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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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“Breadman” Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards’ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.
It’s true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian “J Rock” Williams. On May 11, 2019, Williams wrested the IBF 154-pound world title from Jarrett Hurd. The bout, a lusty skirmish, was in Fairfax, Virginia, near Hurd’s hometown in Maryland, and the previously undefeated Hurd had the crowd in his corner.
In boxing, Stephen Edwards wears two hats. He has a growing reputation as a boxing coach, a hat he will wear on Saturday, May 31, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas when the two fighters that he currently trains, super middleweight Caleb Plant and middleweight Kyrone Davis, display their wares on a show that will air on Amazon Prime Video. Plant, who needs no introduction, figures to have little trouble with his foe in a match conceived as an appetizer to a showdown with Jermall Charlo. Davis, coming off his career-best win, an upset of previously undefeated Elijah Garcia, is in tough against fast-rising Cuban prospect Yoenli Hernandez, a former world amateur champion.
Edwards’ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at “Boxing Scene” in a column where he answers questions from readers.
It’s an eclectic bag of questions that Breadman addresses, ranging from his thoughts on an upcoming fight to his thoughts on one of the legendary prizefighters of olden days. Boxing fans, more so than fans of any other sport, enjoy hashing over fantasy fights between great fighters of different eras. Breadman is very good at this, which isn’t to suggest that his opinions are gospel, merely that he always has something provocative to add to the discourse. Like all good historians, he recognizes that the best history is revisionist history.
“Fighters are constantly mislabled,” he says. “Everyone talks about Joe Louis’s right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and it’s more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.”
Stephen “Breadman” Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father died when he was three. His maternal grandfather, a Korean War veteran, filled the void. The man was a big boxing fan and the two would watch the fights together on the family television.
Edwards’ nickname dates to his early teen years when he was one of the best basketball players in his neighborhood. The derivation is the 1975 movie “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” starring Laurence Fishburne in his big screen debut. Future NBA All-Star Jamaal Wilkes, fresh out of UCLA, plays Cornbread, a standout high school basketball player who is mistakenly murdered by the police.
Coming out of high school, Breadman had to choose between an academic scholarship at Temple or an athletic scholarship at nearby Lincoln University. He chose the former, intending to major in criminal justice, but didn’t stay in college long. What followed were a succession of jobs including a stint as a city bus driver. To stay fit, he took to working out at the James Shuler Memorial Gym where he sparred with some of the regulars, but he never boxed competitively.
Over the years, Philadelphia has harbored some great boxing coaches. Among those of recent vintage, the names George Benton, Bouie Fisher, Nazeem Richardson, and Bozy Ennis come quickly to mind. Breadman names Richardson and West Coast trainer Virgil Hunter as the men that have influenced him the most.
We are all a product of our times, so it’s no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadman’s estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the “Four Kings” with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.
Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonard’s three-time rival Roberto Duran. “I once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duran’s title defenses on it,” says Edwards. “This was a back before the days of YouTube.”
But Edwards’ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the “Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb whose legend has grown in recent years to the point that some have come to place him above Sugar Ray Robinson on the list of the greatest of all time.
“Greb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,” says Breadman, “but there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?”
Edwards notes that in Harry Greb’s heyday, he wasn’t talked about in the papers as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. The boxing writers were partial to Benny Leonard who drew comparisons to the venerated Joe Gans.
Among active fighters, Breadman reserves his highest praise for Terence Crawford. “Body punching is a lost art,” he once wrote. “[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.”
If the opening line holds up, Crawford will enter the ring as the underdog when he opposes Canelo Alvarez in September. Crawford, who will enter the ring a few weeks shy of his 38th birthday, is actually the older fighter, older than Canelo by almost three full years (it doesn’t seem that way since the Mexican redhead has been in the public eye so much longer), and will theoretically be rusty as 13 months will have elapsed since his most recent fight.
Breadman discounts those variables. “Terence is older,” he says, “but has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.” That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Canelo’s performance against William Scull: “Canelo’s legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.”
Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plant’s last three fights. Their first collaboration produced a Knockout of the Year candidate. With one ferocious left hook, Plant sent Anthony Dirrell to dreamland. What followed were a 12-round setback to David Benavidez and a ninth-round stoppage of Trevor McCumby.
Breadman keeps a hectic schedule. From Monday through Friday, he’s at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, he’s back in Philadelphia, checking in on his investment properties and, of greater importance, watching his kids play sports. His 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are standout all-around athletes.
On those long flights, he has plenty of time to turn on his laptop and stream old fights or perhaps work on his next article. That’s assuming he can stay awake.
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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More
It’s old news now, but on back-to-back nights on the first weekend of May, there were three fights that finished in the top six snoozefests ever as measured by punch activity. That’s according to CompuBox which has been around for 40 years.
In Times Square, the boxing match between Devin Haney and Jose Carlos Ramirez had the fifth-fewest number of punches thrown, but the main event, Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero, was even more of a snoozefest, landing in third place on this ignoble list.
Those standings would be revised the next night – knocked down a peg when Canelo Alvarez and William Scull combined to throw a historically low 445 punches in their match in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 152 by the victorious Canelo who at least pressed the action, unlike Scull (pictured) whose effort reminded this reporter of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – no, not the movie starring Paul Newman, just the title.
CompuBox numbers, it says here, are best understood as approximations, but no amount of rejiggering can alter the fact that these three fights were stinkers. Making matters worse, these were pay-per-views. If one had bundled the two events, rather than buying each separately, one would have been out $90 bucks.
****
Thankfully, the Sunday card on ESPN from Las Vegas was redemptive. It was just what the sport needed at this moment – entertaining fights to expunge some of the bad odor. In the main go, Naoya Inoue showed why he trails only Shohei Ohtani as the most revered athlete in Japan.
Throughout history, the baby-faced assassin has been a boxing promoter’s dream. It’s no coincidence that down through the ages the most common nickname for a fighter – and by an overwhelming margin — is “Kid.”
And that partly explains Naoya Inoue’s charisma. The guy is 32 years old, but here in America he could pass for 17.
Joey Archer
Joey Archer, who passed away last week at age 87 in Rensselaer, New York, was one of the last links to an era of boxing identified with the nationally televised Friday Night Fights at Madison Square Garden.

Joey Archer
Archer made his debut as an MSG headliner on Feb. 4, 1961, and had 12 more fights at the iconic mid-Manhattan sock palace over the next six years. The final two were world title fights with defending middleweight champion Emile Griffith.
Archer etched his name in the history books in November of 1965 in Pittsburgh where he won a comfortable 10-round decision over Sugar Ray Robinson, sending the greatest fighter of all time into retirement. (At age 45, Robinson was then far past his peak.)
Born and raised in the Bronx, Joey Archer was a cutie; a clever counter-puncher recognized for his defense and ultimately for his granite chin. His style was embedded in his DNA and reinforced by his mentors.
Early in his career, Archer was domiciled in Houston where he was handled by veteran trainer Bill Gore who was then working with world lightweight champion Joe Brown. Gore would ride into the Hall of Fame on the coattails of his most famous fighter, “Will-o’-the Wisp” Willie Pep. If Joey Archer had any thoughts of becoming a banger, Bill Gore would have disabused him of that notion.
In all honesty, Archer’s style would have been box office poison if he had been black. It helped immensely that he was a native New Yorker of Irish stock, albeit the Irish angle didn’t have as much pull as it had several decades earlier. But that observation may not be fair to Archer who was bypassed twice for world title fights after upsetting Hurricane Carter and Dick Tiger.
When he finally caught up with Emile Griffith, the former hat maker wasn’t quite the fighter he had been a few years earlier but Griffith, a two-time Fighter of the Year by The Ring magazine and the BWAA and a future first ballot Hall of Famer, was still a hard nut to crack.
Archer went 30 rounds with Griffith, losing two relatively tight decisions and then, although not quite 30 years old, called it quits. He finished 45-4 with 8 KOs and was reportedly never knocked down, yet alone stopped, while answering the bell for 365 rounds. In retirement, he ran two popular taverns with his older brother Jimmy Archer, a former boxer who was Joey’s trainer and manager late in Joey’s career.
May he rest in peace.
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Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

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