Snips and Snipes 4 June 2014

Carl Froch reportedly earned $12 million plus from the second Groves fight and Groves $3 million plus. With purses like those and an 80,000 crowd boxing is alive and well in Britain. There are also some other world champions, a clutch of top contenders and a whole stack of former amateur stars coming through. Matchroom/SKY and Frank Warren/Box Nation are providing great coverage and nurturing young talent and the light heavyweight series on Channel 5 has proved a big success. The sport still does not get the coverage it deserves in the newspapers but it is as strong in Britain right now as it is in any part of the world.

Final figures not yet available for the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Marcos Maidana fight but it looks like approximately 900,000 buys. Mayweather vs. Alvarez did 2.2 million. Mayweather not such a hot attraction now? Maidana without a big following in the USA? No Mexican and no Pacquiao? Could by any one of those three or none.

Ruslan Provodnikov seems to be on the radar of both Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez. Pacquiao v. Marquez-again does not seem on the cards. One of Pacquiao’s advisors was reported as pointing out that Marquez got only $1.5 million for the Mike Alvarado fight and would be lucky to get $5 million for another Pacquiao fight. It used to be about pride, now it is about money.

The Russian who was promoting the aborted second Guillermo Jones vs. Denis Lebedev fight is suing Don King for £2 million claiming it is King’s fault that his Jones took a banned substance leading to a positive pre-match test result and so to the fight being cancelled. I wish him luck-sincerely. What makes me mad is the derisory two year ban for Jones for a second offence. He should have been banned for life.

Wlad Klitschko was pursuing seriously a fight with Stiverne to unify the titles. Wlad wanted it on September 6 but Stiverne was not planning to fight again until November. No mention of a title shot for Kubrat Pulev against Wlad. Pulev won an IBF final eliminator in August last year but is not in the running for the September slot. That will mean a wait of at least 15 months between winning a final eliminator and getting a title shot which makes a final eliminator almost meaningless as it actually allows you to be by-passed for lesser challengers. The IBF rules state:

“After compliance with his mandatory defense obligation, throughout the

remaining term of a Heavyweight Champion’s reign, he shall be obligated to

mandatorily defend his Championship within intervals of no more than nine (9)

months against the leading available contender in the Heavyweight Division as

designated by the Championships Chairman.”

Pulev has been rated No 1 by the IBF since September 2012!

He is probably lucky he is not getting the September fight as the IBF have agreed that Klitschko can enforce an 80-20 purse split which is just greedy by a guy who already has millions. The mayor of Kiev should kick him out of town-wait a minute Vitali is the mayor. I love the Klitschko’s. If you can’t beat them-join them.

The guy who pays the piper calls the tune. The WBA in their wisdom said that Gennady Golovkin would have to defend his title against Jarrod Fletcher, their No 2 contender, on the July 26 show in Madison Square Garden. Since being crushed by Billy Joe Saunders in two rounds in a Commonwealth title fight in 2012 Fletcher has done a good reconstruct job winning six fights including a comprehensive victory over Max Bursak in February. However, HBO, who pay the bills, said Jarrod who? No thanks, we’ll take Daniel Geale, so the WBA rolled over and accepted the piper could play whatever tune he liked as long as the sanction fee rolled in.

Tomasz Adamek is aiming to return to the ring on 18 October. In his last fight in March Adamek lost a wide points decision to Vyacheslav Glazkov. With a new WBC champion he wants to get back into the mix. One of the names mentioned for October is Ray Austin who returned with a win in February after being inactive since being stopped in ten rounds by Bermane Stiverne in June 2011. Adamek also threw the name of returning Brit David Haye into the mix, but Haye is likely to be the one who picks the opponents rather than Adamek.

Shannon Briggs continues to shout big and fight small. His next victim will be Brazilian Raphael Zumbano on June 28 in Oklahoma City.  Zumbano is 33, is 6’5” (196cm) and has a 34-7-1 record with only one loss by KO/TKO. A big improvement as long as you over look Zumbano’s points loss to Frenchman Fabrice Aurieng in October. Aurieng has a 7-7 record and had lost 3 of his last 4 fights. The hope I guess is that Zumbano might actually stay around for the second round.

Briggs is 42 and that set me thinking about how cruel it was to have a veterans week without inviting me. In action last week were Bronco McKart 43, Anthony Bonsante 43, Sam Hill 43,Don Diego Poeder 42, Mike Miranda 41, Sam Soliman 40, Wayne Martell 40, Igor Pylypenko 40, Jonathan Corn 40, Vic Darchinyan 38, Shannon Miller 38, Matt Legg 38, Lanardo Tyner 38, Roberto Cocco 37, Cosme Rivera 37, Carl Froch 36, Marcin Rekowski 36, Ali Funeka 36 , Maurycy Gojko 36, Mzolisi Yoyo 36,Oezcan Cetinkaya 36, Felix Sturm 35,Mike Gbenga 35, Albert Sosnowski 35 and Krzys Szot 35. It must have been lonely at the old folks home. Some big winners there, some big losers there but Where have all the young men gone……….

A good light heavyweight match in Montreal on 27 September will see Jean Pascal face Tavoris Cloud. All the talk right now is about Adonis Stevenson, Sergey Kovalev and Bernard Hopkins but Pascal remains a force so let’s not forget his wins over Adrian Diaconu, Chad Dawson and Lucien Bute or that he drew with Hopkins and lost in the return with just one point separating them on one card and two points on another. Former IBF champion Cloud has more of a rebuilding job after losing to Hopkins and Stevenson but he can’t be ruled out either.

Is it an indication of respective wealth? Floyd Mayweather Jr wants to buy a major US basketball franchise. Manny Pacquiao is taking the post of player/coach for the Kia Motors team in the Philippines Basketball Association league. Perhaps we could get a basketball game going between Mayweather and Pacquiao. Of course all of the Kia Motors team will be obliged to undergo WADA testing.

Top Rank are continuing their thrust into the Chinese market with a big show in Macau on July 19 and a schedule for a weekly boxing program. The main bout on July 19,-in theory-is Guillermo Rigondeaux defending his WBA/WBO super bantam titles against Thai Sod Kokietgym. That will not excite the Chinese audience very much-if at all. Zou Shiming is the show for the Chinese audience. His career so far consists of 1 x 4 round fight, 2 x 6 round fights and 1 x 8 round fight and that magnificent collection gets him the position of No 3 in the WBA light flyweight ratings-even though he has never weighed below 111lbs. Significantly the WBA title is vacant. Shiming is 33 and needs to make a big move soon-do I see him leaping over the No 1 and 2 to get a title shot? Stranger things have happened. Mexican super middleweight Gilberto Ramirez, the WBC No 2 is also on the show.

It seems that I am not the only one concerned with the situation in South Africa. A leading writer wrote in the Citizen newspaper there that the attitude adopted by the Sports Minister is robbing fighters of their earnings by not settling their dispute with the promoters and that social media websites have started to fill up with pictures of the various stakeholders in boxing begging for the Minister to do something about the mess. However, we are taking about a politician here, and have to take into account the loss of face he would suffer if he backed off and admitted his approach was all wrong, so don’t hold your breath, but feel sorry for the fight industry down there.

Ghanaian cruiserweight Braimah Kamoko is currently nursing a hand injury so he obviously had time on his hands and came up with the brilliant idea of throwing out a challenge to fellow-countryman Joshua Clottey. In his win over Ayitey Powers Kamoko weighed 208lbs. In his fight with Anthony Mundine Clottey weighed 153lbs. Clottey rightly told Kamoko not to be so silly. The words pick on someone your own size might have been in there as well.

A great little fight for September will see Roman Gonzalez challenge Akira Yaegashi for the WBC flyweight title. The little Nicaraguan is 39-0 with 33 wins by KO/TKO and already a two division champion. Yaegahsi’s statistics are not as good at 20-3 but he is himself a two division champion. One to savor.

At the other end of the weight scale Ruslan Chagaev gets a chance to regain his old title when he fights Fres Oquendo for the vacant secondary WBA title in Grozny on July 6. Chagaev, 35 is 32-2-1 with the losses being to Wlad Klitschko and Alex Povetkin.  Oquendo, 41, lost to Chris Byrd for the IBF title in 2003 and John Ruiz for the WBA title in 2004. He is rated No 6(5) with the WBA but since back-to-back losses to Jean Marc Mormeck and Oliver McCall in 2010 he has gone from nowhere to No 6 for beating no one notable. Ah, but he is the WBA Fedelatin champion and that gets him automatic promotion irrespective of who he fought.

The Arroyo twins seem to be on the road to title fights. Super flyweight McJoe fights former WBA flyweight champion Herman Marquez in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico on 14 June in an IBF eliminator and twin brother McWilliams faces Filipino Froilan Saludar in Bayamon on June 19 at flyweight. McWilliams was the bigger star as an amateur so McJoe will be looking to get through to a title fight first.  Also on the Tuxtla Gutierrez show Jorge Arce takes on Jorge Lacierva with a win getting him a shot at WBC champion Jhonny Gonzalez.

One of the late Jose Sulaiman’s legacies came to fruition as the President of Mexico, through the Health Minister, confirmed free Medical Insurance to all boxers and members of the boxing industry and their families through the WBC. Jose began this project many years ago and Monday, May 19, it was formally announced in Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico.

A smarter mousetrap often just gives birth to a smarter mouse. This is the perennial problem for the  WADA and it is constantly finding out new methods being used to illegally enhance performance. They have now added two gasses to the list of banned substances Xenon and Argon, but it is an ongoing battle.