On Friday, June 2, 2023, at the Pechanga Resort & Casino’s Summit in Temecula, California, MarvNation Promotions in association with Ringside Ticket Inc., will present a card billed as “An Evening of Fights with Sugar Ray Leonard and Tommy Hearns.” Leonard and Hearns, serving as honorary hosts for the night and meeting fans, a seven-fight card will be held, featuring Orlando, Florida’s undefeated Jonathan Lopez (10-0, 7 KOs) taking on Mexicali, Mexico’s Eduardo Baez (21-4-2, 7 KOs) in an eight-round featherweight battle.
A trio of undefeated California-based fighters will also appear, as Women’s WBC interim world super flyweight champion Adelaida “La Cobra” Ruiz (13-0-1, 7 KOs) of Los Angeles will face Mexico City’s Lucia Hernandez Nunez (6-7) in a 10-round super flyweight non-title matchup; while the son of another legend, Fernando “El Feroz” Vargas Jr. (8-0, 8 KOs) of Oxnard, California, will meet Jesus Cruz Silva (6-2, 1 KO) of Monterey, Mexico.
San Diego’s own Mario “Matador” Ramos (10-0, 8 KOs) will go six super welterweight rounds against Fort Lauderdale, Florida’s also undefeated Alexander Centeno (8-0, 6 KOs).
Three more undercard bouts are also scheduled.
Leonard-Hearns was the first megafight I followed as a kid. It was written about in the papers daily for weeks leading up to the fight. Leonard was the golden boy and media daring while Hearns was the stoic, dark horse assasin. Ha! The perfect fight to unify the Welterweight title, it was a lot less confusing then- the WBA and the WBC. I lost a bet to my 5th grade classmate on that one. Hearns was my man.
Same here and I still have my fight scrapbook. It was almost as if world sport came to a standstill for the fight. From an intrigue and skill factor a great fight.
Remember going with a group of friends to see this pay per view. Most of them were not boxing fans but Hearns had all of Detroit interested.
“Leonard, Hearns at Pechanga June 2”
– For a second, I thought this was an announcement for a re-match…..
OMG, don’t give them any ideas.
Boxing writers put so much emphasis on an undefeated record its no wonder fighters take less risk these days. With just 10 fights it doesn’t matter that the fighter is undefeated. We all expect it was due to soft matchmaking. We blame the fighters but the writers dont make it any better.
I was having that conversation the other day with a friend of mine. Guys like Freddie Pendleton, Emmanuel Augustus, Mickey Ward, and Verno Phillips would chew most of these guys up and they lost about 30 fights combined before they reached their primes. Different game now. You have stiffs out there who are 20-0.
Man oh man that Augustus could scrap when he felt like it ! Loved watching him on Friday night fights !
I boxed as a kid and when I first started, I would walk around asking everybody what their record was, expecting them to say 20-0 or at least 19-3 or something because those were the records of the fighters you saw on tv. I was blown away when the best and most experienced fighters in the gym told me they were like 16-12 or 22-17. Some even had losing records. Good fighters with records like 3-12. Then ESPN had the early days of Top Rank Boxing where they featured fighters with really bad records that were actually good fighters. Anybody remember Vampire Johnson and Thomas “Shake and Bake” Baker? Haha. A guy with a stellar record means he has been promoted, protected, and groomed.
Vampire Johnson. They used to roll him to the ring in a coffin. He actually had a W over Donny Lalonde.
This card is the real deal, full of young guys trying to build a nane for themselves, no divas, no pompous entrances, no absurd conditions, just pure boxing and boxers willing to please the audience and the treat to meet two immortals of the game
Two of the greatest of all time!
I would take these 2 guys at welterweight over anyone before or since.
‘Son of another legend’ – hmm
I kinda thought the same thing when reading that, but I might say Feroz was a legend. Not in the same realm as Hearns or Leonard, but for his era you could call him a legend. Trinidad and DelaHoya really took the wind out of his sail, but coming up, Feroz was a bad ass. After losing to DLH, he completely altered his fight style to being more of a boxer, and that style never really suited him.