Mayweather: The Perfect Fighter Still Pitching the Perfect Game

Published

11 years ago

September 12, 2014

New York Yankees righthander Don Larsen, who had gone 3-21 just two seasons earlier with the Baltimore Orioles, had only minutes earlier finished pitching the first – and to date, only – perfect game in World Series history, a 2-0 masterpiece over the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5 of the 1956 Fall Classic in Yankee Stadium. Trying to make sense of the seemingly miraculous feat he had just witnessed, Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News struggled to find just the right words to begin his story. Dick Young came to his colleague’s rescue, typing in the seven-word opening paragraph that became one of the most famous leads in newspaper sports journalism.

“The imperfect man pitched a perfect game.”

Boxing and baseball are different sports, to be sure, but to the casual observer it would appear that Floyd Mayweather Jr. has surpassed “imperfect man” Larsen in at least one respect. Where Larsen went 27 up, 27 down on one magical afternoon, Mayweather – whom many have proclaimed as the “perfect” boxer – has gone 46 up and 46 down as a professional, with Argentine tough guy Marcos Maidana (35-4, 31 KOs) likely to be become his 47th consecutive victim Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. It’s a rematch of their March 5 fight in which Mayweather was pressed far more than usual in winning a 12-round majority decision, the type of give-and-take affair in which he is rarely obliged to engage.

The television ads for the Showtime Pay-Per-View do-over loudly proclaim the previous close call as “Mayweather’s toughest fight,” which it really isn’t. If you want to see Mayweather truly pushed to the limit, YouTube his Dec. 7, 2002, unanimous decision over Jose Luis Castillo, which remains the ultimate litmus test for someone who guards the “0” in the loss column of his record as if it were the gold in Fort Knox. That is an appropriate analogy when you consider that Mayweather – and he is not the first superstar athlete to think this way – regards his enormous earning power as further certification that he is unique and unlike anyone who came before him, or might come at some later date. He has earned a reported $350 million in boxing, more than any fighter ever has, and with three more bouts before his lucrative six-bout deal with Showtime expires, the man they call “Money” could well push that figure close to $500 million by the time he hangs up his gloves. He has announced – and, really, there is little reason to doubt him this time – that 2015 is the final year in which we will see him as an active fighter before he devotes himself to the next phase of his boxing life as a promoter and entrepreneur.

But, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the Mayweather we have been told is singularly distinctive has been glimpsed before, at least in part, in the person of at least one predecessor of fairly recent vintage. Even the stories about Mayweather now being authored have a sameness that call to mind individuals that came before. That is not necessarily a negative, but it is a reminder that, in boxing as in Hollywood, there are only so many original ideas that can be conceived before the recycling process kicks into gear.

A lengthy profile of Mayweather by the Washington Post’s Rick Maese in advance of the second Maidana fight touches on all the pertinent facts, and is indicative of the writer’s skill as a wordsmith. But even Maese finds it difficult to come up with anything that hasn’t been written before about a famous fighter who has been psychoanalyzed more than the sum total of Sigmund Freud’s case studies. Consider how Maese concludes his story, with Mayweather leaving his gym in Las Vegas to head off into the artificiality of the neon-lit gambling mecca the world’s current pound-for-pound champ, who was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Mich., has made his home.

“For Vegas and for Mayweather, it’s all choreographed, shimmering and plastic and contradictory at even turn,” Maese observes. “The money rolls in faster than anyone can count; air is pumped through the vents; entertainment is available at all hours. There’s no clock or rhyme or reason to anything, and everything under the sun can be bought. It’s all fueled by money and whim. Indulgences are the norm, excesses expected, and no indiscretion is ever judged.

“It’s the perfect city for an imperfect man.”

Somewhere, if Don Larsen were to read that description the puncher and the gaudy town that has so embraced him, you’d have to figure he’d have to crack a smile.

The Maese piece on Mayweather also examines the seeming conflict between “Money’s” swaggering, arrogant belief that he is unbeatable in the ring with the self-doubt that the fighter, at least to the writer’s way of thinking, apparently is harboring.

“Everything about Mayweather screams of insecurities: the way he flashes money, plays for cameras, seeks attention,” Maese writes. “But he says he’s completely comfortable with who he is, with what he has and with what he doesn’t. The real Mayeather is `a family man,’ he says, `a person who likes to give back, a great heart, loyal and honest.’ The cocky, flashy portrayal the world sees is apparently just a carefully crafted projection.”

It became clear to me that the Mayweather that Rick Maese sees is, in many ways, a replication of the Roy Jones Jr. that I perceived to be not so very long ago. Similarities between the two most naturally gifted fighters of their respective eras? They are plentiful: almost surrealistic talent, a fixation with image, the delineation between public and private personas and, as their reputations became increasingly outsized, a hesitancy to venture into the deepest and most treacherous waters of a shark-infested occupation.

It is tricky business when a writer, any writer, seeks to find real honesty in the morass of lies and half-truths swirling within a carefully orchestrated setting in which elite fighters, and their publicists, seek to cultivate public opinion to the purpose of generating maximum exposure and profit. Consider this, which I wrote about an in-decline Jones in November 2008:

“I’m not a psychologist, so I won’t attempt to go all Freudian in analyzing why Jones has been as disappointing in some regards as he has been exhilarating in others. I do think he has harbored a fear of being seriously hurt because of the state of living death in which his friend, Gerald McClellan, has existed for these past 13 years. It’s a gut reaction that most human beings can understand; prizefighting is a dangerous occupation most sensible persons wouldn’t dare attempt.

“It does seem apparent to me, though, that Jones is a mass of conflicted emotions, a preening show of bravado on the outside and a gnawing core of self-doubt on the inside. Teddy Atlas told us years ago, before Mike Tyson’s comeuppances at the hands of Buster Douglas, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, Danny Williams and even Kevin McBride, that the self-proclaimed `baddest man on the planet’ was a bully who would not know how to react when someone had enough gumption to stand up to him.”

There are obvious differences between Mayweather and Jones, of course. From a technical standpoint, Jones – like the young Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali – did everything wrong, but it turned out right, at least for a long time, because of his superior physical gifts. The young Ali and the young Jones could drop their hands to their sides, lean straight back, throw punches off the wrong foot and get away with it because of their remarkable reflexes and sense of timing. They were, in a manner of speaking, like gifted jazz musicians, playing riffs that only they could hear in their heads. But when the pace of the music changed, along with their reactive speed, their results took a decided turn for the worse. Mayweather, on the other hand, possesses some of Jones’ instinctive moves, but his technique is far more polished and fundamentally flawless. He does everything right, and so far it keeps turning out right.

The other difference is the fact that Jones, who at 45 is a mere shadow of his former greatness, has eight defeats on his record, four of which came on knockouts. Mayweather is fixated on the notion of retiring undefeated, convinced that an unblemished record will – must – elevate him above even great fighters who have had to swallow the bitter pill of occasional defeat.

Like Jones, who liked to tell everyone that there was a marked difference between nice-guy Roy and the badass “RJ” who was his version of Dr. Hyde to the more frequently witnessed Dr. Jekyll, Mayweather has subdivided himself into family-man Floyd and “Money,” who is that much more brash and presumably more difficult for outclassed opponents to deal with in the ring.

“RJ is a bad dude,” Jones said after the first of his three bouts with Antonio Tarver, which he won on a close decision, his only victory in the trilogy. “I don’t like to mess with him too much. But my subconscious, which is where he usually dwells, seems to be jacked up … You don’t get to see me like that often.”

And Mayweather?

“You have Floyd Mayweather and then you have Money Mayweather,” both personas’ friend and longtime business associate, Leonard Ellerbe, is quoted as saying in the story by Maese. “Money Mayweather is what the fans see.”

Sometimes, though, it is difficult distinguishing Floyd from Money. For someone who has made such a point of his devotion to his family, Floyd/Money has been involved in domestic violence cases in which he is alleged to have struck Josie Harris, mother to three of his four children, and, more recently, fiancée Shantel Jackson. There have been other dustups outside the ring, creating the impression of someone who is at least periodically out of control. In the wake of the domestic-violence incident that got Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice drummed out of the NFL, Mayweather again flouted convention by rising to Rice’s defense, saying that “I think there’s a lot worse things that go on in other people’s households. It’s just not caught on video, if that’s safe to say … Like I’ve said in the past, no bumps, no bruises, no nothing. With O.J. and Nicole, you seen pictures. With Chris Brown and Rihanna, you seen pictures. With (Chad) Ochocinco and Evelyn, you seen pictures. You guys have yet to see any pictures of a battered woman, a woman who claims she was kicked and beaten (by Mayweather).”

Pretty repellant stuff, but then allowances always have been made in boxing for even the outrageous of statements and actions. Mayweather’s tacit if not outright acceptance of his semi-villainous reputation isn’t likely to affect his box-office and PPV clout. He doesn’t much care if fight fans buy his fights to see him win or lose, so long as his take-home check has enough zeroes on it.

“Whether my hand is raised or not, winning is giving it 100 percent, but if I make $70 million or $80 million, guess what? I’m a winner,” he says in the Maese piece.

If that were the case, however, Mayweather would understand that his fattest payday, and his best opportunity to embellish his legacy, would be to simply end the interminable suspense of his circle dance with Manny Pacquiao and sign for the fight that everyone most wants to see. Who’s right and who’s wrong no longer matters much; fighting Maidana, Amir Khan or anyone else whose name has been floated for the Floyd’s Farewell Tour is no longer sufficient to fully secure the 37-year-old Mayweather’s place in the annals of boxing. Nor can he continue to casually dismiss Pacquiao as a “little yellow chump” who somehow is unworthy to swap punches with him simply because “Pac-Man” is promoted by Bob Arum, who once promoted Mayweather and is the object of some of Money’s most virulent ire. The old, tired excuses not only don’t fly anymore, they can’t even get airborne.

I don’t believe that Mayweather is afraid of Pacquiao, whom I have long admired as a fighter. In fact, I would have picked Mayweather to win years ago, and I’d pick him to win now. But his inclination to play it safe, relatively speaking, in the maintenance of his undefeated record as his career winds down also calls to mind one of the less praiseworthy aspects of the Roy Jones Jr. that once occupied the pinnacle upon which Mayweather now is perched.

“Roy Jones,” former HBO senior vice president Lou DiBella once noted, “is the most careful great fighter I’ve ever seen.”

Added Seth Abraham, the onetime HBO Sports president: “(Jones’) drive was to do things that were of interest to him, but not necessarily to fight the very best middleweights, super middleweights and light heavyweights who were out there. I think Roy’s legacy in the sport absolutely will suffer because he chose not to do everything he could to make himself as great as he might have been.”

Jones is a future first-ballot inductee into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, his recent stumbles notwithstanding, and so is Mayweather. A loss to Maidana – and, let’s face it, Mayweather is no more resistant to the aging process than any other fighter, although Bernard Hopkins might qualify as an exception to the natural laws of diminishing returns – won’t change that. But the window of opportunity is closing fast for him to do the right thing and stare across the ring at Pacquiao, rather than to trash-talk him from a distance.

Hopkins has correctly noted that there are things even more precious to a fighter than immense wealth, which is why the 49-year-old ageless wonder has elected to test himself in a Nov. 8 unification matchup with the most devastating puncher in the light heavyweight division, Russia’s Sergey Kovalev.

“I want to fight the best,” reasoned Hopkins, who added that “history don’t go broke,” which is more than can be said about athletes with profligate spending habits who eventually find themselves destitute. It is the reason B-Hop will be remembered fondly even if he is beaten bloody by Kovalev. The old guy at least will have taken his best shot at making more history, and therein is a nobility that is indisputable.

Forget the veneer of faux perfection. I will be watching Mayweather-Maidana II, like a lot of other people, but only as it serves as a hopeful step toward Mayweather-Pacquiao. And if that fight never happens, it will be a hundred times worse than Roy Jones Jr. declining to bite the bullet, travel to Europe and mix it up with Dariusz Michalczewski.

Fight fans deserve something better than consolation prizes from someone who insists he isn’t merely the best fighter of today, but the best ever. So Floyd – or Money, whomever he chooses to be at any given moment – is almost obligated to do the right thing, if not for our sake than for his own peace of mind.

Because not only is it time, it’s long overdue.

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Bernard Fernandez

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

Published

13 hours ago

April 22, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

In any endeavor, the defining feature of a phenom is his youth. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper was a phenom. He was on the radar screen of baseball’s most powerful player agents when he was 14 years old.

Curmel Moton, who turns 19 in June, is a phenom. Of all the young boxing stars out there, wrote James Slater in July of last year, “Curmel Moton is the one to get most excited about.”

Moton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father Curtis Moton, a barber by trade, was a big boxing fan and specifically a big fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr. When Curmel was six, Curtis packed up his wife (Curmel’s stepmom) and his son and moved to Las Vegas. Curtis wanted his son to get involved in boxing and there was no better place to develop one’s latent talents than in Las Vegas where many of the sport’s top practitioners came to train.

Many father-son relationships have been ruined, or at least frayed, by a father’s unrealistic expectations for his son, but when it came to boxing, the boy was a natural and he felt right at home in the gym.

The gym the Motons patronized was the Mayweather Boxing Club. Curtis took his son there in hopes of catching the eye of the proprietor. “Floyd would occasionally drop by the gym and I was there so often that he came to recognize me,” says Curmel. What he fails to add is that the trainers there had Floyd’s ear. “This kid is special,” they told him.

It costs a great deal of money for a kid to travel around the country competing in a slew of amateur boxing tournaments. Only a few have the luxury of a sponsor. For the vast majority, fund raisers such as car washes keep the wheels greased.

Floyd Mayweather stepped in with the financial backing needed for the Motons to canvas the country in tournaments. As an amateur, Curmel was — take your pick — 156-7 or 144-6 or 61-3 (the latter figure from boxrec). Regardless, at virtually every tournament at which he appeared, Curmel Moton was the cock of the walk.

Before the pandemic, Floyd Mayweather Jr had a stable of boxers he promoted under the banner of “The Money Team.” In talking about his boxers, Floyd was understated with one glaring exception – Gervonta “Tank” Davis, now one of boxing’s top earners.

When Floyd took to praising Curmel Moton with the same effusive language, folks stood up and took notice.

Curmel made his pro debut on Sept. 30, 2023, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. After stopping his opponent in the opening round, he addressed a flock of reporters in the media room with Floyd standing at his side. “I felt ready,” he said, “I knew I had Floyd behind me. He believes in me. I had the utmost confidence going into the fight. And I went in there and did what I do.”

Floyd ventured the opinion that Curmel was already a better fighter than Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA world featherweight champion who would successfully defend his belt the following week.

Moton’s boxing style has been described as a blend of Floyd Mayweather and Tank Davis. “I grew up watching Floyd, so it’s natural I have some similarities to him,” says Curmel who sparred with Tank in late November of 2021 as Davis was preparing for his match with Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz. Curmell says he did okay. He was then 15 years old and still in school; he dropped out as soon as he reached the age of 16.

Curmel is now 7-0 with six KOs, four coming in the opening round. He pitched an 8-round shutout the only time he was taken the distance. It’s not yet official, but he returns to the ring on May 31 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where Caleb Plant and Jermall Charlo are co-featured in matches conceived as tune-ups for a fall showdown. The fight card will reportedly be free for Amazon Prime Video subscribers.

Curmel’s presumptive opponent is Renny Viamonte, a 28-year-old Las Vegas-based Cuban with a 4-1-1 (2) record. It will be Curmel’s first professional fight with Kofi Jantuah the chief voice in his corner. A two-time world title challenger who began his career in his native Ghana, the 50-year-old Jantuah has worked almost exclusively with amateurs, a recent exception being Mikaela Mayer.

It would seem that the phenom needs a tougher opponent than Viamonte at this stage of his career. However, the match is intriguing in one regard. Viamonte is lanky. Listed at 5-foot-11, he will have a seven-inch height advantage.

Keeping his weight down has already been problematic for Moton. He tipped the scales at 128 ½ for his most recent fight. His May 31 bout, he says, will be contested at 135 and down the road it’s reasonable to think he will blossom into a welterweight. And with each bump up in weight, his short stature will theoretically be more of a handicap.

For fun, we asked Moton to name the top fighter on his pound-for-pound list. “[Oleksandr] Usyk is number one right now,” he said without hesitation,” great footwork, but guys like Canelo, Crawford, Inoue, and Bivol are right there.”

It’s notable that there isn’t a young gun on that list. Usyk is 38, a year older than Crawford; Inoue is the pup at age 32.

Moton anticipates that his name will appear on pound-for-pound lists within the next two or three years. True, history is replete with examples of phenoms who flamed out early, but we wouldn’t bet against it.

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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

Published

2 days ago

April 20, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Arne's-Almanac-The-First-Boxing-Writers-Assoc-of-America-Dinner-was-Quite-the-Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.

The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.

In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.

The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:

New York Times

New York News

New York World

New York Sun

New York Journal

New York Post

New York Mirror

New York Telegram

New York Graphic

New York Herald Tribune

Brooklyn Eagle

Brooklyn Times

Brooklyn Standard Union

Brooklyn Citizen

Bronx Home News

This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.

Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.

The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.

Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)

Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.

Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.

There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.

In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.

There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.

The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.

Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.

The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.

The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.

Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.

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Gabriela Fundora KOs Marilyn Badillo and Perez Upsets Conwell in Oceanside

Published

3 days ago

April 20, 2025

David A. Avila

Gabriela-Fundora-KOs-Marilyn-Badillo-and-Perez-Upsets-Conwell-in-Oceanside

It was just a numbers game for Gabriela Fundora and despite Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo’s elusive tactics it took the champion one punch to end the fight and retain her undisputed flyweight world title by knockout on Saturday.

Will it be her last flyweight defense?

Though Fundora (16-0, 8 KOs) fired dozens of misses, a single punch found Badillo (19-1-1, 3 KOs) and ended her undefeated career and first attempt at a world title at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.

Fundora, however, proves unbeatable at flyweight.

The champion entered the arena as the headliner for the Golden Boy Promotion show and stepped through the ropes with every physical advantage possible, including power.

Mexico’s Badillo was a midget compared to Fundora but proved to be as elusive as a butterfly in a menagerie for the first six rounds. As the six-inch taller Fundora connected on one punch for every dozen thrown, that single punch was a deadly reminder.

Badillo tried ducking low and slipping to the left while countering with slashing uppercuts, she found little success. She did find the body a solid target but the blows proved to be useless. And when Badillo clinched, that proved more erroneous as Fundora belted her rapidly during the tie-ups.

“She was kind of doing her ducking thing,” said Fundora describing Badillo’s defensive tactics. “I just put the pressure on. It was just like a train. We didn’t give her that break.”

The Mexican fighter tried valiantly with various maneuvers. None proved even slightly successful. Fundora remained poised and under control as she stalked the challenger.

In the seventh round Badillo seemed to take a stand and try to slug it out with Fundora. She quickly was lit up by rapid left crosses and down she went at 1:44 of the seventh round. The Mexican fighter’s corner wisely waved off the fight and referee Rudy Barragan stopped the fight and held the dazed Badillo upright.

Once again Fundora remained champion by knockout. The only question now is will she move up to super flyweight or bantamweight to challenge the bigger girls.

Perez Beats Conwell.

Mexico’s Jorge “Chino” Perez (33-4, 26 KOs) upset Charles Conwell (21-1, 15 KOs) to win by split decision after 12 rounds in their super welterweight showdown.

It was a match that paired two hard-hitting fighters whose ledgers brimmed with knockouts, but neither was able to score a knockdown against each other.

Neither fighter moved backward. It was full steam ahead with Conwell proving successful to the body and head with left hooks and Perez connecting with rights to the head and body. It was difficult to differentiate the winner.

Though Conwell seemed to be the superior defensive fighter and more accurate, two judges preferred Perez’s busier style. They gave the fight to Perez by 115-113 scores with the dissenter favoring Conwell by the same margin.

It was Conwell’s first pro loss. Maybe it will open doors for more opportunities.

Other Bouts

Tristan Kalkreuth (15-1) managed to pass a serious heat check by unanimous decision against former contender Felix Valera (24-8) after a 10-round back-and-forth heavyweight fight.

It was very close.

Kalkreuth is one of those fighters that possess all the physical tools including youth and size but never seems to be able to show it. Once again he edged past another foe but at least this time he faced an experienced fighter in Valera.

Valera had his moments especially in the middle of the 10-round fight but slowed down during the last three rounds.

One major asset for Kalkreuth was his chin. He got caught but still motored past the clever Valera. After 10 rounds two judges saw it 99-91 and one other judge 97-93 all for Kalkreuth.

Highly-rated prospect Ruslan Abdullaev (2-0) blasted past dangerous Jino Rodrigo (13- 5-2) in an eight round super lightweight fight. He nearly stopped the very tough Rodrigo in the last two rounds and won by unanimous decision.

Abdullaev is trained by Joel and Antonio Diaz in Indio.

Bakersfield prospect Joel Iriarte (7-0, 7 KOs) needed only 1:44 to knock out Puerto Rico’s Marcos Jimenez (25-12) in a welterweight bout.

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