By William Trillo
From The United States to The United Kingdom, it was a big boxing weekend that left us with more than a few topics to discuss, both inside and outside the ring. In fact, there were so many trinkets I just don’t know where to begin. So, without further Doo Doo, here we go;
Before I could get to my media seat ringside at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles, photos on Twitter of Oscar De La Hoya posing with Terrance Crawford were making the rounds amongst my peers. Speculation and innuendo were all we had to go with, but everyone to a man knew…considering the state of the business of boxing and all the Horse Hockey that comes with it, this was gonna be good.
In the moments prior to the main event featuring Alexis Rocha vs. George Ashie, De La Hoya stated that he had spoken with Terrance Crawford. The gist of the interview was, if Rocha did well against Ashie a title shot versus Crawford would be on the table.
OK boxing fans, I will leave this up to you…did Rocha do well? Coming off that performance should he now get the Crawford title fight?
And what about the undefeated Vergil Ortiz? Golden Boy Brass can spare me the canned answer that “Vergil is already set to fight Eimantas Stanionis”. A bout like that could be scrapped in the blink of an eye, it happens all the time.
If anyone in the Golden Boy stable deserves a fight with Crawford, it’s Ortiz. Taking that one step further, if anyone in the Golden Boy stable has a sniff of a chance to defeat Crawford, it’s Ortiz. Period.
Circling back to Rocha, that KO was impressive, but the performance was not. Taking into consideration the amount of leather that hit Lex in the face, I would at best grade his night a B-. A guy the likes of Bud Crawford would make Mincemeat out of Rocha if he can’t do better than that.
On the topic of Rocha vs. Crawford, one of the most respected and knowledgeable boxing scribes on the planet said, “Look, there is no one at 147 pounds that can beat Terrance Crawford right now. Rocha might as well fight him next. Why not?”
George Ashie wasn’t even a blip on the radar screen before Saturday night. After a tough and gutsy performance against Rocha he has now made himself a known and formidable presence. Hopefully for Ashie, he will earn a few more decent paychecks for himself after his eye catching performance.
Venturing across The Pond, that Light Heavyweight title fight between Artur Beterbiev vs. Anthony Yarde was better than I expected. Yarde did well hanging in there for as long as he did and should be commended. But truth be told, Artur Beterbiev is a fully loaded freight train running downhill without any brakes. If you don’t stop him right away, he is going to get a full head of steam and punish you severely. It’s hard to argue a record of 19-0 with 19 Knockouts.
Speaking of Beterbiev vs Yarde, did you happen to see the scorecards at the time of the stoppage? Are you sitting down? The judges had Yarde ahead on two of the three scorecards. Two judges had Yarde winning with scores of 68-65 and 67-66, while one judge had it 67-66 for Beterbiev. Talk about some Home Cooking! Fighting in Wembley Stadium, Yarde, who hails from London, was on his way to an undeserved serving of Yorkshire Pudding had the fight gone the distance. But as we know, Artur has yet to let the judges come into play when he is doing his work in the ring.
On a side note to that fight, thank goodness for streaming on the internet and ESPN+. Without that I would not have been able to watch that fight live as I was just arriving at my duties in Los Angeles. Glad I was able to check it out.
That being said, I wish ESPN+ would give us the option of watching the fight without having to listen to the announcers. Excuse me for thinking out loud but, “Woooooo”, “Ooooooh” and WooooHoooo”, are neither blow by blow or commentary. It’s a screaming and somewhat irritating former fighter turned fan who just happens to have a microphone in front of his Pie Hole.
I really wish either one of the streaming networks, ESPN+ or DAZN, would consider giving fans the option to get the live feed, with all the sounds from the arena but without the droning on of the now umpteen announcers that are getting shoved into our living rooms. Trust me on this, I think the networks would be surprised to find out how many fans would pull the plug on the Gum Bumpers.
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