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Amir Khan, Chris Algieri make weight for Friday bout

Fighters Network
28
May

Me and a grizzled veteran who shall remain nameless were chatting before the Thursday weigh-in at Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, ahead of the Friday card topped by an Amir Khan-Chris Algieri welterweight tangle. We both agreed, me and Mr. Grizzled, that more boxers are having scale fails these days, and we pondered why.

The kids today, we both agreed, like oldsters grumbling about that horrible racket coming from the radio circa 1964, they don’t make ’em like they used to. Too many coddled kids, with posses who blow smoke at ’em instead of giving them tough love.

And then, just like that, one of the boxers had to get starkers, drop trou and everything else to reach the 130-pound limit for his fight. That fighter in question was Javier Fortuna, and I cast no aspersions on him, or his “posse,” or what have you. In fact, he stepped on and off the scale about six times, and it was reading 130.2, and then 130.00, so the NY commission signed off on the hitter from the Dominican Republic, who takes on Bryan Vasquez, out of Costa Rica. That one will run on Spike before the Khan-Algieri main event, and apart from some jawing between Fortuna’s manager, Sampson Lewkowicz, and Vasquez’s trainer, Rigoberti Garibaldi, over the weight issue, the rest of the weigh-in was drama free.

Khan, with a healthy parade of rooters present to wish him well the day before the clash, which could earn him a date with Floyd Mayweather if he gets the better of Algieri, was 146.4, while the Long Islander Algieri betrayed not a hint of self doubt as he made 146.2, and then stared deep into the eyes of the Brit, with his face saying, “I belong here, I’m no easy mark, that guy who fought Manny Pacquiao was not me.”



Spike will run those two bouts, on a card promoted by Lou DiBella, with an assist from Joe DeGuardia, promoter of Algieri. Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions is the packager of the event.

Follow Woods on Periscope. You gotta download. It’s OK, it won’t bite. https://www.periscope.tv/

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