Several notable news tidbits came out over the weekend that need acknowledgement now that the fight coverage is over. First, longtime Irish middleweight contender Andy Lee is retiring. Top Rank has made a nice, under the radar pair of signings and PBC has had an undercard bout from their upcoming card on Saturday postponed as well. Finally, Adrien Broner is in trouble again, if that is even news anymore.
- Goodbye, Andy Lee (35-3, 24 KOs). The 33 year old has announced his retirement from the sport. Maybe the Irishman never quite lived up to the hype from back when he was the late, great Emanuel Steward’s next big thing, but he had a nice career. He will probably be most remembered for his losses in truth, but Lee picked up the WBO belt in 2014. I will always remember him positively for his absurd knockout of an admittedly badly faded Carl Daniels way back in 2007 when Lee was coming up as a prospect. Sure, Daniels was in pure journeyman mode at that point, but that still remains one of the greatest right hooks ever landed regardless.
- Top Rank has picked up a really nice pair of young fighters in 26 year old featherweight Genesis Servania (30-1, 16 KOs) of the Philippines and 23 year old Carlos Adames (13-0, 10 KOs) of the Dominican Republic. Servania put on a really nice performance in a highly competitive world title loss to Oscar Valdez last year while Adames recently dominated recent top contender Carlos Molina and was a prominent amateur. Both of these young men have all the potential in the world to get to and compete well at the world title level. I am excited to see them help flesh out Top Rank’s so far largely high quality ESPN series going forward.
- Finally, the secondary title fight between Jermall Charlo (26-0, 20 KOs) and Hugo Centeno Jr (26-1, 14 KOs) that was scheduled for this weekend’s Showtime undercard has been postponed to April 21st due to a rib injury suffered by Centeno. This weekend’s show headlined by Deontay Wilder and Luis Ortiz will continue as scheduled, just now as a doubleheader instead of with three fights.
- The show that Charlo and Centeno are moving to is the card headlined by Adrien Broner and Omar Figueroa. Of course, that is assuming that Broner’s latest run in with the law doesn’t jeopardize the card. Earlier this month the troubled Cincinnati fighter was arrested for groping a woman in a shopping mall in Atlanta.The charges for this are misdemeanor sexual battery. At least he wasn’t driving around with a bullet riddled car this time, I guess.
