Everything seemed to be in the favor of Alex Saucedo for his attempt to lift the WBO junior welterweight title from Maurice Hooker,Saucedo had the home advantage in Oklahoma City, his promoter (Top Rank), his television network (ESPN) and the small ring to suit his aggressive style and not the large ring preferred by the rangy Hooker.
Everything was in place to bring Saucedo the title and Top Rank, the next big fight for ESPN, which would be a Saucedo unification with WBC champion Jose Ramirez, which why Top Rank overpaid Hooker in order to win the purse bid to gain their fighter those advantages.
However, all of those advantages couldn't overcome one problem - Saucedo's inability to make the right hand of Hooker miss and the result was Hooker retaining his title and taking it back to DAZN with a seventh-round knockout.
It wasn't easy though, as the power-punching challenger dropped Hooker with a second round right hand and Hooker was dazed upon rising from the floor, but Hooker managed to clear his head and even though I had Hooker losing the third round on my card, you had the feeling that Saucedo might have seen his best opportunity go across the bow.
Hooker then began to turn the tide and at the end of the sixth round-I tweeted that I thought that I saw a look of resignation on the face of Salcedo, which usually is not a good sign.
It wasn't as Hooker stung Salcedo seconds into the seventh round and drove a staggered Salcedo into the ropes, which the referee correctly scored a knockdown as only the ropes kept Salcedo from falling.
Hooker jumped upon Salcedo after the eight count and landed several uncontested right hands which forced the referee to end the bout.
The Hooker victory ruined Top Rank's plans for a spring unification bout with WBC champion Jose Ramirez as noted earlier, but Hooker and promoter Eddie Hearn both invited Ramirez for a unification fight anyway, but the key words belonged to Hooker "come on over to DAZN", which is the television network for Hearn's fighters and where Top Rank fighters seldom tread.
Since Top Rank signed their deal with ESPN, only Oleksandr Gzovdyk has crossed lines for a challenge of Adonis Stevenson in two weeks on Showtime on another network, so I'm doubtful that fight is able to be negotiated unless Hearn is willing to bring Hooker back to ESPN.
If this is how Top Rank (or any other promoter with a platform deal) is going to talk contract with opposing promoters, don't count on a lot of these big inter-promotional fights to be signed.
Golden Boy brought Jorge Linares over to make a Vasyl Lomachenko happen and Eddie Hearn honored the purse bid to have Hooker defend here and that means that when a fighter really wants to make a fight it can be made, but if this is indeed the line in the sand for Top Rank, get ready to wait.
The co-feature (shown on ESPN +) saw Egid Kaviliauskas overcome a headbutt in the second round to knock out Robert Arriaza in the third round in a welterweight eliminator from the WBO.
Kaviliauskas used a right hand to the side of the head to floor Arriaza but added a punch to Arriaza while he was down, which rightfully angered the Arriaza camp, but I doubt that it would have changed the outcome.
Give Kaviliauskas credit for the rally with such a bad cut sending plenty of crimson flowing down his face, but not too much because we really don't know how good Arriaza really was.
The win will give Kaviliauskas the mandatory position for WBO champion Terence Crawford, also promoted by Top Rank, who watched the fight from ringside between Twitter call-outs of IBF kingpin Errol Spence, who also was watching in support of fellow Dallas native Maurice Hooker.
I don't think Crawford should be too concerned about Kaviliauskas, who fights more crudely than his two-time Olympian status would suggest nor should he worry too much about fighting Errol Spence anytime soon either.
The problem in making a Spence-Crawford fight is this- Spence is signed with PBC, who is the company least likely to allow their elite fighters to fight another elite fighter from another promoter.
Crawford is with Top Rank, which brings its own issues, but has more of a track record of making tough fights, should their fighter demand it, but of course, would prefer matching their fighters with Crawford such as Kaviliauskas.
Spence has more options with a fight in March against lightweight champ Mikey Garcia, which looks good on paper, but likely won't be more than an overpowering of Garcia in the ring and with WBA champ Keith Thurman and WBC champ Shawn Porter in the PBC stable, while Crawford doesn't have nearly as many options, unless Vasyl Lomachenko wants to make a Garcia-like leap to challenge him, so Crawford needs Spence more than vice-versa for now.
The boxing game just makes you cringe sometimes
Crawford likes to fight often but has problems finding suitable opponents.
Spence has plenty of suitable opponents but doesn't seem to want to fight very often, as he will have fought one round in 14 months by the time he fights Garcia.
WBC champion Shawn Porter seems to be willing to fight anyone, but he's never been the preferred welterweight of his own promoter and few of even his fellow PBC fighters want to fight him unless a sanctioning body forces them to and even if you defeat Porter, it's a rugged grueling fight that leaves more of you behind than you would prefer.
WBA beltholder Keith Thurman's activity in the ring makes Spence's ring time look like he's fighting constantly with only one fight in twenty-two months (and that fight was preceded by another nine months of inactivity before that) when he finally returns against shopworn Josesito Lopez in an understandable squash match to chip some rust off.
The welterweight champions talk about settling who's best, but it's going to be quite a while to see just who is the best of them all.
The funny part of the Spence-Crawford whatever that was video above was Spence's comments that Crawford was "too small and light in the ass" and could be taken as Crawford was too little to make such an encounter interesting, yet Spence, who will have fought one round in 14 months by the time he fights Garcia, has no problems fighting the even smaller Garcia.
Only in the boxing business.
In the boxing challenge, I earned two points for the Kaviliauskas win, while Ramon Malpica scored one.
Both of us selected Alex Saucedo to defeat Maurice Hooker.
I still lead the challenge 188-165
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