Nice one ITV, 2 hours of live boxing this Saturday night !

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JimJim
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Nice one ITV, 2 hours of live boxing this Saturday night !

Post by JimJim »

From 9.35pm until 11.35pm on Saturday, ITV are giving us live coverage of the Bolton show with Woods-Johnson, M'Baye-Balbi and Khan-Barrett listed as the featured bouts.

Two hours on primetime TV is good stuff for boxing fans, it seems that ITV are giving us their coverage in one 120 minute live portion, rather than splitting the show into two halves and showing us the rest on ITV4 a few days later, like they did with the July Cardiff show.

It will be even better if ITV pull their fingers out and manage to get the first contest underway well before ten o'clock, there is no point allocating two hours to the entire show if they're going to pad it out with endless "punditry".
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Post by josh fg »

Should be good for boxing because both fights will be reasonable, the Kahn opponet looks like he will be a bit of a contest and facing something new and the Woods fight should be a belter, its no good having 2 houres if you end up with Williams Harrison hard fights are good for the sport.

I think Woods will KO Johnson but may be the only one.
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Post by Autobarn »

josh fg wrote:Should be good for boxing because both fights will be reasonable, the Kahn opponet looks like he will be a bit of a contest and facing something new and the Woods fight should be a belter, its no good having 2 houres if you end up with Williams Harrison hard fights are good for the sport.

I think Woods will KO Johnson but may be the only one.
I see Woods doing a number on him. Cos he's smaller, Johnson has to work hard to pressure Woods. It also makes him very tired. I know Woods couldn't cope with the pressue last two times. But I think he's developed the inside strength to hang with Johnson, the defense to neuralise him and the repertoire of shots to get his respect, maybe even put some hurt on him.

Johnson's a magnificent veteran, but he's going down.
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Post by jamesmcdonnell »

Hmm, I think that Johnson's high pressure style is going to give Clinton problems again personally. We shall see whether his supposed strength and fitness improvements are for real or not, that's for sure.
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Post by nickd »

More fight action and less bullshit is definitely the way forward. Too much of the ITV shows is filled with prefight talk then the analysis at the end. Keep that stuff short and sweet especially when you consider the quality of their punditry.
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Post by josh fg »

jamesmcdonnell wrote:Hmm, I think that Johnson's high pressure style is going to give Clinton problems again personally. We shall see whether his supposed strength and fitness improvements are for real or not, that's for sure.
Hoye seemed to be a high pressure type although no where near as good as johnson, I have a feeling that woods's power and Johnson's aging will tell in the later hours
nickd wrote:More fight action and less bullshit is definitely the way forward. Too much of the ITV shows is filled with prefight talk then the analysis at the end. Keep that stuff short and sweet especially when you consider the quality of their punditry.
In fairness I think a lot of it is because they deal with a audience who largely don't really understand boxing and are trying to give them a clue what the fights mean. I think the BBC did a better job than them, but only because I think Rawling Woodhall and Bunce when on together both explained and also analised well together.
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Post by stujones »

Unfortunately the Sky guide doesn't often tell the full story. I was looking forward (though in hindsight it was probably a good thing) to see Tak vs Magee in full as it certainly implied it would be on the Sky guide, it never was shown.

With Johnson vs Woods and Mbaye vs Balbi expected to be distance fights I highly doubt the latter will be shown in full.

Dissapointed ITV4 isn't being used.
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Post by jamesmcdonnell »

josh fg wrote:
jamesmcdonnell wrote:Hmm, I think that Johnson's high pressure style is going to give Clinton problems again personally. We shall see whether his supposed strength and fitness improvements are for real or not, that's for sure.
Hoye seemed to be a high pressure type although no where near as good as johnson, I have a feeling that woods's power and Johnson's aging will tell in the later hours
nickd wrote:More fight action and less bullshit is definitely the way forward. Too much of the ITV shows is filled with prefight talk then the analysis at the end. Keep that stuff short and sweet especially when you consider the quality of their punditry.
In fairness I think a lot of it is because they deal with a audience who largely don't really understand boxing and are trying to give them a clue what the fights mean. I think the BBC did a better job than them, but only because I think Rawling Woodhall and Bunce when on together both explained and also analised well together.
Hoye isn't really a pressure fighter, he's an aggressive puncher. Johnson fights right in his opponent's chest using shoulder rolls and a good defence to get inside and work his opponent over. Hoye tried to bang Clinton around from range, and had no clue what to do when he was being outworked and outmanouvered.
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Post by JimJim »

The last time, when they used ITV4 as "back-up", the person in charge should have been sacked for stupidity. On the live broadcast, they showed recorded footage of Enzo knocking out Dominguez. Then, two days later, they showed the entire fight, from round one onwards.

You'd think that somebody would have had the fooking gumption to tell their live viewers to "look away now" or something, like TV frequently does for football results.

As ITV will undoubtably show Amir's fight live, including build up and post fight interviews, I am just keeping my fingers crossed that they get the first fight underway very quickly into the show, otherwise the two hours duration will be mainly eaten up by Woods/Johnson and Amir's bout, with brief highlights of M'Baye vs Balbi.
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Post by emma »

JimJim wrote:The last time, when they used ITV4 as "back-up", the person in charge should have been sacked for stupidity. On the live broadcast, they showed recorded footage of Enzo knocking out Dominguez. Then, two days later, they showed the entire fight, from round one onwards.

You'd think that somebody would have had the fooking gumption to tell their live viewers to "look away now" or something, like TV frequently does for football results.

As ITV will undoubtably show Amir's fight live, including build up and post fight interviews, I am just keeping my fingers crossed that they get the first fight underway very quickly into the show, otherwise the two hours duration will be mainly eaten up by Woods/Johnson and Amir's bout, with brief highlights of M'Baye vs Balbi.
:lol:
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Post by Freiheit »

A scandinavian TV network have the rights to show this card, but they wont. And what will they show instead. (They usually show it live on a "gold package channel" and then delayed by a couple of hours on a more common channel). They will show a rerun of a U/21 football match between Macedonia and Denmark on on channel and a rerun of a match from the Basketball world championships on the other one... :evil:
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Post by JimJim »

If the promoter of Saturdays' show & the WBU had any say in it, that Macedonia vs Denmark football match would be billed as the world cup final :TU:

Apologies for veering off topic here but I hate "pretend" world titles.
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Post by Taki... »

JimJim wrote:If the promoter of Saturdays' show & the WBU had any say in it, that Macedonia vs Denmark football match would be billed as the world cup final :TU:

Apologies for veering off topic here but I hate "pretend" world titles.
I hate to piss on your chips, but they're all pretty much 'pretend' world titles.
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Post by steve689 »

Ha Ha that's true enough! For the record i think Woods will dominate Johnson and stop him late, Johnson is no superman and Woods is improved of late...expecting a good one :TU:
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Post by glahn »

I'm expecting a very exciting and gruelling fight, with both barely able to stand at the end. Should be good.
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Post by Max Molyneux »

I want to shout Clinton like the Sheffield crowd. :TU:
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Post by JimJim »

"I hate to piss on your chips, but they're all pretty much 'pretend' world titles"

True, but Magee vs Takaloo (for example) was billed as being for the welterweight championship of the world according to the WBU, while there's a couple of guys called Mayweather and Margarito who's names never got a mention on the promotional posters, so casual members of the public may well have thought that Magee and Takaloo were the best two 147 pounders on the planet, and not two washed up fighters from the same promotional stable.

Obviously boxing fans know the difference but thats not the point. A few weeks prior to Magee vs Takaloo, Floyd Mayweather beat Zab Judah in a much more significant fight.

My beef is that these titles are a con trick. We only have (annually) one FA Cup, one Premiership title, and so on. You cannot buy a clapped out old banger from the scrapyard, give it a new coat of paint, and slap a Mercedes badge on the front and back and sell it as a Merc. If you did, do you think Warren would drive one ? Not on your life.

He has made money off promoting bogus world championship matches. When Holyfield and Lewis held the major titles, this guy promoted Herbie Hide vs Damon Reed as being for the heavyweight championship of the world, according to the WBO.

I'm not just sticking the boot in on Warren, he's also promoted some fantastic bouts too, and he's not the only promoter to put on bogus title matches and I hate them all.

Remember when this country had all those top 154pounders, who in the end never fought each other (apart from when Alexander beat Takaloo) ? They should all be ashamed of themselves, and if I remember correctly two of them even held minor world titles. What a joke, when you don't even fight your own domestic opposition.

Sorry for the rant lads but I just fxxking hate these titles :oops:
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Post by Max Molyneux »

Who were these top Light Middles I hear so much about?
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Post by Razor »

Nice saturday in, watching the boxing with my hangover, great stuff :TU:
JimJim
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Post by JimJim »

"Who were these top Light Middles I hear so much about?"

If the question isn't rhetorical, they were Steve Roberts, Wayne Alexander, Richard Williams and Takaloo. Roberts had a lengthy run with the WBF belt, which he defended against imports, Williams won the Commonwealth & IBO belts, Alexander was the British champion and Takaloo held IBF intercontinental and WBU titles.

On paper, it was possibly the hottest division in British boxing but none of them ever fought each other, except for when Alexander and Takaloo met two or three years down the line, with both coming off losses.

I just remember this period as being a crying shame for British boxing fans, as we had four talented fighters, each with their own title, and yet they somehow managed to avoid each other during the period when the domestic 154lb division was really hot; Steve Roberts had 11 WBF title fights during this time, with promoter Barry Hearn talking up a match against Oscar De La Hoya and I can still remember his words; he was assessing the world light-middleweight title picture and commented that, after DLH and Roberts, who else was there around ?!

I doubt that Oscar had ever heard of Roberts or the WBF.

Roberts, Takaloo, Alexander and Williams all went on to lose and the whole thing just died a death, so to speak.

Boxing fans often hark back to the heavyweight divisions' 1970's glory days when all the top names fought each other. At a much lower level, the polar opposite of this has to be the British 154lb division, as described above.

They all had their own titles, three of which were of the "bogus" variety (IBO, WBF, WBU) and this allowed them to do their own thing without having to risk facing each other. In the end, it was a bit of a waste of time really, as none ended up winning respectable versions of the world championship, and none of them remained unbeaten, either. They all lost fights, and it remains a shame for British fans that they never faced each other at a time when the division was really hot.
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