Snips and Snipes 29 July 2014

Gennady Golovkin just impresses more every time he gets in the ring. His destruction of Daniel Geale was awesome. The Tasmanian is a world class fighter with excellent skills and had never been stopped yet GGG just blew him away. I didn’t see it mentioned anywhere but this million dollar fight could have been watched for next nothing. Back in 2001 at the East Asian Games in the 67kg category Gennady Golovkin won the gold medal by beating Daniel Geale 15-3 in the final. As with all of the Super Star fighters today Golovkin’s name is now being linked to a number of matches. Miguel Cotto would be the preferred option for Golovkin’s team, but Julio Cesar Chavez, Saul Alvarez and Sam Solomon have also been mentioned. If these fights can’t be made then the cupboard is a bit bare with guys such as Dmitry Chudinov, Jarrod Fletcher, Patrick Nielsen and Daniel Jacobs being hard to sell right now. Golovkin has just signed an extension to his contract with HBO with the aim being to build to a PPV showing but those guys don’t have the profile to justify PPV. Floyd Mayweather? After the showing “Money” put up against Marcos Maidana I would not bet on his lasting six rounds with Golovkin.

Perhaps he could revenge another amateur loss by taking on Andre Dirrell. The fight with Geale drew a crowd of 8.500. Not bad for a fighter from Kazakhstan against an Australian in New York.

Sergio Martinez confirmed in Spain that he will fight again as he does not want his loss to Miguel Cotto be the memory that people take away of him so “Maravilla” will be back.

The talk right now is of Cotto against Julio Cesar Chavez in New York in December, but nothing signed yet.

Since the WBC is Mexican-based and were the first world title sanctioning body  to implement weighing-in on the day before as fight it is ironic that the Mexico City Commission has now announced in it’s new rules it will revert to weighing in on the day of the fight, eight hours before fight time. The Commission will work with sanctioning bodies by allowing the day before weigh-ins for their multitudinous title fights, but other fights will be under the “same day” rule.

Mike Perez was naturally upset at his loss to Bryant Jennings which on the scores was so close that a last round point deduction cost him a draw. He claims that the officials and crowd were against him because he is a Cuban and is based in Ireland. The Cuban argument is pretty tenuous, but New York biased against Ireland! That’s as likely as an effigy of the pope being burned at the St Patrick’s Day Parade.

With Bermane Stiverne under orders to defend against Deontay Wilder and November/ December being talked about for the fight winner Bryant Jennings is going to have to wait until 2015 for his shot at the WBC title. An offer has been made for fight with Steve Cunningham. Cunningham’s win over previously unbeaten Amir Mansour in April gives it some credibility. I approve if for no other reason than that that Cunningham is fund raising to afford a heart transplant needed by his youngest daughter. That there is enough reason for me.

From the sublime to the ridiculous with Shannon Briggs bursting into a Wlad Klitschko work out in Florida to harangue Wlad and try to goad him into a fight. So far all Briggs has done is to should loud and fight nobodies. He needs to fight a few live opponents instead of spouting rubbish. Hopefully Wlad will treat him with the contempt he deserves.

On the subject of Wlad I misinterpreted the translation of a report of a press conference discussing drug testing for his fight with Kubrat Pulev. I attributed a remark regarding Wlad being “a man of the world” as a reason for the difficulty of doing random testing to one of Wlad’s team. I was wrong. The remark was made by a representative of the Germany body responsible for the testing. Wlad had agreed to the testing in the contract, as he always has and Wlad’s team were not happy at my mistake so I owe them an apology.

It does highlight the problem of random testing in a sport without a single recognized governing body. There is no way a German body could be expected to cover the administration or cost of random testing. Boxing is not structured in the way that athletics is with the WADA working with the national body to carry out testing. If there is a big fight coming up with one fighter based in Germany and one in China neither the sanctioning body nor the national body will be able to ensure that a proper procedure is in place. At some local levels, and where fighters opt-in, it can be covered, but other than that it is a shambles with no international standard or any co-operation.

With Mikey Garcia tied up in a contract dispute with Top Rank the WBO are aiming to keep their super feather title moving (and bringing in sanctioning fees) and the proposal is for No 1 Fernando Vargas to face No 2 Orlando Salido for the interim title. What a ridiculous sport this is. Salido ruins a show by coming in way over the limit for his WBO featherweight title defence against Lomachenko and is punished by getting a shot at their interim title in his next fight.

Lucien Bute is the latest big name to be making a pilgrimage (pope/pilgrimage-that’s the end of the religious flavor to this piece) to the West Coast to train with Freddie Roach. Enough fighters have trod the path and demonstrated that the trip is worth while but you have to wonder how many slices Freddie can make of himself. There are some of the best fighters in the world out there and they came specifically to work with Freddie but even Freddie is limited by there being only 24 hours in a day. Roll on cloning when they can all have their own Freddie.

Some fighters get a cash bonus for winning but Ghanaian John Napari has another incentive. The 18-0 Napari is in the Ghana Military and if he wins his fight against Braimah Kamoko on October 3 he is on the promise of a promotion. If he loses he could be peeling potatoes for the next five years. It is still noticeable that Kamoko has yet to fight outside Ghana which makes me wonder if his alleged eye problem has been fixed.

I understand that negotiations are ongoing for Vasyl Lomachenko to defend his WBO feather title against his No 1 contender Chonlatarn. The Thai has impressive 51-1 stats but the only class fighter he has faced is Chris John who beat him by 10, 10 and 6 points in a WBA title fight in 2012. Forget the other 51.

Politics and sport should not mix but the too often do. You have Russian Dmitry Chudinov defending his interim WBA middleweight title against Frenchman Mehdi Bouadla in Sevastopol on August 9. So whilst the EU countries are rushing about slapping sanctions on Russia over the annexation of the Crimea, a French boxer is going there for a fight and the WBA may even appoint European Union country officials to work the fight. However, in this uncertain world you can rely on the WBA. Bouadla had not fought since winning a six round fight in February but he suddenly jumps into their June ratings at No 12. Shame? They can’t spell the word.

I am still scratching my head over Robert Stieglitz being awarded a TKO over Sergey Khomitsky because of the number of times that Khomitsky’s glove taping came undone and the time taken to fix the problem. I could understand a disqualification but have a hard time figuring how it could be a technical knockout. Did it mean that Khomitsky was give a suspension commiserate with him having been knocked out? Very strange.

Boxing South Africa (BSA) must be running out of toes as they have shot themselves in the foot so often. The latest and in some respects the most serious allegations against the Board have come through an affidavit lodged by a disgruntled employee. In a report the South African Sunday Times reported that the affidavit accused the acting CEO Loyiso Mtya of allegedly pocketing extra cash on the side from kickbacks he takes from promoters and other licence holders, the employee alleged in his affidavit that he once carried R25 000 in a brown envelope he had collected from promoter Enoch Nxumalo at a BP garage in Louis Botha Avenue to Boxing South Africa’s offices in Johannesburg. He delivered it to Mtya. Nxumalo did not recall details of the exchange, but said: “I paid money sometimes for things to happen . . . even for fights to happen or boxers to be rated.” The whistleblower also alleges that Mtya offered to arrange a fight for former world champion Jeffrey Mathebula, suggesting he be bought out of his contract with promoter Branco Milenkovic. This is contained in a letter Mathebula’s lawyer sent to Boxing South Africa. “Mtya advised our client … should he so elect, [he] could be ‘bought out’ of his promotional agreement . . . and that Mtya would arrange a fight for our client against one Guillermo Rigondeaux.”Our client did not accept this proposal (on September 28 2013 at the boxing indaba Mtya again approached our client with a similar invitation to be bought out of his contract).The Sunday Times added that “The allegations against Mtya come after CEO Moffat Qithi was suspended last year for failing to disclose his criminal record when applying for the job and thatMtya has been the subject of previous criticism. The Sunday Times reported that he was described as part of “the rot that had set in” at Boxing South Africa in a defamation case instituted against him ( and won) by Milenkovic. Senior counsel Laurance Hodes, acting for Milenkovic, told the High Court in Johannesburg last year that Mtya had been suspended during his first spell as acting CEO some years ago after Boxing South Africa had failed to pay the receiver of revenue taxmoney deducted from boxers’ purses. “We get the same people coming back.
We’re not getting rid of the rot that has set in.”

Mtya has strenuously denied all of the allegations and it remains to be seen whether he will sue the employee and the paper and what action the BSA will take to investigate the allegations. Somehow this has to be resolved as it is the fighters who are suffering.

There are still fights going on in South Africa and on August 9 in Gauteng Thabo Sonjica defends his IBO super bantam title against Roli Gasca. The 21-year-old Sonjica has a 19-2 record and has reversed both losses and scored goods wins over former IBF super fly champion Simphiwe Nonggayi, Sylvester Lopez and Toto Helebe. He is WBC No 10 and could be the next South African to challenge for a world title.

Three top Filipino fighters will be on a show in Dubai on September 5. Unbeaten WBO No 2 super bantam Genesis Servania (24-0) faces Mexican Jose Cabrera (22-4-2) and super fly Arthur Villaneuva (25-0) and super feather Rey Bautista (25-3) are also scheduled to be on the show.

Still on the Philippines, the Penalosa family really believe in keeping things in the family. The show at the weekend featured Dodie Jr. and brother David fighting, dad Dodie Snr. and uncle Jonathan in the corner and the show was promoted by Gerry. Dodie Jr. looks to have a good chance of getting to the top but he plans to go back to University to complete his Bachelorship in Mechanical Engineering.

Former Olympic star Zou Shiming is the big star of Chinese boxing but coming up quietly in the background is heavyweight Zhang Junlong. Described as “The Chinese George Forman” because of his size and style, Junlong has a 17-0 record with 17 wins by KO/TKO. Some of his fights are not getting onto formal records. He fought on

February 8 in Quingdao, on May 31 in Beijing and June 28 again in his home town of Quingdao. The Beijing show reportedly drew close to 15,000 fans. One to watch.

A bad briefing can embarrass any politician. I remember British referee Mike Jacobs going out to Africa in the 1970’s to referee a match. He was introduced to the country’s President who shook his hand warmly and told Mike that he had done great work in promoting Joe Louis! That Mike Jacobs died in 1953 at the age of 73 but discretion being the better part of valour the modern Mike gracefully thanked the President for his parise.