“Crawford, who faces Hank Lundy in the main event of the HBO Championship Boxing card from Madison Square Garden in New York, is not facing Manny Pacquiao, as rumors ultimately as hollow as they were well-placed encouraged us to believe. But his rejection as the Filipino’s first final opponent reflects how formidable a fighter Crawford has become. It was not finances that prompted Team Pacquiao to choose Tim Bradley a third time, but preservation. Bradley is the more familiar fighter, yes, he is more proven; Crawford is better. Just how much better is something neither the brain trust of a 37-year-old veteran of 65 fights, nor the fighter himself, is interested in presently determining.”

Read Idle Ceremony: Terence Crawford-Hank Lundy Preview on The Cruelest Sport.

“Sergey Kovalev did not, as he promised, retire Jean Pascal at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, on Saturday night. Pascal, kept on his stool at the end of the seventh round, will fight again; he will have as little difficulty finding a trainer willing to salvage and refurbish him as he will an opponent looking for a career best win. What he will not find, however, is the vitality Kovalev beat out of him. That beating—cynical, protracted, delivered with a calm born not of emotional detachment but of genuine relish—will forever be linked to the man who applied it.”

Read Make Him More Pain: Sergey Kovalev TKO7 Jean Pascal on The Cruelest Sport.

“Saturday night at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, Danny Garcia outpointed Robert Guerrero over twelve rounds in a fight good enough to momentarily muffle the anti-PBC rhetoric and not good enough to warrant a second viewing. A typically current affair, then: one criticized for failing to meet lowered and lowering standards while being defended as no worse than the rest. The truth, less convenient than the people who most fervently claim its possession would assert, is no more likely to be found in the middle than it is in the extremes; but Garcia-Guerrero will neither turn away current aficionados nor create new ones. It is the latter of these two outcomes that the PBC professes to be concerned with and its failure in this regard is proof that the packaging has not supplanted the product.”

Read Tough Nothing: Danny Garcia W12 Robert Guerrero on The Cruelest Sport.