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Mayweather’s Reading Ability Belies How Smart He Is

Fighting, whether it’s boxing, wrestling or mixed martial arts, is the toughest sport known to man. Yes, all the other major sports require some form of skill, strength, toughness, stamina, speed, mental concentration and athleticism, but not to the degree that fighting or one-on- one combat does. You show me a great fighter in any combat sport and I’ll show you someone who is very smart and who is also quick to analyze and process things pertaining to situations that change in milliseconds.
No two fighters in the world fight or move alike. They are all built differently and every part of their body is different. There are other one-on-one sports, but no one is physically trying to prevent you from accomplishing what you’re trying to do with the intent to hurt or disarm. In addition to that, in most fighting confrontations, each combatant knows what the other is trying to do and vice-versa. And that makes fighting that much tougher.
Recently, rapper 50 Cent challenged Floyd Mayweather to read a page of Harry Potter, which was later downgraded to reading The Cat in the Hat on Jimmy Kimmel Live. This escalated when an audio recording of Mayweather surfaced with him reading a transcript…..”I’m Floyd Mayweather, and I’ve joined IHeartRadio for the Show Your Stripes movement to support the hiring of vets. Go to ShowYourStripes.org, a website that connects veterans with employees and helps businesses find candidates with the best training.” Mayweather’s reading didn’t flow smoothly and he certainly didn’t sound like a national news anchor reading copy.
Once the audio went viral over the internet, the venom really spewed in Floyd’s direction. He was called dumb, stupid and illiterate. Mayweather responded by posting photos of two pay checks totaling over 71 million dollars on the internet and mocked those who delighted in calling him dumb.
Only, Floyd isn’t dumb. You can’t be a great fighter and be dumb; in fact you have to be very smart and quick on your feet to be a great fighter/boxer. It requires much more than just athleticism and skill.
Muhammad Ali, the most widely known athlete, not just fighter in history, graduated at the bottom of his high school class. Yet in 1968 and only 26 years old, he went on Firing Line and held his own with conservative icon William F. Buckley, and boxing wasn’t discussed once during the 90 minute program. Buckley mentioned during one of his last interviews that Ali was one of the smartest and quickest on his feet thinkers that he ever interviewed or debated. For not being highly educated, Ali sure knew how to control the emerging new media and transform himself from a fighter who wasn’t taken all that seriously when he turned pro after winning a gold medal at the 1960 Olympics, into one of the most recognizable faces on the planet.
Ali was a great communicator and understood people. He also understood psychology and worked his big name opponents to death before their in-ring confrontations. He also grasped that the quickest way to reduce great fighters to their lowest common denominator was to get them mad. This is evidenced by how many boxers have looked anything like professional fighters when getting into it at a press conference. Or how MMA fighters Jon Jones and future opponent Daniel Cormier looked flailing away at each other during their recent confrontation at a press conference. Isn’t it amazing how much better a fighter’s technique and skill come out when they aren’t mad? In all of Ali’s 61 fights, it’s safe to say that his antics had the least effect on Ken Norton and Jimmy Young as far as name opponents go. He tried everything in his book but never unraveled them once. Maybe he realized they were a tough style match-up for him, but they added to his degree of difficulty by not getting mad and keeping their cool during their bouts with him.
Everyone knows that Ali wasn’t book smart or very educated, but he was a very smart man and more than held his own in and out of the ring with all those he crossed paths with. He barely got out of high school yet was asked to give lectures not pertaining to boxing at Oxford and some of the highest learning institutions in the world.
How about Bernard Hopkins. He spent almost five years in prison and didn’t graduate high school. Has there ever been a better self-managed athlete in any sport? If so, I don’t know of them. Hopkins wasn’t a gold medalist, doesn’t necessarily have a fan friendly style, he’s not the kid next door, and he didn’t have any corporate or establishment money working behind the scenes trying to advance his career. In fact, once he captured the middleweight title, the establishment was trying to knock him off, and he was smart enough to see it. That’s why he never got out of shape and kept his eye on every fighter who he knew he’d one day most likely have to defend the title against. Hopkins was also smart enough to learn the business of boxing, insuring that he wouldn’t get ripped off and taken advantage of like many other past great fighters were.
And when it comes to ring combat, Hopkins is as smart as they come. He’s great at understanding his opponents’ strengths and weaknesses and usually takes away their strengths and forces them to fight from their weakness. On top of that he’s earning some of his biggest pay days and enhancing his legacy at the end of his career. How many athletes can that be said about? No, Bernard will not be getting calls to read radio spots once he finally retires, but he’s every bit as smart and intellectual as the guy writing them.
What about Floyd Mayweather? In Floyd you have a fighter who isn’t a former gold medalist, he doesn’t have natural charisma, he’s not the best boxer you’ve ever seen, nor is he the fastest or the hardest puncher. If that weren’t enough, he has a reputation of not fighting the toughest and most worthy opposition when they are at their most dangerous. His managerial skills as far as picking opponents are every bit as good as his ring skill. Actually, they are better because he’s one of the top three fighter-managers ever.
Floyd realized around the time that he fought Oscar De La Hoya, in mid 2007, that he couldn’t be promoted as the kid next door like Oscar. He also didn’t possess flashy and blow you away skill like Sugar Ray Leonard or Roy Jones, and he wasn’t a destroyer like Thomas Hearns. So what did he do? He transformed himself into the ultimate cocky bad guy who, in the style of a WWE wrestler, relishes playing the villain. And all that has done has made him the highest paid athlete in the world the last two years, and that’s without making one cent from endorsements like Peyton Manning, LeBron James and Tiger Woods.
Mayweather has never taken a beating in any fight, so he’ll retire with his health and wealth. This leads me to conclude that for a guy who some say isn’t too smart because he may be moderately illiterate, he’s done really well for himself. Remember, he can be taught to read like everyone reading this was… However, we could never be taught or learn to fight like he can. And there’s no such thing as a great fighter who isn’t a very smart and shrewd person.
Fighting is the hardest thing to do athletically. To be a great one you must be a very quick thinker and not only process information quickly, but you also must have the capacity to apply what’s needed and throw away what doesn’t apply, all in a moment’s notice. Floyd Mayweather may not be the guy you want to read advertising copy, but he sure is one smart man.
Frank Lotierzo can be contacted at GlovedFist@Gmail.com
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and 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 Top Rank card in San Diego 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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