Friday's heavyweight edition of Shobox turned out to be a two-fight winner, with undefeated Americans Eddie Chambers and Chris Arreola beating Dominick Guinn and Malcolm Tann, respectively.
Arreola and Tann put on a hell of a show in the opener -- more accurately, Arreola put on a hell of a show. Tann talked a lot and seemed to have no idea that he was getting destroyed in there. Hell, I scored two rounds 10-8 that had no knockdown, just where Tann did absolutely nothing. Arreola pressured the taller fighter the entire way, and Tann never established a jab to make him pay for coming in. Arreola finally knocked Tann out of the ring in the eighth and final round, scoring his 18th knockout in 20 fights. Tann was heard describing the stoppage as "bullshit," but again, Tann clearly had no clue that he hadn't accomplished anything in the entire fight.
Chambers/Guinn was a very interesting fight, really. I thought Guinn was winning the fight for a while before Chambers completely disrupted him and took over in the second half of the 10-rounder. Brent and I agreed that Guinn fought a stupid fight, and really could have beaten the slicker, faster Chambers. But as has been the story with Guinn for a while now, it's a lot of "could've" and another L in his record. He fought tough and valiantly, and he tested Chambers, but in the end, Guinn wasn't good enough to beat him. He's 28-5-1 now, and he has slipped to the level of fighter that he was fighting to not be: An opponent for rising possible contenders.
In a non-televised fight, Malik Scott improved to 28-0 with a ten-round unanimous decision against veteran Charles Shufford (20-7-1). Shufford may have been Scott's toughest opponent thus far, which isn't saying a whole lot.
Across town at the MGM Grand, Hugo Cazares knocked out Wilfrido Valdez Perez in the second round to successfully defend the WBO light flyweight title. Cazares (25-3-1) is now set to take on Ivan "Iron Boy" Calderon in August in Puerto Rico. Calderon (28-0) is finally stepping out of the mini flyweight division, though his fights are still likely to draw as much American interest as they did before. It's just hard to know how to rank or consider ranking Calderon among pound-for-pound fighters. I find the same is true for cruisers. One is just too small, and the other somehow isn't quite big enough.
Don't forget (as if you could, or as if we'd let you): We are LIVE on Saturday night for de la hoya/Mayweather, with round-by-round scoring and coverage of the biggest fight in five years. It seems almost impossible that it's actually here, but we're on the eve of what equates to the Super Bowl, World Series, Kentucky Derby, Masters or Wimbledon of boxing.