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

Published

5 years ago

August 6, 2019

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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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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

East Los Angeles has long been a haven for some of the best fighters around if you can keep them out of trouble. For every Oscar De La Hoya or Seniesa Estrada there are thousands derailed by crime, drugs or drinking.

Boxing has always been a favorite sport of East L.A. Every family has an uncle or two who boxes.

On Friday, 360 Promotions’ Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) fights Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1) in the main event at Commerce Casino, in Commerce, CA. UFC Fight Pass will stream the fight card.

The City of Commerce used to be part of East L.A. until 1960 when it incorporated. It’s still considered to be part of East Los Angeles, but informally.

Plenty of fighters come out of East L.A. but few make it all the way like De La Hoya and Estrada. Will Trinidad be the one?

The first world champion from East L.A. or “East Los” as some call it, was Solly Garcia Smith back in the late 1800s. Others were Richie Lemos, Art Frias and Joey Olivo. There is also 1984 Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzalez.

Once again 360 Promotions brings its popular brand of fights to the area. On this fight card includes two female bouts. One features Roxy Verduzco (1-0) the former amateur star fighting Colleen Davis (3-1-1) in a featherweight fight.

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

The next day, also in East L.A., Elite Boxing stages another boxing card at Salesian High School located at 960 S. Soto Street in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles.

Elite Boxing has promoted several successful boxing cards at the Catholic high school grounds. The area is saturated by many of the best eateries in Los Angeles. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself and grab some of that delicious food.

Boxing has long been a favorite sport of anyone who lives in East L.A. It’s a fight town equal to Philadelphia, Brooklyn or Detroit. There’s something different about the area. For more than 100 years some of the best fighters continue to come out of its boxing gyms. Some will be performing on these club shows.

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

Speaking of fight towns, pound-for-pound best Claressa Shields who won two Olympic Gold Medals in boxing, moves up another weight division to tackle the WBC heavyweight world champion Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse on Saturday, July 27, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

Shields (14-0) cleaned out the super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions and now wants to add the big girls to her conquests. She will be facing Canada’s Lepage-Joanisse (7-1) who holds the WBC belt.

The last time Shields gloved up was more than a year ago when she fought Maricela Cornejo. Don’t blame Shields. She loves to fight. She loves to win. The last time Shields lost a fight was in the amateurs and that was three presidential administrations ago.

Shields doesn’t lose.

I wonder if Las Vegas even takes bets on her fights?

The only fight she may have been an underdog was against Savannah Marshall who was the last opponent to defeat her. And that was in 2012 in China. When they met as pros two years ago, Shields avenged her loss with a blistering attack.

Don’t get Shields mad.

Perhaps her toughest foe as a pro was in her pro debut when she clashed with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in Las Vegas. It was four rounds of fists and fury as the two pounded each other on the undercard of Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in November 2016.

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

Assisting Shields on this fight card will be several intriguing male bouts. One guy you should pay special attention is Tito Mercado (15-0, 14 KOs) a super lightweight prospect from Pomona, California.

Many excellent fighters have come out of Pomona including Sugar Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley Jr., Alberto Davila and Richie Sandoval who just passed away this week.

Sandoval was best known for his 15-round war with Philadelphia’s Jeff Chandler for the bantamweight world title in 1984. Read the story by Arne K. Lang on this link: https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-boxing-articles-boxing-news-videos-rankings-and-results/81467-former-world-bantamweight-champion-richie-sandoval-passes-away-at-age-63 .

Fights to Watch

Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) vs Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1).

Sat. ESPN+ 12:30 p.m. Joe Joyce (16-2) vs Derek Chisora (34-13).

Sat. DAZN 3 p.m. Claressa Shields (14-0) vs Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse (7-1), Michel Rivera (25-1) vs Hugo Roldan (22-2-1); Tito Mercado (15-0) vs Hector Sarmiento (21-2).

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

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Arne’s Almanac: Jake Paul and Women’s Boxing, a Curmudgeon’s Take

Published

3 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Jake Paul can fight more than a little. The view from here is that he would make it interesting against any fringe contender in the cruiserweight division. However, Jake’s boxing acumen pales when paired against his skill as a flim-flam artist.

Jake brought a 9-1 record into last weekend’s bout with Mike Perry. As noted by boxing writer Paul Magno, Jake’s previous opponents consisted of “a You Tuber, a retired NBA star, five retired MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, and two undersized and inactive fall-guy boxers.”

Mike Perry, a 32-year-old Floridian, was undefeated (6-0, 3 KOs) as a bare-knuckle boxer after forging a 14-8 record in UFC bouts. In pre-fight blurbs, Perry was billed as the baddest bare knuckle boxer of all time, but against Jake Paul he proved to have very unrefined skills as a conventional boxer which Team Paul undoubtedly knew all along. Perry lasted into the eighth round in a one-sided fight that could have been stopped a lot sooner.

Jake Paul is both a boxer and a promoter. As a promoter, he handles Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female boxers in history. That makes him the person most responsible (because the buck stops with him) for the wretched mismatch in last Saturday’s co-feature, the bout between Serrano and Stevie Morgan.

Morgan, who took up boxing two years ago at age 33, brought a 14-1 record. Nicknamed the Sledgehammer, she had won 13 of her 14 wins by knockout, eight in the opening round. However, although she resides in Florida, all but one of those 13 knockouts happened in Colombia.

“We found that in Colombia there were just more opportunities for women’s boxing than in the United States,” she told a prominent boxing writer whose name we won’t mention.

The truth is that, for some folks, Colombia is the boxing equivalent of a feeder lot for livestock, a place where a boxer can go to fatten their record. The opportunities there were no greater than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995. It was there that Peter McNeeley prepped for his match with Mike Tyson with a 6-second knockout of professional punching bag Frankie Hines. (Six seconds? So it would be written although no one seems to have been there to witness it.)

Serrano vs Morgan was understood to be a stay-busy fight for Amanda whose rematch with Katie Taylor was postponed until November. Stevie Morgan, to her credit, answered the bell for the second round whereas others in her situation would have remained on the stool and invented an injury to rationalize it. Thirty-eight seconds later it was all over and Ms. Morgan was free to go home and use her sledgehammer to do some light dusting.

The Paul-Perry and Serrano-Morgan fights played out in a sold-out arena in Tampa before an estimated 17,000. Those without a DAZN subscription paid $64.95 for the livestream. Paul’s next promotion, where he will touch gloves with 58-year-old Mike Tyson (unless Iron Mike pulls a Joe Biden and pulls out; a capital idea) with Serrano-Taylor II the semi-main, will almost certainly rake in more money than any other boxing promotion this year.

Asked his opinion of so-called crossover boxing by a reporter for a college newspaper, the venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum said, “It’s not my bag but folks who don’t like it shouldn’t get too worked up over it because no one is stealing from anybody.” True enough, but for some of us, the phenomenon is distressing.

—

The next big women’s fight happens Saturday in Detroit where Claressa Shields seeks a world title in a third weight class against WBC heavyweight belt-holder Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated in 14 fights as a pro, Shields is very good, arguably the best female boxer of her generation which makes her, arguably, the best female boxer of all time. But turning away Lepage-Joanisse (7-1, 2 KOs) won’t elevate her stature in our eyes.

Purportedly 17-4 as an amateur, the Canadian won her title in her second crack at it. Back in August of 2017, she challenged Cancun’s Alejandra Jimenez in Cancun and was stopped in the third round. Entering the bout, Lepage-Joanisse was 3-0 as a pro and had never fought a match slated for more than four rounds.

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

True, on the women’s side, the heavyweight bracket is a very small pod. A sanctioning body has to make concessions to harness a sanctioning fee. Nonetheless, how absurd that a woman who had answered the bell for only 11 rounds would be deemed qualified to compete for a world title. (FYI: Alejandra Jimenez was purportedly born a man. She left the sport with a 12-0-1 record after her win over Franchon Crews Dazurn was changed to a no-contest when she tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.)

Following her defeat to Jimenez, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse, now 29 years old, was out of action for six-and-a-half years. When she returned, she was still a heavyweight, but a much slender heavyweight. She carried 231 pounds for Jimenez. In her most recent bout where she captured the vacant WBC title with a split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, she clocked in at 173 ¼. (On the distaff side, there’s no uniformity among the various sanctioning bodies as to what constitutes a heavyweight.)

Claressa Shields doesn’t need Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to reinforce her credentials as a future Hall of Famer. She made the cut a long time ago.

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Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63

Published

4 days ago

July 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Richie Sandoval, who won the WBA and lineal bantamweight title in one of the biggest upsets of the 1980s and then, not quite two years later, suffered near-fatal injuries in a title defense, has passed away at the age of 63.

News circulated fast in the Las Vegas boxing community on Monday, July 22, the grapevine actuated by a tweet from Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler: “Boxing and the Top Rank family lost one of our own last night in the passing of former WBA bantamweight champion Richie Sandoval. It hurts personally and professionally to know that Richie is gone at age 63. RIP campeon.”

Details are vague but the cause of death was apparently a sudden heart attack that Sandoval experienced while visiting the Southern California home of his son of the same name.

Richie Sandoval put the LA County community of Pomona, California, on the boxing map before Shane Mosley came along and gave the town a more frequently-cited mention in the sports section of the papers. He came from a fighting family. An older brother, Albert “Superfly” Sandoval, became a big draw at LA’s fabled Olympic Auditorium while building a 35-2-1 record that included a failed bid to capture Lupe Pintor’s world bantamweight title.

Richie was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic boxing team that was stranded when U.S. President Jimmy Carter (and many other world leaders) boycotted the event as a protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

As a pro, Sandoval’s signature win was a 15^th-round stoppage of Jeff Chandler. They fought on April 7, 1984 in Atlantic City. Chandler was making the tenth defense of his world bantamweight title.

Despite being a heavy underdog, Sandoval dominated the fight, winning almost every round until the referee stepped in and waived it off. Chandler, who was 33-1-2 heading in and had avenged his lone defeat, never fought again.

Sandoval made two successful defenses before risking his title against Gaby Canizales on the undercard of Hagler-Mugabi in the outdoor stadium at Caesars Palace. In round seven, Sandoval, who had a hellish time making the weight, was knocked down three times and suffered a seizure as he collapsed from the third knockdown. Stretchered out of the ring, he was rushed to the hospital where doctors reduced the swelling in his brain and beat the odds to save his life. This would be Richie’s lone defeat. He finished his pro career with a record of 29-1 (17 KOs).

Bob Arum cushioned some of the pain by giving Richie a $25,000 bonus and offering him a lifetime job at Top Rank which Richie accepted. And let the record show that Arum was good to his word.

A more elaborate portrait of Richie Sandoval was published in these pages in 2017. You can check it out HERE. May he rest in peace.

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