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Moloney vs Astrolabio on Saturday has the Mark of an Old-fashioned Dust-Up

This Saturday night in the Stockton Arena in California a fascinating 118lb match will be fought between two of the world’s best bantamweights, Australia’s Jason Moloney, 25-2 and ranked two, and Filipino Vincent Astrolabio, 18-3 and ranked four.
Asrolabio’s rise has been the more meteoric. Clearly talented, it is also true that in 2021 he was very much a preliminary fighter, a supporting act for more storied Filipinos, minimumweight Rene Mark Cuarto among them. In February of 2022 however, Astrolabio got the call he had been waiting for – he was to headline a card out in Dubai, his opponent the former pound-for-pounder and two-time Olympic gold medallist Guillermo Rigondeaux. His purse, rumoured to be around $75,000, was less than a third of what Rigondeaux was set to pocket but still represented a career’s best payday. To maintain such riches, all Astrolabio had to do was win.
This he did, and in style.
Astrolabio came into the fight riding a four-fight knockout streak, a response to his loss out in China to ZongLi He. In truth, Astrolabio probably deserved the nod in that fight, a majority decision that had the smell of hometown cooking if not quite out and out theft. The lesson he learned from his eight-rounder with ZongLi though was not to neglect his body punching. Astrolabio banked early rounds hitting with a right hand to the body and it was a punch he forgot when ZongLi upped the aggression and it probably cost him. Against Rigondeaux, he would not make the same error.
Rigondeaux did his thing, made Astrolabio miss, sometimes by a lot, but the Filipino also turned in a strategic masterpiece. Patient, he also bought pressure. Careful never to throw one punch when two were there to be had, he never got greedy. His mix of touch and power was perfect. Rigondeaux kept waiting as though he expected the same old openings to present themselves, but when they did – and they did – he often found himself out of position or landing a single shot. In the eighth, Astrolabio flashed Rigondeaux with a right-handed punch, but only after repeatedly rattling him with right hands to the head throughout that round. The penny finally seemed to drop for Rigondeaux who won the ninth and tenth but by then it was too late – all three judges had the fight for Astrolabio by virtue of the knockdown (I saw it slightly wider).
His first steps with his newfound status were tentative; he boxed a rusty Nikolai Potapov (now 23-3-1) on a Frank Martin undercard. In fairness, he met the expectation of those of us who had been following his career and exceeded the expectations of many others, sending Potapov to the canvas twice in the very first round, first with a cuffing right hand above the ear and later in the round with a similar counter left. After handing out some brutal treatment in the fourth, Astrolabio found his man with hurtful uppercuts in the fifth and Potapov was down again; matters were settled in the fifth by pressure and a left hook/right uppercut combination. It is worth pointing out that Potapov had never been down as a professional and although stopped once before by long-reigning titlist Omar Narvaez in 2017, this was a corner stoppage. Against Astrolabio a rattled Potapov was sent down four times and heard the ten.
Astrolabio, now twenty-six years old, further developed his body-attack in this fight and his right uppercut is a punch that has come to fruition; furthermore, he clearly impressed an American commentary team (and perhaps audience) who were not that familiar with him – but there is a sense that despite his superb 2022 form, his final confirmation as world-class lies before him. Was Rigondeaux past it? Was Potapov hampered by inactivity? Neither one of these things can be said of Astrolabio’s next opponent.
Moloney is thirty-two, in his fistic prime and highly regarded. The route to divisional kingship lies, for him, through Emmanuel Rodriguez, the current number one and a man who bested him in 2017. This was a close fight and a frustrating one for the Australian, who finished far and away the stronger, winning the ninth through twelfth on my card, but having been cleanly out-boxed in the first half of the fight, it wasn’t enough. It underlines, though, Moloney’s greatest strength: it is unlikely that there is a better conditioned fighter on the planet.
Workrate and conditioning have been the core of what has made Moloney a success since that split loss to Rodriguez as he won eight including five by stoppage. It is true that these wins were bisected by a defeat to the mighty Naoya Inoue, the pugilistic equivalent of being struck by lightning. Still, it is worth noting that when Moloney has stepped up to a level of competition that might be considered higher than Astrolabio’s, he has lost, and that if he were to successfully best Astrolabio, it would represent his biggest, his most important victory.
Moloney spent the first years of the 2020s in the USA, building his name and being battered by Naoya, but in 2022 he returned to Australia for a pair of homecoming fights. The first was against Filipino Aston Palicte (now 28-5-1) who is in possession of neither the quality nor the patience of Astrolabio but does fight with the same sort of punching aggression. It is worth noting then that Moloney timed him on the right uppercut, a shot Astrolabio likes, with a beautiful right hand of his own from which Palicte never recovered. Moloney got him out of there in three – it had previously taken world-class veteran Kazuto Ioka ten. Moloney was heavily favoured, but this was impressive work.
More intriguing in many ways was his most recent fight against the teak-tough Thailander Nawaphon Kaikanha. Kaikanha, now in his early thirties, has boxed one of those fascinating Thai careers heavy on numbers and light on names, but for his 56-2-1 he has victories over former flyweight champion Sony Boy Jaro, and a past-prime version of the storied flyweight beltholder Amnat Ruenroeng. Stopped just once very much against his will back in 2017, Kaikanha, stalking forwards in his Muay Thai stance, was in many ways the perfect foil for Moloney to deploy his fleet-footed, clean-punching style. Alternating between moving to his left, his right, and holding his ground with the proper frequency to create confusion, Moloney also had a fine eye for the right punch, seeking a home for a left to the body and a defence- splitting straight while bringing Kaikanha on to those punches. Moloney is very well balanced and challenges his opponent’s balance with his mobile aggression.
It is clear though that Kaikanha’s heavy hands made Moloney nervous early. Astrolabio has those heavy hands too and he will not get caught following Moloney around the ring. I suspect that Astrolabio will be able to make Moloney fight more often and make him fight when he doesn’t want to, possibly by the ropes. This is the place where the boil for Astrolabio and Moloney begins to intrigue and where the potential fireworks lie. Moloney appears to have a style advantage and also the advantage in quickness, but these were things that were said about both Rigondeaux and Potapov and Astrolabio was not out-sped. Skilled in timing and quick-handed himself in bringing the second punch in behind the first and third behind the second, he, too, remains technically sound under pressure. It is easy to envisage a situation where Astrolabio brings that patient aggression to bear and Moloney finds himself being driven around the ring in an uncontrolled fashion rather than moving and turning at his own pace. That is how he loses this fight.
Moloney’s skill in movement is limited by his inability to tie-up or dominate on the inside, facts that make him over-reliant upon it and can quickly draw him into territorial fire-fights that might otherwise be avoided against a puncher. Astrolabio’s job is therefore two-fold – first, to keep Maloney fighting on the backfoot and to out-hit him in enough exchanges to bag rounds. Moloney can be hit by a right hand and this is the punch that Astrolabio used to punish Rigondeaux and it is likely to be the punch he most favours here given the skill Moloney has shown in countering the right uppercut.
On the other hand, Moloney is built for exactly the type of fight Astrolabio is going to have to fight to win and this is what we mean by style advantage. If, as it appears, he is also the faster man the route to victory for Astrolabio becomes fettered. That is not new for the Filipino though. The bookies have rightly installed Moloney as a slender favourite, but this is a fight that could go either way and a fight which, for Astrolabio to win it, needs to become a fight-of-the-year contender. If he can make it a war he can come away with the spoils; if he allows the Australian to glide his way through the first half of the fight, Maloney’s elite engine should get him home.
But even if Moloney bosses matters, this is going to be fascinating and highly watchable, an old-fashioned dust-up to cement the division’s elite contender in place, a fight both men should be commended for taking and one that The Sweet Science’s readership will undoubtedly enjoy.
Editor’s Note: Moloney vs. Astrolabio will be the co-feature to the WBO world middleweight title fight between Kazakhstan’s Janibek Alimkhanuly and Canadian challenger Steven Butler. The bouts will be broadcast live on ESPN and ESPN Deportes at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT.
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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.
The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.
In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.
The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:
New York Times
New York News
New York World
New York Sun
New York Journal
New York Post
New York Mirror
New York Telegram
New York Graphic
New York Herald Tribune
Brooklyn Eagle
Brooklyn Times
Brooklyn Standard Union
Brooklyn Citizen
Bronx Home News
This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.
Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.
The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.
Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)
Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.
Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.
There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.
In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.
There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.
The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.
Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.
The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.
The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.
Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.
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Gabriela Fundora KOs Marilyn Badillo and Perez Upsets Conwell in Oceanside

It was just a numbers game for Gabriela Fundora and despite Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo’s elusive tactics it took the champion one punch to end the fight and retain her undisputed flyweight world title by knockout on Saturday.
Will it be her last flyweight defense?
Though Fundora (16-0, 8 KOs) fired dozens of misses, a single punch found Badillo (19-1-1, 3 KOs) and ended her undefeated career and first attempt at a world title at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.
Fundora, however, proves unbeatable at flyweight.
The champion entered the arena as the headliner for the Golden Boy Promotion show and stepped through the ropes with every physical advantage possible, including power.
Mexico’s Badillo was a midget compared to Fundora but proved to be as elusive as a butterfly in a menagerie for the first six rounds. As the six-inch taller Fundora connected on one punch for every dozen thrown, that single punch was a deadly reminder.
Badillo tried ducking low and slipping to the left while countering with slashing uppercuts, she found little success. She did find the body a solid target but the blows proved to be useless. And when Badillo clinched, that proved more erroneous as Fundora belted her rapidly during the tie-ups.
“She was kind of doing her ducking thing,” said Fundora describing Badillo’s defensive tactics. “I just put the pressure on. It was just like a train. We didn’t give her that break.”
The Mexican fighter tried valiantly with various maneuvers. None proved even slightly successful. Fundora remained poised and under control as she stalked the challenger.
In the seventh round Badillo seemed to take a stand and try to slug it out with Fundora. She quickly was lit up by rapid left crosses and down she went at 1:44 of the seventh round. The Mexican fighter’s corner wisely waved off the fight and referee Rudy Barragan stopped the fight and held the dazed Badillo upright.
Once again Fundora remained champion by knockout. The only question now is will she move up to super flyweight or bantamweight to challenge the bigger girls.
Perez Beats Conwell.
Mexico’s Jorge “Chino” Perez (33-4, 26 KOs) upset Charles Conwell (21-1, 15 KOs) to win by split decision after 12 rounds in their super welterweight showdown.
It was a match that paired two hard-hitting fighters whose ledgers brimmed with knockouts, but neither was able to score a knockdown against each other.
Neither fighter moved backward. It was full steam ahead with Conwell proving successful to the body and head with left hooks and Perez connecting with rights to the head and body. It was difficult to differentiate the winner.
Though Conwell seemed to be the superior defensive fighter and more accurate, two judges preferred Perez’s busier style. They gave the fight to Perez by 115-113 scores with the dissenter favoring Conwell by the same margin.
It was Conwell’s first pro loss. Maybe it will open doors for more opportunities.
Other Bouts
Tristan Kalkreuth (15-1) managed to pass a serious heat check by unanimous decision against former contender Felix Valera (24-8) after a 10-round back-and-forth heavyweight fight.
It was very close.
Kalkreuth is one of those fighters that possess all the physical tools including youth and size but never seems to be able to show it. Once again he edged past another foe but at least this time he faced an experienced fighter in Valera.
Valera had his moments especially in the middle of the 10-round fight but slowed down during the last three rounds.
One major asset for Kalkreuth was his chin. He got caught but still motored past the clever Valera. After 10 rounds two judges saw it 99-91 and one other judge 97-93 all for Kalkreuth.
Highly-rated prospect Ruslan Abdullaev (2-0) blasted past dangerous Jino Rodrigo (13- 5-2) in an eight round super lightweight fight. He nearly stopped the very tough Rodrigo in the last two rounds and won by unanimous decision.
Abdullaev is trained by Joel and Antonio Diaz in Indio.
Bakersfield prospect Joel Iriarte (7-0, 7 KOs) needed only 1:44 to knock out Puerto Rico’s Marcos Jimenez (25-12) in a welterweight bout.
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‘Krusher’ Kovalev Exits on a Winning Note: TKOs Artur Mann in his ‘Farewell Fight’

At his peak, former three-time world light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev ranked high on everyone’s pound-for-pound list. Now 42 years old – he turned 42 earlier this month – Kovalev has been largely inactive in recent years, but last night he returned to the ring in his hometown of Chelyabinsk, Russia, and rose to the occasion in what was billed as his farewell fight, stopping Artur Mann in the seventh frame.
Kovalev hit his peak during his first run as a world title-holder. He was 30-0-1 (26 KOs) entering first match with Andre Ward, a mark that included a 9-0 mark in world title fights. The only blemish on his record was a draw that could have been ruled a no-contest (journeyman Grover Young was unfit to continue after Kovalev knocked down in the second round what with was deemed an illegal rabbit punch). Among those nine wins were two stoppages of dangerous Haitian-Canadian campaigner Jean Pascal and a 12-round shutout over Bernard Hopkins.
Kovalev’s stature was not diminished by his loss to the undefeated Ward. All three judges had it 114-113, but the general feeling among the ringside press was that Sergey nicked it.
The rematch was also somewhat controversial. Referee Tony Weeks, who halted the match in the eighth stanza with Kovalev sitting on the lower strand of ropes, was accused of letting Ward get away with a series of low blows, including the first punch of a three-punch series of body shots that culminated in the stoppage. Sergey was wobbled by a punch to the head earlier in the round and was showing signs of fatigue, but he was still in the fight. Respected judge Steve Weisfeld had him up by three points through the completed rounds.
Sergey Kovalev was never the same after his second loss to Andre Ward, albeit he recaptured a piece of the 175-pound title twice, demolishing Vyacheslav Shabranskyy for the vacant WBO belt after Ward announced his retirement and then avenging a loss to Eleider Alvarez (TKO by 7) with a comprehensive win on points in their rematch.
Kovalev’s days as a title-holder ended on Nov. 2, 2019 when Canelo Alvarez, moving up two weight classes to pursue a title in a fourth weight division, stopped him in the 11th round, terminating what had been a relatively even fight with a hellacious left-right combination that left Krusher so discombobulated that a count was superfluous.
That fight went head-to-head with a UFC fight in New York City. DAZN, to their everlasting discredit, opted to delay the start of Canelo-Kovalev until the main event of the UFC fight was finished. The delay lasted more than an hour and Kovalev would say that he lost his psychological edge during the wait.
Kovalev had two fights in the cruiserweight class between his setback to Canelo and last night’s presumptive swan song. He outpointed Tervel Pulev in Los Angeles and lost a 10-round decision to unheralded Robin Sirwan Safar in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Artur Mann, a former world title challenger – he was stopped in three rounds by Mairis Briedis in 2021 when Briedis was recognized as the top cruiserweight in the world – was unexceptional, but the 34-year-old German, born in Kazakhstan, wasn’t chopped liver either, and Kovalev’s stoppage of him will redound well to the Russian when he becomes eligible for the Boxing Hall of Fame.
Krusher almost ended the fight in the second round. He knocked Mann down hard with a short left hand and seemingly scored another knockdown before the round was over (but it was ruled a slip). Mann barely survived the round.
In the next round, a punch left Mann with a bad cut on his right eyelid, but the German came to fight and rounds three, four and five were competitive.
Kovalev had a good sixth round although there were indications that he was tiring. But in the seventh he got a second wind and unleashed a right-left combination that rolled back the clock to the days when he was one of the sport’s most feared punchers. Mann went down hard and as he staggered to his feet, his corner signaled that the fight should be stopped and the referee complied. The official time was 0:49 of round seven. It was the 30th KO for Kovalev who advanced his record to 36-5-1.
Addendum: History informs us that Farewell Fights have a habit of becoming redundant, by which we mean that boxers often get the itch to fight again after calling it quits. Have we seen the last of Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev? We woudn’t bet on it.
The complete Kovalev-Mann fight card was live-streamed on the Boxing News youtube channel.
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