Pound-for-pound, dollar-for-dollar: Boxing

[diggedy derek]

Oh, wow, exciting. I don't think the tickets are necessarily daylight robbery, it's just the pricing tiers are quite funny. The prices are not so different from the price scale for a dinner show for a boxing club.

It's a real shame the Krzysztof Glowacki and Lawrence Okolie fight is off. That was a serious test for Okolie.

[diggedy derek]

Nice finish from Joshua. Great to see the return of that uppercut, too.

Hope you had a great night Ray.

[Simon G]

Joshua's uppercut really is something else. How Pulev was able to come back from it so many times really was impressive.

Professional job from AJ I thought. Got a little carried away in the third when he was going for the KO, but calmed down between rounds and took Pulev out in good time.

I still can't call an AJ-Fury fight.

[Ray de Galles]

Maybe I'm not enough of a boxing tactician but I don't quite know why Joshua "calmed down" after the third when Pulev was on the verge of quitting (turning his back and walking to his corner at one point) or it being stopped at that point and an earlier knockout looked on the cards.

I've seen various theories about what then happened from rounds four to seven before AJ asserted his dominance and finished Pulev off in the eighth and ninth - ring rust, the fear of blowing himself out or getting pulled in to a knockabout fight like Ruiz I or a desire to experiment with or display a range of styles

No complaints about the win but just a little confused as to why two or three devastating rounds were spread over nine. I'll have to watch a recording of it to see if it came across differently on TV. I was slightly surprised there were no screens in the arena but then the sightlines from all available seats were so good (a rarity at an elite fight) they would have been a bit redundant- as well as an additional expense for Hearn!

The night was very well run though - easy to socially distance, most people wearing masks, bars and food working through apps and a good atmosphere that built throughout the evening until there was a proper big event feel by the time the main bout ringwalks started despite the low numbers able to attend. It felt a lot like a very high end York Hall evening spread across a lot more space, noisy yet intimate.

The undercard that I saw was a mixed bag, the Bakole fight disappointed after a livewire second round and Hughie Fury plodded along as usual owing his win to his cutman. Okolie destroyed his stand-in opponent in a mismatch.

[diggedy derek]

Joshua is just unpredictable I think. He is often at his weakest when he's just thrown a bunch of punches and knocked someone over. Combine that with the desire to try and get rounds before facing Fury, and I can see why it seemed to make sense to be patient. There was a general clamour for him to 'make a statement' but I think he has every right to completely ignore that.

An extra intriguing theory to add into the mix is trainer Adam Booth, who thinks that Joshua is starting to try and formulate and change his tactics throughout his fights, which not every fighter does. I think you can see that in the Povetkin fight.

I'm very excited for a legit big fight tonight between Canelo Alvarez and Callum Smith. The face-off photos are striking to say the least. But, I think this is a very bad match-up for Smith. I see him as a counter puncher, and he's up against a bigger counter puncher, who also has one of the toughest chins and surely the best defence in all of boxing. Those Canelo body shots are a perilous threat here. How might Smith win? Keep chipping away like Kovalev did and then maybe try and catch him when he's tired. It's never been done, though.

https://www.boxingscene.com/photos-c...ce-off--154082

[Sporting]

Smith did his best but Alvarez is something else. Full credit for going the distance.

[diggedy derek]

Yeah he walked through Smith's punches. I would have been happy for Smith to have been pulled out after ten or 11 rounds, he was literally on a hiding to nothing.

[diggedy derek]

Talking of Canelo and big fights, Golovkin looked in decent shape in Friday. Never say never...

[diggedy derek]

AJ pledges to support amateur boxing clubs

https://www.skysports.com/boxing/new...s-and-scotland

[nmrfox]

Looking forward to Luke Campbell and Ryan Garcia this Saturday. Campbell is an obviously talented boxer but the interest is to see actually how good Garcia is against all of the Internet hype. You can get some very decent odds on Campbell so hoping he wins in the 9th.

[diggedy derek]

Yes the odds are quite something. I think you can also get something crazy like 6-1 on Campbell winning by points, which would seem a fairly likely outcome.

Campbell is a boxer I love to watch, he has some beautiful skills. My gut feeling is that people like Oscar De La Hoya wouldn't put such a highly marketable star like Garcia in with Campbell without thinking it was a very good match-up, but who knows?

[diggedy derek]

Hadn’t clocked how big Garcia was for a lightweight. Unusual for Campbell to be the smaller fighter

[diggedy derek]

You could hear that body shot with which Garcia finished it.

[multipleman78]

That was a savage body shot.

Campbell is such a good fighter but he is just a tad below elite level. There will be many world champions who are not as good as he is.

Garcia looks really good but I don't think he is as good as he thinks he is.

[diggedy derek]

I'd guess the order goes something like Lopez, Davis, Haney and Garcia in that division. Garcia looks flat footed and without much head movement, but there's plenty of time to him to learn. He's certainly got guts and explosive punches.

[Satchmo Distel]

Leon Spinks RIP. His second fight v Ali (15.9.78) was on Radio 2 at around 4 am and was the first time I tried to stay awake to listen to a sports event in the middle of the night (it was the month I turned 12; Friday night so no school in the morning).

[Ray de Galles]

Wow, that is a shock! Only 67 too.

My vague recollections of that fight are some of my earliest boxing memories.

[Diable Rouge]

Note that the reply function is turned off:

https://twitter.com/talkSPORT/status/1358744558172049409

[diggedy derek]

Not ignoring the important Kinahan issue, but Josh Warrington has just been knocked out by the unheralded Mexican Mauricio Lara. The BBC commentary team sound absolutely gutted for him. But Warrington got absolutely mugged out there.

[jwdd27]

Sky Documentaries had a decent boxing night last night, with What's My Name: Muhammad Ali, followed by a well advertised new doc, Bruno v Tyson.

The Ali one was comprehensive and great fun, but his reputation sometimes makes you forget the beatings he took against Frazier and Norton, which makes you question exactly how good he was, despite it being followed by him beating Foreman.
Very sad towards the end when his slowed speech became obvious even when he was still fighting for world titles, and the last scene of his agonisingly brave lighting of the Olympic flame was a lump in the throat.

I was never a huge Bruno fan, he was a flat track bully who didn't really merit his numerous world title shots, and his borderline Uncle you know who persona and embrace of showbiz was a bit annoying.
And he had Tyson in that opening round of the first fight, but didn't follow it through like his opponent would have.
By the time of the second fight Bruno was boxing on against medical advice, and Tyson had got himself back into frightening good shape, the booing of the crowd of British tourists giving him that bit of extra motivation to totally outclass Bruno.

The present day meeting of the two was much trailed, but was rather disappointing, the takeaway being that Tyson is coping with his mental health issues much better than Bruno, perhaps because people have been telling him he's a crazy animal all his life.

Anyway, both docs are well worth your time.

[diggedy derek]

Many people’s second favourite heavyweight, Kiwi Joe Parker, has been named in legal documents as part of an international drug ring.

[diggedy derek]

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/joseph...box=1615511199

[Tony C]

Some online activity regarding the death of Marvin Hagler. Still not on BBC site so I’m hoping it’s a nasty rumour.

[Gangster Octopus]

Confirmed on the BBC. Needs a thread.

[ursus arctos]

Well that sucks