Maidana will be getting $20 million paydays if he beats Mayweather, says Robert Garcia

08/02/201404/07/2014 Rob Smith

Robert Garcia, the trainer for WBA welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (35-3, 31 KO’s), believes Maidana’s going to be soon getting the big $20 million paydays for each fight once he beats Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) in their mega fight next month on May 3rd in Las Vegas, Nevada. Garcia sees a win for Maidana not only bringing him to the $20 million stage of his career, but also making him a bigger star than Manny Pacquiao.

“If he [Maidana] beats Mayweather, he’ll be huge, bigger than Manny Pacquiao. That’s where the $20 million paydays for Chino [Maidana] come,” Garcia said to esnewsreporting.

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Pacquiao-Bradley undercard takes a hit, Roman Martinez drops out

04/07/201404/06/2014 Rob Smith

Former two-time WBO super featherweight champion Roman “Rocky” Martinez has dropped out of his co-feature bout against lightweight contender Raymundo Beltran for this Saturday’s HBO pay-per-view card headlined by Manny Pacquiao vs. Tim Bradley 2 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Martinez is ill, and there’s no way he can take the fight under those conditions.

So instead of Martinez fighting Beltran, another super featherweight, Arash Usmanee (20-1-1, 10 KO’s), has been substituted in Martinez’s place for the co-feature. It’s unclear why Top Rank is matching Beltran against super featherweights instead of fighters from the lightweight division, but I guess the boxing fans paying to see the card on PPV won’t know and won’t care. Roman Martinez is a super featherweight as well, and he was coming off of a knockout loss to Mikey Garcia.

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Cunningham decisions Mansour; Stevens stops Johnson

04/05/201404/05/2014 Rob Smith

Photo: Rich Graessle/Main Events — The more experienced Steve Cunningham (27-6, 12 KO’s) survived two fifth round knockdowns to go on and beat USBA heavyweight champion Amir Mansour (20-1, 15 KO’s) by a 10 round unanimous decision tonight to win by the scores 97-90, 95-92, 95-92 at the Liacouras Center, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

Cunningham put Mansour down on the canvas in the 10th and final round with a right hand after getting him off balance from a series of rights to the head. Mansour’s left eye was almost closed at the time from the heavy shots he’d absorbed from Cunningham.

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Broner will have a lot of eyes on him for Molina fight, says Bernstein

08/02/201404/03/2014 Rob Smith

Boxing analyst Al Bernstein thinks Adrien Broner (27-1, 22 KO’s) will be under the microscope in his next fight against Carlos Molina (17-1-1, 7 KO’s) on May 3rd on the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Marcos Maidana next month. Bernstein feels that it doesn’t matter that Broner is facing a less than dangerous opponent in Carlos Molina, fans will still be watching Broner closely to see if he can rebound mentally from his devastating beat down he suffered last December at the hands of Maidana. Fans and the boxing media will want to see if Broner is the same fighter he was before the loss.

“How he comes back from the Maidana fight can define him more as a fighter than anything leading up to and including the Maidana fight, because everyone will be looking to see how mentally tough Broner is,” Bernstein said to the Boxing Channel.

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Bradley thinks he can get a decision against Pacquiao

08/01/201403/31/2014 Rob Smith

WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (31-0, 12 KO’s) thinks he can get a decision against Manny Pacquiao (55-5-2, 38 KO’s) when they meet up next month on April 12th. The conventional wisdom is that Bradley will need to score a KO over Pacquiao to get a decision this time, due to the controversy that surrounds their previous bout in 2012. Fans think that there’s no way that the judges will want to give Bradley a second decision and have to face the heat from the boxing community.

Bradley feels that he’ll be able to do better in the rematch against Pacquiao because he’ll have two healthy feet for the bout, and this will enable him to move quickly to get out of the way of Pacquiao’s swinging shots.

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Kovalev vs. Agnew tonight on HBO

03/30/201403/28/2014 Rob Smith

(Photo Credit: Rich Graessle/Main Events) For fans wanting to see tonight’s light heavyweight clash on HBO between WBO 175lb champion Sergey Kovalev (23-0-1, 20 KO’s) and challenger Cedric Agnew (26-0, 13 KO’s), I would suggest that they not walk away from their television sets during the fight for a refreshment break, because this one has quick knockout written all over it. Agnew is going to be on the canvas in this fight for the 10 count, and there’s probably nothing he can do to prevent this from taking place.

I’m not going to say that Agnew has no chance to win the fight, because every fighter has a chance. But Agnew’s chances of winning this fight are so incredibly small that it’s not even worth mentioning. Agnew doesn’t have the speed, power, skills or experience for him to last more than a couple of rounds at best.

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Arum sees Bradley as risky fight for Pacquiao

03/27/2014 Rob Smith

Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has some concerns about whether his aging money fighter 35-year-old Manny Pacquiao (55-5-2, 38 KO’s) can get by his next opponent WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (31-0, 12 KO’s) on April 12th next month. Pacquiao didn’t look so great the last time he fought Bradley two years ago, and there’s no way of knowing if Pacquiao will be any better in the remain.

A loss for Pacquiao would likely be a huge blow for Arum, because it could become much more difficult to sell Pacquiao’s fights on pay-per-view. Pacquiao’s last fight against Brandon Rios drew only 475,000 last November, and you’ve got to figure that a defeat at the hands of Bradley won’t help matters for the Filipino star. That would be his third defeat in his last four fights.

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Roach: Pacquiao should be able to stop Bradley by the mid-rounds of the fight

03/26/2014 Rob Smith

Trainer Freddie Roach is playing Nostradamus once again in predicting one of Manny Pacquiao’s knockout wins. In this case, Roach sees Pacquiao scoring a knockout over WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (31-0, 12 KO’s) by the 6th round on April 12th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

What’s different from this time compared to the last time Pacquiao fought Bradley? Well, Roach says that Pacquiao will be fighting for the full 3 minutes of every round and that he’s going to keep the pressure on the 5’6” Bradley the whole time without giving him any space whatsoever. In other words, he’s going to stay on top of the 30-year-old Bradley the entire time without giving him rest breaks like he did in their fight in 2012.

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Mayweather spent a lot of time deciding on his next opponent, says Showtime’s Espiniza

03/27/201403/26/2014 Rob Smith

Stephen Espinoza, the vice president in charge of sport for Showtime, says that Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) had a hard time trying to decide on who he should fight next for his May 3rd fight card. He was stuck between Marcos Maidana and Amir Khan for his next fight, and he finally decided to go with the smart pick in selecting the more accomplished Maidana instead of the struggling Khan.

Mayweather made the only choice he could make in selecting Maidana, because to select Khan would be a case of Mayweather selecting a guy who Golden Boy Promotions had to put the training wheels back on him after his back to back losses to Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia.

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Khan: I’m going to own the welterweight division

03/27/201403/26/2014 Rob Smith

Amir Khan (28-3, 19 KO’s) hasn’t even fought at welterweight yet, and he’s already seeing himself ruling the division with an iron fist. Khan, 27, is moving up to the 147lb division to face the Golden Boy promoted fighter Luis Collazo (35-5, 18 KO’s) on May 3rd on Showtime pay-per-view on the Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight card.

The fight is supposed to be a competitive one, but Khan is still considered the favorite to win it. It’s not a situation where you can truly say it’s a 50-50 fight.

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