As Ali Turns 70, A Reflection On A First Encounter With The Greatest

Published

12 years ago

January 17, 2012

As Ali Turns 70, A Reflection On A First Encounter With The Greatest – On April 19, 1971, a little over five weeks after he lost a unanimous decision to “Smokin” Joe Frazier for the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world, Muhammad Ali’s appeal of his conviction for refusing to be inducted into the US military during the Vietnam war was argued before the Supreme Court. On June 28, 1971 the court ruled in Ali’s favor 8-0 and reversed the conviction. Muhammad Ali won the biggest fight of his life outside the boxing ring.

During the quickly assembled press conference after the ruling, the first question Ali was asked was whether or not he was going to sue the government for wrongly stripping him of his heavyweight title. Ali immediately responded, “No.” And he went on to say that the fight was over and that he held no malice towards anyone. The government did what it believed in and thought was right just as he took a stand in doing what he believed in and thought was right.

Think about that for a moment. Ali wasn’t about trying to gain some sort of restitution or revenge from the entity that robbed him of his physical prime as a fighter and cost him millions in earnings. And in reality part of the reason why Ali’s health isn’t as good as it could be today is because he tried to make up the lost millions from his three and a half year exile on the back-end of his career. Thus he endured punishment as an older fighter in his late thirties. Yet he walked away from his fight and struggle with the government with a clear head and didn’t live the rest of his life as a bitter or damaged man.

We should’ve grasped it right then and there, and perhaps some of us did, how big a man Muhammad Ali is and has always been. Sure, like everyone else he has his warts and perhaps went overboard with his pre-fight antics before his title bouts with Floyd Patterson, Ernie Terrell and Joe Frazier. But that aside, Ali has always seen the big picture and has never been the least bit petty or small minded on serious issues that matter.

Muhammad Ali was born January 17, 1942. Today he turns 70 years old. What’s left to be said about him that hasn’t already been documented? Ali’s life in and out of the ring has been covered so much to the point that it’s been exhausted. Instead of trying to find something to say about his career or the influence he’s had world-wide as a humanitarian since he retired as a fighter that hasn’t already been said, I thought I’d share a true story about my first encounter with “The Greatest.”

It was late April of 1971, I was in 6th grade and lived in Haddonfield, New Jersey, (20 minutes outside of Philadelphia where heavyweight champ Joe Frazier resided), which is the neighboring town of Cherry Hill where Muhammad Ali moved to in 1970. He lived on Ann Drive off of Kresson Road about 8 miles from my house. I was warned by my father numerous times that I was forbidden to ride my bike that far out to Ali’s house hoping to meet him. Yeah, like that was gonna stop me!

On this Saturday afternoon in late April of 1971 I talked a friend of mine, Bob Arnold, into riding our bikes out to Ali’s house with the hopes of meeting him. Bob wasn’t much of a boxing fan but meeting Ali convinced him to take the excursion. On the way there Bob and I debated whether or not he was gonna be home. Once we arrived it was obvious that no one was there and the trip was for naught.

Just as we were starting to ride away I got a flat on the back tire of my Schwinn Apple Krate, which put me in a dilemma because I now had to call my father and ask him to come and pick me up. So I knocked at Ali’s next door neighbor’s door and asked if I could use the phone to call my father. They were very accommodating and said they were used to people driving by looking to get a glimpse of Ali. When I called my father, he asked me exactly where I was calling from. I hemmed and hawed. Finally, he asked if I had gone to Muhammad Ali’s house, and I said yes. He replied, “Instead of giving you a beating, walk your bike home or go asked Muhammad to give you a ride,” and then hung up. So I walked my bike home but didn’t get an ass whipping from my father when I got there.

Seven months later and two weeks after Ali fought Buster Mathis, I talked three friends, Joe Carbone, Jimmy Avery and Danny Till, into cutting school and going out to Ali’s house. This time it was worth the trip. When we approached Ali’s house he was outside raking. He caught us staring at him and motioned us to approach the gate by the entrance of his driveway. When we got there he opened the gate and told us to come in. Once we were on his property, he smiled at us and asked, “You guys skipped school to come out here, didn’t you”? “Yes,” we replied. He then said, “What school do you go to because I have to call your truant officer and tell him that you’re here.” And then he smiled and asked if we were thirsty and we said yes. He then took us down to a lower level of the house to which half the room was surrounded by a bar and fountain. Ali then said, “I have any kind of soda you want.”

After we told him what kind of soda we wanted his wife, Belinda, came down stairs and told him that the drapery man was there and they had to decide on what color they wanted. And by the way the conversation unfolded between them, it sounded as if there was a conflict between the colors red and purple. Ali excused himself from us for a second and said he had to straighten out his wife. He then joined her in a mildly heated debate which was hard to decipher what exactly was being said. After a couple minutes of banter, Belinda walked away from him saying, “That’s it Muhammad, I’m going with our first choice. If you don’t like it, tough. Don’t give me a hard time or I’ll go call Joe. He’s right across the bridge.” After hearing that Ali had the look on his face as if he were a little kid and had his hand caught in the cookie jar.

For the next 15 or so minutes Ali chatted with us and asked what we were studying in school and what our parents did as an occupation. Shortly after that he said he had to go and asked us to follow him to the gate so he could see us out. As we were leaving he said, “The next time we come around during a school day I’m going to report you to your school for playing hooky.” He then waved and went back towards the house.

Years later when I was with him at the 20th anniversary celebration of Frazier-Ali I in Center City Philadelphia, I told him the story and he asked if his old house in Cherry Hill was still there. I told him that it was but it was no longer the nicest house on the street. He laughed.

It’s inconceivable that you’d be able to do that with any elite athlete today, let alone hands down the most famous. And it’s strange, because Muhammad Ali pretty much set the stage for today’s self absorbed super stars, yet he never distanced himself from anyone. And I’m sure that, were his health good, he’d be exactly the way he was back then now when it came to access.

Contact Lotierzo at GlovedFist@Gmail.com“

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Frank Lotierzo

Ramon Cardenas Channels Micky Ward and KOs Eduardo Ramirez on ProBox

Published

1 day ago

April 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Ramon-Cardenas-Channels-Micky-Ward-and-KOs-Eduardo-Ramirez-on-ProBox

The Wednesday night bi-monthly series of fights on the ProBox TV platform is the best deal in boxing; the livestream is free with no strings attached! Tonight’s episode was headlined by a super bantamweight match between San Antonio’s Ramon Cardenas and Eduardo Ramirez who brought a caravan of rooters from his hometown in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico.

Cardenas, coached by Joel Diaz, entered the contest ranked #4 by the WBA. He was expected to handle Ramirez with little difficulty, but this was a close, tactical fight through eight frames when lightning struck in the form of a left hook to the liver from Cardenas. Ramirez went down on one knee and wasn’t able to beat the count. It was as if Cardenas summoned the ghost of Micky Ward who had a penchant for terminating fights with the same punch that arrived out of the blue.

The official time was 1:37 of round nine. Cardenas improved to 25-1 with his14th win inside the distance. Ramirez, who was stopped in the opening round by Nick “Wrecking” Ball in London in his lone previous fight outside Mexico, falls to 23-3-3.

Co-Feature

In an upset, Tijuana super welterweight Damian Sosa won a split decision over previously undefeated Marques Valle, a local area fighter who was stepping up in class in his first 10-round go. Sosa was the aggressor, repeatedly backing his taller opponent into the ropes where Valle was unable to get good leverage behind his punches.

The 25-year-old Valle, managed by the influential David McWater, was the house fighter. This was his 10^th appearance in this building. He brought a 10-0 (7) record and was hoping to emulate the success of his younger brother Dominic Valle who scored a second-round stoppage of his opponent in this ring two weeks ago, improving to 9-0. But Sosa, who brought a 24-2 record, proved to be a bridge too high.

The judges had it 97-93 and 96-94 for the Tijuana invader and a disgraceful 98-92 for the house fighter.

Also

In a fight whose abrupt ending would be echoed by the main event, 34-year-old SoCal featherweight Ronny Rios, now training in Las Vegas, returned to the ring after a 22-month hiatus and scored a fifth-round stoppage over Nicolas Polanco of the Dominican Republic.

A three-punch combo climaxed by a left hook to the liver took the breath out of Polanco who slumped to his knees and was counted out. A two-time world title challenger, Rios advanced to 34-4 (17 KOs). Polanco, 34, declined to 21-6-1. The official time was 0:54 of round five.

—

The next ProBox show (Wednesday, May 8) will have an international cast with fighters from Kazakhstan, Japan, Mongolia, and the United Kingdom. In the main event, Liverpool’s Robbie Davies Jr will make his U.S. debut against the California-based Kazakh Sergey Lipinets.

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Haney-Garcia Redux with the Focus on Harvey Dock

Published

3 days ago

April 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Haney-Garcia-Redux-with-the-Focus-on-Harvey-Dock

Saturday’s skirmish between Ryan Garcia and WBC super lightweight champion Devin Haney was a messy affair, and yet a hugely entertaining fight fused with great drama. In the aftermath, Garcia and Haney were celebrated – the former for fooling all the experts and the latter for his gallant performance in a losing effort – but there were only brickbats for the third man in the ring, referee Harvey Dock.

Devin Haney was plainly ahead heading into the seventh frame when there was a sudden turnabout when Garcia put him on the canvas with his vaunted left hook. Moments later, Dock deducted a point from Garcia for a late punch coming out of a break. The deduction forced a temporary cease-fire that gave Haney a few precious seconds to regain his faculties. Before the round was over, Haney was on the deck twice more but these were ruled slips.

The deduction, which effectively negated the knockdown, struck many as too heavy-handed as Dock hadn’t previously issued a warning for this infraction. Moreover, many thought he could have taken a point away from Haney for excessive clinching. As for Haney’s second and third trips to the canvas in round seven, they struck this reporter – watching at home – as borderline, sufficient to give referee Dock the benefit of the doubt.

In a post-fight interview, Ryan Garcia faulted the referee for denying him the satisfaction of a TKO. “At the end of the day, Harvey Dock, I think he was tripping,” said Garcia. “He could have stopped that fight.”

Those that played the rounds proposition, placing their coin on the “under,” undoubtedly felt the same way.

The internet lit up with comments assailing Dock’s competence and/or his character. Some of the ponderings were whimsical, but they were swamped by the scurrilous screeching of dolts who find a conspiracy under every rock.

Stephen A. Smith, reputedly America’s highest-paid TV sports personality, was among those that felt a need to weigh-in: “This referee is absolutely terrible….Unreal! Horrible officiating,” tweeted Stephen A whose primary area of expertise is basketball.

Harvey Dock

Dock fought as an amateur and had one professional fight, winning a four-round decision over a fellow novice on a show at a non-gaming resort in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. He says that as an amateur he was merely average, but he was better than that, a New Jersey and regional amateur champion in 1993 and 1994 while a student New Jersey’s Essex County Community College where he majored in journalism.

A passionate fan of Sugar Ray Leonard, he started officiating amateur fights in 1998 and six years later, at age 32, had his first documented action at the professional level, working low-level cards in New Jersey. The top boxing referees, to a far greater extent than the top judges, had long apprenticeships, having worked their way up from the boonies and Dock is no exception.

Per boxrec, Haney vs Garcia was Harvey Dock’s 364^th assignment in the pros and his forty-second world title fight. Some of those title fights were title in name only, they weren’t even main events, but, bit by bit, more lucrative offerings started coming his way.

On May 13, 2023, Dock worked his first fights in Nevada, a 4-rounder and then a 12-rounder on a card at the Cosmopolitan topped by the 140-pound title fight between Rolly Romero and Ismael Barroso. It was the first time that this reporter got to watch Dock in the flesh.

Ironically (in hindsight), the card would be remembered for the actions of a referee, in this case Tony Weeks who handled the main event. Barroso was winning the fight on all three cards when Weeks stepped in and waived it off in the ninth round after Romero cornered Barroso against the ropes and let loose a barrage of punches, none of which landed cleanly. Few “premature stoppages” were ever as garishly, nay ghoulishly, premature.

With all the brickbats raining down on Weeks, I felt a need to tamp down the noise by diverting attention away from Tony Weeks and toward Harvey Dock and took to the TSS Forum to share my thoughts. Referencing the 12-rounder, a robust junior welterweight affair between Batyr Akhmedov and Kenneth Sims Jr, I noted that Dock’s Las Vegas debut went smoothly. He glided effortlessly around the ring, making him inconspicuous, the mark of a good referee. (This post ran on May 15, two days after the fight.)

Folks at the Nevada State Athletic Commission were also paying attention. Dock was back in Las Vegas the following week to referee the lightweight title fight between Devin Haney and Vasyl Lomachenko and before the year was out, he would be tabbed to referee the biggest non-heavyweight fight of the year, the July 29 match in Las Vegas between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr.

The Haney-Garcia fight wasn’t Harvey Dock’s best hour, I’ll concede that, but a closer look at his full body of work informs us that he is an outstanding referee.

—

While the Haney-Garcia bout was in progress, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman threw everyone a curve ball, tweeting on “X” that Devin Haney would keep his title if he lost the fight. Everyone, including the TV commentators, was under the impression that the title would become vacant in the event that Haney lost.

Sulaiman cited the precedent of Corrales-Castillo II.

FYI: The Corrales-Castillo rematch, originally scheduled for June 3, 2005 and aborted on the day prior when Castillo failed to make weight, finally came off on Oct. 8 of that year, notwithstanding the fact that Castillo failed to make weight once again, scaling three-and-a-half pounds above the lightweight limit. He knocked out Corrales in the fourth round with a left hook that Las Vegas Review-Journal boxing writer Kevin Iole, alluding to the movie “Blazing Saddles,” described as Mongo-esque (translation: the punch would have knocked out a horse). After initially insisting on a rubber match, which had scant chance of happening, WBC president Jose Sulaiman, Mauricio’s late father, ruled that Corrales could keep his title.

Whether or not you agree with Mauricio Sulaiman’s rationale, the timing of his announcement was certainly awkward.

Haney’s mandatory is Spanish southpaw Sandor Martin (42-3, 15 KOs), a cutie best known for his 2021 upset of Mikey Garcia. A bout between Haney and Martin has the earmarks of a dull fight.

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In a Shocker, Ryan Garcia Confounds the Experts and Upsets Devin Haney

Published

5 days ago

April 21, 2024

David A. Avila

In-a-Shocker-Ryan-Garcia-Confounds-the-Experts-and-Upsets-Devin-Haney

Its good to be crazy. Like a fox.

Ryan “KingRy” Garcia knocked down WBC super lightweight titlist Devin Haney three times to remind everyone of his fighting abilities in winning by majority decision on Saturday.

“I just knew what I could do,” Garcia said.

Fans will not forget the lanky kid from Victorville, California now.

Garcia (25-1, 20 KOs) fooled everyone in playing crazy weeks before the fight, then showed shocking power to hand Haney (30-1, 15 KOs) his first loss as a professional at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Haney’s WBC super lightweight title was not at stake for Garcia because he weighed three pounds over the limit.

After Garcia seemingly acting out of control on social media, Haney’s guard must have slipped in the first round during the first few seconds as Garcia connected with that hellish left hook and Haney, with a look of shock in his eyes, almost went down. He barely survived the first round.

“He caught me with it,” said Haney.

During the next few rounds, Haney proceeded to advance toward Garcia seemingly fully aware of the lethal left hook. He used feints and rights to score with a busier approach as Garcia seemed cocked and ready to counter with a left hook.

In the fourth round it seemed Haney was confident he had regained control of the fight, but every time he opened up with more than a two-punch combination Garcia reminded him whose hands were faster and more dangerous.

Though Garcia seldom jabbed he seemed bent on looking for the right moment to unleash his deadly left hook. And every time the Southern California fighter opened up with a combination he scored and Haney dare not exchange.

A few times Haney smiled as if signifying he escaped.

In the seventh round Haney looked to punish Garcia’s body and instead was met with a three-punch combination included a left hook to the chin and down went Haney slumped on the ground. He managed to beat the count and as soon as Garcia came within reach Haney wrapped his arms around him with a python grip. Despite the warnings by referee Harvey Dock, the fallen fighter would not release and Garcia impatiently fired a weak punch during the break. The referee deducted a point from Garcia though he could have deducted a point from Haney for not obeying his instructions to release his hold. Haney actually went down three times in the round but only one was counted by the referee.

From that point on Haney was very cautious but still looking to win by decision.

Though Garcia kept using a shoulder-roll defense that left his body exposed, he would retaliate with three and four punch combinations that usually Haney could defend against other fighters.. But Garcia’s blazing combinations were too fast to defend.

In the 10^th round Haney looked to attack and was countered by Garcia’s right and a blinding left hook to the chin and another two blows that sent the former undisputed lightweight champion to the floor again.

It didn’t look good for Haney to survive.

Garcia walked into the 11^th round still composed and never out-of-control He dared Haney to exchange and when within striking distance Garcia unleashed another lightning combination and down went Haney again with a defeated look.

Both fighters had fought each other as amateurs six times so there were no surprises between them. But Garcia’s power and speed were superior and that was the difference in a professional fight.

In the final round both were cautious with Garcia’s combination punching proving too dangerous for Haney to open up. Garcia celebrated early as the round ended confident of victory.

After 12 rounds Garcia was seen the victor by majority decision 112-112, 114-110, 115-109.

“You really thought I was crazy,” Garcia told the interviewer and the crowd. “You guys hated on me.”

Other Bouts

Arnold Barboza (30-0) won a curious split decision victory over United Kingdom’s Sean McComb (18-2) in a 10-round super lightweight fight. McComb’s long reach and busy southpaw style gave Barboza trouble. But he managed to win the fight though the crowd was not pleased.

Bektemir Melikuziev (14-1, 10 KOs) defeated France’s Pierre Dibombe (22-1-1) by technical decision after eight rounds due to a cut on his eye from an accidental head butt. It was a very competitive super middleweight fight.

Costa Rica’s David Jimenez (16-1, 11 KOs) outworked John “Scrappy Ramirez (13-1, 9 KOs) in a 12-round scrap to upset the Los Angeles based fighter. After a few close rounds Jimenez simply bullied his way inside and forced Ramirez against the ropes and unloaded his guns.

After 12 rounds two judges saw it 117-111 and 116-114 all for Jimenez.

“I’m a hard-working man from Cartago I come from nothing,” said Jimenez. “My corner told me I had to work inside.”

Charles Conwell (19-0, 14 KOs) stepped on the gas early with vicious body shots and uppercuts and blasted through the resilient Nathaniel Gallimore (22-8-1, 17 KOs) for several rounds. After a brutal fifth and sixth round the referee halted the one-side beating in favor of Conwell who was fighting for the first time under the Golden Boy banner.

Another winner was Sergiy Derevyanchenko (15-5) by decision over Vaughn Alexander (18-11-1) in a super middleweight match.

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