Some Thoughts on the Recent August 3 (Hunter vs Wilson) Card at Madison Square Garden

[Alguiffer]

Called my boxing buddy of 50 years Frankie La La late Monday night waking him up. He immediately asked, “Who died now?”. I said nobody, do you remember the Felt Forum drill – to which he immediately gave me the Clusiot reply “When do we run Pappy?” so I knew he was feeling well enough to travel to boxing again. I had just recently taken him to Vegas for the Loma fight and he handled getting around Vegas pretty good. La La had a rough time with covid and it permanently damaged his heart.
Day of the fight we took the train like we used to always do for the Felt Forum shows and got into the City. Didn’t have enough time to hit Jimmy’s Corner so we checked out a sports bar right near the Garden called Mustang Harry’s – great joint, highly recommend. Food & service top notch. La La had his signature Manhattan made w/Markers Mark, I had a Gin and Tonic made with “Gunpowder” brand gin – both drinks solid as they come.
The Hulu Theater is great for boxing – small in size, great sight lines from any seat. Bought the cheap seats in the top level of the theater but the view was perfect. Card was put on by an outfit I had never heard of – TrillerVerz.
Kinda knew the Hunter-Wilson bout was going to be pretty predicable. The two fights that interested me the most were Ivan Golub vs Eric Walker and Chris Algieri vs Mikkel LesPierre. Have followed Golub closely via the cards on MSG network and it was interesting watching him develop. In the Chris Algieri vs Mikel LesPierre (another MSG network regular) there was some really nice work going on in this bout by both Algieri and LesPierre. Algieri clearly won but I thought the rounds sung a little too wide for Algieri especially the 100-90 (x2). New prospect out of Florida is Aaron Aponte who won by KO – in my humble opinion he gives off a bit of a Rolly Romero vibe (I added him to my watch list). Rest of the undercard was interesting also.
The event was a sellout but right up until the two co-main events there were plenty of empty seats. La La and I improved our lie and moved down to about the 15th row from ringside and watched Algieri-LesPierre and Hunter-Wilson from there. As the last round of the main event closed off the theater began to really fill up as after the boxing card there was a rap band contest and I think that was the generator of the sellout. One thing I noticed was the vast number of younger people at the event - perhaps the combination of boxing and the music is the way to kindle more excitement about boxing among the youngsters.
Final thoughts. If these monthly cards are going to be held at the Hulu Theater I would definitely go back again. It has been a while since going to the Garden and the streets looked pretty clean and we felt safe walking around. It will be interesting to see what the next steps for Algieri and for Hunter are. Kudos to this ThrillerVerz outfit for an entertaining card and hope they remain successful.

[ironbeard]

Thanks for the rundown, Alguiffer! I would like to see Algieri on the undercard of a big fight again. Hunter should step it up to a Ruiz or any top 15-20 HW level.

[margaret thatcher]