Joan Guzman Upends Jesus Pabon With Little Difficulty, Ed Paredes Stops Manuel Leyva

Photo: Reynaldo Sanchez/Fightnews.com

ESPN's boxing department rolled the dice a bit in plugging undefeated junior welterweight Joan Guzman into one of their main event slots -- a subject that has been liberally covered. 


If some guys bring outside baggage into fights, one can only assume the posse surrounding Guzman in the Hollywood, Fla. ring was there to tow his matched luggage of weight-making mishaps, layoffs and style thinning. 


But neither the series of weight issues nor ring rust prevented Joan "Little Tyson" Guzman from dominating and stopping Jesus Pabon on Friday Night Fights' main event last night. So dominant was the 7th round KO win, that it bordered on aggravating by the time he was able to finally land the big shot he'd been looking for all night. 

Victoria aut Mors - Mickey Walker

The gritty mythology of boxing is the type of stuff that makes the modern "badasses" of sports look like wimpy dullards. 


Flipping off fans? 19th century answer: alpha heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan, who apparently never could hold his liquor, drunkenly stumbling to the ring to have a title defense against Charlie Mitchell in 1884 canceled before 6,000 heckling fans. 


Dog fighting? One better: Roberto "Manos de Piedra" Duran has claimed in many interviews to have punched and leveled a horse back in Panama for $150 when he was 18-years old. 


From Tony Galento, a bar-owner who slugged suds between rounds in his Detroit triple-header in 1931; to Kennedy McKinney entering rehab over and over, while fighting; to Oscar de la Hoya, Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe getting caught in coke-binge stupors...this is not a game of saints. Even the seemingly straight-laced Manny Pacquiao was reported to have been staying out late to play pool and drink while in training camps in the Philippines not more than a few years ago. 


Perhaps it's what makes boxing all the more visceral and lovely for its hardcore fans. The truth is far more entertaining than any of the fiction - especially outside of the ring. 


In the ring, though, truth was and is measured in blood given and taken. 


And Mickey Walker was one ridiculously honest guy. 

Joan Guzman, Who Once Battled The Scale, Now Battles Father Time

In the wake of Adrian Broner's blistering stoppage of Eloy Perez last week on HBO, plenty of speculation has been tossed about as to who will take over the role of boxing's next big star. Comparisons have been made, respected figures have offered their opinions, and round and round we go. 

It seems a couple of times a year boxing fans get the "next best thing" hard sell by some network or promoter. We know the pitch: this guy has handspeed, punching power and skills, and his career is pointed in the right direction. 

The reality is that, more often than not, these fighters simply cannot live up to the hype -- even if that's not necessarily a terrible thing. 

Juan Carlos Burgos Outshines Cristobol Cruz, But Only Somewhat

Photo: ThompsonBoxing.com

Sloppy action accented what was a fairly lackluster Friday Night Fights on ESPN2 last night, as what might have been entertaining match ups on paper turned out to be a bit underwhelming. But boxing fans looking to FNF for their pre-Saturday warm up have become somewhat accustomed to fights that look better the week before than they wind up being on the night of. 


Hard-nosed scrapper and former featherweight titlist Cristobol Cruz, who is usually good for a solid effort with his "land what I can" style, was generally out-classed by recent WBC title challenger Juan Carlos Burgos. 


In place of a firefight, fans instead witnessed Burgos often fighting jumpy and looking to avoid any exchanges. It's not that it was necessarily the incorrect tactic, just that Burgos was unable to sustain much of an offense that wasn't based on waiting for Cruz to attack and countering. 

Random Classics - Wilfred Benitez vs. Harold Weston I

Even if you've been a fight fan most of your life, and even if you try to educate yourself when it comes to guys far before your time that you'd never know or care about unless you were a fight fan, you're bound to encounter a few great scraps that you didn't know existed or simply hadn't yet seen.



Footage of primordial bouts has been lost, packed away or forgotten about, and sadly we may never see those gems, and we live with that. 


Other classics simply escape our consciousness for one reason or another, though. Fights like Frankie Baltazar Jr. vs. Juan Escobar, or even "Caveman" Lee vs. John LoCicero lacked really familiar names, but their tales were recounted unto younger boxing followers by responsible, bloodthirsty folk who watched them 30 or 40 years ago. Jung-Koo Chang vs. Katsuo Tokashiki was perhaps the Somsak SIthchatchawal vs. Mahyar Monshipour of the early 1980's, in that both featured two non-American fighters on foreign soil in excellent lower-weight collisions, though the latter match-up was pushed heavily on the internet, while the former relied mostly on word of mouth. 


Whatever the reason, despite how the internet has accelerated the evolution of the boxing fan, we cannot be everywhere at once. Time is limited, and fights fly under the radar. 


This one, while not quite the slugfest the above mentioned were, flew under mine for too long. 

Ave Atque Vale, Joe Frazier

"Oh, Brother, ripped away from me so cruelly, now at least take these last offerings..."

     - Gaius Valerius Catullus

Joe Frazier was referred to as "the slaughterhouse smasher" by the AP ahead of his decision loss in the 1964 Olympic Trials to Buster Mathis Sr., who out-weighed him by 100 lbs. 


It was a short phrase, likely written quickly and without much analysis, simply referring to his destructive style, and his job at a slaughterhouse. But it's perhaps an unintentional metaphor for exactly what he did in the ring, and what he made it look like in there. 

Boxing After Dark - Marco Antonio Barrera vs. Kennedy McKinney

 

When reports of a new HBO Boxing series surfaced sometime around the New Year in 1996, the obvious intention was to showcase younger or lesser-known talent. Perhaps not quite as apparent was the network’s specific intention to expand its international reach by including fighters from abroad, as HBO would control all international rights to a boxing series for the first time ever.

For its February 3 premier, two of the four fighters chosen for the show’s maiden voyage hailed from outside of the United States: lanky Brazilian unknown Giovanni Andrade, and Mexican part-time law student (and WBO junior featherweight titlist) Marco Antonio Barrera, a 22-year-old who had been appropriately named 1995’s international fighter of the year by the BWAA.

The opening bout of the broadcast, WBO super flyweight champ Johnny Tapia vs. Andrade, did little to boost any interest at all, much less outside the U.S. Moments into the fight, Tapia caught Andrade with a punch below the equator, which appeared to set the tone. Andrade was floored by a right hand to the temple in the second round, rose, and hit the deck again near the end of the round, courtesy of a hard hook to the waistband. An unfortunate ending, Andrade chose to roll around on the canvas in feigned agony as referee Raul Caiz, Sr. stopped the fight.

Salvaging the broadcast seemed a sizable task following the disappointing outcome, but Barrera and Kennedy McKinney lightened the mood -- and then some.  The crowd of 7,900 at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, CA witnessed a “Fight of the Year” caliber main event, contested on a reasonably high level of skill despite the ferocity of the exchanges.