FanHouse JuanManuelMarquez

Southpaw former world champion Zab Judah (pictured) scored a second-round knockout over Ubaldo Hernandez on Friday night at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas to improve to 38-6 with his 26th career KO.

The victory was the fourth in the past five fights for the 32-year-old Judah since June 2007, when he was knocked out in the 11th round by Miguel Cotto.

A former three-time titlist, Judah scored three knockdowns while ending a nearly 12-month layoff against Hernandez (22-20-2, 10 KOs), who, like him, weighed 145 pounds for their welterweight matchup.

Southpaw former world champions, Zab Judah, and Joel Casamayor will return to the ring on Friday night at The Palms Casino in Las Vegas.

Judah, a 32-year-old welterweight (147 pounds), will be ending a nearly 12-month layoff. The 38-year-old Casamayor will be ending a nearly 14-month ring absence when he enters the ring as a light weight (135).

Judah (37-6, 25 knockouts) will face 31-year-old Adailton De Jesus (23-4, 18 KOs) of Brazil, who has won four of his last five fights.

TAMPA, Fla. -- With eyes fixated on perspiration-soaked, WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto's workout, Bob Arum surveyed his latest promotional responsibility at The Fight Factory gymnasium like an artist appreciating his most recent piece.

"Miguel is just a fighter with great, great heart," said Arum, whose 42 years in boxing began with the Muhammad Ali victory over George Chuvalo -- his first of 26 fights involving the man many call "The Greatest" -- and included the George Foreman comeback.

A 78-year-old Harvard graduate and attorney, Arum also handled every fight of Marvelous Marvin Hagler's career, as well as substantial portions of those of Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr.

FanHouse caught up with Arum on Tuesday during Cotto's training in Florida for his Nov. 14 defense against Manny Pacquiao to discuss the futures of Cotto, Pacquiao, and several other fighters he promotes.

Mark Taffet, Senior Vice President of HBO Sports Pay Per View, said Floyd Mayweather "clearly has proven his star status by generating the kinds of pay per view numbers that very few men in the history of the sport have ever generated."

FanHouse spoke to Taffet, the man in charge of HBO's Pay Per View, as he addressed Mayweather, the Nov. 14 megafight between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto, the cable giant's "hunger to go younger" initiative geared toward drawing America's youth to the sport of boxing, and how the organization determines which fights are deserving of pay television status during this exclusive interview.

Days after the Floyd Mayweather Jr-Juan Manuel Marquez fight went head-to-head with UFC 103 on pay-per-view, Golden Boy Promotions is declaring that boxing scored a knockout victory over MMA, with four or five times as many buys as the UFC.

It's important to note that Mayweather-Marquez was the biggest boxing match of 2009, while UFC 103 wasn't close to the biggest MMA card of the year. And it's also important to note that pay-per-view buy rates are difficult to nail down.

But Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer said that when all the numbers come in, he'll have an impressive buy rate to announce, likely over 1 million.

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. agreed to pay $5.6 million in back taxes before the Internal Revenue Service was poised to take the money from his purse after his Saturday comeback fight against Juan Manuel Marquez.

The IRS sent the Nevada Athletic Commission a levy notice on Sept. 4 ordering Mayweather's unpaid taxes from 2007 to be deducted from his $10 million fight purse, commission executive director Keith Kizer told The Associated Press.

Despite big nights for the sport like we had on Saturday night, we're constantly hearing that boxing is a dying sport. Two of the biggest reasons for that are that no one can keep the weight classes straight and no one can keep the champions straight.

Ring Magazine deserves great credit for attempting to change that by establishing clear-cut criteria for determining its own champions, but I have two problems with the way Ring does things. The first is that the magazine ranks fighters in 17 different weight classes. That's too many. And the second is that the Ring ratings have so many vacancies at the top tthat only six fighters can be called Ring Magazine champions. That's too few.

So below is my attempt to list boxing's legitimate champions, using only the sport's eight traditional weight classes.

After live tweeting the Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez play-by-play, I got a lot of questions from readers for a boxing Twitter mailbag. But while plenty of questions were about who won the Mayweather-Marquez fight and how (answer: Mayweather by unanimous decision), we'll start with questions about Shane Mosley and HBO boxing announcer Max Kellerman, who made headlines with their actions in the Mayweather post-fight interview.

Fans who saw Mosley call out Mayweather wanted to know whether a Mayweather-Mosley fight is possible, or if Mayweather will next fight Manny Pacquiao or Miguel Cotto. I also answer questions about just how dominant Mayweather was in his victory over Marquez in the new boxing twitter mailbag below.

DALLAS -- While Floyd Mayweather managed to steal most of the major sports headlines away from UFC 103 on Saturday night, UFC President Dana White was in full belief he put on the better event.

How did he know? Because even though White was in the midst of a 13-fight card, he bought the Mayweather-Juan Manuel Marquez fight and had it playing on a monitor near him.

"It sucked," he said. "It sucked just like I said it would and knew it would."

Mayweather vs. Marquez time is almost upon us. The long-awaited Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez fight will start around 11 PM ET, and when it does, we'll have live round-by-round updates, scoring every round on Twitter.

Will the Mayweather fight establish Pretty Boy Floyd as the No. 1 pound-for-pound boxer in the world, or will Marquez exploit Mayweather's 21 months of ring rust? I'll be watching the Mayweather vs. Marquez pay-per-view and filling you in live on Twitter.

We'll also be providing live, round-by-round updates of the full UFC 103 fight card, and if you can't watch Mayweather vs. Marquez or UFC 103, follow along below for the next best thing or follow me on Twitter @MichaelDavSmith.