Sherdog Boxing: The Weekly Wrap

I’m Furious right now! I’ve been respectful to @HeatherHardyBox from day 1. Come to findout her test came back Dirty. Mine was posted yesterday CLEAN! I’ve Never cheated in my life. Ppls life are at risk when things like this happen. @loudibella I want answers like Yesterday pic.twitter.com/4Qen0SR3YC

— Amanda Serrano (@Serranosisters) October 3, 2019

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Joseph Parker apparently got bit by a spider, which caused him to become ill enough that he had to pull out of his fight with Derrick Chisora scheduled for Oct. 26. Parker’s team wants to postpone the fight, but Eddie Hearn is insistent upon replacing him and keeping the British Heavyweight on the card (headlined by Regis Prograis-Josh Taylor). Supposedly, Hearn’s shortlist of replacement opponents includes Alexander Povetkin, Michael Hunter, Oscar Rivas, Otto Wallin, Manuel Charr and Martin Bakole. Joey Dawejko, the sparring partner who supposedly knocked out Anthony Joshua before the Andy Ruiz fight, is also lobbying to replace Parker.

Outside of everybody on boxing twitter making the same joke about a “Parker” getting bit by a spider, the most interesting thing about Parker’s pulling out is how insistent Hearn is about keeping Chisora on the card. You’ll recall that Chisora assaulted Prograis-Taylor at a re-fight press conference, declaring that nobody knows who Prograis and Taylor are, nobody cares about the WBSS or its “Muhammed Ali Trophy,” and that the card desperately needs him to sell tickets. With Hearn unwilling to postpone the fight against Parker, it would appear Chisora was right.

Yildirim, Hardy Test Positive for PEDs

Boxing’s issues with performance enhancing drugs popped up again this week, when both 168-pound fighter Avni Yildirim and 122-pound female fighter Heather Hady tested positive for banned substances. In February, Yildirim lost a WBC title fight to Anthony Dirrell in a bout cut short by an accidental headbutt. When David Benavidez beat Dirrell last week, Yildirim became Benavidez’s mandatory opponent. Unfortunately for Yildirim, that fight is very unlikely to happen since a sample from Yildirim’s training camp on Sept. 13 tested positive for both DHCMT and methylclostebol.

Heather Hardy’s situation is far worse. This week, a VADA sample found she tested positive for a banned diuretic called furosemide. While Yildirim essentially shot himself in the foot, Hardy’s last opponent, Amanda Serrano, went nuts on Twitter about having fought a fighter who may have been hiding PED usage. She wrote “I’m Furious right now! I’ve been respectful to @HeatherHardyBox from day 1. Come to findout her test came back Dirty. Mine was posted yesterday CLEAN! I’ve Never cheated in my life. Ppls life are at risk when things like this happen @loudibella I want answers like Yesterday.” She also (rightfully) went on to talk about how dangerous boxing is, and how fighting someone on PEDs is such an added risk.

Hardy is claiming she tested negative for PEDs but tested positive for a prescription drug she was taking and vowed to figure out what was going on. If you Google furosemide, you’ll find all sorts of articles about MLB player Robinson Cano getting busted for doing the same thing. So, while we’ll have to wait and see if Hardy is telling the truth or not, there is a history of the drug being used to mask PEDs.

While Russian boxer Shavkat Rakhimov never tested positive for PED’s following his stoppage of Azinga Fuzile, his hotel room was full of them. While he’s also being investigated for using smelling salts during the fight, the drugs have South Africa threatening to never allow Rakhimov into their country again. It will be interesting to see what the IBF (the fight was a title eliminator for Tevin Farmer’s belt) does if all his tests come back clean, in the face of such damning circumstantial evidence (the PED’s had Russian labels).

Boxing HOF Ballot Includes Hopkins, Marquez

The International Boxing Hall of Fame announced its newest crop of fighters to be placed on the ballot for the first time, with names like Bernard Hopkins, Juan Manuel Marquez, Jorge Arce, Timothy Bradley Jr., Vuyani Bungu, Joel Casamayor, Diego “Chico” Corrales, Carl Froch, Sergio Martinez, Juan Manuel Marquez, Shane Mosley, Antonio Tarver and Israel Vazquez making their first appearances. The reason why there are so many first-timers is because the IBHOF made a few rule changes to the process.

Firstly, fighters only need to have been retired for three years to be eligible (the old rule was five). The other big rule change is that fighters only need to get eighty percent of votes to get in (the old rule was that only the top three vote getters would be enshrined). Because more than three fighters will be enshrined at once, the rule that fighters could be on the ballots for an indefinite period of time was abolished. Fighters now only have ten years to make the hall or not.

From this crew, Hopkins, Marquez and Mosley are no-brainers. Sergio Martinez is interesting, seeing how he carried the middleweight division for years but doesn’t have any huge wins on his resume with Pavlik, Chavez Jr. and Martin Murray making up the biggest names on his boxrec page outside of Paul Williams (in fairness, if Paul Williams never gets in a motorcycle accident, who knows how big a win that could have proven). There’s also the issue that by the time of GGG’s ascension, Martinez’s knees were shot and he smartly decided he didn’t need those kinds of problems for what would have been so little money.

Corrales had those great fights with Castillo but didn’t have any great wins. Froch beat Jermain Taylor, Jean Pascal and, of course, knocked out George Groves in front of 80,000 people at Wembley Stadium, but lost to Ward and Mikkel Kessler and never fought past 168. Tim Bradley’s a nice guy with a “win” over Pacquaio, but if I had to guess I’ll say from the first timer list we see Hopkins, Mosley, Marquez and, in a mild surprise, Sergio Martinez all get in.

Molina Retires After Benavidez Loss

Less than a week after his loss to Jose Benavidez, 36-year-old John Molina took a look at where he was in his career and decided he would call it quits. Molina is retiring with a career record of 30-9 with 24 knockouts, and though he never won a legitimate world title, he did fight some of the biggest names in boxing including Terence Crawford, Adrien Broner and Lucas Matthysse.

Radio DJ Suing De La Hoya

A Radio DJ named David “Tattoo” Gonzalez, who did a ton of announcing work for Golden Boy Promotions is suing Oscar De La Hoya for abuse of power. Apparently, De La Hoya “improperly demanded” that Gonzalez “perform a wide range of highly personal, improper and illicit non-work-related duties at De La Hoya’s request and on his behalf. Among various things, on countless occasions over the course of over three years, De La Hoya would contact (Tattoo) at all hours of the night in need of help from various compromising situations and, in most cases, assisting a De La Hoya out of life-threatening situations while he was highly intoxicated and under the influence of various substances.”. Among various things, on countless occasions over the course of over three years, De La Hoya would contact (Tattoo) at all hours of the night in need of help from various compromising situations and, in most cases, assisting a De La Hoya out of life-threatening situations while he was highly intoxicated and under the influence of various substances.”

De La Hoya’s partying habits have been well-known for a long time (think of the infamous drag pictures). But when you are in such insane circumstances, that a man who has shot his father, got tazed in the testicles, and has a forehead tattoo that says “I slept with Shaq” is so disturbed that he’s suing you, there have to be some bonkers stories Gonzalez is about to start telling.