By William Trillo
Of all the great boxing action this weekend the fight that was most talked about on Sunday was the James Kirkland vs. Alfredo Angulo Jr. Middleweight brawl. There was no one who I wanted to talk to more than Angulo’s former promoter Gary Shaw. I got in touch with him Sunday afternoon and Shaw had plenty to say about the night in Cancun Mexico.
Pound4Pound: You know Gary; I couldn’t help but think of you as I watched Angulo punch himself out in the first round of his fight against Kirkland on Saturday night.
Gary Shaw: First of all a real professional should not punch himself out in one round. He should be able to go 12 hard rounds unless you have not trained. A guy like Pacquiao throws a lot more punches than that every round.
P4P: So then whether or not he threw 1000 punches in that round I think you are saying Angulo may have been light on his training.
GS: Either light on training or just the wrong training. Look, Clemente Medina is a tremendous trainer, he goes by un-noticed at times but in my opinion he is one of the best. I paid for a strength and conditioning coach for Angulo before his fight with Joel Julio, so maybe he didn’t have the right trainers. But you know what? He had no business fighting James Kirkland, it wasn’t the right fight for him. Both fighters got screwed out of a lot of money, each one could have had two more fights on HBO and after that he could have had a real pay day.
P4P: On your first point, I was just having a discussion this week about Nacho Beristan training Angulo, in my opinion it was bad chemistry from the start, stylistically those two do not mix well at all.
GS: Expecting Nacho do do the same as he did with Marquez is not right. They are not the same kind of fighters.
P4P: In regard to the second point, I agree, it was the wrong fight at the wrong time. I don’t know if it’s the fighters fault or the promoters fault but I think this one was ill-advised, especially for Angulo.
GB: Well they certainly didn’t do him any favors but I don’t blame Golden Boy. Michael Miller (and I believe Cameron Dunkin but I can’t accuse him), but Miller had both sides, Angulo and Kirkland, and maybe Dunkin did as well. If you look at everything, those advisor(s) should never have put them in together, at least not now. No matter what Golden Boy wanted to do it was simply the wrong fight at the wrong time for both of them. Those fighters lost hundreds of thousands of dollars by fighting each other now.
P4P: Great points, I didn’t realize both fighters were represented by the same advisor(s).
GS: Look, this fight was set up for Kirkland to lose. They bring an African American fighter into Mexico to fight Mexican fighter on HBO…that’s a recipe for disaster. And look at the officials, one ref had Kirkland barely ahead..by only one round? Are you going to tell me that doesn’t seem like a set-up?
P4P: I don’t know how Lederman got his hands on the scorecards when he did but something smelled very fishy there.
GS: It smelled like dog poop! Angulo did not win any of those rounds…it clearly smelled of dog poop!
P4P: Speaking of odor, the production of that show in Mexico was as stinky as it gets. At one point I saw Michael Buffer pretty upset and rightly so, the quality throughout the night was really poor.
GS: I will be very interested to see what happens when Ken Hershman gets over to HBO. I know when he worked for Showtime he would not set foot in Mexico. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens.
P4P: On a Karma level, sometimes the things you do come back to haunt you and it looks like Saturday night was Angulo’s Halloween.
GS: Of course, good Karma always wins. It may not happen right away but at the end of the story good Karma always wins out. Angulo is a liar, he has not told anyone the truth about our break up. He blames me for everything and takes no responsibility for himself. He put Clemente Medina his trainer in the gutter, he put his cutman in the gutter, he put Caesar Hernandez, a man who did do much for him in the gutter…you can’t do that and go on and live a good life.
He truly is a dog!
P4P: Do you think there is any hope for him after this?
GS: He will always be an exciting fighter but he will never be the same. Like the school yard bully, once everyone sees him get beat up no one fears him anymore and they will want to line up and box his lights out now, and beat him. Angulo is nothing more than an opponent now!
P4P: This is a sport of what have you done for me lately and right now all anyone is going to remember about him is the Kirkland atrocity.
GS: He took a real beating! And that’s after turning down $750,000 to fight Sergio Martinez with a guaranteed fight on HBO and a guarantee of still being number one at 154 pound in the WBO & WBC He gave up all that for whatever he just got paid, and that surely was no 750K. He would never have taken that kind of beating from Sergio because we were all around him and we believed in him and supported him.
I treated him like a son and I did not deserve the way he treated me in return. When I had that 750K offer for him I couldn’t even speak to him, I had to speak to some girl named Tonya, whom he also eventually kicked to the street. I called him over 20 times and he never took my calls. To blame me for what has happened is hogwash. I was told it was Top Rank that turned him into HBO. It cetrtaly wasn’t Gary Shaw because if he understood boxing he would know the only way he has to earn money is if he fought, why would I not want him to fight?
Thinking Out Loud
I have to say that although Lucian Bute completely dominated Glen Johnson I have to wonder aloud if their friendship and sparring rounds didn’t somehow allow for Bute to carry Johnson for the 12 round distance. It just seemed to me Lucian had a number of opportunities to put Johnson away. Whether it was a conscious effort on Bute’s part or not, I don’t know. But I do know Bute has more than enough killer instinct. I didn’t see any of it on Saturday night.
Pierre Olivier-Cote had a huge night on Saturday night and although you can’t say a star was born it is easy to say the star was conceived. Now let’s see if anyone in his weight class wants any part of him. And yes, Tim Bradley, Amir Khan and Brandon Rios, I am talking about you.
Mike Jones laughs at Angulo for shooting his wad after dropping Kirkland in round one.
So, Cris Arreola put a huge beat down on yet another stiff…BIG DEAL! I understand discussions will start this week to put Arreola in a rematch with Vitali Klitshko. You are kidding me…right? This guy just devoured more “Ham and Eggers” recently than he does on his late night Denny’s Diner runs. How does that qualify him for either Klitschko?
And on another Arreola note… Why is it that his promoter Dan Goossen sent out a press release claiming he weighed in at 239 pounds when he officially tipped the scales at 240.46? Seems to me if you wanted to round, (take term literally), the number you would have picked 241 instead of “buying” him a pound and a half comfort zone.
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