Crawford-Spence Gets More Buzz, but Inoue-Fulton is No Less Compelling

Published

1 year ago

July 20, 2023

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Writing about Japan’s Naoya Inoue just over ten years ago I claimed that “Inoue is a monster. He controls his opponents with aggression for all the finesse. This means given even his extraordinary potential there will be limits for him and that limit will be 122lbs.”

Naoya had legacy written all over him, even at 3-0. Appraising him was not a matter of speculation but of application of thought, so clear was his capacity for violence. At the very least he was to make a visitation to the pound-for-pound lists of the future, and at best? At best, Naoya was to become one of the greatest fighters of the century. What is at stake on Tuesday for Naoya is more than just a 122lb strap, a victory in yet another weight class over yet another divisional number one, his third, would make Naoya de facto pound-for-pound number one and default number three fighter of the decade behind Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.

Such achievements are transitory and such arrangements can be temporary and with Usyk and Spence and Crawford in play, they will remain so – but they are better done than left undone. My earliest expectations were that Naoya would achieve great things in boxing but that 122lbs would be a bridge too far. It seems fitting then that the fighter Naoya is presented with to break these barriers is such a special one. Stephen Fulton, 21-0 out of Philadelphia, is not here just to add to Naoya Inoue’s 24-0.

“I need some excitement in my life,” Fulton told Brian Custer when the fight was made. “I like the idea of having my back up against the wall.”

He does have his back up against the wall. Fulton will be fighting early Tuesday morning Philadelphia time. Well-travelled as an amateur and to be confronted by the traditionally polite Japanese crowd rather than the baying hordes of Scotland or Mexico; the honest promotions often associated with Japan rather than the questionable officiating sometimes associated with England or Germany, this risk seems to be a calculated risk in favour of what is rumoured to be a considerable purse. And Fulton appears confident.

That sounds like a minimum requirement, like something that could and should be said about every fighter before every championship level fight, but this is to underestimate the savage projection of the conqueror. Storied, experienced men have taken to the ring to face the Japanese with an air of a man ascending to the gallows rather than the ring. These men were not minor figures in their divisions, either, rather men like Adrian Hernandez, a Mexican warrior who travelled to Japan as the world’s number one light-flyweight, climbed into the ring with his eyes down, and having won his last two fights by speedy knockout, here spent six rounds running from the 5-0 Naoya with fear in his moves. Omar Andres Narvaez was on a long win streak and ranked the best super-flyweight in the world when he visited the Land of the Rising Sun and he was summarily butchered in two, seeming to spend more time lying on the canvas than standing on his feet. Neither of these men troubled the pound-for-pound top twenty, but they were elite sportsmen and ranked the best in their division before Naoya caved them in. What is impressive is not that he won but how he won. Intimidating world class athletes is extremely difficult in a sport governed by weight classes, but fighters know fighters. Naoya Inoue was in a different echelon from these men after just a handful of contests.

What is the thing that troubled these opponents? The answer to that is concussive power on delivery. Naoya Inoue boxes with a trident, perhaps, a three-pronged attack of power, speed, and accuracy, but he also undermines this as a final word. Naoya can also trap, trick, he spends time trying to convince an opponent he can approach safely, and he unveils his attacks as time elapses. Naoya fights like a general: some of the most important aspects of his boxing lie in reserve. In other words, even when he is apparently unfolding within the ring, he is in fact boxing within himself.

So, I was interested in Nonito Donaire’s words in discussion with Boxing Scene earlier this week. Donaire injured Naoya and forced him to box the most layered match of his career, nursing a fractured eye socket while scoring enough points to repel his most elite opponent to date. In the rematch, Naoya inevitably inflicted the same butchery upon the ageing Donaire as the rest, but Donaire extended him in their first fight. His opinion would seem to matter. His reason for choosing Fulton is the best reason there is: size.

Naoya has never boxed at 122lbs before and in moving directly into the company of the very best fighter in the division he is bold indeed. It is the actions of the pound-for-pound best in the world, something I hold Naoya to be, and it is not the normal route. Marlon Tapales, an excellent fighter in his own right, is the man in possession of two of the more relevant divisional alphabet titles and as a Filipino, his promotional connections run deep in Japan. Naoya, though, prefers Fulton and Fulton certainly prefers Naoya. The latest batch of diva heavyweights could do well to learn lessons from these two men, who seem to have settled terms in a short series of phonecalls.

Fulton is listed at between 5’6” and 5’7”. Naoya is consistently listed at 5’5”. This is not a meaningful difference. In terms of reach, however, there is a difference and one that might matter. Fulton probably outreaches Naoya by three inches. This typically has not been significant. Naoya began his career at 108lbs and has found himself outreached by a lot or a little frequently since that time. Jamie McDonnell had a longer reach than that of Fulton for his 2018 visit to Japan. Naoya made a mockery of that advantage with speed, timing, and punch selection. Donaire’s reasoning, “size” makes no more sense that his claims to Fulton’s champion’s advantage or his “hunger.” These are not meaningful reasons for his selection. But the fact that Fulton has a longer reach in conjunction with his style, that really might matter.

This is why this fight is exciting, this is why it might be the fight of the year, this is why I look forward to it more than Spence-Crawford: balance. Balance, speed of thought and the reaction time to match. It is not sensible to compare Daniel Roman, Fulton’s last victim, to Naoya Inoue, but there are things we can see in that fight that speak to us about this one. There was a moment early where Fulton set himself to retreat out of the corner Roman had trapped him in, readying a move to his own right. He swept his weight back near his heels and prepared to step out when he noticed that Roman had dipped all the way in with his head and upper body, so on a dime he spun his plan. Throwing his right hand, full torque, away from himself and back, he simultaneously pitched himself forwards through his toes meeting the punch with his balance in time for it landing. This is an elite physical skill, one that most fighters do not possess, one that is improvised, and in my opinion one that very, very rarely manifests itself in punchers. The trick of balance and punch blending on a knife’s edge is almost the opposite of a puncher “falling in love” with his power, something we hear all the time but rarely explore as an idea. Instead of fixating on the power, a fighter who lacks power – and Fulton does – can learn to make the punches that shouldn’t even be thrown, land with meaning. They are often his most significant punches, and they are punches absolutely primed for punishing monsters. Sweeping offence is there to be victimised by the quick, balanced, learned slickster. That is what Fulton is.

This, for me, is where the fight will be won and lost. Can Naoya Inoue, with his physical gifts, layered attack, undisputed adaptability, find the right punches against a man who doesn’t have to wait for him but can rather improvise around his failures?

The aforementioned Tapales doesn’t think so. He describes a very close fight, a fifty-fifty fight even, but one where Naoya “finds a way.” Former Naoya opponent Jason Moloney goes much further telling 4C Media that Fulton “does not have enough in the kit to trouble [Naoya] too much.” Brave words, but Moloney’s account interested me because he appraised Fulton. He talks about Fulton’s counter-punching ability and larger frame, but also Naoya’s technical superiority and explosiveness. This seems enough for Moloney with a heavy full stop.

Explosiveness is the key, in the end. How Naoya’s power translates against a genuine super-bantamweight is probably the key question for the fight. When I originally appraised the man Naoya succeeded as king of the lower weights, Roman Gonzalez, he was only a light-flyweight, as was Naoya the first time I looked at him. What I felt I saw in Gonzalez was a roof of 115lbs; I went far enough to predict that he would be stopped by a power-punching southpaw. So it proved. But it was not because I thought Gonzalez would be vulnerable to punchers at this weight. Rather it was because I felt that Gonzalez, who was already layering punches in world-class combinations, would himself surrender his status as a puncher at that weight limit.

I felt the same way about Naoya, only I saw him climb further, all the way to 118lbs. 122lbs would be where the dashing combinations would no longer end resistance.

Between 118lbs and 122lbs are only 4lbs, but there is more in the rehydration of the modern fighter. Fulton will come to the ring nearer 130lbs than the 122lbs limit he weighs in at the day before. Nobody imagines Naoya a puncher at middleweight – but where does the punching stop and the pure-boxing start? How will Fulton, personally, hold up to Naoya’s onslaught?

For all those predictions about a twenty-year old Naoya, there is no way to finally know. What we can say is that he destroyed the opposition at 118lbs. Eight out of nine opponents were sent spinning, some of them in seconds, and the only man to survive him did so after inflicting a debilitating eye injury upon him. Naoya is a destroyer at 118lbs, like Carlos Zarate before him. And like Carlos Zarate before him, he will almost certainly carry serious power to 122lbs and only the right man will be able to take it and fire back. Is Fulton that man?

This is a question for next Tuesday. Sooner or later, we will see Fulton’s reaction to Naoya’s power and learn whether he is capable of returning it. My job here is to make another guess and my guess is that Naoya Inoue will force Stephen Fulton to retreat just often enough to take a comfortable decision victory. If I am right then he still has the challenge of some aggressive punching super-bantamweights ahead of him, but those assignments should be easier than this one, a typical Naoya Inoue contest which has opposite corners of the internet insisting that each has never met a man like the other. This is true, but it is also meaningless.

Aside from the fact that could make for an astonishingly good fight, one that Naoya will win but in doing so will realise that 126lbs is too big for him, that 122lbs is his limit.

Probably.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 245: Farewell to the Thompson Promotions Era and More

Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

East Los Angeles has long been a haven for some of the best fighters around if you can keep them out of trouble. For every Oscar De La Hoya or Seniesa Estrada there are thousands derailed by crime, drugs or drinking.

Boxing has always been a favorite sport of East L.A. Every family has an uncle or two who boxes.

On Friday, 360 Promotions’ Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) fights Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1) in the main event at Commerce Casino, in Commerce, CA. UFC Fight Pass will stream the fight card.

The City of Commerce used to be part of East L.A. until 1960 when it incorporated. It’s still considered to be part of East Los Angeles, but informally.

Plenty of fighters come out of East L.A. but few make it all the way like De La Hoya and Estrada. Will Trinidad be the one?

The first world champion from East L.A. or “East Los” as some call it, was Solly Garcia Smith back in the late 1800s. Others were Richie Lemos, Art Frias and Joey Olivo. There is also 1984 Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzalez.

Once again 360 Promotions brings its popular brand of fights to the area. On this fight card includes two female bouts. One features Roxy Verduzco (1-0) the former amateur star fighting Colleen Davis (3-1-1) in a featherweight fight.

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

The next day, also in East L.A., Elite Boxing stages another boxing card at Salesian High School located at 960 S. Soto Street in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles.

Elite Boxing has promoted several successful boxing cards at the Catholic high school grounds. The area is saturated by many of the best eateries in Los Angeles. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself and grab some of that delicious food.

Boxing has long been a favorite sport of anyone who lives in East L.A. It’s a fight town equal to Philadelphia, Brooklyn or Detroit. There’s something different about the area. For more than 100 years some of the best fighters continue to come out of its boxing gyms. Some will be performing on these club shows.

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

Speaking of fight towns, pound-for-pound best Claressa Shields who won two Olympic Gold Medals in boxing, moves up another weight division to tackle the WBC heavyweight world champion Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse on Saturday, July 27, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

Shields (14-0) cleaned out the super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions and now wants to add the big girls to her conquests. She will be facing Canada’s Lepage-Joanisse (7-1) who holds the WBC belt.

The last time Shields gloved up was more than a year ago when she fought Maricela Cornejo. Don’t blame Shields. She loves to fight. She loves to win. The last time Shields lost a fight was in the amateurs and that was three presidential administrations ago.

Shields doesn’t lose.

I wonder if Las Vegas even takes bets on her fights?

The only fight she may have been an underdog was against Savannah Marshall who was the last opponent to defeat her. And that was in 2012 in China. When they met as pros two years ago, Shields avenged her loss with a blistering attack.

Don’t get Shields mad.

Perhaps her toughest foe as a pro was in her pro debut when she clashed with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in Las Vegas. It was four rounds of fists and fury as the two pounded each other on the undercard of Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in November 2016.

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

Assisting Shields on this fight card will be several intriguing male bouts. One guy you should pay special attention is Tito Mercado (15-0, 14 KOs) a super lightweight prospect from Pomona, California.

Many excellent fighters have come out of Pomona including Sugar Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley Jr., Alberto Davila and Richie Sandoval who just passed away this week.

Sandoval was best known for his 15-round war with Philadelphia’s Jeff Chandler for the bantamweight world title in 1984. Read the story by Arne K. Lang on this link: https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-boxing-articles-boxing-news-videos-rankings-and-results/81467-former-world-bantamweight-champion-richie-sandoval-passes-away-at-age-63 .

Fights to Watch

Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) vs Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1).

Sat. ESPN+ 12:30 p.m. Joe Joyce (16-2) vs Derek Chisora (34-13).

Sat. DAZN 3 p.m. Claressa Shields (14-0) vs Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse (7-1), Michel Rivera (25-1) vs Hugo Roldan (22-2-1); Tito Mercado (15-0) vs Hector Sarmiento (21-2).

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

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Arne’s Almanac: Jake Paul and Women’s Boxing, a Curmudgeon’s Take

Published

2 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Jake Paul can fight more than a little. The view from here is that he would make it interesting against any fringe contender in the cruiserweight division. However, Jake’s boxing acumen pales when paired against his skill as a flim-flam artist.

Jake brought a 9-1 record into last weekend’s bout with Mike Perry. As noted by boxing writer Paul Magno, Jake’s previous opponents consisted of “a You Tuber, a retired NBA star, five retired MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, and two undersized and inactive fall-guy boxers.”

Mike Perry, a 32-year-old Floridian, was undefeated (6-0, 3 KOs) as a bare-knuckle boxer after forging a 14-8 record in UFC bouts. In pre-fight blurbs, Perry was billed as the baddest bare knuckle boxer of all time, but against Jake Paul he proved to have very unrefined skills as a conventional boxer which Team Paul undoubtedly knew all along. Perry lasted into the eighth round in a one-sided fight that could have been stopped a lot sooner.

Jake Paul is both a boxer and a promoter. As a promoter, he handles Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female boxers in history. That makes him the person most responsible (because the buck stops with him) for the wretched mismatch in last Saturday’s co-feature, the bout between Serrano and Stevie Morgan.

Morgan, who took up boxing two years ago at age 33, brought a 14-1 record. Nicknamed the Sledgehammer, she had won 13 of her 14 wins by knockout, eight in the opening round. However, although she resides in Florida, all but one of those 13 knockouts happened in Colombia.

“We found that in Colombia there were just more opportunities for women’s boxing than in the United States,” she told a prominent boxing writer whose name we won’t mention.

The truth is that, for some folks, Colombia is the boxing equivalent of a feeder lot for livestock, a place where a boxer can go to fatten their record. The opportunities there were no greater than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995. It was there that Peter McNeeley prepped for his match with Mike Tyson with a 6-second knockout of professional punching bag Frankie Hines. (Six seconds? So it would be written although no one seems to have been there to witness it.)

Serrano vs Morgan was understood to be a stay-busy fight for Amanda whose rematch with Katie Taylor was postponed until November. Stevie Morgan, to her credit, answered the bell for the second round whereas others in her situation would have remained on the stool and invented an injury to rationalize it. Thirty-eight seconds later it was all over and Ms. Morgan was free to go home and use her sledgehammer to do some light dusting.

The Paul-Perry and Serrano-Morgan fights played out in a sold-out arena in Tampa before an estimated 17,000. Those without a DAZN subscription paid $64.95 for the livestream. Paul’s next promotion, where he will touch gloves with 58-year-old Mike Tyson (unless Iron Mike pulls a Joe Biden and pulls out; a capital idea) with Serrano-Taylor II the semi-main, will almost certainly rake in more money than any other boxing promotion this year.

Asked his opinion of so-called crossover boxing by a reporter for a college newspaper, the venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum said, “It’s not my bag but folks who don’t like it shouldn’t get too worked up over it because no one is stealing from anybody.” True enough, but for some of us, the phenomenon is distressing.

—

The next big women’s fight happens Saturday in Detroit where Claressa Shields seeks a world title in a third weight class against WBC heavyweight belt-holder Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated in 14 fights as a pro, Shields is very good, arguably the best female boxer of her generation which makes her, arguably, the best female boxer of all time. But turning away Lepage-Joanisse (7-1, 2 KOs) won’t elevate her stature in our eyes.

Purportedly 17-4 as an amateur, the Canadian won her title in her second crack at it. Back in August of 2017, she challenged Cancun’s Alejandra Jimenez in Cancun and was stopped in the third round. Entering the bout, Lepage-Joanisse was 3-0 as a pro and had never fought a match slated for more than four rounds.

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

True, on the women’s side, the heavyweight bracket is a very small pod. A sanctioning body has to make concessions to harness a sanctioning fee. Nonetheless, how absurd that a woman who had answered the bell for only 11 rounds would be deemed qualified to compete for a world title. (FYI: Alejandra Jimenez was purportedly born a man. She left the sport with a 12-0-1 record after her win over Franchon Crews Dazurn was changed to a no-contest when she tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.)

Following her defeat to Jimenez, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse, now 29 years old, was out of action for six-and-a-half years. When she returned, she was still a heavyweight, but a much slender heavyweight. She carried 231 pounds for Jimenez. In her most recent bout where she captured the vacant WBC title with a split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, she clocked in at 173 ¼. (On the distaff side, there’s no uniformity among the various sanctioning bodies as to what constitutes a heavyweight.)

Claressa Shields doesn’t need Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to reinforce her credentials as a future Hall of Famer. She made the cut a long time ago.

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Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63

Published

4 days ago

July 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Richie Sandoval, who won the WBA and lineal bantamweight title in one of the biggest upsets of the 1980s and then, not quite two years later, suffered near-fatal injuries in a title defense, has passed away at the age of 63.

News circulated fast in the Las Vegas boxing community on Monday, July 22, the grapevine actuated by a tweet from Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler: “Boxing and the Top Rank family lost one of our own last night in the passing of former WBA bantamweight champion Richie Sandoval. It hurts personally and professionally to know that Richie is gone at age 63. RIP campeon.”

Details are vague but the cause of death was apparently a sudden heart attack that Sandoval experienced while visiting the Southern California home of his son of the same name.

Richie Sandoval put the LA County community of Pomona, California, on the boxing map before Shane Mosley came along and gave the town a more frequently-cited mention in the sports section of the papers. He came from a fighting family. An older brother, Albert “Superfly” Sandoval, became a big draw at LA’s fabled Olympic Auditorium while building a 35-2-1 record that included a failed bid to capture Lupe Pintor’s world bantamweight title.

Richie was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic boxing team that was stranded when U.S. President Jimmy Carter (and many other world leaders) boycotted the event as a protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

As a pro, Sandoval’s signature win was a 15^th-round stoppage of Jeff Chandler. They fought on April 7, 1984 in Atlantic City. Chandler was making the tenth defense of his world bantamweight title.

Despite being a heavy underdog, Sandoval dominated the fight, winning almost every round until the referee stepped in and waived it off. Chandler, who was 33-1-2 heading in and had avenged his lone defeat, never fought again.

Sandoval made two successful defenses before risking his title against Gaby Canizales on the undercard of Hagler-Mugabi in the outdoor stadium at Caesars Palace. In round seven, Sandoval, who had a hellish time making the weight, was knocked down three times and suffered a seizure as he collapsed from the third knockdown. Stretchered out of the ring, he was rushed to the hospital where doctors reduced the swelling in his brain and beat the odds to save his life. This would be Richie’s lone defeat. He finished his pro career with a record of 29-1 (17 KOs).

Bob Arum cushioned some of the pain by giving Richie a $25,000 bonus and offering him a lifetime job at Top Rank which Richie accepted. And let the record show that Arum was good to his word.

A more elaborate portrait of Richie Sandoval was published in these pages in 2017. You can check it out HERE. May he rest in peace.

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