Notebook: Like everybody, Munguia, Rosado expect an action-packed battle

Canelo-Plant PPV numbers; Fury has elbow surgery; Covid knocks Rios out of title fight; purse bid updates; Quick hits; Show and tell

Nov 13, 2021

Gabriel Rosado is as tough a man as they come but to many in boxing he had become a steppingstone opponent, a guy who would make a slugfest but ultimately lose to the A side.

He parlayed his fan-friendly style into a series of notable fights, including middleweight title fights against Gennadiy Golovkin and Peter Quillin, who both stopped him due to cuts. Rosado’s long resume also includes losses to Jermell Charlo, David Lemieux and Daniel Jacobs last November.

But the Jacobs fight, at super middleweight, was a very close split decision that many thought could have gone either way.

Rosado looked rejuvenated and then in June scored his biggest victory in years when he survived a first-round knockdown and rallied to knock out heavily touted up-and-comer Bektemir Melikuziev, a 2016 Olympic silver medalist and 2017 World Amateur Championships silver medalist from Uzbekistan, who was on the fast track to a title shot.

That win set the stage for a fight few think can deliver anything but action when Rosado, the underdog yet again and returning to middleweight after three super middleweight bouts in a row, takes on former junior middleweight world titlist Jaime Munguia in a 12-round fight that headlines a Golden Boy Promotions card (DAZN, 9 p.m. ET) at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.

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Rosado credits his recent success to linking up with Hall of Fame trainer Freddie Roach.

"Freddie and I are coming off of some good momentum. We had a great camp, great sparring and truthfully it was a camp where I was locked in from beginning to end,” Rosado said this week. “Experience is what is different, locking in and training with a Hall of Fame trainer who just guides me. I have never given up on myself. I have always worked hard and have always believed that I could be a better fighter. And I look forward to proving that on Saturday.”

The fight between Munguia (37-0, 30 KOs), 25, of Mexico, and Rosado (26-13-1, 15 KOs), 35, of Philadelphia, gained momentum when they each won on a June 19 card El Paso, Texas, with Munguia stopping Kamil Szeremeta in the sixth round of the main event and Rosado upsetting Melikuziev in the co-feature.

“It’s always good to announce fights and get positive feedback. It’s not always the case. We always try to please the fans. I mean, that’s first and foremost,” Golden Boy president Eric Gomez said. “You want to please the fans and make the fights that they want. You got to kind of keep your ear to the ground and listen to the chatter and what they’re talking about. A lot of fans were talking about this fight after Rosado’s last win. They wanted this fight, and we heard them loud and clear. I’m just happy we were able to get it done. It’s going to be a great fight.”

Munguia, who is going into his fourth middleweight bout since vacating his junior middleweight title to move up, took notice of Rosado’s performance that June night.

“I know that Rosado is coming off a great fight, a great knockout and has a lot of experience,” said Munguia, who is trained by Hall of Famer Erik Morales. “I know I have to be careful but I have faith in my training and I am confident that I will be victorious on Saturday. We make a great team with Erik Morales. Thanks to him I have had a great training camp and I feel like my boxing skills have advanced.

“I know on Saturday I have to keep my distance and apply pressure where I need to. I need to make sure I dominate the action in the ring.”

Like most familiar with the styles of Munguia and Rosado, both fighters also expect an action-packed battle. So too does Roach.

“I think this is going to be a really good fight,” Roach said. “You have two really good fighters in a real fight. This is what boxing is all about. I think we got lost a little bit with celebrity boxing but this is two real fighters going into a real fight. I love this.

“Gabriel is very clever and he's a very good boxer, but we're fighting a veteran ourselves and a very good puncher, so we have to be very careful. Both fighters have a lot of heart and that makes this fight interesting. It’s gonna be a fight of the year’ type of fight.”

Rosado described Munguia and himself as “a Mexican warrior and a Puerto Rican warrior. We are gonna clash and the fans will win.”

And Munguia added, “This is going to be a fun night, a night full of punches. It will be a war. Everyone knows that Mexico versus Puerto Rico (matches) are always great fights. I honestly see a very motivated Gabe Rosado. He is strong and willing to give a good fight. I can assure you that we will leave everything in the ring and bring something great on fight night.”

Canelo-Plant a PPV hit

Until pound-for-pound king Canelo Alvarez knocked out Caleb Plant in the 11th round last Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas in the main event of a Showtime PPV card, he had not fought on a traditional pay-per-view card for six consecutive bouts over the past three years.

But Alvarez’s star power remains strong and when he returned to PPV to face Plant, the fight did “roughly 800,000” pay-per-view buys in the United States, a source involved in the event told me. The source added that the gate for the fight would be around $18 million, which would put it in the top 10 boxing gates in Nevada boxing history. I wrote about it for World Boxing News. Please read that story here: https://www.worldboxingnews.net/2021/11/12/canelo-pay-per-view-numbers/

Fury has elbow surgery

Heavyweight champion Tyson Fury won the trilogy fight with former titlist Deontay Wilder on Oct. 9 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas despite “badly injured” elbows going into the bout, according to his father, John Fury.

In an all-time classic battle, Fury (31-0-1, 22 KOs) retained the title by knocking out Wilder (42-2-1, 41 KOs) in the 11th round of a fight in which Fury was knocked down twice and Wilder was down three times.

John Fury said that his son had cortisone injections in both elbows prior to the fight and then underwent a six-hour surgery to fix the problems after the fight.

“Tyson was very badly injured going into that fight,” John Fury told BT Sport, Fury’s United Kingdom broadcaster. “He was handicapped from the beginning. It wasn't a boxing match, was it? My son's No. 1, a legend and will be spoken about for hundreds of years. He's that damn good and got that burning desire to never get beaten. He had to have (cortisone) injections into both elbows. He's since had an operation, six hours, all day in hospital having them sorted out. He had some bone spurs he had to get removed.

“He said to me afterwards, ‘I couldn't box, I couldn't work the jab. If I'd missed the jab, it would’ve put me in limp mode and I wouldn’t have been able to fight. The pain when throwing the jab was unbearable, so I was fighting two people — the pain in my own body and him. All we could do was make it a war and I wanted to win more than he did.’”

New foe for Akhmadaliev; Rios has Covid

Junior featherweight Ronny Rios (33-3, 16 KOs), 31, of Santa Ana, California, has come down with Covid-19, forcing him to withdraw from his mandatory title shot against unified titlist Murodjon “MJ” Akhmadaliev (9-0, 7 KOs), 27, a southpaw from Uzbekistan, which was scheduled to take place on Nov. 19 (DAZN) at SNHU Arena in Manchester, New Hampshire, on the undercard of middleweight titlist Demetrius Andrade’s defense against Jason Quigley.

Matchroom Boxing announced that Rios was out on Friday and that Akhmadaliev would instead make his second title defense against Jose Velasquez (29-6-2 19 KOs), 32, of Chile, who has won 21 fights in a row since 2016, although he has yet to face a notable opponent.

“I hope that Ronny is feeling well. It’s a shame that he cannot face me, but it is a great chance for Jose and I am sure he will put everything into this fight,” Akhmadaliev said. “Everything has been good in camp. It’s been a long camp with a couple of fights getting cancelled, but we’ve stayed in the gym and I’m ready to defend what is mine.

“We have a new gym, and we love it, it’s our new home. The facilities are great and there’s more room and new rings. It’s always a pleasure being in camp because (trainer) Joel Diaz and the team — we’re one big family. We joke around and mess around, but we get great work in. We have our own language in the gym with broken English, Spanish, Uzbek and Russian, all mixed up. It’s fun but that’s because we work so hard that we make sure we enjoy ourselves when the work is done. We eat, sleep and drink boxing. The discipline is second to none.”

Besides Andrade (30-0, 18 KOs), of Providence, Rhode Island, defending his WBO belt against Ireland’s Quigley (19-1 14 KOs) and Akhmadaliev-Velasquez, the card also features two other world title bouts:

WBC flyweight titlist Julio Cesar Martinez (18-1, 14 KOs), of Mexico, defends against interim titlist and mandatory challenger McWilliams Arroyo (21-4, 16 KOs), of Puerto Rico.

Kali Reis (18-7-1, 5 KOs), of Providence, defends the WBA women’s junior welterweight title and also fights for the vacant WBO belt against Montreal’s Jessica Camara (8-2, 0 KOs).

WBA: 1 purse bid, 1 cancellation

There were two WBA purse bids scheduled on Friday. Here’s what happened:

The one for the fight between junior flyweight titlist Hiroto Kyoguchi (15-0, 10 KOs), 27, of Japan, and secondary titlist Esteban Bermudez (14-3-2 10 KOs), 26, of Mexico, was canceled as the sides made a deal for the fight, although there is no official date or site. The winner will be the lone 108-pound WBA titlist as the organization is steadily working to reduce the number of titles it sanctions.

The purse bid for a junior featherweight title elimination fight between Ra’eese Aleem (18-0, 12 KOs), 31, of Las Vegas, and Azat Hovhannisyan (20-3, 16 KOs), 33, an Armenia native fighting out of Los Angeles, took place via Zoom video conference and Hovhannisyan promoter Golden Boy was the only bidder. It offered $80,001 — $1 over the minimum allowed. The split is 50-50 between the boxers, but the fight is unlikely to take place.

Marshall Kauffman, Aleem’s promoter, did not bid because Aleem, who was one of 11 WBA interim titleholders stripped when the organization terminated all interim titles a few months ago, is scheduled to fight Eduardo Baez in a 10-rounder on the Showtime-televised undercard of the Brandon Figueroa-Stephen Fulton Jr. junior featherweight unification fight Nov. 27 in Las Vegas.

The WBA told Fight Freaks Unite that if Aleem does not take the fight, Hovhannisyan will be declared the mandatory challenger for the winner of next week’s fight between unified titlist Murodjon Akhmadaliev (9-0, 7 KOs) and Jose Velasquez (29-6-2 19 KOs).

Quick hits

Weights from Phoenix for the Premier Boxing Champions card Saturday on Showtime (9 p.m. ET): David Benavidez 169 pounds, Kyrone Davis 167.75 (169 contract weight); Jose Benavidez Jr. 158.75, Francisco Emanuel Torres 157.5 (159 contract weight).

Weights from Anaheim, California, for Golden Boy’s show Saturday on DAZN (9 p.m. ET): Jaime Munguia 160 pounds, Gabriel Rosado 159.4; Alexis Rocha 146.2, Jeovanis Barraza 146.4; D’Mitrus Ballard 159.8, Paul Valenzuela Jr. 160; William Zepeda 134.4, John Moralde 133.8; Arley Muncino 111.8, Jackie Calvo 112; Alejandro Reyes 139.8, Osmel Mayorga 144.2; Jorge Chavez 130, Gilberto Aguilar 130; Asa Stevens 121.6, Felix Vasquez 121.2.

Mexico’s Diego De La Hoya (22-1, 10 KOs), the cousin of Golden Boy CEO Oscar De La Hoya, was supposed to see action against countryman Jose Gonzalez (23-9-1, 13 KOs) in a 10-round featherweight fight on the Munguia-Rosado card in what would have been De La Hoya’s first action in 23 months. However, the fight was canceled earlier in the week when De La Hoya suffered a gallstone attack.

MTK Global announced a card that will take place Dec. 3 (ESPN+) at York Hall in London and be headlined by middleweight Danny Dignum (13-0-1, 7 KOs), 29, a British southpaw, against Lucas Bastida (17-1-1, 9 KOs), 24, of Argentina, for a vacant regional belt. Also, featherweight Isaac Lowe (21-0-3, 6 KOs), 27, of England, will face Luis Alberto Lopez (23-2, 12 KOs), 28, of Mexico, in an IBF final eliminator with the winner becoming the mandatory challenger for Kid Galahad. Lopez is coming off a win over heavily touted Top Rank prospect Gabriel Flores Jr., whom he beat down in a one-sided 10-round decision on Sept. 10.

Show and tell

The first fight between Hall of Fame legends Aaron Pryor and Alexis Arguello is, quite simply, one of the 10 best fights in boxing history. They met at the Orange Bowl in Miami, where Arguello, a former featherweight, junior lightweight and lightweight champion, was the big crowd favorite and attempting to become the first boxer to win a world title in four divisions as he challenged Pryor, who was making his sixth junior welterweight title defense. It was a fantastic battle featuring non-stop back-and-forth action at the highest skill level. Ultimately, Pryor would not be denied and knocked out Arguello in the 14th round of what was later named 1980s fight of the decade by Ring magazine. That all-time great fight was on Nov. 11, 1982 — 39 years ago on Friday. For reasons that I have never been able to figure out, the program is extremely rare in any condition even though the fight was at a huge stadium with a big crowd. In around 20 years of looking for a program, I came across maybe three, including this absolutely gorgeous one I bought a few years ago for a price I could live with. I wasn’t about to pass it up.

Munguia-Rosado photo: Kevin Estrada/Golden Boy Promotions; Fury-Wilder photo: Sean Michael Ham/TGB Promotions

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