IBF/WBO world middleweight champion Janibek Alimkhanuly, generally regarded as the best of the current crop of middleweights, retained his IBF title today in Sydney, Australia, with a ninth-round stoppage of game but overmatched Andrei Mikhailovich. The end came at the 2:45 mark of round nine.

Favored in the 8/1 range although he was in a hostile environment, Alimkhanuly (16-0, 11 KOs) beat Mikhailovich to a pulp in the second round and knocked him down with one second remaining in the frame, but Mikhailovich survived the onslaught and had several good moments in the ensuing rounds as he pressed the action. However, Alimkhanuly’s punches were cleaner and one could sense that it was only a matter of time before the referee would rescue Mikhailovich from further punishment. When a short left deposited Mikhailovich on the seat of his pants on the lower strand of rope, the ref had seen enough.

Alimkhanuly, a 2016 Olympian for Kazakhstan, was making his first start since October of last year. He and Mikhailovich were slated to fight in Las Vegas in July, but the bout fell apart after the weigh-in when the Kazakh fainted from dehydration.

Owing to a technicality, Alimkhanuly’s WBO belt wasn’t at stake today. Although he has expressed an interest in unifying the title –Eislandy Lara (WBA) and Carlos Adames (WBC) are the other middleweight belt-holders — Alimkhanuly is big for the weight class and it’s a fair assumption that this was his final fight at 160.

The brave Mikhailovich, who was born in Russia but grew up in New Zealand after he and his twin brother were adopted, suffered his first pro loss, declining to 21-1.

Semi-wind-up

Topping the flimsy undercard was a scheduled 8-rounder between Mikhailovich’s stablemate Mea Motu, a 34-year-old Maori, and veteran Australian campaigner Shannon O’Connell, 41. The ladies share eight children between them (Motu, trained by her mother in her amateur days, has five).

A clash of heads in the opening round left O’Connell with a bad gash on her forehead. She had a big lump developing over her right eye when her corner threw in the towel at the 1:06 mark of round four.

Motu (20-0, 8 KOs) was set to challenge IBF/WBO world featherweight champion Ellie Scotney later this month in Manchester, England, underneath Catterall-Prograis, but that match was postponed when Scotney suffered an injury in training. Motu took this fight, which was contested at the catchweight of 125 pounds, to stay busy. O’Connell, 29-8-1, previously had a cup of coffee as a WBA world champion (haven’t we all).

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 299: Golden Boy in Saudi Arabia and More

A small brigade of Mexican and Latino-American fighters gathered at the beautiful Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Their mission: to export Mexican style fighting to the Saudi Arabia desert.

Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez defends the WBA cruiserweight title against WBO cruiserweight titlist Chris Billam-Smith and they will be joined by several other top Golden Boy Promotion fighters on Nov. 16 at the Venue in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

DAZN will stream the Golden Boy and BOXXER promotions card called “The Venue Riyadh Season.”

Mexican fighters are known worldwide for their ferocity and durability. Ramirez, a former super middleweight champion, surprised many with his convincing win over former champion Arsen Goulamirian last March.

Now Ramirez seeks to unify the cruiserweight titles against United Kingdom’s Smith who has never fought outside of his native country.

“I will become the first Mexican cruiserweight unified champion. It’s exciting because my dream will come true this November 16,” said Ramirez.

Smith has a similar goal.

“This opportunity for me is huge,” said Smith. “I’ve been written off many times before.”

The cruiserweights will be joined by two top super lightweight warriors who’ve been itching to face each other like a pair of fighting roosters.

Arnold Barboza, an undefeated super lightweight contender from Los Angeles, has been chasing top contenders and world champions for the past six years. Former super lightweight champion Jose Ramirez simply wants action and a return to elite status.

“I’ve been wanting this fight since 2019 for whatever reason it never happened,” said Barboza. “I want to give credit and thanks to Oscar, he’s a man of his word. When I signed to Golden Boy, he said he was going to give me this fight.”

“It’s honorable Barboza saying he’s been chasing the fight since 2019. Now that he stands in the way for me to reclaim my titles it’s time to get that fight on,” said Ramirez.

Others on the Riyadh fight card include Puerto Rico’s WBO minimumweight world titlist Oscar Collazo defending against Thailand’s Thammanoon Niyomtrong, along with Oscar Duarte and lightweight contenders William Zepeda and Tevin Farmer.

One fighter missing from the card is Charles Conwell, the super welterweight contender they recently signed earlier in the year. He last performed on the Vergil Ortiz Jr. and Serhii Bohachuk clash in Las Vegas.

Conwell has similar talent to those two.

And what about the women fighters”

Yokasta Valle recently re-signed with Golden Boy Promotions. What is her next scheduled fight? She was spotted facing up against Australia’s Lulu “Bang, Bang” Hawton at a fight card. Is that on the horizon?

West Coast venues

Speaking of the Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles, its just a few buildings north of the Belasco Theater where Golden Boy was staging its club shows for several years.

A majority of the boxing media favored that location for its cozy atmosphere and proximity to LA Live. A number of prospects that developed into contenders and world champions fought there including Vergil Ortiz Jr., Ryan Garcia, Joshua Franco, and Oscar Duarte.

On any given fight night celebrities like Mario Lopez, George Lopez and others would show up in the small venue that held several hundred fans in its ornate theater setting.

The Mayan Theater and Belasco Theater are still open for business. According to one source, LA Laker owner Jeannie Buss stages a pro wrestling show at one of those theaters.

World title fight

England’s Nick Ball (20-0-1, 11 KOs) defends the WBA featherweight world title against Southern California’s Ronny Rios (34-4, 17 KOs) on Saturday Oct. 5, at M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, England. Starting time for the Queensberry and Top Rank promotion card is 11 a.m. PT.

Ball was last seen nearly toppling WBC featherweight titlist Rey Vargas but lost last March. He then defeated Ray Ford for the WBA title

Fights to Watch

Fri. ESPN+ 2 a.m. PT Janibek Alimkhanuly (15-0) vs Andrei Mikhailovich (21-0)

Sat. ESPN+ 11 a.m. PT Nick Ball (20-0-1) vs Ronny Rios (34-4)

Photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy

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This reporter chanced upon Manny “Flick” Savoy yesterday afternoon at a boxing gym in Las Vegas. That afforded me an opportunity to get his take on “paint gate.”

In case you missed it, Sandy Ryan was splashed with red paint on Friday as she left her hotel for Madison Square Garden where she would be defending her WBO world welterweight title against Mikaela Mayer. Manny Savoy was roughly 10 feet away from her when the incident happened. It happened so fast and was so unexpected that Savoy – who would be Ryan’s chief voice in her corner — never got a good look at the perpetrator who was wearing a hoodie.

A security camera captured the attack and Savoy keeps the little video on his cell phone. In the video that Savoy shared with me, one can see a late-model vehicle pull up and double-park. The man with the hoodie emerges from the passenger side holding a receptacle of some sort and then, moments later, rushes back without it and the car speeds off.

The paint-splashing was part of a multi-pronged assault. Sandy Ryan was defamed in leaflets that appeared around her hotel and near Madison Garden. The leaflets had Ryan’s image and the text, among other things, called her a whore. (We were shown a screenshot of one of the leaflets tacked to a pole, but it was not a close-up and we were only able to make out a few words.)

Who would do such a thing and why? Let’s rule out the possibility that the assault was random; that’s too far-fetched. Someone had to have been tipped-off when Sandy Ryan would emerge from her hotel. The defamatory leaflets, coupled with the paint attack and threatening messages from anonymous callers that Ryan says were left on her phone, are compelling evidence that this was a premeditated and well-thought-out scheme of attack.

Sandy Ryan and Mikaela Mayer were well-acquainted. They had known each other since their amateur days. Mikaela had sparred with Sandy in preparation for the 2016 Olympics. But what had been a warm relationship soured when Ryan hooked up with Mikaela’s coach Kay Koroma in Las Vegas at the same gym where Mayer regularly trained. Mikaela didn’t think that was kosher and eventually ditched Koroma in favor of Kofi Jantuah, a sundering that left hard feelings on both sides.

Ryan is firm in her belief that Mayer’s team was behind the attack. “What else could it be?” she says. Manny Savoy won’t go that far, but notes that Ryan, a British citizen with a home in Portugal, never spent enough time in New York to make any enemies there. Her fight with Mayer was her second fight in the U.S. and her first fight in the Big Apple.

Mikaela Mayer’s manager George Ruiz was quick to respond to Sandy Ryan’s veiled accusation: “Let me be clear. No one associated with Team Mayer had anything to do with the paint assault on you or the leaflets and the alleged anonymous threatening messages you say you received….Mikaela and Team Mayer want the perpetrator(s) found, caught, and punished to the full extent of the law.”

(The view from here is that while it seems logical that someone associated with Mayer orchestrated the attack, we would be shocked if Mikaela had any foreknowledge of it. The lady has far too much common-sense to get involved in a scheme that could ruin her boxing career and her promising post-boxing career as a TV boxing pundit.)

The presumed intent was to psychologically unsettle Sandy Ryan to where she couldn’t bring her A-game. (Sandy was a short favorite and the odds wavered only slightly, diluting the theory that the assault was orchestrated as part of a betting coup.)

As for the fight itself, it was outstanding. If Ryan was rattled, she didn’t show it although she came out on the short end of a majority decision, a decision that was somewhat controversial. (ESPN’s Mark Kriegel had Ryan winning six rounds to four.)

Ryan’s promoter Eddie Hearn has called on the WBO to mandate a rematch. “[Sandy] had to go back to her room, take all her clothes off, take all the paint off her body. [She had to be] emotionally shocked to pieces and yet she gave an incredible performance. The WBO, if they have any compassion, must order an immediate rematch.”

The rematch, if it happens, won’t be in New York. Advised to leave the city for her own safety, Sandy Ryan got out of town in a hurry.

—

In an article published here on June 23, Thomas Hauser wrote about the possible ramifications to Ryan Garcia’s failed PED test beyond the sanctions imposed upon him by the New York State Athletic Commission. Garcia’s victory over previously undefeated Devin Haney at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on April 30, 2024, was a changed to a no-contest when ostarine, a banned substance, was discovered in Garcia’s urine samples.

Hauser speculated that Team Haney might file a lawsuit against Garcia. By using a performance-enhancing substance, Garcia denied Devin a level playing field, yielding a result that adversely affected Devin’s future earnings, or so it would be argued.

Team Haney was paying attention. Six days ago, on Sept. 27, they filed a lawsuit in New York seeking compensation for “battery, fraud, and breach of contract.”

If successful, the lawsuit, which has polarized the boxing community, may benefit the sport. “Win, lose, or draw in court, I think this is actually a good thing to deter fighters from using performance enhancing drugs because the [current] penalty is not strict enough,” said Eddie Hearn in a conversation with Boxing Social.

—

This is a boxing site, but kindly indulge me as I go off-topic and say a few words about Pete Rose who passed away at his home in Las Vegas on Monday, one day after appearing with several of his former Cincinnati Reds teammates at a sports memorabilia show in Nashville.

I never felt sorry for Pete because he was an a-hole. Ask some of the veteran blackjack dealers here in Las Vegas and you will be hard-pressed to find one who has a nice word to say about him. However, whether his lifetime ban from baseball should have been lifted so that he could go into the Hall of Fame while he was still alive…well, that’s a horse of a different color.

Pete Rose was baseball’s all-time hit king, but forget the stats; he transcended the sport.

News of Pete’s death transported me back more than three decades to a conversation I had with my young son who hadn’t yet started kindergarten. He had become a fan of the Atlanta Braves, one of two teams (the other was the Cubs) whose home and away games were nationally televised.

One day, when he was watching baseball and I was in the next room, he came in and said, “dad, so-and-so [the player’s name eludes me] just did a Charlie Hustle.”

I have no idea where he got that from and he likely wouldn’t have recognized Pete Rose if he had bumped into him on the street – Pete had been out of baseball for some time – but I knew exactly what he was talking about. He had just witnessed a player on the Braves beat out an infield hit or maybe a bunt by sliding head-first into first base.

A friend e-mailed me yesterday from North Carolina and said, “From my view, the Hall is diminished by not having him in there rather than the other way around.”

I share that sentiment. If you disagree, we can still be friends.

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