Boxing

[Doc_Piptorious]

Seriously ... just seen this today ... to day the other girl was leaving her chin out there is an understatement ..... but still ... sweet baby Jesus

Ward was a **** boxer though. She was just an ex basketball player who became an attraction in women's boxing thanks to her size.


Ann Wolf on the other hand was boxer through and through back in the day. A tough lady who took no **** in the ring when she was an active fighter and who takes none from the fighters in her charge out of the ring.

[Nicey]

Ward was a **** boxer though. She was just an ex basketball player who became an attraction in women's boxing thanks to her size.


Ann Wolf on the other hand was boxer through and through back in the day. A tough lady who took no **** in the ring when she was an active fighter and who takes none from the fighters in her charge out of the ring.

Awesome she looks tidy, very tight

[marcus50bucks]

Amir Khan open to Floyd Mayweather fight in September

By Alistair Magowan
BBC Sport

Britain's Amir Khan says he could fight Floyd Mayweather in September despite previously stating Ramadan might disrupt his training.

Khan, 28, is a Muslim and is set to fast during the holy month, which lasts from mid-June to mid-July this year.

Ahead of his bout with Chris Algieri on 29 May, Khan said: "Mayweather normally fights mid-September and Ramadan is a little bit earlier this year.

"It gives me enough time to get the training done, so it can happen."

Khan said on Sunday that Mayweather's manager was keen to "get a fight on" after the undisputed welterweight champion beat Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas.

Mayweather, 38, took his unbeaten record to 48 fights with a one-sided points victory over Pacquiao and is expected to make his next fight his last.

Bolton-born Khan, who takes on former light-welterweight world champion Algieri in New York, says he has also been invited to fight Pacquiao, 36.

But Khan insisted his focus is purely on Algieri, who was knocked down six times by Pacquiao during a massive points defeat in November.

He said: "I really can't take this Algeri fight lightly - lose and it would ruin my dreams to fight the biggest names in boxing.

"I'm not going to be fighting Mayweather until I win this fight. I'm not looking past Chris because I've made that mistake in the past. There are bigger fights out there for me, but this is my focus."

During Ramadan practising Muslims fast during daylight hours to learn self-discipline, while also reminding them of those less fortunate than themselves.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/boxing/32614030

[Shaggy]

I was in tears laughing at this before

[ame]https://twitter.com/JM90x/status/596426079608434688[/ame]

[meffin]

[G]

Evander Holyfield on boxing today.

It was supposed to be boxing’s big moment. I was hoping Mayweather vs. Pacquiao would start a renaissance and help bring boxing back as a major sport in America. But with the whole world watching, instead of The Fight of the Century, we got a fight that highlighted everything that’s wrong with boxing. You can’t blame Floyd Mayweather, and you can’t blame Manny Pacquiao. They’re all-time greats who were just out there fighting like they always have.

The only one you can blame is boxing itself.

I’ve attended the three biggest fights of the year so far: Deontay Wilder vs. Bermane Stiverne, Wladimir Klitschko vs. Bryant Jennings, and now Mayweather vs. Pacquiao. And you know what I’ve seen?

Not much boxing.

In 36 total rounds, I saw zero knockdowns. I saw a lot of holding and hugging, and a lot of running. I saw three, 12-round unanimous decisions.

What I didn’t see were punches being thrown and landed. No fighter in any of the three fights was ever threatened or even in trouble. I didn’t even see a fighter with a cut or a bruise after the fight. Everyone was just playing defense, trying not to get hit.

The concept of fighting is simple: Hit the other guy and don’t let the other guy hit you. Today, there’s a whole lot of trying not to get hit and not a whole lot of hitting. How can you have a boxing match if guys aren’t throwing and landing punches?

How can you have a boxing match if guys aren’t throwing and landing punches? The answer is, you can’t.

The answer is, you can’t. But that’s what boxing has done to itself with how it’s scoring these fights today and how the action is being evaluated. Fans are expecting engagement, aggression and action, but unfortunately, the system is not set up to promote and support that type of activity anymore. In fact, boxing is not only allowing this less aggressive brand of fighting, it’s supporting it by rewarding less aggressive fighters with decisions.

I don’t blame Mayweather. He might be the smartest fighter alive. The judges today are giving decisions to fighters who use defensive tactics, and he knows that. That’s why he’s now 48-0. He’s boxing according to the way judges are scoring the fights. He plays the system and he wins. That’s just another thing that makes him one of the all-time greats in this sport. But this is what boxing has become, I’m sad to say. There was a time when fighters would get points for being aggressive and engaging the other fighter. There was also a time when fighters would get penalized for hugging and holding, and avoiding the opponent altogether. But that’s just not how boxing is anymore and that’s not how referees call the fights, either.


That’s not to say referees aren’t giving out penalties — they’re just not giving them out as often as they should. Even Klitschko, the world heavyweight champion who hasn’t lost in 11 years, was penalized a full point after multiple warnings for holding against Jennings. And he won that fight. His defensive approach worked. So it’s not just Mayweather using this strategy. It’s an issue spread throughout the sport.

One of the most famous fights in the history of boxing is Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman — the Rumble in the Jungle — where Ali used the rope-a-dope technique to win the fight. Ali sat on the ropes and played defense the entire fight, absorbing body blows and letting Foreman be the aggressor. But he didn’t do it to win a decision (he would have lost if it went to a decision, and he knew that). He did it to weaken the bigger, stronger Foreman so he could knock him out in the later rounds.


That used to be the mentality — boxers went into the ring to fight. They wanted to knock people out. They wanted to take the decision out of the judges hands. Today, instead of boxing for the knockout, fighters are boxing for the decision. Instead of fighting to win, they’re fighting not to lose and they’re getting rewarded for it.

Boxing isn’t broken. Everything that was wrong with Mayweather vs. Pacquiao — which I feel was a good fight, just not The Fight of the Century, as it was hyped — can be fixed with a few simple changes.

First off, we need to change how referees officiate these matches.

Referees need to be more aggressive in enforcing engagement. If referees are told to hand down penalties for holding and not engaging the opponent — including early warnings, taking points away or in extreme cases, disqualifying fighters — guys will engage. That’s how the sport is refereed at the amateur level so why should it be any different at the highest levels? This is the simplest and easiest solution to implement: strictly enforce the rules and hold referees accountable.

Secondly, we need to change how judges are scoring the rounds. There are four things judges look for when scoring a fight:

1. Effective aggression (moving forward and attacking, but also landing punches and avoiding an opponent’s blows)

2. Ring generalship (controlling the action and pace of the fight)

3. Defense

4. Hard and clean punches

After evaluating these four criteria, the judges award a 10 to the fighter who won the round and a 9 to the fighter who lost. Points are deducted for knockdowns, holding, low blows and other penalties as well, but it’s that initial 10-9 scoring that’s the biggest issue.

Judges hand out scores and decide who won the round without giving any breakdown or reasoning for how they arrived at their decision — because they’re not required to. We’re just supposed to take their word for it and live with the decision. They don’t even have access to round-by-round statistics like punches thrown or punches landed. They depend solely on what they can see from their ringside seats. So if a fighter has his back to a judge and he lands a punch, but the judge can’t see it, it won’t be counted in that judge’s scoring of the round.

How can judges accurately score the round under these circumstances? It’s as subjective as any system in sports, and even when a decision gets called into question, the judges are rarely held accountable. The scoring system in boxing would benefit from implementing new technology that would provide the judges with real-time statistics after each round to use in their scoring. Why not give judges any and all information possible to accurately score the round?


Additionally, judges should have to present a scorecard for each round laying out how they scored that round according the the four major criteria. This would ensure that judges are scoring based on all four criteria, not just awarding the round based on one aspect, such as defense. Not only would this make the decisions more transparent, it would also make it easier for judges to give extra points for willingness to engage, and to take away points for lack of aggression and being passive. If fighters know they’ll get points for being aggressive, believe me, guys are going to fight. You’ll see guys step into the ring ready to fight from bell to bell.

If fighters know they’ll get points for being aggressive, believe me, guys are going to fight.

Implementing these changes would also open the door for other simple scoring changes. If the goal is to get fighters to be more aggressive — and I believe it is — the scoring system can be weighted to favor aggression. If sixty percent of a fighter’s score came from the “effective aggression” and “hard and clean punches” criteria (thirty percent for each), and the other forty percent was split between “defense” and “ring generalship,” fighters would know they need to be aggressive and land punches to win each round, not just play great defense. This would promote an aggressive and offensive style of fighting — which the sport needs — without taking defense out of the equation.

It’s really that simple. If we get referees more aggressive in enforcing penalties, hold judges more accountable by making their decisions more transparent and change the scoring system to promote aggressive fighting, we’ll get clear winners in each fight and we’ll see a better brand of overall boxing. The kind of boxing we saw in the glory days of myself and Mike Tyson, and before us with fighters like Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. We’ll see fans gravitate back to boxing the way they did when it was among America’s most popular sports.

Boxing isn’t dead, it just needs to evolve. Look at all the other major sports in America, particularly football and baseball. Football is constantly evolving, from rules and penalties to the game itself. They’re even looking into getting rid of the extra point — anything to make sure the game doesn’t get stale and remains ever-changing. Baseball is finally getting in on it as well, implementing replay and clock technology to make the games faster and officiating more efficient.

The only major change in boxing in the last 25 years was moving from 15- to 12-round fights. Other than that, boxing has stayed the same and as a result, it’s fallen behind. That’s why MMA and the UFC have been so successful. There was a void in combat sports created by boxing’s reluctance to embrace change, and MMA came along and filled it.

A perfect example is Wilder vs. Stiverne earlier this year. Wilder fought for, and won, the heavyweight championship in Las Vegas in January, becoming the first American to hold one of the heavyweight championship belts since 2007.

For those who love boxing, if you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.

And only 8,400 people showed up to see it.

Two weeks later, at the same venue, the UFC featured Anderson Silva vs. Nick Diaz, two fighters coming off back-to-back losses. That fight drew a crowd or over 13,000.

It’s just another example of boxing’s growing irrelevance — an American wins the Heavyweight Championship, and it’s out-sold by two guys trying not to lose their third straight fight.

Boxing has turned into an event sport where the masses tune in to the marquee fights that happen every so often, like Saturday’s fight. That’s one of the reasons I called for the development of youth programs — to strengthen boxing from top to bottom and bring back a culture of loyal fans who watch more than just the occasional fight. Boxing had the opportunity to start that movement Saturday night. I thought Mayweather vs. Pacquiao would be the fight to make the world believe in boxing again and that the sport could regain its popularity, maybe even create a whole generation of new boxing fans.


Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way.

But that doesn’t mean some good can’t come of it. If the negative press from a fight the entire world stopped to watch doesn’t make the sport of boxing look at itself and say, It’s time for change, I’m not sure what will. For those who love boxing, if you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.

Mayweather vs. Pacquiao won’t go down as one of the all-time great fights even though the two fighters will be remembered as all-time greats. But their fight could be looked back upon as a turning point in boxing history — the event that sparked the changes that brought the sport back to the mainstream. If boxing could just open its eyes and embrace change.

http://www.theplayerstribune.com/mayweather-vs-pacquiao-state-of-boxing-a-fight-for-relevance/

[Doc_Piptorious]

Have to say that some of that, if it was really said by Holyfield and is not someone paraphrasing what he said, is shockingly naive with regards the scoring of a bout, especially coming from someone who competed at the top end of both the paid and unpaid ranks.


For example his definition of Effective Aggression is incorrect. When it comes to scoring a bout Effective Aggression does not mean moving forward and attacking.

The text book definition to scoring a bout, with regards to Effective Aggression, is as follows:

A hostile or forceful behaviour designed to create a desired or intended result, or produce a favorable impression

In a nutshell that means that an obvious and proactive tactic must be observed, and regardless of whether a fighter is moving forwards or backwards it is his ability to land cleanly whilst not being hit by his rival that counts. In that respect an accurate and hard hitting counter puncher will always score more than the guy who is holding the centre of the ring and chasing the counter puncher down.

Now a guy who moves forward and who lands more punches than the guy retreating will score more, but what Holyfield seems to be suggesting is that Effective Aggression means moving forward whilst attacking/defending, which simply is not the case and he should know this as well as anyone.


Also the idea of making the judges give even more detailed reports of how they score each round is all well and good if the time between rounds were to be increased, but within the current set up that idea is more than a tad foolish.

He is spot on imo with regards to having better access to the punch stats, but he also seems to be forgetting just how long it takes for a person to be deemed ready to judge a top level fight and the amount of fights they will have judged (and their work is evaluated the whole way up) before getting into the big leagues.

Also judges do not just get to judge a bout and then not have to explain their scoring. The Athletic Commission does sit down with judges and scoring does get discussed and scoring gets explained in detail.


Preferences comes into it as well. Some judges like a brawler. Some like technicians. Some love counter punchers and so on. So short of judging a bout only on cold stats, the human element will always be there regardless of the changes Holyfield seems to be suggesting.


I also take issue from a safety pov. Trying to make fighters more aggressive comes with some very obvious safety concerns, and it is amongst the journeymen and lower tier fighters where this would have the most impact imho. Boxing is a tough sport and it can be a dangerous sport, but anything that increases the risk of serious injury, even a small increase of risk, just for the sake of ratings should be discounted straight away in my eyes.


I get the frustration being shown by Holyfield and I do agree with some of what he seemingly has said, but a big chunk of what is in that article is overly simplistic and for that reason I suspect that my earlier comment about how there may be a degree of paraphrasing and the like going on may hold some water.

[G]

It's possible but given his name is on it and nobody else's you'd have to assume he'd have read it and given it the go ahead. On the night of the fight he was live tweeting and he thought Manny had won. He couldn't believe the decision.

[Doc_Piptorious]

It's possible but given his name is on it and nobody else's you'd have to assume he'd have read it and given it the go ahead. On the night of the fight he was live tweeting and he thought Manny had won. He couldn't believe the decision.

Another reason as to why he should not be listened to when it comes to scoring a fight

[Shaggy]

I disagree with Holyfield, mostly, but I don't think you can deny his stance is at least interesting, thought-provoking and worthy of respect.

He knows **** loads more about the technical side of boxing than I do, that's for sure, but then so do most of the boxing regulars on here to be fair.

[Doc_Piptorious]

I disagree with Holyfield, mostly, but I don't think you can deny his stance is at least interesting, thought-provoking and worthy of respect.

He knows **** loads more about the technical side of boxing than I do, that's for sure, but then so do most of the boxing regulars on here to be fair.

His comments on judging suggest that his knowledge of that side of things is not so great.

But that is not exactly unusual. Many pro fighters would have a working idea as to how judges operate but ask one to explain the scoring process in detail and you might be a long time waiting for an answer.

He deserves respect for his many achievements in the sport, and the guy very often lived up to his nickname once the bell rang, but I would wager that plenty of coaches, trainers and the like could buy and sell him when it comes an in depth knowledge as to what goes on outside the ring.


No different to pro footballers and the finer details of the rules of football or the logic behind certain training patterns etc. Often all that is had is a working knowledge and the heavy lifting in mental terms is left to others.


But don't sell yourself short Shagster, I bet you could dazzle Holyfield with your knowledge of horticulturally related relaxation techniques

[Shaggy]

I did wonder about that - how a lot of footballers seem to know **** all about football - but boxing to me is a very different sport in terms of how it's analysed and the technical aspect of it all.

I disagree with him anyway. Mayweather clearly won the fight.

[Doc_Piptorious]

I did wonder about that - how a lot of footballers seem to know **** all about football - but boxing to me is a very different sport in terms of how it's analysed and the technical aspect of it all.

I disagree with him anyway. Mayweather clearly won the fight.

There are a large number of boxers whose knowledge of the more technical aspects of boxing would rival that of pro footballers and football.


Not really that unusual. They get told how to train, how to hit, how to put together patterns of strikes, how to move etc etc., and after a while it becomes an instinctive reaction rather than something that requires thought

[Chazza]

Tonight's offering from Hearn

SCHEDULE
5.30pm

JORDAN COOKE VS LANCE SHEEHAN
4 x 3 mins Lightweight Contest
5.50pm

MICHAEL ROONEY VS ISMAIL ANWAR
4 x 3 mins Lightweight Contest
6.10pm

DAN BREEZE VS DEE MITCHELL
4 x 3 mins Light Middleweight Contest
6.30pm

LENNOX CLARKE VS ALISTAIR WARREN
6 x 3 mins Middleweight Contest
6.50pm

GAMAL YAFAI VS ARNOLDO SOLANO
6 x 3 mins Super Bantamweight Contest
Live float

CALLUM SMITH VS OLEG FEDETOVS
8 x 3 mins Super Middleweight Contest
7.35pm

MATTHEW MACKLIN VS FERENC ALBERT
8 x 3 mins Middleweight Contest
Followed by

LUKE CAMPBELL VS ABOUBEKER BECHELAGHEM
8 x 3 mins Lightweight Contest
Followed by

SAM EGGINGTON VS JOSEPH LAMPTEY
12 x 3 mins Commonwealth Welterweight title
Followed by

ANTHONY JOSHUA VS RAFAEL ZUMBANO LOVE
8 x 3 mins Heavyweight Contest
Followed by

KAL YAFAI VS ISAAC QUAYE
6 x 3 mins Flyweight Contest

[Chris]

This card is an utter disgrace even by his lowly standards. Truly awful.