Francis Ngannou, Rico Verhoeven perform in high-profile debuts

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CAIRO, EGYPT - MAY 23: Rico Verhoeven and Oleksandr Usyk touch gloves during the WBC and WBA World Heavyweight Titles fight between Oleksandr Usyk and Rico Verhoeven as part of the Glory in Giza Fight Night at Pyramids Panorama 2 on May 23, 2026 in Cairo, Egypt. (Photo by Mohamed Hossam/Getty Images) | Getty Images From ALroc718: Got into a little back n forth last week over which would be better for Shakur Stevenson’s legacy. Fighting and beating an almost 50 year old Pacquiao or fighting and beating any of the following at 147 Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney or Tank? Thoughts? There is no rub to gain from beating Manny Pacquiao at this point. That Pacquiao vs Barrios fight wasn’t even some abnormally big deal or anything, the world has moved on. Unless he’s attached to Mayweather, the interest in him fighting doesn’t seem to be special. Ryan’s the biggest scalp he could go after at the moment, though Tank could leapfrog him if he were an active fighter again. From Tincan: What do you make of Ngannou and Verhoeven’s performances against Fury & Usyk? It feels easy to normalise now, but beforehand I think most of us viewed their debuts as a drastic mismatches, regardless of their being elite combat sports athletes. Why were we all so far off with that one? Forced any rethinks? With Fury vs Ngannou, Tyson showed up in lousy condition and got caught being lazy. He also had a dumb game plan to try and muscle a guy who was significantly physically stronger than him and has been tussling in far more aggressive “clinches” for many years. I don’t think he took the fight seriously, period. With Usyk, I really did admire the awkwardness that Verhoeven came with. Do I think Usyk maybe carried some rounds? Yes. I personally do think that. I think Rico Verhoeven seems like a lovely guy and he is 100% fighter, 0% bullshit. Francis Ngannou is a terrific fighter and a beast of a professional athlete. From KingSolo123: Mythical matchup: Joe Calzaghe vs Andre Ward? One of my favorite modern fantasy matchups. I go with Ward, but he does not dominate that fight. I think sometimes when you ask people, and their pick is Ward, they’re really certain he has it all his way. I don’t think so. I think he’d get the better of it, but Calzaghe would be pesky throughout. Calzaghe would annoy Ward, he’d fluster him, he’d win a handful of rounds, he’d be in it. Joe was a terrific craftsman, a clever boxer, used the clinch as a disruptor as well as anyone. Ward 116-112 in a fight that makes him never want to see Calzaghe with gloves on again. From Blood: If you could make two promoters both lose their voices whenever they approach a journalist or see a camera, which two would you pick, just to show mercy on every boxing fan on the planet? Thank you. Personally, none of them, as promoters saying goofy things drives a lot of the narrative that is “covering boxing” anymore. But to answer your question, Dana White and Oscar De La Hoya. From bozo: Do you guys ever interview boxers or others in the business, or does your collective straight-shooting and otherwise unvarnished commentary effectively disqualify you from that, or are there other reasons that make that difficult or otherwise not something you want to do? Nah, it’s not that hard. I feel like I was harsher years ago than I am now, part of being younger and more sure you’re right about stuff, and I did interviews back then with various folks. I’d never wanted to do interviews, I just find most modern boxing interviews dull in those shorter form formats, where guys are making the phoner rounds for 10 minutes at a time. My favorites were Shawn Porter and Gary Russell Jr, for what it’s worth. But it didn’t “return” much on the business end and they weren’t that great, as I’d always suspected. Gave it a go, didn’t get much from it. John’s done some good interviews with smaller names because he found stories and angles that intrigued him and he is frankly a better interviewer than I am. But I don’t do them because I just don’t get much out of it, and I doubt the fighter does, either. Save that 10 minutes, do something else. From Bonkers: Fantasy Matchup: the WBC decides to be silly in September 2012 and creates a brand new WBC Platinum Middleweight belt, overtopping JCC Jr’s belt, and allows Sergio to fight for it…against Floyd Mayweather. WHO R U PICKING Floyd. He’d have found a way. Sergio at his brief peak was a hell of a fighter — oh, jeez, I’m approaching this with FloydSpeak, that actually wasn’t on purpose — but I think if Mayweather were going to do one fight at middleweight against a top 160 lber of that time, Sergio was the guy to try. He wasn’t a natural 160 himself, and I think Martinez’s speed, which was good, wouldn’t have aided him so much against someone like Floyd, who was used to fighting quicker guys at smaller weights. It’s one thing to look really fast when the opponent is Kelly Pavlik or JCC Jr. From VeryMadMax: How do you believe Jake La Motta would fare in the currently barren middleweight division? Would he dominate thanks to his otherworldly toughness and grit or would he be too small and limited? I find it really hard to compare boxers of such different eras. Like, you’re talking about not just differences in training, in sports science, conditioning, but differences in the rules, in the way the sport is officiated. And I think maybe the actual most important thing, differences in background, upbringing, the world you’re born into and mature in playing a big role in making you who you are in your head and your heart, on top of the physical stuff. BUT! Let’s say we find the exact proper sci-fi way of bringing La Motta into the game today. He’d beat ass. I’d love to put it some other, more analytical way, but I honestly think it’s that simple. I think he would beat the crap out of the field. It wouldn’t be close. He would run roughshod. And man, before anyone thinks I’m just old, La Motta is well before my time and I really don’t have some great, romantic notion of a world I know mainly through television and film recreation. I just think of the La Motta footage I’ve seen, the stuff I’ve read, the accounts of others, I just really think he’d absolutely thrash these guys, even at 5’8” with a 67-inch reach. From Max Wills 2nd: It sounds like Turki’s health issues are extremely serious, judging by his comments at the Fury-Joshua press conference. Should he step away from the sport, what would be the impact? Presumably there’s a high chance the next chairman of the GEA isn’t a massive boxing fan and decides their millions could be better spent elsewhere? Would that be curtains for Zuffa – or will the promotional genius of Dana White ensure their takeover regardless? (After all, the man made Fury-AJ singlehandedly and knew it would be in Wales from the start.) Whether it’s Turki’s health or just a pulling of funds at some point, the Saudi boxing investment is going to end someday. I’ve said this before and I think it’s a very big deal, for obvious reasons, and that boxing promoters better be ready for that. That said, I think the sort of uncertainty and chaos that could be left in the wake of such a move might actually favor Dana White and Zuffa, who would be on somewhat even ground with the rest of the promoters, almost like a reset, and if TKO were to be told by Dana, “Hey, we’ve got a huge opening in boxing right now,” they might aggressively go after it, there’d still be a lot of money in their coffers, I imagine more than any other promoter has by a significant margin. You’re pulling money generated by UFC and WWE and could invest it into boxing, I think Eddie Hearn’s a good promoter but he can’t match that, neither can Frank Warren or anyone else. Or they might say, “Eh, we have UFC and WWE, leave boxing to its own fate, it’s not going to impact anything we do and we don’t need to spend money on it.”

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From ALroc718: Got into a little back n forth last week over which would be better for Shakur Stevenson’s legacy. Fighting and beating an almost 50 year old Pacquiao or fighting and beating any of the following at 147 Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney or Tank? Thoughts? There is no rub to gain from beating Manny […]