I'm headed to my virtual home away from home, the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, on Wednesday (got the upgrade) to cover the Floyd Mayweather-Juan Manuel Marquez fight, but before I hit the road, here's some stuff I've heard over the past few days:
• Was in touch with Golden Boy's Richard Schaefer over the weekend regarding Saturday's HBO PPV undercard. Of course, Zab Judah was supposed to fight Antonio Diaz in the televised opener, but Judah bailed for no good reason, leaving Golden Boy in a tough spot just a couple of weeks before the show. The company first tried to find a new opponent for Diaz, then looked around for an entirely new fight and then considered going with just three televised bouts. Ultimately, Schaefer said Golden Boy decided to elevate the featherweight match between Orlando Cruz and Cornelius Lock to television. "We could have gone with the three fights but felt that it makes sense to add Cruz versus Lock," Schaefer said. It could be a decent scrap, albeit not the most meaningful fight ever. One of the key reasons it wound up with the coveted TV slot once Judah-Diaz fell out is because Lock is one of Mayweather's fighters. The other two bouts are stellar: the Chris John-Rocky Juarez featherweight title rematch and a very interesting lightweight fight between Vicente Escobedo and Michael Katsidis.
• Also talked to manager Frank Espinoza and he filled me in on two of his fighters. He told me that former junior featherweight champ Israel Vazquez, who returns as a featherweight Oct. 10 in Los Angeles after a 19-month layoff caused by eye injuries following his epic trilogy with Rafael Marquez, will face Angel Antonio Priolo. Priolo has lost six in a row fighting at flyweight and bantamweight. But, hey, if anyone deserves a bit of a soft fight it's Vazquez, who needs to see where he is at after such a long layoff and so many hard fights. Incidentally, Vazquez's fight will be televised on HBO Plus, which is HBO's Latin American arm, for which Golden Boy supplies monthly cards that are not televised in the United States unless you have an illegal satellite dish hooked up. Espinoza also mentioned that Martin Castillo, a former junior bantamweight titlist, will have his second fight since ending his retirement. Castillo is scheduled to fight German Marez on a small show in Mexicali, Mexico, on Sept. 25.
• Top Rank's Bob Arum, Todd duBoef and Carl Moretti were in New York on Friday and met with HBO executives Ross Greenburg and Kery Davis. One of the things to come out of the meeting was the promise that welterweight Joshua Clottey would get a spot on the televised undercard when the Kelly Pavlik-Paul Williams fight is rescheduled for Dec. 5. That's a makeup call from HBO, which promised to televise Shane Mosley against Clottey on Dec. 26 and then changed its mind. They also talked about a possible Jan. 23 "Boxing After Dark" doubleheader from Puerto Rico, which would be headlined by Puerto Rican junior featherweight titleholder Juan Manuel Lopez in the first bout of a two-fight deal with the network. They talked about a possible match with unified titlist Celestino Caballero, who has relentlessly called out Lopez for the past few months. Top Rank said it's willing to make the match, although from what Caballero promoter Leon Margules told me, he has yet to be contacted by Top Rank. The other fight discussed for the card was a featherweight unification bout between Yuriorkis Gamboa and Steven Luevano. The idea would be for Lopez to face the winner of Gamboa-Luevano in an HBO main event in June on the eve of the annual Puerto Rican parade at Madison Square Garden in New York. Lopez and Gamboa, of course, first have to win their fights on Oct. 10 at the MSG Theater.
• Spoke to promoter Gary Shaw at length on Sunday night and he filled me in on the Tim Bradley-Lamont Peterson junior welterweight title bout, which Shaw won the right to promote with a $575,000 purse bid. Shaw, who promotes Bradley, had protested the WBO's order that the split of the purse bid should be 60-40 in interim titleholder Peterson's favor because of a bizarre WBO rule that stipulates that if a fighter goes to the other man's home country (or in this case, hometown), he gets the bigger slice of the pie. Because Shaw is putting the fight on at the Agua Caliente resort in Rancho Mirage, Calif. (Bradley's neck of the woods), Peterson was supposed to get the lion's share. Then the WBO amended the decision and gave Bradley 50-50 when Shaw protested. However, there is conflicting language elsewhere in the WBO's messy rules essentially saying that in a fight such as this one (a titleholder versus an interim titleholder) the way to figure out the split is based on a formula that takes into account the last three purses for each fighter. Bradley, who is a titleholder with extensive exposure on Showtime, has been paid far more than the emerging Peterson in recent fights. "We went through an appeals process," Shaw said of a teleconference that included, him, Bradley co-manager Cameron Dunkin, Bradley co-manager and attorney Michael Miller, WBO representative John Duggan and Moretti, who was representing Peterson promoter Top Rank.
Ultimately, the WBO ruled in favor of Bradley and gave him an approximately 75-25 split based on his last three purses compared with Peterson's.
Also, the card has been moved from Dec. 5 to Dec. 12, Shaw said. The reason, he said, was "because it worked better for Showtime and Agua Caliente. And I did it because it worked better for Cameron as well."
It "worked better" for Showtime because now it won't compete head-to-head with a much bigger fight on HBO, the rescheduled Pavlik-Williams bout. It certainly helps Dunkin, who also manages Pavlik and now can attend both important fights.
Shaw also said he had finalized the Vic Darchinyan-Tomas Rojas junior bantamweight championship fight for the co-feature after making a deal with Rojas promoter Fernando Beltran.
• Promoter Jeff Wald, who should have a TV sitcom made about his life called "Off the Wald," told me that cruiserweight Troy Ross, who won "The Contender" last season, returns Oct. 3 in Montreal. No opponent yet.
• Condolences to promoter Lou DiBella on the death of his beloved dog, Brooklyn. As a pet owner and animal lover myself, I know how hard that is to handle. Pets are part of the family.
Dan Rafael
