Conor McGregor Learns Lesson, Quits Boxing

Okay, my headline is not an eyeball grabber and falls into the category of bad media as typified by Bleacher Report with its fat-stuffed  whiteboy  pro Conor McGregor SEO.  But you've got to fight fire with fire right?  Wrong, because I'm just telling the truth.

Bleacher Reporter was this morning  already pumping up McGregor's TKO loss to aged Mayweather (40). Cliches came up handy to the Menlo Park California whiteboy  entrepreneurs who founded B-R after bonding at a wealthy white-boy school in an exclusive district you can't afford to live.

Here's how it goes basically. "He did very well considering..."  Considering what?  Considering he looked bad, pounding at Mayweather illegally on the back of the head, backwards on his heels most of the time,  and then getting KO'd. 

Yes, that is doing very well to the Mayweather haters.  But remember this Mayweather hating thing goes back a long way, even to the days when Uncle Roger and Floyd Sr. were fighting.  Both dad and uncle were fighters who would have cleaned up most of the competition today but, in those days, you didn't come by a reputation easily. And for the elder Mayweathers,  boxing was the only school that allowed them in.

 I hold formal education in high regard. I hold white people in high regard too, being one of them.  But there are many very smart people  of every stripe, for reasons sociological or economic, didn't have the advantages of it. I have seen the Mayweathers deprecated in the media by these   bigoted snobs, and even Floyd Jr. himself for being 'illiterate.' This is not out of any desire to improve education in America's minority neighborhoods.  It is, in fact, a permissible sanitized bigotry that allows these anonymous critics to feel better about themselves.

It's for this reason that Floyd Jr.'s current nickname is 'Money'. Bigots rub his face into illiteracy so it's poetic justice that the 'ignorant' Mayweathers rub  bigots' noses into money. Keep striving, motherfuckers.

 So then McGregor comes up  with the notion of an early stoppage by the referee.  If I didn't know better, I'd agree with him in that one.  I wanted the thing played out to its logical conclusion -- McGregor doing a face plant on the canvas or on his back looking up dazed at the ring lights.

With his hands down, no longer punching for a full minute while Mayweather bludgeoned him around the ring, and with the 'save me' look in his eyes, the Ref stepped in to save his life.  Instead of being grateful, he tells his fans the ref stopped it early.  Yeah, right, early for him to be brain-dead. And for the record, I'm glad that Mayweather was pulling his punches when McGregor was obviously going down.

Back to the title -- It's more of a prognostication.  Conor McGregor and Dana White have partically accomplished what they intended, that is, to raise MMA's profile in the hope of drawing more profits.  So does this mean that an MMA guy like McGregor can beat even a Class C journeyman fighter?  Or how about one of those excellent Class B fighters. Or maybe one of the up and comers like Errol Spence, Jr. (one of my favorites as mentioned in previous articles) .

I thought  Mayweather - McGregor was ridiculous from the get-go.  If the MMA really wanted to prove itself, they might have had their guy doubling in boxing by fighting one of the many journeyman guys who would die for the chance to fight a highly promoted 'name.'

But no!  They had to fight one of the most famous boxers in history. Otherwise the scheme would fail. Otherwise, a young no-name fighter would knock McGregor out early and the world would yawn.

So that's why my suggestion is so important. Before the gullible MMA public begins to think the Mayweather-McGregor fight was a real thing, they should call for their guy to fight a young boxer of any rank, though preferably, I would pick one who has some distinction.

Errol Spence Jr. would eat him alive and early.  But because the whole act was a fraud, Conor McGregor will not be going the boxing route.  The sport is too hard. Conor McGregor and his fans know he would go right down the drain.

First Take August 24 from Las Vegas: Mayweather V. McGregor

First of all, I like Stephen A. and I love Mollie Q. and regarding Max Kellerman, well, not so much.  Well okay, Kellerman has it right when he says Conor McGregor has no chance.  But there he joins about 40 million fight fans who know the same thing.  Nonetheless, give him a pass. He has to cover it.

But among the people who are laughing at the spectacle are people like Teddy Atlas and Oscar De LaHoya, both of whom know a bit about the sport.  Paulie Malignaggi feels he got played when he got pushed down and someone in McGregor’s crew jumped up and snapped a picture of Paulie on the floor and sent it around. Malignaggi says the real story is that he slapped McGregor around for most of the sparring match, and that’s true.  Otherwise, McGregor and his boss Dana White would have freed the entire sparring session for broadcast. 

But since that session is a classified secret in the McGregor camp, and since the release of the clip would have people laughing, we have only to watch the You Tube clip of the session he had with South African boxing champ Chris Van Heerden .  McGregor looked like crap.  Just as in recent videos of his workouts, he’s slow and throws wide arm punches at poor angles and without snap.   Van Heerden said he could hit McGregor at will, that he was shocked at how badly McGregor looked. 

Stephen A. is a veritable oracle at basketball but he appeared as bewildered as a guy recovering from a three-day drunk when he hosted First Take August 24.  He evidently felt compelled to pretend that McGregor has a chance, the ‘big punch’ and all that, or that Mayweather is near death at age 40.

  We all know what the suckers think.  I don’t know if Stephen A believes himself or whether it’s just your classic sell-out to the ESPN powers that be.  Probably it’s a bit of both.  Or maybe he's hoping something really weird will happen, like the time that clown parachuted into the ring during the Evander Holyfield v. Riddick Bowe fight.

Miguel Flores v. Chris Avalos: Good Fights That End Badly

Under the category of ‘Good Fights That End Badly’ is Tuesday’s boxing FS1 Toe-to-Toe-Tuesday matchup between Miguel Flores and Chris Avalos.  Both boxers acquitted themselves superbly although I would have given Flores the win if they’d gone to the scorecards.  Instead, the referee   ruled Avalos the winner by RTD.

At first I didn’t get what was going on when   ref Bruce McDaniel stopped the fight at a break in the action.  RTD means retired by technical decision.  If you’re wondering how RTD differs from TKO, the latter (TKO) means you were stopped in the ring by the punches of the opponent.  In that case, the ref jumps in and stops one fighter from taking further     punishment.  Those punches you take when you’re out on your feet are the ones that can kill you.  But that wasn’t the case here.

An RTD occurs when a fighter refuses to continue or his corner won’t let him continue. In Flores’ case, he was bleeding from a   cut opened up by an unintentional head butt and a combination of punches.  McDaniel says the cut opened up first from a punch. But even if that were so, a head-butt occurred and made it impossible to continue. If strict rules of interpretation (as in criminal law) were applied, then the head-butt would have been the reason for the stoppage and Flores would have been declared the winner. 

 I don’t think anyone knows which caused the greater damage but everyone (including Avalos) acknowledges the head butt.  If the fight were stopped at that point, and for that reason, I would have gone to the scorecards.  The referee, believing that the cut was opened in an earlier round,  went for the RTD.

By the way, all three judges had Flores winning when the fight was halted.

    

Gennady GGG Golovkin Decisions Danny Jacobs (Beauty and the Beast)

Okay, I’m a whiteboy. So maybe you are   thinking  I’m looking at GGG as the “Beauty” and Danny Jacobs as the “Beast.”   It’s the other way around. And I was for Danny Jacobs before I was against him. 

The reason I was for Jacobs at first was because I followed him for a long time, even before he got cancer. He was someone   the amateurs I used to train looked up to as an up and coming star.  Our kids liked fighters from Brooklyn  like   Curtis Stevenson and Danny Jacobs, and Zab Judah, and Riddick Bowe. And others whose names I can’t remember at the moment.

The reason I switched to rooting for GGG at the last minute were duofold.  I have seen that Golovkin, while he has infinitely more fans than many promotors will admit, has been jerked around by many of the avaricious   boxing promoters, as have other Eastern European fighters.  Reason? I hope it’s not because they’re white and they’re Russian.

  On the alt.boxing channels, I’ve had to listen to many scurrilous and disparaging things about Golovkin, the purpose of which was to downplay GGG’s star value so that people like Canelo Alvarez have excuses not to make contracts to fight him.  

The second reason I had for switching  to GGG was because Jacobs had agreed to go for all the title belts up for grabs, including the IBF.  It was the IBF rules that required a same-day weigh-in. 

Everyone could see beforehand that Jacobs is the bigger middleweight, with a bigger frame, and could take on more pounds.  If he didn’t want to make same-day weight he shouldn’t have made that part of the deal. He broke his word.  Golovkin is a true middleweight – the 160 pound class is the perfect fit.  In the post-fight press conference, Jacobs said he weighed 175 – fifteen pounds over the weight.  It's possible he was closer to 180.

Politically and in terms of risk and business, I completely understand why Jacobs wouldn’t want to get down to the 170 lb grace weight.  It was the shot of his career and one I’m glad he got it.

 Personally, I’ve always thought he was a far more dangerous opponent for GGG than Canelo Alvarez.   I said many times, and publicly, that the oddsmakers were crazy making Jacobs the underdog.  It was a 50-50 fight to me from the git-go.  I'd seen Jacobs fight when people weren't paying attention to him.

. GGG never whines as some fighters (and promotors) do and has, right from the beginning, taken on all comers. The larger problem was that there weren’t that many ‘comers.’ Lots of folks made excuses not to sign their guys to fight GGG.

I had Golovkin   the winner mainly because of the knockdown, but not strictly that either.  Even so, the fight was close enough that Danny Jacobs seemed entirely reasonable in his post-fight press conference.  Owing to whatever subjectivity I am prey to, I had the fight 112-115, but I wouldn't swear to it.

Leave out the knockdown and it depends on the kind of fight you like.  Still, there was enough of beauty in Golovkin’s style to satisfy the sweet scientists amongst us.  And there was enough of beast in Danny Jacobs style to reinforce what I’ve always thought – he’s a gifted strong middleweight.

But basically it was  GGG   with his search and destroy style against Danny Jacobs far more complex and in-the-tradition boxing style. Pretty combinations landed hard sometimes – double left hooks, uppercuts in combination, neat stuff.

But in round four when Jacobs was dumped, he clutched at Golovkin’s leg for some reason. It wasn’t to keep himself from falling because he was already down . 

Golovkin’s unorthodox double right hand was what put Jacobs down.  Very creative, I thought.  Creative also was Danny Jacobs remarks in the press conference that the knockdown didn’t hurt him. He did get up and recover, to his credit. And what else would he say in a career that suddenly has gained serious traction from this fight? Danny Jacobs is a seriously smart student of the game and a serious smart and articulate spokesman for himself.

Beauty and the Beast.  In so far as the prettiest boxer of the two, it’s Danny Jacobs hands down. That’s a matter of my own personal choice;  I’m in no way intended to be persuasive.  I like chocolate. You like vanilla. That’s all.  Think of Sugar Ray Leonard as the Beauty;  Roberto Duran as the Beast.  Or Jake LaMotta v. Sugar Ray Robinson. It’s like that.   

I think now that, if matches can be arranged within 2017, both Gennady Golovkin and Danny Jacobs would KO Canelo Alvarez.  If Alvarez doesn’t stumble over Chavez Jr., he’s going to look awfully silly not signing Golovkin.  Unfortunately, Alvarez’ promotors will find it a lot easier to steer clear of Danny Jacobs because of the catchweight problem.

David Lemieux Hammers Curtis Stevenson in Sensational Round 3 KO

I’m wondering if Curtis Stevens was cold in the 8 degree weather when he arrived at the Turning Stone boxing arena in Verona New York. Maybe Canadian David Lemieux was more accustomed to the bitter winter weather. 

But if Stevens was cold, he left colder, put to sleep by Lemieux in the third round by a classic combination of right-hand and a left-hook follow.  I don’t see Curtis Stevens as being finished, but I think his sensational early days are well behind him.  In spite of recent wins, Stevens is  still in the position of being the ‘opponent’ . The tag will stick as he becomes more and more the former ‘name’ or rung on the ladder other people have to climb.

I hope he’s saved enough money to retire. It was kind of tough watching his mom there at ringside praying for him to open his eyes. Stevens had his run, I’m afraid, and there was no disgrace in losing to David Lemieux, a guy who I’ve always underestimated.

There is no way to underestimate him now. His 8^th ground KO at the hands of Gennady Golovkin was merely one in a long line of GGG KOs.  And while I’m at it, I think I have (by only a tiny bit) underestimated both fighters at one time or another and it’s time I admitted it. At the same time, I’ve always liked and respected both.

What impressed me most last night about David Lemieux was not only his power (which I knew about), nor his speed (which was always evident), nor his boxing knowledge (apparent, too) but his TIMING. 

Timing is something magical that happens when boxers are fighting at a certain high level.  No matter how fast the action looks from the outside, there is something in a   fighter’s mind that clicks in and films the fight in slow motion. Fortunately, the rest of us have real show motion to watch, enabling us to see (but only after watching the slow motion 3 or 4 times…lol) exactly what happened.

The fight was interesting in all three rounds. In the second, Lemieux was told to settle back a little and pick his shots which he did and very effectively. I suppose the announcers were being respectful in speaking of Stevens ‘coming on.’ I didn’t see any ‘coming on.’

But Stevens  (and I’ve seen him do this in other recent fights) was letting himself get backed up against the ropes, something he never did in his early fights. Then in one minute fifty nine seconds of the third round, he was backed up again, and with perfect timing Lemieux threw a touch feint jab to hide a crushing straight right hand that landed flush. Stevens’s instinct was to counter with a flailing hook that was weakened by the right hand he took. 

And that’s where the part about Lemieux’s amazing TIMING comes in. What looked like Lemieux’s fluid left hook in real time actually contained the very slightest hesitation before striking with leverage and power (for doesn’t one flow from the other?)  

In that fraction of a second measured usually and only in racing and the NFL combine, Lemieux’s guiding instinct was to ‘wait’ (waiting is the wrong word but there’s no smaller word to describe a fraction of a second) until Stevens’s right hand lowered enough for Lemieux’s hook to penetrate his guard. And boom!

Okay, look at it as a movement all in one piece, fine. Touch jab, right hand, left hook. Fine.  The reason I mention it is that Lemieux’s timing was right on the money in every punch he threw.  His sense of timing was such that the could have beaten a computer last night.  And so, I must give him his   props with apologies for underestimating him in the first place.

Do I think he can beat GGG in a rematch? My pick would be GGG again.  But I’d like to see Lemieux matched up against Canelo Alvarez.  Not going to happen, because Alvarez is booked up with Chavez Jr. and for how long can Canelo delay a fight with GGG?

For all that, I think it’s about time Alvarez and everybody else stopped talking about how much of a public draw Alvarez is and how lesser a draw is GGG.  Golovkin’s getting older. I want to see himn in his prime. Beating him in old age doesn’t count.

WTF do I care about those fan numbers anyway?  Golovkin is a plenty big draw and there’s plenty of money for both fighters.  I tried to keep an open mind about it but now it’s clear that Golovkin wants to fight and Canelo wants to delay.

I’ll bet ten to one that Alvarez is hoping for Danny Jacobs to knock GGG off. That’s a possibility that shows GGG’s bona fides, his authenticity, because Jacobs is a greater risk than Chavez Jr. in the weight class.

Keith Thurman Won, Danny Garcia Didn't Lose

Nobody bothered to tell Danny Garcia that the fight was an invitation to "Dancing with the Stars."

I picked Danny Garcia to win last night’s unification bout against Keith Thurman.  What happened is that both men went into the fight with strategies in mind.  I was wrong about the outcome but I had Thurman’s strategy right even before he stepped into the ring.

You didn’t have to be a genius to figure it out.  Danny Garcia has a reputation of being a slow starter.  He usually plants himself in a good defensive posture where he can bang but he relies on the other person to fight.  So I knew Thurman would jump on him in the early rounds, which he did effectively. The problem with that strategy came later, in the middle of the fight, when he discovered that Danny Garcia was still there, unhurt, and had a chin like a cement block.

 And  that’s where Keith Thurman went into the second phase of his strategy – Dancing with the Stars.  I’m sure his people had discussed it with Thurman before the fight.  Jump on him early and try to put Garcia down.  Get ahead. But if Danny Garcia is still there in the middle rounds, then use your feet, don’t let him get set, above all don’t fight with the guy. You’re now the Dancing Queen.  Your job is to win on points. Amateur rules.  Get the two belts. That’s where the money is. Boxing is a business.

It worked, too.  The judges had it about right in the scoring.  The one judge who had Thurman way out far ahead didn’t deduct points for Thurman’s failing to engage in the second part of the fight.  The two judges who had it 115-113 both ways gave Garcia credit for aggressiveness in the later rounds, pushing the fight people expected to see.

Give the early rounds to Thurman, no doubt.  I didn’t like Thurman’s fight in the second half but feel the decision was accurate according to the rules. That being said, Thurman didn’t gain admirers with what was a showy but disappointing performance.

Danny Garcia also had a game plan.   He’d stand inside the pockets for the early onslaught, take whatever shots Thurman gave, capitalize on the opportunity if there was one, and then come on in the middle rounds. Trouble was that Thurman didn’t provide any opportunities in the early rounds and fought really well for maybe three-four rounds.  Then came the problem with Danny Garcia strategy – they guessed wrong, believing that Thurman would settle down to fight.  If Thurman did stand in and fight, he was going to get battered. But he didn’t stand in.  He danced, pop-shooting here and there.   And Garcia Inc. didn’t adjust to the situation, fighting too cautiously, and not pressing until rounds 8 through 12.  Easoer said than done, I suppose.  But Thurman’s waltz gave rise to lots of well-deserved booing and didn’t win him any friends.

Thurman’s people may have been content to conduct business in collecting two titles, but that kind of fight don’t sell in places like Fresno, Oxnard, and Stockton. Those are fight venues where un-hyped, unheralded not yet known fighters are . . . well…. actually fighting.

 Jonathan Maicelo,  Danny Valdivia, Andy Vences, Alex “Cholo” Saucedo, Jose Carlos Ramirez and other names you never heard of and I can’t spell are waiting in the wings. Judging by Thurman’s general tendency to avoid confrontations, they will be in for a long wait.

Bottom line:  Thurman won, but at the same time, I’m not finding it easy say that Danny Garcia lost.  I know for a fact that he picked up a few more fans by his serious, hard-work, no b.s., old-school Philly style.  How are those ribs today, Keith Thurman?