Fights You Watched Today

Brook fought Golov for the money.

 

Rewatched Kalambay vs Doug DeWitt. I hadn't watched it in prob 10 years. Kalambay destroyed Doug.

A goddamn crime that Kalambay isn't in the HOF.

Wins over McCallum, Barkley, Graham, and Collins are CLEARLY a HOF resume.

 

Kalambay is unknown to the casual observer and he has the misfortune of simply never getting going in a fight which- had he won or looked good in- absolutely would have put him on the map, namely vs Nunn.

 

Remember that dude Kofi Jantuah? He just popped into my head there- thanks to the fight he had with the skin graft guy {Rubio} and thinking about how Kalambay suffered the exact same fate vs Nunn..... It had been expected to go 12 rounds but he blitzed him in 1 and Jantuah just like Nunn was a southpaw not known as a massive banger.

Then a fight I have watched a bit of..........

Phillip Holiday vs Mosley, thanks to the Mosley Monkey Thread.

Holiday could box and had a win over Ivan Robinson, which is more than Gatti ever had.

Mosley blamed his subpar performance on overuse of creatine which gave him diarrhea, he said.

 

Interesting.............."Beaten by Vernon Forrest in the semi-final of the 1992 Olympic trials........"

Yeah well the pros is a different game so I am sure he..........

 

Rewatched Daniel Santos vs Ahmed Kotiev II.

I hadn't seen this fight in ages.

Santos is kind of underrated. He had legit power in his left hand.

The KO was brutal.

I just uploaded this fight to YouTube, if anyone wants to see it.

 

Santos became underrated as the was the B-side of that competitive era of the 147lbrs and 154lbrs

He came to the UK and was involved in an up-and-downer with a guy called Neil "Silky" Sinclair- a banger but a vulnerable one at that. Santos laid him out having tasted a bit of canvas himself.

Then he moved up in weight and he eventually lost to Dzinzuruk.

Dzinzuruk was badly managed and was allowed to rot on the vine before being imported for Sergio Martinez to chop down. Max Kellerman literally pulled the wire first off himself and then off Martinez in the post-fight presser.

Kellerman hated the Euros and loved himself an oily southpaw.

 

When i was reading up on Kofi Jantuah {trying to remember the name of the guy he KO'd in the first- Rubio} I saw a picture of Rubio landing a low/questionable blow on some hapless but ripped African guy.

Mohammed Akrong was the guys name.

Akrong got blasted out in England by..... Rocky Fielding.

Jesus, Canelo has fought some absolute shit in his time

 

"That's the first I've heard of it!!!"

 

There was a point, you might remember, when I was very high on Dzinzuruk.

I thought he had a chance of upsetting Martinez, but obviously that didn't pan out.

Looking back, the version of Dzin that fought Martinez was badly faded from the Dzin that beat the crap outta Santos.

 

Agreed- he rotted on the vine in Germany.

A similar sort of thing happened to another guy called Howard Eastman who allowed his best years at the end of the 1990's to slip away- he probably beat Joppy but then he went back to South America and just did nothing for over a year.

By the time he fought Hopkins he was no longer as sharp as he had been and Hopkins was in full "clever" mode and way too smart for him.

 

Konadu did the same after the Moon fights. Years of his prime spent doing fuck all.

 

It's alright I hear his mom sorted him out with a few quid.......

Charity shop gave woman £90,000 refund in error - now she could face jail

 

Yeah, he was fighting Bruce Finch but he looked untouchable in that fight. I'd confidently put that Leonard in against almost any welterweight in history and think he'd come out on top.

 

Totally academical but mills lane was like "4....6.....7...."

 

I rewatched Martinez-Dzinziruk, as I hadn't watched it since it happened.

Yeah, Dzin was a shell of the fighter he was in the Santos fight.

 

2012.

Interesting for several reasons

The notion of 2012 Paulie busting anyone up......indeed any version of Paulie busting anyone up.......

Senchenko takes a spanking from a Hatton victim, then wipes out Hatton on a body shot in his very next fight, demonstrating how truly shot Hatton was. The matchmakers got that badly wrong.

Paulie really was a masterful boxer, great angles.. the way he got inside the longer arm, handspeed on the jab, accuracy on the jab, snapping it out.

I looked at his title shot with Cotto and how he negotiated that, making it a close fight and sort of exposing some of Cottos flaws, despite Paulie fighting large parts of that with a broken face.

 

Another thing from that Senchenko Paulie fight........this idea of Freddie Roach being "flown in" to work the Senchenko camp, Steve Bunce used to go on British TV and routinely deride the notion that some people had about Freddie being a "Wizard" who could just fix things.

I am not sure Freddie could have "fixed" anything not if he'd spent a year there- but the idea of just flying a guy in to "fix" something on the one-off is madness.

 

I rewatched Margarito vs Antonio Diaz last night, aka the battle of Mosley's sons.

Good scrap. Diaz gave a good account of him early, but Margarito was just too strong and wore him down for a stoppage.

Marg really did throw a beautiful left uppercut.

 

Poor Diaz. I wonder what he is doing these days. He beat Ward, probably his best win. I always knew Mickey was shit once he failed to beat Diaz

Diaz might pick up a title today.

Mosley was so fast in that fight.....he really chilled Diaz in the opening round with that speed. Made him clam up.

 

Just checked it again......Diaz beat Cory Stinks in 1998. Poor bastard. It's all timing isn't it.

 

Watching Pinango vs Gaby now, and Hagler's commentating. His death still hits pretty hard man.

Anyway, I'm quite impressed with Canizales' early out-boxing. I've always thought of him as the of the more nasty, powerful (debatable, that though) and aggressive of two brothers and the better slugger. I feel like most people see them this way as well, but thinking like that makes it easy to traps and forget how skilled Gaby was in his own right; or how heavy-handed Orlando was in his own right. I've always found the distinction between these two is that Gaby was a pressure fighter who could box, Orlando was an boxer-puncher who could pressure.

I like Pinango's 'style'; very tumultuous. He seems happy and comfortable enough to switch things up and fight how he needs to. He's slow and wild but a very good ring general.

 

George, this is how I saw it when i watched this a couple of months back. And this is coming from a huge Gaby fan.

Gaby Canizales v Bernardo Pinango

Never watched this fight before because I was so disappointed in the results, but here we go.

Round 1: 10-9 Pinango
Round 2: 10-10 Even
Round 3: 10-9 Gaby
Round 4: 10-9 Pinango
Round 5: 10-9 Pinango
Round 6: 10-9 Gaby
Round 7: 10-9 Gaby
Round 8 - 15: all for Pinango

Total: 147-139 Pinango (actual scores: 146-142, 148-144 and 147-138 all for Pinango)

I was disappointed but mostly disgusted with this fight as this was not the Gaby Canizales I knew. The commentating team got it right. Gaby never threw a combo and kept going backwards. Pinango should have had rope burns on his back from being grilled there. Instead, the boxer forced the fight. I have rarely been so disappointed with a performance. Gaby should have had him out of there by the mid-rounds.

 

I can't really disagree w your card much. I didn't score it, but I seem to remember Gaby getting the better of the second, coming back into in the mid-rounds and then not winning anything from thereafter.

I looked at this fight how I look at some of Monzon's fights. Gaby looked poor, but when I ask myself why, I can only deduce that Pinango was in control, and wanted Gaby to fight going backward. If that was the case, and it was such a clear win, so I'm sure it was, then I think it's more of a top performance from Pinango, not a poor one from Gaby. If anything, Gaby's technique and skillset impressed me more than Pinango's, but he wasn't the controlling the action and never in a place where he could out-work Pinango.

 

Started watching Lara vs Canelo.

Gave Lara the opening round.

 

After 3 rounds of Lara vs Canelo I have Lara 2-1 up and Canelo's round, the 2nd, was a narrow round.

You can hear Fisher and Bontempo trying to set the tone...........in the 3rd round "Oh, he needs to be careful not to give these rounds away, he didn't steal this round".

Actually he did. He stole it with combos and movement and making Canelo miss, miss badly.

I cannot stand these fucking narrative controlling bought-and-paid-for hacks.

EDIT:

Dead even after 6 but I would bet a dollar to a dime that all 3 judges scored the 6th for Canelo even though for me Lara won it:
*Clean shots
*slowed Canelo's attack
*made him miss badly and in particular with two wild desperate looking uppercuts.

But I am sure the judges would have given him that round for his "Pressure" and "Bodypunching"- half of them were low, around the back, on the hip. Little flurries and even then he was missing badly.

 

Rewatched Vitali - Lewis earlier today. Wasn't quite as I remembered it.

Firstly, although a decent action fight, it wasn't quite the back and forth war my memory told me it was. It was a fairly sloppy affair in the main, in truth, punctuated by some good action is most of the rounds.

Secondly, Lewis was really, really out of shape. Much worse than I remembered. He could barely breathe after two rounds. And he fought horribly. Like as bad as he did in any fight he ever had. His jab didn't work, he couldn't get out of the way of punches and his entire handler seemed to involve following Vitali round and loading up on bombs.

Conversely, Vitali was much less hurt/fatigued at the time of the stoppage than I remembered. I had remembered that Lewis was gaining the upper hand and looked likely to win of the fight continued. That was not first at all. Vitali's face was a mess but he was by far the more likely winner of that fight had continued.

I wondered afterwards if both men didn't gain from the ending. Lewis got to retire with a W he barely deserved but a W nonetheless. Vitali lost but took great credit from the loss and it is one of his best career efforts. What would have happened if Lewis lost? I don't think he retires. I think he rematches Vitali, but trains like fuck beforehand and makes it his business to avenge it. If he had done so, where would Vitali be today?

Anyway. Not how I remembered it at all.

MTF

 

Rewatched the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Watching Robinson is like repeating the words of Larry Merchant every 10 seconds. "Can that man FIGHT!"

 

Rewatched Mosley-Margarito last night.

I had forgotten how much Shane physically MANHANDLED Marg.

My recollection of the fight was Mosley just being too fast and hitting Marg at will, but I had forgotten how Shane tossed Marg around the ring like a child. That totally and completely threw Marg's forward momentum off, as he figured he would be able to bull Shane the way he did Cotto.

Strong lil fucker, Shane was.

That's why I've always said, Mosley would give a guy like Duran a much harder fight than Oscar would, because of his physical strength. Shane would lose, and lose clearly, but he would give a good account of himself because Duran wouldn't be able to physically bully him, whereas I do see Duran physically bullying DLH.

 

I watched Clottey vs. Judah and Corley vs. Bailey. Don't necessarily recommend either. Judah got run over and Bailey wouldn't let his hands go and loaded up too much.