Indholdsfortegnelse for 22 May 2025 i Boxing News

LET’S BE clear. I’d rather not see Manny Pacquiao back in the ring in his mid 40s. It would be preferable if Manny left us with the memories of the fighter he once was, when he was storming through the weight divisions; “a typhoon blowing across the Pacific” as HBO’s Larry Merchant once called him. The reality is, though, that Pacquiao wants to box again. And if he passes all the required medical tests, it’s difficult for a commission to deny him a licence. There could be legal issues, for one thing. So, as of now, Pacquiao is set to meet Mario Barrios in a WBC welterweight title fight in Las Vegas on July 19. What muddies the waters here is not so much that Pacquiao is 46 and inactive…

MAIN EVENT UNDERCARD The star ratings indicate how well the writer believes the fighters match up, the fight(s)’ contextual significance, and how good the fight(s) will be WE hear it all the time about a boxer being in a contest that he must win to save his career. Yet that appears to be exactly the case when Josh Taylor meets Ekow Essuman in a 12-round welterweight bout in Glasgow on Saturday. Taylor has lost his past two fights. Teofimo Lopez outpointed him to take Taylor’s WBO 140lbs title, and then Jack Catterall beat him in their rematch. The fight with Lopez was close on two of the judges’ cards. In the Catterall fight, though, Taylor was soundly defeated. And even before these fights, in the first meeting with Catterall, Taylor…

BETHNAL GREEN MAY 17 WHOLE SHOW WARREN Boxing Management and Trinity Entertainment Boxing promoted at York Hall with Deevorn Miller meeting Lee Roberts in the six-round show-closer. Lewisham’s Miller (9-3, 7 KOs, 202lbs) steadily outboxed upright Roberts (1-2, 1 KO, 196lbs 7oz) before turning on the power in round four. A big right cross and left hookhad Edgware’s Roberts lurching alarmingly for referee Sean McAvoy to intervene at 1-57. Micky Burke Jr (8-0, 3 KOs, 163lbs 3oz) from Bexley had his first fight since July 2022 and outpointed Islington’s Jordan Grannum (12-159-5, 160lbs 5oz) 59-55 for ringside scorer Mr McAvoy, while Bernard Oyet refereed. Burke kept his workrate high and could afford to lose the last, when he picked up a nosebleed. A year ago in this same ring Sam King (5-0-1,…

ABERDEEN MAY 10 WHOLE SHOW ANOTHER healthy crowd at the Beach Ballroom bore witness to a series of wide points victories for the home corner, unbeaten local favourite Gregor McPherson (9-0, 1 KO, 137lbs 2oz) leading the way with an 80-72 eight round success against gritty and far more experienced opposition in the shape of Nicaraguan lightweight Eliecer Quezada (24-35-4, 9 KOs, 135½lbs). It was a first outing over eight for the man dubbed ‘Mean Machine’ who, fresh from a training camp in Spain and having come through here with flying colours, will now be looking to push on. Man in the middle was Paisley’s Kevin McIntyre. Aberdeen southpaw and former two-weight Scottish champion Fraser Wilkinson (11-2, 2 KOs, 156½lbs) returned to winning ways, having been halted by Dean Sutherland…

RYAN JONES and Mitchell Asare gave the crowd at Worcester City ABC’s show nine minutes of top quality, non-stop action. Jones and Asare had 120 bouts between them and produced a phonebooth fight at Archdales 73 Club. Jones (Worcester City) outlanded Asare (White Hart Lane) to win unanimously – but what a fight! It was a huge occasion for Jones, a semi-finalist in the NACs at 60kgs last year. He made his debut in Worcester a decade ago – and hadn’t boxed there since. Jones was ruled out of boxing on his club’s show last year, and until five days before the show he wasn’t matched. The 20-year-old says calls were made to around 50 clubs – before Asare accepted the job up at 64kgs. Asare, NAC finalist at 63.5kgs…

WELSH EBA Vice-Chairman and Treasurer Wynford Jones contacted me to say that on Friday, May 2, President Eddie Avoth celebrated his 80th birthday. “This was followed on the next evening,” Wynford said, “by a fabulous party at the Park Hotel in Cardiff. “Eddie had invited me to speak, but sadly, on that afternoon, I went down with a stomach bug and was unable to attend. However, Eddie asked Geraint Thomas, son of Eddie Thomas [Avoth’s manager], to speak in my place and there were lots of stories to tell. “Eddie was thrilled that four Welsh world champions came to help him celebrate, namely Joe Cordina, Lee Selby, Robbie Regan and Joe Calzaghe. “All in all, a well-deserved tribute to a man who remains immensely popular around the country at Ex-Boxer…

LIFE has changed for Terri Harper in the past 12 months. A career saved and history made, Harper is now looking ahead with much glee. The WBO lightweight champion headlines in her home town on Saturday night as he continues a career that, despite amassing three world titles, still has the look of the under-fulfilled. Undefeated German Natalie Zimmermann will be in the opposite corner on a night that will carry high emotions for ‘Belter’. “I have experienced so much in my career, but this is like the cherry on top,” Harper tells Boxing News. “When I heard GBM Sports was doing a show in Doncaster, I just wanted to be on it. The fact that I am headlining makes it really special. I think it is every fighter’s dream…

COMMERCE, CA MAY 17 MAIN EVENT SERHII BOHACHUK continued his march towards a world title shot at the weekend, albeit in an unconvincing display against Mykal Fox at the Commerce Casino. Making the second appearance since his contentious split decision loss to Vergil Ortiz Jr last August, Bohachuk (25-2, 24 KOs, 159½lbs) secured the unanimous decision victory, but didn’t have things his own way against the gangly, defensively minded Fox (24-5, 5 KOs, 154½lbs). With Bohachuk tipping the scales almost 6lbs over the 154lbs limit on Friday, reports would later reveal that the contracted weight for the contest had been moved; first from 154lbs, then to 157lbs and, finally, 160lbs. Whatever the reason, Bohachuk’s performance wasn’t aided by the extra poundage, as the Ukrainian began in sluggish fashion, pushing his…

“IF I GET quiet, you should be afraid, because I’m thinking about how I’m going to cut your body up, you feel me? Man, I’m as real as they come. I’m from the hood. I can’t act any other way.” Growing up in Indianapolis, home to Olympic gold medallist ‘Sugar’ Ray Searles and three-time light-heavyweight champ Marvin Johnson, seven-year-old Lamon Brewster envisioned joining the city’s list of fistic kings. Twenty four years later, he did. On February 10, 2004, he met Wladimir Klitschko for the vacant WBO heavyweight title. The Ukrainian was a big betting favourite. Brewster had other ideas. “Nobody in the heavyweight division could beat Wladimir Klitschko but me, I’m sure of that,” he says of that Las Vegas night. “He’s coordinated, he’s strong, he’s skilled, he has…

IN all his years in boxing, Frankie Gavin says he’s never seen a super-heavyweight quite like Matthew Williams. The 2007 World Champion was in Williams’ corner throughout the National Amateur Championship that culminated in the 20-year-old from Acocks Green outworking Joshua Simms (Freedom). That result means Gavin, 2005 and 2007 ABA lightweight champion and 2006 Commonwealth Games gold medallist, has been in the corner with two National Amateur Champions. He helped mentor Tom Chaney steer Holly Heffron to the 2022 title tle at bantamweight, and Williams became his second NAC champion in April. Gavin has been with Williams for his past nine bouts. Williams has won eight – six by stoppage. “He’s such a humble kid,” said Gavin, who won British and Commonwealth welterweight honours and fought Kell Brook for…

IT WAS obvious Mike Tyson would fall in love with the gym the moment he started to climb the stairs. Tyson was always a simple soul in his boxing tastes, and this was a gym of simple tastes. Not a lot has changed at the gym that Brian Hughes built in Collyhurst, in a part of Manchester that time left behind a few decades ago. Tyson was in town for the now mystical event – “Don’t call it a fight,” urged the promoter, Frank Warren – against Julius Francis at the MEN in January 2000. That is a pivotal fight (sorry, event) in many ways – an odd affair; no world title and it sold over 20,000 tickets immediately. A year later, I sat with Hughes in the gym to…

WHOLE SHOW IT took something extraordinary to dethrone Luis Alberto ‘Venado’ Lopez, the unorthodox IBF featherweight champion whose jolting power and awkward style had dispatched Isaac Lowe, Josh Warrington and Michael Conlan. Angelo Leo, however, tore up the script. On August 10, in his Albuquerque hometown, Leo (25-1, 12 KOs) unleashed a thunderous 10th-round left hook to knock out Lopez, claiming the 126lbs title in a Knockout of the Year contender. “I went in there with a chip on my shoulder to prove everyone wrong,” he told Boxing News in September. Now, the former WBO super-bantamweight titlist faces a different type of test: his first defence, on Saturday, against Tomoki Kameda in Osaka, Japan, on a Kameda Promotions card helmed by the challenger’s brother, Koki. Tomoki (42-4, 23 KOs), a…

Reporters’ star ratings for main events and undercards are based on in-ring entertainment, competitiveness and whether overall expectation was met STRATFORD MAY 17 MAIN EVENT ATMOSPHERE DAVE ALLEN proved that the cover of a book, whether eye-catching or painfully dull, rarely tells the full story. Most would have seen Friday’s weigh-in and immediately given him little chance against Johnny Fisher, the more conventional athlete when it comes to appearances. But while Allen (24-7-2, 19 KOs, 265lbs) may not be carved from stone, his meticulous preparation under the tutelage of Jamie Moore was nonetheless clear to see at the Copper Box Arena. His first encounter with Fisher (13-1, 11 KOs, 245lbs), delivered a highly contentious set of scorecards, distracting most fans from the enthralling spectacle that both combatants orchestrated last December.…

AFTER a fairly slow start, professional boxing had really taken off by the mid-1890s with, as we have seen, well over 500 tournaments per year being reported within the pages of The Sporting Life alone. I have traced between 600 and 850 shows for every year between 1900 and 1908, with the peak being reached in 1902. During this period, the majority of these shows, and the most important of them, tended to take place in London. In 1909, things started to change, and dramatically. The birth of Boxing News that year reflected a sudden surge in the growth of the sport, with 1,230 tournaments taking place in 1909, up nearly 500 on the previous year. Another reflection of the growing interest in the sport was the appearance of the…

REGULAR readers will know that I occasionally like to feature a forgotten British champion as part of this column, and one such fighter is Henry Hall of Sheffield. Hall reigned as British welterweight champion for just over a year, winning his title in November 1948 against that fine Liverpool fighter, Ernie Roderick, and losing it 53 weeks later, on November 15, 1949, to Eddie Thomas of Merthyr, one of the Welsh greats. When Hall turned professional in February 1945, just a couple of months before the end of the War, he did so as the reigning ABA champion, having won his title in 1944 at Belle Vue, Manchester. Like so many young fighters at that time, he had an arduous occupation, being a blacksmith’s striker. He joined the stable of…

May 23 TERRI HARPER vs NATALIE ZIMMERMAN Keepmoat Stadium, Doncaster DAZN (WBO lightweight title) Maxi Hughes vs Archie Sharp Tysie Gallagher vs Ebonie Jones (British and Commonwealth super-bantamweight titles) Reece Mould vs Lewis Sylvester James Flint vs Haithem Laamouz May 24 JOSH TAYLOR vs EKOW ESSUMAN OVO Hydro, Glasgow DAZN Lee McGregor vs Nathaniel Collins Aloys Junior vs David Jamieson Moses Itauma vs Mike Balogun Aston Brown vs Reece Porter ANGELO LEO vs TOMOKI KAMEDA Intex Osaka, Japan (IBF featherweight title) Pedro Taduran vs Ginjiro Shigeoka II (IBF strawweight title) May 28 MASANORI RIKIISHI vs EDUARDO NUNEZ Yokohama Buntai, Japan (vacant IBF super-featherweight title) Yoshiki Takei vs Yuttapong Tongdee May 30 MANUEL GALLEGOS vs KHALIL COE II Domo Alcalde, Guadalajara, Mexico DAZN Murodjon Akhmadaliev vs Luis Castillo May 31 CALEB…