Punches and Punchlines
Punches and Punchlines
From Cornflake to Shoryuken: When Boxing Gets Weird
Boxing's recent showcase delivered a perfect blend of technical brilliance and bizarre moments that remind us why the sport remains so captivating despite its occasional frustrations.
When undefeated Cornflake LaManna (yes, that's really his name) stepped into the ring with Jermall Charlo, we witnessed the stark difference between being unbeaten and being elite. LaManna's knees buckled "cartoonishly" until a merciful doctor stoppage that seemed less about medical concerns and more about sparing viewers additional discomfort.
The real shocker came when Armando Resendiz upset former champion Caleb Plant, who appeared uncharacteristically slow and ineffective. Plant's repeated failed clinch attempts left him vulnerable, with Resendiz capitalizing brilliantly. Despite one judge's inexplicable scorecard favoring Plant, justice prevailed with Resendiz taking a well-deserved victory.
Things turned ugly on the ESPN card when Keyshawn Davis missed weight by a staggering 4.5 pounds (essentially a full weight class), followed by his brother Kelvin losing to underdog Nahir Albright. What happened next crossed the line - reports emerged of the Davis brothers jumping Albright in the hallway after the fight and trashing his locker room, leading to police involvement.
The evening's saving grace was Abdullah Mason's flawless performance in the impromptu main event. Unlike many hyped prospects with glaring technical deficiencies, Mason displayed complete mastery - quick hands, proper guard, perfect footwork, and devastating power that left his opponent unable to continue.
The Japanese cards provided additional highlights, including Tenshin Nasukawa's street fighter-inspired antics preceding his technical masterclass against tough Victor Santillan, and Junto Nakatani's dominant unification victory that established him as the clear alpha in the bantamweight division.
Boxing's unpredictable nature reminds us why we keep coming back - for every disappointing mismatch or unprofessional moment, there's a technical masterpiece or shocking upset waiting just around the corner. Subscribe now to catch our upcoming breakdowns of Dubois vs. Usyk and Taylor vs. Serrano!
Welcome to Punches and Punchlines, where we break down the best in boxing with a sense of humor. And now your hosts, ritz and Franco.
Speaker 2:Welcome back everybody to this episode of Punches and Punchlines. Thank you for joining us again. We have a few weeks of boxing that we're going to talk to you about the highlights of coming to. You live from Indiana that's where I'm at this week, franco and we'll see you and your family out here in a couple of days. I'm looking forward to that. So let's talk about what happened these past couple of weekends. We had some decent boxing, boxing, some great fights and, uh, some garbage mixed in just just for good measure. So I got some thoughts.
Speaker 1:I'm looking to hear what you think we've been away from from the podcasting a little bit, but we're going to get caught up with, uh, everything that we've been able to kind of sprinkle in. We did take a trip, uh, down to north carolina for some minor league baseball. That was a lot fun, but we're not able to get any boxing in Also not a lot of, actually. No, there were some cool bar options down there, but also didn't get to see any boxing while we were down there. I was kind of hoping maybe we'd accidentally stumble into something and we didn't get anything. But lots of fun watching baseball.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's go on ahead and get caught up. Luckily I missed out on a lot of the trash because I relied heavily on Fritz being able to tell me what I should tune into so I could skip the nonsense. I did wrap up the end of my school year and working almost done with my master's degree, so not a lot of free time in there to be able to watch the boxing. So it was nice to skip all of the nonsense for it. So I thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, happy to weed through the garbage for you. Let's get into it. They tell us all the time you can't play boxing. We prove them wrong every episode with our segment called Playing Boxing. If you like playing boxing and you're trying to quit smoking, you can go over to ZipXToothpickscom. Enter the code PUNCH10, and you will save yourself 10% on your order and you'll save some years on your life, so that's not a bad deal. Now I want to start with. Amazon Prime was streaming a free card with Caleb Plant as the main event and Jermall Charlo. It's easy to remember the difference between the two brothers.
Speaker 1:There's.
Speaker 2:Jermall and Jermal. Charlo Mal, ending in A-L-L, has all the excuses, so that's usually how I can remember. That helps me remember which brother is which he made his return to the ring on this card, these two guys fighting different guys, so they could set up this big fight against each other, which still can happen. It wasn't for a title or anything like that. I don't get the oh well, now that they beat these guys you've never heard of, now they can face off against each other. That shit never made sense to me. Charlo goes in against a guy Cornflake LaManna, all right, cornflake LaManna, all right, cornflake LaManna is the guy's name. You know, and you sound like a villain from the Dick Tracy era. You know like you're not going to be good Flat top and prune face and Cornflake Watch out.
Speaker 2:Here comes Cornflake LaManna. See, he's going to get you, he's going to give you the business.
Speaker 1:He heard you were making, making eyes at his dame, see.
Speaker 2:So I would have been happy if you would have given him the business. Cornflake lamanna came in undefeated, franco, and talked a great game and all the pressers. But we've said it before and I'll still stick to it undefeated does not mean you're great. It sometimes it means you're untested. And he took a big test and failed, like, got an f minus minus, like he did not look good. He kind of packed it in early too, where he's like oh, the stuff that I usually get away with in the club boxing is not doing me very well here.
Speaker 2:Um, finally, lamanna, he gets knocked down in the third round, knocked down again in the fourth. They waved it off, but replay did show his knee, did touch for a split second, but either way, like he was buckled, really bad, yeah, so, so they didn't necessarily score that a knockdown, but it was a knockdown. And then, uh, before the six rounds even started, the doctor recommended that they stop the fight. I don't even think it was for medical reasons, I think he just didn't want to watch it anymore. He was like they, they're like do you think he should continue? He's like no, this guy's terrible.
Speaker 1:I don't want to watch it anymore.
Speaker 2:They're like but your medical opinion is like who gives a shit about my medical opinion? This guy is not fun to watch. Let's stop it and get on with our lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the doctor doesn't get paid more for the longer he's there. He's like let's wrap this up already. Yeah, it was not a good fight. It was really, really bad.
Speaker 1:But I will say that there have been some of these fights where we're like why is this terrible person fighting this really good person to set up a bigger fight? And then there's an upset. It happens every once in a blue moon. This was not a blue moon, this was a quarter moon at best, because it was so bad.
Speaker 1:Lamanna did not look like he belonged in that ring and from really early his knees were buckling like cartoonishly bad, like he looked like Woody from Toy Story is just buckling his knees. There was so many punches where you're like this is the end, like this is where it's going to finish. So many punches where you're like this is the end, like this is where it's going to finish, and then in, in the usual cartoonish style of these shitty boxers that don't belong in these fights, when the doctor was checking them out, and he's like no, no, no, this is, this is done, that's enough. Lamanna got all upset. He's like no, how could you do this to me? I had him right where I wanted him. It's like bro, you look so bad, like if anything. Salvage some of your value and say that you fought germall, but just say you fought a charlo. Don't even specify to people because it was so bad I think the doctor also had stock in catalogs.
Speaker 2:He's like, oh, I can't give cornflakes a worse name like this guy is killing my investments. He's killing my entertainment. I got to stop this Corn Flake before it goes any further. But, like you said, the Blue Moon did happen in the main event, which was Caleb Plant versus Armando Resendiz. Caleb Plant is a quality boxer, all right Like. He had two losses coming into this against Saul Canelo Alvarez, which a lot of guys have lost to Franco and David Benavidez. A lot of guys have lost to him too, but he's willing to take these fights. He is like a really good, legit boxer. He did not look at this night. I don't know whether father time just caught up to him. I mean, he's not an old man. I can't tell you his age right off the top of my head, but he's not old. But he looked slower in this fight than I've seen him in the past. Whether he was just taking this dude not seriously enough or whatever that was the case. But this was not the best version of Caleb Plant that we saw on display. That night.
Speaker 1:No, and you know I was really torn. I didn't know if it was Armando Resendiz should get more credit or if caleb plant just wasn't bringing what he should be bringing. Because one of the things that I noticed with plant, he kept trying to grab but being unsuccessful at it. Like resendiz would take a couple steps back and caleb would keep reaching like a, like a child, trying to grab his toy, trying to get his pinky back. He kept reaching out and it was setting him up for some really bad punches where he was like straight up bent over with his face just out there on the line teeing it up and then just getting blasted or do you ever go to lean against the wall and it's not as close as you think it is.
Speaker 2:When I'm drunk yeah, I've done it sober, all right. We're just like, oh, it's that close. You're like, oh shit, and I go. You know it's a little further away.
Speaker 1:That's what he looked like, you know, falling forward, trying to get those grabs in yeah, if anything, you know, I will say kudos to armando resendiz for having the wherewithal to step back and not let himself get hugged, not let himself get clutched. And you know what I still like caleb plant. He just didn't look great here. Maybe he had a bad training camp, maybe I don't know, but for resendez, on his end I thought he looked good like it's not he looked very good it's not like it was some joe schmoe who just happened to get lucky with one shot.
Speaker 1:It was. He legitimately looked really solid in this fight yeah, he had a game plan.
Speaker 2:He was listening to his corner. It was really a well-fought decision and the fact that one judge had it going for plant, as a plant fan, I'm like I, I wrote down. I'm like either you're corrupt or stupid. Like there was no way that anybody legitimate would watch that and think, oh yeah, plant won that fight, like not even by a close margin. It was Resendez for sure. I was happy that he got the win. Resendez got the win, even though I'm a Caleb Plant fan. But I was disappointed that one judge was not watching the same fight that everybody else was watching.
Speaker 1:No, it's criminal. But you know what? Here's my theory. It was Zach Morris, because Armando Resendez looks a little bit like Mario Lopez.
Speaker 2:He did. He looked a little like.
Speaker 1:AC Slater right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if they would have panned over.
Speaker 1:Zach Morris, all grown up, would have been sitting there like ha-ha, take that.
Speaker 2:Slater was you know.
Speaker 2:Yes, he's sitting on his lap you know, taking on that bully that came in and was messing with Screech. So that was all I really wanted to talk about with that card. Now we'll get to ESPN. This was headlined by Abdullah Mason. That was not supposed to be. Who was headlining this card, franco? It was supposed to be Keyshawn Davis and he missed weight by four and a half pounds.
Speaker 2:Jesus Now you might think oh, I just gained four and a half pounds In the boxing game. That's a full weight class. It's so unprofessional and so shitty. It looked like he didn't even try. Even his own promoter was like I don't know what the kid is doing, cause it looks like he didn't even try. All right, that's from his own promoter, all right, bob Arum had that to say. Even the team or I forget the guy's name now who he was supposed to fight. But his team was like they give you a minute to try to lose the extra pound or two. He came back, you know, the next day and, like you, didn't sweat a bit, like you, you weren't even trying to make the weight, so he got stripped of his title on the scales. The fight didn't go on. The kid ended up getting half of his purse. So kudos to top rank for at least paying the kid for being ready to fight. Yeah, it wasn't his fault that their guy was unprofessional.
Speaker 2:And then, just since we're talking about being unprofessional, we'll get into the first fight on that card that I wanted to talk about Kelvin Davis versus Albright. Now, albright was a big underdog in that. One Totally brought it. Albright takes the decision, rightfully, so I thought that he had a much better performance than calvin davis did. Then, after the fight, kishan and calvin and like the whole family uh jump him in the hallway, they trash his locker room, like oh, kishan had to be escorted from the building by the police.
Speaker 2:Like it was just such a shit night for that family. I'd love to make jokes about it. But it's like gross that once you step out of the ring it's supposed to be hey man, good fight, just because a score didn't go your way that night. If he was robbed, you know, like Albright didn't really win the fight, but they gave him the decision, I might even have the smallest bit of sympathy for him, but even then it would be wrong. But when you lose legitimately, like you just got your ass kicked and then you're going to make your it just made it worse. I'm sure Bob Arum's like. All right, how many of these brothers do we have signed and how many do we want to keep? Because it was just a really, really poor showing.
Speaker 1:You know the little bit that I did see of that one. I'm kind of shocked to hear that there were issues afterwards. Albright took him out clean, like why would you jump somebody after a fight? That's just like that's unhinged wild behavior. But otherwise, yeah, it looks like anybody who hasn't watched this one. It's a Nahir Albright against Kelvin Davis. Go back and watch just the highlights. You can search them up on YouTube or whatever other platform you like to use. But there's some fun moves in there, some like spinning punches almost looks like they were playing tech in or street fighter or something. Albright just looks aggressive. He looks so much stronger I mean I can't even think of a better term where it's almost like kelvin davis wasn't ready for it and got caught off guard. But yeah, good for him. Uh, sorry you got jumped afterwards, like that would suck, but otherwise I don't. Maybe this is another one of those hometown things you know where we talk about this, where guys end up getting their asses beat at home and it's because of the emotion.
Speaker 2:So jumping somebody could also be tied into just being too emotional because you lost in front of your friends and family and I will say this like after round two, when kelvin davis was headed to his corner, he did look like I thought this was going to be an easier night, you know like where. He's like oh shit, I gotta work. And what he was doing even after that wasn't working. He looked like shit. So now kudos to abdullah mason. He got bumped up to the main event.
Speaker 2:All right, young kid, super talented, and he was taking on, uh, knock, athelia, dude. It was just a one-sided ass whooping, yeah, where you know. You're like oh, I could see why this was not supposed to be the main event. Um, because one boxer had a lot of skill and knock athelia, he was tough, I'll give him that like. But knock. Athelia said before the fifth round like I can't see. Was this the fight where the doctor, he's like are you okay? And he's like no, and then the doctor is like are you okay? Like he said it to the rep, or am I confusing that with a different fight?
Speaker 1:um, might have been this one here. I just clicked back to see like the ref asked are you okay?
Speaker 2:and he said no, and then looks like he might have been, yes, the doctor yeah, everybody's shaking their head at him.
Speaker 2:They're like, no, this guy's done right, it was weird so you don't need to check with the doctor. But if I'm confusing that with a different fight that I just seen recently, I apologize. I've been taking in a lot of it, so if I'm just confusing the two, uh, I apologize to the puncher maniacs out there, but kudos to abdullah mason, because you know, even during the buildup to this, keyshawn Davis was telling him oh, we should fight. And Abdullah Mason was like all right, my team will put it together. He's like no, me, and you are talking right now. He's like dude, my team will take care of it. I'm not worried about getting into a battle of words with you here. So, yeah, kudos to him. Came away with a big win, got bumped up to headliner and was ready to be dominant and that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I loved this fight. I thought abdullah mason I mean all what four rounds of it, yeah, but he looked technically so sound and so great, he was so fast and so quick. It's everything that, like a lot of these big names that we see getting pushed that I shit on that are still people that could totally kill me without even trying. You, you know, like the Ryan Garcia's of the world, and they have like huge glaring flaws where there's just it's like man, why can't they fix this one thing? This dude looked perfect, like fast. He was keeping his guard up his feet. He was sitting there scampering them around like a like a squirrel, looked, looked awesome, like. It was so much fun to watch this dude and I am definitely looking forward to seeing more of abdullah mason because, technically, dude just looked so good yeah, all around game.
Speaker 2:There wasn't a hole in his game. If it went on much longer there was going to be a hole in uh knock at the face because he was certainly trying, but uh, he was not nearly as good. Now, top rank also was carrying a card from japan. This was victor santian for attention nashikawa. That was the colman event and there wasn't anything glaring that I loved like, oh you gotta go to round three and watch this. It was 10 rounds of action and just joy of boxing. Where it was two guys who were engaging.
Speaker 2:Santillan was clearly the inferior of the two fighters, but not by much. Like it was just a really a fun fight for 10 rounds. Santillan, I'll give him credit. He has an incredible chin, because once in a while Tenshin Nasukawa would just land these shots direct on the chin and either he doesn't have the power that it looks like or santian just has a granite chin triple g style. You know where. He just does not give a shit. But yeah, that was. It was just a fun fight and especially, you can be something like that on. That's just included with my espn subscription anytime. There's something that's joyful like that where I just get to watch 10 rounds of really good boxing. I have to mention it. I get tired of talking about just the bad stuff that will happen. But yeah, that was that fight 10 rounds of joy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my favorite part was it was like in the middle of the fight. I want to say it was like in the sixth round or something. At one point, nasukawa, he ends up squatting down, like he squats a couple of times and he's going really low down to the ground and then he like shoots up and hits him with an uppercut and it.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you remember in street fighter when you're playing as ryu or ken and they do the shoryuken and they like shoot up and yeah it was funny, like it was a little bit more exaggerated because santean did the whole that didn't hurt and like shook his head, uh kind of thing, but it made it look like he got like wobbled, like like video games. I like oh, my head's gonna fall off. I literally like laughed out loud like a really hard laugh at seeing that one, yeah, favorite part of the fight ended up making me a little bit of a fan yeah, now, speaking of that, did you see during the introductions, nasakawa, when they introduced him and they did the whole and they they finished his name?
Speaker 2:he did like a, like a oh no, uh is street fighter or mortal combat. I wasn't sure I couldn't remember that one guy did like an energy blast, like that yeah, yeah street fighter i's. Yeah, it felt like a street fighter thing to me, but yeah, it's funny that you mentioned it there too, because that's, I wrote that down. I was like, oh, but it's gotta be a street fighter move.
Speaker 1:So yeah, whenever guys have the dorky stuff like that, I love it. I eat all of that up, like you're about to go in and possibly sacrifice your life, and then for them to be doing like cartoonish goofy stuff beforehand Right Like, oh, there's something honestly wrong with this person, and to end.
Speaker 2:On another positive note, Ryusuke Nishida versus Junto Nakatani. All right, this was 118 pound unification WBC and IBF belts on the line. Right from the first bell they went at each other. I don't think it was in Nishida's best interest to do that. I think he needed to be a little more elusive because he was just taking a pounding and that I kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I forget what round it was even called off in, I think it was before the fifth okay, it was the fifth or six, whatever it was.
Speaker 2:but like his face looks so bad, I started to feel bad for him. Like oh, don't start another round. You know, he looked like he got stung. He got stung in the face by like an angry swarm of bees that he like owed money. You know, like I don't know why he owes bees money, but this guy owed bees money somehow and they found him and stung the shit out of just his face on the right side. And man, I give him credit for even trying to tell his corner. Like no, I can still do it. Like no, you can't guy.
Speaker 1:No, you could hear his wife crying in the corner. She was like he needs his glasses. He needs his glasses to see.
Speaker 2:Oh God, so fun. But yeah, that was a great fight. Like Nakatani, I guess has plans that he wants to fight Naoya anyway, that'd be awesome Staying at 118 right now until they can make that fight happen. But he proved in this fight. Out of the two champions that came in, he was definitely the alpha, because, god did he look much better. And Ryusaki, is that how you say his name? Nishida, right?
Speaker 2:he looked like a good boxer, you know, but he just did not look on the same level as junto nakatani and, you know, maybe it was just the lack of rounds that he had going into this like. He had a long amateur career and then was able to get into a title fight early on, came in undefeated. But he did not leave undefeated. This is probably two weeks ago. I bet he still got swelling. He's still like holding one of those stakes that that rocky beat up at the meat market still holding it on his face. But a fun exhibition of skill. If you, if you don't mind the fight ending early, you want to see a guy, you have to quit on his stool. That's this is the fight for you.
Speaker 2:Now I I just watched this morning, franco, the highlights of Richardson Hitchens and Richardson Hitchens versus George Cambosos. People have said like Cambosos made a living off of beating Teofimo Lopez at one time, and the more I watch the guy box, maybe that's true, because every fight since then he's tough and he's just such a he's a fun dude to watch, but he just keeps losing every time he steps up to these champions and stuff like that. He had his one shiny moment and you'll never take that away from the dude you know what I mean Like he was crowned a world champion. But it seems to have been a downward spiral since then. Well, maybe not a spiral. That seems a little little too extreme. Maybe just up, it definitely uh peaked at that point and he's he's walking down that hill now, but if you want to watch any highlights, you'll see a guy that is tough, but he just got destroyed to the body.
Speaker 1:I'm sure even a couple days later he is still peeing blood like it was poor dude yeah, the only things I saw were the highlights on uh instagram and just the whatever came across my feed and tiktok and whatnot, and uh, yeah, cambosos. It did not look good like they. Just I kept seeing the knockout at the end over and over again and he looked like uh, how I felt after we left from valhalla in charlotte after a night of drinking.
Speaker 1:He just plopped over and then that was a wrap. Probably wasn't snoring as loud as me, but he probably was that night.
Speaker 2:I had to bring Chatty Franco home. That was always a fun trip. You're talking to every stranger we pass by. It was so great, I totally remember all of that, yeah, I believe it.
Speaker 2:Please remember this If you ever order me two car bombs in one single night. We're not friends anymore. All right, the podcast is over, we can't talk anymore. That's how that will go. So I don't know, what do we have coming up? Franco, I think the next big thing is dubois versus usic in july. Taylor versus serrano is in july. I don't know that. We have a, like a must watch no, they're.
Speaker 1:I'm scrolling through them all right now and I'm not really seeing anything. Uh and billy, not really anything huge.
Speaker 2:Wilder against some dude, yeah I mean, we'll keep our eye on stuff and if we got enough to come back for an episode, we'll definitely do that. If not expect to hear back from us after, uh, serrano versus taylor three, after usic versus dubois, and we'll keep our eye on the boxing world. And, like I did for Franco, I'm going to do for everybody out there. I'm going to, I'm going to watch it all and then if there's something to talk about, I'll let you know. If it's just garbage, I'm not going to bore you with that. So that said, franco, are you ready for this week's trivia question? I'm trying to kind of get you back into the wind column.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am not. I'm like Cambosos right now, man, I can't, I can't catch a break, okay so, we talked about Caleb plant at the beginning of this episode.
Speaker 2:I'm going to tell you the people that he's beat. I want you to tell me who he is not beat. All right, all right, all right, all right, all right. Mike lee, jose uscate, andrew hernandez or zoltan drago? Drago, zoltan drago you are correct oh, thank god I had to dig deep too for a daredevil villain that I wasn't even that familiar with, to try to keep on the daredevil thing to uh, to help you out there.
Speaker 1:So all, all the uh wires in my brain crossed and I'm like drago, that's a boxer.
Speaker 2:No, no, it's still not a real one so, uh, yeah, now you're, you're, uh, you're back in the win column. Oh yeah, next next episode, I'll be, uh, back in the hot seat for trivia. You know we can go from there. I want to thank everybody for listening. Thanks for subscribing. Tell your friends if they like boxing I don't know if you know this, but me and Franco do too, and we love to chat about it. So tell them to tell your friends to subscribe. Leave a review. I want to thank everybody. Thanks for Franco for doing all the real work behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:If, if you don't have anything else, frank, I'm throwing in the towel. Thank you for listening to punches and punchlines. Make sure to like, subscribe and follow and we'll see you next week when we break down the best in boxing with a sense of humor.