Saturday, August third, goes to be a monumental day in boxing. Terence Crawford (40-0, 31 KOs) will tackle Israil Madrimov (10-0-1, 7 KOs) at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles.
(Credit: Mark Robinson: Matchroom Boxing)
Crawford, the previous undisputed champion at 140 and 147 kilos, will move as much as 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 query from reading that paragraph, apart from how will Terence Crawford have a look at 154 kilos or what Eminem’s setlist will appear like, is: wait, if this card is going down in Los Angeles, why is Riyadh Season promoting it? I assumed Riyadh was in Saudi Arabia. Well, the reply to that is easy! His Excellency Turki Alalshikh thinks Riyadh Season is such an awesome vibe that it should mushroom further to incorporate events not in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, or Asia. This Saturday’s event in Los Angeles might be the primary time Riyadh Season has ventured onto American soil.
Terence Crawford is a person 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 perfect pound-for-pound fighter on this planet.
Along with training for his fight against Madrimov, Crawford has been seen in one other ring these days, twice appearing on WWE Smackdown in the previous couple of weeks. The 2 episodes took place in Crawford’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. Crawford was seated within the front row and gave a wrestler a chair; the next week, after the victim of the chair shot demanded that Crawford apologize, Crawford “knocked out” the wrestler with one punch.
Crawford’s appearance within the skilled wrestling universe was notable for multiple reasons. When Top Rank represented Terence Crawford earlier in his profession, Bob Arum was very outspoken about Crawford’s inability or unwillingness to assist promote his fights. Perhaps Crawford wouldn’t have done something like this a couple of 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 coping with all of the negative publicity that got here 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 that 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 only occur out of thin air. We’ve been constructing towards this for years now.
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One man who has fought in Saudi Arabia and is joyful to be fighting in Los Angeles is Andy Ruiz, who was born in Imperial, California, about 260 miles away from BMO Stadium. Andy Ruiz might be facing Jarrell Miller in a captivating heavyweight matchup. Except for the fundamental event, that is the fight on the cardboard that I’m 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 most important night of his profession. But Miller tested positive for steroids and was faraway from the cardboard. Into Miller’s place stepped Andy Ruiz, who pulled off certainly one of the most important upsets in boxing history and defeated Anthony Joshua as a 25-1 underdog at Madison Square Garden to grow to be the heavyweight champion. Jarrell Miller can get a little bit of revenge on Ruiz on Saturday night.
This fight card is pretty good from top to bottom, a typical feature of Saudi boxing events. A vacant light heavyweight championship might be on the road 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 shouldn’t get discounted. But it is going to 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 profession so far, and a rematch can be a giant fight. American heavyweight Jared Anderson (17-0) can be on this card. He’ll face Congolese native Martin Bakole (20-1), the younger brother of former cruiserweight champion Ilunga Makabu, within the hardest test of Anderson’s blossoming profession. Plus, Eminem might be performing! I’m a complete Stan of this card. Let’s get to the opposite man within the fundamental event before I feel of more puns.
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While Israil Madrimov is defending his championship against a person coming up in weight to challenge him, Madrimov is the decided underdog on this matchup. Madrimov, who hails from Uzbekistan, will face his hardest challenge within the immensely talented Crawford. Madrimov has been within the 154-pound weight class his entire skilled profession and spent a part of his time within the amateur ranks fighting on the middleweight limit of 168 kilos.
Except for being the naturally greater man, Madrimov has been more lively than Crawford lately. Since Madrimov turned skilled in November 2018, he has fought eleven times. Crawford has just six fights in that span. That inactivity may be a bonus for Crawford, who might be 37 years old at the tip of September. Madrimov’s fans in his native Uzbekistan have been watching plenty of boxing these days.
Uzbekistan has eleven male or female boxers who qualified for boxing on the 2024 Olympic Games, that are currently happening in Paris, behind only the twelve athletes Australia sent. Uzbekistan is certainly one of two nations to have a representative in all seven men’s boxing weight classes on the 2024 Olympics, together with neighboring Kazakhstan.
The 2 most notable fighters within 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 primary Asian man to win a world title recognized by certainly one of boxing’s 4 major sanctioning bodies. Israil Madrimov would go a great distance 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 grow to be more inescapable than ever, Israel Madrimov hopes that Saturday night also marks the start of a golden era in Uzbek boxing.
