Notebook: Triller moves Lopez-Kambosos to avoid Mayweather exhibition
Saunders details injuries; Top Rank site deal; Quick hits
Unified lightweight world champion Teofimo Lopez’s mandatory title defense against George Kambosos is on the move, as expected.
The fight was originally scheduled to headline a pay-per-view on June 5 in Miami, but when Floyd Mayweather plopped his pay-per-view exhibition with Logan Paul on June 6, also in Miami, Triller Fight Club decided to get out of the way.
On Tuesday, Triller made the poorly kept secret official, announcing that Lopez-Kambosos will headline a pay-per-view card on June 19 at loanDepot Park, home of the MLB’s Miami Marlins.
The card will be available as a linear television pay-per-view card on cable and satellite services and via pay-per-view on FITE for those who want to stream the show. FITE was recently purchased by TrillerNet, the parent company of Triller Fight Club.
On April 16, the day before Triller put on the Jake Paul-Ben Askren PPV event, it held a press conference to announce Lopez-Kambosos and that a heavyweight exhibition between former four-time heavyweight titlist Evander Holyfield and Kevin McBride, who retired Mike Tyson in 2005, would serve as the co-feature. However, Holyfield-McBride is no longer on the Lopez-Kambosos card and apparently headed to another event.
Triller did announce additional undercard fights for the PPV:
Unified women’s super middleweight world titlist Franchon Crews Dezurn (7-1, 2 KOs), 33, of Baltimore, will meet Elin Cederroos (8-0, 4 KOs), 36, of Sweden, who holds the other two super middleweight belts, for the undisputed crown.
Michael Hunter (19-1-1, 13 KOs), 32, of Las Vegas, and Mike Wilson (21-1, 10 KOs), 38, of Medford, Oregon, will meet in a WBA sanctioned-heavyweight title eliminator, even though Wilson is a career cruiserweight with zero wins of note and will have been off for nearly two years. Hunter took the fight after withdrawing from an IBF title eliminator against rising contender Filip Hrgovic (12-0, 10 KOs). Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn won the purse bid for $606,666, of which Hunter was entitled to 60 percent (363,999.60), but Hunter decided he didn’t like the deal.
Andy Vences (23-2-1, 12 KOs), 29, of San Jose, California, and Ireland’s Jono Carroll (19-2-1, 5 KOs), 29, will meet in a 10-round regional junior lightweight title bout.
“We are excited to have Franchon and Elin join a night of boxing that already has one of the most anticipated fights of the year, Lopez and Kambosos, along with a strong undercard that will appeal to true boxing fans,” said Peter Kahn, Triller Fight Club’s chief boxing officer.
Lopez (16-0, 12 KOs), 23, of Brooklyn, New York, will be fighting for the first time since his upset decision win over Vasiliy Lomachenko to unify titles in October when he faces Kambosos (19-0, 10 KOs), 27, of Australia.
Triller surprised many when it unexpectedly won the Lopez-Kambosos purse bid for $6.018 million, a number so big that it beat the two other bids combined — an offer of $3.506 million from Matchroom Boxing, which was bidding in conjunction with DAZN and Kambosos promoter Lou DiBella, and $2.315 million offered by Top Rank, Lopez’s promoter.
Saunders speaks
Former super middleweight world titlist Billy Joe Saunders made his first public comments since Canelo Alvarez stopped him at the end of the eighth round on Saturday night at AT&T Stadium, where a United States indoor boxing record crowd announced at 73,126 turned out to cheer wildly for Alvarez on Cinco de Mayo weekend.
Alvarez inflicted injuries with a clean right uppercut to a crouching Saunders’ face during the eighth round of their three-belt title unification fight. After the round, Saunders’ trainer Mark Tibbs threw in the towel because of the severity of the damage around Saunders’ right eye. Saunders (30-1, 14 KOs), a 31-year-old southpaw from England, was taken to the hospital after the fight and had surgery on Sunday.
Saunders later wrote on social media, “Thanks everyone for (messages). Broken eye socket and broken cheek bone in 3 places. Operation (Sunday) all went well. You win some and lose some. Didn’t feel out of my league but got caught with a good shot and couldn’t see. … Thank you all who watched. I’ll be back. God bless you all.”
At the time of the stoppage, Alvarez (56-1-2, 38 KOs), 30, of Mexico, was ahead on all three scorecard, 78-74, 78-74 and 77-75.
Top Rank-Virgin Hotels deal
Top Rank and Virgin Hotels Las Vegas — the newly refurbished former Hard Rock Hotel & Casino — announced a deal under which Top Rank’s next four ESPN cards will take place in the hotel’s theater with spectators permitted.
It begins with the show on May 22 (ESPN, ESPN Deportes, ESPN+, 8:30 p.m. ET) headlined by the undisputed junior welterweight world championship fight between fellow unified titleholders Jose Ramirez and Scotland’s Josh Taylor.
On June 12 (ESPN, ESPN Deportes, ESPN+, 10 p.m. ET) it will be former featherweight titlist Shakur Stevenson (15-0, 8 KOs) taking on Namibia’s Jeremiah Nakathila (21-1, 17 KOs) for the vacant WBO interim junior lightweight title.
A June 19 (ESPN, ESPN Deportes, ESPN+, 10 p.m. ET) card will be topped by Japanese pound-for-pound star Naoya “Monster” Inoue (20-0, 17 KOs) defending his unified bantamweight title against Filipino mandatory challenger Michael Dasmarinas (30-2-1, 20 KOs).
The four-fight run concludes June 26 (ESPN+, 10 p.m. ET) with the return of former three-division world champion Vasiliy Lomachenko (14-2, 10 KOs), of Ukraine, in his first fight since losing his unified lightweight belts to Teofimo Lopez in October and undergoing subsequent shoulder surgery, against Japan’s Masayoshi Nakatani (19-1, 13 KOs) in a 12-round lightweight bout.
“Top Rank is honored to debut boxing at the beautiful new Virgin Hotels Las Vegas with many of the sport’s biggest stars in sensational fights,” Top Rank chairman Bob Arum said. “We begin May 22 with a genuine super fight, a precursor for the great action to come in June.”
Ramirez-Taylor undercard
Top Rank has announced its lineup of bouts for the Jose Ramirez-Josh Taylor undisputed junior welterweight title undercard on May 22 (8:30 p.m. ET main card on ESPN/ESPN Deportes/ESPN+, prelims on ESPN+ at 5:15 p.m.) at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.
Besides the main event, the main card will include junior welterweight Jose Zepeda (33-2, 26 KOs), of La Puente, California, in a versus Philadelphia’s “Hammerin” Hank Lundy (31-8-1, 14 KOs) in the 10-rounder co-feature and welterweight prospect Elvis Rodriguez (11-0-1, 10 KOs), of the Dominican Republic, versus Chicago’s Kenneth Sims Jr. (15-2-1, 5 KOs) in the eight-round opener.
Two eight-round featherweight bouts highlight the preliminary action with Mexico’s Jose Enrique Vivas (20-1, 11 KOs) against the Robert Garcia-trained Louie Coria (12-4, 7 KOs), of Moreno Valley, California, and two-time Cuban Olympic gold medalist Robeisy Ramirez (6-1, 4 KOs) faces Brownsville, Texas’ Juan Tapia (10-3, 3 KOs).
Three other fights round out the card: junior lightweight Andres Cortes (13-0, 7 KOs), of Las Vegas, against Eduardo Garza (15-3-1, 8 KOs), of Mission, Texas, in an eight-rounder; lightweight Raymond Muratalla (11-0, 9 KOs), of Fontana, California, versus Jose Gallegos (20-10, 15 KOs), of Bakersfield, California, in an eight-rounder; and Milwaukee middleweight Javier Martinez (3-0, 1 KO) versus Calvin Metcalf (10-5-1, 3 KOs), of Kansas City, Missouri, in a six-rounder.
Quick hits
Former lightweight contender Felix Verdejo, 27, appearing via video conference at a court hearing in Puerto Rico on Tuesday, entered a not guilty plea in the case in which he is charged with murdering his 27-year-old pregnant mistress Keishla Marlen Rodriguez. He also pleaded not guilty to additional charges of carjacking resulting in death, kidnapping resulting in death and killing an unborn child. He faces life in prison and the case is eligible as a death penalty case. He and an accomplice are accused of punching Rodriguez, drugging her, trying her feet and arms with wire, tying a her to a cinder block and throwing her off a bridge. Verdejo is also accused of shooting at her body as it fell to the water, where he body was found on May 1. Verdejo, who was denied bail, remains jailed in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico until his trial.
Sacramento, California, junior lightweight Xavier Martinez (15-0, 11 KOs), 23, will face replacement opponent Juan Carlos Burgos (34-4-2, 21 KOs), of Mexico, in a 10-rounder that will open Showtime’s tripleheader headlined by the Luis Nery-Brandon Figueroa junior featherweight title bout on Saturday (10 p.m. ET) at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California. Martinez was scheduled to face Abraham Montoya (20-2-1, 14 KOs), 26, of Mexico, but he was forced out about a week ago due to visa issues.
Super middleweight contender Daniel Jacobs (37-3, 30 KOs), a former middleweight titlist, is looking for his next fight and told Brian Custer on his Last Stand Podcast that he is interested in a fight with middleweight titlist Jermall Charlo (31-0, 22 KOs), who defends his title against Juan Macias Montiel on June 19. “That’s one of the fights that I want as far as my legacy fights,” Jacobs said. “I do see that as a big fight, and it’s been brewing for a long time so I don’t see why it can’t happen.”
Show and tell
After the great Felix Trinidad unified welterweight belts with a disputed decision over Oscar De La Hoya, he moved up to junior middleweight, where he fought three times, destroying David Reid to win a title, doing the same to mandatory challenger Mamadou Thiam, and then stopping Fernando Vargas in the 12th round of an epic slugfest to unify titles. That set the stage for Trinidad to move up in weight again to take part in promoter Don King’s Middleweight World Championship Series, a four-man tournament that would produce the undisputed champion. The tournament was essentially created as a vehicle for Trinidad, who was the star attraction. Bernard Hopkins would outpoint Keith Holmes in the first semifinal to unify two belts and then Trinidad would challenge titleholder William Joppy in the other semifinal.
I am often asked about the best atmospheres I have ever been in for a fight. This past Saturday’s Canelo Alvarez-Billy Joe Saunders fight makes my all-time list but there have been few fights I have covered at ringside where there was more crackling electricity than that of Trinidad-Joppy at a wild Madison Square Garden in New York. It was just nuts. The Puerto Rican fans were out in force and I can still hear the air horns, drums and thunderous cheers in my head. It was so crazy that police allowed fans to tailgate on 7th Avenue in front of the Garden hours before the show began. I saw it with my own eyes. In the end, Trinidad delivered a massive beating to Joppy in a fifth-round knockout that sent the fans into rapture as he claimed a title in a second weight class and would move on to face Hopkins in the final. I will never forget Trinidad-Joppy. Ever. The fight was 20 years ago on Wednesday.
Here are three different posters from the fight in my collection. The first is the HBO PPV version, which has always been one of my favorites. The second one is the closed circuit poster. The third is for the Australian broadcast.
Saunders photo: Michelle Farsi/Matchroom Boxing
I agree
Not for nothing, but the Mexican National Anthem is bat shit crazy complicated. It’s a whole musical journey! The young lady who sung it at Canelo Saunders did it well.