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Boxing Odds and Ends: A Bountiful June and a Cult Fighter Returns from Prison

Boxing Odds and Ends: A Bountiful June and a Cult Fighter Returns from Prison
The month of June brought us a Big Bang in Saudi Arabia and wraps up in Arizona on the final weekend of the month when Juan Francisco Estrada collides with Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez in a super flyweight title fight that has the earmarks of a classic.
Mexico’s Estrada, considered a surefire future Hall of Famer after twice defeating Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez, ranks higher than Rodriguez on pound-for-pound lists but is yet chalked the underdog. Ten years older than “Bam” at age 34, “El Gallo” has put a lot of mileage on his odometer since turning pro at age 18, answering the bell for 322 rounds. San Antonio’s Rodriguez has turned heads while building a 19-0 record and is favored in the 7/2 range.
This coming Friday, June 7, fight fans get to choose between cards going head-to-head in South Florida and Upstate New York.
The card in New York at the Turning Stone Casino Resort in Verona, is run in conjunction with Hall of Fame Weekend at the International Boxing Hall of Fame and Museum, an annual event on the first weekend of June. The main event is a battle of southpaws between Puerto Rico’s Oscar Collazo and Gerardo Zapata, a Miami-based Nicaraguan making his U.S. debut. Collazo will be making the third defense of his WBA minimumweight title.
Don King’s card that same night at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida, has 12 bouts listed. Some of these fights will likely be scratched, but hopefully not the featured bout between Blair Cobbs and Adrien Broner as it is an interesting match-up between two 34-year-old boxers looking to stay relevant. Cobbs will tell you in all seriousness that he is a budding superstar. Broner figured that he would make billions before he left the sport, not that it mattered as he would have squandered it all away,
The following night, Top Rank is back in New York in its customary Puerto Rican Day Parade Weekend slot. Xander Zayas, who signed with Top Rank when he was a junior in high school, is now 21 years old and ready to take his place as the next great Puerto Rican fighter, following in the footsteps of Felix Trinidad and his hero Miguel Cotto. Standing in Xander’s way is Patrick Teixeira, a 33-year-old Brazilian who is the only man to defeat reigning WBC middleweight champion Carlos Adames.
Speaking of Adames, he defends his belt on Saturday, June 15, at the MGM Grand with Terrell Gausha in the opposite corner. Gervonta “Tank” Davis headlines in a WBO world lightweight title defense against Frank Martin.
June 15 will be a tripleheader for diehard fight fans with the action beginning at a soccer stadium in London where once-beaten Chris Billam-Smith defends his WBO world cruiserweight title against British countryman Richard Riakporhe. Billam-Smith won his title in his hometown of Bournemouth, turning away Lawrence Okolie in a very big upset, and will find himself the underdog again when he touches gloves with the unbeaten Riakporhe.
The action then shifts to Manati, Puerto Rico, where IBF 140-pound world title-holder Subriel Matias (20-1) meets the undefeated (24-0) Aussie Liam Paro. Matias scored all 20 of his wins by knockout while avenging his lone defeat. Paro looked very sharp while dismantling Montana Love on the undercard of Haney-Prograis in San Francisco.
Fight Fans get a breather the following weekend. As it now stands, the only noteworthy fight on the May 22 docket is a battle for the British middleweight title between Felix Cash and Tyler Denny. The venue is Resorts World in Birmingham and it is Matchroom/DAZN production.
The following Saturday, the compelling showdown in Phoenix between Estrada and Rodriguez isn’t all that there is. Top Rank is in Miami Beach that night where Teofimo Lopez defends his WBO 140-pound world title against Canada’s Steve Claggett.
This match has been ridiculed on social media and, indeed, Teofimo will be a heavy favorite. However, Claggett is certainly deserving of a title shot. At age 34, he’s in excellent form, having won nine straight, and he’s only been stopped once in 47 fights, that coming early in his career. Teofimo blows hot and cold and if he has another off-night, Claggett can make it warm for him. In an undercard match of note, Nico Ali Walsh will attempt to avenge his lone defeat in an 8-rounder with Detroit’s rugged Sona Akale.
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Avtandil Khurtsidze, Out of Prison and Back in the Ring at age 45
Seven years ago this month, Avtandil Khurtsidze was making plans to fly to England to challenge WBO world middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders. The match was sealed for July 8, 2017 at London’s Copper Box Arena.
Khurtsidze never made it. On June 7, with the fight 31 days away, he was swept up in an FBI dragnet that netted 22 other alleged members of a Russian crime syndicate. They were charged with violating the RICO Act, a wide-ranging statute created to give law enforcement a more effective tool for fighting organized crime.
Khurtsidze, who came to the United States in 2014 from the Republic of Georgia in the former Soviet Union, then resided in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, a stronghold of the Russian Mafia. Among many other things, the Brighton Beach mob was accused of gaffing slot machines in Atlantic City and Pennsylvania casinos and of stealing cargo shipments from overseas, one of which contained more than a 10,000 pounds of chocolate. Khurtsidze purportedly worked as an enforcer for Razhden Shulaya, one of the ringleaders of the operation.
The boxer faced 20 years in prison, but was sentenced to 10. Released on parole last summer, he went back in the gym and this past Friday (May 31) he returned to the ring in a 6-round prelim at a club show staged by a Polish promoter in the New York borough of Queens at the Melrose Ballroom in Astoria.
Khurtsidze was matched against an Argentine fighter who was 11-15-2 heading in and had been stopped eight times. Khurtsidze, who carried 171 ½ pounds, knocked him to the canvas twice before the match was halted after only 140 seconds of the opening round. That bumped Khurtsidze’s record to 34-2-2 (27 KOs).
Khurtsidze attracted a cult following in his first nationally televised fight in March of 2016 when he massacred highly-touted Antoine Douglas at a show in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with TSS writer Bernard Fernandez looking on. “He is squatty as a fire hydrant and his fighting style is…well, let’s just say inelegant,” wrote Fernandez in his award-winning ringside report. Standing only five-foot-four and with a menacing scowl, Khurtsidze took the fight on less than three weeks’ notice and was virtually unknown to American fight fans.
For an encore, he went over to England and scored a fifth-round stoppage of previously undefeated Tommy Langford, earning him a shot at the WBO world title, an opportunity that evaporated when the feds came calling. He was on a 10-fight winning streak and had won twenty-six of his last twenty-seven when his career was interrupted.
I never in my life thought I would ever say that I would welcome the return of a 45-year-old man to the prize ring, but I’ll make a one-time exception for this guy, a “mini-Tyson” as he came to be called. And, for certain, I wouldn’t want to run into him, or anyone that looked like him, in a dark alley.
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Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

Japan’s Naoya “Monster” Inoue banged it out with Mexico’s 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.
“By watching tonight’s fight, everyone is well aware that I like to brawl,” 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 Cardenas’ trainer Joel Diaz was that his fighter “can crack.”
Cardenas proved his trainer’s 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.
“I was very surprised,” said Inoue about getting dropped. ““In 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.”
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.
“I dreamed about fighting in front of thousands of people in Las Vegas,” said Cardenas. “So, I came to give everything.”
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 Inoue’s 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.
“I knew he was tough,” said Inoue. “Boxing is not that easy.”
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.
“I wanted to fight a game fighter to show what I am capable,” 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 Espinoza’s third title defense.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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Undercard Results and Recaps from the Inoue-Cardenas Show in Las Vegas

The curtain was drawn on a busy boxing weekend tonight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas where the featured attraction was Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue appearing in his twenty-fifth world title fight.
The top two fights (Inoue vs. Roman Cardenas for the unified 122-pound crown and Rafael Espinoza vs. Edward Vazquez for the WBO world featherweight diadem) aired on the main ESPN platform with the preliminaries streaming on ESPN+.
The finale of the preliminaries was a 10-rounder between welterweights Rohan Polanco and Fabian Maidana. A 2020/21 Olympian for the Dominican Republic, Polanco was a solid favorite and showed why by pitching a shutout, punctuating his triumph by knocking Maidana to his knees late in the final round with a hard punch to the pit of the stomach.
Polanco improved to 16-0 (10). Argentina’s Maidana, the younger brother of former world title-holder Marcos Maidana, fell to 24-4 while maintaining his distinction of never being stopped.
Emiliano Vargas, a rising force in the 140-pound division with the potential to become a crossover star, advanced to 14-0 (12 KOs) with a second-round stoppage Juan Leon. Vargas, who turned 21 last month, is the son of former U.S. Olympian Fernando Vargas who had big money fights with the likes of Felix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya. Emiliano knocked Leon down hard twice in round two – both the result of right-left combinations — before Robert Hoyle waived it off.
A 28-year-old Spaniard, Leon was 11-2-1 heading in.
In his U.S. debut, 29-year-old Japanese southpaw Mikito Nakano (13-0, 12 KOs) turned in an Inoue-like performance with a fourth-round stoppage of Puerto Rico’s Pedro Medina. Nakano, a featherweight, had Medina on the canvas five times before referee Harvey Dock waived it off at the 1:58 mark of round four. The shell-shocked Medina (16-2) came into the contest riding a 15-fight winning streak.
Lynwood, California junior middleweight Art Barrera Jr, a 19-year-old protégé of Robert Garcia, scored a sixth-round stoppage of Chicago’s Juan Carlos Guerra. There were no knockdowns, but the bout had turned sharply in Barrera’s favor when referee Thomas Taylor intervened. The official time was 1:15 of round six.
Barrera improved to 9-0 (7 KOs). The spunky but outclassed Guerra, who upset Nico Ali Walsh in his previous outing, declined to 6-2-1.
In the lid-lifter, a 10-round featherweight affair, Muskegon Michigan’s Ra’eese Aleem improved to 22-1 (12) with a unanimous decision over LA’s hard-trying Rudy Garcia (13-2-1). The judges had it 99-01, 98-92, and 97-93.
Aleem, 34, was making his second start since June of 2023 when he lost a split decision in Australia to Sam Goodman with a date with Naoya Inoue hanging in the balance.
Check back shortly for David Avila’s recaps of the two world title fights.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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Canelo Alvarez Upends Dancing Machine William Scull in Saudi Arabia

Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who has acquired a new nickname – “The Face of Boxing” – is accustomed to fighting on Cinco De Mayo weekend, but this year was different. For the first time, Canelo was fighting outside the continent of North America and entering the ring at an awkward hour. His match with William Scull started at 6:30 on a Sunday morning in Riyadh.
In the opposite corner was 32-year-old William Scull, an undefeated (23-0) Cuban by way of Germany, whose performance was better suited to “Dancing With the Stars” than to a world title fight. Constantly bouncing from side to side but rarely letting his hands go, Scull frustrated Canelo who found it near-impossible to corner him, but one can’t win a fight solely on defense and the Mexican superstar was returned the rightful winner in a bout that was a fitting cap to a desultory two days of Saudi-promoted prizefighting. The scores were 115-113, 116-112, and 119-109. In winning, Canelo became a fully unified super middleweight champion twice over.
Terence Crawford was in attendance and HE Turki Alalshikh made it official: Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) and Canelo (63-2-2, 39 KOs) will meet in the Fight of the Century (Alalshikh’s words) on Sept. 12 in Las Vegas at the home of the city’s NFL team, the Raiders. For whatever it’s worth, each of Canelo’s last seven fights has gone the full 12 rounds.
Semi-wind-up
In a match between the WBC world cruiserweight title-holder and the WBC world cruiserweight “champion in recess” (don’t ask), the former, Badou Jack, brought some clarity to the diadem by winning a narrow decision over Noel Mikaelian. One of the judges had it a draw (114-114), but the others gave the fight to “Jack the Ripper” by 115-113 scores.
A devout Muslim who is now a full-time resident of Saudi Arabia, the Sweden-born Jack, a three-division title-holder, had the crowd in his corner. Now 41 years old, he advanced his record to 29-3-3 (17). It was the first pro loss for Mikaelian (27-1), a Florida-based Armenian who was subbing for Ryan Rozicki.
The distracted CompuBox operator credited Mikaelian with throwing 300 more punches but there was no controversy.
Tijuana’s Jaime Munguia, a former junior middleweight title-holder, avenged his shocking loss to Bruno Sarace with a unanimous 12-round decision in their rematch. This was Munguia’s first fight with Eddy Reynoso in his corner. The scores were 117-111 and 116-112 twice.
Surace’s one-punch knockout of Munguia in mid-December in Tijuana was the runaway pick for the 2024 Upset of the Year. Heading in, Munguia was 44-1 with his lone defeat coming at the hands of Canelo Alvarez. Munguia had won every round against Surace before the roof fell in on him.
Surace won a few rounds tonight, but Munguia was the busier fighter and landed the cleaner shots. It was the first pro loss for Surace (26-1-2) and ended his 23-fight winning streak. The Frenchman hails for Marseilles.
Heavyweights
In a 10-round heavyweight match fought at a glacial pace, Martin Bakole (21-2-1) and Efe Ajagba (20-1-1) fought to a draw. One of the judges favored Ajagba 96-94 but he was outvoted by his cohorts who each had it 95-95.
Bakole, a 7/2 favorite, came in at 299 pounds, 15 more than he carried in his signature win over Jared Anderson, and looked sluggish. He was never able to effectively close off the ring against the elusive Ajagba who fought off his back foot and failed to build on his early lead.
The fight between the Scotch-Congolese campaigner Bakole and his Nigerian-American foe was informally contested for the heavyweight championship of Africa. That “title” remains vacant.
In a 6-rounder, heavy-handed Cuban light heavyweight Brayon Leon, a stablemate of Canelo Alvarez, was extended the distance for the first time while advancing his record to 7-0 at the expense of Mexico’s Aaron Roche (11-4-1). Leon knocked Roche to the canvas in the fourth round with a right-left combination, but the Mexican stayed the course while eating a lot of hard punches.
Photo credit: Leigh Dawney / Queensberry Promotions
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