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'Iron Boy': Boxing's best little secret
How good is world junior flyweight champion Ivan "Iron Boy" Calderon, the Puerto Rican pint-sized boxing wizard? The 2000 Olympian, who made 11 defenses of the 105-pound strawweight title before moving up to 108 to capture the junior flyweight crown, once defeated countryman and good pal Miguel Cotto, who would go on to become a dominant junior welterweight and welterweight titleholder. The 3-2 victory came in a 1993 amateur bout when Calderon was only 17 and they each weighed only about 100 pounds. In the 15 years since, Cotto has grown into a hard-punching, full-fledged 147-pounder. Calderon, who is just 5-feet, has added only eight pounds to his fighting frame.Latin Fury |
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TV Lineup for Top Rank's "Latin Fury" pay-per-view card Saturday night (9 ET) from the Ruben Rodriguez Coliseum in Bayamon, Puerto Rico: • Junior flyweights: Ivan "Iron Boy" Calderon (31-0, 6 KOs) vs. Hugo Cazares (26-4-1, 19 KOs), 12 rounds, rematch, for Calderon's world title • Junior featherweights: Roman Martinez (19-0-1, 11 KOs) vs. Santos Benavides (14-1-1, 12 KOs), 12 rounds • Bantamweights: Eric Morel (38-2, 20 KOs) vs. Heriberto Ruiz (39-6-2, 23 KOs), 12 rounds |
ZUMA Press/Icon SMI
Calderon, right, hopes for an easier time out when he meets Hugo Cazares in the rematch.
Brewster is back
Former heavyweight titleholder Lamon Brewster (33-4, 29 KOs), last seen in the ring taking a pounding en route a sixth-round TKO loss in a July 2007 rematch with Wladimir Klitschko, returns to the ring Saturday looking to end a two-fight losing streak.AP Photo/Roberto Pfeil
Good as new: Lamon Brewster is feeling like his old self again.
QUICK HITS
Williams
• Despite the expiration this summer of an exclusive deal to televise Top Rank fights and a new deal to televise the fourth season of "The Contender," Versus will continue its live boxing coverage, two sources with knowledge of the network's plans told ESPN.com. They said Versus plans to air 4 to 6 cards this fall, with the dates not going exclusively to one promoter. Versus declined to comment. The first card will be at the Soboba Casino in San Jacinto, Calif., on Sept. 25, when Dan Goossen will promote a doubleheader involving welterweight titleholder Paul Williams and heavyweight contender Cristobal Arreola. Williams, whose opponent hasn't been determined, will fight a nontitle middleweight bout. Arreola will face Israel "King Kong" Garcia. If Williams and Arreola successfully navigate their bouts, they'll be back Nov. 29 on HBO on a card in which Williams would return to welterweight to defend his belt.
Luevano
• Top Rank and Golden Boy are finalizing the undercard for the Kelly Pavlik-Bernard Hopkins fight Oct. 18 (HBO PPV) at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. In the co-feature, Top Rank's Steven Luevano will defend his featherweight title against Australia's Billy Dib, a Shane Mosley protégé promoted by Golden Boy. According to Top Rank matchmaker Brad Goodman and Golden Boy matchmaker Eric Gomez, the other fights in the works are Top Rank middleweight Marco Antonio Rubio against Golden Boy's Enrique Ornelas and Golden Boy's top young rising star, bantamweight Abner Mares, against an opponent to be determined. Mares is the mandatory challenger for titlist Gerry Penalosa, but Gomez said that is unlikely to be the match.
Julio
• Joel "Love Child" Julio is headed to Dressen, Germany, to challenge junior middleweight titlist Sergei Dzindziruk on Oct. 18. Dzindziruk's promoter, Universum, won a purse bid this week with an offer of $276,000. Julio promoter Main Events, the only other bidder, offered just the minimum $200,000. Julio took the fight instead of an opportunity to face Sergio Martinez for an interim 154-pound title in California in an HBO "Boxing After Dark" main event Oct. 4. Instead of earning about $125,000 to fight Martinez on HBO, he'll make $69,000 (25 percent of the winning bid) to go overseas for a fight that does not have an American TV outlet.
Donaire
• Top Rank won the rights to flyweight titleholder Nonito Donaire's mandatory defense against South Africa's Moruti Mthalane in an IBF purse bid this week. Top Rank, which signed Donaire this summer, bid $334,000 to beat a $286,500 bid by Branco Sports, which promotes Mthalane. That means $250,500 for Donaire and $83,500 for Mthalane on the 75-25 purse split of the bid. Top Rank's Bob Arum said he plans to put the fight on a Nov. 1 pay-per-view card headlined by welterweight titleholder Antonio Margarito in his first bout since stopping Miguel Cotto July 26 (likely a rematch/unification bout with Joshua Clottey). Top Rank has the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., on hold for the card.
Ouma
• Former junior middleweight titleholder Kassim Ouma (25-5-1, 15 KOs) will try to end a three-fight losing streak when he returns Oct. 4 at the National Guard Armory in Philadelphia on a show being put together by manager Tom Moran. Ouma will begin training in Philadelphia next week, according to Russell Peltz, who co-promotes Ouma with Golden Boy and will assist with the show. Ouma's skid began in December 2006 with a lopsided points loss to then-middleweight champ Jermain Taylor. That defeat was followed by surprising decision losses to Saul Roman in November and Cornelius Bundrage in March.
Casamayor
• Lightweight champion Joel Casamayor (36-3-1, 22 KOs) is getting his money's worth out of trainer Roger Bloodworth, who is in his second training camp with Casamayor following Casamayor's exciting 10th-round knockout of Michael Katsidis in March. In addition to preparing Casamayor for a Sept. 13 (HBO PPV) title defense at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas against Juan Manuel Marquez (48-4-1, 35 KOs), the junior lightweight star who is moving up in weight, Bloodworth also serves as Casamayor's cook at their Phoenix base. "Joel eats very well, three, maybe four times a day, and if I'm not looking, maybe five," Bloodworth said with a wink. "I don't believe in starving fighters. I started cooking at training camp because it was cheaper for me to cook than to hire a chef. I don't cook really fancy; just cook simple meals that are healthy. Joel really likes chicken, salmon, steamed vegetables and, once in a while, I make pasta, but I only use whole wheat or brown rice pasta. We don't eat any junk food, just a clean diet because he has to burn more calories than he takes in."
Valuev
• It will undoubtedly be too big for you, but if you want to own the boxing robe that Nikolai Valuev will wear into the ring before his Saturday rematch with John Ruiz for a vacant heavyweight belt, you can bid on it. Valuev will auction the red-white-and-blue robe, which he will autograph, at www.ebay.de/starsandcharity. Bidding ends Sept. 1. The money will go to German medical aid organization Action Medeor, which provides medical equipment to people in developing countries. "I hope for lots of boxing fans to join the auction so that a lot of money will be raised to help children in the poorer regions of the world," Valuev said. "This project means a lot to me."
Schaefer
• Golden Boy's close ties to HBO in America are well known. But now Oscar De La Hoya's promotional company has announced a two-year deal with HBO Latin America Group, with which it will team for a monthly television series, "Next Boxing Generation," that will showcase rising fighters from Latin America. Golden Boy will promote 12 cards per year to support the show, which will air throughout Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean on HBO Plus, which is run by HBO LAG and is the only premium channel in Latin America to televise boxing. The network, which is a separate entity from HBO in the U.S., is jointly owned by Time Warner, Sony and Disney. Half of the cards will take place in Mexico and the other half elsewhere in Latin America. The Sept. 20 debut card will take place in Monterrey, Mexico, and will be headlined by the lightweight title eliminator between Jose Armando Santa Cruz and Antonio Pitalua. "Globalization of the Golden Boy brand while showcasing top boxing talent has always been a company goal," Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer said, adding that he was working on securing a U.S. outlet to broadcast the fights.
• Over the next several months, there will be a flood of Olympians turning pro now that the Beijing Games are history. First out of the gate is U.S. Olympic alternate Danny O'Connor, 23, of Framingham, Mass. The southpaw junior welterweight, who lost to 141-pound Olympian Javier Molina in the trials but traveled to Beijing as an alternate, signed a promotional deal with Seminole Warriors Boxing. "Danny was an exciting young amateur boxer who is going to make a lot of noise in the coming years as a professional," said Leon Margules, executive director of Seminole Warriors Boxing. "He's got a perfect style for the pro game, and we have very high expectations of him." O'Connor, 95-8 in the unpaid ranks, defeated gold medalist Felix Diaz of the Dominican Republic on May 29 at a pre-Olympic match. O'Connor will make his pro debut Sept. 17 in Manchester, N.H.
QUOTABLE
Loew
"There comes a time when every dog has to be put down. His time is over." -- Jack Loew, middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik's trainer, on Bernard Hopkins, whom Pavlik will face Oct. 18 (HBO PPV) in a 170-pound nontitle fight, during a fan rally this week in Pavlik's hometown of Youngstown, Ohio.
QUOTABLE
Forrest
"As far as being humble, I'm a very confident person. I'm always confident. So, a loss is not necessarily humbling. What's humbling is not being able to compete at your highest level when you are competing. Now I get another chance. And as for the first fight, I'm going to take a mulligan and we will see how the next one turns out. That's right. A mulligan on that one and I'm going to straighten it out and get everything right the second fight." -- former junior middleweight titleholder Vernon Forrest, on in his loss to Sergio Mora in June and their Sept. 13 HBO PPV rematch.
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