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Shawn Porter is a Wrecking Ball with a Grade-A Chin, but the Pick is Crawford
Terence Crawford will finally have a chance to reshape the narrative of his (so far) middling stint in the welterweight ranks when he defends his 147-pound bauble against the redoubtable Shawn Porter Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. Who knows, if the end result swings in his favor – and it should – you may even see the surly switch-hitter break into a smile.
Ever since he hiked up to the so-called glamour division some four odd years ago, Omaha’s Crawford has reaped seemingly every desirable outcome an elite prizefighter could dream of from the sport: outsize paychecks (cut by his longtime promoter Top Rank), exposure on national television (via media mammoth ESPN), and nonstop adulation as a generational great (according to Joe Tessitore and anyone with a Twitter handle). So why all the sulking?
Because for every ditty sung in praise of Crawford’s “pound-for-pound” bonafides, a barrage of jeers rains down from the peanut gallery, calling into question his credentials at the welterweight limit – and rightfully so. His white whale, Errol Spence Jr., has remained beyond reach, on account of the ceaseless factional rifts in the sport. Manny Pacquiao has retired (for now) to become a fulltime politico. That Crawford’s run thus far at 147 has been underwhelming is an understatement. His first fight in the division, after all, was a title shot against the tough-as-nails but cloddish Jeff Horn, a former school teacher. The matchmaking did not improve. Jose Benavidez Jr., Amir Khan, and Kell Brook were all, to one degree or another, hobbled and shopworn. Only Egidijus Kavaliauskas, a solid contender who managed to give Crawford a few fits in the early going before folding late, can be said to have been in his prime. Indeed, the disjunction between the prestige of his name and the inadequacy of his résumé can only be the source of much frustration, if not outright embarrassment, for a fighter as prideful as Crawford. Nobody in boxing, not even a palooka, wants to hear that their career is a sham.
The recent achievement of Canelo Alvarez, who unified all four belts in the 168-pound division with a stoppage over Caleb Plant earlier this month, serves as an instructive foil. Even Crawford, 34, seemed to be in awe of Alvarez’s latest milestone, his recent comments suggesting a whiff of envy.
“[Alvarez] has fought four times in the past year,” Crawford told Sky Sports. “He has become undisputed. He is getting all of the fights that he wants right now. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to. It has been frustrating. But what’s meant for me, I will have. Everything happens for a reason and I believe that my time is coming. I feel like I’m already there, but I have to prove it to the world and it starts with Porter.”
Although Crawford has described Porter in ways that suggest he views him as nothing more than a steppingstone – “I told him I’m not looking to fight you,” Crawford recounted to Tim Bradley. “I’m looking to fight Spence, I’m looking to fight Keith Thurman, because they’ve got something to offer.” – the mauler from Cleveland, Ohio is clearly the toughest opponent of his career. A former football player, Porter is a wrecking ball in perpetual motion. Few willingly line up to face Porter, and those who have faced him are never in the mood for a rematch. “[It’s like] skydiving for the first time,” Kenny Porter said of his son recently. “When you get to the ground and you’re safe, you say, ‘whew, I made it. I’m never doing that again.’ That’s Shawn Porter. That’s what you get.”
In recent years, Porter has added a bit more finesse to his pedal-to-the-metal approach, in addition to shoring up some of the more unsavory aspects of his aggressive style, namely his tendency to smother his punches, utilize elbows, and lead with his head. In what may have been the best performance of his career (albeit in a losing effort) against Spence, Porter landed a surprising number of clean, strafing blows. But his worst habits came back to haunt him late, when Spence caught him waffling on the inside, chin exposed, with a left cross that put him down. To his credit, Porter, 31-3-1, (17), was not visibly shaken. Nevertheless, such lapses figure to be a recipe for disaster against a marksman as accurate and lethal as Crawford. Still, compared to previous Crawford victims, Porter is durable, superbly conditioned, and perhaps most importantly, he has an A-grade chin.
Unlike Porter, Crawford does not have any glaring weaknesses. He hits hard with both hands, can switch stances on a dime, and possesses, like the best jazz artists, an improvisatory feel for the game. He can also take a punch. What makes Crawford especially unique in boxing today though is his ability to finish. He has stopped every single welterweight he has ever fought, a feat worth mentioning given that is not an inclination shared by some of his top peers; Thurman has gone the distance with Josesito Lopez, Danny Garcia with Ivan Redkach, and Spence with an undersized Mikey Garcia. The last time Crawford, 37-0 (28), went the distance was in 2016, when he defeated Viktor Postol on points. Porter, of course, is an entirely different proposition. Moreover, one concern for Crawford is that he seems to be more hittable in recent fights. Against Brook, Crawford had trouble avoiding the jab; against Kavaliauskas, he ate his fair share of right hands. On the other hand, Crawford will not have to worry about being presented with those same problems by Porter, whose strengths are of the more rough-hewn variety.
In order to have his hands raised at the end of the night, Porter must fight according to his natural instincts and employ the same gung-ho tactics that he used against Spence. Trying to be a cutie, as he imprudently did against Yordenis Ugas, is not the answer here. Yet he is up against an opponent who excels at containing pressure fighters and countering their aggression. That is why it is doubly important that Porter win the early rounds and take advantage of the fact that Crawford typically starts slow. The path for Porter to win is on the judges’ scorecards.
Crawford, on the other hand, needs to take a page out of the playback he employed for Horn. That means fighting exclusively out of the southpaw stance, doubling up the jab, and snapping off hooks while simultaneously circling away to his right. Eventually, Crawford will mix in uppercuts and find a home for his straight left. Unless Crawford, no spring chicken, has diminished considerably, it is hard to envision him squandering this opportunity. By the late rounds, Porter should be ready to go. Expect a violent finish – and perhaps even a smile…. CRAWFORD TKO 11
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Bygone Days: Muhammad Ali at the Piano in the Lounge at the Tropicana
Bygone Days: Muhammad Ali at the Piano in the Lounge at the Tropicana
Among other things, Las Vegas in “olden days” was noted for its lounge shows. Circa 1970, for the price of two drinks, one could have caught the Ike and Tina Turner Review at the International. They performed three shows nightly, the last at 3:15 am, and they blew the doors off the joint.
The weirdest “lounge show” in Las Vegas wasn’t a late-night offering, but an impromptu duet performed in the mid-afternoon for a select standing-room audience in the lounge at the Tropicana. Sharing the piano in the Blue Room in a concert that could not have lasted much more than a minute were Muhammad Ali and world light heavyweight champion Bob Foster. The date was June 25, 1972, a Sunday.
What brought about this odd collaboration was a weigh-in, not the official weigh-in, which would happen the next day, but a dress rehearsal conducted for the benefit of news reporters and photographers and a few invited guests such as the actor Jack Palance who would serve as the color commentator alongside the legendary Mel Allen on the closed-circuit telecast. On June 27, Ali and Foster would appear in separate bouts at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Ali was pit against Jerry Quarry in a rematch of their 1970 tilt in Atlanta; Foster would be defending his title against Jerry’s younger brother, Mike Quarry.
In those days, whenever Las Vegas hosted a prizefight that was a major news story, it was customary for the contestants to arrive in town about three weeks before their fight. They held public workouts, perhaps for a nominal fee, at the hotel-casino where they were lodged.
Muhammad Ali and Bob Foster were sequestered and trained at Caesars Palace. The Quarry brothers were domiciled a few blocks away at the Tropicana.
The Trop, as the locals called it, was the last major hotel-casino on the south end of the Strip, a stretch of road, officially Highway 91, the ran for 2.2 miles. When the resort opened in 1957, it had three hundred rooms. Like similar properties along the famous Strip, it would eventually go vertical, maturing into a high-rise.
In 1959, entertainment director Lou Walters (father of Barbara) imported a lavish musical revue from Paris, the Folies Bergere. The extravaganza with its topless showgirls became embedded in the Las Vegas mystique. The show, which gave the Tropicana its identity, ran for almost 50 full years, becoming the longest-running show in Las Vegas history.
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Although the Quarry brothers were on the premises, Ali and Foster arrived at the Blue Room first. After Dr. Donald Romeo performed his perfunctory examinations, there was nothing to do but stand around and wait from the brothers to show up. It was then that Foster spied a grand piano in the corner of the room.
Taking a seat at the bench, he tinkled the keys, producing something soft and bluesy. “Move over man,” said Ali, not the sort of person to be upstaged at anything. Taking a seat alongside Foster at the piano, he banged out something that struck the untrained ear of veteran New York scribe Dick Young as boogie-woogie.
When the Quarry brothers arrived, Ali went through his usual antics, shouting epithets at Jerry Quarry as Jerry was having his blood pressure taken. “These make the best fights, when you get some white hopes and some spooks,…er, I mean some colored folks,” Young quoted Ali as saying.
This comment was greeted with a big laugh, but Jerry Quarry, renowned for his fearsome left hook, delivered a better line after Ali had stormed out. Surveying the room, he noticed several attractive young ladies, dressed provocatively. “I can see I ain’t the only hooker in here,” he said.
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The doubleheader needed good advance pub because both bouts were considered mismatches. In the first Ali-Quarry fight, Quarry suffered a terrible gash above his left eye before his corner pulled him out after three rounds. Ali was a 5/1 favorite in the rematch. Bob Foster, who would be making his tenth title defense, was an 8/1 favorite over Mike Quarry who was undefeated (35-0) but had been brought along very carefully and was still only 21 years old. (In his syndicated newspaper column, oddsmaker Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder said the odds were 200/1 against both fights going the distance, but there wasn’t a bookie in the country that would take that bet.)
The Fights
There were no surprises. It was a sad night for the Quarry clan at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Muhammad Ali, clowning in the early rounds, took charge in the fifth and Jerry Quarry was in bad shape when the referee waived it off 19 seconds into the seventh round. In the semi-wind-up, Bob Foster retained his title in a more brutal fashion. He knocked the younger Quarry brother into dreamland with a thunderous left hook just as the fourth round was about to end. Mike Quarry lay on the canvas for a good three minutes before his handlers were able to revive him.
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In the ensuing years, the Tropicana was far less invested in boxing than many of its rivals on the Strip, but there was a wisp of activity in the mid-1980s. A noteworthy card, on June 30, 1985, saw Jimmy Paul successfully defend his world lightweight title with a 14th-round stoppage of Robin Blake. Freddie Roach, a featherweight with a big local following and former U.S. Olympic gold medalist Henry Tillman appeared on the undercard. The lead promoter of this show, which aired on a Sunday afternoon on CBS (with Southern Nevada blacked out) was the indefatigable Bob Arum who seemingly has no intention of leaving this mortal coil until he has out-lived every Las Vegas casino-resort born in the twentieth century.
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I may drive past the Tropicana in the next few hours and give it a last look, mindful that Muhammad Ali once frolicked here, however briefly. But I won’t be there for the implosion.
On Wednesday morning, Oct. 9, shortly after 2 a.m., the Tropicana, shuttered since April, will be reduced to rubble. On its grounds will rise a stadium for the soon-to-be-former Oakland A’s baseball team.
A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.
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WBA Feather Champ Nick Ball Chops Down Rugged Ronny Rios in Liverpool
In his first fight in his native Liverpool since February of 2020, Nick Ball successfully defended his WBA title with a 10th-round stoppage of SoCal veteran Ronny Rios. The five-foot-two “Wrecking Ball” was making the first defense of a world featherweight strap he won in his second stab at it, taking the belt from Raymond Ford on a split decision after previously fighting Rey Vargas to a draw in a match that many thought Ball had won.
This fight looked like it was going to be over early. Ball strafed Rios with an assortment of punches in the first two rounds, and likely came within a punch or two of ending the match in the third when he put Rios on the canvas with a short left hook and then tore after him relentlessly. But Rios, a glutton for punishment, weathered the storm and actually had some good moments in round four and five.
The brother of welterweight contender Alexis Rocha and a two-time world title challenger at 122 pounds, Rios returned to the ring in April on a ProBox card in Florida and this was his second start after being out of the ring for 28 months. He would be on the canvas twice more before the bout was halted. The punch that knocked him off his pins in round seven wasn’t a clean shot, but he would be in dire straits three rounds later when he was hammered onto the ring apron with a barrage of punches. He managed to maneuver his way back into the ring, but his corner sensibly threw in the towel when it seemed as if referee Bob Williams would let the match continue.
The official time was 2:06 of round ten. Ball improved to 21-0-1 (12 KOs). Rios, 34, declined to 34-5.
Semi-wind-up
A bout contested for a multiplicity of regional 140-pound titles produced a mild upset when Jack Rafferty wore down and eventually stopped Henry Turner whose corner pulled him out after the ninth frame.
Both fighters were undefeated coming in. Turner, now 13-1, was the better boxer and had the best of the early rounds. However, he used up a lot of energy moving side-to-side as he fought off his back foot, and Rafferty, who improved to 24-0 (15 KOs), never wavered as he continued to press forward.
The tide turned dramatically in round eight. One could see Turner’s legs getting loggy and the confidence draining from his face. The ninth round was all Rafferty. Turner was a cooked goose when Rafferty collapsed him with four unanswered body punches, but he made it to the final bell before his corner wisely pulled him out. Through the completed rounds, two of the judges had it even and the third had the vanquished Turner up by 4 points.
Other Bouts of Note
In a lightweight affair, Jadier Herrera, a highly-touted 22-year-old Cuban who had been campaigning in Dubai, advanced to 16-0 (14 KOs) with a third-round stoppage of Oliver Flores (31-6-2) a Nicaraguan southpaw making his UK debut. After two even rounds, Herrera put Flores on the deck with a left to the solar plexus. Flores spit out his mouthpiece as he lay there in obvious distress and referee Steve Gray waived the fight off as he was attempting to rise. The end came 30 seconds into round three.
In a bantamweight contest slated for 10, Liverpool’s Andrew Cain (13-1, 12 KOs) dismissed Colombia’s Lazaro Casseres at the 1:48 mark of the second round.
A stablemate and sparring partner of Nick Ball, Cain knocked Casseres to the canvas in the second round with a short uppercut and forced the stoppage later in the round when he knocked the Colombian into the ropes with a double left hook. Casseres. 27, brought an 11-1 record but had defeated only two opponents with winning records.
In a contest between super welterweights, Walter Fury pitched a 4-round shutout over Dale Arrowsmith. This was the second pro fight for the 27-year-old Fury who had his famous cousin Tyson Fury rooting him on from ringside. Stylistically, Walter resembles Tyson, but his defense is hardly as tight; he was clipped a few times.
Arrowsmith is a weekend warrior and a professional loser, a species indigenous to the British Isles. This was his twenty-fourth fight this year and his 186th pro fight overall! His record is “illuminated” by nine wins and 10 draws.
A Queensberry Promotion, the Ball vs Rios card aired in the UK on TNT Sports and in the US on ESPN+.
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Alimkhanuly TKOs Mikhailovich and Motu TKOs O’Connell in Sydney
IBF/WBO world middleweight champion Janibek Alimkhanuly, generally regarded as the best of the current crop of middleweights, retained his IBF title today in Sydney, Australia, with a ninth-round stoppage of game but overmatched Andrei Mikhailovich. The end came at the 2:45 mark of round nine.
Favored in the 8/1 range although he was in a hostile environment, Alimkhanuly (16-0, 11 KOs) beat Mikhailovich to a pulp in the second round and knocked him down with one second remaining in the frame, but Mikhailovich survived the onslaught and had several good moments in the ensuing rounds as he pressed the action. However, Alimkhanuly’s punches were cleaner and one could sense that it was only a matter of time before the referee would rescue Mikhailovich from further punishment. When a short left deposited Mikhailovich on the seat of his pants on the lower strand of rope, the ref had seen enough.
Alimkhanuly, a 2016 Olympian for Kazakhstan, was making his first start since October of last year. He and Mikhailovich were slated to fight in Las Vegas in July, but the bout fell apart after the weigh-in when the Kazakh fainted from dehydration.
Owing to a technicality, Alimkhanuly’s WBO belt wasn’t at stake today. Although he has expressed an interest in unifying the title –Eislandy Lara (WBA) and Carlos Adames (WBC) are the other middleweight belt-holders — Alimkhanuly is big for the weight class and it’s a fair assumption that this was his final fight at 160.
The brave Mikhailovich, who was born in Russia but grew up in New Zealand after he and his twin brother were adopted, suffered his first pro loss, declining to 21-1.
Semi-wind-up
Topping the flimsy undercard was a scheduled 8-rounder between Mikhailovich’s stablemate Mea Motu, a 34-year-old Maori, and veteran Australian campaigner Shannon O’Connell, 41. The ladies share eight children between them (Motu, trained by her mother in her amateur days, has five).
A clash of heads in the opening round left O’Connell with a bad gash on her forehead. She had a big lump developing over her right eye when her corner threw in the towel at the 1:06 mark of round four.
Motu (20-0, 8 KOs) was set to challenge IBF/WBO world featherweight champion Ellie Scotney later this month in Manchester, England, underneath Catterall-Prograis, but that match was postponed when Scotney suffered an injury in training. Motu took this fight, which was contested at the catchweight of 125 pounds, to stay busy. O’Connell, 29-8-1, previously had a cup of coffee as a WBA world champion (haven’t we all).
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