By Scott Gilfoid: In a move that’s likely destined for failure, former IBF/WBO heavyweight champion of the world Chris Byrd (40-5-1, 21 KOs) is apparently going to continue on with his boxing career despite his recent three losses in his last four fights. According to the The Flint Journal, Byrd, now a ripe 38 years-old, has said that he wants to be the third person in history to go from heavyweight to light heavyweight and win a championship belt. There’s no problem with Byrd having a goal; In fact, it’s admirable, except for the fact that he was recently trounced in his last fight by light heavyweight Shaun George on May 16th, who methodically gave Byrd a systematic beat down in every round before knocking him out in the 9th round.

Although in fairness to Byrd, he did injure his left shoulder and couldn’t continue fighting because of that. However, Byrd injured the shoulder after being badly hurt for the second time in the fight and knocked down. When Byrd fell, he landed on his left shoulder, causing a serious injury. Read more

By Manuel Perez: Undefeated World Boxing Organization light flyweight Ivan Calderon (31-0, 6 KOs) fights a rematch with former WBO light flyweight champion Hugo Fidel Cazares (26-4-1, 19 KOs) in a scheduled 12-round bout on Saturday night at the Ruben Rodriguez Coliseum, in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. The two have unfinished business after the 33 year-old Calderon won a controversial 12-round split decision over Cazares last August in Puerto Rico, despite Cazares knocking Calderon down in the 8th round and appearing to win the last six rounds of the fight. The final judges’ scores were a mixed bunch, with one judge ruling it a 116-111 victory for Cazares and the other two giving Calderon the nod by the scores of 115-112 and 115-112, each.

I personally had Cazares, 30 winning by a narrow margin over Calderon. I thought Calderon did a good job in the first six rounds, moving around the ring like a Gazelle, stopping occasionally to land a quick counter-punch, and then continuing with his constant movement. He looked good in those rounds, and made the bigger Cazares miss often with his big shots. Read more

By Eric Thomas: With the talks with Manny Pacquiao still going nowhere and stuck in a standoff, Oscar De La Hoya is reportedly looking at taking on WBO welterweight champion Paul Williams (34-1, 25 KOs) for De La Hoya’s final fight of his career on December 6th. However, it’s hard to take this boxing news serious because Williams, 27, is probably the best welterweight in the division, and who already holds a win over Antonio Margarito, the fighter that De La Hoya has shown no interest at all in fighting and who many boxing fans feel that De La Hoya is afraid of.

Williams, a tall, 6′2″ fighter with an high work rate, would be a very dangerous opponent for a fighter as old and as inactive as De La Hoya has been in the past five years. Frankly, I can’t see this fight turning out any different for De La Hoya than a fight with Margarito would, because De La Hoya won’t be able to match-up with the huge size of Williams, and he surely won’t be able to hold him off with his jabs and left hook. Read more

MIDDLEWEIGHT - James DeGale vs. Emilio Correa-Bayeaux

British middleweight James DeGale built up an early 6-1 lead in the first round over his Cuban opponent Emilio Correa-Bayeaux and then held onto the lead to eventually win 15-12. However, DeGale got sloppy-looking by the end of the 2nd round, and tried to run out the clock in both the third and fourth rounds, making the fight dull to watch. His skills were far from impressive, as he looked badly fatigued and sloppy, ready for the taking by his Cuban opponent. Of all the Olympic fighters, DeGale probably looked by far the worst of the lot, and nothing like a potential professional champion. He got caught on the ropes over and over again in the 2nd and 3rd rounds, and took a lot of punishment. The running, however, in the 3rd and 4th rounds by DeGale made him look really bad and it wasn’t an Olympic style performance by far.

Results: DeGale wins by 15-12.

LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT - Kenny Egan vs. Xiaoping Zhang Read more

FEATHERWEIGHT Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Khedafi Djelkhir

In perhaps the most impressive performance of all in the gold medal tournament, Ukrainian Vasyl Lomachenko overwhelmed his French opponent Khedafi Djelkhir with power shots, hurting him often and causing three standing eight counts in the 1st round. After the third standing eight count, the fight was stopped giving Lomachenko the gold medal.

Results: Lomachenko wins by 1st round stoppage

LIGHTWEIGHT Alexey Tishchenko vs. Daouda Sow

Alexey Tishchenko, the former 2004 Olympic Gold medal winner as a featherweight, came back four years older at 24, but still fighting at the top of his game. He build up an early lead on Daouda Sow from France, winning the 1st round by a 3-2 score. In the second, Tishchenko build on the lead hitting Sow with left hands to end the round ahead by a 7-4 score. Read more

By Erik Schmidt: For the first time in ages, this year’s Olympics failed to unveil a large amount of potential future professional champions. In fact, it seems that in some of the cases due to crazy hand-held electronic scoring devices of the judges, the top fighter didn’t always make it into the finals of the Olympic tourney.

There were, however, a few fighters from Ukraine and Russia that really impressed, such as two-time Olympic Gold medal winner Russian lightweight Alexey Tishchenko, Ukrainian featherweight Vasyl Lomachenko and Russian heavyweight Rakhim Chakhkiev. Lomachenko appeared to be easily the best fighter in the entire Olympics, as he breezed through his competition with ease and scored a 1st round stoppage in his gold medal match against Khedafi Djelkhir. Italian super heavyweight Roberto Cammarelle also looked good, scoring a 4th round stoppage over Zhilei Zhang from China, although Cammarelle, 28, probably doesn’t have the size or the age to make it as a professional. Read more

By Nate Anderson: Undefeated Australian super featherweight prospect William Kickett (12-0, 5 KOs) defeated Argentinean Vicente Martin Rodriguez (21-2, 10 KOs) by a 10-round unanimous decision on Friday night at the Leagues Club, Wyong, in New South Wales, Australia. The final judges’ scores were 100-90, 99-91 and 99-91. However, the lopsided scores were slightly off as Rodriguez appeared to win at least four of the rounds. For Kickett, 21, a highly hyped Australian fighter and perhaps the best prospect in all of Australia, this fight was more of a setback than any kind of real victory for him.

Rodriguez, a decent fighter at best, hung tough with Kickett for most of the fight, and seemed to take the fight to him in the middle rounds as Kickett looked slightly timid, spending the majority of the time running from his weak-punching opponent. Not much of a puncher himself, Kickett was forced to move and box in order to keep the aggressive Rodriguez from out-slugging him at close quarters. In the end, it paid off for Kickett, but it was hardly the kind of performance you would expect from a fighter as hyped as him. Read more

By Jonathan Watkins: To become a renowned champion, you must fight your way to the top and then maintain the skills and consistency to stay there. Once accomplished you then have the luxury of sitting at the top of your division and being sought after by up and coming boxers. These fighters, aspiring to become better than the best fighter, have something to prove, unlike the title-holder who has already proven his worth.

A current champion who has come under scrutiny about his choice in fights is one Joseph Calzaghe, the Welshman who boasts a record of 45-0-0. Along with this impressive record, he has held the WBO Super-middleweight title for an astonishing ten years. On the way to earning these credentials he has beaten such fighters as Chris Eubank, Jeff Lacy, Mikkel Kessler, and Bernard Hopkins. Joe Calzaghe’s record speaks for itself. Read more

By Eric Thomas: Featherweight Fernando Beltran Jr. (31-3-1, 18 KOs) defeated Takalani Ndlovu (28-5, 18 KOs) by a 12-round split decision on Friday night to win the vacant IBO featherweight title at the Sommet Center, in Nashville, Tennessee. The final judges’ scores were 115-112, 115-112 and 113-114. Beltran, who was coming off a 12-round lopsided decision loss to Steve Molitor in April, fought much better against the South African Ndlovu.

Other than a rough patch in rounds six through eight, Beltran Jr. dominated the fight against the less active Ndlovu, taking the fight to him and out-working him for the most part. Both fighters share the distinction of having been recently defeated by IBF super bantamweight champion Molitor, but in Ndlovu’s case, he was stopped in the 9th round of a one-sided fight versus Beltran Jr’s 12-round shellacking. Read more

By Manuel Perez: The fight between welterweight Irving Garcia (16-3-3, 8 KOs) and Hector Munoz (18-1-1, 11 KOs) was stopped in the 2nd round after Munoz sustained a nasty cut over his left eye, which appeared to come from a right uppercut from Garcia. The fight was stopped at 1:40 of the 2nd round by Roberto Ramirez, who ruled that the cut came from a clash of heads. Garcia controlled the 1st round of the bout, landing some good left hands.

However, at the start of the 2nd round, the two fighters came in close, with Garcia’s back to the ropes, when suddenly Garcia landed a big right uppercut to the left eye of Munoz, causing him to back up and start holding the eye. The referee appeared to be shielded from the action and didn’t see that the cut was caused by a punch and assumed that it was caused by a clash of heads. After the cut was looked at, it was determined that it was too deep for the fight to be continued. Read more

By David Lahr: You got to hand it to Vitali Klitschko, he has a lot of courage to make a boxing comeback after four years out of the ring, especially in choosing perhaps the best fighter in the heavyweight division in WBC heavyweight champion Samuel Peter (30-1, 23 KOs) on October 11th in Berlin. But, of course, the greatest challenge of all will be for Vitali to get to the bout in one piece without falling apart from one injury or another before then. It’s been four years since Vitali last fight, at which time he defeated British heavyweight Danny Williams by an 8th round TKO in December 2004.

Though it was only four years ago, that’s practically a lifetime for a sport like boxing, which is a young man’s sport and it has a way of exposing older fighters like Vitali as old men in an instant. Whatever Klitschko may have been in the past, it’s highly unlikely that he will be even close to the same level he was four years ago when he last held the WBC heavyweight title. At that time, he may have been the best heavyweight in boxing, but that’s probably not the case any longer. There’s little doubt that Vitali has the boxing skills, size and power to defeat the Nigerian Peter, but the problem is that Vitali has often had trouble in the later rounds of his fight, and one could expect that he probably hasn’t improved in that area with the significant time that he’s been away from boxing. Read more

By Michael Lieberman: Instead of taking on Kelly Pavlik in his final fight of his career, Joe Calzaghe has opted for the Oscar De La Hoya finish to his career, facing a fighter that’s well beneath him in ability at this stage in his career Roy Jones Jr. on November 8th at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Jones may have been a great fighter one point in his career - and perhaps easily a much better fighter than Calzaghe can every hope to be - but at 39, Jones would be lucky to beat a bottom level top 15 fighter. To listen to Calzaghe tell you, people would think he’s about the face the toughest opponent of his career in the ancient Jones.

That may have been the truth if Jones was 10 years younger rather than a faded 39 year old, one who has been defeated three times out of his last six fights, while getting knocked out viciously twice to Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson. An argument could be made that the only reason that Jones has won any of his fights as of recently is because he’s no longer taking on top level opposition, thus disguising how faded he really is. Though Jones is only three years older than Calzaghe, he might as well be ten years older, because he has been in much tougher fights and against much superior opposition than the mostly soft opponents that Calzaghe has feasted on during his long 15 year career. Read more

By Eric Thomas: It looks as if the negotiations are continuing with Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao for De La Hoya’s farewell fight on December 6th. According to boxing writer Dennis Principe from Fightnews, De La Hoya has upped the offer to lightweight Pacquiao, increasing it from 70-30 to a 67-33 purse split with Pacquiao, of course, to get the much smaller 33% PPV split. Now it remains to be seen whether Pacquiao will go for the offer or still insist on the 60-40 purse split that he originally asked for at the start of negotiations. Pacquiao may instead like the idea reportedly offered by his trainer Freddie Roach, who came up with the idea of De La Hoya getting a 60% purse split and Pacquiao getting 30%, and then the winner getting the remaining 10% purse split.

Nothing has been said of that idea, and I can only imagine that De La Hoya, who is no longer fighting at the top of his game, might not like that idea very much. It would, however, be a sporting way to solve the issue and would seem to make the most sense of all. If Pacquiao is stuck on getting 40%, why not let him fight to get to that level? For either fighter, it would take some courage to accept such a deal, because they’d be potentially giving up a lot if they were to lose. Both, of course, can afford it I’m sure. Read more

By Scott Gilfoid: Though his name is never brought up when the top super middleweight fighters are mentioned, young 21 year-old Daniel Jacobs (8-0, 8 KOs) may already be the best of the bunch, perhaps even better than Joe Calzaghe and Mikkel Kessler - the two fighters thought by many boxing fans to be the top two super middleweights in the division by far. However, neither Kessler or Calzaghe have the crushing power that Jacobs has, nor the smooth moves on the inside. Indeed, Jacobs, a former PAL national championship and a National Golden Gloves welterweight championship winner, looks to be the successor of those two fighters.

At 21, however, Jacobs is progressing at a rapid rate and looks to ready to take over the division even at this early point in his boxing career. Having fought as a professional for only a year, he obviously has a little more time before he’s going to be pushed up against the likes of fighters like Kessler. However, he looks like he’ll be ready when the time comes, and like I said, he’d probably have enough power and skill to give Kessler huge problems even now. Jacobs’ power is enormous, so that even when he’s not landing perfectly, he’s capable of scoring a knockout. Read more

By Jason Kim: I’ve always been a big fan of boxing and especially the heavyweight division. There’s nothing better than to sit down on occasion and watch a good heavyweight bout on HBO or Showtime on the rare occasions that they have a decent fight scheduled. However, it seems that less and less often there’s a fight worth watching. That’s not the network’s fault but rather than lack of good quality fighters. When I look at the cast of characters that inhabit the heavyweight division nowadays, I’m less than pleased. With fighters like Wladimir Klitschko, Samuel Peter and Ruslan Chagaev holding titles, all decent fighters, it’s hard to get excited about the division.

They’re all good fighters in their own way, but none of them are close to being in the class of a George Foreman (76-5, 68 KOs) in terms of power, knockout ability or star power. Perhaps the closest thing to it, I guess, would be Wladimir Klitschko, but he doesn’t fight hard most of the time, throw his punches with the same intensity or have the same take no prisoners approach to fighting that a young Foreman showed. Peter, the WBC heavyweight belt holder, is a lot more aggressive, tending to throw ever punch with knockout intentions. Read more

Los Angeles, CA (August 20, 2008) — 2004 Olympic Gold Medalist and top-10 world rated Andre S.O.G. Ward has just released a statement today that on Friday, August 8 at around 6 AM (PST) he underwent arthroscopic surgery on his right knee. Dr. Warren King, who has operated on many top athletes, and is also affiliated with the Oakland Raiders, San Jose Sharks and the San Francisco Giants, performed the surgery at Fremont Medical Center. Read more

By Aaron Klein: Having seen undefeated lightweight Amir Khan (18-0, 14 KOs) on approximately a dozen occasions, I have serious doubts whether he’ll ever be ready to take on top level opposition such as Nate Campbell, Manny Pacquiao, Humberto Soto, David Diaz, Joel Casamayor or Michael Katsidis. I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade, but Khan, from what I’ve seen of him, he doesn’t have the chin to compete in the lightweight division. In fact, I don’t think he has the chin to compete in the sport of boxing at all, period. He’s like the equivalent of Wladimir Klitschko in the lightweight division, except that he doesn’t have a big left hook or fight hand like Klitchko possesses.

Khan does, however, have excellent speed and movement, which is why he’s still undefeated at this early point in his career. His chin, though, is like fine china that you have to handle with the utmost care for fear that you might break it. The problem is, the direction that Khan is heading, namely against better fighters with a heck of a punch, he’s going to be getting hit a lot no matter how fast his own punches or how much he opts to run around the ring. Read more

By Dan Ambrose: This is a question that has many boxing fans and writers wondering about since undefeated super middleweight Joe Calzaghe decided upon fighting what many people consider to be a faded Roy Jones Jr. rather than a young, 26-year-old undefeated middleweight Kelly Pavlik. Although Calzaghe has made his reasoning pretty clear for deciding not to fight Pavlik - “he’s not ready…he hasn’t proven himself…he turned me down previous…etc” -it doesn’t seem to be making much sense to many people and it’s not pacifying a lot of non-English boxing fans, who see it as something other than what Calzaghe is saying.

It’s strange, though, for Calzaghe has always been a fighter that I personally have considered brave, taking on the toughest super middleweights in the division like Mikkel Kessler and Jeff Lacy. However, the list runs short after those two fighters, and there’s still interest in my part, and other boxing fans, to see whether Calzaghe could prove how good he is by facing a fighter smaller than himself in Pavlik, a middleweight, and who appears to be equally as good. Especially after Calzaghe’s last fight, a 12-round split decision over a 43 year-old American fighter Bernard Hopkins, who not only came close to beating Calzaghe but also knocked him down in the process. Read more

By Chris Williams: As the talks between boxing pound for pound king Manny Pacquiao and former American boxing hero Oscar De La Hoya remain in a virtual stalemate over the disagreement over the purse split, I’ve come to wonder whether De La Hoya has become too greedy for his own good? It’s okay for a fighter to want to get the bigger share of the pie when they’ve put in time and showed that they’re the bigger star in the game. However, when you offer other stars, ones that are in their primes and fighting much better than you could ever dream of, much lesser amounts of money to take a fight, I think it’s bad for the fighter to accept and bad ultimately for boxing.

What it does is set up the faded fighter as some huge gorilla that can take advantage of bigger names and use them to their advantage. It somewhat reminds me of a faded pop star Paul McCartney, who by the 80s was no longer capable of putting out number #1 hits on his own, using the biggest current stars in music like Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder to sing duets with and continue - at least for a little while - to stay on top of the music industry. I really have a lot of respect for Pacquiao the way he walked away from the contract negotiations with De La Hoya when he refused to budge from his original 70-30 split offer. Read more

By Nate Anderson: It’s been a year since Ricky Hatton (44-1, 31 KOs) got pasted by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in an embarrassing 10th round stoppage at the MGM, in Las Vegas, Nevada, and there any many boxing fans out there saying that Hatton has lost a step, and should consider retirement from the sport. However, it’s not quite clear whether Hatton is any different than he previously was, because by looking at him, he looks the same. He looked superb against Juan Lazcano in his last fight in May, and the only real thing that I noticed that was wrong with him was his lunging a bit too much at Lazcano, which was cause for a bit of excitement when he was stunned briefly by a short left hook in the 8th round.

However, I think Hatton’s problems aren’t physical in nature; Rather I think that Hatton has gotten a wee bit sloppy with his technique as of late and is trying to get by with some of his earlier bad habits, namely leaping in with his hooks and right hands without setting them up with a jab ahead of time. This kind of thing works against the lesser opponents he previously fought in the past, but now that he’s stepped it up against better punchers like Mayweather, Lazcano and other fighters of that class, Hatton is finding himself having some slight problems. Read more