The WBO hurried Vargas up the ladder against opponents who barely belong on televised undercards. Walking through Mills, Agustin Quintana, and Jonathan Montrel is paid sparring. It does zero to prepare a kid for an elite technician coming off a one-sided dissection of Teofimo Lopez. The sanctioning body prints numbers next to names to collect sanctioning fees. It cannot gift a raw prospect the ring IQ required to survive an elite southpaw.

Vargas owns 64 professional rounds. He saw the tenth round exactly once. He never shared a ring with an ex-titleholder, let alone an elusive master of range. The stoppage over Mills gave Top Rank nice internet highlights. Vargas pressed forward against a guy willing to trade in a telephone booth. Mills cooperated completely. Shakur treats fighters like that as light cardio work. The champion controls distance with absolute cruelty.

He will dig body shots, angle out of corners, make Vargas reset every single rush. The moment frustration sets in, Vargas will begin lunging wildly. Shakur will step around those telegraphed swings, crack him with counters, and vanish before Vargas even finishes throwing.

Lopez learned that lesson the hard way. Lopez brought wins over Vasiliy Lomachenko, Josh Taylor, and Jamaine Ortiz into that ring, yet he still looked completely lost. If an experienced champion failed to win three rounds against Shakur, a prospect with zero marquee wins will drown inside six minutes.

Defensively, Vargas is an accident waiting to happen. He keeps his chin stuck in the air whenever he unloads combinations. When return fire comes his way, he commits the cardinal sin of pulling straight back with his left hand resting on his hip. Club fighters miss those openings. Shakur will pick him apart like an unpaid sparring partner.

Power means nothing when a fighter punches thin air. Shakur controls real estate so well that Vargas will spend 36 minutes swinging at ghosts while eating crisp left hands.

The Vargas family already paid this price once before. Fernando Vargas held a real belt at 154 pounds when promoters fed him to Felix Trinidad back in 2000. Fernando possessed true grit, yet he absorbed five knockdowns and sustained trauma that altered his entire career. Fernando took a beating from a puncher. Emiliano is being lined up to get systematically humiliated by a defensive wizard who will make him look amateurish.

Top Rank skipped entire tiers of matchmaking. If Bob Arum wants to find out what he truly has, he needs to stick Vargas in with Lindolfo Delgado. A solid technician like Delgado tests a prospect, exposes defensive holes over ten grueling rounds, and shows whether a kid possesses actual championship grit.

Getting outboxed by Delgado ends the hype train early, but feeding Vargas to Shakur ruins the fighter entirely.

Cashing out a young ticket seller for one mandatory payday is downright reckless. Vargas draws eyes. Top Rank has a marketable commodity they can build into a legitimate draw over three years. Throwing him into a mismatch strips the polish off the product overnight.

Weight drain makes matters worse. Vargas is a huge light welterweight who eventually grows into a full welterweight. Squeezing his body down to 140 pounds to chase an elusive target drains his legs before the opening bell rings.

Shakur will happily take the payday and collect an easy defense. The real blame falls on the handlers who confuse a manufactured ranking with genuine fighting ability. Vargas has plenty of raw talent. Serving him up to Shakur right now sacrifices a good kid just to give a champion an effortless night of work.

“You’re going to get this ass cooked, bro. You don’t even look on weight right now. Not even close. So, you’ve got a lot of work to do. We know what you’ve got to do after this,” said Ryan to First Take in his conversation with Benn. “Probably get in the sauna, probably do a lot of things. I’m chilling. So, I just don’t want to hear no excuses. I don’t want to hear, ‘Oh, you know, I was dehydrated. I was this. I was that.’ Please, just don’t give me no excuses.”

That was the most revealing part of their exchange. Ryan was relaxed enough to tell Benn that he was “chilling,” while painting a picture of his opponent sweating out the remaining pounds in a sauna.

There is obvious irony in Ryan lecturing another fighter about weight. He missed the 140-pound limit by more than three pounds against Devin Haney in 2024. Two years later, Ryan is the WBC welterweight champion and acting like the responsible adult monitoring Benn’s final cut. After taking the title from Mario Barrios in February, Ryan now makes his first defense. This is his chance to show that the discipline required from a champion has replaced the scale trouble and erratic behavior that previously followed him.

His April fight against Regis Prograis took place at a 150-pound catchweight, so Benn is not dropping directly from middleweight. Still, those three pounds matter when a fighter has spent years adding muscle for bouts at junior middleweight and middleweight.

Getting down to 150 once does not guarantee Benn can complete the final reduction without paying for it. The concern is not simply making the number. It is what Benn has left after he reaches it.

Applying pressure for 12 rounds requires active legs and plenty of energy. Benn’s punch resistance may also suffer if the final cut takes too much out of him. He cannot afford to slow down while charging into Ryan’s best weapon.

Those attacks often begin with Benn dipping forward as he tries to close distance with speed and aggression. If dehydration reduces his head movement, those entries may become easier to time. Ryan’s quick check left hook is built to punish an opponent rushing at him without moving his head sharply.

The repeated use of “I’m chilling” was deliberate. Ryan presented himself as calm and comfortable while Benn talked about graveyard shifts, pressure, and punching through his face. Benn wants intensity to look like commitment. To Ryan, it looks like desperation.

The goal is to make Benn angry enough to attack recklessly from the opening bell. Controlled pressure gives Benn a chance to crowd Ryan and work inside. Emotionally charged lunges give the champion the space to land his left hook.

Capturing the welterweight championship his father, Nigel Benn, never won brings additional personal motivation. That may sharpen Conor, but it may also tempt him to force the knockout he predicted. The weigh-in provides the first genuine test. If Benn arrives gaunt and exhausted, Ryan’s accusation will sound less like routine trash talk and more like an early diagnosis.

A clean performance on the scale would answer him. Anything else gives Ryan another psychological victory before either fighter throws a punch.

At 22 years of age, Dempsey was tearing through the heavyweight division with his aggressive style and crushing left hook. Miske, 24, had the benefit of fighting before his hometown supporters, but he was far more than a protected local attraction.

Dempsey weighed 187½ pounds, while Miske came in at 182.

Known as the “St. Paul Thunderbolt,” Miske was a fast, clever boxer who understood how to block punches, smother attacks, and work at close range. Those skills gave Dempsey one of his hardest tests during his climb toward Jess Willard’s heavyweight championship.

The local favorite supplied a tactical lesson for smaller fighters facing dangerous punchers. Instead of continually backing away, he stepped into Dempsey’s punching range and crowded him. Retreating would have given Dempsey space to drive forward, build speed, and launch his leaping left hook. Miske took away that leverage by getting close, controlling Dempsey’s arms and preventing him from completing his punches.

The rolling movement associated with Dempsey’s attacks depended upon momentum. He bobbed his upper body from side to side, shifted his weight, and sprang forward with hooks from changing angles. An opponent who backed away gave that attack time to gather force.

Meeting Dempsey chest to chest changed the exchanges into an arm wrestle. His long swings lost much of their force as Miske blocked the hook, jammed the punching arm, and answered with short shots before tying him up.

Quick punches inside prevented the younger man from finding a steady rhythm. Dempsey had productive stretches in the second and third rounds, but Miske answered with a hard right cross in the third.

Years later, Dempsey admitted that Miske was landing more punches and building what looked like a lead. He also recalled being hurt during one exchange and struggling to remain upright until the bell.

“Miske had landed more telling blows than I had,” Dempsey recalled. “He suddenly came at me with a volley that nearly put me out.”

It was a revealing admission from a fighter remembered for overwhelming opponents. Raw aggression had run into a boxer who understood distance, timing and leverage. The visiting fighter finally produced his strongest attack in the seventh. A heavy left to the body followed by a right to the jaw troubled Miske and helped Dempsey recover ground. Neither man scored a knockdown, leaving the newspapers to decide which work they valued more.

Miske’s approach was almost the opposite of the one Jess Willard used against Dempsey in Toledo the following year. The 6’6″ champion tried to control the challenger from long range but remained too upright and stationary.

That distance allowed Dempsey to leap forward with hooks and overhand punches. Willard became an easy target once the challenger closed the distance, leading to seven knockdowns during the savage opening round.

Such a runway was never available against Miske. He moved toward the danger, shortened the punches, and forced Dempsey to work without full leverage. Willard waited at the end of Dempsey’s forward rush, while Miske intercepted it before the punches reached full speed.

The St. Paul fight showed that smothering Dempsey was safer than surrendering the ring and waiting for him to attack. Gene Tunney receives credit for solving Dempsey in 1926 and repeating the result one year later. Miske had exposed several of the same weaknesses eight years earlier. Their tactics were not identical. Tunney relied more heavily on footwork, his jab, and movement at long range. Miske was more willing to hold his position, work inside, and smother Dempsey physically.

Both remained composed when Dempsey attacked. They refused to become stationary targets at his preferred distance and punished him when his forward movement became predictable.

Before their first fight, Tunney studied films of Dempsey and brought former opponents and sparring partners into camp. There is no firm evidence that Miske personally supplied Tunney’s plan, but the St. Paul contest had established the central principle: Dempsey became less effective when an opponent denied him momentum and forced him to restart his attacks.

Miske supplied the early evidence that denying Dempsey momentum made him less effective, and Tunney later produced the polished championship version.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press surveyed eight writers at ringside. Four favored Dempsey, one selected Miske and three scored the fight even. The newspaper published the bout as a draw, although other reports awarded Dempsey a narrow newspaper decision based on his aggression and heavier punches.

A later collection drawing upon additional newspaper sources produced seven verdicts for Dempsey, four draws and one for Miske. That broader tally included reports beyond the eight writers questioned in St. Paul.

Such disagreement exposed the weakness of the no decision era. A boxer’s official record remained untouched after a distance fight, even when most observers believed he had lost. Local sports editors became unofficial judges without a uniform scoring system or any requirement to agree.

Reports from St. Paul do not support the claim that hometown writers simply protected Miske. Four of the eight surveyed writers favored the visiting Dempsey, while only one selected Miske. Regional loyalty may have influenced individual accounts, but the split also reflected a genuinely close fight.

Miske landed more often and controlled long portions of the contest, while Dempsey delivered the harder individual blows. Some writers valued activity and craft; others favored aggression and damage.

Promoters benefited from the uncertainty. Dempsey survived a difficult night without receiving an official loss, allowing his handlers to continue selling him as the next threat to Willard. Miske also avoided a formal defeat and remained a leading heavyweight attraction in Minnesota. Jack Kearns wanted knockouts that would sell Dempsey to a national audience. Taking him into Miske’s hometown against a fast, experienced boxer was a serious gamble.

The no decision format reduced the danger because only a knockout placed an official loss on the record. It did not remove the promotional risk. A decisive beating reported across the country still would have damaged Dempsey’s growing reputation.

Kearns learned that clever defensive fighters presented a different challenge from the large, slower heavyweights Dempsey destroyed. His fighter continued facing dangerous opposition, including Fred Fulton, Battling Levinsky, Bill Brennan and Miske himself, but the first fight supplied a warning. Dempsey’s power did not automatically solve every style.

The pair met again in Philadelphia on November 28, 1918, with most newspapers favoring Dempsey after six rounds. By then, the future champion had gained more experience against Miske’s troublesome methods.

Their third fight came on September 6, 1920, after Dempsey had taken the heavyweight championship from Willard. Miske was suffering from Bright’s disease and was knocked out in the third round of Dempsey’s first title defense.

His illness was not common public knowledge, so there is no basis for claiming Kearns selected Miske because he knew the challenger was dying. In hindsight, the physical decline made the title fight far less dangerous than their first meeting had been.

That knockout became the lasting image of their rivalry. Miske is now remembered primarily as the sick challenger who needed money, while Dempsey remains one of boxing’s most recognizable champions.

The familiar family story belongs mainly to the end of Miske’s life, not the 1920 title fight. A gravely ill Miske returned against Bill Brennan in November 1923, scored a fourth-round knockout, and used the money to give his family a memorable Christmas. He died on January 1, 1924.

Remembering only the tragedy reduces Miske to a sympathetic opponent in Dempsey’s championship story. Reports from 1918 present the fuller picture.

At that time, the St. Paul Thunderbolt was one of the sharpest technical boxers in the heavyweight division, possessing the timing, defense, and composure to frustrate Dempsey near his physical peak. He survived 10 rounds and forced the future champion to abandon many of his preferred attacks. The press left St. Paul unable to agree on a winner.