By Erik Schmidt: Unbeaten cruiserweight prospect Alexander Frenkel (14-0, 10 KOs) faces perhaps his toughest challenge of his short career when he meets up with American Cory Phelps (12-3-1, 7 KOs) on Saturday night at the Oberfrankenhalle, Bayreuth, in Bayern, Germany. Frenkel, 23, will be fighting for the vacant IBF Youth cruiserweight title. Frenkel is coming off an impressive 5th round stoppage over American Arthur Williams in his last bout in February. In that fight, Williams was totally dominated and dropped twice before the referee stopped the one-sided bout in the 5th.

At 23, Frenkel, originally from Ukraine and now living and fighting out of Germany, is one of the top cruiserweight prospects in the world, though he has still yet to fight any top level opposition thus far in his career. In selecting Phelps, Frenkel’s management is choosing a tough opponent, one who many felt beat Bobby Gunn in their recent 6-round draw in March. Even though his record isn’t all that impressive with his three losses, Phelps is much better than his record indicates. He has excellent power and moves well around the ring. That is precisely the type of fighter that may turn out to be the Achilles hill for Frenkel, who despite his enormous power in either hand, he’s somewhat stationary, and moves rather poorly for a top level fighter. Read more…

By Aaron Klein: Undefeated light middleweight prospect Alfredo Angulo (12-0, 9 KOs) makes his second appearance of the year this Saturday night when takes on Colombian Richard Gutierrez (24-1, 14 KOs) in a bout for the vacant WBO Inter-Continental light middleweight title at the Buffalo Bills Hotel, in Primm, Nevada. Also on the card is undefeated light middleweight contender James Kirkland a super featherweight phenom Yuriorkis Gamboa, so this will be a good chance for the young 25 year-old Angulo to show off his skills in comparisons to fellow light middleweight Kirkland.

Angulo represented Mexico in the 2004 Olympic Games, losing to Ireland’s Andy Lee. Since turning professional in January 2005, Angulo has strung together a high percentage of knockouts in that short time period, with four of him nine knockout victories coming in the 1st round. In his last two fights, Angulo has surprised many with 1st round knockouts over the tough veterans Archak TerMeliksetian and most recently Ricardo Cortes. Most people hadn’t expected Angulo to win so impressively over either fighter. More to the point, some fans felt that Angulo wouldn’t be able to get by TerMeliksetian at all period, let alone knock him out in the 1st round. Read more…

By Nate Anderson: In one of the poorer scored fights I can recall seeing, light welterweight prospect Joel Torres (9-0-1, 5 KOs) and Christopher Fernandez (15-4-1, 9 KOs) fought to an 8-round draw on Wednesday night at the Gotham Hall, in New York, New York. The final judges’ scores were 77-75, for Torres, 78-74, for Fernandez and the third judge scored it 76-76. I personally had Torres winning by several rounds, but I suppose the judges’ can’t be blamed because Torres, who had came into the fight as the one expected to win, was hardly impressive to say the least. In fact, both fighters looked bad and fought a mostly boring fight, holding often and landing few hard shots in the fight.

Torres concentrated mostly on the midsection of Fernandez in the opening round, hitting him with hooks repeatedly. Fernandez, the bigger and stronger guy, allowed the shorter Torres to crowd him. Although Fernandez, 32, seemed to relish the idea of fighting on the inside for some reason, often coming in close to Torres and trying to out-punch him at close quarters. Being the shorter guy, Torres seemed more than happy to oblige Fernandez with his inside fighting game and freely fire back with short punches. The punches were terribly weak, however, which is where the judges’ probably figured that Fernandez was doing better, even though he was landing much less frequently than Torres. So far, I was coming close to being impressed with neither fighter. Read more…

By Nate Anderson: Light welterweight prospect Francisco Figueroa (19-2, 13 KOs) defeated Luis Rodriguez (22-2, 13 KOs) by a 12-round unanimous decision on Wednesday night to retain his NABF light welterweight title at the Gotham Hall, in New York, New York. The final judges’ scores were 118-110, 117-111 and 116-112, all for Figueroa. Going into the fight, the 23 year-old Rodriguez was thought to have been able to make this a close fight based on his excellent record. However, at once glance of his record, with all of the fights taking place against unknown opposition, I should have been more skeptical about his chances in the fight.

Built like a tall string bean, Rodriguez rarely used his height to his advantage against the much shorter Figueroa. Instead, Rodriguez allowed t Figueroa to bull his way to the inside and stay there for most of the fight, hitting Rodriguez over and over with short head shots. In fact, Rodriguez took an awful lot of head shots for a fight with such a low level title at stake. With the fight going very much against him in the later rounds of the fight, he may have been better off if he had just folded his cards and quit on his stool in between rounds, especially considering he had no power to speak of an almost a zero chance of scoring a knockout of Figueroa. Read more…

By Scott Gildfoid: In somewhat of a disappointing move, former 2004 Cuban Olympic heavyweight Gold Medalist Odlanier Solis (9-0, 6 KOs) will be reportedly fighting former heavyweight contender Francois Botha (45-4-2, 28 KOs) on May 30th in Spain. The fight would have meant much more say five years ago when Botha was still fighting regularly, but since that time the 39 year-old Botha has fought only one time and clearly isn’t the same fighter he was in his prime. This seems to be a case of Solis fighting a named fighter so as to increase the Cuban’s stature in the division.

Despite winning the Gold Medal in 2004, Solis has still done little as of yet, mostly fighting soft opposition. In his toughest fight to date against 6’4” Cisse Salif in March, Solis struggled badly, missing often and having problems with Salif’s size. To be sure, Solis, a smallish heavyweight at 6’0”, looked horrible in the bout and nothing like a future champion. If not for Salif’s lack of offense, this would have easily have been a loss for Solis, who looked like he didn’t belong in the same ring with Salif. I had expected that Solis would continue moving up against better opposition after the Salif fight, but he immediately went back to fighting C-class opponents in his next bout, a fight against a badly overmatched Georgian fighter Mamuka Jikurashvili, who Solis dropped three times with body shots en route to a 2nd round TKO in April. Read more…

Former Heavyweight Champion of the World Larry Holmes has dismissed the current crop of heavyweight boxers as nothing more than ‘big and strong guys who don’t know how to fight.’

Speaking to Setanta Sports News Holmes said:

“If you want to prove yourself as a champion, you have to fight everybody and anybody who comes up and gives you that challenge. You have to prove yourself worthy of being Heavyweight Champion of the World. Read more…

When unbeaten super featherweight phenomenon Yuriorkis Gamboa (9-0-0, 8 kos) steps into the ring against Darling Jimenez (23-2-2, 14 kos) this Saturday (May 17th) in Primm, Nevada, it will not only be the HBO debut of the Cuban Olympic gold medallist, but also his chance to win the WBC international championship. The title had been laid down by none other than Phillipinian superstar Manny Pacquiao before “Pacman” stripped the world title from Juan Manuel Marquez on March 15th. Read more…

Olympic gold medallist Odlanier Solis and former world heavyweight champion Francois Botha were meant to meet in the ring in December 2007 but the “White Buffalo” drew in his horns on very short notice. Now everything is set and the contracts are signed for the fight to take place on May 30th in Bilbao, Spain.. Read more…

By Eric Thomas: Undefeated light middleweight contender James Kirkland (21-0, 18 KOs) faces his toughest test to date this Saturday night against the hard-punching Nigerian fighter Eromosele Albert (21-1, 10 KOs) in a bout for the vacant WBO NABO light middleweight title at the Buffalo Bills Hotel, in Primm, Nevada. Kirkland, 24, is coming off an exciting action packed bout with Allen Conyers in November 2007, a bout in which both fighters traded first round knockdowns before Kirkland’s superior power eventually took over and he was able to stop him later in the round with another knockdown. Since turning professional in 2001, it has been only in the past year that Kirkland has started to build a name for himself with victories over Billy Lyell, Ossie Duran, Mohammed Said and the aforementioned Conyers.

Most of the fights have been shown on ESPN, which has allowed a fairly substantial viewing public to see Kirkland fight. After watching his fight with Lyell, an 8th round TKO, l in February 2007, I can see why Kirkland has been getting so much television coverage. He goes right after his opponents from the opening bell in a style somewhat reminiscent of a Tough Man contest in which both fighters forgo any thoughts of defense while they try to take each other out as quickly as possible. In Kirkland’s case, he has a lot of skills and tremendous power to go with his high pressure style of fighting, which makes him much more appealing than the average fighters that are generally shown on cable. Read more…

By Manuel Perez: Undefeated former 2004 Cuban amateur Gold Medalist super featherweight Yuriorkis Gamboa (9-0, 8 KOs) takes a big leap up in competition this Saturday against Darling Jimenez (23-2, 14 KOs) in a 10-round bout at the Buffalo Bills Hotel, in Primm, Nevada. Gamboa, 26 has quickly risen up the rankings in the super featherweight division since turning professional last year in April 2007, winning eight of his nine bouts by knockout. Though he’s only fought nine times, Gamboa is already ranked #5 in the WBC and #3 in the WBA, and is thought by many to be even better than the top super featherweights in the division, such as Manny Pacquiao, Juan Manuel Marquez and Edwin Valero.

It’s still too early to tell due to the mostly soft opposition that Gamboa has been placed in with but he looks so far to have the goods to be a future champion in a short while. What makes Gamboa so appealing as a fighter is that he fights like he has a train to catch, not wasting any time with the typical feeling out period that most boxers use in the opening moments of their fights. Read more…

By Nate Anderson: With last Saturday’s impressive 12-round unanimous decision over former WBC light welterweight champion, unbeaten Timothy Bradley (22-0, 11 KOs) fights himself as the top guy in the junior welterweight division and the new star on the block. However, he’s still not quite the top guy in the division, for just below him at the next open slot in the WBC rankings is former champion Ricky Hatton, the fighter that many people feel is the best fighter in the division. However, Hatton, 29, appears to be mostly living on his past accolades in the division, for he hasn’t done much since defeating Juan Urango and Jose Luis Castillo last year.

Both were impressive fights, most fans would admit, but Hatton hasn’t continued to prove himself since that time. He took time off from the division to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. in December, which turned out to be a good move financially for Hatton but resulted in him being stopped in the 10th round. Hatton was simply too small for Mayweather, which he admitted later on. Since then, Hatton has decided to move back down to the light welterweight division where he previously held the IBF title. Before taking on the best in the division, Hatton has decided to take an easy tune-up fight against Juan Lazcano on May 24th. Read more…

By Jim Dower: Former heavyweight contender David Tua (49-3-1, 42 KOs) has recently snapped out of his lethargy with an agreement to fight the winner of the of the June 21st bout between young heavyweight contenders Chris Arreola and Chazz Witherspoon. The 35 year-old Tua perhaps has his eyes on a potential future title shot against WBC heavyweight champion Samuel Peter, which would make sense of Tua’s decision to fight the Arreola-Witherspoon winner. Arreola is currently ranked at #7 in the WBC, so a win against him would give Tua a big shot in the rankings and at the same time would make him a desirable future opponent for Peter – or whoever ends up on top in the division after Peter’s October bout with Vitali Klitschko.

For Tua’s sake, he better hope that Arreola emerges at the winner against Witherspoon, because if it’s Chazz that comes out on top, that’s not a fight that favors Tua’s style of fighting. Chazz would likely be able to use his long reach to jab into submission. Arreola, however, is a more of a crude slugger, who would come right at Tua, trying to take his head off with every punch. Despite his large 6’4” frame, Arreola tends to stand directly in front of them, often very close, which would allow for a shorter-armed puncher like Tua to land his bombs with great frequency. Arreola’s defense is also pretty average and that’s not a good thing against a fighter that punches as hard as Tua. Read more…

By Jason Kim: In a move almost destined for failure, former IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Chris Byrd (40-4-1, 21 KOs) will be making his first appearance as a light heavyweight this Friday night when he fights the tough Shaun George (16-2, 7 KOs) at the Thomas & Mack Center, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The bout will be shown live on ESPN2, so it’s not like the 37 year-old Byrd will be able to hide a poor performance from the general public in his initial effort in the division. Byrd, who was stopped in the 11th round by Alexander Povetkin in his last bout fought on October 27, 2007, will be coming into Friday’s bout a full 50 lbs lighter than he did in his fight with Povetkin.

Byrd, a natural light heavyweight, has been forced to keep his weight well above that while campaigning as a heavyweight for almost his entire 15-year professional boxing career. Never a particularly big heavyweight, usually weighing in between 200 to 215 lbs, Byrd will be coming in a lot less than that against George on Friday. According to Byrd, he feel faster and stronger at this weight than he did as a heavyweight, which isn’t hard to believe because he wasn’t exactly muscular-looking in appearance as a heavyweight. Until late in his career, when he suddenly began focusing on building muscle and shedding fat, Byrd was always somewhat fat looking. The strange thing about it, though, is that when Byrd took off all the fat, he seemed to be a much less effective fighter than he was earlier in his career. Read more…

By Scott Gilfoid: David Haye (21-1, 20 KOs) has reportedly givin up his WBC cruiserweight championship belt, and asking the WBC to rate him in the WBC heavyweight division. However, he still has yet to give up his other two cruiserweight belts, the WBA and WBO. One can imagine that Haye, 27 will shortly be giving up those belts as well as he moves forward with his hopes of winning a heavyweight title in the near future. As for Haye’s WBC cruiserweight title, it will be fought over by Rudolf Kraj and Giacobbe Fragomeni. The latter fighter is no stranger to Haye, having fought a life and death battle with him in November 2006, in which Haye, who was bloodied and hit often, eventually prevailed with a 9th round stoppage.

Since letting his plans known that he wants to move up to cruiserweight, Haye has not been shy about wanting to take on the best in the division. Unlike most fighters, Haye has no interest in taking things slow and moving up in small increments the way that it’s normally done in the boxing world. Almost immediately, Haye called out IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko , asking him to fight him. After getting not getting a positive response from Klitschko, Haye recently confronted him at a charity press conference in April, getting face to face with Klitschko and calling him out. Klitschko looked both startled and afraid, as if he wasn’t sure if Haye was going to reach out and clock him with one of his big trademark right hands. Read more…

By Eric Thomas: While watching former WBA super welterweight champion Junior Witter (36-2, 21 KOs) struggle in this past Saturday’s bout with Timothy Bradley, I got a general sense that Witter, 34, is past his prime and should really strongly consider ending his career. He looked well past it and his advanced age seems really has nothing to do with my thoughts on this. Many fighters still can fight effectively well past 34, Lennox Lewis, a prime example of that. But, in Witter’s case, he looked old and slow from the very get go, struggling with both his timing and his speed against the younger, stronger Bradley.

I’ve seen many of Witter’s fights and have been a big fan of his for many years, and for that reason I kept out hope for him that he would somehow eventually start fighting like his old self and take over the fight. The problem was, this isn’t the same fighter that I’ve come to know in the past. Witter’s speed was largely gone and his defense, once impregnable and nearly flawless, was wide open for pretty much anything that Bradley chose to throw his way. When Witter was dropped in the 6th round by a badly telegraphed right hand from Bradley, that pretty much clued me in that Witter just doesn’t have it anymore. Read more…

By Erik Schmidt: Edison Miranda (30-2, 26 KOs) hopes to get a fair decision this time out when he takes on unbeaten middleweight Arthur Abraham (26-0, 21 KOs) in their revenge match in June 21st at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, in Hollywood, Florida. Miranda, 27, was given what many people consider a poor decision when he lost to Abraham by a controversial 12-round unanimous decision in September 2006. Miranda, who dominated most of the rounds, breaking Abraham’s jaw in the fourth round and appearing to do more than enough to get the win over Abraham.

However, Miranda was penalized a total of five points in the fight, ranging from low blows to the use of his head. There’s no question that Abraham was guilty of using his head on one occasion but as far as the low blows go, those were punches on the border of Abraham’s beltline and it seemed way out of line to penalize Miranda for such questionable shots. Worse, however, was that the fight was stopped in the fourth round to have Abraham’s jaw looked at by a ring side doctor. Abraham ended up being allowed to continue fighting but he mostly was limited to brief flurries in every round, missing the vast majority of his punches every time. Abraham only landed a small handful of punches in each round following the fifth round, while taking tremendous punishment from Miranda, who continuously landed big bombs with both hands. Read more…

By Aaron Klein: After last Saturday’s split decision loss to undefeated American Timothy Bradley (22-0, 11 KOs), a fiercely determined vowed to fight on, saying “I’m still going to carry on, no way am I retiring after that,” Witter said. “There’s a lot more in the tank. There are better nights for me to come and Junior Witter will be back - as a world champion.” To be sure, Witter, 34, still seems to have a lot in the tank based on the closeness of the fight against Bradley. If not for his tiring out in the last three rounds of the fight, Witter would have won the fight. Even then, Witter still came close to getting a draw.

The loss, however, does have a big impact on Witter’s career because he now is no longer in the running for a potential bout with Ricky Hatton. It was a long shot at best regardless of whether or not Witter won the fight, because Hatton had shown zero interest in fighting him all these years when Witter was winning constantly. Now that he’s lost to Bradley, obviously Hatton will use this as an excuse to side step Witter for the remainder of his career. Read more…

By Chris Williams: Undefeated British featherweight Paul Truscott (11-0, 1 KOs) defeated Osumanu Akaba (10-4, 8 KOs) by a tough 12-round unanimous decision on Friday night to win the vacant Commonwealth (British Empire) featherweight title at the Eston Sports Academy, Middlesbrough, in Yorkshire. Truscott, only 22, traded rounds with the hard-hitting Akaba, who refused to give any ground to the highly skilled Truscott. The final judges’ scores were 116-112, 115-113 and 116-112, all for Truscott. Many of the rounds were very close and difficult to score because Akaba often wouldn’t land as many shots as Truscott, yet his punches were much harder than the weaker-punching Truscott.

In the first round, it appeared that Akaba would simply be too strong for the rail-thin Truscott as landed a high number of powerful hooks to the head of Truscott. However, after being dominated for the first two minutes of the round, Truscott showed what was in store for Akaba later on in the fight, as he began to return fire with piercing combinations and excellent hooks. Though his punches were not even close to being as hard as Akaba, they were thrown with excellent form and were quite constant in nature. Read more…

By Manuel Perez: Fresh off his 6th round stoppage at the hands of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., in December 2007, light middleweight Ray Sanchez (21-2, 15 KOs) squeezed out a close 10-round majority decision over Patrick Thompson (13-13-1, 5 KOs) on Friday night at the Isleta Casino & Resort, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The final judges’ scores were 97-93, 96-94 and 95-95. It was a mostly ugly fight with Sanchez doing a lot of running and clinching for most of the bout, and landing counter shots whenever he’d spot an opening in the defense of Thompson.

For his part, Thompson, 35, put a lot of pressure on Sanchez for the entire fight, keeping him against the ropes for much of the action where Thompson would land mostly body shots and a small amount of uppercuts. It looked overall as if Thompson had done more than enough to get the decision but the outcome came to no surprise to me because Sanchez was fighting in his own hometown. Some in the audience weren’t in full agreement with the ultimate decision, however, as they loudly booed Sanchez afterwards. Like I said, he looked to have lost the fight by at least 1-2 rounds, and wasn’t the one making the fight. Read more…

By Scott Gilfoid: In an especially badly scored fight, BBBofC English lightweight champion John Murray (24-0, 12 KOs) defeated Youssef Al Hamidi (4-9-1, 1 KOs) in a scheduled 8-round bout at the Nottingham Arena in Nottinghamshire, England on Saturday night. Murray, 23, won by the score of 77-75, which seemed like a gift decision because it was Hamidi who appeared to win six of the first eight rounds of the fight. Many in the crowd hated the decision and gave a chorus of boos to Murray, letting them know what they thought of the decision. To say that Murray struggled against Hamidi would be putting it lightly.

In most of the rounds of the fight, Murray couldn’t lay a glove on Hamidi, as he followed him around the ring taking repeated shots from the 5’5” Syrian born fighter. Up until the 7th round, Murray was only able to land in the single digits against the elusive Hamidi, who used foot movement and twists of his torso to dodge the slow and labored punching style of Murray. In terms of speed, Murray has got to be one of the slowest punching lightweights I’ve seen, and it’s frankly astonishing that he’s a champion of anything. Whatever the case, he may have got the decision but he didn’t win the fight, not as far as I’m concerned. That was a case of a fighter winning when they shouldn’t have. Read more…