Now that O\u2019Shaquie Foster has thoroughly dispatched of Navarette, what is his most likely scenario moving forward? With Charly Suarez, Anthony Cacace, and now Loma at 130, but also Foster\u2019s stated desire to go after bigger fish like Stevenson and Haney, what do think his most likely path will be?<\/p>\n
Until proven otherwise, I\u2019d still expect him to take the mandated fight with Charly Suarez. It\u2019s a good fight and even with that terrific win over Navarrete, it may be hard for Foster to find any bigger a fight quickly enough, unless Lomachenko is ready to dive right back into the deep end next spring. Foster dropping a belt to take that one would not be a surprise.<\/p>\n
Where do you rank Canelo amongst greatest Mexican fighters of all time?<\/p>\n
I mean, he\u2019s up there. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s passed Julio Cesar Chavez, nor will he, because to me, greatest is about a lot more than belt collecting and listing achievements, which always comes with potential asterisks based on who you really beat and all that, anyway. There are a lot of fighters who never won a world title that I\u2019d rank over Adrien Broner all time; like, a lot.<\/p>\n
I say this as an outsider, obviously, but I think Chavez\u2019s cultural impact, both in the sport and in Mexico, soars him past Canelo and it\u2019s still not all that close and probably isn\u2019t going to be. But that\u2019s how I see it; if you are just jotting down achievements and that\u2019s how you rank it, yeah, Canelo has an argument as Mexico\u2019s GOAT. I wouldn\u2019t have him there, but I\u2019m also not Mexican. Someone who is is absolutely better qualified to answer this, and I can really only talk about the modern era (when I say modern I\u2019m still going back to the 70s\/80s so \u2026 it\u2019s not really modern, a lot of it), but I was asked, that\u2019s my view of it.<\/p>\n
Lomachenko is coming back and wants to be undisputed again at 130. What odds do you give him to accomplish this? Seems like a tall order for his age coming back after a long layoff, but he is Lomachenko.<\/p>\n
I think the odds are low, but then the odds of anyone going undisputed are low. I love Lomachenko, think he\u2019s a great technician, a wonderful boxer, but he has never been unbeatable or anything. I do think the best shot he has at that sort of achievement now is at 130, certainly not 135. He was never a true lightweight, though he did very well at the weight anyway, obviously.<\/p>\n
I really don\u2019t know what sort of form Vasiliy is going to be in on return, but O\u2019Shaquie Foster is no paper champ or pushover, and I think today\u2019s version of Foster would have always given Loma some problems at 130, let alone an older Lomachenko who hasn\u2019t fought in roughly three years by the time we see him again. But if he\u2019s in shape and all that, I\u2019m glad to see him giving it another go. Boxing careers are very short, even the guys who stick around \u201clonger\u201d than they \u201cshould.\u201d And he\u2019ll be 39 in February, not 50 or anything. If there\u2019s anything left and the desire is still there, good to give it the go and have no feeling you left something on the table.<\/p>\n
If you could invest in either Leo Atang or Adam Olaniyan, who would you invest in?<\/p>\n
Olaniyan, just by a little bit. Not by a lot. Both good prospects. Both very young. VERY young. Way too early to really be sure of this, but if you want to know which gamble I\u2019d take, it\u2019s Olaniyan. And at this point, with both, it\u2019s all still a gamble what the long-term is going to look like. You know when you know, and not a moment before.<\/p>\n
If you could shrink any big man to fight any little man what would you do? I\u2019m doing all Ukrainian, Loma vs Usyk.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a good one, and might be my pick. But since you picked that already, let me go with Tyson Fury vs Bud Crawford. I know the latter is Officially Retired and Fury will probably be Officially Retired again in about two months, but I always wish there were more fighters like Fury in lower classes. Fury is odd in his style and approach. He\u2019d still be abnormally tall for any shrinking, mind you, or else you lose that, but all divisions have abnormally tall guys. So if he\u2019s down at 147\/154 to fight Bud, Tyson needs to be about 6\u20193\u201d or so. I mean this is all make believe, I can make any rules I want.<\/p>\n
The sanctioning bodies have shown no real interest in organizing North America with regular regional title fights and rankings – NABA, NABF, NABO and USBA. We still get fights for those belts but they never seem to lead anywhere and there isn\u2019t a clear path to getting those title shots.<\/p>\n
Would it matter if one of them took it seriously? Could it become something that American fighters cared about on the way up? Or does it really just not matter, and that\u2019s why the sanctioning bodies don\u2019t spend any time on it.<\/p>\n
I just think it\u2019s too late to get American fighters and promoters to buy into that sort of functional, useful, regional system like we see in the UK and Japan, in particular. But yes, in theory, I think it would be good, because I\u2019ve seen evidence of how it works. Not only do you give top prospects clear paths, but you create a level at which fighters who are going to top out there can have good, memorable careers and be matched appropriately, which produces good fights. American fans would need re-training, too, but the audience has shrunk so much that I think you could probably pull it off. Those left are the diehards, they don\u2019t leave, and those coming in new would come in knowing that system and appreciating it.<\/p>\n
How did Terence Crawford go under the radar as a prospect for so long? He was arguably the most talented fighter of his generation, in the biggest hotbed of boxing talent, promotion and scouting in the world, and he wasn\u2019t signed by a major promotion until Top Rank signed him after Bradley\u2019s recommendation? Also how is such an untested fighter as a young Crawford able to just walk into the gym against a bigger future hall of famer and just whoop him as Desert Storm admits?<\/p>\n
On the latter, it\u2019s just talent. Maybe to some degree Bradley was so surprised by his quality that that played a part, too, but Tim Bradley could have known and he wasn\u2019t going to be better than Bud. And Bradley could fight, he was not actually \u201cass.\u201d<\/p>\n
That happens, though, and it\u2019s always a mystery in hindsight. How has Sampson Lewkowicz managed to find so many diamond in the rough types over the years? Because others weren\u2019t looking where he looked. But Crawford didn\u2019t have any big amateur career and he was from Nebraska. It happened before him, it happened with him, it will happen many more times. There\u2019s some 15 year old right now in a gym somewhere, and no one\u2019s looking, but he\u2019s got it. We\u2019ll know his name eventually.<\/p>\n
We still have a couple months left but who are your leading contenders for FoY? O\u2019Shaquie? Dubois? Someone else?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s O\u2019Shaquie for me. Dubois is a contender, but O\u2019Shaquie\u2019s outstanding performance against Navarrete sealed it. What a story. What a career turnaround. And what a fighter he\u2019s become.<\/p>\n
Canelo is near the end of his career, when it\u2019s all said and done, is he a true Hall of Famer and all time great or is he just overrated?<\/p>\n
If Canelo gets knocked out in a round by Mbilli, he is a first ballot, no doubt Hall of Famer.<\/p>\n
The biggest real, actual question is about the doping scandal. That\u2019ll be for fans to debate, because nobody in boxing actually cares. They\u2019ve shown us that many, many times over many, many years. They say they do, but they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Shaquie Foster in or near your top 10 P4P after last weekend\u2019s performance?<\/p>\n
He\u2019s in, yeah. Honestly, it could be short-lived. That might have been the climax of his journey. But again: He is one of the best stories in boxing over the last decade. It wasn\u2019t some big, over-hyped, headline news story, it was a real story of a guy refusing to pack it in, making changes, and becoming the best version of himself he could be in a boxing ring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now that O\u2019Shaquie Foster has thoroughly dispatched of Navarette, what is his most likely scenario moving forward? With…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":953015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,711,16145,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-953014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-boxing-commentary-opinion","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=953014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/953015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=953014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=953014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=953014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}