Featured Articles
Ortiz-Molina is Off and Wilder-Fury is On
![Citizens Bank](https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/a5d9w4qg.jpeg)
Late Tuesday morning, Sept. 25, I received an e-mail from powerhouse PR firm Swanson Communications regarding Sunday’s TV fight at the Citizens Bank Center in Ontario, California, between Victor Ortiz and John Molina Jr. This was a generic press release informing boxing writers of the date, time, and location of the pre-fight press luncheon and the weigh-in, among other particulars.
Several hours later, Victor Ortiz was the subject of a story by Christian Martinez in the Ventura (CA) Daily Star. The timing was awkward.
Martinez informed his readers that Ortiz had turned himself in to authorities in Oxnard, California, where he was wanted on three counts of sexual assault. The charges related to an incident that happened in March. As reporter Martinez noted, this wasn’t Ortiz’s first brush with the law. He was on probation for a DUI offense. His bail was set at $100,000.
In the Internet Age, news spreads like wildfire, especially if the news is in regard to some scandal. Within hours, Martinez’s story was being rehashed on dozens of web sites.
As of Wednesday morning, Ortiz was free on bail and the fight was still on. All things considered, it shaped up as a doozy, notwithstanding the fact that Ortiz and Molina are friends and both are on the wrong side of the hill. Ortiz, a former WBC world welterweight champion, and Molina, a two-time world title challenger, were seldom in a dull fight. Ortiz’s 2011 rumble with Andre Berto was named the 2011 Fight of the Year by The Ring magazine. He would subsequently appear on “Dancing With the Stars” where his story of growing up in a dysfunctional home – he spent part of his youth in foster care – earned him legions of new fans.
It didn’t seem right that the fight would still happen, not in this day and age, not with the “Me Too” movement having gained so much traction and, predictably, it has now been cancelled. It was John Molina, not co-promoters Al Haymon or Richard Schaefer, or their spokespeople, who broke the news.
“All right guys,” said Molina in a video, “the fight has been officially cancelled obviously due to uncontrollable circumstances from Team Ortiz. Team Molina was ready. To all my friends, family and fans, that were ready to see me get down on Sunday, I’ll be in the house still, but I apologize.” (Odd that he would apologize when it wasn’t his fault.)
The show will go on without the Ortiz-Molina fight, and even without it, it’s an interesting show. The 10-round contest between undefeated Tex-Mex featherweight Brandon Figueroa and Columbia’s Oscar Escandon (25-4), a former world title challenger, shapes up as a very competitive scrap. Two hot heavyweight prospects, Joe Joyce and Efe Ajagba, and promising Philadelphia featherweight Stephen Fulton will be showcased on the undercard.
Joyce (5-0, 5 KOs) represented Great Britain in the 2016 Olympics and emerged with a bronze medal after losing a split decision to eventual champion Tony Yoka in the semifinals. He currently hangs his hat at Abel Sanchez’s compound in Big Bear where he will soon have a new sparring partner, Tyson Fury.
Joyce, who is on the fast track, is pitted against Iago Kiladze (26-3), an LA-based fighter from the Republic of Georgia.
Ajagba (6-0, 5 KOs) also participated in the Rio Olympics. An imposing physical specimen, he was the only boxer from Nigeria to qualify. He won his first pro fight in 25 seconds and his fifth pro fight in 35 seconds. His last bout entered the books as a win by disqualification when his opponent, Curtis Harper, returned to his dressing room at the sound of the opening bell.
Harper said he was making a statement about his purse. Co-promoter Schaefer had a different take on it. In Schaefer’s view, Harper took one look at Ajagba and wet his pants.
The 24-year-old Fulton (13-0, 6 KOs) is paired against Mexican trial horse German Meraz in an 8-round affair. This figures to go a few rounds. Meraz, who turned pro in 2005 at age 18, has been stopped only eight times in 112 bouts.
The Joyce, Ajagba, and Fulton bouts will be on TV along with Figueroa-Escandon. The Sunday night show will air on Fox Sports 1 and Fox Deportes.
WILDER-FURY
Unless someone gets injured in training, the highly-anticipated match between WBC heavyweight title holder Deontay Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) and former lineal heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (27-0, 19 KOs) will take place on Saturday, Dec. 1, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. This wasn’t the first choice of Fury’s promoter Frank Warren but the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas was unavailable. The bout will air on SHOWTIME PPV.
Next week Wilder and Fury will embark on a whirlwind three day, three city tour. On Monday, Nov. 1, the two will face off in London. Then it’s off to New York and then Los Angeles. All three events will be open to the public.
The star of these sessions will be the colorful, bombastic Fury, the self-styled Gypsy King. In his view, the heavyweight division currently consists of himself and a bunch of bums.
Photo credit: Luis Mejia / Ringstar Sports
Check out more boxing news on video at The Boxing Channel
Featured Articles
Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More
![Avila-Perspective-Chap-289-East-L.A.-A-Fight-Town-Claressa-Shields-and-More](https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Lina.png)
Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More
East Los Angeles has long been a haven for some of the best fighters around if you can keep them out of trouble. For every Oscar De La Hoya or Seniesa Estrada there are thousands derailed by crime, drugs or drinking.
Boxing has always been a favorite sport of East L.A. Every family has an uncle or two who boxes.
On Friday, 360 Promotions’ Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) fights Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1) in the main event at Commerce Casino, in Commerce, CA. UFC Fight Pass will stream the fight card.
The City of Commerce used to be part of East L.A. until 1960 when it incorporated. It’s still considered to be part of East Los Angeles, but informally.
Plenty of fighters come out of East L.A. but few make it all the way like De La Hoya and Estrada. Will Trinidad be the one?
The first world champion from East L.A. or “East Los” as some call it, was Solly Garcia Smith back in the late 1800s. Others were Richie Lemos, Art Frias and Joey Olivo. There is also 1984 Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzalez.
Once again 360 Promotions brings its popular brand of fights to the area. On this fight card includes two female bouts. One features Roxy Verduzco (1-0) the former amateur star fighting Colleen Davis (3-1-1) in a featherweight fight.
All that action takes place on Friday.
Elite Boxing
The next day, also in East L.A., Elite Boxing stages another boxing card at Salesian High School located at 960 S. Soto Street in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles.
Elite Boxing has promoted several successful boxing cards at the Catholic high school grounds. The area is saturated by many of the best eateries in Los Angeles. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself and grab some of that delicious food.
Boxing has long been a favorite sport of anyone who lives in East L.A. It’s a fight town equal to Philadelphia, Brooklyn or Detroit. There’s something different about the area. For more than 100 years some of the best fighters continue to come out of its boxing gyms. Some will be performing on these club shows.
For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com
Claressa Shields in Detroit
Speaking of fight towns, pound-for-pound best Claressa Shields who won two Olympic Gold Medals in boxing, moves up another weight division to tackle the WBC heavyweight world champion Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse on Saturday, July 27, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.
DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.
Shields (14-0) cleaned out the super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions and now wants to add the big girls to her conquests. She will be facing Canada’s Lepage-Joanisse (7-1) who holds the WBC belt.
The last time Shields gloved up was more than a year ago when she fought Maricela Cornejo. Don’t blame Shields. She loves to fight. She loves to win. The last time Shields lost a fight was in the amateurs and that was three presidential administrations ago.
Shields doesn’t lose.
I wonder if Las Vegas even takes bets on her fights?
The only fight she may have been an underdog was against Savannah Marshall who was the last opponent to defeat her. And that was in 2012 in China. When they met as pros two years ago, Shields avenged her loss with a blistering attack.
Don’t get Shields mad.
Perhaps her toughest foe as a pro was in her pro debut when she clashed with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in Las Vegas. It was four rounds of fists and fury as the two pounded each other on the undercard of Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in November 2016.
That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.
Assisting Shields on this fight card will be several intriguing male bouts. One guy you should pay special attention is Tito Mercado (15-0, 14 KOs) a super lightweight prospect from Pomona, California.
Many excellent fighters have come out of Pomona including Sugar Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley Jr., Alberto Davila and Richie Sandoval who just passed away this week.
Sandoval was best known for his 15-round war with Philadelphia’s Jeff Chandler for the bantamweight world title in 1984. Read the story by Arne K. Lang on this link: https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-boxing-articles-boxing-news-videos-rankings-and-results/81467-former-world-bantamweight-champion-richie-sandoval-passes-away-at-age-63 .
Fights to Watch
Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) vs Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1).
Sat. ESPN+ 12:30 p.m. Joe Joyce (16-2) vs Derek Chisora (34-13).
Sat. DAZN 3 p.m. Claressa Shields (14-0) vs Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse (7-1), Michel Rivera (25-1) vs Hugo Roldan (22-2-1); Tito Mercado (15-0) vs Hector Sarmiento (21-2).
Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker
To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE
Featured Articles
Arne’s Almanac: Jake Paul and Women’s Boxing, a Curmudgeon’s Take
![Arne's-Almanac-Jake-Paul-and-Women's-Boxing-a-Curmudgeon's-Take](https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/bestest.png)
Jake Paul can fight more than a little. The view from here is that he would make it interesting against any fringe contender in the cruiserweight division. However, Jake’s boxing acumen pales when paired against his skill as a flim-flam artist.
Jake brought a 9-1 record into last weekend’s bout with Mike Perry. As noted by boxing writer Paul Magno, Jake’s previous opponents consisted of “a You Tuber, a retired NBA star, five retired MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, and two undersized and inactive fall-guy boxers.”
Mike Perry, a 32-year-old Floridian, was undefeated (6-0, 3 KOs) as a bare-knuckle boxer after forging a 14-8 record in UFC bouts. In pre-fight blurbs, Perry was billed as the baddest bare knuckle boxer of all time, but against Jake Paul he proved to have very unrefined skills as a conventional boxer which Team Paul undoubtedly knew all along. Perry lasted into the eighth round in a one-sided fight that could have been stopped a lot sooner.
Jake Paul is both a boxer and a promoter. As a promoter, he handles Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female boxers in history. That makes him the person most responsible (because the buck stops with him) for the wretched mismatch in last Saturday’s co-feature, the bout between Serrano and Stevie Morgan.
Morgan, who took up boxing two years ago at age 33, brought a 14-1 record. Nicknamed the Sledgehammer, she had won 13 of her 14 wins by knockout, eight in the opening round. However, although she resides in Florida, all but one of those 13 knockouts happened in Colombia.
“We found that in Colombia there were just more opportunities for women’s boxing than in the United States,” she told a prominent boxing writer whose name we won’t mention.
The truth is that, for some folks, Colombia is the boxing equivalent of a feeder lot for livestock, a place where a boxer can go to fatten their record. The opportunities there were no greater than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995. It was there that Peter McNeeley prepped for his match with Mike Tyson with a 6-second knockout of professional punching bag Frankie Hines. (Six seconds? So it would be written although no one seems to have been there to witness it.)
Serrano vs Morgan was understood to be a stay-busy fight for Amanda whose rematch with Katie Taylor was postponed until November. Stevie Morgan, to her credit, answered the bell for the second round whereas others in her situation would have remained on the stool and invented an injury to rationalize it. Thirty-eight seconds later it was all over and Ms. Morgan was free to go home and use her sledgehammer to do some light dusting.
The Paul-Perry and Serrano-Morgan fights played out in a sold-out arena in Tampa before an estimated 17,000. Those without a DAZN subscription paid $64.95 for the livestream. Paul’s next promotion, where he will touch gloves with 58-year-old Mike Tyson (unless Iron Mike pulls a Joe Biden and pulls out; a capital idea) with Serrano-Taylor II the semi-main, will almost certainly rake in more money than any other boxing promotion this year.
Asked his opinion of so-called crossover boxing by a reporter for a college newspaper, the venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum said, “It’s not my bag but folks who don’t like it shouldn’t get too worked up over it because no one is stealing from anybody.” True enough, but for some of us, the phenomenon is distressing.
—
The next big women’s fight happens Saturday in Detroit where Claressa Shields seeks a world title in a third weight class against WBC heavyweight belt-holder Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.
A two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated in 14 fights as a pro, Shields is very good, arguably the best female boxer of her generation which makes her, arguably, the best female boxer of all time. But turning away Lepage-Joanisse (7-1, 2 KOs) won’t elevate her stature in our eyes.
Purportedly 17-4 as an amateur, the Canadian won her title in her second crack at it. Back in August of 2017, she challenged Cancun’s Alejandra Jimenez in Cancun and was stopped in the third round. Entering the bout, Lepage-Joanisse was 3-0 as a pro and had never fought a match slated for more than four rounds.
![Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse](https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Vanessa-300x263.png)
Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse
True, on the women’s side, the heavyweight bracket is a very small pod. A sanctioning body has to make concessions to harness a sanctioning fee. Nonetheless, how absurd that a woman who had answered the bell for only 11 rounds would be deemed qualified to compete for a world title. (FYI: Alejandra Jimenez was purportedly born a man. She left the sport with a 12-0-1 record after her win over Franchon Crews Dazurn was changed to a no-contest when she tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.)
Following her defeat to Jimenez, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse, now 29 years old, was out of action for six-and-a-half years. When she returned, she was still a heavyweight, but a much slender heavyweight. She carried 231 pounds for Jimenez. In her most recent bout where she captured the vacant WBC title with a split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, she clocked in at 173 ¼. (On the distaff side, there’s no uniformity among the various sanctioning bodies as to what constitutes a heavyweight.)
Claressa Shields doesn’t need Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to reinforce her credentials as a future Hall of Famer. She made the cut a long time ago.
To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE
Featured Articles
Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63
![Former-World-Bamtamweight-Champion-Richie-Sandoval-Passes-Away-at-age-63](https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/richie.png)
Richie Sandoval, who won the WBA and lineal bantamweight title in one of the biggest upsets of the 1980s and then, not quite two years later, suffered near-fatal injuries in a title defense, has passed away at the age of 63.
News circulated fast in the Las Vegas boxing community on Monday, July 22, the grapevine actuated by a tweet from Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler: “Boxing and the Top Rank family lost one of our own last night in the passing of former WBA bantamweight champion Richie Sandoval. It hurts personally and professionally to know that Richie is gone at age 63. RIP campeon.”
Details are vague but the cause of death was apparently a sudden heart attack that Sandoval experienced while visiting the Southern California home of his son of the same name.
Richie Sandoval put the LA County community of Pomona, California, on the boxing map before Shane Mosley came along and gave the town a more frequently-cited mention in the sports section of the papers. He came from a fighting family. An older brother, Albert “Superfly” Sandoval, became a big draw at LA’s fabled Olympic Auditorium while building a 35-2-1 record that included a failed bid to capture Lupe Pintor’s world bantamweight title.
Richie was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic boxing team that was stranded when U.S. President Jimmy Carter (and many other world leaders) boycotted the event as a protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.
As a pro, Sandoval’s signature win was a 15th-round stoppage of Jeff Chandler. They fought on April 7, 1984 in Atlantic City. Chandler was making the tenth defense of his world bantamweight title.
Despite being a heavy underdog, Sandoval dominated the fight, winning almost every round until the referee stepped in and waived it off. Chandler, who was 33-1-2 heading in and had avenged his lone defeat, never fought again.
Sandoval made two successful defenses before risking his title against Gaby Canizales on the undercard of Hagler-Mugabi in the outdoor stadium at Caesars Palace. In round seven, Sandoval, who had a hellish time making the weight, was knocked down three times and suffered a seizure as he collapsed from the third knockdown. Stretchered out of the ring, he was rushed to the hospital where doctors reduced the swelling in his brain and beat the odds to save his life. This would be Richie’s lone defeat. He finished his pro career with a record of 29-1 (17 KOs).
Bob Arum cushioned some of the pain by giving Richie a $25,000 bonus and offering him a lifetime job at Top Rank which Richie accepted. And let the record show that Arum was good to his word.
A more elaborate portrait of Richie Sandoval was published in these pages in 2017. You can check it out HERE. May he rest in peace.
To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE
-
Featured Articles2 weeks ago
Middleweight Title Fight Canceled; Super Welterweight Sizzler Announced by Golden Boy
-
Featured Articles3 weeks ago
Angelo Leo’s Homecoming Fight in Albuquerque was Fermented on ProBox
-
Featured Articles4 days ago
Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63
-
Featured Articles4 weeks ago
Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez is the Boss at 115, but Don’t Sleep on Ioka vs Martinez
-
Featured Articles2 weeks ago
Results and Recaps from Philly where ‘Boots’ Ennis Stomped Out David Avanesyan
-
Featured Articles4 weeks ago
Results & Recaps from Miami where Teofimo Lopez Out-Classed Steve Claggett
-
Featured Articles3 weeks ago
Shakur Improves to 22-0 and Christmas Comes Early for Conceicao in Newark
-
Featured Articles2 weeks ago
Trevor McCumby Fell Off the Map and Now He’s Back with a Big Fight on the Horizon