Notebook: Andrade's plan is to make Williams pay for all of his pre-fight trash talk
Munguia card postponed; Jake Paul PPV; Shields MMA debut set
Middleweight world titlist Demetrius Andrade has heard just about enough out of mandatory challenger Liam Williams.
Even before the fight was signed, Williams was trash talking Andrade with abandon on social media and in interviews and it has continued this week as the fight approaches.
“I don’t think he has the same intensity as me,” Williams said. “I wear my heart on my sleeve. I can punch harder than him. I have a better engine than him. I’m going to bring it all on the night and I don’t think he has the answers.
“He’s a clown. I don’t think he’s wired up right. He’s got a screw loose. His mannerisms, the way he acts and talks on his interviews, he’s just a little bit strange and I can’t put my finger on it. He’s an oddball.”
But, as Andrade points out, now it is time for Williams to try to back up his stream of verbiage when they square off in the main event of a Matchroom Boxing card (sans spectators) on Saturday (DAZN), 3 p.m. ET) at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida.
“It’s one thing to be hyping yourself up and the fight,” Andrade said. “But you got to be concerned with what you are saying and back it up because at the end of the day, I don’t have two losses, I have never lost. They call him ‘The Machine,’ but when I am done with him, he’ll be ‘The Rust Bucket.’”
The 33-year-old Andrade (29-0, 18 KOs), a southpaw from Providence, Rhode Island, and a former junior middleweight titlist, will be making his fourth middleweight defense and coming off a coronavirus pandemic-induced 15-month layoff.
What Andrade wants is to fight the likes of Canelo Alvarez, Gennadiy Golovkin, Jermall Charlo, Billy Joe Saunders or Caleb Plant, be it at middleweight or super middleweight. Instead, he has to face Williams (23-2-1, 18 KOs), 28, of Wales, who has won seven fights in a row since consecutive defeats at junior middleweight to former world titlist Liam Smith in 2017, including one by stoppage.
“You’re going to see the same you always see from me — a solid game plan, dominance, landing big shots, an all-around great performance and giving people what they have been missing, the sweet science,” Andrade said. “I don’t think he’s going to just lay down with all the shit talking he’s been doing, but when you finally get here, it’s different. Now you have to fight, and Liam is not going to stop my train.
“I expect him to bring the fight because this is his opportunity, but at the end of the day he’ll be able to say, ‘I lost to Demetrius Andrade.’ Everyone says that they are going to do this and that with me, but reality bites, and when I touch them, they fall all around the ring and go running. It’s hard to hit me. They always end the night losing and saying, ‘Wow, you are better than we think.’”
Munguia-Ballard postponed
First, Maciej Sulecki suffered a back injury, which forced Golden Boy Promotions to find another opponent to face Mexican middleweight contender Jaime Munguia in the 12-round main event of a DAZN card on April 23 at the Don Haskins Center on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso.
In stepped the Golden Boy-promoted D’Mitrius Ballard last week, but on Wednesday he too was forced to withdraw due to an elbow injury, a source with knowledge of the situation told Fight Freaks Unite.
The source said the entire card will be postponed with an eye toward rescheduling it sometime in May with either Sulecki (29-2, 11 KOs), of Poland, or Ballard (20-0-1, 13 KOs), of Temple Hills, Maryland, taking on former junior middleweight titleholder Munguia (36-0, 29 KOs) — whichever one of them is ready to go.
The postponement was not officially announced because Golden Boy was notifying fighters on the card about the situation.
Postponed along with the main event is a fight between rising heavyweight Arslanbek Makhmudov (11-0, 11 KOs) against Nagy Aguilera (21-10, 14 KOs); women’s flyweight titlist Ibeth Zamora (32-6, 12 KOs) defending against Marlen Esparza (9-1, 1 KO); welterweight Blair Cobbs (14-0-1, 9 KOs) versus James Bacon; and other bouts.
Shields MMA debut set
Undisputed women’s junior middleweight world champion Claressa Shields, the three-division champion and two-time U.S. Olympic gold medalist, announced several months ago that she had signed with the Professional Fighters League and would compete in MMA as well as boxing with her MMA debut ticketed for June.
Shields and PFL made her MMA debut official on Wednesday, announcing that Shields will fight jiu-jitsu specialist Brittney Elkin on June 10 (ESPN2) at the Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Shields, 26, of Flint, Michigan, announced he plans to join PFL in December and has been training in Albuquerque, New Mexico alongside former UFC world champions Jon Jones and Holly Holm.
“I am very excited to cement my legacy as the ‘Greatest Woman of All Time,” Shields said. “I cannot wait to step into the PFL cage for the first time on June 10 and show the world that I never back down from a challenge. I have shown I am the best boxer in the world and eventually I intend to do the same thing as a mixed martial artist.”
In her most recent boxing match, Shields (11-0, 2 KOs) shut out Marie Eve Dicaire to become the undisputed junior middleweight champion in a pay-per-view headliner on March 5 in Flint.
Elkin (3-6) has competed in various MMA promotions, including in a 2018 PFL bout when he lost to future PFL champion Kayla Harrison via first-round submission.
“I’m very grateful to be back in the PFL and to have this opportunity to square off with Claressa Shields,” Elkin said. “I know she is a great boxer but this is MMA and I plan to show everyone that I am a well-rounded fighter who can compete wherever the fight takes me.”
Jake Paul hoopla
Jake Paul (2-0, 2 KOs), the popular YouTube personality turned professional cruiserweight boxer, squares off with MMA fighter Ben Askren, a former Bellator and ONE Championship champion making his pro boxing debut, in an eight-round bout on Saturday (PPV and FITE, $49.99, 9 p.m. ET) that headlines a card expected to generate strong pay-per-view numbers.
The Triller Fight Club event, which will take place without spectators at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, includes boxing matches (one involves former junior welterweight world titlist Regis Prograis against Ivan Redkach) and several music acts, including Justin Bieber and Triller Fight Club partner Snoop Dogg, who will also be part of the commentary team.
I was part of the FITE In Focus roundtable preview show for the event, which you can watch for free right here:
Harrison back in action
Former junior middleweight world titlist Tony Harrison lost his belt by stoppage in December 2019 and entered 2020 on a down note that only got worse. The coronavirus pandemic took hold in the United States and among the at least 563,000 Americans who have perished due to Covid-19 was Ali Salaam, Harrison’s father and trainer.
Harrison had a hard time dealing with his father’s untimely death. But now, almost one year to the day since his father’s passing, Harrison returns to the ring with his older brother, LJ Harrison, now serving as his trainer. Harrison will end a 16-month layoff against Bryant Perrella in the main event of the Premier Boxing Champions on Fox card on Saturday (8 p.m. ET) in Los Angeles.
I spoke to Harrison at length about what he has gone through over the 16 months, his ring return and where he wants to go from here. Please read the story I wrote about it for The Ring magazine website: https://www.ringtv.com/620292-tony-harrison-pursues-rebirth-in-2021-faces-bryant-perrella-on-saturday/
Quick hits
Light heavyweight Anthony Yarde (20-2, 19 KOs), 29, of England, will face Emin Atra (17-0, 12 KOs), 31, of Germany, in a 10-rounder on April 24 on promoter Frank Warren’s card in London. Yarde, who suffered 11th-round knockout loss challenging Sergey Kovalev for a world title in August 2019, is seeking to rebound from a split decision loss to Lyndon Arthur for the Commonwealth title Dec. 5. The fight will be on the undercard of Denzel Bentley (14-0-1, 12 KOs) defending the British middleweight title against Felix Cash (13-0, 9 KOs), whose Commonwealth crown will also be at stake. “I am just looking forward to getting back in action and blowing away the cobwebs,” Yarde said. “It has been a bit of a rollercoaster personal and business wise, but I am getting back and right now I feel very good. Things are going well. I wanted the rematch with Lyndon immediately, but it didn’t work out that way. There is still a rematch clause, but for now I need to stay active.”
Former world title challenger Miguel Marriaga (29-4, 25 KOs), of Colombia, will face Jose Garcia (14-3-1, 11 KOs), of Mexico, in the 10-round featherweight main event of “Boxeo EstrellaTV” on April 30 (Estrella TV, 10 p.m. ET) at the Fit Center in Mexico City. It’s the second card of the Spanish-language network’s new monthly boxing series. The big-hitting Marriaga is 0-3 in world title fights against Vasiliy Lomachenko, Oscar Valdez and Nicholas Walters.
Show and tell
After the legendary Bernard Hopkins knocked out tough-as-nails Antwun Echols in the 10th round of their rough mandatory rematch in December 2000, Hopkins came to the post-fight news conference and pleaded with the media, myself included, to put pressure on promoter Don King not to match junior middleweight champion Felix Trinidad with either William Joppy or Keith Holmes, the two middleweight titleholders King also promoted, and allow Trinidad to be called middleweight champion if he won. Hopkins’ point was nobody could rightfully be called middleweight champion without seeing him, the dominant 160-pound titlist of the time. Eventually, King made a deal with Hopkins and included him in the four-man Middleweight World Championship Series. It would be a three-fight tournament to produce the undisputed champion (at a time when a fighter only needed to claim three belts — WBC, IBF and WBA — for that recognition).
The pairings were set with Hopkins to meet Holmes to unify the IBF and WBC titles in the first semifinal on HBO and Joppy to defend the WBA title against Trinidad, who would move up in weight, in the second semifinal a month later on HBO PPV. The winners would meet that fall for the undisputed championship.
I was ringside when Hopkins faced Holmes at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York to open the tournament on April 14, 2001 — 20 years ago on Wednesday. Hopkins rolled to a one-sided unanimous decision on his way to knocking out Trinidad five months later for a career-defining victory. Here’s a rare glossy HBO poster from Hopkins-Holmes in my collection.
Andrade photo: Matchroom Boxing
If Williams could pull an upset, in his 2 losses to Smith he bloodied him up in the 1st bout with punches then Smith looked butted him leaving a big cut on his eye lid that ended the bout. 2 of the judges scoring in the re-match were terrible. Andrade also looks chinny
Andrade doesn't provide value for money. For this reason [plus the fact Williams was unlucky in both his losses and has looked great since moving to 160, albeit against 'mixed' opposition] I hope Williams comes away with the victory.