them out of trouble. For every Oscar De La Hoya or Seniesa Estrada there are thousands derailed by crime, drugs or drinking.

Boxing has always been a favorite sport of East L.A. Every family has an uncle or two who boxes.

On Friday, 360 Promotions’ Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) fights Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1) in the main event at Commerce Casino, in Commerce, CA. UFC Fight Pass will stream the fight card.

The City of Commerce used to be part of East L.A. until 1960 when it incorporated. It’s still considered to be part of East Los Angeles, but informally.

Plenty of fighters come out of East L.A. but few make it all the way like De La Hoya and Estrada. Will Trinidad be the one?

The first world champion from East L.A. or “East Los” as some call it, was Solly Garcia Smith back in the late 1800s. Others were Richie Lemos, Art Frias and Joey Olivo. There is also 1984 Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzalez.

Once again 360 Promotions brings its popular brand of fights to the area. On this fight card includes two female bouts. One features Roxy Verduzco (1-0) the former amateur star fighting Colleen Davis (3-1-1) in a featherweight fight.

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

The next day, also in East L.A., Elite Boxing stages another boxing card at Salesian High School located at 960 S. Soto Street in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles.

Elite Boxing has promoted several successful boxing cards at the Catholic high school grounds. The area is saturated by many of the best eateries in Los Angeles. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself and grab some of that delicious food.

Boxing has long been a favorite sport of anyone who lives in East L.A. It’s a fight town equal to Philadelphia, Brooklyn or Detroit. There’s something different about the area. For more than 100 years some of the best fighters continue to come out of its boxing gyms. Some will be performing on these club shows.

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

Speaking of fight towns, pound-for-pound best Claressa Shields who won two Olympic Gold Medals in boxing, moves up another weight division to tackle the WBC heavyweight world champion Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse on Saturday, July 27, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

Shields (14-0) cleaned out the super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions and now wants to add the big girls to her conquests. She will be facing Canada’s Lepage-Joanisse (7-1) who holds the WBC belt.

The last time Shields gloved up was more than a year ago when she fought Maricela Cornejo. Don’t blame Shields. She loves to fight. She loves to win. The last time Shields lost a fight was in the amateurs and that was three presidential administrations ago.

Shields doesn’t lose.

I wonder if Las Vegas even takes bets on her fights?

The only fight she may have been an underdog was against Savannah Marshall who was the last opponent to defeat her. And that was in 2012 in China. When they met as pros two years ago, Shields avenged her loss with a blistering attack.

Don’t get Shields mad.

Perhaps her toughest foe as a pro was in her pro debut when she clashed with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in Las Vegas. It was four rounds of fists and fury as the two pounded each other on the undercard of Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in November 2016.

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

Assisting Shields on this fight card will be several intriguing male bouts. One guy you should pay special attention is Tito Mercado (15-0, 14 KOs) a super lightweight prospect from Pomona, California.

Many excellent fighters have come out of Pomona including Sugar Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley Jr., Alberto Davila and Richie Sandoval who just passed away this week.

Sandoval was best known for his 15-round war with Philadelphia’s Jeff Chandler for the bantamweight world title in 1984. Read the story by Arne K. Lang on this link: https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-boxing-articles-boxing-news-videos-rankings-and-results/81467-former-world-bantamweight-champion-richie-sandoval-passes-away-at-age-63 .

Fights to Watch

Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) vs Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1).

Sat. ESPN+ 12:30 p.m. Joe Joyce (16-2) vs Derek Chisora (34-13).

Sat. DAZN 3 p.m. Claressa Shields (14-0) vs Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse (7-1), Michel Rivera (25-1) vs Hugo Roldan (22-2-1); Tito Mercado (15-0) vs Hector Sarmiento (21-2).

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

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Arne’s Almanac: Jake Paul and Women’s Boxing, a Curmudgeon’s Take

Published

3 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Jake Paul can fight more than a little. The view from here is that he would make it interesting against any fringe contender in the cruiserweight division. However, Jake’s boxing acumen pales when paired against his skill as a flim-flam artist.

Jake brought a 9-1 record into last weekend’s bout with Mike Perry. As noted by boxing writer Paul Magno, Jake’s previous opponents consisted of “a You Tuber, a retired NBA star, five retired MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, and two undersized and inactive fall-guy boxers.”

Mike Perry, a 32-year-old Floridian, was undefeated (6-0, 3 KOs) as a bare-knuckle boxer after forging a 14-8 record in UFC bouts. In pre-fight blurbs, Perry was billed as the baddest bare knuckle boxer of all time, but against Jake Paul he proved to have very unrefined skills as a conventional boxer which Team Paul undoubtedly knew all along. Perry lasted into the eighth round in a one-sided fight that could have been stopped a lot sooner.

Jake Paul is both a boxer and a promoter. As a promoter, he handles Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female boxers in history. That makes him the person most responsible (because the buck stops with him) for the wretched mismatch in last Saturday’s co-feature, the bout between Serrano and Stevie Morgan.

Morgan, who took up boxing two years ago at age 33, brought a 14-1 record. Nicknamed the Sledgehammer, she had won 13 of her 14 wins by knockout, eight in the opening round. However, although she resides in Florida, all but one of those 13 knockouts happened in Colombia.

“We found that in Colombia there were just more opportunities for women’s boxing than in the United States,” she told a prominent boxing writer whose name we won’t mention.

The truth is that, for some folks, Colombia is the boxing equivalent of a feeder lot for livestock, a place where a boxer can go to fatten their record. The opportunities there were no greater than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995. It was there that Peter McNeeley prepped for his match with Mike Tyson with a 6-second knockout of professional punching bag Frankie Hines. (Six seconds? So it would be written although no one seems to have been there to witness it.)

Serrano vs Morgan was understood to be a stay-busy fight for Amanda whose rematch with Katie Taylor was postponed until November. Stevie Morgan, to her credit, answered the bell for the second round whereas others in her situation would have remained on the stool and invented an injury to rationalize it. Thirty-eight seconds later it was all over and Ms. Morgan was free to go home and use her sledgehammer to do some light dusting.

The Paul-Perry and Serrano-Morgan fights played out in a sold-out arena in Tampa before an estimated 17,000. Those without a DAZN subscription paid $64.95 for the livestream. Paul’s next promotion, where he will touch gloves with 58-year-old Mike Tyson (unless Iron Mike pulls a Joe Biden and pulls out; a capital idea) with Serrano-Taylor II the semi-main, will almost certainly rake in more money than any other boxing promotion this year.

Asked his opinion of so-called crossover boxing by a reporter for a college newspaper, the venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum said, “It’s not my bag but folks who don’t like it shouldn’t get too worked up over it because no one is stealing from anybody.” True enough, but for some of us, the phenomenon is distressing.

—

The next big women’s fight happens Saturday in Detroit where Claressa Shields seeks a world title in a third weight class against WBC heavyweight belt-holder Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated in 14 fights as a pro, Shields is very good, arguably the best female boxer of her generation which makes her, arguably, the best female boxer of all time. But turning away Lepage-Joanisse (7-1, 2 KOs) won’t elevate her stature in our eyes.

Purportedly 17-4 as an amateur, the Canadian won her title in her second crack at it. Back in August of 2017, she challenged Cancun’s Alejandra Jimenez in Cancun and was stopped in the third round. Entering the bout, Lepage-Joanisse was 3-0 as a pro and had never fought a match slated for more than four rounds.

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

True, on the women’s side, the heavyweight bracket is a very small pod. A sanctioning body has to make concessions to harness a sanctioning fee. Nonetheless, how absurd that a woman who had answered the bell for only 11 rounds would be deemed qualified to compete for a world title. (FYI: Alejandra Jimenez was purportedly born a man. She left the sport with a 12-0-1 record after her win over Franchon Crews Dazurn was changed to a no-contest when she tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.)

Following her defeat to Jimenez, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse, now 29 years old, was out of action for six-and-a-half years. When she returned, she was still a heavyweight, but a much slender heavyweight. She carried 231 pounds for Jimenez. In her most recent bout where she captured the vacant WBC title with a split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, she clocked in at 173 ¼. (On the distaff side, there’s no uniformity among the various sanctioning bodies as to what constitutes a heavyweight.)

Claressa Shields doesn’t need Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to reinforce her credentials as a future Hall of Famer. She made the cut a long time ago.

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Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63

Published

4 days ago

July 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Richie Sandoval, who won the WBA and lineal bantamweight title in one of the biggest upsets of the 1980s and then, not quite two years later, suffered near-fatal injuries in a title defense, has passed away at the age of 63.

News circulated fast in the Las Vegas boxing community on Monday, July 22, the grapevine actuated by a tweet from Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler: “Boxing and the Top Rank family lost one of our own last night in the passing of former WBA bantamweight champion Richie Sandoval. It hurts personally and professionally to know that Richie is gone at age 63. RIP campeon.”

Details are vague but the cause of death was apparently a sudden heart attack that Sandoval experienced while visiting the Southern California home of his son of the same name.

Richie Sandoval put the LA County community of Pomona, California, on the boxing map before Shane Mosley came along and gave the town a more frequently-cited mention in the sports section of the papers. He came from a fighting family. An older brother, Albert “Superfly” Sandoval, became a big draw at LA’s fabled Olympic Auditorium while building a 35-2-1 record that included a failed bid to capture Lupe Pintor’s world bantamweight title.

Richie was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic boxing team that was stranded when U.S. President Jimmy Carter (and many other world leaders) boycotted the event as a protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

As a pro, Sandoval’s signature win was a 15^th-round stoppage of Jeff Chandler. They fought on April 7, 1984 in Atlantic City. Chandler was making the tenth defense of his world bantamweight title.

Despite being a heavy underdog, Sandoval dominated the fight, winning almost every round until the referee stepped in and waived it off. Chandler, who was 33-1-2 heading in and had avenged his lone defeat, never fought again.

Sandoval made two successful defenses before risking his title against Gaby Canizales on the undercard of Hagler-Mugabi in the outdoor stadium at Caesars Palace. In round seven, Sandoval, who had a hellish time making the weight, was knocked down three times and suffered a seizure as he collapsed from the third knockdown. Stretchered out of the ring, he was rushed to the hospital where doctors reduced the swelling in his brain and beat the odds to save his life. This would be Richie’s lone defeat. He finished his pro career with a record of 29-1 (17 KOs).

Bob Arum cushioned some of the pain by giving Richie a $25,000 bonus and offering him a lifetime job at Top Rank which Richie accepted. And let the record show that Arum was good to his word.

A more elaborate portrait of Richie Sandoval was published in these pages in 2017. You can check it out HERE. May he rest in peace.

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