Podcast: Anniversary celebration of Rocky III, best boxing movie ever

Plus: Recapping Lopez-Conlan, Lara-Wood 2, Okolie-Billam-Smith, Rocha-Young; news items; memories of Johnny Tapia 11 years after his death

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There were four notable cards Saturday, the Matchroom/DAZN card headlined by the Mauricio Lara-Leigh Wood WBA featherweight title rematch; the Top Rank/ESPN+ show topped by Luis Alberto Lopez’s IBF featherweight defense against Michael Conlan; the Boxxer card headlined by the Lawrence Okolie-Chris Billam-Smith WBO cruiserweight title bout; and the Golden Boy/DAZN card headlined by welterweight contender Alexis Rocha versus Anthony Young. We discussed and recapped all of them as well as some of the undercard bouts. We also covered a couple of news items and discussed a pair of anniversaries: the death of the great Johnny Tapia and the opening of the greatest boxing movie of all time, Rocky III.

Here’s what we discussed on this episode (in order):

• Trying to watch three of the shows at the same time.

• Recapping Lopez’s one-sided fifth-round knockout of Conlan, including what made Lopez so effective; what went wrong for Conlan; and where does each of them go from here?

• Recapping Wood avenging his KO loss to Lara to regain his old title, which was vacant because Lara failed to make weight, including the adjustments Wood made from the first fight three months ago and what was the deal with Lara’s less-than-stellar effort?

• Recapping wins by junior welterweight contender Jack Catterall and WBA women’s junior middleweight titlist Terri Harper on the undercard.

• Recapping the wild fight and wacky scoring in Billam-Smith’s upset decision over Okolie to take his cruiserweight title.

• Recapping Rocha’s impressive knockout of Young to remain the mandatory challenger for Terence Crawford and Oscar Collazo’s stoppage of Melvin Jerusalem to win the WBO strawweight title and set the record for the fewest fights needed (7) for a Puerto Rican to win a world title.

• Matchroom Boxing and top-notch super middleweight prospect Diego Pacheco extending their deal and details on his first fight of the new deal being scheduled.

• Heavyweight champion Tyson Fury making noise again about trying to make a summer fight with Anthony Joshua.

• Memories of the legendary Tapia on the 11th anniversary of his untimely death.

• Celebrating the 41st anniversary of the opening of Rocky III and why it’s the best movie in the Rocky franchise and the best boxing movie ever. I’ll die on that hill!

Please give it a listen! Also: rate, review, subscribe and enjoy!

We will be bringing you the weekend recap each Monday. Let me know what you think of the podcast by leaving your comments.

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