Some Are Hoping Mightily Floyd Sticks To Promise To Retire After Berto Fight

Published

8 years ago

August 28, 2015

So this could be it, the finale to a helluva run, the most successful one of this era, and, he sometimes will tell you, any.

Sept. 12 could be the last time fight fans and sports fans will be given the option to see Floyd Mayweather in action, inside a boxing ring, showing off his brand of defensive wizardry which has kept him lossless since he turned pro in 1996.

No less than the man who rolled some heavy dice, Showtime boxing boss Stephen Espinoza, who staked his job security on this decision, has told us he thinks Floyd is in “one and done” mode.

“September 12th will be a historic night no matter what happens,” said Espinoza. “It is generally expected that this will be Floyd Mayweathers’ last fight. He has consistently said he will not fight anymore.”

“One last chance for the fans to witness history,” is how Floyd’s right hand man Leonard Ellerbe has put it, and one would presume he is inside the Floyd bubble deep enough to know what direction Mayweather is heading.

Yep, Floyd, who owns a 48-0 mark, and will be tying Rocky Marcianos’ record of consistent winning, if and when he beats Andre Berto in Vegas, would be content to tie the record, and not break it by trying to go 50-0, probably by fighting the rival he schooled easily on May 2, Manny Pacquiao.

Seems implausible, frankly, to me, on the outside looking in. He tells us boxing is a job, but surely there are millions upon millions of Americans who loath their jobs much more than Mayweather does, and none of them are making the obscene hourly wage he is….

On Aug. 13, Fight Hype posted a video in which “TBE” spoke of fighting, and not fighting, and retiring, and such. He said that his uncle Roger has “lost a lot of memory from his boxing.”

{youtube}v-3_6rpnGto{/youtube}

Roger Mayweather (age 54; 59-13) boxed pro from 19811999, but, Floyd said, “It hurts me extremely bad he don’t even know who I am anymore.” This reality has Floyd thinking that taking punishment is unwise. Even when making $30-$200 per outing in exchange for the risk…

“My health is more important than anything,” Floyd himself has noted. I haven’t met a single person who believes him, that the Berto fight is his last, so if he holds to his word, and all are wrong, then the man deserves a massive clap of hands, for not in fact engaging in a cynical exercise in leveraging and marketing.

But if indeed the hype is reality, that this Sept. 12 is his victory lap, then we must consider this boxing landscape sans Floyd.

I asked longtimer Kathy Duva, who heads Main Events and works with Russian terminator Sergey Kovalev, in some ways the anti Floyd when it comes to how he approaches the sport and business, about the “TBE” legacy.

She spoke on Mayweather-Berto, and Floyd’s impact on the sweet science.

“I won’t be buying Mayweather-Berto,” Duva told me. “I’ll follow you on Twitter instead.”

She said she’d rather put on “real fights,” and thinks Floyd’s belief in what matters long-term makes the sport as a whole weaker.

“This is our sport,” she said, “and what he doesn, doesn’t reflect well on our sport. This idea that you can’t risk a loss…His undefeated record will and would not be a legacy. It’s just a bunch of wins.”

Duva noted that Mike Tyson, who of course still gets swarmed whenever and wherever he goes, ten years after he last fought, basically lost his step-up fights. “He never won a big fight! Holmes and Spinks were his biggest wins…but he has more legacy than Floyd will ever dream of having. Because it’s not all about wins, it’s about taking risks and having entertaining fights. He sure as hell entertained the fans, and that’s really what it’s all about.”

Here is Duva’s direct message to Floyd: “Please retire. Get it over with.”

She’s eager to see what 147-154 does when that dust settles, when Floyd hangs up the mitts. And she is pretty damned sure he won’t be lumped in with the Leonards and the Durans five, ten, twenty years after he retires. “Who won their fights when they fought, Leonard and Duran and Hearns and Hagler? It’s almost immaterial…people almost don’t care…they care because they saw the fights!”

Duva offers a recollection which helped remind her what impact is about, how legacy can be built..and not in the way Floyd is doing it. She was walking with Arturo Gatti after Mayweather beat him. It was 2005. People were walking up to Gatti, saying, “Congrats champ!”

He was puzzled, she said.

“What is this? I lost,” Gatti (40-9 and in the Hall of Fame) stated.

“Yes, but these people will be able to tell their grand-children they met you…they don’t care you lost. It’s about taking the challenge!”

She continued that train of thought: “Taking a chance! Challenging yourself! That’s what people want to see. Hey, I wish Mayweather Godspeed….but I’m looking forward to the whole mentality he supports going away.”

In other words, Duva doesn’t hate the player, but the game he’s been playing, the brand of risk aversion, she is hoping his influence wears off when he leaves the arena.

Check back, and hear from another long-timer who doesn’t agree with Duva, who thinks that all in all, Mayweather has been good for the sport…

Follow Woods on Twitter. https://twitter.com/Woodsy1069

Follow @Woodsy1069

Post Views: 1,043

Michael Woods

Zhilei Zhang KOs Joe Joyce; Calls Out Tyson Fury

Published

5 hours ago

September 23, 2023

Arne K. Lang

Zhilei-Zhang-KOs-Joe-Joyce-Calls-Out-Tyson-Fury

Joe Joyce activated his rematch clause after being stopped in the sixth frame by Zhilei Zhang in their first meeting. In hindsight, he may wish that he hadn’t. Tonight at London’s Wembley Stadium, Zhang stopped him again and far more conclusively than in their first encounter.

In the first meeting, Zhang, a southpaw, found a steady home for his stiff left jab. Targeting Joyce’s right eye, he eventually damaged the optic to where the ring doctor wouldn’t let Joyce continue. At the end, the fight was close on the cards and Joyce was confident that he would have pulled away if not for the issue with his eye.

In the rematch tonight, Zhang (26-1-1, 21 KOs) closed the curtain with his right hand. A thunderous right hook on the heels of a straight left pitched Joyce to the canvas where he landed face first. He appeared to beat the count by a whisker, but was seriously dazed and referee Steve Gray properly waived it off. The official time was 3:07 of round three.

Zhang, who lived up to his nickname, “Big Bang,” was credited with landing 29 power punches compared with only six for Joyce (15-2) who came in 25 pounds heavier than in their first meeting while still looking properly conditioned. One would be inclined to say that age finally caught with the “Juggernaut” who turned 38 since their last encounter, but Zhang, 40, is actually the older man. In his post-fight interview in the ring, the New Jersey resident, a two-time Olympian for China, when asked who he wanted to fight next, turned to the audience and said, “Do you want to see me shut Tyson Fury up?”

He meant it as a rhetorical question.

Semi-Windup

Light heavyweight Anthony Yarde was matched soft against late sub Jorge Silva, a 40-year-old Portuguese journeyman, and barely broke a sweat while scoring a second-round stoppage. Yarde backed Silva against a corner post and put him on the deck with a short right hand. Silva’s body language indicated that he had no interest in continuing and the referee accommodated him. The official time was 2:07 of round two.

A 30-year-old Londoner, Yarde (24-3, 23 KOs) was making his first start since being stopped in eight rounds by Artur Beterbiev in a bout that Yarde was winning on two of the scorecards. Silva, a late replacement for 19-3-1 Ricky Summers, falls to 22-9.

Also

Former leading super middleweight contender Zach Parker (23-1, 17 KOs) returned to the ring in a “shake-off-the-rust” fight against 40-year-old Frenchman Khalid Graidia and performed as expected. Graidia’s corner pulled him out after seven one-sided rounds.

In his previous fight, Parker was matched against John Ryder who he was favored to beat. The carrot for the winner was a lucrative date with Canelo Alvarez. Unfortunately for Parker, he suffered a broken hand and was unable to continue after four frames. Tonight, he carried 174 pounds, a hint that he plans to compete as a light heavyweight going forward. Indeed, he has expressed an interest in fighting Anthony Yarde. Graidia declined to 10-13-4.

The Zhang-Joyce and Yarde-Silva fights were live-streamed in the U.S. on ESPN+.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 355

An Ode to the Polo Grounds on the (Belated) 100th Anniversary of Dempsey-Firpo

Published

1 day ago

September 22, 2023

Arne K. Lang

An-Ods-to-the-Polo-Grouns-on-the-Belated-100th-Anniversary-of-Dempsey-Firpo

If you happen to be up in Harlem this Saturday, they are holding a little shindig at the Polo Grounds Towers Community Center in honor of the 100^th anniversary of the Dempsey-Firpo fight.

Better late than never, as they say. The centennial of this storied fight was actually September 14, a week ago Thursday. But that rubbed up against Mexican Independence Day which prompted little shindigs that would take precedence in a neighborhood where many of the inhabitants speak Spanish.

The Sept. 14, 1923 bout between heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, the Manassa Mauler, and his Argentine challenger Luis Angel Firpo, the Wild Bull of the Pampas, was staged at the Polo Grounds. The match was slated for 15 rounds, but no one expected it would go that far. “The styles of both,” said a Brooklyn Times Union scribe in his pre-fight report, “eliminate the possibility of the affair becoming tedious.”

That proved to be an understatement. Dempsey vs. Firpo consumed only three minutes and 57 seconds of actual fighting, but the action was breathtakingly intense and the crowd, estimated at 80,000, was on its feet the whole while.

There were so many knockdowns and they came so fast that there was disagreement among ringside reporters as to the exact number. In the first round alone, Dempsey put Firpo on the canvas at least five times, if not seven, and Firpo returned the favor twice. However, it was the Argentine that scored the most memorable knockdown. With one mighty swing of his vaunted right hand, Firpo knocked Dempsey clear out of the ring, the Mauler landing head first on a table of ringside reporters and their telegraphers with his feet up in the air. The moment inspired one of the most famous paintings in sports, George Bellows “Dempsey and Firpo,” on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York since the museum opened in 1931.

Dempsey was reeling and almost out before the first round ended, but he gathered his senses and ended the contest in the next frame. His final punch, with Firpo bleeding heavily from his mouth, “lifted the Argentine giant from his feet and hurled him headlong to the floor with the crash of a mighty oak falling from great heights.” So wrote Grantland Rice.

The Polo Grounds sat in a hollow in the northern reaches of Harlem across the Harlem River from Yankee Stadium. It was the home of the New York Giants of the National League from 1891 until the franchise left for San Francisco at the end of the 1957 season. It also housed the New York Giants football team from its inception in 1925 through 1955 and in its end days, served as the temporary home of New York’s two expansion teams, the Mets and the Jets.

Professional boxing was first served up at the Polo Grounds in 1922. There were four boxing shows there in 1923 preceding Dempsey-Firpo, but these were small potatoes by comparison, notwithstanding the fact that each of the four shows included a title fight. Dempsey-Firpo was the first collaboration between Tex Rickard and Charles Stoneham who owned the controlling interest in the baseball team.

Rickard and Stoneham had a lot in common. Rickard ran gambling saloons in mining camps in Alaska and Nevada before making his mark as a boxing promoter and settling in New York where he headed up the boxing department at Madison Square Garden. Charles Stoneham was a gambler too. He made his fortune operating bucket shops, funneling his winnings into a string of thoroughbred race horses and a horse track and casino in Havana. His silent partner in many of his business ventures was purportedly the infamous Arnold Rothstein. (A so-called bucket shop was a business where people could bet on the rise and fall of stocks and other commodities like wheat and oil without taking an ownership stake in any of the companies that comprised the marketplace.)

Rickard died in 1929, opening the door to Broadway ticket scalper Mike Jacobs who supplanted Rickard as New York’s most powerful boxing promoter. Jacobs acquired the exclusive rights to stage boxing shows at both the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium. Charles Stoneham and his counterpart with the Yankees both profited when a card was held at either property.

Yankee Stadium was more modern and could accommodate a larger crowd, so Jacobs tended to pot his biggest promotions there. Joe Louis had 12 fights at Yankee Stadium, but only two at the Polo Grounds, namely his famous 1941 fight with Billy Conn and his fight later that year with Lou Nova. However, important matches continued to land at the Polo Grounds. Thirty-four boxers who would go on to be enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame had one or more fights at the Polo Grounds.

—

I’m dating myself, but this reporter is among an ever-shrinking cadre of people who once sat in the grandstand of the Polo Grounds. The allurement was baseball. Although born in Brooklyn, I was a Giants fan.

I vaguely remember descending the steep iron staircase that led from the 155^th Street subway station to the ticket booths. When one exited the subway, he was on Coogan’s Bluff, named for the former Manhattan borough president who owned the land on which the stadium sat. Coogan’s Bluff became a euphemism for the Polo Grounds itself, as Chavez Ravine would become a euphemism for Dodger Stadium.

Coogan’s Bluff

The Polo Grounds had an odd, triangular-shaped configuration. The distance to both foul poles was short whereas centerfield was cavernous, the perfect playland for the wonderful Willie Mays whose range was unsurpassed. In the words of the late, great Jim Murray, Willie’s glove was where triples went to die.

When Charles Stoneham died in 1936, the ballclub passed to his son Horace Stoneham who moved the team in San Francisco and eventually sold it to local interests. Stoneham was vilified in New York for abandoning the city, but the park and surrounding neighborhood had deteriorated. The stadium was torn down in 1964 and became the site of a giant, low-income housing project, Polo Grounds Towers, a complex consisting of four 30-story buildings run by the New York City Housing Authority. The Polo Grounds Community Center is housed in Tower #2.

The Dempsey-Firpo fight was an incandescent moment in America’s Golden Era of Sports. It was a big deal in South America too. In Buenos Aires, tens of thousands of people reportedly jammed the streets around the newspaper offices to follow the progress of the fight on bulletin boards. The last boxing show at the Polo Grounds was staged on June 20, 1960. Floyd Patterson avenged his loss to Ingemar Johannson with a fifth-round stoppage. The predicted crowd of 40,000 failed to materialize. The official attendance was 31,892.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

—

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.

Post Views: 1,240

Avila Perspective, Chap. 253: Oscar De La Hoya Reloading in LA and More

Published

2 days ago

September 21, 2023

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-253-Oscar-De-La-Hoya-Reloading-in-LA-and-More

Oscar De La Hoya sat with a satisfied look inside his glittering building on Wilshire Boulevard, unveiling plans to stage a welterweight showdown between southpaw contenders next month.

Lately, the six-division world champion turned promoter from nearby East Los Angeles has attended every boxing show produced by his company Golden Boy Promotions. Big or small, the former fighter who acquired millions as a prizefighter has put full attention on expanding his boxing empire.

Golden Boy Promotions has reloaded.

On Tuesday, De La Hoya discussed plans to match Alexis Rocha with Top Rank’s Giovanni Santillan on Saturday, October 21, at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif. DAZN will stream the show.

Rocha (23-1, 15 KOs) seems to have gained his man strength. Five out of seven of his past foes have not heard the final bell. The Orange County fighter’s seek and destroy style has made him a crowd favorite throughout Southern California.

Santillan (31-0, 16 KOs) is a different kind of cat. The San Diego-based welterweight was groomed by Thompson Boxing Promotions and then aided by Top Rank. With the loss of promoter Ken Thompson who passed away earlier this year, Top Rank has taken over the reins of the crafty fighter.

Both Rocha (pictured with Oscar) and Santillan are familiar with each other through sparring.

“I feel that I’ve grown so much over time and now’s my moment, and I want to keep just banging on the door for a world title. I know that Giovani is going to be a good opponent,” said Rocha who is based in Santa Ana.

San Diego’s Santillan expressed excitement about fighting in Los Angeles.

“This isn’t the first time that I go into enemy territory,” Santillan said. “I think that I will gain the LA fan base after this fight.”

It’s the kind of fight that would have sold out the Olympic Auditorium down the street. Battles between fighters from rival towns in Southern California resulted in fights like Bobby Chacon versus Danny “Lil Red” Lopez, or East L.A.’s Ruben Navarro versus South L.A.’s Raul Rojas.

Crosstown rivalries made the Olympic Auditorium a legendary venue for decades. And the Los Angeles area has always been a hotbed for boxing talent. Always.

De La Hoya knows that and has lived it.

“As Golden Boy, we know our position, we know exactly what we have to do in order to position that fighter to get them to that world title. Alexis Rocha is knocking on the door. Giovani has an amazing opportunity. So, this is what boxing is all about,” said De La Hoya.

MarvNation

Welterweights Eduard Skavynskyi (14-0) of Ukraine and Mexico’s Alejandro Frias (14-9-2) headline the main event at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California on Saturday Sept. 23.

This is Skavynskyi’s first time fighting in the U.S. All his previous fights were in Russia and Ukraine.

Also, co-headlining are female minimumweights Yadira Bustillos (7-1) and Katherine Lindenmuth (5-1) in a rematch set for eight rounds.

Bustillos fights out of Las Vegas and Lindenmuth is based in New Mexico and looking to avenge her loss a year ago.

For tickets and information go to: https://www.tix.com/ticket-sales/marvnation/6815/event/1344994?fbclid=paaabuvxlnjny1dafchk0wwkftjganfmww6bayhkj7autu-mhjyz8ll__ycga

Heavyweight Rematch in England

Once again, the United Kingdom presents a heavyweight show and this time a rematch between China’s Zhilei Zhang (25-1-1, 20 KOs) and England’s Joe Joyce (15-1, 14 KOs) on Saturday, Sept 23. ESPN will stream the Frank Warren boxing card from London.

Zhang stopped Joyce in the sixth round this past April. Can he do it again?

Welterweight showdown in Florida

Jessica McCaskill (12-3) and Sandy Ryan (6-1) meet for several welterweight world titles on Saturday, Sept. 23, in Orlando, Florida. DAZN will stream the Matchroom Boxing card.

Super lightweight Richardson Hitchins (16-0, 7 KOs) test top contender Jose “Chon” Zepeda (37-3, 28 KOs) in the co-main event. Conor Benn is also on the card.

Fights to Watch

Sat. ESPN+ 2 p.m. Zhilei Zhang (25-1-1) vs Joe Joyce (15-1).

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Jessica McCaskill (12-3) vs Sandy Ryan (6-1); Richardson Hitchins (16-0) vs Jose Zepeda (37-3).

Alexis Rocha photo credit: Golden Boy / Cris Esqueda

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 741