Book Review: Brian Kenny’s “Ahead of the Curve”

Published

9 years ago

July 18, 2016

Book Review – Boxing fans know Brian Kenny from his work on ESPN2 Friday Night Fights, Showtime Championship Boxing, and PBC Boxing on FOX. But his #1 area of sports expertise is baseball.

Kenny is an MLB Network host and anchors some of its most important studio programming: MLB Now and MLB Tonight. He’s also an ardent proponent of sabermetrics: the use of cutting-edge statistical analysis as a key component of decision-making in virtually every aspect of the game.

Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution (Simon & Schuster) is Kenny’s presentation in support of sabermetrics. “Somewhere along the line,” he writes, “we stopped thinking. In the most basic ways, a purposeful ignorance set in. We have received considerable baseball wisdom from the early days of childhood from our adult role models, our peers, the media, and the baseball industry itself. What is so fascinating is that all this nonsense survived. For nearly a century, no one even bothered to think about it deeply enough to give themselves an incredible competitive advantage. At a certain point – about the time we discovered penicillin – it was time to evolve past these 19th-century relics. Instead, our thinking calcified and then endured decades beyond its point of usefulness.”

Book Review: Brian Kenny’s “Ahead of the Curve”

With that as his starting point, Kenny challenges long held assumptions regarding baseball strategy.

He begins with the sacrifice bunt, studying how a simple scenario has played out over an 18-year study period.

Man on first base, nobody out. Your team needs a run. Sacrifice bunt, right?

That what most managers do. But look at the numbers.

With a man on first base and nobody out, a team can be expected to score .94 runs in that inning. With a man on second base and one out, a team can be expected to score .72 runs.

“So let’s be clear,” Kenny writes. “Even with a successful bunt, you score fewer runs.”

But by bunting successfully, the manager has taken himself out of the line of fire and absolved himself of blame.

“He put the next two batters in the spotlight,” Kenny continues. “There’s a man on second waiting to be driven in. When he doesn’t score, it’s those two hitters that didn’t get it done. Failure is there visually in the hitter slinking off the field, having left a man on base. The manager walks off scot-free, even though he is the one who traded three chances for two.”

Then there’s the matter of third-base coaches, who are reluctant to send a runner home on a fly ball to the outfield that’s caught for the second out of an inning. The current success rate for attempts to score from third base in sacrifice fly situations is 90%. In other words, the coach only instructs the runner to go for it when the odds are overwhelmingly in his favor.

But if the fly ball is the second out of the inning, the runner’s chance of being driven in by the next or a succeeding batter is roughly 30%. Thus, Kenny writes, “Third base coaches send runners only when it’s obvious they will score. Getting a runner thrown out at the plate looks bad for both the third base coach and runner. But taking more risks will lead to more runs even with more runners being thrown out.”

The manner in which today’s managers deploy their pitching staff also mystifies Kenny. He starts by asking, “Why do all major league teams pitch the way they do?” And he arrives at the answer, “Because that’s the way we always have done it.”

But times change. In 1904, pitchers finished 88% of the games they started. In 2014, that number was down to 2%. “The only reason we still have starters,” Kenny writes, “is because, once upon a time, one pitcher was all you used for the whole day.”

Kenny advocates starting games, not just with long-inning pitchers but with short-inning hurlers as well. And he heaps scorn on the way managers use their closers.

“Today’s relief aces,” he writes, “are treated like rare exotic flowers to be taken out only in certain conditions. They work the ninth inning only, preferably with nobody on base, and they top out at seventy innings for the season. Take a step back. You’ve established one pitcher as the best on your staff, batter for batter. You then artificially restrict his innings [and] keep him from the most important parts of the game.”

But isn’t the ninth inning the most important part of the game?

“Any manager who is saving his closer/relief ace/fireman/stud for the ninth inning,” Kenny notes, “is thinking the following: ‘I’m saving him to seal this win when the game is most on the line.’ And this is simply not the case. The game is frequently on the line in the ninth. But the act of saving your best pitcher for a situation that may not come (a one-run lead in the ninth) is not worth the exchange. A 4-1 lead with the bases loaded in the fifth? Run the numbers! You think there will be a bigger threat? The ninth-inning closer model has bolstered the myth that the game is on the line only in that final inning. It certainly is more obviously on the line at that point. But the fact is, most games are decided before then.”

The nerve center for decision-making during a baseball game is the manager who, Kenny declares, typically stands on the top step of the dugout “like Washington crossing the Delaware.” He then notes that 83% of the MLB managers who started the 2015 season had played previously in the major leagues. By contrast, only 19% of NFL head coaches and 50% of NBA head coaches had similar playing experience. That leads Kenny to ask the rhetorical question: “Do you think Major League Baseball requires some different level of understanding of its sport that the NBA and NFL don’t?”

Then comes more sacrilege. Kenny states, “If you told me I would be an NFL head coach tomorrow – taking over on a Monday in the middle of the season – it would be a disaster. Same thing if you gave me an NBA team. Now tell me I’m managing the Cincinnati Reds tomorrow. You know what? I’d be fine. Understand the distinction. I’m not saying I could coach. I couldn’t teach a cutter or even a good curve ball. I couldn’t teach a hitter proper mechanics. But coaching isn’t managing. The Reds would go along for days before you even knew I was there. It’s not that hard.”

He’s probably right. A case study proves his point.

Game 5 of the 2015 World Series. The Kansas City Royals are leading the New York Mets three games to one. Mets ace Matt Harvey has thrown eight scoreless innings, giving his team a 2-to-0 lead. Mets manager Terry Collins tells Harvey he’s done for the night. Harvey pleads to take the mound for the ninth inning. The crowd is chanting his name. Collins relents and sends Harvey to the mound to finish the game.

“So what’s wrong with a manager letting his stud pitcher take the mound for three more outs?” Kenny asks.

Then he answers.

“Here’s what’s wrong: a mountain of evidence that pointed to Harvey fatiguing late in games. Harvey has a fairly clear fatigue point: 100 pitches. To that point in his career, in pitches 1-100, major league hitters hit an anemic .206 against Harvey. After Harvey reached 100 pitches, they hit a robust .373 with a Hall-of-Fame level .440 on-base percentage. Harvey, after eight innings against Kansas City, was at 102 pitches.”

In the ninth inning, Harvey – predictably, to the sabermetrician’s way of thinking – blew up. The Mets lost the game and, with it, the World Series.

“The mainstream media almost universally defended Collins for going with his heart,” Kenny writes. “Nowhere that I can recall did anyone wonder where brains fit into this equation.”

That leads to Kenny’s next target: the media.

“It is a sportswriter’s job.” he states, “to help bring the game to a mass audience, to help the interested reader or listener understand the latest strategic innovations, explain the nuances, and keep them abreast of the ongoing revolution. During the sabermetric revolution, the sportswriting fraternity failed miserably.”

And there are choice words for the self-important writers who are responsible for inducting players into baseball’s Hall of Fame: “How hard is it to figure out that Bob Feller and Mickey Mantle are Hall of Famers? Most of the players voted into the hall by the writers would also have been voted in by a panel of fourth-grade baseball fans. The hard part for the baseball writers is at the border. This is where they continue to fail.”

Kenny extols Babe Ruth as the greatest hitter of all-time. And he sets forth an intriguing theory (first advanced by Bill James) as to what enabled The Bambino to turn baseball upside down: “It happened only because he was a pitcher. No one much cared if he swung from the heels. His hitting was superfluous. The baseball culture therefore didn’t pressure him into conforming. Ruth had the good fortune to break the single-season home run record while still a pitcher. By the time he was ready to convert to an outfielder, it was too late to stop him. He had already shown that swinging for the fences was a worthwhile risk.”

Basic record-keeping also comes under Kenny’s withering eye. He denounces what he calls ”the tyranny of the batting average,” noting, “In batting average, a single is as good as a home run and walks don’t exist. Yet the very first stat cited in most baseball conversations for 120 years was the batting average.”

He savages what he believes is an idiotic overemphasis on a pitcher’s won-lost record, beginning with the question, “Do you care that Mariano Rivera, from 2001 to 2012, had an average [won-lost] record of 4-3?”

Then Kenny adds, “I’m sorry if I’m the one to break this to you, but the same goes for all pitchers.” And he backs up his opinion with data showing that, between 1920 and 2014 (a 94-year data base), pitchers who threw eight innings in a game and gave up two earned runs were credited with a “win” only 33.6% of the time.

Further analyzing his data, Kenny calls Ted Williams the second best hitter of all-time, behind only Babe Ruth. Examining The Splendid Splinter’s 1941 season (.406 batting average, .553 on-base percentage, and .735 slugging percentage), he writes, “Williams’s numbers can barely be fathomed. Our minds aren’t trained to see .553 as an on-base percentage. It’s too high. No one does that past high school.”

Kenny also notes that, while Joe DiMaggio set a major league record that still stands by hitting safely in 56 consecutive games, Williams owns three of the four longest streaks for getting on base in consecutive games, including a streak of 84 consecutive games in 1949. “In baseball,” Kenny writes, “0-for-0 with three walks is likely better than 1-for-5 with a single.”

Sabermetrics can be a daunting subject for those who grew up in a simpler time when batting average, RBIs, HRs, wins, losses, and ERA reigned. Old eyes tend to glaze over when faced with OPS, OPS+, WAR, DRS, and FIP. But Kenny ties snippets of data together in enlightening and entertaining ways and brings statistics to life with a non-stop parade of informative and entertaining anecdotes

There’s a tip of the hat to Bill James, the patron saint of sabermetrics, who Kenny calls one of “the seven most influential figures in the history of baseball” along with the likes of Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and Marvin Miller. Speaking first and foremost about James, Kenny writes, “The best thing about the sabermetric revolution is that the pioneers of the movement weren’t looking to run teams. They were fans of the game who loved baseball and proved that we can see much more when we take a wider view.”

Kenny also hails Billy Beane (who pioneered sabermetrics with the Oakland Athletics) and Theo Epstein, (who refined the art, first with the Boston Red Sox and now with the Chicago Cubs). The Houston Astros are lauded as today’s team leader in sabermetrics.

And yes; in recent years, teams have been learning. By way of example; the defensive shift (realigning the traditional placement of fielders) began in 1946 with an experiment by Cleveland Indians manager Lou Boudreau when Ted Williams was at bat. It wasn’t until the second decade of the 21st century that the shift became more than an oddity. In 2011, MLB teams employed a defensive shift on 2,358 occasions. In 2014, the number rose to more than 13,000.

“If you give it about thirty seconds of thought,” Kenny observes, “you realize why, for about 130 years, professional baseball players stood where they did on the field. That’s where they always stood. With this inability to evolve, it makes you wonder: how do we even survive as a species?”

“Athletes train hard for hours every day,” Kenny writes in closing. “Managers plot and plan, losing sleep. Organizations pour money into resources. Given how hard every player, coach, manager, and executive works, wouldn’t you think they would leap at the chance to gain a tactical edge using information? Each loss is crippling. Things do not have to even out. You need to fight and scrap and give yourself the best chance to win in every half-inning of every game. Burn this into your mind. You cannot give away a game.”

Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book (Muhammad Ali: a Tribute to the Greatest) was published by Pegasus Books. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism.

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Thomas Hauser

Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

History has Shortchanged Freddie Dawson, One of the Best Boxers of his Era

Published

8 hours ago

April 2, 2025

Arne K. Lang

History has Shortchanged Freddie Dawson, One of the Best Boxers of his Era

This reporter was rummaging around the internet last week when he stumbled on a story in the May 1950 issue of Ebony under the byline of Mike Jacobs. Boxing was then in the doldrums (isn’t it always?) and Jacobs, the most powerful promoter in boxing during the era of Joe Louis, was lassoed by the editors of the magazine to address the question of whether the over-representation of black boxers was killing the sport at the box office.

This hoary allegation had been kicking around even before the heyday of Jack Johnson, bubbling forth whenever an important black-on-black fight played to a sea of empty seats as had happened the previous year when Chicago’s Comiskey Park hosted the world heavyweight title fight between Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott.

Jacobs ridiculed the hypothesis – as one could have expected considering the publication in which the story ran – and singled out three “colored” boxers as the best of the current crop of active pugilists: Sugar Ray Robinson, Ike Williams, and Freddie Dawson.

Sugar Ray Robinson? A no-brainer. Skill-wise the greatest of the great. Even those that didn’t follow boxing, would have recognized his name. Ike Williams? Nowhere near as well-known as Robinson, but he was then the reigning lightweight champion, a man destined to go into the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the inaugural class of 1990.

And Freddie Dawson? If the name doesn’t ring a bell, dear reader, you are not alone. I confess that I too drew a blank. And that triggered a search to learn more about him.

Freddie Dawson had four fights with Ike Williams. All four were staged on Ike’s turf in Philadelphia. Were this not the case, the history books would likely show that the series knotted 2-2. Late in his career, Dawson became greatly admired in Australia. But we are jumping ahead of ourselves.

Dawson was born in 1924 in Thomasville, Arkansas, an unincorporated town in the Arkansas Delta. Likely a descendent of slaves who worked in the cotton plantations, he grew up in the so-called Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, the heart of Chicago’s Black Belt.

The first mention of him in the newspapers came in 1941 when he won Chicago’s Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) featherweight title. In those days, amateur boxing was big in the Windy City, the birthplace of the Golden Gloves. The Catholic Archdiocese, which ran gyms in every parish, and the Chicago Parks Department, were the major incubators.

In his amateur days, he was known as simply Fred Dawson. As a pro, his name often appeared as Freddy Dawson, although Freddie gradually became the more common spelling.

Dawson, who stood five-foot-six and was often described as stocky, made his pro debut on Feb. 1, 1943, at Marigold Gardens. Before the year was out, he had 16 fights under his belt, all in Chicago and all but two at Marigold. (Currently the site of an interdenominational Christian church, Marigold Gardens, on the city’s north side, was Chicago’s most active boxing and wrestling arena from the mid-1930s through the early-1950s. Joe Louis had three of his early fights there and Tony Zale was a fixture there as he climbed the ladder to the world middleweight title.)

The last of these 16 fights was fatal for Dawson’s opponent who collapsed heading back to his corner after the fight was stopped in the 10^th round and died that night at a local hospital from the effects of a brain injury.

Dawson left town after this incident and spent most of the next year in New Orleans where energetic promoter Louis Messina ran twice-weekly shows (Mondays for whites and Fridays for blacks) at the Coliseum, a major stop on boxing’s so-called Chitlin’ Circuit.

That same year, on Sept. 19, 1944, Dawson had his first encounter with Ike Williams. He was winning the fight when Ike knocked him out with a body punch in the fourth round.

The first and last meetings between Dawson and Ike Williams were spaced five years apart. In the interim, Freddie scored his two best wins, stopping Vic Patrick in the twelfth round at Sydney, NSW, and Bernard Docusen in the sixth round in Chicago.

The long-reigning lightweight champion of Australia, Patrick (49-3, 43 KOs) gave the crowd a thrill when he knocked Dawson down for a count of “six” in the penultimate 11^th round, but Dawson returned the favor twice in the final stanza, ending the contest with a punch so harsh that the poor Aussie needed five minutes before he was fit to leave the ring and would spend the night in the hospital as a precaution.

Dawson fought Bernard Docusen before 10,000-plus at Chicago Stadium on Feb. 4, 1949. An 8/5 favorite, Docusen lacked a hard punch, but the New Orleans cutie had suffered only three losses in 66 fights, had never been stopped, and had extended Sugar Ray Robinson the 15-round distance the previous year.

Dawson dismantled him. Docusen managed to get back on his feet after Dawson knocked him down in the sixth, but he was in no condition to continue and the referee waived the fight off. Dawson was then vacillating between the lightweight and welterweight divisions and reporters wondered whether it would be Robinson or Ike Williams when Dawson finally got his well-earned title shot.

Sugar Ray wasn’t in his future. Here are the results of his other matches with Ike Williams:

Dawson-Williams II (Jan. 28, 1946) – The consensus on press row was 7-2-1 or 7-3 for Dawson, but the match was ruled a draw. “[The judges and referee] evidently saw [Williams] land punches that nobody else did,” said the ringside reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dawson-Williams III (Jan. 26, 1948) – Dawson lost a majority decision. The scores were 6-4, 5-4-1, and 4-4-2. The decision was booed. Ike Williams then held the lightweight title, but this was a non-title fight. (It was tough for an outsider to get a fair shake in Philadelphia, home to Ike Williams’ co-manager Frank “Blinky” Palermo who would go to prison for his duplicitous dealings as a fight facilitator.)

Dawson-Williams IV (Dec. 5, 1949) – This would be Freddie Dawson’s only crack at a world title and he came up short. Ike Williams retained the belt, winning a unanimous decision. The fight was close – 8-7, 8-7, 9-6 – but there was no controversy.

Dawson made three more trips to Australia before his career was finished. On the first of these trips, he knocked out Jack Hassen, successor to Vic Patrick as the lightweight champion of Australia. A 1953 article in the Sydney Sunday Herald bore witness to the esteem in which Dawson was held by boxing fans in Australia: “None of our boxers could withstand his devastating attacks which not only knocked them out but also knocked years off their careers,” said the author. “It is doubtful whether any Australian boxer in any division could have beaten Dawson.”

Dawson had his final fights in the Land Down Under, finishing his career with a record of 103-14-4 while answering the bell for 962 rounds. Following what became his final fight, he had an eye operation in Sydney that was reportedly so intricate that it required a two-week hospital stay. He injured the eye again in Manila while sparring in preparation for a match with the welterweight champion of the Philippines, a match that had to be aborted because of the injury. Dawson then disappeared, by which we mean that he disappeared from the pages of the newspaper archives that allow us to construct these kinds of stories.

What about Freddie Dawson the man? A 1944 story about him said he was an outstanding all-around athlete, “a champion in all athletic undertakings – basketball, baseball, track and even jitterbugging.” A story in a Sydney paper as he was preparing to meet Vic Patrick informs us that he had two young children, ages 2 and 1, owned his own home in Chicago, and drove a two-year-old Cadillac. But beyond these flimsy snippets, Dawson the man remains elusive.

What we learned, however, is that he was one of the most underrated boxers to come down the pike in any era, a borderline Hall of Famer who ought not have fallen through the cracks. Inside the ring, this guy was one tough hombre.

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Ringside at the Fontainebleau where Mikaela Mayer Won her Rematch with Sandy Ryan

Published

4 days ago

March 30, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Ringside-at-the-Fontainebleau-where-Mikaela-Mayer-won-her-Rematch-with-Sandy-Ryan

LAS VEGAS, NV — The first meeting between Mikaela Mayer and Sandy Ryan last September at Madison Square Garden was punctuated with drama before the first punch was thrown. When the smoke cleared, Mayer had become a world-title-holder in a second weight class, taking away Ryan’s WBO welterweight belt via a majority decision in a fan-friendly fight.

The rematch tonight at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas was another fan-friendly fight. There were furious exchanges in several rounds and the crowd awarded both gladiators a standing ovation at the finish.

Mayer dominated the first half of the fight and held on to win by a unanimous decision. But Sandy Ryan came on strong beginning in round seven, and although Mayer was the deserving winner, the scores favoring her (98-92 and 97-93 twice) fail to reflect the competitiveness of the match-up. This is the best rivalry in women’s boxing aside from Taylor-Serrano.

Mayer, 34, improved to 21-2 (5). Up next, she hopes, in a unification fight with Lauren Price who outclassed Natasha Jonas earlier this month and currently holds the other meaningful pieces of the 147-pound puzzle. Sandy Ryan, 31, the pride of Derby, England, falls to 7-3-1.

Co-Feature

In his first defense of his WBO world welterweight title (acquired with a brutal knockout of Giovani Santillan after the title was vacated by Terence Crawford), Atlanta’s Brian Norman Jr knocked out Puerto Rico’s Derrieck Cuevas in the third round. A three-punch combination climaxed by a short left hook sent Cuevas staggering into a corner post. He got to his feet before referee Thomas Taylor started the count, but Taylor looked in Cuevas’s eyes and didn’t like what he saw and brought the bout to a halt.

The stoppage, which struck some as premature, came with one second remaining in the third stanza.

A second-generation prizefighter (his father was a fringe contender at super middleweight), the 24-year-old Norman (27-0, 21 KOs) is currently boxing’s youngest male title-holder. It was only the second pro loss for Cuevas (27-2-1) whose lone previous defeat had come early in his career in a 6-rounder he lost by split decision.

Other Bouts

In a career-best performance, 27-year-old Brooklyn featherweight Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington (15-0, 9 KOs) blasted out Jose Enrique Vivas (23-4) in the third round.

Carrington, who was named the Most Outstanding Boxer at the 2019 U.S. Olympic Trials despite being the lowest-seeded boxer in his weight class, decked Vivas with a right-left combination near the end of the second round. Vivas barely survived the round and was on a short leash when the third stanza began. After 53 seconds of round three, referee Raul Caiz Jr had seen enough and waived it off. Vivas hadn’t previously been stopped.

Cleveland welterweight Tiger Johnson, a Tokyo Olympian, scored a fifth-round stoppage over San Antonio’s Kendo Castaneda. Johnson assumed control in the fourth round and sent Castaneda to his knees twice with body punches in the next frame. The second knockdown terminated the match. The official time was 2:00 of round five.

Johnson advanced to 15-0 (7 KOs). Castenada declined to 21-9.

Las Vegas junior welterweight Emiliano Vargas (13-0, 11 KOs) blasted out Stockton, California’s Giovanni Gonzalez in the second round. Vargas brought the bout to a sudden conclusion with a sweeping left hook that knocked Gonzalez out cold. The end came at the 2:00 minute mark of round two.

Gonzalez brought a 20-7-2 record which was misleading as 18 of his fights were in Tijuana where fights are frequently prearranged. However, he wasn’t afraid to trade with Vargas and paid the price.

Emiliano Vargas, with his matinee idol good looks and his boxing pedigree – he is the son of former U.S. Olympian and two-weight world title-holder “Ferocious” Fernando Vargas – is highly marketable and has the potential to be a cross-over star.

Eighteen-year-old Newark bantamweight Emmanuel “Manny” Chance, one of Top Rank’s newest signees, won his pro debut with a four-round decision over So Cal’s Miguel Guzman. Chance won all four rounds on all three cards, but this was no runaway. He left a lot of room for improvement.

There was a long intermission before the co-main and again before the main event, but the tedium was assuaged by a moving video tribute to George Foreman.

Photos credit: Al Applerose

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William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0

Published

4 days ago

March 29, 2025

David A. Avila

William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0

No surprise, once again William Zepeda eked out a win over the clever and resilient Tevin Farmer to remain undefeated and retain a regional lightweight title on Saturday.

There were no knockdowns in this rematch.

The Mexican punching machine Zepeda (33-0, 17 KOs) once more sought to overwhelm Farmer (33-8-1, 9 KOs) with a deluge of blows. This rematch by Golden Boy Promotions took place in the famous beach resort area of Cancun, Mexico.

It was a mere four months ago that both first clashed in Saudi Arabia with their vastly difference styles. This time the tropical setting served as the background which suited Zepeda and his lawnmower assaults. The Mexican fans were pleased.

Nothing changed in their second meeting.

Zepeda revved up the body assault and Farmer moved around casually to his right while fending off the Mexican fighter’s attacks. By the fourth round Zepeda was able to cut off Farmer’s escape routes and targeted the body with punishing shots.

The blows came in bunches.

In the fifth round Zepeda blasted away at Farmer who looked frantic for an escape. The body assault continued with the Mexican fighter pouring it on and Farmer seeming to look ready to quit. When the round ended, he waved off his corner’s appeals to stop.

Zepeda continued to dominate the next few rounds and then Farmer began rallying. At first, he cleverly smothered Zepeda’s body attacks and then began moving and hitting sporadically. It forced the Mexican fighter to pause and figure out the strategy.

Farmer, a Philadelphia fighter, showed resiliency especially when it was revealed he had suffered a hand injury.

During the last three rounds Farmer dug down deep and found ways to score and not get hit. It was Boxing 101 and the Philly fighter made it work.

But too many rounds had been put in the bank by Zepeda. Despite the late rally by Farmer one judge saw it 114-114, but two others scored it 116-112 and 115-113 for Zepeda who retains his interim lightweight title and place at the top of the WBC rankings.

“I knew he was a difficult fighter. This time he was even more difficult,” said Zepeda.

Farmer was downtrodden about another loss but realistic about the outcome and starting slow.

“But I dominated the last rounds,” said Farmer.

Zepeda shrugged at the similar outcome as their first encounter.

“I’m glad we both put on a great show,” said Zepeda.

Female Flyweight Battle

Costa Rica’s Yokasta Valle edged past Texas fighter Marlen Esparza to win their showdown at flyweight by split decision after 10 rounds.

Valle moved up two weight divisions to meet Esparza who was slightly above the weight limit. Both showed off their contrasting styles and world class talent.

Esparza, a former unified flyweight world titlist, stayed in the pocket and was largely successful with well-placed jabs and left hooks. She repeatedly caught Valle in-between her flurries.

The current minimumweight world titlist changed tactics and found more success in the second half of the fight. She forced Esparza to make the first moves and that forced changes that benefited her style.

Neither fighter could take over the fight.

After 10 rounds one judge saw Esparza the winner 96-94, but two others saw Valle the winner 97-93 twice.

Will Valle move up and challenge the current undisputed flyweight world champion Gabriela Fundora? That’s the question.

Valle currently holds the WBC minimumweight world title.

Puerto Rico vs Mexico

Oscar Collazo (12-0, 9 KOs), the WBO, WBA minimumweight titlist, knocked out Mexico’s Edwin Cano (13-3-1, 4 KOs) with a flurry of body shots at 1:12 of the fifth round.

Collazo dominated with a relentless body attack the Mexican fighter could not defend. It was the Puerto Rican fighter’s fifth consecutive title defense.

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