If it wasn’t already crystal clear that former pound for pound boxing great Roy Jones Jr.’s near twenty-five year career had gone on for far too long, Thursday it was announced that he will fight Kevin ‘Kimbo Slice’ Ferguson in Jamaica in December. This fight that no one asked for and that no self-respecting athletic commission would sanction is apparently being made possible by something called Giomax Entertainment Company and Stewart’s Auto Sales.
Yup.
Jones went the first fourteen years or so of his professional boxing career without a real loss (He was disqualified for hitting Montell Griffin while he was down in 1997 and promptly KO’d him when they re-matched five months later) and dominated multiple weight classes on his way to being considered, at times, the world’s best boxer, pound for pound. But since 2004 Jones has gone 7-7, with four of those losses being ugly knockouts or TKO’s.
If it wasn’t already crystal clear that former pound for pound boxing great Roy Jones Jr.’s near twenty-five year career had gone on for far too long, Thursday it was announced that he will fight Kevin ‘Kimbo Slice’ Ferguson in Jamaica in December. This fight that no one asked for and that no self-respecting athletic commission would sanction is apparently being made possible by something called Giomax Entertainment Company and Stewart’s Auto Sales.
Yup.
Jones went the first fourteen years or so of his professional boxing career without a real loss (He was disqualified for hitting Montell Griffin while he was down in 1997 and promptly KO’d him when they re-matched five months later) and dominated multiple weight classes on his way to being considered, at times, the world’s best boxer, pound for pound. But since 2004 Jones has gone 7-7, with four of those losses being ugly knockouts or TKO’s.
And so, it has come to this for Jones Jr. Fighting Slice, who is best known for fighting boxing schlubs in South Florida and having those sloppy competitions posted on YouTube, will be a career-low for Jones.
Sure, Kimbo moved past dock boxing to, first, getting propped (EliteXC) and then easily over matched (UFC) up in MMA, and since moving to professional boxing recently he’s built a 5-0 record. We can’t begrudge Slice his financial success and for taking his fame and running with it but Jones has over sixty professional boxing matches, before that was an Olympian (Do yourself a favor and see him dominate the ’88 Olympics and then get screwed out of the gold medal, if you haven’t already).
Jones Jr. vs. Kimbo is a textbook example of the worst part of the fight world – businessmen trying to make a quick buck with sad and silly match ups that exploit fighters and put them at risk. We really have no interest in promoting this bout anymore than we just have so if you want details of when this piece of garbage is supposed to happen, and where, check out the doting article written by The Jamaican Observer.
In less than 20 years, the UFC has grown to the point that it’s now officially standing side-by-side with boxing, just like the little brother who grows to the height of his older sibling, and in the next five years, it looks like little brother …
In less than 20 years, the UFC has grown to the point that it’s now officially standing side-by-side with boxing, just like the little brother who grows to the height of his older sibling, and in the next five years, it looks like little brother will be taller and bigger. How did this come to […]
Pound for pound boxing champ Manny Pacquiao‘s next fight has been scheduled for December 8th, the same night as the UFC’s next Fox network show. In the recent past when the UFC has had big shows scheduled the same night as major boxing events they’ve has hoped that earlier telecasts on would catch many viewers who were planning on watching boxing later in the evening.
Things may not have worked out that way for the UFC and this development of Pacquiao fighting on a date that the UFC had already set as a Fox event might end up taking away viewers from the MMA programming. Last May, the UFC on Fox 3 featured an exciting card headlined by a spectacular title contender’s fight between lightweights Nate Diaz and Jim Miller. The free to watch event was also followed, on pay per view, by Floyd Mayweather Jr. fighting Miguel Cotto.
The UFC’s numbers ended up going down from their prior two Fox shows, while Mayweather’s win had an excellent buy-rate on pay per view. The UFC’s “come pre-game with us before boxing,” strategy might be more successful this time around if Fox promotes the heck out of the event during football telecasts as it did last year for the Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos heavyweight title telecast.
Otherwise, the UFC had better hope that Fox is taking a qualitative and long-view of things because dropping ratings on network television are never good.
Pound for pound boxing champ Manny Pacquiao‘s next fight has been scheduled for December 8th, the same night as the UFC’s next Fox network show. In the recent past when the UFC has had big shows scheduled the same night as major boxing events they’ve has hoped that earlier telecasts on would catch many viewers who were planning on watching boxing later in the evening.
Things may not have worked out that way for the UFC and this development of Pacquiao fighting on a date that the UFC had already set as a Fox event might end up taking away viewers from the MMA programming. Last May, the UFC on Fox 3 featured an exciting card headlined by a spectacular title contender’s fight between lightweights Nate Diaz and Jim Miller. The free to watch event was also followed, on pay per view, by Floyd Mayweather Jr. fighting Miguel Cotto.
The UFC’s numbers ended up going down from their prior two Fox shows, while Mayweather’s win had an excellent buy-rate on pay per view. The UFC’s “come pre-game with us before boxing,” strategy might be more successful this time around if Fox promotes the heck out of the event during football telecasts as it did last year for the Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos heavyweight title telecast.
Otherwise, the UFC had better hope that Fox is taking a qualitative and long-view of things because dropping ratings on network television are never good. The UFC on Fox events have been going up against some stiff competition, however.
This next one will go against Manny Pacquiao, the third went against Floyd Mayweather and Miguel Cotto, and their last one, the superb fourth edition, went up against the highest rated summer Olympic games in history.
Either Fox is grateful to have original programming that draws away some of those blockbusters’ audiences, or they are impatient instant gratification types. Time will tell.
The UFC on Fox 5 will feature a lightweight title fight between champion Benson Henderson and challenger Nate Diaz. Pacqiuao will likely fight either Juan Manuel Marquez for a fourth time or Timothy Bradley for a second.
Marquez is a Mexican star who has fought Pac-Man more closely and competitively than anyone in the last eight years and is also perennially among the top 3-5 pound for pound boxers in the world. Bradley is a champion and warrior who went up in weight to fight Pacquiao and got thoroughly out-classed and beaten before getting a controversial gift decision from the judges.
One of these fights would be infinitely more compelling to watch than the other. Which one do you think the UFC would rather go up against, nation?
Back in early 2001, there were many big names in the world of professional boxing—Oscar de la Hoya, the up-and-coming Floyd Mayweather Jr., Lennox Lewis, Roy Jones Jr. and others—but one name kept on coming up, time and again, as the best n…
Back in early 2001, there were many big names in the world of professional boxing—Oscar de la Hoya, the up-and-coming Floyd Mayweather Jr., Lennox Lewis, Roy Jones Jr. and others—but one name kept on coming up, time and again, as the best new boxer out there: Zab Judah.
With incredible hand speed, great reflexes, brutal knockout power and underrated defense, Judah was ripping through the competition. He was exciting as hell to watch, and he honestly looked unstoppable.
Then, a heaping helping of hubris and the hard right hand of Kostya Tszyu changed all of that, forever.
All the talent he had couldn’t save him from himself. He had the fight with Tszyu in the bag; it was his for the taking. He was hitting Tszyu nearly at will and having a ball making “The Thunder from Down Under” look like a rank amateur.
But he failed to adhere to the age old admonition of the fight game: “Protect yourself at all times.” In the case of Judah, he needed protection from himself more than anyone.
Now, with a career notched with defeats suffered at the hands of boxers who were never really blessed with as many gifts as he has squandered, Judah is somewhat of a cautionary tale in the boxing world: “Don’t let this happen to you.”
I can only hope Melvin Guillard doesn’t suffer the same fate as Zab Judah, because in many ways, his career as a professional fighter seems to be heading in the same direction.
This is not to say that Guillard hasn’t made improvements in his game, because he has. He continues to grow, and he’s still got the time to turn things around.
But something needs to change. Every time Guillard starts to build up some steam and looks to be cracking the top 10, heading for a title shot, he gets derailed—usually in ways he should have seen coming.
Guillard has many of the same gifts that Judah had: brutal KO power, terribly fast strikes, god-given athleticism and a love for fighting. These are attributes you can develop to a degree through hard training, but they’re better employed when they come naturally, and in Guillard, they flow out like a river.
But he always seems to falter when he’s on the cusp of what could be a shot a true greatness.
Of his 18 fights in the UFC, he’s suffered seven defeats, six of those coming via submission. For a fighter with so much going for him, he clearly isn’t putting in enough time on the mat against the kind of submission experts that will teach him the error of his ways.
At a time when training in large fight clubs with many big-name fighters is thought to be the best way to become great, it seems Guillard may reap more rewards by taking a drastically different approach and deciding to go with a smaller group of trainers who are able to give him the time and focused attention he needs in order to take the next step.
Guillard has all of the physical advantages a fighter could ever want. If champions were decided based upon talent alone, Guillard would be the champion—not Benson Henderson—but that’s not the case.
I have often wondered how Guillard would look if he took a year (or at least six months) off from fighting to train hardcore in nothing but jiu-jitsu and boxing. Time spent as an honest student of both games would demand he develop the necessary skills and motivation needed just to keep up—and those are the exact things he seems to be missing.
It’s hard to imagine Guillard enjoying any time in a gym like the one owned by Freddie Roach unless he was about the business of paying attention and getting better; he’d be too busy climbing up off the floor if he didn’t—and those are the exact things he seems to be missing.
Whatever he decides, the time of Melvin Guillard is now, not tomorrow. He needs to do something different, or else he could wind up as MMA’s equivalent to Zab Judah—and that is a story with a very sad ending indeed.
Saturday night I had the pleasure of attending the UFC on FOX 4 fight card at Staples Center in Los Angeles.As a big fight fan, and a person who has trained in both the sport of boxing and in MMA, I am one of those rare, all around fight fans, that has…
Saturday night I had the pleasure of attending the UFC on FOX 4 fight card at Staples Center in Los Angeles.
As a big fight fan, and a person who has trained in both the sport of boxing and in MMA, I am one of those rare, all around fight fans, that has love for both the sport of boxing and MMA, in a world where it seems you have to only love one or the other.
The main reason why I had an interest in attending the UFC on FOX 4 fight card was because I was a big fan of both the main event and co-main event fighters, Shogun and Machida.
From the pre-fight promotions, to the actual fight atmosphere, and post fight activities, I took notice to the reasons why the UFC is so successful and growing stronger to the mainstream as opposed to my personal favorite sport, boxing.
For those of you who have never been to a UFC fight, it is a bit of everything from a fight, to a rock concert, to even a DJ club party.
There is constant entertainment from the laser light shows, to the DJ constantly spinning good mash ups of rock and rap songs together between fights and down time, the UFC understands that they must keep the audience entertained at all times.
Many boxing fans may be also haters of the UFC, but there are definitely many things that boxing can and should learn from the UFC in order to win over new fans to their sport.
Here is a list of five things that boxing must learn from UFC on FOX 4.
Famed boxing trainer Freddie Roach recently appeared on MMAJunkie.com Radio, and he delivered the goods. Sure, he touched on Amir Kahn’s upcoming fight, Pacquiao, and certain MMA fighters, but none of that matters. Freddie Roach almost ate a man’s eye in a street fight. Not only did he do this, but he talks about it with the gleeful amusement more befitting a child recalling his favorite prank than a grown man describing how he used his teeth to transform another human being into an unwilling cyclops.
The conversation begins with Roach discussing Amir Khan’s fight against Danny Garcia, but quickly veers into MMA. At one point, Roach claims that one of the reasons that boxing has fallen behind MMA in terms of pay-per-view numbers is that “[boxing has] promoters that don’t like each other, and they bring their personal life into boxing.” Fortunately, MMA hasn’t had to suffer overly emotionalpromoterswho hold grudges, so it’s still in good shape. Then Roach hits on a number of topics, including…
Famed boxing trainer Freddie Roach recently appeared on MMAJunkie.com Radio, and he delivered the goods. Sure, he touched on Amir Kahn’s upcoming fight, Pacquiao, and certain MMA fighters, but none of that matters. Freddie Roach almost ate a man’s eye in a street fight. Not only did he do this, but he talks about it with the gleeful amusement more befitting a child recalling his favorite prank than a grown man describing how he used his teeth to transform another human being into an unwilling cyclops.
The conversation begins with Roach discussing Amir Khan’s fight against Danny Garcia, but quickly veers into MMA. At one point, Roach claims that one of the reasons that boxing has fallen behind MMA in terms of pay-per-view numbers is that “[boxing has] promoters that don’t like each other, and they bring their personal life into boxing.” Fortunately, MMA hasn’t had to suffer overly emotionalpromoterswho hold grudges, so it’s still in good shape. Then Roach hits on a number of topics, including…
Lingering MMA-Boxing enmity:“I have boxing people that don’t like that I like MMA. And it’s like ‘they’re against us.’ And I said there’s room for everybody. A good fight’s a good fight. I don’t care what you call it. You know, I like good fights.”
Anderson Silva:“My good friend Anderson Silva, of course, he had a great fight the other night. They’re saying there’s a little controversy about the knee, that it was a little bit high and went to the chin… I talked to the commissioner Keith Kizer about it, he says ‘we have tape, it’s clean and they’ll be no change in the outcome.’ And Anderson’s one of the best guys I’ve trained, just as far as knowing timing and distance, he’s really, really good.”
GSP:“Right now, I’ve been working with GSP quite a bit. And he’s just like, he’s a great guy and he wants to learn. He’s the type of guy, you show him a move and the next day he comes back and he’s got it down pretty good. And I asked him ‘how long did you spend in the mirror practicing that?’ And he’s that type of guy, he goes back to his hotel room, in front of that mirror working on it. He’s just a great guy to work with.”
BJ Penn:“Penn was one of the best strikers I’ve ever trained. I think at that time he was maybe the best striker. He could really punch. I really liked working with him, and one thing about working with the UFC fighters or the MMA fighters is they have a lot of respect. They come to my gym and they bow and they’re very respectful.”
Tito Ortiz:“I trained Tito for a while also. But the thing about training Tito, though, is that he wanted to go to the ground right away. ‘Cause that was his thing. He didn’t like the standup as much as the other guys I had trained. He wanted to get me on the floor as soon as possible… Even on the mitts, he’d throw a combination and shoot for the takedown.”
Finally, Roach mentioned a street fight in passing. Curious, host George Garcia pressed him for more details. Roach then proceeded to explain how he ended up biting a dude’s eyeball out of its socket.
“I was leaving a club, and I was going out with this girl. She was a Penthouse Playmate and she was real pretty. She was a pretty girl, but she had a drug problem and so forth. So I really don’t know why this fight happened, but two cars, one cuts in front of me, one gets behind me, three guys jump out. I should have probably stayed in the car, but it’s not like me to stay in the car. I get out, the guy’s yelling at me in a foreign language, getting really aggressive, so I dropped him, and then I jumped on him, and then the other two guys thought I was a football and they kicked the shit out of me with their boots on. So then, I gotta do something drastic here, so then I took the guy and I bit his eyeball out. I had eyelashes in between my teeth. It worked though, ‘cause they swung a knife at my back and cut my shirt right in half but didn’t scratch me. And then they went to hit me again with it, and Mike Andolini [approximate guess of this dude’s name] I was giving a ride home that night, he grabs the knife, twists it out of the guy’s hand and threw it in someone’s yard. I had to take him to the hospital to get stitched up. I had 25 major contusions on my head, broken head, broken shoulder, they messed me up pretty good.”
Just, wow. I mean, Freddie and I must have a different concept of efficacy – I’m not entirely sure having someone swing a knife at you is proof that biting a man’s eye out “worked,” but to each his own. At any rate, this has to rank in the top five street fight stories in MMA lore, alongside Bas Rutten fending off Swedish bouncers and Lee Murray landing a Tekken combo and then curb-stomping Tito’s cranium. Even if, you know, this one doesn’t concern an MMA fighter. Whatever, no one’s a fan of technicalities. And as for the question everyone is asking; did he spit the eyeball out? “Oh yeah, blood was gushing. It was great.”
Back in early 2001, there were many big names in the world of professional boxing—Oscar de la Hoya, the up-and-coming Floyd Mayweather Jr., Lennox Lewis, Roy Jones Jr. and others—but one name kept on coming up, time and again, as the best new boxer out there: 