By Manuel Perez: Undefeated light welterweight prospect Mike Alvarado (21-0, 14 KOs) stopped Michel Rosales (16-2, 14 KOs) in the 7th round of a scheduled 10-round bout at the Isleta Casino & Resort, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Friday night. Alvarado, 27, considered one of the top prospects coming up in the light welterweight division, staggered Rosales, 25, with a big right hand at the end of the 6th round. Knowing that Rosales probably hadn’t recovered from the shot, Alvarado went right after Rosales in the 7th round and took him out with a flurry of big combinations, causing referee Rocky Burke to step in and halt the fight while Rosales was still standing at 1:28 of the 7th round.

Early on Alvarado looked mostly boring, somewhat like a smaller version of Winky Wright, except that Alvarado’s defense what rather porous to say the least. Though Rosales rarely threw any punches in the first round, he scored virtually every time he let his hands go. Alvarado, however, let his offense work as his defense as he continuously threw a steady rain of jabs over and over again. Occasionally, he’d throw a decent right hand, but mostly he’d miss with his power shots. Indeed, Alvarado’s accuracy was downright terrible despite the fact that Rosales wasn’t using any head movement or attempting to duck any of the shots. Read more…

By Aaron Klein: With the recent announcement of former WBC Vitali Klitschko (35-2, 34 KOs) and the current WBC heavyweight champion Samuel Peter (30-1, 23 KOs) to fight in October for the championship, one has to wonder how much Vitali will have left for the bout. If this fight were four years ago, the last time Vitali set foot in the ring, I and probably a lot of other people would assume that Vitali would win with relative ease. After all, his chin was one of the sturdiest in the heavyweight division at the time and he had one of the best right hands in the business. In addition, with Vitali’s size – 6’8” 250 lbs – and his ability to choose whether to box or slug, he was more than a match for perhaps any heavyweight in the division.

In his prime, Vitali rarely lost a round to any of his opponents, even against Lennox Lewis in their June 2003 bout. With the ability to use his long jab, left hook, and his powerful right hand, a prime Vitali would have been more than a match for Peter. Indeed, Peter would have been hard pressed to do much with Vitali at all except for to land an occasional shot or two. Read more…

Hennessy Sports in association with GoldenPalace.com can announce important news… Canada’s only national pay Television Network Super Channel will now be televising the WBC Super Lightweight Championship of the world between Junior Witter and Timothy Bradley Jr. at the Trent FM Arena Nottingham at a new revised time of 10.45pm ET/PT. Super Channel will also be showing the International Super Middleweight contents between the WBC # 1 Rated Super Middleweight and mandatory challenger Carl Froch versus Poland’s undefeated and tough Albert Rybacki. Read more…

By Scott Gilfoid: After months of negotiations former WBC/WBO heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (35-2, 34 KOs) have come to an agreement for a bout in October, though no official date has been set as of this time. It will be the first bout for Klitschko, 37, since his defeat of Danny Williams in December 2004. Following that fight, Vitali was injured repeatedly while training for a title defense against his then number #1 challenger Hasim Rahman. After multiple cancellations, involving months of time wasted for both fighters, Vitali finally stepped away from the sport and officially retired from boxing. For whatever reason, Klitschko suddenly announced late last year that he had decided on making a comeback to regain the titles.

Rather than having to work his way back like most fighters, Vitali was given the status of champion emeritus by the WBC, thus immediately thrusting him to the top of the division to take on the champion. Most recently, the dust cleared between the two WBC champions Oleg Maskaev and the interim champion Samuel Peter, with Peter winning the fight by stoppage. This set up another potential Klitschko vs. Peter bout. The first bout, Wladimir Klitschko, Vitali’s younger brother, defeated Peter in 2005, in one of the most exciting fights of the year. Read more…

Sinan Samil Sam has to take a break in preparing for his European heavyweight championship bout against Matt Skelton due to a hand injury. The title fight that was originally scheduled for May 30th in Istanbul will be postponed for about for weeks.

“It’s a pity”, states Sam. “I’m fired up to fight Skelton and I know that all of Turkey wants to see this fight. But at the moment I can’t use my left hand and I cannot take any risk before this fight. I know that this is my last chance to make it to the top. And I definitely don’t want to blow it.” Read more…

By Erik Schmidt: I often wonder how would the great Rocky Marciano (49-0, 43 KOs) do against today’s heavyweights. It’s perhaps even more of a question now than ever due to the lack of talent and interest in the heavyweight division. It’s been a decade since the heavyweight division had a champion – Mike Tyson – that fans were interested in, and since that time the quality of the fighters has dropped off dramatically, along with naturally the interest in the division as a whole. Many people say that it’s impossible for fighters of different generations to fight each other due to the size differences, the more advanced training techniques, and the better nutrition available now compared to the 40s and the 50s, when Marciano was at the top of the sport.

However, I don’t buy into all that, mainly because I see a lot of really poor trainers and a lot of heavyweights with bad diets and poor conditioning, and if anything, the nutrition and training is worse today than it was before. The main difference now, however, is that there’s a larger pool of people to get fighters from due to many of the other countries now having fighters that have turned professional. Despite that, the division still is in the worst shape now than it has been in years. So for this reason, I think it’s important to throw out the belief that you can’t compare different eras. Read more…

By Eric Thomas: In a bit of bad news, former light welterweight and welterweight champion Zab Judah (36-5, 25 KOs) has reportedly suffered an injury to his right forearm, making it necessary to have 50 stitches applied to the wound, and because of that Judah’s May 31st bout with Shane Mosley (44-5, 37 KOs) has been cancelled for the time being. There’s no word at this time as to when the fight will be rescheduled, but there are already talks undergoing for plans for a future date for the fight to take place.

This is particularly bad news for both fighters, perhaps even more for the 30 year-old Judah, for he’s been going through a rough period in his career having lost three out of his last six fights to opponents Carlos Baldomir, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Miguel Cotto. There’s nothing wrong with losing to those kinds of fights, but the fact remains that there’s been little to be happy about in Judah’s career since 2005 when he was the IBF/WBA/WBC welterweight champion of the world. Since that time, Judah has experienced three losses to the aforementioned fighters, including a non contest with Ruben Galvin in April 2007. In his last two fights, Judah has defeated two little known fighters, Edwin Vazquez and Ryan Davis, both fights interesting to watch but clearly a step down for Judah in terms of career bouts. Read more…

By Jim Dower: WIBF Women’s International Boxing Federation and WBA Female flyweight champion Susi Kentikian (20-0, 15 KOs) will arguably be facing her stiffest test of her early career when she faces American Mary Ortega (29-4-2, 8 KOs) in a scheduled 10-round championship bout on Saturday night at the Brandberge Arena, Halle an der Saale, in Saschsen-Anhalt, Germany. Kentikian, now 20, originally from Armenia but has since moved to Germany, will be making her sixth defense of her Woman’s WBA title and her 2nd defense of the prestigious WIBF title against the 27 year-old Ortega.

Kentikian, though only 20, has already surged to the top of the Woman’s flyweight division where she has dominated her opposition thus far since winning the vacant WBA title with a 9th round TKO of Carolina Alvarez in February 2007. Since then, Kentikian has breezed through her opposition, beating Maria Jose Nunez, Nadia Hokmi, Shawnee Martin and Sarah Goodson. Of them, only Hokmi gave her a competitive fight. Their first fight, fought on March 25th, 2007, saw Kentikian win by a narrow split decision. However, Kentikian not one to leave things unfinished, gave Hokmi a rematch in December 2007, this time beating Hokmi by a 10-round unanimous decision, winning by the scores 97-95, 96-94 and 96-94. Read more…

By Nate Anderson: Previously unbeaten super bantamweight contender Mike Oliver (21-1, 7 KOs) was shockingly stopped in the 3rd round by Colombian Reynaldo Lopez (29-5-2, 20 KOs) on Wednesday night at The Roxy, in Boston, Massachusetts. Oliver, 28, ranked # 2 in the IBF super bantamweight division, was cruising along in the third round having won the first two rounds when he attempted to throw a right hand from too far away and was subsequently nailed with a big right hand from Lopez, 34, knocking Oliver down flat on the canvas.

Referee Dick Flaherty then almost immediately stopped the fight at 1:22 of the third round with Oliver flat on his face on the canvas. It was a huge upset because Lopez, a fighter not even ranked in the top 10, was thought not to be nearly in the same class as Oliver in terms of boxing skills. The loss wipes out basically any chance for Oliver to land a bout with IBF super bantamweight champion Steve Molitor, who Oliver had been seeking to land a fight with for some time. Read more…

By Bradley Tice: Undefeated junior middleweight prospect Alexander Abraham (20-0-1, 14 KOs) stayed unbeaten with a disappointing 6-round unanimous decision over Mehdi Azri (12-6, 2 KOs) on Tuesday night at the P arc des Sports et Loisirs, Pont-Audemer, Eure, France. Abraham, 26, the younger brother of undefeated IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham, is clearly a work in progress at this point in his career. He has little of the boxing skills, power or the speed of his older brother, and is still learning how to develop the potential that he does have. Against Azri, who had come into the fight having lost five out of his last six fights, it would be putting it gently to say that the younger Abraham didn’t exactly impress. He did, however, when the fight, which is the most important part regardless of how sloppy he looked in doing so.

Abraham fought mostly flat-footed in the first round, tending to focus mainly on throwing body shots. It was a good idea because Azri was running all around the ring and making it hard to get a bead on him for a head shot. Obviously, Abraham had done his homework and realized what kind of style that Azri would be bringing into the ring. For his part, Azri landed next to nothing in the round, only a few wild shots in passing. It was ugly street boxing, the kind that you might see on the corner. Read more…

By Bradley Tice: In a fight that was supposed to be a stay-busy bout for French Light middleweight Hussein Bayram 27-3, 14 KOs), he was forced to struggle to defeat the tough Romanian Gheorghe Danut (7-10-6) by a six-round split decision on Tuesday night at the Parc des Sports et Loisirs, Pont-Audemer, Eure, France. Bayram, 32, was knocked down with 20 seconds late in the 1st round after walking into a powerful left hand from Danut. Bayram continued to have problems in the 2nd round as well, when he was nailed by a big left hand from Danut and momentarily stunned by the shot. However, Bayram, a fighter accustomed to fighting 10-12 rounds fights instead of six-rounds, began to warm in the 3rd round and then appeared to win the remaining rounds of the six-round bout as Danut badly tired out after the first two rounds.

Bayram looked bad in the first round, his reflexes slow, and his hand speed even slower, as he was hit often by the fast-punching Danut. Indeed, Bayram had a hard time landing his shots in the first round due to the quick movement from Danut, who would get inside and throw a flurry, then quickly dart away before Bayram could get his ponderous shots off. In fact, Bayram only connected with small amount of shots in the round and was already losing the round by a significant margin when he was clipped with a left hand from Danut with 20 seconds to go and knocked down. Read more…

By Bradley Tice: Unbeaten light welterweight prospect Ali Chebah (25-0, 19 KOs) was too much for Nicaraguan Nelson Lara (15-2-2, 8 KOs), finishing him in the 6th round of their WBC World Youth light welterweight title on Tuesday night at the Parc des Sports et Loisirs, Pont-Audemer, Eure, France. After a slow start in the 1st round, Chebah, 22, build up momentum and wore Lara down with big power shots, eventually stopping him in the 6th round with a short left hook to the head. Lara, 24, took a knee and then got up briefly, but then promptly took a knee again and was counted out by referee Massimo Barrovechhio.

In the first round, it looked as if the underdog Lara might pull off an upset as he landed effectively with jabs, combinations and hooks to the head of Chebah. Lara stayed in close to Chebah, smothering his power and preventing him from having room to get in his own shots. For the first two minutes of the round, it was all Lara as he tagged Chebah repeatedly with combinations to the body and head. Chebah, however, a notorious slow started, came on in the last minute of the round as he started to compose himself better, landing powerful right uppercuts and combinations. Read more…

By Dave Lahr: Welterweight prospect Antoine Smith (10-1-1, 6 KOs) stopped an over-matched Aaron Torres (16-7, 6 KOs) in the 3rd round on Wednesday night of a scheduled 10-round bout at The Roxy, in Boston, Massachusetts. Smith dropped Torres two times in the fight, once in the 2nd and another time in the 3rd, knocking him down with a big right hand. After the second knockdown, Torres elected to stay down and was promptly counted out by the referee Javier Colon at 2:25 of the 3rd round.

Torres, 29, who had lost five out of his last seven fights going into Wednesday’s bout with Smith, started off quick out the gates, throwing a steady series of jabs at Smith. It was apparent immediately that Torres for all his activity was going to have problems due to his unusually slow hand speed in comparison to the fast hands of Smith. However, Torres stayed busy in the round and gave Smith few chances to get his own offense started in the round. Indeed, Smith landed only a few shots in the round but he showed impressive power on those rare occasions that he chose to let his hands go. Read more…

Matt Skelton’s European heavyweight title challenge against Sinan Samil Sam has been postponed because of an injury to the Turk. The fight was due to take place in Istanbul on May 30. However, it will now be arranged at a later date when Sam has fully recovered. Skelton was looking to get back to winning ways after losing a WBA world title fight against Ruslan Chagaev on points earlier this year.. Read more…

By Chris Williams: Though many boxing scribes still feel that former IBF light welterweight champion Ricky Hatton (43-1, 31 KOs) is the best fighter in the light welterweight division, he’s beginning to get diminishing support among many fans for his steadfast refusal to fight WBC light welterweight champion Junior Witter (36-1, 21 KOs), who has been calling him out for the past two years without luck. Hatton has said that he doesn’t want to fight Witter because of the way that Witter is constantly calling him out in the press.

However, if Hatton has kept his eyes open in the sport during his career, he’d have seen that this is how it’s always done. That is, when one fighter wants to fight another fighter, particularly one that is more popular than them, they talk to the press and call out the fighter by saying something negative about them in one way or another. Hatton, for all his excuses about not like having Witter calling him out, did just that when he made negative comments in the media about Floyd Mayweather Jr. before they decided to fight one another. Mayweather, in turn, responded to Hatton with his own war of words. Shortly after that, the two agreed to fight. So, Hatton’s feelings of not liking what Witter is doing by calling him out seem to equate to something else, more likening to him just not wanting to fight him period regardless of what Witter is saying or not saying about him personally. Read more…

By Scott Gilfoid: Former lightweight Silver medalist from the 2004 Olympic Games Amir Khan will be taking on Michael Gomez (35-8m 24 KOs) on June 21, at the NIA, in Birmingham, England. Though some people are calling this the stiffest test of the 21 year-old Khan’s three year professional career, many see it as otherwise, feeling that Gomez, 30, a former BBBofC British super featherweight champion, is well past his prime now and can offer up little resistance to the talented Khan. To be sure, Gomez has lost three out of his last six fights, with all three losses coming by knockout.

It would perhaps be excusable if they were all against top flight opposition, but the names Peter McDonagh (7-11) and Javier Osvaldo Alvarez would seem to suggest that Gomez has slipped a lot from his perch near the top of the British boxing scene that he held in 2003. Funny how much things change in five years. It was that long ago, in 2003, when Gomez pulled off the best victory of his career, a 5th round TKO of Alex Arthur. It was Gomez at his best, and he followed it up in the next year with a 6th round stoppage of the hard-punching Leva Kirakosyan. Unfortunately for Gomez, that was pretty much was the end of his good fortunes, for he would lose to the relatively known Osvaldo by a sixth round TKO in early 2005. Read more…

Styles make fights and the May 17 unification title bout between WBC champion Cristian Mijares and WBA title-holder Alexander “El Explosivio” Munoz has all the makings of an instant classic..

The 12-round Mijares-Munoz main event, marking the first super flyweight unification title bout in more than 10 years, headlines the “Noche de Campeones” pay-per-view event live from the Auditorio Centenario in Gomez Palacio, Durango, Mexico. Read more…

By Nate Anderson: Former WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (39-1, 29 KOs) will be taking on undefeated Dimitri Sartison (22-0, 14 KOs) for the vacant WBA super middleweight title on June 21st at the Brondby Hallen, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Kessler, 29, had been on course to challenger WBA super middleweight title holder Anthony Mundine for the title, but Mundine opted to take on Sam Soliman in a rematch, which would have made it the fourth fight since winning the title in March 2007 that Mundine would have failed to defend his title against his number #1 challenger.

This opened up the title for Kessler to fight Sartison, an unbeaten fighter from Kazakhstan, who has fought largely no one while building up his unbeaten record. Kessler had previously been in negotiations to fight former middleweight contender Edison Miranda, but after going back and forth with ESPN for weeks, Kessler backed out, hoping to fight Mundine for the title. With Mundine off the table, Kessler was left with the little-known Sartison, 28, ranked #4 in the WBA, as his opponent for the title. Read more…

By Erik Schmidt: For the second time since winning his WBA title in April 2007, heavyweight champion Ruslan Chagaev (24-0-1, 17 KOs) has been forced to pull out of a bout due to a virus. His opponent, former WBA heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev (48-1, 34 KOs) will be forced to wait a little longer, perhaps a lot longer while Chagaev attempts to defeat this lingering virus. Since winning the WBA title by a controversial majority decision over Valuev in 2006, Chagaev has only defended it a paltry one time over Matt Skelton in on January 19th.

Chagaev, 29, had previously been forced to pull out of a title unification bout with Sultan Ibragimov in October 1997 for the same reason, knocked out due to a virus problem. At this stage, Chagaev is catching up to former WBC champion Vitali Klitschko, who cancelled title defenses to Hasim Rahman countless times due to nagging injuries. Read more…

By Aaron Klein: In watching Oscar De La Hoya (39-5, 30 KOs) completely take apart his opponent Steve Forbes last Saturday night, I saw the blueprint that Oscar had crafted, with the help of Floyd Mayweather Sr – his trainer – to use to beat Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their upcoming September 20th bout in Las Vegas. De La Hoya showed none of the mistakes that cost him in his last May in his split decision loss to Mayweather Jr. Showing an excellent jab, which Oscar kept in Forbes face for the entire fight, De La Hoya chose his moments wisely in which to go after Forbes with sharp attacks.

This strategy effectively conserved De La Hoya’s strength, allowing him to fight hard for the entire fight and keeping him from running out of gas like he often does when going the distance with opponents. De La Hoya didn’t let Forbes encourage him to brawl more than he wanted to, something that Oscar has had a problem with in his fights with opponents like Shane Mosley and Fernando Vargas, both of whom could get De La Hoya to get out of his game plan quite easily just be landing a flurry of shots. Against Forbes, De La Hoya kept his cool, thinking about his game plan and not getting drawn into brawling until he was ready to. This is an important factor for De La Hoya, because it shows that at age 35, he’s still learning. Read more…

By Aaron Klein: Last Saturday night the six-time world champion Oscar De La Hoya (39-5, 30 KOs) showed that he still has what it takes to be a world champion in the process of pounding out a remarkably easy 12-round unanimous decision over former super featherweight champion Steve Forbes at the Home Depot Center, in Carson, California. The win, although minor in some people’s eyes, was extraordinary in a sense that we got to see De La Hoya in the best shape he’d been in years, which allowed him to once again show his excellent ring skills without fading late in the fight like he’d done in many of his fights in the past eight years.

Beyond that, he showed that he wasn’t a washed up fighter, a tag that has been placed on him by many boxing pundits who have called out for him to retire from the sport. In so far as what I saw of him on Saturday night, I don’t think De La Hoya should retire at all, at least not yet. He looks like has a minimum of three years left at the top of the sport and he’d be crazy to get out of it now, just to appease a few negative sports writers. I can certainly understand where they’re coming from, though, for De La Hoya has looked bad in losses to Bernard Hopkins and his draw with Felix Sturm. Other than that, however, De La Hoya has nothing to be ashamed of for his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr., whom he lost by a split decision. Read more…

Saturday, May 24 sees a record breaking show in the United Kingdom with 55,000 fans packed into the home of Manchester City Football Club to witness the homecoming of their favorite son, Ricky Hatton. Ricky defends his IBO light welterweight crown and the most prestigious title in world boxing, the Ring Magazine belt, against Mexican-American hard man Juan Lazcano. Read more…

World Boxing Council Lightweight Champion David Diaz arrived in San Antonio, Texas on Monday night in advance of his meeting with the fans and local media on Tuesday at 11:30am at Mi Tierra Café, 218 Produce Row in San Antonio..

Diaz is visiting San Antonio for the first time in fifteen years. “I’m thrilled to be here, the fans were terrific to me when I fought here as amateur in 1993 and I look forward to meeting many of them on Tuesday. San Antonio has a great history in boxing so this is a perfect place to start our press tour.” Read more…

ShoBox: The New Generation returns to the United Kingdom on May 10, 2008, with an outstanding world title showdown and a promising undercard bout featuring two undefeated prospects..

On a special Saturday night edition of the popular, prospect-oriented SHOWTIME boxing series, World Boxing Council (WBC) Super Lightweight Champion Junior Witter will defend his crown for the third time when he takes on WBC No. 1 contender Timothy Bradley at the Trent FM Arena in Nottingham, England (same day tape delay at 10:45 p.m. ET/PT on SHOWTIME). Read more…

By Scott Gilfoid: French cruiserweight Jean Marc Monrose (24-1, 15 KOs) overwhelmed champion Johny Jensen (23-1-2, 10 KOs), stopping him in the 1st round on Saturday night to win the EBU (European) cruiserweight title at the Palais des Sports, Marseille, in Bouches-du-Rhone, France. Ranked #8th in the WBA cruiserweight division, Monrose, 26, immediately pounced on the Danish Jensen from the opening bell, bum rushing him and hitting him with a huge left hook to the head.

After a flurry of shots, which saw Jensen visit the canvas once, the referee stepped in and halted the fight at 1:30 of the 1st round, with Jensen taking severe punishment against the ropes. Jensen looked battered, his left eye swollen and he seemed disoriented, as if he didn’t know what had hit him. Perhaps he wasn’t figuring that Monrose would start out so quickly, Jensen never could make any adjustments to counteract Monrose’s furious first round attack and ended up losing badly to the French fighter. Read more…