Saturday, August 3rd, is going to be a monumental day in boxing. Terence Crawford (40-0, 31 KOs) will take on Israil Madrimov (10-0-1, 7 KOs) at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles.
(Credit: Mark Robinson: Matchroom Boxing)
Crawford, the former undisputed champion at 140 and 147 pounds, will move up to the 154-pound division to challenge Madrimov for his WBA junior middleweight championship. The fight will headline a “Riyadh Season” card that features WBA super lightweight champion Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz (26-2-1) defending his title against Jose Valenzuela (13-2), former heavyweight champion Andy Ruiz (35-2) facing Jarrell Miller (26-1-1), and a performance by Eminem.
The natural question from reading that paragraph, other than how will Terence Crawford look at 154 pounds or what Eminem’s setlist will look like, is: wait, if this card is taking place in Los Angeles, why is Riyadh Season promoting it? I thought Riyadh was in Saudi Arabia. Well, the answer to that is simple! His Excellency Turki Alalshikh thinks Riyadh Season is such a great vibe that it should mushroom further to include events not in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, or Asia. This Saturday’s event in Los Angeles will be the first time Riyadh Season has ventured onto American soil.
Terence Crawford is a man who deserves to headline such a historic card. Crawford has looked unstoppable as of late. The Omaha native has won eleven consecutive fights by knockout as he has climbed into the conversation for the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
In addition to training for his fight against Madrimov, Crawford has been seen in another ring lately, twice appearing on WWE Smackdown in the last few weeks. The two episodes took place in Crawford’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. Crawford was seated in the front row and gave a wrestler a chair; the following week, after the victim of the chair shot demanded that Crawford apologize, Crawford “knocked out” the wrestler with one punch.
Crawford’s appearance in the professional wrestling universe was notable for multiple reasons. When Top Rank represented Terence Crawford earlier in his career, Bob Arum was very outspoken about Crawford’s inability or unwillingness to help promote his fights. Maybe Crawford would not have done something like this a few years ago; it got people talking about Crawford and his upcoming fight. The platform was relevant as well.
Before boxing and UFC promoters began holding major cards in Saudi Arabia and Turki Alalshikh was funding boxing cards on American soil, the WWE ventured into the murky waters of holding events in Saudi Arabia and dealing with all the negative publicity that came with it. WWE has held promoted events in Saudi Arabia since 2014 and agreed to a ten-year strategic multi-platform partnership with the Saudi General Sports Authority in 2018. Whatever you think of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record or the willingness of fight promoters to do business with Saudi leaders, ‘Riyadh Season’ coming to Los Angeles on Saturday night did not just happen out of thin air. We have been building towards this for years now.
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One man who has fought in Saudi Arabia and is happy to be fighting in Los Angeles is Andy Ruiz, who was born in Imperial, California, about 260 miles away from BMO Stadium. Andy Ruiz will be facing Jarrell Miller in a fascinating heavyweight matchup. Aside from the main event, this is the fight on the card that I am most looking forward to.
These two men are already inextricably linked, as five years ago, Miller was all set to face heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua in what would have been the biggest night of his career. But Miller tested positive for steroids and was removed from the card. Into Miller’s place stepped Andy Ruiz, who pulled off one of the biggest upsets in boxing history and defeated Anthony Joshua as a 25-1 underdog at Madison Square Garden to become the heavyweight champion. Jarrell Miller can get a bit of revenge on Ruiz on Saturday night.
This fight card is pretty good from top to bottom, a common feature of Saudi boxing events. A vacant light heavyweight championship will be on the line when David Morrell (10-0) takes on Serbian Radivoje Kalajdzic (29-2). Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz will defend his piece of the 140-pound championship against Jose Valenzuela. Valenzuela is a young, talented lefty who should not get discounted. But it will be interesting to see if ‘Pitbull’ Cruz can do enough to merit a rematch against fellow 140-pound titlist Gervonta Davis (30-0). Cruz gave Davis the stiffest test of his career thus far, and a rematch would be a big fight. American heavyweight Jared Anderson (17-0) is also on this card. He will face Congolese native Martin Bakole (20-1), the younger brother of former cruiserweight champion Ilunga Makabu, in the toughest test of Anderson’s blossoming career. Plus, Eminem will be performing! I am a total Stan of this card. Let’s get to the other man in the main event before I think of more puns.
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While Israil Madrimov is defending his championship against a man coming up in weight to challenge him, Madrimov is the decided underdog in this matchup. Madrimov, who hails from Uzbekistan, will face his toughest challenge in the immensely talented Crawford. Madrimov has been in the 154-pound weight class his entire professional career and spent part of his time in the amateur ranks fighting at the middleweight limit of 168 pounds.
Aside from being the naturally bigger man, Madrimov has been more active than Crawford in recent years. Since Madrimov turned professional in November 2018, he has fought eleven times. Crawford has just six fights in that span. That inactivity could also be an advantage for Crawford, who will be 37 years old at the end of September. Madrimov’s fans in his native Uzbekistan have been watching a lot of boxing lately.
Uzbekistan has eleven male or female boxers who qualified for boxing at the 2024 Olympic Games, which are currently happening in Paris, behind only the twelve athletes Australia sent. Uzbekistan is one of two nations to have a representative in all seven men’s boxing weight classes at the 2024 Olympics, along with neighboring Kazakhstan.
The two most notable fighters in the history of Uzbek boxing are Artur Gregorian and Ruslan Chagaev. Gregorian became the WBO lightweight champion and successfully defended his belt against seventeen opponents between 1996 and 2003. Chagaev was a two-time WBA heavyweight champion and the first Asian man to win a world title recognized by one of boxing’s four major sanctioning bodies. Israil Madrimov would go a long way toward adding his name to that list with a victory over Terence Crawford.
On a day when Saudi Arabia’s influence on the sports world will become more inescapable than ever, Israel Madrimov hopes that Saturday night also marks the beginning of a golden era in Uzbek boxing.
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