Boxing

By Steve Kim: The first time Johnathon Banks faced Seth Mitchell back in November, there was quite a bit going on in his life. With the sudden passing of legendary trainer Emanuel Steward in October, he was thrust into the position of taking the reins as lead trainer for Wladimir Klitschko, who just happened to face Mariusz Wach in Germany. This just one week before his own bout with Mitchell in Atlantic City. And in the midst of all this, Banks attended Steward’s funeral in Detroit on the way

(Mikey Garcia, left, lays waste to JuanMa Lopez; Photo credit: Getty Images) Boxing fans are back into the swing of being hit with big fights left and right. True, boxing has no "season," per se, but recent years have seen summer and autumn pump out some of the biggest events. Many of us had hoped the Mikey Garcia vs. Juan Manuel Lopez meeting would produce more two-way fireworks than it did, but we're getting no breather, no chance for tears to well up, because Paulie Malignaggi and Adrien Broner hook up this coming weekend. And this week on TQBR Radio, Bad Left Hook's James Foley and TQBR's own Patrick Connor are covering it all, joined by Eric Raskin of Grantland, ESPN and the Ring Theory podcast. Click this link to tune in live at a special time of 5 p.m.Pacific/8 p.m. Eastern, or download the episode later via iTunes, or Stitcher Radio.

A world title doubleheader headlined by featherweight titlist Abner Mares defending against former titleholder Jhonny Gonzalez is close to being finalized for Aug. 24, Golden Boy Promotions chief executive Richard Schaefer told ESPN.com on Tuesday night.

In case you still can't believe it's actually going to happen, here's the first official face-to-face meeting between Floyd Mayweather and Canelo Alvarez ahead of their September 14 mega-fight on Showtime pay-per-view (photo via Golden Boy on Facebook): Mayweather (44-0) and Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO) will be meeting in what will undoubtedly be the biggest fight of 2013, and one of the biggest sporting events, period. The fight, titled "The One," is expected to do monster numbers, possibly the biggest since Mayweather's record-setting win over Oscar De La Hoya in 2007. And as far as the gate in Vegas goes, they may even be able to top the gross total brought in from ticket sales, which would set a new all-time record. We've got just about three months of what is going to be a major promotional blitz left to go, including an 11-city media tour. Here are the details on that: Monday, June 24New York, NYLocation: Times SquarePedestrian Walk on Broadway Between 46th & 47th StreetsNew York, NY 10036Fan Arrival Time: 2:00 p.m. ETPress Conference Begins: 3:00 p.m. ETTuesday, June 25Washington, DCLocation: The Howard Theatre620 T Street NWWashington, DC 20001Fan Arrival Time: 12:00 p.m. ETPress Conference Begins: 1:00 p.m. ETWednesday, June 26Grand Rapids, MILocation: Houseman Field2055 Rosewood Avenue SWGrand Rapids, MI 49503Fan Arrival Time: 11:00 a.m. ETPress Conference Begins: 12:00 p.m. ETChicago, ILLocation: Chicago Theatre175 North State StreetChicago, IL 60601Fan Arrival Time: 5:00 p.m. CTPress Conference Begins: 6:00 p.m. CTThursday, June 27Atlanta, GALocation: Atlantic Station1380 Atlantic Drive (Central Park between Rosa Mexicano and Strip)Atlanta, GA 30363 Fan Arrival Time: 12:00 p.m. ETPress Conference Begins: 1:00 p.m. ETFriday, June 28Miami, FLLocation: Bayfront Park100 Chopin Plaza (In front of InterContinental Miami hotel)Miami, FL 33131Fan Arrival Time: 12:00 p.m. ETPress Conference Begins: 1:00 p.m. ETSunday, June 30Mexico City, MexicoLocation information to be announced separately.Monday, July 1Houston, TXLocation: Union Station at Minute Maid Stadium (Main entrance of stadium)501 Crawford StreetHouston, TX 77002Fan Arrival Time: 12:00 p.m. CTPress Conference Begins: 1:00 p.m. CTSan Antonio, TXLocation: The Alamo300 Alamo PlazaSan Antonio, TX 78205Fan Arrival Time: 5:00 p.m. CTPress Conference Begins: 6:00 p.m. CTTuesday, July 2Phoenix, AZLocation: Herberger Theater222 East Monroe StreetPhoenix, AZ 85004Fan Arrival Time: 11:00 a.m. MTPress Conference Begins: 12:00 a.m. MTLos AngelesLocation: Nokia Plaza L.A. LIVE777 Chick Hearn CourtLos Angeles, CA 90015Fan Arrival Time: 6:30 p.m. PTPress Conference Begins: 7:30 p.m. PT

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News spread like wildfire last week when details of the upcoming 11-city, two-country media tour to officially announce the September 14 mega-fight between Eight-Time, Five-Division World Champion Floyd "Money" Mayweather and Unified Super Welterweight World Champion Canelo Alvarez were made public

On Sunday night, AAA was set to host their first iPPV, TripleMania 21, following in the footsteps of New Japan. New Japan’s iPPV’s have been reasonably successful, giving US fans a chance to watch a product that isn’t on television in the states. Konnan and the MLW crew (Court Bauer and MSL) had been pushing the show, which went head to head with WWE’s offering of Payback. But on Sunday night, word was that the show wasn’t working at all. The Cubs Fan on his Lucha blog was on top of the situation. AAA put all of the blame on uStream. To make up for it, AAA has now put the entire show on YouTube in four parts. You can watch below. The post Video – TripleMania XXI: Full Show appeared first on Fight Game Blog.

Well, Mark Henry rules. Brock is back with CM Punk in his sights. After last night’s match with Chris Jericho, WWE put out a video with CM Punk telling Paul Heyman that he wants to go solo. He also mentioned that Brock and Curtis Axel needed him. There was a similar segment on Raw. Heyman was a little flustered but said that he understood and said they’ll always be friends and that he will always be the best in the world. Fast forward to Punk’s match with Alberto Del Rio in the main event slot, which Punk won by count out. In this case, the count out wasn’t a bad finish because it allowed Dolph Ziggler to attack Del Rio for what he did to Ziggler the night before. Then, Brock Lesnar’s music hit. He walked into the ring, picked up Punk, and gave him the F5. Now, what’s the story behind it? Is it because Punk didn’t feel the need to have Paul in his corner? Is Brock upset that Punk said Brock and Curtis Axel needed him. We’ll soon find out. Mark Henry retires. Or so we thought. Mark Henry swerved the wrestling world. He came out after John Cena did a promo about how he’s ready to handle anything, including The Money In The Bank winner. Mark Henry interrupted him to supposedly announce his retirement. He was superb. He talked about his kids, looked to be choked up for a bit, and even had some fun back and forth with the audience. And right when it ended, Cena came out to raise his hand before Mark Henry, in return, gave him the World’s Strongest Slam. Swerves are an interesting deal. When done properly, they can work tremendously. The problem is that I don’t think many people even knew Mark Henry was going to retire, outside of his Twitter followers. However, for five minutes, Henry did not only one of the best retirement speeches ever, but he worked most of that audience. There were a few interesting tells if you look back at it. Cena talking about Money In The Bank. Henry telling Cena to stick around. Why? Are they supposedly friends? All that being said, it worked like a charm and was one of the best segments of the year. Early on Monday, I listed all of the contenders, including Mark Henry. Let’s just hope they can work good enough matches. The McMahon family values If not for how well the show has been of late, these McMahon segments would be destroying Raw. Last week, it was all about how Triple H wanted to wrestle, but Vince didn’t want him to. Then, Vince wanted him to and now, Triple H doesn’t want to face Curtis Axel. On tonight’s show, for some reason, Triple H didn’t care about wrestling at all. Instead, he wanted Vickie to make life hell for the Shield. AJ Lee cut a promo about winning the Divas belt. Oddly, Stephanie came out and she was one of the ugliest and angriest people you’ve ever seen. She chastised AJ and then then Kaitlyn came out and because Kaitlyn came out, she also chastised Kaitlyn. She was a tremendous bully on the same show that Puff Daddy did a PSA about bullying. In the same segment, Kaitlyn’s nipple popped out. Via WWE’s Youtube channel After the Shield jumped Kane in the US title rematch, they mocked Vickie in the back who was quite a bit frustrated. Then Vince celebrated them. In another segment, Vince told Vickie she was doing a great job and to always listen to him. Then Triple H came in and said he told her to make the Shield suffer and to always listen to him. And when they both left, Stephanie said don’t listen to either and to listen to her. This is a sick, power hungry, ego-trippin’ family. And the rest… Christian returned! Finally! Damien Sandow and Cody Rhodes beat Sheamus on a roll-up. Yes! Finally! Randy Orton faced Daniel Bryan in a No DQ match (as voted on in the WWE App) and beat him when Bryan couldn’t continue. At one point, Bryan missed a tope and Orton busted him up with a kendo stick. Originally, the way he missed the tope, I though

WBA welterweight titleholder Paulie Malignaggi has given as good as he's got in the trash talk leading up to Saturday night's, but the Brooklyn native does feel that things have gone a little further than they should have, intruding on a personal life he wanted to leave out of his fight hype: "This is more than just the normal trash talk," Malignaggi said before a Tuesday afternoon workout at Gleason's Gym. "He went and dragged out some stuff that I thought I had buried four months ago. I don't mind trash talking about boxing, saying he's going to knock me out and stuff like that. But this is really stuff about my personal life that I wanted to keep personal." When Malignaggi (32-4, 7 KO) feels things have gotten out of line, that's saying something. And he's right. This all went far beyond the lines of good taste, and had nothing to do with boxing or their fight. And it's not even as if there was any real personal beef between the two -- it was just all attention-grabbing BS, and while Paulie fired back with the same level of nonsense, it sounds like he reacted with a hot head more than meant for it to go this way. Either way, you have to wonder if Broner might be in his head going into the Showtime main event. If Paulie is beaten mentally, he's going to have an extremely hard time with this fight.

A local pro card at La Villita in San Antonio, Texas, has been cancelled for Saturday and rescheduled July 13. The main event had featured Christina Ruiz vs. Mandy Fuentes. Nathan Cleverly is calling Carl Froch a joke for turning … Continue reading →