Billy’s Boxing Blog

By William Trillo

Okay, so fight night in Mexico this past Saturday night didn’t go exactly as planned, that goes without saying. But in all honesty the rest of the week went beautifully.

The resort town of Cozumel was ready for the show and with a fight card a dozen bouts deep there was no doubt the island was in store for more boxing here than ever before. But even those with a keen sense of boxing betting insight could not have predicted how the Main Event battle would eventually turn out.

We arrived onto the island on Monday afternoon, the people were friendly and the sunset was like a painting without flaw.

Not wanting to get caught up in the resort atmosphere Librado Andrade and Enrique Ornelas put in a good hard day of work on Tuesday in a steamy gym that was the perfect place to cut the last few pounds.

Wednesday was a bit more relaxed and after the fighters worked out it was time for a little casual dining followed by the most spectacular sunset of the entire week.

Things started hopping on Thursday as the fighters met in town with promoter Pepe Gomez for the final press conference to announce the festivities to come.

Later that evening the fighters met again in town, this time it was to perform in an open workout for the islanders. Nothing like watching the principals at work to get the fans to gobble up some tickets.

Friday was weigh-in day back in town and everyone seemed pretty relaxed.

Ornelas and Andrade posed for the cameras before they hit the scales.

Donovan George hooked up with some of his hometown folks for some photos as well.

After that Andrade and George exchanged some kind thoughts as they prepared for the final photo shoot.

Meanwhile Team George and Andrade’s trainer Danny Zamora sat down with the officials to go over the rules one more time.

With ring girls present Jimmy Zeek Hartofilis did not pass on a photo opp of his own.

Back at the hotel George sat poolside and collected his thoughts for what was in store in 24 hours.

Saturday…fight day! Nothing like collecting your thoughts while swinging at the bar on the Caribbean coast.

Only a couple hours before the fight one can only wonder what Donovan Goerge was thinking as he checked out the ring…that was the closest he got to it all night.

Yes, the ring girls were present and under the clouds and rain they seemed to be having a splendid time.

Golden Boy’s Abner Mares was ringside in Cozumel and was taking a breather after his spectacular win over Joseph Agbeko. Moments after I took this shot I was informed George had been advised to pull out of the fight.

Back at the hotel Team Andrade sat down for a good meal and took what happened only hours before in stride. It was a difficult situation to handle but we made the best of a tough situation.

On Sunday as we prepared to leave Hartofilis tossed me his camera and asked me to take a photo of he and Leon Margules. After I shot the photo Zeek asked me what I was going to title it. All things considered I could not come up with anything suitable but Hartofilis came up with a good one…
”A Greek and a Jew walk into a bar…”

Badda Boom Badda Bing!

In all honesty Sunday was an awkward day, even more awkward was that both teams shared the same flight back to the States.

While awaiting our flight at the airport Hartofilis looked at me and said, “Hey did you drop that?” I looked down and saw a crumpled twenty dollar bill. I looked at Jimmy and shook my head no. He pointed to the bill again so I bent over to pick it up. As it turned out the bill was attached to a string and another member of Team George pulled the bill out from under me right as I was going to grab it.

We all had a good laugh.

This past week Leon Margules put Donovan George in front of the boxing community and said he was the man to beat Librado Andrade. But like that twenty dollar bill, moments before the fans were set to cash in on a very good fight, Margules pulled his fighter out from under everyone.

No one was laughing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 at 5:07 am and is filed under Boxing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.