By Michael Amakor
June 2013 has been a very busy month for boxing indeed. First off, the aftermath of June 8 had Marko Huck besting Afolabi in their trilogy to settle all accounts and retain his WBO Cruiserweight title.
As advertized in the fight promos knockout artist Adonis Stevenson destroyed Dawson in the very first round to seize his WBC 175LBS title. Degale also defeated Bozic to defend his WBC 160LBS Silver title.
Marcos Maidana survived a barrage to stop Jesosito Lopez in a thriller. 40 year Fres Oquendo also kept his WBA Latin American title by besting Derrick Rossy.
Angulo knocked down Erislandy Lara twice for the first time in Lara’s career only to be unable to continue after a combination contorted up his face and his eye looked set to explode from its sockets to lose that fight.
On the 22nd, we had an intense pre-fight drama followed by the classless, unsportsmanly but skilled Adrien Broner outpointing Malignaggi to seize his WBA 147lbs title and former girlfriend Jessica to become a multi-division champion and certified girl snatcher.
On that undercard Jonathon Banks was more than less than impressive to say they very least in his tepid 12 round decision loss to the very shaky Seth Mitchell in their rematch in such a fashion that the boxing community believes the fight was fixed. But prior to that bore fest, three time title challenger Sakio Bika rained on and received a fearsome fusillade of punches to defeat Mexican’s Marco Antonio Periban in a slugfest of monumental proportions that had me wincing in my chair in horror and the crowd standing to its feet throughout the 12th to win the WBC 168lbs title after previous defeats to Ward, Calzaghe and Beyer for the title at long last.
During all these fisticuffs, Mayweather and Alvarez began kriss-krossing the country to promote their Sept 14th fight mega fight. Altogether, June plans to finish off with a bang as we have the heavy-handed unified champion Golovkin defend vs. Macklin on the 29th and the tenacious Joan Guzman, Gavin Rees, Lee Selby, and James Toney all headlining loaded fight cards. You can bet that knockouts will follow to ensure we finish the month of June out with a bang. Tyson turned 47 on June 30th too. See you in July
As in September, I once again ran out of gas in the 10th & 11th championship rounds of October & November with this column, but I recovered to complete them and will unleash a few more flurries to close out the 12th and final round.
In the first week of October, Hassan N’Dam won a UD over Curtis Stevens in an eliminator for the right to challenge Jermaine Taylor who defeated aging Sam Soliman to regain the IBF Middleweight title. How Taylor even earned this title shot is another story altogether, but it is all irrelevant as he is now the champion. However he will not have too much time to savor his victory as he has assault and battery charges pending against him and an upcoming court fight that may turn out to be the toughest fight of his life, just when things started to look up for him in boxing, we wish him luck.
