Canelo Alvarez – The Mexican Masterchef
In all my years watching boxing, it’s rare that I’ve seen a fighter as awe-inspiring as Canelo Alvarez, writes Ian Probert
ALTHOUGH I’ve written a fair amount about boxing over the years I consider my ongoing fascination with this addictive business to be little more than a dilettante guilty pleasure. Even at the height of my professional involvement during the 1990s I was never one of those people who knew the name of every six-round fighter in the country. When access to that level of detail was required there was always someone out there willing to fill in the blanks. But even though the sport’s appetisers would rarely fail to serve up a tasty treat or two it was always the main course that unashamedly held my interest. So it remains to this day.
Bantamweight legend Panama Al Brown
Miles Templeton recalls the times when Panama Al Brown toured the UK
ONE of the all-time greats of the bantamweight division is Panama Al Brown, active between 1922 and 1942 and the winner of 129 of his 160 contests. He is consistently ranked by experts and historians in the all-time bantamweight top 10, and in a 2016 article on the Boxing News website, Mike Lockley placed him at number four.
He was a complex character out of the ring, and he led a colourful and interesting life before tragically dying in 1951 at the early age of 48. He was a gay black man and so he had to contend with a lot of prejudice, and I suspect that this might account for his choosing to spend a large part of his life in Paris, a city notable then, as it still is today, for its tolerance. Brown fitted easily into French society where, as well as being an extremely well-known boxer, he was also an accomplished tap-dancer, part-time actor and flamboyant socialite.
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What a waste of time for Filip Hrgovic. You know the guys accept the position, we negotiate the fight, we got to purse bid, I win the purse bid; it’s a good purse bid, it’s solid money, and then he [Hunter] says, ‘Yeah, the Bounty Hunter is coming.
“Hrgovic, you’re going to get it, blah, blah, blah.’ And then I send the contracts, and then they just write, ‘We’re not taking the fight.’
“What is he [Michael Hunter] doing? He hasn’t got any offers coming in. If he’d won that fight, he’s [IBF] mandatory for the world title.
Hygiene-obsessed Joe Bloom maintained pristine standards at his famous West End gym
WHEN you think of an old-time gym what do you imagine? Floors, walls and windows thick with grime, dilapidated equipment and a rickety, blood-stained ring? Go back 60 years or more and that’s probably a fair portrayal of a typical British boxing gym. But there was one notable exception.
The Cambridge gym at 9 Earlham Street, off Cambridge Circus, in London’s West End was a bastion of neatness and cleanliness thanks to its eccentric owner, Joe Bloom. “You’d be skipping and he’d be going round sprinkling disinfectant on the floor,” Teddy Lewis, a talented feather and lightweight of the 1940s and ‘50s, once told me. “Woe betide anyone who dropped even a small piece of paper on the floor of Joe’s beloved gym,” recalled Boxing News ‘Old Timers’ doyen Ron Olver.
Liam Smith travels to Russia to challenge for his latest title. Credit: Matchroom Boxing.
Liam Smith has been out in the cold at world title level for a while now, and the Liverpudlian must travel to Russia this Friday night in order to maintain his lofty ranking with the WBO.
He takes on unbeaten home fighter, Magomed Kurbanov, in a dangerous assignment, with the vacant WBO International Super Welterweight title on offer for the winner.
Smith is currently ranked number two in the latest WBO rankings at 154 pounds, while Kurbanov sits at number five.
The winner here will hope to move closer to a meeting with the current WBO champion at the weight in Argentina’s Brian Carlos Castano, but Australia’s Tim Tszyu occupies the number one spot with the organisation.