Boxing Challenge: Smith Smokes Groves. WIns WBSS!

The majority of the matches in the boxing challenges took place on a Friday for a change with the main event showcasing the finals of the super middleweight tournament in the WBSS from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia which hosted professional boxing for the first time.

Callum Smith won the super middleweight tournament for the first season of the World Boxing Super Series and the WBA title in the division with a seventh-round knockout of George Groves.
I picked Groves, but in my preview of the fight, I noted that I was considering Smith because, at the weigh-in, he appeared so much physically larger than Groves.
I stayed with Groves, but my hunch was correct as Smith kept Groves at bay from the outside, yet was controlling the inside on those occasions that Groves was able to get into range.
I thought Smith won five of the six rounds, although Groves did occasionally have his highlights before the hook that staggered Groves into the corner and led to the flurry that ended the fight in the seventh with Groves on his knees.
With four champions at super middleweight and all four being young and talented (Smith WBA, David Benavidez WBC, Jose Uzcategui IBF, and Gilberto Ramirez WBO), it would be interesting to see a mini-tournament to settle who would be the best.
It would be tough to make with the exception of the unaffiliated Uzcategui because the other three are with different promoters and I'm not sure which fighter I would pick to win any unification bout.

Chris Eubank Jr returned from his loss to Groves with a squash match win over J.J. McDonagh, when McDonagh retired in his corner with an injured shoulder at the end of the third round.
This bout was more notable for the post-fight interview when Eubank chided McDonagh for quitting and McDonagh challenged Eubank to finish the fight.
That might have been a better idea to do before you conceded the fight.

Friday night's ESPN+ doubleheader from Oakland saw another super middleweight champion in the IBF's Jose Uzcategui in a stay busy fight against Argentina's Ezequiel Maderna.
I scored Uzcategui a shutout winner in winning all ten rounds as he kept the motor running smoothly after mandatory contender Caleb Plant was unable to fight due to a hand injury.
The Uzcategui-Plant fight is expected to happen in March, which means Uzcategui will be waiting another seven months to fight an undeserving challenger, who has defeated one person that would be considered a near a top 50 fighter ( the shopworn Porky Medina) and otherwise has delivered sleep-inducing wins over non-entities.
But hey, he does date the PBC ringside host, so maybe that's enough to be rated top in the IBF now?

The other ESPN+ bout saw IBF junior bantamweight champ Jerwin Ancajas escape Oakland with his title after a draw with Alejandro Santiago in the best fight of the weekend.
I had Santiago a close winner at 115-113, but it was very close with several close rounds except for on two judges cards where one scored 116-112 for Ancajas (Not Good) and another typed a 118-110 for Santiago score (Awful).
I'd like to see a rematch, which Top Rank was quoted to have wanted to make next time out for both fighters.

Saturday night on Facebook from Golden Boy, Jorge Linares returned from his knockout loss to Vasyl Lomachenko with a third-round blitz of Abner Cotto in his first fight in the junior welterweight division.
As expected, Linares dominated Cotto as he knocked Cotto down in the second and twice in the third before the overmatched Cotto was unable to continue.
With the World Boxing Super Series running a junior welterweight tournament with two of the four champions involved (WBA Kiryl Relikh and the winner of a vacant IBF title fight) Linares might have to deal with Top Rank again for a shot at WBC champion Jose Ramirez or if Top Rank's Alex Saucedo can win his challenge of WBO beltholder Maurice Hooker later this year.
Hooker is a Matchroom fighter, so Linares and GBP don't hold a lot of cards in the current title picture at 140 pounds.

I scored five points to Ramon Malpica's four over the weekend to move my lead to 149-127.
I scored two points for the wins by Linares and Eubank with one from Uzcategui.
Ramon scored one each from wins from Linares, Eubank, Uzcategui and Callum Smith.

Boxing Challenge

The boxing challenge continues with most of the bouts on Friday, so this post is earlier than usual.
I am also working on yet another boxing post on the end of the line for HBO Boxing that I'm hoping to have up within the day.

The World Boxing Super Series finally wraps up their first season as the super middleweight finals finished with an all-British battle held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia?
Well, yes- Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in a decision to place the fight there and not the UK that the promoters are likely kicking themselves for.
The delayed final was due to a shoulder injury suffered by George Groves in the final round in his victory over Chris Eubank Jr and despite the tournament flirting with placing Eubank in the finals due to the extra time for Groves to heal, the organizer did the right thing and allowed Groves until September under the conditions that if it looked like he wasn't ready to go by then that Eubank would step in for him.

The super middle bracket wasn't nearly as exciting as the cruiser tourney and no titles will be unified, but the final is still an interesting one as WBA champion George Groves defends against Callum Smith.
Groves, who continues a run of wins since his split decision win over Badou Jack, defeated Jamie Cox and Chris Eubank Jr, (in the only battle of top ten fighters in the tournament) to reach the finals, while Smith defeated unknown Swede Rob Skoglund and late replacement Nicky Holzken to cruise through his side of the bracket to set up the championship.
I've been torn on this fight.
I've always rooted for George Groves through his various near-misses against Carl Froch and then Badou Jack and Callum Smith is very untested even considering his being in the finals, so it was pretty clear that I favored Groves to win.
Then came today's weigh-in and Smith made weight, but just looks physically huge!
Smith looks like he is a full division larger than Groves and that has me thinking that perhaps this is a much bigger (and happens to be younger) man that now I'm thinking about Smith.
It's a close call and should be a good one in Saudi Arabia.

Chris Eubank Jr returns on the undercard against journeyman JJ McDonagh.
Eubank was the on-call fighter in case of an issue with Groves or Smith and was matched lightly to be prepared in case of emergency.

ESPN Plus comes to you from Oakland Friday night with IBF super middleweight champ Jose Uzcategui in a non-title bout against Ezequiel Maderna at light heavyweight
Uzcategui was training for a title bout against mandatory contender Caleb Plant when Plant suffered an injury, so Uzcategui's team decided to take this bout to stay busy.
Jerwin Ancajas defends his IBF junior bantamweight title against Alejandro Santiago in the co-feature.

The final bout is on Saturday on Facebook as former two-division champions Jorge Linares returns to the ring for the first time since his loss to Vasyl Lomachenko in a move to 140 pounds against fringe contender (and cousin of Miguel) Abner Cotto.

In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica has been narrowing the gap, but I still hold a 144-123 lead.

WBA Super Middleweight Title/World Boxing Super Series Final 12 Rds
George Groves vs Callum Smith
R.L: Smith Unanimous Decision
TRS: Groves Unanimous Decision

Super Middleweights. 10 Rds
Chris Eubank Jr vs J.J. McDonagh
R.L: Eubank Unanimous Decisions
TRS: Eubank KO 8

Light Heavyweights. 10 Rds
Jose Uzcategui vs Ezequiel Maderna
R.L: Uzcategui KO 7
TRS: Uzcategui KO 9

IBF Junior Bantamweight Title. 12 Rds
Jerwin Ancajas vs Alejandro Santiago
R.L: Ancajas KO 6
TRS: Ancajas KO 8

Junior Welterweights. 12 Rds
Jorge Linares vs Abner Cotto
R.L: Linares Unanimous Decisions
TRS: Linares KO 6

Boxing Challenge:Groves exposes Eubank and Hamburglar Alert!

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The boxing challenge was similar to the last two weekends in boxing as there may have been a large number of bouts domestically, but once again it was the World Boxing Super Series without an American television home stealing the show from a live stream.

The WBSS moved to their first semi-final in the super middleweight division with a sizable amount of interest in an all-UK faceoff with both the WBA title and a berth in the finals on the line as George Groves earned the biggest victory of his career with a unanimous decision over Chris Eubank. Jr.

The choice in this bout was one of the hardest for me to make in quite a while as both fighters had reasons to pick them and pick against them and despite my rooting for Groves through the years, I had concerns about him winning on the big stage and hesitantly selected Eubank.
I was happy to be wrong in this case as Groves used his jab to control the fight's tempo and distance, befuddling Eubank and leaving him frustrated and settling for wild shots that found air more often than Groves.
Eubank did hurt Groves in the final round after Groves suffered a separated shoulder (more on that soon) and showed signs of the power that made him a betting favorite, but Groves hung on and took a clear decision (117-111 on my card) and a trip to the finals.
The shoulder injury to Groves does throw a wrinkle into the tournament plans for the finals as it is unlikely to see Groves be ready to make a return to the ring by June 2nd on the planned date for the finals against next week's winner of the Callum Smith-Jurgen Braehmer tilt.
As for Eubank, he showed the same lack of discipline that he did in his only previous loss to Billy Joe Saunders and looked to be a fighter looking for his identity in the ring.

We move back across the Atlantic for five challenge bouts on two networks from PBC and yet another mostly disappointing evening.
PBC started with a two-fight show that ran way long since a scheduled squash match for talented prospect Carlos Balderas surprisingly lasted the four round distance and the result of that decision saw the PBC running competition against itself for a while.

The main event wasn't as bad as it could have been considering that it matched the continuing comeback of Devon Alexander against the usually excuse-filled performances from Victor Ortiz.
It was not only scheduled for 12 rds instead of the standard 10, I was shocked to see the WBC sanctioned this as a title eliminator since Alexander had won just once in his comeback and Ortiz hasn't had a win over a contender in years.
It was better than expected, mainly because despite being decisively outboxed and having his eye puffed, Alexander wasn't a banger in his prime and the sometimes soft Ortiz hung in there likely because he wasn't getting seriously hurt.
As the Showtime card started and this fight moved on, it appeared that the only question for the judges was the margin for Alexander as watchers prepared to move to Showtime.
I didn't have many questions as I saw Alexander a huge 118-110 winner, but it was time to bring out the Hamburglar as the cards were stunning at 115-113 for ORTIZ!? with two more at 114-114 for a majority decision draw and the early favorite for the awful decision of the year.
I suppose it wouldn't be a Victor Ortiz fight without something odd happening and say what you will about Ortiz in the ring-the happenings are never dull when Ortiz is around.

The other fight was really bad as Caleb Plant handily (119-109 on my card) won an IBF title eliminator over trialhorse Porky Medina to near a shot against new IBF champion Caleb Truax and the world's first ever all-Caleb world championship fight.
The less said about this the better and Plant is deadly dull to watch.

The drawn-out card on Fox caused me to miss most of the curtain raiser on Showtime as Yordanis Ugas won yet another eliminator in the welterweight division (there were three on the day) this one of the IBF variety with a seventh-round knockout of Ray (missing any sugar) Robinson.
I saw the knockout but missed the first six rounds, so no scoring on the Ugas victory.

The second bout saw a rematch of a fun fight from last year as David Benavidez defended his WBC super middleweight belt for the first time against the man he defeated for the vacant title-Ronald Gavril.
Benavidez had won a narrow split decision in their first fight, had claimed he was ill for that fight and wanted an immediate rematch to remove all doubt.
The doubt was removed as Benavidez dominated on his way to a unanimous decision that saw Gavril win the final round on my scorecard to avoid being shutout (119-109).
The talented 21-year-old champion dominated Gavril with his jab and proved that there would be no need for a third encounter any time soon.
I have a feeling that this time next year that we might be discussing David Benavidez and Gilberto Ramirez in a title unification bout as the latest big fight that boxing fans will miss out on due to the issues with promoters and networks...

The main event was one that I wasn't really excited about as Danny Garcia returned to the ring for the first time in nearly a year against the shopworn Brandon Rios in yet another welterweight eliminator, the second of the evening for the WBC.
If they had half as many title defenses as eliminators, Keith Thurman's nickname wouldn't be used as a metaphor for how often he fights!
Rios, a former Zabbie winner, had been fed journeyman Aaron Herrera last June for his first win since 2015 to revive his name to be fed to someone in the future,
Garcia had a mixed bag for the evening- the good news is that he knocked Rios out with a strong right that saw Rios rise but had the fight ended by referee Kenny Bayliss in the ninth round.
I had Garcia ahead 79-73 (7-1 in rounds) entering round nine and despite the protest of Rios for the fight being stopped, Rios clearly dropped his left and invited the Garcia right that ended a long night from the PBC, so he can only blame himself for a loss that frankly should give him pause of getting out of the business.
Rios is dreadfully slow and having his best days at lightweight, Rios lacks any pop remotely resembling his power at lower divisions, the time may be right for him to consider walking away.

The bad news for Garcia?
Danny was hit far more than he should be by someone of Rios' speed and you cannot blame that all on rust.
Garcia, even in his wins, hasn't been the same fighter at 147 as he was at 140 and now he's beginning to get hit more often?
I thought Garcia won almost every round, but Rios scored enough to hold some interest and I wonder if Garcia has seen his best fights in the back window?

The evening wrapped with one of those pro wrestling style shouting matches that seem to follow the PBC almost every telecast and especially when you have any combination of Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, and Garcia around.
These three constantly challenge each other for future matches, street fights, hot dog eating contests and whatever else floats their boat on that evening.
It's getting to the point that it's simply silly that these things constantly happen between the three and nothing seems to ever come of it.
It's tired, old and much of it seems to be poorly acted.
Here was a tweet of mine from last night about this situation and for the record-Thurman and Garcia are the first two named with Porter being the third.

PBC 147 problem-Three guys all roughly the same level,two of them with an over inflated opinion of their value and skills that aren't really interested in top fights. The 3rd will fight almost anyone, but is a hair less talented- None of them want any part of @ErrolSpenceJr

— R.S (@ThoughtsofRS) February 18, 2018

In the boxing challenge, I outscored Ramon Malpica 6-4 on the night and moved my overall lead to  22-18.
I scored two points each on wins by David Benavidez and Caleb Plant with one point wins from Danny Garcia and Yordanis Ugas.
Ramon added two points for Benavidez with one each from Plant and Garcia.

Hoping to have an episode of Fightheads this week on the podcast to talk about these fights and next weekend's fight in the World Boxing Super Series and finally a good card coming from HBO!!

Boxing Challenge-PBC Junior Middleweight's and a Waste Of Time

Five title fights and an important minor title topped off the weekend in boxing and the gamut was covered from all ends with an explosive knockout, a knockout from a body blow, an exciting fight with give and take, a bloodbath, a squash match, and a predictable snoozer.

Let's start in Brooklyn, where Showtime and PBC had three of the four Junior Middleweight titles (Miguel Cotto holds the WBO title for now)
The star of the night was a fighter that I've often criticized in WBC champ Jermell Charlo (TRS #2), who destroyed Erickson Lubin (TRS #5) with one right hand in the first round.

AFP Photo/AL BELLO

Time will tell whether Lubin was overhyped or not, but regardless of that future evaluation- Jermell Charlo took on a top contender in what was thought to be a pick'em fight (I picked Lubin to win) and blew through him in one round.
Full credit to Charlo and I'm looking forward to seeing him progress against better competition (and Lubin was a step up from his past opponents).
I may not care for his (and his brother's ) post-fight behavior (I've never seen guys so angry after fights they have just won), but you cannot deny results and both Charlo's are learning how to make more fun to watch fights after some early career snoozers.

Charlo was calling out IBF champ Jarrett Hurd (TRS #4) for a unification fight after his knockout and Hurd retained his title in the Showtime opener in a good fight against former champion Austin Trout.
Trout built an early lead on the cards, but Hurd was the harder puncher and wobbled Trout in the middle rounds.
Trout battled back and cut Hurd in the seventh, but Hurd had pulled even on my card after the eighth and seemed to have Trout finished with an almost shut right eye in a tenth round that ended with Trout out of his feet.
The Trout corner showed concern for their fighter by ending the fight thereafter by not allowing Trout out of his corner for the eleventh round.
I had Hurd ahead 96-94 after ten rounds and it looked to me like Hurd would have likely stopped Trout in the eleventh.
The fight was terrific and Hurd becomes the first fighter to stop Trout something that three top fighters that defeated Trout could not do (Canelo Alvarez, Erislandy Lara, and Jermall Charlo) and Trout is a bigger name than anyone on either Charlo's record.
Charlo vs Hurd would be a very strong fight and should happen next, if not for the PBC's normal inclination (more later on this) to put together one of those "wonderful" prep fight cards (usually squash matches, again more later) so we will see when and if this will happen.

In the main event that saw the crowd leaving the arena like water swirling around a drain, WBA champ Erislandy Lara (TRS #1) win every round over former Olympian Terrell Gausha in a fight that was the typical boring, yet dominant win for the Cuban.
Lara did drop Gausha in the fourth but was more interested in flexing for the crowd than finishing Gausha, so the rest of the fight continued on its general dull path.
Lara said after the fight that he was willing to fight Charlo, but there is plenty of doubt to me that fight will ever take place as the two train together in Houston, share the same trainer in Ronnie Shields and have shown little inclination to fight each other in the past.

And then, we move to just what you would expect from PBC with a national television audience on Fox available was wasted when instead of putting Leo Santa Cruz and Abner Mares against each other with possible decent audiences to view, their answer was to put together a waste of time of tremendous proportions.

Leo Santa Cruz (TRS #1) defended his WBA featherweight title with a seven round stoppage over overmatched Chris Avalos in a squash match that should define main event squash matches.
Santa Cruz won every round and generally swatted the tough Avalos around the ring as a cat would bat an almost dead mouse around a floor.
This bout proved nothing other than perhaps chip a little rust off Santa Cruz and other than that minor note was a waste of time.

Abner Mares (TRS #5), who should have been fighting Santa Cruz, wasted his time against another durable but outgunned opponent in Andres Gutierrez with a unanimous technical decision after ten rounds when the fight was stopped after Gutierrez couldn't continue with a bad cut from a headbutt.
I had Mares ahead 99-91 and was never seriously threatened in yet another fight that was unneeded for any reason other than to knock the rust off Mares-rust that wouldn't be there, to begin with, if  PBC was more active for their fighters.
Sigh.

In the World Boxing Super Series in the Super Middleweight bracket, George Groves (TRS #4) stopped Jamie Cox in the fourth round to retain his WBA title with a vicious body shot in London.
Groves, who was seeded first in the tournament, received a better than expected fight from Cox, who came forward and threw plenty of punches before the sudden ending.
The victory for Groves moved him to the semi-finals against fellow Briton Chris Eubank Jr in what will be a huge fight in Great Britain.
I like Groves and I've never been completely sold on Eubank, but something tells me that Groves might be made for Chris Eubank..

In the boxing challenge, I earned nine points to Ramon Malpica's seven to boost my lead to 146-133.

I earned two points to Ramon's one for the Leo Santa Cruz win and two to his one for George Groves victory as well.
We both earned two points for the victories by Mares and Lara.
We both added one point for the win by Jarrett Hurd and neither scored in the Charlo-Rubin fight as we both selected Lubin to win.

The Spence Era Begins-Boxing Challenge

The Boxing Challenge returned with a bout that boxing junkies had hungered for a long time and were rewarded with a back and forth thriller that ended with Errol Spence taking the IBF welterweight belt away from Kell Brook with an eleventh round stoppage.
The bout featured plenty of action with both fighters having more than a few moments, but Spence knocked Brook down in the tenth and Brook dropped to a knee in the eleventh surrendering honorably.
Spence also broke the eye socket of Brook in the middle rounds as he re-injured the socket that Gennady Golovkin broke in Brook's last bout, along with badly puffing the left eye of Brook up with swelling.
I had Spence leading at the time of the stoppage 96-93 (6-4 with an extra point deducted from Brook for the tenth round knockdown).
It was just the type of fight that fans hoped for and with the Spence victory, Premiere Boxing Champions may have found the star that they have lacked since opening their promotion.
PBC has hyped several fighters and hoped those fighters (Keith Thurman, Adrien Broner, etc) would develop into the flagbearer for their company, but for various reasons fell short.
Errol Spence has the type of skills and personality to be such a star-let's hope that PBC can avoid the inactivity pitfalls and allow fans to see him active to build his fanbase, which will allow him to develop into a star.
As for Kell Brook, it appears that he has developed a chronic problem with his facial bones and is going to have problems in tough fights as his face is going to bust up.
Issues like that don't get better over time and Brook is going to have to deal with these problems for the rest of his career.
Ramon Malpica earned two points in the boxing challenge for the Spence knockout, while I picked up one for the Spence victory.

I got that point back when George Groves won the vacant WBA super-middleweight title with a sixth-round stoppage over Fedor Chudinov in another great fight loaded with action.
I had Groves slightly ahead after five rounds (3-2) but wobbled Chudinov badly in the sixth before the referee stopped the bout.
Groves could have two big-money unification bouts that would draw huge crowds (and dollars) in the U.K. with IBF champ James DeGale (Groves handed him his only loss) and if Callum Smith could defeat Andre Dirrell for the vacant WBC title, either could be in Groves' future.
I picked Groves for one point with Ramon picking Chudinov.

As of now, I don't have a result for the final bout for this week from Panama with Anselmo Moreno against Julio Ceja.
I'll add that to this post when I have the result.
Editor's Note Ceja stopped Moreno in three rounds, giving Ramon two points and my zero.
I lead the challenge as of now 70-66

Boxing Challenge-Thurman rallies past Porter,Joshua stops Breazeale

The boxing challenge saw R.L. Malpica and I each score three points over the weekend and make the total for the year 76-63.

The PBC made its debut on CBS and I thought it was a pretty strong one as Keith Thurman rallied late in the fight to earn a unanimous decision over Shawn Porter to retain his WBA welterweight title.

All three judges scored Thurman a 115-113 winner, which was identical to my score, in which Thurman won the final three rounds to earn the win on the TRS card.
Porter cut Thurman above the eye and then slowed in his attack and allowed Thurman to get back into the fight.
The bout was pretty action-friendly and I wouldn't be against an eventual rematch, but I'd like to see each man take another fight or two before a rematch.
I'd love to see Thurman unify vs WBC champ Danny Garcia (Both being with PBC, this should be easy enough to make) and Porter could have a mandated rematch if he could beat David Avenasayan and that to me looks like an excellent network-level card.
Thurman's win was less than popular with the live crowd and I have a theory on that.
Keith Thurman gives a lot of answers that appear programmed and some fans have a negative opinion of Thurman because of that.
He comes across as a bit plastic and when he wins a close fight, there is some blowback-Just a theory.

I was very impressed with junior middleweight Jarrett Hurd, who stopped Oscar Molina in the tenth to open the CBS card.
Hurd lost only one round on my card and set the tone in the first as he dropped Molina with an uppercut.
The stoppage seemed a bit premature for my taste, but Molina wasn't winning this bout anyway, so I wouldn't feel too bad about the end of the bout.
Hurd looks to be a promising prospect and I'm looking forward to seeing more of him.

On Showtime-Anthony Joshua defended his IBF heavyweight title for the first time with a seventh-round knockout of a gutsy Dominic Breazeale.
Joshua hurt Breazeale in the second, but couldn't finish him off until the seventh, when he dropped the American twice before the end of the bout.
Breazeale was more competitive than I thought. but I had Joshua winning every round.
Joshua has the talented Joseph Parker of New Zealand as a mandatory contender, but it's unknown if Joshua will have an optional defense before a Parker bout.

The co-feature was not televised in the US, but was on the boxing challenge as George Groves defeated Martin Murray by unanimous decision to win the Yaqui Lopez award for most title shots without a win (just kidding), but more importantly, earn another title shot against one of the WBA champs at 168 as the WBA still is trying to clean their mess of multiple champions in each division up.
Reports were that it was a fun fight to watch, but I was unable to watch as of this writing...