Juan Manuel Marquez come from behind KO over Juan Diaz
Juan “The Baby Bull” Diaz started fast against Juan Manuel Marquez and had him in trouble in the early rounds in a classic war that could be 2009’s Fight of The Year.
A true battle that matched Diaz’s pressure and volume punching VS Marquez’s accuracy and power punching.
Marquez and Diaz traded furious punches from the opening seconds, with Diaz staggering Marquez midway into the second round but the Mexican G keeping his composure and fighting through the threat.
Diaz opened a cut above Marquez’s right eye in the fifth round and looked to be wearing down the elder veteran.
But Marquez responded by opening a gash above Diaz’s right eye with a left uppercut and stunning the younger G with a left hook 40 seconds before the end of the eighth round, setting the stage for the finish.
Marquez continued to work the body, which as it usually does made the difference.
In the ninth round, Marquez landed two stinging hard rights to Diaz’s face in a three-punch combination that sent the American falling face forward to the canvas with 35 seconds remaining in the ninth round.
Diaz rose but seconds later, Marquez followed with a right uppercut to the chin that left Diaz flat on his back as referee Rafael Ramos waved an end to the fight after two minutes and 40 seconds of the ninth round.
Marquez, 35, rose to 50-4 with one draw with his 37th victory inside the distance.
Diaz fell to 34-2.
Two G’s, toe to toe.
The victory gave Marquez, the reigning Ring Magazine title holder, a clean sweep of the WBA, WBO and IBO world titles.
14. LL Cool J feat. Fat Joe, Foxy Brown, Keith Murray and Prodigy – I Shot Ya (Remix)
This track is the one on the list with the most MC’s but each one rips the mic off the cord. Murray opens up by “representing intellectual violence” and destroying commercial rappers. Then P comes through spitting futuristic lyrics about Illuminati and blows minds. Fat Joe then attacks the mic with street silver bullets and ups the ante by calling himself “Keyser Söze”. Foxy Brown raps better than most guys in the current decade (although, she could have been left off the track). Then LL cleans up by reminding us he “Crushed Moe Dee, Hammer, and Ice-T’s curl”. This track is almost like a street corner cipher with each MC daring the other to go further. Almost a game of lyrical “Chicken”, if you will. Trackmasters on the Production tip.
13. Keith Murray – The Most Beautifullest Thing In This World
When Keith Murray first strangled the mic on this track, I thought I was hearing the second coming of Rakim. A True battle MC, who, with any kind of Marketing could have been huge. But most people don’t get him or his lyrics. Breaks the mic down to an organic compound. With Erick Sermon on the production tip and you have a timeless classic.
12. Beatnuts ft. Big Pun, Cuban Link – Off the books
Pun opens up the track and leaves wreckage and mayhem from here to the beaches of San Juan. Cuban Link, Ju Ju, and Psycho Les clean up over a track that’s sicker than maggot infested, decaying decapitated bodies.
AZ perfects “Pure Swagger” on the mic. Serious. Pure Deadly Swag. Primo supplies the track with the Roberta Flack sample. AZ and Primo are the greatest pairing since Hollow Points and The Desert Eagle.
Word to future DJ’s of the world: Spin this track in your set and you will be better than 99.999% of club DJ’s in the world. It’s that simple. And this DJ Premier track is that ill. And this track checks everyone. And that means you too.
9. Mobb Deep FT. Big Noyd, Give Up The Goods (Just Step)
No track captured the street hustler ethos better than this Q-tip produced trillion cut emerald. Plus, it had the introduction of BIG NOYD with the line that earned him $300,000: “Yo it’s the r – a double pe – r, n – o – y – d Niggas can’t fuck with me”. Not bad for one line.
Killah Priest (who I hung out with recently) takes hip-hop and puts it on its head. And then does it again. And again. True Master lives up to his name on the prod tip on the greatest WU related track.
It’s hard to pick a Eric B. & Rakim track. Hell, they could have the whole “Top Ten”. Here they are at their peak capturing gritty streetlife in a bottle and making you drink it. Juice. Dope movie too.
Only two verses. But they are two verses of perfection. Makes you wonder what would have happened if they added a third. The earth would have probably started spinning the opposite direction. Hip-Hop would never be the same.
Guru understudies Lil’ Dap and Melachi the Nutcracker destroy this Primo track on the realest hip hop track ever. The track sounds sicker than an acetylene torch on bare feet. Another one DJ’s must spin for a party to happen.
KooL G Rap and Nas go toe to toe like Arturo “Thunder” Gatti and “Irish” Micky Ward. With legendary results. Raising the bets higher and higher in the third verse, I am surprised anyone ever picked up a mic again.
Big Daddy Kane plays “Jason” on the track that made it all possible. The word “smooth” doesn’t even do this track justice. Can anyone step to the Kane? No one even tried after this track. If you don’t have every lyric of this track memorized. Do it. You will be a better person for it.
This Primo beat is so ill that this track could have made the top ten if two teenage white suburban girls were rapping on it. Fortunately, J. Mega and Greg Valentine cause the apocalypse in 1998. Hip Hop would never touch these heights again.
See the tall, gregarious young man in the Eighteenth Street Lounge, moving easily toward a group of receptive women as the floor vibrates with reggae music? He’s dressed in a sharp Hugo Boss suit, and he knows that the minimum for a table is $240.
But he’s not offering to buy the drinks. And the suit? He bought it a year ago, when he had a six-figure salary.
Dating in the time of the pink slip means feeling the squeeze of the drastically reduced paycheck, the sudden sting of the layoff. From investment bankers to real estate developers to construction workers, no job means no buying rounds of $15 martinis for a pretty woman and her girlfriends. No hosting parties in the bachelor loft. And often, no idea how to present one’s new self on the dating market.
“It’s been incredibly stressful for me,” said Neil Welsh, 27, the guy in the suit, who until last year was marketing director for a booming real estate company. “I was so used to using my financial situation to leverage my dating.”
For many affected by the recession, dating is the least of their worries. But the market crash has had a particular impact on young adults who developed their dating skills in fat times, the twentysomethings who spent lavishly to show that they could afford the finer things. Now, with national unemployment rates at 8.8 percent for people 25 to 34, they are looking for more creative ways to attract partners — and reassessing what all that big spending really meant.
Come on “player”. Step up your Game to Brioni, or go Custom Savile Row, like your humble Author.
I have said it before and I will say it again: “Game first, Money second”.
Younger aspiring Playboys, who didn’t hone their Game in the 90’s are having a rough go of it. (All the better for battle hardened International Playboys like your humble Author).
Short them.
“looking for more creative ways to attract partners”?
Try Game.
Or Read The G Manifesto.
The Rest is Up to You…
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
The seven young models never used to have this much time for the beach. They’d hop from cellphones to cabs to casting calls, posing and pouting for the catalogs during the height of Miami’s modeling season.
Times being what they are, they now soak in the sorrow of an industry while lounging on beach towels in bikinis and board shorts, or tossing a volleyball. This game is informal, for not one but two of the annual local beach volleyball tournaments have been spiked.
”Oh, the economy!” lamented 19-year-old Dani Dwyer, a wispy blonde with a flat stomach in a black bikini.
This week’s news that the Irene Marie Models agency was shutting its doors in South Beach only served to reaffirm that the nation’s economic ugliness had tainted the world of glamour.
The owner of a top modeling agency in South Beach that closed its doors last week due to a downturn in advertising was in her office on Thursday.
Irene Marie, whose agency bears her name, arrived Thursday morning to hand out portfolios and other promotional materials to models.
”When you are sitting in the middle of February, which is one of the biggest months of the year, in a seasonable business, and there is not much hope left, I was forced into a very difficult decision,” Marie said on Wednesday.
The sign posted outside the agency’s Ocean Drive studio had a clear message: The recession hit the company hard, and models were given instructions on times to pick up their portfolios over the next several days.
Hundreds of models are expected to drop by the studio on Thursday, Friday and Monday afternoon.
The economic downturn has led advertisers to cut back drastically, slicing revenue for newspapers and magazines, and in turn, the agencies that book the models who pose for the photos.
Spending on photo shoots plunged 36 percent in 2008, down to $23 million, according to Miami-Dade figures. That’s an accelerated drop from a broader decline this decade. In 1999, Miami-Dade recorded $46 million in spending on photo shoots.
“According to preliminary calculations, the Dow dropped 250.89, or 3.41 percent, to 7,114.78. It last closed this low on Oct. 28, 1997 when it finished at 6,971.32. The Dow hasn’t traded below the 7,000 mark since October 1997.”
The good news is, the stock market was at these levels when Hip-Hop was good, and nightlife wasn’t completely gay (Bottle Service, girls always dressing in jeans and flip flops, guys wearing clothes without rhinestones on them (Ed Hardy and Christian Audigier).
So maybe we can turn back the clock on this stuff too!
“Let me kick it, about the digits, that I’ve collected
Long distance, and disconnected, it’s gettin hectic
Before my record, they didn’t show it
But now they throw it, hopin that they’ll get drunk off Moet
or Cristal, but that’s not my par-ticular style and taste My name ain’t Puff and I ain’t got loot to waste
I ain’t got time to waste, bad bitches is all up in my face
Crazy ignorant, sweatin links minks and shit
Cosmetic, but deep down, derelict
Fake players, never get out the projects
It’s pathetic — the way she bends for dividends
I tried to jewel her but she tried to get a drink at the end
of our con-vo-sation, I did not have the patience
Slid off to the next Asian
She said, “What you do?” I said, “What?”
She said, “You know your occupation?”
So I broke the fuck out
In nineteen-ninety-six that’s what it’s all about, but
I won’t go that route
Back in the days Biz said it was The Vapors
But today, I realize that it’s the papers”
With millions of homeowners now struggling to repay money they clearly never should have borrowed, our leaders have been righteously wagging fingers at predatory lenders who allegedly enticed innocent borrowers, and the country, into a financial snake pit. While the mortgage industry clearly deserves a good share of the blame, unindicted co-conspirators abound. The ringleaders are still at-large and are, in fact, busy hatching a plan to dwarf the earlier mistakes.
Contrary to the message bouncing off the marble walls of the Capitol, most borrowers in the inflating housing bubble clearly understood the terms of their loans. Most knew that they could not afford their mortgage payments once their teaser rates expired, but enthusiastically jumped into the debt pool anyway believing that guaranteed real estate appreciation, or a quick and profitable sale, would keep them afloat.
Although both lenders and borrowers were acting in their own perceived self-interest, what can we say of our economic policymakers who are expected to protect the good of all? Their actions encouraged the whole sad circus. Were it not for the excessively low interest rates provided by the Fed, the lax lending standards and moral hazards supplied by Congress courtesy of Freddie, Fannie, and the FHA, and the many real estate subsidies built into the tax code, none of these predatory loans would have been possible.
Had lenders exercised better judgment and had borrowers avoided overly burdensome debt loads, both parties would clearly be in better financial positions today. Instead, as borrowers were demanding the credit to fuel their dreams of instant real estate riches, lenders were being ordered to accommodate them.
In past generations, homebuyers were required to save for down payments and postpone their purchases until they could actually afford conventional 30-year fixed mortgages. But in recent years, as home ownership became a matter of public policy, the government accused lenders of discrimination and urged lower standards and easier terms. With government guarantees in place, the mortgage industry was happy to both expand their revenues and promote a better society.
Q: Does The G Manifesto think pot should be legalized?
Michael Mason: Great question. On paper I would say “Yes, all drugs should be legalized”. But then again, The Drug Game employs so many people in this world, that if we legalized drugs, our unemployment rates would skyrocket. I wouldn’t want to see the government or Wal-Mart make all that money, I would rather see the money in the hands of The People. I am kind of on the fence on this one (one of the few instances you will see me on the fence).
I am not on the fence anymore.
The only way out of The Down Economy is to Legalize Drugs. (This would be good for America not necessarily your humble Author…see, I am not completely selfish).
America need to get off its moral high horse.
We need to create things (read drugs) and make America a place again that Rich Foreigners want to visit.
