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The Charlo Twins Are Heading Down Different Paths to Ring Renown

Throughout recorded history, mankind’s deep thinkers have always been fascinated by the living, breathing copies of one another that are identical twins. Psychologists have written scholarly books about their many shared traits, and paranormal researchers can cite literally thousands of examples of identicals that claim to know what their mirror image is thinking or feeling at a given moment.
All of which makes boxing’s Charlo twins, 29-year-olds Jermell and Jermall, such interesting case studies for probers of the human mind as well as fight fans. Seemingly separated only by one vowel in their first names, Jermell (31-1, 15 KOs), who is one minute younger, again appears only slightly earlier than Jermall (28-0, 21 KOs) when he takes on Jorge Cota (28-3, 25 KOs) in the PBC on Fox main event Sunday night from Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay. Six nights later, on June 29, Jermall defends his WBC interim middleweight championship against Brandon Adams (21-2, 13 KOs) in the Showtime-televised marquee bout from the NRG Arena in the twins’ hometown of Houston.
But while those ring appearances come less than a week apart, that’s still a wider gap than their most recent bouts, which came on Dec. 22 of last year, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Again fighting on the same card, as they occasionally have during their dual ascents to the borders of legitimate stardom, the matter of top billing that night was decided by a coin flip. Jermall won and thus was accorded the privilege of going on last, the slot usually reserved for the main event, while Jermell, the WBC super welterweight champ, served as his twin’s lead-in with a title defense against Tony Harrison.
This time, however, the Charlos did not enjoy their familiar success in tandem. Although Jermall retained his WBC interim middleweight championship with a wide unanimous decision over Matt Korobov, his mood at the postfight press conference was noticeably dampened as he sat alongside Jermell, who had been dethroned by Harrison on a close unanimous decision that more than a few observers thought might have gone the other way.
“There’s no way that (Harrison) won that fight,” Jermell said as he struggled to contain his emotions. “I don’t understand how they came up with those scores (116-112 and 115-113, twice). I didn’t just lose. I was robbed.”
Sunday’s opponent for Jermell was again to have been Harrison in the type of grudge match that always makes for compelling TV. But Harrison was obliged to withdraw when he injured his right ankle in training, opening the door for Cota to come in as a late replacement.
What the events of Dec. 22, 2018, did, maybe more than ever, was illustrate that the Charlos – who always will be as close as any boxing brothers have ever been, even closer than Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko, who look like twins although they aren’t and who at one time simultaneously held alphabet versions of the heavyweight championship – are traveling slightly different paths toward the same goal.
The variations are as stark and noticeable as their tattoos (Jermall has the well-inked chest while Jermell’s tats are more concentrated on his arms and shoulders), and as subtle as the stylistic modifications adopted by Jermell when he switched several years ago from veteran trainer Ronnie Shields, who still works with Jermall in the Houston area, to Dallas-based Derrick James.
And although both were world-rated 154-pounders at one time, Jermell has elected to remain a super welterweight while Jermall now campaigns as a full-fledged middleweight, eliminating any notion that the twins might one day have to fight one another, just as the Klitschkos vowed that they never would square off in a unification showdown.
But times and circumstances can change, even for identical twins who share not only the same genetic makeup, but often the same home environments, friends, clothes and, of course, secrets.
“I think our being twins has had a beneficial effect on both of us because of marketability,” Jermell said in 2016. “It’s one of the reasons we’ve been pushed the way we’ve been pushed. I think we always had it in our minds that someday it might turn into a business asset. We always got more attention because we’re twins. It was fun. We slept in the same bedroom all the way through high school.
“But, really, we are different. We like different cars, different kinds of music. I think the time has come for each of us to be recognized for our individual accomplishments.”
James, The Sweet Science’s 2017 Trainer of the Year who also is the chief second for IBF welterweight champ Errol Spence Jr., said it was inevitable that the twins would make the choice, as all twins eventually do, to stake out something that for each is his and his alone.
“Jermell breaking away, he kind of told me why,” said James, who would not elaborate. “Jermell and Jermall are always going to be extremely close, but they’re each becoming their own man. That doesn’t mean they’re totally splitting apart or doing fewer things together. I just think they’re trying to establish their own individuality within the dynamic of being identical twins.”
For Jermell, the goal in the near-future is to meet and defeat Harrison, thus setting right the injustice he continues to believe that was perpetrated upon him a half-year ago in Brooklyn. He said that in the moments after the 12th and final round had concluded and before the scorecards were read, Harrison whispered words of congratulations to him, an admission on the part of the Detroit fighter that he had been beaten. Harrison insists he said no such thing.
“He told me, `You did it. I can see why you’re a real champ,’” Jermell revealed at the time.
Jermell now insists he is fully focused on Cota, as it should be. Settling up with Harrison can stay on the back burner a while longer.
“I want to get him out of there,” Jermell said of his plans for Harrison’s stand-in. “This is a fight to show that I’m back and never really left. It was a quick change to Cota, but I’m always ready for anybody.”
For his part, Cota, a hard-punching Mexican, said he is inspired by the huge upset Mexican-American Andy Ruiz Jr. recently sprang in lifting Anthony Joshua’s IBF, WBA and WBO heavyweight title belts. He also disputes Jermell’s assertion that he was shafted in the fight against Harrison.
“For me, Harrison won that fight,” Cota said. “He threw better punches and landed more. A lot of people thought Jermell had won, but I saw it for Harrison.
“I am a demon in that ring. When other guys are in there, my punches scare them. Jermell is a good boxer, but I think that when he’s under pressure he doesn’t know what to do. I’m going to put pressure on him from the first bell and go right through him.”
In the back-and-forth jockeying to be recognized as the better of the boxing Charlos, it would seem that Jermall, with his interim WBC title and undefeated record, presently holds the upper hand. Although he calls Adams a “game opponent,” he is energized by fighting before a supportive home crowd in Houston and believes a victory, especially if it comes in emphatic fashion, could put him in position for a big-money, high-visibility shot at WBC/WBA/IBF ruler Canelo Alvarez. Like Jermell, he said he will not make the mistake of taking lightly the guy who’ll be in the other corner on June 23.
“I’m training like I’m training for Canelo,” Jermall stressed. “Brandon Adams is going to be on his A-game, but if he makes a wrong move it’s going to be a short night for him. The division is mine as long as I continue to do what I’m doing. I’m in a good place. I’m a force to be reckoned with in the 160-pound division.”
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“Breadman” Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards’ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.
It’s true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian “J Rock” Williams. On May 11, 2019, Williams wrested the IBF 154-pound world title from Jarrett Hurd. The bout, a lusty skirmish, was in Fairfax, Virginia, near Hurd’s hometown in Maryland, and the previously undefeated Hurd had the crowd in his corner.
In boxing, Stephen Edwards wears two hats. He has a growing reputation as a boxing coach, a hat he will wear on Saturday, May 31, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas when the two fighters that he currently trains, super middleweight Caleb Plant and middleweight Kyrone Davis, display their wares on a show that will air on Amazon Prime Video. Plant, who needs no introduction, figures to have little trouble with his foe in a match conceived as an appetizer to a showdown with Jermall Charlo. Davis, coming off his career-best win, an upset of previously undefeated Elijah Garcia, is in tough against fast-rising Cuban prospect Yoenli Hernandez, a former world amateur champion.
Edwards’ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at “Boxing Scene” in a column where he answers questions from readers.
It’s an eclectic bag of questions that Breadman addresses, ranging from his thoughts on an upcoming fight to his thoughts on one of the legendary prizefighters of olden days. Boxing fans, more so than fans of any other sport, enjoy hashing over fantasy fights between great fighters of different eras. Breadman is very good at this, which isn’t to suggest that his opinions are gospel, merely that he always has something provocative to add to the discourse. Like all good historians, he recognizes that the best history is revisionist history.
“Fighters are constantly mislabled,” he says. “Everyone talks about Joe Louis’s right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and it’s more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.”
Stephen “Breadman” Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father died when he was three. His maternal grandfather, a Korean War veteran, filled the void. The man was a big boxing fan and the two would watch the fights together on the family television.
Edwards’ nickname dates to his early teen years when he was one of the best basketball players in his neighborhood. The derivation is the 1975 movie “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” starring Laurence Fishburne in his big screen debut. Future NBA All-Star Jamaal Wilkes, fresh out of UCLA, plays Cornbread, a standout high school basketball player who is mistakenly murdered by the police.
Coming out of high school, Breadman had to choose between an academic scholarship at Temple or an athletic scholarship at nearby Lincoln University. He chose the former, intending to major in criminal justice, but didn’t stay in college long. What followed were a succession of jobs including a stint as a city bus driver. To stay fit, he took to working out at the James Shuler Memorial Gym where he sparred with some of the regulars, but he never boxed competitively.
Over the years, Philadelphia has harbored some great boxing coaches. Among those of recent vintage, the names George Benton, Bouie Fisher, Nazeem Richardson, and Bozy Ennis come quickly to mind. Breadman names Richardson and West Coast trainer Virgil Hunter as the men that have influenced him the most.
We are all a product of our times, so it’s no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadman’s estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the “Four Kings” with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.
Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonard’s three-time rival Roberto Duran. “I once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duran’s title defenses on it,” says Edwards. “This was a back before the days of YouTube.”
But Edwards’ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the “Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb whose legend has grown in recent years to the point that some have come to place him above Sugar Ray Robinson on the list of the greatest of all time.
“Greb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,” says Breadman, “but there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?”
Edwards notes that in Harry Greb’s heyday, he wasn’t talked about in the papers as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. The boxing writers were partial to Benny Leonard who drew comparisons to the venerated Joe Gans.
Among active fighters, Breadman reserves his highest praise for Terence Crawford. “Body punching is a lost art,” he once wrote. “[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.”
If the opening line holds up, Crawford will enter the ring as the underdog when he opposes Canelo Alvarez in September. Crawford, who will enter the ring a few weeks shy of his 38th birthday, is actually the older fighter, older than Canelo by almost three full years (it doesn’t seem that way since the Mexican redhead has been in the public eye so much longer), and will theoretically be rusty as 13 months will have elapsed since his most recent fight.
Breadman discounts those variables. “Terence is older,” he says, “but has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.” That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Canelo’s performance against William Scull: “Canelo’s legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.”
Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plant’s last three fights. Their first collaboration produced a Knockout of the Year candidate. With one ferocious left hook, Plant sent Anthony Dirrell to dreamland. What followed were a 12-round setback to David Benavidez and a ninth-round stoppage of Trevor McCumby.
Breadman keeps a hectic schedule. From Monday through Friday, he’s at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, he’s back in Philadelphia, checking in on his investment properties and, of greater importance, watching his kids play sports. His 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are standout all-around athletes.
On those long flights, he has plenty of time to turn on his laptop and stream old fights or perhaps work on his next article. That’s assuming he can stay awake.
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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More
It’s old news now, but on back-to-back nights on the first weekend of May, there were three fights that finished in the top six snoozefests ever as measured by punch activity. That’s according to CompuBox which has been around for 40 years.
In Times Square, the boxing match between Devin Haney and Jose Carlos Ramirez had the fifth-fewest number of punches thrown, but the main event, Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero, was even more of a snoozefest, landing in third place on this ignoble list.
Those standings would be revised the next night – knocked down a peg when Canelo Alvarez and William Scull combined to throw a historically low 445 punches in their match in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 152 by the victorious Canelo who at least pressed the action, unlike Scull (pictured) whose effort reminded this reporter of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – no, not the movie starring Paul Newman, just the title.
CompuBox numbers, it says here, are best understood as approximations, but no amount of rejiggering can alter the fact that these three fights were stinkers. Making matters worse, these were pay-per-views. If one had bundled the two events, rather than buying each separately, one would have been out $90 bucks.
****
Thankfully, the Sunday card on ESPN from Las Vegas was redemptive. It was just what the sport needed at this moment – entertaining fights to expunge some of the bad odor. In the main go, Naoya Inoue showed why he trails only Shohei Ohtani as the most revered athlete in Japan.
Throughout history, the baby-faced assassin has been a boxing promoter’s dream. It’s no coincidence that down through the ages the most common nickname for a fighter – and by an overwhelming margin — is “Kid.”
And that partly explains Naoya Inoue’s charisma. The guy is 32 years old, but here in America he could pass for 17.
Joey Archer
Joey Archer, who passed away last week at age 87 in Rensselaer, New York, was one of the last links to an era of boxing identified with the nationally televised Friday Night Fights at Madison Square Garden.

Joey Archer
Archer made his debut as an MSG headliner on Feb. 4, 1961, and had 12 more fights at the iconic mid-Manhattan sock palace over the next six years. The final two were world title fights with defending middleweight champion Emile Griffith.
Archer etched his name in the history books in November of 1965 in Pittsburgh where he won a comfortable 10-round decision over Sugar Ray Robinson, sending the greatest fighter of all time into retirement. (At age 45, Robinson was then far past his peak.)
Born and raised in the Bronx, Joey Archer was a cutie; a clever counter-puncher recognized for his defense and ultimately for his granite chin. His style was embedded in his DNA and reinforced by his mentors.
Early in his career, Archer was domiciled in Houston where he was handled by veteran trainer Bill Gore who was then working with world lightweight champion Joe Brown. Gore would ride into the Hall of Fame on the coattails of his most famous fighter, “Will-o’-the Wisp” Willie Pep. If Joey Archer had any thoughts of becoming a banger, Bill Gore would have disabused him of that notion.
In all honesty, Archer’s style would have been box office poison if he had been black. It helped immensely that he was a native New Yorker of Irish stock, albeit the Irish angle didn’t have as much pull as it had several decades earlier. But that observation may not be fair to Archer who was bypassed twice for world title fights after upsetting Hurricane Carter and Dick Tiger.
When he finally caught up with Emile Griffith, the former hat maker wasn’t quite the fighter he had been a few years earlier but Griffith, a two-time Fighter of the Year by The Ring magazine and the BWAA and a future first ballot Hall of Famer, was still a hard nut to crack.
Archer went 30 rounds with Griffith, losing two relatively tight decisions and then, although not quite 30 years old, called it quits. He finished 45-4 with 8 KOs and was reportedly never knocked down, yet alone stopped, while answering the bell for 365 rounds. In retirement, he ran two popular taverns with his older brother Jimmy Archer, a former boxer who was Joey’s trainer and manager late in Joey’s career.
May he rest in peace.
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Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

Japan’s Naoya “Monster” Inoue banged it out with Mexico’s Ramon Cardenas, survived an early knockdown and pounded out a stoppage win to retain the undisputed super bantamweight world championship on Sunday.
Japan and Mexico delivered for boxing fans again after American stars failed in back-to-back days.
“By watching tonight’s fight, everyone is well aware that I like to brawl,” Inoue said.
Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs), and Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs) and his wicked left hook, showed the world and 8,474 fans at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that prizefighting is about punching, not running.
After massive exposure for three days of fights that began in New York City, then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then to Nevada, it was the casino capital of the world that delivered what most boxing fans appreciate- pure unadulterated action fights.
Monster Inoue immediately went to work as soon as the opening bell rang with a consistent attack on Cardenas, who very few people knew anything about.
One thing promised by Cardenas’ trainer Joel Diaz was that his fighter “can crack.”
Cardenas proved his trainer’s words truthful when he caught Inoue after a short violent exchange with a short left hook and down went the Japanese champion on his back. The crowd was shocked to its toes.
“I was very surprised,” said Inoue about getting dropped. ““In the first round, I felt I had good distance. It got loose in the second round. From then on, I made sure to not take that punch again.”
Inoue had no trouble getting up, but he did have trouble avoiding some of Cardenas massive blows delivered with evil intentions. Though Inoue did not go down again, a look of total astonishment blanketed his face.
A real fight was happening.
Cardenas, who resembles actor Andy Garcia, was never overly aggressive but kept that left hook of his cocked and ready to launch whenever he saw the moment. There were many moments against the hyper-aggressive Inoue.
Both fighters pack power and both looked to find the right moment. But after Inoue was knocked down by the left hook counter, he discovered a way to eliminate that weapon from Cardenas. Still, the Texas-based fighter had a strong right too.
In the sixth round Inoue opened up with one of his lightning combinations responsible for 10 consecutive knockout wins. Cardenas backed against the ropes and Inoue blasted away with blow after blow. Then suddenly, Cardenas turned Inoue around and had him on the ropes as the Mexican fighter unloaded nasty combinations to the body and head. Fans roared their approval.
“I dreamed about fighting in front of thousands of people in Las Vegas,” said Cardenas. “So, I came to give everything.”
Inoue looked a little surprised and had a slight Mona Lisa grin across his face. In the seventh round, the Japanese four-division world champion seemed ready to attack again full force and launched into the round guns blazing. Cardenas tried to catch Inoue again with counter left hooks but Inoue’s combos rained like deadly hail. Four consecutive rights by Inoue blasted Cardenas almost through the ropes. The referee Tom Taylor ruled it a knockdown. Cardenas beat the count and survived the round.
In the eighth round Inoue looked eager to attack and at the bell launched across the ring and unloaded more blows on Cardenas. A barrage of 14 unanswered blows forced the referee to stop the fight at 45 seconds of round eight for a technical knockout win.
“I knew he was tough,” said Inoue. “Boxing is not that easy.”
Espinoza Wins
WBO featherweight titlist Rafael Espinosa (27-0, 23 KOs) uppercut his way to a knockout win over Edward Vazquez (17-3, 4 KOs) in the seventh round.
“I wanted to fight a game fighter to show what I am capable,” said Espinoza.
Espinosa used the leverage of his six-foot, one-inch height to slice uppercuts under the guard of Vazquez. And when the tall Mexican from Guadalajara targeted the body, it was then that the Texas fighter began to wilt. But he never surrendered.
Though he connected against Espinoza in every round, he was not able to slow down the taller fighter and that allowed the Mexican fighter to unleash a 10-punch barrage including four consecutive uppercuts. The referee stopped the fight at 1:47 of the seventh round.
It was Espinoza’s third title defense.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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