About the worst thing anyone can do when trying to win the current version of TQBR Prediction Game is to be someone who had won an earlier version of TQBR Prediction Game. Something about being inducted into the Hall of Champions makes just about everyone go on a miserable prediction streak or flat stop playing. Over the past weekend, though, two champs of yesteryear revived some of their glory days... but is a new champ emerging?
Paul Kelly took the lead all by his lonesome by predicting a Daniel Ponce De Leon knockout of Antonio Escalante. But Miggs 88, a Hall of Champions inductee, also predicted a De Leon KO and is a mere 100 points behind him. And another inductee, Pretty Toney, had the most accurate call of the week by predicting De Leon would score the knockout in the 7th round, the closest to the actual KO round, the 3rd. So while we celebrate Paul Kelly's new leaderboard status, it's too early to celebrate him or anyone else as a future champion, as five fights remain. As such, we celebrate old champions this day (Would anyone have picked Carmen Basilio, with the way he fought, to live to be 83? Oh, wait, now that I think about it, it totally makes sense) with the idea that the next champion's day will come.
Most of the rest of us were bamboozled in at least one way. The Shane Mosley-Sergio Mora draw robbed everyone of points, a bitter pill for those of us who thought Mosley deserved the win and probably for some of you who thought Mora did. Meanwhile, 20 of us picked Escalante to 13 people picking De Leon (including Beard of Zeus aka Eugene Dammrod, who broke a five-fight skid). It now feels like my dumbest pick of 2010. I usually can imagine how my picks might lose, but I simply didn't imagine the kind of demolition job De Leon did on Escalante.
The problem for those of us who aren't doing so hot is that, yes, we still have a chance at this thing, but we might have to sit with our shame for a long time. I don't see anything prediction-worthy until Nov. 6, unless there's a sudden grassroots groundswell for a prediction on Oct. 15 for Lucian Bute-Jesse Brinkley and/or Oct. 16 for Vitali Klitscko-Shannon Briggs. Let me know what you think, people.
Until then, here are your standings. As usual, if you see any tabulation errors, notify me and we'll adjudicate:
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