WBA "regular" junior middleweight beltholder Austin Trout and retired refereee Joe Cortez will be among those on the crew calling Saturday night's quadruple-header for Showtime.
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Trout, referee Cortez to work ringside for Showtime
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BROOKLYN -- WBA "regular" junior middleweight beltholder Austin Trout and recently retired Hall of Fame referee Joe Cortez will be working as ringside commentators for Saturday night's Showtime-televised championship quadruple-header at Barclays Center. Trout and Cortez will join host Brian Kenny as well as announcers Mauro Ranallo (blow-by-blow) and Al Bernstein (color commentary) as well as ringside reporter Jim Gray working a stacked, nine-fight card that is headline by a rematch between RING, WBA and WBC junior welterweight champ Danny Garcia and four-division title-winner Erik Morales. Trout (25-0, 14 knockouts), a 27-year-old southpaw from Las Cruces, New Mexico, is doing so in advance of his defense against three-division title-winner Miguel Cotto (37-2, 30 KOs), whom he will face in a Showtime-televised fight on Dec. 1 from New York's Madison Square Garden where the Puerto Rican challenger never has lost. Trout is replacing WBA welterweight titleholder Paulie Malignaggi, who will face Mexico City's Pablo Cesar Cano in a non-title bout. Malignaggi served in a similar role as Trout last month at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, where he called the Showtime-televised card whose main event as WBC junior middleweight titleholder Saul "Canelo" Alvarez scored three knockdowns on the way to a fifth-round knockout over Josesito Lopez. "They told me about it about a week ago. I'm excited. I really wanted to have some kind of audition for something like this," who is coming off a unanimous decision over Delvin Rodriguez in June that followed a Showtime-televised sixth-round stoppage of Frank LoPorto last November. "I feel like I can really be good as a commentator. Not that I have a lot of experience. I've only done it once. But I feel like I have a natural knack for it." Cortiz worked his last fight when Alvarez vanquished Lopez. "This is exciting for me, from a referee's perspective. I can call the shots. I know what these referees are thinking about and what they should be doing because I've done it for 35 years myself," said Cortez. "Plus, being an ex-fighter, that makes it that much easier. It's like having gone to school for 35 years to prepare for my next career." Photo by Tom Casino, Showtime Lem Satterfield can be reached at lemuel.satterfield@gmail.com |