NO HOLDS BARRED

by Eddie Goldman

In the excruciatingly extended, contrived, and boring soap opera about the alleged negotiations to sign a fight to crown a new undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, what is largely being lost is just who the leading candidate is and how and why he got there.

The consensus top heavyweight is, of course, Anthony Joshua of the U.K., who turns 29 on October 15. With a stellar record of 22-0 and 21 KOs, he holds three of boxing's major sham sanctioning body heavyweight world titles. He also was a 2012 Olympic gold medalist boxing in the super heavyweight division.

Joshua first came to major international attention in 2011 at the 2011 AIBA World Boxing Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan, amateur boxing's highest level tournament, in which he entered as an unseeded fighter. He had only been boxing for a few years, which included some run-ins with the cops for criminal activity, and having to wear an electronic tag on his ankle in 2009. But success on the British and European amateur scene, plus not wanting to become yet another statistic, helped Joshua mature, clean up his act, and focus on his career as a boxer.

In the 2011 amateur worlds, Joshua surprised many by first making it to the quarterfinals where he faced 2004 Olympic bronze medalist and 2008 gold medalist and top seed Roberto Cammarelle of Italy. Joshua won by a score of 15-13, under AIBA's Bizarro points scoring system. After winning in the semis, the opponent in the finals for Joshua, just 22 years old, and just about three years into the sport, was 25-year-old Magomedrasul Majidov of the event's host country of Azerbaijan. Majidov, also making his amateur world debut, won a close contest by a score of 22-21. But unlike Joshua, Majidov has never turned pro, and as recently as 2017 won gold for the third time in the amateur worlds again.

In the 2012 London Olympics, Joshua again made it to the finals, and again faced the defending gold medalist Cammarelle, who was ten years older than Joshua at 32. After a sloppy first two rounds -- this still was amateur boxing, after all -- Joshua fell behind by a 13-10 score. But with a delirious partisan crowd cheering him on, Joshua came back in the third and final round, finding his range a little better and landing enough clean shots to even the score at 18-18. They then had to go to the count-back, meaning the total punches landed, which went to Joshua, 8-5. Anthony Joshua was the 2012 Olympic gold medalist boxer in the super heavyweight division.

The result of that final, however, drew some criticism, as many Olympic boxing matches do. On the U.S. telecast, boxer and broadcaster B.J. Flores previewed this fight by calling Joshua "a superstar in the making." But after the fight, he said Cammarelle deserved to win and "they gave it to the hometown guy again."

Nonetheless, it was Joshua who rose to international fame and soon announced that he would be turning pro. This was an incredible turnaround for Joshua, who as late as 2011 was busted for possession of herbal cannabis with intent to supply, was suspended from the British amateur team, and narrowly avoided jail time by accepting community service for a year. Roberto Cammarelle, by the way, stuck around the amateurs, where he took bronze in the 2013 amateur worlds, and has never boxed as a professional.

With all this adversity -- which is not that well-known among the non-British boxing world -- out of the way, Joshua joined up with Eddie Hearn's Matchroom Boxing in 2013. There a well-designed, deliberate, and step-by-step plan was carried out to develop Joshua into a professional world champion by about 2017 or so.

He started as a pro in 2013, fighting the usual suspects. By the end of 2014 Joshua was 10-0 with 10 KOs. In late 2014 and 2015 he took a step up and faced journeymen Matt Skelton, Konstantin Airich, Denis Bakhtov, Michael Sprott, Jason Gavern, Raphael Zumbano, and Kevin Johnson. He stopped them all. Then it was the unbeaten and popular Scottish local fighter Gary Cornish, a boxer not destined for greatness. He lasted just 1:37 of the first round. Joshua closed out 2015 with a seventh-round TKO over amateur rival and then-unbeaten pro Dillian Whyte, who had defeated Joshua back in 2009 in the amateurs. Whyte rocked Joshua in round two but did not score a knockdown. With another setback avoided, Joshua would thus capture the vacant British heavyweight title, and close out 2015 with a record of 15-0 and 15 KOs.

In early 2016, he became a beneficiary of a series of unlikely events which caused chaos in the heavyweight division. Tyson Fury's November 2015 points upset of then-unified heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, a dreadful fight to be sure, triggered a contractual clause for an immediate rematch. But the IBF, one of whose sham titles Fury had won, forbade this, and summarily stripped Fury of this belt.

A fight for the vacant IBF belt took place in January 2016 between two unbeaten fighters, Vyacheslav Glazkov and Charles Martin, neither of whom were considered to be in the top tier of the division. After two uneventful rounds, the fight was more or less even, but in the third, Glazkov's right knee went out and he could not continue. Martin, unceremoniously and by default, was the winner and new IBF heavyweight champion. Glazkov, bu the way, has not fought since.

What this turn of events meant for Anthony Joshua, already working his way up these rankings, was an unexpectedly early graduation from the ranks of the good prospects to becoming a title challenger. A major belt was there to be had, and his management team cleverly got Joshua the fight. Martin never had a chance, lasting just two rounds, and in his 16th pro fight, Anthony Joshua was close to the top of the heavyweight division.

Next came Dominic Breazeale, who went down in seven, and Eric Molina, who only lasted three rounds, and at the close of 2016 Joshua was 18-0 with 18 KOs, with a strap around his waist way ahead of schedule.

Joshua's 19th fight has already gone down in boxing history as a heavyweight classic, and another turning point in his accelerating rise to top of the weight class. That was his April 2017 fight with Wladimir Klitschko, his first since losing to Fury, for the IBF and one of the WBA belts. Klitschko had been waiting around for the Fury rematch, which was put off twice, until Fury tested positive for PEDs, admitted using cocaine and binging on alcohol, ate himself up to about 400 pounds, and eventually relinquished the two major belts he had. Fury was suspended and lost his boxing license, so now that he was out of the picture for a while, the match that made the most sporting and business sense was Klitschko against Joshua.

As the world knows, Joshua knocked down Klitschko in round five, was himself knocked down and almost out in round six, but eventually recovered and came back to drop Klitschko twice in round 11 and then have the ref stop the beating, for a TKO win at 2:25 of that round. It is a fight that can be rewatched and rewatched, even when you know what ensued. It deservedly was widely recognized at the 2017 fight of the year. And in it, Joshua had once more demonstrated that even when down and almost out, he could get off the deck, overcome the adversity, and in the end triumph.

Now as unified champion and atop the heavyweight rankings, it almost seemed as if he had to slow down to catch his breath, if not physically then mentally. A tenth-round stoppage of late replacement and IBF mandatory Carlos Takam had him looking less than stellar, even disappointing. A March 2018 unification fight with unbeaten WBO champ Joseph Parker went the distance, the first time in Joshua's pro career. Joshua won and now had three major belts, but the fight had few fireworks and Joshua's knockout streak had ended, with his new record 21-0 with 20 KOs.

With all these belts came all their mandatories, deserved or not, at least until he or someone becomes accepted as undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and would not care if he were stripped for not facing them. So next up was one of those deserving mandatories, Russia's Alexander Povetkin, a 2004 Olympic gold medalist who entered his September 2018 bout with Joshua at 34-1 with 24 KOs. His only loss was a decision in 2013 to that same Wladimir Klitschko, meaning Povetkin had never been stopped.

When Joshua and Povetkin fought in London's rain-swept Wembley Stadium before some 80,000 or so fans, Joshua went in a huge favorite over the 39-year-old Povetkin. That, however, did not deter the veteran Povetkin.

Although Joshua had a substantial height and reach advantage over Povetkin, he opened the fight almost in a crouch, fighting small with his left hand low. Towards the end of a close first round, Povetkin scored what turned out to be his best shots of the fight, a left jab-right uppercut-left hook combination that wobbled Joshua and left his nose bleeding. From rounds two through five, Joshua had little effective offense against Povetkin and was fighting with his mouth open. The tide turned, however, in the sixth when, again facing adversity in the ring, Joshua started to let his hands go.

Scores of the fight through six rounds varied all over the place, with many impartial and seasoned observers having what was inarguably a close fight 58-56 for Povetkin or even at 57-57. The three official judges, though none of whom were from the U.K., laughably had it 59-55 and 58-56 twice, all for Joshua. But none of this ended up as anything other than footnotes in the seventh round.

Joshua finally landed one of his powerful right hands on Povetkin, who was visibly hurt. Next came the combinations punctuated by another right, which dropped Povetkin, who almost fell clean out of the ring. He somehow beat the count and arose, although looking as if he could be knocked back down by almost anyone or anything. He took a few more punches before being decked again, just as referee Steve Gray stopped the fight, with Povetkin's trainer frantically gesturing on the ring apron.

The official time of the stoppage was 1:59 of round seven, with another TKO victory upping Joshua's record to 22-0 with 21 KOs. The knockout streak had resumed, he had stopped an opponent who had never before been stopped in his previous 35 fights, and his belts had been retained, but Anthony Joshua had to dig deep once more and overcome what should have been a deficit on the scorecards in order to prevail.

In the postfight press conference, a calm Joshua matter-of factly-explained his view of what had happened.

"Just got to take your time," he said. "It's all about instinct what life is. We tend to lose it as you get older because we listen to the crowd, we listen to opinions, 'You're not quick enough, you're not this, you're not that.' But I believed in myself. I knew when the time was right. You could see the chink in their armor fading. I know he's strong to the head but weaker to the body. So I worked to the top, worked to the bottom, break him down, both ends. And then when the opportunity came, I saw and I just took it, really."

There are those who think that Anthony Joshua will always make good on his belief in himself, and those who insist he is still overrated, untested, and unworthy. But his last nine opponents had a combined record of 259-7-1 before he faced them, held numerous belts, and included two Olympic gold medalists and five who were unbeaten as pros. Of The Ring's latest heavyweight rankings, Joshua is number one and has already defeated four of the other nine. Along with the victory over Klitschko, which led to his retirement as a fighter, there is no other heavyweight active today whose resume even comes close to Joshua's.

But the time-tested and detestable tribalism and nationalism that have long been incorporated into boxing's modus operandi makes its adherents always dissatisfied when one not from their camp is atop the weight class. They tell us that Joshua hasn't yet fought in America, he can't take a punch, and, most dogmatically, he is afraid of Deontay Wilder, the WBC champ who holds the last piece of this undisputed heavyweight champion puzzle.

Yes, Joshua shows vulnerabilities, he can be hit, and even he admits that he is still learning on the job. But he and his management team say, convincingly, that he will eventually fight the winner of the Deontay Wilder-Tyson Fury bout, said to be scheduled for December 1, and maybe one day in the future the loser as well. He is close to cleaning out what is still not a particularly deep division, and he may accomplish this before his 30th birthday.

Before his fight with Wladimir Klitschko, and to the astonishment of some including even some British boxing writers, I said that Anthony Joshua had the potential to become as popular as Muhammad Ali. Now Joshua was named the most marketable athlete in the world in any sport by SportsPro Media in 2017, and number two in this category in 2018. He has drawn hundreds of thousands of fans in his last four fights, two in Wembley Stadium and two in Cardiff's Principality Stadium. He is the top draw on the U.K.'s pay-per-views on Sky Sports Box Office, and the DAZN streaming service timed its American kickoff to feature his fight with Povetkin. And his future plans include not only fights in America, but in Africa, especially because of his Nigerian heritage, and Asia and continental Europe. He has called himself a citizen of the world, and a world tour might be on tap if or when he becomes undisputed champion.

I will add that Anthony Joshua is well on his way to being Sonny Liston without the mob, Muhammad Ali without the Nation of Islam, and Mike Tyson without Don King. Joshua may yet lose along the way, as they all did, but history shows that he will quite likely recover and be the one standing at the end.

(Photo of Anthony Joshua and Alexander Povetkin from Matchroom Boxing.)

Labels: Alexander Povetkin, Anthony Joshua, boxing, Eddie Goldman, No Holds Barred

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman presents a two-part, multimedia show and analysis.

The written part of the show has an analysis of the Canelo-Golovkin rematch, the emergence of DAZN in the U.S., the PBC deals with Showtime and Fox, the international stardom of Anthony Joshua, and more. It can be read on the No Holds Barred site here.

The audio of the comments by Anthony Joshua about his September 22 fight with Alexander Povetkin can be played or downloaded at here and here. If one link does not work, please try another.

No Holds Barred is available at Google Play Music.

Also, No Holds Barred is available through iTunes.

You can also listen to No Holds Barred via Stitcher through iOS or Android devices or on the web here.

The PodOmatic Podcast Player app is available for free, both for Android at Google Play, and for iOS on the App Store.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow.

No Holds Barred is sponsored by:

The Catch Wrestling Alliance, resurrecting and promoting the sport of authentic catch-as-catch-can wrestling. The Catch Wrestling Alliance provides tournaments, seminars, and training as well as education about catch wrestling. Join the movement and keep real wrestling alive. For more information, go to CatchWrestlingAlliance.com.

Skullz Double-End Bags, the perfect bag for your combat sports training. Skullz Double-End Bags provide a realistic striking target, and help improve timing, distance, and hand and eye coordination. Hang it and hit it right out of the box! No pump required. For more information, go to SkullzDeBags.com.

Labels: Alexander Povetkin, Anthony Joshua, boxing, DAZN, Eddie Goldman, No Holds Barred

by Eddie Goldman

One of the benefits of aging is that it encourages you not to waste time and to get right to the point. In about six months I will turn 70, unless someone destroys the world and/or me, and I'm not taking odds on any of that happening. But a lot has been happening in boxing recently, a lot has been said and written about what has been happening, and a lot of it isn't worth the bandwidth it uses up, so I'll dive right in here with some capsule analyses, which are, of course, No Holds Barred.

Canelo-Golovkin 2. This was a very close fight with a few indistinguishable rounds, and could have gone either way. I thus have no quarrel with the majority decision for Canelo using boxing's ten-point must system. Canelo did the most damage, but needed to work a bit more to convince those who thought Golovkin won. Golovkin was busy with the jab, but inexplicably did not, as many have pointed out, hardly go to the body. Canelo landed fewer but harder shots than Golovkin. So how do you balance all these factors? It would be interesting if there were a way in close fights to score the whole fight rather than just round by round. That creates its own set of problems, but in some fights where the fighters fight to a stalemate and it is inconclusive who had the advantage, the ten-point must system and round-by-round scoring are sort of like trying to appreciate a great work of art by chopping it up into small pieces and examining them separately. But I'm not offering scoring the whole fight as THE solution. In a close fight in a sport where scoring is by definition to a large degree subjective, there may be no solution, except rematches and perhaps allowing judges to score even rounds without the commissions disapproving -- and, of course, not having the promoters pay for or have any say in the selection of the judges.

This was a good fight but not a great fight. There just were not enough moments of high drama, and the fighters often nullified each other and prevented sustained offense.

Even if you thought Golovkin squeaked out a points victory, this was not a robbery as some have claimed, such as the ESPN clown duo of Smith and Atlas. True, Golovkin would have had to smash in Canelo's head to get a decision on a Golden Boy show in Las Vegas, and Canelo did get the benefit of the doubt on many close rounds. That we knew already. But fair-minded and unbiased people could make a strong case that Canelo deserved to win.

Now Canelo and Golovkin may or may not have a third fight next year, and who knows on what network, since their deals with HBO have reportedly expired. HBO was roundly criticized for their production and announcing of this show, with long downtimes and absurdly biased announcing. U.S. rivals Showtime, ESPN, and even Fox have all said they want to run pay-per-views, so if HBO cancels or more severely slashes their boxing program, there are more networks willing to try to grab your bottom dollar to watch major fights.

The only exception to this greedy lot among major players in the U.S. is the upstart streaming-only service DAZN, which just started with a small MMA show last week and has their first live boxing telecast this Saturday, September 22, with the Anthony Joshua-Alexander Povetkin heavyweight title fight from London.

While DAZN itself will not do evil by showing pay-per-views, and you can get all their shows in the U.S. for $9.99 a month, there is a catch to this. The main boxing telecasts on DAZN are from the U.K.-based Matchroom Boxing. Their major cards are on pay-per-view on Sky Sports Box Office, although they charge roughly half of what pay-per-views cost in the U.S. But that means that the primary revenue streams for these Matchroom Boxing cards are the pay-per-views and the live gate, which is also considerable since Joshua usually gets between 80- and 90,000 fans packed into football stadiums to see his fights. So they can afford not to run pay-per-views on the DAZN shows aimed at the U.S., and still get the benefits in their main market.

It's also been widely discussed that DAZN is just starting out in the U.S., is a work in progress, and has a long-term plan to grow and make lucrative bids to acquire the rights to many mainstream sports when they become available in a few years. While they are starting off with a good lineup of combat sports, including the Matchroom cards from both the U.K. and U.S., the highly acclaimed World Boxing Super Series, and what seems like a revitalized Bellator MMA, their key to stability in the U.S. will be breaking through with some combination of NFL football, NBA basketball, Major League Baseball, and/or NHL hockey. Note that DAZN does have many of these rights outside the U.S., so they already have a relationship with these leagues. Until then, they are creating a base of American fans with the combat sports.

With more and more people cutting the cord from the despicable cable companies and a growing number of younger people never bothering to deal with such outfits, and presumably technology continuing to march forward, streaming is certainly here to stay and the future of how sports and all video are and will be watched. But that transition will take many years, and there is no telling to what degree traditional TV will remain popular. A lot of us still listen to AM and FM radio, even on radios themselves, so there may be a not-so-peaceful coexistence of these old and new technologies for some time to come.

This is why the main winner in all this recent media reshuffling in boxing, for the present anyway, is PBC. They were counted out by the tools and fools in the so-called boxing media. They were the subject of spurious lawsuits by those trying to save a dying business model, the Top Rank and Golden Boy promoters. And even some in the MMA world who know less than nothing about boxing thought they wanted to be a monopoly like the odious so-called UFC tries to be.

In the end, or so far anyway, PBC's big gamble paid off. They raised tons of cash in order to buy time on most U.S. TV networks in the hopes of sooner rather than later getting one or more of these networks to cough up rights fees for their shows. Their shows started airing in 2015, but they actually were on too many networks at once for the average fan to keep up with them, and did not have the following of the NFL or MLB, which have big and established enough audiences to thrive on multiple networks. For the last year or so, when they obviously had burned through a lot of their original investments, it looked like they only were getting TV revenue from Showtime.

But then DAZN came along and upped the ante with their announced eight-year, billion dollar commitment. Plus, and more importantly, the media reshuffling was taking place across the entire U.S. sports scene. The Fox networks went through a major reorganization, selling off their TV studio and popular networks like FX to Disney. They did keep the main Fox broadcast network and FS1 and FS2, but needed reliable sources of programming now that they didn't have direct access to their studio. So the focus of Fox switched to live sports. They got Thursday Night NFL Football, always a ratings winner. In so-called sports entertainment, they got one of the WWE weekly shows. But they refused to meet the outrageous demands for the declining UFC brawls which they had been showing, and UFC jumped to Disney's ESPN and their streaming service, ESPN+. Now Fox had a hole in their programming lineup and more cash to spend, and in came PBC. Good timing plus opportunity equals success.

The Fox deal is for major PBC shows ten times a year on free broadcast TV, 12 more shows a year on FS1, Spanish telecasts on Fox Deportes, and they tell us "more than 175 hours of original PBC boxing content per year across its channels". With Fox's reach and the ability to have many millions of people watching live boxing, this is easily the biggest and most far-reaching TV deal for American boxing in years. Couple this with the recently announced PBC-Showtime deal for major monthly shows, this means that PBC will have about three or more shows a month on TV between Showtime, Fox, and FS1, perhaps for as many as 52 shows a year. This easily makes them the biggest boxing organization in America.

For hardcore boxing types in the U.S., with all this televised and streamed boxing, there will be almost no more free Saturday nights. That should be better anyway than going to some overpriced club filled with drunks, hustlers, thugs, freeloaders, and future indicted politicians.

Matchroom Boxing is bigger overall in the world than PBC, but it is premature and lazy thinking simply to speak of a "DAZN era" today, as some already have. Even though the reported yearly budgets for boxing shows on DAZN in the U.S. and for PBC on both Fox and Showtime appear to be in the same range, it will take time for DAZN to establish itself in America. That will likely eventually happen, but let's not run up the "W" flag just yet, so let's leave that to the Cubbies.

Of course, for the PBC deals to work, they will have to showcase and develop stars, and have better cards on Fox than they have had recently, where former champions on the downside of their careers have been in the main events. But PBC has an incredibly deep talent roster in many weight classes, including Errol Spence Jr, Keith Thurman, the Charlos, Deontay Wilder, Jarret Hurd, Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia, Mikey Garcia, Leo Santa Cruz, Gary Russell Jr., Abner Mares, Erislandy Lara, and many more.

The biggest loser in all of this is ESPN. Their main boxing writer continued to disgrace himself as a witless propagandist by calling the PBC-Fox deal "a modest victory". Although ESPN has many more subscribers than HBO and Showtime, and is obviously well-established as a sports network, the Top Rank on ESPN shows have recently drawn miserable ratings, in the 500- to 600,000 range, approaching the dismal numbers their old "Friday Night Fights" cards got a few years ago leading to that show's cancellation. They have had to overpay fighters like Terence Crawford who they hid on the ESPN+ app recently before an audience which had to be a small fraction of what they even get on TV on ESPN. Right now they keep the viewership numbers for ESPN+ secret, which would no doubt interest Disney's shareholders. The Top Rank on ESPN boxing shows often start late and run long, as they are put after live events from other major sports, which are what ESPN really cares about. Top Rank has a lot of great and up-and-coming fighters, so it's a shame these fighters are stuck with this bad deal. And the addition of the Frank Warren-promoted shows from the U.K. to ESPN+ in the U.S. will only give them a very modest boost.

HBO lost a long time ago, with collapsing budgets and an uncertain commitment to boxing from the new ownership of AT&T. Their boxing program is terminal, so it's just a matter of making funeral arrangements now.

While PBC is firmly in the lead in America, they, too are tied to aging technology. There are some statements about streaming buried in the announcements of their Fox and Showtime deals, like that is some afterthought and minor point. With the new super-fast 5G being tested and rolled out starting this year, streaming will become easier than ever. This situation reminds me of the early days of cable in the 1970s and 1980s, when mainstream TV types regarded it as a trashbin of reruns, soft-core porn, and amateur programming. Adapt or die, the maxim goes, and there will be a lot more bodies lying on the roadside before this latest technological upheaval is done, of course only to make way for the next one, and the next one, and the next one, if we don't destroy humanity and the planet first.

It is DAZN, though, which holds an ace that no one else can match. That is the 28-year-old, charismatic, undefeated heavyweight champion of the world, Anthony Joshua. Besides drawing live crowds the size of entire cities, Joshua holds the top two spots on pay-per-view in the U.K., getting over one and a half million buys for his 2017 triumph over Wladimir Klitschko, and slightly under than for his 2018 title unification fight with Joseph Parker. Unlike almost all other fighters and especially heavyweights, Joshua has widespread international appeal. Last year he was named the most marketable athlete in the world, in any sport, by SportPro Media. This year he slipped, but only to number two, behind Paul Pogba of Manchester United and the French national football team. No other boxer made the top 50 of this list. And if you dismiss this because SportsPro Media is based in the U.K. and not up on U.S. sports, the country with the largest number of athletes on this list was the U.S., with 22 out of the top 50.

Joshua's next assignment, as you no doubt already know, is this Saturday, September 22, against former WBA champ and fellow Olympic gold medalist Alexander Povetkin of Russia. Joshua is a huge favorite and rightly so, as the 39-year-old Povetkin possesses power and good boxing skills, but is not a match for Joshua in any department, save for professional experience.

To get some idea of what to expect, we spoke with Anthony Joshua on last week's media conference call. His answers to these questions were widely quoted by media around the world, but the questions and answers were not posted.

I mentioned that I had just rewatched Povetkin's 2013 fight with Wladimir Klitschko, and said, though he and Klitschko have different styles, he will have the same height and reach advantage over Povetkin. I then asked what we can expect from this fight given his height and reach advantage and given Povetkin's history of fights.

"I look at like different fights, like the Marco Huck fight, the David Price fight more recently, then the Christian Hammer -- I don't know. Povetkin fights differently in all of his fights. I think the thing with him and Klitschko," he said, "he really wanted to prove himself. Then you look at the fight with Christian Hammer where it was a 12 round breeze.

"But with that being said, how am I going to approach the fight? However I want to approach it. Maybe I might just box and keep it simple. Maybe I might keep a tight guard and go pound-for-pound with him, trade-for-trade. It just really depends how I feel, but the reason why I say that is because I'm versatile. I can keep it long or I can slug it out. It depends what I analyze from my opponent as soon as I get in there for a minute or two," he said.

"I never really go in there with exactly what I'm going to do from round one to whenever I'm going to get him out of there. I just analyze them punch by punch, and I'll switch up my styles as the rounds go along."

Asked to make a prediction for the fight with Povetkin, he replied, "12 rounds, probably. 11, 12 rounds. He's a tough cookie. He will stay around for a while. And I'll win. I'll win. Yes, we're at an elite level now. These guys, they don't just come with skill. They come with a lot of determination as well."

And he added, with a laugh, "Anything shorter than that is a blessing."

Soon we shall find out.

There are, as is typical in boxing, some wild cards in its immediate future. Promises continue of an imminent official announcement of the Deontay Wilder-Tyson Fury fight, which was announced last month but without a date or location. Chatter, rumors, and leaks pollute the Internet about a Mayweather-Pacquiao rematch, about which only those two seem enthused. Just don't expect too much from all the overseers, lords, and vassals in boxing, and then you won't be disappointed.

Labels: Alexander Povetkin, Anthony Joshua, boxing, DAZN, Eddie Goldman, No Holds Barred, PBC

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman spoke with Anthony Joshua, Alexander Povetkin, Katie Taylor, and our media colleague Kristal Hart of the "Kristal Hart Show" at last Tuesday's New York media event announcing the U.S. debut of the streaming service DAZN.

The 28-year-old unified heavyweight champion Joshua from the U.K., with a record of 21-0 with 20 KOs, fights Povetkin September 22 in London on a card shown in the U.K. on Sky Sports Box Office and in the U.S. as the headline fight for the first live show in the U.S. on DAZN. Povetkin, who turns 39 on September 2, and from Russia, is a former WBA champion and has a record of 34-1 with 24 KOs.

We got comments from Povetkin on what to expect in this fight, and some very brief comments from Joshua.

Unified women's lightweight champion Katie Taylor, with a record of 9-0 and 4 KOs, has a very busy schedule coming up. She fights July 28 in London on the Dillian Whyte-Joseph Parker card, and returns on October 6 in Chicago against Cindy Serrano, on a card which will be shown in the U.S. on DAZN and presumably also Sky Sports in the U.K. She discussed her career plans, the growth of women's boxing, and more.

Last but not least, we spoke with our colleague Kristal Hart summing up what we had just learned about DAZN and the combat sports.

You can play or download No Holds Barred here and here. If one link does not work, please try another.

No Holds Barred is available at Google Play Music.

Also, No Holds Barred is available through iTunes.

You can also listen to No Holds Barred via Stitcher through iOS or Android devices or on the web here.

The PodOmatic Podcast Player app is available for free, both for Android at Google Play, and for iOS on the App Store.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow.

No Holds Barred is sponsored by:

The Catch Wrestling Alliance, resurrecting and promoting the sport of authentic catch-as-catch-can wrestling. The Catch Wrestling Alliance provides tournaments, seminars, and training as well as education about catch wrestling. Join the movement and keep real wrestling alive. For more information, go to CatchWrestlingAlliance.com.

Skullz Double-End Bags, the perfect bag for your combat sports training. Skullz Double-End Bags provide a realistic striking target, and help improve timing, distance, and hand and eye coordination. Hang it and hit it right out of the box! No pump required. For more information, go to SkullzDeBags.com.

Labels: Alexander Povetkin, Anthony Joshua, boxing, DAZN, Eddie Goldman, Katie Taylor, Kristal Hart, No Holds Barred

By Eddie Goldman

This is shaping up to be one of the most important weeks for boxing this year, and surprisingly so during the hot and sweaty summer months we are enduring in the Northern Hemisphere of our struggling planet Earth.

This Saturday, July 21, at the Olimpiyskiy Stadium in Moscow, Russia, another potential fight of the year candidate will take place, the cruiserweight finals of the World Boxing Super Series. In it, the WBC and WBO champion, Oleksandr Usyk of Ukraine, with a record of 14-0 and 11 KOs, will face the WBA and IBF champion, Murat Gassiev of Russia, with a record of 26-0 and 19 KOs. Two undefeated champions, all four major belts on the line, and the winners earning their place in the finals by triumphing thus far in this eight-man tournament. Plus, each of their semifinal fights, where Usyk got a majority decision over previously unbeaten Mairis Briedis in January, and Gassiev stopped previously unbeaten Yunier Dorticos in the 12th round in February, with each victor having two of those major belts with their wins, were, in my opinion, leading candidates for fight of the year so far in 2018.

Since this was one of the rare times that boxing behaved like a real sport, it was no coincidence that the American TV networks passed on showing this tournament. Instead they fed us, and increasingly made us pay extra for, their steady diet of purposeful mismatches, showcase fights, and recycling of faded former belt holders. Even this cruiserweight final, which will be shown in numerous countries, has no U.S. TV outlet just a few days before the fight. It thus is likely that the World Boxing Super Series, as they have done in the past, will stream this fight in the U.S., hopefully for free.

For the upcoming season two of the WBSS, however, what was essentially an American boycott of the product will end. The new streaming service DAZN, which launches in the U.S. this fall, has picked up the rights in a reported three-year deal. Along with everything else DAZN will be showing, including 32 shows from Matchroom Boxing, equally based in the U.S. and U.K. or nearby, this could quickly make DAZN the number one video source for boxing in America.

This Tuesday in New York, there will be a media event where the details of DAZN’s U.S. launch will be announced, including when it starts and how much it will cost. It has already been confirmed with Matchroom Boxing that both Anthony Joshua and Alexander Povetkin will be in attendance at the media event, which is also supposed to be live streamed.

With the announcement Monday that Joshua and Povetkin will be facing each other Sept. 22 in London’s Wembley Stadium in front of an expected crowd of 90,000 or so, and shown in the U.K. on Sky Sports Box Office, it thus seems quite likely that Tuesday will be the official announcement that the Joshua-Povetkin fight will headline the DAZN U.S. debut show. The only surprise would be if that were not the case.

While some “Make American Boxing Great Again” types are whining that Joshua is not next facing WBC champ Deontay Wilder of the U.S., this fight with Povetkin is the right fight at the right time for Joshua, and actually in many ways more important that a unification fight with Wilder.

First off, Joshua, 28 years old and from the U.K., and with a record of 21-0 with 20 KOs, holds the WBA, WBO, and IBF belts. His goal, obviously, is to become undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, a distinction not achieved since Lennon Lewis did it a generation ago. Povetkin, who turns 39 on Sept. 2, and from Russia, has a record of 34-1 with 24 KOs. Both Joshua and Povetkin have been Olympic gold medalists. Povetkin is the WBA mandatory challenger for Joshua, and also the WBO number one contender, and thus maybe a mandatory there as well, although alphabet soup sanctioning bodies work in mysterious ways.

If Joshua wants to become undisputed heavyweight champion, he must juggle the requirements of these various outfits to retain all the belts. That means occasionally at least fighting one of their mandatories. If, as he is favored to do, Joshua defeats Povetkin, then he can face Wilder at a later date for all four major belts. And that fight then would be massive as well.

But there is more to this fight than simply satisfying the need to face some mandatory challenger deemed worthy by a sanctioning body. Povetkin, though aging, is a legitimate heavyweight contender, and a dangerous one at that. Among the fighters whom Povetkin has defeated are Chris Byrd, Eddie Chambers, Ruslan Chagaev for the WBA belt in 2011, Marco Huck, Manuel Charr, Carlos Takam, Mike Perez, Mariusz Wach, Johann Duhaupas, and Christian Hammer. In his most recent fight, on March 31 of this year, he knocked David Price out cold in the fifth round. Of course, Povetkin had himself been knocked down in the third round and Price has a history of being knocked out. While Povetkin has certainly slowed a bit with age, this was a scary knockout and still showed that he has power.

Povetkin’s only defeat was a lopsided decision loss in 2013 to a still-dangerous Wladimir Klitschko, in which Povetkin hit the canvas four times. But even then, five years ago, Klitschko, who was in those days winning most of his fights by knockout or TKO, could not stop Povetkin.

Now compare that with the list of opponents Wilder has defeated. His best win was also in March of this year, when he stopped Luis “King Kong” Ortiz. Before that, his opponents comprise a list of has-beens, never-wases, and never-will-bes, carefully handpicked by his advisor Al Haymon and the suits at his main TV network, Showtime. His only value is that he holds the one piece of the puzzle missing for Joshua to claim to be undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Yes, Wilder has a powerful right hand, but his boxing skills are so laughable that he has earned an unofficial nickname of “Windmill”.

Only some Americans have drunk the Wilder Kool-Aid and passionately want a Joshua-Wilder fight. That will likely come one day, as it is certain to be a big money fight, but it is also a fight that Joshua really doesn’t need except for winning that additional belt. Wilder is not a big draw either on TV or in arenas, be they in his home state of Alabama or in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where he has failed to sell the place out in his three appearances there.

Povetkin is more of an international star anyway. Many of his earlier fights have been in Germany, with his more recent ones being in Russia and his last one, with Price, as a co-main event on the Joshua-Joseph Parker card in Cardiff, Wales.

So Joshua fighting Povetkin next makes sense in more ways than one. Of course, Joshua is younger, stronger, more agile, and more powerful than Povetkin, and expected to win. But at this point, there is no one in the heavyweight division who could conquer the popular and charismatic Joshua.

If Joshua gets past Povetkin, there is also no urgency for him to take on Wilder next. Some in the dwindling American boxing media might howl, but most of them know as much about boxing as the author of “Howl”, the late Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. If you’re not familiar with that poem, you can look it up online if you really want to, as I won’t distract you with it.

Lurking somewhat out of the shadows nowadays is former heavyweight champ, and still undefeated, and still, surprisingly, listed as just 29 years old, Tyson Fury. His comeback fight, after a two and a half year layoff due to a drug suspension and major physical and mental problems, in June was a complete farce, where he faced cruiserweight Sefer Seferi. The most notable moments were both men dancing the Ali Shuffle, and Fury stopping to look at a real fight in the crowd during the second round. Seferi quit after four, and before even anything resembling a sparring session had commenced.

But a Joshua-Fury fight, with all the expected clowning and jabbering leading up to it, would likely break all U.K. records for a boxing event and would also be a humongous worldwide spectacle. If Fury could in his next fight, in August against the faded Francesco Pianeta, demonstrate that at least he can still fight on a more or less decent level, then a cashout fight with Joshua may not be far off. Joshua has to get Fury before Fury possibly self-destructs again, an unwelcome but far from remote occurrence.

Joshua has also made clear on many occasions that he wants to fight all over the world, including in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Already opponents are building, or perhaps padding, their records to be in place for those paydays. Where does that leave Wilder, and a fight for Joshua in the U.S.? Take a number, and be seated, please.

THe world of boxing in 2018 appears to be rapidly changing. Europe and mainly the U.K. are the main centers of world boxing and home to many of the most important and lucrative fights. DAZN in the U.S. could, if their streaming doesn’t suck, become more popular for boxing than Showtime, HBO, and ESPN. And New York, where the American headquarters of both DAZN and Matchroom Boxing USA are, could regain its status as the U.S. capital of boxing from Las Vegas, where the casinos seems to be otherwise focused.

It’s an exciting time for boxing, both in and out of the ring. Now, oh promoters, networks, managers, and fighters, don’t screw it up.

Labels: Alexander Povetkin, Anthony Joshua, DAZN, Eddie Goldman, No Holds Barred, World Boxing Super Series

by Eddie Goldman

Do not heed the stupefying and foolish tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts, and the scribbling on the bathroom walls. They mean, to quote the Fugs, nothing, nothing, less than nothing.

Boxing is a business first, second, and third. Yes, boxing is a sport, but in this business the sporting aspects are among the most neutered and trampled upon to serve the perceived interests and, of course, profits, of the promoters, including the TV networks, soon to be joined by more and more online and mobile services.

It's a business, and who fights whom next only has to do with what the fans want and plead for to the degree that they can be convinced and/or tricked into parting with their cash. Fights have to be "built up", we are told, by endless mismatches, showcase fights, obscure mandatory challenges, and plainly fixed encounters. That is why there is such organizational chaos and confusion in boxing, with a governance structure easier to manipulate than peeling a banana.

Of late, every day it seems there has been an unending piss stream of challenges, taunts, insults, accusations, and denials. The forcible removal of Wladimir Klitschko from atop the heavyweight division by Tyson Fury in 2015 reignited interest, along with disorder, in it. That order has only been partially restored with Anthony Joshua's dispatching of Klitschko in April of this year to add the WBA "super" title to his IBF strap, followed by the retirement of the 41-year-old former champion.

Yes, Joshua is generally regarded as the best heavyweight today and holds two major belts. But there are holes in his game, seen by his inability to put away Klitschko after a brutal fifth-round knockdown, only to be knocked down hard himself in the sixth almost to the point of losing the fight. Joshua's brilliant comeback and subsequent 11th-round TKO of Klitschko showed his vulnerabilities may not be fatal to his title reign, but they are there to be watched and exploited.

And despite dominating and winning by a tenth-round TKO victory over Carlos Takam in his next fight on October 28, many regarded the ending as being a fast stoppage, and virtually everyone noted that it was a less-than-stellar performance by Joshua.

Joshua, however, remains not only the top heavyweight, but by far its biggest attraction. 90,000 people saw him beat Klitschko in Wembley Stadium in London, and about 78,000 watched him against Takam in Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. Sky Sports in the U.K. shows all his fights on pay-per-view, while he is currently contracted to Showtime in the U.S., with HBO waiting to pursue him.

So fighting Joshua, who at 28 years old still has an unblemished record of 20-0 with 20 KOs, even if one loses, would be an enormous payday, perhaps the most in a challenger's professional boxing career.

The idea of heavyweight unification is also an appealing one, both to fans and some of the money guys. But it also involves numerous risks. For example, on two successive weekends Showtime aired the Joshua-Takam fight and the Deontay Wilder-Bermane Stiverne WBC title rematch, billing both as being for THE heavyweight championship of the world. Fewer title holders means fewer title fights, however inflated or bogus those titles may be.

And in the rare instances where unification is achieved, the demands by the rival sanctioning bodies that the champ immediately face their number one mandatory challenger leads to un-unification, as the champion relinquishes one or more belts, as Terence Crawford did after becoming undisputed 140-pound champion, or more belt-stripping than you'll see in a weekend in Las Vegas.

So yes, many of us would love to see Joshua's next series of fights be to unify his WBA "super" and IBF titles with those of WBC champ Deontay Wilder (39-0, 38 KOs) and WBO champ Joseph Parker (24-0, 18 KOs). But the end game here for Joshua is thus not unification, since it probably won't last long anyway, but raking in the most money for the longest possible period of time while still being able to remain on top.

And that means, despite all the rubbish, basura, and Scheiße being flung around between the top heavyweights and their flacks, it does not necessarily make business sense for Joshua and his team for those to be his next two fights, with Wilder and Parker.

While Joshua fulfilled his obligation for a mandatory defense of his IBF belt by beating Takam, a late replacement for the injured Kubrat Pulev, Pulev is still the highest ranked contender by the IBF, at number two, as they have no one at number one. At some point Joshua may need to face Pulev to retain the original title he first won in 2016.

Then there is the WBA, which has a "super" champion, meaning a belt holder who has or had more than one of these things, and a "regular" champion, whom they sometimes claim is next in line for the "super" champion. This past weekend Manuel Charr, now 31-4 with 17 KOs, captured the then-vacant WBA "regular" heavyweight title with a unanimous decision win over 40-year-old Russian and now-former WBA number one contender Alexander Ustinov (34-2, 25 KOs). The 33-year-old Charr scored what many felt was an upset win based on his record, which included knockout losses to Alexander Povetkin and Mairis Briedis, who usually fights at cruiserweight and is presently the unbeaten WBC cruiserweight champion.

Charr was next ordered by the WBA to negotiate a fight with Fres Oquendo, who has been inactive snce 2014 but who won a lawsuit against the WBA for failing to give him another title shot. Charr is based in Germany where he usually fights, so perhaps the network there, Sky Sports in Germany, which showed his fight with Ustinov, would televise such a rather farcical bout. Or perhaps Oquendo will find one more reason not to take this fight, opening the door for Charr to face Joshua sometime soon in 2018.

Joshua would be a massive favorite to knock out Charr, but such a fight would be good business, besides fulfilling his need to face a WBA mandatory. While Charr is based in Germany and has a following there, he was born in Lebanon but went to Germany as a refugee at age five. He reportedly vowed to give his belt to Turkish president Erdogan. His victory over Ustinov and winning this belt, although derided in boxing circles, was hailed by some in the Arab world.

An ironically cliched headline in the "Arab News", Saudi Arabia's first English-language newspaper, read: "Refugee 'Rocky' becomes first Arab heavyweight champ".

Note that Joshua has stated his desire to gain popularity and fight in many countries and regions, including in the Middle East, and often spends his holiday time in Dubai. A fight with Charr should not only be a decisive win in the ring, but also outside the ring in establishing his presence in Germany and the Arab world.

In several Arab countries there has been growing and serious interest in hosting boxing events as of late. The World Boxing Super Series cruiserweight finals are scheduled to take place next year in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The semifinals have four unbeaten champion fighters, with WBA champion Yunier Dorticos (22-0, 21 KOs) taking on IBF champion Murat Gassiev (25-0, 18 KOs) in one semi-final, and WBO champ Oleksandr Usyk (13-0, 11 KOs) facing the aforementioned WBC champ Mairis Briedis (23-0, 18 KOs) in the other. So whoever is matched up in the finals, it is bound to be a major world boxing event in Saudi Arabia.

And perhaps of lesser significance for now, the launch of KHK Boxing was just announced in Bahrain. This is being sponsored by the 28-year-old Shaikh Khalid Bin Hamad Al Khalifa, a leading sports organizer who already has an MMA promotion there, and is a member of the ruling family in this monarchy. So the time is right for Anthony Joshua to venture into the Arab world.

And what was the urgency of Joshua fighting Wilder and Parker right away again?

Many fans, particularly in America, may end up being disappointed by the opponents chosen by Joshua in 2018, especially if he does not take these two consecutive unification fights. There is no urgency for Joshua to face Wilder, who does not draw that well either in arenas or on TV in the U.S., or Parker, now based in the U.K., but whose last fight, against Hughie Fury, was a YouTube pay-per-view. Wilder and Parker need Joshua far, far more than he needs them, if he needs them at all.

Wilder may want to fight Joshua next year, a possibility which should not be entirely ruled out, but if it doesn't happen, expect him to remain protected and face someone eminently beatable like WBC number two Dominic Breazeale. The WBC number one contender is Dillian Whyte, but Wilder's handlers know too much to risk a mega-payday with Joshua, whenever it may come, by facing someone like Whyte, who himself may get a shot at some belt or another.

Parker also has his WBO duties to fulfill, and his next mandatory may become an interesting one. The current WBO number one challenger is Christian Hammer, but he has a stiff test when he faces Alexander Povetkin, back from his drug suspensions, December 15 in Russia for the WBO international title, and, more importantly, their number one ranking. If Povetkin wins and becomes the WBO mandatory for Parker, and if Parker fails to get that big payday versus Joshua, he may have to face Povetkin this year, in a fight where Povetkin will surely be heavily favored unless he keeps testing dirty. And if Povetkin wins, a Joshua-Povetkin unification fight would be far more lucrative that a Joshua-Parker fight, and could open up even more doors for Joshua around the world.

But Parker, who turns 26 in January and is the youngest of these heavyweight belt holders, has other perhaps more appealing options than facing Joshua or the Hammer-Povetkin winner. Parker is from New Zealand and is predominantly of Samoan descent. The 38-year-old Lucas Browne, still unbeaten at 25-0 with 22 KOs, is from Australia, and is back in action following his own drug test problems. A Parker-Browne fight would be a smash hit in their region of the world as well as one which is far less dangerous for Parker than a clash with Joshua. Browne has also reportedly been in talks to fight Dillian Whyte in February, so where the dominoes fall for next year's heavyweight lineup should be known soon.

For the U.K., a mega-fight for Joshua would be with Tyson Fury, who supposedly will finally have his long-delayed hearing with U.K. Anti-Doping in December. It is absurd that this body has taken so long to adjudicate Fury's failed drug tests from 2015 and 2016. Fury remains suspended and unlicensed, and has not fought for two years, although his own well-documented physical and mental problems have been key to his departure from the ring as well. And Fury also has been charged with throwing out the dope testers when they came to collect a sample from him last year.

There has been the threat of a lawsuit by Fury for these delays and his not being allowed to fight without even a hearing for so long, which potentially could bankrupt the hapless U.K. Anti-Doping if he wins it. But expect some sort of compromise, where everyone agrees that his suspension has been fulfilled by time served, or maybe with just a short extension, while he tries to get in shape to fight once more. If Fury can shed some of his 300-plus-pounds, and stay sober and clean long enough to climb into the ring, it would make far more business sense for Joshua to face him in 2018 than either Wilder or Parker. Such a fight could easily smash U.K. pay-per-view and attendance records, even if Joshua ends up smashing the obese and inactive Fury in the ring.

Plus, it was announced just a few days ago that Fury had signed an advisory deal with the fast-growing management company MTK Global, which already works with his pal, WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders, and the popular Carl Frampton. This indeed is another sign that Tyson Fury is very likely coming back soon.

So don't be shocked if in 2018 Joshua faces Charr, Fury, and/or Pulev. Unification can always come later.

Also do not expect Joshua to take a risky fight with the unbeaten Luis Ortiz, assuming he even is going to fight at a high level again. But if one or more of these belts becomes available, Ortiz just might get a title shot somewhere, and just might win, before preparing to pass the torch to someone two decades younger than him.

While Jarrell "Big Baby" Miller has worked his way into the mix, being rated number 5 by the IBF, 3 by the WBO, and 7 by the WBA, he will still need to raise his profile to get a major title shot. His listless win over Mariusz Wach in his HBO debut November 11 did not help his cause, as this entire show, headlined by Daniel Jacobs, was also a dud both in the TV ratings and at the box office.

Of course, you can just toss the boxing rankings in the trash when the money is right for an important and highly profitable fight. But it usually does help with the hype, marketing, and trickeration to build up such a fight if some more-than-unknown belt is on the line.

So whom will Anthony Joshua face in 2018, between his choices of Manuel Charr, Kubrat Pulev, Deontay Wilder, Joseph Parker, Tyson Fury, and maybe someone else? Whomever brings in the most pounds, dollars, euros, and rubles, that's who.

(Photo credits: Anthony Joshua and Robert Joshua, Esther Lin/Showtime. Deontay Wilder-Bermane Stiverne 2, Tom Casino/Showtime. Tyson Fury, MTK. Joseph Parker, Hennessy Sports. Dillian Whyte and Anthony Joshua, Lawrence Lustig/Matchroom Boxing. Manuel Charr, WBA. Luis Ortiz, Eddie Goldman/No Holds Barred.)

Labels: Alexander Povetkin, Anthony Joshua, boxing, Deontay Wilder, Dillian Whyte, Eddie Goldman, heavyweight, Joseph Parker, Luis Ortiz, Manuel Charr, No Holds Barred, Tyson Fury

NO HOLDS BARRED on PodOmatic

On this edition of NO HOLDS BARRED, host Eddie Goldman speaks with award-winning boxing writer and our correspondent, Charles Farrell, about the current state of the heavyweight division in boxing.

We discuss the recent fights between Juan Carlos Gomez and Oliver McCall, Alexander Povetkin and Chris Byrd, and Samuel Peter and Jameel McCline. We talk about upcoming proposed fights such as IBF champion Wladimir Klitschko against WBO champion Sultan Ibragimov, and WBC interim champion Samuel Peter against WBC regular champion Oleg Maskaev, as well as the prospects for title unification and the emergence of one preeminent heavyweight champion in this oft-criticized division.

In this lengthy discussion, we touch on virtually every top heavyweight in the world today.

To listen to NO HOLDS BARRED, click here or here and just press the play button on the player.

You can also listen to it through this blog and my MySpace page, also by pressing the play button on the player.

Also, NO HOLDS BARRED is available through iTunes.

The show is in MP3 format, so may take some time to download.

If you want to leave a comment on the show, you can do so at this blog.

The NO HOLDS BARRED theme song is called "The Heist", by musician Ian Carpenter.

NO HOLDS BARRED is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

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Labels: Alexander Povetkin, boxing, Charles Farrell, Chris Byrd, Eddie Goldman, Jameel McCline, John Ruiz, No Holds Barred, Oleg Maskaev, Ruslan Chagaev, Samuel Peter, Sultan Ibragimov, Wladimir Klitschko