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A Bevy of Tarnished Heavyweights Vie to Become the Next Bermane Stiverne
In the murky shadows of heavyweight boxing, several fighters with recognizable names are jockeying to become the next Bermane Stiverne, by which we mean the next pawn in the career of a well-connected up-and-comer, someone such as Filip Hrgovic who recently linked up with powerful promoter Eddie Hearn. Hrgovic and other talented fighters at his stage of development are in search of opponents, more specifically sacrificial lambs, the most alluring of whom are those with recognizable names. And the chosen few get a nice paycheck to assuage their hurt and keep their creditors at bay.
Leading candidates to be the next pawn include former titlist Charles Martin and two-time world title challenger Chris Arreola (pictured), who will both be in action on the Spence-Garcia pay-per-view card. Martin (25-2-1) opposes Gregory Corbin (15-0) and Arreola (37-5-1) meets Jean Pierre Augustin (17-0-1). And then there’s Samuel Peter who appeared on a show this past weekend in Tijuana, thereby sending a message that if the money is right he would welcome an opportunity to go overseas and serve as a building block for someone like Hrgovic, a role for which Sam Peter is well-practiced.
Arreola
Chris Arreola, who turns 38 in a few days, is a three-time world title challenger, succumbing inside the distance to Vitali Klitschko, Bermane Stiverne, and Deontay Wilder. His best win was a first round stoppage of Eric Molina, but that was long ago. In his most recent bout against a noted opponent, he out-pointed Travis Kaufman by split decision, a verdict that was changed to “ND” when his post-fight urine exam showed traces of marijuana.
This was the second time that Arreola was exposed as a consumer of the “evil weed.” Back in 2011, his victory over Friday Ahunanya, a wide 10-round decision, was also voided. Take away those two no-decisions and Arreola’s ledger improves to 39-5-1.
Arreola’s opponent on March 16, Jean Pierre Augustin, is a 31-year-old Haitian currently residing in Louisville. A part-time actor with a few movie credits to his name, Augustin’s last fight was in the Mexican/Arizona border town of Agua Prieta where he defeated a no-name fighter who reportedly carried 334 ½ pounds on a six-foot-two frame.
Arreola says that he will retire if he loses this fight. In an interview with a writer from East Side Boxing, Chris acknowledged that he felt soreness in the mornings after a session in the gym, soreness that he did not feel in his younger days. We have no clue what Augustin will bring to the table, but Arreola will be favored and if he wins, as expected, a substantially richer payday likely awaits him around the next corner.
Arreola has a lot of mileage on his odometer, however, and is a strong candidate for pugilistic dementia if he keeps fighting.
Martin
Charles Martin won the vacant IBF title in January of 2016 with a third round stoppage of Vyacheslav Glazkov and gave it up in his first defense when he was demolished by Anthony Joshua who stopped him in the second round. His tenure as a heavyweight title-holder lasted 85 days, the shortest on record.
Martin’s win over Glazkov was tainted. Glazkov slipped as his feet got tangled with Martin’s and he suffered a torn ACL in his right knee as he fell to the canvas. To that point, the fight was shaping up as a dreary affair.
In his last start, Martin and undefeated Adam Kownacki engaged in an entertaining slugfest. Martin came out on the short end of a close decision, but regained some of his lost stature.
Gregory Corbin, his next opponent, is 38 years old. We have never seen Corbin fight but we suspect he will be competitive. Before he went off to prison for seven-and-a-half years on a cocaine trafficking conviction, Corbin was a national Golden Gloves champion.
Partly because his tenure as a title-holder was so short, Charles Martin is widely considered the worst heavyweight champion of the four-belt era. Bermane Stiverne also warrants consideration for that dubious honor and perhaps also Oliver McCall.
We mention McCall, now 53 years old, only because, sad but true, he’s still active. The erstwhile Atomic Bull has a fight scheduled on the last Saturday of March against a tub of lard named Ronald Baca in Robstown, Texas.
Samuel Peter
Peter brought a record of 36-6 (29 KOs) into his match this past Friday with Gerardo Escobar at Cheer’s Bar in Tijuana. We don’t know the result of that fight — it’s not up on BoxRec and a google search came up empty — but we’ll take it on faith that Peter prevailed and likely without working up much of a sweat. In documented fights, Escobar was 2-21 and had been stopped 15 times.
Peter had previously used Tijuana as a steppingstone. In October of 2016, he defeated a boxer from Mexicali named Juan Carlos Salas in this hardscrabble city. Salas, who was mired in a 7-fight losing streak, quit after three rounds. That triumph propelled Samuel Peter into a match with Kubrat Pulev in Bulgaria where it was he who quit on his stool after three rounds. He was undoubtedly well compensated.
There was a day when Peter was being touted as the next big thing in the heavyweight division. His vicious one-punch knockout of Jeremy Williams stamped him as the division’s hardest hitter since Mike Tyson. There was a lot of smart money on the Nigerian Nightmare when he opposed Wladimir Klitschko in 2005 in Atlantic City in Peter’s first stab at a heavyweight title. He knocked Klitschko down three times but lost most of the rounds and lost by three points on all three scorecards.
Six fights later, Peter won the WBC title with a sixth round stoppage of Oleg Maskaev, but he lost the belt in his first defense, falling to Vitali Klitschko. This was Vitali’s first start after sitting out almost four years while rehabbing an assortment of injuries, but Peter was the one that looked rusty. He retired on his stool after eight lopsided rounds.
Peter went on to secure a rematch with Wladimir Klitschko. In 2010, Wladimir stopped him in the 10th round at Frankfurt. Peter then became an opponent for rising contenders like Finland’s 14-0 Robert Helenius, who stopped him in nine frames, and the aforementioned Pulev. He came in at 271 pounds for Pulev, 20 pounds less than in a 2014 bout with a no-name opponent in Oklahoma City, but 28 pounds more than he carried in his first meeting with Wladimir Klitschko when he was at his peak.
Samuel Peter has seemingly been around forever, but he’s “only” 38 years old, younger than Luis Ortiz or Alexander Povetkin, or several others in his pod, soiled fighters with marketable names chasing one last stab at fistic glory or at least one more big paycheck to cushion their transition into the next phase of their lives.
We’re quite certain we haven’t seen the last of Samuel Peter. He just may be the next Bermane Stiverne.
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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
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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Rematches are the bedrock for prizefighting.
Return battles between rival boxers always means their first encounter was riveting and successful at the box office.
Six months after their first brutal battle Mikaela Mayer (20-2, 5 KOs) and Sandy Ryan (7-2-1, 3 KOs) will slug it out again for the WBO welterweight world title this time on Saturday, March 29, at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas.
ESPN will show the Top Rank card live.
“It’s important for women’s boxing to have these rivalries and this is definitely up there as one of the top ones,” Mayer told the BBC.
If you follow Mayer’s career you know that somehow drama follows. Whether its back-and-forth beefs with fellow American fighters or controversial judging due to nationalism in countries abroad. The Southern California native who now trains in Las Vegas knows how to create the drama.
For female fighters self-promotion is a necessity.
Most boxing promoters refuse to step out of the usual process set for male boxers, not for female boxers. Things remain the same and have been for the last 70 years. Social media has brought changes but that has made promoters do even less.
No longer are there press conferences, instead announcements are made on social media to be drowned among the billions of other posts. It is not killing but diluting interest in the sport.
Women innately present a different advantage that few if any promoters are recognizing. So far in the past 25 years I have only seen two or three promoters actually ignite interest in female fighters. They saw the advantages and properly boosted interest in the women.
The fight breakdown
Mayer has won world titles in the super featherweight and now the welterweight division. Those are two vastly different weight classes and prove her fighting abilities are based on skill not power or size.
Coaching Mayer since amateurs remains Al Mitchell and now Kofi Jantuah who replaced Kay Koroma the current trainer for Sandy Ryan.
That was the reason drama ignited during their first battle. Then came someone tossing paint at Ryan the day of their first fight.
More drama.
During their first fight both battled to control the initiative with Mayer out-punching the British fighter by a slender margin. It was a back-and-forth struggle with each absorbing blows and retaliating immediately.
New York City got its money’s worth.
Ryan had risen to the elite level rapidly since losing to Erica Farias three years ago. Though she was physically bigger and younger, she was out-maneuvered and defeated by the wily veteran from Argentina. In the rematch, however, Ryan made adjustments and won convincingly.
Can she make adjustments from her defeat to Mayer?
“I wanted the rematch straight away,” said Ryan on social media. “I’ve come to America again.”
Both fighters have size and reach. In their first clash it was evident that conditioning was not a concern as blows were fired nonstop in bunches. Mayer had the number of punches landed advantage and it unfolded with the judges giving her a majority decision win.
That was six months ago. Can she repeat the outcome?
Mayer has always had boiler-oven intensity. It’s not fake. Since her amateur days the slender Southern California blonde changes disposition all the way to red when lacing up the gloves. It’s something that can’t be taught.
Can she draw enough of that fire out again?
“I didn’t have to give her this rematch. I could have just sat it out, waited for Lauren Price to unify and fought for undisputed or faced someone else,” said Mayer to BBC. “That’s not the fighter I am though.”
Co-Main in Las Vegas
The co-main event pits Brian Norman Jr. (26-0, 20 KOs) facing Puerto Rico’s Derrieck Cuevas (27-1-1, 19 KOs) in a contest for the WBO welterweight title.
Norman, 24, was last seen a year ago dissecting a very good welterweight in Giovani Santillan for a knockout win in San Diego. He showed speed, skill and power in defeating Santillan in his hometown.
Cuevas has beaten some solid veteran talent but this will be his big test against Norman and his first attempt at winning a world title.
Also on the Top Rank card will be Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington and Emiliano Vargas, the son of Fernando Vargas, in separate bouts.
Golden Boy in Cancun
A rematch between undefeated William “Camaron” Zepeda (32-0, 27 KOs) and ex-champ Tevin Farmer (33-7-1, 8 KOs) headlines the lightweight match on Saturday March 29, at Cancun, Mexico.
In their first encounter Zepeda was knocked down in the fourth round but rallied to win a split-decision over Farmer. It showed the flaws in Zepeda’s tornado style.
DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also includes a clash between Yokasta Valle the WBC minimumweight world titlist who is moving up to flyweight to face former flyweight champion Marlen Esparza.
Both Valle and Esparza have fast hands.
Valle is excellent darting in and out while Esparza has learned how to fight inside. It’s a toss-up fight.
Fights to Watch
Fri. DAZN 12 p.m. Cameron Vuong (7-0) vs Jordan Flynn (11-0-1); Pat Brown (0-0) vs Federico Grandone (7-4-2).
Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. William Zepeda (32-0) vs Tevin Farmer (33-7-1); Yokasta Valle (32-3) vs Marlen Esparza (15-2).
Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Mikaela Mayer (20-2) vs Sandy Ryan (7-2-1); Brian Norman Jr. (26-0) vs Derrieck Cuevas (27-1-1).
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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Featured Articles3 weeks agoA Fresh Face on the Boxing Scene, Bryce Mills Faces His Toughest Test on Friday
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