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How Big Would Ali Be Today? He’d DWARF Mayweather

Well, the numbers are in and the Mayweather-Maidana rematch on September 13th did 925,000 pay per view buys.
No, that’s not great but it’s better than any other active fighter could bring if they were fighting a quasi-known entity like Marcos Maidana. Again proof that like him or loathe him, regardless of how many stupid things he does and says out of the ring, Mayweather is by far the biggest star and draw in combat sports. And Mayweather was able to produce those numbers fighting an opponent who he clearly defeated four months ago, one who was nearly an 8-1 underdog on the day of the fight. In fact nobody, at least anybody who has clue-one as to what they’re watching in the ring, gave Maidana a realistic shot to win the fight, yet it was still a successful promotion from start to finish.
The fact that Floyd Mayweather is such a huge star and draw led me to start thinking about how huge of a superstar Muhammad Ali would be today if he were in his prime and fighting the well-known and dangerous contemporaries of his era. Mayweather is a manufactured superstar who had to re-invent himself and needed to fight an empty package named Oscar De La Hoys before anyone really took notice of him and his career. Ali, conversely, was a dynamic personality with incredible magnetism.
Floyd has no natural charisma, none whatsoever. He had to adopt a villain persona a la a WWE heel. Mayweather has been a genius in how he has used social media to highlight his wealth and garish possessions to keep himself in the news. He also is not above commenting, usually stupidly, on things like domestic violence and other things that high profile athletes and celebrities find themselves in the news for.
Floyd’s fights usually aren’t the most thrilling or exciting. Part of that is because he’s so good and the other reason is because Mayweather is selective of who and when he fights certain opponents. Not to mention that he sometimes picks the venue, the referee and the judges along with the gloves the opponent wears. And because of the era that he blossomed during, he’s never once fought in a bout that was scheduled for 15-rounds.
Think about Ali. He was the biggest star in sports history, yet the only access to him for the fans were the newspaper and the wide world of sports and a few late night talk shows. Muhammad didn’t have the benefit of 24 hour cable TV sports stations the likes of ESPN and Fox Sports 1. And there has to be at least two or three 24 hour all-sports talk radio stations in every city in America today, something that wouldn’t emerge until 15 years after Ali’s last title bout. There was no Facebook or Twitter either. The only thing Ali had going for him back then was the coming age of television. He espoused natural charisma and was extremely telegenic. It was also known that Ali’s boastfulness was merely schtick, and even when he said derogatory things about his opponents, with the exception of Ernie Terrell, it was said with a twinkle in his eye.
Muhammad Ali inspired constructive debate on issues and topics such as race, religion, politics, war, sports and salaries among a plethora of other things. Ali stood by his convictions in and out of the ring. And he was also blessed to come along at a time when the heavyweight division was loaded with dangerous foes that were well known and viewed as a serious threat to his dominance, and he fought and defeated every one of them before he turned 36.
Ali was even stripped of his undisputed title for refusing military induction and at one time was viewed as a draft dodger and a bad guy.
However, after a 43 month exile he came back and changed hearts and minds while totally cleaning out the heavyweight division without really experiencing a physical prime. When Ali faced “Smokin” Joe Frazier in 1971 in his first attempt to regain the undisputed title he was stripped of, it was the most anticipated sporting event in history, something that still holds true in 2014. And when Ali went into the ring to confront Frazier, who was at his absolute peak, he also knew that the U.S. supreme court was about to rule on his draft conviction. If he lost the decision to the government, which he did win by an 8-0 vote, he would’ve gone to jail to serve out the five year jail sentence that was handed down to him in 1967. Ali lost a unanimous decision to Frazier that night, and it paved the way for him to solidify his all-time stature and greatness over the next five years.
The first Frazier vs. Ali fight was called “The Fight Of The Century.” It grossed nearly 30 million dollars in 1971 via the live gate of nearly 20,000 in attendance at Madison Square Garden and closed circuit revenues. At that time there were only three venues per state where you could go to see the fight on closed circuit TV. There was no HBO 24/7 or Showtime All-Access to promote and hype the fight. There wasn’t ESPN, who would’ve loved Ali because he was so accessible and willing to give a quote worthy of stirring the pot and providing SportsCenter with non-stop coverage and dialogue. If you think ESPN went over the top with their continuous coverage of Tim Tebow and LeBron James at one time, that would’ve looked like a cavity filling compared to way Ali and his upcoming bouts would’ve been covered by them.
Imagine what kind of coverage sports-talk radio and TMZ would’ve given Muhammad Ali before and after all of his fights? How funny would Ali’s tweets be? And his Facebook page would’ve been a scream… Ali went toe-to-toe with conservative icon William F. Buckley for 90 minutes straight when he was 26 years old, and boxing wasn’t discussed at all. If Ali could hang with Buckley, he would’ve eaten up political commentators like Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, Wolf Blitzer of CNN and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC……..talking about the Vietnam war, Watergate, civil rights, abortion, and whatever else was going on during the years 1965-1975. Ali would be the most sought-after guest in the world in 2014 by all the big sports-talk show hosts in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami – and that’s when he wasn’t doing a publicity tour promoting an upcoming bout.
What about Ali the fighter?
Muhammad Ali never ducked a single fighter; he actually sought out the toughest contenders before they were his mandatory because they were a perceived threat. Not only that, he fought them when he had nothing to gain and on many occasions fought them more than once. Ali never made his opponents wear certain gloves or insisted on who worked the fight regarding the referee and judges.
Could you imagine Mayweather as a heavyweight fighting the undefeated George Foreman 40-0 (37), who Ali regained the title from, without making him submit to getting blood tested for performance enhancing drugs twice a day for six months before the fight? What about Mayweather as a heavyweight having to deal with Frazier’s unrelenting aggression and unending stamina for 15 rounds? Floyd would’ve made Joe run a marathon on the morning of the fight.
Not Muhammad Ali. He offered to let Frazier’s and Foreman’s relatives judge their fights against him. And if there were rumors out there that Foreman was using HGH or steroids, Ali would’ve said, “George, you better get extra shoot up on the day we fight – because I’m going to kick you’re a– and the a– of the guy who injects you!” And when Ali fought Foreman, he fought him in a phone booth disguised as a 16 foot ring. This as opposed to Mayweather, who would’ve demanded that the ring be as big as a shopping mall parking lot.
Muhammad Ali always delivered. He didn’t always participate in great fights but many of his high profile bouts were. He always fought the best of the best when the heavyweight division was littered with greats and near greats. And Muhammad never complained about how his opponents stretched the rules during their bout. With the exception of Chuck Wepner’s continuous rabbit punching, Ali never looked to the referee to bail him out of a difficult situation. Ali’s big bouts were also scheduled for 15-rounds and often it was during the final rounds that he pulled out a lot of tough and close fights because of his iron will and stamina.
Ali always had something substantive to say. He was funny and his quick wit had no equal. He never dictated the terms of his bouts and was a real fighter who was gracious in victory and defeat. If Muhammad Ali was around today his nickname wouldn’t be “Money,” it would be “TFR,” standing for “The Federal Reserve,” because only they could’ve cashed his checks after his bouts. If Ali was heavyweight champion in 2014, Floyd Mayweather would be an HBO fighter, fighting at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City in front of a viewing audience of a million plus households, like he was before he re-invented himself during the build up to his fight with Oscar De La Hoya.
Mayweather can probably gross $50 million for fighting Manny Pacquiao in 2015 or 2016, and that might be a conservative estimate. And if Floyd can get that much for fighting Pacquiao, how much would Ali gross if he were fighting Frazier or Foreman with everything being the same? In actuality, $100 million is probably low balling it.
It’s hard to comprehend just how huge of a star and personality Muhammad Ali would be today if he were heavyweight champion.
Frank Lotierzo can be contacted at GlovedFist@Gmail.com.
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: 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 San Diego fight card 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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