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Garcia Wins, Lee & Quillin Draw in Night of Fight or Flight in Brooklyn

BROOKLYN, N.Y. – “That was a war,” Danny Garcia said after 12 wildly divergent rounds with Lamont Peterson. “That’s what fans want to see.”
Maybe so, and maybe not. Ring wars, like actual wars, come in many shapes, sizes and strategies. But what most fight fans apparently want to see – the announced attendance was 12,700, which seems about right –is not always what they got here Saturday night in the Barclays Center, with all four participants in the nationally televised co-features on NBC coming away feeling at least vaguely dissatisfied with the respective outcomes.
Garcia’s WBA and WBC super lightweight championships were not on the line because, fearing he would drain himself too much by continuing to try to make the 140-pound weight limit, he had asked and received an agreement from the Peterson side that the bout be fought at a catch weight of 143. The slightly enlarged Philadelphian then played the role of relentless pursuer, at least through the early and middle rounds, until Peterson, a former WBO junior welterweight titlist, decided the time was right to stop retreating and go on the attack himself.
Shortly after the final bell rang, Garcia (30-0, 17 KOs), in his apparent farewell to his current weight class and championship reign, was awarded, depending on one’s point of view, a deserved or mildly controversial majority decision. Judges Steve Weisfeld and Kevin Morgan each saw Garcia as a 115-113 winner, while Don Ackerman, who gave Peterson each of the five rounds, had it a 114-114 standoff.
Punch statistics compiled by CompuBox, never an indisputably accurate gauge of what transpires inside the ropes, were inconclusive. Although Garcia threw 95 more punches (589 to 494), he landed only three more (173 to 170). His lower overall connect percentage (38 percent to 50 percent) was offset by the fact that he landed 147 power punches to just 105 for Peterson, who had vowed beforehand to “give the performance of a lifetime.” And maybe the Washington, D.C., native did just that, if adhering to the stick (occasionally)-and-move blueprint mapped out by his father figure/trainer, Barry Hunter, is the standard of excellence to which he had aspired.
“I thought it was close, I’m not going to lie,” said Garcia. “But I felt I did enough to win.”
More than enough, figured Garcia’s always blunt father/trainer, Angel Garcia, who had predicted there was “no way” his son could possibly lose to the supposedly inferior likes of Peterson.
“I thought Peterson was running a lot,” Angel groused. “He was saving his energy for the last quarter of the fight.” And releasing any pent-up energy for the final 25 percent of the proceedings shouldn’t be enough for anyone to offset a dubious first 75 percent, the elder Garcia believed, saying, “I don’t know what that judge (Ackerman) was thinking when he saw a draw.”
Peterson (33-3-1, 17 KOs) agreed with Angel; he also did not believe anyone with a pencil and a scorecard could have considered the fight a draw – or a victory for Garcia, for that matter.
“My plan all along was to tire him out in the early rounds, find where I could get my chances and then take them,” he said. “I did my part. I’m not calling it a robbery. He fought a good fight, (but) it’s probably the least contact I’ve ever had. People can call it a slow start, but I thought I was controlling the pace of the fight.”
Added Hunter: “Mr. Garcia definitely knew he was in the fight of his life tonight. Lamont fought a great fight. He can’t do the judges’ job, too. Lamont did a great job of sticking to his game plan and executing.”
Unlike Garcia-Peterson, in which no knockdowns were registered, the co-feature, which pitted WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee against his would-be challenger, former WBO 160-pound ruler Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin, had its up-and-down moments. Quillin floored Lee with right hands in the first and third rounds, but Lee, a southpaw, negated one of those trips to the canvas by decking the Brooklyn-born and sort-of crowd favorite with a right hook in the seventh stanza.
In between those well-spaced flashes of power-punching, there were long stretches of feinting and faking by both fighters, who clearly had enough respect for one another that they were not disposed to recklessly engage. The audience made its displeasure known by booing as often or more than it cheered, but those supporting Lee – born in London to Irish parents, and a member of the 2004 Irish Olympic team – had more reason to feel good in the closing rounds as their guy, like Peterson, appeared to do more in the later rounds and thus was able to salvage the split draw.
Judge Guido Cavalleri scored it 113-112 for Lee, Eric Marlinski had it 113-112 for Quillin while their colleague, Glenn Feldman, saw it at 113-113, giving two of the final three rounds to Quillin. Maybe even more so than Garcia-Peterson, a draw seemed a reasonable result, given the similar punch totals (113 of 299, 38 percent, for Lee to 103 of 267, 39 percent, for Quillin).
Had the bout been for Lee’s title, he would have retained it on the draw, but, as it turned out, he was assured of remaining the champ in any case as Quillin failed to make weight on Friday, tipping the scales at 161.4 pounds. Perhaps “Kid Chocolate” should have restricted himself to broccoli or brought in Marie Osmond, she of all those NutriSystem weight-loss commercials, to serve as his strength-and-conditioning coach.
“What can I say? I didn’t make weight,” Qullin said. “I want to apologize to Andy Lee and to all my supporters and fans. I made every effort to make weight, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I have no one to blame but myself.”
The matter of weight – the need to go up or down – was a major pre- and post-fight topic, and not only by the principals in the gargantuan, 10-bout card which took over 7½ hours to complete, from start to finish.
“That’s a lot of boxing – maybe a little too much,” mused promoter Lou DiBella near the conclusion of his long day’s journey into late, late night, despite the fact the co-main events – the second telecast of Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions series on NBC – began in prime time. “I want to go to sleep.”
Garcia, who earned $1.5 million (to Peterson’s $1.2 million), is moving up from super lightweight to welterweight because it’s what his body is telling him, as well as his hope for a fattened bank account. He is aware that the welters are and likely will continue to be boxing’s marquee division, and that campaigning as a 147-pounder might someday bring him a megabucks payday against either Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Manny Pacquiao, whose welterweight unification showdown on May 2 will be the richest prizefight of all time, with each man likely to come away with a payday of $100 million-plus.
“I would love to fight one of them, but I need a couple of fights at 147 first,” Garcia reasoned, although he and his pop probably wouldn’t elect to wait if Mayweather or Pacquiao anointed Danny as their next man up.
Also heading to welterweight is impressive 22-year-old Puerto Rican prospect Prichard Colon (14-0, 11 KOs), who scored a ninth-round stoppage of Daniel Calzada (11-14-2, 2 KOs) on the undercard. Colon is currently a super welterweight, but he came in at a trim 148 pounds against Calzada and he concluded that it would be easy to shed another pound for a dive into the dangerous but profitable waters of the fight game’s deepest talent pool. “It is a stacked division,” Colon acknowledged. “There’s so many big names out there, you know?”
It remains to be seen whether PBC – which is heavily underwritten by Haymon, who sees the ambitious project as a means to vault boxing back into the mainstream, and not just for a special occasion, like May-Pac – is a business visionary like, say, Bill Gates, or an investor in an outdated product and destined to lose his figurative shirt. But the shadowy Haymon has a cast of thousands (OK, hundreds) under contract, and all those fighters need to stay busy. Marathon cards on PBC nights are likely to be the rule rather than the exception, at least in the foreseeable future.
For on-site consumers desirous of getting more bang for their buck, Saturday’s Barclays Center show was a veritable orgy of pleasant excess. There were three walkout bouts (all televised via NBC SportsNet) after Garcia-Peterson, which were attractive in their own right: welterweight Errol Spence Jr. (16-0, 13 KOs) stopped Samuel Vargas (20-2-1, 10 KOs) in four rounds; light heavyweight Marcus Browne (14-0, 11 KOs) halted celebrity son Aaron Pryor Jr. (19-8-1, 12 KOs) in six and junior welterweight Felix Diaz (17-0, 8 KOs) scored a unanimous, 10-round decision over Gabriel Bracero (23-2, 4 KOs).
The five pre-NBC fights also were televised, internationally, and featured both old (former WBA welterweight champ Luis Collazo, who turns 34 on April 22) and new (Colon). The entire as a whole was a United Nations smorgasbord, too, with fighters hailing from Northern Ireland, Hungary, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, Ireland, Canada and the Dominican Republic. All right, so neither PBC event has featured anything along the classic lines of a Marvin Hagler-Sugar Ray Leonard (Leonard was at ringside, as a color commentator) or Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo I, but they’ve featured very good fighters in reasonably competitive matchups, with Part 2 exceeding Part 1.
If the product continues to improve, boxing just might find the wider audience it has been searching for since the sport got regular dates on over-the-air telecasts in the way back when of Howard Cosell and Don Dunphy.
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Ebanie Bridges Poised to Defend Her Title and Boost Her Brand in SanFran This Weekend

Ebanie Bridges opposes late sub Miyo Yoshida on the undercard of Saturday’s Matchroom card in San Francisco featuring the WBC lightweight title fight between Regis Prograis and Devin Haney. It’s doubtful that Bridges vs. Yoshida will steal the show (Prograis vs Haney is a compelling match-up), but it’s a stone-cold lock that Bridges vs. Yoshida will steal the weigh-in. It goes at 1 pm Friday at the Chase Center and is open to the public.
This is all Bridges’ doing. She can fight more than a little, as Damon Runyon would have phrased it, but is best known for turning up at weigh-ins in lingerie so sexy that Matchroom honcho Eddie Hearn averts his eyes to keep from blushing. Others can’t keep their eyes off the 37-year-old, well-endowed Australian and on Friday the paparazzi will crash the scene to capture images that will be all over the internet within hours.
This doesn’t sit well with a lot of people. Former opponent Shannon Courtenay, who saddled Bridges (9-1, 4 KOs) with her only defeat, chastised her for selling their fight for the wrong reasons and disrespecting the sport. Her most recent opponent, Shannon O’Connell, called her a skank and other terms of derision unfit for a family newspaper.
Bridges stopped her in the eighth round in what is her most gratifying win to date. “She made it personal,” says Ebanie. “It felt good to make her eat her words.”
Bridges, who set a withering pace, was making the first defense of the IBF bantamweight title she won with a comprehensive 10-round decision over Argentina’s long-reigning Maria Cecilia Roman. Shannon O’Connell, a fellow Aussie, entered that bout on an 8-fight winning streak that included hard-earned decisions over Australian standouts Taylah Robertson and Cherneka Johnson.
So, although Bridges vs O’Connell was contested in Leeds, England, it was something of the culmination of an Australian round-robin tournament, and it would be Ebanie Bridges that emerged as the Queen Bee.
Bridges has a platform on Only Fans. Known for its “adult” content, the web site is also a place where B-list celebrities go to monetize their fan base by promising a closer look into their personal lives. For attractive female celebs, that usually means displaying more skin that can be found in generic publicity photos, but well short of hard-core. Current Only Fans performers include recording artist Cardi B, actress Denise Richards, the former spouse of Charlie Sheen, actress Drea de Matteo, best known for portraying Adriana on “The Sopranos,” former “Baywatch” sex symbol Carmen Electra, boxer Mikaela Mayer, and former Miss USA Shanna Moakler who shares a daughter with Oscar de la Hoya.
Women that profit from cheesecake, to use an old word for racy photos, aren’t known for having the brightest bulbs between their ears but Bridges, despite embracing her nickname, the Blonde Bomber, doesn’t fit the stereotype. She’s no bimbo.
Ms. Bridges has two college degrees, an undergraduate degree in math and a master’s in secondary education. In her spare time, she finds solace in playing the piano and in drawing, a skill that she inherited from her father, a painter and commercial artist.
In her drawings, she is partial to British soccer coaches and athletes, in particular boxers. Some of her photos are embedded in her smart phone. These, I can attest, are very good. There was no mistaking her drawing of Sugar Ray Robinson. It ranked right up there with Stanley Weston whose illustrations adorned the covers of 57 issues of The Ring magazine.
Bridges is her own best publicist. It’s an attribute she shares with UFC superstar Conor McGregor.
It comes as no surprise to learn that they are well-acquainted. Bridges and McGregor sat together at the first fight between Katie Taylor and Chantelle Cameron. She is a spokesperson for the latest product that McGregor is pushing, Forged Irish Stout, a brand of beer that debuted at the Black Forge Inn, the Dublin pub that McGregor owns.
“I love Conor,” she says, “he’s lovely,” a rather odd adjective to apply to a man who once attacked a bus with a metal barricade at a UFC media event in Brooklyn, injuring three people.
“He’s great for my brand,” says Bridges of McGregor, “and I’m great for his brand.”
Like it or not, this is the new world order. This reporter is old enough to remember when colleges and universities had football teams. Now they have football franchises, which isn’t quite the same. A franchise requires a well-oiled marketing department to enhance the value of the brand.
Bridges got her first crack at a world title (the WBA version held by Shannon Courtenay) after only five pro fights against opponents who were collectively 12-25-5. Her opponent on Saturday, Miyo Yoshida, sports a 16-4 record and is coming off a loss.
This is fodder for critics of female boxing but, make no mistake, Bridges would be a tough out for any female bantamweight in the world and she has paid her dues. She had 30 amateur fights after previously training in karate, kickboxing, and Muay Thai. (In fairness to Matchroom’s matchmaker, he salvaged Saturday’s date for her, securing Yoshida after three previous opponents fell out.)
Looking ahead to 2024, Bridges envisions fighting England’s Nina Hughes, the WBA belt-holder, and then Denmark’s Dina Thorslund who owns the other two meaningful pieces of the bantamweight title. A match with Thorslund (currently 20-0, 8 KOs) with all four belts on the line would be a blockbuster and, by then, should it transpire, the Blonde Bombshell would undoubtedly be one of the most well-known boxers in the world.
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A Paean to the Great Sportswriter Jimmy Cannon Who Passed Away 50 Years Ago This Week

“Of all his assignments,” said the renowned sportswriter Dave Anderson, “[Jimmy] Cannon appeared to enjoy boxing the most.”
Cannon would have sheepishly concurred. He dated his infatuation with boxing to 1919 when he stood outside a saloon listening to a man with a megaphone relay bulletins from the Dempsey-Willard fight in faraway Toledo. His father followed boxing as did all the Irishmen in his neighborhood. For him, an interest in the sport of boxing, he once wrote, was like a family heirloom. But it became a love-hate relationship. It was Jimmy Cannon, after all, who coined the phrase “boxing is the red light district of sports.”
This week marks the 50th anniversary of Jimmy Cannon’s death. He passed away at age 63 on Dec. 5, 1973, in his room at the residential hotel in mid-Manhattan where he made his home. In the realm of American sportswriters, there has never been a voice quite like him. He was “the hardest-boiled of the hard-drinking, hard-boiled school of sports writing,” wrote Darrell Simmons of the Atlanta Journal. One finds a glint of this in his summary of Sonny Liston’s first-round demolition of Albert Westphal in 1961: “Sonny Liston hit Albert Westphal like he was a cop.”
In his best columns, Jimmy Cannon was less a sportswriter than an urban poet. Here’s what he wrote about Archie Moore in 1955 after Moore trounced Bobo Olson to set up a match with Rocky Marciano: “Someone should write a song about Archie Moore who in the Polo Grounds knocked out Bobo Olson in three rounds…It should be a song that comes out of the backrooms of sloughed saloons on night-drowned streets in morning-worried parts of bad towns. The guy who writes this one must be a piano player who can be dignified when he picks a quarter out of the marsh of a sawdust floor.”
Prior to fighting in Madison Square Garden the previous year – his first appearance in that iconic boxing arena – Moore had roamed the globe in search of fights in a career that began in the Great Depression. Cannon was partial to boxers like Archie Moore, great ring artisans who toiled in obscurity, fighting for small purses –“moving-around money” in Cannon’s words — until the establishment could no longer ignore them.
Jimmy Cannon was born in Lower Manhattan. He left high school after one year to become a copy boy for the New York Daily News. In 1936, at age 26, the News sent him to cover the biggest news story of the day, the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping trial. While there he met Damon Runyon who would become a lifelong friend. At Runyon’s suggestion, he applied for a job as a sportswriter at the New York American, a Hearst paper, and was hired.
During World War II, he was a war correspondent in Europe embedded in Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army. When he returned from the war, he joined the New York Post and then, in 1959, the Journal-American which made him America’s highest-paid sportswriter at a purported salary of $1000 a week. His articles were syndicated and appeared in dozens of papers.
Cannon was very close to Joe Louis. He was the only reporter that Louis allowed in his hotel room on the morning of the Brown Bomber’s rematch with Max Schmeling. Louis, he wrote, “was a credit to his race, the human race.” It was his most-frequently-quoted line.
In an early story, Cannon named Sam Langford the best pound-for-pound fighter of all time. Later he joined with his colleagues on Press Row in naming Sugar Ray Robinson the greatest of the greats. As for the fellow who anointed himself “The Greatest,” Muhammad Ali, Cannon profoundly disliked him. He persisted in calling him Cassius Clay long after Ali had adopted his Muslim name.
It troubled Cannon that Ali was afforded an opportunity to fight for the title after only 19 pro fights. Ali’s poetry, he thought, was infantile. He abhorred Ali’s political views. And, truth be told, he didn’t like Ali because certain segments of society adored him. Cannon didn’t like non-conformists – hippies and anti-war protesters and such. When queried about his boyhood in Greenwich Village, he was quick to note that he lived there “when it was a decent neighborhood, before it became freaky.”
Cannon’s animus toward Ali spilled over into his opinion of Ali’s foil, the bombastic sportscaster Howard Cosell. “If Howard Cosell were a sport,” he wrote,” it would be roller derby.”
Cannon frequently filled his column with a series of one-liners published under the heading “Nobody Asked Me, But…” His wonderfully acerbic put-down of Cosell appeared in one of these columns. But one can’t read these columns today without cringing at some of his ruminations. He once wrote, “Any man is in trouble if he falls in love with a woman he can’t knock down with one punch.” If a newspaperman wrote those words today, he would be out of a job so fast it would make his head spin.
Similarly, his famous line about Joe Louis being a credit to the human race no longer resonates in the way that it once did. There is in its benevolence an air of racial prejudice.
Jimmy Cannon was a lifelong bachelor but in his younger days before he quit drinking cold turkey in 1948, he was quite the ladies man, often seen promenading showgirls around town. Like his pal Damon Runyon, he was a night owl. As the years passed, however, he became somewhat reclusive. The world passed him by when rock n’ roll came in, pushing aside the Tin Pan Alley crooners and torch singers that had kept him company at his favorite late-night haunts.
Cannon’s end days were tough. He suffered a stroke in 1971 as he was packing to go to the Kentucky Derby and spent most of his waking hours in his last two-plus years in a wheelchair. Fortunately, he could afford to hire a full-time attendant. In 2002, he was posthumously elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Observer category.
Jimmy Cannon once said that he resented it when someone told him that his stuff was too good to be in a newspaper. It was demeaning to newspapers and he never wanted to be anything but a newspaperman. He didn’t always bring his “A” game and some of his stuff wouldn’t hold up well, but the man could write like blazes and the sportswriting profession lost a giant when he drew his last breath.
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Arne K. Lang is a recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling. His latest book, titled Clash of the Little Giants: George Dixon, Terry McGovern, and the Culture of Boxing in America, 1890-1910, was released by McFarland in September, 2022.
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Ryan “KingRy” Garcia Returns With a Bang; KOs Oscar Duarte

It was a different Ryan “KingRy” Garcia the world saw in defeating Mexico’s rugged Oscar Duarte, but it was that same deadly left hook counter that got the job done by knockout on Saturday.
Only the quick survive.
Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs) used a variety of stances before luring knockout artist Duarte (26-1-1, 21 KOs) into his favorite punch before a sold-out crowd at Toyota Arena in Houston, Texas. That punch should be patented in gold.
It was somewhat advertised as knockout artist versus matinee idol, but those who know the sport knew that Garcia was a real puncher. But could he rebound from his loss earlier this year?
The answer was yes.
Garcia used a variety of styles beginning with a jab at a prescribed distance via his new trainer Derrick James. It allowed both Garcia and Duarte to gain footing and knock the cobwebs out of their reflexes. Garcia’s jab scored most of the early points during the first three rounds. He also snapped off some left hooks and rights.
“He was a strong fighter, took a strong punch,” said Garcia. “I hit him with some hard punches and he kept coming.”
Duarte, an ultra-pale Mexican from Durango, was cautious, knowing full well how many Garcia foes had underestimated the power behind his blows.
Slowly the muscular Mexican fighter began closing in with body shots and soon both fighters were locked in an inside battle. Garcia used a tucked-in shoulder style while Duarte pounded the body, back of the head and in the back causing the referee to warn for the illegal punches twice.
Still, Duarte had finally managed to punch Garcia with multiple shots for several rounds.
Around the sixth round Garcia was advised by his new trainer to begin jabbing and moving. It forced Duarte out of his rhythm as he was unable to punch without planting his feet. Suddenly, the momentum had reversed again and Duarte looked less dangerous.
“I had to slow his momentum down. That softened him up,” said Garcia about using that change in style to change Duarte’s pressure attack. “Shout out to Derrick James.”
Boos began cascading from the crowd but Garcia was on a roll and had definitely regained the advantage. A quick five-punch combination rocked Duarte though not all landed. The danger made the Mexican pause.
In the eighth round Duarte knew he had to take back the momentum and charged even harder. In one lickety-split second a near invisible counter left hook connected on Duarte’s temple and he stumbled like a drunken soldier on liberty in Honolulu. Garcia quickly followed up with rights and uppercuts as Duarte had a look of terror as his legs failed to maintain stability. Down he went for the count.
Duarte was counted out by referee James Green at 2:51 of the eighth round as Garcia watched from the other side of the ring.
“I started opening up my legs a little bit to open up the shot,” explained Garcia. “When I hurt somebody that hard, I just keep cracking them. I hurt him with a counter left hook.”
The weapon of champions.
Garcia’s victory returns him back to the forefront as one of boxing’s biggest gate attractions. A list of potential foes is his to dissect and choose.
“I’m just ready to continue to my ascent to be a champion at 140,” Garcia said.
It was a tranquil end after such a tumultuous last three days.
Other Bouts
Floyd Schofield (16-0, 12 KOs) blitzed Mexico’s Ricardo “Not Finito” Lopez (17-8-3) with a four knockdown blowout that left fans mesmerized and pleased with the fighter from Austin, Texas.
Schofield immediately shot out quick jabs and then a lightning four-punch combination that delivered Lopez to the canvas wondering what had happened. He got up. Then Scholfield moved in with a jab and crisp left hook and down went Lopez like a dunked basketball bouncing.
At this point it seemed the fight might stop. But it proceeded and Schofield unleashed another quick combo that sent Lopez down though he did try to punch back. It was getting monotonous. Lopez got up and then was met with another rapid fire five- or six-punch combination. Lopez was down for the fourth time and the referee stopped the devastation.
“I appreciate him risking his life,” said Schofield of his victim.
In a middleweight clash Shane Mosley Jr. (21-4, 12 KOs) out-worked Joshua Conley (17-6-1, 11 KOs) for five rounds before stopping the San Bernardino fighter at 1:51 of the sixth round. It was Mosley’s second consecutive knockout and fourth straight win.
Mosley continues to improve in every fight and again moves up the middleweight rankings.
Super middleweight prospect Darius Fulghum (9-0, 9 KOs) of Houston remained undefeated and kept his knockout string intact with a second round pounding and stoppage over Pachino Hill (8-5-1) in 56 seconds of that round.
Photo credit: Golden Boy Promotions
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