Matthysse destroys Dallas Jr.; Soto-Karass defeats Aydin

matthysse1 By Bill Phanco: It took WBC interim light welterweight champion Lucas Matthysse (33-2, 31 KO’s) most of the 1st round to adjust to the hand speed of Mike Dallas Jr. (19-3-1, 8 KO’s) tonight but once he did, he tagged him with a monstrous overhand right late in the round that knocked Dallas Jr. clean out, sending him down face first on the canvas at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The referee immediately stopped the fight after realizing that Dallas Jr. was out cold and wasn’t moving a muscle. The official stoppage was at 2:26 of the round.

Dallas Jr. was jabbing well in the early part of the fight, and tying Matthysse up each time he could get in close to land his power punches. However, as the round wore on, Matthysse began to catch Dallas Jr. with hard left hooks to the head and big right hands. You could see with the power that Matthysse was throwing his shots that Dallas Jr. wasn’t going to last very long in this fight.

Matthysse’s power was pretty impressive in this fight because he wasn’t just punching big power with his left hand. He was also throwing with good power with his right as well, and there aren’t too many fighters at 140 that would have been able to last long tonight against him.

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Golden Boy offers Top Rank $3 mil for Donaire-Mares fight

mares56 By Rob Smith: Top Rank CEO Richard Schaefer has reportedly sent a large $3 million offer to Bob Arum of Top Rank for him to consider a mega fight between his fighter WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire and WBC champion Abner Mares. Golden Boy and Mares have both signed the contract and they’re waiting for Donaire to sign on the dotted line for a fight that will take place in no later than June, according to Dan Rafael.

Schaefer is skeptical that Arum will agree to the deal even though it’ll be by far the biggest payday of Donaire’s boxing career. Schaefer doesn’t think Arum will agree to the deal for some reason. The $3 million would be split up between the two fighters.

Top Rank can have their name as the one that’s promoting the fight, and Donaire can have the top billing, Schaefer said. They just want the fight so they’re willing to give Top Rank and Donaire these things. The fight won’t involve a catchweight and there won’t be a rematch clause on the contract nor any kind of options. In other words, it’ll be a straight up one-fight only.

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Trout: Golden Boy is protecting Canelo from me

trout2 By Rob Smith: WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout believes that Golden Boy Promotions are looking to protect their “Golden Goose” WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez from facing him, and potentially suffering a loss that would wreck his marketability.

Trout said on his twitter “I personally don’t believe that Canelo is ducking me. I do believe that [Richard] Schaefer [the CEO of Golden Boy] and Golden Boy is though. Have faith in your boy, GB.”

That’s easier said than done. Schaefer has been pretty transparent about his reluctance to put Canelo in with Trout with his comments about Trout needing more big fight experience before he’d agree to let him fight Canelo. I guess it wasn’t enough that Trout beat former WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto in his last fight.

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Donaire chosen as 2012 Fighter of the year by BWAA

By Rob Smith: The Boxing Writers Association of American has selected WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire as their Fighter of the year for beating four opponents in 2012. They saw victories over Jeffrey Mathabula, Jorge Arce, Toshiaki Nishioka and Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. as enough to give Donaire the Fighter of the Year award. They also picked Manny Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez 4 as Fight of the year, and Robert Garcia as the trainer of the year.

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Ward: Froch and Kessler are just using my name to get attention

ward643 By Michael Collins: WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward thinks both Mikkel Kessler and Carl Froch have been just using his name to help promote themselves and put themselves on same level as him. Ward beat both Kessler and Froch in the Super Six tournament in fights that left no question who the better fighter was.

Ward hasn’t cared for the comments that both fighters have made since he beat them, and he feels that they’ve made excuses for their losses instead of giving him the credit he deserves for schooling them.

Ward said in an interview with esnewsreporting.com “I’ve lost all respect for Mikkel Kessler and I’ve lost all respect for Carl Froch. Neither one of those guys want to fight [me]. They’re just using my name to keep their name up. If I fight either one of those guys, I don’t care which country it’s in, it’s not going to go the distance. I don’t have to go to Denmark to become a star; they have to come to the U.S if they want to become an all-time great.”

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Andrade dominates Hernandez

andrade By Bill Phanco: Unbeaten junior middleweight Demetrius Andrade (19-0, 13 KO’s) kept his perfect record intact with a lopsided 10 round unanimous decision win over Freddy Hernandez (30-4, 20 KO’s) on Friday night at the Paramount Theater in Huntington, New York. Hernandez was down in the 6th, and hurt on number of occasions by big shots from Andrade. The judges’ scores were 100-89, 100-89 and 100-89.

It was a fine performance from Andrade, #3 IBF, #3 WBO, #8 WBC, #13 WBA,. He showed good power at times and nice hand speed. He didn’t have much to worry about in this fight because Hernandez was way out of his league and he didn’t have a lot of power.

Andrade knocked Hernandez to the canvas in the 6th round with a right hand to the head, and he also had Hernandez hurt in the 9th after nailing him with a right uppercut. Hernandez showed a good chin to make it the full 12 considering it looked like the fight was on the verge of being stopped in the 9th when Andrade was unloading on Hernandez with everything but the kitchens sink.

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Bryan Vera: “I want Gennady Golovkin on March 30th after I’m victorious on FNF”

vera2 By Joseph Herron – After WBA Middleweight Champion Gennady Golovkin’s methodical and impressive seven round destruction of customary Junior Middleweight contender Gabriel Rosado on January 19th, the Kazakhstani’s promoter, Tom Loeffler and K2, issued a statement announcing that the stone-fisted title holder would follow up his TKO performance on March 30, 2013.

While a challenger for the upcoming event has not yet been determined, perennial Middleweight contender and Texas native Bryan Vera (21-6, 12 KOs) has declared a genuine interest in facing the most avoided fighter in the packed 160 pound weight class.

“That’s the fight we originally wanted,” claims the 31 year old fighter. “We were being considered for the January 19th slot but ultimately didn’t land the fight. Team Golovkin and HBO decided to go with Gabriel Rosado instead. But we’re still hopeful that a championship opportunity against Gennady will happen in the near future. I would really love that fight.”

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Lying In Weight

By Alden “The Kid” Chodash – You might’ve noticed that the last time the recognized heavyweight champion of the world was not a giant (with the exception of Hasim Rahman’s short reign in 2001) was in 1994 when Michael Moorer briefly carried the title. And that’s unfortunate, because in a division where a weight limit does not exist, smart managers are more than encouraged to seek bigger as a viable alternative to better. For example, if the question of whether Wladimir Klitschko or Rocky Marciano was the better fighter was raised in a room full of boxing aficionados, it would be quite obvious that Marciano would unanimously get the nod. However, if the question was who would win a hypothetical match-up between those two fighters, they might not be so certain. And this indicates simply that the best heavyweights in the world today aren’t the best fighters in the division anymore, but rather, the hardest to beat.

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Ghana’s Lartei Lartey eyes world glory after winning first US title

By Prince Dornu-Leiku: After beating Michael “Slick” Anderson in front of Anderson’s hometown fans in Newark, New Jersey, USA on Saturday night, January 19, 2013, Ghanaian Emmanuel ‘Ice Cold’ Lartei Lartey has expressed his willingness to take on the best welterweights in the world following his annexation of the WCB USCB Welterweight belt.

Undefeated Lartey who now resides in The Co-Op City section of the Bronx, New York was so dominant over Anderson at the Robert Treat Hotel, Newark, New Jersey that the three judges had no choice than to dole out the unanimous decision, 97-92, 97-93 and 97-93 which ringside observers hinted wasn’t even that close.

“I knew Michael Anderson would be tough, but we watched video of him and knew our best chance was to take him into the later rounds,” said Lartei Lartey, who raised the USCB belt and showed his happiness.

He added: “This is what I came for (referring to the belt). When I saw the bout I knew I was going to give my all and win it. You were going to have to kill me in the ring to get me out of there.”
His opponent concurred that the Ghanaian was one cut for more success in the ring.

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Mark de Mori: “I wanted to focus on weight training and build my body into a heavyweight wrecking machine.”

By Dan Emicus

Having previously been an Australian football player, what made you want to switch to boxing?

I really enjoyed Australian rules football and it is the most popular sport by far in Australia, so I was surrounded with it. However, when I first saw some tapes of Muhammed Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, I became obsessed with boxing. While I was a natural at most sports, boxing was not something that came easily, but I was determined to do it.

It’s been said that you idolised Mike Tyson. Was it the explosive KOs, or did you also come to admire him stylistically?

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