Boxing Blog – TSS Tidbits

Wladimir Klitschko and former cruiserweight champion David Haye will battle on June 20, Dan Rafael reports.

Most likely, the bout will take place in Germany.

This fight will be the most anticipated heavyweight bout since…Lord…I don’t know when….Maybe you all have a suggestion for me.

Former WBC heavyweight champion Samuel Peter weighed in at a career high 265 pounds ahead of his Friday fight with Eddie Chambers. In first fight since losing the world title to Vitali Klitschko last October, one might think Peter would want to send a message that he learned his lesson, that his fire has been restored, that he craves the return of the belt.

The only message he sent with this weight? I like to eat, and I don’t like to train, and I don’t respect Eddie Chambers as a foe.

Peter scaled in at 11 1/2 pounds more than he did for the Klitschko fight.

His previous high was 257 pounds, which he weighed for his and first fight with James Toney in September 2006.

Is the smart money on Chambers, based on the moaning and groaning that the scale unleashed when Peter stepped on it? Or can a fat Peter still take down the Philly fighter?

Hall of Famer Chuck Bodak has died. The cutman, who lived in California, was 92.

He’d worked with Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, and Oscar De La Hoya, and was known to many fight fans for his practice of affixing pictures to his head during fights.

TSS will run a more in-depth assessment of Chuck soon.

Happy Martin Luther King Day, crew.

Here are a couple MLK quotes to chew on.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

As we head into Inauguration Day 2009, we in the US look at this quote as we never before have.

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

As we look back at the past eight years, as we became a nation that accepted an indentity as a society which tortures enemies real and merely suspected, we too look at this quote in a different light.

Amir Khan (19-1, 15 KOs; age 22) will fight Mexican legend and Marco Antonio Barrera (64-6, 43 KOs; age 34).

No venue or TV has been announced, but the bout will take place in the UK.

Barrera is promoted by Don King, Khan by Frank Warren. Khan is now being trained by Freddie Roach, and is looking to keep his career momentum up after suffering a KO1 loss to Breidis Prescott in September.

Barrera took a year off after a conclusive decision loss to Manny Pacquiao in 2007. He talked retirement, but came back this November and won a rust-remover bout against 25-19 Sammy Ventura.

It just struck me, as I read the comments to the news that Pacquiao-Hatton I is on….TSS is home to the smartest fight fans out there. More than any other fightsite, the smartest fans come here.

Just my two cents, I may be biased…

EM

And Happy Holidays if you celebrate something else!

MJW

Log on, or else! Or else you won’t, in which case you will miss another superior BORGES column…

This note just in case you thought we were blowing off the Wlad-Rahman fight entirely!

Broadcasting & Cable reports that Oscar De La Hoya’s loss to Manny Pacquiao generated 1.25 million buys and $70 million in PPV revenues.

This marks the fourth time a non-heavyweight boxing match has hit the million buys mark, the report said, and this number makes it the biggest PPV event of the year, in boxing or MMA.

There are those that will say the fight should’ve done closer to the numbers enjoyed by Oscar and Floyd for their 2007 bout; that generated 2.4 million buys and $120 of revenue. Considering that was two US based fighters, in a stronger economy, many will say this latest scrap did OK.

Still others will tell you they wished it did worse, under one million buys, if only to convince the suits that the PPV model is hurting the sport, even if they are benefiting mightily…