By Ricardo Lezama Eminem. Grupo Codiciado. Pitbull Cruz and Rayo Valenzuela. Celebrities. Riyadh Season’s full blitz of Hollywood entertainment and impartial engagement with every culture and subculture of California was the best 80 dollars I’ve ever spent for a PPV. Nonetheless, I can definitely see less intense fans being overwhelmed by the length, but if you paid for this fight, then you got your money’s worth.
A noteworthy runner up would be any Eddie Hearn backed Canelo PPV card, but that’s besides the point. Riyadh Season has raised the production values associated with boxing, a once dominant sport in the global community that has languished under fractured promotional circuits, fight mismatches with predictable outcomes and defensive boxing oriented towards Pay-Per-View sales and undefeated record marketing.
Main Event: Weight Classes Matter
Terrence Crawford was able to beat out Madrimov by relatively thin margins. Keep in mind that Crawford’s last opponent was a somewhat out of his prime Errol Spence, southpaw with somewhat predictable volume punching. This essentially meant that Spence gave him plenty of counterpunching opportunities. This was not the case with Madrimov.
Madrimov was a resounding champion at 154. Madrimov’s body and punch resistance was at 100 percent capacity and his ability to counterpunch Crawford and make the latter wince was impressive.
#crawford defeats #madrimov #boxing#TerenceCrawford #fyp Terrence Crawford pic.twitter.com/Evar4DJ8iz
— pdtv (@PDTV3) August 4, 2024
This victory, however, hasn’t come without controversy. Despite Crawford’s unanimous win, with scores of 116-112, 115-113, and 115-113, Eddie Hearn expresses his disgust at the decision in favor of Terence Crawford. Hearn believes that Israil Madrimov was robbed of victory.
Best Fight: Valenzuela Upsets Pitbull
Valenzuela fought the fight of his life with calculated counter punching, but from the first round his footwork was definitively the game changer. When Pitbull began to pounce with his explosiveness, Rayo would quickly pivot away from Cruz’s attack tapping away at times to the body, face and chest of Cruz.
Issac Pitbull Cruz Vs Rayo Valenzuela Round 11 My Opinion Rayo Winning 7 rounds to 4 so far pic.twitter.com/XRQUesiNv7
— Dimas Tollinchi (@TollinchiDimas) August 4, 2024
A series of uppercuts almost obligated Cruz to keep his tight guard even harder and he ate plenty of Rayo’s powerful counters, which is unusual for Cruz. One thing that was never brought up was the fact that Rayo Valenzuela was knocked out when he fought Edwin De Los Santos last year. The promising southpaw nevertheless persevered and went on to upset and batter Chris Colbert in a controversial decision loss that was then avenged with a spiteful KO.
However, this fight, Cruz vs Valenzuela, was very much sink or swim and, perhaps, the calculated workouts with Robert Garcia’s boxing system is what made the key difference this time around for Valenzuela against an arguably more dangerous puncher.
Valenzuela picked his spots as he took steps back to negate Cruz’ constant pressure.
