7/28 PBC/Showtime: Mikey Garcia vs Robert Easter Jr (WBC/IBF Lightweight Title unification)

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patscorpio

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WBC Lightweight World Champion Mikey Garcia and IBF Lightweight World Champion Robert Easter Jr. will square-off in a 135-pound unification showdown between unbeaten stars Saturday, July 28 live on SHOWTIME from STAPLES Center in Los Angeles in an event presented by Premier Boxing Champions.

The main event of the SHOWTIME CHAMPIONSHIP BOXING® telecast (10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT) will see Garcia look to become a unified champion for the first time in a career that has seen him win titles in four weight classes. Easter, who enters with a 5-inch height and 8-inch reach advantage, looks to stamp his name amongst boxing's elite by unifying titles at 27 years old, less than two years after capturing his first belt.

Tickets for the live event, which is promoted by Ringstar Sports and TGB Promotions, begin at $50, plus applicable fees, and are on sale now. To purchase tickets, visit AXS.com.

"SHOWTIME Sports continues to lead the industry with the biggest events, the most important matchups, week after week, month after month," said Stephen Espinoza, President Sports & Events Programming, Showtime Network Inc. "Mikey Garcia vs. Robert Easter Jr. is the third world championship unification match on SHOWTIME this year. A consensus top-10 pound-for-pound champion facing an undefeated young champion while both are in the prime of their careers. July 28 has all the makings of an instant classic."

"Mikey Garcia vs. Robert Easter is an outstanding lightweight matchup that is sure to deliver drama for fight fans at STAPLES Center and on SHOWTIME," Said Tom Brown, President of TGB Promotions. "Garcia will look to unify in his hometown and further solidify his credentials as boxing's pound-for-pound best. He'll have perhaps the toughest test of his career in the unbeaten Easter, who has a lethal combination of size, speed and power that he brings to the ring. With both fighters defending their titles and undefeated records, this is shaping up to be a can't-miss night of boxing in downtown Los Angeles."

"This is the kind of matchup that boxing fans love and a fight that I believe will certainly live up to expectations," said Richard Schaefer, Chairman & CEO of Ringstar Sports. "With two undefeated world champions, and two of the top guys at 135 pounds, this fight is guaranteed drama. Mikey Garcia will look to become a unified world champion and add another accolade to a career that is already shaping up to be historic. Robert Easter Jr, a proud champion in his own right, is coming to STAPLES Center on July 28 to upset Mikey Garcia in his hometown. This is the quality of matchup that fans watching on SHOWTIME have come to expect and I suspect they will be fulfilled once again when these two warriors meet in the ring."

"We are really looking forward to this incredible fight at STAPLES Center," said Lee Zeidman, President, STAPLES Center. "These two fighters will undoubtedly headline an amazing night of fights for boxing fans in Los Angeles and we are looking forward to welcoming back Premier Boxing Champions and SHOWTIME for the second time in just two months."

“ Unifying titles is something I've dreamed of doing for many years, and to do it at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles will make it even more special. ”Four-time World Champion Mikey Garcia
One of Southern California's most popular fighters, Garcia returns to STAPLES Center for his first fight since becoming a world champion, and his first in California in seven years. Easter returns to the site of his professional debut, having started his career at STAPLES Center in 2012 after serving as an alternate in the London Olympic Games.

Garcia (38-0, 30 KOs), of Moreno Valley by way of Oxnard, Calif., became only the third fighter in modern history to become champion at 126, 130, 135 and 140-pounds, joining future Hall of Famers Juan Manuel Marquez and Manny Pacquiao, when he defeated Sergey Lipinets for the IBF 140-pound title in March. The 30-year-old relinquished that title so that he can unify the WBC Lightweight World Championship that he won in January 2017 with a highlight reel knockout of Dejan Zlaticanin (ClickHERE to watch Garcia-Zlaticanin KO video)

These wins, combined with a summer 2017 victory over Adrien Broner, have seen Garcia return to the top of pound-for-pound lists after a layoff of two and a half years. Garcia accrued wins over a list of notable names while winning his first two titles at 126 and 130-pounds, including Orlando Salido, Roman Martinez and Juan Manuel Lopez.

"This is the toughest fight of my career to date," said the four-division champion Garcia. "Robert Easter Jr. is an undefeated world champion who presents serious challenges that I'm going to have to work hard to overcome. Unifying titles is something I've dreamed of doing for many years, and to do it at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles will make it even more special. This is the kind of fight that will help my legacy. To be the best you have to beat the best, and Easter is certainly one of the best out there. I'm very thankful to have this opportunity and I'm going to make the most of it on July 28."

Representing his hometown of Toledo, Ohio, Easter (21-0, 14 KOs) has made three successful defenses since winning his world title in an exciting contest over Richard Commey in 2016. The 27-year-old delivered a fifth-round destruction of former champion Argenis Mendez to earn the title shot, and since winning the title has held off challenges from Javier Fortuna, Denis Shafikov and Luis Cruz to retain his 135-pound belt.

Easter will be making the move to work with Kevin Cunningham for the first time for this fight and conducting training camp in West Palm Beach with him. Cunningham, the longtime trainer of former world champions such as Devon Alexander and Cory Spinks, spurred Adrien Broner to a strong performance in a draw against Jessie Vargas and Gervonta Davis to a dominant knockout of Jesus Cuellar in their first fights together in April.

"This is a fight I've been waiting for and I'm really excited that the time is now," said Easter. "This is the best fighting the best. These are the fights that boxing is all about. I made the move to train with Kevin Cunningham down in Florida and I think it's going to help me reach another level. It's just eat, sleep and train down there. We're going to be ready on July 28 to put on a show and deliver fireworks."


Undercard
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The July 28 boxing card from the Staples Center in Los Angeles will have Luis Ortiz, a former world heavyweight title challenger, face off against fellow former title challenger Razvan Cojanu in the co-main event.
Ortiz has not fought since this past March when he lost to WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder in a heavyweight classic. That fight headlined a Showtime Championship Boxing card from the Barclays Center in New York. Ortiz was originally ordered to fight Dillian Whyte in a title eliminator, but Whyte withdrew from the fight.

Cojanu has not fought in more than a year, which was a unanimous decision loss to then-WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker in May 2017. Cojanu, who sports a 16-3 record, previously held the WBO China National heavyweight title and fought in ESPN’s 2015 Boxcino tournament, reaching the semifinals before losing to Donovan Dennis.

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The opening bout of the Showtime telecast will have Barrios face off against twice-beaten Jose Roman. Barrios has won all 21 of his pro bouts, knocking out 13 and achieving a ranking on the WBA junior welterweight rankings (No. 4) and on the IBF lightweight rankings (No. 8). Roman, a former regional champion at lightweight, is 24-2-1 as a pro, but is coming off a loss to Wilberth Lopez this past September in California.
 

Thatrogueassdiaz

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:blessed: Mikey should win this. If he does win, i hope he doesn't face Errol next. I'd like him to build.up that fight. A Crawford, Spence, Garcia welterweight round robin would be dope as fukk! Add another big name and we'd have a modern day 4 Kings steez! Maybe Thurman's bytch ass if he returns lol.

Garcia
Spence
Crawford
Thurman
D. Garcia
Porter
Prograis
Pacquaio?!?!
:wow:
 

patscorpio

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:blessed: Mikey should win this. If he does win, i hope he doesn't face Errol next. I'd like him to build.up that fight. A Crawford, Spence, Garcia welterweight round robin would be dope as fukk! Add another big name and we'd have a modern day 4 Kings steez! Maybe Thurman's bytch ass if he returns lol.

Garcia
Spence
Crawford
Thurman
D. Garcia
Porter
Prograis
Pacquaio?!?!
:wow:

a welterweight round robin...that will never happen :russ:..too political among other things for that division
 

IVS

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I cant wait to hear the juelzing after Garcia beat him. I actually want Easter to win tho so AB is embarrassed.Easter def has a chance tho
 
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KingOFKings

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:blessed: Mikey should win this. If he does win, i hope he doesn't face Errol next. I'd like him to build.up that fight. A Crawford, Spence, Garcia welterweight round robin would be dope as fukk! Add another big name and we'd have a modern day 4 Kings steez! Maybe Thurman's bytch ass if he returns lol.

Garcia
Spence
Crawford
Thurman
D. Garcia
Porter
Prograis
Pacquaio?!?!
:wow:

Talk about stacked, is there a division as stacked right now?

It's a shame that 1 or 2 losses is frowned upon by fickle fans, some of these 0's will haaaaaaaaave to go.

Mayweather ruined it for everyone lol
 

patscorpio

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Garcia vs. Easter: Showtime To Stream Undercard Fights

SHOWTIME Sports will provide live streaming of undercard fights and analysis on the network’s social platforms in advance of this Saturday’s Mikey Garcia vs. Robert Easter Jr. Lightweight World Championship Unification. SHOWTIME CHAMPIONSHIP BOXING COUNTDOWN, the fifth digital presentation of live boxing in 2018, will stream on the SHOWTIME Sports YouTube channel and SHOWTIME Boxing Facebook page beginning at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT preceding the evening’s SHOWTIME CHAMPIONSHIP BOXING® tripleheader live on SHOWTIME at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT.

The social media offering will include a 10-round bout featuring undefeated super lightweight prospect Fabian Maidana, the brother of former champion Marcos Maidana, as well as special guests breaking down the highly anticipated unification fight from STAPLES Center in Los Angeles. This is the third consecutive year that SHOWTIME has delivered free live streams of boxing, an industry-leading offering available to all consumers with internet access.

Former three-division champion Abner Mares will join boxing broadcaster Ray Flores and analyst Chris Mannix as they call the fights from ringside in Los Angeles and preview that evening’s three-fight telecast.

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Maidana (15-0, 11 KOs), the younger brother of former two-division world champion Marcos Maidana, will face his toughest professional test in former world title challenger Andrey Klimov (20-4, 10 KOs). The 26-year-old Maidana, of Argentina, is looking to continue his rise from prospect to contender. Also on the live stream, 2016 U.S. Olympian and unbeaten prospect Karlos Balderas (5-0, 4 KOs) will appear in a six-round super featherweight bout against an opponent to be announced.
 

patscorpio

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Hopefully Easter uses his reach and height. Everyone is counting him out for obvious reasons, just want to see a competitive fight. Didn’t he recently switch trainers to Cunningham? Hopefully he changes it up , cause his last couple fights, particularly Against Fortuna he was very underwhelming.

I cant wait to see the fight myself but I thought Easter has lost 3 of his last 4 fights. He struggled with Fortuna his last time out :huhldup:. I think Mikey will win by decision because one of the positives Easter has is his chin is pretty solid as well as his recovery powers. The shot commey landed on him that cause his lone KD would have ko'ed any other lightweight. Im also curious to see how Mikey will handle Easter's physical advantages too.
 

reservoirdogs

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Mikey by clear decision.
Easter has a good chin but he was wobbled a couple of times against Fortuna. So I think Mikey has the power to stop him late, wouldn’t surprise me either but I think he won’t risk much by stepping on the gas, keep it conservative and win by UD.
 

patscorpio

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Can you quote the article here? They say you can’t open in EU countries and that they are working on it

Stephen Espinoza paused as he read from a script touting Saturday’s fight between Mikey Garcia and Robert Easter at Staples Center.

One fact grabbed the Showtime president’s attention as he spoke to reporters on a conference call:


Garcia-Easter is the first lightweight unification shown by the network since the late Diego Corrales’ 10th-round knockout of Jose Luis Castillo in 2005.

“Big shoes to fill,” Espinoza remarked.

Corrales-Castillo, staged May 7, 2005 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, was called the greatest fight in history by the late boxing scribe Bert Sugar, and is considered a timeless example of heart and skill.

“It was a five-star, quality dissection of the most exquisite technique you’ll ever see,” Corrales trainer Joe Goossen said. “Textbook defense. Combinations were delivered that you’d be hard to ever teach to anyone. It was the prototype.”

With the World Boxing Council and World Boxing Organization belts on the line, Corrales nearly knocked out Castillo during the first half of the bout, but Castillo rallied to close Corrales’ left eye by the end of the seventh.

“I was looking forward to getting two titles. I thought a lot about how great it’d be to be a champion for two organizations,” Castillo told The Times last week by phone from Tijuana.

In the other corner, Goossen said, “We went to work on [Corrales’] eye with a frozen metal device called an ‘end swell’ to push the blood from underneath the eye to the outside. A little bit of maneuvering helped open the eye enough to see.”

Castillo landed a left hook to the head that dropped Corrales early in the 10th, and did so again seconds later as Corrales spit out his mouthpiece to gain a respite, rose on the count of “nine” and accepted a one-point deduction from referee Tony Weeks, visiting Goossen in his corner.

“You gotta [expletive] get inside on him now!” Goossen ordered Corrales.

Goossen said he thought of “what we did in the gym — all the running, the 150 rounds of sparring, the bag work, the legwork — and I had remembered how Alexis Arguello once told me about getting Ruben Olivares down twice and saying, ‘If this guy gets up, I’m done. I have nothing left.’

“Taking that slice, I was thinking Castillo may be thinking the same thing. Diego looked me right in the eyes when I told him to go inside, and damn if he didn’t do it.

“It was this perfect confluence … you wouldn’t believe it if it was in a ‘Rocky’ movie.”

An onslaught of punches wilted and cut Castillo, who was getting pounded against the ropes without answer when Weeks darted in to stop the fight.

“I got overconfident,” Castillo said. “I thought I had him — ‘One more shot is all I need’ — unfortunately, that shot never came from me. It came from him.”

Both men were hospitalized — “Castillo’s body punches were unbelievable. Diego filled a beaker with his urine and it literally looked like tomato juice,” Goossen said — and neither ever won another title fight.

“I said afterward, ‘Whoever seeks out an immediate rematch is sadistic,’” Goossen said, but promoters Bob Arum and Gary Shaw agreed on one that was staged five months later on Oct. 8, 2005.

“I’ve seen guys go through a career and never get hit as hard or often as they did in that fight. It was like driving a car over a cliff, surviving it, and then being asked to do it again a few months later. Diego still had black eyes going into training.

“What I’ve noticed is that the human body has a gas tank to take you through a career, and Castillo and Corrales really stepped on the pedal. After that fight, that tank was empty. It’s more than concussions from punches. It’s the spirit of boxing leaving you.”

Corrales lost the rematch to an overweight Castillo, getting knocked out in the fourth round, and lost his last two fights. Exactly two years after he beat Castillo, on blacktop not far from Mandalay Bay, a distraught Corrales was killed in a motorcycle crash.

“I couldn’t believe it and it took me a long time to accept it,” Castillo said of Corrales’ death. “It really hurt because I’ll never forget that fight and those moments we shared in the ring.”

Goossen surmised, “That was the last bit of effort, of blood, sweat, tears and soul those guys could give. Diego said he was willing to die to win, and both of those guys practically did.”

Castillo, a protégé of Julio Cesar Chavez who first won his lightweight belt in 2000 at the Bicycle Club casino parking lot in Bell Gardens, then engaged in a 2002 bout with Floyd Mayweather Jr. that’s considered the closest Mayweather came to defeat, fought 19 more times after beating Corrales, winning 13.


“We left a lot in the ring,” Castillo said. “I wasn’t hungry anymore. I worked very hard, trained so much to get to the top, and after that, I didn’t. It was hard to tell if it was because of that fight, but my desire wasn’t there. I lost a lot of fights toward the end because I wasn’t into boxing anymore.”

Now a congressman in Sonora, Mexico, Castillo has a son, Jose Jr., who boxes professionally and while he can’t bring himself to watch an entire replay of any of his prior fights, he'll show his family a few rounds of the Corrales classic.

“I never thought I was anything out of the ordinary; never would’ve paid any money to see myself fight,” Castillo said.

“But it makes me very proud when people talk to me about that fight and say it was the best they’d ever seen. I’ll show my kids and say, That’s your father, in a fight they call one of the best in history.”
 
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