Broner’s best chance to win was to engage. It was clear that he couldn’t out-box Garcia. And it seemed that he was more likely to hurt Mikey with one punch than the other way around.
In round nine, Adrien began coming forward and enjoyed his best three minutes of the fight as a consequence of several clean hooks to the head and body and two more that looked low. But he never went for broke, and Garcia reestablished control.
Garcia was technically brilliant and gave Broner a boxing lesson, outlanding him by a 244-to-125 margin over the course of twelve rounds. The judges scored the bout 117–111, 116–112, 116–112 in Mikey’s favor. Very few other people in the arena thought it was that close.
After the fight, Garcia declared, “This is definitely one of my best performances ever. I was the superior fighter tonight.”
He was right on both counts.
Broner talked the talk. Garcia walked the walk. There’s a difference.
Top Rank—ESPN—Lomachenko —Crawford
As 2017 progressed, Top Rank had two of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world on its roster. But it was struggling with the issue of how to showcase and monetize them.
Three years ago, the eyes of boxing were on Premier Boxing Champions and what Al Haymon was (or wasn’t) going to do. Now the talk is about Top Rank and ESPN.
On August 9, 2017, The Walt Disney Company unveiled plans for an ESPN over-the-top streaming subscription video service that will debut in 2018. In 2011, ESPN was in one hundred million homes. Since then, that number has dropped to 87 million as more and more customers cut the cable cord. Each lost home represents the loss of eight dollars a month in cable fees paid to ESPN by local cable companies. Thirteen million homes times eight dollars a home comes to more than $100 million a month in lost revenue for ESPN. Fewer homes also translates into fewer viewers, which means the amount ESPN can charge for commercials drops.
Meanwhile, the July 1, 2017, bout between Manny Pacquiao and Jeff Horn marked the start of a new undertaking by Top Rank (Pacquiao’s promoter) and ESPN. No formal announcement of long-term plans has been made. But reports suggest that Top Rank fights will be televised in the United States exclusively on ESPN, ABC, and the new ESPN streaming video channel.
ESPN has televised two Top Rank cards since Pacquiao-Horn.
First, an August 5, 2017, telecast featured WBO 130-pound champion Vasyl Lomachenko (8–1, 6 KOs) vs. Miguel Marriaga (25–2, 21 KOs) with Raymundo Beltran (33–7, 21 KOs) vs. Bryan Vasquez (35–2, 19 KOs) in the opening bout.
The telecast began more than an hour late because ESPN chose to stay with the NFL Hall of Fame induction ceremony (which ran long) and ESPN2 was occupied with what the network considered more important programming. Finally, Beltran-Vasquez began on ESPN2. Lomachenko-Marriaga was aired on ESPN after the Hall of Fame ceremony ended.
Beltran won a majority decision over Vasquez.
Lomachenko completely outclassed Marriaga, outlanding him 186 to 45 en route to a corner stoppage after seven rounds. That was predictable, since Vasyl is high on most pound-for-pound lists and ranked number one at 130 pounds by ESPN, while Miguel wasn’t ranked anywhere in any weight division by ESPN.
On August 19, Top Rank returned to ESPN with a three-bout offering headlined by WBC-WBO 140-pound champion Terence Crawford (31–0, 22 KOs) vs. WBA-IBF 140-pound champion Julius Indongo (22–0, 11 KOs).
In the telecast’s opening bout, 2016 Olympic silver-medalist Shakur Stevenson (2–0) boxed rings around David Paz (4–3–1) but showed a troubling lack of power. In Paz’s most recent outing, he’d lost to an opponent with 3 wins in 13 fights.
Next, Oleksandr Gvozdyk (13–0, 11 KOs) knocked out 30-to-1 underdog Craig Baker in the sixth round. Gvozdyk won a bronze medal for Ukraine at the 2012 Olympics and is a world-class fighter. Baker entered the ring with a manufactured 17–1 record. He’d stepped up in class once before, against Edwin Rodriguez in 2015, and been knocked out in the third round.
That set the stage for Crawford-Indongo.
The twenty-nine-year-old Crawford is near the top of most pound-for-pound lists, and deservedly so. He’s an accurate puncher with power and speed, who looks better and better with each fight.
Indongo, age thirty-four, had won belts in his last two fights, journeying both times to his opponent’s hometown: Glasgow for Ricky Burns (WBA) and Moscow for Eduard Troyanovsky (IBF). All of Indongo’s other fights had been in Africa.
Top Rank wanted to put Crawford-Indongo in Terence’s hometown of Omaha. But Lady Gaga had booked the CenturyLink Center for August 19, so the fight wound up in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Without the belts, Indongo would have been a ho-hum opponent. Depending on where one looked, Crawford was listed as a better than 10-to-1 favorite. But the fact that all four major sanctioning body titles were on the line gave the bout a certain cachet.
Top Rank president Todd duBoef did a nice job of hyping the fight.
“This is not an outlier,” duBoef said of Indongo at the final pre-fight press conference. “This is what happens with boxing. This is no different than Azumah Nelson coming over on ten days’ notice and getting in the ring and making a name for himself in the United States. People can change the tide very quickly in the sport of boxing. Indongo is a very talented fighter who has worked figuring out how to master a trade. The door of opportunity opens and he steps through it, and that is the story of boxing. People take advantage of those opportunities, and suddenly a diamond in the rough is discovered.”
Indongo built on that theme, telling the media, “I have been in boxing for a long time and not many people know me. I believe this is the time for me to show the world that a boxer from Africa, from Namibia, can beat a guy fighting in his home in front of his people. I know that my country and Africa is on my shoulders. I will travel the world with the four titles. I will take them back to Africa, to my country. I am going to be very very happy.”
But fighting Crawford is starting to look like running a race against a gazelle or getting into a one-on-one eating competition with a hungry lion. It didn’t take long for Indongo’s dream to turn into a nightmare. Crawford dropped Julius in round two and closed the show with a highlight-reel straight left to the body at 1:38 of round three.
“He hit me hard to my body,” Indongo said afterward. “I couldn’t breathe, it hurt so bad. When he hit me that hard, not only did it hurt, it took my mind away. I couldn’t think.”
So . . . Where do Top Rank, ESPN, Lomachenko, and Crawford go from here?
The three-hour Pacquiao-Horn telecast averaged 3.1 million viewers on ESPN and ESPN Deportes (including streaming). It was ESPN’s highest-rated boxing telecast since 1995 and the highest-rated boxing telecast on cable television since 2006. The main event averaged 3.9 million viewers and peaked at 4.4 million. Those are good numbers.
By contrast, Lomachenko-Marriaga drew an average audience of 728,000 viewers. That’s 104,000 fewer people than watched Lomachenko one fight earlier against Jason Sosa on HBO. In that regard, keep in mind, ESPN is available in approximately 87,000,000 homes while HBO is available in only 32,000,000.
Crawford-Indongo attracted an average of 1,200,000 viewers. That’s slightly more than Crawford’s most recent fight on HBO, a less attractive matchup against Felix Diaz.
As for future opponents; when asked who he might fight next, Lomachenko responded, “For me, it doesn’t matter. My job is to work my best boxing in the ring. I will fight anybody. I want to fight, and I want to unify titles.”
Unlike many boxers, Lomachenko seems to mean it when he says he’ll fight anyone. That puts the ball squarely in Top Rank’s court.
As for Crawford, after beating Indongo, Terence declared, “Belts matter. I’m the only one who can be labeled a champion at 140, and that’s a big deal to me.”
But given the state of world-sanctioning-body politics, it’s unlikely that the 140-pound titles will be unified for long unless it’s through the mechanism of “super” world champions
hips and other nonsense. Also, the 140-pound division is weak at the moment. However, seven pounds to the north, the welterweight division is loaded. The hope is that Top Rank will find a way to match Crawford against one of boxing’s elite 147-pound fighters instead of putting him in one or more meaningless mandatory title defenses.
And by the way, Jeff Horn is not an “elite” 147-pound fighter.
Top Rank has two legitimate candidates for the pound-for-pound throne in Lomachenko and Crawford. The challenge now is to put them in fights that matter. Over the decades, Bob Arum has developed some great fighters and given the world some great fights. But there are times when, fortified by a network output deal, he has presented fans with mismatches and predictably boring contests. Boxing fans aren’t stupid. They know the difference.
The ESPN-Top Rank alliance represents another golden opportunity for boxing. Time will tell whether Top Rank delivers the goods or falls short of the mark.
The Barclays Buzz
A prizefight is a violent chess match that can end at any time.
The first fight card at Barclays Center was contested on October 20, 2012, and featured four world-title fights: Danny Garcia vs. Erik Morales, Paulie Malignaggi vs. Pablo Cesar Cano, Devon Alexander vs. Randall Bailey, and Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam vs. Peter Quillin. For good measure, Danny Jacobs, Luis Collazo, Dmitriy Salita, Eddie Gomez, and Boyd Melson were on the undercard.
Barclays is still waiting for The Big One, the megafight that will raise its profile in boxing to a new level. But it has established a pretty good boxing franchise with a nice buzz on fight nights.
October 14, 2017, marked the twenty-fifth fight card at Barclays Center over the past five years. Most of these cards have involved Al Haymon fighters with DiBella Entertainment as the promoter of record. That was the formula on Saturday night, when three 154-pound titles were at stake.
The first of these bouts was Jarrett Hurd (20–0, 14 KOs) vs. Austin Trout (30–3, 17 KOs).
Hurd, age twenty-seven, seized the vacant IBF 154-pound throne when he knocked out Tony Harrison earlier this year.
Trout, now thirty-two, held the WBA 154-pound title several years ago but lost it by decision to Canelo Alvarez. His other defeats, also by decision, were to Erislandy Lara and Jermall Charlo (Jermell’s twin brother). His signature victory was a 2012 decision over Miguel Cotto.
“Everybody knows that he’s the undefeated champion for reasons,” Trout said of Hurd during an October 4 media conference call. “So you can’t smack on a kid like that. But we see holes in his game. It’s just going to end up being me and him and we have to punch through those holes.”
“I’ve accomplished something that all fighters dream of and that’s to win a world title,” Hurd responded. “And I don’t feel like this is where my legacy ends. This is only the beginning.”
Hurd was a 5-to-2 betting favorite.
Erislandy Lara (24–2, 14 KOs) vs. Terrell Gausha (20–0, 9 KOs) was also on the card.
Lara, age thirty-four, is a former Cuban amateur star who worked his way through a series of “interim” titles and vacancies to claim the WBA 154-pound belt. There are some recognizable names on the victory side of his ring ledger, but no big ones. His losses were by decision to Paul Williams and Canelo Alvarez.
Gausha, age thirty, has been carefully matched throughout his career and had never faced a quality opponent as a pro. Lara was a 15-to-1 betting favorite.
Jermell Charlo (29–0, 14 KOs) vs. Erickson Lubin (18–0, 13 KOs) was the third title bout on the card and the one that intrigued fight fans the most.
Like Hurd and Lara, the twenty-seven-year-old Charlo became a 154-pound belt holder by virtue of a vacancy when he defeated John Jackson for the WBC’s empty chair. Lubin, twenty-two, is considered a prospect with a bright future in boxing. The question was whether the future is now.
Lubin was a mandatory challenger, which didn’t sit well with Charlo.
“I didn’t win my first world title until I was twenty-six,” Jermell told the media. “So how the fuck is this kid getting an opportunity like this? It’s been rough on my mind. I’m thinking, ‘Hey, why is this motherfucker fighting me?’ I feel like it should have been more of a tournament mode to get a chance to fight me. If you don’t have a name, you shouldn’t even be in the ring with me.”
Lubin responded in kind:
• He’s a fool if he thinks I’m not ready for this type of fight. I’m better than anyone he has ever faced, and I’m gonna show that October 14th. This is the fight that’s gonna make me into a superstar and this is the fight that’s gonna break him. Some might say I haven’t been challenged yet, or some might say I’ve fought nobodies. But realistically, I just make them look like nobodies. I wouldn’t be surprised if I do the same on October 14th.”
• “I know I’m ready, I came into this game and I fought no opponents with a losing record. Everybody I fought had a positive record. Some undefeated guys, some guys who had just one loss. I won pretty much every amateur tournament out there. I’ve been undefeated since I was thirteen years old. I’m glad they put this opponent in front of me, where I can showcase my talent.”
• “I’m ready to change the lives of the people around me. I’m ready to change the lives of my parents. My son was born in July, and I just want to make sure he’s set for life; for school, for college, for everything. I’ll get a house at just twenty-two years old, get the cars that I always wanted that I never had. I’m definitely gonna keep my circle tight and keep the people I’ve got around me. But it’s gonna change my life for good.”
• “It’s not about what he does. It’s about what I do. I believe in my skill. I’m very talented. I think I’m a star already. Everybody loves me.”
For all intents and purposes, Charlo-Lubin was the main event.
“That’s how I look at it,” Lou DiBella said. “And that’s how I’m promoting it. Showtime dictates the order of the fights it televises, so Lara-Gausha will go on last. But Charlo-Lubin is the fight that everybody wants to see.”
Charlo was a slight 6-to-5 betting favorite.
At the final pre-fight press conference, five of the six title-bout contestants thanked God and Al Haymon. Erislandy Lara just thanked Haymon.
All six fighters made weight.
The announced attendance on fight night was 7,643.
As is often the case at Barclays Center fight cards, the smell of weed wafted through the arena. That gave rise to the suggestion that the Barclays buzz is, at least in part, about being buzzed.
Hurd-Trout was a very good fight. This writer’s notes, taken as the action unfolded, read as follows:
Round 1: Hurd the aggressor. Trout counterpunching. although he’s more effective when he gets off first.
Round 2: Trout taking Hurd to school.
Round 3: Spirited action. Both guys getting hit. Trout seems to be slowing down a bit.
Round 4: Constant pressure from Hurd. But he doesn’t move his head enough. Too often, after Hurd punches, he waits for a receipt. So Trout hits him.
Round 5: Hurd keeps coming forward, trying to break Trout. He’s forcing the fight and willing to trade at all times.
Round 6: Trout’s punches have lost their snap. Hurd forcing a slugfest. Both guys landing cleanly, but Trout seems to be getting hurt more.
Round 7: Hurd badly cut over the left eye by an accidental head butt, but still teeing off. A good action fight. More and more, Trout is throwing stay-away-from-me punches. Hurd is throwing to do damage.
Round 8: Trout is game but he’s getting clobbered. Hurd is stronger and hits harder. When Trout lands, Hurd just keeps coming forward.
Round 9: Hurd comes out for every round applying non-stop pressure and looking to exchange. Trout has very little left. His right eye is closing. This is the worst beating he has taken as a pro.
Round 10: A methodical beatdown. Hurd is showing no respect for Trout’s power, maybe because there’s none left. Hurd shaking Trout with power pu
nches. [Referee] Eddie Claudio should think about stopping the fight.
In the corner after round ten, Louie Burke (Trout’s trainer) appropriately told ring doctor Nitin Sethi that he wanted the bout stopped.
Charlo-Lubin was up next. Most of the first round was a feeling-out process with little action. Two minutes into the stanza, Lubin ducked low and Charlo stung him with a chopping right hand. Thirty seconds later . . . BOOM!
Lubin ducked low again, and Charlo fired a twisting right uppercut that landed flush on Erickson’s cheek. Lubin went down hard, his arms and legs unnaturally twisted, shaking spasmodically. At the count of six, referee Harvey Dock stopped the fight. Astonishingly, Erickson somehow made it to his feet before ten seconds elapsed. But the bout was already over.
“I’m fine,” Lubin said afterward. “He caught me with a blind shot. I didn’t see it coming. It’s boxing; it happens.”
The crowd thinned out after Charlo-Lubin and continued to do so as the final fight of the evening—Lara vs. Gausha—unfolded. Lara boxed his way to an uninspiring 117–110, 117–110, 116–111 win in what was essentially a walk-out bout.
As for what happens next, Charlo was adamant in demanding, “Give me another title. I want Hurd. Hurd just won. Give me Hurd.”
Charlo–Hurd would be an interesting fight. I’ll take Charlo.
Deontay Wilder vs. Bermane Stiverne: No Surprises
Deontay Wilder’s career has been aided enormously by creative matchmaking. But as 2017 neared an end, even Wilder’s critics conceded that he had become a dangerous fighter.
WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (now 39–0, 38 KOs) has one-punch knockout power. How much power is unclear since, for the most part, he has steered clear of opponents with sturdy chins. And he has gravitated away from big punchers because his own chin is suspect.
Protect Yourself at All Times Page 11
