Canelo-Kovalev, the UFC, and the Great DAZN Flapdoodle

Published

5 years ago

November 4, 2019

Canelo-Kovalev-the-UFC-and-the-Great-DAZN-Flapdoodle

On Saturday, Nov. 2, Canelo Alvarez became a world title-holder in a fourth weight class with an 11^th-round knockout of Sergey Kovalev. But the big winner that night was Dana White. The brassy, 50-year-old President and poster boy for the UFC, White has always insisted that his brand of Mixed Martial Arts would blow boxing out of the water as a spectator sport and on Saturday the live-streaming service DAZN bowed down before White and beatified his claim.

It’s old news now, but the first bell for Canelo-Kovalev came at 10:18 Pacific. That’s 1:18 in the morning for those living in the Eastern Time Zone where almost half the U.S. population resides. The late start, as we were forewarned, owed to the decision by DAZN executives that the fight would not go head-to-head with Dana White’s promotion in New York, a pay-per-view event on ESPN+ featuring a bout between Jorge Masvidal and Nate Diaz for something called the BMF title (the initials stand for Baddest Motherf*****).

The co-main event to Canelo-Kovalev was a 12-round contest between lightweights Ryan Garcia and Romero Duno. It was over in 98 seconds. That meant that the long wait before the main event would become even longer. It dragged on for a good hour-and-a-half.

That was a tough break for the talking heads on the DAZN telecast, none of whom are likely to win any Peabody Awards. During the lull, former NBA star Robert Horry was interviewed at length. “Next they gonna interview the janitors,” snorted someone whose tweet popped up on several web sites. (In Great Britain where Canelo-Kovalev was a PPV event on Sky Sports, they filled the void with a re-run of the Canelo-Jacobs-fight.)

I did not see the DAZN telecast because I remained in the arena where, quite unexpectedly, the Masvidal-Diaz MMA fight showed up on the big screens. Dana White explained how that came about. “So we were sitting there (at Madison Square Garden),” said White, “and MGM called and said that ‘you guys are halfway through your co-main event now. People are losing their minds here,’ or whatever. Can we show the Diaz fight at the MGM?”

Showing the MMA fight inside the Grand Garden to mollify the restless crowd was a smart call. As boxing writer Doug Fischer noted, most of the crowd got into the fight. And Masvidal-Diaz, truth be told, provided more excitement than Canelo-Kovalev, a fight with no indelible moments until Canelo closed the show with a devastating right hand. But the MGM erred by not switching away from the telecast as soon as it became obvious that the ringside physician had stopped the fight and that Masvidal had prevailed. That would have shortened the wait time by getting the three national anthems out of the way sooner. (Please, in the future can we please have an abridged version of the Russian anthem; it’s awfully long.)

It was DAZN’s doing, but the MGM Grand, although smart to show Masvidal-Diaz, has to be held complicit for stalling the fight that everyone came to see. It was a slap in the face to the paying customers who forked up anywhere from $400 to $1,700 to see the fight live. “If you are a boxing promoter and you want to turn off your fans,” said Yahoo’s Kevin Iole, “you overprice your tickets so they can’t get in to see it and then kowtow to an MMA fight on the other side of the country.”

Professional boxing as we know it, meaning gloves and a predetermined number of three-minute rounds, has been around for more than a century. A watershed event in the evolution of Queensberry boxing was the 1892 fight in New Orleans between John L. Sullivan and James J. Corbett.

The first UFC fight (UFC 1, we’re now up to 244) was held in Denver on Nov. 12, 1993, but this was really an underground event of which the media took no heed, a representation of what the late Sen. John McCain famously called human cockfighting. The rules had to be softened (UFC 1 had no weight classes) and other changes had to be made before the UFC came out of the shadows. Their watershed event was the Nov. 22, 2002 show at the MGM Grand with Tito Ortiz opposing Ken Shamrock in the headliner.

And so, what DAZN did was disrespect a sport that has been around for more than a century in favor of a Johnny-come-lately. And what’s odd about it is that Canelo Alvarez is their highest-paid performer, having signed the richest contract of any athlete under the DAZN umbrella. Canelo’s purse for the Kovalev fight was reportedly $35 million. (I have no idea what Masvidal and Diaz earned, but Diaz was paid $250,000 for his previous fight with Anthony Pettis.)

For the record, the Masvidal-Diaz fight became official on Sept. 7. The Canelo-Kovalev fight did not become official until Sept. 19. So, the UFC, one might say, had dibs on the date.

Granted, nowadays, in a saturated market for combat sports, it’s darn near impossible for a promoter to manufacture an event without a competitor coming along and planting something on the same date, but yet Golden Boy, Canelo’s promoter, was guilty of poor planning. One guesses that Oscar De La Hoya and his associates underestimated the clout of UFC after their lone venture into MMA turned out badly. Their show at the LA Forum in November of last year featuring the rubber match between geezers Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell was purportedly a big money-loser.

The UFC isn’t my cup of tea, but I understand the appeal. It harks back to the great 1890s barber shop debate as to whether a good boxer could defeat a good wrestler. Compared to boxing, UFC has more permutations. Because there are several different types of MMA disciplines, it’s a more sophisticated blood sport. I have no doubt it is here to stay. This is no fad like indoor bicycle racing. There’s even a part of me that wishes the sport had come along sooner so that the great college wrestlers of yesteryear had a place to go after exhausting their eligibility.

And to this we should add that although UFC fights appear to the naked eye to be far more brutal than boxing, UFC competitors, by all indications, are at less risk of a traumatic head injury.

But all this is neither here nor there. The fact is that DAZN screwed up and screwed up royally. Didn’t upper management foresee that pushing Canelo-Kovalev back to such an ungodly hour would foment a great outpouring of outrage? And lest one think that the Brits were pleased that they didn’t have to get up quite so early in the morning to take in Canelo-Kovalev, that’s just not so. Like the rest of us, they were led to believe that the UFC fight wouldn’t delay the MGM fight as long as it did and they set their alarms accordingly, something akin to being sent off on a wild goose chase. Much of the venom on social media emanated from Great Britain.

If we assume that the decision to push back Canelo-Kovalev wasn’t motivated entirely by greed – giving the company extra time to sign up new subscribers – then we must conclude that DAZN concluded that boxing and MMA have overlapping constituencies; that a good many boxing fans also follow MMA and vice versa. Perhaps, but there’s no hard data and I personally have seen no evidence of this.

October was a great month for boxing with several Fight of the Year candidates. So, we’ll give DAZN a pass this time for getting the month of November off on such a messy start. But if they pull this stunt again…. Well, serious boxing fans are accustomed to getting crapped on, but even they have their limits.

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Arne K. Lang

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Floyd Schofield Wins a Banger and Gabriela Fundora Wins by KO

Published

2 days ago

November 3, 2024

David A. Avila

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Floyd Schofield Wins a Banger and Gabriela Fundora Wins by KO

LAS VEGAS-Shades of Henry Armstrong and Baby Arizmendi. If you don’t know those names, look them up.

Floyd Schofield battled his way past Mexico’s super tough Rene Tellez Giron who walked through every blow the Texan could fire but lost by decision on Saturday.

It was a severe test and perfect matchmaking for Schofield who yearns for the big bouts against the lightweight giants roaming the world.

Schofield (18-0, 12 KOs) remains undefeated and won the war over thick-necked Mexican Tellez Giron (20-4, 13 KOs) who has never been knocked out and proved to be immune to big punches.

In the opening rounds, the Texas fighter came out firing rapid combinations from the southpaw and orthodox stances. Meanwhile the shorter Tellez Giron studied and fired back an occasional counter for two rounds.

Tellez Giron had seen enough and took his stand in the third stanza. Both unleashed blazing bombs with Schofield turning his back to the Mexican. At that moment referee Tom Taylor could have waved the fight over.

You never turn your back.

The fight resumed and Schofield was damaged. He tried to open up with even more deadly fire but was rebuked by the strong chin of Tellez Giron who fired back in the mad frenzy.

For the remainder of the fight Schofield tried every trick in his arsenal to inflict damage on the thick-necked Mexican. He could not be wobbled. In the 11^th round both opened up with serious swing-from-the-heels combinations and suddenly Schofield was looking up. He beat the count easily and the two remained slugging it out.

“He hit me with a good shot,” Schofield said of the knockdown. “I just had to get up. I’m not going to quit.”

In the final round Schofield moved around looking for the proper moment to engage. The Mexican looked like a cat ready to pounce and the two fired furious blows. Neither was hit with the big bombs in the last seconds.

There was Tellez Giron standing defiantly like Baby Arizmendi must have stood in those five ferocious meetings against the incomparable Henry Armstrong. Three of their wars took place in Los Angeles, two at the Olympic Auditorium in the late 1930s as the U.S. was emerging from the Great Depression.

In this fight, Schofield took the win by unanimous decision by scores 118-109 twice and 116-111. It was well-deserved.

“I tried to bang it out,” said Schofield. “Today I learned you can’t always get the knockout.”

Fundora

IBF flyweight titlist Gabriela Fundora needed seven rounds to figure out the darting style of Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz before firing a laser left cross down the middle to end the battle and become the undisputed flyweight world champion.

Fundora now holds all four titles including the WBO, WBA and WBC titles that Alaniz brought in the ring.

Fundora knocked down Alaniz midway through the seventh round. She complained it was due to a tangle of the legs. Several seconds later Fundora blasted the Argentine to the floor again with a single left blast. This time there was no doubt. Her corner wisely waved a white towel to stop the fight at 1:40 of the seventh round.

No one argued the stoppage.

Other Bouts

Bektemir Melikuziev (15-1, 10 KOs) didn’t make weight in a title bout but managed to out-fight David Stevens (14-2, 10 KOs) in a super middleweight fight held at 12 rounds.

Melikuziev used his movement and southpaw stance to keep Pennsylvania’s Stevens from being able to connect with combinations. But Stevens did show he could handle “The Bully’s” punching power over the 12-round fight.

After 12 rounds one judge favored Stevens 116-112, while two others saw Melikuziev the winner by split decision 118-110 and 117-111.

Super middleweight WBA titlist Darius Fulghum (13-0, 11 KOs) pummeled his way to a technical knockout win over southpaw veteran Chris Pearson (17-5-1, 12 KOs) who attempted the rope-a-dope strategy to no avail.

Fulghum floored Pearson in the first round with a four-punch combination and after that just belted Pearson who covered up and fired an occasional blow. Referee Mike Perez stopped the fight at 1:02 of the third round when Pearson did not fire back after a blazing combination.

Young welterweight prospect Joel Iriarte (5-0, 5 KOs) blasted away at the three-inch shorter Xavier Madrid (5-6, 2 KOs) who hung tough for as long as possible. At 2:50 of the first round a one-two delivered Madrid to the floor and referee Thomas Taylor called off the beating.

Iriarte, from Bakersfield, Calif., could not miss with left uppercuts and short rights as New Mexico’s Madrid absorbed every blow but would not quit. It was just too much firepower from Iriarte that forced the stoppage.

Photos credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy

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Results and Recaps from Turning Stone where O’Shaquie Foster Nipped Robson Conceicao

Published

2 days ago

November 2, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Top Rank was at the Turning Stone casino-resort in Verona, New York, tonight with an 8-bout card topped by a rematch between Robson Conceicao and O’Shaquie Foster with the victor retaining or recapturing his IBF world junior lightweight title. When the smoke cleared, the operative word was “recapturing” as Foster became a two-time title-holder, avenging his controversial setback to the Brazilian in Newark on July 6.

This was a somewhat better fight than their initial encounter and once again the verdict was split. Foster prevailed by 115-113 on two of the cards with the dissenting judge favoring Conceicao by the same margin. Conceicao seemingly had the edge after nine frames, but Foster, a 4/1 favorite, landed the harder shots in the championship rounds.

It was the thirteenth victory in the last 14 starts for Foster who fights out of Houston. A two-time Olympian and 2016 gold medalist, the 36-year-old Conceicao is 19-3-1 overall and 1-3-1 in world title fights.

Semi-wind-up

SoCal lightweight Raymond Muratalla (22-0, 17 KOs) made a big jump in public esteem and moved one step closer to a world title fight with a second-round blast-out of Jose Antonio Perez who was on the canvas twice but on his feet when the fight was stopped at the 1:24 mark of round two. Muratalla, a product of Robert Garcia’s boxing academy, is ranked #2 by the WBC and WBO. A Tijuana native, Perez (25-6) earned this assignment with an upset of former Olympian and former 130-pound world titlist Jojo Diaz,

Other Bouts

Syracuse junior welterweight Bryce Mills, a high-pressure fighter with a strong local following, stopped scrawny Mike O’Han Jr whose trainer Mark DeLuca pulled him out after five one-sided rounds. Mills improved to 17-1 (6 KOs). It was another rough day at the office for Massachusetts house painting contractor O’’Han (19-4) who had the misfortune of meeting Abdullah Mason in his previous bout.

In a junior lightweight fight that didn’t heat up until late in the final round, Albany’s Abraham Nova (23-3-1) and Tijuana native Humberto Galindo (14-3-3) fought to a 10-round draw. It was another close-but-no- cigar for the likeable Nova who at least stemmed a two-fight losing streak. The judges had it 97-93 (Galindo), 96-94 (Nova) and 95-95.

Twenty-one-year-old Long Island middleweight Jahi Tucker advanced to 13-1-1 (6 KOs) with an eighth-round stoppage of Stockton’s teak-tough but outclassed Quilisto Madera (14-6). Madera was on a short leash after five rounds, but almost took it to the final bell with the referee intervening with barely a minute remaining in the contest. Madera was on his feet when the match was halted. Earlier in the round, Tucker had a point deducted for hitting on the break.

Danbury, Connecticut heavyweight Ali Feliz, one of two fighting sons of journeyman heavyweight Fernely Feliz, improved to 4-0 (3) with a second-round stoppage of beefy Rashad Coulter (5-5). Feliz had Coulter pinned against the ropes and was flailing away when the bout was halted at the 1:34 mark. The 42-year-old Coulter, a competitor in all manner of combat sports, hadn’t previously been stopped when competing as a boxer.

Featherweight Yan Santana dominated and stopped Mexico’s Eduardo Baez who was rescued by referee Charlie Fitch at the 1:57 mark of round four. It was the 12^th knockout in 13 starts for Santana, a 24-year-old Dominican father of three A former world title challenger, Mexicali’s Baez declines to 23-7-2 but has lost six of his last eight.

In his most impressive showing to date, Damian Knyba, a six-foot-seven Pole, knocked out paunchy Richard Lartey at the 2:10 mark of round three. A right-left combination knocked Lartey into dreamland, but it was the right did the damage and this was of the nature of a one-punch knockout. Referee Ricky Gonzalez waived the fight off without starting a count.

Knyba, 28, improved to 14-0 (8 KOs). A native of Ghana coming off his career-best win, a fourth-round stoppage of Polish veteran Andrzej Wawrzyk, Lartey declined to 16-7 with his sixth loss inside the distance.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 303: Spotlights on Lightweights and More

Published

3 days ago

November 1, 2024

David A. Avila

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Those lightweights.

Whether junior lights, super lights or lightweights, it’s the 130-140 divisions where most of boxing’s young stars are found now or in the past.

Think Oscar De La Hoya, Sugar Shane Mosley and Floyd Mayweather.

Floyd Schofield (17-0, 12 KOs) a Texas product, hungers to be a star and takes on Mexico’s Rene Tellez Giron (20-3, 13 KOs) in a 12-round lightweight bout on Saturday, Nov. 2, at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada.

DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotion card that includes a female undisputed flyweight championship match pitting Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz and Gabriela Fundora.

Like a young lion looking to flex, Schofield (pictured on the left) is eager to meet all the other young lions and prove they’re not equal.

“I’ve been in the room with Shakur, Tank. I want to give everyone a good fight. I feel like my preparation is getting better, I work hard, I’ve dedicated my whole life to this sport,” said Schofield naming fellow lightweights Shakur Stevenson and Gervonta “Tank” Davis.

Now he meets Mexico’s Tellez who has never been stopped.

“I’m willing to do whatever it takes,” said Tellez.

Even in Las Vegas.

Verona, New York

Meanwhile, in upstate New York, a WBC junior lightweight title rematch finds Robson Conceicao (19-2-1, 9 KOs) looking to prove superior to former titlist O’Shaquie Foster (22-3, 12 KOs) on Saturday, Nov. 2, at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino in Verona, N.Y. ESPN+ will stream the Top Rank fight card.

Last July, Conceicao and Foster clashed and after 12 rounds the title changed hands from Foster to the Brazilian by split decision.

“I feel that a champion is a fighter who goes out there and doesn’t run around, who looks for the fight, who tries to win, and doesn’t just throw one or two punches and then moves away,” said Conceicao.

Foster disagrees.

“I hope he knows the name of the game is to hit and not get hit. That’s the name of the game,” said Foster.

Also on the same card is lightweight contender Raymond Muratalla (21-0, 16 KOs) who fights Mexico’s Jesus Perez Campos (25-5, 18 KOs).

Perez recently defeated former world champion Jojo Diaz last February in California.

“We’re made for challenges. I like challenges,” said Perez.

Muratalla likes challenges too.

“I think these fights are the types of fights I need to show my skills and to prove I deserve those title fights,” said Fontana’s Muratalla.

Female Undisputed Flyweight Championship

WBA, WBC and WBO flyweight titlist Gabriela “La Chucky” Alaniz (15-1, 6 KOs meets IBF titlist Gabriela Fundora (14-0, 6 KOs) on Saturday Nov. 2, at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada. DAZN will stream the clash for the undisputed flyweight championship.

Argentina’s Alaniz clashed twice against former WBA, WBC champ Marlen Esparza with their first encounter ending in a dubious win for the Texas fighter. In fact, three of Esparza’s last title fights were scored controversially.

But against Alaniz, though they fought on equal terms, Esparza was given a 99-91 score by one of the judges though the world saw a much closer contest. So, they fought again, but the rematch took place in California. Two judges deemed Alaniz the winner and one Esparza for a split-decision win.

“I’m really happy to be here representing Argentina. We are ready to fight. Nothing about this fight has to do with Marlen. So, I hope she (Fundora) is ready. I am ready to prepare myself for the great fight of my life,” said Alaniz.

In the case of Fundora, the extremely tall American fighter at 5’9” in height defeated decent competition including Maria Santizo. She was awarded a match with IBF flyweight titlist Arely Mucino who opted for the tall youngster over the dangerous Kenia Enriquez of Mexico.

Bad choice for Mucino.

Fundora pummeled the champion incessantly for five rounds at the Inglewood Forum a year ago. Twice she battered her down and the fight was mercifully stopped. Fundora’s arm was raised as the new champion.

Since that win Fundora has defeated Christina Cruz and Chile’s Daniela Asenjo in defense of the IBF title. In an interesting side bit: Asenjo was ranked as a flyweight contender though she had not fought in that weight class for seven years.

Still, Fundora used her reach and power to easily handle the rugged fighter from Chile.

Immediately after the fight she clamored for a chance to become undisputed.

“It doesn’t get better than this, especially being in Las Vegas. This is the greatest opportunity that we can have,” said Fundora.

It should be exciting.

Fights to Watch

Sat. ESPN+ 2:50 p.m. Robson Conceicao (19-2-1) vs O’Shaquie Foster (22-3).

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Floyd Schofield (17-0) vs Rene Tellez Giron (20-3); Gabriela Alaniz (15-1) vs Gabriela Fundora (14-0).

Photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy

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