Good, bad, lots of ugly from Times Square to Riyadh to Las Vegas
A hearty helping of random thoughts from the three big cards: Garcia-Romero, Canelo-Scull and Inoue-Cardenas
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A hearty dose of random thoughts off the good, bad and the very ugly from fights in Times Square, Riyadh and Las Vegas…
Does anyone still want to see a Ryan Garcia vs. Devin Haney rematch after their extraordinarily lackluster fights on Friday in New York’s Times Square? Count me out, at least for now.
Garcia, who apparently did not have PEDs in his system for this fight like he did for his previous fight last year with Haney, got dropped and sleep-walked through a giant upset loss to made-to-order Rolly Romero in a very boring fight.
As bad as that fight was it made Haney’s virtual shutout of the seemingly shot Jose Ramirez look like a Matthew Saad Muhammad classic.
Yes, Haney won easily but he looked petrified to get hit after having been dropped three times by Garcia’s left hook in last year’s close loss that became a no contest because of Garcia’s positive PED tests and a one-year suspension.
The Garcia-Haney fight last year was pedestrian at best in terms of entertainment value. Their follow-up bouts on Friday were even worse. All three were historically pathetic in terms of punch output, so why would anyone want to pony up for yet another pay-per-view fight?
CompuBox has tracked fights for literally 40 years. Here are the 12-round fights it has tracked (and there are thousands) with the fewest combined punches thrown — three of which pitifully happened on back-to-back days last weekend:
1. 445-Canelo Alvarez (152) vs. William Scull (293)
2. 459-Deontay Wilder (204) vs. Joseph Parker (255)
3. 473-Sultan Ibragimov (245) vs. Shannon Briggs (228)
4. 490-Garcia (210) vs. Romero (280)
5. 499-Haney (214) vs. Garcia (285)
6. 503-Haney (224) vs. Ramirez (279)
Half of them feature Haney and Garcia. While the rematch was set for this fall in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, had they won, Turki Alalshikh and the rest involved could still decide to move forward with it. Hopefully, for all of our sake, they won’t.