Latest news with #TopRank
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Josh Taylor, former undisputed champion, announces retirement from boxing due to eye injury
Scotland's Josh Taylor has been forced to call time on his storied career. Taylor, 34, announced his retirement from professional boxing on Monday morning due to a recurring eye injury. "The Tartan Tornado" says he was advised by doctors to hang up his gloves or risk losing his eyesight. Taylor (19-3, 13 KOs) was the first four-belt undisputed champion from Britain. He won the World Boxing Super Series (WBSS) in 2019, which included wins over IBF super lightweight champion Ivan Baranchyk and WBA titleist Regis Prograis. After emerging out of the WBSS with two belts, Taylor chased the other two titles — held by Jose Ramirez — by signing with Ramirez's promoter, Bob Arum's Top Rank. Taylor ultimately defeated Ramirez in 2021 in Las Vegas to unify the four 140-pound belts. Since then, however, Taylor's career has been nothing short of a nightmare. The Scotsman announced his homecoming title defense against little-known mandatory challenger Jack Catterall. In the opinion of many, Catterall deserved to win on the scorecards on that February 2022 night in Glasgow, but was denied the verdict after a heavily disputed decision went in favor of the local fighter. Taylor gave up three of his championships attempting to make a rematch with Catterall, but that failed, and then he was ordered to defend his WBO belt against Teofimo Lopez. Lopez took Taylor's final title by unanimous decision in 2023. A deal was finally reached for a much-anticipated Taylor vs. Catterall rematch following that defeat — and this time the judges did get it right. Catterall was awarded the decision over Taylor in Leeds, England, in the rematch. Looking for a fresh start after essentially three defeats on the bounce, Taylor moved up to welterweight earlier this year and signed with Frank Warren's Queensberry Promotions to undergo one final run in his career. Essuman, however, outworked and outfought Taylor to hand him another defeat. Although Taylor's retirement officially comes due to an eye injury, the trajectory of his career was heading in that direction anyway. Taylor's journey to capturing all of the belts at super lightweight was special, and he will hope that is his legacy in the sport.
New York Times
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
If Jake Paul is boxing's biggest draw, what does that say about the sport?
Jake Paul has another boxing match on Saturday. Thousands will scream they don't care. However, millions more will pay for the privilege to watch. Love it or loathe it, Paul, who first entered the public eye by posting videos on social media of sophomoric pranks, has become the biggest draw in American boxing, and that's been great for him. Advertisement This weekend's pay-per-view bout on DAZN against former world champion Julio César Chávez Jr. in Anaheim, Calif., will be his eighth headline fight since 2021. Paul has reportedly earned more than $60 million in his brief in-ring career. What it says about the state of the sport is not so clear. 'I think Jake Paul is brilliant as a marketer and an influencer,' said Todd duBoef, the president of Top Rank, a boxing promotion company. 'And I think he's done an incredible job. But I don't really believe it has anything to do with boxing.' The numbers don't lie, though. An estimated 108 million viewers caught at least a live glimpse of Paul dancing around a 58-year-old Mike Tyson on Netflix last year in a bout that arrived with maximum hype but quickly devolved into an unsatisfying spectacle. Paul won the fight by unanimous decision. Many observers decried the event's very existence. However, it did little to dim Paul's drawing power. 'I've embraced the hate and done things consistently to push people's buttons, to build that hate even more,' Paul said in a recent interview. It's an old-school formula he's leaned into with new-school annoyance, and Paul is well aware that people will tune in hoping to see him get knocked out. 'In this sport, monetizing that hate can be very lucrative,' he said. 'You look at all the big people — they were all villains, from Floyd (Mayweather) to Mike Tyson to Muhammad Ali. People forget Muhammad Ali was one of the most hated figures in the world. I see myself as a similar story.' That Paul would be brazen enough to mention himself in the same breath as three of boxing's all-time greats is the type of antic that drives many to root against him. Ali, after all, came to prominence during the Civil Rights era, when his unapologetic confidence upended the expectation that Black athletes would be quiet and humble. He unleashed some of the most poetic trash talk the sports world has ever heard, but his anti-war stance cost him his champion belts and years of his boxing prime. Advertisement Paul faces nothing like that kind of pressure. His public career began with prank skits on Vine. He later skirted COVID-19 restrictions in California by throwing large parties and was sued by his neighbors for being a public nuisance. His résumé includes beating a retired NBA player and former MMA fighters years past their prime. It doesn't take a trained eye to know that Paul's talk of eventual world titles is all talk; the imperfection in his 11-1 professional record was a loss to journeyman-turned-reality star Tommy Fury. And yet the 28-year-old Paul believes he would be heralded as the next great American prospect if he weren't a YouTuber with Disney Channel roots. The sport's purists would scoff at that. Boxing's check-engine light may glow brighter with each of his ring walks, but he is undeniably a magnet for attention. 'I don't know why he set his sights on boxing,' said boxing historian and commentator Mark Kriegel, the author of Tyson's biography. 'But it was a pretty smart calculation.' Paul has become the rare promoter who straps on gloves and turns himself into the product. 'I think he might be one of three people in my lifetime who understand the media better than the media understands itself,' Kriegel said. 'The other two being Al Sharpton and Donald Trump. He just has an intuitive sense of what people want.' The greatest promoters have always built hype, provoked engagement and told stories. However, in a crowded media space where sports are competing with TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, HBO and Hulu for attention, the modern-day promoter needs a breakthrough. Enter boxing, a sport in desperate need of an American disruptor. 'Content is king,' Paul said. 'And I think that's where I come into the picture — telling the stories, using my platform, promoting these events and promoting other fighters.' Advertisement Top Rank's duBoef sees it and calls Paul wonderful for the industry, but he draws a hard line between Paul's spectacle and the sport itself. When duBoef considers the health of boxing, he views it through a global prism. He starts in Japan, where there's a renaissance behind pound-for-pound king Naoya Inoue. In England, he points to Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois at Wembley Stadium on July 19. In North America, he cites Canelo Álvarez and David Benavidez, who draw massive crowds. The biggest fight in the sport in 2025 is likely to be Álvarez facing Terence Crawford on Sept. 13 in Las Vegas. For duBoef, Paul's fights live in a different bucket. An entertainment adjacent to boxing, in the same way that the PGA Tour shouldn't be concerned about Aaron Rodgers battling Tom Brady in 'The Match.' Paul would have been just as successful playing three-on-three basketball, chess, tennis or pickleball, DuBoef believes. In a moment of humble levity, Paul echoed duBoef, to a point. 'I think there are better boxers,' Paul said, acknowledging the Benavidezes and Inoues of the world. 'But outside of the ring, I'm one of the most important in boxing. Just because of the new eyeballs running to the sport.' The eyeballs Paul is drawing into boxing aren't just for him. He's helping to make names out of others, too, cultivating an ecosystem of potential future stars within his Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) brand, in the same vein as Mayweather Promotions and Golden Boy Promotions. The November rematch between Amanda Serrano, who is signed to a lifetime deal with MVP, and Katie Taylor thrived so mightily on the Paul-Tyson undercard in November that the women will headline their trilogy in Madison Square Garden on their own Netflix card this summer. 'It's too easy to dismiss him as just a provocateur,' Kriegel said. 'Promoters promote. There are too many promoters in this sport who just hang out a shingle and let someone with money pay for their promotion. You wouldn't have seen Serrano-Taylor 2 reach that audience if it weren't for that card.' Advertisement Whether that's inspiring, infuriating, repulsive or innovative, Paul's persisting existence in boxing is certainly not neutral. For those who believe boxing should be about skill, belts, rankings and legacies, Paul is a warning sign. For those who prize entertainment, reach and pop-culture relevance, then Paul is the adrenaline shot the sport needs. Either way, feeling anything is infinitely more valuable than apathy. 'That Gen Z category all got aware of the sport,' duBoef said. Yes, Paul has another boxing match scheduled for this month. Don't tune in for world-class footwork or heady feints. However, don't think ignoring it will make it go away. A man many boxing purists despise just might be essential to the sport's health. 'It seems to me like there's this elaborate dance,' Kriegel said. 'And most of the time he gets what he wants.' (Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic. Photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Jin Sasaki's vicious knockout defeat to Brian Norman Jr. epitomizes the brutal reality of combat sports
Jin Sasaki took a beating before getting knocked out in the fifth round of his fight vs. Brian Norman Jr. (Photo courtesy Naoki Fukuda/Top Rank) Jin Sasaki was awake in a hospital bed Thursday night with no visible signs of brain damage. It appears to be positive news, but ask Sasaki how he ended up being stretchered in an ambulance to a local hospital, and he wouldn't have a clue. Advertisement That is because Sasaki is reportedly suffering from around six weeks of memory loss. Not only can the Japanese welterweight not remember his brutal KO loss to Brian Norman Jr. on Thursday for the WBO world title, but he also cannot recall anything that happened this past month or for the majority of May either. That is the brutal reality of boxing — and indeed of combat sports. On one end of the spectrum, you have a 24-year-old American world champion ascending into a boxing star. On the other, there's a 23-year-old who doesn't know where he is or why he's there. Sasaki was floored twice in the opening round by Norman Jr. It was clear within 90 seconds of the fight that Norman was the superior boxer, and Sasaki's chances of winning the fight were slim, at best. The writing was on the wall, and the bout should've been stopped there and then, but Sasaki and his training team were too proud to lose in that fashion in Sasaki's first world title challenge in his home city of Tokyo. Instead, Sasaki fought fire with fire, trading with the smarter and stronger Norman Jr. He smiled at the conclusion of Round 1 when he went back to his corner; he seemed happy to be involved in a fight that he couldn't really win. Advertisement Sasaki continued to absorb heavy punishment from Norman. He nodded his head, acknowledging that Norman was hurting him with power punches, and even spoke to Norman during the action in Round 3, imploring the champion to continue attempting to finish him with big shots, as Norman's current output wasn't enough to deter Sasaki from coming forward — or so he claimed. Norman continued to put a beating on Sasaki, landing heavy artillery to the challenger's face and visibly forcing him off his stance. In Round 5, however, it all came to a sensational end. Norman landed a devastating left hook that saw Sasaki's head concerningly thump onto the canvas, with the boxer flat on his back for over a minute after the punch landed. Norman refused to celebrate after landing the best shot of his career. There was grave concern for Sasaki's well-being in the immediate aftermath of the knockout, with Sasaki's team and ringside doctors crowding his still body in the ring. It was an avoidable end to a brutal fight. Advertisement The bottom line: Fighters need saving from themselves. Every shot Sasaki took after the second knockdown in the first round was unnecessarily taking time off his career — and potentially even his life. Sasaki is a young fighter who could reach the top level of the sport again. He did not need to absorb the potentially life-changing punishment that he received on Thursday. It remains to be seen whether Sasaki will ever be the same fighter. He might not be, and he only has his corner team — the people whose job it is to look after his best interests — to blame for that.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Abdullah Mason vs. Sam Noakes ordered for vacant WBO lightweight title
Abdullah Mason (L) could fight for his first world title after the WBO ordered a bout between Mason and fellow rising contender Sam Noakes for the vacant lightweight belt. (Photo by) The WBO has now officially ordered Abdullah Mason and Sam Noakes to contest the vacant WBO lightweight title. Unbeaten contenders Mason, 21, and Noakes, 27, occupy the No. 1 and No. 2 positions in the governing body's rankings. The pair have 20 days to reach a deal, or purse bids will be called. Mason, Uncrowned's runner-up for 2024 Prospect of the Year, is represented by Bob Arum's Top Rank, while Noakes is with Frank Warren's Queensberry Promotions. Advertisement The development comes as a result of Keyshawn Davis being stripped of his WBO title Friday after he missed weight by over 4 pounds for his title defense against Edwin De Los Santos. The bout was subsequently canceled just 24 hours before it was scheduled to take place, and ironically it was Mason who was upgraded to the headliner for the event. Mason (19-0, 17 KOs) stopped Jeremia Nakathila at the beginning of Round 5 in their ESPN-televised main event bout Friday in Norfolk. Mason voiced his desire to fight for a world title immediately afterward. Noakes (17-0, 15 KOs) last fought in May, when he knocked out Patrik Balaz in three rounds in a tune-up bout. The Brit was planning a fight with Ireland's Jono Carroll in August, sources close to the situation told Uncrowned. But after Davis missed weight and it was apparent that Noakes would be in line for a title shot, the bout with Carroll was scrapped. On Tuesday evening, boxing financier Turki Alalshikh named Mason among a list of fighters he wanted to feature on the Saul "Canelo" Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford card, which is scheduled for Sept. 13 and is to be streamed live on Netflix. Mason's maiden title shot against Noakes carries a real possibility of landing on the aforementioned show.
USA Today
07-06-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Abdullah Mason vs. Jeremia Nakathila: Predictions, odds for fight in Top Rank main event
Abdullah Mason vs. Jeremia Nakathila: Predictions, odds for fight in Top Rank main event Abdullah Mason vs. Jeremia Nakathila will serve as the new headliner for Top Rank's card on Saturday, after the promotion was forced to pivot on Friday. It will be a 10-round lightweight showdown held at the Scope Arena in Virginia. The fight will serve as the main event following the cancellation of the WBO lightweight world title fight between Keyshawn Davis and Edwin De Los Santos. Davis did not make weight and was stripped of the title. Mason enters the fight unbeaten with a record of 18 wins and 16 knockouts during his career. Nakathila has a record of 26-4, with 21 of those wins coming by knockout. He also has been defeated twice by knockout. It will be Nakathila's first fight back in the United States after winning three consecutive fights in Southern Africa. He lost his last two fights to Ernesto Mercado and Raymond Muratalla. Here are the current predictions, odds and how to watch Abdullah Mason take on Jeremia Nakathila. More: Why Keyshawn Davis vs. Edwin De Los Santos fight was canceled Abdullah Mason vs Jeremia Nakathila predictions DAZN: Mason expected to overcome experienced Nakathila Mark Lelinwalla writes: 'Yes, Nakathila has an experience edge that Mason will have to overcome. Still, DAZN News has the Ohio native with a 2-1 edge heading into Saturday night's bout as he certainly possesses all the sweet science tools to deliver a scintillating statement.' Bet365: Mason expected to earn quick victory Rob Tebbutt writes: 'Not one to waste time, Mason has only been past four rounds in three of his 18 professional contests, and it's fair to say that I don't expect that to change this weekend. "My lock is for the fight to be over inside the opening six minutes, but given both Muratalla and Mercado finished the job in two rounds, I fully expect Mason to one-up them and try and close the show in the opening round…' Betfred: Mason to win it Joey Mills writes: 'I am going to go for Mason to take this in round five at 8/1, allowing for the underdog to have brought a smidgen of self-preservation into his game.' Abdullah Mason vs Jeremia Nakathila odds Odds according to BetMGM as of Saturday, June 7 at 2 a.m. ET. Abdullah Mason: -3000 -3000 Jeremia Nakathila: +850 How to watch Abdullah Mason vs Jeremia Nakathila: Date: Saturday, June 7, 2025 Time: 10 p.m. ET (Undercard 5:10 p.m. ET) Location: Scope Arena, Norfolk, Virginia TV: ESPN Streaming: ESPN+
