Thursday, March 12, 2009

Kirkland-Angulo: As hot as it is going to get?

Kirkland-Angulo: As hot as it is going to get?
Mark E. Ortega
Freelance
March 12, 2009


Also eight other matchups and whether they would come off better now or later

There are fights out there that quickly grasp the attention of the boxing public, sometimes a bit too early in time for it to be a realistic possibility based on where in their careers those two fighters are. That is one of the many things that make our sport intriguing, it is all in the timing. It isn’t like football or baseball, where they play basically the same set schedule with a few differences here and there. In boxing, you never can guess where you will be eight months from now; let alone two to five years from now.

With that said, in boxing, many times a fight will start building up heat and excitement even if it doesn’t make sense at that exact moment for that fight to come off. Promoters are always trying to build a fight up so much until both guys are at similar stages in their career, near their projected primes, so that it makes the most money. A lot of times, this has worked and many fights have come together that took years of build-up to produce. It seems that fights like Hagler-Hearns and Tyson-Holyfield, despite their numerous setbacks, were always meant to come together the way they did, and it served the winners in both of those fights much better based on the timing.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Kirkland takes Julio’s heart, title of biggest puncher at 154

Kirkland takes Julio’s heart, title of biggest puncher at 154
Mark E. Ortega
Freelance
March 8, 2009


In an exceptionally well-matched card on paper, Golden Boy Promotions presented three equally intriguing bouts featuring some of their hottest young stars and seemingly had a can’t miss card. Unfortunately, anything can happen in the sport of boxing, and that includes three high-profile bouts being less than expected for reasons that were uncontrollable. The HP Pavilion lured HBO into their town of San Jose, California with a mission to prove that the city is a fight fan city, and the hometown crowd was successful in that mission as 6,765 people were reported in attendance. On this night, however, quite a few instances occurred that took some of the air out of the tires that was the three televised bouts.