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The relentlessness Pryor displayed against Arguello created the ultimate modern boxing near-miss. Despite Pryor coming up while Leonard, Duran, and Hearns fought at welterweight, the tenacious junior welterweight did not score a fight with any of them as a pro. While prior Leonard-Pryor negotiations broke down over low offers to the less famous fighter, the two reached an agreement to vie for Leonard s welterweight belt in 1982. Leonard soon suffering a detached retina in a tune-up fight threw off those plans. Hawk moved on to Arguello later that year, but Leonard s first retirement took a fight with boxing s star of the moment off the table, altering Pryor s career.
Andrew Maynard was a baby when it came to boxing experience but he won gold at the 1988 Olympics nonetheless. Today, in conversation with Thomas Gerbasi, he explains why he regrets having Sugar Ray Leonard as his mentor during an eventful but difficult professional career
MINUTES before the biggest fight of his young life, 24-year-old Andrew Maynard warmed up in Jamsil Students’ Gymnasium in Seoul, South Korea and waited for his name to be called to fight the Soviet Union’s Nurmagomed Shanavazov in the light-heavyweight division’s gold medal bout of the 1988 Olympics.
As the time slowly ticked by, the Maryland native wondered what was going on in the ring as his Olympic roommate, Roy Jones Jnr, faced South Korea’s Park Si-hun in the light middleweight gold medal bout. There was no television monitor in the locker room, only the sounds from outside the door.
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Real or Not: Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua in consecutive fights? A trilogy for Juan Francisco Estrada and a tough test for Vergil Ortiz
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Kellerman: Why Fury vs. Joshua is the biggest fight that can be made in boxing (1:11)
Max Kellerman reacts to the news that heavyweights Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua are expected to fight in May or June. Watch Max on Boxing at 4:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2. (1:11)
After a few eventful days in the boxing world, attention has turned back toward Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua with the announcement that the two heavyweight world titlists have signed a two-fight deal.
Saturday is an anniversary. The calendar repeats itself. Maybe, history will too.
Roman Gonzalez and Juan Francisco Estrada meet in a fight featuring two of the best from boxing’s lightest divisions exactly 28 years since Michael Carbajal and Humberto Gonzalez fought for the first time.
Carbajal and Gonzalez were junior flyweights on March 13, 1993. So-called little guys, 108 pounds each. Combine the two and you’d barely have one heavyweight in today’s sumo-sized weight class.
But the
little
was gone nearly three decades ago, knocked out by Carbajal and Gonzalez after a bout long-remembered for its big-boy impact. Carbajal got up twice, first in the second and again in the fifth. Gonzalez went down once and stayed down, beaten in the seventh at the Las Vegas Hilton.
By Norm Frauenheim–
Oscar Valdez was motivated by a chance to shut mouths. He did that, including this one. But his compelling stoppage of Miguel Berchelt was – make that is – more than immediate satisfaction gained from silencing the doubters.
It is validation, enduring proof, of who he is. It was there in a victory loaded with lessons for a cynical business short on patience and poise. Quaint notions, both, but Valdez practices them with faith impossible to break. Fracture his jaw, but not his ethics.
They are why he won, leaving the feared Berchelt face- down on the canvas last Saturday. That patience and poise, instead of purses and pound-for-pound claims, are why we’re still talking about a fight that happened nearly a week ago, almost an era today in the social-media’s accelerated time zone. A good guy won in a timeless way.