“A longtime passenger on the HBO entitlement train, Berto, Winter Haven, Florida, cashed several hefty checks for facing a murderer’s row that included Miguel Angel Rodriguez and Freddy Hernandez. With his advisor, Al Haymon, turning the thumbscrews on HBO executives, Berto was the poster child for a business beholden not to consumers but to network programmers and their bedfellows.”
Read Long Nights Waiting: Jesus Soto Karass TKO12 Andre Berto on The Cruelest Sport.
However destructive middleweight Gennady Golovkin’s career has been to this point, it has largely been the product of the how—not the whom. This is not to belittle the accomplishments of a fighter who has compiled a record of 26-0 with 23 knockouts: in boxing, the best platform for raising your profile remains the scaffold, and it is unlikely that either HBO or the public they occasionally represent becomes as enamored with Golovkin without the carnage he produces. But skepticism persists, primarily because ruining the likes of Nobuhiro Ishida does little more than emphatically restate the obvious. What Golovkin has long needed—and has struggled mightily to secure—is an opponent whose undoing would silence the critics. This Saturday, from the MGM Grand at Foxwoods Resort, Mashantucket, Connecticut, he faces just such a man.
Read The Monster Under The Bed: Gennady Golovkin-Matthew Macklin Preview on The Cruelest Sport.
A few of boxing’s unspoken rules will manifest when featherweights Mikey Garcia and Juan Manuel Lopez square off at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, Saturday night. One such rule, the soft first defense, dictates a new champion savor the accomplishments of his title winning effort by dispatching an overmatched opponent. Garcia, owner of this fight’s strap, scored his hardware in a January slap-up of diehard Orlando Salido. Lopez has shared the ring with Salido as well, getting knocked silly both times.
Read Form For Fury: Mikey Garcia-Juan Manuel Lopez Preview on The Cruelest Sport.
In Between Rounds 