Corey Erdman

By Corey Erdman - Eduardo “Rocky” Hernandez arrived at the Cancun Convention Center for his WBC super featherweight title bout against champion O’Shaquie Foster around three hours before the opening bell would ring. Convention centers, as one might imagine, aren’t equipped with locker rooms as an arena would be, so the dressing rooms on this night were either empty

By Corey Erdman - Fighters whose professional journey began the way Steve Claggett’s did typically don’t win up headlining a card on an ESPN platform. For many years, Claggett bounced between short-term promotional deals and self-promotion, and was starting to become thought of and treated by the industry as a high-level opponent, a fighter who was good on the Canadian scene but not quite good enough to thrive outside of it.

The art of matchmaking in boxing is a practice of toeing several lines at once. The one between giving your fighter confidence and giving them a learning experience. The one at the intersection of actual danger based on skill and perceived danger based on name value. The one between delivering an impressive performance under duress and creating doubt in the fanbase’s minds.

Everyone who has achieved anything has that formative moment in their lives in which it became clear that their wildest dreams weren’t as far-fetched as they might have seemed, the moment when they realized they had what it takes.

By Corey Erdman - Ryan Garcia has used Lupe Fiasco’s 2007 song Superstar as his entrance music several times in his career, first against Romero Duno, then for his bout against Francisco Fonseca. At the time, his relation to the song may have been more surface-level. Garcia was a fighter whose popularity vastly outpaced his achievement, a highly-touted prospect drawing numbers on television and at the gate comparable to established champions.

By Corey Erdman - For large portions of Devin Haney’s dominant victory over Regis Prograis, DAZN commentators Sergio Mora and Shawn Porter, themselves former world champion boxers, outwardly praised Haney’s abilities. While the role of a color commentator most often includes making tactical suggestions towards either participant, on this night that would have been moot. Haney had it all figured out, and so long as he was in the flow state he was in, there was little Prograis could do about it. The appreciation, and sometimes astonishment was evident in their voices, as Haney glided around the ring untouched, landing picture perfect jabs, right hands and left hooks to the body.

By Corey Erdman - This is the time of year when everyone is making New Year’s resolutions, deciding upon what they’ll accomplish in 2024 without having begun the work to accomplish it. Goal setting is important, as any self-help book will tell you, but equally as important is not working in absolutes, or setting goals so lofty that you’ll let yourself down. The latter is the rake that boxing can step on every once in a while, taking an unexpected blow to the face as it saunters towards its best laid plans.

There aren’t too many things you can count on in boxing, but Kazuto Ioka fighting on New Year’s Eve is one of them. Since his third year as a pro, Ioka headlining on the final day of the year has been an annual event, save for a brief retirement in 2017. The end of the year and the beginning of the new one is a particularly exciting time for Japanese sports, when international football friendlies, the Ekiden relay race, New Japan Pro Wrestling’s Wrestle Kingdom, various MMA and kickboxing events and more are always scheduled. In boxing, its biggest stars fight at the end of the year, and in present day, that means Naoya Inoue and Ioka, the country’s most popular fighters and two of its most accomplished ever.

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Joshua Buatsi has talked about wanting to be more active, having fought once in each of the last two years after a beginning to a pro career that had some observers declaring him to be the future of the light heavyweight division. Buatsi was so committed to the mission of being more active that he was willing to fight his good friend Dan Azeez this past weekend.