Punches and Punchlines
Punches and Punchlines
Spring Break Braids And The Tallest Featherweight Champion
Blood on the canvas, debates on the scorecards, and a corner countout that had us double-taking at the screen—this week’s slate turned small venues into big stories. We start with Jack Catterall’s ruthless timing against Asuman, where early power, clean knockdowns, and cut management morphed a presumed showcase into a gritty, can’t-look-away brawl. From there, we head to ESPN Deportes, where production charm met raw matchmaking: Blandon dissecting Marinero with steady pressure and shot selection, and Mosinos vs Cabrera delivering a lighter-weight firefight built on pace, chin, and survival instincts.
Our detour to the Top Rank Classic stream brought a pair of emphatic moments. Heavyweight prospect Richard Torres ended his night almost as soon as it started, smashing a nose, dropping an uppercut, and forcing the finish—an efficient reminder that precision beats size when it counts. Then 17-year-old Julian Montalbo scored a clinical body-shot KO, the purest kind of verdict boxing can offer. But the weekend’s lightning rod was Lindolfo Delgado vs Gabriel Goyas, a split decision that split the room. Was the jab and late knockdown enough to tilt the cards, or did heavier counters and visible damage win the quieter rounds? We unpack ring generalship, effective aggression, and how commentary can bend perception when fights get close.
We close with Rafael Espinoza, the tallest featherweight champion in history, and a performance that was more than reach. He didn’t just paw a jab—he layered hooks, uppercuts, and pressure that forced a brave corner to make the call. Strange countout or not, it was the right ending after ten punishing rounds. If you love boxing for its arguments as much as its action, this one has both: scoring nuance, rising prospects, and a champion who knows how to turn height into hurt. Hit play, share your card for Delgado vs Goyas, and if you’re riding with us weekly, tap follow, rate the show, and tell a fight friend where to find us.
Where are we breaking out the best thing? Your host and freak goes.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome back, everybody, to this episode of Punches and Punch Lines. Thank you for joining us. You're probably thinking, like, wow, they were they were gone for a month. Now we get two in a week. This is crazy. Yeah. Well, the we just kind of have to go with what boxing is available. And there was some fun boxing this past weekend. There was Friday night. There was ESPN Deportes, just part of your regular ESPN package. I didn't understand all any of the commentary, but maybe Franco can help me out with that because I only speak the one language, but Franco's lucky enough to be bilingual. And then on Saturday night, if you were able to find the top rank classic channel, is what they're calling it. Um, there was a live event with Rafael Espinoza at the top of that card, and that turned out to be a fun fight if you're a Rafael Espinoza fan. Um but yeah, some fun boxing, and then there was uh a card, uh a pay-per-view that I had zero interest in uh paying for with a cheater at the top of it, but there was a fight on that undercard that uh maybe we'll maybe we'll kick off our uh coverage with that one.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, yeah, let's go on ahead. There's uh there's a lot of little fights, a lot of and there there was no huge names or anything, but yeah, let's go on ahead and get into the fights that we watched over the weekend.
SPEAKER_00:They tell us all the time that you can't play boxing. We prove them wrong every episode with our segment called playing boxing. If it's uh you're new to this place, you know we're uh or you don't know, but you will know now that we're uh brought to you by Zibix Toothpicks. If you're trying to quit smoking, if you just want to cut back on smoking, get your nicotine fix, go over to zippix toothpicks.com, enter the code boxing, and you get yourself uh a nice little discount. So I use it myself. I recommend you use it as well. Now we said at the open franco we would start with Jack Catterall versus I don't even know if I got the guy's first name, but Assuman was his opponent. Yes. The cow, I think. Okay. Now here's what I loved about this fight. I first saw Jack Catteralt when he lost quotation marks to Josh Taylor for undisputed 140-pound champion. Now, he I thought he beat Josh Taylor's ass in that fight, and so did the rest of the world, it felt like, because he got like shamed into having a rematch. But either way, in this fight, Jack Catteralt was landing just some beautiful power, and there was just like a suite made for highlight reel knockdown in the fourth where the guy hits the mat. You're not even sure if he's gonna get up, and assuming just had like blood coming down his face, you're like, Oh, this is over in the fourth, but he somehow gets up and survives the next 20 seconds and makes it all the way to the 11th. Like, I I thought for sure that that fight was done in the fourth.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, he was a bloody mess. There was multiple knockdowns in this one, it was a lot more fun than I thought it was gonna be. But yeah, so while I was watching this one, uh, full disclosure, I was also trying to put away Halloween bins and get out Christmas bins. So, like between rounds, be like, I have one minute. It was actually a really good workout. I'd haul ass over to the bits, and then I'd hear the fight starting, and I'd like jump out of the crawl space. But I missed how Catarall got busted open because he had a bunch of blood just streaming down his face. And I'm like, Did I miss something? Because the Suman just kept going down and getting his ass beat.
SPEAKER_00:In the sixth or seventh, it assumes did end up having some success where he was definitely landing, pretty much just hitting Caterall right in the eye, you know, and then there was like a cut above the bridge for the nose. So there was some success, and you could see that he had some power because he did open up those cuts. But if you go to like the next rounds, you see he gets cleaned up and he must have had a good cut man because at the end he looked fine again, you know what I mean? So yeah, there were definitely was a round or two where he was bloody. But for anybody that didn't see this, watch the highlights of this because the knockout at the end is it's a brutal knockout where the guy's like halfway out of the ropes, yeah. But before that time that Asuman went to the mat, he gets knocked down. The ref goes to like wave it off, even though it was a knockdown. I don't know what was going on there. But Asuman gets right back up to his feet and stumbles forward toward Catarell and eats another like three punches. And it was like the classic of oh, protect yourself at all times because you're gonna pretend that you weren't knocked down. Guess what? He's gonna knock you down.
SPEAKER_02:So uh yeah, he got tore up.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yes.
SPEAKER_02:And I will say on the last uh on that last knockout, uh, I thought he was trying to escape out of the ring because he's legit, he like dove headfirst through the ropes, but like belly side down. Usually when somebody gets launched to the ropes, they're going backwards. He went like head first, face down. Uh, and then the best part was he had his butt sticking up in the air and a giant only fans advertisement right across his ass. It's like this poor guy, like horrible product placement, but also made it more entertaining for us. Um, I I loved it. Also looking forward to seeing more Jack Catterall. Hopefully, this is a Jack Caterall that we continue to see because I thought he looked good. He was he was landing some good shots when he wanted to, and uh it ended up making for an entertaining fight. A bloody fight, but an entertaining fight.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. So if we miss anything else on that card that we should go back and watch, I don't care about the main event because you can blame it on as many eggs as you want, you can use the cool hand Luke Defense. Um, but there's no way you pop that hot because of eggs. So if there's anything else on that card that we should watch, definitely let me know. Now I'll go back. Let's start with the ESPN Deportes card on Friday night the 14th. Now, how was that commentating crew? Like just from the energy level, I liked them, but I also didn't know what the hell they were saying. So I was just basing it just on their emotion behind it. So I was enjoying it. Are they any were they any good?
SPEAKER_02:Uh yeah, they were fine. Uh a little bit of an accent that I wasn't quite familiar with, but it was one that was easy to understand. So, like in Spanish, you have like Puerto Ricans and Cubans, and like there's certain accents, Venezuelans, uh, Spain, it's just silly, it's like cartoonish and lispy, whatever. But but a lot of the like islands and stuff and uh parts of of South America, it's really hard to understand what the hell is going on. These guys, it was like a very it was a normal accent, but there was something going on there. Uh, but uh it was fine. Uh, nothing crazy. A lot of times with the Spanish announcers, you get really crazy, like out-of-pocket borderline offensive stuff, and uh there was none of that here. It was very professional, very they were good, and I thought the the feed was fine too. Like the uh production value sometimes is is like really crappy.
SPEAKER_00:This one it was fine, it looked like they were in like a bingo hall or something, but it did look like a small haul, yeah, but there was some fun fights on this, and that's why you know I wanted to talk about it. Like the first fight that I started taking notes on, or that I kept my notes on was Blandon versus Marinero. That was earlier in the card. I think that you've watched this as well. Yeah, now Blandon he comes out just kicking ass right from the opening bell, like he was double parked, he was just looking to beat the shit out of Marinero. Am I saying that right, by the way? Is it yeah, yeah, Maranero? Okay, now Marinero, for those that didn't watch us, he looked like central casting of like the bully that picked on the wrong kid. Now he's getting his come up ins. Like he just looked like he would be a jerk. I'm sure that he's a fine human being, but if you were casting a movie in the 80s, Maronero would have played like the absolute bully that you wanted the root against. This looked like a really good boxer against a guy with a chin because Blandon was landing with each hand, he was landing. And what I noticed about Marinero, like a lot of boxers, they can brag about, oh, I have power in both hands. You gotta watch out. Marinero has swing and missability with both hands, like he was throwing wild rights, he would throw a wild left. He wasn't discriminating, you know what I mean? Like he would swing and come nowhere close uh with both hands. It was it was fun to watch.
SPEAKER_02:It was uh, you know, we've said this before. There was whole stretches of this fight. To me, it's it's like when you fight in a dream and everything's going slow and nothing is doing any kind of damage. Like these guys weren't just telegraphing, they were literally telegraphing their punches. Like that's how long and slow some of these like big, just wild punches were, and they were still hitting, but then like neither guy was going down for a while. I thought, oh gosh, if I can't think of his name. Yeah, Marineto, uh, the the crappier of the two.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, yeah, I'd say he missed as much as he connected, like that's how bad his accuracy was.
SPEAKER_02:I the only thing I could remember was that he was Guatemalan and was not in the best of shape. He was uh, I don't want to say pudgy, but he just looked like he had never seen a weight room before in his life, and it just took a beating. Like this poor guy was just getting his ass beat the whole time. But at least it was entertaining, like it was not quite bum fights, I'd say a good four levels above that because there was technique and skill involved, but it was definitely just one dude getting bullied and beat up the entire time, and he kept trying, like he has art.
SPEAKER_00:But uh I broke I wrote down like if he didn't have a chin, he would have been out of there in the second round. Yeah, because Blandon was was landing plenty of good close shots. So Martinano, give him credit. Like he has a chin. He just I don't know that that's a skill you want to base your whole career around, you know. It's a good way to get CTE, you know, and then the main event you had your favorite Latino first name, Brian. All right, uh Brian Massinos versus Julio Cabrera, and this was a good, like just main event where there was two equally kind of skilled fighters. Now, I thought that Massinos was dropping his hands too much, yeah, and was just eating hooks because of it. But they're like, Well, that's how he keeps his jab from that's how he surprises them. Like, well, he's also getting surprised a tattoo right on his face. Like, let's pull that together. It was good action.
SPEAKER_02:Like, if if you like seeing two little dudes just throw a bajillion punches, it was very entertaining in in that aspect. The only thing was there was multiple times where I thought somebody was gonna get launched out of the ring, and then both guys were just eating the punches, so it's like, were the punches not that strong? Or was it that these two dudes are just that tough and were just eating all of these punches? Either way, uh made for an entertaining fight.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, the one thing Mosinos he got knocked down with like two minutes left in the round and somehow still survived that round. I was like, Oh, that's that's a win for you. Like, I know nobody wants to celebrate a moral victory, but if if you can somehow find your legs while you're running for two minutes, that's that's not a bad skill to have. So, yeah, that went unanimous decision for Julio Cabrera. Then we go to Top Rank Classic, I think was what the channel is called, Franco. And our guy, Richard Torres, was taking on Thomas Salek. Now, did you watch this fight, Franco?
SPEAKER_02:That is like the only one that I did not watch. Please tell me how our boy did.
SPEAKER_00:It was incredibly short. Oh, okay. Uh, we will talk about this fight longer than the fight actually went on. He busted the dude's nose, all right, twice with a hook and then landed an uppercut on it. And that's when I think Saleh had just turned his back and was like, oh, and then the doctor looked at him just when the doctor touched his face, you hear him like, ah! And so it was scored a knockout there in the first round. I don't even think it lasted a minute and a half, but here's the biggest thing you missed Richard Torres comes out with his Hall of Fame mustache. You know what I mean? He's got the good, he's got the good porno stash, but he also came out with like spring break braids. All right, you know, like that's nice. Uh how you'll see your friends come back from uh Cancun and they're like, Oh no, somebody did this for me at the beach. You're like, Oh, Derek Braids. Yeah, you should have left this at the beach because uh you're back, you're back, and you look ridiculous.
SPEAKER_02:I just pulled up a picture and I see that's terrible. It uh what was the movie with uh James Franco? Spring breakers or something like that. Oh, well, maybe something like I didn't see it.
SPEAKER_00:It looks very white trash, it looks it's pretty bad. Uh I think when I say spring break braids, people get exactly what I'm talking about. Like that, I think that's painting a picture for people, but yeah, it was it was a guy I was looking forward to watching, and we didn't get to watch him long, so he didn't really miss too much. So he's ready for Usik, is what I'm hearing. Right. And then in the next event, Julian Montalbo versus Nicholas Patron, Montalbo or Montalbo, 17 years old, all right, comes out fighting Patron and lands a body shot that makes Patron hit the mat and doesn't get up. All right, he doesn't beat the count. There's there's no chance of it. But I was thinking, you know what, with as many times that I've been put on the floor by Patron, like I'm glad to see the tables turn. Fuck this guy. Uh, I want to see him puke now because he's made me puke in the past. Now I want to see this would be a poetic justice to watch Patron puke from having internal injuries like he's caused to me for years.
SPEAKER_02:All the liver damage, you want to see him take it now?
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Like that'll show you pot throne. Uh, so I don't know if you saw that one. Um, now we can skip to I think what I was talking about before Lindalfo Delgado versus Gabriel Goyas. Yes. Did you score this by yourself at home?
SPEAKER_02:Uh I did, and I believe this might be one of the biggest ripoffs and robberies I've ever seen. Maybe not ever. Really? But up there, I did not have it going the way that it went. How did you have it? Because I did not think that Lindolfo Delgado took that fight.
SPEAKER_00:See, now I thought it was a super close fight. When they said split decision, I'm like, all right, at least they were watching the same fight that I was. Where the announcers were like, Oh, I don't think Delgado's even scored a couple rounds. I'm like, you're not watching the same fight I am. Like, now don't get me wrong, Goya's had a wonderful fight, all right? But he was landing a lot of jabs, and Delgado was landing a lot of his power shots. You could see by the look on their two faces when the fight was over that Delgado was landing a lot of power shots, and Goya's was having a lot of success with the jab, so I don't blame him for not going away from it. You know, like if you're having success with something, stick with it. But he wasn't mixing it up either, and that's why I just felt like some of those closer rounds, I was giving it to whoever was running the the more meaningful shots, and rarely do I see the meaningful shot be the jab. You know what I mean? Here's another thing that I thought that I really like. Corey Erdman, he was the one calling this fight. I don't know that I like his partner all that much, but okay, they were talking before this that Goya's his last fight he looked like shit, and before that, he had lost to Subreel Matisse. So I think just the fact that he didn't suck made them fall in love with him. Like they were expecting Delgado to just walk right through him, and because that didn't happen, they started giving extra points to Goya's for just not sucking. Where I just thought this was a close fight. I could have seen it going the other direction for the exact scores that it went, but I didn't think it was some landslide that it was some big shocking thing. I do think that with that knockdown in the final round, like it probably should have gone in Goya's, but I also thought it was gonna be close, you know, like a 114, 113, either way. And I was bothered by their being shocked as much as they were. Where I was watching it, uh, I didn't have a bet on this. I'm not in the fan club of either one of these guys. I thought it was a really good fight that I just thought was close.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, I could I could see maybe somebody scoring it a little bit close, but I definitely did not think it was that close. I thought that a lot of the stuff that Delgado was throwing wasn't necessarily landing or it was just kind of getting eaten up. I I don't know. I I thought that this was a ripoff, which is where I thought you were gonna be going with it. So that's why I was kind of surprised when you were surprised. I was like, Oh, not uh not at all how I had it. I definitely had it where I thought Delgado not only lost, but with that knockdown, I thought that kind of sealed it up. I thought because of how you said, once I heard split decision and all that other stuff, it was kind of like, oh, you know, it's gonna be a draw, it's gonna be something weird. And then I was genuinely shocked when uh they raised Delgado's hand and I was like, Oh shit. Uh, and then the crowd was all booing and the announcers were against it. Literally, Fritz is the only person that somehow sought the other way. Maybe.
SPEAKER_00:Uh and when the crowd started booing, I'm like, all right, maybe I'm in the wrong. But and I also thought, all right, are the judges so much in favor of this guy that they're making me root the other way? I'm like, maybe that's happening too.
SPEAKER_02:And that does happen a lot. Uh it really does. When when I'm listening to the broadcast and they're leaning one way, a lot of times it makes me want to root for the other guy. Not even, I guess it's kind of like a wanting the underdog to win kind of thing, but also a lot of times I'm like, screw your friend. I want the other guy. He needs me as a friend. So yeah, maybe maybe it was a little bit of that. But yeah, I I Donald, I thought pretty good and uh did not have Delgado take in that fight, and then he did.
SPEAKER_00:I'm gonna have to uh write since everybody else seems to think that as well. Um, now here's where we'll wrap up our action. We got more coming up next week. There's uh some pay-per-views, stuff like that. So when we have enough for another episode, like we always do, we will come right back for one. But we wrap up this week's episode with Rafael Espinoza versus Arnold Kage, the guy. I'm not sure. I think it's Kage. Okay, now Raphael Espinoza is the tallest featherweight champion in history, yeah. Okay, and it was very apparent in this fight because Keggy had a little success early, but that gap was just too much for him to overcome. And you might think, like, oh well, the taller fighter just picked him off with jabs. No, he started landing power early, like the hooks were just coming. And I give keggy credit, like he wanted that belt, but he just did not have the staying power to stand up to that thing because that thing, like the the absolute onslaught, like it was relentless, and it reminded me a little bit of our old when we watch David Benavidez fights when he was still like 160. You know, like his output is just like that, you know, with like the punches and bunches were just relentless, and you could see him land it with some real power. So this goes 10 full rounds. The guy doesn't come out for the 11th, so they call it a knockout. Now, I'd never seen this before. Maybe this was just the area that they were at in Mexico, but the ref went over to the corner and counted him out while he was on his stool.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I don't know what that was about, but it was definitely weird.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so they said something like, Oh, this is just a formality. Well, I was like, All right, they can also just wave their arms, they don't have to count to 10, but clearly they did have to count to 10. I actually give Keggy's corner credit because they let him hang in as long as they could, but there was no chance, he was just getting hurt more and more every time he went out there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, uh, I will say with the count out in the corner, I was confused about what was going on because the way that he was counting from a distance when they first started showing it, his palm was very flat and down, and his arm was very extended in a very 1930s German kind of way. And I was like, Oh my god, it's everywhere now, like the world is coming to an end. Maybe he was just calling his friend Elon. Yeah. But I was like, what the hell is he doing? I was ready for a riot, and then I'm like, oh, he's counting, that is weird, and then finally he put up the other hand with one finger, and it's like, all right, now we have an out. Like now he's not gonna get into trouble. But um, it kind of reminded me the fight of Sebastian Fandora, but like not more athletic, but like smoother. Like, don't get me wrong, I love me some Sebastian Fandora, but for whatever reason, Rafael Espinoza, despite being freakishly tall and skinny compared to his opponent, is like smooth with it. Like the movements, the foot movement, no, at no point did he look awkward. Like you said, throwing these big monster hooks and uppercuts and getting in there on this guy who's just a little guy. Like it looked so weird, and I love it. I love any kind of like weird mismatch. It reminds me of old like Ultimate Fighter, where it would be like, All right, here's a 500-pound sumo wrestler versus this jujitsu guy who weighs 80 pounds. Go, right, yeah. That's that's kind of what this reminded me of, and it was fun. I like me some Rafael Espinoza, like I said, is kind of a freak show aspect where he's just so much taller, but man, he's just athletic and sharp, and he's he's got a good build on him. It was a fun fight and a nice ass whooping to watch.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the height difference, it would have been appropriate if he went over after the fight was and give him a noogie, like it put him in a headlock, like, ah, you little scamp, thanks for trying. You know what I mean? Like, that's it looked that one-sided.
SPEAKER_02:He looked like a drunk uncle that's had too much to drink at Thanksgiving. He's like, put on the gloves, boy. And starts beating up somebody's nephew in the corner, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I appreciate everybody coming back in. I thanks Franco for doing all the work. I don't know if we'll see you before Thanksgiving or if you'll hear from us before Thanksgiving. But either way, if you live here in the States, happy Thanksgiving. If you don't live in here in the States, just eat a lot of turkey and drink, drink some wine, drink some uh beers on that Thursday that what we're celebrating, you know, just be gluttonous, and then you can be like, Oh, no, I'm not a slob, I'm having a holiday, you know. So uh I recommend that. But do you have anything else you wanted to uh cover on this, Franco? Did you have a trivia question for me? I know I was due for one.
SPEAKER_02:Uh yeah, I have a trivia question for you, Fritz. Are you ready for this one? I am ready. All right, I'm I'm giving you a little bit of a softball since we we missed it last week. So let's get bring it in this week. All right, Lindolfo Delgado has beaten all of the following, except for one of these guys. Which one did Lindolfo Delgado not beat? Ricardo Rico Pozos, James Roach, Jervis Tech, and Eduardo Cordoves. Eduardo Cordovas. It is Jervis Tech, aka the Mad Hatter from Batman.
SPEAKER_00:Ah, damn it. It was right up my alley with some DC knowledge, and uh I swung and missed like that uh kid. I can swing and miss uh with both hands just like him and a trivia. So we got that going for us. Uh I want to thank uh everybody again. Thanks for subscribing, thanks for listening. Thanks to Franco for doing all the work. And uh yeah, if you don't have anything else, Franco, I'm throwing in the towel.
SPEAKER_02: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.