When a boxer answers every pre-fight question with “well, if the cut’s don’t open up” then you know the fight is going to be interesting and bloody. Such was the case in the ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights junior welterweight main event between Oakland native Juaquin Gallardo and Venezuelan Patrick Lopez. Gallardo was the aforementioned bleeder; he had had cuts open in four of his last six fights. His Scranton experience held to form.
After a clash of heads in the fifth a cut opened to the right of Gallardo’s nose. Despite the streaming blood Juaquin moved forward impervious to the …read more

In Saturday’s Ricky Hatton-Juan Lazcano undercard match Brooklyn junior welterweight proved that you can’t hit what you can’t see. The problem wasn’t the head speed of his opponent South African Lovemore N’Dou; N’Dou was relatively stationary. No, the problem was Malignaggi’s recently implanted 18-inch-long hair extensions.
In the first round of the IBF junior welterweight title bout The Magic Man more resembled a Komondor dog (pictured to the right) than a boxer. His long twisted fake locks escaped their weak rubber band-hold less than a minute into the fight. Paulie spent the next two minutes fighting through his heavily-obscuring hair. While …read more

In the main event of an entertaining mid-day Saturday pair of junior welterweight bouts Ricky Hatton outlasted Juan Lazcano by a wide margin.
55,000 screaming Mancunians poured into Eastlands, the home stadium of Manchester City FC, to see their favorite son outperform and out-brawl Lazcano. Hatton was hurt twice by Lazcano — in the 8th and in the 10th — but his near-constant pressure and successful stream of body punches and left hooks proved too much for the American.