GL: Unfortunately things didn’t go as you planned with the Showtime bantamweight tournament. Can you give us some thoughts on the fights? “I thought the show was excellent and they were great fights. I thought that Vic Darchinyan won a razor thin victory over Abner Mares. I thought the scoring on McDonaugh’s card of the last seven rounds for Abner Mares was out of order. When Darchinyan was knocked down two of the judges scored it 10-9 instead of 10-8 because it was questionable. Had the other judge given it a 10-9 as well, the fight would have been a majority draw. For that fight I give credit to Abner Mares because he came back strong against Yohnny Perez and he came back strong against Darchinyan, so that says a lot about him. I just think it was a bad decision for Vic. In the Yohnny Perez fight, I thought Agbeko fought a brilliant fight and you can’t take anything away from Agbeko at all. It was just brilliant and very smart of him.”
GL: Your guys will be facing each other in the consolation bout of this tournament, can you give us any early thoughts on that?
Gary Shaw: “It’s going to be a tough fight. If Yohnny fights the same type of fight against Darchinyan that he did with Agbeki, then Darchinyan will come out victorious. If he fights like he fought the first time against Agbeko, then it’s going to be a very long night for Vic Darchinyan.”
GL: Is there a provision that the winner of the consolation bout will face the winner of the tournament next? Did all these guys committ their next three fights to Showtime?
GS: “No. But I believe Showtime sees the value of these four guys and there’s an undefeated kid out of Puerto Rico named Seda, who will be moving up from 115 to 118, so there are plenty of fights. It’s like the old days with Trinidad and Winky, and De La Hoya and Shane Mosley and Vargas, there’s great fights to be made let them keep fighting each other.”
GL: You were involved with the Bradley-Alexander press tour, can you give us some thoughts on that?
GS: “It was a good tour. Bradley is heated up and he wants to close Kevin Cunningham’s mouth once and for all. It’s going to be a great fight between the two best junior welterweights in the world. I think the world now knows that Victor Ortiz is not in these guys class and in the Maidana fight with Khan, there seems to be some controversy, maybe Khan needs to fight the loser of Bradley-Alexander and the winner should fight Pacquiao.”
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