American Jarrell Miller remains highly ranked, while compatriots Jared Anderson and Richard Torrez Jr, an Olympic silver medallist, are rebuilding.
New Zealand’s former world champion Joseph Parker is seeking a return after his provisional doping suspension was lifted in August.
Australia’s Teremoana Teremoana has stopped all 12 professional opponents within two rounds, while Uzbekistan’s two-time Olympic champion Bakhodir Jalolov extended his unbeaten record by beating Solomon Dacres on Saturday.
In Britain, Derek Chisora, 42, is considering another comeback and says he expects to face WBA ‘regular’ champion Gassiev in December.
British champion Richard Riakporhe is pursuing world honours after moving up from cruiserweight, while former cruiserweight world champion Lawrence Okolie is targeting a return after reaching an agreement with the WBC over an adverse drugs test finding.
David Adeleye, Dave Allen, Johnny Fisher and Frazer Clarke remain on the domestic scene, while Leo Atang, 19, and Ireland’s Adam Olaniyan, 20, are emerging talents.
With Usyk, Fury and Joshua approaching the ends of their careers, the heavyweight division is entering a new era.
There is no shortage of potential big fights, but bringing the champions together before mandatory obligations, rematches and boxing politics get in the way could prove the greatest challenge.
Let’s get the rose-colored story line out of the way, right away.
The postseason starts Tuesday, and it could be the last we see of Major League Baseball for a long, long time. The owners expect to lock out the players when the collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1, and the owners have made their pitch loud and clear: No new agreement without a salary cap, for they believe there can be no true competitive balance without one.
You’ll hear a lot about how the way this postseason sets up, or how it plays out, could impact the bargaining.
Don’t believe a word of it. Nothing that happens this October will be relevant to the new labor agreement.
Come on. The team with the lowest payroll — the Cleveland Guardians — won their division. So competitive balance can’t be completely out of whack, can it?
Cleveland hasn’t won the World Series since 1948. The opponent was the Boston Braves, who subsequently moved to Milwaukee and then Atlanta.
What about the team with the best record in the American League: the Tampa Bay Rays, who beat up on big-market bullies in the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox?
The Rays never have won the World Series.
Well, what about the Milwaukee Brewers? For the second consecutive season, the team in baseball’s smallest market posted baseball’s best record.
The Brewers got swept in last year’s National League Championship Series. They never have won the World Series.
But aren’t the Brewers the best example of a team playing beyond its payroll instead of using it as an excuse?
Isn’t that what got everyone agitated? Doesn’t everyone outside L.A. know the Dodgers have destroyed competitive balance, and the owners are trying to fix it?
The owners were ready to fight for more than a year before the Dodgers helped themselves to Díaz, Tucker and Skubal. For years, the commissioner’s office touted baseball’s competitive balance, citing in part how the league championship series and World Series matchups changed almost every year.
After the Dodgers won in 2024, the commissioner’s office redefined competitive balance as how often a small-market team won the World Series, last accomplished by the 2015 Kansas City Royals. The seeds for this winter’s labor war had been planted.
If the Dodgers flop this October, the owners are not going to suddenly back off a salary cap. If, say, the Brewers or Rays win, the owners will say that’s the exception that proves the rule.
There are ways for owners to direct more revenue to small-market teams without the salary cap the players insist they will not accept, and without limiting the definition of success to winning the World Series, which risks devaluing the product among 29 fan bases every year. Whether the owners wish to consider them without the cost certainty that comes with a salary cap will be the story line of the cold winter ahead.
The Dodgers are scheduled to open next season on March 25. Neither owners nor players would have lost any significant revenue by then — ticket sales and broadcasting rights for owners, salaries for players — so a new agreement by then is uncertain at best.
So enjoy the postseason.
So, at least for now, isn’t the postseason tilted toward the Dodgers and Yankees?
Those screams you hear are coming from New York, where Yankees fans are annoyed that their team finished with the second-best record in the AL and still could be eliminated in two or three days. The Yankees finished behind the Rays and received a wild card.
The Yankees lost 13 fewer games than the AL West champion Houston Astros and 10 fewer games than the AL Central champion Guardians, both seeded ahead of them. The Astros are a .500 team, the worst record a division champion has taken into the postseason. The Guardians get a bye, just like the Dodgers.
The Yankees drew the Red Sox, which means painful amounts of national commentary will focus on (1) how the system victimized the Yankees and the Red Sox; and (2) baseball’s most hyped rivalry.
Until baseball realigns its divisions or seeds its playoffs by wins, regardless of division, the Yankees should simply do what Aaron Judge said about how they should respond to criticism of their fundamentally frightening 2024 World Series: “Play better.” And baseball’s best rivalry will be on October display only if the Dodgers and San Diego Padres meet in the NL Championship Series.
Still laughing, though, at sanctimonious Yankees fans believing baseball is somehow unfair to the poor, gutty Yankees.
Can anyone save baseball in 2027?
We should try Pope Leo. He’s a long-suffering Chicago White Sox fan. In his first full year as pope — and after three consecutive 100-loss seasons — the White Sox made the playoffs.
Some fans call it a miracle, a reporter told the pope. Did the pope have anything to do with the turnaround?
He smiled.
“No comment,” he said, then paused.
“Great things happen in Chicago,” he said.
The Cubs made the postseason too. The Cubs and White Sox have shared Chicago since 1901. This is the fourth time both have qualified for postseason play. Deep dish pizza for all, but a World Series in Chicago this fall might truly require divine intervention.
Alexandre Pantoja and Joshua Van hope their fight Saturday at Crypto.com Arena will last longer than 26 seconds.
It has been nine months since their first bout, which ended in less than a minute because of a Pantoja injury and made Van the UFC flyweight champion. Pantoja aims to reclaim the belt he lost at UFC 331, with the main event beginning at 6 p.m. and streaming on Paramount+.
Pantoja dislocated his elbow when he fell while trying to defend against one of Van’s moves on Dec. 6 at UFC 323 in Las Vegas. The fight ended immediately.
Van celebrated winning the 125-pound title, but both fighters walked away from that night feeling everyone deserved more than the premature result.
Alexandre Pantoja holds his arm after losing his flyweight title fight on Dec. 6 in Las Vegas.
(Ian Maule / Getty Images)
Pantoja, of Brazil, has not competed since that night. He has spent most of the past nine months recovering from the injury, while Van successfully defended his title once against Tatsuro Taira in May, winning by stoppage in the final round.
“It’s been [nine] long months,” Pantoja said. “I’ve been working hard. And at a certain point, I think that after two years as champion, five title fights — almost six title fights — at a certain point it’s good to take some time off, enjoy my family, enjoy myself. But at the same time, I’m really hungry to win again.”
Pantoja said he returned to the gym two days after that first fight. Although the injury kept him out of the octagon, he didn’t want to stay away from training for too long because he said that would have made it harder to get back to fighting at the championship level.
During his time out of the octagon, he observed how the division changed.
“I see a lot of good fights. We’re seeing the top 10 change almost completely,” Pantoja said Wednesday. “I see incredible fights in the flyweight division. And I think this Saturday, with my fight against Joshua Van in the main event here in Los Angeles, is very special.”
Van, meanwhile, enters the rematch coming off a five-round championship bout.
“I’ve been working on my ground game, and you’ll see it,” said Van, who holds dual American and Myanmar citizenship. “I tried it in the fight against Taira, but I didn’t quite pull it off. But this time, you’ll see a different level from Joshua Van.”
The champion’s confidence remains undiminished, as he sees the rematch as an opportunity to put any debate surrounding that first fight in 2025 to rest and prove his place in the division.
“When I beat him, I’ll be one of the greats in this division, and then the next challenger will come and try to take the belt from me,” Van said.
Pantoja said Van has changed since December, highlighting the fight against Taira and noting the champion has refined aspects of his fighting style.
Joshua Van celebrates after defeating Alexandre Pantoja in a flyweight title bout during UFC 323 on Dec. 6 in Las Vegas.
(Ian Maule / Getty Images)
“I think Van definitely evolved a lot after our fight,” Pantoja said. “He had the fight against Tatsuro Taira; I think he evolved and corrected some mistakes he made in that fight. So I think it’s going to be completely different.”
Pantoja doesn’t consider himself the same fighter who will face Van.
“The drive is always the same,” Pantoja said. “I’ve had the same drive since I was a kid — I’ve always wanted to fight the best fighters in the world. The drive is the same; it’s just that I think I’m much more mature now.”
Pantoja said Van is a top-tier fighter, but he believes the injury prevented both of them from showing everything they were capable of.
“He’s an incredible fighter,” said Pantoja, 36. “When you watch Joshua Van fight, his expression never changes — he always tries to stay in control. And that proves just how good you are.”
Although Pantoja officially lost that night, the injury changed the course of the fight before it could truly get underway.
“I injured my arm. I know that, as an athlete, I lost that fight, and now I have the opportunity to fight world champion Joshua Van — and that’s what I want. I want him at his best because I’m at my best too,” Pantoja said.
Tensions have escalated since their first encounter.
At a news conference in August in Los Angeles, the fighters got into an exchange that forced UFC president Dana White to intervene. Pantoja stood up from his seat after Van interrupted him, but the situation did not escalate into a physical confrontation.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m his dad,” Van said. “He was being respectful before the fight, and I don’t know what he’s doing in interviews and stuff like that to make me look like the bad guy.”
Pantoja offered a different explanation.
“He does a very good job,” Pantoja said. “He needed a lesson. When I stood up, I tried to teach him a lesson. I’m from the ‘90s. Back then, if you didn’t respect your mother or father, you’d get a slap.”
Despite the disagreement, both have shown respect for their opponent’s skills. Van described Pantoja as a “very, very dangerous” fighter.
“He’s going to be motivated, he’s going to be hungrier, and I think this will be the best Pantoja we’ll see,” Van said. “So I’m very well prepared for this fight.”
Pantoja, for his part, knows he’s facing a champion who’s already had the chance to prove he can go the distance for five rounds. The Brazilian also viewed Van’s fight against Taira as a source of insight for his preparation.
“An incredible fight, very good,” Pantoja said of his 24-year-old opponent. “I think it’s a good fight for all the fans. It showed me something, but I know Joshua Van is very young and can fix a lot of things from that fight.”
For the Brazilian, the goal this weekend is clear.
“At the end of the day, what matters is the victory,” said Pantoja. “However it plays out — whether it’s by decision, split decision, KO or submission — I think the closer we get to the fight, the less those things matter. The closer we get to the fight, the championship doesn’t matter anymore, the money doesn’t matter — all that really matters is the win.”
Van doesn’t expect to let the fight go to the scorecards.
“I don’t think it’ll go five rounds; I’ll finish it within the first three rounds,” he said confidently. “It’ll be by knockout or submission, but I’m leaning more toward a knockout.”
If Pantoja regains the championship, he would become only the third flyweight champion in UFC history to reclaim the belt after losing it, joining Deiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Moreno.
For the Brazilian, returning to Los Angeles also holds personal significance. He recalled that it was the first city he visited when he arrived in the United States in 2014 and that, back then, he slept in a gym.
Now he’ll return as a title challenger in the main event of UFC 331.
“It’s so nice that people see where I started here and see how far I’ve come,” Pantoja recalled. “For me, the best part is being the same guy I was when I arrived here in 2014; I’m the same guy right now, and I’m very happy and proud of myself.”
