Boxing News Thread

[heyzel]

Malignaggi Targets Zaveck: He Needs To Get Through Me!

By Rick Reeno

Former 140-pound champion Paulie Malignaggi (28-4, 6KOs) reached out to BoxingScene.com to send a message to the current IBF welterweight champion, Jan Zaveck (31-1, 18KOs) of Slovenia. Zaveck returned to the ring last Friday and retained his title with five round domination of Paul Delgado, who Malignaggi beat twice eight years ago.

Malignaggi made his move to the welterweight division in December with a six round TKO over Michael Lozada. Following the win over Delgado, Zaveck expressed his desire to travel to the United States for potential fights with the bigger welterweight names.

"I hope he doesn't think that a win over Paul Delgado, who I beat seven years ago, is going to get him fights in the United States with people like Pacquiao and Mayweather. He's nowhere near their level or a fight of that magnitude. He needs to come to America to prove that he deserves Mayweather and Pacquiao. It's time to step up and I'm putting the challenge out there. I'm a full fledged welterweight. Maybe he might think that he has a shot at me because I'm not a big welterweight and I don't have a lot of knockouts on my record, but I am a name in the United States," Malignaggi said.

"He has a lot of options, but I think that at the end of the day - I'm the guy that he should be looking for. I'm the guy who's putting it out there that he should fight a real fighter. I'll put it out there 'you have a world title, fight your first world class opponent of your career. At 34-years-old, and three title defenses, you found a way to never fight a world class fighter in your whole career.' It's about time. He managed to go get a world title on paper. It's pretty much a paper title anyway, but I want it. And taking on a Paulie Malignaggi, it will certainly be the best fighter that he's ever faced in his whole career."

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

there is plenty of money fighting bums in germany for sturm so don't expect the trend to end ever

Hey un-related but I just watched Oldboy and that face in your avatar is him. The minute I saw it at the start of the movie I knew the face.

Crazy movie.

 

[2-0-Sixx]

one of my favorites

 

[2-0-Sixx]

Koki Kameda: I'll Fight Nonito Donaire at Anytime!

By Kazuto Harada

Koki Kameda (24-1, 15KOs), the WBA's "regular" bantamweight champion, has called for a unification with WBC/WBO title holder Nonito Donaire (26-1, 18KOs). He would to stage a unification bout with Donaire as the main event showcase on the year-end “Kameda Festival” event.

"I will fight with Donaire anytime!," vowed Kameda.

At the present, Kameda’s team is planning his first defense of the bantamweight belt this coming May. After his initial defense of the belt, Kameda will officially offer Donaire a unification fight. The "Kameda Festival" will have three world class title fights. One will involve Daiki Kameda, second will involve the youngest of the clan, Tomoki Kameda in his first world title fight.

"And the main event should be our unification title fight,” Koki said.

So far the Japan Boxing Commission (JBC) has never accepted Japanese boxers challenging for WBO and IBF titles. (JBC only allowed WBA, WBC and OPBF title fights) But now the board of the JBC is considering a move to approve unification title fights between the current champions of the various sanctioning organizations, which include the WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO.
Tags: Nonito Donaire , Koki Kameda





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Juanma Warns Donaire: Stay Away From Featherweight
By Jhonny Gonzalez

Last Saturday, WBO featherweight champion Juan Manuel "Juanma" Lopez was ringside at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas to watch Filipino Nonito Donaire capture the WBO/WBC bantamweight titles with a two round knockout of Fernando Montiel. After the big win, the prospect of fighting Juanma and other featherweights was brought up in conversation to Donaire. The unbeaten Puerto Rican has warned Donaire to stay away from the featherweight division, at least for a while.

"I think that at 118, he should dominate without any problems and perhaps he can do the same at 122-pounds, but at 126 I think right now it's a little too much for him. Not only against me but against [Yuriorkis] Gamboa and against Orlando Salido," Juanma told Carlos Gonzalez. "So far he's never felt a blow from a man at 126-pounds. It is not the same. [Donaire] is not a fight that I would dismiss. It would be a good fight, but at the right time. Right now I think he's not ready [to be at featherweight].

 

[heyzel]

Donaire now #3 in the Ring pound-for-pound ratings

By Chris Williams: WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (26-1, 18 KO’s) has been elevated to the number #3 sport in the Ring pound-for-pound ratings. This comes after Donaire knocked out Fernando Montiel in the 2nd round last weekend to capture his WBC and WBO bantamweight titles.


Before the fight, Donaire had been ranked at number #5 by the Ring. This places the 28-year-old Donaire ahead of Sergio Martinez and Juan Marquez. However, the ratings are things that fluctuate based on one or more fighters having a good fight.

I imagine Donaire will soon find himself supplanted by someone else based on a good fight. You have to keep winning against quality fighters all the time if you want to stay at the top, and one big win by fighters below you and you get passed up. It’s all subjective stuff. Bunch of guys sitting around taking a stab at who they think is the best. I have my own views on this as well, and I don’t see Donaire at number #3. I see him down around the 10 spot. He hasn’t beaten anyone yet and I still think he’s flawed.

Donaire has a lot of work ahead of him, because he wants to fight the eventual winner of Showtime’s bantamweight tournament and then move up to take on perhaps Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. The fights that boxing fans want to see Donaire in is against either Juan Manuel Lopez or Yuriorkis Gamboa

 

[heyzel]

HBO to buy Chavez Jr. vs. Zbik for June 4th

By Dan Ambrose: HBO is interested in buying the June 4th proposed fight between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) and WBC middleweight champion Sebastian Zbik (30-0, 10 KO’s), according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.


Although the fight isn’t a definite thing for that date, HBO might help it become a reality by showing that they’re interested in airing the fight. Zbik also could face WBA Super World middleweight champion Felix Sturm next, as Sturm said that they are currently negotiating a fight with Zbik for Germany.

Either one of these fights are less than interesting, because Zbik had the WBC belted handed to him by the World Boxing Council after they stripped champion Sergio Martinez, a fighter that is considered by many to be the best fighter in the middleweight division.

Sturm and Zbik would be a decent fight for German consumption but it would be hard to for boxing fans outside of Germany to watch what would likely be a boring jab-fest because two pure boxers.

Sturm was a good fighter at one time, but he never tested himself against the best and he appears to be losing his skills judging by how he had to struggle to beat Ronald Hearns last weekend.

As far as Chavez Jr. vs. Zbik goes, HBO must be looking at the ratings that Chavez Jr. brought in for his last fight against Billy Lyell. The fight did really good ratings, but both Chavez and Lyell looked horrible. Chavez Jr. won the fight but was less than impressive.

Chavez Jr. is currently ranked #1 by the WBC, meaning that Zbik is going to have to fight him sooner or later. Chavez Jr. doesn’t appear to be as good as a lot of other fighters in the middleweight division. However, the WBC opted to rank him at the top spot despite his lack of experience against top level opposition. Still, HBO made a good decision because fans of Chavez Jr’s father, Julio Cesar Chavez, will likely tune in to watch Chavez Jr. fight, even though he appears to be a rather mediocre fighter.

 

[heyzel]

HBO/Showtime Shootout on March 12 – Cotto-Mayorga or Martinez-Dzinziruk:

By Frank Livingstone: For a long time, HBO was the dominant Pay Per View outlet for the big fights but this may about to change come March 12. HBO will be showing on their Pay Per View the fight on that night between Sergio Martinez and Sergiy Dzinziruk. But on the same night, Showtime PPV will have the Miguel Cotto and Ricardo Mayorga fight. Two great fights on March 12 but on different channels.


The undercards for both fights also look impressive. Showtime PPV will have the Yuri Foreman and Pawel Wolak as well as the Joshua Clottey and Calvin Green bouts for their appetizers. HBO PPV will have the Andy Lee and Craig McEwen fight and Javier Fortuna against Gabriel Sarmiento.

The Cotto/Mayorga fight will be co-promoted by Bob Arum and Don King. It has been five years since both of them worked together to promote a fight. Showtime had its last PPV fight in 2005 with the bout between Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo. The decision to have the Cotto/Mayorga fight on Showtime was brought about by the refusal of HBO to have the proposed Cotto fight with a Top Rank fighter on HBO PPV.

Showtime should know the risk on taking on HBO head on by having the Cotto/Mayorga fight on the same night as the HBO’s Martinez/Dzinziruk fight. But it is a risk worth taking and it has been rewarded with the Pacquiao/Mosley fight on May 7.

HBO will now have to contend with the comeback of Showtime for the PPV revenues. Whatever the outcome in terms of PPV numbers on March 12 is concern, it would surely spice up the competition and this could only be good for us boxing fans.

 

[2-0-Sixx]

a little cool factoid, Nonito Donaire beat James Kirkland in the amateurs


BT: I am a big student of the game and I came across something that many people don't know, you actually beat James Kirkland as an amateur, can you tell me about that?

Nonito Donaire: Yeah he was a beast, very strong. But I used my jab and quickness to beat him. He kept dropping his head and I was hitting him with an uppercut. But man that dude was knocking kids out at like 14 years old. Even though I beat him, he still won the outstanding fighter of the tournament because he knocked everybody out except me.

 

[heyzel]

damn kirkland was a animal back then but I hope it's some footage I would love to check this out

 

[heyzel]

Montiel to be back in action by the summer

By Chris Williams: Former WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Fernando Montiel (44-3-2, 34 KO’s) will be returning to the ring by summer at the latest to resume his boxing career and put his loss to Nonito Donaire behind him. Hopefully, this is enough time for Montiel to recover from the knockout loss and the subsequent surgery to repair his fractured right cheekbone. For a knockout like the one that Montiel suffered, he might be wiser to take more time off to heal.


Montiel, 31, plans on campaigning as a super bantamweight, because of the difficulties he’s been having at making the bantamweight limit of 118 lbs. Hopefully, this is the last time that the 5’4″ Montiel needs to move up in weight.

He started his career as a flyweight and his moved up from flyweight to super flyweight to bantamweight and now super bantamweight. With his limited height, Montiel will face huge obstacles should he decide to move up beyond the super bantamweight division to the featherweight class. The fighters at that weight would mostly be larger than Montiel and he could find himself in trouble against those guys. As a super bantamweight, Montiel’s power would still be impressive enough for him to do well at that weight class.

Montiel made a mistake in his loss to Donaire. First of all, he failed to keep his right hand up to guard against Donaire’s tendency to throw left hooks. Had he kept his right up high during the two rounds of action, he would have taken away Donaire’s best weapon, the same way that Rafael Concepcion was able to do with Donaire in their fight in 2009. Secondly, Montiel needed to be smarter by setting traps so that he could time Donaire and land his big shots while Doniare was looking to land his own big shots. By coming after Donaire in the 2nd round, Montiel made himself vulnerable to Donaire’s big left.

 

[heyzel]

Angulo vs Quintana 154-Pound Showdown is in The Works?

By Rey Colon

Carlos 'El Indio' Quintana (28-3, 22KOS), who last Friday returned from a ten month layoff to pick up a nine round TKO win over Yoryi Estrella, could return in his next fight against the dangerous Alfredo "El Perro" Angulo, the WBO's interim champion at 154 pounds, who has a record of 19-1, with 16 knockouts.

"El Perro Angulo was mentioned and we'll see what happens. I liked what happened [in his last fight] because it took him nine rounds of work. He won every round. Now with a fight against Angulo, he has to go out there and be perfect. He's a complicated opponent to box, but Kermit Cintron boxed him and won. I'll try to get him here for a seven to eight week camp. For this fight, we were in San Juan for only three weeks," said his trainer Jose Bonilla

 

[heyzel]

Kellerman calls Mosley-Pacquiao a terrible fight – Boxing News

By Dave Lahr: Instead of putting Manny Pacquiao (52-3-2, 38 KO’s) in with a fighter that is still fighting in the prime of their careers, Pacquiao’s promoter has opted to match him up with the 39-year-old Shane Mosley (46-6-1, 39 KO’s) on May 7th at the MGM Grnad, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The only good thing I can see coming from this fight is that it won’t be held at a strength draining catch weight and it won’t have a new paper title on the line for Pacquiao to add to his collection of titles.


I’m so happy for that, because I figured that the next thing Pacquiao was going to do after beating Antonio Margarito for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title last November was to go after the weak link at middleweight, the newly crowned WBC champion Sebastian Zbik. I figured that would be the next move for Pacquiao, but at least we won’t have to see Pacquiao facing some paper champion at middleweight. However, the Mosley fight is still an awful match-up because of how shot Mosley is.

I guess I’m not the only one that hates this fight because HBO analyst Max Kellerman hates the fight as well. In an interview of Kellerman at fightnews.com, Kellerman said “I don’t like this fight. I like the fight a couple of years ago…I think this is a terrible match-up. He’s almost 40-years-old. He has so much heart that I’m worried for him in this fight.”

I agree with Kellerman. This is a bad match-up. What is Pacquiao doing fighting 40-year-olds at this point in his career? Guys that fight 40-year-old fighters are usually guys that are starting their career and trying to learn some things. But to match Pacquiao against someone this old right now reeks of cherry picking. Why isn’t Pacquiao being matched up against unbeaten Andre Berto or Sergio Martinez?

 

[heyzel]

Margarito says he’ll be ready to fight Cotto by June

By Jim Dower: Former IBF/WBO welterweight champion Antonio Margarito (38-7, 27 KO’s) says he thinks he’ll be ready to fight in June against WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto in a rematch. It’s unclear whether the fight can be made at that early date, because Cotto has a fight coming up next month against Ricardo Mayorga on March 12th. That fight could end up being a bloody one for Cotto. It would be a big ask for Cotto to hurry up and get ready for Margarito coming off that fight.


Margarito lost his last fight against Manny Pacquiao last November in a 12 round beat down decision loss. The fight was a costly one for the 32-year-old Margarito, as he suffered a fractured right orbital bone, which required surgery to repair it. But beyond that, Margarito took an enormous amount of punishment in that fight in the way of head shots. His trainer or the referee should have stepped in and stopped the fight when it became obvious that Margarito didn’t even have a puncher’s chance of beating Pacquiao. It was a mismatch on paper before the fight, and sure enough, the Pacquiao-Margarito fight turned into an ugly route after the 6th round.

With the kind of beating that Margarito suffered against Pacquiao, he really needs at least one tune-up to see where he’s at physically and mentally from that defeat. If Margarito doesn’t care about winning the fight, then by all means he should go ahead and fight Cotto straightaway and forget about a tune-up. I think that would be an incredibly stupid thing to do, but if Margarito doesn’t care about taking a tune-up, that’s on him.

 

[heyzel]

Pascal and his promoter reach agreement for Hopkins rematch

By Dan Ambrose: WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal has reportedly reached an agreement with his promoter Yvon Michel for Pascal’s rematch with 46-year-old Bernard Hopkins (51-5-2, 42 KO’s) on May 21st. The fight has been ordered by the WBC after Hopkins and Pascal fought to a 12 round majority draw last December. The results satisfied no one, least of all the aging Hopkins, who felt that he won the fight.


However, Hopkins’ case for claiming victory was badly hurt by the fact that he was knocked down twice by Pascal and was fighting him in his adopted country of Canada. It’s genuinely very difficult to beat a champion when you get knocked down multiple times. The WBC came to Hopkins’ rescue, however, by forcing Pascal to give Hopkins an immediate rematch instead of making him wait like most fighters that fail to beat a champion have to do.

Hopkins is a very popular fighter and it obviously pays to have that working for you in boxing. Hopkins will have to stay on his feet this time otherwise his claims of victory, in light of another controversial decision, will be hard to swallow.

The Pascal-Hopkins II fight still needs a venue. It’s likely to take place in Canada, possibly in Quebec City. Golden Boy Promotions, the promoters for Hopkins, won the purse bid for the fight. But the Hopkins-Pascal fight won’t likely draw well in the U.S. because Hopkins isn’t a big ticket seller like Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Devon Alexander.

 

[dookie1]

By Dave Lahr: Instead of putting Manny Pacquiao (52-3-2, 38 KO’s) in with a fighter that is still fighting in the prime of their careers, Pacquiao’s promoter has opted to match him up with the 39-year-old Shane Mosley (46-6-1, 39 KO’s) on May 7th at the MGM Grnad, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The only good thing I can see coming from this fight is that it won’t be held at a strength draining catch weight and it won’t have a new paper title on the line for Pacquiao to add to his collection of titles.


I’m so happy for that, because I figured that the next thing Pacquiao was going to do after beating Antonio Margarito for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title last November was to go after the weak link at middleweight, the newly crowned WBC champion Sebastian Zbik. I figured that would be the next move for Pacquiao, but at least we won’t have to see Pacquiao facing some paper champion at middleweight. However, the Mosley fight is still an awful match-up because of how shot Mosley is.

I guess I’m not the only one that hates this fight because HBO analyst Max Kellerman hates the fight as well. In an interview of Kellerman at fightnews.com, Kellerman said “I don’t like this fight. I like the fight a couple of years ago…I think this is a terrible match-up. He’s almost 40-years-old. He has so much heart that I’m worried for him in this fight.”

I agree with Kellerman. This is a bad match-up. What is Pacquiao doing fighting 40-year-olds at this point in his career? Guys that fight 40-year-old fighters are usually guys that are starting their career and trying to learn some things. But to match Pacquiao against someone this old right now reeks of cherry picking. Why isn’t Pacquiao being matched up against unbeaten Andre Berto or Sergio Martinez?

CO-SIGN

 

[2-0-Sixx]

This is sick. Moreno is the #2 guy. Donaire is #1. They can fight for The Ring belt. After which, Donaire can fight the winner of Mares/Agbeko winner and absolutely clean house in the division before moving up in weight.




Donaire vs Moreno is Being Discussed For May

By Rick Reeno

BoxingScene.com was advised by trainer Robert Garcia, that a May unifiication is being discussed for newly crowned WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (26-1, 18KOs). The "Filipino Flash" captured the titles last Saturday in Las Vegas with a brutal two round knockout of Fernando Montiel.

Top Rank is exploring a possible fight between Donaire and WBA champion Anselmo "Chemito" Moreno (30-1, 10KOs) for the month of May in San Francisco, California. Moreno is poised to defend his title against Lorenzo Parra on April 30 in Panama, and that fight would obviously be ruled out if a Donaire-Moreno deal moves forward.

"They are talking about Moreno in May, in San Francisco. We want the unification fights. Moreno is a good fighter. I haven't seen any tapes of him, but I'll get them. I have a guy who who can get me footage of him," Garcia said to BoxingScene.com.

 

[heyzel]

props to donaire for keeping busy and if he wins this fight he should be # 3 on the p4p list

 

[2-0-Sixx]

and he'll quite possibly be #2 if floyd doesn't have a fight scheduled by May.

(The Ring will drop a fighter from their rankings due to inactivity if a year has passed without a fight taking place nor a fight scheduled).

 

[heyzel]

damn but I think it's still too early for Donaire too take this fight I can see if this fight was happening in july

 

[2-0-Sixx]

donaire's a real man he doesn't need to wait. Shit, he barely got touched and went 1 and half round. He can do May.

oldschool fighters used to fight once a month!