By William Trillo
Photo: Chris Suchánek
The Cinco De Mayo fight weekend that boxing fans have come to know and love was saved by Naoya “The Monster” Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs) and Ramon Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs), who were headlining the Main Event inside the Las Vegas T-Mobile Arena on the Top Rank promoted card on Sunday night.
With all of Inoue’s 122-pound belts on the line, these two went at in with non-stop action. Inoue was dropped by a left hook in round two, but got back up on his feet, turned up the heat, and then rallied to stop Cardenas via eighth round TKO.
The fight was a boxing fans dream, and best of all it wasn’t PPV. Longtime boxing enthusiast, Dave from Placentia, said it perfectly, “Take note dumb PPV Boxing shows. I just watched a great fight with a future Hall of Famer on ESPN regular TV.”
No doubt Dave was firing a blast at the PPV crap that transpired this weekend in New Yorks Time Square on Friday night and in Saudi Arabia on Saturday. And if he wasn’t taking aim…allow me.
First of all, whose idea was it promote Cinco de Mayo fights on the streets on New York or the dunes of Saudi Arabia instead of its home of Las Vegas, Nevada? Certainly not anyone with respect for one of boxing’s time-honored traditions. That was your first mistake, both of those cards were doomed from the onset.
Next, someone is paying these fighters an inordinate amount of jack, and in doing so you put out their competitive fire. What’s their motivation?
All William Scull had to do is run around the ring for twelve rounds, collect a huge paycheck, go back to Cuba and never be seen again.
All Canelo had to do was cut off the ring and…oh…umm…I forgot, Canelo has been paid enough money for three lifetimes, why would he do anything more than go through the motions? I mean, what’s the point, where’s the motivation? Right Saul?
Moving on, both Ryan Garcia and Devin Haney need to go away, and I mean forever. Ryan really doesn’t want to fight and looking over the punchstats of the Haney fight…neither does he. But trust me, they both want some more of that Turki money and are bound to beg for more in the not-too-distant future.
Shelling out this kind of money has turned most of today’s so-called Super Stars into entitled brats.
Don’t take my word for it. Just check out these unsolicited texts I got from boxing fans during Friday and Saturday nights shows;
“These are the amazing undisputed champions of the day? They get paid millions and do nothing. Boxing makes me sick now!”
“This is horrible. This whole thing is very awkward.”
“Over-hyped PPV nonsense.”
To sum things up, your shows on Friday and Saturday night sucked and the fans are very displeased.
Thank goodness Bob Arum’s Top Rank Promotions put on a fight worthy of the Mexican holiday. Otherwise, this weekend would have gone down as one of the worst Cinco De Mayo boxing events ever.
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