My Public Apology to Joseph "King Kong" Agebko

I feel pretty bad about what happened last night.

For various reasons, none of the BoxingWatchers were available for round by round coverage of Showtime's broadcast of the Joseph Agbeko-Yonnhy Perez bantamweight title fight. It happens sometimes, but I was especially bummed because I've actually grown to enjoy watching King Kong fight quite a bit.

In fact, I was going to do a post this week on the best boxers most casual fans don't know, and I was definitely going to include Agbeko. The operative term is "was."

That's because, as you've probably read by now, King Kong was dethroned, sent to the canvas in the 10th and handily outpointed by Yonnhy Perez. I feel somewhat responsible, like if I would have cared enough to rearrange my work schedule it wouldn't have happened. Or perhaps it still would have, since the closest scorecard was 116-111 Perez.

In the co-feature, another boxer who is a lot of fun to watch had better luck, as Antonio DeMarco captured the WBC interim lightweight belt with a 10th round TKO of Jose Alfaro. Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports wrote a nice column earlier this week about how DeMarco's rise has surprised even his own promoter (though maybe that's not a shock, since it's Gary Shaw). The piece says he'd like to fight Edwin Valero, and I'd be certain to free myself to watch that if it happened.

Somewhat amusing: the AP fight story paints it as a triumphant return to Las Vegas for Don King... right before it mentions the sellout crowd of just over 1,000 fans. It's all relative, I guess.

Anyway, congrats to Perez, but even though you probably have the coolest first name in all of boxing, I doubt I'll feel the same way about you that I do about Agbeko. I'm sorry I missed the fight King Kong, and if you get another title shot, I'll try to do better next time.

Posted by The Franchise