Miscellaneous Boxing News

[Booth]

Sunday's card saved what had been a disappointing weekend of boxing. Inoue vs Cardenas was a good fight. Cardenas had the Monster on the canvas in the second from a left hook, but Inoue survived, and he eventually stopped Cardenas in the 8th. An excellent action fight.

 

[white is right]

Sunday's card saved what had been a disappointing weekend of boxing. Inoue vs Cardenas was a good fight. Cardenas had the Monster on the canvas in the second from a left hook, but Inoue survived, and he eventually stopped Cardenas in the 8th. An excellent action fight.

Yes the main event and the semi final bout saved the weekend as pretty much every other fight on the weekend failed to launch. White Mexican Rafael “Divino” Espinoza essentially destroyed and broke down ethnic Mexican Edward Vasquez and battered him and forced a 7th round referee's stoppage. I missed this one so I am just summarizing the wire reports.

The Monster showed his fighting heart which hadn't been tested until this fight, his gallant Mestizo opponent was on the verge of submitting but he was rolling with the punches when he was stopped in a slightly premature stoppage IMO.

Storm clouds are brewing on the horizon as Inoue probably can't rise much further and not have a similar situation as his opponent as his opponent seemed a natural size larger than Inoue and when he moves up to 126 the opponents will be a shade larger than him. I'm not too sure that he can survive a fire fight with a big punching 126 pound fighter.

Also Kevin Lerena made bridgerweight history as he made his first defense of his title against a true paper contender. Hopefully he can entice a smaller star fighter like a Wilder to fight him for that title or he may have to fight similar "street sweeper" type challengers as similar to the early days of the cruiserweight division the talent is thread bare in the division at the moment.

 

[NWsoccerfan]

Is the bridgerweight division still not being recognized by the federations? I checked boxrec and it just shows Lerena’s bought as a normal non title fight, although it was scheduled for 12 rounds. Also, boxrec shows Benavidez as the champ at 175. I thought Bivol had all the major belts now. Sometime boxrec makes me scratch my head!

 

[white is right]

Is the bridgerweight division still not being recognized by the federations? I checked boxrec and it just shows Lerena’s bought as a normal non title fight, although it was scheduled for 12 rounds. Also, boxrec shows Benavidez as the champ at 175. I thought Bivol had all the major belts now. Sometime boxrec makes me scratch my head!

The WBC was the first to adopt the division and now that the division has lasted 2 years+ the WBA adopted the division too. The WBO and IBF at the moment don't recognize the division.

If you look boxing history the adoption of the 168 and 200 pound division have a similar history and eventually when star fighters fought for the belts then all of the greedy and corrupt organization adopted them. I recall Leonard vs Hearns II boosting the profile of the 168 pound division which had an image of this division with Scot Murray Sutherland being the first champion of the division a few years earlier.

I can't see this division be regarded as anything but a spurious division until a younger Wilder type plants a flag in the division and wins multiple defenses of his title.

At the moment Lerena is too low a profile fighter to cross over for that but if he knocked out the shot Wilder on a Saudi card this could raise his profile to that point but it looks like Wilder is going in another direction with his new comeback attempt.

PS It came back to me during the promotion of Leonard vs Lalonde the WBC sneakily made the 168 pound title and the 175 pound up for grabs as Lalonde was forced to sweat down do to 168 pounds on a crazy vegetarian diet. So that fight introduced the title that Leonard won by tko over the weight drained Lalonde.

This makes more sense as Leonard vs Hearns II was a draw and the title would have stayed vacant but Leonard that fall defended the title against Duran that he later vacated after he beat Duran.