The Frampton Fight Is Off, but the New Main Event is a Compelling Fight

Published

5 years ago

August 6, 2019

The-Frampton-Fight-is-off-but-the-New-Main-Eventois-a-Compelling-Fight

ESPN+ will broadcast a card from the Liacouras Center in Philadelphia, PA this coming Saturday. Originally the card was to be headlined by former featherweight champion Carl Frampton who was matched against Emmanuel Dominguez. However, Frampton broke his left hand Monday in a freakish accident at his hotel where a concrete pillar fell onto a table where the former champion had placed his hands.

Frampton, the former featherweight champion, was the main attraction. In all likelihood, the promoters will have to refund quite a few tickets. But the show will go on with the semi-main, Jason Sosa vs. Haskell Lydell Rhodes, a 130-pound contest scheduled for 10 rounds, bumped into the main event. And this shapes up as a very entertaining fight. In fact, before learning of Frampton’s injury, I had written that the fight between Sosa (22-3-4, 15 KOs) and Rhodes (27-3-1, 13 KOs) would likely steal the show.

This is an evenly matched crossroads fight that features a contrast of styles. Sosa, who hails from nearby Camden, NJ, knows only one way to fight and that is to come forward applying constant pressure and he will do so from the opening bell. An accomplished body puncher when he gets into range, Sosa is the type of fighter that is more than willing to take a few punches just to get the opportunity to land one of his own.

While Sosa’s style tends to lead to exciting contests, it can also take a toll on a fighter. In his last fight in January, Sosa struggled mightily in winning a 10-round decision against sub-.500 journeyman Moises Delgadillo. There is a legitimate question as to just how much Sosa has left in his tank.

Rhodes is a quick athletic fighter who likes to use his legs. He is going to use the entire ring and fight from the outside carefully picking his spots to unload his punches. While he does have fast hands, he tends to not be busy enough in fights and allows himself to be outhustled. Against Sosa, Rhodes will need to be more active than we have seen in the past.

Stylistically, Rhodes could be a nightmare for Sosa. But Sosa is just so determined and will keep coming, applying the pressure all night even if he may not be the same fighter from just a few years ago. The contrast of styles along with the evenly matched skill levels should make this a very entertaining bout.

How To Make Boxing A Safer Sport, Part One

If there is something that all boxing fans can agree upon it is the need to make this a safer sport. But just how is that accomplished? What I propose is a minor rule adjustment.

Open scoring has long been a subject of debate amongst boxing fans. For the longest time, I was strongly opposed to any and all concepts of it. But my thoughts have changed ever so slightly as I now think that a modified form of open scoring if universally adopted can improve fighter safety.

Before I present my proposal, let me start with an anecdote. I will from time to time wager a few bucks on a fight. And sometimes my having a little skin in the game will alter how I view a fight. I sometimes see something in favor of the fighter that I wagered on that others are just not seeing.

Whenever this happens, I always go back and watch the fight a second time. And amazingly, I generally see something entirely different.

So where am I going with this? Well, if $25 can skew my viewpoint, I can only imagine how someone with a much larger stake in the fight — a cornerman, manager, etc — could be viewing it. No doubt their perceptions can be skewed as to what is actually occurring inside the ring.

I would like to see a modified open scoring system implemented for any bouts that are scheduled for more than eight rounds to make potentially relevant parties aware of what is actually occurring in the bout.

For example, let’s take a bout scheduled for 12 rounds. If after eight rounds a fighter needs at least one 10-8 round to get mathematically back into the fight on the scorecards, the commission informs that fighter’s corner, the referee and doctor. No scores are read but the commission is informing everyone just where that fighter stands on the scorecards. This would also be done after the ninth round if the scenario still exists.

Every fight is different and this is not saying the fight should necessarily be stopped. But the seeds are planted for everyone to start monitoring the situation much more carefully. If the fighter shows no hope of turning things around, then those involved (referee, corner, doctor and commission) may opt to end things rather than allowing the fighter to take more needless punishment.

For a 10-round fight, the commission would inform the relevant parties after rounds six and seven. For an 8-round fight, this would be done only after round six.

Please note this is a careful balancing act as to not go too far with open scoring where it alters the dynamics of a fight. This is why this would only be done after those select rounds and not after rounds 10 or 11 of a 12-round bout. We are trying to catch obvious situations of one-sided fights and inform the relevant parties of the facts of the situation.

For the record, this idea first came to me after watching the Teofimo Lopez-Diego Magdaleno fight in February. If the relevant parties had all been told just where Magdaleno had stood on the scorecards after round six, there is a good chance someone would have ended that bout before allowing Magdaleno to absorb vicious and unnecessary punishment in the following round before ultimately getting knocked out.

These are the situations that I want to see avoided going forward and such a modified open scoring system could do just that.

How To Make Boxing A Safer Sport, Part Two

Something that we in the media and as fans can do to make this sport safer is to change out mindset on certain things. In particular, I think we need to remove the term “quit” from our vocabulary and instead applaud fighters for making the courageous decision not to go forward in a bout.

Again, let me begin with a quick anecdote. I was upset when Guillermo Rigondeaux did not come out of his corner to start round seven for his fight with Vasiliy Lomachenko in December of 2017. I voiced my displeasure on social media and various other outlets. In hindsight, I was wrong for doing so.

The first line of defense for a fighter is his corner. The second is the referee. But neither the corner nor the referee can truly know what is going on inside a fighter’s body during a fight. This is where it is on the fighter to make the courageous decision if something is not feeling right and remove himself from the fight.

In the boxing culture, a fighter making such a decision generally faces an enormous backlash. And as such, many fighters are hesitant to take this step. But we need to change that culture. If something is not right, fighters need to be encouraged to pull themselves out of a fight.

In many sports, athletes are often told that if something is not feeling right that they need to inform someone as soon as possible. For example, a major league pitcher who is feeling discomfort is in pitching arm is expected to tell his manager this even if that means having to be removed from the game. The pitcher is not quitting but making a common sense decision to keep a possible injury from getting much worse.

Boxing needs to adopt the cultures of other sports and encourage fighters to make common sense decisions when something does not feel right. This falls in part on us as members of the media as well as fans. By us doing so, a fighter may feel more comfortable in removing himself from a bad situation and that could potentially save that fighter from serious injury.

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Matt Andrzejewski

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Skylar Lacy Blocked for Lamar Jackson before Making his Mark in Boxing

Published

3 days ago

January 19, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Skylar Lacy, a six-foot-seven heavyweight, returns to the ring on Sunday, Feb. 2, opposing Brandon Moore on a card in Flint, Michigan, airing worldwide on DAZN.

As this is being written, the bookmakers hadn’t yet posted a line on the bout, but one couldn’t be accused of false coloring by calling the 10-round contest a 50/50 fight. And if his frustrating history is any guide, Lacy will have another draw appended to his record or come out on the wrong side of a split decision.

This should not be construed as a tip to wager on Moore. “Close fights just don’t seem to go my way,” says the boxer who played alongside future multi-year NFL MVP Lamar Jackson at the University of Louisville.

A 2021 National Golden Gloves champion, Skylar Lacy came up short in his final amateur bout, losing a split decision to future U.S. Olympian Joshua Edwards. His last Team Combat League assignment resulted in another loss by split decision and he was held to a draw in both instances when stepping up in class as a pro. “In my mind, I’m still undefeated,” says Lacy (8-0-2, 6 KOs). “No one has ever kicked my ass.”

Lacy was the B-side in both of those draws, the first coming in a 6-rounder against Top Rank fighter Antonio Mireles on a Top Rank show in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and the second in an 8-rounder against George Arias, a Lou DiBella fighter on a DiBella-promoted card in Philadelphia.

Lacy had the Mireles fight in hand when he faded in the homestretch. The altitude was a factor. Lake Tahoe, Nevada (officially Stateline) sits 6,225 feet above sea level. The fight with Arias took an opposite tack. Lacy came on strong after a slow start to stave off defeat.

Skylar will be the B-side once again in Michigan. The card’s promoter, former world title challenger Dmitriy Salita, inked Brandon Moore (16-1, 10 KOs) in January. “A capable American heavyweight with charisma, athleticism and skills is rare in today’s day and age. Brandon has got all these ingredients…”, said Salita in the press release announcing the signing. (Salita has an option on Skylar Lacy’s next pro fight in the event that Skylar should win, but the promoter has a larger investment in Moore who was previously signed to Top Rank, a multi-fight deal that evaporated after only one fight.)

Both Lacy and Moore excelled in other sports. The six-foot-six Moore was an outstanding basketball player in high school in Fort Lauderdale and at the NAIA level in college. Lacy was an all-state football lineman in Indiana before going on to the University of Louisville where he started as an offensive guard as a redshirt sophomore, blocking for freshman phenom Lamar Jackson. “Lamar was hard-working and humble,” says Lacy about the player who is now one of the world’s highest-paid professional athletes.

When Lacy committed to Louisville, the head coach was Charlie Strong who went on to become the head coach at the University of Texas. Lacy was never comfortable with Strong’s successor Bobby Petrino and transferred to San Jose State. Having earned his degree in only three years (a BA in communications) he was eligible immediately but never played a down because of injuries.

Returning to Indianapolis where he was raised by his truck dispatcher father, a single parent, Lacy gravitated to Pat McPherson’s IBG (Indy Boxing and Grappling) Gym on the city’s east side where he was the rare college graduate pounding the bags alongside at-risk kids from the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

Lacy built a 12-6 record across his two seasons in Team Combat League while representing the Las Vegas Hustle (2023) and the Boston Butchers (2024).

For the uninitiated, a Team Combat League (TCL) event typically consists of 24 fights, each consisting of one three-minute round. The concept finds no favor with traditionalists, but Lacy is a fan. It’s an incentive for professional boxers to keep in shape between bouts without disturbing their professional record and, notes Lacy, it’s useful in exposing a competitor to different styles.

“It paid the bills and kept me from just sitting around the house,” says Lacy whose 12-6 record was forged against 13 different opponents.

As a sparring partner, Lacy has shared the ring with some of the top heavyweights of his generation, e.g., Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte. He was one of Fury’s regular sparring partners during the Gypsy King’s trilogy with Deontay Wilder. He worked with Joshua at Derrick James’ gym in Dallas and at Ben Davison’s gym in England, helping Joshua prepare for his date in Saudi Arabia with Francis Ngannou and had previously sparred with Ngannou at the UFC Performance Center in Las Vegas. Skylar names traveling to new places as one of his hobbies and he got to scratch that itch when he joined Whyte’s camp in Portugal.

As to the hardest puncher he ever faced, he has no hesitation: “Ngannou,” he says. “I negotiated a nice price to spend a week in his camp and the first time he hit me I knew I should have asked for more.”

Lacy is confident that having shared the ring with some of the sport’s elite heavyweights will get him over the hump in what will be his first 10-rounder (Brandon Moore has never had to fight beyond eight rounds, having won his three 10-rounders inside the distance). Lacy vs. Moore is the co-feature to Claressa Shields’ homecoming fight with Danielle Perkins. Shields, basking in the favorable reviews accorded the big-screen biopic based on her first Olympic journey (“The Fire Inside”) will attempt to capture a title in yet another weight class at the expense of the 42-year-old Perkins, a former professional basketball player.

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Mizuki Hiruta Dominates in her U.S. Debut and Omar Trinidad Wins Too at Commerce

Published

5 days ago

January 18, 2025

David A. Avila

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Japan’s Mizuki Hiruta smashed through Mexico’s Maribel Ramirez with ease in winning by technical decision and local hero Omar Trinidad continued his assault on the featherweight division on Friday.

Hiruta (7-0, 2 KOs), who prefers to be called “Mimi,” made her American debut with an impressive performance against Mexican veteran Maribel Ramirez (15-11-4) and retained the WBO super flyweight world title by unanimous decision at Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.

The pink-haired Japanese southpaw champion quickly proved to be quicker, stronger and even better than advertised. In the opening round Ramirez landed on the floor twice after throwing errant blows. On one instance, it could have been ruled a knockdown but it was not a convincing blow.

In the second round, Ramirez again attacked and again was met with a Hiruta check right hook and down went the Mexican. This time referee Ray Corona gave the eight-count and the fight resumed.

It was Hiruta’s third title defense but this time it was on American soil. She seemed nervous by the prospect of getting a favorable review from the more than 700 fans inside the casino tent.

For more than a year Hiruta has been training off and on with Manny Robles in the L.A. area. Now that she has a visa, she has spent considerable time this year learning the tricks of the trade. They proved explosively effective.

Though Mexico City’s Ramirez has considerable experience against world champions, she discovered that Hiruta was not easy to hit. Often, the Japanese champion would slip and counter with precision.

It was an impressive American debut, though the fight was stopped in the eighth round after a collision of heads. The scores were tallied and all three saw Hiruta the winner by scores of 80-71 twice and 79-72.

“I’m so happy. I could have done much more,” said Hiruta through interpreter Yuriko Miyata. “I wanted to do more things that Manny Robles taught me.”

Trinidad Wins Too

Omar Trinidad (18-0-1, 13 KOs) discovered that challenger Mike Plania (31-5, 18 KOs) has a very good chin and staying power. But over 10 rounds Trinidad proved to be too fast and too busy for the Filipino challenger.

Immediately it was evident that the East L.A. featherweight was too quick and too busy for Plania who preferred a counter-puncher attack that never worked.

“He was strong,” said Trinidad. “He took everything.”

After 10 redundant rounds all three judges scored for Trinidad 100-90 twice and 99-91. He retains the WBC Continental Americas title.

Other Bouts

Ali Akhmedov (23-1, 17 KOs) blasted out Malcolm Jones (17-5-1) in less than two rounds. A dozen punches by Akhmedov forced referee Thomas Taylor to stop the super middleweight fight.

Iyana “Roxy” Verduzco (3-0) bloodied Lindsey Ellis in the first round and continued the speedy assault in the next two rounds. Referee Ray Corona saw enough and stopped the fight in favor of Verduzco at 1:34 of the third round.

Gloria Munguilla (7-1) and Brook Sibrian (5-2) lit up the boxing ring with a nonstop clash for eight rounds in their light flyweight fight. Munguilla proved effective with a slip-and-counter attack. Sibrian adjusted and made the fight closer in the last four rounds but all three judges favored Munguilla.

More Winners

Joshua Anton, Tayden Beltran, Adan Palma, and Alexander Gueche all won their bouts.

Photos credit: Al Applerose

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 309: 360 Promotions Opens with Trinidad, Mizuki and More

Published

6 days ago

January 16, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 309: 360 Promotions Opens with Trinidad, Mizuki and More

Best wishes to the survivors of the Los Angeles wildfires that took place last week and are still ongoing in small locales.

Most of the heavy damage took place in the western part of L.A. near the ocean due to Santa Ana winds. Another very hot spot was in Altadena just north of the Rose Bowl. It was a horrific tragedy.

Hopefully the worst is over.

Pro boxing returns with 360 Boxing Promotions spotlighting East L.A.’s Omar Trinidad (17-0-1, 13 KOs) defending a regional featherweight title against Mike Plania (31-4, 18 KOs) on Friday, Jan. 17, at the Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.

“I’m the king of L.A. boxing and I’ll be ready to put on a show headlining again in the main event. This is my year, I’m ready to challenge and defeat any of the featherweight world champions,” said Trinidad.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the Hollywood Night fight card that includes a female world championship fight and other intriguing match-ups.

Tom Loeffler heads 360 Promotions and once again comes full force with a hot prospect in Trinidad. If you’re not familiar with Loeffler’s history of success, he introduced America to Oleksandr Usyk, Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and the brothers Wladimir and Vitaly Kltischko.

“We’ve got a wealth of international talent and local favorites to kick off our 2025 in grand style,” said Loeffler.

He knows talent.

Trinidad hails from the Boyle Heights area of East L.A. near the Los Angeles riverbed. Several fighters from the past came from that exact area including the first Golden Boy, Art Aragon.

Aragon was a huge gate attraction during the late 1940s until 1960. He was known as a lady’s man and dated several Hollywood starlets in his time. Though he never won a world title he did fight world champions Carmen Basilio, Jimmy Carter and Lauro Salas. He was more or less the king of the Olympic Auditorium and Los Angeles boxing during his career.

Other famous boxers from the Boyle Heights area were notorious gangster Mickey Cohen and former world champion Joey Olivo.

Can Trinidad reach world title status?

Facing Trinidad will be Filipino fighter Plania who’s knocked off a couple of prospects during his career including Joshua “Don’t Blink” Greer and Giovanni Gutierrez. The fighter from General Santos in the Philippines can crack and hold his own in the boxing ring.

It’s a very strong fight card and includes WBO world titlist Mizuki Hiruta of Japan who defends the super flyweight title against Mexican veteran Maribel Ramirez. It’s a tough matchup for Hiruta who makes her American debut. You can’t miss her with that pink hair and she has all the physical tools to make a splash in this country.

Mizukii Hiruta

Two other female bouts are also planned, including light flyweight banger L.A.’s Gloria Munguilla (6-1) against Coachella’s Brook Sibrian (5-1) in a match set for six rounds. Both are talented fighters. Another female fight includes super featherweights Iyana “Right Hook Roxy” Verduzco (2-0) versus Lindsey Ellis (2-1) in another six-rounder. Ellis can crack with all her wins coming via knockout. Verduzco is a multi-national titlist as an amateur.

Others scheduled to perform are Ali Akhmedov, Joshua Anton, Adan Palma and more.

Doors open at 4:30 p.m.

Boxing and the Media

The sport of professional boxing is currently in flux. It’s always in flux but no matter what people may say or write, boxing will survive.

Whether you like Jake Paul or not, he proved boxing has worldwide appeal with monstrous success in his last show. He has media companies looking at the numbers and imagining what they can do with the sport.

Sure, UFC is negotiating a massive billion dollar deal with media companies, as is WWE, both are very similar in that they provide combat entertainment. You don’t need to know the champions because they really don’t matter. Its about the attractions.

Boxing is different. The good champions last and build a following that endures even beyond their careers a la Mike Tyson.

MMA can’t provide that longevity, but it does provide entertainment.

Currently, there is talk of establishing a boxing league again. It’s been done over and over but we shall see if it sticks this time.

Pro boxing is the true warrior’s path and that means a solo adventure. It’s a one-on-one sport and that appeals to people everywhere. It’s the oldest sport that can be traced to prehistoric times. You don’t need classes in Brazilian Jiujitsu, judo, kick boxing or wrestling. Just show up in a boxing gym and they can put you to work.

It’s a poor person’s path that can lead to better things and most importantly discipline.

Photos credit: Lina Baker

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