Ricky Burns to defend against Raymundo Beltran on September 7th in Glasgow, Scotland

burns6 WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2, 11 KO’s) got his difficult title defense against Jose Gonzalez out of the way in beating him by a 9th round TKO last May, and now Burns will be making what should be a lot easier title defense against #8 WBO 8 Raymundo Beltran (28-6, 17 KO’s) on September 7th in Glasgow, Scotland.

If Burns beats Beltran, he will likely face the winner of the Gavin Rees vs. Anthony Crolla fight next. That’ll give Burns two relatively easy fights back to back before he has to take on someone dangerous like Sergio Thompson, Omar Figueroa or Terrence Crawford. That’s where Burns will really be tested.

Beltran is a good fighter, but he’s already lost at the top rungs of the division recently in defeats against Luis Ramos Jr. and Sharif Bogere. Beltran did defeat Hank Lundy and Ji-Hoon Kim recently, but those guys aren’t in the same class as Burns and it’s not the same thing.

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Cleverly vs. Kovalev on August 17th in Wales

Big punching unbeaten light heavyweight contender Sergey Kovalev (21-0-1, 19 KO’s) will be facing WBO 175 lb. champion Nathan Cleverly (26-0, 12 KO’s) on August 17th in a fight that will be televised by HBO as part of a possible triple-header with IBF middleweight champion Daniel Geale defending his title against challenger Darren Barker in a different location, and IBF super bantamweight champion Jonathan Romero facing an opponent still to be determined.

The Cleverly-Kovalev fight will be staged at the Motorpoint Arena, in Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom.

This will be one of the rare fights for Cleverly where he’s fighting someone that actually is a really good fighter and who has a chance to beat him. You can’t say that about a lot of the guys that Cleverly has been fighting since he picked up the WBO 175 lb. title in 2011. There’s been a lot of weak opposition that Cleverly has been facing and it’s nice to see him fight a live body for a change.

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Gennady Golovkin – Matthew Macklin Full Interview Transcript

352 Operator: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Middleweight Championship Boxing After Dark Triple Header Conference call. Today we have WBA and IBO defending middleweight champion, Gennady “GGG” Golovkin with a record of 26 and 0, 23 knockouts and his challenger, top rated middleweight contender and former World Title challenger, Matthew “Mac the Knife” Macklin with 29 and 4 and 20 knockouts.

We also have Tom Loeffler, president of K2 Promotions, Golovkin’s promoter and GGG’s head trainer, Abel Sanchez. For team Macklin, we have promoter Lou DiBella of DiBella Entertainment, co-promoter, Brian Peters of Brian Peters Promotions and head trainer, Buddy McGirt. The HBO Boxing After Dark triple header begins at 9:45 pm Eastern Time and Pacific Time on Saturday, June 29 and takes place at the MGM Grand Theater at Foxwoods.

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Iran “The Blade” Barkley Speaks: 25-Years After His Stunning Upset KO Of Thomas Hearns

Just over 25-years ago, Iran “The Blade” Barkley, he of the mean streets of The Bronx, met Thomas “The Hitman” Hearns, he of the equally tough neighbourhoods of Detroit – and a sensational middleweight title fight was witnessed.

Hearns, by 1988 already a living legend, has just made history by becoming the first ever four-time “world” champion in boxing (welterweight, light-middle, light-heavy and then middleweight). Barkley, who had been handily out-pointed by the talented Sumbu Kalambay in his only other world title challenge, was a pretty big underdog entering the ring at The Las Vegas Hilton that summer’s evening. Still, sage boxing people knew Barkley was as tough as he was dangerous. To the shock of millions, Barkley showed just how tough and dangerous he was, after taking a most ferocious beating at the hands of the champion.

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Weigh in results for ESPN2 FNF Minneapolis

549 Weights for the Espn2 Friday Night Fights Card-Minneapolis Convention Center

Rances Barthelemy 129 vs Fahsi Sakkreerin 128 IBF 130 Eliminator
Donovan George 161.8 vs Caleb Truax 162 -10 rounds 162
Jeremy Mclaurin 134.6 vs Tony Lee 134 -8 rounds 135
Gavin Quinn 154 vs Kenneth Glenn 158(over)-4 rounds 154
Charles Meirer 154 vs Tyler Hultin 153.6 -8 rounds 154
Pat Quinn 363 vs Josh Schimon-4 rounds Heavyweight
Lewayne Hardiman(no show) vs Dustan Perton 155.7 – 4 rounds
Adrian Martinez 135.7 vs Leonard Overstreet 139.2 -4 rounds

Tickets to Friday Night Fights at the Convention Center start at $35 and can be purchased through www.sofights.com.bIn addition to the 12-round Barthelemy vs. Sakkreerin main event, seven more fights are scheduled including the 10-round televised middleweight co-main event between local hero “Golden” Caleb Truax (21-1-1, 12 KO) of Osseo, Minnesota, and Chicago’s Don “Da Bomb” George (24-3-2, 21 KO).

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Mikey Garcia – And Another Thing

By now everyone knows Mikey stopped Juanma, and everyone knows Mikey missed making weight by two pounds. Everyone knows he is undefeated, blah blah blah, but damn if he didn’t demonstrate boxing at its best Saturday night. It was highly entertaining to watch someone who is so good at his job that he makes it look easy. Unfortunately, some fans mistake his level of talent boring, but they fail to understand and appreciate the difficulty involved with making a violent job like his look easy. He transforms a violent sport into one of grace, power and courage. He puts fundamental together in an almost magical way.

What he does resembles the proverbial surgeon. His victories over Solito and Juanma were excellent example of this type of wonderful skill. Generally speaking, surgeons put people back together, but Mikey systematically takes them apart. His kind of skill surpasses that seen in other sports. In several of those sports the beauty and skill manifests itself through such things as a “sweet swing” in tennis, golf or baseball.

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Should Professional Boxers Be Allowed To Compete In The Olympics?

The idea of professional boxers fighting in the Olympics has been recently refreshed by Wladimir Klitschko, who has stated on numerous occasions that he is trying to get approved to fight in the next trials and hopefully win a gold medal.

The thought of such an achievement would draw anyone’s attention and the effort to make it a reality, but would it really be fair to the true amateur fighters trying to make a name for themselves by winning a medal and then trying out in the professional ranks?

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Sergio Martinez mentions Miguel Cotto As a Possible Future Opponent

While Google Translate didn’t do that great of a job translating a website form Spanish to English for me, the plot of the article was clear with one of the quotes by Sergio Martinez:

“One of the possible future opponents may be the Puerto Rican Miguel Angel Cotto,” Martinez said to diariouno.com.ar. If you are not excited about the possibility of this fight taking place, well you should be. While I see Martinez as more of a technical fighter than Cotto, Miguel is the type of fighter who will not make too many mistakes in a fight.

It has been a while since Martinez impressed his fans in a memorable fight, with a knockout or at least an action packed fight. His fight against Chavez Jr. was a great demonstration of skill, but to this day I believe that Jr. wasn’t ready for that fight, and was a very successfully handpicked opponent.

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Mares vs. Gonzalez and Santa Cruz vs. Terrazas close for Aug. 24 on Showtime

Espn.com writer Dan Rafael is reporting that a Championship doubleheader featuring Abner Mares vs. Jhonny Gonzalez and Victor Terrazas vs. Leo Santa Cruz is very close to being official. The fights would take place on August 24th and be broadcasted by Showtime Sports.

Since Golden Boy Promotions recently won the purse bid for the Terrazas vs. Santa Cruz fight, which will open up the broadcast, the only thing left is finalizing the fight between all action fighter Abner Mares and former champion Jhonny Gonzalez.

From the sounds of it the fight is just a matter of days away from being done. On Tuesday night Golden Boy C.E.O Richard Schafer told ESPN.com “There are no particular outstanding issues with Mares and Gonzalez. Both fighters want to fight and I’m just trying to finalize everything.”

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Ryan Burnett Inspired By Carl Frampton

RYAN BURNETT says he’s going to follow the blueprint set by fellow Belfast-native Carl Frampton in his attempts to get to the top.

The pair trained together under the legendary Gerry Storey at the Holy Family Golden Gloves Boxing Club as amateurs and have remained firm friends.

Frampton now sits on the verge of world title shot despite having only 16 pro fights, and Burnett sees no reason why he can’t follow The Jackal’s lead.

“Carl Frampton is a big inspiration to me because I used to train with him and I’ve seen how he’s got so far so quickly,” Ryan, 21, said.

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