The Force is With Anthony Joshua as `The (British) Empire Strikes Back’

Published

6 years ago

May 28, 2019

The date was Dec. 8, 2007, and WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr., who had just doused the hopes, if not the enthusiasm, of thousands of British boxing fans who had traveled to Las Vegas from the United Kingdom to cheer countryman Ricky Hatton in his bid to dethrone the favored American, spoke of a trans-oceanic trip he hadn’t made, and never would have to.

“I always wanted to fight in the UK,” Mayweather mused after he had dominated and then stopped the previously undefeated Hatton in the 10^th round. “But because I couldn’t, I had the best fighter in the UK come to me.”

Mayweather never made it across the pond because he had the power and leverage to make all challengers travel to a place of his choosing, which frequently was the MGM Grand on the Vegas Strip. When you are the perpetual side `A’ and highest-grossing prizefighter of all time, it’s not difficult to make side `B’ dance to your tune when it comes to negotiating contractual terms.

Times have changed, and the first working assignment in America for British’s vastly popular world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (22-0, 21 KOs), who takes on blubbery Mexican-American Andy Ruiz Jr. (32-1, 21 KOs) in the DAZN-streamed main event Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, bears little to no resemblance to the trip made by Hatton nearly 12 years ago. It most definitely is not reminiscent of the seemingly endless decades of failure by British big men, who without exception were required to journey to the United States and take regularly scheduled beatdowns from clearly superior American champions. That happened so often and over so long a period that it resulted in the coining of the term “horizontal heavyweights” to describe the manner in which most of the Brits’ longshot challenges were so emphatically squashed.

The non-boxing British Empire – which once was called “the empire on which the sun never sets” – officially became a thing of the past in 1997 when the UK ceded control of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow for a relatively small island nation that, in 1913, held sway over 23 percent of the world’s population and 24 percent of the land mass. The ebbing of British influence in a general sense more or less correlates to the lengthy gap between the heavyweight title reigns of Bob Fitzsimmons, who held the title from March 17, 1897, to June 9, 1899, and the first of three separate title ascendances for Lennox Lewis, achieved when he was arbitrarily declared the WBC champion on Dec. 14, 1992, in place of American Riddick Bowe, who had publicly renounced that sanctioning body’s recognition by dumping its bejeweled green belt into a trash can.

Thus did Lewis, born in London to Jamaican immigrant parents, become the first British world heavyweight champion of the 20^th century. And when he made the first defense of that title on May 8, 1993, with a 12-round unanimous decision over former IBF titlist Tony Tucker in Las Vegas, it ended an ignominious streak of 13 consecutive championship-bout defeats by British heavyweights to American titlists, all of which occurred on U.S. soil.

But Lewis did not so much take his various titles back to the UK as to keep them on semi-permanent loan to the U.S. Of the 18 world championship bouts in which he participated, 14 were in America, three in the UK and one in Africa. That, he has consistently stated, was by his choice and in recognition of the United States as the epicenter of all boxing and especially championship-level heavyweight boxing.

“In the beginning when I started boxing in America, I used to get booed because I was the Brit coming over to their country,” said Lewis, now 53 and retired since June 2003. “But when I won over there, they said, `Fine, he’s an OK Brit. He boxes well.’ They accepted me as a good fighter.

“In any case, you really had to go to America in those days for the big fights with Tyson, Holyfield and those guys.”

Similar sentiments were echoed by long-reigning super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe, the undefeated Welsh southpaw who logged 42 of his 46 career victories in the UK, one each in Germany and Denmark and two – the last two of his storied career – in the U.S., one in Vegas and one in New York.

“Brits, in order to prove themselves, always have to go over to America,” Calzaghe remarked a few days prior to his lifting of The Ring magazine’s light heavyweight championship belt on a 12-round split decision over Bernard Hopkins on April 19, 2008, in Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center.

Ah, but that was then and this is now, most pointedly in a heavyweight division in which America’s stranglehold of all or most of the undisputed and alphabet championships has devolved into a significantly loosened grip. Although the United States, with 54, remains far and away the leader in world heavyweight titles once or now held by representatives of a particular nation, the United Kingdom, a distant second with eight, is doing its best to paint over any lingering vestiges of the dark days of its “horizontal heavyweights,” an era in which defeat not only was anticipated, but accepted without complaint if the occasionally valiant loser exhibited what the British like to call a stiff upper lip.

“They love a loser in this country,” a perplexed Calzaghe said in Wales while preparing for his date with Hopkins. “It’s ridiculous.”

Four of the six Brits to have held some version of the heavyweight crown have done so since Lewis: Herbie Hide (WBO, two reigns), Frank Bruno (WBC), Henry Akinwande (WBC) and, of course, Joshua. But the WBO was not regarded as a “major” organization when it was presenting championship straps to Hide and Akinwande, and even the thickly muscled and beloved Bruno was generally dismissed as a minor player during a time ruled by such renowned U.S. heavyweights as Tyson, Holyfield, Bowe, Larry Holmes, George Foreman and Michael Spinks.

All of which is reason enough to believe that Joshua, an overwhelming favorite over a game but seemingly overmatched Ruiz, will be at the Garden only to better introduce himself to American fight fans before returning to his comfort zone in the UK, where he is far and away the most popular and marketable fighter in Europe. No American fighter – and the only one who can even be mentioned in the same breath at this point is WBC champ Deontay Wilder (41-0-1, 40 KOs) – can pack arenas and even massive stadiums as does Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua, the super heavyweight champion at the 2012 London Olympics and son of a Nigerian mother and Nigerian-Irish father. Joshua fought before crowds of 90,000 and 80,000, respectively, for defenses against Wladimir Klitschko and Alexander Povetkin in London’s Wembley Stadium, sandwiched around capacity turnouts of 78,000 in Cardiff, Wales’ Principality Stadium against Joseph Parker and Carlos Takam. If and when Joshua and Wilder agree to a much-anticipated full unification showdown, if AJ wants it on home turf, it will be so, and most likely not for the 50-50 revenue split that Wilder insists should be his because he ostensibly is in possession of the scepter once held by the regal likes of such American heavyweight legends as Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, Foreman, Holmes, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Riddick Bowe.

Those days, at least for now, are past, and Joshua is a British big man who does not have to go America to stake his claim to what already is demonstrably his. He holds three titles (four, if you include the IBO’s) to Wilder’s one and is the more established drawing card. Unlike other UK heavyweight wannabes, and even champions, including Lewis, he almost always gets to set terms favorable to himself. In a very real sense, until further notice, he is what Mayweather used to be, big enough and important enough to get the world to come to him.

For now, though, he is in America for what could ultimately prove to be a one-and-done. It will be interesting to see if his fans, like those who followed Hatton to Vegas for the likely come-uppance from Mayweather, are as supportive of and passionate about a major favorite as they were of an underdog with a puncher’s chance to defy the odds. Will they again show up by the thousands, screaming themselves hoarse singing “Rule, Brittania” and “God Save the Queen”? Or have they become too comfortably familiar with success, now that it’s Americans, and likely soon a Mexican-American, who is left horizontal on the canvas?

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Friday Boxing Recaps: Observations on Conlan, Eubank, Bahdi, and David Jimenez

Published

20 hours ago

March 8, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Friday-Boxing-Recaps-Observations-on-Conlan-Eubank-Bahdi-and-David-Jimenez

March 7 was an unusually heavy Friday for professional boxing. The show that warranted the most ink was the all-female card in London, a tour-de-force for the super-talented Lauren Price, but there were important fights on other continents.

Brighton

Michael Conlan, who sat out all of 2024 on the heels of being stopped in three of his previous five, returned to the ring in the British seaside resort city of Brighton in a shake-off-the-rust, 8-rounder against Asad Asif Khan, a 31-year-old Indian from Calcutta making his first appearance in a British ring.

Conlan, a 2016 Olympic silver medalist who famously signed with Top Rank coming out of the amateur ranks, is now 33 years old. Against Khan, he was far from impressive, but did enough to win by a 78-74 score and lock in a match with Spain’s Cristobal Lorente, the European featherweight champion.

Conlan, who improved to 19-3 (9), absorbed a lot of punishment in those three matches that he lost. With his deep amateur background, Michael has a lot of mileage on him and he would have been smart to call it quits after his embarrassingly one-sided defeat to Luis Alberto Lopez. His frayed reflexes speak to something more than ring rust. Heading in, Khan brought a 19-5-1 record but had scored only five wins inside the distance.

Conlan vs Khan was the co-feature. In the main event, Brighton welterweight Harlem Eubank, the cousin of Chris Eubank Jr, improved to 21-0 (9 KOs) with a dominant performance over Conlan’s Belfast homie Tyrone McKenna. Eubank was credited with three knockdowns, all the result of body punches, before referee John Latham had seen enough and pulled the plug at the 2:09 mark of round 10. It was the fourth loss in his last six outings for the 35-year-old McKenna (24-6-1).

Harlem Eubank wants to fight Conor Benn next and says he is willing to wait until after his cousin “wipes Benn out.” Chris Eubank Jr vs Benn is slated for April 26 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The North London facility, which has a retractable roof, is the third-largest soccer stadium in England.

Toronto

Local fan favorite Lucas Bahdi and his stablemate Sara Bailey were the headliners on last night’s card at the Great Canadian Casino Resort in Toronto. The event marked the first incursion of Jake Paul’s MVP Promotions into Canada.

Bahdi, who is from Niagara Falls but trains in Toronto, burst out of obscurity in July of last year in Tampa, Florida, with a spectacular one-punch knockout of heavily-hyped Ashton “H2O” Sylva. His next fight, on the undercard of Jake Paul’s match with Mike Tyson, was less “noisy” and the same could be said of his homecoming fight with Ryan James Racaza, an undefeated (15-0) but obscure southpaw from the Philippines who was making his North American debut.

Bahdi vs Racaza was a technical fight that didn’t warm up until Bahdi produced a knockdown in round seven with a sweeping left hook, a glancing blow that appeared to land behind Racaza’s ear. The Filipino was up in a jiff, looking at the referee as if to say, “this dude just hit me with a rabbit punch.”

The judges had it 99-90, 97-92, and 96-93 for the victorious Bahdi (19-0) who was the subject of a recent profile on these pages.

Sara Bailey, a decorated amateur who competed around the world under her maiden name Sara Haghighat Joo and now holds the WBA light flyweight title, successfully defended that trinket with a lopsided decision over Cristina Navarro (6-3), a 35-year-old Spaniard who “earned” this assignment by winning a 6-round decision over an opponent with a 1-4-3 record. The judges scored the monotonous fight 99-91 across the board for Bailey who improved to 6-0 and then returned to the ring to assist her husband in Lucas Bahdi’s corner.

Also

Twenty-two-year-old super bantamweight Angel Barrientes, a Las Vegas-based Hawaii native, delivered the best performance of the night with a one-sided beatdown of Alexander Castellano whose corner mercifully stopped the contest after the seventh round as the ring doctor stood in a neutral corner chatting with the referee.

The gritty Castellano, who hails from Tonawanda, New York, brought an 11-1-2 record and hadn’t previously been stopped. A glutton for punishment, he appeared to suffer a broken orbital bone. Barrientes improved to 13-1 (8 KOs).

The show was marred by an excessive amount of fluffy gobbledygook by the TV talking heads which slowed down the action and made the promotion almost unwatchable.

Cartago, Costa Rica

Fighting in his hometown, super flyweight David Jimenez scored a lopsided 12-round decision over Nicaragua’s Keyvin Lara. The judges had it 120-108, 119-109, and 116-112.

Jimenez, now 17-1, came to the fore in July of 2022 when he upset Ricardo Sandoval in Los Angeles, winning a well-earned majority decision over a 20/1 favorite riding a 16-fight winning streak. That boosted him into a title fight with the formidable Artem Dalakian who saddled him with his lone defeat.

Jimenez’s victory over Lara was his fifth since that setback. It sets up the Costa Rican for another title fight, this time against Argentina’s Fernando Martinez who acquired the WBA 115-pound title in July with an upset of Kazuto Ioka in Japan. Lara, who unsuccessfully challenged Ioka for a belt in 2016, falls to 32-7-1.

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Price Conquers Jonas on an All-Female Card at Royal Albert Hall

Published

2 days ago

March 7, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Price-Conquers-Jonas-on-an-All-Female-Card-at-Royal-Albert-Hall

Ben Shalom’s BOXXER Promotions was at London’s historic Royal Albert Hall tonight with an all-female card topped by a welterweight unification fight between WBC/IBF belt-holder Natasha Jonas and WBA champion Lauren Price.

Liverpool’s Jonas, who turns 41 in June, has had a sterling career, but Father Time has caught up with her. The 30-year-old Price, an Olympic gold medalist, had faster hands, faster feet, and hit harder. The classy Jonas (16-3-1) acknowledged as much in her post-fight interview: “She beat me to the punch every time.”

The scores were 100-90, 98-92, and 98-93.

In advancing her record to 9-0 (2), Price built a strong case that she is the best fighter to come down the pike from Wales since Joe Calzaghe. As for her next bout, she hopes to fight the winner of the March 29 rematch in Las Vegas between Mikaela Mayer and Sandy Ryan. That match, with all of the meaningful welterweight hardware at stake, would be a hot ticket item if potted in Cardiff.

Semi-wind-up

Caroline Dubois staved off a late rally to successfully defend her WBC lightweight title with a majority decision over South Korea’s spunky Bo Mi Re Shin. The judges had it 98-92, 98-93, and 95-95. Although the 95-95 tally by the Korean judge was quite a stretch, Shin performed far better than the odds – Dubois was a consensus 35/1 favorite — portended.

Dubois, a 24-year-old Londoner trained by Shane McGuigan, is the sister of IBF heavyweight title-holder Daniel Dubois. Reportedly 36-3 as an amateur, she advanced her pro record to 11-0-1 (5). Heading in, Shin (18-3-3) had won nine of her previous 10 with the lone setback coming via split decision in a robust fight with Belgium’s Delfine Persoon in Belgium.

Other Bouts of Note

Kariss Artingstall returned to the ring after a 14-month absence and scored a unanimous decision over former amateur rival Raven Chapman. The scores were 98-91, 97-92, 96-93.

The prize for Artingstall, who happens to be Lauren Price’s partner, was the inaugural British female featherweight title and a potential rematch with Skye Nicolson who would relish the chance to avenge her last defeat, a loss by split decision to Attingstall in the quarterfinals of the Tokyo Olympics. Nicolson, who was part of tonight’s broadcast team, defends her title later this month in Sydney against Florida’s Tiara Brown.

It was the first 10-rounder for Artingstall (7-0). Chapman (9-2) had an uphill battle after Artingstall decked her in the second round with a straight left hand.

In a mild upset, Jasmina Zopotoczna, a UK-based Pole, won a split decision over Chloe Watson, adding Watson’s European flyweight title to her own regional trinket. One of the judges favored Watson 97-93, but each of his colleagues had it 96-95 for the Pole. Although there was no great furor, the verdict was unpopular.

Zapotoczna, who fought off her back foot, improved to 9-1. It was the first pro loss for Watson who is trained by Ricky Hatton.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 316: Art of the Deal in Boxing and More

Published

3 days ago

March 6, 2025

David A. Avila

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So, they want to save boxing?

A group of guys with recent ties to the sport of boxing and bags of money suddenly believe they can save a sport that is older than any other sport since the dawn of mankind.

Boxing is the oldest sport.

When cavemen roamed the planet, you can believe one tribe bet another tribe their guy could whip the other guy. Thus began the sport of boxing. There was no baseball, soccer or horse racing.

Even the invention of the wheel was still a few generations away when men were duking it out with other men for sport.

Throughout history mentions of one man fighting another man without arms are written in the Tales of Ulysses and other literary references.

Boxing will never die. Period.

Here is the reason why.

Boxing requires only two men in their underwear with no weapons and no requirement of classes in jujitsu, kickboxing, wrestling or advance training facilities. You can prepare in your backyard with one heavy bag and a pair of boxing gloves. It’s simple.

MMA, on the other hand, requires money.

Boxing is for the poor. Any kid can walk into a gym and begin training. When they become adults, then they start paying to use the gym.

Don’t let people fool you and tell you “boxing is dying.”

People have been saying those same words since John L. Sullivan in the late 1800s. You can look it up.

The phrase “boxing is dying,” is said by people who want you to pay them money to save it. Kind of sounds like the guy currently sitting in the White House who is going to save America by firing Americans from their jobs and allowing Russia to take over Ukraine.

Don’t believe these people.

Boxing does not need saving.

Why would Dana White, who has stated for decades that MMA is bigger than boxing, though no MMA fighter can equal the purses of a Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Tyson Fury, why is he involved in boxing?

There is big money to be made in boxing, especially with internet gambling sites being allowed all over the world. And boxing is popular worldwide. MMA is not.

More people know who Canelo is than UFC’s Alex Pereira.

I respect the UFC fighters. They put in hard work and battle injuries throughout their careers. But MMA is simply not as big as boxing. The purses of MMA fighters at the top level don’t come close to boxing’s top money earners.

Why did Conor McGregor, Nate Diaz and others quickly switch to boxing when called?

The money in boxing is much bigger.

Follow the money.

NYC

A rumble is planned for Times Square in New York City.

Vatos from Southern California are fighting dudes from Nevada and Brooklyn. Sounds like a script from the Gangs of New York.

Where is Leonardo DiCaprio when you need him?

Ryan “KingRy” Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs) will meet Rollie Romero (16-2, 13 KOs) in a welterweight match set for May 2, on Times Square in mid-Manhattan. This is one of three marquee bouts planned to be streamed on DAZN.

Others matched will be Arnold Barboza (32-0, 11 KOs) versus super lightweight titlist Teofimo Lopez (21-1, 13 KOs), and Devin Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) against Jose Carlos Ramirez (29-2, 18 KOs) in a welterweight contest.

This is the proposed match by The Ring magazine backed by Turki Alalshikh who, along with Golden Boy Promotions and Matchroom Boxing, is sponsoring this fight card.

It was also announced that Alalshikh, TKO Group Holdings, and Sela are forming a promotion company.

TKO owns UFC and WWE.

SoCal Fights

Southern California will be busy with boxing cards this weekend.

This Thursday, March 6, is Golden Boy Promotions with a boxing card featuring Manny Flores (19-1, 15 KOs) versus Jorge Leyva (18-3, 13 KOs) in a super bantamweight match at Fantasy Springs Casino. DAZN will stream the boxing card from Indio, California.

On Saturday, March 8, the Fox Theater in Pomona, California hosts a boxing card featuring super middleweights Ruben Cazales (10-0) vs Adam Diu Abdulhamid (18-16). Also, super featherweights Michael Bracamontes (10-2-1) meets Eugene Lagos (16-9-3) at the historic venue promoted by House of Pain Boxing.

On Saturday March 8, Elite Boxing hosts a boxing card at Salesian High in East Los Angeles featuring East L.A. native Merari Vivar (8-0) against Sarah Click (2-8-1) and several other fights.

On Saturday, March 8, an event hosted by House of Champions features top contenders Joet Gonzalez (26-4) vs Arnold Khegai (22-1-1) in a featherweight main event at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, Calif.

A Big All-Female Card in London

On Friday, March 7, the historic Royal Albert Hall in the Kensington borough of London will host an all-female card with two world title fights including a unification fight in the welterweight division.

Natasha Jonas (16-2-1) and Lauren Price (8-0) meet 10 rounds for the IBF, WBC, and WBA belts.

Jonas, 40, the current WBC and IBF titlist, recently defeated Ivana Habazin and before that edged past Mikaela Mayer in a win that could have gone the other way very easily. She will be facing Price, an Olympic gold medalist and current WBA and IBO titlist.

Price, 30, hails from Wales and has an aggressive pressure style that saw her win a battle between punchers with a third-round knockout of Colombia’s Bexcy Mateus this past December in Liverpool. Before that she defeated the always tough Jessica McCaskill.

In the co-main event, lightweights Caroline Dubois (10-0-1) and Bo Mi Re Shin (18-2-3) meet for the WBC world title.

Me Re Shin, 30, fights out of South Korea and has knockout power. She was one of only two fighters to stop Venezuela’s Ana Maria Lozano who has 38 pro fights. That says something. She lost a split decision to Delfine Persoon in Belgium. That really says something.

Dubois had two competitive fights, first, against Jessica Camara that ended in a technical draw due to a clash of heads. Before that she defeated Maira Moneo. Dubois has very good talent and is still young at 24. Is she ready for Mi Re Shin?

Times Square photo credit: JP Yim

Fights to watch:

Thurs., March 6: DAZN, Manny Flores (19-1) vs. Jorge Leyva (18-3)

Fri., March 7: free on DAZN, Lucas Bahdi (18-0) vs. Ryan James Racaza (15-0)

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