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`NO MAS’ FIGHT SHOWED EVERY FIGHTER HARBORS A FEAR OF SOMETHING
So many fighters say the same thing. “I’m ready to die if necessary,” they publicly pronounce, and some might even believe it. But while bravery is as much of a staple of winning boxing as talent, answering the bell against even the most fearsome puncher is not the same as a soldier charging a machine-gun nest or engaging in hand-to-hand combat with an enemy who is actually trying to end his life, not just knock him out. A fighter’s fortitude and strength of character certainly are tested in the ring, but all the convenient comparisons to war go way too far. Boxing is a sport, and not one for the faint of heart, but it is never a matter of kill-or-be-killed. At least it shouldn’t be.
The truth is every fighter – probably every human being, for that matter – is afraid of something. The seemingly meekest individual is capable of extraordinary heroism, given the proper circumstances, and the most blustery bully can be exposed as a paper tiger if confronted by someone made of sterner stuff. The only thing that holds true in either case is the observers who stand off to the side critiquing the actions of the actually involved as being courageous or cowardly. And once the more odious label is applied, it can be extremely difficult to scrape off.
There might never have been a boxing match to fuel as much armchair psychoanalysis as the second of the three bouts that pitted Panamanian tough guy Roberto Duran against flashy American Sugar Ray Leonard. Nov. 25 marks the 35th anniversary of that curious bout in the Louisiana Superdome, in which Duran, who had been widely perceived as the fight game’s most implacable and relentless destroyer, abruptly threw up his hands late in the eighth round, muttered something to Mexican referee Octavio Meyran and began to walk away. It was a blatant act of surrender by the one man from whom no one would ever have expected it.
The bout soon came to be known, rather notoriously, as the “No Mas Fight,” a reference to the words in Spanish Duran supposedly had said to Meyran, which meant “No more,” although Duran to this day steadfastly insists he never said any such thing.
A disgraced Duran went home to find his palatial home vandalized, his most ardent fans holding him in contempt and the Panamanian government, which had assured him he would get to keep all $8 million of his purse because of his status as a “national hero,” now disposed to nullify that exemption and take $2 million off the top in taxes.
Fortunately, for the “Hands of Stone,” his legacy has been largely restored. He went on to fight 21 more years after “No Mas,” winning another two world championships along the way, and, who knows, he might still be fighting today, at 64, had he not been forced to retire after being in a bad car accident in October 2001, when he was 50. Several historians today rate him higher on various all-time pound-for-pound lists than Leonard, who lost their first fight (which was terrific) on a close but unanimous decision before Sugar Ray won parts two and three of the trilogy.
“In New Orleans, Duran became the story,” Leonard said of the “No Mas” fight that, even in victory, didn’t turn out the way he had anticipated. “All everyone talked about was him quitting. He got more attention for quitting than I did for winning the fight.”
There have been, of course, other fights – major ones, too – in which one of the principals quit, if only in a manner of speaking, rather than allowing himself to be knocked out or his humiliation to be extended to the final bell. But it is “No Mas” that has become a case study of the swirling emotions that can engulf even a great fighter when he finds himself in a place where bravado cannot rescue him from a dark place he never expected to be thrust into.
At the press conference to officially announce Duran-Leonard II, Duran dismissed Leonard and brashly predicted he would beat him much worse than he had in their first bout, which took place in Montreal five months earlier.
“I don’t like to see clowns in the ring,” he sneered with undisguised contempt. “I like to see boxers. To fight and beat me, you have to come into the ring and fight me, hard. (Leonard) goes into the ring and tries to imitate (Muhammad) Ali, but an imitator is a loser.”
Leonard imitated Ali all right, and pretty damn effectively, the most obvious example coming in the seventh round, when Sugar Ray wound up his right hand in windmill fashion, as if he was going to throw a bolo punch, before delivering a stinging left jab to Duran’s nose, causing the WBC welterweight champion’s eyes to water.
William Nack, writing in Sports Illustrated, described that moment as “the most painful blow of Duran’s life. It drew hooting laughter from the crowd and made Duran a public spectacle – a laughingstock.”
Perhaps ironically, Duran – who was not in the same tip-top shape he had been for the first fight with Leonard, having had to take off anywhere from 40 to 70 pounds in a relatively short time, depending on which version of the tale you choose to believe – believed that by simply walking away he was putting himself in a better light than if he had continued to be the target of Sugar Ray’s largely successful attempts to embarrass him.
“In Duran’s mind I think he expected that the crowd would condemn Leonard for having made a mockery of the fight, rather than him for quitting,” said veteran trainer Emanuel Steward, who was in the Superdome with his fighter, WBA welterweight titlist Thomas Hearns, to agitate for a unification showdown with the winner.
It was an egregious miscalculation.
“He quit out of humiliation and frustration,” Leonard told the late George Kimball, author of “Four Kings: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran and the Last Great Era of Boxing.” “It’s one of those things that happens to bullies. Duran threw his hands up without realizing the repercussions it would have on his legacy.”
Not surprisingly, Duran’s people quickly put up a smokescreen in which they blamed their guy’s disappointing performance, and eventual surrender, on stomach cramps and an injured right shoulder more than on Leonard’s superior foot and hand speed.
“If Duran had stomach cramps,” wrote Al Goldstein, the boxing writer for the Baltimore Sun, “it must have been his guts shrinking.”
Ed Schuyler Jr. of The Associated Press, cracking wise to his colleagues in the press room, said, “They’re checking Duran’s birth certificate back in Panama. They think now he may be a Guatemalan.”
To appreciate and understand the furor attendant to “No Mas,” it is necessary to go back to their first encounter, on June 20, 1980, at Montreal’s Stade Olympique, in the same city in which Leonard was the breakout, gold-medal-winning star of the Olympic boxing competition.
Perhaps Duran’s resentment of Leonard went from slow boil to volcanic eruption when it became apparent that he and his team had been snookered at the negotiating table by the Sugar man and his savvy attorney/adviser, Mike Trainer. Trainer had arranged for Leonard to receive the entire site fee and 80 percent of the closed-circuit and foreign TV sales, which wound up being nearly $10 million, by far eclipsing the previous high payday for a fighter, which was the $6.5 million Ali got for his third bout with Ken Norton. Duran, meanwhile, had signed quickly for $1.65 million, which was his biggest purse to that point but so much less than he might have received had he sought a more equitable division of the financial pie.
In any case, this was a fight in which it was virtually impossible to sit on the fence.
“The casting is perfect,” said Angelo Dundee, Leonard’s chief second. “You have Sugar Ray, the kid next door, the guy in the white hat, against Duran, the killer, the guy with the gunfighter’s eyes. It’s the kind of fight where you can’t be neutral.”
Duran played his part to the hilt, except that he wasn’t playing. He insulted Leonard from the get-go, and his constant disparagement of the Olympic poster boy had Leonard convinced that his best course of action would be to beat the mouthy Panamanian at his own game.
“He had that bully’s mentality,” Leonard said after he was handed his first loss as a pro. “He always tries to intimidate opponents. He challenged my manhood, and I wasn’t mature enough to know how to respond. All I could think about was retaliating.”
Despite facing Duran on the Panamanian’s terms, Leonard met fire with fire. He barely lost on points, coming up short by margins of 146-144, 148-147 and 145-144 on the judges’ scorecards. And it wasn’t long before he concluded that he would fare much better with a revised fight plan, particularly in light of the nonstop celebrating engaged in by Duran, who now saw himself as invincible, or at least something close to it. So Leonard and Trainer pressed for a quick rematch, offering Duran that $8 million, but only if he agreed to the November date.
“I knew Duran was overweight and partying big time,” Leonard said. “I’ve done some partying myself, but I knew when to cut it out. I said to Mike, `Let’s do it now, as soon as possible.’ In retrospect, it was pretty clever of me.’”
So, how does “No Mas” look now, 35 years down the road? Should Duran have insisted on more time to get his body back in peak condition, and if so, would the outcome have been different? Might it have been preferable to chase after Leonard, slowly being beaten down and then stopped?
Duran, in an interview with Nack three years after “No Mas,” continued to give Leonard something less than full credit for winning while absolving himself of at least some of the blame.
“Leonard knew I had nothing,” Duran said. “He was running and clowning because he knew I couldn’t do anything. I wasn’t going to let myself get knocked out and look ridiculous in the ring.”
It is a mindset that is hardly unique to Duran. A two-time former heavyweight champion who had won a silver medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics as a 165-pounder, Chris Byrd made a career of flummoxing larger heavyweights who would have preferred being pounded into submission by someone more like them than to be shown up by the flitting Byrd.
“It’s called `getting clowned,’” Byrd said before his Dec. 14, 2002, bout with Evander Holyfield for the vacant IBF heavyweight title, which Byrd won by unanimous decision. “Nobody wants to get clowned. They’d rather get knocked out than to get frustrated and embarrassed at the same time. But I’ve been doing that to people for a long time … since I was a kid. I pride myself on that. I kind of make guys look foolish, particularly heavyweights since they’re a lot slower.”
Which brings us back to the subject of fear in the ring, in all its various forms. There is the most obvious application, which is the fear of being beaten bloody, the kind that virtually paralyzed some of the opponents faced by such devastating punchers as Sonny Liston, George Foreman and Mike Tyson. And there is the more subtle form of apprehension and dismay, the kind perhaps displayed by Tyson – a fighter who, by the way, has always looked upon Duran as a role model – when he got himself disqualified in his rematch with Holyfield, by twice chomping on Evander’s ears, a form of submission as much as Duran turning his back on Leonard, at least in the opinion of noted boxing commentator and former Tyson trainer Teddy Atlas.
One of the more gentlemanly fighters ever to have achieved significant success, the late two-time former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, was as far removed from Duran, both stylistically and personally, as anyone could be. But Patterson gave one of the most honest and insightful interviews ever to author Gay Talese in the March 1964 edition of Esquire magazine, in which Patterson spoke of the near-terror that gripped him before both of his clashes with Liston, who won each by first-round knockout.
“Oh, I would give up anything to just be able to work with Liston, to box with him somewhere where nobody would see us, and to see if I could get past three minutes with him,” Patterson told Talese. “I know I can do better. I’m not talking about a rematch. Who would pay a nickel for another Patterson-Liston fight? I know I wouldn’t. But all I want to do is get past the first round.
“It’s not a bad feeling when you’re knocked out,” Patterson said a bit further down in the article. “It’s a good feeling, actually. It’s not painful, just a sharp grogginess; you’re on a pleasant cloud. But then this good feeling leaves you. And what follows is a hurt, a confused hurt – not a physical hurt. It’s a hurt combined with anger; it’s a what-will-people-think hurt. All you want then is a hatch door in the middle of the ring, a hatch door that will open and let you fall through and land in your dressing room.”
For his first fight with Liston, Patterson – who had a sinking sensation he would lose in pretty much the manner that he did – brought a false beard, false mustache, hat and glasses to his dressing room so that he could slip away as quietly and anonymously as possible.
“You must wonder what makes a man do things like this,” Patterson told Talese. “Well, I wonder, too. And the answer is, I don’t know. But I think within me, within every human being, there is a certain weakness. It is a weakness that expresses itself more when you’re alone. And I have figured out that part of the reason I do the things I do is because … I am a coward. You see it when a fighter loses.”
So, Patterson was asked, could the menacing Liston be a coward as well?
“That remains to be seen,” he replied. “We’ll find out what he’s like after somebody beats him, how he takes it. It’s easy to do anything in victory. It’s in defeat that a man reveals himself.”
On Feb. 25, 1964, the big, ugly bear, Liston, got clowned big-time in his first meeting with Cassius Clay and quit on his stool after the sixth round, citing an injured shoulder which in retrospect appears as dubious an excuse as was to Roberto Duran’s stomach cramps.
The fights go on, and sometimes the hardest struggle is the one that a fighter wages within himself to tame the beast that gnaws at his insides when things aren’t going his way and the prospect for a turnaround are dimming fast. It calls to mind something written by Ernest Hemingway, not necessarily about boxing, although it very well might have been.
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places,” surmised Hemingway, who also noted that, “Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” It is a point of view that would seem to be the basis of extensive debate.
“Papa” did not weigh in on the conundrum of a fighter being clowned. You’d have to think it would have been the basis for a terrific novel, though.
Northern California’s Cain Sandoval remained undefeated with a knockout win over Mark Bernaldez in a super lightweight battle on Friday on a 360 Promotions card.
Sandoval (15-0, 13 KOs) of Sacramento needed four rounds to figure out tough Filipino fighter Bernaldez (25-7, 14 KOs) in front of a packed crowd at Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez.
Bernaldez had gone eight rounds against Mexico’s very tough Oscar Duarte. He showed no fear for Sandoval’s reputed power and both fired bombs at each other from the second round on.
Things turned in favor of Sandoval when he targeted the body and soon had Bernaldez in retreat. It was apparent Sandoval had discovered a weakness.
In the beginning of the fourth Sandoval fired a stiff jab to the body that buckled Bernaldez but he did not go down. And when both resumed in firing position Sandoval connected with an overhand right and down went the Filipino fighter. He was counted out by referee Rudy Barragan at 34 seconds of the round.
“I’m surprised he took my jab to the body. I respect that. I have a knockout and I’m happy about that,” Sandoval said.
Other Bouts
Popular female fighter Lupe Medina (9-0) remained undefeated with a solid victory over the determined Agustina Vazquez (4-3-2) by unanimous decision after eight rounds in a minimumweight fight between Southern Californians.
Early on Vazquez gave Medina trouble disrupting her patter with solid jabs. And when Medina overloaded with combination punches, she was laced with counters from Vazquez during the first four rounds.
Things turned around in the fifth round as Medina used a jab to keep Vazquez at a preferred distance. And when she attacked it was no more than two-punch combination and maintaining a distance.
Vazquez proved determined but discovered clinching was not a good idea as Medina took advantage and overran her with blows. Still, Vazquez looked solid. All three judges saw it 79-73 for Medina.
A battle between Southern Californian’s saw Compton’s Christopher Rios (11-2) put on the pressure all eight rounds against Eastvale’s Daniel Barrera (8-1-1) and emerged the winner by majority decision in a flyweight battle.
It was Barrera’s first loss as a pro. He never could discover how to stay off the ropes and that proved his downfall. Neither fighter was knocked down but one judge saw it 76-76, and two others 79-73 for Rios.
In a welterweight fight Gor Yeritsyan (20-1,16 KOs) scorched Luis Ramos (23-7) with a 12-punch combination the sent him to the mat in the second round. After Ramos beat the count he was met with an eight punch volley and the fight was stopped at 2:11 of the second round by knockout.
Super feather prospect Abel Mejia (7-0, 5 KOs) floored Alfredo Diaz (9-12) in the fifth round but found the Mexican fighter to be very durable in their six-round fight. Mejia caught Diaz with a left hook in the fifth round for a knockdown. But the fight resumed with all three judges scoring it 60-53 for Mejia who fights out of El Modena, Calif.
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By TSS Special Correspondent David Harazduk — After David Alaverdian (8-0-1, 6 KOs) scored a gritty victory against a tough Nicaraguan journeyman named Enrique Irias, his plans suddenly changed. The flashy flyweight from Nahariya, Israel hoped to face even tougher opposition and then challenge for a world title within a year or so. But a prolonged illness forced David to rip up the script.
The Irias fight was over 22 months ago. On Saturday, Feb. 22, Alaverdian will be making his first appearance in the ring since that win when he faces veteran road warrior Josue “Zurdo” Morales (31-16-4, 13 KOs) at the Westgate Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. It’s the fifth promotion by Las Vegas attorney Stephen Reid whose inaugural card was at this venue on Feb. 13, 2020.
“I’m excited to come back,” Alaverdian declared.
During his preparation for Irias two years ago, Alaverdian felt fatigue after a routine six-round sparring session. “It was on April 1, 2023, about ten days before my fight. It felt like an April Fool’s joke,” he said. He came down with a sore throat, a headache, and congestion. He soon developed trouble breathing. At first, he thought his seasonal asthma had flared up, but his condition soon worsened. No matter what he did, Alaverdian could no longer take deep breaths. Fatigue continued to plague him. His heart constantly raced. Instead of breathing from his diaphragm, he was breathing from his chest. He sought out numerous doctors in the United States and in Israel.
His symptoms were finally diagnosed as Dysfunctional Breathing (DB). DB is a condition that can stem from stress and is often misdiagnosed. Its symptoms include dyspnea and tachycardia, both of which David experienced.
While receiving treatment, the Vegas-based pro went back to Israel where he coached aspiring fighters. “David’s influence on Israeli boxing is amazing, because he shows we can succeed in a big business even though we come from a small country,” said another undefeated Israeli flyweight, 20-year-old Yonatan Landman (7-0, 7 KOs). “A lot more Israelis are going to dare to succeed.”
Landman was able to work with Alaverdian during David’s return to Israel. “He is a great guy and a friend,” Landman said. “He has a lot of willingness to help, share his knowledge, and help you move forward.”
Alaverdian finally started to feel like he could compete again eight months ago. He won last year’s Israeli national amateur championship and competed in Olympic qualifiers. Now, he’s preparing to fight as a professional once again. “He doesn’t mention anything about [his breathing issues] like he did before,” his coach Cedric Ferguson said about this camp. “He’s been working like there’s no issue at all.”
It has been a whirlwind week for the 31-year-old Alaverdian. In addition to putting the finishing touches on his preparation ahead of Saturday’s comeback fight, David got married on Tuesday. His mom came over from Israel for the wedding and will stay for the fight. “It’s a good distraction,” David said of this week’s significant events. “It helps me. That way I don’t have to focus on the fight all day.”
Josue Morales, a 32 year old from Houston, hopes to play spoiler on Saturday. The crafty southpaw has never been stopped during his 52-fight career. “He’s a seasoned guy with a lot of experience,” Alaverdian said of Morales. “He knows how to move around the ring and is more of a technical boxer. He’s a tough opponent for someone who has been out of the ring for two years.”
A win Saturday night would complete a monumental week for David Alaverdian, both in and out of the ring, repairing the once-shredded script.
Doors open at the Westgate fight arena at 6:30 pm. The first bout goes at 7:00. Seven fights are scheduled including an 8-round female fight between Las Vegas light flyweight Yadira Bustillos and Argentine veteran Tamara Demarco.
NOTE: Author David Harazduk has run The Jewish Boxing Blog since 2010. You can find him at Twitter/X @JewishBoxing and Instagram.
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Two Candidates for the Greatest Fight Card in Boxing History
Saturday’s fight card in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, topped by the rematch between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol for undisputed light heavyweight supremacy, was being hyped as the greatest boxing card ever. That was before Daniel Dubois took ill and had to pull out of his IBF world heavyweight title defense against Joseph Parker, yielding his slot to last-minute replacement Martin Bakole.
The view from here is that the card remains in the running for the best fight card ever, top to bottom. The public didn’t view Dubois as the legitimate heavyweight champion. That distinction goes to Oleksandr Usyk.
Terms like “greatest” are, of course, subjective. Are we referring to the most attractive match-ups or the greatest array of talent, or the card that gives the most satisfaction by churning out a multiplicity of entertaining fights?
We won’t know how satisfying this card is until after the fact. We won’t know whether the talent on display was the greatest ever assembled on one night until many years have passed. Contestants such as Shakur Stevenson, Vergil Ortiz Jr, and Hamzah Sheeraz are still in their twenties (Stevenson is the oldest of the three at age 27) and it’s too soon to gauge if they will leave the sport with a great legacy.
As for which fight card in history had the deepest pool of attractive match-ups, this is a query that is amenable to an operational definition. Betting lines are a useful tool for informing us whether or not a fight warrants our attention if the likelihood of witnessing a closely-contested bout is our primary consideration.
Based on these factors, I would submit that the current leader in the race for the best card ever assembled goes to Don King’s May 7, 1994 promotion at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Six future Hall of Famers – Julio Cesar Chavez, Ricardo Lopez, Azumah Nelson, Terry Norris, Julian Jackson, and Christy Martin — were on that card, an 11-fight, eight-hour marathon with five WBC world title fights, four of which were rematches.
These were the five title fights:
140 pounds: Julio Cesar Chavez (89-1-1, 77 KOs) vs. Frankie Randall (49-2-1, 39 KOs)
Odds: Chavez 3/1 (minus-300)
154 pounds: Terry Norris (37-4, 23 KOs) vs. Simon Brown (41-2, 30 KOs)
Odds: even (11/10 and take your pick)
160 pounds: Gerald McClellan (30-2, 28 KOs) vs. Julian Jackson (48-2, 45 KOs)
Odds: McClellan 7/2 (minus-350)
130 pounds: Azumah Nelson (37-2-2, 26 KOs) vs. Jesse James Leija (27-0-2, 13 KOs)
Odds: Nelson 17/10 (minus-170)
105 pounds: Ricardo Lopez (36-0, 27 KOs) vs. Kermin Guardia (21-0, 14 KOs)
Odds: none
Results
Chavez-Randall — Julio Cesar Chavez avenged his loss to Frankie Randall, but not without controversy. An accidental clash of heads in the eighth round left Chavez with a bad gash on his forehead. Ring physician Flip Homansky would have allowed the bout to continue if that had been Chavez’s preference, but El Gran Campeon wasn’t so inclined. A WBC rule specified that in the event of a significant injury accruing from an accidental head butt, the less-damaged fighter is penalized a point. The fight went to the scorecards where Chavez won a split decision that would have been a draw without the point deduction. The crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Chavez, but the big bets were mostly on Randall and the odds got nicked down on the day of the fight.
Brown-Norris — In their first meeting in December of the previous year, Simon Brown dominated Terry Norris from the opening bell before stopping him in the fourth round. It was a massive upset. Norris was in the conversation for the top pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. In the rematch, Norris opened a slight favorite, but the late money was on Brown. And, once again, the so-called “sharps” were on the wrong side. Terry Norris, the would-be avenger, won a comfortable decision.
McClellan-Jackson — A murderous puncher, Gerald McClellan bombed out Julian Jackson in 83 seconds, or four rounds quicker than in their first engagement. Jackson was also a murderous puncher and attracted money in the sports books, lowering the price on the victorious McClellan who yet remained a solid favorite.
Nelson-Leija – WBC President Jose Sulaiman mandated this rematch after the first meeting ended in a draw after an error was found in the tabulation of one of the scorecards, overturning the original verdict which had Nelson retaining his title on a split decision. Leija thought he was robbed and was the rightful winner in the do-over, outworking Nelson to win a unanimous decision. At age 35, Azumah was getting long in the tooth.
Lopez-Guardia – Before the digital age, bookmakers didn’t trifle to post lines on bouts that on paper were egregious mismatches, save perhaps a fight of great magnitude. Guardia, the Colombian challenger, overachieved by lasting the distance in a fight with no knockdowns, but “Finito” won a lopsided decision.
A Note on Odds
Betting lines serve a useful purpose for boxing historians; they quantify the magnitude of an upset. However, quoting odds is tricky because they are fluid and vary somewhat from place to place. What this means is that two journalists can quote different odds on the same event and they both can get it right – unless there is a significant disparity. The odds quoted above are the closing lines at the MGM Grand or, at the very least, a very close approximation.
Saturday in Riyadh
One reason why tomorrow’s fight card is the best ever, said the tub-thumpers, is that the card (in its original conformation) included seven world title fights. But that’s no big deal There are so many title fights nowadays that the term “world title” has been trivialized. And what wasn’t acknowledged is that three of the title fights were of the “interim” stripe.
However – and this is a big deal — a glance at the odds informs us that tomorrow’s card is chock-full of competitive match-ups (at least on paper) and from that aspect, a blend of quality and quantity, it is a doozy of a boxing card.
The greatest boxing linemaker of my generation, now deceased, once told me that any fight where the “chalk” was less than a 3/1 favorite is essentially a “pick-‘em” fight. Yes, I know that makes no sense mathematically. However, I know what he was getting at. In a baseball game, for example, it’s very rare to find a team favored by odds of more than 3/1. In boxing, where self-serving promoters are constantly feeding us King Kong vs. Mickey Mouse, odds higher than 3/1 are the norm.
As this is being written, there are six fights on Saturday’s card where one could play the favorite without laying more than 3/1. I believe this is unprecedented. Moreover, the main event and a fascinating match-up on the undercard, Vergil Ortiz Jr vs Israil Madrimov, are virtual toss-ups with the favorites, Beterbiev and Ortiz, currently available at 5/4 (minus-125). Another very intriguing fight is the heavyweight contest between late bloomers Agit Kabayel and Zhilei Zhang which finds the less-heralded Kabayel cloaked as a small favorite. And kudos to Joseph Parker for accepting Martin Bakole when he could have held out for a lesser opponent. If Bakole is in shape (a big “if”), he will be a handful.
And so, where does tomorrow’s card rank on the list of best boxing cards ever? Right up there near the top, we would argue, and, if the bouts in large part are memorably entertaining, we would push it ahead of Don King’s May 7, 1994 extravaganza.
That’s the view from here. Feel free to dissent.
Postscript: If you plan to watch the entire card ($25.99 on DAZN for U.S. buyers), it would help to stock up on some munchies. The first fight (Joshua Buatsi vs. Callum Smith) is scheduled to kick off at 8:45 a.m. for us viewers in the Pacific Time Zone / 11:45 a.m. ET. If the show adheres tight to its schedule (no guarantee), Beterbiev and Bivol are expected to enter the ring at 3:00 p.m. PT/6:00 p.m. ET.
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Results and Recaps from Madison Square Garden where Keyshawn Davis KO’d Berinchyk
Hall of Fame Boxing Writer Michael Katz (1939-2025) Could Wield His Pen like a Stiletto
Claressa Shields Powers to Undisputed Heavyweight Championship
Vito Mielnicki Hopes to Steal the Show on Friday at Madison Square Garden
Najee Lopez Steps up in Class and Wins Impressively at Plant City
With Valentine’s Day on the Horizon, let’s Exhume ex-Boxer ‘Machine Gun’ McGurn
Bakhodir Jalolov Returns on Thursday in Another Disgraceful Mismatch
More ‘Dances’ in Store for Derek Chisora after out-working Otto Wallin in Manchester
Boxing Odds and Ends: Ernesto Mercado, Marcel Cerdan and More
Ringside at the Cosmo: Pacheco Outpoints Nelson plus Undercard Results
The Hauser Report: Keyshawn Davis at Madison Square Garden
Avila Perspective, Chap. 311: Jim Lampley Adds Class to the Benavidez-Morrell Rumble
Benavidez Defeats Morrell; Cruz, Fulton, and Ramos also Victorious at Las Vegas
Avila Perspective, Chap. 313: The Misadventures of Canelo and Jake Paul (and More)
Japanese Superstar Naoya Inoue is Headed to Vegas after KOing Ye Joon Kim
Arnold Barboza Edges Past Jack Catterall in Manchester
Lucas Bahdi Paid His Dues, Quite Literally, and Now his Boxing Career is Flourishing
Eric Priest Wins Handily on Thursday’s Golden Boy card at the Commerce Casino
Biyarslanov TKOed Mimoune at Montreal; Jalolov Conspicuous by his Absence
Undercard Results from Las Vegas where Mirco Cuello Saved his Best for Last
Cain Sandoval KOs Mark Bernaldez in the Featured Bout at Santa Ynez
The Return of David Alaverdian
Two Candidates for the Greatest Fight Card in Boxing History
Avila Perspective, Chap. 314: A Really Big Boxing Show in Riyadh and More
Lucas Bahdi Paid His Dues, Quite Literally, and Now his Boxing Career is Flourishing
The Hauser Report: Keyshawn Davis at Madison Square Garden
Oscar Duarte KOs Miguel Madueno in a Battle of Mexicans at Anaheim
Arnold Barboza Edges Past Jack Catterall in Manchester
Results and Recaps from Madison Square Garden where Keyshawn Davis KO’d Berinchyk
Avila Perspective, Chap. 313: Global Cooperation — Golden Boy and Matchroom Boxing
Vito Mielnicki Hopes to Steal the Show on Friday at Madison Square Garden
With Valentine’s Day on the Horizon, let’s Exhume ex-Boxer ‘Machine Gun’ McGurn
More ‘Dances’ in Store for Derek Chisora after out-working Otto Wallin in Manchester
Avila Perspective, Chap. 313: The Misadventures of Canelo and Jake Paul (and More)
Biyarslanov TKOed Mimoune at Montreal; Jalolov Conspicuous by his Absence
Bakhodir Jalolov Returns on Thursday in Another Disgraceful Mismatch
Claressa Shields Powers to Undisputed Heavyweight Championship
Benavidez Defeats Morrell; Cruz, Fulton, and Ramos also Victorious at Las Vegas
Undercard Results from Las Vegas where Mirco Cuello Saved his Best for Last
Avila Perspective, Chap. 311: Jim Lampley Adds Class to the Benavidez-Morrell Rumble
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