Has Ryan Garcia regained his senses?
Or Jose Ramirez, his hunger?
Can Devin Haney take a punch?
And which version of Teofimo Lopez shows up?
Friday’s truly interesting Times Square card should provide some preliminary answers. But to me, the issue of greatest consequence has to do with the guy no one’s talking about: Arnold Barboza Jr.
Unlike his opponent, Lopez — who, when he’s right, remains as electric a talent as there is in all of boxing — Barboza doesn’t get much buzz. He’s not a social media star, never even had a public meltdown. Actually, he’s something of a novelty here: just a fighter, albeit a pretty good one — 33 years old, and at 32-0, ridiculously overdue for a world title shot. The rules have changed since Barboza debuted back in 2013. Apparently, being just a really good fighter is no longer good enough.
Still, the question going forward — especially germane for the principals of this nascent TKO boxing league, UFC boss Dana White, WWE president Nick Khan (full disclosure: my former agent) and the guy with the bankroll, the Saudi financier Turki Alalshikh — is: Can that change? Being a fighter is a plenty tough gig — you risk your life, after all — without having to be some kind of online provocateur. Is there a construct that simply allows good fighters to be good fighters, and from their midst, as will inevitably happen, comes the occasional great one?
Put another way, can you make boxing a sport again?
“When I debuted,” says Barboza, of El Monte, California, “social media wasn’t even a thing. It wasn’t until like 2020 that it really began to change.” In fact, Barboza had been in line for a world title shot going back to 2019, when Top Rank promoter Bob Arum mentioned him as a likely next opponent for then-WBC junior welterweight champion Jose Ramirez. To Ramirez’s credit, however, he went instead to Texas, added Maurice Hooker’s title to his collection and Barboza went the WBO route (Top Rank’s preferred sanctioning body) in pursuit of a belt.
Sure enough, Barboza has won some good fights toward that end, most recently upsetting English southpaw Jack Catterall in Manchester, England. He is now the “interim” champion, one of several supposedly prestigious WBO distinctions he has earned along the way, including the organization’s “International” and “Inter-Continental” titles. These secondary belts may seem nice trinkets — certainly they afford the fighter protection against a draft as he makes his ring walk — but even so interested an observer as Arnold Barboza Sr., his son’s trainer and erstwhile manager, fails to distinguish among them. “To me, they’re all of the same,” he says, referring to the customary sanctioning fee. “Three percent [sanctioning fee] of the purse.”
The sanctioning bodies — let’s be clear, all of them — are about pay to play. You want to be a contender? Ante up. Meanwhile, Barboza — a top-5 guy for most of this decade and the WBO’s No. 1-ranked fighter at 140 pounds since June 2023 — has jumped through all the hoops he has been required to — though he did pass on a pretty good fighter from Chicago named Kenny Sims Jr. That was January 2022, per my sources, when Barboza was ranked No. 3 by the WBO. Sims, like Barboza, was considered just a fighter, though then known for his upset of Elvis Rodriguez. Problem was, Sims wasn’t ranked by the WBO.
“I needed a top-5 guy, that’s what I kept asking for,” says Barboza. “What good was that gonna do me?”
Therein lies the fighter’s dilemma. Are you listening, TKO? Why should rank-and-file contenders who tithe 3% of their purses risk all those years and all that money to fight guys who can’t get them closer to the title?
That’s not to say, in any way, Barboza is a duck. In addition to Catterall, his wins include the aforementioned former champ Ramirez, whom he defeated by unanimous decision in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; the tricky and experienced Jose Pedraza; the then-undefeated and equally tricky Danielito Zorrilla; and an especially hard hitter, also undefeated and then at the cusp of a title shot, Alex Saucedo.
“That was my toughest fight,” Barboza concedes. The underdog, Barboza went down in Round 7, but nevertheless won a unanimous decision in a brutal fight. It says something about Barboza (and explains, perhaps, why guys are less than enthusiastic about fighting him) that he doesn’t often separate his opponents from their consciousness (only 11 KOs), but does test them body and soul.
Certainly, Saucedo, a fearsome puncher, will never forget. A brain bleed he suffered that night caused him to retire. (By the way, if you ever want the unvarnished truth, what a fighter, or just a fighter, endures in a forced retirement, suddenly searching for an identity, try “Saucedo” on Netflix.)
So I call Saucedo, wondering if he has a rooting interest here: Barboza, the fighter who vanquished him, or Lopez, who might afford him some measure of revenge.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I kind of lost interest in boxing. I don’t see it the same way anymore.”
Bad blood with Barboza? I wonder.
“Not at all,” he says. “I’m very thankful I got out of that f—ing business.”
Saucedo has two happy kids, 11 and 6, a good construction job and a college course load that will one day enable him to be a project manager on job sites. “Tell you the truth, I feel bad for a lot of these guys who are fighting now.” Not the stars, he means, but fighters like him, or Barboza, or Sims for that matter. “Most of them just gotta keep begging and begging and begging and begging.”
And posting. “It’s all about charisma, selling yourself,” he says disgustedly. “That social media, it’s wicked.”
Admittedly, Saucedo had no talent for it. Then again, he wasn’t alone.
“Kind of funny,” he says. “I remember they said the same thing about Terence Crawford.”