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The Fallout Continues from the Benn-Eubank Fiasco but the Beat Goes On

Six days have elapsed since Riath Al-Sammarai, the Chief sports feature writer at the Daily Mail, broke the news that Conor Benn had tested positive for a banned substance, aborting the big fight between the offspring of British boxing legends Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank, and the brickbats continue to fly with lead promoter Eddie Hearn bearing the brunt.
Hearn and his collaborator Kalle Sauerland were apparently aware of this development well before the story broke â Bennâs âA-sampleâ purportedly came back positive on Aug. 23 â but did not call off the fight until a last-ditch effort to salvage it and the heat got too intense.
Donald McRaeâs chastisement typified the reaction. Writing in the London Guardian, McRae, an award-winning author, had this to say: âThe shameless way in which efforts were made to sidestep the damning evidence of the Vada testâŠexposed the hypocrisy at the sick old heart of this promotion and boxing itself.â
Before the spit hit the fan, Chris Eubank Sr, who refused to participate in any of the pre-fight hoopla, encouraged fans to boycott the fight, a âcatch-weightâ affair. By his reckoning, his son, although the bigger man, was in greater jeopardy of being permanently injured because of weight-draining. Eubank Sr held no animosity toward Conor Benn who he believes ingested the banned substance at the suggestion of a member or members of his camp without realizing the ramifications.
Jarrell âBig Babyâ Miller, of all people, has now added his voice to the chorus, blistering Eddie Hearn as a hypocrite on his YouTube channel. (Jarrell Miller has his own YouTube channel? The world has passed me by.)
Miller, as we recall, was pulled from his scheduled 2019 fight at Madison Square Garden with Anthony Joshua by the New York State Athletic Commission when he was exposed as a serial PEDs (plural) user. âHe threw me under the bus,â said Miller of Hearn whose hands were tied when the adverse findings were made known.
Several months ago, Hearn said that Miller still owed him money which he intended to collect (an advance on Millerâs multi-million-dollar purse) and branded Big Baby a criminal.
Will Eddie Hearn seek reparations from Conor Benn? The influential promoter had a lot invested in him. As Sean Nam noted in a story that ran on these pages, the flashy son of Nigel Benn was emerging as Hearnâs most promising candidate to carry British boxing into the post-Joshua era.
Meanwhile, the beat goes on for Eddie Hearn who makes his first foray into Australia this weekend with an event in South Brisbane with undefeated Aussie super lightweights Liam Paro and Brock Jarvis colliding in the main go. Paro, the slicker boxer, is a consensus 2/1 favorite over the harder-punching Jarvis in a match that promises more fireworks than the more newsworthy fight the next day down the road in Melbourne (well, actually the cities are 1100 miles apart), the rematch between Devin Haney and George Kambosos Jr.
Crawford-Spence
According to various sources, negotiations between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr have hit a snag and the hoped-for date of Nov. 19 is a no-go, pushing the fight into December at the earliest. A keen-eyed contributor to a rival publication notes that Crawford is now 35 and Spence is 32. Keep that in mind when the promoters tag this match with a steep pay-for-view price tag and hype it as the reincarnation of Leonard-Hearns I.
When Sugar Ray and Tommy the Hitman met at Caesars Place in 1981, Sugar Ray was 25 and Hearns was 23.
The biggest welterweight match since that classic was the 1999 meeting at Mandalay Bay between Oscar De La Hoya and Felix Trinidad. Both were 26. Granted, athletes donât age as fast nowadays because of advances in nutrition and exercise science, but each month that this match-up stays on the backburner, the less likely that Crawford and Spence will meet in their respective primes.
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Dr. Bennet Omalu has been in the news a lot lately. Dr. Omalu is the Nigerian-American neuropathologist whose research into Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in retired football players inspired the 2015 Hollywood movie âConcussionâ and was instrumental in getting the NFL to institute âprotocolsâ to prevent players who receive concussions from going back into the game with an eye toward diminishing the risk that they will develop neurological deficits later in life that will burden their loved ones.
Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa recently suffered apparent concussions in games spaced four days apart. Dr. Omalu, who believes that all contact sports for children should be abolished, ventured the opinion that Tagovailoa, who is 24 years old and is in his third season in the league, should retire immediately. The quarterback, he told TMZ, [âmore than likelyâ] suffered severe long-term permanent brain damage.â
Dr. Omalu pops up in Tris Dixonâs important 2021 book âDamageâ The Untold Story of Brain Damage in Boxing.â CTE is pugilistic dementia re-named to fit a wider set of precipitators.
While not wishing to denigrate the importance of Omaluâs findings, itâs worth noting that he isnât held in high regard by his peers. For one thing, he continues to maintain the fiction that he discovered CTE. To the contrary, he did not discover the disease, nor he did he name it. A British neurologist first used the term in 1949.
Washington Post sports reporter Will Hobson âoutedâ Omalu for a 2020 story titled âFrom Scientist to Salesman.â The consensus in the brain science community, says Hobson, is that Omalu âexaggerates his accomplishments and dramatically overstates the known risks of CTE and contact sports.â
Dr. Omalu, noted Hobson, transitioned from being a CTE researcher to being an evangelist, cashing in on his fame to make public appearances at $25,000 a pop. CTE is one of the fastest growing fields of litigation and Omalu commands a fee of $10,000 for serving as an expert witness.
Omalu reportedly earned $900,000 in 2018, the bulk coming from courtroom appearances as an expert witness for the plaintiff.
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Alexis Rocha KOs Brave but Overmatched George Ashie on DAZN.

Golden Boy Promotionsâ potted their first offering of 2023 at the recently opened YouTube Theater, a 6,000-seat venue situated inside the stadium built to house LAâs two NFL franchises. The main event was a scheduled 12-round welterweight match between Alexis Rocha, a southpaw from nearby Santa Ana and George Ashie, a 38-year-old Ghanaian making his U.S. debut. Ashie was a late substitute for Anthony Young who reportedly suffered a nose injury in training. The match and supporting bouts were live-streamed on DAZN.
Ashie, who was fighting above his normal weight class and carried a career-high 146 pounds, was brave but out-gunned. Rocha knocked him down in the third frame with a right hook and hurt him several more times as the fight progressed although Ashie never stopped trying. In round six, an accidental clash of heads left Rocha with a nasty cut on his left eyebrow. He fought with more urgency after this incident and knocked Ashie out cold in the next round. The official time was 2:08 of round seven.
It was the fifth straight win for Rocha who improved his ledger to 22-1 (14 KOs). After the bout, he expressed an interest in fighting Terence Crawford. Ashie fell to 33-6-1 (25).
Other Bouts of Note
Floyd âAustin Kidâ Schofield, a precocious 20-year-old lightweight, had Albert Mercado on the canvas in the second round but was unable to put him away despite hurting him multiple times and went 10 rounds for the first time in his young career.
Schofield, the 2022 TSS Prospect of the Year, improved to 13-0 (11), winning 100-89 on all three cards. Mercado, a 35-year-old Connecticut-born Puerto Rican, declined to 17-5-1 but retained his distinction of having never stopped.
Super middleweight Bektemir Melikuziev, a 2016 Olympic silver medalist for Uzbekistan who lives and trains in Indio, California, overpowered San Diegoâs Ulises Sierra who was on the deck twice from body punches before the fight was waived off at the 2:59 mark of round three. It was the fourth straight victory for Melikuziev (11-1, 9 KOs) after suffering a stunning one-punch knockout at the hands of seemingly shopworn Gabriel Rosado with whom he is pursuing a rematch. Sierra was 17-2-2 heading in with eight of his wins coming in Mexico.
In a match framed as a WBO minimumweight title eliminator, Oscar Collazo (6-0, 4 KOs) scored an impressive fifth-round stoppage of Yudel Reyes. Collazo knocked Reyes down twice in the fifth round, the second with a vicious right hand that put Reyes down so hard that the referee didnât bother to count. The official time was 2:59 of round five.
In theory, Collazoâs next fight will come against the Filipino Melvin Jerusalem who won the title earlier this month with a second-round stoppage of Masataka Taniguchi in Osaka. Reyes, a 26-year-old Mexican making his U.S. debut, declined to 15-2.
Photo credit: Al Applerose
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Artur Beterbiev TKOs Anthony Yarde in a London Firefight

The presumption, echoed by ESPN boxing commentator Bernardo Osuna, was that tonightâs bout at Wembley Arena in London between Artur Beterbiev and Anthony Yarde would be explosive and entertaining for as long as it lasted. That proved to be true and when the smoke cleared, Beterbiev, the rugged Montreal-based Russian had retained his three light heavyweight title belts and had added another knockout to his ledger, his nineteenth as a pro in as many opportunities.
Both men landed hard shots during the fight and both were marked up at the finish. Yarde had a cut under his right eye and Beterbiev had a cut on his left eyelid.
A chopping right hand from Beterbiev late in the first minute of the eighth round marked the beginning of the end for Yarde, the muscular 31-year-old Londoner who entered the contest sporting a record of 23-2 with 22 knockouts. The punch sent him reeling backward toward his corner where he landed on his knees. He beat the count, but turned toward his corner rather than referee Steve Gray.
Gray let the bout continue, but Beterbiev pressed his advantage and after a few more unanswered punches Yardeâs trainer Tunde Ajayi stepped up on the ring apron and summoned Gray to stop it. The official time was 2:01 of round eight.
Beterbiev hasnât lost since losing a decision to amateur nemesis Oleksandr Usyk in the quarter finals of the 2012 London Olympics. At age 38, he shows no signs of slowing down.
In his post-fight interview, the self-effacing Russian said, âI hope some day I will be a good boxer,â and acknowledged that he would welcome a unification fight with fellow Russian Dmitry Bivol, the WBA title-holder.
WBA Title Fight
In a bout that was in theory the co-feature but went off during the earlier portion of the ESPN+ livestream, Artem Dalakian (21-0, 15 KOs) retained his WBA world flyweight title with a unanimous and somewhat controversial 12-round unanimous decision over Costa Ricaâs David Jimenez (12-1). The judges had it 116-112 and 115-113 twice.
An Azerbaijan-born Ukrainian, Dalakian was making the sixth defense of the title he won in 2018 with a 12-round decision over Brian Viloria in Los Angeles in his lone previous appearance at a venue in the English-speaking world. His five title defenses were in Kiev. Jimenez was coming off a 12-round majority decision over Ricardo Sandoval in what ranked as one of the bigger upsets of 2021.
A Split for the Itauma Brothers
Promoter Frank Warrenâs newest signee, 18-year-old heavyweight Moses Itauma, made a big splash in his pro debut, blasting out Czechoslovakiaâs Marcel Bode (2-2) in 23 seconds. Moses and his older brother Karol Itauma are sons of a British citizen of Nigerian ancestry and a Slovakian mother.
In a shocking upset, Ezequiel Osvaldo Maderna, a 36-year-old Argentine who had lost six of his previous eight fights, forged a fifth-round stoppage of well-touted Karol Itauma who was 9-0 (7 KOs) as a pro coming in. Itauma ate numerous straight right hands before a straight right hand knocked him down for the count. The official time was 1:04 of round five. Maderna improved to 29-10 (11).
Also
The Frankham cousins, super welterweight Joshua and super featherweight Charles, improved their ledgers to 7-0 with 6-round shutouts over their respective opponents. The cousins are grandsons of John âGypsy Johnnyâ Frankham, a former British light heavyweight champion.
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Jake Paul vs Tommy Fury on Feb. 26 in a Potential Pay-Per-View Blockbuster

Itâs now official. The twice-postponed âgrudge matchâ between Jake Paul and Tommy Fury will come to fruition on Sunday, Feb. 26, at Riyadh in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. An 8-rounder contested at a catch-weight of 185 pounds, the match and several supporting bouts will air in the U.S. on ESPN+ PPV at a cost of $49.99.
The hook for this promotion â a come-hither that will be hammered home incessantly in the coming weeks – is that Jake Paul will finally touch gloves with a legitimate professional boxer. Paulâs previous opponents were a fellow YouTube influencer (AnEsonGib), a retired NBA player (Nate Robinson), and three former MMA champions: Ben Askren, Tyron Woodley, and Anderson Silva. He fought Woodley twice.
Tommy Fury, the half-brother of reigning WBC world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, made his pro debut in December of 2018 in a four-round bout in his hometown of Manchester. He was two fights into his pro career when he became a contestant on the TV reality show âLove Island.â An enormously popular show in Great Britain, especially among the coveted 18-34 demographic, âLove Islandâ was in its fifth season.
Fury was paired with supermodel Molly-Mae Hague with whom he finished second. They developed a great chemistry, on and off the set, became engaged, and purportedly welcomed a baby girl this week.
What about Tommy Fury the boxer? How legitimate is he?
Furyâs record currently stands at 8-0 (4 KOs). His first opponent was a professional loser from Latvia whose current ledger reads 10-113-3. His next six opponents were a combined 4-73-2. Finally, in his last fight, which occurred in April of last year, he met an opponent with a good record, Polandâs Daniel Bocianski, who was 10-1. But look closer and one discovers that all but one of Bocianskiâs 10 triumphs came against opponents with losing records. The exception was a 6-round decision over a fellow Pole whose record currently stands at 18-16-1 and who has been stopped 13 times.
Fury bloodied Bocianski and won a wide 6-round decision, but his performance was underwhelming. âFury had the Hollywood teeth, tan, and diamante-colored shorts,â wrote Chasinga Malata of the London Sun, âleaving only his performance without sheen and sparkle.â
There is nothing in Tommy Furyâs background, aside from his biological pedigree, to suggest that he has the tools to become a world-class boxer. If he were a member of the Three Stooges, he would be Shemp.
Jake Paul, by contrast, may actually be legit. Those in the know that have watched him train have come away impressed. It says here that Paul isnât moving up in class on Feb. 26; itâs the other way around.
In the co-feature, Ilunga Makabu (29-2, 25 KOs) will make the third defense of his WBC world cruiserweight title against Badou Jack (27-3-3, 16 KOs). A Congolese-South African, Makabu is the older brother of heavyweight contender Martin Bakole. Jack, four years older than Makabu at age 39, formerly held world titles at 168 and 175 pounds.
Although Badou Jack was born in Sweden and keeps a home in Las Vegas where he has long been affiliated with the Mayweather Boxing Club, he will have the home field advantage in Saudi Arabia where he has cultivated a loyal following. A devout Muslim, Jack will be making his fourth straight start in the Persian Gulf Region. In his last outing, he outpointed Richard âPopeyeâ Rivera at Jeddah, winning a 10-round split decision.

Badou Jack
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