Boxing

[jmdirt]

So Aug 26 is the date set for Mayweather vs. McGregor...maybe. There are so many negotiations taking place that I won't believe it until the two are between the ropes, but at least the NSAC has a date on the calendar.

I think that FM has the most to lose in this fight. The only true win is for him to knock CMc out in the first round. Even if FM wins a decision, that won't be a win in his eyes, or most observers either. Its a fight so you never know, CMc could tag FM (brutal for his legacy).

 

[movingtarget]

Re:

So Aug 26 is the date set for Mayweather vs. McGregor...maybe. There are so many negotiations taking place that I won't believe it until the two are between the ropes, but at least the NSAC has a date on the calendar.

I think that FM has the most to lose in this fight. The only true win is for him to knock CMc out in the first round. Even if FM wins a decision, that won't be a win in his eyes, or most observers either. Its a fight so you never know, CMc could tag FM (brutal for his legacy).

It's a mismatch to state the blindingly obvious but it just shows how money oriented Mayweather is, it's ridiculous but I also think that many other boxers also would have taken the fight because they think it will be an easy payday and they might stop McGregor running his mouth off.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

That's it exactly.

I do think Floyd has to win by early KO, not necessarily RD1, but early, after toying with and humiliating McGregor a little, in order to make it mean anything at all. If the fight drags on like an exhibition, sort of like when Ali "fought" Lyle Alzado, or some of those awful celebrity boxing matches, it's going to be more than boring, and laughable afterwards.

I fear that Floyd doesn't have enough power to knock anyone out early anymore, but the chances of McGregor getting a real punch in or hurting Floyd is almost zip with Floyd's skill, especially defensive capability. This is a recipe for an uninteresting, maybe boring, fight. Not that Floyd cares, he's making easy money.

 

[King Boonen]

£18 million each I heard. Both winners no matter what.

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

£18 million each I heard. Both winners no matter what.

Mike and Mike said $200mil for FM, and $100mil for CMc.

 

[Merckx index]

Re:

I find it sad that the internet is abuzz about this fraud of a fight, when a potential Fight of the Year is happening this Saturday: Ward-Kovalev II. Ward, who is arguably the no. 1 P4P fighter in the world, barely decisioned Kovalev in their first match, and many people thought he lost. The match is not unlike Mayweather-Pacquiao, featuring an undefeated technical master against a guy with scary power—except that these two are still in their prime. And if you want further hype, there is a lot of bad blood between the two—genuine, unstaged, unlike the phony smack manufactured by Floyd, eagerly devoured by his fans and haters alike.

Yet all the talk is about a “fight” that is probably the biggest mismatch in the history of boxing, a guy who has never even freaking been in a boxing match vs. an undefeated all-time great. Why would anyone in his right mind waste his words, let alone his money, on this? Hard to take seriously the complaints of sportswriters and boxing fans that there are no challenging fights any more when they bring this crap on themselves.

£18 million each I heard. Both winners no matter what.

LOL, Floyd wouldn’t fight anyone for a paltry 18 million, not even when he was active, let alone would he come out of retirement for that. We’re talking hundreds of millions.

 

[King Boonen]

Sorry both, I seem to have not pressed the zero properly. £180 million.

 

[jmdirt]

Re: Re:

I find it sad that the internet is abuzz about this fraud of a fight, when a potential Fight of the Year is happening this Saturday: Ward-Kovalev II. Ward, who is arguably the no. 1 P4P fighter in the world, barely decisioned Kovalev in their first match, and many people thought he lost. The match is not unlike Mayweather-Pacquiao, featuring an undefeated technical master against a guy with scary power—except that these two are still in their prime. And if you want further hype, there is a lot of bad blood between the two—genuine, unstaged, unlike the phony smack manufactured by Floyd, eagerly devoured by his fans and haters alike.

Yet all the talk is about a “fight” that is probably the biggest mismatch in the history of boxing, a guy who has never even freaking been in a boxing match vs. an undefeated all-time great. Why would anyone in his right mind waste his words, let alone his money, on this? Hard to take seriously the complaints of sportswriters and boxing fans that there are no challenging fights any more when they bring this crap on themselves.

£18 million each I heard. Both winners no matter what.

LOL, Floyd wouldn’t fight anyone for a paltry 18 million, not even when he was active, let alone would he come out of retirement for that. We’re talking hundreds of millions.

W vs K 2 should be a great fight. I think that boxing hasn't promoted boxing well enough for a long time. Part of it could be that there are too many belts, therefore not much unity for promotion. The fights that have been promoted well are because the fighters have done the promotion.

I won't spend any money (not counting beer! ) on this fight, but I definitely want to see it. It could be entertaining. I have watched a lot of fights in my life, and often the ones that look good on paper aren't good in the ring. People used to watch Tyson fights to see how quickly he could knock people out. The potential is that the type of striking that CMc will bring won't be what FM has seen so the first few rounds could be entertaining.

The thing that no one is talking about is that the guys on the undercard will get exposure beyond their dreams, and it might move them to another level. I have heard about several other potential boxing vs MMA match ups for the undercard.

To your point, there are still lots of great boxing matches out there, they just need to be promoted beyond boxing fans. Also, who knows, maybe the next great boxer will come out of the MMA ranks.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Re: Re:

Yet all the talk is about a “fight” that is probably the biggest mismatch in the history of boxing, a guy who has never even freaking been in a boxing match vs. an undefeated all-time great.

Great to see you again Merckx. What happened to your avatar?

As I said before, this is a lot like when Muhammad Ali fought an exhibition against Lyle Alzado, who had been an amateur boxer, but loved Ali and Ali gave him a chance to box against him. They went at it for a few rounds, Ali toyed with him, and in the end both collected some cash. But no one in their right mind took it seriously, and Ali played it up for the fun it was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t5h4wtPwBo

 

[BullsFan22]

Hopefully it's nothing like Mayweather/Pacquiao. That was a joke. Mayweather was just running around the ring pretending to extend his arm to 'punch' Pacquiao. I'd like to see an actual fight where both guys are going for it.

 

[movingtarget]

Mayweather v McGregor

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jun/15/conor-mcgregor-floyd-mayweather-fight-ufc-boxing

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Great article, spot on. Thanks for sharing.

 

[King Boonen]

Seems to sum it up very well. I still don't quite understand why two completely different sports are so desperate to pit one against the other to be honest.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Money.

No other reason.

 

[May0maniac]

Yes, it's just a circus fight for money, at least the Japanese always went full crazy with the Kickboxing and MMA freakshow fights,
Really hyped for Ward vs Kovalev II. The first fight was pretty close, but I just gave it to Ward.
I'll pick Ward in the rematch, I think he figured Kovalev out in the 2nd half of the first fight and he's the kind of fighter who should be able to make adjustments and perform better in the 2nd fight. There's bad blood and Kovalev seems to be a really mean dude in the right, you usually don't see a guy who has already killed someone in the right being so aggressive in the ring after knocking other boxers out and talking about hurting his opponents, for me it's kinda disturbing.
Could be fight of the year, but it could be pretty close, Golovkin vs Canelo is finally happening and I'm hyped for that fight.

 

[movingtarget]

Ward V Kovalev Rematch

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jun/18/andre-ward-wants-pound-for-pound-recognition-stopping-sergey-kovalev

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Not sure how long this will stay up on YouTube. In Russian:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzvtNCX3vP8

Did he hit him low? Maybe. Ward was winning the fight though, and going to win the fight whether it was stopped or not. A little surprised the ref didn't give a standing 8 to Kovalev, though maybe that wasn't allowed in the rules for this fight.

 

[Irondan]

Re:

Not sure how long this will stay up on YouTube. In Russian:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzvtNCX3vP8

Did he hit him low? Maybe. Ward was winning the fight though, and going to win the fight whether it was stopped or not. A little surprised the ref didn't give a standing 8 to Kovalev, though maybe that wasn't allowed in the rules for this fight.

I don't think it was low enough to be considered a "low blow", I think Kovalev's using it as an excuse because he wasn't expecting to get hit so much in the body perhaps and he was rocked anyway by huge right that basically dropped Kovalevs gloves for the rest of the fight. Not long before the big right you can hear the ref tell Kovalev that the punches were at the "belt line".

I think Ward beat Kovalev fair and square and Kovalev should expect to be hit in the belt line a lot considering how tall he is compared to his competition in that weight class.

Here's the fight in english, for now until youtube pulls it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDaQcU2JO04#t=1538.75167

Edit: Alpe, you mention that you're surprised there was no standing eight count and I think I am too but on the other hand it seemed to me like Kovalev stopped defending himself in the last round, maybe the ref took that into consideration? I don't know but you're right. Usually we would see a standing eight but not last night for some reason.

 

[jmdirt]

-That was an OK fight...formula fight.
--It seemed like the stoppage was pretty quick. He wasn't taking heads shots so let him try to box out.
--Ward is still undefeated, but I'm not sure that he is the P4P best.
-All of Kov's headlocks made me think that we were watching the first MMA vs. boxing of the year
-IMO, none of the low body shots appeared to be below the belt, but several were on it. I need a better view of the end though.
--I'll be curious what the NSAC has to say.

 

[Irondan]

Apparently Kovalev's promoter, Kathy Duva intends on protesting the fight although I'm not sure what good that'll do considering they've already fought before so another rematch is probably out of the question.

 

[May0maniac]

Yes, I thought that Kovalev was done in that round, his stamina was gone because of all the body shots that Ward threw in the earlier rounds and was really hurt from a right hand before the "low blows" happened.
Ward was able to made adjustments and seems to have found the blueprint to beat Kovalev.
Kovalev was gassed, hurt badly and pretty much ducked into those punches.
I don't know if I actually want to see a 3rd fight, Ward vs. Stevenson would be a pretty interesting fight.
No idea if Ward is actually the P4P best, there are waaay too many great fighters in the lower weightclasses.

 

[jmdirt]

"Decisions" like this continue to hurt boxing. Do the judges realize that when they kill boxing, they are out of work too?

From Lennox Lewis: "This is what's wrong with boxing. Horn was very game but I'm hard pressed to see how he could have won that fight by any stretch!"

I didn't have it live so I depended on bootleg videos, ESPN.com round by round highlights, punch counts, and "expert" analysis. Now I have piles of post fight info as well. One stat that sticks out is that Horn landed less than 8 punches per round to Pacqu's 16 (93 to 194). Also of importance, the fight was almost stopped by the referee AND by Horn's corner. I score it 116 to 111 for MP (that's 8 rounds to 4 with one 10-8).

 

[movingtarget]

Re:

"Decisions" like this continue to hurt boxing. Do the judges realize that when they kill boxing, they are out of work too?

From Lennox Lewis: "This is what's wrong with boxing. Horn was very game but I'm hard pressed to see how he could have won that fight by any stretch!"

I didn't have it live so I depended on bootleg videos, ESPN.com round by round highlights, punch counts, and "expert" analysis. Now I have piles of post fight info as well. One stat that sticks out is that Horn landed less than 8 punches per round to Pacqu's 16 (93 to 194). Also of importance, the fight was almost stopped by the referee AND by Horn's corner. I score it 116 to 111 for MP (that's 8 rounds to 4 with one 10-8).

I only saw extended highlights and it looked like an ugly fight with a lot holding. Considering Pacman was intending to blow Horn out early and see if Mayweather wanted a rematch, well that backfired. Two judges from the USA and one from Argentina and the ref was also from the USA. So I don't understand the talk of bias. Not sure how they came up with the scores they did but what I did see is an aging fighter way past his best with an opponent who had guts but not a lot of skill and won't retain his belt for long. For fans that have watched Olympic Games boxing, that is even worse and possibly more corrupt. This is nothing new unfortunately for boxing. Manny Pac should retire and Horn can thank his lucky stars that he gets his pay day on his title defense cause I get the feeling there won't be many of those. As a promoter Bob Arum's good name isn't considered much better than Don King's. Could there be anyone worse to compare to in the sport of boxing ? Teddy Atlas was almost frothing at the mouth after the fight and Lennox Lewis' comments seemed to be the consensus view.

 

[jmdirt]

The first presser with FM and CMc was funny! The backstage interviews were a contrast though with FM talking about how he's not as good as he used to be and that CMc is a warrior, while CMc talked about bouncing FM's head off of the canvas. They have a few more of these promo pressers before the fight so we'll get some more funny.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

I consider this match akin to pro wrestling. All hype, for entertainment purposes, and a chance someone could actually get hurt, but not likely.