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COMMISSIONER’S CORNER: Love For Bud, Our Man Harold, And Mayflower-Merriweather

Last week, this column kind of just appeared out of nowhere, with no explanation of what the heck it is and when to expect it. It’s like this: After signing with Al Haymon, I struck a multi-billion dollar deal with Dino DaVinci & Michael Woods to allow me to throw this column onto TSS every Monday. So, here is installment #2…Oh, I also said I’d remind you guys to call toll free into my show on SiriusXM later today. The number is 1-866-522-2846. We are on from 6-8pm (ET). You guys in other time zones, make the adjustments.
On Saturday night in Omaha, Nebraska, a boxing match—for a world championship—took place in the CenturyLink Center. Not since 1972, when heavyweight Ron Stander—who was from across the river in Council Bluffs, Iowa—took on heavyweight champion Smokin’ Joe Frazier in Omaha, had a title fight taken place there.
On Saturday, a capacity crowd came out to cheer for Omaha native Terence Crawford, who was making the first defense of the WBO lightweight title he had won less than four months earlier.
The opponent across the ring was as tough an opponent as Crawford could have possibly selected: A Cuban refugee named Yuriorkis Gamboa. The challenger brought a 23-0 professional record—enhanced by over 250 amateur fights, most of them on the elite level—into the fight. Sixteen of his wins were by knockout. Oddly and ironically enough, Crawford had the same record.
After falling behind in the first four rounds to the quick, shifty and talented Cuban, Crawford brought out his championship pedigree.
The right-hander switched to southpaw, a move which was questioned by many in the crowd and even by HBO announcers Jim Lampley, Roy Jones Jr. and Max Kellerman. However, it was really easy to see what Crawford was doing.
By switching to southpaw, his right jab began repeatedly finding the challenger. Not since switch-hitting middleweight champ Marvelous Marvin Hagler has any champion been able to switch boxing stances as easily as effectively as Crawford did. From the southpaw stance, he began to take Gamboa apart.
Crawford dropped Gamboa in the fifth and sixth rounds, only to have the Cuban come storming back each time. Finally, after two more knockdowns over a challenger who insisted on going out on his shield, referee Genaro Hernandez waved it off after 2:53 of the ninth round.
The incredibly game challenger later said he could have continued. He could NOT have. What he meant to say is that he WANTED to continue. He truly wanted to go down swinging. The fact is, he did exactly that.
He fought his heart out against probably the best lightweight on this planet and gave an amazing account of himself. A recommendation from this corner: Drop down to 130, Yuri. You’ll probably be able to win another belt there.
The fight itself was memorable in its two-sidedness and in how the champion was able to kick-start his huge heart into turning it on when the champion found himself falling behind on the scorecards.
For me, I took four things from this fight:
One: Yuri Gamboa needs to take the summer off, then get back in the ring before the end of the year. We want to see him again.
Two: Terence Crawford is the best lightweight in the world, perhaps far better than anyone else at 135 pounds.
Three: This fight might just beat out last week’s Robert Guerrero- Yoshihiro Kamegai battle for 2014’s “Fight of the Year.” How can that be, you ask, when Guerrero was 10 rounds of non-stop you-hit-me-and-I’ll-hit-you action? That’s because, Guerrero-Kamegai was contested between two guys with very little defensive skills. They get insulted if you miss them with a punch. Crawford-Gamboa was nearly nine full rounds of amazing boxing ability, drama and will-to-win excitement.
Four: Omaha, Nebraska, has a world champion. He’s one the city is in love with and who loves the city right back. His presence packed the arena on Saturday.
You can rest assured It won’t be 42 years before Omaha, Nebraska, hosts its next world title fight!
***
WHERE’S HAROLD? : HBO’s longtime ringside scorer, Harold Lederman, was conspicuous by his absence from the HBO telecast from Omaha. Sitting in, explaining the rules and giving us his scoring was Steve Weisfeld, who has been working in that capacity for over a year. Sometimes, HBO uses both Weisfeld and Lederman. We like Steve Weisfeld a lot. When I was commissioner in New York, I gave Steve his judge’s license. He turned into one of the finest judges in the world. In my mind, he’s one of the Top-10 judges. As is another once of my N.Y. judges, Julie Lederman, Harold’s daughter. Back to Harold. Here’s a guy who is a pharmacist by trade. He may hold the Guinness Book of Records for getting fired from more jobs than anybody. That’s because of fights he was assigned to by HBO when the pharmacy expected him to work for them on that night. When it came to making a choice, there was no choice. Harold chose the HBO. Incredibly, early in his HBO career, Harold made more at his pharmacy job than at HBO. Harold has shown HBO nothing but respect. They should be proud they have an employee so loyal as Harold Lederman. You’d think the least they could do is show some loyalty back to him.
LIGHTWEIGHT RATINGS: With Terence Crawford’s huge victory on Saturday night, I couldn’t help but put my list together for the world’s top 135-pounders. The list, with the title they hold in parentheses, looks like this:
1. Terence Crawford (WBO)—24-0 (17)
2. Miguel Vazquez (IBF)—34-3 (13)
3. Yuri Gamboa—23-1 (16)…He’d help his cause if he dropped to 130
4. Omar Figueroa—(WBC) 23-0 (17)
5. Ray Beltran—29-6-1 (17)
6. Richard Abril (WBA)—18-3-1 (8)“The Road Runner”…Inactive since March 2013
7. Dejan Zlaticanin—19-0 (13) WBC International Champion
8. Paulus Moses—33-2 (21) WBO International Champion
9. Hank Lundy—25-3-1 (12)
10. Kevin Mitchell—38-2 (28)
***
MY TWEEKED PxP LIST: Last week after my column was posted, I realized I had omitted one of my favorite fighters, whom I believe absolutely belongs on the list. That man is GuillermoRigondeaux. So, here goes:
10. Leo Santa Cruz
9. Vasyl Lomachenko
8. Sergei Kovalev
7. Guillermo Rigondeaux
6. Mikey Garcia
5. Wladimir Klitschko
4. Gennady Golovkin
3. Manny Pacquiao
2. Andre Ward
1. Floyd Mayweather
If you guys would like, do your own PxP list and either post your own ratings or in-box them to me by Friday at midnight (ET). I will compile them all, giving 10 points for first place down to one point for 10th place. That way, TSS can have its own PxP Top-10 List. I await your entries.
WEEKEND RESULTS: The boxing career of Ricky Burns lies in ruins, as he suffered a 12-round split decision loss on Saturday to Montenegro’s Dejan Zlaticanin. In front of a silent, stunned hometown crowd in Glasgow, Scotland, Burns was dropped by a left hook and was never in the fight, despite the scorecards (on which a British judge, naturally, gave it to Burns). In reality, he lost at least seven—perhaps eight—of the rounds. The fight, for the WBC International Lightweight Title, was Burns’ second loss in a row. He lost his WBO lightweight title to Terence Crawford last March 1…In Kinshasa, Zaire, localite Llunga Makabu won the vacant WBC International Cruiserweight Title with a ninth-round stoppage of former world champion Glen “The Road Warrior” Johnson in the ninth round. The 45-year-old Johnson told me, when I saw him at the IBHOF weekend earlier this month, “I hope to get one more title shot.” This loss should effectively end his career and begin his five-year countdown until he is inducted in the IBHOF. Johnson is 54-19-2. Makabu is now 17-1 with 15 KO’s…Heavyweight Shannon Briggs was forced to go the distance for the first time in four comeback fights, taking a unanimous decision over Raphael Zumbano Love for the vacant NABA heavyweight title. Briggs is now 55-6-1 (48) and hoping to punch his way into a world title shot. He is 42…2012 U.S. Olympians Errol Spence and Marcus Browne scored impressive wins in Las Vegas on Saturday. Welterweight Spence took a unanimous 10-round decision over tough Ronald Cruz. It was Spence’s 13th win in as many fights. He has 10 KO’s. On the same card, light heavyweight Marcus “The Liver Killer” Browne needed just 91 seconds to dispatch of last-minute replacement Donta Woods. Browne’s original opponent, Yusaf Mack, failed a NSAC blood test and was scratched from the card. “The Liver Killer” is 11-0 with eight stoppages. It is expected he will be fighting again on the August 9th card at the Barclay’s Center…Also on the card in Las Vegas, heavyweight prospect Gerald Washington went to 13-0 (10) with a second-round wipeout of veteran Travis Walker…Unbeaten junior welter Ivan Redkach labored to a 10-round unanimous decision against rugged veteran Sergey Gulyakevich on a Showtime-televised card in St. Charles, MO.
MY FAVORITE LOSER: British junior welterweight Kristian Laight dropped a four-round unanimous decision to Ryan Smith on the undercard to Dejan Zlaticanin-Ricky Burns. For Ryan, the win upped his record to 2-0. For Laight, the loss dropped his record to 9-176-7. In 2014, Laight is actually doing quite well—he has won two fights while only losing 12. He has two more fights scheduled in July. If he pushes, he may be able to reach that magical 20-loss circle this year. He has done it before. We just know he can do it again. Oh, in those 176 losses, he has only been stopped five times. In his nine wins, he has yet to record a knockout.
TWO MORE FOR AL: Junior middleweight Vanes Martirosyan recently signed with advisor Al Haymon. So did IBF lightweight king Miguel Vazquez. If you’re keeping track, here are some of the bigger names who have signed with the powerful but reclusive Haymon: $$$May, Deontay Wilder, Marcos Maidana, Shawn Porter, Lucas Matthysse, Amir Khan, Adonis Stevenson, Robert Guerrero, Keith Thurman, Omar Figueroa, Peter Quillin and most of the 2012 U.S. Olympians.
FUNNY: On Saturday evening, a few hours before the HBO telecast of Crawford-Gamboa, my wife and I went to see “Jersey Boys” at a Long Island theatre. As I was about to pay for the tickets, I noticed a poster on a stand. “CANELO ALVAREZ vs ERISLANDY LARA” read the poster. “See it Here.” Two female employees, one perhaps around 40 and the other in her early 20’s, stood behind the counter and saw me looking at the poster and then heard me discussing it with my wife.
“Are you a boxing fan?” asked the older woman.
“I am indeed a boxing fan,” I answered.
“Well, this is the second time we’ll be showing a big boxing match,” she replied.
“When was the first boxing match you showed? Who were the fighters?” I asked.
The older woman looked at the sign.
“We showed Alvarez,” she said, pointing to the photo of Canelo. “He fought, uh, uh…”
She had to think of Alvarez’ opponent’s name. Then it came to her.
“He fought Mayflower,” she said. I smiled. I knew who she meant.
Her younger colleague laughed and playfully said to her, “You dummy, it’s not Mayflower.”
“Well, it was something like that,” she retorted.
Before I could correct her on “Mayflower,” her colleague said, “It’s Merriweather.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said the Mayflower girl. “Merriweather. I knew it was something like that.”
I never bothered to correct her.
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Ebanie Bridges Poised to Defend Her Title and Boost Her Brand in SanFran This Weekend

Ebanie Bridges opposes late sub Miyo Yoshida on the undercard of Saturday’s Matchroom card in San Francisco featuring the WBC lightweight title fight between Regis Prograis and Devin Haney. It’s doubtful that Bridges vs. Yoshida will steal the show (Prograis vs Haney is a compelling match-up), but it’s a stone-cold lock that Bridges vs. Yoshida will steal the weigh-in. It goes at 1 pm Friday at the Chase Center and is open to the public.
This is all Bridges’ doing. She can fight more than a little, as Damon Runyon would have phrased it, but is best known for turning up at weigh-ins in lingerie so sexy that Matchroom honcho Eddie Hearn averts his eyes to keep from blushing. Others can’t keep their eyes off the 37-year-old, well-endowed Australian and on Friday the paparazzi will crash the scene to capture images that will be all over the internet within hours.
This doesn’t sit well with a lot of people. Former opponent Shannon Courtenay, who saddled Bridges (9-1, 4 KOs) with her only defeat, chastised her for selling their fight for the wrong reasons and disrespecting the sport. Her most recent opponent, Shannon O’Connell, called her a skank and other terms of derision unfit for a family newspaper.
Bridges stopped her in the eighth round in what is her most gratifying win to date. “She made it personal,” says Ebanie. “It felt good to make her eat her words.”
Bridges, who set a withering pace, was making the first defense of the IBF bantamweight title she won with a comprehensive 10-round decision over Argentina’s long-reigning Maria Cecilia Roman. Shannon O’Connell, a fellow Aussie, entered that bout on an 8-fight winning streak that included hard-earned decisions over Australian standouts Taylah Robertson and Cherneka Johnson.
So, although Bridges vs O’Connell was contested in Leeds, England, it was something of the culmination of an Australian round-robin tournament, and it would be Ebanie Bridges that emerged as the Queen Bee.
Bridges has a platform on Only Fans. Known for its “adult” content, the web site is also a place where B-list celebrities go to monetize their fan base by promising a closer look into their personal lives. For attractive female celebs, that usually means displaying more skin that can be found in generic publicity photos, but well short of hard-core. Current Only Fans performers include recording artist Cardi B, actress Denise Richards, the former spouse of Charlie Sheen, actress Drea de Matteo, best known for portraying Adriana on “The Sopranos,” former “Baywatch” sex symbol Carmen Electra, boxer Mikaela Mayer, and former Miss USA Shanna Moakler who shares a daughter with Oscar de la Hoya.
Women that profit from cheesecake, to use an old word for racy photos, aren’t known for having the brightest bulbs between their ears but Bridges, despite embracing her nickname, the Blonde Bomber, doesn’t fit the stereotype. She’s no bimbo.
Ms. Bridges has two college degrees, an undergraduate degree in math and a master’s in secondary education. In her spare time, she finds solace in playing the piano and in drawing, a skill that she inherited from her father, a painter and commercial artist.
In her drawings, she is partial to British soccer coaches and athletes, in particular boxers. Some of her photos are embedded in her smart phone. These, I can attest, are very good. There was no mistaking her drawing of Sugar Ray Robinson. It ranked right up there with Stanley Weston whose illustrations adorned the covers of 57 issues of The Ring magazine.
Bridges is her own best publicist. It’s an attribute she shares with UFC superstar Conor McGregor.
It comes as no surprise to learn that they are well-acquainted. Bridges and McGregor sat together at the first fight between Katie Taylor and Chantelle Cameron. She is a spokesperson for the latest product that McGregor is pushing, Forged Irish Stout, a brand of beer that debuted at the Black Forge Inn, the Dublin pub that McGregor owns.
“I love Conor,” she says, “he’s lovely,” a rather odd adjective to apply to a man who once attacked a bus with a metal barricade at a UFC media event in Brooklyn, injuring three people.
“He’s great for my brand,” says Bridges of McGregor, “and I’m great for his brand.”
Like it or not, this is the new world order. This reporter is old enough to remember when colleges and universities had football teams. Now they have football franchises, which isn’t quite the same. A franchise requires a well-oiled marketing department to enhance the value of the brand.
Bridges got her first crack at a world title (the WBA version held by Shannon Courtenay) after only five pro fights against opponents who were collectively 12-25-5. Her opponent on Saturday, Miyo Yoshida, sports a 16-4 record and is coming off a loss.
This is fodder for critics of female boxing but, make no mistake, Bridges would be a tough out for any female bantamweight in the world and she has paid her dues. She had 30 amateur fights after previously training in karate, kickboxing, and Muay Thai. (In fairness to Matchroom’s matchmaker, he salvaged Saturday’s date for her, securing Yoshida after three previous opponents fell out.)
Looking ahead to 2024, Bridges envisions fighting England’s Nina Hughes, the WBA belt-holder, and then Denmark’s Dina Thorslund who owns the other two meaningful pieces of the bantamweight title. A match with Thorslund (currently 20-0, 8 KOs) with all four belts on the line would be a blockbuster and, by then, should it transpire, the Blonde Bombshell would undoubtedly be one of the most well-known boxers in the world.
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A Paean to the Great Sportswriter Jimmy Cannon Who Passed Away 50 Years Ago This Week

“Of all his assignments,” said the renowned sportswriter Dave Anderson, “[Jimmy] Cannon appeared to enjoy boxing the most.”
Cannon would have sheepishly concurred. He dated his infatuation with boxing to 1919 when he stood outside a saloon listening to a man with a megaphone relay bulletins from the Dempsey-Willard fight in faraway Toledo. His father followed boxing as did all the Irishmen in his neighborhood. For him, an interest in the sport of boxing, he once wrote, was like a family heirloom. But it became a love-hate relationship. It was Jimmy Cannon, after all, who coined the phrase “boxing is the red light district of sports.”
This week marks the 50th anniversary of Jimmy Cannon’s death. He passed away at age 63 on Dec. 5, 1973, in his room at the residential hotel in mid-Manhattan where he made his home. In the realm of American sportswriters, there has never been a voice quite like him. He was “the hardest-boiled of the hard-drinking, hard-boiled school of sports writing,” wrote Darrell Simmons of the Atlanta Journal. One finds a glint of this in his summary of Sonny Liston’s first-round demolition of Albert Westphal in 1961: “Sonny Liston hit Albert Westphal like he was a cop.”
In his best columns, Jimmy Cannon was less a sportswriter than an urban poet. Here’s what he wrote about Archie Moore in 1955 after Moore trounced Bobo Olson to set up a match with Rocky Marciano: “Someone should write a song about Archie Moore who in the Polo Grounds knocked out Bobo Olson in three rounds…It should be a song that comes out of the backrooms of sloughed saloons on night-drowned streets in morning-worried parts of bad towns. The guy who writes this one must be a piano player who can be dignified when he picks a quarter out of the marsh of a sawdust floor.”
Prior to fighting in Madison Square Garden the previous year – his first appearance in that iconic boxing arena – Moore had roamed the globe in search of fights in a career that began in the Great Depression. Cannon was partial to boxers like Archie Moore, great ring artisans who toiled in obscurity, fighting for small purses –“moving-around money” in Cannon’s words — until the establishment could no longer ignore them.
Jimmy Cannon was born in Lower Manhattan. He left high school after one year to become a copy boy for the New York Daily News. In 1936, at age 26, the News sent him to cover the biggest news story of the day, the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping trial. While there he met Damon Runyon who would become a lifelong friend. At Runyon’s suggestion, he applied for a job as a sportswriter at the New York American, a Hearst paper, and was hired.
During World War II, he was a war correspondent in Europe embedded in Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army. When he returned from the war, he joined the New York Post and then, in 1959, the Journal-American which made him America’s highest-paid sportswriter at a purported salary of $1000 a week. His articles were syndicated and appeared in dozens of papers.
Cannon was very close to Joe Louis. He was the only reporter that Louis allowed in his hotel room on the morning of the Brown Bomber’s rematch with Max Schmeling. Louis, he wrote, “was a credit to his race, the human race.” It was his most-frequently-quoted line.
In an early story, Cannon named Sam Langford the best pound-for-pound fighter of all time. Later he joined with his colleagues on Press Row in naming Sugar Ray Robinson the greatest of the greats. As for the fellow who anointed himself “The Greatest,” Muhammad Ali, Cannon profoundly disliked him. He persisted in calling him Cassius Clay long after Ali had adopted his Muslim name.
It troubled Cannon that Ali was afforded an opportunity to fight for the title after only 19 pro fights. Ali’s poetry, he thought, was infantile. He abhorred Ali’s political views. And, truth be told, he didn’t like Ali because certain segments of society adored him. Cannon didn’t like non-conformists – hippies and anti-war protesters and such. When queried about his boyhood in Greenwich Village, he was quick to note that he lived there “when it was a decent neighborhood, before it became freaky.”
Cannon’s animus toward Ali spilled over into his opinion of Ali’s foil, the bombastic sportscaster Howard Cosell. “If Howard Cosell were a sport,” he wrote,” it would be roller derby.”
Cannon frequently filled his column with a series of one-liners published under the heading “Nobody Asked Me, But…” His wonderfully acerbic put-down of Cosell appeared in one of these columns. But one can’t read these columns today without cringing at some of his ruminations. He once wrote, “Any man is in trouble if he falls in love with a woman he can’t knock down with one punch.” If a newspaperman wrote those words today, he would be out of a job so fast it would make his head spin.
Similarly, his famous line about Joe Louis being a credit to the human race no longer resonates in the way that it once did. There is in its benevolence an air of racial prejudice.
Jimmy Cannon was a lifelong bachelor but in his younger days before he quit drinking cold turkey in 1948, he was quite the ladies man, often seen promenading showgirls around town. Like his pal Damon Runyon, he was a night owl. As the years passed, however, he became somewhat reclusive. The world passed him by when rock n’ roll came in, pushing aside the Tin Pan Alley crooners and torch singers that had kept him company at his favorite late-night haunts.
Cannon’s end days were tough. He suffered a stroke in 1971 as he was packing to go to the Kentucky Derby and spent most of his waking hours in his last two-plus years in a wheelchair. Fortunately, he could afford to hire a full-time attendant. In 2002, he was posthumously elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Observer category.
Jimmy Cannon once said that he resented it when someone told him that his stuff was too good to be in a newspaper. It was demeaning to newspapers and he never wanted to be anything but a newspaperman. He didn’t always bring his “A” game and some of his stuff wouldn’t hold up well, but the man could write like blazes and the sportswriting profession lost a giant when he drew his last breath.
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Arne K. Lang is a recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling. His latest book, titled Clash of the Little Giants: George Dixon, Terry McGovern, and the Culture of Boxing in America, 1890-1910, was released by McFarland in September, 2022.
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Ryan “KingRy” Garcia Returns With a Bang; KOs Oscar Duarte

It was a different Ryan “KingRy” Garcia the world saw in defeating Mexico’s rugged Oscar Duarte, but it was that same deadly left hook counter that got the job done by knockout on Saturday.
Only the quick survive.
Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs) used a variety of stances before luring knockout artist Duarte (26-1-1, 21 KOs) into his favorite punch before a sold-out crowd at Toyota Arena in Houston, Texas. That punch should be patented in gold.
It was somewhat advertised as knockout artist versus matinee idol, but those who know the sport knew that Garcia was a real puncher. But could he rebound from his loss earlier this year?
The answer was yes.
Garcia used a variety of styles beginning with a jab at a prescribed distance via his new trainer Derrick James. It allowed both Garcia and Duarte to gain footing and knock the cobwebs out of their reflexes. Garcia’s jab scored most of the early points during the first three rounds. He also snapped off some left hooks and rights.
“He was a strong fighter, took a strong punch,” said Garcia. “I hit him with some hard punches and he kept coming.”
Duarte, an ultra-pale Mexican from Durango, was cautious, knowing full well how many Garcia foes had underestimated the power behind his blows.
Slowly the muscular Mexican fighter began closing in with body shots and soon both fighters were locked in an inside battle. Garcia used a tucked-in shoulder style while Duarte pounded the body, back of the head and in the back causing the referee to warn for the illegal punches twice.
Still, Duarte had finally managed to punch Garcia with multiple shots for several rounds.
Around the sixth round Garcia was advised by his new trainer to begin jabbing and moving. It forced Duarte out of his rhythm as he was unable to punch without planting his feet. Suddenly, the momentum had reversed again and Duarte looked less dangerous.
“I had to slow his momentum down. That softened him up,” said Garcia about using that change in style to change Duarte’s pressure attack. “Shout out to Derrick James.”
Boos began cascading from the crowd but Garcia was on a roll and had definitely regained the advantage. A quick five-punch combination rocked Duarte though not all landed. The danger made the Mexican pause.
In the eighth round Duarte knew he had to take back the momentum and charged even harder. In one lickety-split second a near invisible counter left hook connected on Duarte’s temple and he stumbled like a drunken soldier on liberty in Honolulu. Garcia quickly followed up with rights and uppercuts as Duarte had a look of terror as his legs failed to maintain stability. Down he went for the count.
Duarte was counted out by referee James Green at 2:51 of the eighth round as Garcia watched from the other side of the ring.
“I started opening up my legs a little bit to open up the shot,” explained Garcia. “When I hurt somebody that hard, I just keep cracking them. I hurt him with a counter left hook.”
The weapon of champions.
Garcia’s victory returns him back to the forefront as one of boxing’s biggest gate attractions. A list of potential foes is his to dissect and choose.
“I’m just ready to continue to my ascent to be a champion at 140,” Garcia said.
It was a tranquil end after such a tumultuous last three days.
Other Bouts
Floyd Schofield (16-0, 12 KOs) blitzed Mexico’s Ricardo “Not Finito” Lopez (17-8-3) with a four knockdown blowout that left fans mesmerized and pleased with the fighter from Austin, Texas.
Schofield immediately shot out quick jabs and then a lightning four-punch combination that delivered Lopez to the canvas wondering what had happened. He got up. Then Scholfield moved in with a jab and crisp left hook and down went Lopez like a dunked basketball bouncing.
At this point it seemed the fight might stop. But it proceeded and Schofield unleashed another quick combo that sent Lopez down though he did try to punch back. It was getting monotonous. Lopez got up and then was met with another rapid fire five- or six-punch combination. Lopez was down for the fourth time and the referee stopped the devastation.
“I appreciate him risking his life,” said Schofield of his victim.
In a middleweight clash Shane Mosley Jr. (21-4, 12 KOs) out-worked Joshua Conley (17-6-1, 11 KOs) for five rounds before stopping the San Bernardino fighter at 1:51 of the sixth round. It was Mosley’s second consecutive knockout and fourth straight win.
Mosley continues to improve in every fight and again moves up the middleweight rankings.
Super middleweight prospect Darius Fulghum (9-0, 9 KOs) of Houston remained undefeated and kept his knockout string intact with a second round pounding and stoppage over Pachino Hill (8-5-1) in 56 seconds of that round.
Photo credit: Golden Boy Promotions
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