In our light heavyweights first day summary we said that Tajikstan’s Djakhon Kurbanov “dominated” defending world champ Abbos Atoev and merely that the referee stopped Croatian Marijo Sivolija-Jelica bout against Samoan Satupaitea Farani Tavui in the third round.
That was before we saw the matches on TV which were shown on tape delay in the United States. We take back everything we said. Print results can be deceiving. To our eyes Djakhon Kurbanov didn’t dominate Abbos Atoev at all. The fight looked very close to us. In fact we might have even thought Atoev landed more clean punches than the …read more

The shadow of Chris Byrd (40-4-1) will make his much ballyhooed light heavyweight debut tonight against Brooklyn’s Shaun George (16-2-2) on ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights (9:00 p.m. EST).
Byrd’s most recent fight was last October when he was TKO’d in the 11th against 2004 Athens Super Heavyweight Olympic gold medalist Aleksandr Povetkin. Povetkin weighed in at 226 1/4, Byrd at 211 1/4. It was a far cry from Byrd’s own Olympic medaling weight: a svelte 165.
After winning the middleweight silver medal in Barcelona 1992 Byrd immediately placed himself on the heavyweight trajectory. “Guys I knew I could beat (at heavyweight) …read more