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Three Punch Combo: Cruiserweights Take Center Stage, A PPV show in Miami and More
THREE PUNCH COMBO — The eyes of the boxing world will be on the big cruiserweight title fight on Saturday between unified champion Oleksandr Usyk (15-0, 11 KO’s) and Tony Bellew (30-2-1, 20 KO’s) in Manchester, England. But there’s another cruiserweight fight taking place later in the day that I think steals the spotlight from an entertainment standpoint.
First off, I completely understand why the Usyk-Bellew fight has come to fruition. Usyk has already defeated most of the viable contenders at cruiserweight. Bellew is a big name in the UK. He is coming off two big wins against heavyweight David Haye. Usyk needs some new competition and Bellew has momentum going in his career. Plus, he can sell tickets in the UK. So the fight makes total sense.
However, in my eyes Bellew is a step down for Usyk from most of the recent competition he has faced. And in most of those fights, Usyk proved levels above his opposition. Simply put, it is difficult to envision Bellew being competitive. As such, it is difficult for me to get excited about this fight.
Also this weekend, the second season of the cruiserweight tournament in the World Boxing Super Series continues from the UIC Pavilion in Chicago. Mairis Briedis (24-1, 18 KO’s) takes on Noel Mikaelian (23-1, 10 KO’s) in one quarterfinal with Krzysztof Glowacki (30-1, 19 KO’s) taking on Maksim Vlasov (42-2, 25 KO’s) in the other quarterfinal. While I think Briedis easily takes care of business against Mikaelian, formerly known as Noel Gevor, the Glowacki-Vlasov contest should prove to be an entertaining competitive scrap.
Glowacki (pictured) burst on the scene in 2015 with a knockout of then cruiserweight kingpin Marco Huck in a fight that many considered the fight of the year. A year later, Glowacki would lose for the only time in his career by decision to the above mentioned Usyk. Since that loss, he’s rattled off four straight wins. He is an aggressive skilled southpaw who is not afraid to mix it up and exchange with his opposition.
Vlasov seems like he has been around forever. The veteran pro has only lost twice by decision in 44 career fights and is riding a 12 fight winning streak since losing in January of 2015 to now super middleweight title holder Gilberto Ramirez. Vlasov likes to throw power punches in combination behind the left jab from his orthodox stance. He is more than willing to lead and get off first with his punches, but in doing so he is vulnerable to getting countered and often stands straight up in front of his opponent, making him an easy target.
Glowacki-Vlasov should be a very competitive fight and given the styles I think we see plenty of good exchanges. While Usyk-Bellew will command the most attention, the Glowacki-Vlasov contest should not be overlooked.
Better Late Than Never: Gamboa vs. Lopez in 2019
This Saturday night, Yuriorkis Gamboa (28-2, 17 KO’s) and Juan Manuel Lopez (35-6, 32 KO’s) fight in separate contests on a PPV card (suggested retail: $24.95) in Miami, FL. If each is victorious, then the plan is for the two to finally meet in the ring in 2019. It is a fight that has always seemed inevitable and one that I admit still draws my interest.
It is hard to think back but many years ago both Gamboa and Lopez were considered to be future stars in the sport. And I just don’t mean being world champions. They were each thought to be destined for greatness. The talent that each displayed on the way up was simply eye popping.
Gamboa just had this special set of athletic qualities rarely seen in prizefighters. His hand speed was dazzling. With his quick hands, he started to become a masterful counterpuncher. And then there was the power. Gamboa scored some highlight reel knockouts on his rise.
Lopez was an aggressive southpaw with thunderous power in both hands. He was drawing comparisons very early in his career to the great Felix Trinidad and it was easy to see why. The knockout ability along with his natural athleticism made Lopez quite a force.
With both Lopez and Gamboa competing around the featherweight division, a matchup between the two was a fight fans dream. We all know the story from here. Top Rank wanted to build the bout into a mega-fight. They thought the bout needed to be “marinated.” In their eyes, it needed to be built into something like De La Hoya-Trinidad.
But as history would show, Gamboa and Lopez had their weaknesses. They were so naturally gifted that those weaknesses at first were not apparent as they could get away with a lot inside the ring. First, it was Lopez whose defensive issues got exposed. Later, Gamboa’s own defensive shortcomings, along with management missteps derailed his once promising career. The fight never happened.
Here we are now eight or nine years after the bout should have happened. By now, people have lost interest and many in boxing want to see both retire. And though I too was a skeptic at first, as I think about it more, I do want to see how this contest will play out.
Who was the better fighter? One last hurdle to cross for both on Saturday and then we may finally get the answer.
Thomas Hearns vs. Jay Snyder – You Never Know What Can Happen In Boxing
November 6th will mark the 20th anniversary of the Thomas Hearns-Jay Snyder bout that took place at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, MI. The contest, which marked a return to the ring for the legendary Hearns after nearly a two year layoff, has long been forgotten, but something very rarely seen in boxing occurred that night in Detroit.
The plan for Hearns at this point in his career was to have a final farewell tour. He was, of course, beloved by his hometown fans in Detroit and could sell tickets there regardless of the opponent. So for the first fight of what was supposed to be the last leg of his career, a very safe opponent was selected named Jay Snyder.
Snyder, 37, entered the fight with a record of 19-5 but had never defeated anyone who had a winning record. Moreover, all five of Snyder’s losses were by knockout and all those knockout losses occurred within four rounds. He was known as a crude brawler who lacked speed and defense who’d bring the fight to Hearns but in doing so expose his weak chin. On paper he was the perfect opponent for Hearns at this stage of Hearns’ career.
Hearns entered the ring weighing a career high 190 pounds but still appeared in much better shape than Snyder who tipped the scales at 185. Hearns, who also had somewhere around an 11-inch reach advantage, looked to work behind the jab when the opening bell rang as Snyder pressed forward.
About a minute into the round, Snyder threw a well-timed left jab that caught Hearns coming in just as Hearns was unloading a right hand of his own. Snyder’s jab landed first but Hearns right hand also found a home and both men fell to the canvas. It was a double knockdown!
Hearns popped up quickly and appeared more embarrassed than anything about having fallen to the canvas. Snyder, on the other hand, was not getting up anytime soon and was counted out.
The double knockdown is a rarely seen occurrence, but every now and then it happens. And when it does, it always seem to happen in the most unlikely of scenarios like on November 6th, 1998, in the long forgotten bout between Thomas Hearns and Jay Snyder.
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Cardoso, Nunez, and Akitsugi Bring Home the Bacon in Plant City
Cardoso, Nunez, and Akitsugi Bring Home the Bacon in Plant City
The final ShoBox event of 2025 played out tonight at the company’s regular staging ground in Plant City, Florida. When the smoke cleared, the “A-side” fighters in the featured bouts were 3-0 in step-up fights vs. battle-tested veterans, two of whom were former world title challengers. However, the victors in none of the three fights, with the arguable exception of lanky bantamweight Katsuma Akitsugi, made any great gain in public esteem.
In the main event, a lightweight affair, Jonhatan Cardoso, a 25-year-old Brazilian, earned a hard-fought, 10-round unanimous decision over Los Mochis, Mexico southpaw Eduardo Ramirez. The decision would have been acceptable to most neutral observers if it had been deemed a draw, but the Brazilian won by scores of 97-93 and 96-94 twice.
Cardoso, now 18-1 (15), had the crowd in his corner., This was his fourth straight appearance in Plant City. Ramirez, disadvantaged by being the smaller man with a shorter reach, declined to 28-5-3.
Co-Feature
In a 10-round featherweight fight that had no indelible moments, Luis Reynaldo Nunez advanced to 20-0 (13) with a workmanlike 10-round unanimous decision over Mexico’s Leonardo Baez. The judges had it 99-91 and 98-92 twice.
Nunez, from the Dominican Republic, is an economical fighter who fights behind a tight guard. Reputedly 85-5 as an amateur, he is managed by Sampson Lewkowicz who handles David Benavidez among others and trained by Bob Santos. Baez (22-5) was returning to the ring after a two-year hiatus.
Also
In a contest slated for “10,” ever-improving bantamweight Katsuma Akitsugi improved to 12-0 (3 KOs) with a sixth-round stoppage of Filipino import Aston Palicte (28-7-1). Akitsugi caught Palicte against the ropes and unleashed a flurry of punches climaxed by a right hook. Palicte went down and was unable to beat the count. The official time was 1:07 of round six.
This was the third straight win by stoppage for Akitsugi, a 27-year-old southpaw who trains at Freddie Roach’s Wild Card gym in LA under Roach’s assistant Eddie Hernandez. Palicte, who had been out of the ring for 16 months, is a former two-time world title challenger at superflyweight (115).
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Introducing Jaylan Phillips, Boxing’s Palindrome Man
On Thursday, Nov. 28, as Americans hunkered down at the dinner table with family and friends for our annual Thanksgiving Day feast, junior welterweight Jaylan Phillips and his trainer Kevin Henry were up in the sky flying from Las Vegas to Rochester, New York. For their Thanksgiving repast, they were offered a tiny bag of peanuts.
Phillips would not have eaten too much had the opportunity presented itself. The next day was the weigh-in. On Saturday, the 30th, he would compete in the 6-round main event of a small club show.
Phillips wasn’t brought to Rochester to win. His opponent, Wilfredo Flores, had a checkered career but he had once held a regional title and he lived in the general area. In boxing parlance, Jaylan Phillips was the “B” side. His role, from the promoter’s standpoint, was to fatten the record of the house fighter.
Jaylan didn’t follow the script. He won a unanimous decision over his 11-3-1 opponent, advancing his record to 4-3-4, and returned to Las Vegas with a new nickname, albeit not one of his own choosing or intended as a permanent accessory. This reporter dubbed him The Palindrome Man.
A palindrome is a word that spells the same backward and forward. Phillips’ current record is palindrome-ish.
It’s an odd record. One would be hard-pressed to find other active boxers with a slew of draws inside a small window of fights. It harks to the days, circa 1900, when some journeymen boxers accumulated as many draws as wins and losses combined.
A boxer with a 4-3-4 record would seem to be an unlikely candidate for a feature story, but the affable Jaylan Phillips is not your run-of-the-mill prizefighter.
Boxers, as we know, tend to be city folk, drawn from the black belts and the barrios of America’s urban places. Phillips grew up in Ebro, Florida, population 237 per the 2020 U.S. census. Ebro is in the Florida panhandle in the northwestern part of the state in a county that was dry until 2022. It is 23 miles due north of Panama City Beach but a world apart from the seaside Florida resort town and its pricey beachfront condos.
Of those 237 people, only five identified as African-American or black, or so it would be written, but the census-taker was obviously slothful. “That’s a crazy number,” says Phillips. “There has to be at least 40 or 50. And the reason I know that is that we are all related.”
“What does one do for excitement in Ebro?” we asked him. “Hunting, fishing, trapping, that sort of thing,” he said. And what does one trap? “Mostly raccoons,” he said, while adding that some of the elders in his extended family consider it a delicacy.
Phillips fought in Rochester, New York, on Saturday and was back in the gym in Las Vegas on Tuesday. He lives alone and does not own a car. His apartment, near UNLV, is three-and-a-half miles from the Top Rank Gym where he does most of his training. He jogs there and then jogs home again, this in a city where the temperature routinely exceeds 100 degrees for much of the year.
During his high school years, Phillips, now 25, concedes that he smoked a lot of weed and it impacted his grades. His interest in boxing was fueled by the exploits of Roy Jones Jr, another fighter with roots in the Florida panhandle. In his spare time, he enjoys watching tapes of old Sugar Ray Robinson fights which can be found on youtube. “He was the best,” says Phillips of Robinson who has been dead for 35 years, echoing an opinion that hasn’t diminished with the passage of time.
In his second pro fight, Phillips was thrust against a baby-faced novice from Cleveland, Abdullah Mason. Although Mason was only 17 years old, the Top Rank matchmaker did Jaylan no favors. He was still standing when the referee waived the fight off in the second round.
About the heavily-hyped Mason, Phillips says, “He’s a beast, like they say, but I would love to fight him again. I took that fight on two weeks’ notice. I’m confident the outcome would have been different if I had had a full camp.”
This observation will undoubtedly strike some as a delusion. Pound for pound, the precocious Mason just may be the top pro fighter in the world in his age group. But Jaylan isn’t lacking confidence which spills over when he talks about what lies ahead for him. “I will be a world champion,” he says matter-of-factly. And after boxing? “I see myself back home in Ebro living a humble life, hunting and fishing, but with a million dollars in the bank.”
If unswerving dedication and self-confidence are the keys to a successful boxing career, then Jaylan Phillips, notwithstanding his 4-3-4 record, is destined for big things. But here’s the rub:
“In boxing, it isn’t what you earn, but what you negotiate,” says the esteemed British boxing pundit Steve Bunce alluding to the importance of a well-connected manager. In a perfect world, each win would be stepping-stone to a bigger fight with a commensurately larger purse. But in this chaotic sport, a “B side” fighter who scores an upset in a low-level fight may actually be penalized for his “impertinence.” Promoters may be wary of using him again (the old “risk/reward” encumbrance) and, in a sport where it’s important for an up-and-comer to stay busy, his progress may be stalled.
Phillips doesn’t know when his next assignment will materialize, but regardless he will keep plugging along while setting an example that others who aspire to greatness would be wise to emulate.
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Emanuel Navarrete and Rafael Espinoza Shine in Phoenix
Emanuel Navarrete and Rafael Espinoza Shine in Phoenix
PHOENIX – Saturday was a busy night on the global boxing scene, and it’s quite likely that the howling attendees in Phoenix’s Footprint Center witnessed the finest overall card of the international schedule. The many Mexican flags on display in the packed, scaled down arena signaled the event’s theme.
Co-main events featured rematches that arose from a pair of prior crowd-pleasing slugfests. Each of tonight’s headlining bouts ended at the halfway point, but that was their only similarity.
Emanuel “Vaquero” Navarrete, now 39-2-1 (32), defended his WBO Junior Lightweight belt with a dramatic stoppage of more-than-willing Oscar Valdez, 32-3 (24). The 29-year-old champion spoke of retirement wishes, but after dominating a blazing battle in which he scored three knockdowns, his only focus was relaxing during the holidays then getting back to what sounded like long-term business.
“Valdez was extremely tough in this fight,” said Navarrete. “I knew I had to push him back and I did. You are now witnessing the second phase of my career and you can expect great things from me in 2025.”
“I don’t really know about the future,” said the crestfallen, 33-year-old Valdez. “No excuses. He did what he wanted to and I couldn’t.”
Navarrete, a three-division titlist, came up one scorecard short of a fourth belt in his previous fight last May, a split decision loss to Denys Berinchyk. This was Navarrete’s fourth Arizona appearance so he was cheered like a homeboy, but Valdez was definitely the crowd favorite, evident from the cheers that erupted as both fighters were shown arriving in glistening, low rider automobiles.
Both men came out throwing huge shots, but it was Navarrete who scored a flash knockdown in the first round, setting the tone for the rest of the fight. There was fierce action in every frame, with Navarrete getting the best of most of it, but even when he was in trouble Valdez roared back and brought the crowd to their feet. He got dropped again at the very end of round four, and Navarrete sent his mouthpiece into orbit the round after that.
When Navarrette drove Valdez into the ropes during round six it looked like referee Raul Caiz, Jr was about to intervene, but before he could decide, Navarrete finished matters himself with a perfect left to the ribs that crumpled Valdez into a KO at 2:42.
“He talked about getting ready to retire soon so I told him we had to fight again right now,” said Valdez prior to the rematch. There were numerous “be careful what you wish for” type predictions of doom and he entered the ring at around a two to one underdog, understanding the contest’s make or break stakes. “Boxing penalizes you if you have a lot of losses,” observed Valdez. “It’s not like other sports where you can lose and do better next season. In boxing, most people don’t want to see you again after a couple of losses.”
What Valdez might decide remains to be seen, but even in defeat he proved to be a warrior worth watching.
Co-Feature
After their epic, razor-close encounter almost exactly a year ago, it was obvious Rafael Espinoza, and fellow 30-year-old Robeisy Ramirez should meet again for the WBO featherweight title belt Espinoza earned by an upset majority decision. Espinoza turned the trick again this time around, inside the distance, but it was more anti-climactic than anything like toe-to-toe.
The 6’1” Espinoza, now 26-0 (22), was the aggressor from the opening frame, but 5’6” Ramirez, 14-3 (9) employed his short stature well to stay out of immediate danger and countered to the body for a slight edge. The Cuban challenger avoided much of their previous firefight and initially controlled the tempo. The crowd jeered him for staying away but it was an effective strategy, at least at first.
Espinoza connected much better in the fifth round and looked fresher as Ramirez’s face rapidly reddened. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere in round six, Ramirez took a punch then raised a glove in surrender. Whatever the reason, even looking at Ramirez’s swollen right eye, it looked like a “No Mas” moment. Replays showed a straight right to the eye socket, but that didn’t stop the crowd from hooting their disgust after ref Chris Flores signaled the end at 0:12.
***
Richard Torrez, Jr, now 12-0 (11), displayed his Olympic silver medal pedigree in a heavyweight bout against Issac Munoz, 18-2-1 (15). Torrez, 236.6, found his punching range quickly with southpaw leads as Munoz, 252, tried to stand his ground but looked hurt by early body work that forced him into the ropes. He was gasping for breath as Torrez peppered him in the second, and Munoz went back to his corner on unsteady legs.
Munoz’s team should have thought about saving him for another day in the third as he ate big shots. Luckily, referee Raul Caiz, Jr. was wiser and had seen enough, waving it off for a TKO at 0:59.
“I don’t train for the opponent,” reflected Torrez, who isn’t far from true contender status. “Every time I train, I train for a world championship fight.”
***
Super-lightweight Lindolfo Delgado, 139.9, improved to 22-0 (16), and took another step into the world title picture against Jackson Marinez, now 22-4 (10), 139.2.
On paper this junior welterweight matchup appeared fairly even, and Marinez managed to keep it that way for almost half the scheduled ten rounds against a solid prospect but Delgado kept upping the ante until Marinez was out of chips. The assembled swarm was whistling for more action after three tentative opening frames, as Delgado loaded up but couldn’t put much offense together.
That changed in the 4th when Delgado connected with solid crosses. In the fifth, a fine combination dropped Marinez into a delayed knockdown and a wicked follow-up right to the guts finished the wobbly Marinez, who had nothing to be ashamed of, off in the arms of ref Wes Melton. Official TKO time was 2:13.
In a matter of concurrent programming, Saturday also held a lot of highly publicized college football and basketball games which likely detracted from the larger mainstream audience and media coverage this fight card deserved. That’s a shame but you can’t fault boxing, Top Rank, or any of the fighters for that because, once again, they all came through big time in Phoenix.
Photos credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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