No Holds Barred: Bernard Hopkins, Brother Naazim Richardson, Kristal Hart

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman speaks with light heavyweight boxing champion Bernard Hopkins and his trainer, Brother Naazim Richardson, about the rematch between Hopkins and Chad Dawson scheduled for April 28 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. We also speak with New York TV host Kristal Hart of Manhattan Neighborhood Network about this fight. All these discussions were recorded Wednesday at the kickoff New York news conference for this fight.

You can play or download No Holds Barred here. You can also download No Holds Barred here. If one link does not work, please try another. The show is in MP3 format, so may take some time to download.

No Holds Barred is also available on mobile phones and iPads through Stitcher.

Also, No Holds Barred is available through iTunes.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", by Ian Carpenter.

No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

ONE Fighting Championship. ONE FC is Asia's largest and most prestigious mixed martial arts event. ONE FC features the best Asian fighters and has initiated the ONE Asia Partnership Network, which includes most of the major MMA promotions and MMA gyms in Asia. For more information, go to their web site, at ONEFC.com.

DARE Championship. Based in Thailand, DARE is a mixed martial arts event where fighters from all over the world compete to become the DARE Champion. DARE is one of the first MMA promotions in Thailand, and has been televised in many countries and online. For more information, go to their web site, at DareFightSports.com.

Beezid.com - Penny Auctions. Your #1 source for exciting auction shopping and outstanding deals on just about anything! Top rated, most trusted auction site online. Where do you shop? Beezid.com - Penny Auctions.

American Top Team. Whether you're a beginner or a champion, train with the champions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling, grappling, and mixed martial arts at American Top Team. Check out their web site at http://americantopteam.com/.

The American Sambo Association, which is committed to becoming the premier association in the U.S. dedicated to the advancement of Sambo. Sambo is a form of sport, self-defense, and combat established in the former Soviet Union during the early twentieth century. For more information, go to ussambo.com.

No Holds Barred: Bernard Hopkins, Chad Dawson, Kendall Holt, Danny Garcia, Paulie Malignaggi

On this audio edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman previews the October 15 boxing card headlined by the light heavyweight title fight between Bernard Hopkins and Chad Dawson.

The 46-year-old Hopkins, the oldest boxer ever to win a major title, will be defending his WBC belt against the 29-year-old Dawson, a former WBC and IBF champion, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. This card will be telecast in the U.S. HBO Pay-Per-View.

We spoke with both Bernard Hopkins and Chad Dawson on media conference calls where both fighters stated their cases as to why they will prevail in this fight. The legendary Hopkins explained what he represents to people and how he wants to be known, besides being a champion boxer. Dawson argued that he has the tools and desire to beat his older opponent, and is highly motivated for this fight.

We also explain why you should never, ever, bet against Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins.

In addition, we also spoke with Kendall Holt and Danny Garcia, who fight in a junior welterweight bout, and Paulie Malignaggi, who faces Orlando Lora in a welterweight fight, on this show.

You can play or download No Holds Barred here. You can also download No Holds Barred here. If one link does not work, please try another. The show is in MP3 format, so may take some time to download.

Also, No Holds Barred is available through iTunes.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", by Ian Carpenter.

No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

Beezid.com - Penny Auctions. Your #1 source for exciting auction shopping and outstanding deals on just about anything! Top rated, most trusted auction site online. Where do you shop? Beezid.com - Penny Auctions.

American Top Team. Whether you're a beginner or a champion, train with the champions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling, grappling, and mixed martial arts at American Top Team. Check out their web site at http://americantopteam.com/.

The American Sambo Association, which is committed to becoming the premier association in the U.S. dedicated to the advancement of Sambo. Sambo is a form of sport, self-defense, and combat established in the former Soviet Union during the early twentieth century. For more information, go to ussambo.com.

Is Civilization Ruining Boxing?

Back in them good ol’ days, before politicians, newspaper writers, and preachers started sticking their dirty noses into the manly art of fighting, two guys would go out to the woods, fight without gloves or any of that other sissy stuff, and duke it out until one, or perhaps both, could no longer continue.

That bare knuckle era, where rounds ended with a knockdown but fights ended only with a finish, was replaced by the twentieth century with the more civilized approach we have today. Politicians now directly regulate the sport of professional boxing, there are all sorts of rules and regulations, and a scoring system is in place since you can no longer have those old-fashioned finish fights.

The politicians, in their boundless empathy for humanity, have also given us what they call rules of war. You can no longer use such nasty tactics as torture or poison gasses, and instead have to be content with the more humane love taps of carpet bombing and nuclear weapons. Gas chambers, car bombings, genocide, and the like today draw the ire of these politicians, so long, of course, as they are only used by their enemies.

Now that boxing is so civilized and gentlemanly, we are running into one scoring controversy after another in major fights virtually every week. Last week, as we discussed in a previous thread, it was the apparent robbery of Glen Johnson in his April 12 fight with Chad Dawson. Now we have a new controversy arising from Joe Calzaghe’s split decision victory over Bernard Hopkins April 19.

While Calzaghe’s win was hardly a robbery and many people who watched that fight believe that Calzaghe may have eked out a decision and won the boxing match under the civilized scoring of the unified rules of boxing, it was Hopkins who won the fight. Calzaghe may have set a CompuBox record by landing the most punches ever against Hopkins in any of the 43-year-old’s previous fights, but few did much damage and many were just slapping blows with little impact.

So what do we want, fighting or boxing? Is this current scoring system on the way to reducing boxing to becoming a symbolic contest, like fencing, or, worse, Olympic boxing? How do we balance these contradictory imperatives of having a fight while making sure it is supposedly reasonably safe? And how do we alter this scoring system with which no one is satisfied and yields on an almost weekly basis bad decisions in major fights?

Cleaning out the obvious political influence in the care and feeding of judges is one thing. But when so many unbiased and educated observers regularly disagree about who really won these fights, then the subjectivity of the scoring system must be examined, and the parameters of how to score must be changed.

Or, we could just let the boys slug it out till only one of them is left standing. Maybe we can let the politicians fine tune the return to finish fights by trying it out themselves before inflicting this upon the boxers. Then again, maybe they have never become half as civilized as boxing is today.

April 12: Good, But Not The Best

Baseball, for those who still believe in it, is back with yet another season set to culminate in a World Series, as happens every year (except 1994). American football is still buzzing about the upset victory in the Super Bowl by the Giants. Other professional sports, including NBA basketball and NHL hockey, are gearing up for their playoffs. Boxing, as we know, has no season and rarely has organized elimination tournaments.

The two televised boxing cards scheduled for this Saturday, April 12, on HBO and on Showtime, at times which deliberately overlap, each feature two fights in the same weight class on their respective shows. While several of the top fighters in these divisions will appear on these shows, none of these fights pits the best against the best at those weights.

HBO has a welterweight doubleheader from Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In their two title fights, WBA welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (31-0, 25 KOs) will defend his belt against the popular but limited Alfonso Gomez (18-3-2, 8 KOs) of “The Contender”, and IBF welterweight champion Kermit Cintron (29-1, 27 KOs) will try to avenge the only defeat of his professional career when he fights Antonio Margarito (35-5, 25 KOs).

The best in this division is Floyd Mayweather Jr. He is more or less taking a sabbatical, appearing on BET’s “Iron Ring” mixed martial arts series, acting on the disgraceful pro “wrestling” circuit, and then likely having a highly unanticipated rematch with Oscar De La Hoya in September which will be hyped as another chapter in “The Mayweather Family” soap opera, focusing on which Mayweather is training whom, and so on.

In Mayweather’s absence, Cotto, after KO’ing Zab Judah and decisioning Shane Mosley last year, is also trying to take a breather. After Gomez, he likely will face Ricardo Mayorga in the summer. Mayorga has fought just once in 2005, 2006, and 2007, getting stopped by De La Hoya in his 2006 cameo. Cotto-Mayorga may be an entertaining slugfest while it lasts, but it is certainly not the best against the best.

Cintron was taken apart three years ago by Margarito. Since then, he has stopped all five of his opponents and claims to be a more mature and improved fighter. But none of his victims has been top-tier welterweights. Margarito, destroying Golden Johnson in one round after dropping a close decision to Paul Williams last year, may have slowed a bit since first facing Cintron, so this fight has the potential to be more competitive than their first. In any case, while a good matchup, it still is not the best against the best. Even if the winner faces Cotto in a partial unification bout, we should not have to wait another year or even more for a welterweight World Series.

The light heavyweight fights on Showtime are being billed as featuring the best in that division. Almost, but not so. Their April 12 card, from the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, Florida, features former undisputed light heavyweight champion, 39-year-old Antonio Tarver (26-4, 19 KOs), against IBF light heavyweight champion, 35-year-old Clinton Woods (41-3-1, 24 KOs), and one of the rising stars in boxing, 25-year-old WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson (25-0, 17 KOs), against former world champion, 39-year-old Glen Johnson (47-11-2, 32 KOs).

Clearly this is being staged as some sort of limited playoff, with the winners advancing to a partial unification. The Tarver-Woods winner has the IBF belt, and will likely next face the Dawson-Johnson winner, who will hold the WBC belt. Again, however, it is not the best against the best.

The linear light heavyweight champion is 43-year-old Bernard Hopkins, who faces super middleweight king Joe Calzaghe the following week, and on HBO. The undefeated Dawson is clearly the future of the division, but he needs a marquee opponent to gain recognition, both from the public and the slow-witted boxing media. If, as expected, Dawson wins Saturday’s fight, and impressively enough, he can next get a partial unification fight and then stand in line for whatever is left of the division after Hopkins-Calzaghe – and perhaps have to jump to HBO as well.

So Saturday’s cards overall should be good and interesting, and be viewed by all boxing people, despite the stubborn network war which has these being shown live at almost the same time. Both networks offer replays, or you can record one while watching the other live.

I will be in Atlantic City this weekend, first covering the YAMMA Pit Fighting mixed martial arts show Friday and then the boxing Saturday. I’ll tape the Showtime card and watch it when I return home. Hopefully some of you reading this will be at one of these shows.

If you are in Atlantic City, let me know when you are going to the Mountain Bar at Bally’s Wild Wild West. That bar also may not be the best, bit it is still plenty good.