Boxing Banter

Sadly, my computer is dead (fried motherboard), but a couple hundred dollars later I spruced up my old one with a new battery and power cord, and I pulled my data off the dead one with a SATA-USB dock (handy little things -- I recommend having one around). So, I'm back in the blogging game with my old computer and a fancy new one on the way. Not that I've had much to say for most of the off-season -- hopefully that will change soon!

Now, onto some fight notes. I didn't get to see any of these live, but there were some interesting results to comment on:

1.) Paul Williams is something of a beast, and now he has the WBO interim Junior Middleweight title to lug around and possibly entice people to fight him. This is one of those troublesome interim titles -- the actual titleholder, Sergiy Dzinziruk, is out fighting and defending his title. Why is there still an interim belt when the real title-holder isn't hurt or otherwise out of the picture? And why would the WBO bother with the extreme farce of a "vacant" interim title? These are the mysteries around which boxing is made. If the world made any sense, this would lead to a mandatory fight between Dzinzurik (36-0-0) and Williams (36-1-0) -- but that would probably make too much sense for the WBO. Anyway, based on the results of this fight, Williams isn't going to have any problem with his move up from welterweight.

2.) Maybe I should give Cristobal Arreola more credit than I did in last week's post. After knocking out Travis Walker last night, he's 26-0 with 23 knockouts. He did the deed in the third round after Walker sent him to the canvas in the second, so he would seem to have some staying power. I still doubt that Arreola would have much of a chance against either Klitschko or Nikolai Valuev -- but it's starting to look like we'll get a chance to find out.

3.) This fight wasn't on my radar, but WBC junior flyweight champion Edgar Sosa handed mandatory challenger Juanito Rubillar his 11th loss on the way to defending the title.

4.) I'm looking forward to December 6. The headline fight for most is the Oscar De La Hoya/Manny Pacquiao tilt -- but I tend to agree with the commentators who think that the natural size difference is too much and that De La Hoya will dominate. Far more interesting to me is the Carl Froch/Jean Pascal fight for the vacant WBC Super Middleweight belt. Both fighters are undefeated, and I think sup mid is an interesting weight that can produce some good fights, so that could be interesting. The vacant WBO Cruiserweight belt will also be contested in a fight between Enzo Maccarinelli and Johnathan Banks. Maccarinelli comes in at 28-2-0 with 21 KO's, while Banks is undefeated with 20 wins and 14 KO's. The WBO junior featherweight belt will also be defended by Juan Manuel Lopez against Sergio Medina.