[Thebomb]

Originally Posted by ferocious

i told you last week but you were saying thailand in october , me and lard are going.... jermaine taylor is defo moving up to super middle n'all so i reckon that will be calzaghe's finale , beating kessler to be un-disputed then beat up taylor and retire un-defeated unified champion.. hall of fame for joe

you know me....in one ear out the other.....its november though isnt it???? 2nd or 3rd????........i think he'll beat the pair of em...but you just never know do u.......could be interested in joinin ya's....we'll talk later pal

[ferocious]

november 3.... bout £450 all in.... tell you what taylor is fighting kelly pavlik in the autumn & i reckon pavlik will spark him , imagine pavlik - calzaghe , tear up

[Bilbobaggins]

Originally Posted by ferocious

thats a nightmare , i already pay for sky & i've got the foriegn set up too for my saturday afternoons football which is only £96 a season but i'm a bit peeved at paying more money...BTW i bought myself a ringside ticket today for the calzaghe-kessler fight so setanta can wait

Reg how much you paid for that fight?
Thats gonna be a goodun
and where is it?

Baggins...

[Bilbobaggins]

woops sorry, just seen your post, I'll swerve that then, saving money for 2 months in LOS just after xmas

Baggins

[irishmic]

Originally Posted by ferocious

i told you last week but you were saying thailand in october , me and lard are going.... jermaine taylor is defo moving up to super middle n'all so i reckon that will be calzaghe's finale , beating kessler to be un-disputed then beat up taylor and retire un-defeated unified champion.. hall of fame for joe

I saw Jermaine Taylor before his championship, fought in West Virginia on the undercard of a Spadafora title match, think it was Taylors' 12? fight or so, made the most impression on me with his power and combinations. the rest is history.

[mack]

Too bad Mayorga didn't duck the punch, then maybe King would have got his big fucking mouth socked.

[ferocious]

Originally Posted by mack

Too bad Mayorga didn't duck the punch, then maybe King would have got his big fucking mouth socked.

mayorga has gone through his career gobbing off , but what he should have thought about was vargas is a bit of a lad and is not scared to get it on & he duly shit it when vargas chinned him

Frank Warren has signed a double deal , Amir Khan will remain on ITV and so will selected bills such as next weeks from Cardiff but the rest will be on Setanta including Calzaghe v Kessler.

[ferocious]

well i'll be getting up at 3am saturday morning to watch this fight


Friday night’s bout between Fernando Vargas and Ricardo Mayorga is being billed as ‘The Brawl’, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about how this fight is going to unfold.

(Vargas v Mayorga is LIVE on Setanta Sports 1 on November 24 at 3:00am)

Indeed, it’s impossible to foresee this bout being one for the purists. Mayorga is as wild and unorthodox in the ring as he is outside it, while Vargas, who has announced his intention to retire after the fight, has been involved in some of the most memorable tear-ups of the past decade and intends to bow out of the fight game in explosive fashion. In that light, “The Brawl” is quite appropriate.

Certainly, Mayorga is desperate for the fight to become a war; it is the only way he knows how to fight.

The 34-year-old Nicaraguan’s career has been one big show of machismo. Before nearly every fight, he has questioned his opponent’s masculinity in a deliberate attempt to anger his foe into standing toe-to-toe with him. When it works, it looks like an ingenious ploy, but when it doesn’t, Mayorga ends up looking more than a little foolish.

When Mayorga met Vernon Forrest in a welterweight unification fight in January, 2003, he got inside Forrest’s head.

‘The Viper’ went into that bout on the back of two stunning victories of ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley, who was considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world at the time, but he was thrown by Mayorga’s outrageous behaviour, which culminated in the Nicaraguan turning up for the weigh-in eating a slice of pizza.

Forrest was just as perplexed and bemused by Mayorga during the fight and was completely unable to get to grips with unusual angles of the Nicarguan’s punches. The bout lasted three rounds.

Forrest was granted an immediate rematch in Las Vegas six months later but lost a majority points decision after a fight in which Mayorga repeatedly dropped his guard and allowed Forrest to hit him.

“I wanted to let him know that he couldn’t hurt me. I wanted to let him know that I was the boss, I was his daddy, I was the champ,” Mayorga explained at the time.

However, Mayorga’s questionable tactics have been less effective in recent years and he has lost three of his past five fights, suffering brutal kayos at the hands of both Felix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya.

On those occasions, his pre-fight attacks only served to motivate his opponents, as De La Hoya, who was repeatedly labelled a "queer" and a "faggot" by Mayorga, admitted after stopping 'El Matador' in six in May of last year.

Mayorga, unsurprisingly, has not learned his lesson and has been goading Vargas mercilessly in recent weeks. He has consistently referred to the Mexican as ‘Fatty’ and is adamant that Vargas is going to run "like a coward" on Friday night.

Mayorga’s insults appeared to have worked, however, as an infuriated Vargas was drawn into an exchange of blows at their first pre-fight press conference. A Perspex screen was required for their final promotional presser!

But, when that first bell sounds at the Staples Centre, will Vargas rise above the taunts and fight with his head, rather than his heart?

That looks unlikely because, throughout his career, Vargas has never walked away from a brawl. One could even argue that he is too brave and courageous for his own good at times.

‘El Feroz’ has impressive hand speed but the majority of his victories, the most notable of which came over Ike Quartey and Ronald ‘Winky’ Wright, were largely based on his incredible power (he stopped his first 17 opponents, equalling the record previously held by Roy Jones Jr.).

And his hands are no longer as heavy as they once were, meaning his admirable heart and bravery have resulted in him suffering sustained beatings at the hands of Trinidad, De La Hoya and Mosley in recent years.

But Vargas remains undeterred and is determined to produce some “fireworks” on Friday night, meaning a brawl is effectively a given.

So has Vargas merely falling into Mayorga’s rather simplistic - but often effective - trap? Perhaps not.

The catch-weight of 166lbs should work in Vargas’ favour. He is the naturally bigger man and spent most of his career struggling to stay inside the limit at light-middleweight. Mayorga, by contrast, started out at light-welterweight.

Vargas is also the five years Mayorga’s junior. True, he is probably far older in ring years, given the amount of brawls he has been involved in, and looked a tad tired and weary in his bouts with Mosley.

But while he may not be the same fighter who became the youngest light-middleweight champion of all time when he dethroned Luis Ramon Campas in 1998 at the age of 21, he is still a very competent fighter who boasts a dangerous mix of power and speed.

Vargas will also have the crowd on his side too. He is an approachable, brave and likeable family man; Mayorga is his complete antithesis.

Mayorga, after all, is a fighter who has been known to drink and smoke during his training camps. He has been charged with rape - he was later acquitted - and accused of fraud at various points in his career. This is man who courts controversy at every turn and Don King's reference to him as the 'Nicaraguan Mike Tyson' was quite apt.

But perhaps the most damning indictment of his character is the fact that he is not very popular within his homeland. Indeed, many Nicaraguans are ashamed and embarrassed by his conduct outside of the ring.

Some of it is undoubtedly an act but it is very hard to defend a man, who would go so far as to make insulting remarks about his opponent's recently-deceased mother, just as Mayorga did to Cory Spinks in 2003.

Still, while Mayorga is very hard to like, he is unquestionably a true ring warrior and if Vargas fulfils his promise to stand and trade, this could be a contender for fight of the year. Regardless of the outcome, that would be a fitting way for Vargas to walk away from a sport he has served so well over the past decade.


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[mack]

I hope Vargas punishes Mayorga then knocks him out.