Notebook: Morrell vows to KO Agbeko in Showtime finale
Teofimo Lopez's next defense details; two Japanese world title cards set; WBO honors Espinoza, Calderon; Quick hits; Show and tell
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“Showtime Championship Boxing,” the cornerstone series of Showtime Sports, which began with a tape delay of Marvin Hagler’s middleweight title defense against John “The Beast” Mugabi in March 1986 and has featured virtually every meaningful fighter in the sport since at least once, will come to an end after 37 years of showcasing many of the biggest fight in boxing history.
With Paramount Global, which is Showtime’s parent company, announcing in mid-October that it would shutter Showtime Sports, including the boxing franchise, at the end of the year, it means one last fight card — a Premier Boxing Champions tripleheader on Saturday (9 p.m. ET) at The Armory in Minneapolis.
WBA “regular” super middleweight titlist and Cuban defector David Morrell will headline in his adopted hometown by making his sixth defense against Sena Agbeko.
“This is a great opportunity to headline the last fight on Showtime,” Morrell said at Thursday’s news conference. “I was ready for him in April and I’m ready for him now. I’ll show him and anyone who doubts me. It’s going to be worse for him now. I’m better now than if we had fought in April. I’m taking him right out now.”
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Morrell (9-0, 8 KOs), 25, and Agbeko (28-2, 22 KOs), 31, a Ghana native fighting out of Nashville, were due to fight in the Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia co-feature on April 22 in Las Vegas on Showtime PPV, but the Nevada commission declined to license Agbeko due to an issue with his MRI that has since been resolved. Morrell faced late replacement Yamaguchi Falcao and knocked him out in the first round.
“I’m going to knock his ass out in the sixth or seventh round this Saturday night. My Christmas present for him is gonna be a knockout,” Morrell said. “I’m really just focused on Agbeko. I’m not thinking about (a possible fight with WBC interim titlist) David Benavidez right now. I’ll come for him after Agbeko. I’m taking this guy out first.”
Agbeko has won five fights in a row since a lopsided 10-round decision loss to unbeaten Vladimir Shishkin on Showtime’s “ShoBox” series in February 2021 but is a major underdog.
“I can’t hate a man who’s on the same mission as me,” Agbeko said. “We both want to be world champion. We were supposed to fight in April, and I believe that someone went to great lengths to stop the fight from happening then. I fought to get this fight back, because I deserved it. I’m grateful to the universe and to David and his team for accepting the fight.
“I truly believe that his team thinks I’m a sheep coming to the slaughter house. But they don’t know that I’m a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This will be the culmination of everything I’ve ever dreamed of.”
In the co-feature, Chris Colbert (17-1, 6 KOs), 27, of Brooklyn, New York, and Jose Valenzuela (12-2, 8 KOs), 24, a Mexico native fighting out of Seattle, will meet in a WBA lightweight title eliminator that is also a rematch of Colbert’s close, heavily disputed decision in their first fight in March.
“I’m not forced to do anything. I’m my own boss,” Colbert said of deciding to fight Valenzuela again. “This was the option that I chose. I’m tired of hearing him talk. I’ve always wanted to prove myself. He’s a sore loser, but he comes to fight. He’s gonna come to fight. I want to prove to the world and to his fans that he didn’t win. I’m gonna come dominate. I want him to take his loss like a man.”
They met for the first time on the David Benavidez-Caleb Plant Showtime PPV undercard at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and Colbert was awarded a unanimous decision, 95-94 on all three scorecards. Valenzuela scored a first-round knockdown and many thought he clearly deserved to win, including Showtime’s announcers.
“It’s not about how you start, it’s about how you finish,” Colbert said. “He dropped me in the first 30 seconds and he didn’t’ finish me. It says a lot about him as a fighter. He had 2:30 to finish me in the first round.”
Valenzuela said he won’t let Colbert off the hook this time.
“I learned I have to keep my foot on the gas,” Valenzuela said. “It was pretty clear to everyone that I won. He said that I was a bum, but it looked like he was getting jumped in there. Everything happens for a reason and I’m happy to be back. I made the adjustments that I had to make. Saturday, I’m knocking him out.”
In the 10-round opener, 40-year-old welterweights Robert Guerrero (37-6-1, 20 KOs), of Gilroy, California, and Andre Berto (32-5, 24 KOs), of Winter Haven, Florida, who both lost to Floyd Mayweather, will meet in a rematch 11 years after Guerrero dropped and outpointed him 116-110 on all three scorecards to retain the WBC interim title.
“These fists are hungry and I gotta feed them,” said Guerrero, who has won titles at featherweight and junior lightweight plus interim belts at lightweight and welterweight, but has boxed only once since 2019 in a decision over Victor Ortiz in August 2021. “(The rematch has) been a long time coming. Things change, but like my dad always told me, ‘the older the bull, the stiffer the horn.’ We’re ready to go.”
Berto, a two-time welterweight titlist, hasn’t had a fight since a split decision win over Devon Alexander in August 2018 but has always itched for revenge against Guerrero.
“Anybody who follows me, they know I stay in shape. This is a fight that I felt like I always needed to get back,” Berto said. “I shouldn’t have even stepped into the ring against Guerrero when we first fought. I’m on a revenge tour now before I leave this game.
“Robert is a great fighter of course, and he did what he did. But I’m hungry for this one. I still think about situations from that fight back then. I’m hungry to get this one back. We had a hell of a training camp and we’re gonna get it. I wasn’t in the right space mentally or physically when we first thought. I only gained four pounds after the weigh-in. Even then he barely beat me.”
Teofimo Lopez’s next defense
Top Rank is in the process of finalizing a fight between lineal/WBO junior welterweight champion Teofimo Lopez and Jamaine Ortiz, who will move up from lightweight, to headline on Feb. 8 at a site to be determined in Las Vegas, a source with knowledge of the plans told Fight Freaks Unite on Thursday.
The fight date is the Thursday before the Super Bowl LVIII, which will be played on Feb. 11 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
Top Rank told Fight Freaks Unite that it had hoped to match Lopez against former unified titleholder Jose Ramirez (28-1, 18 KOs), 31, of Avenal, California, but that Ramirez turned down the fight for low seven figures. Ramirez’s contract with Top Rank is up but, according to the company, he is free to talk to other promoters, although Top Rank said it retains a matching right.
Ramirez, who has been with Top Rank since signing with the company out of the 2012 Olympics, has only fought once per year from 2020 through 2023. He has won two fights in a row since losing a decision in a unification fight to Josh Taylor in 2021. Ramirez is coming off an 11th-round knockout of former lightweight titlist Richard Commey in March.
Lopez has won three fights in a row since a massive upset decision loss to George Kambosos Jr. in November 2021 cost him the three-belt unified lightweight title. He then moved up to junior welterweight, won two bouts and got a mandatory shot at Scotland’s Josh Taylor.
They met in June at The Theater at Madison Square Garden, site of Lopez’s loss to Kambosos, and Lopez put on a clinic in a unanimous decision to win the title.
Brooklyn, New York, native Lopez (19-1, 13 KOs), 26, claimed afterward that he was retiring but that was brief, although he has not fought since, in part because he has been going through a nasty divorce and custody battle over his son.
Ortiz (17-1-1, 8 KOs), 27, of Worcester, Massachusetts, made a name for himself with a unanimous decision over former junior lightweight titlist Jamel Herring in May 2022, a victory he parlayed into a fight with former pound-for-pound king and three-division champion Vasiliy Lomachenko in October 2022. Ortiz was a heavy underdog and lost a unanimous decision but it was a highly competitive fight. In his only fight since, Ortiz outpointed Antonio Moran in September.
Major Japanese cards set
Teiken Boxing on Thursday held a news conference in Tokyo to announce two major cards for early 2024, both of which will stream live in the early morning of the fight date on ESPN+ in the United States.
On Jan. 23, at Edion Arena in Osaka, WBC/WBA junior flyweight champion Kenshiro Teraji (21-1, 14 KOs), 31, of Japan, will make the fourth overall defense of his second reign and third of the unified title when he meets former WBA titlist Carlos Canizales (26-1-1, 19 KOs), 30, of Venezuela, who has won four in a row since losing his belt in May 2021, in the main event.
Also on the card:
WBA flyweight titlist Artem Dalakian (22-0, 15 KOs), 36, of Ukraine, will make his seventh defense versus Japan’s Seigo Yuri Akui (18-2-1, 11 KOs), 28, in a fight rescheduled from Nov. 15 when that card was postponed due to a main event injury.
Japanese kickboxing superstar Tenshin Nasukawa (2-0, 0 KOs), 25, a southpaw, will have his third pro boxing match against Luis Robles Pacheco (15-2-1, 5 KOs), 25, of Mexico, in an eight-rounder at junior featherweight.
The other card will take place on Feb. 24 at Ryogoku Sumo Arena in Tokyo, where WBC bantamweight titleholder Alexandro Santiago (28-3-5, 14 KOs), 27, of Mexico, who outpointed Nonito Donaire in a major upset to win the vacant title in July, will make a high-risk first defense against former WBO flyweight and junior bantamweight titlist Junto Nakatani (26-0, 19 KOs), 25, a Japanese southpaw.
Nakatani recently vacated his title at junior bantamweight after one defense to move up in weight to seek a belt in a third division. He won the vacant junior bantamweight title in May in Las Vegas on the Devin Haney-Vasiliy Lomachenko undercard when he scored a massive 12th-round knockout of the year contender against Andrew Moloney to finish off a one-sided beating.
Also on the card:
WBA bantamweight titlist Takuma Inoue (18-1, 4 KOs), 27, of Japan, who is the younger brother of Naoya Inoue, will make his first defense against former junior bantamweight titlist Jerwin Ancajas (34-3-2, 23 KOs), 31, a Filipino southpaw. The bout was originally set for Nov. 15 but postponed when Inoue suffered a rib injury.
Kosei Tanaka (19-1, 11 KOs), 28, of Japan, who has won world titles at strawweight, junior flyweight and flyweight, will go for a belt in a fourth division versus Mexico’s Christian Bacasegua (22-4-2, 9 KOs), 26, when they meet for the vacant WBO junior bantamweight title Nakatani vacated. It will be Tanaka’s second shot at the belt. He has won four bouts in a row since Kazuto Ioka stopped him in the eighth round challenging for the same title in December 2020.
Espinoza, Calderon honored
Mexico’s Rafael Espinoza received his WBO featherweight title belt at a ceremony in Corozal, Puerto Rico, where the WBO is based, and newly elected International Boxing Hall of Famer Ivan Calderon, a former strawweight and junior flyweight champion, and one of Puerto Rico’s best, was on hand to hand the belt to Espinoza.
The unheralded Espinoza, an anonymous 10-year pro getting the opportunity of a lifetime, scored a huge upset in a dramatic majority decision victory over Robeisy Ramirez to win the title this past Saturday in the Top Rank Boxing on ESPN main event in Pembroke Pines, Florida.
Espinoza (24-0, 20 KOs), 29, who suffered a hard knockdown and was nearly stopped in the fifth round, rallied. He sealed the 115-111, 114-112, 113-113 win by dropping Ramirez in the final 30 seconds of the fight.
“I hope I get to also achieve that someday, congratulations,” Espinoza said to Calderon about his Hall of Fame election. “It’s an honor to be here. The same thing I feel now is the same thing I felt in the fight. I’m thankful to the WBO for all this. I’ll keep training and keep giving it my all to give good fights like this one and make them memorable for everyone.”
Then Espinoza handed Calderon a plaque commemorating his Hall of Fame election.
“One day, I said I wanted to be champion and I never thought about being a Hall of Famer, thinking about the negative things people said about me because of my height, weight, because I had no punching power, but my sacrifices changed everything,” said Calderon, who will be inducted with the class of 2024 on June in Canastota, New York.
Quick hits
Weights from Orlando, Florida, for the Most Valuable Promotions card Friday night on DAZN: Jake Paul 199.4 pounds, Andre August 198.6; Shadasia Green 167.2, Franchon Crews-Dezurn 167.6 (for vacant WBC women’s super middleweight title); Yoenis Tellez 153.6, Livan Navarro 153.8; Lorenzo Medina 244.4, Joshua Temple 221.8; Elijah Flores 149, Javier Mayoral 148; Alexander Gueche 116.4, Clayton Ward 116.6; Zachary Randolph 186.8, Michael Manna 191.
The fight between WBC flyweight titlist Julio Cesar Martinez (20-2, 15 KOs), 28, of Mexico, and Angelino Cordova (18-0-1, 12 KOs), 28, of Venezuela, which was scheduled as the second bout of the four-fight Showtime finale on Saturday night at The Armory in Minneapolis, was postponed on Thursday. According to the announcement made by PBC and Showtime, “Martinez experienced visa issues trying to enter the country, forcing the bout to be rescheduled for next year.” There is no set date yet.
Featherweight Jose “Tito” Sanchez (12-0, 7 KOs), 24, of Cathedral City, California, outslugged Walter Santibanes (12-3, 2 KOs), 33, of Phoenix, in a rousing battle Thursday night to close Golden Boy’s 2023 schedule in the main event of the “Fight Night” card on DAZN at Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, California. Sanchez won 99-91, 99-91 and 98-92, pounding his way to victory by landing 275 of a whopping 1,087 punches (25 percent), according to CompuBox. Santibanes landed 98 of 557 punches (18 percent) as Sanchez spent long stretches right in front of him but made him miss. “This was a real war,” Sanchez said. “The crowd’s cheers kept me going through the tough times, and with them having my back, I was able to push through and get the victory. My right middle knuckle was severely injured in the third round, but I made it 10 rounds with the Coachella Valley’s support.”
Middleweight up-and-comer Hamzah Sheeraz (18-0, 14 KOs), 24, of England, and former world title challenger and countryman Liam Williams (25-4-1, 20 KOs), 31, will meet on Feb. 10 (TNT Sports in U.K.) at the Copper Box Arena in London, Queensberry Promotions announced. The bout was initially due to take place Dec. 2 but postponed when Sheeraz suffered a perforated eardrum during training. Williams has won two fights in a row since back-to-back decision losses to Demetrius Andrade in a 2021 WBO middleweight title challenge and Chris Eubank Jr. in 2022.
Show and tell
For most of three-division champion Terence Crawford’s time with Top Rank, it was hard for the company to find top opponents for him to fight once he rose to welterweight because most of them were with PBC and fighting on Showtime or Fox. That left Crawford often at odds with Top Rank because he was stuck fighting good but regular opponents. One such case was when he made his third title defense against “Mean Machine” Egidijus Kavaliauskas, a then-undefeated contender but big underdog. In the end, Crawford knocked him down in the seventh round and twice in the ninth round for the knockout, but Kavaliauskas actually gave Crawford one of his toughest fights before he closed the show.
He troubled Crawford at times, including in the third round when he landed a right hand that forced Crawford to grab him. Later in the round, Kavaliauskas fired several more shots and caught Crawford, who went down to a knee. Referee Ricky Gonzalez ruled it a slip. I always thought it should have been a knockdown. Kavaliauskas knocked Crawford off balance in fourth round and landed several more clean shots to raise swelling around his right eye. He also landed big shots in the seventh round before Crawford took over.
The more interesting fight going into the show at New York’s Madison Square Garden was the co-feature, when reigning prospect of the year Teofimo Lopez got a shot at IBF lightweight titlist Richard Commey, a good puncher with a lot of experience. But Lopez lived up to his considerable hype and annihilated Commey via second-round knockout to impressively win his first world title. The card, which I covered at ringside, took place on Dec. 14, 2019 — four years ago on Thursday. Here is a scarce thin cardboard site poster in my collection.
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Photos: Morrell-Agbeko, Colbert-Valenzuela, Guerrero-Berto: Amanda Westcott/Showtime; Lopez: Mikey Williams/Top Rank; Teraji: Naoki Fukuda; Espinoza: V. Planas/WBO; Paul-August: Esther Lin/Most Valuable Promotions
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These are the fights Teo doesn't show up. The ones that appear lopsided. How did ortiz even get ranked in the top 15 at 140? I thought every sanctioning org requires a top 15 ranking for voluntary defenses.... I'm probably in minority here, but I'll take Teo over haney. If over the hill Linares can time Haney on the way in not once but twice and buzz him, Teo can floor him. Teo has great timing, awkward angles and still decent pop at 140.
Dan, I humbly suggest you write an article on how Jose Ramirez continues to turn down fights where he’ll be generously compensated because he knows he will loose. He’s an accomplished fighter but the last 3-4 years he’s turned chickenshit and has had excuse after excuse. I hope his free agency collapses on him, as he doesn’t deserve big fights after turning down one after the other.