Saturday was a pretty decent day of boxing. Here are some of my notes from a day that didn’t suck:
– We really shouldn’t have been surprised at Amir Khan and/or Kell Brook looking done-as-fuck in their Saturday grudge match at Manchester’s AO Arena.
In the eight years between when it made the most competitive sense to face one another and now, both former world champs had been busted up and treated as chum by younger, hungrier, better opposition. Still, it was a little jarring to see just how little punch resistance Khan had– and, conversely, how good Brook looked (although how good he looked may have worked hand-in-hand with how bad Khan looked).
Khan, the Olympic silver medalist and former junior welterweight world champ, was rocked in the first round and pretty much rocked by everything solid landed until the ref waved off the contest in the sixth. Seeing how bad Khan looked, it was a minor miracle that he was able to get into the ring without a stiff breeze knocking him loopy during the ring walk. It was hard to tell how much offense he could’ve been capable of launching because he just never truly got his feet underneath him.
All things considered, though, Khan-Brook was a positive. A conclusive result added to that positive. As I wrote last week, this was boxing bonus material. It pitted two names– who otherwise wouldn’t have been doing anything– against one another in a legit grudge match, years in the making.
The only takeaway from this event should be that a weathered, post-prime Kell Brook is better than a weathered, post-prime Amir Khan. “Special K” should savor the moment and not take this win as inspiration to launch himself at any current elite-level welters or super welters.
– In, arguably, the second most significant fight of the day, Jaime Munguia fought in front of his hometown Tijuana fans for the first time since 2017, a full year before he curb-stomped Sadam Ali to claim a spot on the world stage. And, despite the DAZN broadcast team’s hard sell to the contrary, he was matched pretty light against D’Mitrius Ballard.
The 28-year-old Temple Hills, Maryland native was undefeated coming into the Munguia bout, but it was an undefeated in the “wink, wink…nudge, nudge” boxing sense of the word. Ballard had been brought along very carefully and definitely gave off the vibe of a moderately talented fighter being fattened up to serve as some star’s sacrificial lamb. Well, he served that purpose against a Jaime Munguia looking to impress his hometown fans and keep his positive buzz going.
The 25-year-old Munguia has tremendous fan support in Mexico, where his all-action mindset and humble, “aw shucks” big kid vibe fits right into what fight fans want in their boxing stars. He’s probably not, however, ready for an elite-level, multi-dimensional middleweight at the moment and that’s why his people are not leveraging his No. 1 spots in the WBC and WBO rankings (or his no. 2 spot in the WBA rankings) into a title shot at the moment.
There’s no rush with Munguia and he won’t take too much flak for beating up tailor-made fall guys, as long as he makes the squashes entertaining. But there ARE significant chinks in his armor and, unless his matchmaking is impeccable, he could at some point– fairly soon– fall to an upset.
– On the Munguia-Ballard undercard in Tijuana, highly-regarded lightweight contender William Zepeda stopped journeyman Luis Angel Viedas in three sloppy rounds.
The performance by the 25-year-old Mexican banger, which saw him get dropped in the second round, didn’t exactly affirm his status as the leader of the next wave of rising, high-end lightweights. To be fair to Zepeda, Viedas is sloppy AF and the ring was sloppy-wet as well. And, well, it’s not like he let the journeyman, who headlined an 8-rounder at the Plaza China King strip mall in Tijuana the fight before last, get too far.
– Also on Saturday, in Russia, Jorge Linares got stopped in the twelfth round by Russian lightweight contender Zaur Abdullaev.
It was a close fight right up until the very end, with Linares taking the early rounds and Abdullaev coming on late. In the twelfth round, however, with Linares up by one round on my scorecard, he got dropped twice and eventually stopped.
Is this the end for the 36-year-old Venezuelan former world champ? He’s now 3-4 in his last seven fights and appears to have nowhere left to go in the top-heavy lightweight division.
In this last fight with the Russian and in his previous losing effort against Devin Haney, Linares appears to still have the goods. His timing is decent, his reflexes seem sound. He can clearly still “go” at the world class level. His punch resistance may be faltering at this late stage of his career, but he’s hardly “shot.”
Linares is just Linares. I’ve written about this before, but the guy has always had the skill and ability to be a long-standing elite. There’s just something inside him that’s kept him back, sabotaging his own efforts and preventing him from achieving full self-actualization as a fighter. There’s just some black cloud there. Bad mojo manifesting itself as self-sabotage.
We could run through the whole sad-sack list from seven career losses, but just these last two defeats on his ledger pretty much tell the tale. He had Haney out on his feet in the tenth round and probably could’ve done that much earlier in their fight– but he didn’t. He was in firm control against Abdullaev on Saturday– but did nothing to change the course of the fight when Abdullaev started coming on.
And I don’t think these losses are necessarily age-related, although age is probably becoming more and more of a factor. This “let-wins-slip-through-his-fingers” quirk is totally in character with who Jorge Linares has been throughout his career.
Linares is not “done” just yet. He’s just Linares– a very good fighter who will find a way to lose the big ones.
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com