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REMEMBERING THE ROCK & MR. BOXING

It was around 6:00 a.m. on Monday, September 1, 1969. I was headed into my third year in college and into my second year of competitive amateur boxing. I had gotten up early that first morning of September to head out for a fast-paced three-mile run, then jump in the pool. Before I left the house on Long Island, I went outside and picked up the morning’s papers, which were delivered to my home and left on the front steps. It was a morning ritual for me, always an early riser, to go outside, retrieve Newsday and the New York Daily News, then tiptoe into my parent’s bedroom and leave the papers on my father’s side of the bed. As I picked up the papers, I looked at the headlines on both of the papers. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“ROCKY MARCIANO DEAD AT 45” was the headline on the Daily News. The sub-headline underneath read, “Former Heavyweight Champ Dies in Plane Crash.”
I was stunned. I quickly took Newsday out of its protective plastic bag.
Newsday’s headline was “MARCIANO KILLED IN PLANE CRASH.”
I was breathing harder than if I had just finished my three-mile run. I needed to share this horrible information with someone.
Dad!
Why not? It was only natural. My dad, Carl, was the one who introduced me to boxing 10 years earlier. I needed to wake him. Had to wake him.
I quietly opened the door to mom and dad’s room, then entered. I walked around to my sleeping dad. I took another look at the headline on Newsday, just to make sure I read it right. I did. I wished it wasn’t true.
“Dad!” I whispered. He didn’t budge. My second “Dad!” got him to open his eyes.
He looked at me and lifted his head off his pillow. He looked at the clock. It was a minute or two after 6:00.
“What is it, Randy?” he questioned softly. Is everything okay?
“Dad, look at the headlines,” I said. I showed him Newsday, then held up the Daily News.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. He said it a few more times. Rocky Marciano was one of my dad’s favorite fighters.
Then he turned to my mom, Roberta.
“Honey, wake up!” he said, tapping her lightly on a shoulder. “Wake up!”
She half-opened her eyes.
“Ughhh, what is it?” she mumbled, still half asleep. “What is it?”
He took the papers from my hands and held them over mom’s face.
“Look!” he said.
She opened her eyes to read. In a flash, the sleep left her. Her mouth fell open.
“OH MY…” she clamped her hands over her mouth before she could finish.
“Rocky is dead?” my dad asked. “How could that be? He was still a young man. How’d he die?”
“He died in a plane crash, dad,” I said. The news hit home even harder. My dad was a pilot.
He sprung up in bed and began reading one of the papers.
My mom rubbed the sleep from her eyes. I handed her the other paper.
“Rocky was in a Cessna 172 when it crashed into a corn field in Newton, Iowa,” said my dad. “It appears there was bad weather.”
He took a deep breath. You could see he was moved.
“Rocky was one of the greats,” said my dad. “Next to Joe Louis, he may have been the greatest heavyweight of all time. And, guess what…today would have been Rocky’s 46th birthday.”
In 1969, there was no Youtube, no internet. My 10-year journey into boxing consisted of hearing stories from my dad, reading Ring Magazine and all the local papers. I truly considered Ring Magazine to be, as founder Nat Fleischer called his publication, the “Bible ofBoxing.” In being the bible, I also looked at Fleischer to be the creator of all things boxing. His word was gospel.
The news of Marciano’s death was nothing less than shocking. How could “The Rock” be gone? I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to know more about Marciano. How great was he? Where did he fit in amongst the great heavyweights of the past? I decided I had to speak with Nat Fleischer himself. I decided to call him later that morning. Then, I decided I wouldn’t give a secretary a chance to make up an excuse he was busy. I decided to go to his office and sit there for as long as I had to in order to meet him and talk with him.
The Ring offices were located in an old six-story building at 120 W. 31st Street in New York City. They had been in Madison Square Garden on 49th Street for years, relocating after that MSG faced the wrecking ball and the current MSG was opened in the late 1960’s.
I got to the building shortly before 9:00a.m., Monday, September 1. I checked the directory on the wall and quickly found what I was looking for: Ring Publishing Corp, 5th Fl.
I excitedly stepped into the small elevator behind me and pressed the button withthe number 5 on it. Little did I know, but that elevator would take me up and down to The Ring offices thousands of times, beginning in another 10 years.
When the door opened, several odors were immediately evident: Cigarettes. Cigars. Perfume. Cologne. Mold. Mildew.
“May I help you,” said a woman in an office with a sliding window to my right.
“Yes, I’m hoping to see Mr. Fleischer,” I told her.
“Do you have an appointment with Mr. Fleischer?” the lady asked.
“No, I don’t,” I said, “but I have been reading Ring since I was a child and…”
She cut me off.
“I’m sorry, young man, but if you don’t have an appointment with Mr. Fleischer, there is no way you can see him. He is very busy.”
I tried explaining my desire to speak with the founder of Ring, but the lady kept apologizing and telling me she was sorry. Finally, she said in a stern voice, “Young man, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but Mr. Fleischer is very busy. There will be a TV crew coming in soon to interview him. I’m sure you heard that Rocky Marciano has died in a plane crash. Mr. Fleischer will be doing interviews all morning.”
I sighed and nodded. Then I turned and went to press the button for the elevator. At that moment, the door to Nat Fleischer’s office opened. Out walked the balding, short, roundish founder of The Ring, the man who began rating fighters, the man whose opinion in the sport was heard and worshipped the way Moses heard and worshipped his Lord in front of the burning bush over 2,000 years ago.
“Mr. Fleischer,” I said, moving towards him. “Boxing lost such a great fighter last night. I am an avid reader of The Ring. I live on Long Island and just had to come in to meet you and talk to you. I know you’re very busy, but if you can give me just five minutes, I would be honored.”
He looked at me and for a moment—it seemed like an hour—he stared at me. Then he spoke.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name, son,” he said.
“It’s Randy, sir. Randy Gordon,” I replied nervously.
“Mr. Gordon, I would love to speak with you,” he said. Turning to the receptionist, he said, “Millie, will you please show Mr. Gordon into my office? I must talk with Nat for a few moments.”
“Nat?” I thought. “Nat must talk with Nat? It’s got to be Nat Loubet, the Managing Editor, Fleischer’s son-in-law, and the heir apparent to Fleischer’s throne.
“Would that be Nat Loubet you’re meeting with?” I asked, quickly realizing I was out-of-place for doing so.
“Yes it is,” laughed the most respected boxing journalist in the world. Then he gave me a playful smack on the top of my head.
“Millie, take this young man into my office and give him a few copies of his favorite reading material.”
We walked into a neat office with framed issues of The Ring hanging on the walls, along with photos of Nat Fleischer giving and receiving awards. There he was with Jack Dempsey. With Joe Louis. With Sugar Ray Robinson. With Willie Pep. With Henry Armstrong. With Gene Tunney.
This was the office, which, in 15 years, I would sit in—at that very same desk—as Editor-in-Chief of the magazine which Fleischer gave life to in 1922 and which Bert Sugar and I brought back from the dead in 1979.
I walked around the room. I looked at the photos. My love for the sport intensified with every minute I stayed there. Then, as I was looking at a photo of Nat Fleischer presenting an award to Rocky Marciano, the door leading from Loubet’s office to Fleischer’s opened. In walked Fleischer. He saw me looking at the photo of him and Marciano.
“I was presenting Rocky with the ‘Fighter of the Year Award’ at the Downtown Athletic Club,” said Fleischer. He motioned to the couch in his office.
“Sit, Mr. Gordon,” he said. “Stay and talk about Rocky Marciano.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fleischer,” I said, adding, “Please call me Randy. Mr. Gordon is my father.”
Then, showing a sense of humor, he said, “Then you can call me Nat. Mr. Fleischer is my father!”
I walked over and sat on the couch. He walked over and sat down a few feet away. Then he turned and asked, “So, do you think Marciano was the greatest heavyweight champion ever?”
He watched as I looked up, obviously in deep thought. He answered for me.
“Marciano was good, real good,” said Fleischer. “He may have been the toughest heavyweight ever…the most determined…relentless…a banger…he could take a guy out with either hand.”
Then he paused and took a deep breath.
“But he wasn’t the best ever,” said Fleischer. “Far from it.”
“Who was?” I asked. “Was it Joe Louis?”
Fleischer shook his head.
“Jersey Joe? Gene Tunney?” I inquired.
“No sir,” said Fleischer. “The greatest was Jack Johnson.”
“Where does Marciano fit in?” I asked.
He took a pad from the table from in front of the couch, then removed a gold pen from his shirt pocket and began to write. In about a minute, he handed me his list:
1 – Jack Johnson
2 – James J. Jeffries
3 – Bob Fitzsimmons
4 – Jack Dempsey
5 – James J. Corbett
6 – Joe Louis
7 – Sam Langford
8 – Gene Tunney
9 – Max Schmeling
10- Rocky Marciano
I looked it over. I was surprised to see Marciano at #10. I asked him why he was so low.
“It’s not that’s he’s low,” explained Fleischer. The ones above him were so great.”
Just then, the TV crew arrived.
“Stay, Randy,” said Fleischer. “They’re from ABC News. They are going to interview me about the death of Rocky Marciano.”
“I’d love to watch,” I said. “I’ll stay quietly out of the way.”
I sat on the couch as around eight members of the ABC crew set up their lights, ran electric wiring along Fleischer’s office floor and duct-taped it down, checked their cameras and microphones and connected a small microphone to Fleischer’s shirt, running the wire down the back of his shirt and out to a small box connected to the back of his pants. One of the technicians powdered Fleischer’s nose and held a piece of white typing paper next to his face as they did a white balance, making sure their wasn’t too much light on the subject, causing an on-screen glare. The interview was underway within a half hour of the crew showing up.
“What was your reaction when you heard that Rocky Marciano had been killed?” Fleischer was asked.
“Like everybody else, I was stunned,” he said. “I still am.”
“Describe Rocky Marciano the fighter, Mr. Fleischer,” came the next question.
“He lived up to his nickname. He was a Rock. A boulder. He was relentless. And tireless. His defense wasn’t the best, but he didn’t mind trading punches. With Rocky, it took only one shot. Just one!”
As Fleischer was interviewed, I stared at his list of top all-time heavyweights:
10. Rocky Marciano
I had long thought Marciano would have been in the top three, but that was from hearing my dad heaping praise on him whenever we talked about the heavyweight champs.
After the interview, and after the camera crew had left, I said, “Thank you, Nat, for taking the time to meet me and stay to watch you interviewed. Before I leave, can I ask you three things?”
Sure, Randy, ask away,” said the Founder/Owner/President/Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of The Ring.
“My first question is, ‘Are the guys above Marciano in your ratings so much better? Shouldn’t he be rated a lot higher. He knocked out Louis, who you have at number six.’”
He looked at me and said, “Marciano is one of my all-time favorites. He had the biggest heart ever. Sure, he beat Louis, but Joe was a shell of himself them, and still gave Marciano a rough time. Other guys he beat, like Jersey Joe Walcott and Archie Moore were also past their prime.”
I nodded my head.
“Muhammad Ali is in exile,” I said. “If he didn’t run into draft problems and was still fighting, do you think he would have become an all-time great?”
“Cassius Clay (Fleischer always referred to Ali—even rated him—as Cassius Clay) was a big, strong, lightning-quick heavyweight. But speed and agility is all he had. Anybody in my Top 10 would have had an easy night with him.”
I remained expressionless, not wanting to tell Nat Fleischer I disagreed. Maybe another time.
“My last question, Nat, is ‘How do I get a job as boxing writer? I want to be in the business. Where do I start?’”
He placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Well, it helps to know somebody,” he said, looking directly into my eyes. Then he smiled.
“You know me,” he continued. “I will help you get your start.”
“You will?” I said with excitement.
“I will,” he replied. “When do you graduate college?”
“In two years, sir,” I answered.
“Stay in touch,” he told me. “Send me some of the articles you write for your college newspaper. When you graduate, you’ve got yourself a job.”
Excitedly, I embraced the Dean of all boxing writers.
“Thank you, Nat! Thank you!” I exclaimed.
He laughed.
We shook hands, and he walked me out of his office—my future office—to the elevator.
“Stay in touch, Randy,” he said.
“I will, Nat, thank you so much,” I replied.
The elevator door closed and we waved to each other.
I never saw—or spoke—to him again. A few months after we met, he celebrated his 82nd birthday. That winter, he contracted pneumonia, and the battle took its toll. He began to need more rest and went into the office less frequently. By the following year, he hardly went in at all. His son-in-law, Nat Loubet, took over the reigns of The Ring.
On June 25, 1972, a few weeks after I graduated college, Nat Fleischer went to that big arena in the sky. He was 84.
It was eerie, when, seven years later, I walked into that same office to team with Bert Randolph Sugar in rebuilding and revitalizing a near-bankrupt Ring Magazine, turning it into perhaps the finest, most-respected and widely-read boxing magazine of all time.
During those Ring years, and in the decades since, I have watched Marciano’s legacy become almost mythical. The old-timers I knew back then who knew Marciano and covered him and used to tell me stories of The Rock are long gone.
I have been asked, as a former Editor-in-Chief of The Ring, to put together my list of Top-10 heavyweights, just like Nat Fleischer did and just like Bert Sugar did. Joe Louis was #1 on Sugar’s list. Marciano was #6.
I can’t do a list. Lord knows I’ve tried.
That’s because dreams die hard. As a kid, Rocky Marciano was among the greatest, if not THE greatest. Today, he’s a mythical name who my Italian friends love to talk about and ask if I think he was the best heavyweight ever.
It’s tough for me to tell them he wasn’t the greatest heavyweight champ ever, probably not even a Top-10 All-Time Heavyweight Champ.
Occasionally, I’ll look skywards and ask Nat Fleischer and Bert Sugar for help, saying, “I am about to put together my Top-10 heavyweights. Where do I put Muhammad Ali? Where do I put Jack Johnson. Where do I put Joe Louis? How about Rocky Marciano? What do I do with him?”
When my book comes out, and I have my chapter of Lists, I just my leave my list of Top-10 heavyweights blank.
I still have no idea where to put Rocky Marciano.
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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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Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

Japan’s Naoya “Monster” Inoue banged it out with Mexico’s Ramon Cardenas, survived an early knockdown and pounded out a stoppage win to retain the undisputed super bantamweight world championship on Sunday.
Japan and Mexico delivered for boxing fans again after American stars failed in back-to-back days.
“By watching tonight’s fight, everyone is well aware that I like to brawl,” Inoue said.
Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs), and Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs) and his wicked left hook, showed the world and 8,474 fans at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that prizefighting is about punching, not running.
After massive exposure for three days of fights that began in New York City, then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then to Nevada, it was the casino capital of the world that delivered what most boxing fans appreciate- pure unadulterated action fights.
Monster Inoue immediately went to work as soon as the opening bell rang with a consistent attack on Cardenas, who very few people knew anything about.
One thing promised by Cardenas’ trainer Joel Diaz was that his fighter “can crack.”
Cardenas proved his trainer’s words truthful when he caught Inoue after a short violent exchange with a short left hook and down went the Japanese champion on his back. The crowd was shocked to its toes.
“I was very surprised,” said Inoue about getting dropped. ““In the first round, I felt I had good distance. It got loose in the second round. From then on, I made sure to not take that punch again.”
Inoue had no trouble getting up, but he did have trouble avoiding some of Cardenas massive blows delivered with evil intentions. Though Inoue did not go down again, a look of total astonishment blanketed his face.
A real fight was happening.
Cardenas, who resembles actor Andy Garcia, was never overly aggressive but kept that left hook of his cocked and ready to launch whenever he saw the moment. There were many moments against the hyper-aggressive Inoue.
Both fighters pack power and both looked to find the right moment. But after Inoue was knocked down by the left hook counter, he discovered a way to eliminate that weapon from Cardenas. Still, the Texas-based fighter had a strong right too.
In the sixth round Inoue opened up with one of his lightning combinations responsible for 10 consecutive knockout wins. Cardenas backed against the ropes and Inoue blasted away with blow after blow. Then suddenly, Cardenas turned Inoue around and had him on the ropes as the Mexican fighter unloaded nasty combinations to the body and head. Fans roared their approval.
“I dreamed about fighting in front of thousands of people in Las Vegas,” said Cardenas. “So, I came to give everything.”
Inoue looked a little surprised and had a slight Mona Lisa grin across his face. In the seventh round, the Japanese four-division world champion seemed ready to attack again full force and launched into the round guns blazing. Cardenas tried to catch Inoue again with counter left hooks but Inoue’s combos rained like deadly hail. Four consecutive rights by Inoue blasted Cardenas almost through the ropes. The referee Tom Taylor ruled it a knockdown. Cardenas beat the count and survived the round.
In the eighth round Inoue looked eager to attack and at the bell launched across the ring and unloaded more blows on Cardenas. A barrage of 14 unanswered blows forced the referee to stop the fight at 45 seconds of round eight for a technical knockout win.
“I knew he was tough,” said Inoue. “Boxing is not that easy.”
Espinoza Wins
WBO featherweight titlist Rafael Espinosa (27-0, 23 KOs) uppercut his way to a knockout win over Edward Vazquez (17-3, 4 KOs) in the seventh round.
“I wanted to fight a game fighter to show what I am capable,” said Espinoza.
Espinosa used the leverage of his six-foot, one-inch height to slice uppercuts under the guard of Vazquez. And when the tall Mexican from Guadalajara targeted the body, it was then that the Texas fighter began to wilt. But he never surrendered.
Though he connected against Espinoza in every round, he was not able to slow down the taller fighter and that allowed the Mexican fighter to unleash a 10-punch barrage including four consecutive uppercuts. The referee stopped the fight at 1:47 of the seventh round.
It was Espinoza’s third title defense.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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