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It's Tuesday night and I'm Brent Brookhouse, filling in for Scott Christ who is out attending to personal issues. I hope I may serve to provide a reasonable facsimile of this, Scott's popular semi-almost-every-night feature.
There's not a lot of cute things to say about Tuesday, but there are a lot more songs about Tuesday -- or at least prominently containing the word Tuesday -- than I initially remembered. So let's listen to some music and talk about boxing stuff.
Mitchell vs. Arreloa moved to September 7
It was talked about yesterday, but it was announced by Showtime Sports today that the card headlined by Seth Mitchell vs. Chris Arreola has been bumped back a day to September 7. The move comes after Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.'s bout with Brian Vera was scrapped after Chavez suffered a cut in training. There's speculation that the cut -- or at least the severity of it -- was blown up into something more than it really was to give reason to postpone the bout and instead make Chavez vs. Andre Ward, but there's no news on that front yet.
As mentioned yesterday, the move of dates for Mitchell vs. Arreola was something Showtime viewed as positive because it provided for a strong lead-in for the Mayweather-Canelo All Access epiisode scheduled for the seventh. While that part makes sense, it is a little weird to move a live sporting event on less than a month's notice, but I don't know that there are that many people who were picking up Mitchell/Arreloa tickets early who wouldn't be willing to attend on a Saturday night instead of Friday.
Speaking of Chavez vs. Vera, it has been rescheduled except maybe not
While I was writing this up, Chavez Jr. -- or whoever is running his account -- tweeted:
September 28 at the Home Depot center Chávez jr vs brian vera
— Julio Cesar Chavez (@jcchavezjr1) August 14, 2013
But now Dan Rafael is saying:
Contrary to rumor out there the @jcchavezjr1-@BVWARRIOR fight is NOT rescheduled for Sept. 28, so says @HBOboxing #boxing
— Dan Rafael (@danrafaelespn) August 14, 2013
I don't know if it counts as a "rumor out there" when it comes from one of the fighter's official Twitter account, but let's just leave it as "uncertain."
SANCTIONING BODY CHAOS!
Not really though.
Mike Alvarado was promoted to full WBO champion at 140 pounds. He was the "interim" champ, with Juan Manuel Marquez having won the vacant title against Sergey Fedchenko. But then Marquez went to Welterweight, knocked out Manny Pacquiao and is fighting at 147 against Timothy Bradley. So the WBO has stripped Marquez of the title and promoted Alvarado to full champ.
A move that makes plenty of sense all things considered.
On the other side of things, the WBC announced that Vitali Klitschko will be out until some time in 2014. The WBC said that it's due to a "hand injury" and that they won't make a decision on Klitschko's title status until early next year.
Vitali hasn't fought since last September and the fight with mandatory challenger Bermane Stiverne has fallen apart at purse bid several times already and now is on permanent hold. Team Stiverne responded with great anger about belt hostage taking and true championship...something or other.
It's like Gatti/Ward...AGAIN! And other things
- People are stupid and can only remember one thing ever. And they also like to be reminded about that one thing they remember. So every action fight, be it during the fight or in the pre-fight build-up -- will be compared to Arturo Gatti's legendary trilogy with Micky Ward, 100% of the time. So when Todd DuBoef said that Alvarado's bout with Ruslan Provodnikov could resemble Gatti/Ward, it wasn't a shock. It was, however, a convenient reminder that HBO's Legendary Nights series returns that night with a look at the Gatti/Ward trilogy.
- If you pay attention to MMA at all -- and likely even if you don't -- you no doubt heard the rumors that Quinton "Rampage" Jackson would fight Roy Jones Jr. on a Bellator pay-per-view. That ended up not happening as Rampage is fighting Tito Ortiz in a modern day "Age In The Cage." But Rampage said earlier today that the bout was actually being planned and was "real close to happening" and "might still happen." Jackson also shared that they were going to initially fight in a straight boxing match, followed by a mixed martial arts bout later.
- David Tua's bout with Alexander Ustinov has been pushed back to November 16. I was going to make some joke about not being aware that Tua was still active, but then I looked it up and saw that he hasn't fought since 2011, so I'm not totally out of the loop or anything.
Tuesday is gone (well, in another 51 minutes)...and so am I.