Arum: Mayweather is poaching the Mexican holiday

Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has no interest whatsoever in staging the mega fight between his fighter Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr on the Mexican holiday on May 2nd. According to Arum, he sees this as disrespectful to the Mexican people that Mayweather wants to fight on the May 2nd date, which is the Cinco de Mayo holiday.

Arum sees that May 2nd date belonging to Mexican fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who was not long ago easily beaten by Mayweather. The idea is Canelo will fight Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto on the May 2nd date instead of Mayweather fighting Pacquiao. Arum promotes Cotto, so it’s a win-win situation for him if that fight goes ahead on May 2nd. Arum prefers the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight to take place in April or June of next year.

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Dahou stops Valenzuela in round 1 to retain WBC Youth title

Algeria’s boxing pride, Djamel Dahou made a strong case to break into the world ratings after claiming a first round knockout victory over Daniel Valenzuela on Friday night to make a successful defence of the WBC Youth Welterweight title in his home country.

Undefeated Dahou (now 13-0, 12 KOs) in fact needed only 76 seconds in Bordj Bou Arreridj to snuff out the challenge of Valenzuela (drops to 33-25-2, 21 KOs) who had shown so much promise in the opening seconds.

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Fighting the smart fight

Boxing is a brutal sport. Of course, those of us who appreciate the subtleties of the game use colorful euphemisms to emphasize the skill rather than the violence. We call it the “Sweet Science”, or the “Noble Art”. Yet at its essence the thing that compels us to watch boxing is the controlled savagery, the idea that we can put our basest elements on display, yet do so within a set of rules which elevates it from mere barbarism to an almost divine test of skill and heart. Yet even with this emphasis on the ethereal, we expect to see the two combatants push themselves to their limits, to give everything they have and hold nothing back in the ring. Those who do so are exalted not only in victory, but in defeat as well. Those who do not, those who seek to give less than their all in the circle of truth, will find that even a win may serve as a career setback. Watching Keith “One Time” Thurman taking the path of least resistance this weekend lead me to ask myself, what exactly is the “smart fight”?

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Jo Jo Dan defeats Kevin Bizier

Jo Jo Dan won another razor close split-decision over hometown favorite Kevin Bizier in a welterweight rematch of their 2013 bout, scored 115-112 Dan, 114-113 Bizier, 114-113 Dan.

The early rounds were extremely close with back-and-forth action that could have gone either way. Bizier had his best round in the seventh, landing 38 punches to Dan’s 12 and flooring the Romanian for the first time since 2011. But the Quebec City native may have punched himself out, as Dan rallied and was the more active fighter from that point on. Dan landed 113 to just 78 for Bizier from the eighth through the 12th rounds.

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Adonis Stevenson KOs Dmitry Sukhotskiy In WBC Light Heavyweight Title Defense

QUEBEC CITY (Dec. 19, 2014) – Adonis Stevenson defended his WBC Light Heavyweight World Championship for the fourth time with a devastating fifth-round knockout of Russian challenger Dmitry Sukhotskiy in the main event of SHOWTIME BOXING: SPECIAL EDITION on Friday at Pepsi Coliseum in Quebec City, Canada.

Known for his knockouts, the southpaw champion was patient early, not forcing the action against a defensive Sukhotskiy. When Sukhotskiy did decide to punch, Stevenson was extremely effective with his counter shots and floored the challenger with a straight left in the closing seconds of the second round.

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Stevenson stops Sukhotsky; Dirrell beats Edwards

In an embarrassingly one-sided fight, WBC 175 pound champion Adonis Stevenson (25-1, 21 KOs) annihilated #7 WBC Dmitry Sukhotsky (22-3, 16 KOs) by a 5th round knockout tonight at the Colisee de Quebec, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. If the idea was to pick out an opponent that was no threat to him, Stevenson did a good job with Sukhotsky because this guy did very little in the fight on offense in this one-sided affair.

Stevenson hurt Sukhotsky with a straight left to the head that put him down on the canvas. Stevenson would then knock Sukhotsky down twice more in the round with left hands before the fight was halted at 2:42 of the round.

“He [Sergey Kovalev] has com come to me. I’m the Ring champion, so he has to come to me,” Stevenson said.

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Mayweather Sr: Khan fights like a washer woman

Trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr says he wasn’t impressed with what he saw from Amir Khan in his recent 12 round decision win over Devon Alexander last Saturday night. Floyd Sr says that Khan fought like a woman due to the way he would flail with his arms when coming forward to throw his combinations.

To Floyd Sr, Khan looked like a wild woman, and he saw it as a very undisciplined manner to be fighting. With that said, Floyd Sr still thinks that Khan would present more of a problem for his son Floyd Mayweather Jr than someone like Manny Pacquiao. Floyd Sr thinks that Khan’s high work rate would be more difficult than Pacquiao’s one punch at a time style of landing punches.

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Cotto waiting to hear back from Canelo’s side in negotiations

WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto says he recently detailed what he’s looking for to make money wise for his fight against the red-haired Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on May 2nd. He’s now waiting to hear back from his side to see what they say about it.

The Cotto-Canelo fight, if it gets made, will be televised on HBO pay-per-view, and it’s expected to be a huge money fight where both fighters will likely get a career payday if everything goes right.

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Deontay Wilder looking to KO Stiverne on 1/17

Unbeaten Deontay Wilder (32-0, 32 KOs) has little doubt that he’ll be victorious next month in his fight against WBC heavyweight champion Bermane Stiverne (24-1-1, 21 KOs) on January 17th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Wilder feels that he’ll get the win but he might not get the credit for the victory because he thinks that a lot of boxing fans will still doubt him.

Beating the 36-year-old Stiverne will go a long ways towards proving Deontay’s many detractors wrong, because Stiverne is considered to be a good fighter by a lot of fans. However, for the 6’7” Wilder to really prove himself, he’s going to need to beat other contenders like Bryant Jennings, Alexander Povetkin, Carlos Takam, Tyson Fury and Kubrat Pulev.

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Khan: If Mayweather wants to be a global star, he has to fight me

Amir Khan bristled at the recent news that Floyd Mayweather Jr said that he’s not worth fighting because his name doesn’t hold value in the United States because the casual boxing fans have no clue who Khan is. Khan feels that he’s more popular than two of Mayweather’s past opponents Victor Ortiz and Robert Guerrero. Khan also says that he’s got a large following in India and Pakistan, and if Mayweather wants to be a global star then he needs to fight him.

I’m not sure that Mayweather cares if Khan has tons of fans in India and Pakistan though, because Mayweather is mainly looking for opponents that are big stars in the United States. That’s where the pay-per-view buys will be coming from, not India or Pakistan.

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