The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Boxing with Chris Mannix - Matchroom/Queensbury Winners and Losers

Episode Date: June 2, 2024

Mannix reacts to a Nick Ball's title-winning performance, Daniel Dubois's continued resurgence, the likely end of Deontay Wilder's career and more from Queensbury's clean sweep of Matchroom in the 5 vs. 5. #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 I-Heart 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. Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars fan, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand new week of fun, thought-provoking Star Wars-related episodes.

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Watch this. Hosted by S.I's Chris Mannix. 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. All right, well, welcome into a special edition of the podcast. Let's call it the podcast after dark, because it is after.

4 a.m. 431 a.m. to be precise in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where I am recording this. If you're listening on the podcast feed, welcome. We are also broadcasting this on YouTube. So if you are not a subscriber to the YouTube page, get over to the Chris Maddox page, hit that subscribe button as well. What a night. The Matchroom versus Queensberry, five on five. There were a lot of expectations for this event coming in. And I felt they exceeded them. had at least four really competitive fights, nip and tuck fights that came down to big moments or close scorecards. And I just thought the whole event was excellent. Second time in three weeks, we have had big cards in Saudi Arabia. And for the second time in three weeks, these cards have

delivered. So on this episode, I'm just going to talk a little bit about the winners and losers from this match room versus Queensberry card. Obviously, Frank Warren is the big winner. A clean sweep for Queensbury promotions. They go 5-0 against the Matchroom boxing fighters. Eddie Hearn of

Matrum came in. A lot of confidence that his guys were going to get the job done. And even though there were some good performances, I thought Raymond Ford

fought really well. I thought Craig Richards at the end of his fight, you know, put some shots together. Ultimately, this was an all Queensberry all the time type of card.

So Frank Warren, the big winner, his promotional company gets the $3 million bonus from the Saudi government, so a little extra change in the pocket of Frank Warren. But let's boil it down to some of the fights and some of the fighters. I think you can call every member of Team Queensberry a winner from this show. Willie Hutchinson. So Willie Hutchinson, you know, was a guy that like four or five fights earlier had a knockout loss.

And, you know, coming into this fight, I thought Willie Hutchinson was a little bit too big for his Bridges. Like, he was talking down to Craig Richards. Craig Richards is no, you know, pound for pound type of talent. But he gave Dimitri Beavall all he could handle in a light heavyweight title fight. He gave Joshua Boatzi all he could handle in a title eliminator. So the resume of Craig Richards was a lot. better than the resume of Willie Hutchinson coming into that fight. But I thought Willie was really good. He offensively, he landed a lot of power shots. I'm not usually a fan of fighters switching

stances as often as Willie did, but he was really effective. Certainly struggled at times in the second half of that fight. Remember, he'd never been passed seven rounds before as professional. And I thought he ran out of the gas kind of in the 10th and 11th round. of this fight, kind of opening the door a little bit for Craig Richards to give himself an opportunity to get a stoppage. But he ultimately closed pretty strong and came away with a wide unanimous decision. So now he is a player at 175. He is going to be someone to watch in the light heavyweight division. Hamza Shiras. I didn't know too much about Hamza Shiraz coming into this fight. I mean, I watched his last fight against Liam Williams and he knocked him out in the first round.

But my takeaway from watching that fight was that Liam Williams, after all these wars with, you know, Liam Smith and Demetrius Andrade and Chris Eubank, I just thought he was shopworn. I don't think that told me much about what kind of prospect Hamza Shiras is. And even early in this fight against Ammo Williams, I thought he was kind of unimpressive. You know, the second round, he took a lot of shots. and I thought Amo had a decent chance of scoring a stoppage in that fight. But Shiraz is a strong, strong guy. He's a big guy.

I mean, he is 6-3. Officially, he is 160, but watching him in the ring, it looked like he was like 180, 185, just a big, big guy. It reminds me of kind of what Zerto Ramirez was like, you know, at 175, rehydrating 20 plus pounds. I mean, he's just, he was massive in there. And his power was real. Like, he busted up Ammo Williams.

Ammo had some good moments, especially early in that fight, but he took a sweeping right hook and got knocked down late in the fight, and then, you know, just a whole bunch of power shots that eventually led to the stoppage in that fight. So Hobbes-Shiraz, that fight was an eliminator for the WBC middleweight tie. It's a belt currently held by Carlos Adamas. I would love to see a fight between Hamza Shiraz and Carlos Adamas. I would guess that Adamas doesn't want that fight right now. Now I'm sure he's looking at unification fights. Janibek, you know, bigger fights that might be out there for him at 160. But if that fight happens, that's a great fight.

I came away from watching Hamza Shiraz thinking he was the real deal. Nick Ball, big winner. I thought Nick Ball was going to win this fight because I thought the pressure of Nick Ball was going to be problematic for Raymond Ford, especially since I didn't believe that Ray was going to be, the best fighter he could be at that weight class. I mean, he has talked a lot over the years about moving up to 130 pounds. He won his title in his last fight. And I truly believe that if it wasn't for the money that was on the table in Saudi Arabia, he would not be fighting at 126. And look, that was a competitive fight. I actually scored it forward, 115, 113. Two judges

disagreed. They had at 1513 the other way. One judge had the same card that I did. a very, very competitive fight that I think when Ray looks back, he will look at some of those early rounds that he didn't deal well enough with the pressure of Nick Ball that ultimately cost him the fight. And for Nick, look, he could make an argument that he beat Ray Vargas last time out, that he should be the unified champion at 126.

Well, now he's got a real belt, and his fighting style is very television friendly. So look, the 126-pound titles, a lot of them are kind of U.S.-based, I guess Luis Alberto you could do a fight against Nick Ball. I just think he is going to be in some very fan-friendly fights in the future. So great win for Nick Ball. And good for him, too, for, you know, he didn't get screwed against Ray Vargas because I thought he did give away the first six rounds of that fight.

But, you know, he closed strong, can make an argument that he won, and now he walks away with his first world title. So great performance by Nick Ball. Now, the heavyweights, this is where this event got really interesting. And it began with Daniel Dubois against Philip Hergevich. You know, if you just watched the first round,

you would think that Hergevich all day long. Like, the straight right hand from Hergevich just couldn't miss on Dubois. And I just remember sitting there thinking, like, there's no way Dubois can take this many right hands. But to Dubois's credit, he just kept coming. He just kept moving forward and kept putting the pressure on Hergevich.

Even the rounds that he wasn't winning, he was still landing enough shots to slow Hergevich down. And this was the question, I think, coming in about Hergevich, because a lot of people viewed him as one of the boogeymen in the heavyweight division. I think he was demystified to a degree by Jay Le Jong in their fight. You know, competitive fight. Hergevich got the decision a few years ago. But I think he still was viewed as, you know, one of the best fighters in the heavyweight division.

And he may still be. But, you know, what Dubois did to him, pressuring him, pushing him back, landing power shots. That was a guy fighting with. with a boatload of confidence. It was. You know, the cut that Hergevich had to deal with, of course, was a big problem for him over the final few rounds of that fight. But this is all about Danny Dubois

and how he fought in this fight. And look, you can look at records and you can look at highlight real knockouts. But until you see guys in with their contemporaries, with their peers, you just don't know what kind of. a fighter that they are. I think Philip Herkovich can go on and potentially win a heavyweight title. I think he still can bounce back. But, you know, he's conditioning in the fight against Dubois

and the fight against Zhang were not good. It was not good. You know, by the middle of that fight against Dubois, you wanted how Herkovich were going to make it to the final bell. And, you know, when the doctors stopped it, I think they almost did Herkovich a favor because I think at some point Dubois would have gotten to him and stopped him. And, you know, I talked to Dubois about this a little bit in the ring. And man, it just feels like we're looking at a fighter that has had three careers, right? Like, the first part of his career came when he was this promising prospect and he was knocking a bunch of guys out. You thought he was the next big thing in the heavyweight division. Then the Joe Joyce fight happens. And he gets accused of being a quitter, wrongfully

accused, I believe, because he had a broken orbital bone in his face. And as we've seen, that's a real injury and guys don't recover from that. Then he has the fight with Usik and even though some people would say the way he knocked Usik down was clean, he got knocked out at the end by a jab and seemed to give up in that fight. But over the last six months, Du Bois has really turned a corner. He has reinvented himself. Digging deep to beat Jarell Miller back in December was impressive.

Digging deep to beat Philip Hergovich on Saturday was even more impressive. And now we're talking about Danny Dubois once again as being a contender in the heavyweight division. Now, he's got that interim version of the IBF title. My intel on all this is that at some point over the next few weeks, you are going to see the IBF upgrade Dubois into the full champion. I don't think the IBF wanted to strip Alex and Usik right away, but the reality is that mandatory fight was long overdue. And you can say what you want about these sanctioning bodies, but the IBF does follow its rules.

And I think they're going to elevate Dubois. And if they don't, the full title is going to be on the line in September when Anthony Joshua takes on Daniel Dubois. Because that seems like the fight. that's going to happen. Both these guys are British. The Saudis want to do a big show over in the UK, Wembley Stadium. Makes perfect sense. IBF title on the line.

Dubois, AJ, big fight. I think that's a no-brainer for September. And it's a no-brainer because in the main event, we saw the end of Deonté Wilder. You know, for the second straight fight, Deonté Wilder could not let his hands go, specifically that right hand. Fighting Jay Le Jong, you knew he was probably going to be fighting more on the back foot because Zhang is a pressure come forward fighter who has that big left hand, and he got to be aware of it.

But again, for the second straight fight, Wilder just did not and was not willing to let that right hand go. not willing to throw your best weapon with the frequency and the accuracy that you did during your heyday, you're not going to win a lot of fights. And look, it was, I believe, what, the fifth round when Zhang landed that big shot, spun Wilder all the way around, then he followed it up with a massive shot as well. I know Deonté protest a little bit at the end about the stoppage, but I think the referee in that moment saved Deonté from a brutal knockout. Jean was coming forward.

He is really heavy-handed, and I think it would have put him Deonté down and out. So good on the referee for stopping that fight when he did. And look, Deontay, he made it clear during this fight week that if he didn't perform at the highest level in this fight, it was over. He's in his late 30s at this point. He's made a lot of money in his career. He's happy living in Alabama. he's got seven kids. There's really nothing left for him to do in the sport of boxing.

Look, there will be plenty of time to kind of dissect the career of Deontay Wilder because he's at one of those careers that kind of needs a full autopsy. Like you kind of really need to unpack it to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. But for now, I mean, I just want to focus on the kind of fights Deontay gave us. I mean, he gave us one of the best heavyweight trilogies that we will ever. see. He will go down as one of the heaviest handed punchers in boxing history. He gave us electrifying moments in the heavyweight division. Maybe he won't be remembered as an all-time great. He probably won't. But he left his mark on the heavyweight division. There's no doubt

about that. And I do hope that he walks away. There was some talk before this fight about Jared Anderson. That's obviously off the table. There was certainly some talk about making an AJ fight. That certainly is off the table. I just don't. don't think Deonte has, hasn't even left. And I think some of that has to do with age, some of that has to do with, you know, his general ability. And I think someone has to do with the wars he fought against Tyson Fury. I mean, we spent, you know, time a couple of weeks ago talking about what the Wilder fights took out of Fury. Well, how about what the Fury fights took out of Deontay Wilder? It's left him kind of a lesser version of his best self. So,

hopefully Deonte calls it a career, enjoys his life, enjoys his family, made his plenty of money. I don't think it's all that expensive to live in Alabama. So I think he's going to be able to enjoy the rest of his life and move on and do other things. But, you know, good performance from Zhang. I don't know where he goes from here exactly. I guess you can make a Parker rematch. You know, Joe Parker's looking for a big fight either in September or October of this year. They were originally penciled in to fight each other to rematch anyway before the wilder deal.

came together. So that's a pretty good fight in a rematch later in the year. And if he wins that, I think in 2025, we're talking about AJ against Zhang in China. You know, one of Eddie Hearn's dreams for years, because he worked with Zhang for a long time. One of his dreams was to make a fight in Beijing at the bird's nest, put like 100,000 fans or whatever it is into that venue. I think Zhang has made that a possibility once again. So if you can find a way to beat Parker, no easy task. Joseph Parker is having a good run. And if AJ can keep having some success, that could be a massive fight over there in 2025.

So that's it for the night. Great night. Great show. Great fights. Great storylines that came out of it. Frank Warren wipes the floor with Eddie Hearn in the first five-on-five. I don't think it's going to be the last five-on-five. This team concept seems to have some legs,

and I think we'll see it back in Saudi, in the UK, maybe in the U.S. Talk of that, too, somewhere down the line. But a great night for boxing, and certainly a great night for Frank Warren and Queensbury. 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, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter 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 podcasts. 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 is. 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 IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars fan, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand new week of fun, thought-provoking Star Wars-related episodes. Join us as we tackle science and culture topics from a galaxy far far away, such as the biology of tauntons and wampas on the ice planet hot, or the practicality and corporate business sense of the Sith Rule of Two. Listen to Stuff to Bole Your Mind on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.