Judah to headline Dekada Fight Night
CALGARY If Zab Judah needed any proof that he’d left his mark on the boxing game, he got it last summer.
In the buildup to the massive Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor fight last summer, Judah’s name was regularly brought up for anyone seeking proof that Mayweather wasn’t nearly as invincible as some people were making him out to be.
While Judah lost to Mayweather when they squared off in the ring back in 2006, he put up some serious resistance against the undefeated master and even dropped Mayweather with a right hook. The sequence was controversially ruled a slip.
Judah’s success was used to prove that yes, Mayweather could be hit, and the New York native admitted Thursday it meant a lot to have his effort in that fight be remembered so fondly.
“It’s always great because we fought in ’06, so for that time, that situation, for my name (to still be remembered) and still be buzzing like that, that was great for me,” Judah said Thursday from Grey Eagle Casino, where he’ll take on Noel Rincon in the main event of Saturday night’s Dekada Fight Night.
“That was a great feeling, to just know that something I went out and put my heart into, years later it still stood as something that stood for something. That was great. I appreciated it.”
Judah is set to fight his 55th professional boxing match on Saturday, and his career has seen him take on essentially every one of the greats of his era.
He’s boxing royalty, at this point, with a resume of bouts that includes the likes of Mayweather, Miguel Cotto and Cory Spinks, who he famously beat in his opponent’s hometown of St. Louis to win the undisputed WBA and WBC welterweight championships of the world.
Judah ranks that fight as his greatest accomplishment in the sport, and the 9th round TKO, and the final flourish of punches along the ropes with which Judah finished Spinks perfectly illustrate just how frightening his hands can be.
With so much time in the boxing game, that might make Judah a boxing traditionalist, the type of guy who would dismiss the Mayweather-McGregor fight as being little more than a circus sideshow.
But Judah was there that night in Las Vegas last summer, and he’s got a very different take.
“I thought it was rather interesting,” Judah said. “It lived up to being a better fight than people anticipated. You figured here’s a guy coming to a sport where’s he’s handicapped. This is not his best foot forward, and I didn’t think as a fighter he had anything that could stand up to Floyd and go as many rounds as he did.”
In addition to the McGregorMayweather fight, 2017 also featured a couple other huge boxing matches that helped push the sport back into the mainstream. Anthony Joshua’s heavyweight championship win over Wladimir Klitschko sold out Wembley Stadium in London, while Gennady Golovkin’s draw with Canelo Alvarez was one of the most riveting matchups in years.
In Calgary, meanwhile, Dekada has emerged over the past couple years as Western Canada’s leading boxing promotion and has put on increasingly competitive, interesting fights.
Saturday night’s card is no exception, and the Judah-Rincon matchup guarantees fireworks.