George Foreman RIP + Sebastian Fundora Defends In Vegas And Bruce Carrington With Dan Too | Fight Freaks Unite Recap - Big Fight Weekend Boxing Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well off of a weekend that has seen Sebastian Fondura
defend his unified Junior Middleweight championships with an impressive TKO.
We're ready to recap that PDC on prime card from Vegas.
We're ready to give you some on George Cambosa's winning
in Australia as he now sets up for a possible
title shot at one hundred and forty pounds. We're in

(00:24):
the recap mode there. It's good to be back here
on the Fight Freaks Unit recap podcast. I'm merely the
somewhat capable host TJ Reeves. He is our insider. Fight
Freaks Unite is his substack. After all, why are you
not subscribing to the substack in the newsletter for all
the great info with Dan Rayfield. Good to be with you,
my friend again. We're gonna get to the fights. We're
gonna get to the news. I wish it was better

(00:46):
circumstance that we were coming in here off the weekend
than what we're gonna have to talk about here coming up,
But nonetheless, welcome aboard.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Here's we come off the weekend.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah, it's kind of a slowist weekend for the action,
but we've got plenty to discuss. Ye're alluding to the
untimely passing of the great George Foreman. We have the
interview that you did not mention with the featherweight contender
Bruce Shoeshoe Carrington, who is in action coming up this
Saturday night on the top rank card and a very
important fight for his career, a WBC final eliminator in

(01:15):
the featherweight division. So you'll hear from him, and I
know I'm doing your job.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
And Shoeshoe, by the way, he's got a couple of
things going for me. You can fight, and he's also
a great talker. You'll hear from him with Dan in
a few minutes, we'll get to the recaps. By the way,
a ratus review us that helps make sure you're following
subscribing here on Apple, Spreaker, Spotify, wherever you get pods.
Also find the Big Fight Weekend YouTube page as well
for content that's there, as well as being on board

(01:42):
with Dan substack and newsletter. So the news broke on
Friday night, as it turns out that George Foreman had
passed away at age seventy six. I was shocked sitting
watching all the college basketball I lean on you. Did
we have any insight that he had been ill? I
guess they kept it private if.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
He had been ill.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
I know you wrote the lengthy and always do a
tremendous job obituary. In your sub stack, I read that
sad is the way I will describe it. Iconic figure
the last fifty years of boxing as the former two
time heavyweight champ. All right, so let's kick it off
and let's wax nostalgic as we should about George Foreman

(02:24):
at the top of the pot.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Well. As far as your first question about whether it
was known to anybody, the answer is no. I mean,
it hadn't been publicly disseminated. I spoke to people that
have been close to George for years that I wrote,
you know some things from their memories in my obituary,
including Jim Lampley, who had become a close friend of George's,
no inkling that he had been ill. Bill Kaplan, the

(02:47):
Hall of Fame publicist who's been like family to George
Foreman for the better part of sixty years, knew George
from when George was like eighteen seventeen years old and
has been close to the family for decades, no inkling
that he was ill. But that happens, and it's said,
and you know, the point is that Muhammad Ali, his legacy,

(03:10):
his shadow, if you will, is over everybody in the
history of boxing in many respects, particularly the heavyweights of
that great era, his great rivals George Foreman and Joe Fraser.
But if you put Ali to the side for a minute,
men like Fraser and Foreman carved out their own legacies
that did things that were not necessarily related to Mahamed Ali.

(03:32):
George Foreman, he fought Mhamed Ali one time and lost.
That's I mean, that's important part of his legacy. But
there's so much more. You can argue that that loss
of the heavyweight championship to Muhammad Ali in the Rumble
in the Jungle, that was, in my opinion, and I
think the opinion of many, the singular most not the
most important, but the singular biggest fight in the history

(03:55):
of boxing for a lot of different reasons. I think
a lot of people may go back and look, after
reading and hearing about George's passing, and go back and
check out the great documentary When We're at Kings, which
won the Oscar Award for documentary which chronicles that amazing event.
You know, I told you talking to Bill Kaplan. It
just did not make it into the obituary that I

(04:15):
wrote about George. And I had heard these stories from Bill,
who I'm very close to and have been for twenty
five years. Bill was Inzire with George and spent you know,
two months there with him and has told me plenty
of stories about their time. But anyway, that was only
one part of what George did. There's so many more
things to George Foreman's legacy from the way he came up,
you know. Basically it's the ultimate American story. Petty street, criminal, bully, college,

(04:40):
high school dropout, joins the job Corps, finds boxing. Winds
up a couple of years later in the Olympics, not
only in the Olympics, but standing on top of the
podium with an Olympic gold medal. In Glasco City in
nineteen sixty eight, turns professional big Puncher wins the heavyweight
championship in one of the most devastating performer it says ever,

(05:00):
when he knocked out Joe Fraser in the second round,
Down goes Fraser, of course, the famous call from so
I mean here, this is the amazing thing. I'll get
back to the rest of the career. George Morman wins
the heavyweight championship two times, and the two times that
he won the title were both by devastating knockout, and
both times they were called by legendary broadcasters, Hall of

(05:22):
Fame broadcasters who, in my opinion, uttered the single most
iconic call of their entire awesome careers in the fight.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
In which George Foreman heavyweight chick.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah, so it's Fraser getting knocked out and co Sell
down goes Fraser, And of course everybody knows Michael Moore
getting knocked out by George Foreman regained the heavyweight title
in nineteen ninety four, and it's of course the legendary
call from Jim Lampley. It happened, It happened. So but
back to the whole overall career of George. He wins
the title, and he is a dominating, scary, massive puncher,

(05:56):
one of the great punchers in the history of boxing,
and he's knocking everybody out. And when he comes up
against Muhammad Ali in a title defense in Zaire, in
the Rumble in the Jungle, he's a big favorite. Ali
is now a few years removed from having lost to
Joe Fraser, even though he's gone on a nice winning street.
But people are thinking, oh my god, this is this

(06:17):
is a guy that that Joe Fraser defeated in their
great first fight, and now he's coming up against a
guy in George Foreman, who annihilated Joe Fraser in two
rounds to win the title. And keep in mind, after that,
George had gone on and absolutely annihilated Kenny Norton in
two rounds also to retain the title. And Kenny Norton
was a guy that had given Ali trouble and had

(06:38):
beaten him in their in one of their three meetings.
And anyway, it's a he's a prohibitive underdog, you know.
And at that time, Muhammad Ali was like, what thirty
two years old. Back in those days, being a heavyweight
thirty two years old, you might as well be in
the retirement home.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
You were an old man.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Now we got guys, you know, pushing forty on a
regular basis who were at the top of the at
the top of the division. And they go and they
have an iconic fight, and it's the rope of dope
and mom and Ali sits on the ropes and lets
George punch himself out and ultimately stops him by knockout
in the eighth round and regains the heavyweight title. And
the type of guy George was, who was you know,

(07:16):
everybody I know that knows now everybody has their demons,
and you know, he was accused of spousal abuse and
some things like that along the way, And I don't
have evidence of that specifically, but the people I know
that we're in contact with George, and even my own
personal interaction to George, friendly, nice, humble, you know, willing
to help, you know, give you, give you, give you

(07:36):
a pat on the back. Lift you up, got a
guy that brings you down. That was this type of
personality as a you know, infectious type personality, wanted to
to everybody know, let you know, be happy, type of guy.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Uh, you know.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
But the fact that he was able to accomplish the
things that he did, uh, it's a remarkable career.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
So so let's go to the second act. So he
loses to Ali. He basically is disillusion the right word
comes kind of becomes disillusioned after that, never regained the
title in the seventies or even a portion of the
title and then.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Goes away from boxing for a long time.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
You got to go back to what happened after the
Ali fight. He had several more fights before he retired
for the ten years to fight after Ali. This remember
he fights Ali in October of seventy four, that's the
rumble in the Jungle. Three months later January of seventy
or no, I take that back a year and three
months later he comes like takes a year off after Ali,
but he comes back in the in the fight in

(08:33):
the Caesar's Palace in nineteen seventy six January of seventy six,
one of the greatest fights in the history of boxing.
It wasn't a title fight, but that was the slugfest,
the absolute mayhem, tumultuous battle with ron Lyle where they're
both down twice. It's yeah, massive, you know, punishment you've
jokes would.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Make caveman stuff.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Go back and watch Foreman and Lyle banging and beating
each other.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
I thought Cosell, who was doing the fight for ABC,
was gonna have a fucking aneurysm during that fight. I mean,
that's the kind of fight that was so Then after
he beats Lyle. His next fight after that, which was
just four or five months later, he absolutely annihilates Joe
Fraser again in the rematch, not a title fight, and
that was pretty much you know, Joe only fought maybe
one or two times more after that, but that was,
you know, another knockout. He fought a few more times. Now.

(09:18):
He goes down to Puerto Rico March of seventy seven
against the Qutie slicker Jimmy Young, gets knocked down, loses
a twelve round decision, and George has told the story
in the dress room after the fight. You know, it
feels like he's dying, has a revelation that he sees
and speaks to God, who tells him you need to
change your life. He retires at age twenty eight. He

(09:40):
goes home to Houston and he becomes an ordained minister
and spent the next decade, you know, as a preacher
in his local church. And it got to a point
ten years later where he's not you know, he's not
an old man, you know in terms of society, but
he's an old man in boxing parlance. But the church
needs money, he needs money, and sides to launch a comeback,

(10:01):
and I remember this, and I was in high school
when this was going on. This is nineteen eighty seven.
He makes the comeback and it got a lot of
news coverage and it was sort of a big deal
that the former heavyweight CHAMPI George Forman is coming out
of this decade long retirement. But most people felt it
was a complete joke on a.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Farm well, because honestly, it was a complete joke. We
talked about this before for about a year or two.
He's fighting absolute nobody's just for whatever paycheck he could get.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
Getting himself in some type of condition. He's going through
the process. He is making a few dollars. He was
a regular. For example, he was on USA Tuesday night
fights on a regular basis. They would do good ratings
when he would be on. Brad Jacobs, who was the
chief operating officer of Top Rank back in those days,
was running the USA Network broadcasts, and I've talked a

(10:50):
Brad about this. I mean, they did a great job
of mixing the younger guys and the contenders in an
occasional title fight, but they also would have their big
nights on ratings terms when they would bring back legendary name,
so they put on a George Foreman fight during the comeback.
They would do the later you know, faded versions of
Duran and Camacho at Holmes and those type of nostalgia acts.

(11:11):
So but he did that for like you said, for
a while. He fought twenty five fights of the comeback
in a short period of time until he got the
title shot against Evander Holyfield. And we have talked about
that fight.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
I didn't even realize it was that many. I thought
it was like ten or fifteen, twenty five of them.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
Wow, twenty fifth fight of the comeback was the holy
Field fight.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
It was a few fights before that, three four fights
before that. The fight we have talked about, the one
that sort of made people think, okay, maybe he has
a chance to actually be a legit contender again, was
when he knocked out Jerry Cooney, who was a faded
fire but it was a spectacular knockout. He fought about
four more times after that, then he got the fight
with holy Field. Now, when he fought Holyfield, this was

(11:51):
a mega mega event. This was the the the incarnation
of modern pay per view. It was the debut event
of TVKO, which became HBO pay per view. It was
a massive, like several months long build up to the fight,
the Battle of the Ages. That was a play on
the fact that there was a fourteen age a fourteen
year age gap between Evander who was undisputed, who had

(12:13):
you know, had knocked out.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
By And by the way, we should mention because you
and I always do the nostalgia thing. In this timeframe,
Evander has won the gold medal, He's been on the
bronze medal, the bronze medal, He's been in the Olympics,
which is on Network TV. He's now been on Network
TV repeatedly on wide world of sports and big time fights,
and he's now a known enough commodity where again.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
Well you also forgot he became the undisputed Cruiserwaight.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Here's the way, Jeb Right and people people have to understand.
When you're talking about the heavyweight championship at this time,
it's more prominent than the NFL at that time. I'm
saying that the super Bowl was a big deal, but
the heavyweight title fights, everything would stop for that front
page of everything. So I vividly remember being in in Memphis,

(13:00):
Tennessee that fight week, and that build up was tremendous
because it was in and around the time that Mike
Tyson had lost uh and I mean the heavyweight title,
and the pieces of the heavyweight title being in different
directions meant everything.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
But Vander was undisputed at the time. Yes, and he.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Gives he had beaten Buster Douglas to take.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
The forming the chance. They put on a massive event,
and the people involved with that fight, especially those at HBO,
which were the folks that ran TVKO, thought they had
found the way to just print money because they didn't
know what to expect and the fight. Remember this was
at a time there might have been around ten million
addressable homes for pay per view at the time it

(13:46):
did one point four million buys.

Speaker 4 (13:48):
It made.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
It was and it stayed for many years. It was
the biggest non head. It was the it was. It
was one of the biggest pay per views ever for
a long time. Even after it did, there were other
big fights on pay per view. It's still one of
the you know, you know, maybe at this point there
might be in the history of pay per view there
might be uh maybe fifteen fights or so that are

(14:09):
over a million buys or two, you know, twenty events
over a million buys. That's still one of them did
a huge number. And even though George lost, in many ways,
it was kind of like what happened and Rocky won.
Rocky loses the title fight against Apollo, but he gains
in momentum and popularity and notoriety because he went the
distance and he put up a great fight. Blah blah blah.
That's what George did. George had no right being even

(14:32):
in the fight against Vander Holyfield. Yeah, he lost at this.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
It's a very competitive fight.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
It was landing on holy Field and holy Field's blasted
him back and George.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
Is taking her super interesting.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
I still share with you again. I'm in Memphis, Tennessee,
and these times they would still do this. They had
it the ticketed event in the big ballroom of the
Cook Convention Center downtown Memphis, and there were easily a
couple of thousand people in that assive ballroom to watch
on the big screens that night. So I bought a

(15:04):
ticket which Rayfield for the Rayfield collection. I don't have
my ticket, uh from that night. Of buying a closed ticket.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
As a collector, close circuit tickets is hard cool close.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
I got you, but just to equate this the pay
per view box. I remember this was not even really
available on the Memphis cable system where I was living.
That's hard for people to fathom get the box to
get the pay per view wasn't available everywhere, which is
your point about how much better an audience it did.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
For that Holy film, you had to physically go from
your house to your cable office, get a box, bring
it home, plug it in, hook it up, and then
order the pay per view.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
That's imagine people.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
They would charge you if you're keeping the box, even
if you didn't buy pay per view.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
In a society where you can sit on in a
society now where you can sit in a fucking toilet
and watch a pay per view on your phone, it's
a hard far cross.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
I don't need too much information on you sitting on
the toilet.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
I'm just saying you could. I didn't say I do that,
but that back then you had a drive and then
when the when the event was over, as you mentioned,
I had to unplug it and wrap it up and bring
it back the way.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
They would charge you, right, They would charge you for
keeping the right. So one man, one more story.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
About that, just to tell you what kind of guy
George was, and and the marketing part and what it
would lead to and and what he became because he
was a surly anti media, anti people guy back in
the seventies and did a total one to eighty into
the opposite. So I read this account on Saturday as
we as we tape this Sunday into Monday, a prominent

(16:33):
Atlanta's sportscaster named Jeff Hullinger nationwide, you probably aren't going.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
To know that name.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Hullinger has been in Atlanta media for forty plus years.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
He's now retired out of the media.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
He was a prominent weeknight sportscaster when this was a
much bigger deal in Atlanta. He told the story he
posted on his Facebook page that they had done a
massive amount of coverage of the former holy Field fight
building up to it because evanders from Atlanta. And so
they went up to Atlantic City to cover fight week.
And they get up to Atlantic City and he had

(17:05):
met George Foreman before, He had gotten George Foreman's phone
number before from the promotion of the fight in Atlanta
and elsewhere, and he said, we get in a bind.
We're trying to do a live shot on the Atlantic
City boardwalk on Atlanta a local news and suddenly our guest,
he didn't relate who it was, can't be there. He goes,
I have the idea about forty five minutes before this

(17:27):
live shot, let me try George Foreman. This is the
former heavyweight champion of the world who in a couple
of days is about to fight Evander Holyfield in Atlantic City,
and he sends a message somehow to George's hotel room.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
He either calls the room or he calls his cell phone.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Cell phones were primitive back in this time period, and
Georgia right, George calls him back, either on a payphone
or whatever the number is. George Foreman calls Jeff Hollinger
back as he relates the story and says.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
What do you need and when do you need it?

Speaker 1 (18:01):
And Jeff says, can you get down here to wherever
he is on the boardwalk, I'd love to interview you
live on the Atlanta sports cast to promote the fight,
and George Foreman does it.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
By the way, he'ves his room and goes and does
the live shot.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
I have heard from my ringside colleagues who were older
than me that covered that event who would talk about
I mean, you just mentioned now in the first incarnation
of George's career, sullen, stoic, scowling.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
And anti media didn't want to do it, didn't want
to do it.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
When I talked to Bill Kaplan, the publicist I mentioned
that was close with George for almost sixty years, told
me that George really wasn't like that, that he was
a very nice guy, but that he learned that whole
scowl thing from Sonny Liston, who he watched coming up,
and that was sort of listens the way he handled himself.
But when George came back and he kind of had
its more mature as a human being, understood the element

(18:55):
of promotion and why it was important to do that,
because you're selling yourself and your event. That he became
the everyman, you know, the hamburger eating, smiling, get.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
To the second can you imagine?

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Let me finish. Yeah, And then the reporters would tell
me that that's sort of what you said about Hollinger.
George would walk into the press room before his fights
at that time, whether it was Holyfield or other fights
he had that were significant. Tommy Morrison, et cetera. What
do you need guys, tell me what you need and
you would signed with them. And you know what, it's
a good fucking lesson because there was a lot of fighters.

(19:30):
I'm not going to name names right now, but there's
plenty of guys that are supposed stars that could take
a lesson from George on what promotion is all about.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
That's right to help your own cause. But what a story.
And as you related, so many of these stories.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
So he had that holy Field fight, so he we
eventually come to him fighting Tommy Morrison. As you mentioned,
we eventually come to him fighting Michael Moore.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
After he fought Holyfield. He won three fights, but he
was getting touched up a bit in those fights and
maybe not looking as good as he had earlier in
the In the comeback, he fights to Tommy Morrise and
fight that was where the WBO vacant heavyweight title in
nineteen ninety three. At the time, the WBO heavyweight title
was not significant to ninety nine percent of the world,

(20:10):
but they still build it as a heavyweight title fight.
Tommy Morrison beat him on a decision in that fight.
It was not even all that close. Tommy, who was
a big brawler and puncher, actually out box George that night,
and most people thought at that point, this is June
of ninety three, George's peers over. It's you know, he's
had a great run in the comeback. He fought for
the heavyweight title, fought for this at the time fringe title,

(20:31):
and it's going to be the end of the career.
He was not done. He wanted to continue. Seventeen months later,
he had spent a lot of time personally. Remember he's
working at HBO as a broadcaster along with Larry Merchant
and Jim Lemby formed that Great World Championship Boxing announced team.
He's lobbying seth Abraham, the Hall of Famer, longtime president
of HBO Sports, give me the shot against More and

(20:54):
Moore had beaten holy Field for the title. He's fighting
on HBO. Give me the shot, Give me the shot.
It basically wore him down, and the hierarchy at HBO,
said Abraham, Lou Debella, Mark Taffett finally to jump basically
shut George the fuck up. They greenlit the fight, and
you know, at the end of the day, they knew
that George is going to bring ratings also, and then

(21:14):
that is a business and they want the eye of
you know, Michael was a good young champion, undefeated, but
not he was like George was earlier in this sirst,
stoic and not really media friendly, et cetera. George would
talk to anybody. And they made the match. And George
was forty five years old, and George was a guy
who was an underdog, and Michael is the young champ

(21:35):
who was a south pop built good powers, beating Holyfield
and you know he's Sky's the limit. They go in
the fight. He loses every single round, George for him
and basically every minute of every second of every round.
And as the story has been recounted a thousand times,
and Lampley's told the story, told it to me again
when I talked to him the other night when I
was writing George's obituary. George and Jim had become close

(21:57):
and for the months leading up to the fight, George
is telling Lampley, I'm gonna knock him out. You watch,
how are you gonna do it? George? He's fast, he's
a south By, he's got good power. You know you're
not fast. He's you know, he's got just beat Holyfield,
who beats you, et cetera. And he's like, and George
is consistent.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Jim.

Speaker 3 (22:15):
You watch sometime late in the fight, He's gonna come
stand in front of me and let me knock him out.
And as Jim makes the point, and you can watch
the video, what happened late in the fight, round number ten,
Michael Moore comes and basically stands in front of George Foreman.
Now keep in mind, Teddy Alas, who is Michael's trainer,
is telling him in the corner. You can hear the

(22:36):
video on the video, don't stand in front of him.
He's looking to set you up. Don't He's Teddy's begging
him to move and not stand in front of this man.
But Michael Moore went and it exactly what George Foreman
had told Jim Lambley was gonna do. Michael went and
stood in front of George Foreman and let him knock
him out. George landed a nice hard jab that shook

(22:56):
Michael up. He came behind it with a right hand
that traveled for inches, probably hit him right on the
tip of the chin. And as Gil Clancy, who was
filling in that night for George Truman on the commentary,
when you hit on the chin, it's good night, and
that's exactly what happened. And of course he's out. The
blood is welling up behind his lips. Lampley gives the
legendary call it happened, It happened. George sees what's going on.

(23:19):
He kneels in the neutral corner to pray to God.
He's surrounded by his people. Roy Foreman, his brother who
I have been friendly with for years. Bob Aram, who
was this promoter, comes in and you know, Bob was
not a guy, by the way, if you watched top
rank fights, Bob Aram was not a guy that was
typically you saw a lot of in the ring. Wasn't
a big celebrator. He was doing his business promoting the fight.

(23:39):
But on that night that meant so much to Bob,
who was very close incredible got in the ring and
kneeled down with him. Yeah, and they were hugging it out.
I mean, it is one of the greatest moments in
boxing history, the way that he knocked him out. And look,
I know, and let me just say, want to think
about it, go ahead. This is the most amazing thing
to me. And this still fucking blows my mind. When
George beat Moore, it was twenty years almost to the

(24:01):
day that he had lost the title to Ali in
the Zayre fight. Yeah, he was wearing the same trunks
in the ring against Michael when he knocked him out
as he wore when he lost the title to Eli.
And it was George's way and Larry Merchant asked him
about this in the post fight interview. I actually watched
it back this morning that that was essentially George's way
of exercising the demons of Zayre. He's heavyweight champ of

(24:25):
the world again. He's wearing the same trunks to night
that he lost it. He's come full circle. He's forty five.
He's the oldest champion to ever win a world title
in boxing, heavyweight or otherwise, a record later broken twice
by the great Bernard Hopkins. But at that moment, you know,
Foreman has regained the heavyweight title and he's wearing the
same trunks from twenty years amazing, and he's the man again.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
And look, I know we've gone on for a while,
but this is deserved. This is one of the iconic fighters,
George Foreman, that has passed away that we're talking about
of the last fifty.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
Years of the sport. Ever of worldwide known. We I mean,
we can't.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
We can go on for an the fifteen minutes, but
we don't have it because we've got to get onto
the recapping of the fights, and we've got Bruce Shueshu
Charrington in a few moments. But then he readvanced himself
from a personality standpoint, not only as a broadcaster, but
with the Foreman grill.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
And you and I have talked about that, the.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Millions and millions and millions of those grills that they
sold in the nineties and into the two thousands. That
made him a multi millionaire. But he became a pitch
man for all kinds of products after the Foreman grill.
It was incredible.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
He was selling hamburgers and I mean the Miniqi muffler commercial, yes,
but you know, and other things also, but the grill.
Keep this in mind he had obviously when he came
back and regained the heavyweight title, he had several big
time you know, seven figure persones was making great money
as a boxer, more than he made in the earlier
days when he was you know, heavyweight champion in the seventies. Obviously,

(25:48):
given the landscape of the economics of the sport in
any event, though, with the grill, not only is he
making money per unit that is sold off the grill,
he eventually, you know, vis A become not only a
great fighter, but he's a businessman, he's a philanthropist. Yeah,
he sells the rights to the grill for one hundred

(26:09):
and thirty seven point five million dollars. I'm I'm one
hundred and thirty seven point five million. So he gets
that money. He's so he's made that gargantuan score, and
he was making money on the grills that were being sold.
The girl sold. You know, I don't think they have
the exact total anyway, but I was looking up by
the million, one hundred million grills worldwide.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yes, it's amazing what that was. Again, the younger people
don't know what we're talking about. This became like revolutionary
on an electric grill.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Plug it up. You don't need charcoal, you don't need
the smoke. Everywhere we see. It was the empire, it.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
Was the it was the George Foreman Lean mean grilling machine.
The infomercials ran constantly on television, and every college kid
had one, Yes, every bachelor had one. Every family had one.
I mean I actually would say if you, I mean
people our age anyway, if you ask, I guarantee you
not only will the people have the grill, but many

(27:05):
people like our family, have more than one, different sizes,
different shapes. You make the grilled cheese, you make the chicken.
I mean, it was amazing. And he made hundreds of
millions of dollars on the grill.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
And again philanthropically gave back, gave back to his community
in Houston, charitable stuff. What a loss here, iconic boxing
figure for sure, and you want to share that you
went and dug out a piece of memorabilia.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
And you put this on social media.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Listen. I didn't know George that well, but I knew
him enough, you know, over the years, because he was
doing HBO fights as the commentator, and I was covering
many of those fights. And I was also very close
to Bill Kaplan, who was one of George's closest friends,
and so I had met him several times at the fights.
I have one great memory of being at an HBO
fight in Atlantic City where he was doing the broadcast
for but I was also doing a pee. There was

(27:56):
a big tribute gala that was going to take place
in South Florida, the honor his trainer, Angelo Dundee, who
he had hired to be a trainer in his second
act after having been on the opposite side when Ali
knocked him out, He's like, I want that guy in
my corner.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
You know.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
It was yelling and Ali uh about about what was
going on in hour fight. So he brought him in
and it was Angelo that helped lead him to uh,
you know, those those heavyweight title fights in his second career. Anyway,
they were doing this tribute gallop for Angelo, and they
did a beautiful program for the event, and in the
program they had people, uh you know, the three most
famous fighters that Angelo worked with was Ali, Sugar, Ray

(28:33):
Leonard and George Foreman. And each of them they had
somebody talk to them and ghost write a piece for
the program about what Angelo had meant to them in
their career. So I was asked if I would do
the piece with George on his thoughts and his things
about Angelo Dundee. So I met with him. They had
done an HBO. They would do their their their fighter meetings,

(28:53):
I guess on Friday, you know, either or after or
before the weigh in, and when that was over in
Atlanta seat. There's Atlantic City where they had done these meetings.
I met with George, just the two of us. He
went to a conference room, you know, a couple of
doors down from where he's doing the HBO meetings. We
sat in this conference He was could not have been
more of a cool guy, very pleasant, very nice, very accommodating.

(29:15):
I sat with George Trumman, just the two of us,
had to be forty five minutes, maybe an hour. We
went over everything that he could think of or talk
about related to Angelo Dundee. I took what he told
me I had recorded it. I actually might still have
that audio casset somewhere, believe it or not. And from that,
from that conversation, I then ghost wrote the piece in
George's words, in his voice, what Angela Dundee meant cool.

(29:39):
And you know, years later when he went, you know,
George authored a couple of different books. One of the
books he put out, you know, he gave to me
and and I put a picture of it on my
social media. It's an awesome and it's a beautiful, big autograph.
But the part of that I like the best was
it was something like you know, Danny Boy was which
is what he called me, because that's what Bill Kaplan
calls me, called me. Danny Boy. Signed it Danny Boy,

(30:01):
your pal George Foreman, and I put the picture up.
So when I saw that he had passed, I went
and I have my bookshelf in my in the sitting
area of our bedroom, and I have a bookshelf with
a whole shitload of boxing books on there, and I
pulled that out to take the picture of it. So
George meant a lot to a lot of people. And
I've talked to many people over the last couple of
days in the business who knew him well and are very,

(30:22):
very saddened by what happened. He you know, he he's
a beloved figure. Maybe not on the level of an Ali,
but you know, within the boxing community, it ain't that
far off.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Again, we gave that it's just due as it should
have been for the Hall of Famer, the two time
heavyweight champ and had the record for the longest time
of the oldest champion ever recapturing the heavyweight title back
in nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
So I read imagined by the Western Piece George Foreman.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
Two heavyweight championship brains literally twenty years apart.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
That's incredible. But just like Jim Lampley called it, Dan Rayphiel,
it happened. It happened. This stuff really happened. Go back
and look it up. And we can't overemphasize how big
a deal. He had a TV show too, right, they
did a George TV show.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
It was called George.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
It was a surprise. He literally has four or five
sons named George. He named them all George.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
So hold on here, here's the thing about the show.
On the show, how about this, he played a retired
boxer helping youth. Sounds familiar, right, Yes, he kind of
knew that time.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
And I think a couple of his Georges were on
the show with him. His sons so.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
Well, I know I know a couple I know some
of his sons from because they've been around boxing also.
But George, who was married five times, but his widow
currently they were married since nineteen eighty five. They weren't
together obviously for many, many years. He is the father
of twelve children. I'm not sure how many different moms are,
but twelve different he had. Eleven of them are still alive.

(31:51):
One of them his daughter Frieda, who coincidentally actually had
six boxing matches back, you know, in the UH in
the late nineties, early two thousands. She passed way in
twenty nineteen. But he named all of his sons George Junior,
George the third, George the fourth, George the fifth, and
George the sixth all named George. And as a matter

(32:11):
of fact, when I told you that his daughter Frieda,
her middle name was George, he had one of his
other daughters is Georgietta, So he liked the word George
named George. Yeah, there's a lot of sim and kin
out there.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Again, great stuff and well worth it.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Now we get to the recap portion of the pod
and Sebastian Fondorra's TKO win in Las Vegas on the
PBC on prime card, successfully retaining the WBCWBO title.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
I can't say that I was shocked.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
I expected this, I predicted on the bet Us Boxing Show.
I thought he would get to him before the ninth
or the tenth round. And he did get to Cordelle
Booker fairly quickly, brutally with the left upper cut especially.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
Smashed his smashed his face, knocked him down.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Booker was stumbling all over the place, staggering from punches,
staggered after a shot, went down, got up, got wiped
out in the fourth round. All right, So your thoughts
on this made event fight and how good fun Dora
looked As we get into the recap, Moune.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Listen, he'd been out of the ring for a year
since the blood bath against Tim Zoo, so it was
fifty one weeks later. He comes back in the ring,
look good, looks strong. I thought he looked pretty sharp.
You know, he's never gonna be a guy that's gonna
wow you with the technical things because he's a little
still a little gangly. Because of the size difference of
him and his opponent, he's six foot six roughly Cordel
Booker was five foot nine, you know, so that the

(33:31):
the gap in the size is stark, and that's a
complicated situation for the opponent obviously, but it also makes
it sometimes tough for Fundor Also because you're constantly punching down,
it's hard to get in close because your arms are
so long. The guy doesn't want to get you know,
he wants to the opponent wants to try to get
as close as possible, but not too close anyway. Booker

(33:54):
had a hard time. He Booker is a pretty decent boxer,
and he you know, he did use some movement and
it was hard for Fundor to sort of cut off
the ring. But eventually you keep throwing those clean shots,
those those power jabs, and like you said, the uppercuts,
at some point you're gonna get him. If you can't
blunt the offense of Fondora, you pretty much have no shot.
Even when he lost the fight against Mendoza, he didn't

(34:17):
have a problem landing punch as he ultimately just got
caught with a shot, which happens, and that put him out.
But Booker number one doesn't have that kind of power anyway.
Even if he caught Fundor, I don't think would have
been able to do significant damage. And Booker was just
very reticent to get in there. He had no way
to get inside, and when he did he caught the
end of some solid shots. He gave a good effort.

(34:38):
I mean, I don't Booker was a respectful guy, hard
to root against the guy, but he was sort of
out of his depths, it felt like. But Fondora did
the job. I mean, like you said, the upper cut,
the two left uppercuts that that put him down in
round four were pretty devastating. There was a stoppage was good.
He had him on the ropes and he was just
about the tee off landed a couple of shots and
the referee, Thomas Taylor, who I think we can acknowledge

(34:59):
at this point is probably the number one referee in boxing,
did the right thing and stopped the fight. You know,
Cordell Booker will live to fight another day. His only
other loss was a knockout. With that came that middleweight
in the first round, but that was against Amma Williams.
He just got clipped against a bigger guy, but bigger
guy weight wise, I mean not bigger guy heightwise, but Fondora. Look,

(35:20):
this was like I'm audi the ring a year. Let
me get my legs back under me, let me get
in there. They had waited a long time to try
to get the aerospence, but it didn't happen. It was like,
you can't just leave the guy not in the ring.
So he took care of this business. I'm sure we'll
see him back in the ring in the second part
of the year. And you know what, because the weight
class at one hundred and fifty four is so deep
and most of the top guys are affiliated with PBC

(35:42):
as well, it should not be hard for him to
get a top opponent. He could fight the winner of
Zue Thurman if it happens. Obviously, a Zoo rematch will
be highly attractive. Baker Marteziliev, who was the IBF champion.
That's a fight that he wants because he wants a unification.
Martazalev is with Main Events, but they've been working with
PBC now. He also has the possibility of trying to

(36:02):
redo the you know, to really get the Arrow Spence
fight going, if that's something they can finally close up.
If Arrow's gonna be ready to get back in the
ring after all of his time off. But the thing
is he's also going to be due to make the
next mandatory, which is of the WBO. While it hasn't
officially been ordered, the WBO said they were the president
of the WBO is going to recommend to their committee,

(36:23):
which means it probably will be adopted that they make
the number one contender, which is xandersyas the mandatory and
Xander's eyes was at the fight. Him and Fundora posed
for pictures afterwards. There's a pretty decent chance that that's
going to be the next fight. I'd like to see
Fendora get in three fights this year. He just fought
now here, you know, in the early part of the
year in March, and if he fights the fight with Xander,

(36:45):
the WBO has said it's got to be within a
one hundred and twenty days of the title defense against Bookers,
so that would take him, you know, into the summer.
I guess there'd be no reason why I couldn't do
that fight, and it's healthy have another fight in the fall.
That would be ideal to have three fights for a guy.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Activity if we can get there.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
And there's certainly a pathway for him, as you mentioned
with PBC.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
So it could be it could Bebiased next and then
then a big one. It could be maybe a unification
with Martazleev, perhaps the Zoo or Thurman. It could be
like I said, it could be uh uh you know
them the reputting together of a fight with Ero Spence,
so he's not gonna lack for for quality opposition and
uh and also by the way, uh Young we'll talk

(37:28):
about this fight a minute, but on the undercard, Jesus Ramos,
who's a good contender. He won his fight, and he's
been looking for a match against Fundor. He's highly ranked
in the organizations as well, and that would be a
good fight on top of that. So, uh, Fondora, like
I said, look pretty damn good for a year out
of the ring. Always fun to watch. Throws a lot
of punches and uh, you know, did the job on
court up book or a big time.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
All right, so you mentioned Jesus Ramos. He did win.
I don't know how much resistance from the opponent. I've
seen a couple of the highlights. I have to confess.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
With all the college basketball going on, sorry, I did
not stay intently on this fight. But Ramos gets his
t KO win and he's in the picture, which is
what you just said, potentially at one fifty four here
maybe in another fighter too, we'll sing no, right.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
He fought.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
He fought a Argentine fighter who by definition, in my mind,
are always tough guys, and and his opponent, Guido Emmanuel Schrom,
showed an immense amount of toughness, no question about it.
He was a fighter that took this fight on about
two three weeks. Notice when the original opponent, Kevin Salgado Withdrew,
so he was behind the eight ball, so to speak,

(38:29):
by taking it on late notice, and he got had
gotten knocked out in his previous fight, he got knocked
out in this fight. Look, he gave a very game
effort in many ways, not the same style of boxer
as as Cordell Booker, but he gave that type of
big heart effort where he took everything that that that
Ramos had to offer. And you know, he was even

(38:51):
mad about the stoppage. I mean, I thought it was
a perfectly fine stoppage in round number seven by Mark Nelson,
another very equality championship level referee. So it was just
lost in a row, including the Vladimir Hernandez by knockout also.
But Ramos, look, he did what he was supposed to do.
He said, he puts some pressure on himself because he
had said all along, I got to get this guy
out of here, and he did the job. He got

(39:11):
the guy out of there. And so Ramos, you know,
I think he's got a little bit of a chip
on his shoulder because he's now won three fights in
a row by knockout to fight before that in the
end of twenty twenty three that he lost that was
a decision to Eric sNaN Lubin. And I was at
that fight, and myself and many many many people, whether
you were there or you're watching on TV, they thought
that Eric s n Lubin got a gift that night

(39:31):
that Ramos kind of got got ripped off in that fight.
So to me, Ramos, the stock is the same where
it's been. He's a good quality contender. He should get
some type of opportunity for a title fight. He's now
twenty three and one with nineteen knockouts, only twenty four
years old, fun style, good engaging personality, and really can
fight his ass off. So that's another guy that's definitely

(39:53):
in the mix in terms of a challenge potentially, you know,
as in an in house PBC challenge to Fandora.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
And by the way, they moved this card along the
other fight that was on the PBC on Prime card,
which you were disgusted by. And I saw everybody all
over social media saying that Elijah Garcia split decision win
in the middleweight fight with Terrell Gachet. That happened, and
then they got the next two fights in the ring quickly.
We had a main event in the ring before even
ten pm, which we love.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Everything was over like a ten to fifteen Eastern time.
It's like unheard of.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
A three fight card where you know in the granted
there was knockouts, but still to get it in and
I refer to it as a crisp the two hours.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Two hours, all right?

Speaker 1 (40:35):
But about this Elijah Garcia and geshat In once again
indictment on judging.

Speaker 3 (40:41):
I got a couple of things to say about this.
Number One, Zachary Young discussed me he was the judge
who has a history of shitty scorecards, and this was
one of the shittier scorecards to score that fight. Ninety
six to ninety three is just an absurdity. If you
asked me, I just don't. I don't see how that
is possible. I mean Garcia, who you know, has been
a superb prospect over time. To me, he's getting worse,

(41:06):
to be quite honest. His last fight in June, he
lost a decision to Kyron Davis, who was a heavy
underdog but a veteran, you know, decent guy who came
with a purpose and came with a plan. Had Stephen
Breadman Edwards, an excellent trainer in this corner, had him
said all the right things. They had a great plan
and they executed that plan and he got the win.
And Elijah Garcia was trying to bounce back from his

(41:27):
first defeat in that fight. Now, keep in mind, Elijah
Garci's only twenty one years old, so it's not like
this man has a career that's going nowhere. But I
thought he looked very average in the Cayron Davis fight,
and I thought he looked extremely average here in this
fight against Terrell. Now, if you've ever listened to our
podcast before or seen whatever in I'm no big fan
of torell fighting style, never had it. He's been in

(41:47):
some of the worst fucking fights I've ever seen. You know,
I think I should send him a bill for the
hour of my life. I'll never get back for that
fucking fight against Aristoni Laura that he's stunk it out
in that Lara spunk it out.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Anyway, this is not about that. This is not about this.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Is about not fucking a guy that should get the victory.
Terrel Gaschet is thirty seven years old. He's fought all
the tough guys. You know, no one's ever done this
guy a fucking favor in his career. And you know,
some of the loss are well deserved. Okay, he lost
to Tim Zoo, that was legit. He scored a knockdout
against Zoo, but he didn't win the fight, and the
same can be said against Carlos Damas. Carlos Damas pretty
much dominated him. That was his last fight in June.

(42:21):
But that doesn't mean when a veteran guy who gives
a great effort and trains his her end off and
is they're trying to make a career and a life
for himself should get absolutely fucking robbed because you come
up against a twenty one year old house fighter who's
the one with the future that the fans gravitate to,
who is a Hispanic background that could possibly become a
commodity and a ticket seller. He didn't fucking win. And

(42:44):
on top of this, this is what makes it worse.
Terrell Gachet scored a clean knockdown against Garcia in the
first round, kind of the same way he did against
Tim Zoo back when they fought in twenty twenty two.
So right there, now, I know what knockdown doesn't make
a fight. We've seen fights guys get down, you know,
get knocked down. Three times and don't win, but at
the very least you're off to a damn good start.

(43:05):
And you cannot fucking tell me that if you go
through and watch the next nine rounds of the fight,
that Terrell Grouchet did not win most of them, and
for Zachary Young to score six rounds for Elijah Garcia
is just a fucking joke. It you know, it hides
the Migliori scorecard of ninety of uh excuse me, of

(43:28):
ninety five to ninety four. That was actually Don Trella,
who I have ample respect for. I've known Don for
a while.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
He's said questionable cards too.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
I just did not like that card. That that look
when you have intelligent boxing people who've watched the fight,
who don't have a dog in the race, who couldn't
give a fuck if Terrell get wins or if Elijah
Garcia wins, who just call it like they see it,
and they all say that is just preposterous. The announcers,
you know, to their credit, they called it out. Brian

(43:56):
Campbell and Mara Ronalo and Abner Mars, Abner Marris, who
had maybe the line of the night. They're talking about
the scoring when the fight's over and Abner. He's like, look,
Elijah Garcia is a friend of mine. He's a friend
of mine. He didn't win the fucking fight. He didn't
win the fight. So what are we doing? TJ Reeves?

(44:17):
What are we doing here?

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Yes? Tee it up?

Speaker 3 (44:20):
Anyway, To his credit, he was a sportsman. He didn't
bitch and moan about it. I know he's got to
be gutted for the loss. He deserved the better fate.
And to me, even though Elijah gets the official win,
you know, it doesn't make him a bad guy. He's
not the one score in the fight. But to me,
Elijah garcias stock his way down because he thought he
performed inadequately in this fight. He did not look good

(44:43):
in the Cairo and Davis fight. And these are the
stepping stone type of middling contenders that you're supposed to
beat if you're going to the promised Land of alf
And from what I have seen in two fights in
a row when he stepped up in class, he is
not going to the promised Land based on those performances.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
I love it. By the way.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
A shout out to our colleague Ricky Carroll, who runs
the Big Fight Weekend website that we're associated with here.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
Ricky is based in Europe.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
Ricky has always wanted to cover Dan Rayfield a world
title fight in Las Vegas. He finally was able to
make that happen. A lifelong boxing fans dream can I
go see?

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Can I go? Cover a world title fight? And he
was there.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Shout out to the PBC people. They took care of
him with the credential. The whole bit, Ricky is having
a travel nightmare on Sunday with flight delays trying.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
To get back. He has to get back to Europe
eventually New York and then Europe. So Ricky does do
a good job with he does, he doesn't.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
I don't understand. Yeah, if you're gonna come all that
way to clever a world championship event in Las Vegas,
and I'm not.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Not gonna know.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
I would think in that one because this is when
it could work on his schedule because of his nine
to five job and the other stuff that he's doing.
So he came all the way from Europe to be
there for this, and again the fight card moved a law.
We got the fun Dora main event. The whole bit,
he said the in arena experience at the michelob Ultra
Arena was tremendous. So shout out to Ricky and writing

(46:08):
all the stuff for this weekend's fight card. All right,
So one more fight card to go over real quick,
one more main event to go over before we get
to Bruce Shues Shue Carrington. I promise that's coming straight ahead.
George Cambosis did win by decision in the match room
de own main event Junior well toweight battle late late
replacement opponent in Jake Wiley. This was Saturday morning in

(46:30):
the US, Saturday night in Australia. Cambosis dan cut early
in the fight, bleeding. We've seen him cut and bleeding
in other fights. Fought through it. Wiley was game hung
in It was not an exciting, thrilling fight. Cambosis gets
the win. But I know one thing, you and I
were exchanging messages, etc. Maybe he took a step back

(46:51):
even in victory here with this, with the fact that
it was a late replacement opponent. So a follow up
thought on this because Cambosas is apparently still going to
get a tight shot right coming up.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
Yeah, I mean, look, he took this fight Wiley on
like whatever A few four or five days notice when.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
I think it was Tuesday, whatever it was.

Speaker 3 (47:08):
He took the fight on short notice. Now Jordan had
had to withdraw from it for a medical reason. Uh
so the young Australian which we talked about beforehand. I
thought it was hilarious that here you have Jake Wiley.
He has purchased tickets to go to the fight and
then he winds up in the main event.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Okay, so look, as I said on the bet Us show,
do we've had verification they gave him a refund?

Speaker 2 (47:28):
I would hope they would give him a refund. I'm
now the main event fighter. Mate.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
Wiley did not have any particular credentials, had a nice record,
but got knocked down in his one loss. Had thought,
you know, a whole bunch of nobody's and kem boss
in my mind is is a is a nice guy,
the great talker, and you know he's got the hunger.
But you know he's he's on his last legs. I
think in the terms of being at the top of
the sport, he's moved up to out to one hundred
and forty. He had lost three or four two wipeouts

(47:55):
against Devin Haney and decisions stopped by the silly Lomachenko
a vacant IBF title. The one in air quotes win
was against you know, it was a fight where he
came to America and he fought a fight where I
didn't think that was right, got a bad call from
the point of view of many people. He ended up
Cambosa's winning a majority decision. So you know, he'd seen

(48:18):
better days than his last couple of years in his career.
So even okay, fine, he wins the fight against wild
and that was not controversially he did get the win.
He did, you know, deal with the cut, but you know,
I don't think he looked anything spectacular. But here's the
thing that galls me. The guy's got one irrelevant victory
at one hundred and forty pounds against an opponent that

(48:39):
was completely obscure, not a big name at all or
even a reputable guy, hard worker perhaps, and because of that,
he's getting a world title shot. That's done. He's going
to fight Richards and Hitchens for the IBF title. Eddie
Hearn was talking about after the fight that the date
that Hitchens will fight, be it Cambos's or whoever. If
Camboses can't make it to the fight, whatever the case,

(49:00):
maybe June twenty. First, I'd like to know what in
the world as George Cambos is done to warrant fighting
for a world title.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
We know the answer. They make this up as they
go along.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
So that is actually disappointing. But anyway, look, he did
what he had to do. He won the fight. It
wasn't a particularly compelling fight. George hasn't really been in
a compelling fight since the time when he shocked the
world and won the fight against Ti Fimo Lopez to
become lightweight world champ. Can never take that away from him,
but has done very little since then. So I wish
George Cambos, you know, I wish him well. Like I said,

(49:34):
I rather like George. I think he's a cool guy
and I rather enjoy his personality. I've interviewed him a
few times, so you know, good luck to him. But
I'm also that if you're going to fight for these
type of titles, you should have some merit behind it,
and to me, there is no merit him getting a title.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Se No merit is being kind. We keep it real
here on the podcast. Love all of that, all right,
let's get to it. As you mentioned, it is fight
week this week right back in Las Vegas for the
Mikayla mayor Sandy Ryan rematch on the undercard.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
Bruce Shoeshoe Carrington, You're going.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
To enjoy this facing off against Jose and Rique Vivas
in a WBC featherweight final eliminator. This is Saturday night
on the undercard of the top ranked card. But as
I like to say, you don't have to wait for
later this week to hear from Shoeshoe.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
We always love guys that are good talkers.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Dan spoke with him and now let's play that conversation
in the preview mode for later on this week.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
For Shoeshoe Carrington, well.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
That's my great pleasure to have on our podcast this
week is the top featherweight contender. Bruce Shoeshoe Carrington, Shoesha,
welcome to the show. Thank you so much for doing this.

Speaker 5 (50:39):
Today, man, Thank you for having me man, I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
It's my pleasure. I'm gonna tell our listeners what you've
got going on. You're a I think probably you wouldn
argue with this the most important fight of your career
thus far. You are going to be fighting Jose Enrique Vives.
It is an official WBC final elimination fight in the
featherweight division. It will take place on March twenty ninth.
You're on the card that's headlined by the rematch being
mcie Hala Mayer and Sandy Ryan for the women's welterweight

(51:02):
title at the Fontaine Blue in Las Vegas. You were
your fight. The show is on ESPN. I'll make sure
the folks know your fight's the final fight that is
only available on ESPN Plus so they can check it
out there. So, as I just mentioned, seems like it's
the biggest fight of your curve based on the stakes,
and and and the fact that with a victory you
are you are now going into this fight one went

(51:25):
away from challenging for a world title, which is obviously
the dream of every professional boxer that ever laysd on glove.
So just give me your thoughts as you head into
the fight knowing the stakes.

Speaker 4 (51:34):
Man, this is Yes, I agree, this is definitely the
biggest fight of our career this far. This is just
the type of pressure that a fighter like me needs
in order to like, you know, show different shades of
their game and show like different levels of you know
who I am and my opponents, and I really intend

(51:55):
on putting on an emphatic performance.

Speaker 3 (51:57):
So one of the things that's interesting about this, I said,
it is the official eliminator. The winner is going to
get a chance of fight for one of the title,
the WBC title one hundred and twenty six pounds. Look,
I've been covering boxing a long time twenty five years,
and title eliminators in my life have always been twelve
round fights. I was all surprised when I saw this
was a ten rounder, So I was wondering when you
when you realize it was a ten rounder, even with
the stakes at hand here, what was your thought about that.

(52:21):
I will let you know that I actually inquired with
the WBC earlier before we did this interview, just to
make sure I wasn't crazy, and I texted back and
forth with Mauricio Suliman, and his this thing was that's
allowable by our rules under special circumstances. I wasn't really
sure what the special circumstances were on this fight. But
what are your thoughts about having a title eliminator that

(52:43):
is a ten rounder, not a twelve rounder? But you've
never gone twelve rounds before had a schedule twelve rounders
so far.

Speaker 4 (52:49):
Yeah, yeah, I've never had to schedule twelve rounders so far,
So being at ten rounds, I mean, it really doesn't
make a difference to me, Like I is far much
longer than ten rounds. Twelve rounds anyway, So I have
been prepared for regardless. But yeah, you know, it is
what it is. You know, we we're fighting Tot Brouns
for Totle Browns, but being at his ten, we're gonna
handle business just the same exact way. It doesn't even
really matter. You know, we might not even make it

(53:11):
to the whole ten. We never know, but you know,
on know for sure that the way how I've trained,
I'm wert ready for anything.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
Well, so then what are your thoughts about Vivas? Because
I was looking over as record. I've seen him fight
a few times, very experienced, has faced good opponents. The
only losses he has he has three defeats, but on
the on so that's you know, he does a guy
who's been beating before. But on the other hand, the
three guys that he lost to were all by decision,
and they're all good fighters, guys that fought for world titles.

(53:40):
Joe at Gonzalez, who's fought for the title multiple times.
That was in twenty twenty three. I lost to Edward
Obias in twenty twenty two and Rubin Via in twenty nineteen.
So on the one hand, very experienced against good opponents
when you see that on the record, but you know
he's lost those fights. How do you sort of gauge him,
how to size him up?

Speaker 5 (53:58):
Man? You know, you you kind of like obviously you
don't take it lightly.

Speaker 4 (54:02):
You know, just this kiss has losts like you said,
until he lost too, he's never been stopped. And then
you look at the way he fights. Man, He's very durable,
throws a lot of punches, and he's gonna be in
your face all night, you know. With my boxing style,
I want to be able to show just like a
larger gap between from myself and the opponents that he's

(54:24):
lost to, because those guys are you know, are are
great fighters in your own right.

Speaker 5 (54:28):
As well too.

Speaker 4 (54:28):
But I just want to separate myself and let everyone know,
like I'm gonna be world champion, like you know, these
guys that he lost to as well, like the Dave
dault for the title, but they've also never been world champion.

Speaker 5 (54:39):
I want to be able to, you know, show like
I'm over that hump.

Speaker 3 (54:44):
Well, speaking of getting over the hump, I want to
go back and just ask you briefly about your fight
two fights ago. That was the fight where it was
really close. You fought the uh uh, the experienced Suliman
Sagawa was you know, a tough fight for you for him. Also,
you got a narrow majority decision, and there was I
think I remember reading a lot of comments about it,
having my own thoughts about it. Two sort of two

(55:05):
schools of thought. One, Hey, shoesho Carrington found himself in
a tough fight. He got through it. He won a
close fight, and he showed something because he was able
to rise to the occasion and overcome some adversity. That
was sort of the positive. Then, of course there's always
a negative. We're like, oh, shoeshow got exposed? He's not
that good? Is what the hype'spen etc. You know how
that goes. I mean, so I guess my question what

(55:27):
was what is? What was your view of it? And
what do you think of the people that said, you
know what, overhyped?

Speaker 1 (55:32):
My thing?

Speaker 5 (55:33):
Is this? Right?

Speaker 4 (55:34):
Like I people don't understand that boxing, like every great
you're gonna have your tough fight, whether if it's one
fight to fight, you're gonna have a debt opponent that's
gonna match you stylistically in a way that's gonna make.

Speaker 5 (55:47):
It pretty difficult for you.

Speaker 4 (55:48):
And that's what the go was.

Speaker 5 (55:49):
You know, you're gonna have that. You're gonna have that.

Speaker 4 (55:51):
And it was definitely a line lesson for me. I learned,
uh not to get too happy with the knockouts and whatnot.
But also I also took the to the fact that
I noticed that the people that are saying all over
hype now or whatever, they were just so used toe
you just me knocking guys.

Speaker 5 (56:09):
Out and steam rolling everybody and whatnot. So I've always
noticed once it's like a person like that gets into
a close.

Speaker 4 (56:16):
Fight, they're like so eager to throw that lost word
in there, you know what I'm.

Speaker 5 (56:21):
Saying, And all he lost all he's not he's over
hyped or whatever. But man like there was.

Speaker 4 (56:26):
Just two fighters just getting it in and you know,
he was home. He even had a big upset fight
before with Ruvilla, and they they like, you know, he's
a top level contender and in front with Division as
well too.

Speaker 5 (56:39):
So the dude was no slouch.

Speaker 4 (56:41):
Just because like people don't know his name, like they're
not and recognize him.

Speaker 5 (56:45):
They just think like, oh, you know, shit, went in there.

Speaker 4 (56:47):
With some guy that didn't make have much of the
name and got into some trouble.

Speaker 5 (56:51):
But you look at his record, or you look at
the way he fights, the.

Speaker 4 (56:54):
Dude is tough, and you know, I got a number
of respect for Segau, but man.

Speaker 5 (56:58):
We was able to do what we had to do
to get to w still and you know.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
Move on exactly. I was gonna say, you didn't lose
the fight. You did get to win as close as
may have been. And then in your last fight, which
was in November, I thought this was pretty cool. You
got the opportunity to be on the undercard of Jake
Paul and Mike Tyson, which was obviously a massive event
seeing worldwide by tens of millions of people on Netflix. Yes,
you took on a tough guy and Dana colewell, you

(57:25):
dropped him two times, won a lopsided basically a shutout
decision against him. What was the experience like for you
to be on such a huge card. I mean, you're
you're you're on championship level cards already. But I don't
think anybody or most people in boxing right now, unless
they're the main event, necessarily have been on that level
of an event in Cowboys citing huge, huge event.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
What was that?

Speaker 5 (57:47):
Like?

Speaker 4 (57:48):
I think that was a like, by far the biggest
event that I've been a part of. Second to that
was my pro debut to a Wild of Fury three card.

Speaker 5 (57:56):
But man, this was my Tyson.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Like this so that's your guy, right, that's your Brooklyn.

Speaker 4 (58:01):
Yeah, yeah, Like so many things as to why it
hits home, Like, you know, Mike Tyson's from Brownsville.

Speaker 5 (58:07):
He personally was the one to ask to have me
on a card.

Speaker 4 (58:12):
You know, I was able to you know, share a
lot with him in terms of like you know, watching
train and talk to him, get his phone number and everything.

Speaker 5 (58:19):
Like now now you know we're where he spent to.

Speaker 4 (58:22):
My place, and but back to like just the whole
magnitude of how I was fighting on that card, it
was just amazing, man, Like just the whole thing of
how I was being treated in terms of being escorted here,
escorted there, and uh they're just in an early nice room.

Speaker 5 (58:39):
It was so crazy man, but I loved it.

Speaker 4 (58:41):
It was like a spectacle and that's something that I
can't wait to experience again and in their future.

Speaker 3 (58:47):
So one thing I was not clear about, did you
know Mike much at all before this or was it
just that he saw that monologue you did of his
famous post fight interview and then he sort of was
introduced that and said, I like this kid. I want
him to be on my show.

Speaker 4 (59:01):
But we've met, like I would say, less than a
handful of times throughout my life, you know, but just
to like see him take a picture or just to
ask ques, but it will be like few. And it
was like so many years in between.

Speaker 5 (59:15):
I know he would forget about who I am, right.

Speaker 4 (59:17):
But luckily I had a friend that's actually a mutual
friend of his that kind of kept putting a bug
in his ear about my name, and you know, my
face wasn't really being shown as much yet. And then
once I finally fought on TV, when I thought Bernard Torres,
I knew that that was the day, like I've.

Speaker 5 (59:34):
Got to do my tys of rendition now. I didn't
think that it would have.

Speaker 4 (59:39):
Got me the position to fight on the same part
as him, but I'm just like, I gotta pay home
minds my first time fighting on TV. Everybody to remember
whom I am outside of what I've just you know,
just played in the ring.

Speaker 5 (59:50):
And yeah, man, it was so dope.

Speaker 4 (59:53):
I feel like, uh that that was the actual reason
why he reached out because he loved the fact that
I did that rendition.

Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
It was like, oh, man, you're crazy. Man. You gotta yo, Man,
you gotta you gotta come.

Speaker 4 (01:00:04):
On up fight, you gotta come on our car, man,
Like I wouldn't have it any other way, And it
made me.

Speaker 5 (01:00:09):
Feel really special.

Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
You need to give our our listeners a little snippet
of the monologue.

Speaker 5 (01:00:13):
No, man, I retired monologue.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
Man, I was only joking. I actually didn't expect that.
It's all good.

Speaker 5 (01:00:18):
It's so crazy man, that that is it. I retired
to monologue. Mike Tyson doesn't be much better than I do.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
That was still impressive that you could remember the whole thing.
So anyway, so as we were talking about this fight,
because it's a title liminator in the WBC. The WBC
champion is Stephen Fulton Junior. He recently won that title
from Brandon Figueroa. He's been a champion also in the
one hundred and twenty two pound way class. I just wondered,
since if you win this fight, which I know you
planned to do, do you have any thoughts about the
possibility of fighting Fulton and what you think of his game?

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (01:00:46):
Man, Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 4 (01:00:47):
I've been thinking about fighting Fulton for the past I'm
gonna say a year and a half now, you know,
because I knew he was coming up in way at
some point, and you know, and being at once he
got up to further way, it was like, okay, Like
now I can really like really hone in and watch
you and see what your faults are. So I noticed

(01:01:07):
if there's a few things like that he doesn't keep
up with, you know, in terms of like defensively that
I could easily.

Speaker 5 (01:01:13):
Capitalize on and already in my size and.

Speaker 4 (01:01:16):
I feel like I'm bigger than him, I feel like
I'm stronger than him, and you know, I have a
lot of different things that we have in common in
terms of our box ability, but I feel like just
for what he edges and like with me in terms
of like experience, I feel like I still.

Speaker 5 (01:01:33):
Like I have a better IQ than he does. Like
I just utilize what I have, like my assets better
than he does.

Speaker 4 (01:01:40):
And you know, I just want an opportunity.

Speaker 5 (01:01:42):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
That's a big statement because he's falled good guys. He guys.
You know, guy's been a world champion twice. He you know,
he fought over in Japan against any way, he squat
Figureoa twice, fought other quality guys Angelo Leo. So you're
saying you got a bigger IQ than Steven Fulton.

Speaker 4 (01:01:56):
Yeah, definitely, Yeah, I still I still do because like
you know that the time will come in THEO.

Speaker 5 (01:02:01):
Granted, like he has more experience than me, but at
some point.

Speaker 4 (01:02:05):
I will have, you know, a lot of experience will too,
and then you know, people will start making an argument
of oh, like the experienced aspect of it.

Speaker 5 (01:02:13):
But you have all this experience in the world.

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
A lot of the guys that have already thought had
more experience than me, and I was able to get
him out of there or stop Moor.

Speaker 5 (01:02:21):
Just beat them.

Speaker 4 (01:02:22):
So it is what it is, man. The experience is
one thing, but to use the IQ is another thing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Okay besides Fulton though, and that's of course the fight
that you would be positioned for with a victory. But
I've heard you mentioned other guys in the way class
their names. There's other good champions in this division. It's
kind of a wide open division. There's not like one
guy that's got like the lockdown, you know what I mean.
There's a multitude of opinions about who's number one. But
Nick Balls, the WBA champion who just defended the title recently.

(01:02:49):
I've heard you mention him as a guy you love
to get in the ring with the top rank is
involved with the two other title there's your promotion company,
that's the WBO champion, Raphael Espinoza and the IBA champion
angel Leo. Uh, what are you? What are your your
takes on on maybe those guys you mentioned Ball, I've
heard that, yeah, and the talent and the and the
rest of your champions in your division.

Speaker 4 (01:03:11):
Man, But you know, I'm very inclined to fight raphael
A Spinels as well too.

Speaker 5 (01:03:15):
I'm number one in the WBO, like I'm here to fight.

Speaker 4 (01:03:18):
All of the champions, angel O Leo as well too.
I'm number ranking before in the IVF. I want to
fight all these guys. But these guys gotta have to
be the one that's gonna want to step up to
the play. I'm here like, I'm not ducking anybody. I
would say the most attractive fights for me are Stephen Fulton,
any Ball.

Speaker 5 (01:03:35):
Those are the most attractive fights. But if those fights.

Speaker 4 (01:03:37):
Don't happen, then I would be gladly open to a
fight at Espinoza or angel Leo, but just for just
so I can fight for the title and get that strapper.

Speaker 5 (01:03:47):
In my waist.

Speaker 4 (01:03:47):
Man, Like you ask those guys, are they ready to
fight me? That's that's what the real question is.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Well before that, it's obviously the Vivas fight, So just
backed in for a minute. Yeah. As I mentioned earlier,
he has the three losses, but all against the very
reputable opponents, all guys who had fought for the world titles.
But also, as I mentioned, those guys all went the
route with him, they didn't get knocked out. So I wonder,
do you believe that perhaps a way for you to
separate yourself from those other guys is to get in

(01:04:14):
there and to knock him out. Is that sort of
what you would what you would love to do, is
to get rid of him, and and like I said,
show a separation between yourself and the other contender types
that he has already lost to.

Speaker 5 (01:04:23):
That'll definitely put me.

Speaker 4 (01:04:26):
In a different different level, will show me in a
different level from the rest of the guys he's lost to.
You know, me, I'm coming in and to dominate, whether
if it's you know, going to distance or knockout.

Speaker 5 (01:04:38):
But I feel like it's very possible.

Speaker 4 (01:04:39):
For me to get him up out of there for
sure with the you know, the things that I see
that he lacks, or the things that I gain from
fighting him and stuff like that.

Speaker 5 (01:04:47):
So I feel like at this.

Speaker 4 (01:04:49):
Point, I just have to just be you know, stick
to the game play and work smart and you know,
get the job. Then if knockout comes, the knockout comes.
You know, you never know when it comes to the
SHUTU show.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
Well either way knock out decision. If you win, it's
onto the world title fight. That's right, That's right, all right,
Bruce Shushoe Carrington, thank you very much for your time today.
I appreciate it. I wish you nothing but the best
in the fight. I'm looking forward to watching you in action.
Thank me, I appreciate it, all right, you bet have
a great day.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
Again, as advertised, he can fight, he can talk, he's
an up and comer. We're not saying he's a future
Hall of Famer already, but Shushu Carrington is entertaining and
he's on this undercard for top rank in Vegas. A
final thought after the conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:05:28):
If he actually proves that he can fight at the
championship level, he can absolutely have a level of stardom
because he is not only an entertaining and crowd pleasing
fighter to watch, he gets it like he likes to
talk to the press, like I've done this a long time,
DJ I can tell if a guy hates talking to
the media, if a guy just does it because it's
his job and they kind of force him to do it,

(01:05:49):
and there's other guys that seem to genuinely like it, yep,
I would put at this point in time Shushu Carrington
as a guy that actually likes the interaction, likes to
talk about himself, likes to talk about his plans and
what he wants to do, and he's definitely in that
sort of mindset, and good luck to him. He's got
a lot of talent, he's got a lot of belief
in himself. And it comes off to me some might

(01:06:10):
say cocky. I don't tell me. It doesn't come off
as cocky. It's just just self confidence and you know what,
good for him.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
So we'll say, you can't have it both ways.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
Fight fans, you want fighters that have personality that will
say something about themselves or about their opponent, because all
you do is complain. All these guys never say anything.
They mumbled. They gave the same cliche answers, the same
stock answers. I had a great training camp, you know,
hopefully God will help me win the fight.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
I had a great opponent.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
We we need some of this mixed in. You can't
have it both ways, peeps. This guy, this guy's wearn't
it on his sleeve that I think I'm great? And
so part of the people are tuning into ceas he
gonna get his block knocked off.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
That's good for the sport.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
So he definitely is in that in that vein good
good for the game. And now it's a matter of
you know, if he can do it. It's the higher level
because yeah, look, no offense to him, but he he's
fighting Viva, who is experienced, and as we talked about,
he's got the three losses against quality opponents that fought
for World titles, but he's never a shusha who doesn't
have any big wins on his record. Yet he's sort

(01:07:11):
of been rushed into this position in my opinion personally,
and this is not a knockout him. I rather like
Shushu Carrington. I still view him as a prospect. He's
fourteen and no, I hasn't really fought anybody. I was
at his pro debut. Actually, he reminded me of that
because he turned pro on the undercart. I believe it
was on the undercard of either Tyson Fury Deontay Wilder
two or three, and so you can see how quickly

(01:07:32):
he's been moved along. But anyway, good luck to him
if he wins the fight. As we talked about, he's
the mandatory for Stephen Fulton, and we'll see if that
fight comes off and how he does what he really
steps up against a real guy and Stephen Fulton, if
that's what comes to pass, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
Some news quickly and then some nostalgia because we've been
here a second or two. We were wondering were we
not on the weekend of help me with my dates
May two, three, and four. If Eddie Rayoso is training
Ryan Garcia and others, how is he in the corner
in New York on Friday night the second and then

(01:08:07):
he's also in Saudi Arabia with his guy Canelo Alvarez
on the third the next day, and with the time
displacement with Saudi Arabia being what seven or eight hours ahead?

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
We now have the answer follow up on.

Speaker 3 (01:08:19):
This, okay. So, Tiathimo Lopez had done a couple of podcasts.
I believe he was on with our buddy Sean Porter
on Sean does a great podcast called The Porter Way.
So on that podcast, he spoke about how that he
wasn't training with Eddie Renoso, that he hadn't spoken directly
with Eddie, but Eddie's people had contacted his team, I

(01:08:42):
guess his management or his lawyer whatever, and explained to
him that he was not going to be able to
train him. And Tifim was kind of hurt by that,
and he went and did another interview on another show
called The Punch Drunk Boxing Show and was sort of
disappointed about the turn of events and wasn't really a surprise.
And when I saw those comments, I touched base with

(01:09:02):
Eddie Renoso and I said, you know, any kid, you
just kind of clarify what's going on here, because I
didn't think there was any kind of falling out. But again,
like you mentioned, if you have you know, and remember
with fanfare, ti Fimo had announced last fall that he
and his father were happily gonna have Eddie Renosa helping
them out and to work with them and train them

(01:09:23):
and and get ready for his fights. And they thought
it was a great match. And the same thing had
happened where he had Ryan Garcia who had previously trained
with UH with Eddie but had left him when the
whole thing happened when he fell out with Canelo, and
he then was training, you know, with Derek James. For
whatever reason, he left Derek James UH and was going
back to Eddie. So they're like, okay, so now you've

(01:09:45):
got the card that come now, this was before this
May second card had been put together. Now you have
Turkey al Chic puts together this this tripleheader in Times Square,
where one fight is tia Fimo Lopez defending against Barbosa.
The main event is supposed to be Ryan Garcia against
Roly Romero. You have Devin Haney and the co feature.
But anyway, if Eddie Renoso has got the two guys

(01:10:06):
you know, in the first fight and in the main event,
but you got Canelo Alvarez fighting on May third in
Saudi Arabia. You just made the point. It can't be
in two.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
Places, not those two places.

Speaker 3 (01:10:17):
And so also so they could be like.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
In New York and maybe be in Chicago the next night,
even that New York to Ria, that's not the same thing.

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
No, So anyway, I touch base with Eddie and he
explained that he and Canelo for obvious reasons, to accommodate them,
to acclimate themselves to the to the climate, to the
time change, just to their surroundings, the food, the whole nine.
They're going to Saudi Arabia for May third, They're going
three weeks ahead of the fight. Wow, So they're going
to be there for a while. So not only like

(01:10:46):
at first I thought maybe Eddie would train them, but
not necessarily be with them on the night of the fight.
There are certain trainers like Robert Garcia is an example.
Robert's got a big stable of guys and if he
if the schedule was confusing and there's too much going on,
Robert has all people with him. He's got his son
Robert Junior is very dependable and a top trainer in
his own right. In the making. He'll go with the guy.

(01:11:08):
They've got other assistants. Sometimes his father will go, Mikey
will go. They've got people that can work it out
and they deal with their team like that. Eddie doesn't
necessarily have that person, and the fighters like Ryan and
Tifimo are at a higher level anyway in terms of
what their expectations are, so it just was not conducive
to it. So Eddie and I were talking about this
and he basically said, look, you know, Ryan is training

(01:11:29):
with his father Henry there in San Diego. He and
Canelo are in Lake Tahoe. T Femo is going to
be trained by his father. T Femo singor good luck
to them. But I just didn't feel like with all
the guys I have that I can do them justice,
and especially since we're leaving so many weeks ahead of time.
And by the way, besides Canelo on the card in
Saudi Arabia, he's got a kid that he manages, the

(01:11:53):
olympian from Mexico Verde, who was turning professional. He wants
to be there for him. He also has another young
a Cuban light heavyweight that's on the card named Brian Leone,
who he does train, who's on the undercard. So he's
gonna be with those guys, along with Canelo and Saudi Rabi,
and so it just wasn't going to work out. So
all the hype about Eddie being with the two big

(01:12:13):
names in Ta Female and Ryan, they won't even make
it to one fight together in this union.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
Interesting, all right?

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
So you solved that one other news item not unexpected
as it relates to the potential Terrence Crawford and Canelo
Alvarez fight later this year, and that is Crawford making
what decision.

Speaker 3 (01:12:32):
So Gustavo Oliveri, who was the new president of the WBO,
hosted on social media and also sent me and some
of the other boxing reporters a message saying that they
as an organization had confirmed with Crawford that he will
not return to the one hundred and fifty four pound
division and he will relinquish his interim WBO one hundred

(01:12:55):
and fifty four pound title. That once the Canelo Crawford
fight is made officials and now is obviously it's gonna
be after me a third at that point that title
will become vacant. There was no assessment about what's happening
yet with the WBA title. He holds the full title
of the WBA. But if he's telling the WBI I
am not coming to WO, that he's not coming back

(01:13:15):
to fifty four, you can count on that title being vacant,
which means at some point the young Yo Nstayas who
just won the interim title in recent weeks, he will
be elevated to the full title holder. And as we
all knew, this is just making official in many ways
that Terrence Crawford, who is now near the end of
his career and going for the biggest fights possible, that
he will never fight again at one hundred and fifty

(01:13:36):
four pounds, and he'll go on and fight to Canelo Alvarez,
presuming Canelo defeats William Skull, and those titles will go
to other people at some point.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
All right, one thing left, and that's another bit of nostalgia.
After we spent so much time on George Foreman. It
was twenty nine years ago, as we do this pod
March twenty three, March the twenty third, nineteen ninety six,
that ar Turo Gotti fought Wilson Rodriguez. We've talked about
this before, but let's bring it up for the audience
right here, the IBF Junior Lightweight title defense Gotti Rodriguez.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
Wild fight.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
In fact, you believe, and many believe outside of the
Mickey Ward fights, this may be his next best fight.
So bring it up again here on the nostalgia on
the anniversary.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
Oh, I believe that very strongly. I think that if
you take a look, if you take if you take
Goddy Ward one and Gaddy Ward three out of the equation,
this is the best Arturro Gotti fight in terms of
drama and action. This was a young Gaddy first title defense,
star on the rise, coming off a big win against
Tracy Harris Patterson to win the IBF title. And Tracy

(01:14:46):
Harris Patterson was a hell of a fighter in his day.
He had defeated him in December of nineteen ninety five.
Now he's starring in the main event on I believe.
It was the second ever edition of HBO's Boxing after Dark.
They had a absolute barn burner in their first main
event with Marco Antonio Brera and Kennedy McKinnon and having
this as the next main event really set HBO Boxing

(01:15:08):
Efter Dark on a path of people knowing that you're
going to tune in whatever the fights are and most
likely to see some kind of hell of a fight.
That was the sort of the style of that show
for several years before it became a dumping ground for
you know, getting rid of contract fights that were owed
and bullshit mismatches and comeback fights. But back in the
early days of the series, it was this kind of
very compelling main event. Now, first of all, the undercart

(01:15:30):
fight that opened the show is kind of just as
good as anything, but it's kind of loses the attention
because it wasn't at the same level of you know,
incredible action and drama as the first as the main
event was the undercard fight. This was Junior Jones against
the Hall of Famer Orlando Canizales and a one hundred
and twenty two pounds world title fight, and they put
on a tremendous battle. Junior Jones got the big win

(01:15:53):
against Canazales, but the main event is what really stood out,
and that was, like I said, Gaddy, he's making his
first title defense, young star in the Rock. He's got
a lot of fans there from New Jersey in the crowd,
and Wilson Rodriguez then put on an absolute fucking war.
This was drama on top of drama on top of drama.
Gaddy gets dropped in the second round. Goddy's eye is
completely fucking swelled up.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:16:14):
He knocks Wilson Rodriguez down. Uh he you know, he's
body shots. He ultimately scored a massive one punch knockout
to completely make a dramatic comeback. He was about to
get knocked out Gaddy. Of course, the very famous aspect
between rounds. At one point, You've got the doctor in
the corner with you know, Gaddy's eye swelling up and
he has him cover the eye. How many fingers do

(01:16:36):
I have up? And you know he guesses right, and
they let the fight continue. I mean, that's drama. You
could you know, they had the mic in the quarner
so you could hear the quarter and the doctor going
through it. And uh, you had the great late cutman
Joe Susa, who basically saves Goddy's career that night.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:16:52):
The the what's the word, the conspiracy if you will,
the urban legend, if you will, that when the doctor
held up the fingers it was. It was Joe Susan
that tapped Goddy on the leg to tell how many
fingers it was. He tapped him twice, so he was,
you know, holding up the two fingers. Nonetheless, massive pretend
this battle just I felt this was the fight. Now

(01:17:15):
I had seen ar Turro win the title against Tracy
Aris Patterson. I obviously saw fights after this Wilson Rodriguez fight.
I covered, you know, uh, ten or twelve Gaddy fights
in his career. Uh And I'm a i'm a I'm
a dieart.

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
I'm in the.

Speaker 3 (01:17:29):
Bag for our Taro Gatti. I love it by this fight,
watching this fight on HBO. At this time, I'm working
as a reporter at a newspaper in Saratoga Springs, New York.
And I come home. I've I've taped this boxing event
on the VCR and I settled after work. Because in
those days I'm working at the newspaper. We get off
our ship from the sports department on a Saturday night.

(01:17:50):
We've taken all of our our sports scores and put
the paper to bed. I get back to my apartment
probably two o'clock in the morning. I rewind the tape
without knowing what happened. There's no smartphone. I can't check Internet.
I'm not worried about Twitter. I rewind it. I watched
the show and this was the fight where I fell
in love with our Turo gat. Yeah, and it was
a love affair that goes on to this day.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
Go back and watch that fight and let me just
add to your nostalgia that I was just as we
do this now. Last weekend in Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.
We talked about it back a couple of nights ago
on the preview pod.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
I took a picture.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
Which I showed you of Gotti pummeling an opponent at
Boardwalk Hall. They have a banner hanging in Boardwalk Hall
permanently that says home of our Turo thunder Gotti eleven
world title fights. It's got red boxing gloves hanging as
a banner in that building. He is so revered from
the nineties and the two thousands and all of these

(01:18:46):
tremendous battles, including this one.

Speaker 3 (01:18:49):
Well, he fought the final nine fights of his careb
Boardwalk Call.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:18:52):
I was blessed to cover all nine of those fights
at Boardwalk Call. The last this was basically the first
Mickey wordfight took place in Connecticut at the Foxwoods Casino. Uh,
I've take them back at the Mohegan Sun Casino.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
My bad.

Speaker 3 (01:19:06):
But the next nine fights before he retired, every one
of them was in Wardwall call. But this fight against
Wilson Reriguez that headlined is boxing after darkcart with the
very underrated Junior Jones Orlando Kenizals undercard fight. This took
place at the Theater at Madison Square Garden.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:22):
And I actually have a great so back a few
years ago when the when the Ring magazine, this was
during the pandemic, they did a Gaddy war tribute issue
and uh, my pal Dougie Fisher asked me what I
write a piece for that, And the story that he
assigned to me was, can you do a piece on
the five best Arturi Gaddi fights, not Mickey Ward. Like
we mentioned, I obviously picked this as the number one fight.

(01:19:44):
There's also others a fight that's our legendary fight against
Gabriel Rowellis and others. But so when I'm doing the
piece on on this, on this for this magazine article,
and I'm and I'm talking to Pat Lynch, who was
the career long manager of Arturo Gotti, and he's recounting
some stuff about the fight. You know, he says to me,

(01:20:06):
he says he after the fight, he asked Gott he
like when he got knocked down. He's like, well, what
were you thinking? He's like, well, he was thinking that
I just spent like six figures on a new car,
and I'm gonna be fucked if I lose this fight.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:18):
That was what was when he got up and he
came back and scored a dramatic comeback and and like
I said, that's when I and I'm sure many others fell.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
Relive it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):
All right, great stuff here. The Foreman Nostalgia itself was
a podcast on to itself. Shoeshoo Carrington with us as well,
gave you some fight recaps with the Towering Inferno, Sebastian
Fondora and Ferocious Cambosis fights.

Speaker 2 (01:20:42):
You got it all.

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
Let's go have a good week and let's get ready
for that Las Vegas Top Rank show and ending out
the month of March.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
Coming up here. Other than that, Dan Rayfield, I think
we're good. Ray Poplis We said a lot here on
the Pop.

Speaker 3 (01:20:56):
Well, thank you sir.

Speaker 2 (01:20:57):
There you go there is.

Speaker 1 (01:20:58):
Dan Rayfield follows. Subscribe to this podfeed, Apples, Preaker, Spotify.
Also to Dan's substack, the Fight Freaks Unite substack for
all the intel, all the news, the newsletter.

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):
You did it all right now we are good. You've
been listening to the Fight Freaks Unite retap podcast

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}George Foreman RIP + Sebastian Fundora Defends In Vegas And Bruce Carrington With Dan Too | Fight Freaks Unite Recap