Top Rank Boxing is in Limbo, but that Hasn’t Benched Robert Garcia’s Up-and-Comers

It’s old news now, but Top Rank’s deal with ESPN expired and the “Global Sports Leader” chose not to renew.

Top Rank and ESPN had a long, although choppy, history. The cable TV goliath began airing Top Rank fights in 1980 with a weekly series on Thursday nights. Back then, ESPN (an acronym for the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) was one-year-old and reached only four million homes.

Top Rank’s first go-around with ESPN lasted 15 years. Their most recent partnership with ESPN had an 8-year run.

The month of August is a quiet month for professional boxing, so it likely hasn’t hit most people yet that for the first time in the history of television, all boxing sits behind a paywall (a situation that could change at any moment).

Fighters under contract to Top Rank are in a state of limbo. To fulfill its contractual obligations, the company is now paying outside promoters to use Top Rank fighters on their cards. That was the situation this past Saturday when three SoCal prospects with decorated amateur pedigrees — featherweight Albert “Chop Chop” Gonzalez, junior middleweight Art Barrera Jr, and junior bantamweight Perla Bazaldua, all whom have multi-fight deals with Top Rank — appeared on a show at a small Native American casino in the Inland Empire town of San Jacinto, roughly 100 miles from Los Angeles.

Chop Chop and Barrera Jr didn’t have to travel far. Both are trained by Robert Garcia who recently opened a new gym in Moreno Valley, 22 miles from San Jacinto.

If a young professional boxer has Robert Garcia in his corner, that informs us that he is indeed a very strong prospect. Garcia, the former IBF 130-pound world title-holder who retired 24 years ago at age 26 with a record of 34-3, has been named Trainer of the Year by at least one prominent site on four separate occasions.

Garcia was born to the manor, so to speak. He learned the ABCs of boxing at the knee of his father Eduardo Garcia, a Mexican immigrant farm worker who taught boxing in the evenings at a boys’ club in the LA county community of Oxnard before opening his own gym. Among others, Eduardo coached and was a father figure to U.S. Olympian and two-time junior middleweight world champion “Ferocious” Fernando Vargas who in his teen years often stayed at the Garcia’s home.

In San Jacinto, Top Rank’s three promising prospects were matched soft, just as they likely would have been if this had been a Top Rank event. None of their opponents won a round.

“Chop Chop” Gonzalez advanced to 14-0 with a 10-round shutout over Mexico’s Angel Arturo Contreras (16-10-2).

(Some might remember Chop Chop’s late brother Danny Gonzalez who signed with Floyd Mayweather Jr’s “Money Team” coming out of the amateur ranks and had three pro fights, winning them all, before becoming disillusioned with boxing and quitting the sport. Danny was murdered in a drive-by shooting in Moreno Valley in September of 2020 at age 23.)

Chop Chop’s 20-year-old stablemate Art Barrera Jr advanced to 10-0 with a 6-round shutout over Missouri’s Jake Robinson (6-4-3). Perla Bazaldua improved to 3-0 with a 4-round shutout over Virginia’s Kedra Bradley (3-9-1).

Perla Bazaldua

LA’s Bazaldua, 20, won a spate of amateur titles and was a frequent sparring partner of Seniesa Estrada, the former unified minimumweight champion who retired undefeated in October of last year. She became the third female boxer to sign with Top Rank – following Mikaela Mayer and Estrada – when she signed a multi-fight contract with Bob Arum’s organization earlier this year.

There are no forthcoming events listed on the Top Rank website, but it’s business as usual at Robert Garcia’s boxing academies.

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