Eugene Podolinyi

Boxing writer on

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

I'm not buying into an Errol Spence victory...

Let's draw a parallel with one of his former opponents, Yordenis Ugas. They're roughly the same age, fought in roughly the same weight class, and both spent about three years out of the ring. Then Ugas comes back... and barely manages to beat a journeyman with 15 losses in Mexico, scraping by with a split decision.

I suspect we'll see nothing more than a shadow of Spence as well. Especially considering that he's already started talking about this potentially being his final fight

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

@ChillTownBoxing What's good about it?

We could have made some decent money betting on Wilson to get rid of his opponent early. That opportunity is gone now.

Just like with Oscar Collazo and that Filipino opponent he was originally supposed to face.

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

I get it. Bam Rodriguez is incredibly talented, he's exciting to watch, and he scored another knockout win.

But if he ends up fighting Inoue, he should still be a sizeable underdog. We shouldn't get carried away by this stoppage victory.

Vargas has always been fragile. His chin has been a concern throughout his career, so I don't think this result suddenly tells us that Bam is ready to beat someone of Inoue's caliber.

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

Am I the only one whose BoxRec watch list has become completely useless after the latest update?

Everything is mixed together now, with no logical order whatsoever. Fighters competing tomorrow can appear below fighters who aren't scheduled to fight until August.

It feels like they somehow managed to break one of the site's most useful features. Every day, the user experience seems to get a little worse...

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

I wasn't impressed by Gabriela Tellez's performance at all.

As far as I'm concerned, there was never any real case for her winning that fight, even though the judges seemed determined to help her as much as possible. She didn't do enough. She spent far too much time on her bicycle, circling and retreating.

What stood out to me was that whenever the Turkish fighter took a breather, Tellez didn't use those moments to seize the initiative and launch her own attacks. Instead, she seemed relieved to get a break herself.

Honestly, my interpretation of those tears after the fight is a little different. I don't think they reflected confidence that she'd done enough to win. They looked more like the reaction of someone who was simply relieved it was finally over — relieved that she no longer had to keep searching for an escape route under that relentless, suffocating pressure.

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

I'd be happy to see her win.

It's just that I can easily envision a blueprint for beating the Turkish fighter: box off the back foot, make her miss, and make her pay for those mistakes. That approach makes perfect sense to me.

What raises questions is choosing to walk her down and trade punches with someone who hits that hard. That's a risky game plan against a puncher of her caliber.

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

Another boxing card in Quebec is coming up. And once again, I sit down to do my analysis, watch fights involving Canadian boxers... and come away with the same conclusion: Canada is the true capital of judging robberies.

Not Germany. Not even Russia.

I honestly can’t remember seeing as much bullshit anywhere else as I have in Canada. Pick almost any Canadian fighter and chances are you'll find at least one fight where they were gifted a decision they clearly didn’t deserve.

Thomas Chabot, Luis Santana, Ryan Rozicki, Albert Ramirez, Avery Martin Duval — the list goes on and on. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of examples

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

Yeah, well, after reading that wall of text, I was already impressed by Tellez on paper. Then I turned on her fights, expecting to see the Mexican reincarnation of Caroline Dubois — or at least the next Gabriela Fundora.

Instead, I saw a fat little pig barely five feet tall, with no punching power, no... well, no anything at all, beating up housewives and strippers

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

@ChillTownBoxing @MatchroomBoxing I’d really appreciate links to any fights involving Rodriguez or Terraza. I haven’t been able to find them anywhere

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

@B0xingGuru Why? It’d be easier to just throw him to the wolves.

He’s 16-1 with 14 knockouts, an Olympian, a big, well-built two-meter-tall heavyweight. On paper, that’s the kind of scalp that looks great on someone’s résumé. In reality, though, he’d probably just get beaten up and stopped

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

Good lord, Ivan Dychko has declined badly. At this point, I’ll be looking to bet on an upset in his very next fight, assuming his opponent has a pulse.

It’s not like Dychko was ever some elite boxer to begin with, but his recent performances leave a really bad aftertaste. There’s no real boxing on display anymore, nothing. And honestly, he looks like a guy who can’t take a punch very well.

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

@P_Pajor Po prostu fantastyczny wynik. Szczerze mówiąc, na Twitterze — i w mediach w ogóle — znam tylko 3–4 osoby, które naprawdę są świetne w typowaniu walk bokserskich, i wy zdecydowanie do nich należycie. Mogę jedynie życzyć powodzenia i wirtualnie uścisnąć dłoń. Świetna robota.

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

That's the fight we need 😀
Amari Jones vs Omari Jones

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

Many people are surprised by how much Bivol has declined after a long layoff and a back injury. But just wait until we see how much 41-year-old Beterbiev has declined after such a lengthy period of inactivity and without any tune-up fights. I think it’s going to be catastrophic

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

"It really pisses me off when so many boxers are saying the same thing now about the stoppage in the Usyk-Verhoeven fight. They’re like: 'If Usyk had landed a couple more hard shots and something serious had happened, the responsibility would’ve been on the referee.'
Seriously?
What responsibility does the referee actually have? Is he responsible for the boxer’s life or health? No. Even if a boxer gets killed in the ring, what’s the referee going to get — sued or fined? No. At most, some moral responsibility, which basically means none at all.
In reality, your job is simple: count to ten when someone hits the canvas. But a lot of referees have started imagining themselves as the main characters in this movie and keep trying to steal the spotlight

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

Daniel Lapin... Imagine this: you’re young, tall, with long arms. Your whole life, you’ve been trained by a world-class, championship-level coach. You’ve spent half your life training side by side with a man who shattered just about every record in boxing… You get placed on the undercards of the biggest boxing nights imaginable… and yet, as a boxer, you’re still absolute garbage, throwing 10 punches a round

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

Here’s how Shakhram Giyasov had to cut weight before his fight against Jack Catterall

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

He gets tired in almost every fight that goes past the halfway point. It was noticeable in the 9th round against Calderon — long pauses, poor reactions, and he was taking a lot of shots. In the 7th round against Gomez, he was visibly hurt, and the fight turned into a genuinely competitive one

[Eugene Podolinyi @Boxing7152]

After four straight fights without a stoppage from the Japanese girl, the bookmakers have completely lost faith in her knockout power. But I haven’t.
Besides the fact that I really like how she looks, I just enjoy watching her box. Everything is polished, precise, straight out of the textbook.
Why didn’t she knock out her recent opponents? I put it down to the fact that she was facing Mexicans and Argentinians — girls known for having rock-solid chins and incredibly tough, gritty attitudes.
Now she’s facing an Egyptian. There’s a massive gap in level between them. Soliman just walks forward swinging, without much thought for defense. So we could see either a stoppage or a late TKO from accumulated damage