The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Boxing with Chris Mannix - Call it a Comeback

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Joining Mannix this week is Dan Rafael, longtime boxing writer and author of the Substack Fight Freaks Unite (19:12). Mannix and Rafael discuss Vergil Ortiz’s return, the status of the Ryan Garcia-Devin Haney talks, if Garcia should target Rolly Romero (29:30), PBC’s spring plans and more; later, Vergil Ortiz on his lengthy layoff, his decision to return to train with Robert Garcia, plans for a run at 154-pounds (1:35:00), more. #Volume #HerdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.

Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me.

Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Cliford Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes,

creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to the Clivert Show on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok.

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slash sportsbook for details and state-specific responsible gambling resources. Eligibility deposit restrictions apply. Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. Terms at sportsbook.draftkings.com slash basketball terms. This is boxing with Chris Manning. Or somebody punch him in the face. Anthony Joshua is a composed and ferocious finisher. Watch this. Andrew Ruiz is the heavyweight champion. Hosted by S.I's Chris Manix. That was my moment. Now with interviews, analysis,

and everything going on in the world of boxing. When you have talent, you are given another chance. Here's Chris Mannix. And we are back. Boxing with Chris Mannix, part of the volume sports podcast network. First podcast of 2024. Hope everyone had a great holiday week. Got some good boxing over the holiday week.

Noe A. Inouye is now the undisputed champion at 122 pounds. Inouye knocks out Marlon. Apollos in the 10th round of that fights. You got a good fight right after Christmas. You got another good fight this weekend. Virgil Ortiz, the former welterweight contender, he is coming off a long layoff. He is going to fight Frederick Lawson on Saturday,

live on DeZone. It's going to fight that fight at 154 pounds, so a lot of intrigue around the return of Virgil Ortiz. One of the things I love about boxing. There are no seasons in boxing. So you do have some ebbs and flows. some lulls in the schedule. And if we're being honest, January,

oftentimes a quiet month in boxing because guys don't want to train over the holidays. Who can blame them? But this year, you've got Virgil Ortiz in early January. You've got Jaime Mungia, John Ryder at the end of January, setting up to be, I think, a pretty good year on the boxing calendar. The PBC schedule starts in March on Amazon. So I think there's a lot to look forward to in boxing.

And I'm definitely looking forward to all of it. Great show for you this week. Dan Rayfield, long-time boxing writer ESPN USA Today. He is now writing his own substack, Fight Freaks Unite, a must subscribe for all boxing fans. He's going to join me to talk about Virgil Ortiz. Two and a half years ago, Virgil Ortiz was one of the brightest young stars in boxing. He was coming off wins over Boris Hooker, over Agus Cavalascus. He ran into some health problems, some inactivity issues.

he has fought one time since then. He is moving up and weight. He is kind of rebuilding now. So I talked to Dan about whether or not Virgil can get it all back at this new weight class. He's definitely a compelling character in boxing, undefeated, perfect knockout streak. Can he take that power, take that skill to 154 pounds after this long layoff? So I talked to Dan about that. We get into the Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney negotiations.

I talked to Dan about if Ryan should be going for a Devin Haney fight, or should he be trying to prioritize making a fight happen against Roli Romero? And then we get into the BBC schedule, which we don't know yet, right? We don't know anything about the BBC schedule, which is supposed to begin in March. But you've got Gervante Davis out there, presumably going to fight in the first quarter of this year. Canelo Alvarez, presumably going to fight in May of this year. And then there's the Bud Crawford-Earl Spence fight. Is that going to happen at all this year?

Is that going to happen, period? So Dan and I get into all the topics in the news right now in boxing. A little bit later, Virgil Ortiz himself joins the show. I've done a lot of interviews with Virgil over the years. This was the most candid one that I can remember. It's obviously been a really tough time for Virgil, personally, professionally, emotionally, financially. He really opened up to me about a lot of the things that were going on in his life over the last two and a half years. And you can just feel the excitement, the anticipation that he has about being back in the ring and just how much he wants to accomplish in 2024 and beyond.

So stick around. It is a great conversation with Virch-Lortiz. Before I get to that, I do want to explain what I posted on s.com and what you saw on my social media with respect to my fighters of the year. My 2003 male fighter of the year was Devin Haney. My 2023 female fighter of the year was Amanda Serrano. Now Amanda Serrano, I think, is uncontroversial. She won three times in 2003. She became the undisputed champion at 126 pounds. in February. She defended her titles in the summer. And then towards the end of the year,

believe it was November, she fought 12, three-minute rounds, which was precedent-breaking in women's boxing in a title defense as well. So she had a really strong year in what was a relatively down year when it came to women's fighters of the year. So Amanda Serrano,

women's fighter to the year, strong candidate, no issues there. I saw her name atop a lot of lists out there of the awards winners. Devin Haney. So to me, there were three candidates for Malefighter of the Year. They were Bud Crawford. They were Neue in a way. And they were Devin Haney.

On the outskirts, you got David Benavides, really good year. Jervante Davis, really good year. Bam Rodriguez, really good year. But those guys to me were second-tier candidates, at least when compared to the. three guys I mentioned at the top. Bud Crawford had the best win by far. Beating Errol Spence and the way in which he beat Errol Spence, that was the most

impressive performance of 2003, hands down. That was a fight that was the most anticipated fight of the year. It was the most anticipated welterweight fight since Mayweather Pachiao. That fight was a big deal. and Terrence Crawford won it going away. So he gets a lot of credit for that. My issue with Crawford is obvious. He only fought one time in 2023.

So as great as that win was, I just needed one more fight out of him to put him above in a way and Haney on my fighter of the year ballot. On another year, in another year, against other competitors, I might have been able to vote for Bud, Crawford again, you know, four Fighter of the Year.

But because his competition was so fierce that one win, even though it was a great win, just wasn't enough for me to name Bud as Fighter of the Year. In a way, was the runner up on my ballot. And this was as close a runner up to first place as you could possibly get. what in a way did to Stephen Fulton was the second most impressive performance of the year right behind what Crawford did to Spets Fulton came into that fight in the spring

as the unquestioned king of 122 pounds he was undefeated he had some quality wins he was an excellent fighter and in a way just beat him up just beat him up moving up his first fight at 122 just beat him up

the end of that fight seeing Fulton just kind of crumpled in the corner after in a ways shot after shot put him down. That was impressive. That was the second best win of 2003. The Tepalus win was really good and really meaningful. But going into that fight, and I said this on the podcast, you can go back and listen to previous episodes. I didn't think that much of Marlon Tepalas. he was the legitimate unified champion, got that win over MJ Akmadalia, deserved that win over

MJ Akhmadalia. But I just didn't give him any chance against Inouye in that fight. So great win for Inouye against Fulton, good to decent win against Apollos, even though it had great mean to it. What impressed me about Haney was that I thought he had two really, really, high quality competitive or should have been competitive wins. The Lomachenko fight in May,

I know there's a lot of people out there and I've talked to them in the aftermath of my awards posting who believe Lomachenko won that fight. Fine. I don't, I'm not going to argue with you. You saw the fight one way, three judges saw the fight another way. If you want to say the Lomachenko-Haney fight was disputed, fine. Don't say it's controversial.

when you have two judges that scored the fight, 115, 113, 113, and you say scored the fight, 115, 113 the other way, that's not a robbery. That's two great boxers putting on a master class that three solid judges see a particular way. Look, full transparency, I was in Vegas that night. I scored the fight for Vasily Lomachenko. But when the judge's scorecards were announced,

I had no problem with Haney coming away as the winner. Because the fight was that close. The rounds were that competitive. Haney's body work was that good. His accuracy with his power shots was that good. Yes, you look at the final punch stats. Lomachenko threw like 189 more punches overall. But Haney's accuracy, his body work,

I think he did enough to win seven. rounds on two of those judges' scorecards, 16, 12, that was a little wide. 7-5, I'm okay with that. So that was a great win for Devin Haney. And the Progrey fight, look, I was on record as saying I thought Progrey going into that fight was the number one guy in the Junior Welterweight Division. It's not because the fight was on DeZone. It's not because I like Regis Progray.

It's because Regis Progray was effectively a career-long junior welter. weight, who was a two-time junior welterweight champion. You want to argue that Teofima Lopez is better pound for pound, or Subreal Matias is better pound for pound. Okay, I can buy that. But at this weight class, Regis Progray had accomplished more than anybody else had accomplished that was still there, except for Josh Taylor. And Josh Taylor at that time had not looked good, had the close win over Jack Caterall

and the loss to Teofima. So I thought ProGre was number one. Devin Haney moves up in his first fight at 140. First fight. And completely embarrasses Regis Progrey. You know how hard it is to get all three judges to agree on a complete shutout? 120, 107 all three times. Stunning performance by Regis Progrey.

So, by Devin Haney, sorry. So those two wins right there, given the caliber of opposition. and how Devin just comprehensively beat Regis in that second fight. That gave him just enough of an edge over Inouay on my unofficial fighter of the year ballot. If you voted for Inouye, no problem with that. Tremendous year. If you voted for Bud Crawford, no problem with that. Unbelievable year.

I thought Brian McIntyre, Bud's trainer, was the trainer of the year. So a lot of credit going into that camp. But for me, Devin Haney, fighter of the year, 25 years old. And I think if nothing else, Devin has proven he wants all the smoke. His first real title defense after he got done with George Cambosis, he comes back and fights Lomachenko. You have to fight Lomachenko. Could have to fight anybody else in a title defense.

A much easier title defense. His first fight at 140, he fights Regis Progray. He didn't have to fight Regis Progray. Could have to fight anybody in his next fight. Devin wants the toughest fight. fight. So it's not going to surprise me if in the first half of this year, if it's not Ryan Garcia, it's somebody else really tough. In the second half of this year, maybe it's a tough fight at 147. Devin's a guy that's proven over the last couple of years that he wants the biggest and the best

fights. And that to me was one of the biggest reasons why he was my 2023 fighter of the year. All right. Let's get into it. Dan Rayfield, longtime boxing writer with ESPN USA Today, now writing his own substack. He joins me next. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way,

the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days I'd put on 10 pounds, I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app. Apple Podcast

or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media.

Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment,

and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Cliverts Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me, or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to The Clivert Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or we're you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs?

Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode, with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but just so you all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack.

So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. They're finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history.

Listen to look back at it on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Dan Rayfield is here, long time. Boxing journalist does a terrific substack over at substack.com called Fight Freaks Unite. You can subscribe to that on all of Dan's social channels. Dan, we're going to start this show talking about a guy that I know you talked to this week. I talk to this week, Virgil Ortiz, who is back after. close to a two-year absence out of the ring. One fight really in the last two and a half years,

that was a knockout win over Michael McKinson. And you and I are old enough to remember when Virgil Ortiz was at the top of the 147-pound prospect heap, right? Like, he was right there with Boots Ennis as the next big thing in the welterweight division. health issues mainly some other issues as well have kept him out of the ring now he's back facing frederick lawson on saturday new weight class 154 pounds so i guess my question for you dan is like when you look at where virgil ortees is right now can he get it back like can he get back to where he was before all the issues came up that derailed him well i i absolutely think that he can, Chris, no question about it. And I mean, I've been watching Virgil's

entire professional career. And actually, I know that he was trying to make a run at things in the welterweight division. But when I actually picked him as the prospect of the year, a few years ago, that was still when he was campaigning at 140 pounds, which of course became more and more difficult for him to make. And he ended up to welterweight. And obviously did not get the opportunity to fight for a belt because of his health issues. His opponent had a health issue that caused a fight to be postponed, and then it was obviously later canceled, I talked about a Mount Estagnonis, which was a fight that was really pumped up for a lot of boxing fans. That was on paper a tremendous matchup.

Yes, can he get it back? Absolutely, yes. He's only 25 years old. He hasn't taken any punishment in the ring. It's not a guy that's been knocked around or beat up. He's pretty much thrashed every opponent he's had, and won convincingly by knockout, hasn't even been extended the distance in any of these fights. And you mentioned that, you know, you talked in this week and that I had talked in this week.

when I was talking to him, one of the things I was asking him, I said, you know, do you feel like it's sort of just that you haven't gotten big fights or or championship opportunities, not because of your ability, but the only thing that has stood between you and the promised land, if you will, and the big fights and the big money and a lot of attention or even more attention is because of yourself and your own issues, not because of an opponent that's derailed you, you haven't been in a spat with your promoter, you haven't been arrested, or anything like that, that it's only thing standing between you and stardom in a big way is your own unfortunate, you know, physical ailments. And, you know, he didn't, he didn't so much answer it specifically, but he did say that he, you know, his biggest thing was activity. And he's talked about being, he wanted to get back to when he was at his best. And he described his best. And if you take a look at his record or go on box record and check it out. He was talking about the time frame from 2019, right before he moved up in his first fighter that year, right before he went to Welterweight.

But in the welterweight that year, first of all, he fought four times, and he ran through, like pretty solid guys. I think you probably broadcast some of those fights on DeZone, which was in order,

Mauricio Herrera, who had never been stopped, Antonio Roscoe, who was a quality contender, and then Brad Solomon, who was still getting the job done at that time. And the first fight was against a kind of a nobody opponent

that was unknown. But those were pretty good wins, and he followed it up again with some other quality wins against Hooker and Cavalowskis. He was stringing together some good wins. and you mentioned two and a half years out of the ring or thereabouts and because of his physical limitations.

He says he really wants to get in three, hopefully four fights in 2024. The fact that your first fight of the year comes a couple of days into the new year should certainly make it possible if you are healthy to fight at least three times. I'm sure he'd be thrilled. I'm sure Golden Boy would be thrilled. I'm sure the zone would be thrilled. And he's now in a new weight class.

And he talked about walking around at 170 pounds as just a normal non-non getting ready for a fight, Virgil Ortiz. And so making 154 is much less of a hassle and strenuous than it was to make 147, which he just obviously for reasons that have been proven he can no longer make. So yeah, he can get it back. It starts with Frederick Lawson. And then from there, hopefully they can step them up to a higher level of opponent. And we can see the Virgil Ortiz that looked like a superstar in the making,

you know, like four years ago and has done nothing wrong since except have unfortunate physical issues. Yeah, I think he can get it back. And I think he's going to be fine at 154 pounds. He's a tall kid, you know, 510, 511. So filling out that frame, I don't think is going to be a big problem for him. I would like to see him spend 2024 just focused on activity. I mean, I'm sure there'll be pressure when you get to the back end of the year to see Virgil Ortiz in a meaningful fight. He's still a big name. I'm sure we'll be talking if he's successful in, say, his first two fights of the year. about him stepping up to a championship level in one of his last two or his last fight of the year. I don't think he should be focused on that at this point. I think he should just be out there. I'd almost compare it to Joseph Parker, right? Like, I know Virgil didn't lose a fight, but what Joseph Parker did prior to the Deonté Wilder fight was just stay active.

He fought three or four times against mid to low level competition, just to get his body right, to get his mind right. and to get himself back, you know, into the position he was in to fight Deonti. I'd like to see Virgil take that approach. Just focus on activity. Maybe you can face a former champion at 154. Maybe it's a Tony Harrison type that you fight at 154 towards the end of this year. But I wouldn't worry about the Tim Zuz.

I wouldn't worry about the Jermel Charlems. I wouldn't worry about any of the top-tier title holder class of 154 if I'm Virgil. Ortiz at the moment. I do like Dan that he's back with Robert Garcia. I'm not exactly sure why those two split. I mean, part of me wonders if it was outside the ring stuff, you know, where, you know, we all know how it ended where Robert Garcia was not in the corner for Virgil's fight against Agus Cavalosquez, chose to work with Josh Franco that night. They were fighting on the same day in Texas. I kind of wonder if that had something to do with it where maybe Virgil felt slighted

or his team felt slighted about it. But either way, this is the right partnership. His best years came with Robert Garcia in his corner. You mentioned the years of the things he did when he was peaking at 140. At 147 in 2021, when he beat Maurice Hooker and he beat Cavalascus, those were peak years for Virgil Ortiz, where he looked like one of the next big things in the Welterweight division. I don't know about you, but I always thought that Virgil, his style, Robert's training style, were perfect fits for each other. I think it's going to greatly benefit

him having Robert back in the corner. Yeah, I agree with that. We talked about that a little bit, and, you know, they didn't break up on like real negative circumstances. I think it was partly Robert had a lot of guys and he was devoting time to Jose Ramirez and he was devoting time to some other fighters and Virgil had his place, but he might have wanted a little more one-on-one attention, whatever it was. You know, fighters always want that. I always say they want that, but then, you know, the grass isn't always greener sometimes. Look, they was talking about him going to Eddie Rino, so that never happened.

He ended up working with Manny Robles, who's a good trainer also, obviously. But anyway, he just felt more comfortable. And his dad still runs the show out there. His dad still is very much involved. But the thing about it was, and if you know, Robert, I know you do, that he's not a guy that holds a grudge necessarily. He wants to be involved with the best fighters and if he can help them

do his job, obviously make a good living doing so. So he was welcome back with open arms by all accounts. Robert was happy to have him back. He's happy to be back. He says, it's like I never left. Obviously, they have a report. I don't know if they like spent time together or communicated much

over the last period of time when they weren't together. But so far, it's as he described, it's like you never left. So that's good. I mean, they have a, they know each other well and the more important, I don't know about more important, but as important as just what Robert brings as a strategist, as a trainer, as a conditioner, all those things, the quality level of the sparring that you get in a gym that Robert has with so many quality professionals is outstanding. Now, you can get great sparring in Southern California at a lot of places,

but Robert Garcia's gym is one of the best from what I've always been told. You mentioned earlier about spending 2024 staying busy and not worrying about a title of fight and a bigger name and all that. I don't know how he sounded when you spoke to him, but when I talked to Virgil, that is not his plan. He's like, you know, and he used some, it was when I interviewed him, was a very frustrated Virgil Ortiz. Not a bad way. It wasn't like he was negative towards me or anything like that. But I'll tease the podcast that we did. And he named check my man Chris Mannix with some criticism. So folks can go listen to that on our Fight Freaks United interview. but he wants the big fight.

He understands what's going on Saturday with Lawson and maybe even after that. But he's like, I want to, I'm fighting for a title in 2024. I don't, and I, you know, use the F bomb. He said, I don't give an F. And, you know, he's, and he even specifically said, I'm not into, I don't want to let fights marinate. I don't care. You know, he wants the biggest name. He's like, I've waited long enough.

He's obviously pressured he didn't get the opportunity against Stanley Onus, which would have, you know, if he had won that fight, would have given him a. belt not the top title, of course, but still would have been significant to his career. So, you know, he's willing to wait a little bit, but he's in a hurry to get there. It's been a while. He's in the frustration, at least to my years, and I was looking at him on a Zoom call, definitely came through that this is a man that is extremely frustrated. And I kind of feel bad for what Frederick Lawson is going to face on Saturday night. Oh, I do too.

Frederick Lawson has been stopped three times in his career. I think we're going to get four on Saturday. I don't think there's a question about that. Look, I just, I get Virgil's desire to get back on top. I just think at a new weight class, you don't want to ease your way into it because you want to stay busy. But I want to see him test himself progressively at that weight class. And I'm looking at like the 154 pound rankings. You've got Charlo at the top and who knows when he's going to fight, you know, if at all in 2024.

for you know, Tim Zoo's got a belt. The IBF belt is vacant, but that's going to be on the line in the immediate future. But you've got some guys, Dan, you know, on this list. Like a Josh Kelly might make some sense for Virgil Ortiz. It's actually an interesting fight. Yeah. He's affiliated with Match Room. You can make that fight happen.

Well, Josh is actually, Josh is affiliated with Wasserman, but he's also on the zone. He's on DeZone. Sorry, I thought you're right. He fought on DeZone recently, but that's a makeable fight, like for Virgil Ortiz. and he's ranked, you know, by several of these sanctioning bodies. You know, I wouldn't put him out of the Calum Walsh. Sergey Boechuck is probably going to be in line to fight for a title at some point. You know, maybe they can make the money work to do a fight against him.

Like, there's just some good names out there, 154, that are not the champions at the moment. I would be reluctant to put Virgil in with Tim Zoo right now. That's kind of where I'm pointing to. Like, if Tim Zoo's out there and, like, they can make a fight with him, I might hold off on that until 2,000. Well, you got to figure that if that did come up as a possibility, it wouldn't be until the back end of there anyway, which by that point, there's a good likelihood if he's healthy that that Virgil would have had at least two fights in the way class, and at that point

maybe they go for it. And, you know, it's going to be interesting because, you know, Tim Zhu has and his team have said on a number of occasions that when he had his fight recently, that that was going to be their last fight in Australia for the time being they have every intention of basing themselves in terms of where they box in the United States for. 2004, you know, for the foreseeable future, sort of like what his father, uh, Kostas who had done where he, you know, had a bunch of fights and won a title and did a lot of stuff in Australia and then eventually based himself and fought most of his big fights in the United States.

Tim is looking to do the same thing. And so if that's the case, at least from a proximity point of view, you don't, there's no argument about are we going to go to Australia, are we going to the United States, you know, you can do that fight in America. Obviously there's the issue of, you know, what's Tim's schedule, what's his status with PBC as they go on. their new deal with Amazon. Their team is saying, and there's not been like confirmed by PBC, but it seems to me there's a pretty good, I won't say necessarily likelihood, but a good possibility anyway, that when Tim Zhu makes his 2024 debut, it will be probably in one of the first couple of shows that

PBC does. There are dates on hold in Las Vegas for some fights in March. So that's something to keep an eye. Here's the thing, though, if Virgil's fighting, you know, in January and Zoo was fighting in March, they're not that. far separate in terms of what the calendar says. So it's not out of the realm of possibility that at least if they did want to make the fight that from a perspective of the calendar, they'd be on a similar track.

Although I still would not hold out hope that that fight happens this year, even though it's obviously an intriguing matchup pending what we see from Virgil in the weight class on Saturday. That's like to me, I'm more in the Josh Kelly, give me like Austin Trout, if he still wants the box, Michael Sorrow. Like, there's some names out there. I'd be more eager to see Virgil in this year. And then early 2025, then you start to make a run at World Titles.

I mean, to me, if he feels he's up for it, get him a couple of fights and then let's go for it. What are we waiting on? Yeah. No, no, look. He literally said, at least when I spoke to him, he said, I'm not into marinating. Like, he's not interested. Yeah, I think, I think what he's, my read on what, how Virgil looked at the last couple of years is that when fights, because a couple of times fights got scrapped not for his health issues. Like, you know,

the first time the Stani Otis fight was scrapped was Stanionis had an appendectomy. Like, I think his thing was like, if a fight is not available to me, I'm not waiting for that fight. Right. Right. Like he's like, I'm just going to go and do another fight. Like, you know, this, this year, I don't think he's going to be waiting around. It's like whatever opponents out there, he's going to take them on to keep his career active. And I like that. I think that's the smart that way it goes. And also, part of the activity is this. You have to be an. agreement with your promoter and your broadcaster, and you also have to be willing to fight for amount of money that fits the budget. And I'm not saying that Virgil is like this, but some fighters,

the reason for their inactivity is because they're like, I want to fight three times. I want to fight four times. And then they go ask for like $3 million. And that's just not in the budget. Okay, if you want to really honestly stay busy, we can pay you a million and a half, and you can stay busy. In other words, you have to decide which is most important. Is it the activity? And by the way, you're still making a nice payday, or are you willing to fight for fewer times and take a larger paycheck for those fights, but be less active? To me,

it seems at age 25 and still with room to improve and still make good money, even not mega money, that from Virgil's point of view, it would probably be better for him to take a good paycheck, stay active, and I think he's willing to do this, then hold out and say, I'm only fighting for X number of dollars instead. And that's sometimes what puts guys on the shelf.

If you're willing to fight for what's there, you can stay active in this business. Yeah, I think that's important for him one way or the other in 2020. All right, let's talk about Ryan Garcia, who is coming off a win in December, a comeback win in his last fight against Oscar Duarte, stops Oscar Duarte in the later rounds. In the immediate aftermath of that fight, Dan, Ryan Garcia seemed to indicate that he wanted to fight Roller Romero. There were apparently some discussions behind the scenes, didn't really go anywhere. Ryan pivoted to Devin Haney after Haney beat Regis Progray. Then Roli came out on social media and was calling out Ryan.

Ryan came back and said it's too late. Your team dragged its feet, yada, yada, yada. So as we record this, I believe there are active negotiations for a Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney fight at some point in the first half of 2024. There are. There are, no question. Yeah, but in your mind, is that the right move for Ryan Garcia? Should he go straight into a Devin Haney fight or should he look to try to rekindle something with Roller Romero first? I'm about big fights. I'm not a promoter. I don't have a financial stake in it.

It doesn't do me any good if he fights, a lesser fight. You know, if the fighter wants it and they can make a deal. and I definitely think that boxing fans would be far more interested in seeing Ryan fight against Devin Haney than they would against Rale Romero, who is inactive, who if you read his social media, it doesn't really seem to care about boxing these days, which is his prerogative. It doesn't make him a bad guy or anything. He's lucky to have the belt that he won against Barroso, his original opponent who had the title for his own fault dropped out Alberto Pueo because he fell the drug test. and then, you know, he got in the eyes of many in a, let's be honest, a putrid, putrid, putrid fight against Ishmael Barroso, but one that Barroso kind of got, you know, a bad call in because of the very unusual stoppage that was made by, you know,

typically outstanding referee Tony Weeks. That was just an abomination of a stoppage. I think you called that fight, maybe, or it was on his own anyway. No, Showtime. That was a Showtime fight, yeah, you're right. My bad, my bad. a ninth round knockout that just was unfortunate. And, you know, Raleigh is not in typically really good fights, in my opinion.

I mean, he talks a good game as his pre-fight buildups are good, but the bouts themselves are usually not very impressive. So to me, anyway, a Haney fight is a bigger fight. It's a huge, it's a huge opportunity to win a real title. I think it's a fight that would be, I don't think it does, it's not going to do the level of, let's say, pay-per-view business as, as Ryan did with Dervanta Davis, obviously,

but I think it's got a chance to do some business. So, you know, if all things equal, you know, you go for the Haney fight. And by the way, I know if you lose us to Haney,

you're going to get a lot less grief than if you lose to Romero, who maybe people would view as a more winnable fight, but Romero is capable of, you know, coming up with a good punch also. So to me, I'm about big fights.

Give me the Haney fight seven days a week. Yeah, and by the way, and there definitely are, discussions because both sides have said so. You know, Oscar has said so. I know they're having the conversation with Eddie, you know, between Golden Boy and Matcham.

I don't think Matcham is like the official promoter of Devin, but they've been, you know, they're working together sort of the way that. They have some rights to him. Yeah. They've got some, however their deal was structured before the pro-gray fight, they've got some kind of, you know, matching rights first of all, whatever it is that with Devin Haney. I think one of the problems with, you know, ultimately finalizing a Haney Garcia fight is that both these guys are probably going to want big guarantees.

And I don't know. I don't know if they're going to be able to get to that number where it's agreeable for both guys to agree to the fight. But Dan, I want to see the Romero fight first because for a couple of reasons. I don't understand. I mean, let me, let me lay out my case. Ryan and Haney, they got a history. They fought six times. They're amateurs.

They want to fight each other. They do. But that's not a fight that right now I believe Ryan can win. I think Devin... Are you a Ryan promoter? No, I don't think he can win it. But like, I don't... Why do you care?

Because I want to see a competitive fight. And I think Ryan can get to a point where it's more winnable for him. Look, Ryan is coming off his first fight with Derek James as his trainer. It wasn't even a fight that was contested at the 140. pound limit. It was a fight that at times Ryan looked good, especially at the end. At times, he looked really bad, especially in the middle when he was doing that shoulder roll defense that nobody could quite figure out why he was doing that. So I was like, yeah, I see. It's on camera doing the shoulder roll. I just think Ryan would benefit from one more fight. And I think a Romero fight

would be ideal for him. Yes, it comes with some risk because Roli can crack. But Roli also puts himself in position to get knocked out badly. Like Roli leaps in, leans in, there's a better than, I'm trying, I don't know what the percentage, but there's a decent chance, Dan, that we see a Francisco Fonseca type knockout from Ryan Garcia in a Roli-Romero. which would give him a legitimate title. He was Roli, whether he deserved it or not, has a legitimate belt at 140.

And it would give him a little bit more momentum going into the Haney fight. And I think he'd agree, if Ryan knocks out Raleigh and how the buildup for a fight like that would be, that would make the fight against Haney even bigger. So for those reasons, for those reasons, I'd like to see Ryan,

if a deal can be made to fight Ruler-Ramere, which I don't know. Like I agree with like, Roley changed his mind every couple of weeks whether he wants to fight. He does these strange interviews on YouTube where he talks about some crazy things. He still has to deal with his own mandatory issues, although I will say this, if Roley wanted to fight Ryan Garcia, there is no way the WBA standing in the way of that. Because the W. Guilbertico Mendoza was in the ring for Ryan Garcia's win over Duarte and put

a belt around his waist. Now, what belt that was, I don't know, because it was a catchweight. So is he the catchweight champion of the world? It's actually interesting you say that because I had questions about that myself and asked Golden Boy. And they didn't want to acknowledge publicly that it was a fight that was over 140 pounds. So it was the WBA's, I want to tell you, a intercontinental welterweight title, but they didn't want to deal with the rush back by calling a welterweight fight saying Ryan was moving up just because they fought it like, what, 142. We called it a welterweight fight because it wasn't a welterweight fight. Exactly.

Yeah. But the thing about it is you mentioned about the mandatory. We'll see what happens because on Saturday on the Virgil card, you have the, the, the, was it the interim title? Harrow Davies, Barroso interim title, yeah. Correct. So Davies has been the longstanding mandatory for that belt once the Romero and Barroso and Pueo situation was handled.

And we'll see. I mean, the winner of that fight is supposed to be the next shot against Roley. Davies is on record of saying, you know, a thousand times over and over that, you know, he wants that fight. He's been waiting a long time for it. Money talks. We'll see what happens. WBA is never going to order it.

Of all the sanctioning bodies that would, the WBA is not getting in the way of Ryan and Roley, they're not doing it. Probably not. You know that. You know they're not doing it. Well, I mean, you're probably right, but I'd have to wait to see how they react. I know from my own conversations with the WBA. that they want to see that situation get handled.

But Roli is, it's the other thing about Romero, by the way. If Haney and Ryan go towards making their fight, you're talking about a time frame that would probably put them in like around April-ish. Romero has been sidelined because of this disc injury in his back, where at least according to the original report that went to the WBA when they checked his medicals and allowed him to be sidelined, not strip him, and make this Barroso versus O'Hara. Davis fight for the interim title in that medical paper, which I read and actually have a copy of,

they were saying that the Roller-Ramero's doctors were saying he shouldn't be back, you know, into any kind of significant training and fighting until at least April anyway. So I'm not sure if he's going to be medically ready to fight. Let's say he wanted to make the fight against Ryan. He's going to be ready to fight in April anyway. So, you know, we can talk about the possibilities, but it's not necessarily based on the actual schedule when these, you know, human beings are prepared and able to go into the boxing ring. So if Ryan is presented with a case where you can fight Devin Haney like, you know, sometime in March,

or are you going to wait until fight Rowley like in May? I don't think he's going to wait around. I think he's going to go for the bigger fight right off the bat. I even think, though, I don't know that a Haney fight could get made by March at this point. I don't, I just don't think they're close, you know, close enough to close a deal and do a fight. Well, Chris, you know, in boxing negotiations, you can be as wide as the grand. Canyon and everything comes together and then the end as long as once they get over like whatever there's one hurdle I've seen a thousand times fights where they're termed as being

we're not close and suddenly put it like this you're not close until you're close in other words there could be a huge gap and suddenly like a domino things start to happen and and I actually look at the fight between Ryan and Haney as well you know I say this relatively speaking it's not that complicated like there's not going to be arguments about who comes into the ring first, who gets introduced. Clearly, Devin Haney is in a position where he's the established champion and he may not be as popular as Ryan,

but he's got enough going for him where he's not, you know, and I think Ryan's the type of guy where he's even said, I don't care about that stuff. Like, let him, you know, he's the champion fine. Let him walk when he wants. Let him be introduced. Ryan's got a history, right? Ryan's got history of doing things to get a fight done. Like what Ryan did to make the Tank Davis fight happen,

it doesn't get done unless he's willing to do certain things. And by the way, Devin Haney has shown this similar kind of mentality because of what he did when he had the WBC title. He didn't have to do everything the way that George Cambosas wanted, even though George had more of the belts. But he

raised his hand when Loma fell out of that fight back at the time they were supposed to have the match. And he made the deal. And so Haney and Ryan are both, at least in today's game of star level fighters, they're the type of guys that don't let that shit stand in their way. Like they'll do

what it takes to make fights. And I think the fact how much they say they want to fight each other, and as I mentioned before, they know each other so well. Six amateur fights, they really want to get it on as pros. And when you are in that situation, and I've watched this occur for

as long as I've been writing about boxing, when the two fighters want to fight, there's very little that can usually stand in their way. If they really want to make a deal, they're going to make a deal. And I don't know, listen, I hear all what you're saying about the Roli fight, but if you went and asked any boxing fan out, there. Would you rather see Roley against Ryan or would you rather see Haney against Ryan?

I have to believe that the vast, vast majority against him, give me the Haney fight. I would agree. I just think a Haney fight becomes more winnable if Ryan has one more fight under his belt with Derek James in his corner. So we can see a more polished version. I can't disagree with that. But what I can say is that ain't my problem. That's true. So you want Haney and Garcia. I would like like to see Ryan Roley in like April and maybe early May, Devin Haney like Liam Paro in that type of fight. And then they both go.

Why? Who cares about that fight? Just a fight for him. A fight. He's undefeated. He's coming up a winner from Montana Love. Like give him a fight. Listen, you, you're my man.

You're my man. I love you. I'm a friend of the pot. But I am over making into when the fight's hot, make the fight. I've seen too many. We just watch Wilder. and Joshua go up in flames because of all this same kind of nonsense.

So no, no, no, no. No, no, let Roley fight Paro. You know, and then do something there. I'm done with that shit. Give me the big fights when you can make them. And both of these athletes have a desire to fight each other now. I'm not standing in their way. Go make the fight.

Whatever happens happens. And by the way, whoever loses, I don't take anything away from them because they were willing to step up and fight the best guys and not mess around. You know, I look at, I think about when Oscar De La Jollaue,

who was Ryan's promoter, was at his best, you know, he took some losses, but he always fought the best guys. He became a superstar and was a legend and had a lot of great fights. Ryan may not be at that level of talent, but he's got that mentality of I'll fight whoever, and I appreciate that as a fan.

And if he takes a loss, so be it. All right. Well, we'll punctuate that conversation right there. I do want to talk about PBC's calendar because we are getting into, the first quarter of 2024. We know BBC is going to start its contract with Amazon

in March of this year. No announcements as of yet as to who will be the first show that what the first show will be that BBC does. You kind of alluded to some dates being on hold in Vegas for BBC. Any ideas yet? Let's just

start here. Any ideas yet about what their calendar could look like in the first half of this year? Yeah, I mean, certainly they're going to have, I think, at least two events in the month of March. I believe one of them will be a non-paper view fight, probably to kick things off. I guess it wouldn't really make a lot of sense to me anyway if your first event was a pay-per-view. That sort of seems sort of weird to me. So I do think, and combining this with the comments that have come from Tim Zoo, it strikes me that there's at least a reasonable chance that out of the gate,

Tim Zhu in Las Vegas in March defending the, you know, his junior middleweight title. You know, I don't know who the opponent would be, but that type of fight. Not a paper you remember that it does go on pay-per-view in Australia. So from a financial point of view, there still be able to generate money. So it seems that would seem sort of like a logical thing. And then maybe at the end of the month doing a pay-per-view or even, you know, not the end of the month necessarily, but a week or two after that of doing it. Now, again, I mentioned on one of the recent Nevada Commission agenda is they actually had

three dates on hold in March. All of them specified being either at the T-Mobile Arena or at the MGM brand. And so I think that would be a possibility. And who that's going to be? Could it be the next fight of Tank Davis? Potentially, there's been a lot of conjecture that he's going to have a rematch, you know, with Pitbull Cruz potentially. So that's maybe a possibility.

They have a few fights that have been kicking around that were heavily discussed but did not come to fruition at the end of last year. One of them was, for example, a, what was a, what was a? it was a Keith Thurman against Stanionis fight. I know they won against Stanionis back in the ring. He has not fought because of the issues. For a long time. Yeah.

Yeah. So they want to get him back in. I've talked to his manager, Shelly Finkel. They're very anxious. They believe they're going to be, you know, right out of the gate quickly.

Maybe they'll be in that first March fight. If it's not Zhu, maybe it'll be a double header if they want to kick it off with a bang. Who knows? So, but it could be that. You also have a fight between, again,

I don't know if they're still trying to make this match, but there was a lot of conversation about doing Erislandi Lara, defending the WBA middleweight belt against Danny Garcia. That may be a possibility. But I think you're looking at those types of fights to kick off things. All you have to do, if you want to figure out who's sort of next up is go back and look at the order in which they fought in 2020. Now, it doesn't always follow the exact same trend.

But guys are in a certain spot where they're sort of next up in the rotation. I'll give you another one, who I'm pretty confident is going to wind up in one of the first couple of shows, first few shows, because of his own inactivity. He was another guy that kind of got caught in number of squeeze at the end of last year and couldn't get one of those last spots. And that's Carlos Adamas, for example, who has a belt or at least what is it, an interim belt. And so I know they'd like to get him back in there. And he's been waiting because of the inactivity. Well, you know, he's been mandatory for the middleweight Charlo. And we'll see if, you know, he can, he's probably not fighting Charlo, but he's going to have to fight at some point.

So we'll see. I mean, I think that's a, that'd be a good guy to get back out there pretty quickly because he has been inactive. Again, not for his own faults, wasn't injured, wasn't in jail, wasn't unwilling to fight, it just didn't work out. So those are the types of fights early on, I think, that you're looking at. And then, of course, with the undercards that go along with it, with some of the guys that maybe aren't in the main event level, but some of the younger guys are the up-and-coming contenders that they work.

But they've got so many good fighters. And I know the one thing that's been a negative is just the level of inactivity. And it's important for you know, if you want to be a star, how can you become a star if you don't fight and put yourself in front of an audience? And that's not just a PBC issue. A lot of promoters have that problem. But they seem to be the ones that have the worst of it. And I'm a little concerned as we go into the startup of this agreement. And it was kind of in the small print.

It was kind of like throw away in their announcement or when the people were speaking about it. And that's not necessarily from the press release, but like when I'm sure you've talked to some of these folks on background, as they say. This deal with Prime Video, they're looking at about 12 to 14 events for the year, but that's including the pay-per-views, which if you take into account the number of events that Showtime did with PBC in 2020, plus the pay-per-views, I think they did six pay-per-views, and that's something like 16 shows or 15 shows. So the number of events is going to be quite a bit less.

And so that is cause for concern if you're not. have as big of a stable. So it says to me, and I kind of heard rumblings about this, that Al, Heyman, who's obviously the big boss man of PBC, has been out there pounding the pavement looking for a second broadcast deal. Remember, when the PBC deal was announced with Amazon, nowhere in there that they talked about exclusivity. If you read the things about top rank in ESPN, it was exclusive. You know, there's lots of exclusivity in these different things. Matchroom is exclusive with the zone as they announced, et cetera. In the Amazon PVC deal, nothing was mentioned exclusivity. So I know Al

has an absolute right to go and shop his wares to some other outfit if they're interested and I've heard some rumblings of other possibilities. We'll see if they come to fruition. One thing I do know, Chris, and you know this too, they need more dates. End of story for the amount of top boxers that they are involved with. And I've said this before on the show.

The outlet to watch for PBC is Max because Max is interested in live sports. Max is not going to do anything until it figures out how much money it's going to spend on the NBA. But that deal will be figured out at the latest next summer. So if Max isn't spending the kind of money it thought it might have to spend,

there could be some money left over in the boxing, in the budget to do boxing. And we could see, ironically, you know, boxing back in the, you know, Warner's family, not in the same way HBO was. Yeah, I don't think that's, I don't think that's, happening but um you know well anybody that's been around long enough knows that the way that pbc and nb o and hbo ended was very very uh negative but this is a while the pbc team is the same the hbo executive suite is totally different now yeah yeah totally different entirely by the way

just moments ago you talked about the wba may be doing the right thing on the junior uh welterweight title just remember that when eraslandi laura defends against Danny Garcia who has never fought at middleweight. Just remember that when you talk about doing the right thing. There's different, they're doing the right thing. I guess there are shades of doing the right thing.

I try to listen. I have, because I have a nice, I have a good relation with Gilberto, and we talk all the time about these types of issues, I, while I'm happy to call them out and anybody that's ever followed me, read me, heard me, whatever knows I do not ever hold back.

and he knows that too. So we have had those conversations, not always in a good way. But I like him and I try to, you know, I don't say lay a guilt trip on him or anything like that, but like say, dude, why not just do the right thing? Like, it's not that hard. So I maintain a little bit of hope.

I'll put it like that. Yeah, who's the guy for, I'm blanking on his name, but who's next in line for that WBA middleweight title shot? I've not looked at their ratings the middleweight for a bit I'm blank I apologize for blanking The middleweight division though At least in the WBA

Well most of the middleweight division is pretty decrepit at the moment It is yeah I mean Laura is a guy Who has been a tremendous fighter He was in a fight of the year A few years ago on Showtime against Jared Heard In a junior middleweight fight He was a great amateur fighter

But over the last several years He has literally since the Hurd fight or maybe besides the hurt fight, he's just fought terrible, very ridiculously bad opposition commensurate for being a championship level fighter. He's fought like, what, once a year, if that, it's like he just holds this middleweight belt hostage

that he acquired only when Golovkin retired or gave it up. I don't know, I can't say he retired because he never announced it. And it's disappointing. And hopefully, I'll put it like this. I'd much rather see Eraslani Lara fight Danny Garcia than just not fight at all. Right.

Now, the guy I was thinking of was Michael Zarafa, who is next in line. That's the title. Yeah, that world title. I mean, that's the fight that should take place. I know it's not the most lucrative fight, but if you're going by the rankings, that's the fight that should take place next.

I know Zarafa's been lobbying for it. Sure. Hard to get that fight to happen. If I'm not mistaken, that's an... Yeah. Zarafa's on a, I mean, he's on a pretty decent winning streak, if I'm not mistaken. He won four in a row,

but he hasn't fought since the end of 2022, because he's been waiting for this exact opportunity. The belt has been held hostage. I might be a little biased because my last memory of Zaratha in terms of seeing him alive was watching him laid out. I believe that junior middleweight on a PBC card a few years ago. Like badly knocked out the first round. Peter Quillen knocked him out.

Exactly. First round, right? That was a long time ago. That was fifth round eight years ago, nine years ago almost at this point. That was like one of the early BBC cards when he went and when Haman bought time on all the channels. And it was as brutal on this match as you could have.

imagine. Yeah, I want to drill down on a couple of things related to the PPC calendar. One, uh, everybody's kind of wondering if we're going to get Terrence Crawford, Errol Spence, the rematch. Uh, officially what we've heard is that Spence has exercised his, uh, his rematch clause, but we have not heard specifics about what weight that fight might be contested at. We have not heard anything about a date. I've talked to a few people around Spence. And the sense I get, Dan, is that Spence is not going to be ready to fight anytime soon. Spence is not, you know, if you can't announce the fight tomorrow, expect Spence to be ready to go in like March, one of those early PBC dates. So what do you think the odds are that we get Terrence Crawford, Errol Spence, Part 2?

It's a really good question. I've kind of been perplexed on this one for a while. I mean, when it was first made, when they fought the first time in the, you know, this past summer, by all accounts, nobody disputed that there was a rematch clause. Both fighters acknowledge it leading up to the fight. There was never an issue about that. There was public announcement or or not even a denial, even a mild denial that the exercising had occurred for the rematch. And it was explained to me by multiple sources that, okay, that the exercising that he had elected to do the rematch and that it was supposed to take place by the end of 2020. And now, no matter what your contract, say, if two sides agree to amend it, they can do so. So it struck me that, okay, they exercised the right to do the rematch, but both sides were fine with not doing it at the end of the year.

It wouldn't have made sense. There was really not any space in the calendar. On a pay-per-view level, it was after a successful pay-per-view. They could not possibly have done something similar in that time frame for the second fight. So I think everybody was fine with putting it off until sometime in the early part of this year. now the question now okay then showtimes contract and you know their their sports department was closed so pbc was now how to put everything on hold because not just spencer crawford but their whole whole stable of fighters because they were going towards this new deal they had with amazon and by the way if you look at some of the smaller club shows around the country that have been going on

the past you know a couple of months not the big names on pbc's roster but they've had some of their younger fighters that they farmed out to just get them active and make sure they fight you had you know Cavalowsk who just fought, he's a PBS fighter fought on a card in Southern California recently. You had Vito Mill Nikki Jr. who just was on a card non-televised in Newark, New Jersey,

and there was a couple other guys on that show that were from the BBC group. So they're keeping them busy. So the point is Spence and Crawford is only one of those issues. It strikes me that Spence has said as loud as you could say, I'm not fighting at Welterweight.

He's not going to try to make that wait again. That was, I think, probably one of the reasons that he looked so bad in the fight the first time around because the weight finally had gotten to him. So that seems to make an indication that if they do fight again, it would have to be at juvenile weight, which I believe that Terrence Crawford would be the one

to be able to say so. If he says welterweight, then Errol may be forced to pass on it. I'm not convinced. It's one thing to exercise the rematch, right? Fine. But there's a difference between saying yes and actually getting into the ring.

Like, what's the old saying? There's a big gap between the lip and the cup. I mean, you know, who the heck knows if they actually will fight? And frankly, listen, I'm a big Errol Spence fan. I have all the respect for what he's done in his career. He's a great guy.

Nothing bad to say about Eral Spence at all. Just a gentleman. And I like him as a fighter. I like him as a person. He doesn't need that fight. I'll say the same thing I said after Canelo talked about what wanted to fight, Demetre Bebole again,

using the line from the great movie Rocky 2. We don't need that man in our life. That's what he would, you know, what Apollo Creed's manager was saying, or his trainer, was saying to him when he was trying to get the Rocky rematch, you know he's all wrong for us baby like errol spence does not need another helping of terence crawford in his life uh anybody knows it will watch that fight understands that especially knowing the the

beast that that terence crawford can be when he when he wants to be so i don't know if it's going to happen by the way do you think chris you tell me you know the business uh very well is there going to be any public demand they did like 650 plus thousand pay per view guys everybody made a good amount of money it was a great great event And I'm glad that the fight finally happened. But I have never heard a single person since that fight finished. Oh, I got to see that rematch. Oh, not at all.

Nobody cares about that. Because most people believe probably correctly that even if the fight took place at 154, the exact same things happens. Did people just believe that Crawford at this stage is on a different level? And I buy that. If Arrow came back and fought somebody, Zarafa, whoever, pick a guy. like you were taught Tony Harrison, somebody that was a good fighter at junior middleweight, if not at the Crawford level, obviously nobody really is.

He's pound for pound number one in my book. But if he came to 154 and put a nice win in his winning record, maybe then you might get some believers. Oh, he looked good at that way. He looks strong. Maybe it'll be different. But if the only evidence you have to go on is a man moving up and wait against the same guy that destroyed him, also moving up and weight,

who's spending $80? on that to see it again. The most ardent diehards may do so, fair enough, but it won't be close to the 650 they did. And I can't imagine that these are people looking to make less money on the next fight. No, I think it would be a fraction of what, of the number that bought it the first time. I think it's a really low number.

The aggravating thing about it also is while this whole thing is being held up, and there's not clarity on when that fight's happening, if it's happening, what weight is happening at. You have Terrence Crawford, as I mentioned, my opinion, the number one fighter in boxing pound for pound. I'm certainly not alone in that assessment. He's holding up the titles.

I mean, they already, the IBF already, you know, he's already been stripped of the IBF title that has now gone to Boots Ennis, who was the interim champion. But at some point, there's other guys not going to do it. You cannot hold up a division over a business deal for an unending period of time. You know, I get, you know,

when you get, that's one of the things about boxing is everybody wants to see the undisputed. Takes a long time. They finally slog through it. They get to the summit meeting. The fight happens. It ends. There's a winner. It gets his hand raised with all the belts.

And then the organizations start coming with mandatories. That winner now is going to, you know, take a little break as assessing the appetite for whatever massive fight they can make and things slow down. Meanwhile, like all the other contenders knocking on the door. There's no activity in the division. The titles are not being lied for. And so that's the downside of the glory of the undisputed. The exact same thing is going to happen in February with the winner of Tyson Fury, Alexander Usik, where the IBF will probably strip the winner right away if they don't go on to face Philip Hergevich.

100%. That's probably not. You can write that down. I mean, they've already mandated months and months at a time. The winner of that fight must next face Philip Hergevich. they will, and I'm not even exaggerating the timing. That fight between Fury and Usik will end on whatever time of day it ends. Like literally, maybe they won't do it on Sunday because they're taking a rest on the weekend.

But I can assure you that probably that Monday, Tuesday at the latest, that letter will go out to the winner and to the number one contender to begin negotiations for that fight. Now, they don't expect the fight to happen, you know, in a few weeks. Obviously, the winner is going to have some arrest bit of time to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, chill out, I guess. Go back. I mean, all you got to do was just look at past history. On the day that Tyson and Fury defeated Vladimir Klitschko and won his belts, I can still remember, like, where I was, like, because I was like with my wife and my kid and were doing something and ended up coming home to write the story. They literally sent out the order for Fury to fight. I believe it was Zar Glasgow in an IBM

Zar Glasgow, yes. Long live Zar Glasgow, main event star heavyweight. Well, blew out his knee, unfortunately. So he only ended up having Charles Martin got that belt, right? Yes, sir, on a knee injury. And AJ got it off Charles Martin.

That was a lottery ticket that Zar Glasgow lost out on. Sure was. So what I'm saying to you is that this is not like it's the first time this has ever happened. Quite literally, Tyson, you could double check this. I want to tell you when he defeated Vladimir Klitschko to become the heavyweight champion.

I believe he held the IBF belt for about 10 days before he, I can't remember if he officially vacated or he was stripped, but the point was that order came out immediately, and the first belt that went away was the IBF, and then, of course, the other belts went later because of his own substance abuse issues and mental health problems. But the IBF, you know, they don't wait around. I mean, they're going to order the winner to fight Hergevich immediately, and that's why there's a very strong possibility that come March, which will be like a month after that fight takes place, there's a very good chance we may see Anthony Joshua against Hergevich

for the vacant title. I kind of respect the IVF for that in a way because, you know, there was a lot of belly aching after they stripped Terrence Crawford as quickly as they did. But look where we are now. Crawford had no intention of defending that title against boot tennis or anybody until the Errol Spence dust was settled and were no closer to seeing, you know, things figured out between Bud and Errol Spence. I'm kind of cool with that.

Let's keep the trains moving here. Let's keep things moving. The one mistake that the IBF made in that case, and I think Daryl Peoples, who's the president of the IBF, who I rather like it as a good boxing guy, I think he has acknowledged us in some interviews. The mistake that they made in the welterweight situation was allowing Ennis to fight for the interim title in the first place

when typically, and this has been proven out for decades, that in the IBF, the interim title, generally speaking, has only been used in the case of an injury, like a bona fide injury that's going to keep a champion on the shelf for a while, And they pretty much went against their rules and allowed Ennis to fight for the interim title before. And if it would have been okay, if they had said, okay, if Crawford is not going to fight

for a while, they could either strip him then and then have Boots fight the fight that he had that got on the interim title and it'd just be for the actual title. The other thing, and the IBF sometimes does things that are counterproductive to everybody, including themselves. So while I do respect that they follow their rules to a degree,

there are certain things that make no sense. And you were just there in Saudi Arabia for the nonsense made no sense. With Jai Opataya being stripped to force him to have a mandatory against an injured challenger who was okay with them being put on the, you know, waiting for the fight. And by the way, both the Opataya camp and the Bravest camp agreeing to sign a document or do whatever and stipulate that we will fight in like by March or whatever on the next Saturday, you know, one of the next Saudi cards in the fight they want.

So meanwhile, they strip them. they don't get a sanction fee. And Bradis is not ordered to be the number one contender to fight whoever, and he's still on the shelf and not fighting for a period of time. So that one made no sense to me in terms of the IBF. It doesn't make them bad guys. It just makes them weird to me. That was trying to unpack the thinking of the IBF there was,

I remember being in Arizona, and Eddie Hearn, who represents Jayapataya, was meeting with Darrell. And he was just beyond frustrated because as you laid out there, like everyone was on the same page. Like he'd fight Bredas in March or April whenever the next available Saudi date was. This was a stay busy fight. Nobody had a problem with it. And they just go and strip him up that title anyway, which now if I'm Jai Apatai,

I don't want any part of that title, like at least not for a while. I mean, he said that he would like to have it back. So I mean, honestly, it's, I don't know what would it be shocking. Well, I guess the IVF rules would not permit Jai to fight for the vacant title. Because if you're, I think he'd be dropped out of their top 10 or top five or whatever. for six months. I mean, it's just, I totally get the need for rules, obviously. And too many shankshying bodies have run roughshot over rules for as long as I've ever watched boxing. But I thought sometimes common sense might prevail, because my, my, the biggest thing to me is,

and I've said this to Daryl, I'm not like speaking like behind his back. We've actually had this conversation on more than one occasion. I have read the IBF rules on a multitude of occasions. their rules more favor the mandatory than they favor the champion. So while, yes, you should protect the rights of your number one contender, I don't think it should be more so than protecting the rights of the champion, at the least make them a little bit more even. And their rules are written in a manner that they seem to protect the rights of the mandatory more than the champion.

And in this particular case, the mandatory didn't need protection because he was okay with it. So my point of view was simply, if nobody is agree, and the number two guy who's also going to have to wait around, he wasn't going to get a fight any quicker either because even if he's ordered to fight for the vacant title, Bratis is still on the shelf for a period of time. So that fight would not have happened until March at the earliest. So the whole thing just made no sense.

You got to love boxing. You got to love boxing. You got to love it. Two names I want to run through before I let you go. One, Canelo Alvarez, who still has two fights left on his PBC deal. Dan, I don't think Canelo makes any decisions until we see what happens with Jaime Mungia and John Ryder at the end of this month. I think there is genuine interest on the part of Canello to face Mungia in May of this year. Now, that's a complicated deal to make because, you know, Mungia is affiliated with Dizone.

I don't have any knowledge of the details of whatever contract he may or may not have. But if I'm disown, I'm not letting Mungia just go and fight Canello after investing. God knows how much money in Mungia over the last five years to fight lesser fights. But I think he's going to wait and see what happens with Mungia. And if Mungia beats Ryder, especially if he does in a convincing way, I think they're going to try to make that fight down. I don't know if they're going to be able to do it, but I think that Jaime Mungia is, I don't, I don't know if I can say he's at the top of the list, but he's certainly right there in the top two

of guys that Kinella wants to face. Well, first of all, just if he does decide to wait to see what the result is between Mungi and Ryder, it's not like he's waiting a long time, the fights in three weeks. Right. So, you know, I don't think there was any hurt. I mean, of care if he's going to fight in May, you know, by the time you get to the end of January, you want at least, if you're doing a pay-per-view type of event, you want to at least have some of your ducks in a row, so to speak.

to wait to January 27th to see what happens with the rider and Mungia is not in any way a problem, it seems to me. So I'd be perfectly happy with that fight. I mean, obviously the fight I want to see is David Benavides, for sure. But it seems to me, and I've said this before, I give Canello the benefit of the doubt because his track record has shown that he will fight the guys that the fans want to see. He's done that repeatedly for many, many years. he doesn't necessarily fight that fighter at the exact moment where we all say fight him you know

did he fight triple g the first time a little bit past when it was at it's a fever pitch maybe a little bit seven eight nine months past when maybe we wanted but in the long run that doesn't mean anything they were still at the top of their game and he was still uh you know in great form that night and a lot people the first two were still incredible fights absolutely so he's he did that uh and i believe that you know there's been demand for the Benavides fight. I do think that that fight, that he will ultimately take the fight, but if you, again,

we just talked about the Fury, IBF situation. If you go back and pay attention on what's happened in the past, it will help guide you in the future. And it's not just a Canelo thing. If you take a look at the history in boxing, at least in, let's say,

I'll say in my time of covering it since, you know, 2000, so the last, you know, almost 25 years, this has been a pattern that has repeated itself a million times. when a fighter gets to the end of a contract, be it a promotional agreement, a broadcast agreement, what have you, that's typically when the biggest fight gets done

because they've taken care of everything else and there's one last, you know, a big push and the promoter and or the broadcaster, you know, really want to get the payoff fight. So it would not in any way surprise me if he did go with a Mungia fight next and save Benavides for what would be, I guess, the last fight of his PBC contract.

Do Mungia in May on the Mexican Singo de Mayo holiday should be plenty of time for Mungia post-Rider to be back in the ring. And then Benavides would get in one fight, presumably, you know, the first half of this year, and set up Canelo versus Benavides for the Mexican independence weekend, you know, come September of 2024, you know, nine months from now. I think that's not unreasonable. I think that is okay. Yes, we'd like to see Benavides next.

I'm fairly convinced that's not happening for a multitude of reasons. but if that means the year we get from Canelo is Mongia in May and David Benavides in September, can't beat that schedule. Mark me down for that one. And by the way, if Canelo were to run the table on those two guys, you're looking probably at the 2024 fighter of the year. I agree. I agree.

You know, we would just talk about the IBF. I know you know the answer to this question, but do you think that people know who the IBF mandatory is for Canelo's titles? That's a good question because I'd actually have to think about it for a quick minute. Oh, I know. Oh, I can give it to you. It's William Skull.

Yes, Chris, correct. The great William Skull, who if you put him in front of me with one other person next to him, I wouldn't know who he was. I'll put you like this, Chris. Now, you know what an absolute degenerate I am when it comes to watching boxing, right? I think you know that after all these years. I watch wacky streams. I get DVDs, I watch like deep undercards, whatever.

I don't know if I know who William Skull is, and I'm familiar with his record. I've seen him in terms of in the rankings and looked them up on Box Rec in the past. I can't say I've ever actually seen one of his fights, which is kind of rare for a top ranked contender for me not to have seen. Dan, like his, here's how you describe William Skull, right? He is Cuban-born, lives in Argentina,

and since 2019 has fought exclusively out of Germany. So he is a man of the world, but not someone that's ever fought anyone. Like Lennox Lewis, a man of the world. I wouldn't diminish Lennox by saying that. Born in Jamaica, box for Canada in the Olympics, fought in the UK,

and then came to America. At a slightly higher level. But William Scull's last, William Scull's last two fights, in 2022, he won an eight-round unanimous decision against Abel Adriel, who was 26, 25, and 3. In 2023, his only fight was in October. He beat Christian Rios, who was 23, 18, and 3 in a six-round unanimous decision. Next time you talk to Daryl, Dan, you asked Daryl to explain exactly how William Skull managed to become the manager.

Now, I know along the way, he picked up some of the time. these, you know, IBF secondary titles, international super middle, IBF Latino super middle. So that's the answer to the question. But how does beating Dragon Leipai and Deneb Diaz get you to the IBF number one position over other challengers for that belt? I just would love to hear the explanation for that. You just answer it. They fight for the regional titles that push them up their rankings.

They don't rank the other, you know, a lot of times they don't rank fighters that don't fight for those belts or for guys who become mandatories or fight for other organizational, regional belts, et cetera. I mean, so, yeah, I don't think there has been, I've not yet heard or any kind of push for an IBF mandatory for Canelo. You know, at least he made his WBO mandatory last year. That was the rider fight. So he doesn't have to worry about that.

You know, Mauricio Suleiman from the WBC has stated on a multitude of occasion, not going to force Canelo into a mandatory at this point, you know, which is fine. you know, I've always maintained for a long, long time. This is not like suddenly my new take on things. Mandatories are good because they give opportunities to fighters that otherwise would be avoided and can't get at the shot, but have put the work in and done the... You know, I was think of like the Hall of Famer Winky Wright.

He was exactly the kind of fighter that mandatories were made for. I was really, really good, but didn't bring a lot to the table financially and just could not get a big fight. And so, you know, you have to get him to a mandatory position to get in that, to get that spot. And there's other fighters that are sort of like that. You know, Geron Ennis was a guy like that. You know, the top guys weren't going to fight him because he was really good.

And at that point, he wasn't a big attraction. And so you had to get in a position where they were, you know, either giving up belts or forced to fight you. But I also, on the flip side of that, to me, if a boxer is active, and there's no obvious guy that should be the next guy to fight for the title, I don't understand why they have to jam these mandatories down the fighter's throat on such a regimented basis. So, you know, I'm glad to see sometimes people let a little breather take place.

You know, we'll see what happens. But in terms of Canello's schedule, Canello has also shown in the past that if the organization gets in his way of what he wants to do, he'll just give up the title. Get it in the middleweight belt. He added to a drop them anyway. Like, what's the point of giving up a million dollars for these titles? Like, you've achieved it. Like to drop them all.

Let's let them all fight for something. Well, listen, I'm not a guy that says the titles don't mean anything. I mean, for Canello they don't. It's all about a happy medium. He wants to have titles. And if you've made hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to pay out, you know, a very small percentage relative to your earnings to maintain the belts,

I don't have a problem with that. Now, does he need to maintain all four? He's proven his point, like you said. One. Yeah. Even keep two or three, but you don't necessarily need all four. I mean, if the IBM forces him to fight William Scholl, for example, I'm pretty sure Canello is going to say, thank you, I'd beF, but here's your belt.

No, no, he's going to say to, to Al Heyman like, all right, this is the fight I want to take the second fight of my contract, pay me the same amount of money. That is his Obdi Yildrum fight. That's what it is. William Skull is the IPA version of Obdi Yilder. When you're an active fighter like Canelo, and in that time frame when he fought Yildrum, he was fighting four times in 11 months.

Yeah. And as part of the deal to get the opportunity to fight for the vacant WBC title along with the WBA belt, and he fought Callum Smith, the back end of that was, you know, I'm going to have four fights over the next year. So I'm going to slip in an evening. easy quote unquote easy fight and that was the mandatory against yildrum so i don't think boxing fans care if they if they're if the fighters are active if they if they're if you're if you're going to fight four times and you want to take one softer fight in that period of time who's going

to argue william scull in December he can defend he's only going to probably fight two times this year but if he does three i'm saying like let's say for let's say he comes out of a benavides fight unscath for whatever reason he wants to fight a third time that and get a big fat payday williamsill will be a nice big fat payday if that's what the yelderam was If that came up, I actually wouldn't have a problem with that. No, neither would I. I would have a problem with the IBF making William's skull, mandatory challenge. That's a different story.

By the way, Dan, and again, I know you know this, but like, if you're a fighter that's in great shape, the IBF is the best set of rankings to be in. Guys do not want to fight for IBF titles because the IBF has that second day weigh in where you have to weigh within 10 pounds. Richardson Hitchens is a great example. He is the highest rated contender for the IBF's 140 pound title, which is currently owned by Subreal Matias. Hitchens doesn't seem to want any part of that fight.

And I don't think it's because he is afraid of Matthias or he thinks he's going to lose. It's that he doesn't like that extra second day weighing. When Hitchens fights for an IBF belt, I think I'm right on this. Like he also has another regional belt on the line because when the IBF, and again, I know you know this, when the IBF combines titles, you don't have to do that second day way in. So if you're a fighter that wants to zip up the rankings and you're not afraid of that second day weigh in,

IBF's your place, baby. Go get those IBF rankings. I mean, look, that's one of the, I think that's one of the holdups right now where the IBF has ordered a 140 eliminator fight for the final eliminator between Richards and Hitchens and Jack Caterall. Typically, when the boxes are promoted by the same promoter, it's not that usually that hard to make to make the fight.

It's not a common thing for a fight that's ordered where both fighters are from the same promoter to have a perspid schedule. The IBF schedule a perspid for Hitchens versus Caterall because Matcham has not been able to close the deal with the fighters. I think part of it is the reluctance on Hitchens' team's part to do a second day weight check, which, you know, that's their priority. He's way too young for that to be a big issue. Like if you don't feel comfortable, move up and wait. man. Well, I think they're

comfortable making the weight on the Friday, but not necessarily doing it. Yeah, but like if you think you're going to be rehydrating like Devin Haney-esque, like you'll never see Devin Haney fight for a straight IBM title ever. But if you're not, if you're Richson Hitchens, if you've got a chance to fight for a world title, you can't

pass it up because you're afraid of that second day win. You're too young for that. Like, you should be able to make that way. That's my opinion. I don't just agree with that. All right, let me, let me finish with this, Dan. Thank Davis. You mentioned, you know, Isot Cruz is currently the frontrunner. It seems like, to face Davis. Davis is not that it matters, but he is now the full WBA title holder at 135 after Devin Haney vacated his belt. Issa Cruz is right there behind him in that number one position. Do you get the sense that's going to be the next fight? And on a broader scale,

like, are we going to see Tank in a quote unquote big fight in 2024? Well, I sure hope see him in a big fight in 2024. Look, I mean, the Pitbull Cruz rematch has sort of been kind of hanging over a lot of things. A lot of people just sort of thought that was going to be the case. You know, one of the reasons why Pitbull was placed on the recent PBC card to sort of get him ready for that fight. I forget which Carter was, but he had a fight on one of the pay-per-view undercards that was towards the end of the year. But I really don't have an idea of the specifics of who he'll fight. Now, to me, the biggest fights for Tank Davis will,

be in the junior welterweight division, not in the lightweight division. Now, he still has the belt in the 135-pound weight class, but to me, the biggest fights that he can make are against opponents that have left the weight class. That's, you know, Devin Haney, obviously, now was at 140, and that all, I mean, he already fought Ryan Garcia, so I don't think there's any demand for a rematch there. But you're also talking about, you know, other fighters that are in a higher way class. I mean, who's at 135 now at this point that would be the logical, I guess,

the logical guy for him to face? I mean, Haney's the big one. I mean, Choucour is the only guy you can pick up, but he's not going to do that. Yeah, I don't see that happening. I didn't even mention him because it's just such an outlandish fight in terms of. Which is crazy since that's like an elite fight to make. Oh, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't mind seeing that for sure.

I mean, that's two of the best of what they do, no doubt about it. But look, Tank Davis and his team have always beat to their own drummer. They're not forced to do anything by people. They want to fight. They're more concerned. And I'm not, this is not a negative. This is just, then they're entitled to this viewpoint. They very clearly are more interested in the money over a belt.

To me, it's always sort of like they work together. You get the belt. I don't think they're mutually exclusive personally. Yeah, exactly. Like they can both be, there's not, it's not one's right and one's wrong. But Tank has grown a huge fan base who doesn't seem to care who he fights specifically. And that's his thing. Especially ones buying tickets.

Maybe not so much on pay-per-view. I kind of wonder what these pay-per-view numbers really are. But the gates speak for themselves. The gates are real. He's doing big like $5 million gates in New York and across the country. Chris, he did a fight in the, and I was at this fight in Washington, D.C., because I live right by that arena pretty much. In Capital One Arena in Washington, C., when he fought against Hector-Ois-Garcy,

this was his January fight of one year ago this month before he fought the Tang Davis fight, I mean, the Ryan Garcia fight, rather. that's a building that's around 20 years old. They did the biggest gate in the history of that building. The previous record had been around a little over $5 million from a Rolling Stones concert. He beat that record. This is not a boxing record. This is a record period.

They have big concerts. This is where Mike Tyson had his last fight of his career against Kevin McGride back in the day. So for him to fight a non-Markey fight against Hector Luis Garcia, a guy that was a good fighter, but nobody knew who he was, to do that kind of. of money, that's, that's very impressive. So yes, the gates are legit. Obviously, they did a huge amount of money, you know, in terms of the fight with, with Ryan Garcia, you know, biggest, at least in this side of the world anyway, biggest pay-per-view, biggest, biggest commercial event, let's call it, you know, in the sport in 2023. So they're not looking to go backwards. I mean, also, the other fight that would be a big fight that I didn't mention for, for Tank, which, again,

I don't see it happening, but this would be a marquee fight. It would be him and T. Fima Lopez. He's the other big name in that way class. He's the lineal champion. He's the WBO champion. He's coming off a beautiful performance against Josh Taylor where he won that fight. I mean, so there are those types of guys. Now, within the PBC universe, there's Sebril Matias. I don't think he's looking to do that because, again, I'm not going to tell you Tank is afraid to fight anybody, but Sebril Matthias has to do a little bit to raise sort of his profile.

I wonder too, Dan, how long Matias is going to be in that PBC universe. Like, he's out there talking to people, whether it's top rank, when match room, like he's out there in conversations with other promoters, most of the ones that have the champions at 140 pounds. So, you know, that might be off the table in terms of an internal fight to make, which then, you know, where are you looking? I mean, look, the Issaq Cruz fight, whatever. I personally think that the only people that want to see that fight are Issaq Cruz,

his family, and Sean Gibbons. But like, the second half of the year is where I think tech needs to do something, right? Like let's say, let's say Devin Haney and Ryan Garcia fight in April or May. Let's say Devin wins convincingly. I mean, then the Devin fight becomes that much bigger. Let's say Teofimo and Subreal-Mathias fight in June on that Puerto Rican Day weekend in New York, which I think is something that's been discussed internally at Top Rack. That if Tea Fimo wins that fight, that's a massive fight.

These are just big, big fights that can be made that makes everybody a boatload of money, both at the gate and the pay-per-view. Tank Dave is going to be 30 years old in November. Like he's got to decide at some point if he wants to be in these high profile, high risk, but high reward types of fights. I think, Dan, multiple of them will be presented to him in the second half of this year. He just has to say yes to them. And look, Shakur, Shakur, if he beats Lomachenko.

Like, if that, yeah, I don't know when that fight would take place, probably the fall. But, like, that's if Lomachenko beats Kambos, of course. but that's a big fight at 135 if you want to stay there. I mean, listen, the bottom line is, and this is not just about Tank Davis, just all these guys. You have as a pro boxer at the highest level, a very limited amount of time to make the biggest fights,

and I am of the strong beliefs that you don't go wasting those opportunities. Right now, Tank is at his, you know, he's in his prime, he's at a high level of earning power, a high level of stardom, and, you know, if you look again, we're going to talk about history.

I say this all, I don't want to sound like a, like a broken record. If you look at the history of boxing, if you are a top fighter and you fight top fights and you lose, it does not mean you cannot go on and still make huge amounts of money. I mean, Tommy Herons got knocked out by Ray Leonard and went on and had a huge career and made huge amounts of money,

including in a rematch with Ray down the road. When Oscar De La Jolla, who was the face of boxing for a period of time, when he lost, you know, he had gotten knocked out by Bernard Hopkins. When he came back and fought Ricardo Mayorga, a little over a year later, I guess, or maybe 16 months later, whatever it was.

And he won that fight to win a title at Junior Middoway. He was never more popular at that moment when he scored that big knockout and went on and made crazy money even beyond that with Mayweather and lots of other big names. And we can sit here in sight chapter reverse. When Manny Packo got knocked out face first by Juan Manuel Marquez,

and a lot of people thought he would never step in a boxing ring again, it wasn't that long after that hellacious, as brutal of a knockout as I've ever seen, ever in the history of boxing, going back to watching black and white, grainy footage of fights. After that, he made nine figures to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. So I don't want to hear about if I lose and I have to protect my record when I'm done. Tank Davis has a fan base. I strongly believe that if he fights the right fights, even if he suffers a defeat,

he's still going to make a huge amount of money and those fans are not going to desert him because they are interested in him, in his punching power, in his charisma or whatever you, however you want to describe it. So stored shelf life, opportunity, make the fight, history shows that you can rebound from those fights. Frick and Muhammad Ali lost the fight came back. I mean, pick any other than Floyd who retired undefeated, you know, which is a rare thing. Every superstar fighter suffered a loss.

Many of them came back. Most of them probably were able to come back and have huge fights. To me, what stands out in the more modern times are what Oscar did after losses, what Pac-Eau did after losses. Look what Mike Tyson did after losses. He got knocked out by Buster Douglas. He had his biggest fights ever after that against Evander Holyfield against Lennox-Lews at the end of his career, made crazy money for these fights.

So, you know, I'm tired of hearing fighters in general talk about, it's only about how much I can make on pay-per-view, you know, and that's why they may look to avoid the biggest fights. If you make the biggest fights, if you happen to lose, your career is not over, if you give the fans what they want and you put in the proper effort. Yeah. I'm not going to step off my soapbox. I could not agree more. And I think you and I would both agree that in some of these big fights that we talked about, it's not like we're making Tank Davis some kind of big underdog. If he's an underdog at all. Like he is in these fights. He is the pound for pound best counterpuncher in boxing in terms of power. I think pound for pound

he has got some pop on those counterpunches. Oh, if you match him up with Tiafimo Lopez, if you match him up with Haney, if you match him up with Matthias, I mean, if you get hit, Tea Fimo gets hit, Haney gets hit, you know, these guys get hit. These are fights where he's going to have

a lot of people picking him to win is the point. And they'll be the favorite in some of those fights, for sure. Yeah, it's, I hope we get to see at least one of them before the end of this year. Well, Dan, I had this podcast budget for like 30 minutes. well over an hour, so I appreciate it, my friend. Check out Dan's substack, Fight Freaks Unite, one of the best boxing reads you can find on the internet. Subscribe to that substack on Dan's social media channels. Dan, always appreciate it, man. Good to catch up. You bet, Chris.

A pleasure. I will talk to you soon, my man. And when we come back, my conversation with Virgil Ortiz. All right, Virgil Ortiz is the undefeated 154-pound contender on Saturday. You will make his anticipated return when he takes on Frederick Lawson. He will also. be Virgil's debut at Junior Middleweight. You can watch that fight live on the zone. Virgil, I have to imagine that given how much inactivity you've had to experience over the last couple of years, you've got to just be dying to get back into the ring right now.

I literally am dying to get back into that ring. You know, it's been too long. You know, last fight was against McKinson in 2022, I believe. And it's just been way too long. It's been a roller coaster of emotions and, you know, they're all bad. Not good and bad and good. It's more like bad and worse and confusion and going. You know, it's just, it sucks.

But, you know, we're a few days away. I'm feeling great. And I'm just, I'm ready to find it. What was the toughest part of the last two years? If I'm being honest, you know, wondering if I'm going to have to sell my house or not. that I had just bought. Wow. I'm being honest.

It was, it got to that point with you? Yeah, I hadn't fun in a few years. We had made some investments on another house that we were going to build a gym that we already had a money put down on that we were probably going to lose as well. If, if nothing was going to go right, I'm telling you, like, we were, we were right there, you know, we were right there. You know, not to put my business, my financial business out there. I don't know.

I'm feeling sorry for me or nothing or, or, you know, but like, you know, it was serious. Like, I might have to sell my house and move back to,

to where I grew up at or, or what, like, are my dreams over? Like, is this it? Like, so,

you know, it got to that point. And, uh, we know, we, long story short, we're here.

No, we're not done yet. What was the turn? point for you. Why did you feel like things were turning around? Um, I guess it's the way I feel right now. You know, it's, it's, this is a different feeling. This is a, a familiar feeling of how I felt back then when I was at my best, you know, and I feel, bro, I'm standing during this interview right now. Like, come on, I have a lot of energy. I'm like three days away from weighing in and I have a lot of energy. I feel good. I'm talking,

I'm talking to you smiling, right? now I'm not smiling. In my other interviews, in my past weight cuts, you know, I feel good. Like, I'm very excited about this fight. I feel good, emotionally, physically, all that. So I'm just, I'm ready to go. So let's talk about kind of how you felt before the last schedule one and clear a couple things up for me because last summer, you're set to take on Amatostanianus, big fight,

secondary title on the line, have been postponed a couple of times because of health issues on both sides, but it was finally set days before the fight, you were forced to pull out. Now, there's a lot of been, been a lot of talking about why you were forced to pull out. Clear up exactly what happened there. So for the last fight, you know, it was the simple case of dehydration and heat exhaustion, you know, that can happen with fighters, you know, it's, I don't want to say it's normal, it happens all the time, but if it were to happen, it's just like, oh, okay, well, we've, we've heard of that before, you know what I mean?

So let's say hypothetically, that had high. happened and I didn't have this rabble thing. Well, it wouldn't have been that big of a deal. Like, oh, well, the truth of the matter is that it was an isolated defense. It had nothing to do with rabble. When I went to the hospital, they ran butt tests on me. I didn't have rabble. So it wasn't that, you know, a lot of, you know,

Twitter doctors say that, oh, he had rabble again or, you know, his team doesn't know what they're doing. They don't know what they're talking about. They're not in my camps, you know, and you have people spreading rumors that that's not even true. We got people talking about stuff that they don't know about. So it's just, you know, I'm in a position where I can talk about this stuff now and so people can hear me.

I'm about a fight. So, you know, just ask all the questions I'm going to answer. Well, you obviously heard a lot of that stuff about the rabdow. You said that had obviously nothing to do with it. It obviously, though, your decision to move up in wait, you were going to fight that fight against Danny Onus at 140. Did what happened during that fight week influence your decision to move up? I think that what happened during that fight week was scary enough for me to be like,

okay, now we can't do this again. You know, it's more than the fight we do. Like, I had before the McKinsey fight, I fought a new machine. So that's a year earlier, right? Then another year to when I was supposed to fight again. So it was just a lot of inactivity. and just nothing consistent. Nothing was consistent.

And I don't know. That's why I was saying, like, I'm not going to wait for nobody no more. Like, I'm going to fight on this state, this state, this state, this state, and this state. If you're not ready, we're going to fight someone else. Like, I'm not going to, I'm not on your time. I'm on my time. Like, when I'm 50, and when we're on 50 or whatever, you're not going to think about me. I'm not thinking about it.

I'm just thinking about my family. and me taking care of them, and I'm going to be able to take care of them with the money I'm going to make fighting, you know. But to take care of them, I have to fight. You know, so I'm going to fight with you or I'm going to fight someone else. You know, so, you know, at this point, I don't care.

I just want to do my job. I just want to fight. You know, I want the fans to be excited about me fighting again. I want them to buy a ticket and not get scared that I'm not going to be able to pull through again because a lot of inconsistencies that have been happening. You know, it gets to you. You know, I think about that a lot. You know, I think about that at this fight right now.

Like, I'm going to have to do, I'm going to have the best performance of my life for people to have confidence in me again. And to want to buy tickets, not be scared of anything happening like that again. To be able to make a trip to Vegas or to California or to San Antonio fucking Mars, I don't care. You know, I want them to have that confidence in me again. And we're going to do it. We're going to get there. And how, like, Sergio and I have talked about this a lot when it comes to you. Like in summer of 2021, you were right there at the top.

After the Cavalascus win, we're talking about you, same way we're talking about Butcennis, you know, talking about you fighting Terrence Crawford. Like, what has it felt like to kind of fall out of that mix over the last couple of years? Oh, mentally it sucks, you know, because I was, like you said, I was at the top. I have all the momentum. people were talking about me fine you know cropper or spence or whoever had the titles at the time shit i thought i was in the five pack yeah at one time i was like damn like you know i had the gold and he had the super wba and i just like damn that's actually a possibility you know and if that were to

happen you know in a heartbeat i would have taken it you know it would have been honored to me being with a legend like him but uh you know i just want to get there again you know and just i understand why my name is in people's mouths like that anymore, I understand it. I can take my point of view and look at it from their point of view. I'm not narrow-minded like that,

but looking at it from my point of view, I'm just like, fuck, I'm still the same guy. I've been really unlucky. So, we're, all we can do is, just not wait for nobody, you know, where we just stay consistent and do what we've been doing this whole time. Like in 2019 when I was prospect of the year, I fought four times that year.

I want to do that again. I want to fight a minimum of three times. I want to fight at the most I want to fight four times this year. You know, I'm fighting in January. We have all year to do that. It's so important, isn't it, like activity, I mean, a lesson you probably obviously learned, you know, with these last couple of, I mean, we were just in Saudi Arabia and I was watching Joseph Parker beat Deonté Wilder.

And there are lots of reasons that happened. But I think one of them is that Joseph Park was fighting for the fourth time that year. And he was sharp, but he was good. And he was, he was ready. Whereas Deonté Wilde had been bought one round in two something years. So you're 100% right. Activity is really important. Your path back to this point, Virgil, is brought you back to Robert Garcia.

I know you've talked about this a lot in the last couple of weeks. But tell me what brought you back there? What made this reunion happen? you know so we just uh after the last camp we were just like man like you know we were just thinking about it and you know ultimately i was just like we we need to go back to where i was the best at you know and uh you know of course nothing against you know my past camp because they're great people you know and they were moved mountains for me for sure um we just feel like we just need to go back to where I was having the most success and just flat out where I was a monster.

And, you know, we went back and with Robert. And I feel good, dude. I feel good. The decision to leave him at the time, how much of that had to do with non-boxing reasons than actual boxing reasons? I mean, really? I mean, a lot of it was I wasn't getting to sparring. that you would expect from their camera.

You know, a lot of them didn't want to spar. A lot of the fighters that were there at the time didn't want to spar me. And that's how you get better, you know? So it's just like, well, we're having to call people in for sparring, you know, we're sparring other people. And they didn't want to spar anymore. See how it gets frustrating?

I don't know. I don't know because I was that much, like, I don't want to hype myself up. So I don't even like saying this, But was I doing that good? People weren't wanting to spar me no more. And even from people from other camps that we were paying them, they didn't want to spar more or what?

I don't know. But it just, that was like the main problem. So you were saying, yeah, yeah, so you're saying now you're fighting in January, you want to be active. What does that look like to you? It begins with Frederick Lawson on Saturday. What an ideal world? What does your 2024 look like?

like. Shit. Hopefully, hopefully with the, with the belt around my waist and defending it at these once, you know, you know, that's, that's my ideal 2024 right there. Have you felt that you've had a chance to train at 154? How do you feel like your power is going to carry? How do you feel all your skills are going to carry this weight? I feel like, I feel like I'm going to feel good, you know.

We're going up in glove ounces, I believe, to 10 ounces. I feel like, to me personally, I feel like I hate harder with heavier gloves because I have more confidence that my hands aren't going to break on me. Because a lot of the times, I honestly, people are going to think that I'm lying. I can already see the Instagram, X, Twitter, or whatever you want to call it now. I can already see the two-todry. But I never really threw as hard as I could because of fearing of my hands breaking because of my hands have broken many times before.

in the Antonio Rosco fight, I broke both of my hands in that same night. You know, that was a crazy fight. But I'm going to have a lot more confidence in my, you know, just in the gloves, just in the gloves itself. I don't know. It's weird. It's only two ounces, but two ounces matter. There's a reason why they added it. Well, if that's the case, that is probably going to be good for you because you've got a perfect knockout ratio as it is.

Virgil, man, great to have you back, man. Looking forward to hopefully is a big year for you in 2024. Thanks for joining me, man. Hey, thanks for having me. Nice talking. That's it for this week's episode. My thanks to Dan Rayfield and Virgil Ortiz for joining the show. As always, subscribe, rate, review this podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you download podcast.

And I'll see you next week. Thank you so much. I go sleep. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. On Humor Me with Robert Smygel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

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