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Efe Ajagba and Jonnie Rice Bring Home the Money at Turning Stone

Efe Ajagba and Jonnie Rice Bring Home the Money at Turning Stone
The temperature dipped into the low teens tonight in frigid Verona, New York, but things were heated inside the Event Center of the Turning Stone Casino Resort where Top Rank presented an eight-bout card topped by a heavyweight doubleheader. Granted, the heat emanating from the ring wasn’t all that intense. There were scattered boos throughout the two featured bouts.
In the main event, Efe Ajagba took advantage of his superior reach to jab his way to a unanimous decision over Stephan Shaw, advancing his record to 17-1 (13). All three judges had it 96-94 for the former Olympian from Nigeria, scores that may have been a tad generous to the previously undefeated Shaw, now 18-1, who never fought with a sense of urgency.
Shaw, a third-generation boxer from St. Louis, was originally set to face Guido Vianello in the co-main, but was bumped into the main event when Ajagbaâs original opponent Oscar Rivas had to pull out after suffering a detached retina in sparring.
A late switch in the odds resulted in Shaw going to post a small favorite. He said before the fight that he was more than willing to fight Jared Anderson next and may get his wish as the victorious Ajagba moves on to a more winnable assignment.
Co-Feature
Jonnie Rice, once thought to be an irredeemable gatekeeper, continued his late career surge, winning his third straight fight with a one-punch TKO of previously undefeated Guido Vianello (10-1-1) to bring his record to 16-6-1 (11 KOs). The bout was stopped early in the seventh round on the advice of the ringside physician.
Rice, who turns 36 next month, had fought an uninspired fight and was well-behind on the scorecards when he tagged his Italian adversary with a big overhand right late in the sixth frame. The punch opened a very bad cut over Vianelloâs left eye.
When the fight was stopped, referee Benjy Estevez indicated the cut was caused by a head clash, in which case the bout would have gone to the scorecards. However, Estevez overruled himself after viewing the ESPN replay and Rice, who went to post a 5/4 favorite despite taking the bout on three weeksâ notice, was fairly deemed the winner.
Also
Albany, New York junior lightweight Abraham Nova (22-1, 15 KOs) celebrated his 29th birthday with a 10-round unanimous decision over Glendale, Californiaâs Adam Lopez (16-4). The son of the late Hector Lopez, an Olympic silver medalist and two-time world title challenger, Adam Lopez has never been in a bad fight and tonight was no exception. However, he was knocked down twice in the middle rounds, the second a controversial knockdown when he was wrestled to the canvas, and he lacked the power to make up the deficit. The judges had it 98-90 and 97-91 twice.
This was a good win for Nova who returned to the 130-round weight class after suffering a harsh defeat at the hands of rising featherweight contender Robeisy Ramirez.
Other Bouts
Twenty-one-year-old Georgia lightweight Haven Brady Jr. who has been training in Philadelphia with Boots Ennis, advanced to 9-0 (4) at the expense of Colombiaâs Ruben Cervera (13-4). Cervera landed the best punch of the fight, a sweeping overhand right near the end of round six that buckled Bradyâs knees, but Brady won comprehensively: 80-72, 79-73, and 78-74.
Bryce Mills, a 21-year-old junior welterweight, won a comprehensive 6-round decision over Wapato, Washington import Margarito Hernandez. It was the 11th win in 12 starts for Mills who trains in nearby Syracuse and had the crowd in his corner. Hernandez: 3-4-1.
In his ESPN debut, an 8-rounder, Georgia welterweight Brian Norman Jr (23-0, 19 KOs) was extended the distance by teak-tough Argentine southpaw Rodrigo Damian Coria (10-5).
Norman came out like gangbusters and it appeared that Coria wouldnât survive the opening round, but the Argentine, who rarely took a backward step, survived the barrage and made things interesting until the final round when Norman put him on the canvas, eliminating any suspense when the decision was rendered. The judges had it 77-74 twice and 79-72.
In a 6-round affair, Bruce âShu Shuâ Carrington, a former U.S. Olympic Trials champion from the gritty neighborhood of Brownsville, Brooklyn, moved to 7-0 (3) with a unanimous decision over Dallas trial horse Juan Antonio Lopez (17-13-1). Carrington won every round but Lopez, who has repeatedly been matched tough, was never in danger.
In the ESPN+ opener, 20-year-old Cleveland light heavyweight Dante Benjamin Jr improved to 5-0 (3) with a first-round stoppage of Emmanueal Austin (6-1) of New Orleans. Benjamin staggered Austin with an overhand right before putting him down with a combo. Austin beat the count, but was being pummeled on the ropes when referee Mark Nelson interceded. The official time was 2:50 of the opening round.
Austin had stopped all six of his previous opponents in the opening round, but against soft opposition including three bouts in Colombia.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank via Getty Images
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âBreadmanâ Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Stephen âBreadmanâ Edwardsâ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.
Itâs true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian âJ Rockâ 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 Hurdâs 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.
Edwardsâ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at âBoxing Sceneâ in a column where he answers questions from readers.
Itâs 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 isnât 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.
âFighters are constantly mislabled,â he says. âEveryone talks about Joe Louisâs right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and itâs more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.â
Stephen âBreadmanâ 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.
Edwardsâ 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 âCornbread, Earl and Me,â 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 didnât 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 itâs no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadmanâs estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the âFour Kingsâ with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.
Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonardâs three-time rival Roberto Duran. âI once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duranâs title defenses on it,â says Edwards. âThis was a back before the days of YouTube.â
But Edwardsâ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the âPittsburgh Windmillâ 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.
âGreb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,â says Breadman, âbut there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?â
Edwards notes that in Harry Grebâs heyday, he wasnât 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. âBody punching is a lost art,â he once wrote. â[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.â
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 doesnât 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. âTerence is older,â he says, âbut has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.â That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Caneloâs performance against William Scull: âCaneloâs legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.â
Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plantâs 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, heâs at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, heâs 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. Thatâs assuming he can stay awake.
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Arneâs Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

Arneâs Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More
Itâs 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. Thatâs 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 â 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 âCat on a Hot Tin Roofâ â 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 â 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 promoterâs dream. Itâs no coincidence that down through the ages the most common nickname for a fighter â and by an overwhelming margin — is âKid.â
And that partly explains Naoya Inoueâs 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, âWill-o’-the Wispâ Willie Pep. If Joey Archer had any thoughts of becoming a banger, Bill Gore would have disabused him of that notion.
In all honesty, Archerâs 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 didnât 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 wasnât quite the fighter he had been a few years earlier but Griffith, Â 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 Joeyâs trainer and manager late in Joeyâs career.
May he rest in peace.
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Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

Japanâs Naoya âMonsterâ Inoue banged it out with Mexicoâs Ramon Cardenas, survived an early knockdown and pounded out a stoppage win to retain the undisputed super bantamweight world championship on Sunday.
Japan and Mexico delivered for boxing fans again after American stars failed in back-to-back days.
âBy watching tonightâs fight, everyone is well aware that I like to brawl,â Inoue said.
Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs), and Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs) and his wicked left hook, showed the world and 8,474 fans at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that prizefighting is about punching, not running.
After massive exposure for three days of fights that began in New York City, then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then to Nevada, it was the casino capital of the world that delivered what most boxing fans appreciate- pure unadulterated action fights.
Monster Inoue immediately went to work as soon as the opening bell rang with a consistent attack on Cardenas, who very few people knew anything about.
One thing promised by Cardenasâ trainer Joel Diaz was that his fighter âcan crack.â
Cardenas proved his trainerâs words truthful when he caught Inoue after a short violent exchange with a short left hook and down went the Japanese champion on his back. The crowd was shocked to its toes.
âI was very surprised,â said Inoue about getting dropped. ââIn the first round, I felt I had good distance. It got loose in the second round. From then on, I made sure to not take that punch again.â
Inoue had no trouble getting up, but he did have trouble avoiding some of Cardenas massive blows delivered with evil intentions. Though Inoue did not go down again, a look of total astonishment blanketed his face.
A real fight was happening.
Cardenas, who resembles actor Andy Garcia, was never overly aggressive but kept that left hook of his cocked and ready to launch whenever he saw the moment. There were many moments against the hyper-aggressive Inoue.
Both fighters pack power and both looked to find the right moment. But after Inoue was knocked down by the left hook counter, he discovered a way to eliminate that weapon from Cardenas. Still, the Texas-based fighter had a strong right too.
In the sixth round Inoue opened up with one of his lightning combinations responsible for 10 consecutive knockout wins. Cardenas backed against the ropes and Inoue blasted away with blow after blow. Then suddenly, Cardenas turned Inoue around and had him on the ropes as the Mexican fighter unloaded nasty combinations to the body and head. Fans roared their approval.
âI dreamed about fighting in front of thousands of people in Las Vegas,â said Cardenas. âSo, I came to give everything.â
Inoue looked a little surprised and had a slight Mona Lisa grin across his face. In the seventh round, the Japanese four-division world champion seemed ready to attack again full force and launched into the round guns blazing. Cardenas tried to catch Inoue again with counter left hooks but Inoueâs combos rained like deadly hail. Four consecutive rights by Inoue blasted Cardenas almost through the ropes. The referee Tom Taylor ruled it a knockdown. Cardenas beat the count and survived the round.
In the eighth round Inoue looked eager to attack and at the bell launched across the ring and unloaded more blows on Cardenas. A barrage of 14 unanswered blows forced the referee to stop the fight at 45 seconds of round eight for a technical knockout win.
âI knew he was tough,â said Inoue. âBoxing is not that easy.â
Espinoza Wins
WBO featherweight titlist Rafael Espinosa (27-0, 23 KOs) uppercut his way to a knockout win over Edward Vazquez (17-3, 4 KOs) in the seventh round.
âI wanted to fight a game fighter to show what I am capable,â said Espinoza.
Espinosa used the leverage of his six-foot, one-inch height to slice uppercuts under the guard of Vazquez. And when the tall Mexican from Guadalajara targeted the body, it was then that the Texas fighter began to wilt. But he never surrendered.
Though he connected against Espinoza in every round, he was not able to slow down the taller fighter and that allowed the Mexican fighter to unleash a 10-punch barrage including four consecutive uppercuts. The referee stopped the fight at 1:47 of the seventh round.
It was Espinozaâs third title defense.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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