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Three Punch Combo: Spence-Porter Notes, Under the Radar Fights and More

THREE PUNCH COMBO — This coming week the eyes of the boxing world are on the Staples Center in Los Angeles for the big welterweight title fight between Errol Spence Jr. (25-0, 21 KO’s) and Shawn Porter (30-2-1, 17 KO’s). In analyzing the fight, two subtle factors jumped out at me.
Porter’s Size
Porter weighed in for his pro debut in 2008 at 165 ½ pounds. He fought most of the early part of his career in the 154-pound weight division. It wasn’t until his 16th pro fight that he dropped down to welterweight. Porter is a big welterweight and someone we have seen physically maul many of his former opponents.
Keep in mind that while Porter has come down in weight, Spence has fought his entire career as a welterweight. Yes, Spence is a strong welterweight but I think Porter, although smaller in stature, has more physicality.
In my opinion, Porter is by far the physically strongest opponent that Spence has ever faced. This fact cannot be underestimated. How will Spence handle Porter’s strength? That answer may be the biggest factor in determining the winner and loser of this bout.
Spence’s Body Punching
Spence is one of the most lethal body punchers in boxing today. He is also very consistent, attacking his opponent’s ribcage from the first round until the fight concludes. This prolonged body attack will often zap his opponents’ strength as a fight progresses and make them less likely to throw their own punches in fear of being countered to the body in return.
So, the first question is, if Spence can rev up the body attack against Porter, then how will Porter respond as the fight enters the middle and late rounds? I think if Spence gets the body attack going, then Porter may go into more of a shell as the fight progresses, leading to potentially a wide decision in favor of Spence.
However, there is another factor to keep in mind. Porter is a short stocky welterweight with a smaller zone to attack his body. And he frequently keeps his elbows tucked in. So, when someone fires off a body shot, Porter often picks it off. Looking back at past Porter fights, opponents often do not attack his body as, frankly, it is not easy to do.
What if Porter is able to take away Spence’s body punching ability? It is not out of the question and could force Spence to make some major adjustments for the first time in his professional career.
Under The Radar Fight
There is a fight taking place on the undercard of Spence-Porter that I circled on the boxing calendar when it was announced several weeks ago.
In a battle of undefeated young pros, Mario Barrios (24-0, 16 KO’s) takes on Batyr Akhmedov (7-0, 6 KO’s) in a battle for a vacant 140-pound world title belt. Talent wise, there is not much that separates these two. The way I see it, this is a true 50/50 fight that could turn into a real barnburner.
Barrios, 24, is a natural boxer-puncher who likes to work behind the left jab to set up his best punch which is a left hook to the body. He also has sneaky quick hands and moves his head well, making him an evasive target who is hard to catch clean. He comes in riding an eight-fight knockout streak. Of note, several of those knockouts have come from body shots.
Though he is an excellent body puncher, Barrios does have a tendency to attempt to go to the body from too far of a distance, leaning forward, which can leave his chin exposed. Against an aggressive power puncher like Akhmedov, Barrios could pay for this flaw.
A 2016 Olympian, Akhmedov, 28, has strung together some impressive performances early in his pro career to rise up quickly in the rankings. A southpaw, he is an aggressive high-pressure fighter who possesses heavy handed power in both hands. He not only possesses power but quick hands and, similar to Barrios, is an excellent body puncher.
Akhmedov does have issues defensively. He does not move his head at all and when he throws, he tends to sit in the pocket too long, exposing himself to counters. In his fight against Ismael Barroso a year ago, Akhmedov was dropped and hurt badly with a counter left hook early in the fight. Though Akhmedov later came back to stop Barroso, his defensive issues were apparent and his performance raised some questions about his chin.
Barrios-Akhmedov is one of those fights that, given the talents of the two fighters along with their respective styles, can’t be anything but a solid entertaining professional fight. It could also turn into quite a shootout between two young fighters with a lot to prove and with a lot on the line.
This PPV undercard fight could very well steal the show.
Under The Radar Fight, Part Two
There is more boxing on tap this week than just the Spence-Porter event. Of note, ESPN+ will broadcast a card from the UK on Friday that will be headlined by a battle of undefeated heavyweights.
Coming off a big win in July against the previously undefeated Nathan Gorman, Daniel Dubois (12-0, 11 KO’s) makes a quick return to the ring to face Ebenezer Tetteh (19-0, 16 KO’s) in a bout scheduled for 12 rounds.
Dubois, 22, is considered one of the top young heavyweights in the world. Tetteh, 31, is totally unknown. But he is an undefeated heavyweight and this is a division that seems to produce more surprises from unknowns than any other division in the sport.
Here is what we know about Dubois: He is a former decorated amateur and as a pro has put on a string of impressive performances displaying devastating knockout power in both fists. The only fighter to take him the distance so far has been the seemingly always durable and defensive-minded Kevin Johnson.
When Dubois stepped in the ring with Gorman in July, he was a short favorite, yet many considered it a 50/50 fight. But Dubois, displaying superior skill, speed and power, overwhelmed Gorman from the opening bell, dropping him once in the third and stopping him in the fifth. It was an eye-opening performance that essentially vaulted him from a prospect into a contender.
Here is what we know about Tetteh: He has fought most of his career at either light heavyweight or cruiserweight while just recently jumping north to the heavyweight division. All his fights have taken place is his native Ghana and there are no even remotely recognizable names on his resume.
There is actually some YouTube footage of Tetteh. His style seems to be that of a free-swinger who will pick his spots to flurry and go for broke. Against the low-level opponents he has faced, this crude, unpolished style has worked, in large part because Tetteh has some pop in his punches.
I could probably write thousands of words on Tetteh’s defensive flaws but let’s just say he is easy to hit. Nevertheless, I see some risk here for Dubois. Tetteh is going to wing punches and throw from unorthodox angles. Something conceivably could clip the Londoner
Yes, given the telegraphed nature of the punches that Tetteh will deliver, along with his severe lack of regard for defense, there’s a very high probability that Dubois will land something big to end matters early. But I am always down for a heavyweight slugfest, even if it is brief.
This could be a fun little shootout assuming Tetteh wings away like we have seen in those YouTube clips.
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: San Diego Smoke

Years ago, I worked at a newsstand in the Beverly Hills area. It was a 24-hour a day version and the people that dropped by were very colorful and unique.
One elderly woman Eva, who bordered on homeless but pridefully wore lipstick, would stop by the newsstand weekly to purchase a pack of menthol cigarettes. On one occasion, she asked if I had ever been to San Diego?
I answered “yes, many times.”
She countered “you need to watch out for San Diego Smoke.”
This Saturday, Top Rank brings its brand of prizefighting to San Diego or what could be called San Diego Smoke. Leading the fight card is Mexico’s Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1, 32 KOs) defending the WBO super feather title against undefeated Filipino Charly Suarez (18-0, 10 KOs) at Pechanga Arena. ESPN will televise.
This is Navarrete’s fourth defense of the super feather title.
The last time Navarrete stepped in the boxing ring he needed six rounds to dismantle the very capable Oscar Valdez in their rematch. One thing about Mexico City’s Navarrete is he always brings “the smoke.”
Also, on the same card is Fontana, California’s Raymond Muratalla (22-0, 17 KOs) vying for the interim IBF lightweight title against Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-1, 12 KOs) on the co-main event.
Abdullaev has only fought once before in the USA and was handily defeated by Devin Haney back in 2019. But that was six years ago and since then he has knocked off various contenders.
Muratalla is a slick fighting lightweight who trains at the Robert Garcia Boxing Academy now in Moreno Valley, Calif. It’s a virtual boot camp with many of the top fighters on the West Coast available to spar on a daily basis. If you need someone bigger or smaller, stronger or faster someone can match those needs.
When you have that kind of preparation available, it’s tough to beat. Still, you have to fight the fight. You never know what can happen inside the prize ring.
Another fighter to watch is Perla Bazaldua, 19, a young and very talented female fighter out of the Los Angeles area. She is trained by Manny Robles who is building a small army of top female fighters.
Bazaldua (1-0, 1 KO) meets Mona Ward (0-1) in a super flyweight match on the preliminary portion of the Top Rank card. Top Rank does not sign many female fighters so you know that they believe in her talent.
Others on the San Diego fight card include Giovani Santillan, Andres Cortes, Albert Gonzalez, Sebastian Gonzalez and others.
They all will bring a lot of smoke to San Diego.
Probox TV
A strong card led by Erickson “The Hammer” Lubin (26-2, 18 KOs) facing Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0, 6 KOs) in a super welterweight clash between southpaws takes place on Saturday at Silver Spurs Arena in Kissimmee, Florida. PROBOX TV will stream the fight card.
Ardreal has rocketed up the standings and now faces veteran Lubin whose only losses came against world titlists Sebastian Fundora and Jermell Charlo. It’s a great match to decide who deserves a world title fight next.
Another juicy match pits Argentina’s Nazarena Romero (14-0-2) against Mexico’s Mayelli Flores (12-1-1) in a female super bantamweight contest.
Nottingham, England
Anthony Cacace (23-1, 8 KOs) defends the IBO super featherweight title against Leigh Wood (28-3, 17 KOs) in Wood’s hometown on Saturday at Nottingham Arena in Nottingham, England. DAZN will stream the Queensberry Promotions card.
Ireland’s Cacace seems to have the odds against him. But he is no stranger to dancing in the enemy’s lair or on foreign territory. He formerly defeated Josh Warrington in London and Joe Cordina in Riyadh in IBO title defenses.
Lampley at Wild Card
Boxing telecaster Jim Lampley will be signing his new book It Happened! at the Wild Card Boxing gym in Hollywood, Calif. on Saturday, May 10, beginning at 2 p.m. Lampley has been a large part of many of the greatest boxing events in the past 40 years. He and Freddie Roach will be at the signing.
Fights to Watch (All times Pacific Time)
Sat. DAZN 11 a.m. Anthony Cacace (23-1) vs Leigh Wood (28-3).
Sat. PROBOX.tv 3 p.m. Erickson Lubin (26-2) vs Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0).
Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1) vs Charly Suarez (18-0); Raymond Muratalla (22-0) vs Zaur Abdullaev (20-1).
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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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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