In the first part of “The Aura of the Stub Hub” we went over the great fights that have transpired in the nearly classic venue when it was named the Home Depot Center. Fights like the first and third battles between Vazquez and Marquez, the welterweight record setter Williams vs Margarito and the war waged between Brandon Rios and Mike Alvarado among others. Now we will review the fights that have gone done in Carson, California, since the ticket brokering website Stub Hub bought the rights to name the AEG controlled grounds.
The first fight under the first moniker was a quick one but a scorcher when Mexican Jhonny Gonzalez captured the WBC featherweight title with a spectacular first round knockout of Abner Mares in the late summer of 2013. That fight was followed in April of the next year by the street fight between Lucas Matthysse of Argentina against California warrior John Molina Jr. Both visited the canvas, Matthysse in rounds two and five while Molina Jr went down in the eighth and tenth. After the last one, referee Pat Russell waived off the fight giving the win to “The Machine” Matthysse.
Two months later in June, a similar type of fight broke out between welterweights Robert “Ghost” Guerrero and Japanese kamikaze Yoshihiro Kamegai. It was expected for Guerrero to dominate but the man from the land of the rising sun gave it as good as he got but it wasn’t enough as Guerrero took a unanimous decision over twelve rounds.
These fights tend to happen in threes and this time wasn’t an exception as two months later in August, the IBF welterweight title exchanged waists when Brit Kell Brook defeated Shawn Porter to take the strap back across the pond. Nobody expected for Brook to be able to pull it off against Porter who was being groomed by his advisor Al Haymon as one of his next stars but now with the win and the couple of title defenses that came after, Brook might be on the short list to face Floyd Mayweather Jr in September in what is being touted as the pound for pound king’s last fight.
The most feared fighter in boxing, middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golokvin, made his west coast debut at the Stub Hub Center in October of 2014. He introduced his around the ring walk in there just before knocking out Marco Antonio Rubio in two rounds with a pounding left to the top of the head. The event was a complete sell out and in his next fight in the Los Angeles earlier this year Golovkin had to move his show to the much bigger Forum to accommodate all his new fans.
This year the Stub Hub Center has hosted a number of fight cards but none of them have been as exciting as the following two. The first in April saw the debut of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr under the Al Haymon banner. Unfortunately it wasn’t a successful one since he got stopped in the late rounds by Andrezj Fonfara while this past weekend’s bout between Timothy Bradley and Jessie Vargas had its own set of fireworks especially the ending courtesy of Pat Russell.
