Cliff Rold
427 articles · Hard Core Boxing
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Billy Joe Saunders-David Lemieux: Pre-Fight Report Card
By Cliff Rold
How silly can boxing be sometimes? If WBO middleweight titlist Billy Joe Saunders wins Saturday night, his name will surely come up as a potential unification opponent for Gennady Golovkin down the…
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Guillermo Rigondeaux Could Be a Type of Legend
By Cliff Rold
Listen to the true believers, the real hardcore Cult of Rigo types, and Cuba?s lineal Jr. featherweight king Guillermo Rigondeaux (17-0, 11 KO) damn near walks on water. There is a cadre…
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Miguel Cotto vs. Sadam Ali: Pre-Fight Report Card
By Cliff Rold
It?s not a fight everyone is excited about going in. That doesn?t mean they won?t feel differently coming out. Mix and aging man with a big name against a younger man who…
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Jerwin Ancajas – The Traveling Man is Back on The Road
By Cliff Rold
Debate the competitive merits of boxing various belts all day. It?s a valid conversation. Their economic and life impacts remain. Case in point: IBF 115 lb. titlist Jerwin Ancajas (27-1-1, 18 KO).…
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Srisaket Sor Rungvisai-Roman Gonzalez II: SuperFly Report Card
By Cliff Rold
One of the things that sometimes defines a great career is the performance of a fighter in rematches. If they lost the first time around, can they find a way to reverse…
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SuperFly and The Thrills To Come
By Cliff Rold
Competition can be contagious. It takes the right circumstances. A truly loaded division is often the right circumstance. When a division has only one or two avenues to a payday, or holding…
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The Redirection of Juan Francisco Estrada
By Cliff Rold
It couldn?t have been looking much better. Juan Francisco Estrada (35-2, 25 KO) went from unheralded challenger to unified and defending titlist in just eight months between November 2012 and July 2013.…
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Terence Crawford-Julius Indongo: Pre-Undisputed Report Card
By Cliff Rold
A fight to unify all four major sanctioning body titles in a weight class is so rare that it?s only happened once since the WBO was born in the 1980s. In 2004,…
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Terence Crawford-Julius Indongo: Risk All Around
By Cliff Rold
Title unification was never easy. That was true well before the WBC broke away from the WBA in the 1960s. In the 1930s, the middleweight and flyweight titles had a slew of…
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Adrien Broner-Mikey Garcia: Good Fight, Rewards Later
By Cliff Rold
It?s not clear anyone was asking to see it before it was signed. At the beginning of 2017, 29-year old Mikey Garcia (36-0, 30 KO) was preparing for a crack at the…
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Manny Pacquiao-Jeff Horn: Pre-Fight Report Card
By Cliff Rold
The road show is nothing new for a star on the wane. With his numbers down from what they were in the States, if still strong for most fighters, Manny Pacquiao is…
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Pacquiao’s Getting Older (But No One’s Proved He’s Old Yet)
By Cliff Rold
This Saturday, current WBO welterweight titlist Manny Pacquiao (59-6-2, 38 KO), he of the record eight title claims combining lineal and sanctioning body crowns, will attempt the second defense in his third…
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An Opportunity for Jerwin Ancajas To Impress on Pacquiao Card
By Cliff Rold
This Saturday night, those who tune in for ESPN?s latest foray in boxing (9 PM EST/6 PM PST) will be there to see if an aging Manny Pacquiao can dispense with a…
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Golovkin-Canelo and the Allure of Exclusivity
By Cliff Rold
Thinking back on some of the biggest fights of the last forty years, the earned pay-per-view or closed circuit nights at the office, one thing often found lacking is a lot of…
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Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev II: Pre-Fight Report Card
By Cliff Rold
It?s still certain to garner passionate argument. Who won the first fight between Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev? Opinions vary. Cries of robbery, in favor of Kovalev, are probably still the strongest…
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Ward-Kovalev II: Who Cares Who Isn?t Watching?
By Cliff Rold
Some fights grow, at least for a night, bigger than the sport. They belong to a bigger picture, a tapestry of memorable events, moments in time where the world slows down and…
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Errol Spence-Kell Brook: Post-Fight Report Card
By Cliff Rold
For the second time in the last couple of months, we have seen a considerable blue chip talent gambled against a veteran their record suggested they might not be ready for. It…
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Anselmo Moreno: A Postscript or A New Chapter
By Cliff Rold
He wasn?t so much knocked out as surrendered into the finish. It was a moment reminiscent of the end of Aaron Pryor-Alexis Arguello II or Manny Pacquiao-Erik Morales III. Anselmo Moreno (36-5-1,…
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Big Changes at 108: BoxingScene Ratings Update
By Cliff Rold
Super Middleweight: David Benavidez made a big time statement on Saturday, dominating and stopping veteran Rogelio Medina just one year after Medina gave James DeGale everything he could handle. Benavidez, only 20,…
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Terence Crawford-Felix Diaz: Pre-Fight Report Card
By Cliff Rold
After a bit of a slower week, boxing is all over the place this weekend. Where one won?t find a single mega-event, there are a slew of good, meaningful fights in multiple…