From a dud comes an explosion of an announcement: GGG-Canelo is official at last!
Though yesterday’s heavily hyped “Battle of Mexico” showdown between Canelo Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Junior failed to deliver the great fight we were hoping for – the one-sided nature of Canelo’s performance and the perceived poor effort of Chavez Jr. forcing the fans in attendance to boo frequently – fans did not leave the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas totally unhappy.
No sooner did boxing’s biggest star Canelo Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs) dispatch Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. (50-3-1, 32 KOs) in a dominant shutout victory over 12 rounds at the sold-out T-Mobile Arena on presented live on HBO Pay-Per-View, than the middleweight superstar announced that boxing’s biggest fight – a showdown with Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) – would take place on Mexican Independence Day weekend on September 16. Canelo beat Chavez, Jr. from pillar to post, earning a unanimous decision with all three judges scoring the fight 120-108.
Tonight’s Mexican clash between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs) and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (50-2-1, 32 KOs) was supposed to have been an exciting affair on HBO PPV, but instead it turned out to be even worse dud than the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight from 2015. Indeed, Mayweather-Pacquiao was exciting in comparison to the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight on Saturday night.
Middleweight contender David Lemieux (39-3, 33 KOs) tried his best to score a quick knockout over high level journeyman Marcos Reyes (35-5, 26 KOs) tonight, but it failed to happen so he had to settle for winning a one-sided 10 round unanimous decision on Saturday night on the undercard of the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. card at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
A new king has made himself known to boxing and those beyond our doors. Joshua assured us that this day would come, even going in to wage war against a man who graces the list of the effective heavy weight boxing champions. 2017 is a year Joshua will always remember in this phase and those yet to come. It was the year he exhibited the components that has seen him hailed the division’s new king, promising to dominate the division with sheer devastation and tactical brilliance that those before him have inspired.
Almost a week has elapsed since we bore witness to a new season in heavyweight boxing. The fight result was as I called it in pre-fight commentary however the events which unfolded on the night were not envisioned by any analyst prior to the fight. The night of the fire fight reminded the world of the presence boxing still holds and the narrative it shares beyond boxing’s enclaves.
Given his celebrated decade of dominance; Wladimir had in recent time been forced to travel a road he has long forgotten. A king disposed from his throne by a jester, was driven to reclaim his throne. In his fight against Tyson Fury he seemed daze and confused by the unorthodox approach Fury applied. The distractions Fury created both in the ring and outside served their purpose; confusing Wladimir to borrowed states of inaction.
It was always going to be a tough job for Joseph Parker: he was never going to be able to send fight fans home as happy and as excited as they were last Saturday night. Parker’s rival, WBA and IBF heavyweight champ Anthony Joshua, gave the world a thrill with his terrific rumble with Wladimir Klitschko, and today Parker had the far less interesting task of dealing with late replacement foe Razvan Cojanu.
Parker, the WBO champ won okay, but the New Zealander looked far from impressive in labouring to a 12 round decision win. Worst still, Parker, 22-0 (18) put fans to sleep. No, it wasn’t all Parker’s fault – Cojanu was a replacement for Hughie Fury (who pulled out of the Parker fight with a bad back ) and the unheralded challenger used all of his 6’7″ to lean on smaller man Parker. It made for a dull fight.
Continuing to honor its pledge to make competitive fights, Golden Boy Boxing on ESPN delivered two significant upsets in the main and co-main events on Cinco De Mayo, with lightweight Robinson “Robin Hood” Castellanos (22-11, 14 KOs) taking out Yuriorkis “El Ciclon de Guantánamo” Gamboa (26-2, 17 KOs) in the main event and Jesus Rojas (25-1-2, 18 KOs) claiming the WBA-NABA featherweight title from Abraham “El Chamaco” Lopez (22-1-1, 15 KOs) in the co-main.
IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua might be soon vacating his IBF title if the International Boxing Federation opts to order him to fight his mandatory challenger Kubrat Pulev next. Joshua (19-0, 19 KOs) has a lot of big money options available for his next title defense, one of them being a highly lucrative rematch with Wladimir Klitschko.
The “Fab 4” is the nickname that refers to the four elite Hall of Fame boxers – Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, and Marvelous Marvin Hagler. These four men are widely regarded as four of the very best who ever competed in the long rich history of professional boxing.