Every Last Fucking Thing You Need To Know About Boxing Going Into Tonight... Plus A Combat Sports AFTP (NSFW... but nobody works on Labor Day Saturday)
GOOD MORNING!… I am going to try and drop 2,000 words tailored to make the time go by during a Saturday morning dump.
I know college football Week 1 and the upcoming NFL season kickoff has everyone holding back erections, but I also have a couple of boxing tidbits to get out into the ether.
As always, I am going to sprinkle some smut throughout this blog as a perverted dangling carrot to keep you engaged until the end, starting with the Bella twin with the bigger rack.
The big action in the boxing world is with the lighter weight classes tonight… Specifically with a Lightweight fighter who I consider the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world (Vasiliy Lomachenko)… But let’s refresh the trajectory of the Heavyweight champs real quick just so everyone is up to date going into what should be a busy Fall/Winter in that division.
Looking furthest out, Ruiz/Joshua II is set to take place on December 7th. - The original rumor that the match would take place in the Middle East went over like a dead journalist, but according to Eddie Hearn, that rumor has become a reality, and at last check, it is slated to be held in scenic Diriyah, Saudi Arabia. Diriyah is a desert town on the outskirts of Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyadh, and a new arena will be built specially to host the contest.
A Google image search of Diriyah yields results that remind me a lot of the first Indiana Jones movie, so I can guarantee I will not be in attendance for this event.
Putting aside that this fight will take place in a nation which I believe still beheads homosexuals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia), I think everyone is curious to see whether Ruiz is for real, Joshua is not, or a combo of both, but what truly intrigues the shit out of me is that the WBO recently made Oleksandr Usyk their (the WBO’s) mandatory challenger – Which puts this crazy Ukranian sonofabitch next in line to face the winner of Ruiz/Joshua II, and I have a horse in any race that Usyk runs.
Usyk (16-0, 12 KOs) most recently unified the Cruiserweight division before moving up to the heavies. He was the first boxer in history to hold all four major world championships the (WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO titles) at cruiser, and for those who have never seen him fight before, terms are almost set for him to make his Heavyweight debut versus ex-Glory kickboxing champ Tyrone Spong (13-0, 12 KOs) on Oct. 12 in Chicago (on DAZN). Spong is a nobody that first has to get by another nobody later on tonight in a fight being fought in Mexico, but the eventual Spong/Usyk matchup will still be a worthwhile watch to make sure Olekdsandr’s iron chin and devastating power transfer to a higher weight.
One last thing regarding Saudi Arabia. - Once the Joshua/Ruiz possibility was being bandied about, there was an immediate rumor that Floyd wants to come out of another retirement and fight Manny there for Pacquiao-Mayweather II… A fight nobody wants to see in a place nobody wants to go to.
Moving on, but staying in the heavies. - Lineal Heavyweight champ, Tyson Fury, found another undefeated challenger that nobody has heard of in Oscar Wallin… They are set to meet on September 14th in Vegas. That is the same weekend nobody I am close with celebrates Mexican Independence Day, and the MGM Grand in Vegas only became available for the Fury fight after Canelo was unable to find an opponent… Canelo traditionally locks up that specific venue on that specific September weekend and also on the weekend surrounding Cinco de Mayo.
Aforementioned random cheesecake…
Fury/Wallin is obviously frustrating to fans who want to see more explosive matchups with Fury, but Tyson claims his camp was rebuffed by Jarrell Miller, Kubrat Pulev, and a couple of other “more recognizable “opponents. Plus, Tyson knows safe and semi-lucrative title defenses are the way to go until he can cash the MEGA-CHECK for the tentative Feb 2020 rematch vs Deontay Wilder… The fight everyone wants to see.
I mentioned Kubrat Pulev two sentences ago, and if that name doesn’t ring any bells, here’s a clip of his most controversial hit…
And here’s a closer look at the reporter who he shot-his-shot at…
Her name is Jen Su-She, and I wrote about the incident when it first happened in March…
Moving onto Deontay Wilder. - I’ve said on this medium before he is not the brightest bulb in the box, and I am not sure if he has done this out of nobility or pure stupidity, but he is fighting King Kong Ortiz (31-1 with that loss coming at the hands of Deontay) in November.
The reason I battle between nobility and stupidity is because Luis Ortiz is certainly getting up there in age (40 years old), but he is still a fucking Cuban ANIMAL with knockout potential who came close to a stoppage vs Deontay in the seventh round of their first matchup before Wilder rallied to KO King Kong in Round 10.
I’m being hypocritical for saying Wilder is stupid to schedule this fight when the super-fight rematch is within striking distance and at the same time demand better opponents from Fury, but selfishly I just don’t want the next Ruiz to pop up and fuck-up that rematch before I get to see Wilder/Fury II.
More random cheesecake…
Now onto tonight’s action. - A couple of familiar names like Jeff Horn and Erislandy Lara are scheduled to fight, but my eyes will be on WBA and WBO Lightweight champion Vasiliy Lomachenko (13-1, 10 KOs) who is taking part in only his 15th professional bout when he faces “Cool Hand” Luke Campbell (20-2, 16 KOs) at the O2 Arena in London.
It will be the first time Loma has fought in England and coverage will start on ESPN+ at 5 PM ET.
The vacant WBC Lightweight title will also be at stake, and should he win, Loma plans to target the IBF title (held by Richard Commey) in order to unify the entire division.
“I want to be the greatest fighter in history,” Lomachenko told Barstool Breakfast (me) last year. “I’m the fastest three weight class world champion, and everything I do creates more of my legacy.”
Campbell has a gold medal and is a solid challenger. Only Lomachenko and Richard Commey are generally rated above him at Lightweight. He’s a good technical fighter that provides an interesting challenge, but Loma is just too goddamned good, and Vegas certainly agrees (Loma -1800).
This bullshit GIF below is a perfect example of Loma’s abilities… 3 lightning-quick and laser-accurate lefts to set up a right versus Crolla…
Left jab, body shot, uppercut to right hook in less than 2 seconds is just too tough to fucking defend… And I should know.
If Vasiliy unifies the entire lightweight division, he could very well retire. Lomachenko has maintained that he has no desire to step up AGAIN to fight at Junior-Welterweight, and even though I like heavily-favored Loma in a KO tonight, I would argue that he’s even too small for the current weight class that he is trying to unify… I am much comfier watching him at Junior-Lightweight, which is where we could potentially see an explosive fight between Loma and that cocky “mini-Mike Tyson“, Gervonta Davis.
I normally don’t recommend people pay for fights, but I love the 5 PM start for this Loma card, and we get a decent Heavyweight fight on the undercard as Hughie Fury looks to emulate some of cousin Tyson Fury’s success when he takes on longtime top 10 Heavyweight Alexander Povetkin… So maybe ESPN+ is worth some consideration today if you don’t subscribe already.
Combat AFTP - I alluded briefly to football-induced-erections at the start of the blog, but they pale in comparison to the amount of blood flow that rushed into nerd’s laps everywhere last week when Disney dropped a trailer for their upcoming series called The Mandalorian.
Here it is again for those of you who kissed a girl before the age of 30…
Count me in as one of the millions of other geeks who will watch this thing as soon as it drops in November.
Outside of my nostalgic love for Star Wars, I was especially excited to see a young lady I have admired for years get a chunky role in this undoubtedly lucrative Disney vehicle.
Gina Carrano is cast as Cara Dune “a former Rebel Shock Trooper” (whatever the fuck that means), and I am glad to see her continue to get even minor roles in big studio productions while maintaining a steady flow of straight-to-video action movies that most of you have never heard of…Since 2015 she starred in Heist, In The Blood, Extraction, Kickboxer: Vengeance (with JCVD), Scorched Earth, and the upcoming Daughter of the Wolf.
If anyone still reading has seen any of those movies, I’d be impressed, and the only person who has watched all of them is arguably Gina Carrano.
Here’s the skinny on Gina:
– She was born in Dallas, TX on April 16, 1982.
– Her dad was a third-string QB for the Cowboys who got a Super Bowl ring while holding a clipboard and fetching water for Roger Staubach in 1978.
– Gina majored in psychology at UNLV.
– She had a cameo appearance in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Volume 1, as a witness at the wedding of The Bride.
– She played a character named “Angel Dust” in the first Deadpool movie.
– In April 2012, she became the first recipient of ActionFest’s Chuck Norris (Best Female Action Star) Award, given to the female action star of the year.
– Her MMA career spanned from 2006-2009 and she retired with a record of 7-1… Her only loss coming at the unattractive manly hands of Chris Cyborg.
– In May 2009, Carano was ranked no. 16 in Maxim’s Hot 100 list.
Now, I think we all know I am a big GIF guy, and she has 2 iconic GIFs on her resumé.
The first was a simple bottom lip bite in the crowd of an MMA fight that was very simple yet very sexy…
And the second was actually a series of GIFs from a weigh-in that revolutionized female combat sports weigh-ins…
Before this watershed event, weigh-in attendants usually passed the time looking for Adam’s apples on female combatants, but Gina was the first to make the audience concentrate on their own penises, not the possible remnants of post-op penises on the ladies weighing in.
Only 37 years old, but I think she’s got enough in her past to clearly make her an AFTP which I am more than happy to do today without objectifying her too much.
Enjoy the fights… Enjoy the weekend… Take a report.
-Large
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I sit down with arguably the nicest guy at Barstool on this week’s ExtraLarge. Clem and I talk about the Mets and Italian meats on BarstoolGOLD…