Indholdsfortegnelse for 27 March 2025 i Boxing News

@KOwriting Editor THE best stories are often about reinvention, and few did it better than George Foreman. George’s untimely passing on Friday came without warning. It barely felt possible. Foreman always seemed so ‘robust’, to quote Graham Houston, who remembers George in a six-page tribute in this issue. Editor Like middleweight great Marvin Hagler, who passed in similar sudden circumstances four years earlier, Foreman seemed forged from a rare, indestructible iron. He looked like he could walk through walls and, at his fighting peak, he was a near-unstoppable force of nature during heavyweight boxing’s golden era. A weekend of loss in boxing In his youth, Foreman was blessed with wrecking-ball fists and you’d have backed him in a firefight against anyone. One of the most stirring memories in boxing history…

THEY said he was chasing an impossible dream when George Foreman started a comeback after being inactive for 10 years. But he proved the critics wrong, knocking out Michael Moorer in an upset to become world heavyweight champion for the second time, at the age of 45. Foreman, who passed away peacefully at his home in Texas on Friday, aged 76, was one of the heavyweight history’s biggest hitters, with 68 KOs in his 76-5 record. The Moorer win was a feelgood moment, with Foreman the underdog but the sentimental favourite. This was in wide contrast to the perception of Foreman as a sullen, brooding bully when he faced Muhammad Ali in the Rumble In The Jungle 20 years prior. You could even say there were three versions of Foreman. There…

AS I sit in tears on a Saturday morning after hearing 'Big George' has gone, I have to pay tribute. Rarely does a man have such an impact in and outside of the ring and rarely does a life have such richness and contrasts. He started off as a monster and as a heavyweight champion before my time who put the fear of god into his opponents. He was the mountain that the great Muhammad Ali had to climb in his magnificent second act when he reclaimed the title. After watching the great documentary Champions Forever, about Ali, George, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes and Ken Norton, I started to see George Foreman as a different person; a humble person who admitted his fear, his flaws and his challenges in life.…

I DO FIGHTING scenes, car smashes, jumping through windows, getting thrown into lakes, taking falls, ordinary stuff like that,” says Donovan Boucher. It hardly sounds like “ordinary stuff”, especially for a man in his 60s who you’d think would rather be relaxing after a long fighting career that included two of the biggest events in Canadian and British boxing history. But then the life of any boxer is a life less ordinary, and perhaps movie stunt work is a way for Boucher to replicate the buzz that most fighters miss once they quit the ring. “Yes, exactly – but you don’t get hit!” says the man who has most notably worked on The Day After Tomorrow, Cinderella Man, Four Brothers, an X-Men sequel and the remake of Assault On Precinct…

Nip and tuck Francis wins the fight, and title, by just one point, writes Andy Whittle GREENWICH MARCH 22 WHOLE SHOW THE first of three 10-round contests at Indigo at The O2 saw a vacant Southern Area welterweight title clash between Daniel Francis (10-0, 2 KOs, 146lbs) of Norwich and Luton’s Oliver Duffy (7-1, 1 KO 146lbs) prove a real nip-and-tuck cracker. No real surprise that both men should raise their arms at the conclusion, but it was Francis who edged it, 96-95, on the card of referee Kieran McCann. Billy Pickles (17-1, 1 KO, 139lbs) secured a unanimous win over Calne southpaw Connor Gray (13-1, 140lbs) but, thanks to an improved late showing from the previously unbeaten Wiltshire man, there wasn’t much separating the pair at the finish; judges…

FINCHLEY have another big super-heavyweight night on Saturday when clubmates Jesse Olupitan and Anthony Ibekwe meet in the London final of the National Amateur Championships. The bout goes ahead at The Royal National Hotel. Olupitan says he has sparred “countless” rounds with Ibekwe – but doesn’t take much from that. He told Boxing News he expects Ibekwe will be “a different animal” when they fight. “Both of us are going to be looking to hurt and harm,” he said. Olupitan was beaten on a split by Alex Williams in last year’s semi-finals and returned with a one-punch knockout in Albania. The skilled southpaw had been ruled out by niggling injuries since winning the Haringey Box Cup last June. Olupitan represented London in Albania and wiped out Meti Hoda with a…

Boxing historian AT the start of 1972, Joe Bugner and Danny McAlinden were the two leading heavyweight challengers in Britain. Bugner, who I regard as one of the best heavyweights produced in this country since the War, was prone to serious lapses in bouts that he was expected to win. After beating Henry Cooper in 1971, for instance, he then lost his hard-won British heavyweight title in his first defence, to Jack Bodell, a man he was expected to beat quite easily. Later that year he was matched against an up-and-coming American, Larry Middleton, and after being knocked down in the 10th and last round, Joe lost the decision. When he was good, Bugner was really good, but it was contests like these that let him down. Middleton then took…

Mar 28 PAT BROWN vs FEDERICO JAVIER GRANDONE Planet Ice, Altrincham DAZN Reece Farnhill vs Mark Dickinson Cameron Vuong vs Jordan Flynn Mar 29 MIKAELA MAYER vs SANDY RYAN II BleauLive Theater, Fontainebleau, Las Vegas SKY SPORTS/ESPN (WBO welterweight title) Brian Norman vs Derrieck Cuevas (WBO welterweight title) Bruce Carrington vs Jose Enrique Vivas ANGEL AYALA LARDIZABAL vs MASIMICHI YABUKI Aichi Sky Expo, Tokoname, Japan (IBF flyweight title) WILLIAM ZEPEDA vs TEVIN FARMER II Cancun, Mexico DAZN Yokasta Valle vs Marlen Esparza Mar 30 MELVIN JERUSALEM vs YUDAI SHIGEOKA II Aichi Sky Expo, Tokoname, Japan (WBC strawweight title) Apr 04 DANIEL BLENDA DOS SANTOS vs SHAKAN PITTERS York Hall, Bethnal Green DAZN (European light-heavyweight title) Emma Dolan vs Lauren Parker (British and Commonwealth super-flyweight titles) Apr 05 JOE JOYCE vs FILIP HRGOVIC Co-op Live, Manchester DAZN David…

@BigDaddyBunce Voice of boxing ANDY LEE was hit with the last of the winter sun as he sat in a Dublin home and talked about detail in boxing. Lee is a kid from Bow in London, an Olympian, a world champion, a trainer of champions and a product of Manny Steward’s Kronk gym in Detroit. Steward is the king of boxing detail. Voice of boxing “There is a lot more to training a fighter than just teaching a guy how to box,” said Steward. It sounds obvious, but it is not – it takes a lot of time and a lot of trust. Lee was under Steward’s care for a long, long time and, at the end, Steward was under Lee’s care. It was a fine boxing circle. Lee remembers…

HALL-OF-FAME trainer Jesse Reid is coming to London next month to be with the fighter he believes will be his 32nd world champion. The 82-year-old has Orlando Canizales, Hector Camacho and Johnny Tapia, among others, on his coaching CV and started working with Irish brothers Aaron and Stephen McKenna when they were in Las Vegas last year. Reid says he’s planning his first trip to the UK for more than three decades when Aaron faces Liam Smith on the Chris Eubank Jr-Conor Benn undercard at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on April 26, and he could be in the Irishman’s corner. Reid, who trains the brothers alongside their father Fergal, tells Boxing News: “My wife and I are definitely coming to London. “I want to come and be involved. I’m pretty sure I…

BY 1900, the United States had started to dominate world of professional boxing, and one only has to look at the calibre of fighters that it was producing to see why. Stanley Ketchel, Kid McCoy, Terry McGovern, Abe Attell, Ad Wolgast, George Dixon, Joe Gans, Battling Nelson, Sam Langford, James J Corbett and Jim Jeffries would be standout fighters in any era, and to aspire to being a world champion, it was men like these that the British lads had to beat. One Englishman who made a good fist of it was Owen Moran [pictured inset] of Birmingham. This terrific little fighter first went out to the States in 1905 shortly after his 20-round points victory over Digger Stanley in a contest which gave him wide recognition as the best…

EBA correspondent HE current Punch Lines, Essex EBA’s monthly newsletter, includes full-page photos of two British champions I remember well – Jimmy Revie (featherweight) and Ralph Charles (welter). The first time I saw them was at the Albert Hall in February 1968. Revie, on 13 straight wins (all inside schedule), was taking on Jimmy Anderson in the first-ever British title bout at 130lbs. This always promised to be a great battle, and it was – and Anderson prevailed, halting Revie in nine rounds. That gave manager Terry Lawless his first British champion – and an hour later he had two, Charles having outscored defending titleholder Johnny Cooke of Bootle. (The latter, who died last year aged 89, was for many years a keen member of the Merseyside Former Boxers’ Association.)…