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

[Harbinger of Hope]

Wood has pulled out of the fight with an injury. Gutted.

So, attempt two at this. Having a Forest v Man City then Wood v Lara, sport-filled day. Leigh appears to be fit and ready to go.

FYI, I did go to the previous one, despite the main event being pulled. Saw Terry Harper win some belts which was good. Due to many taking refunds, my seats up in the gods got free upgraded into the posh/expensive part of the arena, so that was a real bonus.

[diggedy derek]

Buzzing for ya. Lara must be one of the hardest punchers in all of boxing. And Leigh Wood isn't too shabby either.

[Harbinger of Hope]

Yeah, it's going to be really tough for Wood. It's going to be hard going for Forest too. Could be a real day to remember or a day to desperately try and forget. LOL.

[diggedy derek]

I think that a Wood KO at 7/2 doesn't look a bad bet. Lara is static and holds his feet and is very hittable. He's been in trouble before. And Wood is a tough bastard. No less than Naoya Inoue attests to Wood's punching power.

[Harbinger of Hope]

Just have to hope Wood isn't carrying/masking an injury and is truly fully fit. Really looking forward to it though.

[big dog]

Probably the only logical fight available to Eubank at this point other than the Benn debacle-- I think he could get the win and set up the inevitable trilogy that no-one really wanted or asked for.

https://twitter.com/badlefthook/status/1625615966582218764

[big dog]

Speaking of Benn, actually.

https://twitter.com/talkSPORT/status/1625920375174451200

[diggedy derek]

Thanks for those big dog. The Eubank situation makes a reasonable amount of sense to me, it's his biggest fight, he's got a fair enough chance to win, but if not, he could easily and comfortably retire having had a decent although uninspiring career.

The Conor Benn situation is more perplexing. Reading between the lines, Benn is trying to convince/hoodwink/schmooze the WBC's clean drug programme into declaring that Benn was not deliberately trying to gain an advantage. Meanwhile, he's probably serving a six month ban, which can't be talked about through threat of NDAs. Or something like that. But, I don't think he'll ever get the British public back on side, or box in the UK soon, without some kind of admission of fault on his part.

Better things to look forward to this weekend with a tremendous Wood Lara match-up. Lara often looks pretty basic but watching some of his fights again his head movement is decent. And Wood's chin is often up in the air ready to get caught. It's potentially a bad mix. If I had to bet my house on it then that would be Wood's downfall tomorrow. And yet, you can get good odds on a Woods late stoppage... which has become his trademark in recent fights.

[diggedy derek]

I imagine the atmosphere for the ringwalks tonight will be off the charts. “Mull Of Kintyre” is a nice song for it.

[diggedy derek]

Eek.

[diggedy derek]

Already twists and turns.

[diggedy derek]

Lara is tough and dangerous and had Wood rocking and rolling in the second, but I have Wood a long way up, because he has the workrate, and Lara is struggling to get anything going.

[diggedy derek]

Bloody HELL. Lara lands a big one and Wood doesn't know where he is. That is the danger of Lara.

[diggedy derek]

Wow, gutting for Wood. His game plan was working perfectly. But that's the problem with a clever gameplan, you need it to work all the way through.

[Harbinger of Hope]

20230218_225701.jpg
Buzzing off the Man City late equaliser, but gutted for Wood. So close to the end of the round. Think I had him 6-1 up before that left hook. Mull of Kintyre was good though it couldn't really match the footie atmosphere which was fantastic.

[diggedy derek]

Looks great. Let's hope that rematch is next for both fighters.

[diggedy derek]

Eggs appears to be trending on Twitter.

[big dog]

In all seriousness, whatever Benn does going forward, I'm not sure he'll be able to outrun the ridicule (deservedly so).

[diggedy derek]

I've always thought that Benn would be best served by admitting responsibility for the stuff being in his system and serving a ban. This is going to hang over him forever more now. There's been no transparency whatsoever in the WBC's verdict. We are still none the wiser as to what actually happened.

In better, actually really good news for boxing, Ryan Garcia fights Tank Davis in April in Las Vegas. This is arguably the biggest fight in boxing right now, between two massively popular fighters who are absolutely in their prime. I would term this as the dickhead* versus the scumbag†, so there's a a lot of narrative to chew on.

* Garcia has an inflated opinion of his talents despite being either inactive or fighting gimme opponents for the last two years
† Davis has just admitted guilt to a hit and run driving charge which involved a pregnant woman

[big dog]

It's very on brand for boxing that Davis needed to make this fight happen in April because he is getting sentenced in early May and jail time is all but guaranteed. Not sure how much time Davis is looking at but I can't imagine what will be going through his head whilst training for a career-defining fight but also knowing that he is going to be sent down a week later. I don't have any sympathy for Davis, though-- he has this on his sheet plus two arrests for domestic violence. I think he is a great fighter who'll beat Garcia by KO but scumbag is indeed the word to describe him here.

My hope is that this is the first of many dominos to fall and we get some quality fights in 2023. Josh Taylor vs. Teofimo Lopez is supposedly done too according to various twitter boxing scribes but nothing formal from the fighters. That would also be a good one, whether it is in London, Scotland or NYC.

[Harbinger of Hope]

Apparently Taylor has vacated 3 belts to make it happen.

[big dog]

I'm belatedly seeing various clips from that car crash interview Conor Benn did with Piers Moron and yikes, someone needs to tell him to stop digging that hole even deeper.

[Gangster Octopus]

Moron can't help digging. Oh, did you mean Benn?

[diggedy derek]

Fury Usyk is off, looking like Fury just dicked around until negotiations collapsed. What a total chump he is.

[Simon G]

Is anyone really surprised?

He's a great boxer but he's going to go down as a complete waste who ducked the big fights. His wins over Wilder were great, especially getting up from that knockdown in the first fight, but there's been few more protected fighters than Wilder in history and he only took the Fury fight because he looked washed up in one of his comeback fights.

Fights against Joshua and Usyk should have been easy to make, but he's completely dicked around the whole time, laying out completely unworkable conditions and then claiming they were scared to fight him. Given what Usyk has been through in the past 12 months, I dare say that bloke is scared of nothing at all.