The Trash Talk Stoking the GGG-Canelo Rumble: Is at least some of it Strategic?

The subject was trash talk, its truthful origins in some cases and its usage as a strategic tool in others. Sometimes it’s a combination of both

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Published

7 years ago

September 13, 2018

Bernard Fernandez

The subject was trash talk, its truthful origins in some cases and its usage as a strategic tool in others. Sometimes it’s a combination of both. But separating fact from fiction beforehand can be difficult for those on the outside, so it made sense to consult an expert on the subject to weigh in on the increasingly nasty dialogue between the respective camps before Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez exchange verbal jabs for actual punches in Saturday night’s HBO Pay for View rematch at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena.

So how about it, Bernard Hopkins? As the old commercials once advised us, is it live or is it Memorex? Great taste or less filling?

“It’s real, all right. It’s real on both sides,” said Hopkins, who can’t be described as a strictly neutral observer given his position as an executive with Golden Boy Promotions, for whom Alvarez is the principal cash cow.

But regardless of whether the charges and counter-charges, most of which are fairly dripping with venom, are 100 percent genuine hardly seems to matter at this point. The perception of bad blood between Fighter A and Fighter B can stoke wildfires of interest in a particular bout, and the methods employed for igniting the conflagration can range from clever, comical, profane and legitimate animosity. Selecting just the right format to throw a particular opponent off his game is something of an art form.

During a 28-year professional boxing career that will result in a first-ballot induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, Hopkins spiced his physical skills, superior conditioning and ring smarts with a tart tongue and occasional props, the most obvious being the Puerto Rican flag he twice threw down at press conferences in advance of his Sept. 29, 2001, showdown with that island’s favorite son, Felix Trinidad. The gestures of disrespect so infuriated Trinidad that he boiled over with anger, wanting nothing so much as to put a beat-down on B-Hop. And while a more civil Hopkins might have won anyway, in legend and lore his signature, 12^th-round technical knockout victory in a fight he was handily winning to that point is suspected by many to have been somewhat aided by his getting into Trinidad’s head and making him, well, a little bit crazy.

But the insult route in the prefight mental warfare can backfire sometimes. Prior to the first installment in the classic Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier trilogy, on March 8, 1971, Ali — whose previously preferred method of annoying the other guy was to compose trite poems predicting the exact round of that fighter’s impending defeat — resorted to cruel and personal taunts, as well as portraying himself as black America’s champion while holding another proud black man up to ridicule. On one televised talk show, Ali said, “The only people rooting for Joe Frazier are white people in suits, Alabama sheriffs and members of the Ku Klux Klan.”

While that kind of incendiary rhetoric hyped interest in the “Fight of the Century” to a fever pitch, Ali – who later admitted he didn’t really mean much of what he said, that it was just a means of making a big event even bigger – did not count on the motivational effect it had on Smokin’ Joe. “Before we fought, the words hurt me more than the punches,” Frazier is quoted as saying in Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times, by author Thomas Hauser. Not nearly as verbose as Ali, Frazier exacted his revenge the only way he knew how, with a barrage of left hooks, one of which dropped his tormentor in the 15^th round and served as the exclamation point for the Philadelphia slugger’s unanimous decision victory. But that was one of the few instances in which Ali’s trash talk didn’t produce the desired result.

“When it came to mental warfare,” Hopkins said, “I always won that hands down against the guys I fought. I was right behind Muhammad Ali.”

A contender for Hopkins’ runner-up status to Ali as the trash-talking GOAT is the now-retired (but maybe not for long) Floyd Mayweather Jr., whose curious matchup with UFC superstar Conor McGregor on Aug. 26, 2017, whom “Money” stopped in 10 rounds, was presaged by a bizarre four-city promotional tour in which the participants tried to outdo one another in the dropping of globally televised f-bombs. The slew of shouted expletives no doubt helped produce the 4.3 million pay-per-view buys and $600 million in total revenues that made the novelty bout a financial bonanza, but there were more than a few horrified onlookers who probably wished the fighters’ mamas could have come on stage to wash their sons’ mouths out with soap.

Nor is the often-coarse repartee restricted to boxing. Before the NFL took steps to eliminate some of the cruder stuff, it was not uncommon for homophobic slurs, verbal attacks on girlfriends and wives, even questioning the paternity of an opponent’s child to be used to irritate players wearing the other team’s uniform. “I love to be annoying; I’m going to do stuff that will get on your nerves,” Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcom Jenkins told Joseph Santoliquito in a story that was published by PhillyVoice in March 2017. “The talk is more sanitized today than when I first got into the league (in 2009). There is a new generation of players where everybody is buddy-buddy, trading jerseys after games.”

It remains to be seen how GGG-Canelo II is influenced by the relentless innuendos and flat-out accusations of impropriety. While there was grudging respect between the two in the lead-up to their first meeting on Sept. 16 of last year, which ended in a split draw, whatever goodwill that once existed between them and their camps appears to have dissipated. Golovkin and his trainer, Abel Sanchez, believed GGG had done enough to get the decision, but they hinted at darker forces behind judge Adalaide Byrd’s incomprehensible 118-110 scorecard for Canelo.

Tensions would continue to mount after the originally scheduled date for the do-over, on May 5 of this year, was postponed when Canelo tested positive – twice – for the banned substance Clenbuterol. Although Alvarez and Golden Boy CEO Oscar De La Hoya claimed the failed drug tests owed to his fighter inadvertently having ingested tainted beef while training in Mexico, Golovkin has maintained that they serve as proof that the vastly popular Mexican fighter is a purposeful cheater, and probably was before his suspension that has now been lifted.

GGG, on the scoring of the first fight: “It was terrible. It was terrible for the people and, of course, it was terrible for the sport of boxing because statistics showed I landed more punches. The fans saw I wanted to fight and Canelo did not want to fight. The fans who watched it live saw the judges bringing crazy scorecards. When the decision was announced, everyone was saying, `Oh, come on! This is not real! This is not true!’ Everybody was mad because those judges killed the sport that night.”

Abel Sanchez, on the subject of Canelo’s failed drug tests: “They (Alvarez, De La Hoya and Alvarez cornermen Eddy Reynoso and Jose “Chepo” Reynoso) keep accusing us of insulting them. There have been no insults from our side. What I’ve stated has been facts. Golovkin gets bothered when people try to sweep the two positive tests under the rug like nothing ever happened and it’s business as usual. Canelo is the one that tested positive, twice. He’s the one that created that. It wasn’t us.”

Sanchez, on Chepo Reynoso’s claim that GGG fights “like a donkey”: “Chepo Reynoso has never had an Olympian. Chepo Reynoso has never had a silver medalist. Chepo Reynoso has never had 18 world champions, as I’ve had. Chepo Reynoso just talks about Canelo. When he gets to my level, maybe he can speak in an intelligent manner. To hear somebody talk like that is ridiculous. It shows a lack of class, a lack of intelligence.”

Sanchez, on what he thinks of Canelo as a person and as a fighter: “I don’t think he’s a man of honor, a man of character. I think he will run like a scared rabbit, like he did the first time.”

Would you care to respond, Team Canelo?

Canelo: “What little respect we had (for Golovkin and his handlers), it’s been lost. Is it personal now? Yes, absolutely. It’s totally changed. They disrespected me. Everything they’ve been saying, everything they’ve been doing, their actions … now it’s different. It’s personal.”

De La Hoya on Alvarez’s motivation to punish GGG: “That’s exactly what a fighter needs, and that’s exactly why this is going to be a great fight. When you’re a fighter and you have no respect for your opponent, magic happens. You train harder in the gym. You run extra miles. More importantly, it’s mental. The mental aspect of it is at its highest level.”

Eddy Reynoso: “Canelo has more talent. He’s more versatile. He knows how to walk in the ring, how to make you miss, how to counterpunch. He’s the total package. He is a thinking fighter, an intelligent fighter. Come Sept. 15, I can assure you two things: not only is Saul going to take away GGG’s undefeated record, he’s also going to shut up Mr. Abel Sanchez.”

From the sound of it, Hopkins would appear to be correct. The two-way rancor is real, not mere hyperbole. Ah, but how to use that pent-up hostility to one fighter or another’s best advantage?

It is Sanchez who has been constantly sniping at Canelo, claiming he fought “scared” the first time, tactics unbefitting a true Mexican warrior. Meanwhile, Sanchez keeps saying, Kazakhstan’s Golovkin more closely adheres to the “Mexican Style” of fighting, which is to come forward and constantly go for the knockout.

“I remember how Canelo boasted, how Bernard boasted that Canelo was so great he was going to knock out Golovkin in the 10^th round,” Sanchez recalled. “I just hope he’s true to his word this time. The fans are expecting the Canelo that they’ve seen in the past, not the Canelo they saw last year. If he’s true to his words, that’ll give us the kind of classic fight that we expected the first time – two guys that want to win, not one guy that wants to win and the other guy just looking to survive.”

Although Alvarez has vowed to knock out GGG, he is dropping hints that he will not be lured into a toe-to-toe slugfest. “It’s one thing to be coming forward like a donkey and it’s another thing to be moving, dodging punches, counterpunching, even staying on the ropes without being hit,” he said. “I hope (GGG) goes back to his house afterward and realizes what I’ve been saying about him: that he’s a dumbass.”

To Hopkins’ trained ear, Sanchez’s suggestions of a frightened Canelo’s reluctance to engage at close quarters is the equivalent of the Puerto Rican flags he threw down to incite Trinidad into fighting the fight that played into B-Hop’s hands. He insisted Alvarez is too savvy to fall into that trap.

“Why do you think Abel Sanchez is talking so much about why Canelo needs to fight Mexican Style?’” Hopkins asked. “It’s a way of getting people to forget that Golovkin can fight only one way.

“I told Oscar a long time ago, when Canelo fought (James) Kirkland, that all that talk about Golovkin fighting `Mexican Style’ was just a way to camouflage his lack of ring generalship. How do you finesse this dangerous guy, who can get you out of there at any moment of any round? You make his power work against him, like Ali did with George Foreman.”

It’s a given that GGG and Canelo don’t much care for one another. But the outcome of their bitter feud, fueled by a desire for each to impose his will upon the other, may well hinge on which of these splendid fighters can keep a portion of his emotional need to dominate with enough mental discipline to perform under control. It is that inner struggle – the one within yourself, as well as the one as against your opponent – that often determines who survives big fights otherwise drenched in raw emotion.

Bernard Fernandez is the retired boxing writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. He is a five-term former president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, an inductee into the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Atlantic City Boxing Halls of Fame and the recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism and the Barney Nagler Award for Long and Meritorious Service to Boxing.

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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

Published

2 days ago

April 20, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.

The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.

In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.

The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:

New York Times

New York News

New York World

New York Sun

New York Journal

New York Post

New York Mirror

New York Telegram

New York Graphic

New York Herald Tribune

Brooklyn Eagle

Brooklyn Times

Brooklyn Standard Union

Brooklyn Citizen

Bronx Home News

This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.

Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.

The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.

Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)

Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.

Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.

There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.

In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.

There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.

The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.

Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.

The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.

The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.

Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.

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Gabriela Fundora KOs Marilyn Badillo and Perez Upsets Conwell in Oceanside

Published

2 days ago

April 20, 2025

David A. Avila

Gabriela-Fundora-KOs-Marilyn-Badillo-and-Perez-Upsets-Conwell-in-Oceanside

It was just a numbers game for Gabriela Fundora and despite Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo’s elusive tactics it took the champion one punch to end the fight and retain her undisputed flyweight world title by knockout on Saturday.

Will it be her last flyweight defense?

Though Fundora (16-0, 8 KOs) fired dozens of misses, a single punch found Badillo (19-1-1, 3 KOs) and ended her undefeated career and first attempt at a world title at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.

Fundora, however, proves unbeatable at flyweight.

The champion entered the arena as the headliner for the Golden Boy Promotion show and stepped through the ropes with every physical advantage possible, including power.

Mexico’s Badillo was a midget compared to Fundora but proved to be as elusive as a butterfly in a menagerie for the first six rounds. As the six-inch taller Fundora connected on one punch for every dozen thrown, that single punch was a deadly reminder.

Badillo tried ducking low and slipping to the left while countering with slashing uppercuts, she found little success. She did find the body a solid target but the blows proved to be useless. And when Badillo clinched, that proved more erroneous as Fundora belted her rapidly during the tie-ups.

“She was kind of doing her ducking thing,” said Fundora describing Badillo’s defensive tactics. “I just put the pressure on. It was just like a train. We didn’t give her that break.”

The Mexican fighter tried valiantly with various maneuvers. None proved even slightly successful. Fundora remained poised and under control as she stalked the challenger.

In the seventh round Badillo seemed to take a stand and try to slug it out with Fundora. She quickly was lit up by rapid left crosses and down she went at 1:44 of the seventh round. The Mexican fighter’s corner wisely waved off the fight and referee Rudy Barragan stopped the fight and held the dazed Badillo upright.

Once again Fundora remained champion by knockout. The only question now is will she move up to super flyweight or bantamweight to challenge the bigger girls.

Perez Beats Conwell.

Mexico’s Jorge “Chino” Perez (33-4, 26 KOs) upset Charles Conwell (21-1, 15 KOs) to win by split decision after 12 rounds in their super welterweight showdown.

It was a match that paired two hard-hitting fighters whose ledgers brimmed with knockouts, but neither was able to score a knockdown against each other.

Neither fighter moved backward. It was full steam ahead with Conwell proving successful to the body and head with left hooks and Perez connecting with rights to the head and body. It was difficult to differentiate the winner.

Though Conwell seemed to be the superior defensive fighter and more accurate, two judges preferred Perez’s busier style. They gave the fight to Perez by 115-113 scores with the dissenter favoring Conwell by the same margin.

It was Conwell’s first pro loss. Maybe it will open doors for more opportunities.

Other Bouts

Tristan Kalkreuth (15-1) managed to pass a serious heat check by unanimous decision against former contender Felix Valera (24-8) after a 10-round back-and-forth heavyweight fight.

It was very close.

Kalkreuth is one of those fighters that possess all the physical tools including youth and size but never seems to be able to show it. Once again he edged past another foe but at least this time he faced an experienced fighter in Valera.

Valera had his moments especially in the middle of the 10-round fight but slowed down during the last three rounds.

One major asset for Kalkreuth was his chin. He got caught but still motored past the clever Valera. After 10 rounds two judges saw it 99-91 and one other judge 97-93 all for Kalkreuth.

Highly-rated prospect Ruslan Abdullaev (2-0) blasted past dangerous Jino Rodrigo (13- 5-2) in an eight round super lightweight fight. He nearly stopped the very tough Rodrigo in the last two rounds and won by unanimous decision.

Abdullaev is trained by Joel and Antonio Diaz in Indio.

Bakersfield prospect Joel Iriarte (7-0, 7 KOs) needed only 1:44 to knock out Puerto Rico’s Marcos Jimenez (25-12) in a welterweight bout.

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‘Krusher’ Kovalev Exits on a Winning Note: TKOs Artur Mann in his ‘Farewell Fight’

Published

3 days ago

April 19, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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At his peak, former three-time world light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev ranked high on everyone’s pound-for-pound list. Now 42 years old – he turned 42 earlier this month – Kovalev has been largely inactive in recent years, but last night he returned to the ring in his hometown of Chelyabinsk, Russia, and rose to the occasion in what was billed as his farewell fight, stopping Artur Mann in the seventh frame.

Kovalev hit his peak during his first run as a world title-holder. He was 30-0-1 (26 KOs) entering first match with Andre Ward, a mark that included a 9-0 mark in world title fights. The only blemish on his record was a draw that could have been ruled a no-contest (journeyman Grover Young was unfit to continue after Kovalev knocked down in the second round what with was deemed an illegal rabbit punch). Among those nine wins were two stoppages of dangerous Haitian-Canadian campaigner Jean Pascal and a 12-round shutout over Bernard Hopkins.

Kovalev’s stature was not diminished by his loss to the undefeated Ward. All three judges had it 114-113, but the general feeling among the ringside press was that Sergey nicked it.

The rematch was also somewhat controversial. Referee Tony Weeks, who halted the match in the eighth stanza with Kovalev sitting on the lower strand of ropes, was accused of letting Ward get away with a series of low blows, including the first punch of a three-punch series of body shots that culminated in the stoppage. Sergey was wobbled by a punch to the head earlier in the round and was showing signs of fatigue, but he was still in the fight. Respected judge Steve Weisfeld had him up by three points through the completed rounds.

Sergey Kovalev was never the same after his second loss to Andre Ward, albeit he recaptured a piece of the 175-pound title twice, demolishing Vyacheslav Shabranskyy for the vacant WBO belt after Ward announced his retirement and then avenging a loss to Eleider Alvarez (TKO by 7) with a comprehensive win on points in their rematch.

Kovalev’s days as a title-holder ended on Nov. 2, 2019 when Canelo Alvarez, moving up two weight classes to pursue a title in a fourth weight division, stopped him in the 11^th round, terminating what had been a relatively even fight with a hellacious left-right combination that left Krusher so discombobulated that a count was superfluous.

That fight went head-to-head with a UFC fight in New York City. DAZN, to their everlasting discredit, opted to delay the start of Canelo-Kovalev until the main event of the UFC fight was finished. The delay lasted more than an hour and Kovalev would say that he lost his psychological edge during the wait.

Kovalev had two fights in the cruiserweight class between his setback to Canelo and last night’s presumptive swan song. He outpointed Tervel Pulev in Los Angeles and lost a 10-round decision to unheralded Robin Sirwan Safar in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Artur Mann, a former world title challenger – he was stopped in three rounds by Mairis Briedis in 2021 when Briedis was recognized as the top cruiserweight in the world – was unexceptional, but the 34-year-old German, born in Kazakhstan, wasn’t chopped liver either, and Kovalev’s stoppage of him will redound well to the Russian when he becomes eligible for the Boxing Hall of Fame.

Krusher almost ended the fight in the second round. He knocked Mann down hard with a short left hand and seemingly scored another knockdown before the round was over (but it was ruled a slip). Mann barely survived the round.

In the next round, a punch left Mann with a bad cut on his right eyelid, but the German came to fight and rounds three, four and five were competitive.

Kovalev had a good sixth round although there were indications that he was tiring. But in the seventh he got a second wind and unleashed a right-left combination that rolled back the clock to the days when he was one of the sport’s most feared punchers. Mann went down hard and as he staggered to his feet, his corner signaled that the fight should be stopped and the referee complied. The official time was 0:49 of round seven. It was the 30^th KO for Kovalev who advanced his record to 36-5-1.

Addendum: History informs us that Farewell Fights have a habit of becoming redundant, by which we mean that boxers often get the itch to fight again after calling it quits. Have we seen the last of Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev? We woudn’t bet on it.

The complete Kovalev-Mann fight card was live-streamed on the Boxing News youtube channel.

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